Chapter 1

I don't think we liked each other at first. Even though I thought Beth was pretty, I assumed she was a dumb Midwestern redneck and she thought I was some Uncle Tom because of my white dinner jacket and my smooth demeanor. It's funny how memory works, sometimes you can't remember what happened last week but things that happened nearly forty years ago you remember as if they actually were yesterday.

The first time I saw Beth she was working as a waitress in the Denver bar where I played piano on the weekend. She was from Iowa. You might describe her as 'perky' and hardworking. You've seen a thousand like her every four years when the media descend on Iowa for the Primaries. Her limbs were long and her waist was slim; small, high breasts, ample hips and a nice round butt completed the picture. Straight hair hung to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She showed her Welsh ancestry in her jet black hair, porcelain skin which freckled in the sun and her cornflower blue eyes. I used to think she looked like Jackie Kennedy (yeah, I'm old enough to call her Kennedy) but now I think she looked like Juliette Binoche (who was probably about 5 then). When I first saw 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' I was just overwhelmed by old memories of Bethany.

Beth, 1970

Like any good waitress, she moved quickly and lightly on the balls of her feet and she also had a tendency to bounce up and down in place when she was excited. I often saw her move through a crowded bar carrying four plates of food or two trays of drinks without a mishap or even spilling a drop. There was an air of competence about her; she was often smiling and laughing even when everything was chaotic. When Beth laughed, her cheeks pushed up into her eyes and gave her an almost oriental look. She often spouted old ad slogans or movie clichés or used Midwestern rustic sayings like "I'm going to see a man about a horse" when she went on a bathroom break. And yet, despite her corny exterior, there was something about her in the quiet moments that suggested a great depth and high passion.

My day job was as a medical specialist at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. I had come back from my second tour in' Nam' as a Platoon Sergeant with the 101st Airborne. I had switched my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) because I was tired of leading my men into firefights, death and maiming for no discernable purpose. Now I was helping to save what was left of their lives in rehab. I still had to coax and yell at them, but I felt much better about it. Besides that, I could go home every night and forget about my work.

I was about 6'-5"(old age and old injuries have shrunk me a bit since then) and when I was in the airborne, I made it a point of pride to be fitter and faster than anyone in the unit. I was balding and my mustache was starting to show some gray but I still ran every day and did pushups, chin-ups, squat thrusts and worked out at the Karate Dojo.

Being home had its own set of problems, though, and my family was not used to having me home all the time. My wife and daughters had evolved their own system and she resented my attempts to alternately discipline or spoil the teen aged girls. The loss of jump and combat pay was also a problem so I took a second job as a piano man at the Goldrush Bar. That also got me out of the house. The drinks were free, the tips were good and I enjoyed watching people. Besides that, I could play anything from R&B and boogie-woogie to classical, and had a natural ear for picking up a tune.

I was a long way from East Saint Louis and the life of trouble that I was headed for as a teenager when I joined the Army. Back then, there weren't a lot of careers for young black men. The judge told me that if I enlisted, the charges (and a couple of angry fathers of my girlfriends) could be avoided.

The Peacetime Army of the Fifties was good and I got to see a lot of Europe and Asia. I got off base as much as could. With my natural ear I easily learned languages. Thanks to my way with the ivories, I could make myself popular almost anywhere. There were a lot of women who wanted La experience de'sirs noir, and Die Schwartzer orgasmus, and I sure experienced a lot of them, especially the Frenchwomen. Even with all of that, I ended up marrying one of my old girlfriends from East St Louis and settling down (partially).

Of course, Beth's butt caught my eye and her natural friendliness helped to break the ice. I found out that she was a German/French Major fresh out of College and she was teaching High School during the week. One night, I surprised her by playing Mon Dieu by Edith Piaf and Lillie Marlene (an old soldier's lullaby). When she found that I was fluent in both French and German, she started practicing her languages with me. I told her bawdy jokes in Low German and risqué stories in Parisian French.

It turned out that she was working as a waitress to pay for a trip to Hawaii to meet her fiancé for two weeks of R&R (Rest &Relaxation) leave. She had worked as a waitress all through college to pay for her education (you could do that back then).

After we became good friends, she began to talk about her relationship with her fiancé. I guess she thought of me as a father figure and a good friend. Someone who she could open up to and not have put the make on her. I tried to be that person.

Beth was engaged to a lieutenant who had gone over to Nam that summer. He was a year older than her and even though that was the swinging sixties, she had been a virgin until they got engaged. Once they started and she was on the pill, they screwed like rabbits. They tried to capture as much of each other as possible in the face of his looming deployment. She confessed that she didn't enjoy the sex as much as she thought she should. He complained that she was repressed and inhibited. Beth experienced few orgasms in their often hurried lovemaking and it left her vaguely wanting more.

Her fiancé had written that in his visits to the Saigon Cultural Exchange, he had found the Vietnamese women to have a much more open outlook about their sexuality and that he admired their attitude. Of course, I had been to the "Saigon Cultural Exchange" and it was a cluster of bars and bordellos, but I didn't tell her that.

The glamorous vacation in Hawaii she was planning on would obviously involve sex and she was hoping to lose some of her repression before they met again. Her fiancé had suggested she try some porn. Beth had purchased some magazines and even gone to a porno movie in a desire to please him. But she said that they just left her cold and she wondered if something was wrong with her.

I told her there was nothing wrong with her and that stuff also left me a little cold. I gave her my copies of Delta of Venus and Little Birds by Anais' Nin. Beth read Nin in college but didn't know that she wrote erotica. I said, "Yes, in addition to being his lover, Nin also paid for the publication of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller". When she brought the books back, she blushed a little and said she liked them very much.

I mentioned that the story about the hypnotist was my favorite, because he was black and I could identify with him. In addition, I knew a redhead like the woman in the story back in Paris. Beth blushed even more but didn't say anything else.

Later that night, Beth asked me how she could become sexier and I told her that it's kind of like a mirror, if you think you are sexy, and then you are sexy. "However from my experience if a woman wants to feel sexier she usually starts with her underwear. If you want, you could also wear a tighter skirt and you might try unbuttoning a button or two".

She said "I will think about that, at least the underwear."

I said "I'll think about that too." And gave her my best Groucho Marx eyebrow waggle and she laughed and blushed again.

Saturday, she smiled and said that she had purchased some French intimates and they did make her feel sexier. She also asked me if I had any more erotica. I told her yes, but she would have to take very good care of it, because it was very rare.

On Sunday, Beth showed up in a tight black skirt that hit her at mid thigh and when she bent over, it really accentuated her great ass and legs. When she brought me my drink, I noticed that the top two buttons of her white blouse were open and when she leaned forward, I could see a lacy French cut bra and the curve of her breast and her nipple from the side. I looked up and smiled and said "Now that's what I'm talking about!" To my delight, her cheeks flushed and she smiled and told me that she did feel much sexier and her tips were even better now.

After work, I gave her the book which was written in French but intended for the barely literate people of French colonial Africa. I believe it had been designed as a Recruiting tool. It was an anti-German, Pro-colonial cooperation in defense of the motherland piece of propaganda. It dated from the First World War and I had picked it up in a quiet little book store in Clichy, it had somehow survived the Vichy government, the Nazi occupation and the postwar De Gaul censorship. The book was a set of photographs with short captions in French and Senegalese. It was done with a high quality silver gel sepia process which showed great skin tones and high contrast. The whole book is done with extreme pantomime as if it were a silent movie.

The book opens with an obviously drunk German officer attempting to rape a pretty young Frenchwoman. Suddenly, a very large, very black, French Senegalese soldier with mud still on his puttees and trench-coat dramatically bursts into the room. He seizes the officer and knocks him out with one punch. Together, the girl and the soldier defenestrate the German into the street several floors below. The girl then turns to the soldier with her clothes still torn and in disarray, declares him "My Hero" in large block letters and kisses him in the forth picture. The colonial soldier is at first startled but then returns her embrace and then lifts her easily on to her bed. In the next two pictures, she quickly divests him of his clothes and expresses happy astonishment at the size of his manhood in the ninth picture.

What follows is a series of sexual postures both on and off the bed. I found it unusual in that they displayed great pleasure in the sex, including smiles, sweat and flushed skin across the face and chest. The final picture in the series shows them in post-coital bliss, him on his back with a large grin, one hand thrust between her legs and the other resting on her head which lies on his abdomen. Her face has an equal smile with her glazed cheeks and lips nestled against his tumescence, still gleaming from the fruits of their lovemaking. The final two pictures are what make the book unique for the first shows the fiercely proud soldier in full dress uniform bedecked with medals and his beaming and very pregnant bride standing outside the parish church. The books' final illustration is of the soldier complete with paterfamilias mustache, pipe, evening paper and easy chair while his still smiling wife is setting the dinner table with several mixed race children playing at their feet.

I gave the book to Beth and she handled it gingerly and with mixed emotions, promising to take good care of it. She brought it back the following Friday and told me that she had been both aroused and fascinated with the book, but it had obsessed her imagination and even bothered her dreams. Much later, Beth told me that the image she couldn't get out of her head was of the blissful Frenchwoman with her lips wrapped around the soldiers gleaming ebony shaft buried deep inside her mouth.

After she gave the book back, Beth asked with hesitation if I didn't think the soldier was unusually large and I responded that I didn't think so. She stammered with her cheeks reddened and said that she meant his "thing". I again responded that I still didn't think he was all that large. Her eyes widened and I saw them drop to my lap. She quickly looked up with her cheeks crimson and her nipples stiffened and then started to apologize.

But I cut her short and told her "Thank you, it's not often that an old married man gets a compliment like that." She bashfully smiled again and quickly went back to work.

For the next few weeks, Bethany was bubbling with excitement as she planned her romantic trip with her new bikini and see-through baby-doll nightgown. Once, while she was a little drunk, she confessed to masturbating with a vibrator and she could hardly wait to try out some of her new sexual ideas on her betrothed.

Then one day, she was really down in the dumps and when I asked her why, she told me that her fiancé's leave had been cancelled and he was being sent up-country and that he would be out of touch for a couple of weeks. I thought that sounded a little bogus but I told her not to worry, his R&R would soon be rescheduled and they would soon meet up in Hawaii. She cheered up and was soon back to her normal self but still slightly subdued.

The next Friday I found her in tears and she showed me a letter from her brother who was in the Signal Corps in Thailand. He wrote that he had seen her fiancé's name on the manifest of a Saigon to Sidney flight and went down to the Bangkok terminal to greet him. Instead what he saw was her very drunk beloved with an Australian nurse hanging off him bound for two weeks of R&R (or I&I, intoxication and intercourse as her brother put it).

I told her "I'm so sorry. Perhaps your brother simply made a mistake."

She replied "My brother would not have written unless he was absolutely certain". She began to weep bitterly against my shoulder.

I fought the urge to mouth platitudes about "tomorrow is another day." and "There's more than one fish in the sea." Instead, I just held her and stroked the back of her head until she stopped crying.