Throwing Pots

Making the move to small-town Michigan turned out to be far easier for my wife than for me. While they intimated that refusing the move would have been a career-limiting choice for me, my employer was helpful enough to help find employment for my wife. As it turns out, she was enjoying her job and making friends far easier than we both thought she would. Life wasn't so rosy for me. My new position required more hours than I had expected, and it was clear that, as an out-of-towner, I was not being held in high regard. But I did have my pottery. I like making clay pots. In fact I like it so much I started to sell them at craft shows up and down the east coast. I usually go to about one per month, just enough for my hobby to pay for itself plus a little bit. It's the kind of business that could grow into something more substantial when I finally get tired of corporate life. Moving to Michigan just meant I had to find a new set of craft shows, which I did with the help of some friendly crafters. I fully intend to toss the day-to-day intellectual pissing contest that comes with engineering for a large company right into the crapper, where it belongs.

The house we bought on Navajo Trail was a nice-sized ranch on a deep, wooded lot. The neighbors were close enough, and also far enough away. The basement was perfect for my craft: it has a walkout door up a short stair to the back yard. The rooms on the main floor are big, and there's a screened-in porch overlooking the back yard. It's one of those houses that so easy to live in that it makes you think you're on vacation whenever you're in it. Somehow, the elderly couple that we bought the place from had the good taste to decorate it in light colors and open spaces, something that's rare among folks of their generation. One of the features that I liked was a shed in the back yard, almost to the back property line. I don't know why, but whoever built it decided that it needed to be fireproof. It was built of cinder block walls on a concrete slab. It even had a corrugated tin roof that rested on metal framework, obviously from a time before sheet metal was a common building material. I have no idea what the previous owner would do with such a structure, but to me it was a perfect place to put my gas kiln. When you fire ceramic pottery, the firing cycle takes anywhere from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on the size of your kiln, how full it is, and how hot you want to fire it. I work in stoneware, which wants to be fired to cone 10, pretty hot, so it takes awhile. I tend to like rich copper reds, which require a reduction firing. So for fifteen minutes out of every hour, I have to manually "choke" the oxygen out of the fire to get the colors I want. It's tedious, but there's something intimate about art that makes me want to do this without help from technology. So every time I have a firing, I spend the night on a couch in the shed with a sixty-minute timer. My wife is used to spending these nights alone.

So far, my neighbors have been pretty good about the excess racket. Even during the summer, in an area where central air conditioning isn't as prevalent and open windows are more the rule than the exception, no one has complained, and only one guy noticed because he works nights at the Delphi plant in Flint. His name is Jack, and he came home from work during the middle of my first firing and wandered back to see what was up. He stayed quite awhile and we shared several beers. And after he left, I fell asleep and damn near screwed up the firing! Although he's still a good neighbor, he hasn't been back after hours since, although because of other things that have developed, I really don't miss him.

While the folks I work with aren't very receptive, my new neighbors have been great. Jack, of course, is always ready to share a beer (or two) and a sea story. And his wife Maureen is as friendly as he is, though considerably less thirsty. They live on the one side of us, and on the other side are Stan and Maryanne. They're not quite as outgoing as Jack and Maureen, but always willing to help and always friendly. The folks directly across from us, Anthony and Gia, are a little more distant. They smile and wave, but more times than not, when they turn onto the street, the garage door magically goes up, the car cruises up the street and rolls into the garage, and then the door rolls down. Okay, well, not everyone is social.

Our back-yard neighbor is a woman named Arlene. Arlene is a little bit younger than me, is divorced (as best I can tell) and has two daughters, one at home and one usually away at college. Until recently, I didn't really know Arlene very well. In fact, I venture to say that I probably knew the elusive Anthony and Gia better. I do know this. She is a very attractive woman. Not really stunning in a supermodel sort of way, but definitely the kind of woman you'd want to run into at your kids soccer games. About 5'6, athletically built, blond hair, shiny green eyes, and just about the sweetest disposition I'd ever encountered in a woman. And sexy in that innocent, breezy sort of way that really makes you wonder what she's like in the bedroom, and think maybe you just might have a chance to find out. It seems hard for me to believe that any man would want to leave her, but I guess maybe it might not have been all his choice. Oh, and one other thing. She seems to be a little bit careless about closing her bedroom window. While peeping is not a hobby of mine, it's sometimes difficult to keep one's wandering eye under control when the most exciting thing going on in the middle of the night is very hot, baking glass. On two occasions while firing my work, my attractive neighbor returned home from wherever. Reaching the bedroom already mostly undressed, she doffs the rest of her clothing, heads for the shower, and then returns. She sits on the edge of bed and proceeds to dry her hair. There's a Victorian lamp on her nightstand that provides more than enough light, and her bed is one of those antique beds that sit higher off the floor. She seems not to be in any hurry and is completely oblivious to the wide-open state of her curtains. The second time it happened, I wondered "is she just being careless, or does she know I'm back here?" Either way, the view was hard to resist.

My wife works in a supermarket, one that's part of a large, national chain. One of the perks of making this move was that she got to move up into management. Leaving the union meant better treatment overall, and better money, too, although it came with the price of longer and uglier hours. The company expects a higher level of commitment from its managers, like all companies, I guess, and so when the union workers at their stores in southern California went out on strike, my wife was called upon to take her turn at keeping the stores there open. They sent her to La-La Land for a four-week stint in beautiful, downtown Arcadia. Well, it could be worse: she could be in south central LA and I could be worried about her getting mugged or worse.

Anyway, I had a craft show coming up and I was in high-production mode trying to get enough pots thrown to fill my kiln. I'd managed to get them done earlier in the week, and now it was Friday, and they'd dried nicely, so I was loading up the kiln. I was not having a good day. I'd taken the day off and the folks at work were not happy about it. The kiln loading was going just fine, but my colleague felt compelled to call me every couple of hours to get my "input" on some silly-assed problem that he should have been able to handle himself. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper because I wanted to be well through my firing by bedtime. Even the sight of Arlene running the lawn mower in a tank-top and running shorts wasn't helping, although it was a pleasant distraction for a moment or two. I was now well behind my goal and it was time to get some dinner. Take-out seemed to be the best option, as time for cooking was not in the cards. So I called Skip's and ordered the usual.

When I got to Skip's, I was early. I guess this was a good thing 'cause it did two things. First, it forced me to slow down and take breath, something I really hadn't done all week. So I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Second, while I was waiting, who should wander on in but my neighbor, Arlene, now freshly showered and looking like she was headed out for the evening. I thought she looked good in the running shorts, but now, with her hair fixed up and wearing a sexy-looking dancing dress, well, it was hard to keep from staring. She came up the bar and sat next to me and we started to chat. It seems she was doing the take-out thing herself because she was headed out to go dancing at singles club dance at a nearby hotel. So we chatted for a while longer. She asked about all the activity in the shed, and I was surprised to find out she really had no idea what I was doing in there. She seemed genuinely curious about it, but I figured THAT tour would have to wait until there was some reason to invite her to the house, like a Christmas party or something that would, unfortunately, include the wife. So much for fantasy.

When I got back to the house, I took my dinner out back to the kiln shed and ate while I started to button up the kiln. The deep drying had been going on for a while now, and by eight o'clock it would be time to button it up for good and start the firing process. I set the kiln-sitter to temperature and the alarm clock to wake me hourly to check on things. By about one AM, it was time to start choking the fire for fifteen minutes out of every sixty.

Sleeping only 45 minutes at a time tends to leave one groggy when awake, but I thought I heard the slamming of a car door. Sure enough, a light came on in Arlene's house, of which I had a rather accidental view out the back window of my shed across the hundred and fifty feet or so of her back yard and into her bedroom window. Also visible were her deck, dining room, kitchen and bathroom, though smaller windows secluded the kitchen and bathroom. The light came on in the living room, and I could see Arlene taking off her sweater and walking to her bedroom. Soon the light came on in the bedroom and she came in. After a brief visit to the bathroom, she walked to the window and looked out. I turned away, because I keep a dim light on in my shed on firing nights, and I really didn't want my neighbor to think I was sitting there deliberately staring into her bedroom window. If she caught me looking, well, that was okay. But if she caught me staring... I guess I don't mind being regarded as a normal male, but somehow staring seemed more than that, and I try to draw reasonable lines for myself, however unsuccessful I might be.

But soon she left the window, turned off the light, and came out the back door, through the dining room. The back porch light came on and she walked out onto the deck, stopped to look in my direction, and then walked across the back yard toward me. It was a nice night. A little cool, but clear as a bell, and now this... angel is walking toward me in the middle of the night. Being home along for a couple of weeks, the thought of some feminine company, even for just a few minutes was exciting.

She came around the shed to the front door and said hi. In the dim light given off by the kiln, I could see she still looked like she dressed and made-up for an evening of dancing. Her make-up was perfect, accenting her eyes the way it did making them smile even more than they had earlier, at Skip's.

"Hey! How was the dance? C'mon in, have a seat," I said as I stood up.

"Good. I danced my feet off. My friends Gerry and Roger were there and they kept me dancing all night." She walked across the shed to the couch.

"Careful! This isn't the best place for bare feet."

"Oh, I just had to take those shoes off. It felt so nice walking across the yard barefoot." She sat on the couch and put her feet up on the other end as I started to close the air vents. "How are you at giving foot massages?" she asked playfully.

"I dunno. How are you at giving back rubs?" Climbing in and out of the kiln that morning had aggravated an already sore back, and I was willing to trade almost anything for a good back rub.

"I do okay. Think we can work something out?"

"You got it. Just let me get these vents closed."

"This will be much easier of you take off your shirt." Even though it was a cool September night, the fire from the kiln warmed the shed sufficiently, so I obliged.

She started with my shoulders and neck and worked her way down through my ribs, then up again pressing her thumbs into either side of my spine. She went to work on my neck again. Her hands felt so warm and I was so tense to begin with that soon I felt like a pile of Silly Putty. She touched that sensitive place on my ribs and I shuddered and jumped.

"Oh! We're ticklish are we?" She grinned and poked me again, giggling. Next she went to work on my shoulder blades working from where my shoulders intersect my spine down and around to just under my arms.

I said "You're very good that his, Arlene. Is this part of teaching high school Spanish?" She giggled and said no, but that it certainly did come in handy at contract time. And anyway, she had been a candy-striper in the hospital near home when she was in high school.

Soon she finished with my back and said "Your turn!"

I sat down next to her and she put her feet in my lap. I keep some hand cream in the shed for when I get dry hands from the throwing process, so I squeezed some out and rubbed it in my palms. Then I started on her right foot. I could feel her starting to relax as I massaged for a few minutes. I saw her shoulders start to melt into the couch. Soon I finished with her right foot and asked for her left. She had been laying with her left side to the back of the couch and so her legs were modestly closed while I worked on her right foot, but as she placed the left into my lap, she was considerably less careful with the hem of her dress, giving me a more than adequate glimpse of the lace and satin underneath. Squeezing out more hand cream, I set to work on her left foot. Once she had settled, I noticed she was trying to keep her knees together, but as I massaged her foot she relaxed again and now seemed quite comfortable, almost deliberate, with the view she was allowing me. Soon the proximity of her foot to my package and the notion of sensuousness of the moment caused me to stiffen a bit. Although I was enjoying the view, I hesitated to get too familiar. After all, she's my neighbor, and I am married; the last thing I needed was for any such hanky-panky to get back to my wife. No, if this were a seduction, she would have to be a lot more deliberate than she'd been so far.

I glanced at the clock and saw that it was time to close the vents and choke the fire. I was thinking that perhaps the fire wasn't the only thing that would need choking. So we had to untangle a bit so I could close the vents. As she got up she gave me quite view of her underpinnings, one that was certainly deliberate: lifting just one leg up at a time, so high that I could actually see the waistband of her underwear. Hmmm... Lace. Nearly transparent. Very pretty. Victoria's Secret, perhaps? We didn't make eye contact as I rose. Still, all this could be accidental. Maybe she's just uninhibited. In either case, the loose clothing I was wearing wasn't going to hide my growing erection, so I just got up and went about my business, closing my vents and starting the fifteen-minute timer.

Closing the vents made the kiln louder, and so conversation was difficult. After closing the vents, I took a few minutes to check the fire and look at the hot gasses exiting the chimney. I wasn't quite distracted enough to ruin several thousand dollars worth of pottery.

When the bell in the timer chimed, I re-opened the vents, adjusted the fire accordingly, and went back to chatting with Arlene. Spouses. Strikes in Los Angeles. Kids. Marching band. Ice hockey. Circling each other. Each of us not really wanting to go out on that limb. While we chatted, I wandered about the shed closing shutters and doors in the expectation that it would stay a little warmer. The overnight temperature was dropping and I was feeling a chill. Arlene was feeling chilled, too, as I could tell from the hardening of her nipples. You had to figure, the bra under that pretty dancing dress was probably as thin as her panties.

Hmmm... Yes. Wouldn't I like to get a better look at all that.

Well. It was time to stop the circling. It was time to get the ball rolling or just get back to running the kiln. Still, I wasn't quite sure how to do this, yet. I mean, even when I was single, I was available. If a woman wanted me, she wasn't treading on some other woman's "turf" so to speak, by making (or inviting) a pass. Of course, she answered all of this for me, as when I sat down, she sat right next to me and leaning on my shoulder. I raised my arm and she slid down to my lap laying her head there and rolling onto her back. Then she pulled her knees up, allowing her skirt to open slightly and slide up her legs.

"You have dancer's legs," I said. "Strong and athletic."

"You thin k so? I think they're kind of chunky."

"Well, they look pretty good so far. If you don't get control of the hem of that skirt, maybe I'll see a lot more."

With that, she reached down and slid her skirt all the way up. Or down, as the case may be, given the position of her legs and the force of gravity. And then she said "Is this what you meant?" as the lower edge of her panties came into view. (Victoria's Secret, definitely)

"Oh, my. They are lovely. I'll bet they're tired from all that dancing."

"Not so tired as you might think. I think maybe they have a dance or two left in them for tonite."

At that, I went to the far end of the shed and turned up the radio. George Strait was playing "I just want to dance with you..." A cha-cha. I kicked my shoes off and we danced there, barefoot, 'til George was done.

By now, I was convinced that she wanted more than a dance, and well, I'd been alone just about long enough. The next song was a slow one, and so we embraced and she felt so warm and comfortable in my arms, like we fit. Soon she looked up at me and I kissed her, long and deep, still dancing along the way. There wasn't any turning back now, but I don't thin k either of us was in a hurry. I looked in her eyes, and we both exchanged permission to carry on, and when the next song come on, fortuitously, another slow one, I reach back for her zipper and slid it down. We continued the dance, and by now she was lightly scratching my back. I asked her "How was the dance?" She replied "Oh all the usual guys were there, some interesting but not interested, and some interested but not interesting."

I didn't want to ask the next obvious question, so I kissed her again. I felt her hands about my groin and felt her stroking me. It felt good. Very good. She continued for a few seconds, and then she reached for my belt, unhooking it, unbuttoning and unzipping my fly and dropping them to the floor. Already out of my shoes for the dance, I stepped away from my jeans, now piled on the floor, and rubbed her bare back, now exposed by the unzipped dress. I pulled the dress forward and reached for the hem, lifting it over her head. It was a pretty dress, not one that you'd want to toss on the floor of a pottery shed, so I laid it as neatly as I could on the back of the couch.

Kneeling in front of her, I reached around to unhook her bra. It matched her panties, and somehow I couldn't help but wonder if there had been a plan all along, starting from before the take-out at Skip's. Whatever; here we were, getting naked in my kiln shed. Removing the bra, I took one nipple in my mouth at I stroked her opposite breast with my hand, squeezing and massaging, and pulling lightly on her nipples as I went. I went back and forth form breast to breast a couple of times, and Arlene had started to moan and wiggle her hips slightly. With my other hand, now, I started to stroke her ass through her panties, and soon had moved my hand through one of the leg holes inside. I was now massing the cheeks of her ass and she commented at how warm my hands were.