Chapter 19

The two open days between Seattle's departure and the Mets' arrival were relaxing and most welcome. The way we were hitting, Paul Warren and B. J. Surhoff, the hitting coach, could well have decided to call us into the Yard for some remedial batting practice.

But Paul Warren was way too cool to pull a stunt like that. He knew that whatever had us off our feed during the Seattle series wasn't likely to be cured by hitting a few BP pitches in an empty ballpark. He knew we would either get back our edge, or we wouldn't. We'd been together since the opening of Spring Training on February 20. The series would begin October 21.

Eight months.

After that eight-month grind, the last thing anybody needed was batting practice.

Alice's week-long vacation wouldn't officially begin until Monday, but I was waiting for her when she got home from work Thursday night, and again on Friday. After she made it home on Friday, we packed her largest suitcase and closed up her little house for the next nine days. She'd be staying at my place for the Baltimore games, and we had hotel reservations for her in New York for the games at Shea.

She wouldn't be in the same hotel as the club had us staying in. But I knew both hotels -- ours and hers -- and their entrance doors were about sixty paces apart.

Maria Osborn would be staying in the same hotel as Alice while in New York. Orlie, Paul's wife and Maria's mom, would also be there, as would several other players' wives, and, in a couple of cases, their children as well. It wasn't every year you got to go to a World Series. And, for the players' wives, New York was a much better shopping opportunity than St. Louis had been.

Alice and I had settled in at my place on Friday evening. It was still early, and we were debating whether to eat at home or to go out to dinner somewhere. "Debating?" We were discussing this momentous bit of decision-making in the most serene imaginable fashion. We were blissfully pleased to be together, here or anywhere else, on World Series Eve.

The woman continued to amaze me. Initiating her into the world of sexuality continued to be a sweet and rewarding experience. The initial tenderness hadn't been lost in the weeks that followed.

But Alice surprised me with her willingness to take the relationship beyond that point. Along with the moments of gentleness and old-fashioned romance, there were interspersed episodes of sexual abandon during which she had sometimes shocked me a little. These were, at least at first, always at Alice's instigation.

It hadn't occurred to me that she would be prepared for -- indeed, eager for -- the kind of strenuous, heart-stopping sexual encounters that would leave us both soaked in sweat and gasping for our next breath. When I finally caught on to the little not-so-subtle hints I received while we were making love -- hints that this was what Alice wanted -- I tried to be swift in catching up and getting with the program.

Oh, it wasn't that she was into kinky sex. It was conventional enough, I suppose. But she was displaying graduate-school sexuality, and here I had thought of Alice as being still only a freshman.

The woman seemed to want to try everything! We had to do all the positions (including a couple I'd never tried before myself). She loved receiving my oral attentions, but she wanted to give, too. As one might expect, she wasn't particularly good at it, at first. But she was an attentive student.

The first time she took me into her mouth was one of those memorable incidents where you wake up and -- there she is, with your erection already copped and her lips wrapped around it. She was sucking for all she was worth! I can't say it was all that pleasurable. Her mouth was relatively dry, and the motion she was making was more conducive to siphoning gas from a tank than producing an erotic response.

When she realized that I was awake, she let go of me (mercifully), raised her eyes up to me and said "Let me know if I'm not doing it right."

"You're not doing it right," I said, immediately. Tactful? No. But, hey, it was self-defense!

She stopped, looked chastened, and waited for instructions, her hand still firmly (a bit too firmly) clasped around my crank. Obviously, she was waiting for me to impart wisdom.

"Wet your mouth more," I said, as encouragingly as I could, "and bathe me in wetness and softness when you take me -- inside... And don't suck on it, like that. I know they call it 'cock-sucking, ' but when something comes out of that little hole, there, it's because it wants to come out, not because you've extracted it with pure pressure!"

Well, her expression told me that too much instruction, all at once, would be destructive of her self-confidence, so I reluctantly said no more for the moment. "Try it again," I said, gently. "I love it -- that you want to do it."

She did try it again, and it was somewhat closer to the ideal. Clearly, she had remaining questions, but couldn't voice them at that precise moment. I tried to anticipate what those questions might be. "You don't have to worry about how much you take in your mouth," I said. "Take what you can handle comfortably, and leave the rest. The part you're doing now is where the action really is, anyway, so don't worry about the rest... OK, more moisture, now... Gently! Be careful about the teeth... yes, like that... Oh, now, that's very nice! Yes. Like that... Oh, Baby, yeah, that's good..."

On a scale of ten, it was maybe a four-and-a-half, but I decided to award Alice an extra five-and-a-half bonus points for copping my joint before I even woke up and took a shower, and for just being so damned sweet, and willing to learn.

But, hey, that first time was only a few days back. Before long, Alice was a World Class fellatrix, and I didn't have to award her any extra points, just for effort.

And, oh, my! What exactly was happening, here? When we made love, I couldn't always be certain which Alice was going to show up -- the shy, still-almost-virginal young woman, timidly, tentatively accepting me into her body? Or the unrestrained sex-kitten, responding to my touch with strength, athleticism and complete abandon.

It didn't matter, though. I liked both Alices just fine! I just took my cues from her. On the playing field, I'm a switch-hitter. As soon as I figured out which Alice had shown up to play that day, I could make up my mind from which side of the plate I'd be swinging.