Apartment Stories Ch. 06

After the initial shock, a death sentence grants a curious sense of freedom. All of the things previously denied -- or at least curtailed -- were now seen in a new light because consequences didn't matter so much anymore. Red meat, no problem. Pre- and post-prandial cigars, whatever. Alcohol, weed, sweets, things deep-fried and salty, go right ahead.

Similarly, the stuff of fantasy and dire consequence could be recast as unrealized possibility and intriguing promise.

You could throw caution to the wind. You understood that caution frequently denied pleasure and the wind could push you into unexpected directions.

When you knew life's best before date, there was little point in delay. Pleasure denied was a missed opportunity.

Hazel in 3C had been flirting with me off and on for years. Whenever our paths crossed. In front of the building, collecting mail, doing laundry. Flirting was as easy for her as breathing and I was mostly harmless. To my mind at least, I didn't particularly merit even this incidental level of attention. Middling attractiveness. Unhealthy girth. Nearing the summit of the hill but not quite over it. Normally not the object of a younger woman's directed and conscious innuendo.

Flirtatiousness seemed to be her default modus operandi. I'd seen her bestow her attentions and double-entendres on others. The letter carrier. Random delivery guys. The guy from 2C who seemed to be the building's unofficial handyman. I marveled at how she could embrace suggestiveness without causing offense or triggering those predisposed to that kind of thing. It was an art in this day and age -- navigating the rocky shoals of myriad sensitivities and the shifting sands of propriety, where potential offense lurked beneath every word, every image, every gesture. I wondered if she flirted with women too. Probably. She didn't seem to have the kind of hangup that would deprive her from any return on investment, whatever the source.

I considered her flirting with me as some kind of booby prize, a token gold star for participating in humanity. I didn't mind it, perhaps even warmed to it as she no doubt intended, but I also knew that it signified nothing. No one her age fantasized about older, pear-shaped men with receding hairlines.

I hadn't seen her for at least six months. A lot had happened in that time and I'd become something of a recluse after the diagnosis, licking my wounds in private, feeling sorry for myself.

I'd lost weight and enough hair for me to shave the rest of it off. Now I boasted an enviable body mass index and a shiny bald head. Circumstance had made me interesting.

"You look great, John," she said.

I got that a lot these days and wasn't sure how I felt about it. It was at best a silver lining on one big, shitty cloud. Disease, or at least the outward manifestation of it, had changed me. While my reflection revealed to me someone who was gaunt and haunted, I somehow presented as rugged and edgy.

I shrugged at her compliment and looked at her blankly, hoping it was enough. I never rewarded such superficiality with much of a response and certainly no explanation. Pity was the last thing I wanted.

"Have you been working out?"

"Not more than usual," I said. Not a lie.

"Huh." She regarded me appraisingly. "We should get together. You can fill me in on whatever you've done."

"Sure."

"Why not tonight? My place. I'll make you dinner. It'll be like a date."

"Like a date", not "a date". I wondered at the difference. "Sure," I said again. I supposed that someone more evolved than I might have felt objectified as I'd never rated an invitation before. But I didn't have the time or energy for that. Especially the time. "I'd like that," I added.

And I was curious.

She squeezed my hand when we parted.

I knocked gently at the door. In my hands I held a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers because I wasn't sure about the etiquette and figured it was better to not arrive empty handed, even for something like a date.

"Sweet," she exclaimed when she opened the door. "But you really shouldn't have."

She wore a blouse and skirt. The three top buttons of the first were undone, revealing a tantalizing expanse of skin, as if drawn by gravity to the high hem of the second. Cleavage and leg, both displayed unabashedly. She wore a chain with an ankh that sat cushioned between the lush pillows of her breasts. I wondered if she'd inherited the ankh from someone older, a former hippie maybe. You didn't see them so much anymore.

I kissed her cheek.

I'd replayed our meeting in my mind all afternoon, wondering if I recollected the conversation wrong. It wouldn't have been the first time. I was functionally illiterate when it came to reading signals. Anything short of an emphatic semaphore was likely to be missed.

"What?" she exclaimed. "None of that. I want a real kiss."

So I gave her a real kiss and she gave me her tongue. I tasted wine. My libido went from zero to sixty in no time at all. And the kiss certainly defined what "like a date" meant. And the signal was certainly emphatic.

"Better," she said.

I'd spent the last several months cocooned in a state of abject bewilderment, so I should have been used to being hopelessly off-balanced by now. Turned out I wasn't.

Hazel stepped back and smiled. She was of medium height and solid in a way that spoke of either great genes or a lot of time in the gym. She wore her brown hair down to her shoulders and a constellation of freckles dotted her nose and upper cheeks. I wondered whether the color of her eyes, large and wide and currently framed with eye liner and mascara, had informed her parents' choice of name. A Myrna Loy nose and lips that shone with gloss. A chin with a hint of a cleft. She was cute rather than ravishing, which made her all the more appealing to me. Beauty frightened me in its otherworldliness. Cuteness was comfort.

Before the diagnosis, I would have allowed myself to be governed by certain unwritten rules. Hazel was, after all, half my age, perhaps a little less. Young enough to have been my daughter if I'd sown wild oats early on. Before the diagnosis, I would have fretted and worried about this pseudo-date and ultimately would have declined her invitation. Because decency. And insecurity. Now, though, I wasn't about to be denied an experience by the attitudes of others. Age was only a number, or so they said. If her thoughts and mine coincided by some fluke, well, that was good enough.

Still, I felt as thought I'd stepped into a twilight zone where an older fart like me could be of interest to a younger waif like her.

She stepped back and invited me in.

Like my place, her apartment featured a small entryway, a galley kitchen to the right, and a living room further on. The bedrooms were off to the left, accessed by a short hallway.

On one wall of the living room hung a series of photographs. While she dealt with the flowers, I wandered around, looking at them. Hazel in her graduate gown and mortarboard, smiling along with her sisters, who were equally cute, and with her parents, who were roughly my age, perhaps a little older. I looked at another. Hazel, tanned and smiling on some pyramid in Mexico. No pictures of Hazel with a guy her age. No evidence of a boyfriend, current or past.

"It's always interesting to see what others do with their units," I said.

"I'd like to see what you can do with yours." She gasped. "God, I'm sorry. I'm such an idiot. The wine..."

It was clear that she'd been fortifying herself before my arrival. Reassuring that I wasn't the only one with a case of nerves. "That's alright."

"But I know what you mean."

"Yeah, same layout but so different."

"I bet your place is completely masculine."

"Pretty much." I'd taken pains to make it so after my partner beat a hasty retreat after my diagnosis. I couldn't blame her. She'd seen her parents wither away and probably didn't want to go through the experience again.

Flowers dealt with and now presented on the coffee table in a crystal vase, Hazel and I spent some time chatting about this and that while dinner heated in the oven. It smelled good.

Then, out of the blue, she asked, "Do you have any fantasies I could help you with?"

I almost choked on the wine. The question rendered me momentarily mute. She blinked at me. She was serious, not flirting. Hazel seemingly represented a different evolutionary branch from the women I'd been with and I was woefully unprepared for her openness. I foundered. "That question alone encapsulates one of them."

She laughed.

"How about you?" I asked, hoping that her answer would give me time to gather my wits.

"Boatloads." She left it at that, lobbing the conversational ball back into my court.

"And?"

"The guys I've gone with... they're young and kind of inexperienced and perplexed a lot of the time."

"Most young guys are. Par for the course. The fun is in learning together."

"Maybe, except that it isn't very fun... or hasn't been. I mean... all the negotiation that has to happen now. It's good, negotiating and talking about it, but it takes all the spontaneity out of it. You know?"

I nodded. "Is what we're doing now? Negotiating?"

She smiled. "Perhaps. Maybe there's no way around it."

"Still, I can't believe you have any problems with guys."

"It's not that. I've had boyfriends."

"I would have been surprised if you hadn't. You're very pretty and..." I fumbled for the word. "Irrepressible."

She held up a hand, asking me to shut up. I shut up. "Ever been with someone and asked whether that was all there was? Don't answer. Of course you have. Ever find yourself in a rut even before you've gotten up to speed? I mean, half the guys I've been with still live with their parents and play video games in their spare time. When they finally emerge and get serious, they think that it's somehow their birthright to spunk in someone's eye, think it's the height of sexy, some kind of major accomplishment. Can you imagine? They should try it on themselves if they think it's so great."

"I can imagine how off-putting that might be."

"Right? So I'm done with my peers, at least until they grow up."

"So what are you looking for?" I asked, suspecting the answer.

"Ultimately, someone older. Settled and confident. I've fantasized about it for a long time. About you. Someone who knows what they want. A sex Yoda."

I knew better than to sip wine while she was speaking. Choking hazard. And though I might have suspected the desire to be with someone older, based on what she'd said, I couldn't have imagined that that older individual would be me.

"Do you do kink?" she asked.

"What?" Her intimate questions were giving me a case of whiplash.

"You know..."

"Why ever would you think that?"

"Your ex. She had that tattoo on her shoulder."

The tattoo. Of course. The triskelion. It looked like the yin and yang symbol, but with an equal friend shoehorned in. She wanted me to get one too to make a matching pair, but I wasn't into tattoos and not about to advertise that I was a member of the tribe. At the time, I was angry that she would have done something like that without asking me first. I imagined that I had some kind of authority over her. It was an illusion and a learning experience.

"For all you know, I was on the receiving end."

"I have a feeling you weren't."

She was right. My ex and I had dabbled for years. Switched it up on occasion, but for the most part I was the one who wielded the crop. Did, until I didn't anymore.

"I haven't seen her for a while," she said.

"She's no longer in the picture."

"Too bad," said Hazel, though something in her intonation suggested that it wasn't bad at all.

I shrugged.

"I could be in the picture... if you want."

I took a deep breath. Clearly, unequivocally, we were past flirtation. I studied her. Beneath the bravado I could see that she was nervous. She'd put herself out there. It was no easy thing, positioning yourself for rejection. I admired her courage.

Into the silence, she said, "You have it all together and you've always been nice to me. A gentleman. And you're kind of sexy."

"And you want me to..."

"Teach me. Show me the ropes."

"Ropes..."

"Literally or figuratively, it's up to you."

Where were girls like this before? "And you think I'm the one to do it?"

"A girl can hope. I mean, you're experienced and you probably know your way around things without asking."

I almost laughed. It was cute how she conflated age with experience.

"You've had fantasies, right? Probably you still do. I know I do. Maybe we could explore them together."

I leaned back on the sofa. "This is going in directions I hadn't expected. And it's dangerous, what you're suggesting. We don't know each other well. You can't possibly trust me and there's no reason you should."

"Yeah, there's that."

We both sipped wine.

"Is there any reason I shouldn't trust you?"

At this point, a shitheel out to get what he wanted would lie. But I wasn't a shitheel, so I didn't lie, even if my answer was the same. "No, there's no reason you shouldn't trust me."

She smiled. It lit up her face. "There. See?"

I shook my head. Hazel was either tremendously naive and entirely too trusting, or had a sense of people.

"Can I think about it?"

A flash of disappointment crossed her face. I could understand it. She'd worked her way up to this point, had taken a chance on me. She couldn't have imagined that the offering of her body could be refused.

"I'm flattered and, I have to admit, more than a little excited at the prospect. It's just come out of nowhere and I need a day or two to consider things. You should take a day or two as well. You need to be really sure. Besides, we're both a little tipsy and doing anything now would break one of my cardinal rules."

"A day or two?"

"Maximum."

She pouted and then nodded. "Okay."

Then she served dinner. Lasagna and the kind of garlicky bread that would make kissing later a true expression of desire. I watched as she bustled around, thinking myself a lucky man indeed that she would offer herself to me in this way. Of course, she could come to her senses and I would have missed an opportunity. The thought weighed on me.

We chatted like old friends throughout, got to know each other a little bit. There was no more talk of intimacy, no more innuendo, though the subtext was never too far beneath the surface. I could have her, I thought. Was I being an idiot for not jumping on the opportunity right away? A day or two, I said. What a rube I was.

When I left, she pressed her body to mine and kissed me full on the lips, a lingering kiss that spoke of promise. I didn't mind the garlic one bit.

It didn't take two days for me to reach out to Hazel again. It took one, and even that felt too long.

We arranged to meet on Friday at my place. Her schedule didn't allow for a real date beforehand, which I would have preferred. There was a logical order to things. We were skipping the main course and rushing to dessert.

She'd indicated an interest in kink. I had no idea whether this meant full-on intensity or the lite version that Hollywood peddled to titillate suburban housewives. Regardless, I would walk on the tame side until I got my bearings.

In preparation, I did an inventory. Most of the gear my ex and I had accumulated were now relegated to a steamer trunk in my bedroom. I'd meant to get rid of it, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. I was grateful for that now, but a little guilty that the stuff bought for one partner would now possibly be used on another.

Hazel came bearing an expensive Islay. "For later," she said. "I figured you were the Scotch sipping type."

"Good call."

"I'm nervous," said Hazel as she entered my apartment.

"I would have been surprised if you weren't." I didn't admit to being nervous myself. A new partner. Worry that the things I had learned with my ex wouldn't translate to Hazel. Dread that I'd mess things up. That I'd read the signals wrong.

"I didn't know if I should have worn a corset or something."

"You have a corset?"

She shrugged.

She was wearing a dress, arranged to reveal her assets as the blouse and skirt had earlier. If anything, this outfit clung to her curves more intimately.

We sat in my living room, she on the sofa and me in the armchair. I wanted to dip into the Scotch to settle my nerves, but resisted. "I know you have issues with negotiation, but I'd be irresponsible if I didn't ask what your limits were."

She nodded and I went through some of the activities that I thought might be okay for the first time out, and a few others that were a little more challenging, just to see her reaction. I left out everything that didn't interest me or would humiliate her, which really didn't interest me.

Her lips parted and her eyes widened as I went through various options.

Her voice was noticeably tighter when she said, "All of those things are okay."

The beauty and peril of setting limits was to provide pleasure while respecting the spirit of the line. Not the letter of the line, but the spirit. Approaching the line was okay but ultimately timid. Ignoring the line was selfish and possibly cruel. No, you had to dance on the line. A few steps on this side, a few on the other. Pain could be tolerated with the knowledge that pleasure would follow.

"There's one thing I need to ask."

"What's that?"

"What's your safeword?"

Her eyes grew wide. She paled. This had become real for her. Good, I thought.

"Aubergine," she said.

I nodded. "Aubergine it is."

I took her glass and placed it on the coffee table. I decided to throw down the gauntlet and give her an opportunity to come to her senses. "Undress for me. Leave the heels on."

I returned to my armchair.

She hesitated, as I'd expected. I could have engineered more of a segue, but wanted to unbalance her a bit.

She stood, eyes cast to the floor. Then she looked up and directed her hazel gaze at me. I saw determination. She eased the straps off her shoulders and shimmied a little. The dress obeyed gravity until her hips stopped it. Another shimmy, this time assisted by her hands. The dress fell, pooling at her feet. She wore lace panties and a matching bra.

"These too?"

"Would be nice."

Her undergarments followed. She tried hard to look confident as she stood there naked.

To my disbelief, we were on.

Hazel somehow combined solidity without compromising her femininity. Her legs were solid and thick, like those of a gymnast. Calf muscles bunched thanks to the heels. Lush hips that tapered into a thin waist. Pert breasts. Shapely arms and shoulders. A hint of pubic hair. She stood a little under five-and-a-half feet but seemed somehow more diminutive.

"You're beautiful," I said. I kept my voice dispassionate, the words a simple statement of fact. On the other hand, my head was saying, "Holy shit" and "You don't deserve this". Followed by "Don't fuck this up".

I observed her intently for several minutes. For her, it must have seemed like an eternity. As she fidgeted nervously, my gaze soaked her up. I wished that the moment could have had a Pause button so that I didn't have to move or think or anything. Or a Record button so that I could relive it. There are moments when an image is so arresting that it stops you in your tracks and nothing can possibly budge you. This was one of those moments. I felt like a hermit, seeing beauty for the first time. In a way, maybe I was.

Her head bowed at the intensity of my gaze. "Look at me," I said.

She did.

I stood and walked around her, my index finger grazing her skin in spots as I made a slow orbit. It was an act. What I really wanted to do was strip, take her to bed like some kind of marauding Saxon, and claim her as my own before she came to her senses and said it was all a misunderstanding.