I was on my way to pick up a climbing buddy for a weekend of free-style mountaineering and getting hammered on fine Irish peat monster.
I stupidly took a shortcut through Nowheresville. That's where my SUV broke down during a once-in-a-decade tropical storm. If the breakdown didn't screw up our plans, the storm certainly would. Only the kind of idiot who believes in black magic would go rock climbing in a tropical downpour.
According to the news radio, the storm had stalled over New England and in some places it was raining an inch an hour. Make that two-inches in Nowheresville. I pushed the climbing ropes and carabiners aside, curled up in my sleeping bag, and dreamed of the dragon.
"Pardon the interruption," he said. "I'll be brief."
He was an Eastern dragon. A skinny snakelike body, yellow reptilian eyes, and a human face with hair going salt-and-pepper around the temples without looking at all distinguished. Just old. Compared to a sleek and frightening Western dragon, he was homely at best. Butt-ugly also comes to mind. Imagine a wrinkled human head atop a wiggly Slinky toy.
"You don't have a cell phone with service, do you?" I asked. I do things like that when I'm dreaming.
"Sorry. But the first house on the right does. Now if you'll just relax, I've got a couple questions for your unconscious."
"Careful where you step," I told him. "My shrink says it's a sewer down there."
"I'll keep that in mind. Enjoy your nap."
'Such a polite dragon,' I thought, drifting deeper into sleep. Too bad he looks like a dick-head.
###
At dawn, a Victorian farmhouse becomes visible through the downpour. The garden appears as if Jack planted all his magic beans at once. Some of the oversized vegetation reaches the eves, at least 30 feet high.
If there's a Jack, maybe there's also a Jill? I'm always hopeful.
Don't get me wrong. There are women in my life. Perhaps too many women. Most have an agenda. They want a Sugar Daddy. As a mid-thirty-something, I'm too old for young love, and too young for a trophy companion. My friends say I'm on the cusp of becoming "a confirmed bachelor."
At the first letup in the storm, I run for the house. About half way, a wall of wind-driven rain almost knocks me off my feet. I'm soaked to the jock strap in about 30-seconds.
There is some kind of commercial sign at the driveway, but the rain is too heavy to read it. The doorbell sounds like a wind chime and the windows are fogged on the inside.
I'm leaning forward, trying to peer through the window when the door swings open and I find myself inches from the shapeliest part of a terry-cloth bathrobe.
The girl wearing the robe is agonizingly beautiful. Dirty blond hair, emerald green eyes and a Milky Way of pale freckles across the bridge of a slightly turned-up nose. She probably had once been the ugly duckling next door, or the Tom boy you barely tolerated.
That would have been about twenty years ago. Things are very different now.
Even before I hear the perfect modulation of her voice, I want her. Will go anywhere, do anything to be with her. If my life is a song, she's the missing melody. She's the long riff that begins in my libido and lights up the neural pathways of my brain like the Fourth of July.
"We open at Ten," she says in a voice as sweet as her smile. "Can you come back..." she starts to ask, before her face breaks into a broad and sympathetic grin. "Poor you," she says with genuine empathy. "You look like a drowned puppy."
"My ship sank about a mile down the road," I reply. "I had to swim."
"Well, get inside, sailor," she laughs. "I'll find some towels. I'm Lula, by the way."
"Rob," I say, but she's already half-way down the hall to the kitchen.
"Nice to meetcha, Rob" she calls out over her shoulder.
While Lula looks for towels, I drip on a floor mat.
Lula's place is spotless, the polished wood floors gleam like an Arizona sunrise.
On the right is a living room decorated as an old gentleman's club with winged-back Chesterfield chairs and a large nude oil painting over the fireplace, a reclining nude that looks a lot like Lula. There's an imposing 12-point buck head on the opposite wall. But there's no gingham, or chintz, family portraits, or anything dyed or painted pink or green. Refreshing as a cold pint of Guinness.
On the left, the dinning room has been recently subdivided. There's now a wall with three wood-paneled doors numbered one, two, and three. Not your typical Victorian dining room.
Lula reappears with two bath towels and an old cigar box. "Put your valuables in the box and give me your clothes," she tells me.
"Right here?" I ask, but understand why she doesn't want me dripping water on her hardwood floors.
"Yes, sailor. We're a clothing optional establishment."
I'm not sure what that means, but I do what she says. Despite being cold and soaked, Lula in her bath robe is so arousing that by the time I get my wet briefs off, I'm at half mast.
"Nice," she says, a sparkle in her eye. She kneels in front of my cock, taking it very gently in her fingertips and inspecting it closely. "A Goldie-Locks cock," she says looking up at me.
"Goldie Locks?" I'm confused, and shocked, and try not to study her nipples too closely since the top of her robe has pulled open and I'm looking directly down her milky white tits. Maybe she mistook my manhood for a Creamsicle? Loved those as a kid. Lick off the orange part to get at the creamy vanilla center.
"As in the 'Three Bears.' Not too big... not too small... just right," she giggles and stands up, letting go of my now very stiff willie. "Something like that."
"On the subject of fairy tales," I say, trying to hide my disappointment that Lula didn't slip my Goldie-Locks cock between her full, red lips while she had it inches away, even if it probably doesn't taste like a Creamsicle. "What's with the giant bean stalks outside?"
Anything for a distraction.
"Amazing garden, isn't it? Courtesy of the previous owner. A Vietnam vet who apparently had a bamboo fetish. Don't know anyone with a panda, do you?"
"Just the National Zoo. I didn't think bamboo grew this far north."
"Nobody else does either. Let's warm you up. Your lips are turning purple. Follow me."
Lula bundles up my wet clothes and I follow her to a laundry area next to the kitchen. She throws my stuff in the washing machine, adds some detergent and starts it. "In here," she says, swinging a door open and turning on the lights. "Face down."
There's some kind of waterproof-vinyl table and as I stretch out on it, I tuck my swollen cock under my stomach so it doesn't hang out between my legs. Lula turns some valves. An apparatus overhead shudders and bangs and a hot mist pours down on me.
When I glance over at Lula, she's as naked as a hypo-allergenic cat, and there's a big soapy brush in her hands. She still has a Tom-boy's toned muscles, but her body? Good god! Hard to imagine how it could be more perfect. Starting with ripe, up-thrust breasts. Not too big. Not too small. Everything else is in perfect proportion from there.
A little shiver passes down my spine as I relax into the soft, wet table top. Once in a while, I take a sideways peek at Lula while she works my back and legs with the soapy brush. Every time I look at her, my erection increases by a notch or two. Mostly, I keep my eyes closed and hope that if this is a dream, I never wake up.
Lula's skin is slightly tanned and flawless, except for a sprinkle of freckles across her chest. I imagine each of those freckles is a planet and wonder what it would be like to live on one the worlds on the edge of her tan line?
Lula has no tats on her arms, legs or torso. Just softly rippling muscles and the kinds of curves that will get you thrown out of class if you drew them in high-school geometry.
