The Other Side of Paradise

Me?... I was thinking, "Why would Ziegfield EVER give up somebody this passionate." And why was I even contemplating something so off the wall stupid and insecure? It was because I was having a hard time believing this incredible woman was about to give herself to me.

I stroked Julia from her tiny nipped in waist down to her rock-hard flanks. Her reactions were both spontaneous and extreme. She was like a live-wire, fizzing with sexual electricity. Every part of her responded in little erotic flexes and quivers. It was like she was vibrating with carnal energy. Then I squeezed her little round buns, and it set off a series of full-throated moans.

It was clear that Julia just FELT it. I understood now, why Julia had held off being intimate with me. Her wild reaction to stimulation told me there was an extremely sensual woman underneath all of the old fashioned sexual decorum and this was going to get crazy.

Julia parted her robe, and she was naked underneath. I broke the kiss and gazed at her au-natural for the first time. She was an absolutely exquisite little doll. Julia had perfect feminine proportions, standing there in the bright afternoon light that was coming in from the windows of the room. She had firm, high riding round boobs. With pronounced upturned nipples a flat stomach, over full and fruitful hips.

I took her right tit in my hands. It was red hot as I squeezed a nipple. That set Julia off like a skyrocket. She uttered a loud guttural groan. Her eyes rolled up in her head. And in a strangled tone of voice she said, "Make love to me!!! You have to do it NOW!!!

Those were the last coherent words I got out of my love for the next forty-five minutes. She wasn't interested in the subtleties of romance. Julia wanted to be fucked... now!! She collapsed back on the hotel's plush bed. She was so excited that she was humping the air as I struggled out of my clothes. Then her hands disappeared between her legs. she was going to get started - with, or without me.

I had another one of my weird hesitations, "How could somebody so beautiful, and intelligent be so abandoned?" Thankfully, my little voice said, "Stop dithering you pussy and fuck her!!!" I moved between Julia's legs. She grabbed the back of her knees and pulled them into an exaggerated "V", elevating her hips in perfect position to be penetrated.

All the while she was silently fixing me with a focused stare. It was both sexual excitement and challenge in a single look. I had the momentary sense that this was a test that I had better pass - and one that Ziegfield might have failed. Juila let out a shriek of pure desire as I plunged into velvet lava, slapped her hands on my back and slammed her legs around my waist. Then she ground her heels into my ass - in effect pulling me deeper inside of her.

The age-old motion began. It was primal mating - fucking without tricks. We were far too caught up in the fundamental act itself for any side trips. And for those of you who think that was because oral sex wasn't invented until the 1970s. Well... there's slang dating back to the 19th Century... like, "prick eating," "deep sea diving," and "sneezing in the cabbage." that makes that sound silly.

Julia was making extreme effort noises, Ugh-ugh-ugh-oh-oh!!! When she wasn't doing that, she was moaning and crying with unbridled lust. Her pussy was soaked, and her pheromones made it feel like my entire adrenal system dumped. In fact, I was in such an adrenaline-fueled frenzy - that I started to pound her without thinking whether I was hurting her.

All that did was inspire Julia to further efforts. She had her arms in a death grip around my neck and her legs were clamped around my waist. We just beat on each other snarling and yowling for at least twenty minutes. I had never lasted that long - at least at the outrageous speed we were humping. It was like a high-frequency machine going kachunk-kachunk-kachunk at a super-fast rate.

Julia took everything and begged for more. The odd part was that I didn't even think about cumming. The sensations - the sounds and the smells were just so profound. Finally, Julia began to spasm like she was having an epileptic seizure.

Julia's mouth contracted in a rictus of pure sensation as her passage went nuts around me. She uttered a high-pitched shriek that probably only the dogs on the Boardwalk could hear. Then she slammed her legs down hard on the bed as her heels began to beat a tattoo on the mattress while she processed through her orgasm. Her contractions felt like she was milking me with her hands. Then she went utterly limp.

I still hadn't come. So I roughly dragged her dead body over to the edge of the bed and laid her face down and reentered her churning passage. She moaned weakly. I began to pound that incredible ass in all of its jutting springy glory. Julia was making weak attempts to raise it, to give me leverage, which, in turn flamed her desire again. It was like somebody lit the proverbial match in the fireworks factory.

Julia began to grunt with effort and push back as hard as she could while I walloped away on her. She was whipping her thick mane of auburn hair back and forth in a frenzy and urging me on with loud wails of, "Come - Come in me PLEASE!!!" Her moans were continuous and so loud that I was afraid she would get hotel security up to the room to investigate whether I was killing her.

Julia had a grip on the sheet like she was trying to tear it in half. Then the sheet actually ripped as an orgasm of epic proportions rocketed through her. She emitted an unearthly scream of - "OH MY GOD!!! CUMAGAIN!!!" That triggered my orgasm, and it felt like it started from somewhere over the rainbow. I came so ridiculously hard that I saw the proverbial stars.

The next several seconds were more like a near-death experience than a post orgasmic recovery. I slid limply down Julia's well-muscled but very sweaty back and landed on the floor. I feebly turned and propped myself against the bed. I was panting so hard that I was sure that I was going to pass out. It appeared that Julia had actually lost consciousness - since she was lying there as if she'd been murdered. I finally got some sanity back and stood up to attend to her.

Julia was lying face-first in a big puddle of drool, breathing hard, her arms extended in front of her - hands still clutching the ripped sheet. I was just leaning down to her when she popped one eye open and said with wry humor, "I imagine that shocked you. It certainly astonished me. I've never been that wanton. You have to understand that when I love, I commit everything, and this is the gift I give to you."

Then she added casually, "So, I guess that puts us on the path to marriage if you want me. Want her!?? Seriously?!! I said equally dryly, "Well then... get me to the church on time... TOMORROW."

***** The wedding didn't happen right away, or even for a couple of months. But the next day Julia DID move into my room at the Algonquin. Dotty would cut me approving looks whenever we'd cross paths, and she made certain that Julia had a regular seat among invitees at the Round Table. Dotty had a kind soul beneath that intimidating intelligence and I think she could see how much Julia and I loved each other.

Julia was as in awe of the repartee among the Round Table members, just as I was... and Julia could hold her own with anybody. Of course, wit was not a laurel that a woman with Julia's looks would be expected to rest on. Julia told me that the Round Table was the community she'd dreamed about being able to join when she arrived in New York. Our attendance ratcheted up our visibility and since the Round Table was the crème-d-la-crème of literary aficionados, we got requests for articles.

The work thrown our way by the likes of Perkins and Ross put us in a situation where we could live on the proceeds from our writing, which was a surprising, but highly desirable, bonus. We didn't need the money that I'd brought from the 21st Century.

Of course, my investments were doing well... as I knew they would. It helps to be able to see into the future. But it was nice to have your reason-to-be, e.g., writing, recognized by somebody other than your spouse. The fact that Julia had published more articles than I had made me happy. Because Julia wanted the validation more than me.

We finally tied the knot in Toledo. Toledo was Ohio's third largest city back then, with perhaps a quarter-million inhabitants. Both of Julia's parents were present. Mine couldn't make it because they weren't born yet, so I told everybody that I was an orphan.

Julia's old man was a manager at the Libby Glass plant - not a farmer. So, the wedding was a bit of a society event. Julia's status as a society princess was one more thing that she had failed to mention. I thought she was a farm girl. But a farmer probably wouldn't have financed his daughter's writing career. So, I should have realized that.

I met Julia's former fiancé's folks at the wedding. They were a German couple who DID have a farm out on Starr Road west of Toledo. The fiancé's mother kept thanking Julia in broken English. The woman had tears running down her cheeks as she did it... I think it was because Julia's gesture gave them a bit of closure on the loss of their son. My wife's big heart had that kind of effect on folks.

Me? I took Julia's inviting the parents of her former fiancé as a touchingly humane gesture - one that was made out of simple kindness - rather than disrespect. The contrast between Julia's consideration for the feelings of a pair of broken old people and Ashley's stunt of inviting Douchebag to her slut sister's wedding couldn't have been more profoundly evident.

Afterward, we took the Twentieth Century Limited back to Grand Central Station. Given my 21st-century biases, one of the things that surprised me the most about the 1920s was the ease with which you could move around the country. The advent of the airline industry and the super highways that Ike built killed the railroads, but in 1925, trains were a really cheap and comfortable way to get from here to there.

We couldn't live at the Algonquin forever and Jersey City's quaint tree-lined neighborhoods offered a peaceful haven from the insane energy of Manhattan - directly across the river. So, I dipped into my stash of gold and bought a house on a street near Van Vorst Park, a short walk down to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad station. That was where, I could grab the train into the city.

My association with the Round Table, and Dorothy Parker, had given me enough credibility that Max Perkins at Scribners had picked up my novel. If you'll recall... I had first run into Max when we met Fitzgerald and you might think that the subsequent events at Great Neck would have colored his perception. But it turned out that he disapproved of Fitzgerald's lifestyle as much as I did. So we became allies in the struggle to keep Fitz on the straight and narrow.

If you've ever had a book published you know that there is a ton of proofreading and editing after the first draft. So, I had the inevitable back and forth to the City, working with the faceless people who make a book actually happen. The process moved a lot slower than it did in 2020. And my use of the past tense when describing a time that was actually ninety years in the future was an indicator of my fucked up timeline.

After the submission of an initial draft... every proofread page of every chapter gets handed back to you in a form that makes it look like it bled to death. Back then... everything was typewritten with hand-scrawled proofreader's notes in the margins. So, you couldn't just make the necessary corrections on the manuscript by hitting the backspace key—like you would on a word processor. If there were changes... then each page had to be completely retyped.

Julia astonished me by being able to type at an incredible rate of speed. Thus, she was the one who actually created the next proof for me. She said proudly, "I studied secretarial science at Waite, because I knew I would need those skills to be writer." That ought to tell you what kind of motivated woman she was. Julia had already gotten an article into Scribners magazine, which was kindly received and she was working on one for the New Yorker. It was the beginning of a bright career.

So, there I was... living a happy and comfortable life with a beautiful and intelligent woman and finally getting to do what I had wanted to do all my life. But of course... as everybody knows, "When your cup runneth over - looketh out!"

***** It seems like the big ones always happened to me at night. Everything had gone on normally for over a year and, I had settled into life in the 20th Century. It was 1927 now, and I was enjoying the hell out of my existence. My investment portfolio had quintupled and my sex life was like my most fevered wet dream. My novel was about to be published - God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

I had gone to bed at a decent hour that evening and was anticipating my usual good night's sleep. That was when the Bee Gees "Stayin Alive" started playing in my head... now, that was nightmarish. It was followed in a sequence by "Billie Jean," "Bad Romance," and then something from Taylor Swift - I don't know which song since all of hers sound alike to me.

My eyes popped open. It was late at night, and I was lying on my familiar park bench. The psychic shock and genuine physical pain of my horrified recognition trampled over me like a herd of rabid rhinoceroses, and I passed right back out.

A cop woke me in the wolf light of dawn, poking me with his baton. He bellowed, "Move along, asshole. You can't sleep here."

I looked at him with the confused and bleary eyes of a disaster survivor and said anxiously, "What's today's date." That convinced the cop I was a nut. So, he said, "If you don't get a move on, I'm gonna haul you over to the 19th, and you can sleep it off in the drunk tank."

I said, pleading, "Please tell me... what's today's date?" The cop gave me a look of disdain - he clearly thought I was on something - and said, "July 31st." I said, "What year?" Now he really thought I was tweaking. He said, "2024!! When did you think it was?"

I would've been living in a rubber room in Bellevue if I'd told him, "1927." Instead, I collapsed silently on the bench, devastated. The 21st Century had come to reclaim me... and I didn't know why.

In fact, I hadn't devoted any serious thought to my return because I thought I could dictate whether I stayed. Silly human... that kind of monumental hubris was downright Sophoclean in its arrogance and stupidity.

I spent the night in the temporary holding cells of the 19th Precinct, over on East 67th. In the morning, I was given an appearance ticket and released on the street barefoot, sporting a pair of silk pajamas, which was what I had been wearing when I went to bed that night in 1927. My attire would have made me stand out from the crowd in any other city, but the New Yorkers flowing past me didn't even blink.

It was a strange sensation to have existed two full years in another time and yet return to the day after I had left this one. But based on the date - Ashley and I had had our little blowout over her lack of morals only yesterday morning. Hence the whole fucking menagerie was still at the Plaza. Even more ironic... if Ashley was still canoodling with Horse Face, it was likely that I had not even been missed.

The Plaza was a short walk down 67th and Fifth. The desk clerk didn't bat an eye when I stood there in my jammies and asked for a duplicate key. Upscale hotels see a lot of weird guests. Ashley wasn't in the room... of course, she wasn't. My soon-to-be ex-wife had other priorities now. Ashley's absence was a huge relief since I was in a hurry, and I didn't want to deal with her. Besides, she was dead to me.

I showered, shaved, and changed into something comfortable. Then, I walked down to the Chase Bank on Madison Avenue. My passport was still in my travel things, so I had the ID I needed to get money. I had sorted through all of the logical actions while sitting in the drunk tank, and I'd come to a final decision. There was really only one viable option, anyway. But first, I had to do some scouting.

Specifically, I had to find out what had happened to Julia after I'd been so unceremoniously yanked out of her life. Fortunately, we have this little thing called the Internet... and you can learn a lot sitting at a free workstation in the New York Public Library.

Thanks to the genealogy nuts, U.S. obituaries are available and well-documented online. So, it was only a matter of finding the right Julia Richmond. I searched among the names on an amazingly long list of women from that era and I didn't find her. Then - inspiration struck, and I tried Julia Sullivan - her married name. That just produced another impractically long list.

It looked like I was going to be kicked out of the Library before I found anything. Then the thought struck me. I entered "Julia Richmond Sullivan 1902" and got a single obituary from the Toledo Blade. It was for a burial at Toledo Memorial Park in Sylvania, Ohio. Astoundingly, it was dated September 6th, 1927.

The picture of Julia was exactly as I'd last seen her. But it was the title of the obituary that ripped the beating heart out of my chest. It read, "Died For Love?"

The article said Julia had died just a month after I'd mysteriously disappeared. It speculated that my disappearance was the reason why Julia had passed away. I could visualize the poor loyal thing, having lost a fiancé and now a husband, dying from the loss.

The burden of guilt was so crushingly overwhelming that I put my head down on the keyboard and sobbed. The death of such a beautiful and intelligent woman in the prime of her life was immeasurably painful. But knowing that I'd been the cause of it was absolutely worse. There's no coming back from a realization like that. I was a walking dead man.

I leaned back in the institutional chair, rubbed my eyes clear of tears, and said loudly enough to be shushed by the people around me, "This ends here!!" I had actually solved the problem while I was cooped up with a diverse collection of Central Park drunks and perverts over at the 19th. What I had learned gave me the strength to follow through without hesitation.

I was obviously two identical entities moored in time. Why? I don't know. I just knew I was - and for unfathomable reasons, once in a while, they traded places. Hence, the flipping back and forth from century to century would continue as long as both of us were alive. So, it was obvious that I had to eliminate the 21st-century version of myself in order to ensure that the other version stayed put in the 20th.

Yes... I was talking about suicide. It made perfect sense. Because if the fellow who was born and raised in the 21st Century didn't exist, then there would be nothing for the fellow in the 20th Century to flip back to - and that, in turn, would save Julia from the unhappy fate that had befallen her a month later. They didn't actually say that she'd killed herself, but they never did back then.

Of course... if my assumption was wrong, then I might be permanently offing myself in both places. But maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing - since I couldn't imagine life without my wife. It might sound ridiculously sentimental and sappy. But Julia was such an indispensable part of me that I ultimately saw no point in continuing this farce of a life without her.

So, there was one final task to complete. The evening was overcast, and humid as I walked out onto the broad steps of the, Library I scanned around to find a taxi and there was my faithful Rolls waiting patiently by the curb. That confirmed it!! This was the right thing to do.