Chapter 1

When I was a kid, I used to get hold of a Penthouse Forum magazine every so often. When you're a kid, you don't realize that most of those letters are bullshit - fiction that, these days, is published on any number of websites that host erotic reading. And I dreamed of doing the things I read about in those purloined pages, while I beat off like crazy.

Of course back then girls had a different take on playing stinky finger and such things. You could get your dick wet, but not easily. To be honest about it, I think the reason girls were reluctant to play was because they were so afraid somebody else would find out. Some guys were stupid, bragging about every conquest, like that would make them more popular with guys who weren't getting any at all. And once a girl got a reputation, she was stuck with it.

So the challenge, when I was a studly teenager, was to convince the girl not only that it was safe to try things (because my lips would be zipped) but to convince her she should try things. Of course I'm talking about the things I read about in the Forum letters.

And what I learned along the way served me very well, I must say. I hit college in the late sixties, and by then women's feelings about sex had gone through some amazing changes. They were still reluctant, but now it was because they knew sex could be good, but they weren't getting that kind of sex from guys their age. That's because guys their age thought with their balls instead of their brains.

For girls, there were clear and rational steps in a relationship. They all knew what the steps were and talked about them to each other. And for the girls, being on a given step was just fine. It was thrilling and sexy and made her feel grown up. It was romantic to be on one step and contemplate climbing up to the next one. And when she decided to let a boy take that next step, it was a gift to him - she was according him a privilege, if you will.

Guys, on the other hand, saw sex more like falling off a cliff. You took one step and then there was nothing you could do about it. Gravity took over and the only thing that could stop you was hitting the ground. "The ground" usually consisted of a cop, knocking on steamed up windows with his flashlight, or maybe a shrill voice saying "I have a curfew. We have to go right now!"

The point is that only very rarely did what the guys want match what the girls wanted too. So what you ended up with were horny girls who knew it could be good, but didn't know how to get their boyfriends to make it good. I learned about this during my first couple of years of college. And, by the time I was a junior, I had cultivated a reputation, and earned a nickname, which was "Cupid." I was the guy who didn't have a steady girlfriend, but who was fun to go out with, because I knew what the steps were, and would stop when told to stop. In other words, I wasn't boyfriend material. I was "the guy you can try things with and then walk away from." I know that doesn't sound very sexy, but the fact was that a lot of girls were curious about steps they weren't willing to let their boyfriends take, because if they let their boyfriends do that, then he'd think he could do it again, or take more steps etcetera and so forth. And girls hate to commit themselves to something that they don't know for sure if they're going to like or not.

Like blowjobs.

That's just one example, but there were tons of sexual activities (remember this is in the late sixties) that everybody knew about, but which were shied away from by girls just because they didn't want to get into a situation where their guy would expect them to do it again and again.

Then there were the wild girls. Or maybe they were girls who had just let things go too far, and they couldn't get back to where they thought things should be. Like I said, once a girl got a reputation, she was stuck with it. Those girls found themselves in a mixed up world where they had, at one time or another, tasted nirvana. And they somehow knew that if they could just learn how to control the man, they could taste it again someday. To them, sex could be a tool, used to control a man. But you had to be good at using that tool, and you didn't practice on your boyfriend. You practiced with Cupid, and then owned your boyfriend.

Of course in my persona as Cupid, I aimed at getting as much as I could. The whole point of being Cupid was having access to lots of different pussy, without getting entangled in any particular one. And part of being Cupid was being the best bullshitter on the block. This was bullshitting on the level of The Olympics, and the fact was that I had this mysterious talent to get women to do truly astonishing things.

Like fucking bareback.

You'd think that if a girl was going to go without a raincoat, she'd do it with her boyfriend, instead of a stranger, or at least a guy who she wasn't interested in having a long term relationship with. But girls are trained to demand a condom (it really is a good idea) and the only thing most of the intelligent ones have ever felt inside them is latex. Of course they hear stories about how good it feels to experience the real deal ... but they don't want to let their boyfriend do that ... but there's this guy who really will stop when you tell him to, and pull out if you don't tell him to stop ... and he's a nice guy with a good rep ... so if you want to see what it feels like ... just once ... go see Cupid.

Part of my success with women, which often included getting them to try many more things than they came to my house to try initially, was that I didn't play social or mind games with the girls. I talked to them like they were guy friends. I wasn't crude, but I was very open, and I asked them both what they wanted and what they thought about it after they got it. I honestly think that had more to do with making women comfortable around me than anything else. I didn't play the normal male/female mating games with them.

I could have sent a lot of letters to Penthouse, and they wouldn't have been fiction. But, of course, I didn't. And eventually one of the cheerleaders I convinced to try some things decided that, once she'd tried them, she didn't want to walk away, and my hormones finally got under control and I got married and the fun was over.

That's not fair. The fun wasn't over. The fun was actually just starting. Melody was the only woman who, both before we were married and afterwards, growled at me if I talked about using a condom. Melody wanted to be a mother, and she wanted me to be the father of her children. She got pregnant on the honeymoon. Either that or Bobby was a little bit premature, because she had him almost nine months to the day from our wedding ceremony.

And, as she gave her last push, to become what she wanted most in life, a congenital weakness in her aorta resulted in a rupture that turned out to be half an inch long. She died before they even knew there was a problem. She never got to hear her son's first cry, which I will forever believe was in anguish for losing his mother.

But other life went on, and I was all Bobby had left, so I couldn't wallow in self-pity, or whine and moan. I had a baby to raise, and that's what I spent my time doing. For the first five or six years he was my life, outside of work, which I had to do to bring in money. And I couldn't afford to get fired, so I did my job well. That's probably why I ended up as a vice president in the company, but that was much later.

It's astonishing how many things a kid can get involved in once he gets into school. There are plays, and band, and chorus, and sports. There are projects for science fairs, and field trips and birthday parties. And in the summer, when there's no school, boys want to play catch, and go fishing and ride bikes. And the fact that he has no mother doesn't mean vacations don't exist.

The point is that it was pretty easy for me to spend all my free time on my son, which is why I never got around to thinking about having another woman in my life. Melody eventually filled up a warm and sunny spot in my memories, and the pain wasn't so acute any more, but I didn't really need a woman in my life, if you know what I mean.

And then Bobby hit puberty, and parental units became passé with his age group. I was still welcome at football games, to watch him score points and posture on the field, but after the game he wanted nothing to do with me, preferring to hang with his friends.

And his girlfriend, of course.

He was a popular guy, and he never wanted for female companionship. I met them all, of course, and was interested to find out that I still had it when it came to the ladies. Not that I tried to put the moves on his girlfriends or anything. But I just naturally treated them like, and talked to them like I had talked to all those girls their age back in the day. And it turns out that in that sense, girls haven't changed a bit. They like it when a man approaches them on equal terms. And I almost always made friends with his girl of the month. Months - even years - after they broke up, those girls would see me somewhere and smile and come up and spend five or ten minutes catching up on things.

Like father, like son. Bobby ended up with a cheerleader. Her name was Courtney Rader, and she was one of those women who are scary to a lot of men.

First off, she was a stone fox. She was Asian-American, with naturally thick black hair. Instead of being short, which a lot of Asian heritage brings on, she was tall with a full size Barbie figure. She had teeth so white I was pretty sure she had a dentist on retainer to keep them that way. Her skin looked tanned, but I was sure it was also genetically dark. She wore her hair in a ponytail most of the time and liked to show off her legs, which were muscular in a feminine kind of way. She was a healthy young lioness, and when she prowled, the world would do well to take notice.

Not that she was full of herself. Not at all. If anything she was shy when we first met. I noticed that right away because I had seen her in the cheerleading squad long before she started going out with my son, and she knew how to work the crowd and get them going. I confess I'd had the odd fantasy about her myself before we actually met.

And then we did meet, and she was shy, and I treated her just like I had treated all the other girls - as if we were peers - and within a month she was hugging me when she got to the house and giving me a kiss on the cheek and calling me "Mister G." She didn't flirt, exactly, in the sense that this girl was a natural born tease, and teased every man she was around.

At any rate, I realized how serious things were becoming when, after four months, Courtney wasn't replaced by some other girl.

I hadn't thought all that much, up to this point, about what my son was doing with the girls. He was a boy and they were girls, and things come pretty naturally between them. So I assumed he was gaining some experience, and hoped he was being smart about it. I had raised him to be a gentleman, so I wasn't worried, per se. And then one night my bowling league was cancelled because a water pipe broke at the bowling alley, so I had to turn around and go back home much, much earlier than normal.

I didn't enter the house in stealth mode or anything. I wasn't even thinking about the kids, to be honest. I was trying to remember the recipe for Belgian Waffles. I had stopped on the way home to pick up whipped cream and strawberries. I had the powdered sugar, but I couldn't remember where I'd put the recipe for the batter.

The back door to the patio was open, and I heard a girl's voice say "Bobby! Stop it!" She didn't sound angry, exactly, but she did sound serious.

So I went and looked out the open door onto the patio. Bobby and Courtney were in the hot tub. They were also naked.

It was early March, and the weather had been unseasonably warm. I decided that was the reason Courtney was standing up, hip deep in the water, staring down at my son with storm clouds on her face. It wasn't cold enough to be uncomfortable out of the water. I did notice it was cold enough for her nipples to be nice and hard.

"I told you I'm not ready for that yet!" she snapped.

"Aw, come on, Courtney," whined my son, sounding like a spoiled little boy. "Brad told me you did it with him when you guys were going together."

"That was obviously a huge mistake!" said Courtney sharply. "But I don't care about Brad any more. I care about us, and I care that you aren't listening to me."

"Everybody knows that no means yes," said my son.

Which is all it took to have me out the door, striding toward the tub.

"No does not mean yes!" I yelled. "No means exactly what it means."

Courtney's eyes widened as her eyebrows rose above almond shaped eyes. Her hands came up out of the water to cover her breasts. I ignored her. I addressed my son, who was thrashing, panicked in the tub.

"When a lady says no, that's exactly what you had better be involved in," I said. "No son of mine is going to treat a woman like that."

"Dad!" croaked said son.

"Now, apologize to Courtney," I said.

"But I didn't do anything!" he howled. "She won't let me do anything!"

I looked at Courtney, who looked guarded now, rather than surprised. I noticed hickeys, one on her neck and another just above her left hand, on the upper swell of her left breast. I pointed, moving my finger to within an inch of her skin.

"That's a hickey," I said, my voice level. "She let you do that. And I think I'll point out that you're both naked, just in case you forgot."

"I didn't forget," said Bobby, clearly unable to form a plan on how to go forward in this situation.

I turned back to Courtney. She was staring at me, her hands still covering her breasts.

"You okay?" I asked.

She blinked at me two or three times, and then nodded.

"Please excuse my son," I said. "He's an idiot."

She swallowed, and then said "Um ... okay, I guess."

I think it was about then that I just slipped into my teenaged persona as Cupid. Don't ask me why it happened. Maybe all those dry years finally caught up with me.

"You're much too beautiful and sensitive to have to suffer bruises at the hands of an impatient ruffian like him," I said.

I saw her pupils dilate, and her eyebrows relaxed just a little.

"Would you like me to get you a towel, or are you going to give him another chance?" I asked.

"Another chance?" she asked, her voice high.

"Men can learn. You just have to be patient with them," I said. "If you were comfortable with it, I'd be happy to give him some pointers on how to treat a woman."

"Dad!" gurgled Bobby.

"Tell him to shut up," I said softly, looking right into her eyes.

"Shut up, Bobby," she said almost instantly, her eyes never leaving mine.

"Courtney!" he gasped.

Now her eyes left mine and pinned him.

"I said shut up, Bobby!" She looked back at me. "I think your father and I are discussing your future."

I saw curiosity in her face. I wasn't reacting like she expected me to. But that was what Cupid did ... what he was famous for.

"I remember quite clearly what boys and girls like to do," I said. "But there are right and wrong ways to go about it. My concern is that the two of you go about things the right way, so that nobody ends up ... unhappy.

She blinked again. She looked so serious.

"So ... you mean us being here ... like this ... isn't freaking you out?"

I smiled. "I am sometimes envious of my son," I said. "One such time is right now."

Her skin darkened from just above her hands, upwards. She smiled, finally.

"I feel silly."

"Trust me, you look anything but silly," I said.

"Mister G," she said, lowering her eyelashes half way. "Are you flirting with me?"

"I suppose I am," I admitted. "Not that I have a right to but..." I turned to my son, who looked like he had just seen a unicorn, or some other mythical being. "A good women deserves to be flirted with," I finished. "Women are like fine china," I told him. "They are delicate and need to be handled with care. You don't suck at or bite fine china."

I looked back at Courtney. "You want me to go freeze a spoon to deal with those hickies?"

She looked curious again. "You know about how to do that?"

"Sure," I said. "Like I said, I was once young too."

She shot my son a look. "Yes, please. I told him to stop, but he doesn't listen to me."

"Maybe we can fix that," I whispered in a loud aside.

I left to go to the kitchen and wasn't surprised to hear water splashing. I was surprised to hear wet footprints running after me. Bobby caught up to me as I opened the freezer door.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but you need to stop it right now!" he hissed.

I turned to look at him. He was so agitated he'd apparently forgotten he was naked.

"I don't know what you think you were doing out in that hot tub, but you need to stop it right now," I mimicked.

Teenagers have no sense of humor.

Well some don't. I heard a giggle and looked to see Courtney standing timidly in the doorway to the patio. It turned out she'd kept her bikini bottoms on. Or maybe she'd put them back on. Who knows.

"We left our clothes in here," she gasped, and then darted for the living room.