Dr Zoptic: THE WAGES OF SIN
"You have said, I believe, Ms Ehrlich," my interrogator asked, "you told me you were not immediately concerned when you found yourself naked and drugged sprawled on the sidewalk on Central Avenue."
= = =
"Yes," I responded, "I can see every moment of that afternoon. I had come to the Central Avenue Urban Renewal area to pick up my roommate Zaftig -- I mean Dr Rebecca Barton. She was running an emergency response exercise. The neighborhood was a rough, desolate area."
My mind wandered back to that day. I had just turned the corner onto Central Avenue when I was blinded by the setting sun. Without warning, a burly man emerged from the shadows and grabbed my arm. I can see in slow motion his fist coming up to my face I crashed the pavement. I felt a tingle. Scissors were cutting away my red sweater.
A blonde woman, muttering soft words of assurance, stuck a needle in my arm. I found myself in a cloudy world on the edge of consciousness. I felt my penny loafers whisked off while the blond female wielding sheep shears swept dungarees and panties away.. In a wink of an eye, my bare butt lay naked on the rough surface of sidewalk.
The curly dark haired man, leaning over to run a fingernail along the scar that went down the hollow of my breastbone, grimaced, "I didn't expect a freak show. I don't remember examining any mutations among the crisis actors this morning. Do you?"
Calmly the female, placing her hands on her knees preparing to pull herself up, lectured her partner, "Pectoral excavatum occurs in every 300 -- 400 births, most readily observed in males rather than females."
= = =
"Now you were assaulted, your clothes cut off and left naked on the sidewalk in a desolate area and you thought," my interrogator probed, "this was a joke your former friend and former roommate Dr Barton played on you to get even. Could you offer me an explanation?"
"Oh," I explained, "Two years earlier, I was finishing up my first year in Law School. My roommate Zaftig -- I mean Dr Barton was graduating from Medical School. Her class had graduation parties almost every night... I was busy studying, Finals, but Zaftig needed me to drive her to a party," I remembered, "Her expression was glum. She appeared anxious. I drove up to the house. My eyes focused on her classmates on the steps waiting. They looked like wild dogs ready to pounce. I pled with her not to go."
= = =
The images of Friday evening were etched in my mind. I could see them as if they were going on before my eyes.
That Friday was a typical North Country April evening in Capital Land, "a bit chilly for us down-staters, Won't you say?" I tried to strike up a conversation to get my friend and roommate `Zaftig' to open up. "Locals say summer comes to the North Country on the Fourth of July -- eh," I stressed her yet to be conferred title, "Doctor Rebecca Barton," I chided my friend and roommate whom I called Zaftig -- behind her back -- as I drove her in my rust bucket to a graduation party held at an apartment of some of her friends in The University Medical College. My old rust bucket's heater was working that blustery night.
"If my classmates only knew," Zaftig shook her head, "What I did to get myself through my last year to graduate!" Her steel framed glasses and her new outfit, dark slacks and print tunic gave her a professional look.
"You're wearing the wages of sin, but that simple yellow cross still hangs around your neck," I complemented Zaftig.
"Oh, yesterday was one fun day, burning away the Wages of Sin at the new Westgate Mall," Zaftig exclaimed. Carrying packages back to my car, Zaftig declared, "Once you buy the shoes, you need matching slacks and skirts and then blouses."
"And to top it off a new chapeau to complete the ensemble," I interjected, "a trip to the newly opened Westgate Mall financed by practicing medicine without a license as Dr Zoptic?" I replied.
"Dr Zoptic!" Zaftig proclaimed in a sing -- song voice trying to hide the tension in her voice, "is the name, experimental medicine is the game, testing the hypothesis, is an intriguing business."
"-- ya -- ha -- ha," I interjected. I was trying to lighten the mood. Zaftig was nerved up. However, the reference went right over Zaftig's head. Utterly unfamiliar with allusions to Classic TV re -- runs, Zaftig was the product of a rigid upbringing. I brought the first TV to her apartment when I moved in.
When we first met, Zaftig professed ignorance of contemporary culture. "In family, Father imposed a strict regime of studies and insisted on a high level of academic performance. When I was sent to the convent school, TV was regarded as the work of the devil."
During the drive to her party, in an unsteady voice she added, "Did I tell you Al Mandy will be at the party?" Zaftig strove to reassure herself.
Nine months prior to the graduation party, I was a freshman in law school in search of a new sublet when Al Mandy a mutual friend, Zaftig's classmate, introduced us.
I learned of Zaftig's search for a roommate from a tall, dark faced, pretend Englishman Al Mandy, a friend studying medicine in the University Hospital next door to the law school I attended. "Rebecca Barton does tend toward a tad peculiar. Solid downstate family, Clintonville Heights."
"Clintonville Heights?" I replied mimicking Al's polished English accent, "Mightn't I be, luv, a mote downmarket for'n the likes of her?"
"You might find," Al replied, "despite your working-class affectations, you too have much in common. Both," Al smirked as he mocked me slipping into a lower-class accent, "youse two." Reverting to his practiced English polish after a pause, Al continued, "were carried along in the 1970s revolution ban -- the -- bra and push -- ahead -- programme.."
"Peculiar, Al, you mean, like flotsam carried along in a hurricane storm surge," I suggested.
"Pater knows her people from hospital. Becky Barton had been sent up here to a Capitalland convent school. She wanted to be a nun. Then the push -- ahead -- program propelled her to University, then Medical College," Al explained. "Looking at her, Becky fits that nunish image, a cute face, but a rounded bum. You Yanks might call her a `Butterball.'"
"A Zaftig? Think of it me shacked up with the stereotypical chubby little Nun!" I exclaimed.
For someone like Zaftig who once set out to take the veil and become a nun, Zaftig and I, with Al Mandy, had embarked on a very interesting adventure together during the school year.
In the car driving Zaftig to her party, I chuckled when I thought of Al Mandy becoming a doctor. "Al -- a real doctor. He studied anatomy but not in class," I exclaimed, "It's incredible how Al Mandy completed medical school with all the time he spent scripting porno, scouting locations and recruiting women to star in it. When did he have the time to study medicine?"
Last December proved to be exceptionally frosty and frigid. Al Mandy had bailed Zaftig and me out. Outside it was cold and flurrying inside the apartment was so comfortably warm that I could lounge at the kitchen table, as bare as I would dare, in my Che Guevarra T Shirt and panties. But for how much longer? Complaining that she had seen just about a gut -- wrenching wound or burn possible, Zaftig sent me a tingle when she leaned on me to massage my shoulder.
Told of our Landlord's whopping increase to cover dreary 1970s inflationary costs, Zaftig shot me an uncertain expression. Biting her lip, Zaftig blushed when she told me. "I was approached by my classmate Al Mandy. You know him. He introduced us. He can get us parts in ugh -- Blue Movie. We needn't disrobe. We're playing nuns greeting girls entering a convent school," Zaftig explained, After a pause, Zaftig added, "I told Al I wouldn't take it unless you did too."
"As long as pay is better than flipping burgers. Dress up like a nun? A little late for Halloween!" I exclaimed, "but if it helps pay the bills...But answer me this question: why you need me for protection. Is this like a gaggle of ladies herding together to take a trip to the toilet?" I chided her.
"No, because you drive and I don't," Zaftig replied. She leaned into me and felt under my T -- Shirt. "Hey, I knew it! You're wearing two shirts under that oversized man's T -- shirt. How come you're not overheating?" Her fingers tentatively exploring under my shirt were pleasing, but I feared what would she say if she lifted my top off. I was relieved when abruptly breaking off contact, Zaftig declared, "I'm sweltering. I need to get these clothes off before I melt!"
"Don't let me stop you, Dolly!" I giggled as I teased her. "But first, I need to ask. Why you the wannabe nun should want to appear in a skin flint?"
"Every single day, I see mangled, broken burnt, corpuses," Zaftig fell into that distant stare, "What's wrong with viewing beautiful bodies?"
In my dented-up car on the way to her graduation party, Zaftig shook her head, "Al seemed to know the answers before the questions were asked. "You always teased me with the question, `What if Father saw one of Al's films? Al's Dr Zaftig costume left little to the imagination: White lab coat open exposing my sternum barely reaching the mons pubis leaving a gap of flesh between the tail of the white coat and thigh high black fish net stockings..." A dreamy look settled on Zaftig's round face.
Somehow in the course of shooting the first film, Al with suggestions from Zaftig evolved the script and developed the character of a voyeuristic school physician who delighted in humiliating the convent school's student. I proposed Zaftig for the role. Although hesitant at first, Al thought aloud, "round belly, big bappers, eh--prominent bum," Al exclaimed, "Jolly good! It might work indeed."
Al consented to giving Zaftig the part of Dr Zoptic if she would also play a chubby, pig tailed student racing to join her classmates in the shower. Zaftig agreed, "Let's both do it." She tempted me, "We can spend the extra money on clothes. You'll look wonderful."
Fully disrobed to rise to the dare, a broad smile beamed on Zaftig's face as she, like a winged cherub in complete abandon, bazooms bobbing and bare butt bouncing, bounded bare -- assed naked toward the showers. Her yellow cross remained around her neck during the jaunt.
When I inquired, Zaftig explained, "I always wear that cross -- a small present from a former friend. It can never be replaced. So, I never take it off."
