Jennifer Hutchins, aka the costumed crimefighter Midnight, aka CallmeCallme6969 on the swingers' site she had joined last night, logged onto her PC just after noon on Saturday. It was a gray, nondescript fall day, with leaden skies, a steady wind that rattled the eaves, and bare tree limbs reaching up, as if aiming to poke holes in the low-lying clouds. A lazy day, made for sleeping in, napping, curling up on the sofa with her cat, Mitsie, and popping in a DVD.
But first she wanted to check her e-mail. She stretched her arms, yawned. She had only gotten out of bed a half hour ago—having slept the whole morning away. It was just what she needed, but she still was shaking off the cobwebs from her long night's sleep. She wasn't a coffee drinker, never had been. So it took her a while to become alert, get her faculties in full working order.
When she saw her inbox flooded with fifty-three messages, that did the trick! Her faculties whirred into overdrive. How could she have received fifty-three messages in just one night?
She scrolled through the e-mails. Nothing there at all except notice after notice from the sex site. One message informed her that her account had been approved. Duh! All of the other messages told her that someone had sent her a private message on the site. Good grief. Were her naked photos that much of a hit already? She felt a swell of pride—nice to know that the guys approved of what they saw. But still, the thought of logging into her account and reading over fifty e-mails from admirers felt a bit daunting.
She felt something soft and furry rub against her leg, and looked down. Mitsie. Sitting on the floor, staring up at her, eyeing her lap.
"Hey, girl," she said. "You want my lap? Well, what are you stalling for?"
Mitsie waited no longer. She sprang up, and landed perfectly, almost weightlessly, on Jen's lap. She admired the way her cat moved and leaped so gracefully. It was something for her to emulate, to strive to match herself.
Going through the fifty-odd messages was not as daunting as she at first feared it would be. The vast majority of the messages were one-liners, with subject headings like "Hot," "Baby, let's fuck 2nite," "Great rack," and "Hey, ur smokin'." And the accompanying text usually didn't have much else to say. "You want my cock up your fuckhole, don't you?" one message read, and the guy had attached three pics of his penis—two of it erect, one of it post-orgasm, shriveled up, the cum still fresh at the tip.
"Eww," she said, and clicked on the Delete button.
She had never seen so many dicks. One after another, after another—the sameness was deadening. She got to the point where she hardly even read the one-line messages anymore. She just deleted them.
But just when it seemed like there would be nothing to make her pause, just when she was about to close out of the site and likely never log in again, she spotted a message with more meat to it, and no cock pics attached.
She also thought the guy's user name was original . . . NotIronPyrite. Very interesting. Kind of egotistical, after a fashion—she supposed the guy was trying to say he wasn't Fool's Gold, but rather the real thing. Still, it was subtle, intelligent, showing a modicum of wit. Better than anything else she'd seen.
And his e-mail actually was composed of paragraphs instead of a single sentence. Reading through it, he sounded like a nice enough guy, though kind of conceited and presumptuous. But at least he was up front. She wondered about his unwillingness to send her a face pic, but she of all people understood the need to be discreet.
She clicked on the link to view his complete profile, and sure enough, there were the dick shots. But at least he hadn't attached them in his e-mail, and she had to admit, his package looked nice. His dick was big, and he apparently was a meticulous manscaper. It looked like he shaved, fully, as opposed to just trimming. She liked that. It appealed to her sense of aesthetics.
One of the pics showed a part of his torso. Nothing to write home about, but at least he looked to be in passable shape—no beer belly. What he wrote in his profile mirrored what he'd written in his e-mail, with one exception. "I'm a nice guy, sane, I love ya, ladies. But in the bedroom, I like you to be submissive, and I like me to be dominant."
She giggled. Well, he had a fetish. She could live with that.
She clicked on the Reply button, wrote the following . . .
"Hi there. You sound nice, and I appreciate the whole paragraphs. You seem to be one of the few guys on this site who can compose more than two sentences! I'll be up front with you. I'm new here, and have never tried anything like this before. So let's start off slow, okay? Tell me more about yourself. What do you do for a living? What do you like to do for fun? What are you into?"
She read it over, and it sounded lame to her. She sounded like a damn priss. This was a sex site, for God's sake! So she ended it with a little more flair. . .
"Hope to ttys! Like your pics, btw. Mmmmmmm. Nice.
Xoxoxoxoxo,
J"
Before she could think to delete that last part, she clicked on Send, and off her flirtatious post went into the virtual universe of cyberspace.
On her lap, Mitsie was giving herself a cat bath, right now nibbling on her paws. She stroked her back, and Mitsie looked up at her, annoyed, as if to say, "Hey, do you mind? I'm busy."
"Oh, Mitsie, Mitsie, what has your momma gotten herself into?" she said. But before she closed out of the site, she looked at NotIronPyrite's dick pics again. Without being fully aware of it, she licked her lips.
She closed out of the Web, shut down the PC, but was pinned to her seat. She hated to disrupt her cat's bath, so she sat there, swiveling her chair, turning toward the window. The maple tree in the front yard was stripped mostly bare now, the ground beneath it a carpet of fallen leaves. She'd need to rake those soon. But she quickly lifted her eyes from the ground to the tree itself. Something about it today . . . the lighting, the grayness, the mood. It brought her back, unasked for, uninvited. It caused her to look deep into the past, down the corridor of yesterdays, to that day, that terrible day, years ago . . .
Mom, who was pregnant with Richard at the time, was spending the night at her sister's. So it was just Jen and Dad at home. She was six, a Daddy's girl. She'd been looking forward to this night alone with him for days. And now here they were, sipping hot cocoa, sitting side by side on the sofa, watching "It's a Wonderful Life." Dad said it was his favorite movie ever made, especially during the holiday season. Jen didn't much care for it—it seemed slow to her, and kind of corny—but she deferred to Dad. After all, she was just a kid. If Dad thought it was good, then it must be.
Outside, snow was falling. She had just got up a few minutes ago to look through the window, and the white, powdery flakes were illuminated under the streetlamp. She loved to watch it whirl and fall, like lighter-than-air popcorn. Christmas was five days away, and the snow served to ratchet up her excitement, which was already off the charts.
She placed her head on Dad's shoulder, and he patted her hair.
