From This I was Made

Carrie Ann King not only knew she wanted to be a lawyer since her senior year in high school, but knew why. Roland King, her dad, is a lawyer, and there are few people in the world that she admires more than her dad. Roland King built his firm of King, Sullivan and Cromwell into one of the city's top law firms, recognized for giving their clients the best legal work money can buy. Cheap, they aren't, but then quality service never is.

It isn't abnormal for children to admire their parents' profession to the point where they'd like to follow in their footsteps. But Carrie Ann, unlike many children who end up doing something else, followed through. Always an academic standout, she went on to college and then law school, making law review in her second and third years. After working a few years as a public defender, Roland persuaded her to join his law firm. King, Sullivan and Cromwell became King, Sullivan, Cromwell and King.

Thus, Carrie Ann fulfilled her ambition to go into law, working alongside her beloved dad. So far, so good, and nothing out of the ordinary except for one thing: the incestuous feelings Carrie Ann developed in high school only got stronger. Indeed, she more than admires her dad professionally—she's downright attracted to him as a younger woman might be to an older man. She's thus far kept this to herself, though she dropped a subtle hint when a friend teased her about being too picky when it came to men. "Maybe by forty you'll find Mr. Right," the friend said.

"I've already found Mr. Right," Carrie Ann retorted. "Only he's married to my mom."

She does date. And yes, she's picky. But you'd think she'd pick men with her dad's physical and intellectual qualities. And sometimes she does, though more often it's men on a lower tier, men not as well educated, not as smart, not as accomplished professionally, men she can look down on, often literally from her close to six-foot height in heels. It's another weird juxtaposition of her sexual/emotional makeup. By sheer force of her intelligence and assertive personality, she dominates these men, something she can't do with Roland. Does she really want to find Mr. Right? Perhaps not.

She sometimes wonders if she should seek professional help. Books and Web searches give her some insight into her sexual psyche. She reads Freud and Jung in an effort to understand what drives girls/women into their dad's arms—and sometimes into their beds. The Electra complex, the Jung-named stage of development when young girls develop an attachment to their fathers, rings true to her. In normal development, girls grow out of it. Carrie Ann never really did. Growing up, her dad was the nurturing parent, the one that gave her the emotional sustenance she needed. She and her emotionally distant mom locked horns in perpetual competition for Roland's attention, a competition that carried over into her adulthood. Her research gives her some insight. Still, she doesn't fully understand it, though she suspects Roland's good looks play a role—his thick mane of chestnut hair, his square jaw and strong features, his lithe, six-foot-three frame that he keeps hard and toned through racquetball and weight machines. He's been an inspiration to the once sedentary Carrie Ann in that area as well. She's heard other women drop comments on their dads' good looks. Yet not once did any of them express anything beyond that. Not one said in reverse what a certain celebrity said about dating his daughter if she wasn't his daughter.

She's gotten closer to Roland since joining the firm. They do lunch together, play racquetball, share drinks during happy hour when firm business doesn't find them working into the evening. At times, she can feel the sexual tension between them, palpable and simmering. He feels it too; she knows he does. The way he looks at her, the way lots of men look at her, including the firm's two partners, Lester Sullivan and Stephen Cromwell, both, like Roland, middle-age and married.

By almost anyone's barometer of beauty, she stands out in a crowd. Standing a shade over five-foot ten, with turnpike-length legs on a body sculpted by good genes and a disciplined gym regimen, she's tough to miss. She wears her long, straight brown hair parted in the middle; that is, when she doesn't have it pinned up, her "executive doo," she calls it. She wows men whether she's wearing jeans or her dressed-for-success business duds. And her face, pretty in a patrician-refined way: high cheek bones, smooth, lovely skin, straight nose and a mouth, full and luscious and seductive when she's not wearing her game face and sometimes even when she is. Then there's her intelligence, her facile way with language, her unique verbal acumen that serves her so well in the courtroom and boardroom. Do smart men really want dumb women? Tis but a myth in her experience, not with all those smart, successful men that hit on her with predictable regularity, other lawyers, even a few judges she encounters off the bench.

Her dad never went that far. Sometimes she wishes he would, at least lead her on. Yes, she knows the law: vaginal intercourse between relatives in her state is illegal, punishable by one to ten years behind bars. But then so are other laws on the books regarding sexual conduct, archaic and virtually unenforceable.

*****

Happy hour in Brannon's, Pub, just two blocks from the downtown Circuit Court is winding down. Carrie Ann and Roland, after spending the afternoon writing legal briefs, share a small table off to the side, savoring their Samuel Adams brew on tap. Neither are heavy beer drinkers. One, sometimes two usually does it for them, helps them to unwind from a hectic workday. Roland's got his blue pinstriped suit jacket slung over his chair, and his preppy tie, green with black shield icons, hangs loose over his powered blue, button-down dress shirt. Carrie Ann remains fully attired in a charcoal skirt suit over a white blouse. Her hair, pinned up earlier, now hangs down, her only concession to informality since she left for work. When they meet like this, they usually discuss firm business first, the day's events, upcoming cases, etc. Then they might cover everything from politics to Carrie Ann's social life.

The Trump presidency has been an ongoing topic between them ever since the election. He voted for Trump, she for Hillary. Grudgingly, Carrie Ann is willing to give Trump more time to prove or disprove his fitness for the job. She's not one of those smug people who proclaim he's not their president. She admires his campaign manager and now adviser, Kellyanne Conway. "She's smart and she's tough," she tells Roland. "I love the skillful way she handles the media, giving as good as she gets."

Roland nods and knocks back some brew. "She does that. Kind of sexy, too." He winks.

She chuckles. "You think so?"

"Yeah. I mean, she's blond, cute and slender, looks good for a middle-age woman. But more than that, she's like you said, smart and tough, with exceptionally good verbal skills. Thinks fast on her feet. Kind of reminds me of you in that regard."

Carrie Ann beams. "Really? So—and you don't have to answer if you don't want to—does that mean you find me sexy as well?"

He blushes and looks away for a few seconds. "Um, well, I find you very attractive. In an objective way, of course."

"Of course. I mean, you're my dad, so I wouldn't expect you to see me the way other men might. The same is true on my end. I mean, I can think you're a really hot looking guy without necessarily harboring thoughts of seducing you. Or, Lord help us, putting thoughts into action, crossing the line." She flashes a teasing smile.

He loosens his collar and takes another swig. "Lord help us is right. It's called taboo for a reason."

They sit in silence for a while, sipping their beers. Carrie Ann feels the familiar sexual tension between them, taut as a fresh bowstring. "Dad, mind if I ask you something?"

"Work related or personal?"

"Um, the latter."

"Shoot."

She smiles shyly and giggles. "This isn't easy."

"You sure it's worth asking?"

The server, a blond, pony-tailed, mid-twenties female comes over and points to their near-empty mugs. "Another round?"

"I think I better," Carrie Ann says. "Dad?"

"I can't let you drink alone." He looks up at the server. "Make it two." When she returns less than a minute later, he says, "So, your question..."

She purses her lips, then takes a deep breath. "Right. Well, to proceed, is it just me or do you also sense this strange vibe between us?"

He knocks back a swig from his fresh beer mug. "Strange vibe? Strange how?"

She cups her hands around her frosted glass, gazes into his hazel eyes. "I mean, sometimes I feel we're something other than father-daughter or even law partners."

He rolls his shoulders and looks around before responding. "You sure you want to go there?"

She leans forward and lowers her voice to just above a whisper. "Well, first I'd like to know if there is any there there."

"You know who first used that phrase, don't you?" She shakes her head no. "Hint. It was a woman."

When she was growing up, Roland regularly fed Carrie Ann quotes and then gave her their source. She loved the game and still does. "No, but let me guess. Hmm...Sylvia Plath?"

He smiles. "No, but that's a very good guess, something she might have said. It was Gertrude Stein talking about Oakland, California."

She knows the name but is not familiar with any of Stein's literary works. She wonders if he's trying to change the subject. "Interesting. Anyway, I wasn't talking about Oakland but about the dynamic between us."

"So I figured. What about it?"

She grasps his hand, looks at him sympathetically. "Dad, if you're uncomfortable with this we can talk about something else, not go there."

He grins. "You mean the there that might or might not be there but can't know for sure unless we go there." Pause. "You know, this is starting to sound like a verbal Rubik's Cube."

She takes a sip. "Guess I should have stayed with the strange vibe."

He breaths out hard. "Okay, I'll concede that there is some sort of vibe, to use your word, though I'm not sure what adjective to place in front of it. Strange. Unusual. Scary. Scary in an exciting way, perhaps."

She can relate to the exciting part, feeling something akin to an electrical current shoot through her. "So you Do feel it. Am I right?"

"I'd be lying if I said I didn't."

She giggles and then takes another sip. "I feel so embarrassed right now."

He laughs. "Don't feel bad, that makes two of us."

She chuckles. "So, I guess we have to stop meeting like this." Brushing beads of sweat from her forehead, she slips off her suit jacket and hangs it over the back of her chair. "It's getting warm in here."

"Warm to hot," he says, and opens another button on his shirt. "Which is the way you look to me right now." He demurs. "Ohmygod, talking about crossing lines. I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

Her breathing picks up. "No, maybe you should have. But be forewarned that if you keep talking like that my mouth isn't the only part of me that'll be wet." She extends her foot, sneaks her toe under his pants cuff and caresses his calf.

He reaches down and grips his hand around her leg, encased in pantyhose. "You know, this is getting kind of scary."

"But a feel-good kind of scary, at least for me," she says, now starting to feel the wet she mentioned.

"Your mom would try to have us both locked up if she knew how we felt, never mind acting on it."

She shoves her foot further up his calf. "But we haven't acted on it. Not yet."

He feels his erection pressing against his briefs. "So wickedly tempting."

"Isn't it though." She brushes her hands over her boobs. "Jeez, dad, I might not be able to finish my beer."

"Try. It's supposed to cool you off."

"But it's not working."

"Maybe we should go out for some ice cream."

"Maybe we should just go...back to my place."

"To eat ice cream?"

"Ha ha. No, I'm fresh out. Will frozen yogurt do?"

"And then what? Listen, honey, I'm not as daring as you seem to be."

"We can just see what happens. No pressure, no expectations."

He laughs. "If I'm still in this aroused state back at your place, I'm pretty damn sure what will happen. And it has little to do with frozen yogurt."

She slips off one of her black, high-heeled shoes. Then, after checking to see if anyone is looking, she slides halfway under the table and wiggles her toes between his legs. "Wow! Aroused state is right. We should do this, we should go."

"We should?"

"We should. I mean, we shouldn't really. But we should. If that makes any sense."

It does, at least to where Roland calls his wife, tells her the truth about where he's headed (but obviously not the reason) and pays for the beers. Then they leave in separate cars, he in his Volvo following behind her Rav 4. She's nervous, fidgeting with the steering wheel and talking to herself out loud. "Am I fucking naughty, or what? Here I am, driving back to my place to have sex with Roland King, my biological dad." She shakes her head. "This is epic, this is crazy stuff. But so irresistibly erotic."

*****

They arrive at her spacious townhouse at the same time. Townhouse is a slight misnomer, a geographic oxymoron. The house sits in the suburbs, not downtown, but its architectural pedigree is unmistakable, with its hip type roof and broad front, a design that harks back to city row houses built in the early 1800s. The house, like the rest of the row, fronts an asphalt parking lot, and is modern in every other way.

Roland leaves his suit jacket in the car, then follows his daughter into the house. Carrie Ann tosses her jacket on the loveseat before heading straight for the fridge. "We could use some wine, dad. What'll it be? I've got Zinfandel and Merlot."

"Merlot, please," he calls from the living room.

She soon joins him on her greenish Scandinavian style sofa, holding her own glass of Merlot. She kicks off her shoes and motions for him to do the same. "Relax, make yourself at home," she says. The slit in her skirt opens wide enough for him to see half her shapely thighs when she crosses her legs. When he quickly looks away after seeing her smile in satisfaction, she says, "Dad, don't be so uptight. I love when you check me out in the office, so there's no reason to hold back here."

He shakes his head, looks down and takes a sip. "You know, I love your mother, but I never tire of looking at beautiful, sexy women. That includes, I'm ashamed to say, my own daughter."

She nods. "You think it's in our DNA?" He gives a puzzled shrug. "I mean that we both have this weird attraction to each other that's supposed to be taboo. With me, it started in high school. I'm curious, when did it hit you?"

Again, he shrugs and takes another sip. "Not sure. I always thought you were a pretty girl."

"Nothing abnormal about that."

"No, and if that's all I thought, then I wouldn't have felt compelled to seek therapy."

She gasps. "You went into therapy?! I didn't know that."

"Neither does your mom or anyone else. I kept it hush hush as I'm hoping you will."

"Of course. So when did you start?'

Looking up at the ceiling, he runs his hand through his hair, thinking back. "I guess when you turned around sixteen. Yes, that's it. I remember because you had just started driving. That's when my objective, normal thoughts turned to abnormal thoughts, fantasies no father should be harboring about his daughter. I felt like a dirty old man, a creep."

He went for close to four years, he tells her, to a couple different therapists who gave him similar explanations as to why he sexualized Carrie Ann. "In a nutshell, they said that because your mom failed to give me the emotional support I needed, I turned to you for that support. It's a minor miracle we're still together."

She nods, tells him she can relate to her mom's lack of support, the way she keeps her emotional distance in times of crisis. "It's not that she doesn't care, it's that she's not very nurturing."

"She's the antonym for nurturer."

"That's a good way to put it. Anyway, you never molested me, never even touched me inappropriately."

"Thank goodness. Thank goodness I had enough self-control not to. Therapy helped in that regard. What it didn't do was cure me." He forms his fingers into quotation marks around cure. "Because I still harbor these sexual fantasies. Like you just mentioned, I still check you out, something I assume would turn most women's stomachs if their dads did that."

She chuckles and sips more wine. "Not mine. My stomach's just fine. Wanna see?" Before he can answer, she lifts her blouse up to her bra."

He blushes. "Very nice. You can put it down now." Pause. "Either that or take it off. Kidding, just kidding," he says, throwing his hand up.

She grins. "Kidding? Are you sure about that?" He shrugs. "Look, you said I was daring, right? Okay, so maybe what we need is to get closer and see what happens. Maybe that's the CURE for this thing. Now that we can talk about it openly, maybe it's time to take the next step." She slides to within a couple inches of him, close enough to smell his cologne against his natural manly scent. After placing her wine glass on the wood coffee table, she begins to touch the back of his neck, moving her fingers through his hair that just touches the collar of his blue shirt. "Feel good?"

He stiffens up at first, flexing his shoulders and trapezius muscles. Then he begins to relax. "That does feel good," he says, and then places a hand on her thigh. "I hope you don't feel this is touching you inappropriately," he says, shooting her a shy grin.

"Hardly. Here, let me make it easier for you." She stands and hikes up her skirt. Then, after holding it there for a few seconds, enjoying her dad gape with pleasurable surprise, she slips off her pantyhose and sits back down. Then she takes his hand and places it right back where he left it. "There. Now, resume what you were doing."

"You're skin's so smooth," he says, running his fingers along the length of her leg.

"Thanks. The skin care I use helps. That and not being quite thirty." Lifting her butt, she hikes her skirt up higher, exposing both legs, and then extends her feet onto the coffee table. "Continue the message, Mr. King." She notices his breathing getting heavier after he puts down his wine glass to message both her legs. "This is turning you on, isn't it?"

"Um, well, to be perfectly honest, yes." He slips off his tie and tosses it over the back of the sofa.

"Great, because it's doing the same for me." She unbuttons her blouse and tosses it on the hardwood floor. "And I thought it was hot in Brannon's." She lets him continue the message for a few minutes. Then she says, "You know, we never really kissed the way I've for years wanted us to kiss." Removing her feet from the table, she leans into him and holds his face in her hands. "Ready?" He nods.

Her lips touch his, and then she slips her tongue into his mouth. Tentative at first, they get more passionate as the seconds pass, pressing their lips harder, stabbing their tongues deeper, squeezing their still clothed bodies closer. Pulling away, she unsnaps her bra and tosses it aside. "I know my boobs aren't that big," she says apologetically, "but I hope they work for you."

Wide-eyed, he says, "I'd think they'd work for anybody." He begins to fondle them with his hands before leaning over to suck on her nipples.

She lays back and pulls him on top of her. "Jeeze, dad, I'm on fire," she cries as he continues to fondle her boobs while adding a dry hump to the mix. "And I can feel you are, too."

On fire is right, what with his erection all but bursting through his pants, his desire on a downhill roll, speeding past those metaphorical signs that read, proceed with caution. The faster things progress, the harder it is for him to see those signs. Passion and desire wreak havoc on his superego, one that had heretofore kept him out of trouble, stopped him from acting on his erotic impulses. He still has the presence of mind to back off, to retreat under the influence of years of Western cultural social conditioning, the sort that teaches what he's doing is a huge no no.