The Sun Also Rises

Fair warning, this is going to be a long one. I need the space to develop all of the characters that come and go through the story. As you can probably tell from the title I adapted the idea from Hemingway. His characters have major nerd tendencies and I find that interesting.

I write about places where I've been and things that I've done. That's the case here. I have to admit that I was never chased down the street by bulls. But I HAVE done the racing thing as described. So I reimaged things that way... Enjoy! - DT

*****

Sunset

I met Janet on a porch in Adams-Morgan one steamy DC night.

It had been a typical summer day. The heat and humidity were both hovering around 100. And I'd sweated through my underwear.

Nobody in their right mind would be in Washington in July. It's no coincidence that the varmints in Congress scamper off for a five week recess then. But my graduate work chained me to the place. So there I stood, suffering.

It was fucking miserable.

The District of Columbia was built on territory that was contributed by the States of Maryland and Virginia.

And there was no way that our rapacious founding fathers were going to donate productive agricultural land to the cause.

So instead they gifted the Nation with a prime piece of Potomac swamp.

And, even though it has been paved over by a lot of expensive real estate, the essence of the original quagmire still lingers.

I straightaway noticed two things about my future wife.

First, she was draped in a ratty old porch couch looking totally shitfaced, which boded well for my drought relief problem.

I had been going through a lengthy slump in the sex-with-anything-but-my-hand department. So I wasn't really looking for romance.

Secondly, she had a big beautiful set of jugs.

It might seem shallow to be attracted by her chest. But as they say, "you can't motorboat a personality.'

She had a cute oval face, not beautiful but pleasant and really thick brown hair, which flowed down her back in waves. She had an incredibly sexy mouth with very full and sculptured lips. Movie stars pay a fortune for lips like that.

She wasn't passed out or anything. She was just clearly at a place where her judgment might be seriously impaired.

In short, she was exactly what I was looking for in a woman.

I am not a predator. I would never force an unwilling girl. I am just somebody who typically needs a lot of alcohol to score. The fact is, I do a lot better with females if their powers of observation are reduced to a point where they don't notice my inherent lack of savoir-faire.

I plopped down next to her. She gave me a goofy smile and a slurred, "I was hoping you would come over to talk to me."

This was something new? Most of the time when I sit next to a pretty girl I get, "Fuck-off creep."

I am average in every way, height, weight, and looks. And my approach to women definitely needs work. So females usually decide life is WAY too short to waste time talking to me.

Having one actually say that she was HOPING that I would talk to her was a new wrinkle.

I tried on my best Prince Charming expression and said, "Do I know you?"

Damn! That wasn't very charming!!

She said in one of those furry drunk voices that indicate that she was well over the line, "I was in your cryptology class last year. Don't you remember me?"

Wow, at least she saw me in my element. I thought to myself, "Any woman who takes an advanced code breaking class is a righteous nerd bitch. And I am king of that.

"Maybe that will offset some of the factors that I lack, like looks, money and sex-appeal. Not to mention a few aspects of personal hygiene.

"In fact, this drunken little nerdette might be the girl I have been searching for my entire life."

But I still didn't remember her. I asked her what her name was and she told me, "Janet Askew."

I recalled a Janet Askew. But that chick was about the same size as Shamu the killer whale. And she sported a set of bangs that made her look like she had stepped out of a 1950s Archie and Veronica comic.

This little woman had a very trim and curvy figure with magnificent tits and was dressed like she had graduated from Choate. I looked puzzled.

She giggled drunkenly and said, "You knew me before I lost all of the weight. I had some issues after my parent's divorce and ballooned up to where I was in your class. It took a lot of therapy and a crash diet, but I am back to my normal self now."

I took a second look at her. She was not beautiful but she WAS incredibly sexy.

She had an open, pretty "girl-next-door" face and the aforementioned bosom. But she also had long slim legs and nice round hips in a skin tight pair of beaten out jeans. A little yellow spaghetti strap top showed perhaps four inches of prime dusky cleavage.

She was looking invitingly at me. So I decided to kiss her. Remember, we were sitting in the dark on the front porch outside a loud party. And we had been acquainted for perhaps 90 seconds at that point.

She surprised me by not slapping me, or screaming and running to the police. Instead she threw one arm around my neck plastered herself to me and opened her mouth for the hottest kiss I had ever been given. It was like she had been waiting her whole life to do that.

I don't believe in random good luck. But it had been a long dry spell. So I was NOT in a mood to look a proverbial gift horse in the mouth. I began to fumble with her bra in order to get my hands on one of those incredible ripe melons.

She moaned loudly. Then she began to suck my tongue like it was something a little further down on my body.

I finally got a boob in one hand and felt the nipple. I thought that she had nice tits but her nipples were extraordinary. They were substantial thick and round, almost like little Nuks.

Except they were growing longer as I moved my palm over them. And they were incredibly hot and sensitive.

I found out how sensitive they were when I tweaked one. The shriek that she let out sounded like I was killing her. THAT brought people running.

We heard them coming. So, we were just nonchalantly sitting there as half the party galloped up.

Both of us were panting like hound dogs on a hot southern porch. But it was dark. And there was no actual evidence that I had been fondling her delightfully heaving bosom about 10 seconds earlier.

Not seeing either of us in any form of distress; the severe blue-balls that I was suffering were not readily apparent, the mob of would-be rescuers went thundering past us and out onto the sidewalk looking for the source of the shriek.

She looked at me. I looked at her. And we both burst out laughing.

We had been with each other for approximately fifteen minutes. But I just KNEW that I was going to marry this delightfully quirky little woman.

The next night we consummated the inevitable. That was in an all-night session that was just as sweltering as the DC weather.

We married a scant four months later and settled into a nice little apartment further out the Red Line at Shady Grove.

Now I know that you probably think that it was stupid to jump into marriage that quickly. But Janet's charms had really clouded my thought processes.

I should have suspected something if I had taken time to think about the situation. But Janet was just SO attractive and I was just THAT needy.

Our first few months together were idyllic. I couldn't imagine a more compatible woman or a more satisfying lifestyle. She and I just clicked. We fucked a lot. But we also did every interesting thing that you could think of in a City with boundless opportunities for diversion.

Everybody thought that we were the perfect pair. Some couples hang all over each other in a drippy kind of lovey-dovey way. Janet is a very smart woman and our life was built around our mutual intelligence.

We kidded and teased each other. We handed each other plays on words like a good comedy team. And we generally shared an affectionate tongue-in-cheek view of the world. It was hard to NOT love a woman who saw the irony and humor in everything that she did.

It was almost too good to be true. And of course it was indeed just that.

The first sign of things to come was when I met her dad.

We had married in a quick civil ceremony. As is the nerd way. But she had been bugging me for several months to meet her daddy. Just to get his blessing.

So, we took the Acela up to New York City one weekend.

I knew her dad lived in Manhattan. I DIDN'T know that it was overlooking Central Park in the upper 80s.

It seems that daddy had made his money the old fashioned way. He had inherited it.

And as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "The rich are different from you and me."

Daddy treated me with the same scorn that the Lord of the Manor would show any raggedy peasant who his foolish daughter had just dragged home. It almost seemed like he expected me to tug on my forelock every time I addressed him.

In short, I hated him from the moment we met.

Janet also changed 180 degrees. She went from open and friendly, to snide and arrogant. It was clear that she thought the "little people" were beneath her. Being one of the little people myself, I was flabbergasted.

It was also clear that the break-up between daddy and her mother was the result of daddy's philandering. And daddy didn't try to hide it.

He clung to his right to fuck any female he met with the same fanatical certainty that Charles I must have had about the divine right of kings. Unfortunately I found out what that meant in the worst possible way.

He took us across the Park to the Carlyle for dinner. That experience was so far out of my league that I knew that he had planned it, just to show me how exalted he was.

Janet was in a tight little black dress and heels that put the goods on display. She was turning heads every place we stopped. And both she and her dad were a study in sophisticated New Yorker.

Me - not so much.

I didn't actually do anything too embarrassing. But I was also not exactly the star of the show. Daddy kept asking me about what I did and I tried to explain to him about the offer that I had just gotten at Georgetown. It was an Associate Professorship to start. That isn't normal in academe. In fact I had done very well for myself in that respect.

His response was to blow me off as a "teacher", which I guess I was. But his tone of voice made it sound like it was something that anybody could do, which it wasn't.

I certainly was not making the kind of money his daughter was used to. But I was on a solid trajectory for success in my chosen field.

I remembered all of the implications later on. But at the time I felt both inadequate and pissed off. Since I could see NOTHING about the man's OWN accomplishments to justify the lofty opinion that he had of himself.

Except, of course, the fact that he was born into the right family.

It kind of hurt that Janet didn't defend me. But I could see that she had "daddy" issues and I loved her so I was willing to give her a pass with her father. On the other hand, it didn't increase my confidence in her.

The other thing that bothered me was how her father treated her.

It was like she was his date.

He was touching his daughter in a way that I would have called social-services about, if she was 13, not 23. And even worse, she was allowing it which was really not making me happy.

They both got sloppy drunk. I poured the two of them into a cab. And we went back across the Park to 86th street. I rode up front and the two of them were slumped in the back.

I had reached the point where I was planning a "come-to-Jesus" moment with my wife as soon as I got her alone.

That was when I heard the sound of rustling and a moan from the back seat.

My eyes flew open like cartoon window shades. I stuck my head around the privacy partition and sure enough. My wife was in an intimate embrace with her father.

There was nothing explicitly sexual going on but dads don't hug their daughters like that.

Both of them were drunk and at that point she might have EVEN thought that it was me. But she had her leg thrown over his and she was molded against him in a way that was totally inappropriate.

My first instinct was to stop the cab, drag daddy out and kick his ass. But the situation was just ambiguous enough that I settled for saying in a loud voice, "We're almost home now."

They both startled and then looked guilty. I gave her a glare that I hope warned her what I was thinking. And she sat back in the corner of the seat. It looked like she was sulking.

As soon as we got into the bedroom I said, "What the hell did you think you were doing? Were you planning on fucking him right there? He's your DAD you know? And this isn't Kentucky."

She looked guilty and said, "I wasn't doing anything. Daddy hugs me like that all the time."

I was beginning to get an inkling that my wife might have a screw loose. At least where her old man was concerned.

It definitely explained the total personality transplant she had undergone on Friday.

She seemed to take on the coloration of the dude exactly like a chameleon would.

I said, "You DO realize that what you were doing back there was totally inappropriate between father and daughter?"

She looked at me obstinately and said, "Just because YOU don't approve of it doesn't mean that it is wrong. Daddy has always taken good care of me and he loves me."

There is love and then there is "love". But arguing wouldn't get us any further. And we were going home in the morning. So I said, "Let's get some sleep but I want to talk about this tomorrow."

The next morning the woman I knew as my wife magically reappeared. Her body language, voice and her attitude had turned back around 180 degrees. It was as if she had taken off last night's persona, like a robe, and hung it in the closet of her daddy's guest room.

It was actually kind of eerie. We took a taxi down to Penn Station and she was her usual energetic, funny self. It was like a malevolent spirit had been exorcised from our marriage.

The night before had been odd. But I had months to build up a sense of who Janet was. And my impression was that she was a warm and intelligent human being.

I knew that it was natural for an adult child to change around a parent. In fact it would have seemed odder if she had NOT lapsed back into some form of remembered behavior.

But the conduct I saw with her father was not something I condoned, or wanted to encourage. Then again, we were looking ahead with our lives not back.

So I made a mental note to stay away from Templeton Askew. And that was the LAST time I was going to allow Janet and him to grab any incestuous alone-time.

Janet's slipping from one person into a totally different personality was something that might have worried me if it had gone on any longer. But it had only been for a day and it just didn't bothered me that much.

It should have.

The next five years flew by on blissful wings.

The main feature during that period was the data compression algorithm that I came up with.

Data compression underlies machine vision which has applications in everything from search engines to cruise missiles. Thus, it is the Holy Grail for us nerds.

I had been working on a superior lossless algorithm during my final days at GWU. And I perfected it two years later.

I am way too naïve to do the actual productizing. But I had a friend named Scott. He was a genius when it came to getting things to market. So he did the heavy lifting and I got a 40% share as a silent partner.

Our first contract was with Raytheon.

Almost immediately, the targeting system for their TERCOM/DSMAC Block IVs got a lot more capable and my bank account got inconceivably larger.

I'm a nerd. I don't care about money. And I don't know anything about finance. So I had Scott take care of all of that.

And I never discussed our fiscal situation with Janet.

In my mind it would have sounded self-congratulatory. And nerds don't brag about how much they make.

World of Warcraft Conquest Points definitely! But money - NEVER!

It would sound too much like the dick measuring that went on among Janet's yuppie friends.

I just went along in life like nothing had changed. Later on I was very glad that I had done that.

The money was a blessing only in that it gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted with the rest of my life.

I had been teaching and I liked doing that. So I kept my faculty position. But I DID buy a place in Georgetown. I paid cash.

Janet didn't seem to notice. I think she thought that I had mortgaged myself to the hilt. The only real change was that it was now an easy walk to campus.

Janet herself had undergone a HUGE transformation. The 23 year old I had met on that hot night in Adams-Morgan was now a 28 year old with a sense of style that I could only dream of.

Most of our life together was still bantering and interesting observations. But she increasingly took on a gravitas that was marked by assumed superiority and social refinement. She had also developed into a really beautiful woman.

She had been cute and coltishly sexy when I first met her. But as she got into her late twenties her face got more refined and her body filled out.

She always had gorgeous tits. And those remained meaty and proud. But now her hips and ass were to die for, round full and muscular. She was a truly spectacular looking person.

She never asked about money. It was just always there for her. Accordingly, she had adopted all of the rich-bitch dress, grooming and fashion tricks that differentiated between pretty and stunning.

In effect she was now miles out of my league on the social scale.

Unfortunately for me I am not that refined, or sophisticated. And I never will be. I live mostly in my head. And I have never had any desire to be socially prominent. My world is head down and virtual. It might be isolated. But I am really only happy there.

The good news was that my abilities and interests underwrote Janet's life style. The bad news was that we began to go other directions. We might have been perfect together once. But we were different people now. And as time passed we begin to function in entirely different spheres.

Janet was a black tie Kennedy Center kind of gal. My idea of a great night out was sitting at Blues Alley. She liked the ambience at the Verizon Center. I liked the peace and quiet of our sailboat on the Potomac.

I think that you can see where this is going and it inexorably went there.

Most of the time we had a free and easy life. But it was obvious that we were no longer quite as intimately connected. At least in the way that we were in the beginning. It showed in the occasional strained conversations and the huge qualitative drop-off in our sex life.

But I have to admit that I didn't see the torpedo coming until it actually hit.

I was aware of the fact that I was severely lacking in the sociability department. And I knew that there were going to have to be some changes. But that was as far as I had thought it through

On the other hand, Janet had already taken it all the way home. Or perhaps the proper term is, "All the way out the door."

I came back from class one bright sunny morning in May. The DC weather was in that narrow window when the term "delightful" best describes it.

I dropped my laptop bag on the table in the entrance hall. I walked into the living room whistling cheerily to myself. And I stopped dead, stunned by what I saw.

Janet was sitting nervously on the couch. She was holding the hand of a tall, very good looking guy. Templeton Askew himself was lounging on the couch facing them.