It's hard to be a smoker. First of all, it's a social class identifier. Beautiful people rarely smoke anymore. Working class people smoke, and if you smoke, odds are you are either working class, or from a foreign country.
Second, you have to put up with moralistic behavior from your friends and co-workers. You know what I mean.
Third, there's no place to smoke anymore! You have to go outdoors, stand more than 25 feet from a doorway. In winter, that can be a drag. You have to huddle to keep warm.
I love to smoke. It smooths me out. If I'm nervous, it calms me down. If I'm sleepy and bored, it picks me up. After a good meal, it's better than dessert. I have an oral fixation, and without smoking I would eat and gradually put on weight. Smoking keeps me thin.
It gives my hands something to do. And last, but not least, it's social: How many times have I joined someone going outside the building for a cigarette break? More times than I can count.
Finally, I can personally confirm that the rumors are true: There is nothing like a cigarette after sex. But good luck with that. You practically have to have sex outdoors these days if you want to smoke in peace after sex.
Okay, that's out of the way. Now for the story I want to tell you. Let me say up front that I'm a happily married woman professional. (Yes, I am one of those rare "beautiful people" who smoke. I should be in a museum, or a zoo, these days, I'm such an oddity.) My husband travels a lot on business, and since we do not yet have children, I am often alone.
I'm a college professor, so I am always working: grading papers, writing research papers, giving seminar talks, and most often listening to other people give seminar talks. When my husband is traveling, I hole up in my little study area at home and work on my research, or on preparing my lectures, or on grading students' essays and papers.
I smoke as I work, with a powerful fan behind me and the window open in front of me, so there is no dreaded tobacco smell when hubby comes home. I practically mainline Listerine in case my husband wants to kiss me. When I'm not working, and my husband Mark is traveling, I often hang out with Marlene. She is my best friend. Her husband Sam is tight with Mark, too. We all four go to the same church.
The night in question Marlene and I went out for drinks, to be followed by a meal. Well, it turns out my husband has, shall we say, dalliances while he is traveling on business. When he returns, he enjoys reliving them by recounting them to Sam, who gets way too much vicarious pleasure hearing about them.
Mark had a particularly spectacular adventure recently, apparently, and somehow Marlene got wind of what was going on. I was curious how she learned. Well, it turns out she does not trust Sam, and she has wired her own home! Also, it seems, she was right not to trust Sam. He is as loyal as a dog, but one who all too often catches the smell of a bitch in heat.
Marlene wanted to discuss her troubles, but when she let slip what Mark is up to when he travels, and that she has tapes of his recounting of his conquests to Sam, she kind of lost my attention: I went into shock.
We left the bar, and she stood with me, while I did my best imitation of a chimney. I smoked half a pack right then, right there. It helped, just not enough. I was too upset to think. Marlene could tell. She stood quietly with me, realizing she had given me quite a shock. She had assumed I knew already about my lying and cheating husband.
We went to dinner. I had a Vodka Collins to calm myself before dinner, and switched to wine with dinner. I'm a small woman, so I was fairly drunk at this point. During our dinner, which we now refer to as "The Dinner," we decided what to do. We would both play along, acting innocent and ignorant of our husbands' infidelities, and arrange our own dalliances. What's good for the gander, is good for the goose. Marlene and I are sexy geese. We could do this.
Being an academic, I go to conferences from time to time. There was one coming up in Chicago. It was easy to get Marlene registered for the conference, and she would pretend to be an academic. I was not at all sure how to go about this, but I was determined to step out with someone in Chicago, and Marlene felt the same way.
The first thing to do was to vary the academic uniform. I'm in literature, and not a scientist or an engineer, so the norm for my conferences is not totally dorky dress. The women usually look stylish and pretty, and so do the men, many of whom are gay. But not all of them of gay; not by any means.
A black pants suit and a blouse with a bow at the top is an armored look; it says I want to look nice, but men, please do not hit on me. A black suit with a skirt is friendlier, but the length of the skirt is key. Too long is dowdy, too short is inappropriate. Down to the ankles is the hippy look, but not if it's black.
For the friendly look, the blouse can show a little skin around the neck, but not too much, and it should be accompanied by an anal necklace of pearls.
I chose a red figure-hugging dress, with a slit in front, a plunging neckline, and a large gold cross on a long and heavy gold chain. The cross fell to in between my breasts. Trust me, for an academic conference, this was a huge statement. I did not even own such a dress; I had to buy it first, which I did.
When we got there, Marlene and I went to our shared room and we changed into our "come-fuck-me-now" outfits. I made my grand appearance at one of the welcoming cocktail parties most of the big universities throw. Marlene matched my outré appearance. We got complements exclusively from the few blacks there, and some of the gay men. The straight men and women noticed us all right, but mostly they just looked embarrassed by our attire.
The women there must have thought we were contagious. Anyway, they avoided us. The men were intimidated, and they also avoided us. The lone exception was Mike. I've known Mike for at least 6 years now, and we always enjoy each other's company at these meetings.
Mike was thrilled to see me, red dress or no red dress. He did not even mention it, but simply launched into a long monologue of praise about my recently published academic book. I do well with praise, and I smiled a lot. I did notice his eyes occasionally strayed to my cleavage, but they always quickly returned to my face. I introduced him to Marlene, and he took a double take.
"Where have you been hiding this little angel?" he asked me. I was thinking, what am I? Yesterday's soggy French toast? Marlene blushed but said nothing.
Mike continued, "Well Mary, you have your mystery siren. I have a mystery friend, too. Let's call him Zorro. How about a foursome for dinner tonight? Chicago has some great eateries." We nodded our assent.
"Oh and by the way, Mary, please stay in that dress! If you want to cheat on your husband, lose your bra, and Zorro will spend the evening under your thumb, and maybe even under you, if you are so inclined. I might, too!" I knew Mike was joking. It was his awkward way of telling me I looked pretty and, perhaps especially, sexy.
We agreed to meet in an hour to go to dinner. Mike said he would reserve at Spiaggia. I had heard of that restaurant, but I had never been there. It's expensive. But Mike works at Harvard, and he has access to all sorts of expense money when he travels, so I figured he would treat the four of us.
Marlene and I circulated, and we were running out of time. I spent the hour, while we were circulating and making small talk, to teach Marlene how to make academic small talk. She is a fast learner. Everyone would want to know where she worked. It would be a way to pigeon hole her, and they would know to treat her with respect, reverence, as an equal, with contempt, or with pity.
We decided we would say she was on a grant to do research in Hungary. Nobody knew Hungary, and nobody - NOBODY! - would know the Hungarian language. But Marlene did: her grandparents fled Hitler from Hungary, and her family forced all their children to learn Hungarian, even to this day. She has even twice visited Budapest.
Other than that, all she had to do was ask men what they were working on, and sit back and listen. Marlene was a good listener. I hoped she could stay awake.
When it was time to get ready for our "date," I remembered what Mike had said. If we want to cheat on our husbands, we should go without bras. I said to Marlene, "What do you think?"
"No bra for me then," she said. I smiled. Good for her. I had an internal debate, and my good angels lost. We both went without our bras. Luckily, we both have small boobs, so it was easy to do.
But the plunging necklines and the absence of bras meant that we were likely to tantalize the men all evening, assuming they like women's breasts. That is a safe assumption, in my experience.
We met the men at Spiaggia. It is a wonderful Italian cuisine restaurant, and Mike tipped the head waiter $20 and we got a table with a gorgeous view of the Oak Street Beach and of Lake Michigan. It was hugely romantic. I melted. So did Marlene.
I could tell Marlene was captivated by my old friend Mike. He was married, but then, so was Marlene, at least for now. That left Zorro for me. Zorro's real name was Fisher, but he had been called Zorro since childhood, and he still went by it. A first name of Fisher was not that tempting, anyway.
Zorro was a bore, but he had one good feature: He was practically drooling over me. He took every look he could down my blouse, he hung on my every word, and he told me that he loved my perfume. I felt as if I were dining with a puppy dog. But I enjoyed it, and I gave him lots of looks down my blouse. Some of them were good looks, too; I deliberately leaned forward at times to facilitate his study of my boobs. Probably he can describe my nipples in some detail at this point.
My brother used to say, when he was talking about girls and wanted to get my goat, "You don't fuck the face." Well, if you're an academic woman you fuck the mind. Zorro's mind was just not erotic for me. His mind was so standard; so formulaic. I need some imagination, a creative spark, if you will. It was a pity, really.
Mike I'm sure was ready to fuck Marlene's sexy body, and he could care less about her mind. Plus, as an added bonus, she has a pretty face, even if that's not what Mike planned to fuck, although these days you never know. Marlene just wanted revenge on her husband, and any man would do for her, and Mike was better than most. So that was a done deal. This was going to be awkward.
At the end of the evening, Mike and Marlene went to our hotel room. I was supposed to go to off with Zorro to his room, but I did not want to. I let him down easily, using the "I'm married" excuse, and he understood, or at least he pretended to understand. That left me alone, with no hotel room, and no place to sleep.
I went outside for a smoke to think and to figure out what to do. I think best when I smoke. I was presenting my paper the next afternoon, and I needed to get my beauty rest. I needed a place to sleep! As I was smoking, a man asked if he could join me. I said sure.
"Can I bum a cigarette? I just quit a few days ago," he said.
I offered him my package of Pall Malls and he extracted one. I lit it with the end of my cigarette, leaning forward and giving him a nice look down my dress as I did so. "Thanks angel. I'm Steve," he said. I liked that he called me "angel."
"I'm Mary," I said. "But you can continue to call me Angel. I like it." Making conversation, I asked him the obvious question: "How many times now have you quit?"
