This is the guy side of "Tthe Birthday Present". So now you know his reasons. Where they good ones?
In a way Larry couldn't believe his luck. He was being considered as Writing Center director, and they even sent to this conference, an internationally based one, but right next door. That meant one thing to him, three days of freedom with an expense account. And plenty of nearby coffeehouses to explore new baristas, his latest set of conquest material for his manic stream of women.
In his St. Paul apartment he had a map of the world with pins, one for each country containing a woman he had fucked, or as he preferred seduced. Baristas at least in Minnesota seemed to often be from eastern European and Middle eastern countries. His map in these areas was definitely filling up. Many came here on student visas looking for husbands. It was his mania driven need to populate his list of conquests that drove him, and here he was in fresh territory. Or fresher. The age of his victims helped, young tight bodies with swirls of dark long hair, sweet smelling, and exotic, unable to keep up with his barrage of endless words, they often disappointed him.
With one his favorites Dregna he had explored some new territory. He let slip about his homosexual forays in college, and she offered herself to him as both man and woman by presenting him with a strapon and dildo that matched his girth and length so perfectly he couldn't help being impressed. She also liked the idea of playing the Dom, even though she asked too many questions about comfort to be that exciting in these roleplay scenes. Still he appreciated the variety. The leather cuffs, neat assorted restraints, all intrigued him.
Dregna was on one mission to get married and a permanent place in the USA. When he refused, she married some lonelier, saner man, but continued to meet with him once a week. He had system of nights for particular women. All lived in St. Paul and nearby saving on car money and allowing for walking. There was the lovely barista that modeled lingerie on the side for an Internet only site, a violinist, and her youngish mother, the passionate poet, and Dregna all at his whim.
Yet he was feeling restless, spinning out of control. Twice he had been late for a class, and this was the beginning of a dangerous pattern. The Writing Center Director gig could help him, ground him, then there was this conference just on the other side of the Mississippi with other coffee shops, and favorite bars. ( He had stopped drinking after losing two jobs at universities in Minneapolis, so he was now dry.) He was up for the change.
In the Minneapolis days his favorite conquests were bored young housewives. He coached them tennis and spent plenty of time in saunas and private locker rooms with his prey. He had learned many tricks, ones that could almost remove from his mind his only true love his ex-wife. So why had she left him? Only for the obvious, dozens of affairs, lost jobs, lies, disappearances, forced hospital stays. She was a lovely blonde haired woman with an angelic face and gorgeous body. But—it was never enough. He liked them young, and he liked them not as smart as he was. So that is why his first response to Gabrielle was "Run!"
He was at this conference of basically the nerdiest of the nerds. Boring presentations. Not one person with any life in their eyes. No one like him. Not a mental illness in the whole room, and then he saw her. An older woman with dark long curly hair, slender and striking, yet something more, an oozing of sexual tension that began around her lips, full and brilliantly plum red, and eyes like deep blackish wells of unknown depth. Yet, it was her smile, her bright teeth and the curl of her lips, and the raising of one eyebrow that revealed her to him as a compatriot. He had to find out more.
He asked to sit at her table conveniently close to the ballroom door. The pre-keynote had begun, and the room was expectant yet full of dead boring faces. How was it that he was talked into going inside again? He was accompanied by some 20 something rather homely and friendly, yet boring graduate student that he had just had a cigarette with by the hotel's back door. He only smoked cloves and only when he was feeling especially bad or bored. He saw the olive skinned women right away, something in the way she tossed her long bang from over her left eye. She had a gothic look to her, not aided by her conservative clothes. It was somewhere in her face, full of nuance, dark mysteries, loneliness, defiance, compassion, cruelty. Her teeth showed that she barely drank coffee, and didn't smoke, so white, so sexy. She licked her lower lip and sucked it in and puffed it back out. Her dark plum lipstick shimmered on her otherwise makeup less face.
If was killing him, all this detail, it was just like he was in his story, the story in his head that morning about the relationship, a perfect one that took place in only 24 hours and no longer. Relationships are never perfect, and yet he craved the perfect moment. The perfect woman, but a perfect woman is not defined by her perfection, instead by her complex aloofness and sexually dynamic power. He reached for his meds, and changed his mind. He wanted the ride to be pure. He flashed forward to his hand around her throat, her eyes going soft with true submission and truer, purer desire.
She spoke and her words intrigued him. She released them at him rapid fire, and he gave them back to her, just as rapidly.
"My name is Gabby by the way, short for Gabrielle."
"Oh really well my name is Larry By-the-Way perhaps we are cousins," he retorted.
