A Wee of June: Sunday

The hot and sticky season had settled in over Manhattan with a vengeance by the end of May. Brownouts were regular occurrences, what with hundreds of thousands of air conditioners trying to bring some comfort into cramped apartments. People settled into regular perches on their fire escapes, looking for patches of shade, fanning themselves with anything that would hold its shape in the wilting humidity.

The angry snarl of taxi horns swam through the thick air, loud enough to be heard over the hum of my ancient air conditioner. I had been lucky, to this point, not to lose my power yet. But none of these issues were on my mind. I was feverishly cleaning my apartment, trying to make the space look presentable. I had good reason: finally, June was coming to stay.

I looked around, gauging the effect of the somewhat haphazard décor. The main room of my one bedroom flat was really quite spacious. I had a handsome pullout sofa, shelves from Ikea housing my numerous art books, my stereo, with its eclectic collection of CDs, and the TV and DVD player. The hardwood floor shone through around the off-white Berber carpet. Examples of my photography hung framed around the walls, and a space between the two large windows was kept clear for my indoor photo shoots. One camera stood on a tripod next to a light; the other sat on the coffee table with several lenses nearby.

****

It had been my photography that had led to the demise of my marriage. Sure, I majored in art and art history in college, but who had the guts to forge their way through the world on that basis? So, I gave up the Birkenstocks and cut-offs for a tailored pinstripe suit and made my way in the world of Madison Avenue. I was a good advertising executive, with an eye for the quirky sell, the eye-catching logo. I was so successful that I was made a partner in my firm after only three years on the job. During this time, I met Alice James.

Alice was John Brigadier James' only daughter. Mr. James owned a highly successful and independent chain of convenience stores. I was hired to produce advertising for JBJ, inc., and I met Alice while working through the advertising campaign with her father. I was 25, she was 23. All haughty and cold beauty, with platinum blonde hair carefully coifed, and ice blue eyes, piercing in their intensity. I found quickly enough that under her icy exterior lurked a heat of repressed passion, which culminated in a wild weekend of unbridled fucking at her father's compound in the Catskills. I married her that July, and in June of the following year, we had our one and only child. June.

Life with Alice was never simple. As far as I could tell, she considered us to be Mrs. & Mr. Alice James. As long as I was keeping her in the style she was accustomed to, there were no problems between us. Sadly, there was also no sex between us. She had a series of affairs with rude menials, from the parking lot valet to the gardener we hired to care for the grounds of our Westchester home. I was completely in the throes of denial. This carried on for thirteen very long years. At the age of 38, I finally came to my senses. I was miserable in my job, my home, my relationship. The only thing that made life worth while was my darling angel June.

****

I walked into my bedroom, a small room, scarcely larger than my ex-wife's walk-in closet in our old home. The rumpled sheets and empty wineglass next to the bed spoke volumes of my restless state the night before. I quickly stripped the bed and carried bedclothes and glass out of the room. The sheets I deposited in the washing machine, the glass I carried into the miniscule kitchenette. Here I put the finishing touches on my latest culinary adventure, a fried tofu stir-fry with cashews, a recipe I had found on the 'net. Although I had come late in life to the pleasures of cooking, I had made great strides in the six years since my divorce. Living single had forced me to reevaluate traditional roles, and I found I favored eating well over an outmoded male ideal of having dinner served to me.

As I carried the plate of rice and vegetables out to the small table in the corner of the living room, I found myself thinking about June. The last time I had seen her had been two years ago. When I had left Alice to seek a better life for myself, she had made all kinds of threats about withholding visiting privileges. Truly, I think she was less upset about my leaving than about the way it would look in her social circles. She wielded any weapon she could to keep me in the neatly labeled cubbyhole she had placed me in. She even pretended to be interested in me sexually once more. None of her pathetic strategies worked, however. I had already hired a top lawyer to ensure that nothing that was due me could be denied. Even so, as the years went by, I found that my visits with June grew further and further apart. Oh, reasons were given: June has her horse-riding camp then; June has a dance recital; June's friends are having a party for graduating from middle school. Finally, the visits simply stopped.

I was devastated, of course. But by this time, my new business, SmartImage, Inc., was struggling to get up and moving. All of my spare time was devoted to shilling for new customers and fending off my creditors. I had invested all of my savings in my company, and I had nothing left over in time or money to get my ex-wife back into court. I still got e-mail from June, however, and that was my only ticket into her life. We wrote each other regularly, and I learned all about her travails in high school, the arguments she had with her mother and stepfather (another bonehead Alice had conned into setting her up in style), and her hopes and dreams for the future.

And then, out of the blue, last week, June wrote me to tell me that she had saved up enough money to come visit me for a week; to celebrate her eighteenth birthday with her father in New York City.

****

The bathroom in my apartment is one of its finest features. Out of proportion to the rest of the apartment, it has room for a freestanding bathtub on porcelain claws. The size of the bathroom was, in fact, the reason I bought this apartment. I installed a long cabinet on a free wall, put a red light in, and blacked out the windows, and I had a homemade darkroom. I spent far too much time in that bathroom, but my finest inspirations were realized there. After my dinner, I thoroughly cleaned the fixtures in expectation of the teenager who would be using them starting the following day.

I examined my latest work, drying on the lines: one architectural piece; three publicity shots for an stage actress; and one of my personal projects, a shot of a fire escape in a back alley in Greenwich Village. Although I paid the bills with jobs like the first two, my heart was really only in my own projects. This photo was in a series of metal objects in NYC. I had twelve others like it: antennae on rooftops, traffic lights, chainlink fences, and so on. The purpose was to abstract the recognizable, to find the hidden beauty in the mundane. Photography can find the truth as well as hide it. My personal projects aimed to do the former, while my company's projects were often forced to do the latter. My overall aim was to sell out only so much as needed to pay for my art.

I got myself ready for bed, and lay down, staring at the ceiling. I remembered June as I had last seen her. At fifteen years of age, she was beginning to come into a kind of beauty a father can only wonder at as well as worry about. She had dark blonde hair with lighter blond highlights, straight, that fell below her shoulders in thick tresses. She often wore it simple, pulled back with a barrette; other times, she would french braid it. She had large grey-green eyes that seemed outsized for her face, perpetually startled, except when she had a mischievous glint in them. Her nose had a gentle curve to it, which she constantly bemoaned, yet it lent her features an elegance that belied her youthfulness. In my mind's eye, I saw her as I had captured in a candid I took at our last visit together. In it, she has her head turned to the side slightly away from the camera, her strong chin outlined, a quirk in her smile, a coyness to her gaze that is directed back toward the lens. How would she have changed in the intervening years? I fell fitfully asleep.

****

Sunday morning dawned and my alarm awoke me at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM. I almost slammed the clock off of the side table before I jerked upright with the lightning thought: in less than two hours June would be getting into Penn Station! I still had plenty to do before I could go to pick her up. After making up the sofa bed for June, I went to take a shower and shave. As the water was warming up, I took a quick once-over of my reflection in the floor-length mirror. Certainly, nothing to be ashamed of in a 44 year-old gentleman. I had decided upon leaving Alice that it was incumbent upon me to keep up my appearance. I enrolled in a gym near to my apartment, close enough that I could hardly use distance as an excuse. For six years, I had been religiously visiting the establishment three times a week. Of course, it didn't hurt that so many bright young things frequented the gym. Eye candy is perhaps the greatest incentive to work out.

My reflection gazed back at me. He stood a shade over six feet tall, with brown wavy hair that had grown grey around the temples, but which he wore long in the back as a rejection of all he had given up. His eyes, also grey, held a certain sadness in them, I speculated, yet also showed a resolve that many would envy. His mouth was firm, in support of that resolve, yet when he smiled, his face was warm and sympathetic. His muscles were not such that Charles Atlas would resign in disgrace upon viewing them, yet the fellow was far removed from a ninety-seven pound weakling. And if the middle were given to sag slightly, it was no less than could be expected of a man at his age. My eyes were drawn downward to his groin: a handsome specimen at rest, shifted slightly to the left, the circumcised head nestled between the testicles. A personal quirk: he kept his testicles shaved, emphasizing their position between the hair of his thighs. Finally, I turned around, and looked over my shoulder at the gentleman's rear, and nodded in satisfaction: he certainly knew how to maximize his workouts if the taut cheeks of that ass were any indication.

After my shower and breakfast, I donned a muscle shirt and a pair of light shorts. I tend not to wear underwear when I can get away with it, particularly in such hot weather as I was about to brave. Why wear extra layers that will stick to your body? Also, you never know when the opportunity for discreet flashing might present itself. I am, without any reservation, an exhibitionist by nature. I have brought several young ladies to my bed through a combination of subtle disregard for exposure and bold out-in-the-open displays. The game is made more exciting due to the chance for rejection: the maneuver chosen must match the viewer's level of comfort. The successful exhibitionist can read his voyeur and select accordingly.

For example, a situation occurred not five minutes later, in the corner grocery store. This emporium, while small, sells some of the finest produce around. While I was checking the zucchinis for firmness, a woman in her late twenties rounded the corner, attempting to wrestle a stroller into submission in the crowded aisle. She looked harried, but beyond the tendrils of long brown hair that had escaped her barrette and the rumpled nature of her spaghetti strap blouse and floral skirt lived a very attractive girl. Her toddler, jailed by the stroller's straps, was busy reaching his chubby hands for any colorful item he could see on the shelf nearby.

"Here, let me give you a hand," I quickly volunteered. I could tell that the direct approach would net me nothing but disgust from this lovely (and very married) mother. I therefore elected to pretend that I had no idea that the head of my cock was dangling about an inch below the leg of my shorts when I kneeled down to free the wheel of the stroller. I heard a sharp intake of breath from the girl as she caught sight of my exposed member. As I stood up again, I maintained the discreet (if such is possible) display. I couldn't look down without showing my knowledge and destroying the sham, so I pictured what I looked like in my mind's eye: a handsome stranger, unaware that the deep red crown of his dick lay open to the air beneath the hem of his running shorts.

"Thanks," she managed to say, a highly becoming flush in her cheeks and her shoulders. I smiled winningly back at her. I saw her willing her eyes upward; willing but the flesh is weak, and her gaze fell downwards again towards my crotch. I rewarded her with a twitch of my cockhead. She seemed fascinated, attracted yet rooted to the spot by society and her own upbringing's expectations.

"It's been a few years since I had one as young as yours, but I remember how hard it was to squeeze one of these infernal contraptions into crowded spaces," I returned, rather pleased with my bon mot. I got back to my shopping but saw her looking at me out of the corner of my eye. I didn't want to push my luck: what had happened to that point could have been an accident, but to attempt more might have caused her to flee, or, worse, to report me; thus I carefully readjusted myself. The exhibitionist has to have a fine balance of confidence in his body and concern for the sensitivity of the subject. Too much of the first, and he is nothing but a pervert, indecently forcing himself on the uninterested. Too much of the second and he never fulfills his own needs. In the balance is created the artist, the man who can tease, titillate, arouse, excite people, but who never overstays his welcome.

I took the groceries back to my apartment, and put them away. The charming interlude in the grocery store had passed the time nicely, but now I needed to get on the subway to pick up June. I picked up my newspaper and went down to the station. As I was waiting for the train, I saw another extremely attractive woman to my left. This one had long black hair, at least half way down her back, and European features; an olive complexion with deep brown eyes and full sensuous lips. She was dressed in tailored clothes, a simply cut vest and short wraparound skirt that came down to her mid-thighs, and carried a slim portfolio under one arm. I guessed that she was an actress, with her publicity photos in her folder. I had handled many young things like her professionally in the past, and could recognize the sort immediately. She glanced at me, and gave me a gorgeous half-smile, before allowing her gaze to travel down, and then up my body. This lady, in strong contrast to the mother in the store, was far more self-confident. She could take, I surmised, a more frontal assault without batting an eyelash. This was going to be an interesting train ride!

There were very few people on the train when it arrived, and besides my unknown admirer, only two other passengers entrained at our station. I knew I had about fifteen minutes until we arrived at Penn Station, and I was determined to make the best use of my time possible. I sat in the seat closest next to the door so no one could sit on the other side of me. I was not surprised when my actress friend sat in the seat next to mine, so close that her left thigh brushed against my right. She reached her left hand up and swept her hair over her shoulder so that it breezed against my shoulder. I caught the scent of jasmine in the soft wind stirred up by her movement.

I carelessly glanced over at her. From my vantage point I could see the darkness created by the cream colored vest of her suit around the deeper hue of her cleavage. She was a small-breasted woman, not voluptuous, but exquisitely proportioned. The shape of her body seemed to draw one's attention directly to the center of her being; the long, slim legs inevitably leading the eyes upward, the curve of her torso leading the eyes down.

She, likewise feigning no interest in me, played idly with the top button on her vest, before undoing it with practiced ease, and fanning herself as if overheated. Now the gentle valley of her breasts was uncovered, although the areolas and the nipples themselves remained hidden from view. I felt myself begin to harden at this gift, and correctly perceived that she required something in kind for her show to continue.

I stretched in my seat, pulling my arms up over my head, and slid down again. However, the material of my shorts bunched up somewhat, pulling tight over the shape of my cock, outlining its length clearly. I heard a soft sigh, a lovely exhalation of gratification. She enjoyed the game she was playing, and I wondered how many lucky men had sat in my seat before me.

We stopped at the next station; one oblivious passenger exited through the door next to us; no others came on. My accomplished companion fanned herself again and remarked, as if to herself:

"Oh, this awful heat!" She toyed with the next button on her vest. I silently willed her on, wanting to play her game, but all too aware of the time constraints. Finally, she let it go, undone, artfully pulling the sides open as if to let more air in, leaving only one button to contain her modesty. The vest gaped open, in silent awe at its owner's audacity, for now anyone walking past would be able to see her breasts, uncontained by anything so conventional as a brassiere. In particular, this humble observer admired the deep brown of her nipples, their erect length sitting atop the two slight hillocks. My organ responded in like fashion, lengthening, pushing against its own constraints, until, Samson-like, it burst its chains, making its grand entry down the inner surface of my thigh.

The next station: three people came in through the door next to our seats, yet in keeping with New York etiquette, refrained from looking to the right or the left of them. How I wanted to shout out to these poor fools: Look! Look! In your ignorance you pass by displays more elegant than those in the Metropolitan! You miss a show more entertaining than any now playing in Times Square! Two of these benighted passengers went the other direction in the care. The third, a bespectacled girl in an NYU sweatshirt, sat opposite us and buried her nose in some arcane tome. And here, we two sat, across the train from her, my penis continuing its escape out of my shorts, my companion with her breasts practically begging to be observed.

This remarkable lady was not yet done, however. Her hand, with graceful fingers extended, the nails painted a deep red, began a journey up my leg from the knee. With teasing slowness, she traced a path up towards my exposed glans. With bated breath, I awaited her next move. When she reached my penis, she traced one fingernail delicately around the head. The light touch completed my undoing, and my erection began to move upwards, obscenely exposed in the glaring light of the fluorescent bulbs. She let her finger glide down my length, and I shuddered under her administrations.

Station number three: no passengers enter or exit. As the doors close and we begin to move again, her finger left my tumescence. I almost wept at the absence of stimulation, until I saw her hand move to the tie of her wraparound skirt. With a private smile, she began to pull on the end.

The train jostled to and fro, and briefly the lights flickered. How a propos, I mused, as I watched her slowly, oh, so slowly unravel the thread that bound her remaining modesty. Why is it that exhibitionism and trains go hand in hand? Is it the combination of publicity and anonymity? Is it a subconscious desire to participate in the classic symbolism of trains and tunnels? Or is it simply that the movement of the train adds to the physicality of the erotic display, in the same way that the eroticism of Lady Godiva benefited from the sensuousness of being on horseback?