Chapter 12

There were only two more days before classes began and I had done myself proud, working steadily every day all week, updating my lesson plans, reviewing new developments in computer language programs, and generally satisfying my professional conscience, after a summer of guilty pleasures.

Betsy called me at my office on campus. "Got you on the first try!" she said. "It's that time of year when the phone number calling-sequences change!"

"How 'you doin', coach?"

"Never mind me. I'm an old married lady. Same ol' thing, weak in, weak out -- you know the joke. The question is, how 'you doin'?"

"I'm doin' excellent, if not better," I said. I've got one more date with my Honey before she becomes an official coed, and probably takes up with some football hero, again."

"But the moonlight cruise thing, that went well, right?"

"Are you kidding? That wasn't a boat, Betsy, that was an Orgasmatron! We came off that paddle-wheeler and went into a 15-minute lip-lock! I done you proud, coach! You should'a been there!"

"So this relationship is -- proceeding apace?"

"Oh, yeah! I mean, school starting is no doubt going to slow us both down a little. Gotta act like grown-ups, duty calls, and so on. But we're getting along really great, Betsy! And she's warm, and loving, and she doesn't seem to go into those blue funks, anymore!"

"That's wonderful, Chad."

"And I don't think I've screwed up, notably, even once."

"You mean -- by saying the wrong thing?"

"Right! And the longer I go without screwing up, the more relaxed I get. --And the more relaxed Shirley seems to get."

"I'm very pleased for both of you, Chad."

"You're a fucking genius, Betsy. You should get into couples counseling, full-time!"

"Bye, Chad."

On the night before the night before school started, I had Shirley over for dinner. The dinner was a joint effort, with Shirley doing most of the heavy lifting, but we enjoyed preparing it together and feeling all domestic.

I was a happy man. I was falling in love with this woman. I was sure of it.

She didn't seem to find me entirely repulsive, either.
True, we still hadn't taken the relationship into the bedroom, but my misgivings about that were fading fast. Shirley no longer seemed unapproachable. She was neither on a pedestal, as she had been in our First Life together back in high school, nor were my feelings for her any longer qualified by fears that her past had damaged her in some significant way.

I was betting we were going to make something out of this. Something permanent.

But, just as Coach Betsy had advised from the start, I was not rushing anything. I wasn't pushing for anything, asking for anything, pressing or pressuring. I was eager, but not impatient. Far from it. I felt in control. If Shirley let me know she wanted me to escalate matters, I felt as if I could rise to the occasion -- no pun intended.

If Shirley needed more time; if Shirley's current source of personal stress -- starting a college career at age 32 -- required her undivided attention, I was prepared to be patient.

Very patient. For as long as was required.

I had already gone home a few times, after our evenings together, with erections that had to be dealt with the same way I'd dealt with Shirley Kiner-induced erections 17 years earlier. That's OK. There was more where that came from.

Self-abuse aside, I was kind of proud of myself -- how adult I was being about all this. What made it easier, much easier, was that however deprived my libido might be, I stayed a happy camper because I was falling in love with this woman! Just being with her, hands-off, was a tremendous rush.

And, happily, "hands-off" was no longer required. Shirley was affectionate, sweet-tempered, and, evidently, very close to being ready to take our relationship to a much more physical level. Could I have gone right ahead, then and there, and gotten her into the sack? Probably. I was pretty sure the answer was yes.

But I didn't push it, and I believed that the signals I was getting from her, no matter how overheated we both became, were still a little tentative. The way I was reading Shirley's body language, she wasn't wanting me to go faster, or farther. Not just yet.

I hoped to God I wasn't wrong. I hoped I wasn't driving her crazy -- and driving myself crazy -- to no good end. But, surely not. If she wanted me to go farther, she knew how to let me know. She wasn't the sort to play games. I was -- oh -- 85 percent confident that I was reading her signals properly.

Dinner -- our jointly prepared dinner -- was a triumph, and we decided we would do it again, very soon, and next time, invite Herm and Betsy over to enjoy it with us.

Not tonight, however. Tonight was ours alone.

"Want to watch a movie?" Shirley asked me. She had admired my big-screen television set on more than one occasion, and teased me about the perks associated with being an unmarried man with a reasonably high income.

"I don't have much of a collection of titles," I said. "I don't suppose you want to watch 'Field of Dreams, ' do you?"

"How many times have you watched it?" she asked me, smiling.

"I don't know. Six, seven."

"I've seen it," she said. "It's a good movie. I enjoyed it -- once."

"Want me to go rent something?" I asked her.

"I brought one with me," Shirley said. "Let's give it a try." She went out to her enormous purse, hanging on a kitchen chair, and returned with an unboxed VCR tape. "I've never seen this on a big screen like yours," she said, inserting the tape.

"VENTURA HIGHWAY PRODUCTIONS" appeared onscreen, followed by an FBI Warning and some static, and then a little space between the opening and the movie's startup. Then the Title appeared on screen, in big white script letters:

Virgins on Fire

"Jesus!" I said, "What is this?"

"It's one of my movies," Shirley said. "My swan song, as an actress. See there? The cast credits? 'Monique Martine." That's me. I play 'Moana.' Remember, I told you about my character? Moana?"

"Why are we doing this?" I asked her. "What are you trying to prove?"

"You said you hadn't seen any of my movies. You don't have to see all of them. One is enough. They're pretty much all the same, and my part in minor, in all of them. Take my word for it, this one is, first of all, pretty representative, and, second, I'd say it's the roughest one, in terms of sex scenes with me in them."

"What do you -- what kind of reaction do you expect me to have?"

"I'm not testing you, Chad. Honest to God, I'm not playing games with you, here. You can be disgusted, or you can be aroused, or you can laugh at the quality of the dialogue -- I don't care. I swear I don't! But I wanted you to see one of these movies. You've got to know what they were like. How bad they are. Or, maybe, how basically -- harmless -- they are. What I think isn't that important. I want you to see this movie."

"We don't have to do this, Shirley," I said.

"Yes, Chad, we do. Let me have my way on this. I want you to watch it, with me right here with you. And, damn it, I'm not going to judge you. You get a hard-on, watching me or the other girls running around naked, OK, so you got a hard-on. That's not a crime in this state. You see something you think is really sickening, just tell me. Whisper in my ear. Anything goes, Chad."

While Shirley was still telling me the ground rules, a nearly nude woman, tall and with enormous plastic breasts, walked into the room onscreen and answered a ringing telephone. The fake breasts were a major turn-off for me. I like breasts. A tall, naked woman with big jugs like that would have been highly stimulating to me, had they been real.