Chapter 1: Compensations

Bruce Walters remembered a quip from a fellow student way back in his undergraduate days: “To make a living as a poet, you have to be dead.” That was more-or-less true.

Having done his dissertation on Andre Steffano, he read a comment that poet had made about his income from poetry: “About the time I published my tenth book, I needed a new car. The total I had received for poetry up to then, including the advance on that book, totaled a little less than the price of that Chevette.”

Bruce knew it was a long time before he would write his tenth book and probably longer before he’d reach Steffano’s level of fame. He had no illusions about making a living as a poet.

On the other hand, being known as a poet had its compensations. His job as an instructor in the English department of Benson University was due more to his poetry than to his (minimal) promise as a scholar. And the department tolerated his drinking and sexual flings as they would not have tolerated such behavior in a mere scholar. Everyone knew poets were a rather wild bunch.

And the girls hung on him. He was not so modest as to deny his looks, but those looks hadn’t got him nearly as much tail before his first book was published. And, knowing that poets were a wild bunch, the girls accepted his flings with other girls as their predecessors had not done when he was younger.

Still, when girls in the front row of his classes started revealing more and more cleavage, he got worried. The department didn’t demand a vow of celibacy, but you were not to touch your own students. That was a sexual harassment charge, and probably a sexual harassment discharge.

So, he treated the front rows as scenery. For pickups, there were the local bars and cocktail lounges, which effectively excluded undergraduates. Seniors, and some juniors, were over 21; but they got tired of being carded when they’d been drinking in informal student parties for years.

The downside of this is that townies were less impressed with a poet, and less likely to know he was a poet, than the students were. Still, Bruce seldom needed to go home alone.

The goth-look girl giving him the eye one Friday night in the middle of the fall quarter was an example. She had a pretty face despite the makeup, and a body too lush for the style. He watched as she shook off two men who approached. Well, nothing ventured, nothing laid. He took one more drink to build up his nerve and went over to her table.

“Might I buy you a drink?”

“Thank you. A Manhattan.”

He went back to the bar for a Manhattan and a scotch on the rocks. He brought them back to her table and sat down. “Skoal,” he said. She sipped hers as he swallowed a third of his.

“Bruce.”

“Janet. I’m a secretary; what do you do?”

“I teach and write poetry.”

“That’s fascinating. I love poetry. Have I heard of you?”

“Probably not. Bruce Walters.”

“Of course I have. Away From Home.” She’d had his interest when he came over; this comment won his heart. He guessed the number of people who had heard of that book, including booksellers, librarians, and employees of the publishing house, as in the low three figures. Fewer than half of those could tell you the name of the author. Far fewer could go from his name to the name of the book.

Getting acquainted with her would probably cut the number of those who didn’t know him personally by ten or twenty percent. Still, he definitely wanted to get acquainted. Tits and taste in poetry.

“Look,” she said, “you’re off-duty, so to speak; and I won’t take offense if you refuse. But could you recite Dry Morning for me. I want to hear it as you say it.”

So he did, and more. He tried to turn the conversation to her. He’d come looking for tail, after all, not an audience. Every time, though, she turned the conversation back to him. “Buy you another drink?” he asked.

“I’m not done.” She called over a waitress. “Mr. Walters needs another drink. What is it?”

“Scotch on the rocks.”

When the waitress looked at her suspiciously, she sighed and showed her a driver’s license. “I was dressed a little differently that day, okay?”

“Sure,” said the waitress and brought Bruce’s drink.

He had three more, and she had one. “Look,” she said. “You could drive perfectly well, but the cops around here are vicious. Could you pass a breath test? Why don’t I drive you home?”

She did in her shiny-new car. It was only polite to invite her in, and she accepted. She headed directly to his shelves and looked at his display copy of his books. “You really liked Away From Home?” he asked.

“I thought it was marvelous.”

He went to his box of remainders and pulled out one. “To lovely Janet,” he wrote on the fly leaf. He gave it to her.

“For me? ‘Lovely Janet’?” Her voice was so excited that he was barely offended when she set the book down. Even that minor feeling disappeared as she threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Oh, thank you,” she said, moving her head back but keeping her body pressed to his. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said and kissed her back. “Welcome,” another kiss, “welcome,” kissing again, “welcome.” This kiss involved his tongue. She opened her mouth for it.

One thing led to another, and all of them led to bed. He’d drunk enough to slow him down. She clearly hadn’t. She climaxed around him and then lay under him. When he knew his own climax was coming and tried to withdraw, she tightened her legs around him and clutched his ass with her fingernails.

“Stay here,” she said when he tried to move off. So he fell asleep lying on her.

When he woke the next morning, she was gone. All he had left was a throbbing headache and the book he had inscribed.

Scotch was for ordering in public. When he was alone, he drank vodka. He got the pitcher of orange juice from the refrigerator. By the time he had consumed half of that, well-mixed with vodka, and downed three aspirins and two vitamin-C tablets, he was ready for teaching. Bruce wasn’t an alcoholic; alkies drank Sterno.

He had a class in American literature that afternoon. The front rows gave him a nice view again, and several in the rows behind them had actually read the assignment. He kept office hours, picked up his car from the cocktail lounge’s parking lot, and drove home. He was working on his second screwdriver of the afternoon when the phone rang.

“Mr. Walters? Bruce? This is Janet. Something terrible has happened. Did I leave the book you gave me there?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Oh, thank God! I couldn’t find it when I got home this morning. Could I come by to pick it up? When would be convenient?”

Bruce looked around his living room. “Half an hour?” He should be able to neaten the place up by that time.

“I’ll see you in half an hour, then.”

He’d straightened the whole apartment and put the vodka away when his doorbell rang. It was Janet. She was dressed in tight pants, a blouse, and sandals. She was carrying a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. He handed her the book; she handed him the bottle. “I know that nothing could match the gift of something you wrote yourself,” she said, “but I do think I needed to give you something after you gave me the book.”

When the book had been available in bookstores -- not many bookstores and not for very long -- it had sold for a good deal less than the Scotch. As the author, he could buy it more cheaply yet.

“Can I offer you some?” he asked.

“Let me put this in the car so I don’t lose it again,” she said. “Then I’ll come back.”

She did and drank a little. He had only ice cubes to offer, orange juice would have been blasphemous with that scotch.

They talked a little more, she kissed him again. He was sober this time, and it was even better. Slowly, he took off her blouse and bra. She made not the slightest objection, and when he’d lowered her pants, she was wearing no panties.

When he started to move towards the bedroom, though, she demurred. “What’s wrong with right here?”

Nothing was wrong with right there. He dropped his own trousers and shorts. “Should I use something?”

“You don’t need to.” She bent over the kitchen table, and he entered her. He held her rich breasts while stroking slowly back and forth. His hands moved to her thighs when his strokes sped up. When she screamed and shoved back hard against him, he erupted within her. She collapsed on the table and he rested his weight on his elbows while cuddling her shoulders with his hands.

When he could stand up, she’d recovered, too. She knelt down to untie his shoes. Then she stood up to remove his shirt. “This would be a better time for bed,” she said. And they lay together as the afternoon turned to evening. She was perfectly willing for him to explore her body with his hands as well as his eyes. At the end, she used her mouth to arouse him again. He pounded into her until her climax brought his.

Sunday, she brought in some frozen food. She cooked it, and they ended up in bed. He didn’t know her last name; he didn’t know her address or phone number. That was all right as long as she showed up.

Monday, however, she didn’t. Tuesday, he went back to the cocktail lounge looking for her. She wasn’t there Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday, he started at the cocktail lounge and bar hopped looking for her. He ended up at the cocktail lounge just in case. He still hadn’t seen Janet, but he was sufficiently drunk by that time so that one woman with hair dyed red looked like a good-enough substitute. Probably she was sufficiently drunk so that he looked good enough, too.

They kissed and petted a little in the car before he drove her to his apartment. He was opening his door for her when the two of them were attacked.

“He’s mine,” yelled Janet. She slapped the redhead and ripped at her blouse. The redhead retaliated, but Janet had size, speed, and sobriety. The redhead ran off crying.

“Look what you did to her,” he said.

“Look what she did,” Janet yelled. A tear in her blouse revealed a braless tit. “For that matter, look what you did. You brought a slut home. Can’t we take this inside?” That was the first sensible thing she’d said.

In his apartment, Janet pushed him into a straight chair while she paced back and forth. If her language wasn’t nice to hear, she was nice to look at. Her tits were bobbing up and down under her blouse, their nipples straining against the fabric - except for the moments the left one caught in the rip and was directly visible. Her miniskirt swirled on her turns, revealing more and more of her leg -- but no glimpse of panties.

He’d gone without tail for days; he’d been fairly turned on in the car. Now, she was turning him on more. “You’d fuck a knot in a fence,” she told him in a carrying voice. He winced.

“Can’t you watch your speech?”

“You can’t make me. Who are you? You aren’t my daddy to turn me over your knee.” The image was immediately arousing.