Cinemax's Perfect Strangers Ch. 01

1. The Bar Across The Street

The Bar Across The Street had a campus vibe. Trophies on shelves, framed print-media articles on the wall, a long wooden, U-shaped bar, with comfortable tall seats and hooks under the bar for ladies' purses. On one wall, Chicago Cubs posters; artsy, elegant ones that uplifted Chicago. All the decor was left over from the classy country-club-bar vibe the bar had been trying to give, with less success each year, throughout the seventies.

But now it was the eighties, and this neighborhood was on the outskirts of yuppie Chicago, a cheaper neighborhood where striving wannabe young cosmopolitan professionals like wannabe photojournalist Larry Appleton were living and taking the train or dreaming of taking the train into Chicago proper each day. Fortunately for The Bar Across the Street, the eyes of 1986 outer-Chicago discovered the place, as the only bar open after eleven in this lame neighborhood, and when they went inside and discovered the vibe was so preppy, at the height of the Eighties Preppy Style, then The Bar Across The Street became the famous spot in the neighborhood for twenty-and-thirty-somethings, and the place Larry would choose when he invited a charming young lady "for drinks."

It was a bar with always a good mix a people, a good mix of men and women, and a bar where nice girls felt safe, and mostly were.

Before Balki Bartokomous appeared in his life at the end of March in 1986, Larry had been humbly meeting women through the Personals Sections in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Whip (the last one was full of Catholic Midwestern women who were rather particular in their corporal focus).

Larry arranged these dates through letters and telephone calls as they corresponded and got to know each other. Larry found The Bar Across The Street an ideal site for these semi-blind first dates in no small part because of that sweet laugh it usually produced in the woman whom he was inviting out on a semi-blind first date.

"The name of the bar is The Bar Across The Street," Larry might sometimes have to clarify. The laughter was soft, but sweet. Larry was a stranger, but he made these women feel safe.

The bar was always decently crowded, but seats along the bar itself were usually easy to secure two together. Larry was relaxed there, and the bartenders knew him, from his regular patronage, in a nodding, hellos-but-no-long-conversations relationship.

The tables and booths at the bar were usually packed, and the energy at the bar came mostly from the social groups that were the packs of post-college Midwesterners, who never came alone and who still needed to meet romantic partners through groups, group dates, softball leagues, jogging groups, church groups, and the other merry tablefulls of happy, drinking, gossiping patrons.

For all of these reasons, Larry considered The Bar Across The Street a reliable place where he could get his dick wet.

So when he took Balki there that fateful evening to teach him the American Singles Bar Scene, the way it went so bad so fast was one of those sudden reversals of expectation and past practices that would so set Larry Appleton upended against himself and reversing any of his forward motion for a long, wounded period of lateral movement, self-loathing and despair.

Making it agonizingly worse for Larry, that same-night at The Bar Across The Street, Balki met and hooked up with an adorable blonde in a robin's egg blue ensemble of pants and matching blouse, accented with a double-strand of pearls that matched her pearl earrings. Her shoes were beige pumps.

And making it still worse, she and Balki met through pure chemistry and fate, off of nothing more than a glance across the U-shaped bar, eye contact, and sweet, natural conversation.

"Do you come here often?" Balki began with.

Diane--the blonde--with deep, blue eyes the color of Lake Michigan, opened those eyes wider, shook her head honestly and her mouth sunk as she admitted her insecurity: "No," she said, her blonde hair just touching her shoulders and held in perfectly Reagan-Era big-hair coiffure.

She looked at Balki, hopefully.

"Would you smother me with your beautiful American body?" Balki said in his natural voice, which because of his unfamiliar Myposian accent, sounded to her like he was doing a character, like it was a bit. But she could feel the compliment, feel in her insecurity this handsome, tall, dark man about her age telling her that she was not only pretty but Beautiful, not only beautiful but Arousing!

She was taken aback but not offended...and kind of curious... so after this man's pleasant but overprotective friend (Larry) grabbed him out of there, she wandered over to the end of the bar where this strange, attractive foreign man was sitting with his overprotective friend, listening to their conversation... two silly boys being shy about women, as shy about women as she was about men... and so when the pleasant, American one got up to talk to another lady, she sat down and realized she had the green light to be as up-front and direct with this tall, dark, and handsome foreign man as he had just been with her when he called her beautiful and implied that he found her attractive and sexually so, as attractive as, she had to admit to herself, her needy, long-untouched Midwestern Blonde body, found him.

"Is anyone using this bar stool?"

Her soft opening line.

"Yes, you." His opening response.

"I'm sorry to be so forward."

"It's quite okay," Balki replied.

"Did you mean what you said, a moment ago?" she asked.

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I did, I would not say anything if I did not mean it."

"If you don't mind my asking, where are you from?"

"Chicago," Balki said. "About three blocks thattaway." He pointed in the general direction of the apartment he shared with Larry.

She giggled when he pointed. "I mean originally. I'm from Michigan. Saginaw."

"Oh there's no sag in you, baby," Balki instantly, innocently quipped. "I am from a small island, called Mypos. May I offer you a peanut?" Balki said, taking the dish up off the bartop and offering it to her.

She smiled, she accepted, she chose a peanut and pinched it between her fingertips. However, Balki, by focusing his gaze on her fine, fair features, completely missed seeing his Cousin Larry being forcefully ejected from The Bar Across the Street by an irate Chicago Bears fan with an overcompensating mustache and (no doubt) an under-compensatingly small penis, punishing Larry for Larry's sin of chatting with the man's girlfriend, who had been sitting at the bar, appearing and acting completely unattached.

And as Balki became entranced talking with Diane, who was fascinated by Mypos and his life there, when he eventually looked up and could not see Larry anywhere, Balki figured that his wise, cool American cousin Larry had probably already left with his own beautiful blonde like Diane.

Yet, Larry was actually at home feeling sorry for himself after his disastrous night at The Bar Across The Street, glad only not to have been punched.

So hours later, Larry could not help but still be jealous when Balki came home after walking his "American Woman," home to her apartment (that she shared with her sorority sisters from Central Michigan) and making-out American-style with that adorable blonde-haired and blue-eyed Michigan sweetheart Diane, who kissed as hot as a summer's day on Lake Huron.

But Diane knew it was too late, the night had been too good, and it had been too long since she had a man this nice, this sexy, this clean and good-smelling making her feel so good, complimenting her so sweetly.

"You'll have to be quiet," Diane told Balki. "My roommates will be asleep."

The apartment was dark and smelled like women, steeped in the thrice-layered scents of three women, two teachers and an accountant, sharing an over-sized apartment in a lame neighborhood, with only Diane needy enough and bold enough to actually go out by herself to the local pick-up bar to try to meet Mister Right, or maybe Mister Tonight.

Balki had no difficulty stepping over everything in the dark, in pure silence, and following sweet Diane into her bedroom. They were both drunk, both flushed, both fun.

Diane taught high school Geography and had a Masters Degree in Geography from Eastern Illinois State. She had traveled fairly extensively in Europe, Central America and South America, and as an integral part to her explorations and adventures which Diane had enthusiastically sought out during those travels, she considered herself a minor authority on the penis sizes, penis shapes and bedroom behaviors of men from the regions to which she had traveled.

How fun that in her lame, outer-Chicago neighborhood, she would have the opportunity to add another nation to her study, and such a rare one at that!

But her roommates, who were not awake while she and Balki snuck in after talking and flirting all the way through last call, both woke up thirty minutes later as Balki's thick Myposian cock was blowing Diane's mind and rocking her world and doing stuff to her that would require her to move far beyond the clichéd and the trite. The cosmopolitan educator was getting her back walls blown out and her side-walls stretched wider than she'd ever been stretched before, his hand holding her hair right at the back of her head, giving her that perfect sensual stretching through the center length of her entire body, reaching from her clitoris to the part of her medulla oblongata that produces the chemicals responsible for what Diane experienced as the feeling of having a soul, and that night when she had the best orgasm of her life around Balki's cock and woke up her roommates and her neighbors because she was getting her brains fucked out on a school night, Diane felt entirely certain that she had a soul, that her soul was great and vast and deeper than ever she thought before, and that her soul was wonderful and full of light and she was herself a gift of light and goodness for the world.

Her roommates gave her a ton of shit in their petty-bitch jealousies the next morning at breakfast, but despite their cattiness, Diane went on to have the best day at her school since she entered teaching. Sometimes, Diane realized, the key to feeling better might be opening herself up literally and figuratively to a slightly younger man, from a foreign country, who fucked like a barely-tamed animal.

As for Balki, when he came home to his dingy-yet-radiant apartment building that night, he did so with a song on his lips ("American Woman"), and the dancing feet of a young Kevin Bacon. His return was not unnoticed.

Red-haired neighbor Susan Campbell had fucked Larry twice, once when extremely drunk and the other time after she was dumped by her girlfriend. Susan happily kept Larry as wrapped around her finger as Larry was willing to be wrapped (which was completely). Balki, the first moment he saw Susan, she in no more than penny loafers, blue jeans and a fuzzy robin's egg blue sweater, literally begged for the chance to worship her ("would it be impolite to ask if I could be your slave for life?" his exact words), but Susan only needed so many simps and Balki had been easily friendzoned from the start ("I think that would be illegal," was her response to his first words to her). Susan had a short-torso but long legs, and in medium heels was almost as tall as Balki. She had an impossibly narrow waist, still almost no hips at twenty-seven, and small, petite breasts, like a dancer in the Chicago Ballet cut from the company for being an inch too tall. She had the clear skin, the wholesome look, and the secret same-sex tastes, that were so popular in that decade.

That night, Susan was up late in the building's laundry room, enjoying being able to have both washing machines and both dryers all to herself. She was exercising her long, lean legs by carrying a basket of freshly-folded intimates up the grey and grimy inner stair from the laundry room in the basement, up to her apartment.

At first she heard the sounds, then she felt the vibrations, and then was surrounded by the exuberant Balki, who sang and danced his way into the stairwell, danced and sang up the stairwell, and then serenaded Susan as he gracefully passed by her on the stairs, giving her his charmingly-accented rendition of the teasing Canadian Rock-Blues "American Woman," moving with cat-like grace and balance that a dancer like Susan could envy, and, noticing his butt and his body for the first time, did begin to feel emotions far different than envy, the kind that made Susan start to think about, among other things, reclassifying Balki from the friendzone.

He had so much joy, so much confidence, coming into the building late at night with the happy, singing swagger of a man still feeling the clench of a woman's cunt around his spent cock. Susan considered herself a four or a five on the Kinsey scale, but the energy waves she was feeling radiating from Balki's boyish charm, innocence, confidence, and grown-twenty-four-year-old strong, manly body, was the energy that would always keep her from being a Kinsey six.

So, when Susan got the call the next day to double-date for dinner with Larry and Balki so Balki could show-off this incredible lady Diane, of whom Balki was so smitten, so quickly...

... Balki, who once asked Susan if he could be her slave for life... Balki who asked permission just to ask that question, asking first if it would be polite if he asked her to be her slave, Susan's slave...

... Balki, who was now coming home, singing and dancing about some other "American Woman"...

Susan felt some type of way about that, for sure. Of course, Susan was more than merely curious, and she would indeed accept Larry's invitation to be his platonic, "just friends" date to go out with Balki and this new Tramp who dared divert the attentions of one of Susan's back-up, replacement-level slaves.

So she said yes, and Susan went out for the first time with those perfect strangers, as she thought of her down-the-hall neighbors Larry and Balki, who now split the one-bedroom one-bath apartment that had just been Larry's only a few months ago.

She needed to see for herself what sort of woman with no self-esteem would go so hard so fast for Balki.

Susan recognized something in Diane as "one of those sorority girls," but over the course of the mad-cap evening, Susan learned that Diane was far more sophisticated than Susan gave her credit for.

Susan was not surprised that they were at The Bar Across The Street. That had been the bar where she had let Larry get her drunk that time when she was dumped by her first real adult lesbian relationship, and super-drunk as she got, it still took about an hour of Larry's inexhaustible oral before she could relax enough to close her eyes and summon her again in her feelings, pretending for an orgasmic moment that Larry was the woman who had just broken her heart.

Luckily, Larry had shaved his face right before they went out for drinks, so that made it easier for Susan.

Susan was also surprised but not surprised that this was the same place where the perfect strangers had been the night before, and where Balki and Diane had met the night before. Awkward, weird, uncool: that was exactly how Susan pictured the perfect strangers.

But when, before the drinks had even arrived, Balki and Larry from nothing, from maybe no more than a misunderstanding, begin leading first the band and then leading the entire bar in a conga-line dance of joy and boom! It hits Susan, suddenly on this random weeknight, the whole bar was partying like it is New Year's Eve--Susan joined in and felt more like a Kinsey one than even before in her life. The conga line, the dancing, the singing--even before the shots of some clear liquor that Balki could drink like water but made Susan think of that time she had to siphon gasoline from her friend's tank to fill up Susan's car that she had let run to Empty--Susan had to admit, there was something definitely odd about these perfect strangers, who could summon a classy rager on any ordinary Wednesday night.

Susan had not danced on a table since college. And she had never met a man who was as good a dancer as Balki, but she had to admit, Larry was surprisingly rhythmic on the floor. Though, if she thought about it, Susan really knew better and should not have been surprised.

Thus, from no expectations, a random night at The Bar Across The Street turned into one of the best parties any of them had ever been to.

"You can take me out again, Balki, but you have to treat me like a Nice American Boy would," Diane told the twenty-four year old immigrant at the end of their group date, in front of Larry and Susan as they all four left the party around midnight. "You have to take me out, but you can't come home with me again. Not again on another school night."

Balki was going to agree to any rules Diane set, and so he did, and so after the wild time they had back at The Bar Across The Street for a second night, Balki walked Diane home, and they kissed sweetly outside her building's front door while she knew her roommates were all looking down from their front windows, and then Diane like a lady said good night and went inside to the squealing delight of her roommates, and Balki walked home after their short front-door make-out session.

Larry and Susan were talking away in the lobby of their building, and when Balki returned they were still talking. The darling redheaded Susan looked stunning in the black print cotton dress she had on that evening, belted at the waist and unconstructed in the top so to hide the smallness and delicateness of her breasts, while accenting her overall slender and athletic form.

The three of them kept talking as they went upstairs, and then Susan excused herself and said goodnight. She had noticed how quickly Balki had come back from walking Diane home.

Larry and Balki chatted, then went to bed, Larry's balls blue but in fairness, he admitted to himself, he had not expected to get into Susan that night again, thought at several points in the mad-capness of the dinner, he thought it might have gone that way... nevertheless, Larry showered, dressed in pajamas, drank a warm glass of milk, and then closed his bedroom door and went to sleep.

Larry had been asleep for about an hour, while Balki sat up in the darkness of the living room, watching the latest of the late-night television, of brilliant re-runs from the fifties, sixties, and seventies, the finest crash-course in American Culture than any immigrant in 1986 could wish for, streaming free nearly every hour of the day.

It was in those hours that Balki heard the kitten-like knock on the front door, and then saw the door open. The two country bumpkins, one from Mypos, one from Madison, both raised in safe, religiously conservative small-town communities of trust and family bonds, seldom remembered to lock their front door or to attach the chain.

But seldom had a woman as beautiful as Susan in only her bare feet and a black, satin chemise with lace accents and straps as delicate as her shoulders and clavicles, pushed open that door for either of these two, innocent cousins.

But that night, Susan returned after Larry was asleep, and there was Balki, shirtless and fit, wearing only his soft, cotton pajama bottoms.

Balki began to speak, Susan put a finger to her lips. "Shhh," she said, quieter than a whisper.

Susan closed the door silently behind her, slid the deadbolt. She sat Balki down on the pulled-out sofa bed. Balki's cock bounced easily up and out of his pajamas as she pulled them down off his hips and thighs. Susan pulled up the hem of her gown, to feel the hardwood of the floor on her knees.