| |
MY NIGHTMARE OF ACCIDENTALLY stepping down hard on my car’s accelerator instead of on the brake and rear-ending a gasoline truck ended when I woke up at two o’clock the next morning to empty my bladder. I found myself refreshed after only four hours of sleep. How I hated the feeling. It was Saturday morning and, of course, I wanted to sleep late since I had to be up by five every weekday morning in order to beat the traffic and get to work on time. Besides, it was nice and cozy and a gentle rain was falling outside.
I put on my Jazz For A Lazy Day CD, which was reserved for moments like these, but that did nothing to lull me back to sleep. I was afraid to turn on the television for I knew that my eyes would linger on some movie channel that would most likely be playing erotica. I was trying to limit what I allowed through the windows of my eyes.
Growing up I had heard of blue movies – pornographic movies – which I always imagined were done in blue color. I sometimes got on my moral high horse and preached fire and brimstone to the Pompous Jackass who did not have a problem bringing such videos into our home when my mother was at work. But as I got older, my curiosity got the better of me and I found myself flipping through cable movie channels after midnight. I was disappointed.
I guess that having been trained in creative writing classes to examine stories for their plot, conflict and resolution, it was inevitable that I would yawn at the story lines. The men always found some lame excuse to get naked with the women. And then the sex they had was not in any way out of the ordinary – standing in a shower, sitting on a chair, rolling on a bed. So little imagination, I thought. And that was it for me and the blue movies. That was until the Internet arrived in my room.
It was quite by accident that I stumbled on an X-rated site. I was looking for some Samurai X drawings, made popular by the TV series, and on typing the key words in the search engine, XXX websites popped up. Well, what have we here? I wondered as I clicked on the first one. These blue movies were filmed in very real color and the sex was not routine: there was gay sex, lesbian sex, group sex. There were dicks longer than I ever could have imagined. I learned the word “cum”. I learned about anal sex and the term “missionary position” and the names of other positions like doggy style, sixty-nine, and a quarter after six; I learned about the Kama Sutra, dildos and other sex toys... And all of this information had me in awe. I had to go back to my Internet class repeatedly just to digest what I was being taught.
I had never been so driven before and that is when a bell went off in my head: STOP! Why? I asked, like a child intent on having his own way. When I considered it, I likened my obsession with visiting Internet porn sites to being on a drug. I had seen enough addicts to realize that being possessed by anything was not a good thing. It left one out of control and I liked being in possession of my senses. So, with great resolve, I stopped visiting those sites and I summoned the strength to stay away from late night cable programming.
But some damage had already been done. What I had ingested stayed in my head, and in my fantasies it was not uncommon for me to draw from those images and substitute women I knew for those I had seen.
Three o’clock approached. “The devil’s hour” they had called it in a movie, but I dismissed the thought. Instead, out of nowhere, a memory I thought I had buried materialized. It was of an incident that reminded me how easily women can misinterpret a man’s kindness and somehow confuse it with a sexual interest.
As a school teacher, I not only taught my students social studies but for many of them I was the father, brother or friend they had never had. It was a role I enjoyed even though it was short-lived for the children usually dropped off the radar when they graduated from secondary school. That year I had the last of four Sylvester brothers who was not working as well as his siblings had done years before. By now, his single mother and I had become friends as she understood the father-figure role I played in her sons’ lives. So, instead of asking her to come in for a parent-teacher conference, I suggested we talk over dinner. She agreed.
“What are you going to have?” I asked as we looked at the menu. There were many Italian dishes on the menu but I had gotten fed up of pasta. Pasta was still pasta no matter how fat or skinny it was and no matter what tomato sauce you put the meat in. Besides, white flour was getting a lot of bad press from the experts so I limited my intake of it.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having.” I felt that she was concerned about the prices – either that or she was afraid of not saying the right thing when she ordered. She was a simple woman who was in charge of the stock room at a paint company. This was the only job she had ever had and from the look of things, she would probably retire in that position. So, we had salmon, broccoli and mashed potatoes followed by tiramisu and tea.
“Jordan worries me, Mrs. Sylvester.” I was not comfortable calling her Ann even though she was only seven years older. She had so many life experiences that I felt that she could have been my own mother. Besides, she never invited me to call her by her first name. “He is distracted by his extra-curricular activities and he does not realize how much work he has to do to pass his finals.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I can help him with a study timetable. It will mean that he has to make some sacrifices but it will only be for three months.”
“Sir, you know I trust your judgment.”
Mrs. Sylvester was like a little girl on the drive back home. I had never seen her so relaxed before, as if she had taken a drink when she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room to freshen up. She was giggling at everything I said and touching me while she spoke. But none of this prepared me for what was to follow.
“Come in,” she said, taking my hand as she led the way into her home. “Let me turn on a light.” The house was in complete darkness.
“Where are the boys?”
“It’s Friday night, sir. Those boys are never home on a Friday night.” She disappeared from the room and I made myself comfortable. I tried to look at the happy faces staring at me from their mounted frames on the walls even though I had seen them so many times before when I had visited the home. And then I smelled it – fragrant perfume – and I turned and saw Mrs. Sylvester smiling nervously at me like a virgin on her wedding night.
Oh my God! What am I going to do?
She turned on the music. Roberta Flack sang “Set the Night to Music” – and I hoped that Mrs. Sylvester had nothing more than music on her mind. She advanced and I stood up. I was a man, after all, and I would not let her know that I was intimidated by her two hundred pounds of flesh or her garish make up.
She stood on her toes to kiss my lips. At six two, I towered over her. She tried to pull me down to her level but I did not budge. My plan was to thwart her enough so that she would give up her foolish notion of conquering her sons’ teacher. She had a plan of her own. With her arms around my neck she leaped up and hooked her legs around me. That brought me down and I stumbled to the couch – just where she wanted me.
“Perfect,” she whispered and started to undo the buttons of my shirt.
Part of me was saying that I should stop this woman but the other part of me, the part that was still longing to satisfy the burning desire in my loins, left her to see how far it would go. I knew that the most important performer in this play would not stand up long enough to satisfy her since I was not remotely attracted to this woman, but I wanted to confirm that that was still the case. Had this cast member gotten over its shyness and embarrassment of the earlier years? And if it had, would I get to hell out of there? Or would it be symbolic, a rite of passage if you will, permission from above to go ahead and sow some wild oats? I reasoned that if I failed to rise to the occasion, then it must be a built-in safety mechanism placed in me by my Creator, designed to protect me from myself and from horny women.
I was not going to find out that night. We heard a car pulling into the garage and Mrs. Sylvester jumped off of me and dashed to her bedroom. I fixed my clothes hastily and prepared to greet whoever had interrupted my moment of truth.
Understandably, Mrs. Sylvester never spoke to me after that episode. I wanted to tell her that she should not be embarrassed, that we were both adults and sometimes things like that do happen. I even blamed myself. But she refused to hear me. I did work with her son though, and he did very well in his exams. She never called to thank me.
I drifted off as I thought about the countless other students, not to mention their parents, who had also failed to say thanks to me for helping them get ready for life beyond secondary school.
