Homepage 11Giving 3&4

                   HOMEPAGE 11 + GIVING IT UP – 3&4

This is the last story that will appear on this website and it is number 111 and it will be published at the 11th second of the 11th minute of the 11th day of 11-11-11.

This is mostly by coincidence and carries little import but it is very much in keeping with the fact that the first one was published, also mainly by coincidence, on the 9th second of the – – – – etc. etc. on 09-09-09.

 (It is only at this very moment that I see for the first time that the difference between those two dates is exactly 2secs. 2mins. 2hrs. 2days 2months 2years – Well, so what and how can I get them back?)

Editor’s warning – LOOK OUT – Here comes a crass commercial word or two by – well, let’s face it – by the editor.

All of these stories are freely given and, as you’ll no doubt know by now, if you liked one of them you’ll like them all and so I want it to be known that besides my two published novels – “Breaking Free” and “The Lewising Room” – I also have another one, as yet unpublished – “The Bus To Happy Valley” – and more than twenty unpublished novellas.

The point is that a strong enough appeal to get them published – I can be reached at meltad@optonline.net – either in the conventional way – who-needs-all-those-trees-anyway? Let-the birds-come-into-town-and-the-squirrels-can-join-their-cousins-in-holes-in-the-ground – or via Kindle or by following Stephen King’s experiment of publishing a section, or a complete novella, every month for 5 bucks per subscriber on a website – will work wonders at this end and, besides putting the right kind of pressure on my publishers, will also get you offers of copies of the novels at half price.

 Thank you for your patience. Regular programming will begin right now –

GIVING IT UP Parts 3 & 4         11-11-11

Roy Garde

They both lost their faith at almost the same time and at almost the same age too.

She was Sister Maria Theresa – she’d been born ‘Hannah Dougherty’ – and the Priest’s name was Thomas Manning.

She was closing in on being forty years old when she confessed her loss of faith to him, in the little booth, when he was on one of his monthly visits to the Convent.

She had tremendous difficulty with the telling of it but she’d known for months by then that she wanted to do it so she forced herself to come out with the drastic, life changing words.

Of course he didn’t like what she told him because he was hearing the same thing far too often of late and so he told her that he was very disappointed and that he sincerely hoped that she’d change her mind and then he recommended two books for her to read and promised to send them over.  He prayed with her for a minute or two and then asked her to be sure to read both books all of the way through and to wait for a month or two after that before taking the next step which was to inform the Mother Superior.

She read every word in both books but they didn’t change anything for her and so when another month had gone by she told the Mother Superior who told her to stay in her cell and pray for her faith to be restored. Her meals were brought to her and after a week of that she was interviewed again and, when she maintained her position she was allowed to leave the Order and was asked to leave the Convent within the hour.

When the Priest, Thomas Manning, on his next visit was told what she’d done he secretly admired her strength of character and, for reasons of his own, he asked about her whereabouts and when he’d found out that she was working in town and was living in a nasty, poky, run down boarding house that he knew all too well, he visited her there the next time that he was in town.

She was wearing non-descript gray and black clothes and because she was no longer wearing a habit he saw that she was a little fat and a lot plain.

When they were drinking tea he astonished her by asking her for advice on how to best cope with re-entering the secular world.

He went on to explain that he’d wanted to leave the Church himself for several years by then and he wanted to benefit from her experience. “Please tell me how to best cushion the blows that you’ve undoubtedly been given and that I’m bound to encounter too. That is, assuming that I’ll be able to work up the strength-of-will and the courage to go ahead with it like you did.”

A few months later, when he’d finally worked his way through all the many steps to become an ordinary citizen, he went around to her studio apartment again and he took with him one bottle from the crate of wine that he’d been given as one of several farewell presents.

It wasn’t a celebration by any means – it had been a traumatic experience for him and he was by no means a happy man – he simply wanted to get to draw a significant line between then and now, which, he figured, would be fully achieved if he arranged to be alone with an unattached woman, behind closed doors, while drinking wine with her.

She’d welcomed both of his visits, whatever the reason for them had been, because she was desperately lonely.

She had left her cloistered life behind because she’d lost her faith but, at the same time, she well knew that she was getting near to the end of her child bearing years and for some time by then she’d longed to start a family of her own.

However, once she was ‘out on the street’ as it were, it had become obvious to her that she was too old and too plain to get a man interested in her physically or, indeed, in wanting to have anything to do with her at all.

Also, because she went to work six days a week in a church-run Social Club and Hostel that cared for the indigent, spending all that time there meant that she didn’t, in any case, get many chances to meet any men who would meet her modest requirements to become her husband and father her children.

Thomas, too, found that he was very lonely and to combat it he began to work twelve hour days in the Halfway House for Parolees – he’d been given the job of Manager there because he had the right connections, although he didn’t actually approach any of them himself, and that, combined with his two degrees that were hopelessly unrelated to the job at hand, made him borderline qualified – which was his way of avoiding having to spend much time in his poky, barren room where he’d lie on the bed and ponder, unhappily, on the waywardness of life in that while he was now free to love a woman he was unable to go looking for one because of insufficient funds and his lack of the social graces and of having far too much in the way of outright funk when he found himself alone with one.

To occupy his mind he decided to start writing down anecdotes under the title of, ‘Thoughts on Being In Charge of a Halfway-House.’ He used a yellow pad and, because he didn’t intend to let anyone see it, ever, he could be totally candid and truthful.

On the first page, under the title, he wrote:

Monday, Jan 3rd.

“In the very first hour of my first day in this job I heard the F- word used more times than I’d ever heard it spoken before in my entire life.

My inmates attach it to just about every other word that comes out of their mouths – on the few times that I’ve heard women use it I’ve noticed that they, like foreigners and well-educated men, are incapable of using it quite as fluently as working-class men, that is, effortlessly – and, although you would expect repetition on this scale to dull its impact, in fact it somehow remains ever-sharp.

After a few days here I learned to let it slide right by me although I must admit that the shock of hearing it used directly after the word ‘Mother’ still gets my attention which, doubtless, is because it is attached to what is probably the most revered noun in the language, next, perhaps, to ‘Madonna’ but even that goes to proves the point.

I’ve given up on trying to understand its use in that long form, viz: Mother/F-, because I can’t, for the life of me, understand if it’s meant to imply that the person to whom it’s directed is fornicating with his own mother, or what? Surely every man who sleeps with a woman who has given birth to a child – whether it’s one or a dozen and whether or not he’s the father of all or one or none of them – is, by definition, a MotherF- and so why doesn’t that fact logically negate its usage? I can only think that its only reason for universal and common use has to be that it flows from the tongue mellifluously but because I can think of no other reason I have to admit defeat and leave it at that.       

  

Monday Jan. 23rd.

 

To continue my study of the myriad ways that the F- word is used here I’ve been taking notes to eventually compile a comprehensive list of examples but, at lunchtime today, I heard something that has effectively brought that particular task to a positive close.

I was posting some new rosters on the Notice Board in the cafeteria when I over-heard someone, in a group of men who were having lunch, say, obviously about someone who wasn’t present, “Ah, Fuck him. Fucking fuck the fucking fucker.” 

As you’ll no doubt guess, I immediately stopped what I was doing and hurried back here to write down, on a fresh page, what he’d said so as to not forget it.

Of course, the first three words lack any special interest – the subject word in question attaches itself readily to:  -you;  -me;  -off;  -them;  -her;  -it; and, surprisingly, -no; and on and on, and even to, distressingly often,  -the Pope and, comically, to -a duck! – but the rest of the sentence is a gem.    

 

When I’d captured it for ever I wrote it again, underneath, in capital letters, and I took note as to how important is the correct placement of both of the gerunds, and then I wrote it down again so that I could play with the punctuation and again to add emphasis with grave and acute accents and again to space out the words in order to try to get the cadence right to get it to flow from my mouth – inaudibly I hasten to add – and make sense as it had done, miraculously, when the originator of the sentence had pronounced it.

Well, after some practice I managed to do so fairly well but for the life of me I cannot explain why it can make sense. But, there it is.

 

The logical end to this particular study is, of course –

 

QED F-it!

 

But I can’t bring myself to write it out properly – seeing that it’s not a quote – because that would mean that I’d be guilty of adding to its already vast over-usage.      

 

After several months of suffering from loneliness he got to be worried about keeping his sanity and so – also, desperate to get himself the regular family life that he’d given up his priesthood to find – he decided that Hannah, although he didn’t find her the least bit attractive, would have to do.

He started to go around to her place regularly to drink tea, which he didn’t much like but it was all that she had to offer, and then he started taking her out for a meal or on an excursion someplace and when their being a pair had become obvious he asked her to marry him.

She accepted at once, although she felt no special feeling for him either – indeed, she’d wanted a man who wouldn’t have ‘to learn on the job’ as it were – but her loneliness had gotten the point where she was coming close to considering checking out her indigent’s family members for a possible partner even though she well knew that they were a sorry lot indeed.

They got married in City Hall and the clerk found them the needed witness.

Their combined income let them look for, and find, a one-bedroom apartment and they furnished it mostly from bargain stores or warehouses and they bought their utensils and curtains and blankets, and the like, from second hand shops.

Their first night in bed together was very difficult for both of them.

They would have liked to pray together, for guidance and support and in recognition of the wondrous and frightening aspects of what they were about to do, but to whom?

He switched their only light off and they shyly met up in the center of the bed.

He had his underwear on and his pajamas, through habit and through fear, and she was wearing her gray knickers that reached down from her hips to her knees and although she’d taken off her industrial sized bra – she knew that her breasts’ role would be a passive one – she had a nightgown on that was made of flannel.

Their thinking was that by having lots of clothes on it would slow the action down to a pace that they might be able to cope with.

He was sure enough of his ground to untie the ribbons that held the top of her nightgown together and then to boldly free up her imposing breasts, one at a time, for fondling and kissing and she was happy about that because it meant that he liked them and so, for the first time in her life, she was pleased about having them.

She was frightened and relieved and thrilled when, after he’d pulled close to her, she felt something of his poking at her thigh but became puzzled when that was all that it did for several minutes.

The detent was due to the fact that he thought that coming in contact, freely, with real breasts for the first time since he’d been weaned was a huge advancement already and so he gave himself a lot of time to savor the huge amount of pleasure that they afforded.

When the status quo had been maintained for what she thought was way too long she wondered about whether or nor she was supposed to just lie there and stay still for him and, after thinking about it for a while, she figured that maybe it was her turn to do something so she reached down and grasped what was poking at her and, even through two layers of clothing, she knew that she’d done the right thing because he stopped kissing her breasts to be able let out some groans, evidently from pleasure because it certainly wasn’t from pain, that he repeated every time that she squeezed what she had in her hand.

His urges made him want to get on with the next move so he reached down and put his hand up her nightgown and was disconcerted when he found that he wasn’t touching flesh but passion-killing thick knickers.

He tried reaching on up to try to get his hand above them and then back down inside but the elastic band at her waist was so strong and so far up that it defeated him and so he regrouped and directed his efforts to getting a hand inside them at knee level.

Again, he had to give up because the thickness of the material, along with a thinner elastic band, made it impossible for him to get his fingers more than a halfway up.

However, he was, at last, touching actual flesh and its proximity to her long-dreamed of ‘mysterious and wondrous entrance to the world’ overwhelmed him and he had to hurry to disengage and get out of bed and run to the bathroom to be able to find relief and, indeed, relief came to him, in spades, after around two seconds of stimulation.

When he got back to her he saw that she’d switched a light on and was looking at him quizzically.

He was feeling totally drained and deflated and ashamed and very disappointed so the last thing that he wanted at that moment was an inquest so he switched the light off and got into bed and he then turned away and said, “Goodnight.”

She was too puzzled and too intimidated to press him about it and she tried hard to find ways to blame herself for the debacle.

Neither of them thought that they got much sleep that night but Nature saw to it that they got some and She also saw to it that when he woke up in the morning he had a morning-chubby that soon, when he remembered where he was and who was lying next to him, changed into being an all encompassing, attention grabbing erection that infused his whole being with a desperate need that positively had to be assuaged right then.

He woke her up and – now fully armed with a baton that put him firmly, as it were, in command – he told her that what had happened the night before had been unfortunate and that she should try to forget it but . . . “on the other hand, I really do believe that we should, uh, get it done before we leave this bed this very day.”

She was in full agreement and she waited on his orders.

He made another attack on her breasts but, after a few minutes of that and seeing that he didn’t seem to be advancing with the, “getting it done,” part, and remembering the difficulty that he’d had before with getting at her, she figured that she’d better take the initiative.

She eased his head and hands away and turned onto her back and then she raised her nightgown above her waist which let her get at the waistband of her knickers and she eased them down past her knees until she could pull one foot free of them.

The light was still on so she kept her eyes shut – out of habit, as it were – but she could sense that his eyes were locking onto her center.

His need was tremendous – it had increased even more when he was watching her belly and then her center and her thighs come into view as she was struggling to get rid of her knickers – but his curiosity about seeing for the first time the very essence of all women was stronger still and so, after sitting up and turning towards her, he was practically slavering as he pushed her legs apart.

All that he could see there was hair!

A mass of hair.

A veritable bush of pubic hair that was black, thick, curly and tightly wound.

For twenty years she herself had never looked to see what she had down there – it had been strictly forbidden and, like everybody else in the convent, she’d had to wear a shift while taking a bath – and since leaving the Order she’d decided to “Leave well alone.”

It follows that because of that, coupled with the rule against doing any touching any where, her pubic hair never got cut and so for a naturally hirsute women it grew unfettered and became formidable.

He used all of his fingers to make a parting in it but, partly because he didn’t know what he was looking for and partly because it was very coarse and springy, he couldn’t locate what he thought should be there, namely a hole. The only thing that his probing finger came in contact with, on the other side of the thicket, was bone and he was understandably loath to explore downwards.

She couldn’t help him at all because she knew as little about her own physiology as he did but to show him that she thought that they were in this together she reached down intending to hold and comfort him, as before, but he brushed her hand away because, at that same moment, his extended proximity to the erstwhile prohibited zone, and the wonder and aura that emanated from it in spite of all, overwhelmed him and he had to hurriedly search for one of the towels that Hannah had put there and, only just in time, he positioned it correctly to catch and absorb the fluids that flowed from him. Doing that gave him relief but as little pleasure as his night emissions had done as far back as he could remember.

He flung the towel onto the floor – feeling both frustrated and very unhappy with his lot – and then, to compound his misery, the alarm clock went off and told him that it was time to get up and take a shower.

Hannah got up too and she made breakfast for them both and when he’d eaten it, without speaking a single word to her, and had gotten dressed he was on his way out when he stopped at the door and turned back and, still seething, he told her that it was her fault entirely that they’d failed to consummate their marriage and that that was due, entirely, to the fact that she had far too much hair ‘down there’ and should have done something about it before they’d gotten married. She was to be sure to cut it away before he got back from work.

“Also,” he said, “see to it that you don’t wear those – uh – those gray things to bed ever again.”

With that he went out the door and, as she expected, slammed it shut behind him.

 She had been given a week off from work for her honeymoon and he could have easily given himself the same amount of time off but he had to go in that day because all of his office staff, and the first and second shifts of security men, had walked out a few days before because, according to their union reps, they believed that he was far too rule-bound and too demanding along with being guilty of micro-management. Because of that if he didn’t go to the building with the keys the Half-Way House would become a Full-Time House for its inmates and who knew how they’d retaliate if that happened.

After he’d gone she found that she was still mildly excited internally from being, uh, examined by a man for the first time – not only that but by a man who had been her confessor for years and she hadn’t yet allowed herself the time to think through the implications that that brought up – and whenever she thought back on the details some feelings got generated at her core that made her very aware of their presence.

When she’d washed up the dishes from breakfast, and had dutifully done the few chores that a poky one-bedroom apartment with beat-up furniture calls for, she pulled the curtains closed and then she got undressed completely even though she knew that the task ahead of her only called for her to be bare below the waist. She then went into the bathroom, with a hand mirror and a pair of scissors, and she sat on the cover of the toilet seat.

She found it easy to trim all the bunched hair back to around a quarter of an inch and then she used the mirror to examine herself.

She’d been about ten years old the last time that she’d done that so she had to proceed with caution. She probed until she located her center and she realized from that why he hadn’t been able to find it with his finger earlier that morning. He simply hadn’t gone low enough.

After further investigation she located her clitoris and was surprised at the amount of pleasure she got from merely touching it and when she tried twirling it and bothering it in general she was astounded to find that the pleasure that she could generate with it increased ten fold.

She had shaved off the hair under her arms soon after she’d started working ‘outside in the secular-world’ when she’d seen that even the really down-and-out women who lived in her hostel always took time to do so. Because she’d dealt with the stubble the day before she didn’t have to do it again then.

Next she looked at her breasts and saw that there were some ugly, sparse, long black hairs growing near her nipples and as she was trimming them away she was thankful that she’d seen them before her husband had because they looked off-putting even to her.

When she flicked a cut, clinging hair away she, inadvertently, also flicked her nipple and the strange stab of pleasure that she got made her wonder if all of her body had been woken up and made aware of its sensual potential now that its long state of being held dormant was over.

With that piece of new knowledge she also noticed that the various sensations that she was getting seemed to be accumulative which was, to say the least, interesting.

She stood up to check if her eyebrows needed trimming too and to get close enough to see in the mirror properly she had stand to one side of the washbowl and so, because the corner of the hard porcelain was at the exact same height as her center, every time that she moved her arms her body came into contact with it and that quickly made the eye-brow trimming exercise get to be a decidedly secondary consideration.

She had to stop doing it far too soon for her preference because the pleasure that it gave her made her come close to swooning.

However, the accumulation of pleasure that she’d given herself had, by then, pervaded her mind and had quickly become the only thing on it and so she decided to go and lie down on the bed – so as to negate the possibility of falling down – and put her newly acquired knowledge to work.

 A few minutes after she’d learned how to coordinate the fingers on both of her hands she gave herself the first orgasm that she’d ever had and she didn’t know whether it was its intensity or the wonderful, wallowing relief that she felt when it had abated somewhat, that pleased her the most.

When she had to get up to fix lunch for herself it occurred to her that if she could give herself that much pleasure and contentment how could a man possibly give her more?

But there again, she told herself, there’s so much hype about it that that has to be true . . . otherwise . . . ?

Thomas had learned enough about women’s bodies the night before to not get overawed again and he even went as far as to be wearing only his pajamas when he joined his wife in bed that night.

He’d also learned from that morning’s brief session that being able to use his sense of sight added a welcome extra thrill to the overall operation so he left the bedside lamp on.

After praying, silently and incongruously, for help, he caressed and kissed her all over and then, when he knew that he couldn’t possibly get to be any more ready to get on with, he took his pajama bottom off and she followed suit by pulling her nightgown up to her neck.

Seeing that surprised him – a little wanton of her, he thought – but when he saw all that she’d been hiding under it – all the wonderful, womanly parts that she had that he was being allowed to look at, all at once, for the first time ever – he realized that it had been exactly the right thing to do and so that led him to take his pajama top off too.

The wonder of full body contact pleased both of them and he felt the bristling stubble that was at her center and it intrigued him and reminded him that he was fully within his rights to go down and examine her handiwork and also check out what she had down there exactly.

He saw that the short hairs could no longer do their job of ensconcing her private parts and so he could see her vulva plainly and her outer labia were bulging charmingly and were coyly trying to contain her inner labia and stop them from doing more than peep out.

He wanted to touch every thing that she had there but when he’d smoothed it he found that he couldn’t bring himself to insert his middle finger, which comes as naturally to a man as does weighing a breast competently, and he hesitated at the portal for such a long time that Hannah, now the all-knowing one, thought that he couldn’t find her again so she took his hand and moved it until his finger was ‘on site’ and then she helped him to push into her.

‘Tried to help him to push it into her’ would be a better way to put it because when it was a little way inside it they found that a barrier that was formidable indeed. They couldn’t force even the tip of his finger more that about an eighth of an inch into it.

He immediately realized, with dread, that if he couldn’t force his finger into her, even though it was comparatively slim and had a bona-fide bone in it, what chance did he have of completing the act that by then was seeming to be more and more illusive.

Nonetheless, he mounted her to get into the dominant position and hoped that he’d get some kind, any kind, of relief.

She reached down to guide it in and he tried to make headway but failed miserably. He thought about it for a while and then he told her that it would help if she pulled at his hips with both of her hands and, at the same time, thrust her hips up towards him when he gave her the signal and then he relaxed for a few seconds before mustering all of his forces for the effort and then he let out a roar, that came from he knew not where and that rattled the window panes, and they combined their forces to get the deed done.

He gained perhaps an eighth of an inch but at tremendous cost to her.

It was her turn to roar but it wasn’t a rallying cry – it was from excruciating pain. She quickly moved her hands so that they were pushing up at him to make him stop and to get him to get off her so that she could use her hands to comfort herself.

When he felt her hands push up at him he used that signal as an excuse to stop his assault because he was feeling a good deal of pain too. However, as any and all men know, it is close to impossible to switch off the flood of urges that an erection subjects men to, especially a forty year old one that is very close to finding its proper haven for the first time ever, so he tried rubbing it up and down and back and fore on her belly to get relief.

He succeeded after a few minutes and he drenched her crotch area and her belly and even as his urges were melting away, in tune with the subsidence of his penis, he remembered the appropriate chapters and verses in the bible that admonished its readers about, “Spilling seed on the ground,” and so, at the self-same time, he felt grateful for knowing that Hannah couldn’t have read any of it because Nuns aren’t allowed to read the bible except under the guidance of a priest and all priests have more sense than to select those particular verses or other ones that might undermine discipline or encourage unseemly behavior.

He used one of the towels that were to hand to wipe himself dry and then he gave it to her and she held it to herself as she got out of bed and took herself into the bathroom.

He pulled his pajamas on and turned away from her side of the bed and pretended to be asleep when she re-joined him. He most definitely did not want to talk about what had happened until he’d thought up a plan that would end the farce by ensuring that the act would be accomplished the next time that they shared the bed.

At the door, on his way to work after breakfast the next morning, he stopped and turned back and told her that the failure to get it done the night before was again her fault because she should have dealt with the, uh, barrier before they got married.

She asked him how could she have done that and he had no idea so, to appear macho and decisive and in command and man of the house, he put some swagger on and told her that there are doctors who do such things and she should consult one of them. “Look in the phone book under ‘Gynecologists.’

“What will I do if they’re all male doctors?” she asked. “There’s no way I’m going to see one of those because the thought of getting undressed in front of . . . . Ooooh, never. Besides that, I’m nearly forty years old, not nearly twenty years old, and I don’t know which of us would be the more embarrassed. Anyway, if I do find a woman doctor how much will that cost and do we have enough to pay the bill, whatever it is?”

Neither of them had a medical plan nor did they have money to spare so her question gave him pause. He put his briefcase down and came back to the table where she was sitting and he took a chair.

After thinking for a while he said, “Well then. You’ll just have to deal with it yourself, right?” He took out his much prized porcelain fountain pen that he’d been given by his colleagues on his last day as a priest and said, “You can use this to get started and then use something else that’s thicker and work up that way until it’s, uh, done. Yes?”

“Yes, thank you. The pen will be good to get started, sure, but what else do we have?”

In the middle of the table where they were sitting was a bowl that she kept fruit and vegetables in and he selected four different sized carrots and he gave then to her and then he saw that there was an end of a cucumber in the bowl so he showed it to her and said, “Look, use the carrots progressively and this is what you should end up with so go to the store and buy a whole one. Please get it all of it done before I come home tonight. All right?”

He saw that one of the carrots was the same size as his pen so he took the pen back and put it in his pocket and stood up but then an image of her using a good sized cucumber on herself made something stir inside and so, reminding himself that she was his lawful wife and that he was legally entitled to touch her wherever and whenever he wanted to – he presumed that all husbands did that because they could – and seeing that it was State-sanctioned, and was probably even expected of them all, he got her to stand up and he put his hand down the front of her nightgown and fondled one of her breasts and then he used the same hand to do some amateurish groping under her nightgown.

“Ahhhh,” he said in a worldly manner, “so soft and smooth . . . . Hhhmmmmph, well, this is all very nice but I’ve got to go to work, right this minute. Uh, thank you Hannah and, ah, well, good luck.” and then he washed his hands and left.

After dealing with her chores she trimmed and washed the four carrots and, following his orders, she inserted them, in order, every half hour and hour through the rest of the morning. The pain was progressively more severe with every up-grade, of course, but she pioneered and eventually she found that she could dispense with and discard, back into the bowl after washing them of course, the three smaller ones and use only the big one. She never became able enough to insert it with ease but she needed less and less force every time and, concomitantly, had less and less discomfort although she never felt any pleasure while doing it because the clinical – laboratory like, even – aspect of the whole thing overwhelmed all other feelings.

After lunch she walked to her local supermarket and when she saw the huge piles of stacked cucumbers she became shy and self-conscious and couldn’t bring herself to go near them much less handle one. She felt that all the other shoppers and the staff would know instantly what she was going to do with it so she moved to the far end where the flower displays were.

 She then became worried that if the guy in charge of the area saw her hanging around for too long he’d get suspicious and so she decided to buy some tomatoes and a lettuce even though she didn’t need either of them.

She got herself a basket and after putting a pound of tomatoes and a lettuce into it she, as casually as she could manage, moved down to where the cucumbers were and she eyed them and when she saw one that was of medium size and looked close to what she’d handled the night before she pulled it out of the pile and dropped it into her basket, albeit being careful to not bruise it nor harm it, and when it was lying there she saw that while one end was just right the other one was a little thinner and slightly hooked. She pondered as to whether she should change it for a regular one but by then she’d had enough of the whole enterprise, thank you, so she got in line to pay for her selections but she was careful to not look the cashier in the eye when it got to be her turn.

When she got home she took off her dress and her knickers and laid herself down on the bed and then she made, ‘Mr. Carrot,’ do its job again and then she picked up ‘Mr. Cucumber’ and readied herself for insertion.

Of course, she wanted to be gentle about it but she had to use both hands and a good deal of force before she succeeded in making any headway and when she did the pain was horrendous.

Much later on, when she could explore her wound without pain, she figured that the carrots had all merely eased their way through her hymen but Mr. Cucumber had been far too big to follow suit and had been forced to break his way through it and, as her probing finger discovered, had split it in two places near the top and had left three bloody shards.     

 When the pain had subsided a little, and she could stop crying, she got up and swallowed four aspirins and then she made some tea.

She realized that the hardest part, by far, was over but that she hadn’t fully accomplished her goal yet because she didn’t know how far men wanted to push their way into women but then, on further consideration and knowing men a little better by then, she figured that it would be as far as they could possibly go, and so, when she’d finished drinking her tea, she made herself go and lie down again and she put Mr. C back to work.

She steeled herself against the coming pain and she pushed it in and out a dozen times – for only a half of an inch, as before – and then, reasonably happy with her work up until then, she took a deep breath and the next time she resolutely kept pushing and pulling at it until about four inches of it was inside her. By then she was nearly fainting from the ever-increasing pain and so she had to quit.

When she’d rested she got up and made more tea, and took more aspirins, and then she sat still and considered her situation.

It was true that he’d now be able to penetrate her but would she be able to let him even attempt to do so? She thought not and that knowledge made her dread his homecoming because she’d have to tell him that he was going to be thwarted for the third time in a row.

She wondered if ice would help so she shaped a cube of it but found that the only thing that she could do with it, without causing more pain, was to place in it on the outside of her labia. She kept replacing it as it melted and after an hour of doing that she selected the smallest Mr. Carrot to see if she could accept it but even that, as thin as her little finger, was agonizing and she so had to stop almost at once.

She went back to her bed and awaited her fate.

At around five that evening Thomas telephoned her and she could hear that he was really upset. He told her that his third shift of security men had all quit an hour earlier.

They’d voted to join their colleagues to strengthen their cause which was to bring attention to fact that he was a Martinet and very difficult, close to impossible, to work for nor would he even listen to their Union Reps nor would he read the contents of the Suggestion Box. Besides that, they complained that he handed out overtime on a catch as catch can basis rather than distributing it evenly and fairly.

The upshot of it was that because he was all alone he would have to stay where he was all day and all night from now until the dispute was settled.

He went on to say that because it was Friday afternoon he wouldn’t be able to hire replacements until Monday. He promised to call her the next day and let her know what was happening but she wasn’t to expect him home until Monday evening at the earliest.

Before hanging up he asked her how her ‘Cucumber Project’ was proceeding and by doing that he got hot and felt a rush of neediness and so he went on to call her, ‘Darling’ and to say that he was thinking about, “your wonderful body,” and that he was “really, really disappointed that tonight isn’t going to be our night.”

She was just as puzzled by his lewd talk as she’d been at being felt up by him in broad daylight that morning but she readily forgave him because she was delighted to have been told that his not being able to come home meant that her, “wonderful body,” wouldn’t be called on to join him to, “make tonight our night.”

She hoped that by Sunday afternoon she’d have healed enough to be able to give Mr. C a more productive trial run.

When the time came she was delighted to find that even six full inches of Mr. C didn’t cause pain that she couldn’t deal with and, because of that, the ‘test run’ turned into something else entirely and while it was going on she fervently wished that she had a third hand to bring into play.

 At three-thirty on Monday Thomas called her again and she could tell from his voice that something good had happened at his work place because it had a jaunty tone to it.

He told her that he was coming home that night and that he, “could hardly wait to, uh, see you.”

 Knowing that she wouldn’t have to disappoint him this time – or, indeed, any time again – she was pleased with the news and she allowed the warm feeling that she had at her center – the one that hadn’t dissipated much since the day before – to tempt her into having another trial run with Mr. C, just to be sure.

She lifted him from the basket that she’d lined with a soft tea cloth – the basket that was going to be his alone from then on – and she carried him into the bedroom where she put him on the pillow and then got undressed.

When she was ready – that is, when she’d used her fingers to awaken her center and let it know what was about to happen to it – she reached for Mr. C. and reverently positioned him so that he’d be able to do his duty.

Because her fantasy – she was a quick learner and she’d recruited the good looking son of the janitor of her building to fill that role  – required her to keep her eyes closed she’d done so and because of that, after she‘d lifted Mr. C. by his middle, she turned him the wrong way before inserting him and she received the curved end. When he was a little way inside her he cleverly found her G-Spot and she was dumbfounded and confused but not for long because she got to be flooded with an entirely different kind of pleasure – a keener pleasure that was much more rewarding than the one that she’d discovered the day before by using her fingers  – and so she did not admonish him at all and much less did she attempt to rectify her error.

No more, “Aaaaah, yes’s,” were drawn out of her. More like, “Ooowwwaughweee! YES! YES! YES ’s.”

When she’d eased back into the here and now she was delighted with the experience and she reasoned that that was what must happen every time that a man does it to a woman only, of course, even better. “Has to be,” she told herself, “otherwise, why were men needed at all?”

She put Mr. C. back into his basket and then happily stretched out on the bed and as she was dozing she found that she was, for the first time, looking forward to welcoming her husband home.

Because he had plenty of time on his hands, and was bored, over the long weekend Thomas called all nineteen of the semi-confined inmates – the others had weekend home visiting privileges – into his office, one at a time.

He started out by telling them that he was carrying out a survey and that he guaranteed their anonymity. He told them that the survey would help him with a study that he was thinking of doing about finding changes for the better in the from-prison-to-a-halfway-house procedure.

It was, on the whole, useless because they answered mostly in mono-syllables, when at all, and it quickly became clear to him that they had zero interest in cooperating because they didn’t care what his pie-in-the-sky goals were nor did they trust him nor anyone else in authority.

   However, when he closed the lid on his laptop and switched to asking them for their personal histories they all opened up fully – they were amazed that he wanted to listen to them and they liked talking about themselves and, even more relevantly, they had nothing else to do either – and every last one of them started in by telling him that they were innocent of doing any crimes that were more serious than a little shop lifting or smoking a joint or two occasionally.

Villainy was present in all of them, not far below the surface, and Thomas got more and more despondent after hearing each story. The majority of them had had childhoods so horrendous that hearing the details troubled his vitals.

Four of them were simply evil through and through.

Several of them were mildly retarded and one was very much so.

Just about every one of them had tried to con him and one actually attempted to pocket his porcelain pen.

When, later, he compared what they’d told him with what their files told him he found that most of them had been imprisoned due to sheer stupidity or from mischance or misjudgment or from irresolution or from ‘going-along’ with their peers.

 But later that night, when he’d done his last rounds, he sat at his desk and thought back on all that he’d heard and – Snap! – just like that he found that he had regained his faith!

Modified slightly, true enough, but he had it back. Not enough to get him to contemplate reentering priesthood but even so.

When he’d gotten over the strange but very welcome turn of events he, obviously, wanted to find out how that had come about.

He gradually came to realize that after hearing nineteen pathetic life stories from nineteen pathetic men – none of whom had much chance of staying out of the system for long – he’d asked them all what was it that they’d missed most while incarcerated and, besides the usual things – like walking barefoot in grass and being able to eat their favorite food when they wanted to no matter what the clock said and feeling rain on their faces and seeing sunrises and sunsets without having to look through bars and being able to lock and unlock their own doors and being completely alone when they felt that way – they all, to a man, told him that the one thing that they wanted the most was to be with their families.

It came to him that he too had been in prison – the prison of the Church. None of the mundane, everyday things had been withheld from him, of course, but they were all as of nothing when compared to the universally held need to be part of a family.

From that he progressed to seeing that by being in the Church he had been given not just a matter of months or years in jail but a life sentence and he rejoiced about having made the decision to resign.

From that position he realized just how lucky he was to have a caring, competent wife who had already changed a poky apartment into a home and would be a wonderful, loving mother if the good Lord blessed them with a child which was surely what He wanted for all of His children.

 Why else was the need to procreate as strong as the need to do the act of procreation?

  Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, and brimming over with good will, he put aside his project because he’d recognized that the first order of importance was putting his immediate house in order.

He spent the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday thinking over his past behavior, that had made all of his staff walk out on him, and he re-read their complaints and thought up ways to put things right and, by doing so, appease them all with action rather than words.

On Monday morning he telephoned the two Union Reps and asked them to come and see him and when they arrived he asked them to take a seat and he poured coffee for them both.

When his back was turned they looked at each other quizzically and both thought, “Hey man. Here’s a good start.”

  He apologized for his past behavior and told them that he’d been going through a bad patch from having to wrestle with his faith but that had been resolved satisfactorily and he was now a different man.

 He went on to say that he’d decided to drop his attempts to improve on the rehabilitation of the inmates until all of the staff problems had been dealt with and he’d made a list of all the physical changes to their building’s utilities and amenities that were needed. He said that he was going to start with their locker rooms – especially the broken showers in them – and he gave them each a copy of the list of improvements that he was going to get done.

He then drew their attention to the two charts on the wall that he’d made the day before.

The first one listed every one on the staff – in order of seniority that was accorded more import than rank by all of them – and every name had a photo and details of his or her family complete with dates of birth and anniversaries, etc.

He said that he hoped that that was a good way to bring them all together and that he was aiming to build a family atmosphere in the place rather than just being the buildings where they all worked.

The other chart was a method of giving out overtime fairly in which everyone could see at a glance when his or her turn was coming up.

He then pointed out that he’d rejected the very idea of having a suggestion box because from that day on he was having an open door policy and that way anyone and everyone would have full access to him.

He ended by telling him that he was a changed man and asked them to give him a second chance

The Reps were very pleased with what they’d heard, and seen, and they inwardly marveled at the change in the man and they told him, with no need for a consultation between themselves, that they’d call an immediate meeting of all their members and would get back to him.

When they did call him, at three o’clock, it was to tell him that at the beginning of the four o’clock shift the regular guards would resume their duties and the office staff would all show up the next morning.

  When he got home he was very aware of his own sour body odor and so, after giving Hannah a long distance greeting and an air kiss he told that he hadn’t been able to take a shower for four days because of the bad shape of the staff’s bathrooms due to the pipes being rusted out – there’d been a long notice strung across all three stalls in both the men’s and women’s stating, ‘Out Of Order’ and they both had rude and crude messages written on them that were aimed at him and whose content he’d erased from his brain – and so, much as he wanted to tell her all the good news, it would have to wait until he came out of the shower.

He’d intended to stay in there for a good long time but when he’d wet his body he reached for the soap and the stream of water hit his chest and then, as he moved farther away, it hit his belly and it gave him an erection that, boosted by knowing that Hannah was on the other sided of the door and was naked under her clothes, gave him notice that it wasn’t going to quit any time soon and that his overall cleanliness was definitely a secondary consideration.

All through his time as a priest he’d been careful to avert his eyes from the décolletage of unthinking or brazen parishioners, and from the nudes depicted in countless paintings, in order to avoid their impact but since he’d seen, close up, a living, bulging vulva through straggly pubic hairs, no less, and had seen and touched and kissed warm, soft, smooth breasts and, especially, was about to consummate their marriage with their owner, he had to force himself to take the time to perfunctorily soap and rinse his armpits and crotch and then he rinsed the rest of his body for about two seconds and then turned the water off and toweled for maybe three seconds and then he wrapped the towel around his waist, there was zero chance of it falling down, and fairly bolted out of there.

In a strangely deepened and partly strangled voice he asked her to please come and lie down with him and his request was music to her ears – an after lunch visit with Mr. C had primed her for it and that was on top of her already established eagerness to get it done – and she led the way to the bedroom where, oblivious to the fact that it was broad daylight and the blinds were not drawn, she got undressed almost as quickly as it took him to drop his towel on a chair.

 Amazingly, nothing went wrong and a little while later there were two fewer virgins around to annoy their Maker for having rejected His gift of sensuality for way too long.

She was mildly disappointed with the small amount of love play that she’d been given but she could understand it and she forgave because of his being thwarted for so long and so, when he’d gotten into position, she reached down to guide him and then she opened herself up and as she did so she was quivering with anticipation. She was expecting to be swamped with a whole series of marvelous feelings that would thrill her to her core and that would continue to do so from start to finish.

However, it didn’t happen. None of it did.

Not when he was bulling his way into her and not when they were pelvis to pelvis and only a little when he started moving in and out but then he speeded up and the pain from the battering that she had to endure drove away all thoughts of sharing and enjoyment and were replaced by worries about surviving in one piece.

She was, of course, happy about being penetrated properly and thoroughly for the first time – there was absolutely no doubt about that – but why wasn’t her clitoris nor her G-spot – she didn’t know that their names nor even if they had names and she thought of them as the one up a little bit and the one just inside – why weren’t they being, uh, brought into play?

When she’d found ways to save herself from being hurt by his battering she wondered if she should make him stop to let her tell him what she wanted but just then he started in on shouting “YES, YES, YES,” and going, “Arrrrrgggh,” and with that she got realistic and gave up on the idea. She asked herself what was the likelihood of his ever acting to meet her requests when he knew that he could get this much pleasure for himself and the answer that she arrived at was ‘almost certainly not ever’ because although he was usually a mild mannered man he was the male and when he was inside her he would always want to be in charge of the proceedings. Witness the way that he was going at it in such a single minded way that one would think that there was a fire in the next room.

A few minutes later it was clear to her that he had gotten serious because he moved his hands from her shoulders and grabbed her hips with them and he used his weight to keep her body still and he used his upper arms to see to it that she didn’t move sideways and he kept her legs open by positioning his own just so and then, by pressing his head against hers, he effectively immobilized that too.

She realized that she was pinioned in place and clearly he knew it too because he picked up speed until it was physically impossible for him to move his hips any faster and still keep his bones in their sockets. Combined with knowing that, she also knew that he’d long forgotten which woman was underneath him and didn’t much care as long as she didn’t try to move and imperil his ability to transfer his fluids over and into her care.

The unpleasant feeling that she was getting from his selfishness released a flood of understanding of what her indigent whores at her work place had told her.

When she’d first started there, a few days after she’d left the convent, she realized that she’d better find out about the actual practices and mores of the sexual act that she’d have to engage in after finding a man for herself and she figured that no one could possibly know more about it than the prostitutes – the destitute prostitutes – who were in her care.

She soon got to know that when each clique in the hostel got together they almost invariably talked about what they knew best and were good at and because she saw that the whores wouldn’t talk normally and naturally if she was around she had to figure out a way to be close enough to overhear them while maintaining an official role and thus having to be tolerated.

Once she’d figured a way to do it she looked through all of the women’s records and she quietly rearranged the rosters to get six of the younger whores into one group and then she moved that group to the popular task of serving the food in the cafeteria. They all liked being given that job because one of the perks was that it was the custom for all the servers to eat at a long table in the kitchen after all the other women had been given their meal and they could stay there for several hours.

Hannah would see to it that other groups of women got started at bussing the tables and sweeping up in the dining room and with washing the dishes and clearing up in general.

She would then bring her account books into the kitchen – there was no other place where she could sit and spread out her papers because of all the activity in the other rooms – and she’d sit at the far end of the table and get on with routine, brainless tasks so as to be able to concentrate on hearing what the serving women were saying.

Because of all the blasphemies and curses and vulgarities that were a constant in their every conversation she had to adapt a technique that she’d discovered when she’d been a novice. Back then she’d be given a whole series of demeaning and nonsensical tasks every day – to test her humility, she supposed – and she’d get on with them but she learned to close her mind to the uselessness of each one and to the stupidity involved because she could have been doing something helpful for poor people instead, and, as she already knew very well, humility was necessarily ever present whenever that was getting done.

So, she knew how to block out the nastiness but even so she was perplexed to find that she didn’t understand a half what the women were saying.

She started to write down the words and phrases that puzzled her and, later, she hit on the bright idea of taking them to an old, bedridden, one-time prostitute who was grateful to her for the kindness and respect that she got from no one else.   

Her first question was how was it possible that all of the men who, uh, approached whores were all called ‘John?’

Her second one, after she’d been told some of the synonyms and euphemisms for condoms, was how could there be an extra charge for not using one when they obviously had to cost something and so surely the cost of, uh, doing the act without one should be lower?

When the reason for that higher charge was explained to her she couldn’t, for the life of her, fathom out how anyone, man or woman, could possibly be that stupid and she was once again aghast at the folly that was at large in the secular world.     

 Her third question was why was the word ‘blow’ always accompanied by the word, ‘job?’

She could not bring herself to accept the explanation that she was given, notwithstanding the misnomer, so she asked to have it repeated.

And then again.

So, she had to accept the fact that such a thing was not only possible but, from what she picked up at the table, it was not only a regular practice but it seemed to be the most common one that was performed for payment by all the women there.   

By then, she was so horrified that she was physically incapable of continuing her research project and so she suspended it for a few weeks.

 

Even so, because she continued to hold high hopes of getting a man interested in her she forced herself to return to the task of finding out what a wife’s duties are to her husband – aside from the unnatural acts and the unpleasantness that she‘d already heard about – so, armed with her notes, she went on with her quest.

The first new question to her informer was, “What is, ‘Around the world?’ ”

That time, she flatly rejected what she was told but, the next day, she asked the same thing of another advisor and to another one after that and so, finally, she had to accept it as being accurate.

 She went back to her most reliable informant and asked, despairingly, “Why? Why? Why?”

She was told, matter-of-factly, “Honey, it’s the men thats got the money so if that’s what they want, that’s what they gets.”        

 Her respect for ‘fallen women’s’ courage soared and her contempt for all the johns who paid them to carry out such brutal, disgusting, lower-than-animal’s base-urges made her adjust the parameters that she was using to find a mate.

 

   The change in speed and urgency of Thomas’s pummeling brought her back to the present, and to the work at hand, and when it had ranged up into the frenzied level she knew that there was no way that he could keep that up for long and so it all had to be coming to an end. She got confirmation of that when she felt his hands leave her shoulders and go down to grab her buttocks and pull on them and then she heard him start to make strange noises in between shouting, “YES.” “YES.” “YES.” and although the words, obviously, meant that he was achieving his goal the grunting noises made her think that he was in pain, and that his tremendous efforts were being done only to get the job over with in the shortest possible time, so she put her ankles up onto his hips – to make herself as wide open for him as was possible although she knew not what had made her think of doing so – and then she put her hands onto his hips with the intention of placating him with little caresses but instead of that she found that they began to pull at him in coordination with the equally involuntary lifting of her hips to welcome each new incoming thrust.

She began to hear more cries and even stranger grunting noises and cries and just when she realized that they were her own she also realized that it had been her long-established inhibitions that had held her back from responding earlier and it had been the basic, fundamental signals coming from her inner brain stem that had pushed against those same inhibitions and had progressively overcome them until here she was, carrying on like a sow in heat, and calling out to be penetrated harder and faster even as she was getting hammered right up to the point of injury by bone fracture or friction-induced combustion.

When it couldn’t possibly go on any longer he stopped moving and pressed himself hard against her and he let out a yell of triumph, the like of which neither of them had ever heard before, and then she felt his seed jet into her in successive streams and with that she took over the aggressive role and she put her arms around him and held him in place and milked him until she knew that she’d received all that there was.

When her hands had reverted to smoothing his body she felt a strange contentment flood her and she became aware of several important facts that were new to her.

She knew, first and foremost, that she was now with child. She was going to bring forth a new person and knowing that made her realize that that, in itself, was such a miracle that all the hype was necessarily exaggerated to keep pace and to enhance the chances of getting to this happy end result.

She knew that she had become as one with her husband – which passed for love in her book – and she held him in awe at that moment because when the transfer of his precious fluid was taking place he had assuredly been delivering the Highest Power’s essence and when it got to be deep inside her, where it belonged and where it was far away from the light of day, it had already stopped being his and it would never be hers because it instantly became God’s.

Thomas lay full and still on top of her for several minutes, after she’d relaxed her hold of him, from exhaustion and from wonder at the tremendous amount of pleasure that he’d been given, and from the marvelous feeling of fulfillment that he was experiencing, and when he’d recovered some strength he lifted off her and moved until they were lying side by side. He then turned towards her and held her close and he told her about having a revelation and how it had restored his faith and how, at the same time, it had also made him realize that he was very lucky to have met her and that he loved her very much indeed. Then he went on to explain how those two things had somehow cleared his brain and how that had enabled him to find the correct way to solve his personnel problems at work.

When she’d finished kissing him for having found his faith and had congratulated him on his success at work she said that the news about his faith was especially welcome because she’d had a revelation of her own when she’d felt his seed pour into her and realized that it came to her through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

She said that the wondrous fact that God was back in her life was entirely due to his having married her and that she loved him very much too and was very pleased that He was back in his life too. “Praise the Lord!”

“Yes indeed, dear. Praise the Lord on high.”

Then she told that she was positive sure that she was pregnant.

They were both content with their lot and they snuggled up and did some tender kissing and murmuring before drifting off to sleep.

        

A few hours later his body woke him up because it, understandably, wanted more of the same so he kissed her awake and then gave her straight to the core caresses that would have been unthinkably crass just a few hours earlier but were now accepted as the norm.

She, still sleepy, reciprocated mildly and then she felt him pushing at her hips to get her to lie on her back. She helped him to achieve that goal, thinking that he wanted to be able to smooth more of her body, but when he made moves to mount her she came fully awake and then closed her legs together firmly.

Not being at all well versed in that kind of thing he kept prodding at her but in vain so he stopped and asked her what was happening.

She put her arms around him and said, “Thomas dear, I told you. I’m pregnant already. We don’t have to do it again because we’ve succeeded. We’ve done it.”

She took advantage of the silence that her rejection caused and went on to tell him that he just had to agree with her because she felt that it would surely be blasphemous to call on the Holy Spirit again seeing that He’d already done His blessed part.

He knew that this was a very important moment in their lives so he awkwardly eased himself off her and thought for a moment or two and then sat up and put the light on, to be able to look her in the eyes, and then he said, “Hannah, dear. It’s truly wonderful to know that we’ve made a baby together – I couldn’t be happier about it – but that’s not the only reason for a husband and wife to make love. It says in the Bible, over and over, that when lawfully joined together in Holy Matrimony men and women are to cleave together not only to multiply but to find joy in each other too.

“We are commanded to, ‘Give each the other pleasure,’ and that means that we can do it as often as either of us wants to. And listen, dear, although meeting each other’s physical needs all through our lives together is, of course, not nearly as important as our ‘going forth and multiplying’ we can and should keep making love. It’s sanctioned.”

“Really? It says that in the Bible? It’s sanctioned? Well! It’s not a bit of wonder that they only let Nuns read certain parts of the Book along with the catechisms.

“Well, dear. Will you be kind enough, tomorrow morning, to tell me where I can read the parts that you quoted? Good. Hmmmm, ‘Give each the other pleasure’ is in there, you say? Well now, that is entirely different.

“All right. By all means let’s do it again right this minute, if you want to.

“Oops! Oh, you impetuous man. Huh, wait a moment. . . there, you can go ahea . . . Oooow – – – – There – – – – Ah – – – – – – Ah – – – – – – Ah – – – – – – Ah – – – – – – Ah – Oh, but wait.

“Oh, dear me. No! Wait! Stop! This will never do. Stop. No dear, this can’t happen. Stop now dear.  STOP! YES. STOP RIGHT NOW PLEASE! . . . Good . . . now pull it out and get off me because I want to say some – – Oooomph – there, because I want to say something to you . . . . There.

“In the Bible it says, ‘Give each the other pleasure,’ am I right? That’s what you said, right? Yes, well we have to obey God’s words to the last letter right? We can’t be half-hearted about it now can we so that means that we have to include me in on the sharing of the pleasure? True? Well of course it is.

“So, this I what want you to do for me in future every time before we, uh, before we get started. Give me your hand . . . there, now do this with these two fingers . . . like this . . . there, now you try . . . no, no dear, like this . . . there, like that . . . Mmmm, good. Now bring your other hand underneath this one . . . like that, good and do this . . . . No, wait, do this with this middle finger . . . and, Aow! Gently please dear. There, just like that. Ooooh, that’s good, you found the right spot . . . Ooooh, yes, keep doing that until I tell you to Oooooh, yes. Just like that.

“Now, let’s see if you can do both things at the same Oooooh time.

“Oh, yes, that’s so good. Don’t stop, Ooooh yes. That’s it. That’s Ooooh that’s exactly what I need . . . . . . OOOOOH, YES! OOOOOOOOH YES, Yes. Oooowow, yes, yes, yes . . Aaaaah

“There. You can stop now dear. Thank you, that was marvelous.

 “Uh, wait just a minute longer, dear, please . . . . . mmmmmm – there.

“All right, you can put it in again now, dear . . . . there, uh, easy dear. . . There.

“Oh, dear. Stop again will you please? You seem to have gone right past it.

“Pull it out again until there’s only a half inch of it inside me . . . there . . . try to remember where that is please. Now kind of wiggle it in place please. No not like that. Try to . . well, let me show you. Lift up so that I can  . . . there, now make it do this WOWOooooh Like that. Now you try . . .WOW! yes. Just like WOW! Just like that. WOWWOWWOWWOW! YES. ALL RIGHT! – – – – Uh, that’s it. You can stop now dear but please keep still for a minute longer – – – – – – – Whew!

 “Wooohoo, that was so good, thank you dear. All right. You can go ahead with it again now dear. Take as long as you like . . . Argh! Easy dear. Slowly please. Arrrh yes, like that. . . . . You know Ah it’s amazing how much Ah better it is now that you’ve Ah prepared me for it.

“It’s Ah very different indeed Ah and I’m Ah liking this so AH much more than Ah last time. Will you Ah promise to try to Ah remember to Ah prepare me every . . .”

“Hannah. Will you please stop talking?”

 “Yes dear. Sorry . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . . Ah Uh, just one more thing dear, Ah does the Bible Ah say anything Ah about keeping Ah the amount Ah of pleasure Ah evenly divided? I mean Ah does . . . . ”

“HANNAH, STOP TALKING!”

“Sorry dear. ARRRGH! Easy dear, please. That really hurt. Ah There, like that. Ah Thank you dear. Ah . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . Ah . . . . . . . . . . Ah Although, come to think about . . . ”

“ HANNAH! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

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