The Adventures of S.L.U.T.
(Sexual Liberator/Underwear Therapist)
Episode 1 – In Which S.L.U.T. Cures an Alien Abductee's Stubborn Erection
Leslie Manfried, psychologist, controversial sex therapist and best-selling author, sat as guest of honor at table's far end at the Upper Eastside apartment of Leonard and Biennale Kravitz. Leonard sat opposite at table's head while his wife sat to his right. Leslie's then-boyfriend Peter, a fledgling actor over ten years her junior, sat to the doctor's left while the other seven places were taken up with guests Leslie only vaguely knew, if at all. A Grand Cru Bordeaux had just been poured, into glasses of heavy cut Czechoslovakian crystal, as accompaniment to a main course of beef Wellington and small potatoes. And some other obscure roasted vegetable melange including baby carrots.
Leslie, a connoisseur with a five thousand bottle cellar of her own in her Riverview mansion, had just sampled the wine (good but served five degrees too warm) when she felt a curious but familiar vibrating sensation just north of her lace-pantied vagina, imbedded in her old-school, bushy-black pubic hair. Picking up the phone at her elbow and pretending like IT, in silent mode, had just buzzed, Leslie hurriedly excused herself from the table explaining, "I have to take this."
In the privacy of the Kravitz's ornate bathroom, where an apple-and-cinnamon candle burned atop a gold commode, Leslie raised the skirt of her evening dress while pulling the narrow vee of her panty down. It was signaling her all right, the embedded, blinking chip. Picking up off black marble her ostensibly run-of-the-mill iPhone 18, but one specially hacked and modified for her unique purposes, Leslie brought to life the main screen. It said Alert! in red across the top, and below that a name and address. A message pulsed below: "Your Services Needed At Once! Your Services Needed At Once!..."
At the very bottom of the screen Leslie punched the "Copy" button followed by the adjacent one labeled "Call!" The phone would take care of everything else. Recomposing herself, and making sure her $8,000 Dior gown did not betray any untoward wrinkles, Leslie reentered the main apartment and approached the table of hungry guests, every one of whom lowered their fork and looked up.
"I'm so sorry," Leslie said, forcing a smile. "That was Belleview General. I have an emergency. One of my patients..."
From table's head, frowning sympathetically, Leonard Kravitz wiped his mouth and said, "I'm so sorry, Leslie..."
Meanwhile, to Leslie's left, Peter had jumped up, mouth already wiped. Who would have ever guessed that his tight little bottom was striped red from last night's bondage therapy session with Leslie? "I'll drive you!" he offered.
Leslie found her strappy Fendi purse on a nearby stuffed chair and waved her boyfriend off. "No, thanks. I've already called an Uber." Leslie flashed a smile: "Stay here and entertain our hosts. Tell them that joke you told me last night..."
"Which one?"
"A man and a dog walk into a bar?"
"Which one?"
"He tells jokes?" Leonard inquired, at last showing interest in his guest of honor's most recent dumbshit boytoy.
"I'm not just an actor. I do standup too," Peter, retaking his seat, explained.
"Do tell!" Biennale said, taking in, well behind the tall seatbacks otherwise in her line of vision, a last look at Peter's muscularly round, just-planted ass.
By the time Leslie descended in the elevator and the doorman, in his regal uniform, had opened the building's gold-framed glass doors for her, the famous psychologist's ride was pulling up at the curb. If it had been an Uber, or Lyft, or RideMe, the specially modified all-electric Prius would have been the most expensive cab in the world. Or at least outside of Abu Dhabi. The Prius had three labeled driving mode buttons: Econo, Normal and Sport. Below this trio was a curious unmarked fourth button. Once engaged, the homely, unassuming though aerodynamic Toyota, specially modified by a former patient of Leslie's, Elon Musk, could hit a top speed of over 200 mph and do the quarter mile in under nine seconds. Not that you could ever reach a quarter mile's distance in Manhattan without first hitting a stoplight or pedestrians in a "Safe Crossing" zone. Fuckers!
A driver about Peter's age (but much better in bed) jumped out of the Prius to open the rear door for Ms. Manfried. His name—the codename he went by—was Bluejay. Shortened to Jay. Jumping back in the driver's seat Jay roared (well, silently) off, the destination address already loaded into the car's GPS. They were 17 blocks away. At this time of night, flashers on, they would be there in four minutes.
In the heavily tinted car's backseat Leslie hurriedly, but efficiently, dressed. Or rather undressed. Against her firm, pale skin she wore the same "uniform" whether posing as Leslie Manfried best-selling author or, by night, transitioning into the city's mystery sexual problem-solver, a woman who went by the acronym of S.L.U.T. I.e., Sexual Liberator & Underwear Therapist, as she had been strategically leaked it to the media once upon a time.
S.L.U.T.'s uniform was simple, elegant, tasteful, sexy. A black-lace push-up bra (Victoria's Secret had come on board as one of her tacit sponsors), matching bikini panties along with a matching pair of lace-topped thigh-highs, which she now tugged up in the backseat, slender but shapely legs crosswise in the footwells. Yanking off her brunette wig, S.L.U.T. revealed her true self: a platinum-blonde, curling dyed hair to the shoulders. A dash of ubiquitous red lipstick, applied in a lighted mirror in the back of the customized passenger seat headrest, completed the look. Or not. There was still, after all, the black Zorro mask to pull on. S.L.U.T. blew a kiss—at her mirrored, duplicitous, hidden self—before emerging under her own steam from Prius's rear door, wearing uni's last touch: a fuchsia cape that buttoned at the throat and covered her legs to mid-thigh, below the gluey lace grip of thigh-highs. As for cape's brazen front, S.L.U.T., depending on mood and situation, either had to hold it shut in a tight fist or...flaunt it, baby!
"Look! It's the S.L.U.T. lady!" shouted a small boy walking along the opposite sidewalk with his parents, as Leslie ran under building's damp awning to the occupancy roll, and attending buzz-in buttons. There was no doorman. Meaning...the place was a Lower Eastside dump. The mother gently thumped the back of her son's head.
"Don't say that word, ever!"
"But that's her name!" Such had S.L.U.T.'s fame grown to this point in the Great City.
A man answered the building's intercom call. "Who is it? What do you want?"
Leslie rolled her eyes. "It's S.L.U.T. Did you or didn't you apply for help?'
"I did. But..."
"But what?"
"How do I know it's really you?"
"Who else would arrive at your batshit apartment building at nine o'clock in the evening on a rainy night less than ten minutes after your cry for help with a Grand Cru Bordeaux on the table?" You asshole! S.L.U.T. wanted to add.
She was buzzed in, finally. His apartment was on fourth floor. No elevator. Stairs. S.L.U.T. climbed them two at a time. She trained at her gym five days a week. She had the body of a women's mixed martial arts fighter and the stamina of a marathon runner. This was nothing, these bullshit, underlit stairs in a middle-class (which is to say lower-class in Manhattan) apartment building. I could climb to the 110th floor, no problem! S.L.U.T. assured herself.
Leslie, I mean S.L.U.T., didn't have to use any of her magic tools to force open the lock(s) or jimmy the door. Or simply bust it down with her powerful leg kicks and fists. The guy was waiting for her, face filling the frame like an ugly Jack Nicholson in The Shining. He was unattractive—but that was part of the trade. A bloated, ruddy face, thinning hair. Forty-something. He was wearing a thick white cotton robe, probably stolen from a decent hotel on a business trip.
A typically disappointed S.L.U.T., still grasping her concealing cape at the center, at her pierced navel, let the silky thing fall open, the fuck looking her up and down with widening eyes.
"Are you S.L.U.T.?"
"What's it look like?"
