13-ch6

The Stunner was magnetically attractive to men, especially older men, from a fairly early age, but she didn’t become fully aware of her powers until the night before she went away to university in Toronto.

Because she spent her first eighteen years living with her parents in a Northern Ontario copper-mining town, The Stunner breezily dismissed the frequent advances toward her as a function of the town’s twenty-to-one male-to-female ratio. When the men’s shifts in the mine ended on payday, there wasn’t much else for them to do but go out drinking, and certainly all that Labatt 50 and Molson Export didn’t clarify their perception of an early-blossoming girl’s age relative to their own.

During her last summer up North, when she tended the bar at the Rockslide Pub, the men often left behind exorbitant 100-percent tips for her. When she worked the odd shift at the curling-rink snack bar, the grinning old-timers usually told her to “Keep the change, beautiful,” when they handed her a ten or a twenty for a bag of stale mixed nuts. Yet, The Stunner didn’t suspect that she was being treated any differently than any other girl in town.

Then, on her last Saturday night working the bar at the Rockslide, just hours before she would catch a ride in Red Brown’s Piper Cub to Thunder Bay to board her flight to Toronto, The Stunner heard a confession that changed everything. She was pouring another pint for Eddie Jansen, who was only five years older than The Stunner, and already a foreman at the copper mine. Eddie was pretty cute, and she had felt a friction between them ever since he came to town, but he had never once made a pass at her. She decided to ask him why. What did she have to lose?

Eddie’s already glassy eyes filled with tears. “Aw my Gawd,” he said, “Aw my Gawd. If only I’d known, Gawd … I would have …”

“You would have what, Eddie?”

“Aw, I couldn’t have, anyway. Nobody could.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“You’re … you’re untouchable.”

“Untouchable? What? Come on, Eddie! I don’t have cooties.”

“Aw, it’s, it’s not that. It’s …”

“I’m not stuck-up. I’m not a prude. I’ve always been nice to you, haven’t I? I’ve never pushed you away.”

“Nope. You sure haven’t.”

“And I’m not the worst-looking girl in town.”

“Gawd no. Gawd no. You’re the … every man in town wants you. Every man.”

“Eddie, I really don’t care about the other men. But I’ve always kind of liked you.”

“Aw, Gawd, yeah. I know.”

“Well, then? How come you never …?”

“It’s your father,” he blurts.

“My father?”

“He scares the shit outta me. He scares the shit outta everyone.”

“But … how do you know my father? He never comes in here.”

“He doesn’t come in while you’re here. He always shows up about a half an hour before your shift starts. He’ll walk up to a guy randomly, and say, ‘You know that little cutie who works the late shift here?’ And when the guy nods approvingly, he’ll point to his big hunting boots, and say something like, ‘Well, she’s my daughter, and if you so much as look at her the wrong way, these boots will crush your skull and stomp your eyes out.’ Or he’ll pick up a pool cue, point it at the guy, and say, ‘This is where I’ll be aiming my Remington thirty-aught-six if you ever touch her. Hollow-point bullets. Big exit wound, oh yeah.’ And it’s not just the young guys; sometimes he puts on this same show for the old geezers who haven’t had a boner in twenty years.”

The Stunner’s father was one of the biggest in a town full of big men, but she always thought of him as a cuddly, overstuffed teddy bear; she knew he could put on an intimidating act when he needed to, but she had never imagined anything like this. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful for his protection, or angry that he’d meddled in her life this way.

She leaned on her elbows on the bar, and Eddie couldn’t help stealing a look through the open collar of her blouse.

“How about tonight, Eddie?” she cooed. “It’ll be your last chance, sweetie. I’m leaving for university tomorrow morning.”

“Aww, geez,” Eddie moaned, twisting from side to side on his bar stool. “I’d give my entire life’s savings for just one night with you, I really would. Any man in the whole friggin’ town would.” He gulped down the last dregs of his beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’m not sure I’m ready to die for it, though.”

And with that said, Eddie Jansen emptied all the cash from his wallet onto the top of the bar, and slid from his stool, muttering, “Good luck at college, eh?” He slunk out of the Rockslide Pub with his hands jammed into the pockets of his work pants.

The Stunner’s brain arranged and processed these new facts. She was a smart girl, by far the best student in the town’s under-populated high school. She’d brought the average of her entire advanced mathematics class up to the provincial standard by earning 99 percent on her final exam (and she had cried over that lost 1 percent). She’d earned an entrance scholarship to the University of Toronto. So she was smart.

And she was attractive, too, much more so than she had imagined just a few moments earlier.

And her brain told her body what she needed to do next.

She undid a button on her blouse.

Her conscience cried out: What if your father walks in?

She undid another button.

What if he does? Tomorrow I’ll be gone.

Then she hiked her skirt up as high as it would go, exposing more of her tapered thighs than the patrons of the Rockslide Pub had ever seen before, or would ever see again.

“It’s my last night in town, boys!” she hollered. “Everybody’s next beer is on me!”

Of course none of the men let her pay for their drinks, and the next morning The Stunner stepped out of Red Brown’s Piper Cub onto the runway in Thunder Bay with her purse full of cash tips almost equal to the copper mine’s weekly payroll.

Since then, The Stunner has rarely ever paid for a restaurant meal or a drink in a bar. Some drooling, horny boy or desperate, greying mid-lifer will always cover her tab in exchange for a few hours of her attention. All she has to do is nod, smile, giggle occasionally, suggest vaguely that they might get to see her naked body later, and men will empty their wallets in exchange for anything she desires.

Two years earlier, her idea of a Big Night Out was a quarter-chicken dinner and a couple of bottles of Labatt Blue at the Swiss Chalet near the mine site, but since her father isn’t around Toronto to point at his hunting boots and shake pool cues in men’s faces, she’s developed a connoisseur’s appreciation for French wines, fine coffees, fresh oysters, and fois gras. All it takes is a high-hemmed skirt and a low-collared sweater.

And the blowjob! It has become the nuclear warhead in her arsenal; so easy to deploy, so massive in its impact. Giving head is as easy as enjoying a vanilla Popsicle, but it doesn’t take nearly as long to finish. And afterward, the recipient is your slave for as long as you want him to be. Just promise him another. Soon! Very soon!

If she’d known about the blowjob when she was still in Northern Ontario, she could have been the richest ex-barmaid at the University of Toronto. Still, it is a skill that has served her well in the short time she’s had to master it. And she enjoys doing it. She loves the feelings of power and control as they moan and spasm and twitch with every slight manoeuvre. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

So, the Stunner is magnetically attractive to men. It’s like a superpower, and so far she’s only used it in small doses. There are untapped reserves of Potential Energy crackling deep inside her, though, and as soon as she meets a truly Worthy Man, she will let herself go Kinetic on him.