It was the fall of 1980 and I was a college freshman charged with the task of helping today's visiting author set up for a talk with the literature classes, a task I was not particularly looking forward to. Until they mentioned who the author was going to be: Jane Karen Otis...the famed and very prolific author whose dusk jacket photos I'd been swooning over since I came across her first books! Her prose was kind of sexy, too...with a lot of subtext that probably wasn't meant to be arousing... but had that effect on me anyway.
About an hour before her speech I was finishing the set up in the room, hanging posters and filling the water pitcher and generally tidying up. I wanted to get that done before heading to the downstairs foyer to greet her. To my great surprise, just as I was kneeling behind the lectern to clear out some debris, I suddenly heard a voice coming from the entranceway: "Hello? Is this the right room for my talk?"
The voice was soft but throaty and intoxicatingly mellifluous. It could be no one else. There, surrounded by the bright lights shining in from the hallway was the statuesque formon none other than Jane Karen Otis herself! Tall, thin but very shapely...with short permed hair the color of late autumn. Her lips full and red, her eyes wide and green, wearing a light red checkered blouse and a long, flowing shirt that reached down to her ankles and her shiny, black, high heeled boots.
"Um," I stammered, "Miss Otis, we weren't expecting you for another half an hour yet!"
"That's fine," she beamed a shining smile my way. "I always like to come early before a speech." Was that a wink? A lascivious gaze out of the corner of her fluttering eyelids? No, couldn't be...
"Um, is there anything I can do for you to help you prepare?" I asked nervously.
Miss Otis turned her back to me for a moment, closed the door gently and turned the lock. Then she slowly spun around, bent over to grab the ends of her log skirt and slowly began to lift. I stood there dumbfounded watching her shapely legs appear to me one inch at a time. She smiled warmly as she continued to lift... higher and higher. I was now looking at her knees, her shapely, nicely rounded knees. I looked on aghast as I realized she was not stopping there! Part of me thought this was not right for a world class author to be doing and that she should stop... but it was a very small part and I kept watching with rapt attention as the skirt continued its upward journey.
Now I was looking at her thighs. She slowly began to spread her legs as the skirt rose higher. "Shall I keep going?" she purred. Speechless, I nodded vigorously. She kept going.