I guess you're right Baby Doll, I am a romantic. Looking back on the stories I've written, regardless of whether they've got lot of sex in them or not, regardless of whether they're violent or pacifist they're all love stories. Thanks for your love. I love you very much.
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Begin:
My name is Albert Wolf, and I want to set the record straight about my grand-uncle Horace Featherstone and my, uh, my, um . . . I guess I'll have to call "her" my grand-aunt because, I . . . well they . . . actually . . .?!
It's hard to say exactly what I want to say. I guess it'd be better if I start from what I guess is the beginning. I'm still not sure how to go about it, though. I guess maybe we should start not too long after Grand-Uncle Horace's accident. I don't quite know how to, um . . .
Okay, what happened was that Uncle Horace was under the pedestal crane when it toppled. He worked, still does, come to that, in construction, but, okay, okay. The accident happened when they were working in the Templeton Saints Hospital Annex, you remember that job, the pedestal crane had a bad bearing or something and it went down, killed the operator and a couple of people on the ground and injured four others. Well, Uncle Horace was one of the injured although he did manage to get against a steel reinforced footing that hadn't been back filled yet, and got partially sheltered. The way the steel crane bent when it slammed down ended up lightly tapping his back. It was a very glancing tap as far as falling cranes go, but it laid a solid bruise on him. His spine swelled up and put him out "temporarily" -- for over a year and a half.
In the first four months or so that he was laid up, he was essentially paralyzed. With his temper and the way he had with words, i.e., cussing, he went through six LVN/LPN's and three non-medical helpers. Granted that was the roughest time of his recuperation because he couldn't move his lower extremities and was in excruciating pain. There were times when the low dosage pain meds weren't enough to take the edge off and he refused anything stronger saying that wasn't going to get hooked. Those times he was literally bending steel because the pain was so great. He was screaming obscenities at things and at people around him. I knew it was the pain, other people knew it was the pain, but nobody wanted to be around him in his pain. We all wanted him to take the pain meds and hang getting hooked on them, but he wouldn't. So he drove people away with his cursing and stubbornness.
Right about then, Billie answered the ad we'd been continuously running and willingly took the job. We didn't expect her to last too long. We thought she, er, he, or whatever -- that Billie would never last, because Billie appeared to be such a sweet, even-tempered girl. Billie surprised us, managing to hang in there and showing a lot of grit, holding her tongue and answering Uncle Horace's loudly obnoxious tones with her soft sweetness. It seemed to tame him a little, but only a little.
As for Billie, well, Billie was, or is, a strange one. Here's what I found out later, okay, don't judge, lest ye be, you know, judged okay? Okay. Billie was a guy. He was as queer as a three-dollar . . . you know. Or not, I still don't know where to put him -- her. I called him gay, I don't really know if that applies, see he had a medical condition called Klinefelter's Syndrome. Men -- men? Males with this thing have what is basically a feminine body, i.e., no facial hair or very thin facial and body hair, feminine features, female breasts, more slender bodies and shapelier hips -- and their male parts are tiny, like a little boy's things -- smaller. I'm told that some have them looking like an infant's penis and nuts. I found out later that they can't cum much because their nuts are way small and may not produce sperm. Billie told me that guys with this condition sometimes just have an empty sac, too few male hormones. Basically, he looked like a woman, his breasts weren't that big, maybe C cup sized, but they kind of went with his slender body, you know? And maybe it wasn't so odd that he liked guys, looking like he did. He certainly was prettier than a lot of women I know, even without the makeup, and, and . . . oh, hey, now! Don't get me wrong, I'm no queer, and I don't want nobody to think I am, okay? But he was a real pretty guy, plus, he had a lot of patience.
Uncle Horace was at a point where he was getting some movement in his legs when Billie came along. His therapist was an ex-GI and put up with a lot of his mess. He said that he knew a couple of drill sergeants who could learn a few new ways to cuss from him. Anyway, about that time, Billie answered the ad in the newspaper for a non-medical care-giver. By then all we needed was someone to help him in and out of his wheelchair, assist him in getting in and out of the shower, get his newspaper in the morning and just generally cook and keep house for him and be available 24 hours a day. The pay wasn't much, but meals and a room with a private bath were included as well as cable TV. And of course, it was getting to be a better job with Uncle Horace calming down and getting used to his gradually healing condition.
Billie certainly seemed capable, she, or ah, he, uh . . . what do you call him, uh, her or . . . shit! Fuck it! Her! She was able to help Uncle Horace in moving around and she fixed his meals and she even got him dressed decently. She took his verbal abuse and turned it right back in on him, using her own brand of logic and stubbornness to get him to do what he should be doing. I think Billie's problem was that he looked too feminine for most gays and the guys that she attracted were straight guys that thought she was a good-looking woman, which she was. Damn good-looking. Okay, okay, I'll admit it, I liked her.
The thing is that she could have had an operation to make the actual change, so she could actually be more of a woman, but she didn't want that. She was as stubborn as Uncle Horace. And I mean she was more like him than we imagined. She had said to me in a private moment, that she was pretty content with what she had and enjoyed her little penis and that she was afraid that if she got cut apart, she'd lose all her sexual feelings.
Alright, lookit, if I sound confused, it's because I am, okay? I mean, well, lookit -- Uncle Horace was a man's man. Billie was a womanly man. No three ways about it, but . . . and this is a pretty big but . . . she came into his life when he really needed someone to care for him. His wife, Grand-Aunt Caroline had died, oh, roughly ten years previously and he'd only recently started fooling around again. No dates, just women he knew who were "ready, willing and able." Then the accident took him out for a while, and he was laid up for over a year and a half, almost two years. About the time that the Physical Therapist needed some help in getting him motivating, as depressed as he'd become, along came Billie. If you believe in serendipity, this was it, she came at just the right time.
Uncle Horace took to Billie as if she were a long-lost enemy. He'd pile his verbal abuse and scream at her. He'd end his diatribe by saying that he'd never had to fire anybody, they just plain quit on him. Billie looked back at him, smiling a gritty little smile and very gently said that she had never quit a job, so just get over it! She gave him back as good as she got -- in a surprisingly civilized tone of voice. She was as stubborn a, um . . . person as he was.
She had been putting up with him for the better part of a year, and as I understand it now, sleeping with him for a couple of weeks, when he grumpily asked her if she was tired of paying for her other apartment yet. Before she could answer, he told her that if she was, then she needed to get her crap out of it and move in to the house since she was sleeping there most of the time. She smiled but shook her head, she had beautiful head of long very fine thick, thick russet hair. She said that she had a cat and couldn't just walk out on her just as she couldn't walk out on Horace. She said that she had to keep her fed and her litter-box changed out. He sighed and went back to watching his football game as she went about the cleaning chores in the house that she already kept spotless. Finally, he grumpily gave in and told her that she might as well bring the stupid animal with her as well, they'd just have to make room for it. She had smiled and impulsively kissed him on the cheek, embarrassing them both, but true to form, Uncle Horace ignored it and stumped out of the room on his walker. They may have been sleeping together but evidently hadn't yet kissed.
Rhonda, the cat, was a persnickety animal. She would not make friends with me no matter what I tried, but she fell in love with Uncle Horace almost immediately and spent more time with him than with Billie. Rhonda would come sneaking into the room after they went to sleep and curl up under his chin, her nose close to the source of the loud snoring. He'd fuss about "that stupid cat" but he never pushed her away and usually shared his breakfast with her. Rhonda liked her eggs over easy, so he changed from his usual scrambled eggs to eggs over easy -- with a runny yolk. And he had a similar change with Billie just as gradually, although still refusing to admit that he liked her. Odd man. He slept with her, didn't have sex with her and would not admit his feelings for her.
In the mornings, Billie would fix their breakfasts, and he'd wait politely for her to sit before eating or even letting the impatient Rhonda eat. Afterward, she would help him into the bathroom and help him with his morning shower, scrubbing his back and legs and butt. He was a fastidious man. Early in their relationship, she climbed in with him completely dressed, wearing shorts and the heavy bra of a two-piece swim suit. He threatened her with worse than death if she tried to mess with his butt hole.
"Keep your hands off my ass-hole," he growled the first time she helped bathe him.