#06 - "A Lifeguard's tale"

When I was eighteen, I got a job as a lifeguard at Cherry Park Apartments, a new housing development just outside Chicago. These days pools and recreation centers are dirt-common in suburban developments, but back then the concept was new and a bit daring, smacking of sybaritic luxury. This was some time ago, and things were a lot different than they are now. A lot different. The Beatles had just arrived, the Pill had just been introduced, and I'd just finished high school and was looking forward to going away to college in the fall. It was the mid-sixties and the very start of the era in which everything changed. It was a great summer to be 18, and there was probably no better job I could have had than lifeguarding at a private pool.

I never would have gotten the job if it hadn't been for Barry Bortnik, a guy I knew from high school swim team. We'd taken the Red Cross lifeguard certification program together, and we'd become friends of a sort, though Barry wasn't really the kind of guy I usually hung around with. He was an indifferent student and kind of small for his age, not that fast in the water and pretty unremarkable generally, but he got by pretty well on his nerve and brashness and tenacity, traits that gave him a reputation as something of a small-time hustler and bullshitter, always with an angle.

Bullshitter or not, Barry managed to talk his way into the job of head guard and pool maintenance manager at the newly-opened Cherry Park Apartments, and I thought that was pretty impressive. I found out later that some family business connections were involved, but however it happened, Barry was head guard and could hire and fire people, and when he called me and offered me a job as a guard, I jumped at it. It would be a hell of a lot better than spending my last summer before college bagging groceries and herding shopping carts at the local Jewel.

He drove me out to cherry Park one unusually hot and brilliant day in early June to show me around, and I was suitably impressed. Cherry Park sat in the middle of what was basically prairie, but prairie that was being rapidly developed with buildings and strip malls and the like. People had been leaving the cities for the burbs since the '50's, but this was all second-generation stuff out here, the beginning of suburban sprawl.

The apartments at Cherry Park were actually little townhouses, eight or twelve to a building, eight buildings altogether. Each townhouse had its own patio and balcony, sliding glass doors, central air, and all the buildings clustered around the pool and recreation center. They'd sold out fast, and when he drove me out there, we could see families moving into the last available units. They were young couples, mostly, just starting out, so there weren't a lot of kids. Barry drove directly to the pool, past landscaping so new that some of the trees still had nursery tags on them, and parked in a lot whose tarmac was so fresh that it still smelled like tar.

We entered the pool through the rec center, which was a big empty unfinished space at the time and would stay unfinished the whole summer I was there, with nothing but a single forlorn ping pong table standing in one corner. The AC hadn't been hooked up yet and the floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with brown construction paper, so it was hot in there, like a greenhouse, or maybe a brownhouse.

We passed through the freshly-tiled men's locker rooms and showers, and then into the guard room, which was to be the lifeguards' hang out and pool headquarters, and then stepped out onto the deck of the pool and looked out into the blazing sunlight. The pool was good-sized and shaped like a T, the long top made for lap-swimming with a max depth of 5'6", and the smaller stem serving as the deep-water diving area, with a high and a low board. The water was so blue it looked radioactive.

I shielded my eyes with my hand as I checked it out, but the pool wasn't really as interesting as the people out on the deck. They were all women, lying in the sun in their bathing suits; oiled, glistening, some with straps down, most of them already pretty tanned, and not a man among them.

Barry'd told me the pool wouldn't officially open until they'd passed a sanitation inspection at the end of the week, so I'd just assumed there'd be no one there yet. It never occurred to me that people would just come out for the sun, but there were maybe fifteen or twenty women out there, baking on lounges and recliners, leafing through magazines, chatting or dozing or sipping from plastic cups. They wore shorts, halter tops, a couple were in tennis outfits (there were courts nearby too), and of course bathing suits, both one- and two-piece.

They lounged around casually, comfortably, and they obviously felt right at home here. Apparently the pool had already become the social center for Cherry Park's housewives and female residents even before it had officially opened. The men were all at work, of course, which was the norm in those days, and so the place had the feel of a serraglio, the special place where a harem was kept. There was that unmistakable ambiance of a group of idle women without men. It surprised me.

Up to that point I'd never really thought about who we'd be guarding. I'd just assumed it would be a bunch of middle-aged suburbanites and their kids, and maybe, if we were lucky, a few girls our age. I was a city boy, and that's who I thought lived in the suburbs--middle-aged people.

But these were attractive women for the most part, ranging in age from maybe not much older than I was to mid- or upper-thirties, and there was something about the way they acted, some easy indolence or sense of luxury that gave the place a country-club air. The residents of Cherry Park Apartments weren't especially wealthy. In fact, as I said, most of them were young and newly married and just starting out, but I suppose the uniqueness of having their own pool gave them a special feeling of privilege and status. I could feel it in the way they moved and displayed themselves. I wasn't expecting it, and I tried to look professional and nonchalant as I checked out the pool, while behind my sunglasses my eyes kept returning to those glistening, oily bodies.

I suppose I should say something here about who I was and where I was in my own personal development, since it's kind of relevant to the story. I was 18 and had just finished high school, looking forward to going away to college in the fall. I was a big kid and not bad looking, but I was kind of shy and studious, almost the opposite of Barry's frenetic personality. I'd been laid, I believe, three or four times by then (remember, this was the early '60's, before all the wildness started) and I'd liked it very much and hoped to do a lot more of it. But I still looked at the world in terms of kids and grown-ups, and I had no doubt as to which one I was.

These women at the pool, on the other hand, were adults by my definition. They were married, had husbands, had homes and cars and the responsibilities, and some of them even had kids. Their lives were already well underway while mine was yet to begin. So to my mind, we lived in two separate worlds, and in a lot of ways I thought of the women at the pool as having more in common with my parents and teachers than with me and the kind of people I considered my peers. I could admire their bodies and the skin they displayed, but we played in two different leagues, lived in two different worlds.

So I was a little surprised when a couple of the women called out to Barry and teased him about going swimming with them or rubbing oil on their backs, and he kidded right back, addressing them by name: Mrs. Schechtman, Mrs. Burnett, Mrs. Gross, a few by their first names. There was obviously a lot of teasing and socializing going on here, and Barry was in his element.

"This is Jack Zimmer," he said, drawing me forward. "He's a good friend of mine, and he's going to be another guard here."

He caught me by surprise, so I waved weakly and smiled. A few women smiled back, and a couple made some jokes about what it must be like being a friend of Barry's, but most of them were soaking up the sun or chatting and didn't pay much attention.

There was one woman, though, who from this distance looked hardly older than me, cooling herself off under one of the rinse showers everyone was supposed to use before they went in the water, standing with her head back as she let the water run through her hair. She already had a tan, which made the shocking pink two-piece she wore seem to glow against her skin, and she was totally absorbed in what cooling off under the shower. She paid us no mind.

I'd later find out that this was Shelly Greenberg, wife of Steve Greenberg, and that she was 33 years old and had two kids, Matt and Michelle, aged 8 and 5, but that was still in the future.

Barry walked me over and introduced me to Tom Goelz, the guard on the perch, who'd also been in the Red Cross certification program with us. As we chatted, one of the women stood up and walked over to the pool and waded in, thigh deep.

"If the pool's not open yet," I asked Barry, "How come you need guards?"

"To make sure no one goes in the water."

I gestured towards the woman and he dismissed it with a glance. "She's not really swimming is she, so it's okay. We've got to cut these people some slack. They pay our salaries, right?"

He took me over to meet a kid in dark glasses who was collecting towels.

"This is Richard," Barry said. "Richard, meet Jack, a new guard. Richard's our pool maintenance guy."

Richard had the look of misfortune about him, maybe because he kept on wiping away tears from beneath his very big, heavy, sunglasses with a balled up tissue he kept in his hand as he worked. He had a shock of curly black hair and slack, very wet lips. I could tell right away there was something wrong with him.

"I was supposed to be a guard too but I had an accident." He said. "Got chlorine in my eyes and fucked them up."

"Oh wow," I said. "Sorry to hear that. You going to be okay?"

"Yeah. Just have to wear these stupid glasses all summer, and my eyes and nose run all the time, but they tell me that'll stop."

Barry let him say his piece, then took my arm and led me away.

"Wow," I said, "What happened to him?"

"Richard the retard? The only reason he got hired is because he's Marty Bowles' nephew, the guy who manages the Park. Richard was trying to score brownie points by changing the chlorinator tank one morning totally on his own. Didn't know what the fuck he was doing. The plastic feed tube from the tank was clogged, so what does he do? He pokes it with a wire, then blows down it, then puts it to his eye to see what the problem is, just like Moe in the Three Stooges. Of course he gets sprayed in the face with chlorine solution."

"Holy shit!"

"Yeah. It's a good thing there was a landscape crew nearby. They got him to the hospital in time to flush him out and save his eyes. But guarding was out, so his uncle made up a job for him as a kind of pool boy. He takes care of the filters and cleans up and stuff."

"Wow. That's rough."

Barry shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose. On the other hand, it saves us from having to test the kiddy pool for pee and clean the johns and do all that other crap. We get the glamour part."

"What glamour part?"

Barry took off his sunglasses, folded them up and hung them from the neck of his tee shirt. It was the first time I'd ever seen anyone do that, and I thought it was pretty slick.

He was about to say something when a woman seemed to come from nowhere, took a running start and jumped into the pool right in front of us, tucking her legs and arms in in a classic cannonball as she hit the water. The big splash missed us and splattered on the deck, but enough spray hit us to get us wet and make Barry swear.

The face that appeared above the water a second later was that of an attractive woman, mid-thirties maybe, in full make up, smiling wickedly as she shook the water from her dark hair and spit a stream of water at Barry.

"God damn it, Nina!" Barry shouted. "The pool's still closed! You know that. Now get out of there!"

The woman looked at me, treading water. "Isn't he cute when he gets mad?"

"I'm serious! Get out of there now or I'll suspend your privileges!"

She faked a sad face. "Oh no! Not my privileges! I'll get right out, lifeguard sir, right now!"

She turned and swam for the far side in a leisurely breast stroke, using a slow scissors kick that spread her legs wide before she snapped them together. Barry's anger, I saw, was all show. He was smiling as he watched her swim away and climb the ladder out of the pool, then stand there posing for him as she combed the water from her short hair.

He never answered me about the glamour part, but I understood what he meant. Of course I took the job.

And it was a pretty glamorous job. Or, if not exactly glamorous, eminently enjoyable. There were actually two pools. Cherry Park had an annex about a mile away, a separate four-building complex that was slightly downscale from the main complex (apartments rather than townhouses), and they had their own, smaller pool and Barry oversaw them both. There were ten guards, three of them girls, but the girls were all in college and not much interested in hanging around with us high-schoolers, so Barry relegated them to the smaller pool.

The work was shamefully simple. We worked three guards to a shift, two on the pool -- one on the raised perch near the diving boards and one in a chair by the shallow end --and one in the guard house handing out towels and ice and making change for the coke machine, but mostly reading or listening to the radio. Every half-hour or so we switched so we all got some shade time. Even so I got dark as sin sitting out in the summer sun. Most of what we did was yell at the kids for running on the deck or being in street shoes, or for bringing glass containers out on the deck or swimming into the diving area. We also gave swimming lessons to some of the kids in the morning free of charge. It helped break up the boredom.

We were a lot more lenient with the adults. In fact, Marty Bowles had instructed us to be, the idea being that it was their pool and we worked for them, and he wanted to keep them happy. During the day it was all women, so over time we got to know some of them pretty well and they got to know us, and sometimes they would bring us things -- lemonade, soda, cookies -- and sometimes we'd even babysit their kids for a short time while they ran home to take a roast out of the oven or fire up the grill. We each seemed to have our favorites

About 4 or 4:30 the pool would start to empty out as the women went home to greet their husbands. You could smell barbecues being lit and steaks grilling, and for the next few hours the pool would be quiet, a chance for us to straighten up the chairs and collect towels, skim the pool and hose down the deck. Then around 6:30 or 7 the adult crowd would appear, and things were different.

The adults came out to play, and we were told to let them, as long as it didn't get too far out of hand. The pool had a 'strict' no-alcohol policy which was routinely (and even blatantly) ignored at night, and though the pool was supposed to close at 9 PM, if some residents wanted to keep it open later, all they had to do was pay the guards' overtime and give Marty a call, and he almost always okayed it. So staying open till eleven, twelve, even one AM wasn't unusual, and the partiers, invariably drunk by that time, always tipped us lavishly. We loved working late night parties, and there were a lot of them.

~ ~ ~

It was during one of these dinnertime lulls toward the end of August while Barry and I were cleaning up the pool that I happened to mention, "You know, this job would be perfect if we only had some girls our own age around. That's the only thing we're missing."

I was skimming the pool, using a long-handled net to scoop leaves and other debris from the water. It was a job I particularly liked, especially at this time of day when the shadows lengthened and the pool was deserted so the water became smooth as glass. Barry was hosing down the deck with the high-pressure nozzle, and Ray Krantz, the other guard, had gone out to the new Burger King to get us dinner.

Barry finished hosing down a section of deck and then looked at me, and I couldn't really tell if he was smiling at me or squinting at the sun. Despite his brashness, he'd always looked younger than most of the guards and the least athletic, and he'd started smoking these cheap little cigars with built-in wooden holders to give himself an air of authority. He really didn't smoke them. He just clamped the wooden holder in his teeth and chewed on it all day. He was chewing on one now.

He looked like he was going to say something, then apparently changed his mind and went back to washing the deck for a bit. Then he stopped and looked at me. "What do you mean by 'our own age', Jack? Like high school girls? Or older? Like eighteen? Nineteen?"

I shrugged and made a non-committal face, because I thought he was going to bring up the female guards, who were only a couple of years older than us but who pretty much kept to themselves. Their college experience had apparently given them a level of sophistication we couldn't hope to understand, and besides, they all had boyfriends with cars.

"What about twenty-one?" he asked. "Or twenty-five? Is that still our age? What about thirty, or even thirty-five?"

I honestly didn't know what he was getting at and went back to skimming. He watched me for a while, then started hosing down the deck again, washing dirt and debris into the grass at the base of the cyclone fence that surrounded the pool.

"You've really got to broaden your horizons a bit, Jackie," he said. "We're not in high school anymore you know, and age is just a number. It really doesn't mean shit. Mrs. Allenberg , how old you think she is? She's twenty-two, not that much older than us. And Mrs. Grossman, Sandy Weiss, Shelly Greenberg? Are you telling me you wouldn't do them?"

I looked at him in something like shock. I knew all these women and they were all very good-looking. On slow days we sometimes talked about who we'd sleep with or what we imagined their sex lives were like, but that was pretty much teen-aged bravado. They were all married women--adults in my way of thinking--with husbands, homes, responsibilities, some even with kids. While I could certainly admire their bodies and the skin they showed, I'd never really taken the idea of sex with them seriously. Maybe I'd used one or two of them for masturbation fodder when I was home in bed, but that was just fantasy, like the girls in Playboy. To my way of thinking, we lived in two separate worlds-- adults and kids--and there really couldn't be any crossover, at least, not in that sense. I mean, they were married, and married women didn't screw around except in Alfred Hitchcock movies. There was something vaguely incestuous about it.

He sprayed a bit more then stopped and started dragging the hose back towards me.

"And I'll tell you something. These women are alone all day with nothing to do. Nothing to do but watch TV and come out here to the pool and then wait for the old man to get home and hope he's in the mood. And for some of them, that's not even an option. A lot of these guys travel. They're on the road most of the week."

"Well, some of them have kids," I said.

"Yeah, right. Like women with kids don't need to get laid?"

What he said about the husbands was true. We'd get a few hubbies out at the pool after dinner, but for the most part, you only really saw a lot of men there on the weekends. During the days it was all women.

"So, you know, we've got all these women, a lot of them bored, a lot of them horny, coming out and lying in front of us in the sun all day, with empty houses and nothing but time on their hands."

I kept skimming, even though the water was clean. I didn't know if I wanted to hear what he was getting at.

Barry watched me for a while with a grin on his face. "You should really get your nose out of your books some time and pay attention to what goes on here, Jackie. You'd be amazed. Pretty amazed."

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

Barry gave a couple more blasts with the hose and then dragged it even closer to where I stood by the edge of the pool so he could talk to me.

"You know Nina Schechtman?" It was a rhetorical question. Of course I knew Mrs. Schechtman. She'd been the one who'd cannon-balled us when Barry'd been showing me the pool, and she was one of the mainstays of the group of women we called the Leather Ladies because they spent so much time at the pool that they were all deeply tanned. They all sat together, talked and played cards together, and often brought drinks to the pool disguised in plastic mugs and pitchers. They were a good bunch and a lot of fun, always teasing the guards and making racy comments.

"Of course," I said. "What about her?"

He stepped closer, right next to me, and took the cigar holder out of his mouth. He was enjoying the suspense. "What if I told you that Nina Schechtman blew me the other day? Got right down on her knees in her kitchen and sucked me off like a fucking pro? At three in the afternoon."

"Bull shit!" My reaction was visceral and immediate. "Yeah, right Barry."

"I kid you not, man. It was last Monday. I told you I was going over to Bowles' to get the new time sheets, remember? You and Lionel were pissed about missing your break? Well I didn't go to Bowles', at least not right away. I drove around to the back of the Schechtman's place. She'd given me one of her robes as cover so it would look like I was returning it in case anyone saw. And as soon as I was in that house, she was on me like a fucking monkey!"

"Come on, Barry! I don't believe that shit." I said it, but I'd heard enough of Barry Bortnik's stories to know that he seldom actually lied, at least not like this. He fibbed, he exaggerated, he conned, but he didn't fabricate. But this one just seemed too outrageous.

"Believe what you want man, but this is the God's honest truth. She's been coming on to me all summer, making little jokes, dropping hints. You know that."

"Yeah, but they're always making jokes and dropping hints. They all do it."

"That's right man. But see, I take it seriously. I hint right back. And then one hint leads to another..." he shrugged. " I know what's going on here. And once they know you know..."

He started dragging the hose back to the maintenance shed, and I stood there like an idiot with the skimmer in my hands, my mind doing cartwheels. I did in fact remember the incident with Nina Shechtman's robe. I remember it because I'd been the one who found it as we were cleaning up late Sunday night and had made some comment about how ditzy you'd have to be to leave your pool robe behind, when Barry grabbed it out of my hands and said he'd take care of it.

I broke down the skimmer , unscrewing the handle sections, and brought them over to the maintenance shed. Barry was coiling the hose down but stopped when I came over and looked me dead in the eye, eyebrows raised as if daring me to ask a question, but I had nothing to say.

"She wouldn't let me fuck her because she was on the rag," he finally said. "But tonight, you watch. The old man's in San Diego and the coast is clear. You watch for when her lights go out. She always leaves the front room light on when he's out of town, but you watch tonight. When that light goes out, that's the signal. That means old Barry's going to be doing some serious pipe-laying."

"You're crazy!" I said. "You know what kind of trouble you could get into for this?"

"No," he challenged. "What kind?"

He stared at me. "I mean, sure, if her old man catches me, my ass is grass, but so is hers, so that's not going to happen. As for the other stuff... Show me in the rules where it says a guard can't fuck a resident of Cherry Park Apartments. In fact, if you ask me, it's almost part of our job, like an obligation."

"You mean other guards are doing this too?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know, and I don't want to know, because actually it's none of my business, but I've got some suspicions." He finished coiling the hose down and threw it into the shed. "You really ought to pay more attention to what goes on here. Watch who's going home with who after the parties and what happens when the lights go out. There's a hell of a lot of fooling around going on here, a hell of a lot of bedroom bingo. Why shouldn't we get a piece of it?"

I knew he was right. I really was oblivious to what was going on around me at Cherry Park. I just didn't pay attention. What the adults did there was like a separate world that didn't concern me, so I never thought about it. I tended to bury myself in a book when I was on guardroom duty or just lose myself in daydreams while watching the pool.

"In fact," he went on, "If you occasionally took your head out of your ass you might even have noticed how Shelly Greenberg's been coming on to you."

"Right, Barry. Listen, she's nice to me because of the way I get along with her kids, that's all. Because I taught them to swim."

"Yeah. That's why she's always asking you whether you have a girl friend and what you do on your days off and talking you while you're in the perch so you can see down her top." He laughed. "Anyone but you could see it, Jackie. And I happen to know for a fact that she's interested. Very interested."

"What do you mean you know for a fact?"

Barry smiled with satisfaction. "Because Shelly talks to Nina, and Nina talks to me. Shelly Greenberg wants your bod, and that's no shit."

Shelly Greenberg -- Mrs. Greenberg -- and I were friends of a sort. I mean, as much as I thought I could be friends with a wife and mother that much older than me, an adult. Her kids especially were crazy about me for some reason, and I assumed it was because of this that Mrs. Greenberg was so nice to me, bringing me an occasional iced drink or standing and chatting with me when I sat in the perch or was in the guardroom.

She was also one of the hot ones at the pool, and for me, the fact that she taught kindergarten the rest of the year made her seem especially perverse and exciting . She was in her early or mid-thirties, but small and girlish with a tight body accented by a pair of very womanly breasts which she wasn't shy about showing off. Like a lot of small women, she looked younger than her age and even wore her hair straight and loose as was the fashion with younger women then, often crowning it with a scarf or barrette.

It was her eyes that were the key, though: very light brown, almost amber against her deep tan, but with a surprising depth that told you she knew more than she told, and that she found everything just a little bit amusing. There was a calmness about her, a deliberateness, and it was kind of hard to understand how she and Nina Schechtman could be best friends given their difference in temperament. Nina was loud and brassy, and Shelly was quiet and sly. But then I suppose both of them were very direct and knew just what they wanted, so maybe it wasn't so strange.

Barry laughed at me, seeing me standing there in disbelief. "Wake up time, Jack. You think these women are any different from the girls in high school? You think they don't sit around and talk about us just like girls in school sit and talk about boys? Who's the best lay, who's the cutest, who they'd like to do? I hear about it all. Nina tells me, and she knows everything. You think when you're sitting up there on the perch with your shades on staring at these women that they're not lying there in the sun doing the very same thing and staring at you?"

He laughed again. "Come on, man! Get real! Sherry Greenberg wants to fuck you. She wants you to do to her what her old man doesn't."

"This is bullshit, Barry!"

"She and her old man are on the outs, you know. Supposedly she caught him fooling around with some other piece at the Annex, and they might be headed for the big D, according to what Nina tells me. Things are pretty icy between them."

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of Ray Krantz pulling into the lot in his dirty gray VW bug with our dinner. Barry kicked the rest of the hose into the maintenance shed and leaned on the door.

"Listen, man," he said in a lower voice. "Why do you think I even told you about me and Nina? Because Shelly knows about us and she's jealous. She wants some too, and you're the one she wants. All I need to know is that you're willing."

"Willing?"

He looked at me in exasperation. "For fuck's sake! Do I have to draw you a map?"

Ray sauntered into the guardroom with the bags of food, and we had to shut up. He was followed immediately by a young family, ready to take their evening swim, which meant one of us would have to take the perch.

"Ray, you watch the pool while Jack and I eat and then we'll spell you."

Ray was a good guy, agreeable to a fault. He'd do anything he was told. I wondered briefly if he was fucking anyone but quickly dismissed it. He was a guy who seemed to have no desires whatsoever.

As we dug into the bag of food, Barry asked me, "So? What do you say?"

"About what?"

"About what!" he mocked. He stared at me. "You want to do her? You want to fuck Shelly Greenberg?"

I couldn't believe it all came down to this, a simple yes/no question, like it had already been arranged. I was still struggling to understand all the stuff Barry had just told me and trying to imagine Shelly Greenberg as a real life sex partner--a bridge between my world and the world of adults. I had no idea what might see in me or what she expected and whether I could deliver it. I mean, she was married, had kids, seemed way older than me, and no doubt much more experienced in sexual matters. And on top of all that was the possibility of her divorce.

But then too I was 18 and saturated with sexual desire. Barry's story of what he'd done with Nina--what Nina had done with him--made me burn with envy and feel like a fool for never having paid any attention to all these sexual possibilities around me. And now here was Sherry Greenberg herself, being handed to me on a silver platter.

"Yes," I said. "Of course I do. Fuck yes. But, I mean, what am I going to do? I just can't go up to her and ask her if she wants to fuck."

"It's all set up," Barry said. "All you do is tell me yes and I tell Nina and Nina tells Shelly and then you two just work something out. Her old man's going to be out of town all week so things couldn't be easier. Then you just stroll over there some night after the pool closes--have her leave a sight on or some kind of signal--and you take it from there, whatever you two want to do. You can handle that, can't you, Jack? "

I ignored the sarcasm of the last remark as Barry helped himself to my fries. "So that's all there is to it? She already knows about this?"

He nodded. "I just told you she did, didn't I? This is all Shelly's idea."

I was incredulous, sitting there holding my dripping burger.

The thought passed through my mind that Barry might be setting me up for something: some kind of practical joke or maybe something much, much worse. But really, while Barry could be a schmuck in a lot of ways, that wasn't his style, and strange as it seemed, everything he'd said made a lot of sense.

People were screwing around at Cherry Park Apartments. They were screwing around every day and every night. I'd been to enough of the late-night pool parties to see husbands flirting openly with other men's wives, and couples leaving together who didn't live together. I'd just never stopped to consider what it all meant.

"Only one thing," he said. "You'll have to cover for me tonight when we close up, since I expect to be busy. But I'll cover for you when you take off with you-know-who, so we'll be even."

"Sure," I said. "Sure. No problem." Then: "Jesus! I don't know. I mean, what do I do? What does she expect? What if someone finds out?"

He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin and sucked on his coke. "Worry, worry, worry, Jackie. You never let me down. What do you think you do? You've never been with a woman before? And no one's going to find out. And if they do, well fuck them. It's none of their business what you do with a consenting adult in her own home."

"A consenting adult," I repeated, the implications sinking in. "Yeah, okay. Yeah. I'll do it. God yes, I'll do it!"

~ ~ ~

It was only about an hour later that the Greenbergs showed up for the evening swim--the whole family: Matt and Michelle running ahead with their inflatable floats, and the Steve and Shelly. I felt a moment of panic until I realized that there was no way Shelly could know yet that Barry'd talked to me or what I'd said, or if she did, she was keeping it very well hidden. She barely glanced at me when they came in, though I could feel Barry checking me out from his post in the shallow end, looking slightly amused.

Instead I paid attention to Shelly and Steve and how they interacted, or rather, failed to interact. They kept a polite, cool distance between themselves, a tension that was palpable even from where I sat in the perch. I remembered what Barry'd said about Steve's having another girl over at the Annex, and Shelly knowing about it, and then it was pretty obvious they were putting on this show of family togetherness just for the kids.

Steve Greenberg was a good-looking guy, a little short, compact, but with a good body covered with fine reddish blond hair, just beginning to bald. He wasn't a regular at the pool because he traveled so much, but when he did show up he was famous for his fine swan dive from the high board, which always drew a lot of attention, attention he didn't seem to mind at all.

He showed his skill tonight, executing two beautiful dives while his kids were still getting their tubes on, but then he turned his attention to playing the good daddy, roughhousing with the kids in the shallow end, pulling them around in their tubes and splashing with them in a way I knew they didn't like. Despite their swimming lessons, Matt and Michelle still hated getting their faces wet, and their father seemed to have no idea of that.

Shelly, for her part, sat on a chaise with a novel and never even took her robe off or barely looked up till Matt slipped through his Donald Duck float and jumped up crying and choking, coughing up water. Steve was right there to scoop him up, but their evening was over. Shelly grabbed him out of the water and wrapped a towel around him, and within a few minutes the whole family was drying themselves off and collecting their things and heading for the gate. Shelly and the kids in the lead, Steve following behind.

A while later Barry came over . It was getting on to nine o'clock and he leaned against the perch and looked up at me.

"You see Nina's window?" he asked. I'd thought he was going to say something about Shelly. I'd forgotten about him and Nina.

Nina Schechtman's townhouse was in plain sight, right across the parking lot and down at the far end of the second building north. The front window was dark. There was a light on in an upstairs window, which I figured must be the bedroom.

"I'm going to be taking off," Barry said casually. "You and Ray can close up. Richard's here to help too. Let him hose the deck. He likes doing that."

"Sure."

"Tell them I had some family emergency or something, whatever," Barry said. "Or even better, tell them I had a hot date."

"Right." It wasn't unusual for guards to spell one another for closing up if they had something else to do. No one would be suspicious.

Barry paused at the foot of the perch, looking up at me. "What did you think of the happy family?"

"Not much. It looks like she can't stand him."

He smiled. "That's about it. Just like I said. So... You still on?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sure."

Barry gave me a comradely slap on the foot, then left, walking toward the locker room to change, and as soon as he got inside, I blew the whistle to clear the pool. The next hour was spent collecting towels and garbage and straightening up the lounges and chairs, and when I next looked over at Nina Schechtman's house, all the lights were off.

~ ~ ~

I don't remember being especially excited or keyed up about what was going to happen after that. I suppose the whole thing just seemed too unreal, too alien for me to get my mind around it.

Even the next morning, when Barry came in and said, "Okay. You're all set. I told Nina you were in," it still seemed too unreal and too improbable.

"And did she tell Shelly? What did she say?"

Barry shrugged and took off his sunglasses. "I don't know. I didn't get out of there till like 2 AM, you know? But maybe Nina talked to Shelly this morning. I don't know. Be interesting to see what happens when Shelly shows up, huh?"

He put his glasses back on and smiled at me wolfishly.

Shelly showed up at the pool unusually late, after one, and without the kids. I was working the guardroom, and maybe her smile was a little broader than usual as she walked by. I couldn't say for sure.

She put her book and other stuff down on a lounge by her usual spot, then sauntered over to the guard room wearing a light thin blouse over her suit and carrying her big straw pool tote. She was all smiles, waving and saying hello to people as she threaded her way through the lounges. She seemed totally relaxed, totally self-assured.

"Hello, Jack," she said as she put her hands on the counter. "So I hear you had a talk with Barry last night? And I was involved?"

She caught me by surprise and I nodded, my face blank. I really hadn't expected her to be so direct, and I was suddenly strangely intimidated by this kindergarten teacher.

But Shelly was totally at ease, smiling all the time. "And he made a proposal to you? Something concerning me?"

"Yes. I guess you could say that."

Shelly one elbow on the counter and peeled her sunglasses off. "And what did you say?"

"Didn't Mrs. Schechtman tell you?"

"Oh yes. But I want to hear it from you."

I looked into her eyes, and what I saw there left no doubt: the directness of simple desire, the clarity of lust. I don't think, up until that point, a woman had ever looked at me like that, and it suddenly made it all very real, shockingly real. I felt a thrill in my stomach and my cock immediately started to harden.

"I said yes. Definitely yes."

She gave me that coy smile and said, "Good. I'm glad to hear it," then leaned over the counter resting on her elbows, giving me a good shot of her oversized tits pressed together in the snug top of her two-piece. "That means we can dispense with a lot of the BS."

I nodded, still held in thrall by her eyes. Then she gave me a break and released me from her gaze, letting her eyes slide demurely away from mine.

"You know, I've been wanting to do something for you in return for all you've done for the kids--maybe make you dinner, or have you over for a beer some evening. Would you like that?"

"Yes," I said, my heart hammering. "That would be great. That would really be nice. Anytime you want." Then a thought occurred to me and I asked, "Where are the kids today?"

Shelly didn't bat an eye. "They're with their father. He's leaving for Dallas tomorrow morning and wanted to spend some time with them, so they're over at the annex pool." She didn't have to say any more than that. "He'll be gone all week, so maybe tomorrow, the night after...?"

"Sure. Any time. I'm free." Just to make sure, I asked. "So he won't be there? He won't be at this dinner?"

"Now Jack, what do you think?" She gave me a knowing smile. "I thought Barry would have told you: Steve and I are separating."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said, straightening up. "I don't need it and he doesn't deserve it."

I thought I'd ruined the moment, but Shelly dropped her sunglasses into her bag and started searching for something. She pulled out a plastic bottle of suntan lotion.

"Listen," she smiled sweetly. "I know this really isn't part of your job, but do you think you could rub some oil on my back? I'm getting really dry, and normally I'd have the kids do it..."

I couldn't really just step out of the guardroom and oil Mrs. Greenberg's back in full sight of everyone at the pool, but then the guard room was where we brought people who needed first aid, and oiling her back was a kind of first aid, wasn't it?

"Sure," I said. "Come on in." And I opened the outside door.

Shelly came in and handed me the lotion, then walked towards the shadowy back of the room behind the ice machine, peeling off the thin white blouse as she went. She leaned against the wall then smiled at me over her shoulder. "Right in the middle, between my shoulder blades."

I didn't see any dry spots, but then I hadn't expected to. Her skin was golden tan and wonderfully smooth. A woman's back, not a girl's. There was muscle there, and experience. I squirted some of the oil into my hand and then rubbed my hands together to warm it. I was already hard, just being this close to her. I touched my palms gently to the center of her back.

"Cold?" I asked.

"No. Feels good."

I oiled her back, using far more lotion than I needed, then did her shoulders and the muscles on the sides of her neck, letting her slippery skin slide through my fingers as I instinctively began to rub harder. She was tense and her muscles were tight, and it just seemed like the natural thing to do. I stopped every so often to squirt even more lotion into my hands, and rubbed until her back was slick and glistening. The rhythmic way I worked caused her to sway slightly back and forth, and she hummed with pleasure. She tilted her head and pulled her hair to the side so I could do the back of her neck too, and soon I was massaging her, not just oiling her skin, rubbing deep into her neck and feeling her relax and melt under my hands. The noise from the pool, the sounds of kids playing, all seemed to fade away till there was just me and Shelly and the feel of her flesh sliding beneath my hands.

"Take down the shoulder straps?" she asked. "I need it there, too."

"Mrs. Greenberg..."

"Shelly," she corrected.

"Shelly. I really can't do that here. I can't--"

And then my eye lighted on the big gray metal door to the filter room set back in the wall. It was kept locked, the key being kept in a shoe box under the cash drawer.

"Wait..."

I got the key and took one more look out at the pool. Barry was on the perch stretched out beneath the big red umbrella, and Lee Adams was working the shallow end, which was pretty empty. I knew that the inside of the guard room was almost impossible to see from the perch because of its darkness, just a black hole in a white stucco wall, but I was pretty certain that if Barry were watching me he wouldn't much care anyhow.

I had some trouble getting the key into the lock with my hands all greased up, but at last I got it in and leaned against the heavy door and motioned for Shelly to follow. She smiled and grabbed her bag then kind of hopped through like a naughty little girl.

It was loud in there with the pumps thrumming and hot from the equipment--machinery-hot like the boiler room of a ship. it was dark, the only light coming from the louvers set high in the walls, and I didn't bother turning the lights on. We were standing on a little steel mesh platform about three feet above the sump where all the machinery was set. The place smelled like machinery oil and chlorine and wet concrete, and over all that now was the smell of the coconut-scented suntan lotion smeared on Shelly's back and my hands.

Shelly smiled. "Oh, I see. Is this where you guards take your girlfriends?"

"It's private at least," I said.

"Good. Then you can finish my back."

She turned around and leaned against the door, and I took the plastic bottle and squirted a long line of the thick, viscous liquid down her spine, not caring that I got some on her suit. She gasped and arched away from it, and I immediately dug in, rubbing the cream over her already greasy shoulders.

She reached up and lowered the straps of her top and tucked her arms in so I could do the two pale bands of skin that had been covered. The top was tight and in no danger of falling down, but still, the sight of her leaning there against the door with the straps hanging loosely down her arms was terribly erotic, and she knew it too. There was no longer any doubt as to what we were doing, and the intense eroticism of the situation had my cock rock hard and pushing against my trunks.

I began sliding my hands up and down her waist, my thumbs over her spine, letting my fingers expand to embrace the flare of her hips as my hands slid over her flanks, and I think that's what finally did it for me. Two-piece bathing suits then weren't like bikinis are now--all flesh and no fabric--and she was wearing a respectable bottom, but it was low enough to reveal the small of her back and the base of her spine, and that's where my thumbs ended up, pressing, circling, caressing, as my hands held her waist.

She hummed as I rubbed her. "God, you have a wonderful touch."

I was completely entranced now and dizzy with desire, but I didn't know what to do. Should I try and fuck her down here in the heat and dirt and roar of the filter house machinery? Should I try and reach down between her legs? Should I try to get her to blow me like Nina Schechtman had blown Barry? And just how did you go about getting a married woman 13 or 14 years your senior to get down on her knees and blow you?

I didn't know what to do so I just kept rubbing, and finally Shelly turned around and leaned her back against the door. She looked at me, then down at my trunks where my cock was screaming for release.

"Now I get to do you," she said.

She took the bottle from me and squirted some lotion into her hand, and then lost no time. With one hand she pulled the front of my suit away from my waist and with the other she reached inside and grabbed my cock, just like that, her eyes never leaving my face.

Her hand was cool and warm and slick and firm and she grabbed my hard cock as if she knew exactly what to do with it. Other girls had touched me and played with me, but they'd been my age and nervous and tentative. But Shelly was no novice and her grip told me that she knew exactly what a man's cock was for and how he liked to be touched.

She pulled the front of my trunks down and over my cock and I helped her, pushing them down around my thighs till my entire cock and balls were exposed, then she slid her oil-slicked hand up and down my length a couple times in a way so lewd and sensuous that I had to lean against the door next to her, grunting in primal pleasure.

"My, what a lovely cock," she said. "What a nice, hard, young cock!"

All I could do was groan, just lean weakly against the door and groan as she pulled me off with her small hand, slowly, firmly, just hard enough to make the skin of my cock slide through her greasy fist and send chills up and down my spine, but not fast enough to make me cum. She knew just what she was doing, and she held me just where she wanted me.

"You know what I like?" she asked. "I like when a man plays with my tits while I jerk him off. I like to feel his hands on me as I get him harder and harder. Would you like that, Jack? Is that a deal?"

I moaned, or groaned, or whispered, "Fuck" or something unintelligible, and Shelly stopped wanking me long enough to pull the top of her suit over her tits, revealing the glowing paleness of her untanned breasts, her nipples round and dark. She opened the lotion again and laid a thick, heavy stream all over her tits and along the length of my cock, then snapped the bottle shut and dropped it and gripped my cock again.

I reached blindly for her breasts with my right hand, leaning against the door still on my left forearm, and I don't know what excited me more, feeling the soft, meaty mass of her tits slipping through my oily hand or the slow, methodical way she jerked me off, matching her rhythm to her own level of pleasure as I played with her tits.

"Oh, that's nice, Jack" she whispered. "Play with my nipples. I love to have them played with. Harder! Harder!"

I really had no idea of how to handle a woman's nipples, or just what, "Harder!" meant in this context, but I learned from Shelly Greenberg that day, who told me to squeeze them, pull them, twist them, all of which I did, though with my fingers and her tits covered with suntan lotion I couldn't have done a very good job. She finally reached up and pulled my head down to her breast and told me to just suck it, and that I could do. That was instinctive. The lotion was bitter as hell and my head was filled with the fumes of coconut, but there was no mistaking the feel of that soft, gravid breast in my mouth and the rubbery nipple, and the way she gasped and arched and pulled my hair when I dug my teeth into her. I sucked her and licked her and bit her till she squealed and pressed her tits into my mouth and began to beat me off in earnest.

I loved the way she used me, the way she owned and controlled my pleasure to get me to do what she wanted. All this time I'd been worried I wouldn't know what to do with her as an older woman, and now I found it didn't matter. She was using me, playing me like a harp, increasing her pressure and speed to excite me and make me suck and bite harder, then backing off just to hear me groan in frustration and make me pump desperately into her slack, teasing hand. She held my cock like a handle, like a tennis racket, thumb forward, so that she was pulling on me as she masturbated me, her greasy hand sliding back and forth. It was like she was milking me like you'd milk an animal, or like she was going to lead me around the room by my dick, and no doubt she could have at that point had she wanted to. I was on fire and desperate to cum, and I would have done anything.

I licked and sucked and squeezed, getting the lotion all over my face, and Shelly jerked me off with growing excitement till she suddenly grabbed my hair and pulled me away from my breasts.

"Come now, Jack. Come for me, baby. Show me what you got for me."

I was weak, literally weak with pleasure and the need to orgasm, and with her hand on my cock, Shelly had no trouble turning me so my back was against the door. She started fisting me wildly, her naked, glistening tits jiggling as she jerked me back and forth. Even above the noise of the pumps I could hear the obscene, viscid sound of her hand sliding on my aching tool, and I felt the burning ecstasy of orgasm ripping up my legs and down my spine, too late to stop now, too late to control even if I'd wanted too,

"Come on, Jack! Come on, baby!"

I don't think I even cried out. The orgasm was too intense for that, too overwhelming. I pushed my ass away from the door and thrust into Shelly's hand and I was there, helplessly shooting big, thick bolts of jizz into the air one after the other as Shelly stopped and just held my prick, enjoying the feel of my cock's spastic jerking and spitting and the sight of me shooting three or four feet across the floor.

"Oh wow," Shelly cooed. "So much, baby! So much! Shoot it all, baby! Show me how much you've got!"

The ejaculations finally stopped and I leaned against the door shuddering as the rest of my load just flooded out in a thick, copious stream that covered her little fingers and dripped from her knuckles. Shelly kept pumping me till I had to push her away to make her stop. I was too sensitive, too exhausted, too overcome. I leaned against the door, eyes closed, gasping for breath, weak with relief.

As soon as it was over I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I'd assumed she wanted me as a manly lover, as some kind of macho stud, and instead I'd succumbed to a simple hand job like any horny teen-ager, spewing my seed all over the dirty floor of the filter room. I felt like I'd let her down.

If so, she didn't make a big deal of it. She didn't make much of a deal of it at all. She just looked at me and the puddles of cum on the floor and asked, "Wow! You always come so much?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't think straight, and besides, I didn't think she really wanted an answer. She wiped her hands off on an old towel hanging from the railing, then quickly pulled the top of her suit up and fixed the straps, then reached inside and adjusted her boobs. She ran her hands through her hair and shook it free and fluffed out her bangs.

"How do I look?" she asked. "Do I look okay?"

I nodded. She did. Her face was a little flushed maybe, and her chest too, but mostly she looked just fine, just a little over-oiled.

She reached up and kissed me, just a brief little peck, and I was surprised at how short she suddenly seemed, how innocent her face was.

"That was lovely," she said, caressing my cheek. "God, you're one virile stud, aren't you, baby? Was it good, Jack? Did you like that?"

I could barely speak. I nodded. "Yes. Oh, yes. God yes!"

She smiled and reached into her bag, found her sunglasses and put them back on. "Good. It'll be even better tomorrow night. I'll take the kids to my mom's so we'll be all alone. Come over about ten? That'll give you time?"

I nodded.

"I'll leave the upstairs shades down with a light on if everything's okay. You just come around the back. I'll keep the patio light off. No reason to attract attention."

Again, I just nodded dumbly.

Shelly smiled and I moved aside so she could open the door a crack and peek outside.

"You're going to be great, Jack. You're going to be just what I need!" She gave me a little wave and scurried off.

I stood there with my trunks down and semen dripping from my cock till I finally caught my breath, then I wiped my cock on the same towel she'd used and cleaned up the cum on the floor.

~ ~ ~

At ten o'clock the next night I walked out into the parking lot to look of Shelly's apartment, which was two buildings back and on the other side of the pool from Nina Schechtman's. The moon was near full and the pool was smooth as glass and brilliant blue, and there was a warm breeze rustling the leaves of the big cottonwoods in the lot behind Cherry Park. I could hear crickets and the soft swish of the automatic sprinklers, but other than that, the whole place was absolutely quiet.

The upstairs shades at Shelly's were down and the lights were on, and when I saw that I felt a sudden tightness in my stomach, a surge of excitement. I went back into the guard room and picked up the pizza I'd ordered-- my excuse in case anyone saw me going into Shelly's-- and turned off all the interior lights for the pool, leaving it bathed in the glow of the big spotlights, which stayed on all night. I was washed, shaved, scented, and had six condoms in my pocket . I thought that should do it. I locked the gate behind me and set off.

I did run into some people walking their dog as I made my way to Shelly's, but they just said hi and joked about where the party was, which I laughed off. I waited till they left then cut around the side of her building and made my way to the back of her place. The whole first floor was dark but I could see the cool gray light of a TV filtering through the vertical blinds on her patio door. I climbed her stairs and knocked, softly.

She pulled the shade back and looked at me, then locks clicked and chains slid back and the door opened. I stepped into Shelly Greenberg's darkened kitchen, my heart pounding.

"Oh! What's that?" she asked, seeing the pizza box in my hands.

"My alibi."

It was dark downstairs and full of shadows but I could see she was wearing a mid-length white terrycloth robe belted at the waist with some kind of thin white tee shirt beneath it, like she'd just stepped out of the shower. I was surprised. Of all the things I'd imagined she might wear, a terrycloth robe wasn't one of them.

"Listen," she said quickly, keeping her voice down. "There's been a little problem. Nothing major, nothing to worry about, but my mom's under the weather and couldn't take the kids, so they're upstairs asleep. But don't worry, don't worry. I gave them a double dose of allergy medicine and that just knocks them out. They won't move, hell or high water."

The idea of Matt and Michelle sleeping upstairs while I fucked their mother was kind of worrisome to me, but I didn't say anything. Shelly took the pizza from me and seemed a bit confused, and I realized she was a little drunk. She even swayed a bit as she put the pizza down on the kitchen table and brushed her hair back from her face. She was nervous too, a long way from the poised and deliberate Mrs. Greenberg I knew from the pool. I wondered if she really knew what she was doing.

Shelly seemed to pick up on my concern and waved her hand. "Don't worry. I know my kids, believe me, and they're down for the count."

She waited for my reaction but I didn't know what to say. I was suddenly very aware that I was in her house, the house she shared with her husband and family. The signs of family were all over: the ruffled curtains over the sink, their kitchen table, their pictures on the dining room wall. Everything was so simple and prosaic and typically suburban: the wall-to-wall carpet in the dining room, the plastic runners on the floor to keep the carpet clean.

It could have been anyone's home. It could have been my own, had I lived out here.

As if she could tell I was suddenly having reservations, Shelly stepped forward and put her arms around my neck and pressed herself against me, then reached into my hair and pulled my mouth down to hers. I could feel she wasn't wearing a bra and her breasts pushed against my chest even through the robe, instantly exciting me. She tasted like gin and tonic, and that excited me too, made me think of debauchery and lose, hungry women, and Shelly Greenberg was hungry. She opened her mouth to me and her little tongue slithered against mine with a sudden urgency that took me by surprise, licking at me, pushing her tongue into my mouth, and sucking mine into hers.

I'd never been kissed like that. I mean, I'd done my share of kissing in high school, maybe too much of it. Long marathon sessions of kissing and groping where the girl wouldn't let you go any further so all you could do was kiss till your balls hurt and your tongue was strained and swollen.

But Shelly was a woman who wanted to fuck, and I knew that, and her kisses were hard, intimate and direct, filled with need and desire, an invitation to take her, an attempt to stoke my own desire. She licked my lips then slid her tongue into my mouth and fucked me with it, showing me what she wanted my cock to do to her. She bit my lip and sucked on it, then broke the kiss but left her lips against mine, breathing her hot breath into my mouth.

I hadn't expected this. I thought there'd be some talk, some joking around, maybe a long make-out session on a sofa, the kind of thing I was used to. But no. She was ready, and we just stood there in that dark, shadowy kitchen kissing like that, our lips sliding over one another's while the clock ticked in the darkness and the TV murmured in the front room. I got hard, instantly hard, my cock jerking erect till it pressed against her belly, and Shelly made a low humming, appreciative sound in her throat. Her fingers went to the buttons on my shirt and she started undoing them.

"God, this is going to be good, isn't it Jack? I can just tell. You know I really like you. I always have. I've dreamt about this."

As she spoke she was opening my shirt and kissing my chest, kissing it and licking it, even licking my nipples and playing with them. Her hand dropped down to my crotch and she ran her nails over the bulge of my hard cock, then tried to squeeze me through my pants.

"You must think I'm horrible, don't you?" she asked me. "Like I do this with everyone."

"No! Of course not. Don't be silly!" I was afraid she might be drunk enough to get into some sort of self-indulgent guilt trip and ruin the whole thing.

"Well you don't know what it's like," she whispered. "Living with that asshole for all this time and then finding he's fucking some other bitch right under my nose. You just don't know what that's like!"

"Yeah. That's terrible. That's just terrible..."

"But you like me too, don't you, Jack? You want me. When you see me at the pool, you like what you see, right? The other guards too. I know. I've seen them. I've still got it, and I want to show you. I want to show you what he's missing."

She took my wrist and led me through the dining room and into the living room, where there was a matching white French provincial set, the sofa covered with a clear plastic slipcover, as was the custom back then--horrible things that stuck to naked skin like flypaper. The only light was from the big console TV, showing some cop show with the volume down low. To one side were the carpeted stairs that led up to the bedrooms on the second floor, where the kids were sleeping. Shelly guided me to the sofa and flopped down next to me, rolled halfway on top of me and started kissing me again, hotly, desperately, passionately.

She had my shirt unbuttoned all the way by this time and she pulled it from my pants so she could spread it wide and kiss my bare chest. I was half thinking of Matt and Michelle sleeping upstairs but I was burning with lust too, and shocked by this sudden onset of female passion. She was giving me no let-up, going at me like a woman possessed.

Then she was on her knees on the sofa kissing me and unbuckling my pants and opening the zipper and I was fast losing it, disintegrating under her touch. I had it in my mind that I should take the initiative, that I was the man here and I should be setting the pace and taking control, but she was mad for me, and so good and so expert at what she did, so consumed by raw lust, that all I managed to do was kick my shoes off before she had my pants and shorts down and her soft, cool hand wrapped around my hard cock while she leaning over me kissing me hot and deep.

I was determined to take charge this time, or at least to avoid being as passive as I'd been in the filter room, so I pulled her hand off me and rolled her over onto her back. She might know how to drive me crazy, but I knew some things about her too now, and I pulled her robe open and confronted her big tits straining against what looked like a little girl's undershirt, a little two-strapper with a tiny bow between her breasts. I was still holding her wrist from when I'd pulled her off me, and now I lowered my face to her tits and started tonguing and sucking her nipples right through her tee shirt.

"Oh yes! Oh yes!" she moaned in a harsh whisper. She went limp, raising her head to watch me suck her tits while on the TV, cop-show gunshots rang out. "I love when you suck them through a shirt, through a blouse. It just feels so dirty, like you can't keep your mouth off me!"

I'd never heard a woman talk like this, never dreamed they were capable of it, but Mrs. Greenberg was nothing like the girls I'd known before. She'd been jilted, rejected, and was reaching the end of the summer of her youth, and she was determined to savor and be savored, to give and take as much pleasure as she could.

I pulled her robe open and slid my hand up between her legs where I encountered a pair of tiny white cotton panties, already damp. I don't think she was used to being touched there, or else she was just exquisitely sensitive, because she slammed her legs closed on my hand, and grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me away. But I was stubborn and determined to give her some pleasure, and I reached farther between her legs where I could caress the humid flesh of her pussy, and she groaned and gave in, throwing her legs open and sliding down the sofa to press herself harder against my hand.

I didn't know anything about women back then and how their bodies worked. No one did, not even women themselves. It was a time when nice girls never touched themselves down there or explored and certainly didn't allow themselves to be touched. Fellatio was something only whores did, while cunnilingus was beyond perverse and bordered on pathological. All this was to change within a few years, but back then, that's how it was. I, at least, knew something about the clitoris and had some idea of where it was and what it did (thank you, Hugh Hefner!), and more than that, I was a sensitive lover and paid attention to what my partner liked and what she didn't. So I was able to find Shelly's clit, or at least get close enough to it so that when I caressed it through her panties, the results were electric.

Shelly lost it, just lost control of herself, and her thighs reflexively closed on my hand and then opened, closed, then opened again as the shame of being touched there fought with these feelings of intense, consuming pleasure. Her mouth was open but she didn't make a sound--her breath had caught in her throat--but I could tell from the way her belly spasmed and her thighs shook that I was doing something right, so I kept doing it.

It seemed like we were having some sort of fight here, some struggle to see who could pleasure whom the most, and she was determined to win, and just at the point where she seemed most vulnerable and exposed, she grabbed my hand and pushed it away from her.

"No, no!" she gasped. "No. Wait..."

She rolled over onto her stomach and slid down my body, dragging her lips over my chest and then lower, over my stomach. I watched in disbelief as she slid down my legs till her knees hit the carpet in front of the sofa and her mouth was open and poised over my cock, which was so insanely hard now that the tension made him curve up into an arc over my belly so that the pre cum that dripped from the slit fell on my own stomach. Shelly didn't seem to mind, didn't seem to pay any attention. She took him in her hand and opened her lips.

It was the first time a woman's mouth had ever touched my cock, and I watched slumped on that white sofa, transfixed as she held my dick in one hand and bent her head, opened her mouth and extended her little pink tongue. All was illuminated in the gray-blue glare of the TV set as she kissed the head, then licked it, then licked it again. Then she opened her mouth and gave a deep sigh and plunged her face down over my cock, closed her lips around me and began to work her head up and down.

I was shocked and astounded as Mrs. Shelly Greenberg began to suck my cock--slowly, tentatively, moving her head back and forth and letting my prick slide between her lips with a soft, liquid sound.

Thinking back on it now, I realize it wasn't a very good blow job. It was obvious she hadn't had much experience at it because her execution was cautious and tentative, and it occurred to me that she was probably doing this only because she'd found that Nina had done it to Barry and didn't want to be upstaged. But she was sucking my cock all the same--my dick was in a woman's mouth, and it felt sensational. I gave myself over to the pleasure of her mouth, and as she gained confidence she started doing it faster, bobbing her head and sucking with growing excitement, digging her nails into my thighs and pumping her head up and down, her sun-bleached hair falling in her face. I could hear her breathing hard through her nose, and stopping every so often to quickly swallow the excess saliva in her mouth, but it didn't matter to me. I was hers, her slave, and I would have done anything for her at that point.

My head fell back, my knees fell open and I stared blindly at the ceiling as her mouth slid up and down my shaft. I thought of the kids, and wondered what they would have think if they woke up and crept downstairs to find their mother kneeling between Uncle jack's spread legs with his big hard penis in her mouth. The thought almost put me over the edge right then and there, and I jerked myself upright.

"Wait! Mrs. Greenberg! Shelly! Wait!"

She raised her face off my cock, eyes lidded with lust, lips wet and swollen. "Do you like that Jack? Is that good?"

"Oh my God! Oh my God yes, it's good! But I'd better put on a condom. I'm close, I'm close!" I never would have presumed to ejaculate into her mouth. Never. Not then. It just wasn't done.

"No," she said, standing up and taking off her panties. "I want you to do it to me. I want you to put it in me."

I blushed. I'd already pulled out a Sheikh and was tearing it open, getting ready to unroll it onto my dick.

"You don't need that," she said. She seemed almost in a daze, intoxicated, standing there with her robe open and her panties off. "I'm on the pill."

"You're sure?" I'd only been laid once without wearing a rubber, and that out of desperation and because she swore she was safe, and I was sick with worry for weeks until her next period.

"Of course." She smiled that kind of spacey smile, and I stood up to let her get on the sofa but she shook her head no. "Take all your clothes off, Jack, and we'll do it on the floor."

"The floor?"

"Yes. It's better on the floor. You'll see."

She moved over to the darker end of the living room where a coffee table would screen us should the kids suddenly appear. She slid her robe off and laid it on the carpet, and I suddenly realized what she was wearing on top, that little tee-shirt. It was the kind of tee shirts little girls wore, but obscenely stretched from the mass of her breasts, her nipples showing through. It was as if she wanted me to see her as a child or little girl.

Her attitude had changed somehow since the blow job. She seemed calmer now, less passionate, as if fucking me now was something she had to do, a commitment she owed me. As I used my knee to push the coffee table back, I saw the portrait of her family standing on top of it--a professional studio photo of Shelly, Steve, Matt, and Michelle, posed in a smiling family group. It made me uncomfortable and as she got down on the floor I tried to unobtrusively lay it on its face.

"No," she said, lying down and straightening her hair. "Leave it there. Leave it right there."

She stretched out on her back and straightened her robe beneath her, then parted her legs. I thought maybe I should take her in my arms and kiss her or hold her, continue the foreplay and mutual arousal, but something in her attitude told me she didn't want that. She was on her back with her legs apart, and she was ready for business. I knelt between her thighs and leaned over her, and Shelly reached up and caressed my face.

"You know, I've always trusted you, Jack. The kids do too. I know you'd never do or say anything to hurt us, right?"

"No," I said. "Never."

With that she sighed and closed her eyes, ready for me. I took my dick in my hand and tried to find her opening, bumping clumsily against her thigh and her ass and God knows what else.

"Easy," she said with a smile. "Easy. Here. Let me help."

She raised her knees and took hold of my cock and guided me to the maddening softness and heat of her open pussy. I knew the initial entry was often painful and difficult, so I deliberately held myself back, resisting the urge to plunge right into her. But Shelly planted her feet on the floor and reached around me and grabbed my ass and in one smooth move she lifted her hips and pulled me into her, impaling herself on my cock and taking my shaft into her.

She gave a little grunt of discomfort while I groaned in salacious pleasure as her tight sheath closed on me and the animal heat of her slick pussy radiated through my body. I was fucking her, was all I could think. I was fucking a married woman, and I pushed in a little deeper.

"More," she whispered. She slid her legs around the back of my thighs and then reached around me and grabbed her ankles and used them to pull me in even deeper, sighing in pleasure as she forced the broad base of my cock against the very lips of her pussy.

I expected her to set the pace, to tell me how she wanted it, but she didn't. Once she had me inside, she said, "Stay like that just a minute. Just stay like that," and I did, holding my breath, feeling my prick throbbing inside her as if I would cum at any second. Then she relaxed and said, "Okay. Do it. Do it, Jack."

I started to fuck her, trying desperately not to go too fast, trying to make it last. I raised my ass and pushed into her and did it again and again, and at first she was quiet but then she started moaning and breathing hard. Her legs fell open and she grabbed my hair and pulled my mouth to hers and kissed me hard and deep, but she didn't move much, letting me take her, letting me take what I wanted. Every so often I stopped and held myself still inside her to control my excitement and then she would give her an impatient little swivel, a little thrust up at me that sent chills up my spine, and I would start to fuck her again.

She was right about doing it on the floor. It was wonderfully good, intense. There was no give in the floor, no softness to absorb the force of my thrusts, so each plunge went into her deep and hard, making her grunt at first, the grunts becoming moans of obsequious pleasure as she adjusted to my size. I pushed her little tee shirt up so her tits were exposed and I bent my head and sucked and nursed on her like I had in the filter room. She grabbed my hair and pulled my mouth against her tits and hissed with pleasure: "Is it good, Jack? Is it good? Tell me how good it is! Tell me how good I feel."

I had the eerie feeling she was talking to the photograph, but I didn't care. "God yes, it's good! It's so fucking good! You're the best, Shelly! You're just the best!"

I could see her smile in the darkness. "Tell me when you're close, Jack. Tell me when you get close!"

"Yes, yes. I will. I will," I promised, though I had no idea if I could or not.

I tried to draw it out. I tried to stop moving when I felt myself getting close, but then Shelly would do that little hip-wiggle that drove me crazy, and I had to start fucking her again, pushing into her, then slamming into that sweet pussy again and again, nailing her ass to the floor. She might have orgasmed. I couldn't tell. There were a couple of times when she seemed to choke on her own breath and turn rigid and motionless, her face and chest getting red and hot, but then she'd collapse again into this disjointed pile of female flesh and I'd keep on fucking her, fucking her through my pleasure, through the perverse knowledge of her kids asleep upstairs, through the excitement of knowing she was older than me and married and the lewd thought that I was fucking her in her own home, on the floor, like an animal.

Finally it was too much. The orgasmic pressure just became too much, a force in its own right and all the nerves in my body were screaming for release, vibrating with erotic tension. My weight was all on top of her, my hips were pumping with furious abandon and the sweat was streaming off my body.

"You close, baby? You close?"

All I could do was grunt and gasp, but my total lack of control told her all she needed to know. I tried to speak and nothing came out but a kind of guttural snarl as I felt it start, felt my orgasm start.

But that was apparently all she needed to know exactly where I was, because suddenly Shelly planted her feet on the carpet and started fucking back at me, lifting her hips with hard, angry strokes and slamming her loins against me so hard and fast that our flesh smacked together with the sound of some obscene, wet applause. She fucked me like a fury, with all the love and passion and hurt and hatred that men and women feel for each other, and the cum came boiling up through my cock like a stream of magma and exploded into her pussy in jets of savage ecstasy, again, and again, and again, as Shelly kept her feet planted on the floor and her hips tilted up to receive every drop of my explosive release, opening herself up to me and taking it, caressing my back and whispering, "Yes, Jack! All of it, baby! All of it! Shoot it inside me, baby! Deep! I want it deep! All of it! Every drop!"

She held herself pressed against me as I ejaculated inside her, the first wracking, ecstatic spasms giving way to the shuddering pleasure of deep, draining relief as the semen gushed from my cock and filled her with living, liquid male heat.

"Mmmm..." She caressed the back of my neck and kissed me, pressing her pussy hard against my shrinking cock.

"Who's the best now, Jack? Who's the best you've ever had now?"

~ ~ ~

Afterwards, Shelly made us lie on the carpet for what seemed like an awfully long time, and had me get a pillow from the sofa to put under her ass because she said it was sore. Then we picked ourselves up and collected our clothes and went upstairs, past the kids' room, and made love again in her bedroom, sweeter this time, and not so desperate. I left around two AM. The kids never woke up.

I'd like to be able to say that we fell in love, or that there was some satisfying emotional conclusion to this affair, and for a while it seemed like there might be. I saw her several more times that summer, and learned an awful lot about men and women and making love from her, but the fact was, that though we were very fond of each other, it was basically a sexual relationship. There was no way we were going to fall in love. We moved in two different worlds, and summer was drawing to an end.

She spent a lot of time talking about her hatred of Steve, a hatred that had been simmering for years, caused by his financial tightness regarding her and the kids and general boorishness and selfishness, among other things. They'd tried to reconcile, but the last attempt ended with Shelly's discovery of his affair with the woman at the Annex, and that had been the last straw. She talked about how she was going to ruin him in the divorce, both financially and socially, and that was kind of scary. The divorce papers were served the week after I first saw her, and it was because lawyers got involved that I finally had to stop seeing her. She was pretty sure she was being watched for signs of adulterous behavior and wouldn't risk losing her legal advantage by being seen with me. But by then it was only a week or so before school started and I left Cherry Park for good, and meanwhile Shelly'd taken the kids and gone to stay at her mother's, so I never really got to say goodbye. When I went back to visit the deserted pool in November, nobody knew what had happened to her.

There was one more thing I should mention that didn't occur to me until months later, but has bothered me deeply ever since. It's improbably and hard to believe, but I should mention it nonetheless.

That night after we first made love on the floor, Shelly'd made me lie there with her with her hips up for almost an hour, which I thought was kind of odd. Later on when we were upstairs, I'd gone to use the bathroom, and, nosy as I am, I poked around in her medicine cabinet, and found there a three-month supply of birth control pills, bound in a rubber band. I'd never seen BC pills and I found the packaging intriguing, with the pills arranged in a calendar cycle, so I took a good look at them.

The package for the June supply was empty, all used up, and so was July. But here it was near the end of August, and that month's supply hadn't been touched at all.

Would Shelly have done something like that? Gotten herself knocked up by me and claimed the baby was Steve's, conceived just before their final split, just to spite him and milk him for more child support?

As I say, I wonder about that a lot.

This story was written by user dr_mabeuse

Header picture by Ardent Shibari

Fleshtag don't take responsibility for any grammatical errors in the article