First Day in the Caribbean 08

Asch awakened just before dawn to the smell of restaurant food and the feel of a hand in his groin and a generous breast against his cheek. It was Octavia.

"Hey, big boy. I got off work early and figured I owed you those buttons, so I took 'em off. I see you seem to like it," she said as his privates weren't wasting any time becoming engorged. "We're both pretty dirty; you want to shower before or after?" She gave him a squeeze in his nether region, pulling the foreskin down and pressing against the top of his penis, bending his manhood down past vertical.

"You really know how to get a guy's attention," he murmured. "How about we take a shower and I get fully awake? I want to be alert so I don't miss anything."

They got out of the bed and she grabbed him by his member. "Come this way, mister," she said, pulling on him. He obediently followed her lead.

"Okay, you're the dirtiest, so I clean you first. Then you can clean me." She grabbed the soap and a washcloth and started on his feet. She was directly in the stream of warm water, so she got pretty wet pretty quickly. Asch thought a dripping wet gorgeous woman was a pretty attractive thing to look at.

When she got up to his crotch, she put the washcloth on her shoulder and used her bare soapy hands. She pretended to examine his member for dirt, and repeatedly soaped it and ran her hands up and down its length and around his scrotum, with the occasional journey over his back door. She particularly enjoyed making a circle with her thumb and fingers, then pushing the hole over the end of his penis, pulling his skin back while she squeezed her way to the base. She liked how it made him jump.

She resumed with the washcloth as she went higher, scrubbing everywhere, finally taking a swipe over his face.

"Okay, now you do me," she said while he rinsed off his face in the spray.

He took the washcloth and soap and started at her feet, but he used the washcloth less, preferring to run his soapy hands over her legs. He ran his fingers over her bare labia and inside her slit, taking extra time to swirl around her clit, going up and down and making the circles that he knew she liked, and enjoying her moan of appreciation. As he went higher, he stood, and she played with his erect member while he scrubbed her generous breasts and her back, pulling her into him as he did so. He handed her the washcloth. "I'll let you do your face, though," he said.

"Hold me up while I do my hair," she said, putting her head under the stream. He got behind her, manhood between her legs, hands on breasts while she shampooed. She also wiggled and rocked her hips to enhance the sensation of his penis against her and he moved back and forth.

Then she stood behind him, grasping and manipulating his genitals while he bent over to do his own hair. Every once in a while she pumped vigorously for a few strokes, driving him crazy, but not quite making him climax.

Finally they were both pretty much clean. They had a fun time drying each other off; she made sure to give his erection lots of attention, and he blow-dried her neck, which gave her the chills. Again, she led him by his member as they headed for the bedroom. Inside, she heaped the pillows in the middle of the bed and instructed him to lie on his back on the pillows, which he did. He felt rather exposed, what with his member presented so conspicuously.

Octavia smiled wickedly and began to pump up and down on him, slowly at first, spreading his moisture around and pulling the skin down just enough. Then she began to accelerate her movements, faster and faster.

"If you're not careful, I'm going to come!" he gasped.

This was exactly what she wanted, apparently. She put her hand over his mouth and pumped even faster and harder.

He started trembling, then burst a jet of semen into the air as he cried out "Mmff mmff mmff!" bucking his hips as she gradually slowed down and let him rest.

"But I didn't make you come," he objected while she wiped him sort of clean with a T-shirt.

"That's okay. I have big plans for me tonight. You okay with getting together again later?" she smiled fake-innocently at him.

"Um, can't think of anything I'd rather do. Should I do anything to prepare?" Asch thought a moment. "Tuxedo? Bathing suit?"

Pick me up at the house at 4:00. Wear something you can wear to a public event like a concert. Something that won't be too hard for me to feel you through, and remove later." She smiled.

She hopped back on her bike and headed home and he went out to take care of his chores. At breakfast Lydia gave him a knowing look. "I see you had a visitor this morning. You must be an early riser."

"Well I am, but I didn't know Octavia was too," he replied. "She really got me up, too." He smiled slightly, and Lydia smirked.

"In case you want to take her on a real date sometime, the City Musical Society is giving a concert tonight. You two might like to go. I'm taking a guy I know from Easthaven and I don't know when I'll be home." She wiggled her eyebrows. "Don't wait up for me, and there's leftovers in the fridge if you need to eat something."

When Asch went to his bike later, something didn't look quite right. He hadn't built his bike rack yet, so he had left the bike leaning against the garage, and it was tilted differently. On closer inspection, he saw what could only be the remains of a hoof print on the seat, and the carrier frame was broken! The bike seemed to be mechanically sound, but he'd have to get the carrier fixed, and park the thing in the garage. Maybe build a goat climbing toy to put the bike in. Hmmm.

He stopped at the bike store, but all Bill could do was offer a replacement. Asch wanted to repair it. Bill offered, "Well, there's a good welding shop here in town, up on the north side. It's called Axel's Axles. An old Scandinavian guy moved down here maybe 50 years ago and set up shop. Well, he's old now. They can weld aluminum alloy."

The shop office was staffed by an attractive redhead in her early thirties or so, wearing a Kelly green scoop neck top and some nice cleavage. Asch explained his need, and she handed him a work slip, saying, "Go around to the side and you'll see several guys working. Just holler to get someone's attention and tell 'em what you want. They'll give you a price and you can come in and pay me while they do the job. They'll tell me the price, too, so no forging a lower price on the work ticket," she grinned, "though you don't look the type who'd cheat."

Asch bowed slightly and smiled. "Thank you for the vote of confidence. I'll try to live up to it." He walked around to find a large open garage door and several guys welding on different projects. One project looked like a pontoon boat hull. One was a dump truck bed. Another looked like some kind of frame. Asch yelled, "Anybody home?"

The guy closest to the door stopped his arc, straightened up, and lifted his helmet. He squinted for a few moments to adjust to the light and looked toward Asch's voice. He did a little double-take and burst into a huge grin, revealing even rows of white teeth contrasting with his soot-smudged face. He turned his head toward the interior of the shop. "Hey guys! C'mere. This is the guy who decked me. He'll tell you!" It was Fred.

One by one the torches and welders went off, and the men looked toward Asch, betraying various expressions of curiosity and skepticism. The next-closest guy, a muscular black man about the size of Fred, approached with a look of amused disbelief on his face. "Now I know you's lyin'. A guy this size couldn't bend your pinkie." His look shifted amusedly to Fred and back to Asch, who stood there looking pretty much innocent and guilty at the same time. The rest gathered round, assessing Asch, but basically friendly.

"Did you really deck Fred?" one of them asked.

Asch shrugged. "I was lucky."

"Another guy chuckled. "Then you should buy us some lottery tickets, man. Ain't nobody ever bested Fred since his first grade teacher walloped him for picking on a girl. Once."

"'Course I ain't never picked on a girl since, neither," Fred grinned back. "Tell 'em what happened, mister, um..."

"They call me Asch." He looked at them, seeing curiosity and readiness to hear a good story on their faces. Asch looked at Fred, who had put his welding helmet aside and was nodding encouragement. He sensed that the better he made this, the better they'd like it. "Okay, so here I am, walking into a bar, see? And I see this guy trying to make time with this good-looking chick, see? But he wasn't having too much success, so I offered him a little advice, see?"

"Told him to get lost, I bet," one of them chimed in, to a chorus of chuckles.

Asch continued, "So anyway, he didn't like my advice, see, so he took a swing at me. Like this." And he elaborately posed Fred, arm cocked for the swing, then motioned Fred to throw a punch really slowly. "Now if I hadn't been lucky, I'd be dead right now. But I happened to look down at my shoe right then," he demonstrated as Fred's fist swung overhead. "I heard a sonic boom as that cannonball went by, and when I looked up, I stumbled and tried to catch myself. Like this" and he put his hand into the back of Fred's shoulder, by the armpit. "Our combined momentum sent him flying (Fred pretended to stumble forward), and that's what happened." Asch shrugged his shoulders and held his palms up apologetically. "I don't recommend you guys try it."

Everyone laughed at the story, including Fred. "See? It's true." He paused a moment to enjoy the attention. "Well, back to work." He turned to Asch. "And what is it you need, sir?"

Asch showed him the damage to the carrier, explaining that it appeared to be goat damage, and he was planning to go to a town concert that evening. "Actually, Octavia and I probably—"

Fred's head bounced up from examining the carrier. "Octavia? You mean that hot chick at Anchovie's with the heart of ice? You hooked up with her?"

Asch gulped. "I hope that's okay..."

Fred gave him another look, this time of skeptical admiration. "Me and about every guy on the island have tried to pick her up, and she shoots everybody down faster than they can get in two pickup lines! We've all just sort of decided she doesn't do guys. Man, you really should buy some lottery tickets."

Fred got a reflective look on his face, turned on one of the welding machines, took a couple wrenches off the workbench, and removed the carrier from the bike. In about four minutes he had welded the break, reinforced several other places on the carrier, spray-painted the carrier with a brown paint that matched the bike's camo coloring, and reattached it to the bike. "There you are, Sir, good as new only better, as I always say." He jotted on the work ticket, handed it over, and paused. "And I have a favor to ask. Would you meet me at the bar where we, uh, first met, about 5:00? My treat. I'd like to ask your advice about something."

He looked at Asch so beseechingly that Asch couldn't say no.

When Asch took the work ticket into the office, the office lady remarked "You must be someone special. Fred never works for free. Good thing I recognize his handwriting."

"Free? What would it have cost if I had been some Joe Blow?"

"Let's see—weld a break and reinforce the frame, five minutes. Probably about ten bucks. Or more, depending."

"Well, put this in your donut fund, then," and Asch handed her a twenty. "You don't have to mention it to the guys in back."

She gave him a speculative once-over as he left.

He spent most of the afternoon at the library. When it came time to pick up Octavia, she greeted him at the door with "So here's the guy who beats up Fred Costello, the toughest swab on the seven seas, and was so cool with it that he didn't even mention it to his girlfriend."

Asch looked bashful. "Word sure gets around in this town, doesn't it? I was kind of hoping the event would just fade away."

"Well, I poked my head into Anchovies after we got together this morning, to pick up my paycheck, and one of the guys was telling his buddies about how this new guy in town picks up Fred and throws him out the door of Clay's Tap yesterday for trying to make time with Anita Beachcroft, mister knight in shining armor. What actually happened?" she said as they walked. "Where are we going, by the way?"

"Let's say he flew out the door mostly on his own, and I'm inviting you to join me and Fred at Clay's Tap. We're kind of friends. He repaired my bike carrier this morning." Asch flinched as Octavia looked at him in utter disbelief. He went on to describe the morning's events at the welding shop. She chuckled as he told about describing the conflict to his coworkers, and nodded thoughtfully at the prospect of joining Asch and Fred later.

"You never cease to amaze me, Mister Jones. Tell you what. Let me go pick up a few things at the store, and I'll stop by after you guys have some time for some guy talk."

Asch realized that Fred might want to have a little confidentiality, so he agreed.

Clay's Tap was about half full; Asch found a booth in the corner and ordered a club soda. On the dot of 5:00 Fred came in, spotted him, and took a seat. "That looks like water. Don't you want something a little stronger?" he asked.

"Nah, this'll do. That was a nice job you did on my bike, by the way."

"Thanks. I appreciate you making my stupidity yesterday into an enjoyable story this morning. I'll probably never hear the end of it at work, but hey." He took a breath and looked thoughtful for a long moment. "Okay—I run the women off, and you draw them like flies. Carol—that's our receptionist—even made a suggestive remark about you. What's your secret?—I want some advice, and not so I can just jump some dame. So I can actually attract someone. I'm ready to settle down."

Asch screwed up his face while he thought. "Okay, I got three things. Do them and you'll attract at least one worthwhile woman. Do you agree to do them? They're not single-event things."

"Not gonna tell me what they are first?"

"Nope."

Fred mulled this over. "So you're really gonna change my life, aren't you?"

"Nope. You will." Asch looked at him and took a sip of his drink. Fred fidgeted. Asch kept silence. Fred stared at Asch. Asch took another sip and remained silent.

"Okay, mister I'm-gonna-change-my-own-life, you seem happy and you landed a hot chick, so it can't be too bad. I'm in." In spite of himself he grinned.

Asch smiled. "Welcome to the real men's club. The first thing'll be the hardest, I think. Stop drinking."

Fred looked down. "Somehow I knew you were gonna say that. I get violent pretty easy. People say I can't hold my liquor. Man." He looked up. "Never?"

"I don't think you're an alcoholic. You can probably get away with one beer a day, but never take a second one. And remember—the first beer is halfway to the second one." Asch paused, then resumed. "Here's what I think. Your brain is very finely tuned, better than average. That's why you are so good at something as precision as welding. You have to be precise to make really even welds, and it comes naturally to you, right?"

"Well, welding is pretty easy. I could never really understand how some people could make such bad welds. You just go with the flow."

"My point exactly. I'll bet other things that require finesse come easy to you. Were you in a barbershop quartet in high school? Wood shop? Do you like cheese?"

"Huh. You score a hundred percent. I tried out for the men's barbershop quartet and got invited to join—Mr. Rasmussen said I was good at close harmony and had a good sense of rhythm. But I was too big a goof-off and didn't stick with it. Got an A+ in shop, which is one reason I'm a welder." He scratched his temple. "Funny you should mention cheese. I don't have any trouble telling them apart. Those fancy descriptions even make sense to me. But really, I'm pretty much a blue-collar guy."

Asch nodded. "All things that require finely-tuned sensibilities. It's not that you can't hold your liquor, you're more like—here let me give you an example." He got up and came back with a wine glass. Then he licked and wiped off his fingertip.

Fred started to smile. He recognized what Asch was going to do.

Asch licked his finger tip again and gently ran it around the rim of the wine glass. It produced a clear, high ring.

Fred grinned. "Glass harmonica!"

"Yup. Now imagine putting a hammer in this goblet. Not a good match.

Fred winced thinking about it. Then he sighed. "But I like beer!"

"Do you like running off the women?" They stared at each other for a full minute.

Fred broke the staring contest and called the waitress over. "Would you bring me a coke, please? And refill his soda water." He looked at Asch, a small victory on his face. "Okay, what's next?"

"Be clean. Bathe regularly, brush your teeth, comb your hair. Never try to socialize with a woman unless you're clean. Even after you're married to her."

Fred shrugged. "I should be able to do that. In fact, now I'm really glad I took a shower before I came here. I considered just coming straight here from work." He grinned.

"You're right—I wouldn't have minded. Cleanliness is more important to women than it is to us men. Maybe it's a way of showing that you want to be pleasing. Or something, I dunno. But it's true. Women like clean. In a way this applies to our speech, too." He saw Anita walk in. "For example, you would never call a woman a douchebag." Anita's gaze flickered their way, but she kept going.

"Oof. I have done so. Okay, never insult. But I don't think that's item number three."

"Correct. I guarantee you will like number three, even though you might not think so at first. It's this: find a pastime, hobby if you will, that involves doing something, not watching something."

Fred looked blank. "What's that got to do with attracting women?"

"It's a way to meet people you share interests with, and it'll make you a more interesting person."

"Yeah, but what could I do? Right now my whole life is work, ESPN, and beer. And you just talked me out of the beer," he pretend grumbled.

Asch cocked his head sideways, speculating. "You used to be involved with music, right? The construction of your face is a good one for music. Wide jaw line. You dabbled in it in high school. I bet you'd do pretty well in the town's community chorus. Which reminds me—there's a concert in the park tonight, and Octavia and I are planning on going. Care to join us? You could invite Anita over there. She might respond differently to a different approach..." Asch raised his eyebrows and left the idea hanging.

Before Fred could react, Octavia came in. She plunked down next to Asch and kissed him on the cheek. "Hi Fred. I hope I'm not interrupting anything. You guys got all the world's problems solved?"

Fred actually looked bashful. "H-hi, Octavia. Um, Asch just invited me to join you guys at the concert tonight, and I'm supposed to see if Anita'd like to join me—us." He took a deep breath. "Wish me luck."

He got up, taking his drink with him to the bar and sat down about two seats away from Anita, who seemed to be concentrating on her Kindle. "Hey Clay—bring the lady anything she wants; on me."

Anita looked up at him, then at Clay, and almost smiled. "I'll just have a vinegar and water."

Fred was in the process of taking a sip of his coke and her remark caught him completely off guard. He choked on his drink, snorting soda out his nostrils, laughing and crying at the same time. Clay rushed to his rescue with a damp bar towel. Asch stifled a laugh. Octavia looked blank. A couple bystanders snorted. Anita immediately had a look of concern on her face. "Oh Fred I'm so sorry! I was hoping for a laugh, not pain. Are you okay?"