Chapter 2

How was Africa?" Charles asked when I picked up the telephone.

"Hot," I said. "As in sweaty," I added.

"No adventures?"

"I went to Timbucktu," I answered. "That was an adventure. Oh, and I met a couple of men."

"What numbers are those?" Charles asked. I travel the world on my consulting job. Charles and I joke that I'll be the first woman to fuck a man in every country in the world.

"Number twenty and twenty-one. Mali and Niger. One man in each." That's countries, not men. I was up to about one hundred men by then. And one woman.

"You'll tell me about them?"

"Sure. One man was good. The other, well ... there isn't much to tell," I laughed. Charles and I loved to exchange stories of our sexual encounters. We had a very comfortable relationship of affection and sex. Love, it wasn't. Charles was too young – thirty years old compared to my thirty-eight years. And he was still in love with his wife, Linda, although they had been separated for two years. I felt more like a mother and a guidance counselor than a romantic partner. Except at bedtime. He even called me "Mom" as did his roommate, Doug.

"Can you come over tonight?" he asked. It was Friday.

"Yes. Just a quiet night please. I'm tired from all the travel." I paused for a moment. "Will Doug be there?" I couldn't quite keep the nervousness out of my voice. Doug was Charles' best friend and roommate. So close were they that a lot of people speculated they were gay. I could testify from experience that they both liked women.

"No, he has a date."

"OK, see you about seven."

"I'll have the makings for a G&T ready," he replied. Charles was well aware that I liked to get a bit – or more than a bit – drunk. Five days a week, sometimes six or seven, I'm hard-working, serious, and intense. Come a free weekend and I loosen up with booze, sex, and tennis. For the past four months Charles had been the primary provider of the sex.

I was, however, nervous about our coming encounter. Three weeks before I had spent Thanksgiving weekend with Doug. It wasn't the first time I had fucked him. Charles and I had switched partners with Doug and his girlfriend Carol on other occasions – but this weekend with Doug had precipitated a blow-up by Carol and the end of their relationship. I had departed on my African trip and hadn't seen either Charles or Doug since Carol's huffy departure from our tight little group of four – now reduced to three. So, I wasn't sure where I stood with the "boys" (as I called them) – especially Doug. I was glad to hear that he would be out that evening.

I admit to being a slut – and I'm proud of it. I was an ugly duckling as a child. I grew up unloved and ignored by men. I was tall, gawky, near-sighted, overweight, shy, and interested in ungirlish things like mathematics. I lost my virginity at age 18 to an unemployed car salesman who dumped me a few months later when he found a prettier girl. I was devastated. During the next two years I had only a few dates and a single sexual encounter, a one-night stand in which I was so stiff and scared that I couldn't even pretend to enjoy it. Another man, an aspiring entrepreneur, came into my life shortly thereafter and I married him just after I received my degree in accounting. I had a good job; he had a good line about how wealth and fame was just around the corner when his latest brilliant idea caught fire and revolutionized the computer industry. He mostly fucked me in the ass and lived off my earnings for the next four years until he too found another woman and left me.

Thus, at age 25, I found myself with a successful career and a miserable personal life. That condition persisted for nearly five years until my thirtieth birthday. The girls in the office invited me out for a night on the town. I got drunk, I met a man, I got fucked – and I had an orgasm. It was fun, and he said he would call me the next day. I sat by the phone for a week –this being before cellular phones -- waiting for him to call. He didn't.

In my misery, I took stock of myself. I stood naked in front of my bedroom mirror. I was 30 and I looked 40. I was five feet eight inches tall; I weighed 165 pounds; my ass was fat; my tits were big and floppy and hung down over my flabby stomach. My skin was pasty white. I wore thick, round eyeglasses. I opened my closet. Brown was the liveliest color in my wardrobe. My apartment was dreary. My car was a four-cylinder compact. It was gray. I was afraid of men and stiff and speechless in social situations. The only thing good about me was the size of my bank account. I never spent any money and I made a good salary. You know the old joke, "Accountants are like economists, but they don't have as much personality."

So, I decided to remake myself. Step one was to get into shape. I joined a club and took up tennis. I discovered that I was strong, fast, and athletic. I replaced my glasses with contact lenses. I took a vegetarian cooking class. I studied women whose looks I liked, read the labels in their clothes, and bought myself a new wardrobe. I exchanged the gray compact car for a sportier model. And after three months of exercise and diet and a loss of 15 pounds, I had a date with a lovely man – and an orgasm – and then another date with the same man -- and two orgasms.

That first affair didn't last very long but I was off and running as a party girl who enjoyed getting drunk and laid, most often in tandem. But I did too much of both and soon found myself in rehab for alcoholism. That's when I established a rigid rule: no drinking and partying during the work week. Only on weekends.

So, that's where I was at age 38. Confident, experienced and world-weary, successful, well-toned and tanned, and almost pretty – a woman who knew how to attract men and make them happy, to drink without becoming a down-trodden alcoholic, and to beat most men at tennis and on the job.

I worked that day until seven p.m., then went over to the boys' apartment. It was large and luxurious. Charles met me at the door. "Hi, Mom," he said. "I'll fix you a gin and tonic. And we'll meet in the hot tub?"

"Sounds good," said I. They had a hot tub out on the deck of the apartment. I stripped my clothes off in his bedroom, hanging them up carefully (always the orderly accountant), found a fluffy towel in his bathroom, wrapped it around myself, and went outside. It was nearing Christmas and cold and I threw the towel aside and slipped quickly into the hot water. A naked Charles appeared soon, handed me a tall icy glass, and joined me in the water.

"Lasagna in the oven – and a good bottle of red wine opened," he said. Charles was a good cook. Charles was neat, charming, artistic, and personable and exquisitely good-looking in almost a feminine way. I had a second gin and tonic as we chatted amiably in the hot tub. Then we put on matching white bathrobes and went to the dining room and ate dinner and drank the bottle of wine. And after dinner we opened another bottle. I drank most of it while we cuddled and watched a pornographic movie on his large-screen television.