Executive Platinum Ch. 11

"Really?" I responded, impressed. "PhD. Never had the desire to do that myself. What do you want to do with it?"

"I want to be a sex therapist."

It was my turn to be incredulous, unbelieving. I just looked at her. "Seriously?"

"No, Really. I've loved sex ever since I discovered sex. I read so much about women that don't get it, (I understood perfectly her words meaning as "don't understand it") or don't get any, or just need help. I want them to understand sex the way I have. It's like with Mom, the way Mom is beginning to have a sexual life, thanks to you."

"Not thanks to me, thanks to you. If it hadn't been for you, she'd still be sitting around the house watching some Home and Garden channel show. She wouldn't have been on that plane to San Diego; I wouldn't have met her and I wouldn't be here today."

She continued to fill me in on her dreams and ideas for the next few minutes. Seeing a Quiznos sub shop sign ahead, I glanced at my watch. "Got time for lunch? I'm plenty early for my flight."

"Would you mind?"

"I offered, didn't I? Take this off ramp, there's Quiznos right there," I said, pointing at the sign. She did, and minutes later we were seated at a patio table.

"So tell me, Melissa. You are still somewhat of an enigma to me. Sexually you seem to be much more experienced than your mother, although I think," I was barely able to keep the grin off my face as I tried to say it deadpan, "she seems to be loosening up, just a bit."

"Duh," she laughed, "do ya think?"

"Maybe a little," I answered a grin on my face. She took a bite from her sandwich, wiping the corner of her mouth with her finger, and then sucking the condiments off the end of her finger into her mouth before answering. She hadn't intended it, but a very sexual thought ran through my mind.

"You're probably right. I think young American women today are much freer, more sexually active than our mothers were. Just look at the role models; we've all been raised with Sex in the City on TV, pornography readily available on the Internet, all kinds of things that pretty much make the "double standard" obsolete. But it's not gone yet. We've still got the 'good girls don't and bad girls do' mentality out there. If a man sleeps with all kinds of girls it's still okay; but if a girl does, she's a slut. Why should a girl be a slut just because she has an active sex life?"

"I agree, but, I think it's pretty much always been that way. And it really seems to be driven by religion."

"Oh my God, don't even get me started on subjugation of women by organized religion," she vehemently replied. "As women, we get such mixed messages. We watch the Academy Awards, and see the most gorgeous women in the world, dressed in their backless, sleeveless, strapless, bra less, gowns and say 'oh my God aren't they so beautiful', but if the average girl dresses like that, she's practically considered a whore; but yet top women's fashions are always designed to make us look sexy."

"Why do you say that? I don't necessarily agree that they're all designed to look sexy."

"Only because you're not paying attention then." I saw her eyes glance over my shoulder, sensed someone approaching the sandwich shop from behind. "Take for example the T-shirt." She lowered her voice, "look to your right, at this woman coming by us."

I took a bite of my sandwich, as I set it down I glanced to my right were a young woman, very close to Melissa's age, was walking into the shop. To me she just looked like a woman, nice legs, shorts, and a T-shirt. She glanced towards me, her eyes meeting mine momentarily. I didn't hesitate, returning my eyes to the table and Melissa so that she didn't realize I really had been checking her out. "So? Shorts and a tee shirt, what about it?"

"What kind of T-shirt?"

"I don't know, it just looked like a T-shirt to me."

"It was a women's T-shirt. Practically all women's fashions are designed to show off boobs. Even a woman's T-shirt has a vee neck. Men's shirts don't. They're just rounded, they go around the neck. But virtually everything a woman can buy is designed to show off her chest, to accent that she has boobs. But then when we show them off, we're considered sluts." I glanced back through the window at the woman again; sure enough her T-shirt had a vee neck. Not a lot, but it was definitely not a shirt that a man would have worn.

"Hmmm. I see what you mean." I took another bite of sandwich, before I continued. "So why do you think you would make a good sex therapist?" She looked at me, took a drink from her soda before she answered.

"I think, because I started with myself." I looked at her, trying to fathom what it was that she meant. I didn't come up with an answer.

"What do you mean you started with yourself?"

"I'll be honest with you," she said, talking with the half full mouth of sandwich. "When I became sexually active with boys, truthfully -- it wasn't very good at all." I picked up on the modifier 'with boys'. Knowing from my conversations with Gloria she was also sexually active with her girlfriend, I presumed that to meant she was basically admitting that she was bi.

"So, you are bi?"

She cocked her head, looking at me are the corner of her eye, trying to discern where that question had come from. "Where did that come from?"

"You said, 'when you became sexually active with boys', which implies that you've been sexually active with girls also." She just looked at me. I could see her thoughts, wondering where I was coming from. Was I coming on to her? Was I finding out about her, to tell her mother? None of these of course, but I saw it all as it ran over her face.

"You know, you really are very good," she answered instead.

"How's that?"

"You pick up on the subtleties. I hadn't intended to give myself away, but you're right. Yes, I like both men and women." She looked me right in the eyes, obviously waiting for me to flinch, look away. When I didn't she said, "Does it matter?"

I shook my head, "Not to me." I took another bite from my sandwich, glancing again toward the girl in the shop. On second look, I realized the vee of her shirt was more pronounced than I thought originally. Although the vee dipped between her breasts exposing their gentle curve to observing eyes wasn't much, the entire top front of her T-shirt also dipped in a large U-shape, exposing much of her chest. Without that 'U', the vee wouldn't have shown anything, but as it was it certainly did. "You're right, even women's T-shirts are designed to show off their breasts."

"See? It's everywhere and you don't even think about. By the time I started developing boobs, I already knew about sexy clothing, about how to show them off. I knew how to use boobs as advertising to get boys, all women do. I knew about sex or at least I knew about having sex, but I really didn't know a thing about sex. I mean, you sort of know - you hear all those things, but not once is there ever a sex education class that says, "Here is how you do it, this turns men on. This gets a woman off." You see everything in the movies, you read about it in magazines, in novels, but never do we give instruction on how to do it successfully, at least not in the mainstream." She took a bite of her sandwich and a sip of her drink. "So I guess, like most girls, my girlfriend and I experimented. At first it was all about boys. Neither one of us had been kissed, but we wanted to, and we want to know what it was like. So we tried kissing and, well, one thing to sort of lead to another." I just sat and listened, nodding occasionally, eating my own sandwich. She did the same, continuing when she had emptied her mouth.

"Eventually we started getting dates, and eventually we started having sex. I told her about everything I was doing; she told me everything she was doing as well. It didn't take long for us to figure out that although the boys were getting something, they just weren't doing anything for us in return. It got where every Friday we'd go out on dates, and the rest of the weekend we'd commiserate with each other, talk about how all our boyfriends worried about was themselves, and sometime during the weekend we'd get each other off."

"There was this one night, she spent the night at my house, and we'd just gotten ourselves off. We were lying there talking about how easily we could pleasure each other and she said, "You would think they don't have a clue about what they're doing." It suddenly dawned on me that was exactly what it was - they didn't. It's one of those obvious things once you think of it, but I just hadn't. I mean, we've had to teach each other what felt good and what worked, but nobody ever taught us what to do with guys, and obviously, nobody had taught them what to do with us. So I tried it, the next time my boyfriend and I got together, I started telling him what to do." She looked up, with that look that said she was done talking and took another bite of her sandwich. I had already finished mine.

"I take it the results were good?"

"The results were spectacular. It was just as I thought; he didn't have a clue what to really do until I told him. He actually thought he had been doing a good job." She took another drink of her soda, licked her fingers and then wiped them on her napkin. I'd already finished mine. "Ready?"

I glanced at my watch. "Time to go."

Back in the car on the way to the airport once again she continued. "My boyfriend and I at that time didn't last long together, he just wasn't the one for me, but he did give me my first orgasm from... I mean..." She stammered just a bit, realizing what she was saying.

"From fucking," I interjected. Why she was suddenly stammering about heterosexual sex when she had already admitted to me she had a girlfriend who got her off, I didn't understand, so I just spit it out and got her off the hook.

"Yeah. He was my first one. I went back shared that with Barb, and she pretty much had the same results. It was about that time I realized what should have been so obvious, that guys, despite all the porn, all the Internet sex, all the Playboy magazines, everything -- were pretty well clueless when it came to a woman's body. And once I realized that for me to get what I wanted, I needed to teach them what I needed, I began to get it. And once I began to do that and get results, I started looking at my own parents, my own mom and dad who were well on their way to breaking up by that time, and realized they had probably never gone where I already had. Knowing my dad, he really was a Dick. He thought with his dick talked with his dick and thought that because he had one he was a perfect lover. God, I don't know how mom stayed with him as long she did.

So anyway, by that time I discovered that I really like sex. And like everything I do when I find something I'm interested in I, I began to study up on it. I took some human sexuality classes and some psychology classes and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. So that's how I decided I want to be a sex therapist."

"Barb?" I questioned. "That your girlfriend?" She glanced at me, another piercing look questioning what exactly it was that she had said. Her head nodded.

"Yeah. Barbara and I have been best friends since junior high."

"And so you began to work on your mom; taking her to topless beaches, buy her sexy underwear, helping her to find a new boyfriend and getting a new look at life?" She laughed out loud.

"Not exactly... But, yeah, I guess" she laughed again. "I mean once you realize the lies of the game we all play, once you realize that you really can do what you want, be what you want, it's empowering. You are in charge of your life, what you do, where you go -- and you no longer have to put up with waiting for life to come to you. If you wait, it will never happen, because it won't come to you. You have to go out and get it. And that's what mom was doing; she was waiting for some Prince Charming to knock on her door and it wasn't going to happen. I just forced her out of her pumpkin carriage and... and" she giggled, a sheepish grin on her face, "and took her for a topless swim in Miami."

She down-shifted one gear as she headed onto the off ramp at the airport. I guided her to the international terminal, and seconds later she pulled up at the drop off. I slid out, then opened the back door and grabbed my bag. She looked over her shoulder at me from the driver seat. I looked up my eyes locking onto hers. It struck me again how she resembled her mother. If I hadn't known, if it wasn't for the slight difference in clothes, I realized I might not have known it wasn't Gloria. It seemed strange, offering my hand to "Gloria" instead of kissing her, but Melissa's hand reach back over the seat to me. "Will I see you again?"

"I would almost guarantee," I answered. "Certainly if your mother has anything to do with it you will." Behind me I heard a policeman's voice calling out to keep it moving, no waiting; I stepped back from the curb pushing the door shut and Melissa pulled away.