Chapter 2: A Very Scary Person

(Would you believe I used the Salt Lake City political scene as an exaggerated model in this story?)

Julie:

Whenever I look back on the improbable way we met I have to laugh. Here this great looking guy, my next-door neighbor who came knocking on my door and told me he was standing on the other side of my door naked. He said he wanted to come in. I looked out the peephole at him and saw he was indeed naked. But he also looked very ill at ease, not at all as if he wanted to break in and do me harm.

He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looked over his shoulder toward the street. Suddenly, all at once I was swept up into a dare devil mood like never before. I am not the daredevil chance taker who gambles on romance or anything else, for the matter. I had been involved a very few times, three in all, and they were total disasters.

It seemed my fate was to keep finding mamma's boys and jerks. The one time I got married was to a very handsome man who loved his mirror and was closer to his mother far more than to me. After two more disasters I quit dating. It wasn't worth the trouble.

I wanted a strong man who was also capable of love and tenderness. I dreamed I would one day find that special man who was gentle and tender, even mushy sometimes, yet strong inside. These delicate, "sensitive" men left me cold. Like any other normal woman, I wanted to feel protected when I was with my man, not like I was out with some Sesame Street type.

My mother always said I set my sights on unrealistic goals. It could very well be so, because here I was, thirty-nine, divorced and ready to invite a naked man into my apartment, one I had never said one single word to before that day. Is it or is it not insane?

I have heard the so-called "experts" state men are more visual than women. Perhaps is so, but all I knew was I wanted to be visual with this man any way I could. I wanted to stare at him, all of him and devour him with my eyes. Right then and there, on some visceral level I knew this was my man. I knew it from the first naked step he took over my threshold. I felt little thrills nibble through me when I looked at him.

A part of me sat back and watched me with awe as I laughed and teased him. And my remark about his testicle was not the sort of thing I had ever even thought of saying before right then. Now I know what they mean when they say, "The Devil made me do it." It was as if I had a personal little devil sitting on my shoulder directing my craziness.

Yet it felt so good to tease him, this man I wanted in such an exciting way. I looked at his body and saw a person about five or six years older than me. He was covered with muscles of the kind only gotten from hard work doing heavy lifting and strenuous activity over a whole lifetime. Later on, I found out how he had earned some of those muscles. By then I was already aware of what an awesome man he really was.

A lot of the pretty boys in the spa where I did my aerobics exercises to maintain a decent level of fitness went the steroid route. Too many of them messed with their body chemistry in their desperate striving to gain impossible muscle mass on their bodies. They had way more muscle tissue than was good for them. In fact it was good for nothing but posing in front of a mirror. They were driven by desperate egos and empty souls. The few times I looked into their eyes, there just didn't seem to be anyone home.

This man in front of me had no hungry ego that could only be fed by narcissistic mirrors. He looked like he knew exactly who and what he was. He accepted who and what he was, even all his warts and pimples, and was satisfied with himself. He was not smug, he was just plain him. This man was and is what other men would like to be.

One other thing, he was and is truly unconscious of the effect he has on other people. So when he accepted my invitation and sat down, then started to grow a little hard, well, ... I knew he was mine. I also knew I would go to any lengths to make him know he was mine.

I would have taken off my clothes right then if I had dared. Me, prim and proper prudish me wanted to ravage this man. I acted inside my head, and in my heart like some ditzy heroine in a gushy bed warmer novel or a teenager who just discovered she was a female. The only difference was, I was no teen, by twenty years. Also my gushy novel had a real hero and not some impossible pretty boy idiot who could only exist between the pages of a book.

When he spilled coffee on himself, I almost cried. But then I dared to lead him into the bathroom and apply burn lotion to it and hold it and feel it grow really hard in my hand It was then I all at once had no will of my own. I looked up at him and silently asked, all defenses down, "Please, don't hurt me, please." And he didn't.

Instead, he took his lovely thing out of my hand and held me and kissed me and I was his forever and ever. I was thirty-nine years old before I finally learned what intense feelings a man could arouse in a woman if he was the right man. I knew what an earthy thing love was and could be and ought to be.

I would have been happy to merely sit on the couch with him forever, when we heard a loud crash come from next door. I ran and got him a bath towel like he asked and followed him next door when he went to investigate. There were two policemen standing in his living room, guns drawn. The noise we heard was when they kicked his door down.

"Hey. What in the hell is going on here?" They both turned toward him and pointed their guns at him. That was a very big mistake on their part. Like a big lion or a tiger he jumped to one side and toward them all in one smooth motion. He grabbed and twisted the gun out of the skinny one's hand. He hit the second one with the first one's gun, right across the forehead. The cop dropped to the floor and didn't move.

The first uniformed policeman, the one who lost his gun, stood there with his mouth open. John struck him in the temple, spun around like a graceful dancer and kicked him in the head with his naked heel. Then he hurried over to the phone and grabbed it up.

He punched three numbers, waited and said, "I just downed two idiots who tried to shoot me. They have on police uniforms and they are hurt, send an ambulance." He gave the address and listened. "Just come," he said in an aggrieved voice and hung up. Then he walked over to his couch and grabbed up a pair of Dockers and got half dressed.

He pointed to the couch and told me to sit. Shocked at his abruptness, I sat. A few minutes later, we heard a noise outside at the bottom of the stairs, John called out, "If you are cops, come on up. If you're not, go away."

"Hold it, Mister, we're coming right up. If anyone is holding a weapon, lay it on the floor and step back away from it." There was the sound of feet coming up the steps.

"Nobody has any weapons. These two clowns have been relieved of theirs. I put 'em on the TV. Come on up, everything is cool. The first man through the doorway was wearing a gray suit and tie. He had a gun drawn.

"Put thing away or eat it," John growled at him. "This is my home and I will not permit weapons to be drawn in here." Reluctantly, the suit holstered his gun and called out to the man waiting outside. He came in with empty hands.

The two detectives separated us and each asked us to tell what happened. The pair in uniform came to and slowly got their wits back about them. The one with the head injury yelled and came at John with a fist raised to strike him. John turned and smiled. The policeman stopped. He all at once didn't seem so angry after all.

Bit at a time, a garbled story came out that made little sense. The two in uniforms first tried to claim they thought they heard cries for help coming from John's apartment and they were just investigating. Then one denied they broke the door down and the other said he broke it down to come to the aid of whoever was crying for help. They made stupid claims. They contradicted each others stories and then made more stupid statements.

It all came to a head when the skinny one claimed, "Then the naked man snuck up on us and tried to assault us. We drew our guns in self defense and he forced us to give them up so we wouldn't have to shoot him."

The detective in the gray suit asked, "What did he point at you, his dick? Who taught you two clowns to be cops, Barney Fife?" It was then the truth started to come out. The fat one told how a man ran out in front of their car and got clipped by their front bumper. They followed as the ambulance took him to the emergency room. There the injured man told about how he came to collect a debt and got sexually assaulted and how he had to fight his way clear.

The two uniforms were sent away. The detective said, "Well, you have our apologies, Sir."

"Sorry won't cut it," John replied. "I am calling around to have emergency repairs made to this door. This lady and I have both been scared out of our wits. My lawyer will be start a lawsuit against the city and those two fools Monday."

"Oh, you're one of those who think you can sue the city for every little thing. Well, I have investigated and I find this to be a minor inconvenience. It shall so be stated in my report. Come ahead and sue. See how far you get." John nodded and didn't answer.

After the two detectives left, John smiled a very mean smile. He slowly walked over to the corner of the living room directly diagonal from the front door. There was a little what-not shelf hanging in the corner way up high, almost to the ceiling. He pulled a little box down with a small lens on one side. "Spy camera," he said. He put it back and walked over to a black table with a thick top next to his television.