Phone Sex With the Telemarketer

He called just before 9 p.m. with apology in his voice. Must have been some kind of cut-off time after which women on his list (widowed, elderly, presumed to go to bed early) might be offended. And in his line of work, offended was counterproductive.
So, as I say, he started with an I’m-sorry-ma’am in a country-boy drawl and a segue into his spiel: Our state troopers need equipment like Kevlar vests, and a contribution now would help them in these hard times of budget cutbacks.
Something about his voice opened a door in my head that led down a flight of stairs to a cot with a soft blanket and the smell of woodsy cologne. He talked on, listing the dangers out there on the road for our brave highway patrolmen, but I was busy arranging myself on the cot, reaching up to the snap on his jeans.
“Go on,” I said, with a quick slide of his zipper.
“Well, that’s about it,” he said. “What would you feel comfortable pledging?”
“Please tell me more about the equipment,” I said.
My left hand reached inside his pants while my right one busied itself inside my panties.
He talked for another minute, his monologue masking the escalating sound of my breathing. I needed time – at least a few minutes more than his telemarketing script would allow.
“Tell me, young man,” I said, “do you work on commission?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Sonny, I will give you $50 for every minute you stay on the line and keep talking. You can talk about cars, troopers, the weather in Wyoming, whatever you like. If you pretend to be lying next to me on a cot in a tornado shelter, rubbing my nipples, I’ll give you $100. If you tell me things you’d do to grateful old lady, I’ll pledge $200 a minute. You just keep going ‘til I tell you to stop.”
I’ll give him credit; he never missed a beat. That boy was a salesman to the core. Five minutes of dirty cowboy talk later, I was reciting the 16 Discover Card digits.
He read the numbers back to me with a quiver in his voice.
“Oh, honey, I am sorry if I offended you in any way,” I said.
“Oh, no, ma’am, I ain’t shocked or nothin. It’s just that, well… it’s the first time I ever got a hard on from a granny, is all.”
I hung up then, feeling a nice afterglow, and I poured myself two fingers of Laphroaig over cracked ice.
I like house-sitting for old Mrs. Jablonski when she’s off visiting her sister in the hospital. I like her cats, her fluffy pillows and the chance to watch HBO. She always leaves me one credit card to use in case of emergencies; I, in turn, appreciate the chance to do a little something for our boys in blue.

The Lockpicker's Woman

I.
Summer looms with its ferocious heat that feels more like weight than temperature, and you become listless. You say you want to leave ahead of the season, want to go to the north Atlantic coast or Appalachians -- anywhere cooler. You watch me clandestinely to see if I am upset by your impending absence.

This is part of the game we play, and my role is to show indifference because that fuels your interest. The first heat wave arrives suddenly one afternoon, and you tell me you're leaving. But I find a scorpion nest in your travel valise, so I know that you have not even begun to air it out and pack.


II.
You, my lover, think you have peeled back all my layers and know all there is to know about my desires. You have tried money, sex, protective gestures, intellect and humor to pry me open and bind me to you.

But the core of me lies beyond the reach of clumsy lock picks.

Under my yearbook photo was written the words, "More to her than meets the eye."

All these years later, can't you see I'm still the woman standing outside the frame of a photograph, revealing just my shadow?

Come, admit that I am only perfect for you as long as I don't open, because it is the seeking -- not the finding -- that you really love.



*Inspired by a powerful line from Ken Burns' Civil War series, telling how "picklock biographers" never discovered what truly lay in the heart of Ulysses S. Grant.