There are some things to be said for starting work at 6:30 in the morning. But almost none of them are nice.

I get to the office before Katie Couric has batted her first eyelash of the day for only one reason: My boss is a USDA-certified Grade A idiot.

I am not exaggerating. You see, I actually work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In D.C. And my boss has been bounced from agency to agency within the department for 20 years. He's an idiot, but so much of an idiot that no one wanted to keep him long enough to go through all the steps it would take to fire a civil service employee. Instead, they were so desperate that they'd even recommend him for promotions -- as long as that sent him to another agency. And so it went until he finally came to rest in my little corner of the Ag Department.

Our job? We give money to McDonald's so it can advertise abroad. Hey, don't complain to me. I pay taxes too, you know.

There's not a lot to the job. Every few weeks you cut a bunch of checks. In between, you get copies of the ads our tax dollars have purchased and file them. About the only way to screw up is to give money to some company that didn't contribute to the current president's campaign. Considering that most of the big fast-food chains are bipartisan bribers, there's not much to worry about.

It's foolproof -- or at least we thought so. Until we got a fool for a boss.

His screwups are too numerous to mention. My favorite was when he decided to take the initiative to do some overseas marketing directly instead of just shoveling out cash. He figured he had a great deal because he got a few thousand surplus posters showing a diagram of a cow cut up into various pieces and parts, and he got one of our summer interns to slap stickers for several American chains on the appropriate hunks of cow. Very cute. But the country where he had the first batch posted didn't think so.

Those Hindus in India are sensitive that way.

However, what I wanted to tell you about was how I came to work a 6-to-2 shift.

It's simple. The boss figured that if farmers get up at dawn, so should we.

But my agency has nothing to do with farmers. The only manure we see is the stuff our boss spreads through his memos. And the people we actually are dealing with don't appreciate it when they can't get us after 11 a.m. Pacific time.

None of this makes any difference to the idiot, which is why I spend the wee hours of every weekday morning trying to come up with nice things to say about this schedule.

I've been on this shift for two years last Wednesday, and in all that time I'd come up with exactly one nice thing: The subway isn't very crowded.

That means a guaranteed seat for everyone, which is quite a luxury, at least in the tourist season. D.C. has subway stations that could hide the Goodyear blimp, but there are never enough seats to go around when the juvenile delinquents and peripatetic geriatrics of every state in the nation descend on the capital to buy cheesy souvenirs and stare up Lincoln's nose. It's a mess, but one those of us on the earlybird shift are spared.

We're a cozy group, those who rumble underground while day is breaking overhead. With only a few changes day to day because someone missed their regular train by a minute, the same 60 or so people ride with me every day. Not all in the same train car, of course, but most have their favorite spot to wait on the platforms, so even the makeup of each carload doesn't change much, day to day.

There are, oh, probably 18 or so regulars in the lead car, the one I ride most often. Aside from those unfortunate enough to work for idiots, most people stuck on dawn patrol are those with the least seniority and the least clout with their bosses -- in other words, young women. (Yeah, yeah, equal opportunity -- but that just means they gotta hire women. It doesn't keep Washington's bureaucratic chauvinists from doing whatever they can afterward to screw them -- figuratively if they can't do it literally.)

So every weekday morning I ride far beneath the purple skies with a dozen and a half or so women, mostly young. Mostly good looking, too.

Sure, I look. Oh, I don't leer or anything. But what else am I going to do? Read the paper? Plenty of boring hours at work to do that. So I just sit and observe. I try not to be too obvious, like I'll use the windows as mirrors sometimes, or concentrate on the women who are reading papers, so there's less chance they'll catch me at it.

Hey, wait, this is making me sound like some kind of pervert. It's not like that, I swear. It's just ordinary people watching, except I'm lucky enough to have some very pretty people to watch.

Take Stephen King Lady (she's got one of his books open constantly. Either she's an incredibly slow reader or this dude has written more novels than there are wattles in Strom Thurmond's neck). This woman is maybe 30 -- she really looks 35, but you have to make allowances for the really awful lighting on the train. Anyway, she's nothing spectacular for beauty -- nice auburn hair, but she keeps it locked up in a bun too often, and her mouth is too wide for my taste. (Sue me: I'm one of those weirdos who doesn't think Julia Roberts is such hot stuff.) But what Stephen King Lady does have is a pair of legs that would make Tina Turner piss green. I'm talking 60 inches of leg on a 5'4 woman. I'm talking legs so fine we should tear down the Washington Monument and build 20-story replicas of these instead. And she must know what she's got because she puts them on display every day. My favorite is the dark green skirt that comes just above her knees, but when she sits it rides up to mid-thigh. Then she crosses her legs and the slit opens up and it's cut so high I half expect to see her bra strap at the top. Most of the times she wears that skirt she pairs it with sheer black hose that have a few tiny butterflies embroidered up the back, flying above strappy green platform soles.

And there's Red, who's got a great body. But she must be tired of guys staring her in the tits, so she pulls their attention up with one wild hairstyle after another and a different shade of red every week. She's the most dangerous one for me, because it's tough to hide it when you're staring right at someone's face -- and her face is worth the stare. Skin the color of fresh cream, a splatter of strawberry freckles across her cheeks like a pink Milky Way. Huge Bambi eyes, thick lashes batting inside copper eyeshadow. Lips like plush satin pillows gleaming wet.

But every girl on the train has her own special allure, if you ask me. Riding the train is like having dinner every day in a Ben & Jerry's: Hmmm, which flavor will it be today?

I gotta confess, though: I do like chocolate.

There are several black women on the train, in all shades. My eye was most often drawn to the one I call Cleopatra, because she carries herself like a queen.

Tall -- maybe even 6 feet -- she still manages to avoid that string bean look. Instead, she's beautifully proportioned. Proud breasts balanced by an ass so tempting it makes me flex my fingers each time I see it. Luscious legs, arms with just enough definition to show that she works out but she's not a musclehead. Oval face with wide, flaring nose, plump lips, almost almond-shaped eyes half-lidded under a high forehead capped by a short, frizzy Afro. Her skin is amazing -- clear, unblemished, absolutely uniform in color. And what a color! Almost as rich as cherrywood, with an undertone of amber that glows like honey in the shadows.

Cleopatra moves like a sunbeam, gliding through space, there but not quite there. Her clothes are always crisply pressed pleats or fluttery whispers of chiffon or softly draping cotton -- in other words, whatever she wears, it's always the essence of the material's nature, as if she was at one with the basic identity of the fabric. And though she's never flamboyantly sexy in her choices, there's a subtlety to them that purrs erotically. A glimpse of her chiseled clavicle is more alluring than another woman's busting-out cleavage; her exquisitely turned ankle under a long dress more enticing than the acres of flesh on a Brazilian beach. She leaves you with the distinct impression that there's a lot going on beneath the surface.

OK, so I'm a little obsessed with this woman. Trust me, she's worth obsessing over. Of course, I might not be so overboard if I'd had a date in the last six months. Having to get to bed at 9 p.m. is not conducive to a great love life in a city where working past 8 is SOP and so the dating is just getting started when "West Wing" ends.

It hadn't occurred to me that the women I ride in with are in the same boat as I am -- until last Friday.

It was one of those awful D.C. days when it can't make up its mind whether to be rainy or hot so it settles for a bit of both. The mugginess wrapped you in its straitjacket as soon as you got outdoors. You wanted to go out in nothing but your skivvies. But you just knew that by the afternoon it would be pouring, so you had to lug your raincoat and umbrella along.

Cleopatra was juggling an umbrella, a raincoat, a briefcase and a newspaper. Even for someone as graceful as Cleo, it was too much. She almost skewered Red with her umbrella as she made her way down the aisle.

Cleo gets on one station after I do. I pick a different seat every morning -- I prefer variety in my people-watching -- and that day I was in the rear, just two benches in front of the back door. Cleo usually takes a spot in the middle of the car, but Stephen King Lady had her coat draped over the usual bench. So Cleo came down to my end of the car. Partway there she flipped open her briefcase to stuff the paper inside. The train lurched forward and Cleo stumbled toward me, keys and pens tumbling out of her briefcase. As she bent to grab them, her umbrella started slipping on her right side, away from me; her coat slid down on her left, toward me. She spread her legs as far apart as her gray, raw silk skirt would allow, gaining a bit of balance. It was astounding to see this usually so languid a woman turn into a frenzy. One arm trapped the umbrella to her side; she caught the coat in a pinch at her waist. Her left knee banged into the briefcase, flipping her pens up in the air, where she plucked them with her right hand. Theoretically, that left one hand to grab the keys, but even a queen can't do it all. The keys hit the floor with a clang.

I'd wanted to help, but that symphony of flailing arms and legs had paralyzed me with awe -- that, and I was afraid she'd clock me with a stray elbow. When the keys hit the floor, she was still bobbing and bobbling, but my reflexes had me reaching down before I even knew it.

As I stretched down my head brushed past something -- her coat, I figured.

But I figured wrong.

With the keys in my hand, I lifted my head -- only a few inches; there was something in the way. I twisted my head and got it up a few more inches before something wet smeared across my forehead while something else was trapping the back of my head. And, I noticed, it was oddly dark. Plus somebody was yelping something -- kinda muffled, though.

You're probably way ahead of me. Hey, it was early morning and I was still barely awake; I figure nothing worth waking up for is going to happen until I get to the Starbuck's just outside my work stop. So I hadn't had my jolt of burnt, overpriced caffeine yet, and my brain was still in suspended animation.

I could have been dead, though, and I still would have figured out what was what when my nose poked up an inch or two and buried itself in the folds of a warm, slick, fragrant vagina.

Well, at least I had found out what mystery Cleo was keeping under her skirts.

If her skirt had been a little looser or I'd been more awake, it might have ended right there, with me crawling out from under, apologizing humiliatingly, and her probably staring icily or ignoring me completely.

But I'd wedged myself so high into her tight skirt that I couldn't bend backward, and going forward meant shoving my nose even deeper into her cleft. Down, you say -- but that plowed my nose along pussy lips that were getting wetter by the second. I didn't have a chance to think about the significance of that last little fact; I'd discovered that I had a bit of room to twist my head sideways. Just a bit, just a... All at once my head jerked to the side, knocking Cleo off her feet for a moment.

Next thing I knew, my face was squashed between two powerful thighs and my mouth was lips-to-lips with her labia, a fuzzy bush tickling my nose. I was still half on my seat, but I couldn't balance anymore and I fell to my knees.

As I hit the floor, a cry of mild pain was forced out of me. The sound was swallowed up as I got a mouthful of quim.

You know the saying, the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice? This was one sweet blackberry.

I couldn't resist. My tongue snaked out and licked.

Cleo had been struggling -- to regain her footing, I guess -- but immediately she froze. I pulled back my tongue and tensed, ready for her to scream, beat on me, whatever. I had no defense for that lick. What could I say, it was a slip of the tongue?

But she didn't scream.

And she didn't beat on me.

Her thighs spread apart, and as she opened herself her hands came down and applied gentle pressure to the back of my head.

Not pushing down.

Pushing in.

I didn't need more of an invitation. This was Cleo, after all, the African queen. My mind's eye conjured her ample curves, her honeyed skin. I suspect that picture affected my other senses, because I could have sworn I tasted sweet cinnamon as I licked the soft folds at the entrance to her tunnel of love.

I teased at the opening, sliding across, darting here and there but not quite entering. Musk overpowered the cinnamon, sticky fluids dripped onto my chin.

My hands encircled her trim ankles in their nylon sheaths and crawled up the undulations of her perfect legs. As she reached under her skirt and massaged my shoulders, I pried apart her willing defenses with the tip of my tongue.

Slowly my hands crept higher, above her knees to the taut strength of her firm thighs. My tongue slithered up until it made contact with the small, yielding button. Her legs shivered; her fingers dug lightly into my shoulders.

I wrestled with her clit as if we were French-kissing, rolling it back and forth, feeling its moist surface, tracing its contours. And still my hands slid higher, past the elastic tops of her stockings, onto her hot, bare flesh.

My fingers splayed out as I flattened my palms, eager for every possible contact with that beautiful brown skin. I could feel her heartbeat in my fingertips as they inched higher and curved around, trembling slightly, to reach the generous globes of her butt.

Ripe melons, they yielded softly to the pressure of my hands as I held her ass in both hands, pulling her toward my fluttering tongue, which continued to attend to her quivering clit.

Heady scents filled my nostrils, deep odors of sex and passion. I nipped her love button gently, holding it lightly in my teeth as my tongue tickled its very tip. Cleo's legs straddled me as I licked away in darkness. I couldn't see a thing, but the rustling of her skirt around me said she was writhing and shaking.

When her low moans cut through even the rumble of the train, I slid my tongue down from her clit. I heard her sigh as her fingers dug deeper into my shoulders. Figuring that was a signal I shouldn't ignore -- not if I wanted to keep the circulation in my arms -- I let my right hand crawl around to her front, slipping through her crinkly bush and twiddling her clit while my tongue attended to its business just a bit farther down. Her pussy lips, now swimming in her fluids, spread apart easily as my tongue plunged into her. Keeping her clit occupied while I tongue-fucked her seemed to be the right combination -- maybe too right, for her hands left my shoulders only to grasp the back of my head and push me harder against her crotch, almost smothering me.