**Note: To my special friend...thank you for your inspiration and your understanding**
"Yeah, right. No friggin' way!"
I looked at Bernie like he had rocks in his head. He started shaking his head, saying, "No, no no. You can DO this!"
"Bernie," I said, chuckling. "I'm a buck-seventy. No way can I pass as Santa!"
"Brian, listen. They've got the suit all padded. God, I wore it last year, and I looked like a blimp!" He paused, waiting for the inevitable. I had to say it.
"Man, you ARE a blimp!"
We fell into our familiar routine of teasing each other, he calling me 'skinny,' and me retorting with fantasy tales of his floating over football games with an electronic sign on his side. Actually, he's only a touch over 200 pounds, but at 5'-8", with nary a sign of a muscle group to be seen, I have a lot of fun with him.
I'm no Schwartzenegger, but I keep in shape with twice-weekly workouts, and I've been told by many people that I don't look anywhere near my age, which is too darn close to 56 years old. You can't defeat Father Time, I've learned, but you can hold him at bay, if you work hard enough at it. I'm determined to lock that sucker up in a closet somewhere!
Finally, I agreed. I would do my stint as Santa Claus at the store Bernie managed. For that, I would receive minimum wage, a free lunch, and the chance to make a lot of little kids happy. The latter was the clincher.
I had a lot of fun with it online, telling my friends across the country how I was going to be Santa Claus for an afternoon, and teasing my female friends that I had a special 'package' to deliver to them! Good, almost clean fun, but as the day approached, I was getting nervous.
Finally, on December 22, my big day arrived. I took my place on the 'Santa seat', relieving Danny, another underweight Santa, to begin my four-hour stint. It started out slowly enough...a couple of kids, a lot of people asking directions to different departments, and one very cute salesgirl making a few thought-provoking comments. Then, after almost 2 and a half hours of nothing, the crowd hit.
Suddenly there was a line, and parents were escorting kids up to my lap; some of them not too happy to be there, others eager to pull Santa's beard and ask embarrassing questions about my obviously fake attire. A few of the moms were very cute, however, and I tried to engage them, whenever I could, in conversation. I wasn't looking for anything, other than the obvious satisfaction of having an attractive woman find me interesting. One of them actually asked me what she could expect to find under that big red suit, and that took me so much by surprise that I stammered some lame reply, and she left, smiling confidently. Well, so much for 'suave Santa'!
I had just let one small girl down off my lap and was thinking about a bathroom break, when suddenly a grown woman burst through the line, pushing another child gently but firmly out of her path. She sailed straight toward me, landed with a thud on my lap, and buried her face in my beard as she kissed my neck loudly.
"What the...?" I exclaimed, trying to preserve Santa's dignity in front of the assembled children, and wondering what to do next.
"Hi, Santa," came the voice from my neck. "Did you expect me?" She pulled her legs up and formed herself into a ball on my lap, chuckling as she did. I was flustered, to say the least.
"I don't think you should be doing that," I said meekly, warming to her kisses, which were becoming less noisy, and more sensuous. Her mouth raked my neck as her tongue flicked against my skin. I moved to put my hand on her arm, but instead brushed against the side of a large, round breast.
"Oh, yeah," she said immediately. "That's what I was looking for." At that, she pulled her face from the cover of my beard, and looked up at me. She seemed so familiar...
"You don't recognize me, do you?" she asked, smiling impishly. "Even from the one picture I showed you? My hair is redder now, just like I told you."
Oh my god! Could it be? How in the world...? A hundred questions crossed my mind at once, but one answer was clear: it was Margaret, one of my internet friends. She lived at least 7 states away, but she was here. In my arms. On my lap. But, how?
Margaret and I had formed a bond when I was depressed over the loss of friendship with another woman, whom I had gotten too close to. When Samantha left, Margaret was suddenly there for me. She didn't really know me, and had only posted with me a few times on an erotic site forum, but she offered her friendship and advice, and I gravitated toward her. I could tell she was the real deal, and I had come to realize that that was rare on the internet, where little is as it seems. We quickly became friends, and we had shared many secrets with one another over the course of the last few months. Things happen fast, on the web!
Things were happening even faster in real life, at the moment! As my realization of who it was formed, so did a hundred other questions. What did she want? Where was she staying? How would I be able to see her, with my family so demanding of my time? We had had a few fantasy 'affairs', where we wrote each other sensuous stories about ... well, making love to one another, but it was all done rather innocently, there being such a difference in our ages. Margaret was over 20 years my junior, and I only thought in the abstract about actually having sex with her. I'd learned that much, in the course of a couple of previous relationships. NEVER actually date an internet 'lover'. That was the rule! My being married made that much less difficult to enforce.
"Margaret," I said, looking into the never-before-seen eyes. "What are you doing? How did you..." She silenced me with one finger to my lips.
"Uh-uh," she said softly. "No questions. That's for later. Right now," she said, leaning back against me, "I just want to enjoy being with you."
A cough from one of the mothers broke the moment. I looked down the aisle at Danny, who was out of costume, but straightening stock on one of the shelves. He had stayed just out of earshot, I was sure, to keep me from having an escape route from this duty! Now, I made sure he heard me.
"SANTA BREAK!" I yelled, and he jerked upright. Looking at me, with this attractive woman coiled up in my lap, he smiled knowingly and shook his head.
"NOW!"
He headed for the back room to put on his costume.
By the time he got there, half the parents had taken their children elsewhere, unable to explain the sight of Santa with an obviously sexy woman writhing on his lap, and his hands trying NOT to wrap themselves around any of her body parts as they kissed!
We had kissed as if we'd known each other for years, and it was becoming hot, and rather restricted, in this suit, suddenly! Her hands had gone to my hair, fingers raking up under my Santa hat as she pulled me into her, and I had angled my head to better access her mouth. Our breathing had gotten heavier, and I was sure she could feel my rather obvious reaction to her, pressing up against her hip.
"Uh, Santa," Danny said. "I think you'd better take this sideshow somewhere else."
