Chapter 23

For the first time in our relationship, Sandy and I spent time together for more than 24 hours without the intervention of a Game Day.

We spent most of the time in her bed. The sex wasn't strenuous and it certainly wasn't non-stop. We had already calmed down from the Blitzkrieg Stage of our relationship.

But it was languorous and lovely. A slow, unhurried, pressure-free immersion in sexual bliss. Just like my on-field performance, there were no home runs, but lots of satisfying singles.

"Let's go away somewhere," I said, on Morning Three of the off-season.

"Where?"

"The Islands, maybe. Somewhere with a beach."

"I don't tan all that well," Sandy said.

"I'll get you a big beach umbrella," I said. "You can stay in the shade."

"Hey! Let's go to a nude beach!" Sandy said.

"They've got lots of topless beaches, in the Caribbean," I said.

"Not topless! Nude!"

"Hmmm. I don't know. You've got a lot more to be showing off, on a nude beach, than I do," I said.

"You got hang-ups about people seeing your Nether Appendage, here?" she asked, taking the aforementioned appendage into her hand and squeezing it gently.

"Well, if you had spent as much time in the Orioles' locker room as I have," I told her, "you'd be aware that I am not leading the American League in nether appendages."

"I've always heard that it wasn't what you've got, but how you used it, that counts."

"That's what women have been taught to say to guys with small dicks," I said.

"It isn't small," Sandy said, still squeezing. She was right. It wasn't nearly as small as it had been, moments earlier.

"Why do you want to go to a nude beach?" I asked. Not that I had any objection. The prospect of lying on a beach, watching good-looking young women strolling around naked, was beginning to grow on me.

"Just for future cocktail conversation," Sandy said. "Years from now, we can be standing in somebody's living room with drinks in our hands, and I will be able to casually say, 'Well, when we were at the nude beach in St. Maartin... ' and everyone's head will turn."

"And every guy in the room will have this mental picture you there, with your fiery red pussy shining in the sunset!"

"And all the women will imagine you, with your manly appendage, there, hanging down on the beach, for everyone to see."

"My manly appendage doesn't hang all that much. It mostly just -- protrudes," I said, laughing.

"But nobody in the room will know that -- except me," Sandy said. "And whenever it protrudes in my honor, well, it seems to protrude quite a bit!"

With that, she took me into her mouth.

My fate was sealed. We were going to fly out the next day, for a long, long Caribbean vacation, at a nude beach. I would call a travel agent.

Today.

Soon.

Not right now, though.

"Are we going to do this, on the nude beach?" I asked her. She didn't answer. Or I couldn't understand her answer.

"Maybe at night," I answered for her. "We'll do it on the beach, at night."

Now, there are two kinds of fellatio. Both kinds are excellent. Fellatio, is, by definition, excellent. Even when it's bad, it's good.

But when it's done in an amateurish fashion, it's endearing. And, ladies: Try to understand! The reason the guy likes it so much, in large measure, is just because you're doing it at all!

The fact that you may be doing it badly is almost beside the point! I mean, you've got your lips wrapped around his joint, there, and then you raise your eyes to look up at him and, oh, Jesus, that look is worth any amount of errant tooth-scratchings and inartistic sucking movements you might inflict.

I've heard that the younger kids now don't even consider oral copulation to be "sex."

They're out of their minds!

The other kind of fellatio -- the kind performed by a woman who really knows what she's doing, and who, evidently, enjoys doing it -- is superb, enthralling, bewitching, and memorable. In some respects, it can be even more pleasurable than coitus.

However, when you're the lucky fellow who's on the receiving end of this kind of treatment, the thought invariably crosses your mind -- "Where in God's name did she learn to suck a cock like that?"

That can be a little disconcerting.

But, then, you know how men are. If it feels good, all will be forgiven. We're not prone to ask too many embarrassing questions. There are some questions we really don't want answered, even if they might get answered, if we ever asked them out loud.

Sandy's technique was, perhaps, best of all. I had found it very nearly flawless, but not so perfect as to raise uncomfortable questions about her educational background.

"Hey, Babe," I said. "What would you think about -- maybe getting married -- while we're in the Islands?"

Never mention marriage when a woman has your cock in her mouth. She'll stop working on it, every time.

"I have a mother and a father," Sandy said, "and so do you."

"And?"

"And when, and if, I ever got married, I'd want my mother and father to be there to see it happen," she said.

"Yeah. So? Maybe we shouldn't get married on an island, then. But we don't have to talk about it right now," I said. "Why don't you -- go ahead and finish what you were doing, there?"

Sandy didn't finish, though. She dropped my rapidly shrinking Nether Appendage. "You really want to get married?" she said.