Estelle

Well, hello again, Gentle Reader. I hope the day finds you well.

If you're looking for the graphic, detailed sex act that is the centerpiece of my stories, you might want to wait for Chapter Two of this one.

What happened was this - I woke yesterday morning, and my muse had been busy. This story was there, just waiting to be written down. I had the image of Estelle in my mind and, well, all I need to do is look in the mirror, subtract a half-century, and there's the image of the other main character in this work.

As those of you who read my stuff know, much of it is at least in part autobiographical. Yes, my mother did own and operate one of the last privately owned nursing homes in Denver, although they called it a "convalescent home." I think today it would probably be more of a hospice facility. Yes, the woman who got my virginity was 84 - at least that's what she said - and somewhere north of 300 pounds. And yes, as a result of that, my tastes have always run to "mature" women, candidly, the older, the better.

I liked the idea of a blind date, and when I started writing, I figured this would be about ten double-spaced pages of sex, that's two of Literotica's pages.

But a funny thing happened.

I found I liked these characters. I didn't want to end it with Estelle satisfied and David heading out the door.

So, here it is. Meet David and Estelle. Get to know them. They're interesting, and I can't wait to see how things work out for them. Stick with me, and I think this could get interesting. Let's be that fly on the wall, shall we, and see.

"A blind date?" I asked.

"Yeah, and you'll like her," Marty said. Marty had been my best friend since third grade. He knew everything there was to know about me. That included my taste in women.

"Who do you have me set up with?" I asked.

He grinned then.

"My grandmother," he said.

"I see," I said, very interested now.

"Grampa Jim died," he went on, "so Grammi Estelle moved back to town, and she says the men at the center just don't interest her."

"Center?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "She moved into

Happy Village

. The Activity Center hosts dances and games and all sorts of shit but she says she's bored."

I was interested. I basically grew up in a nursing home as my mother struggled with her alcoholism, new regulations, and escalating costs to keep the family business running. And the thing is, after that, I just never could find girls my own age interesting. They all seemed, well, giggly and silly to me. I suppose your tastes get set early, and in my case, the 84-year-old woman who claimed my virginity certainly set mine.

"And what do you have in mind for this blind date?" I asked.

He laughed.

"Hell, I'm already pimping out my grandmother," he said, "you want me to strip her too? Give me your phone."

He knew my passcode, of course, keyed it in, and then keyed in ten digits.

"Hey, Grammi, it's Marty," he said.

"Yes, I know it's a different number. You know that guy I told you about? Well, say hi," he said, handing me the phone.

I was, for one of those rare times in my life, speechless. I just couldn't think of a thing to say.

"Hello?" she said, the lilt in her voice making the word a question.

I liked her voice. It was a little husky. I could picture her smoking a cigarette, a strong drink in one of those round glasses, what my mother called a "highball" glass, in her free hand.

"Ummmmm," I managed to get my tongue untied, "This is David, the guy Marty told you about."

"Well, hello, David," she said, and now my image was of her with a cigarette in her hand, reclined on the bed, smiling. She had one of THOSE voices.

I felt the smile spread across my face, and Marty smiled back at me.

"And hello to you too, Estelle," I said. "Could I interest you in dinner?"

Her soft chuckle fit her voice, deep and throaty.

"Well, that depends, David," she said. "Do you know the word gerontophile?"

It was my turn to chuckle, and I did.

"Yes, Estelle, I do," I said, "But for me, it's just that mature women are more interesting. It's not about age or age gap or my mommy issues, of which I have some. It's just that with age comes experience, and experience is interesting."

She laughed this time, a healthy, throaty sound that I liked.

"Good answer, David," she said. "Yes, I think I'd be interested in dinner and maybe a drink afterward."

I grinned into the phone, wondering if she could hear the grin in my voice when I said, "Italian food okay?"

"Mmmmmmmm," she said, "I'll kill anyone you name for a good lasagna."

"I'll have the names when I pick you up," I said. "Sevenish okay?"

"Seven would be fine, Dear," she said, "but I don't do 'ish.' Be on time, please."

"Fair enough," I said. "What's your address?"

She rattled off an address, 7683 Pleasant View, if it matters, and I said, "See you PROMPTLY at seven," and hit "End."

Marty was grinning.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm just wondering which one of you will get a lesson," he said.

"Oh, I will. That's why I love the old ladies," I said.

"Okay," he said, "I gotta roll. You know how it is. I prefer the young ladies and Carla's tits are calling, I can hear them from here."

I laughed and said, "Have fun. How big ARE those damn things anyway?"

His current girlfriend, Carla, had an ID that proved she was 18, looked like very dangerous jailbait, and was one of those girls with such enormous boobs you wanted to see her in the swimming pool just to see if she'd bob like a cork on those things.

He laughed and said, "My hand to God, her bras are 38FF."

I cupped my hand to my ear, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I hear them calling."

We slapped hands, man hugged, and he was gone.

I sat, thinking.

I knew Marty's age; like mine, he was 23. I knew his mother had been almost 40 when he was born. "Daddy's little surprise," his family always called him. That meant his grandmother, assuming she was 20 or so when Marty's mother was born, could be pretty deep into her 70s.

In other words, from my gerontophilic point-of-view, she could be just about perfect.

I wanted to make the best first impression, so I took my little blue chick magnet to the carwash and sprung for the $40

El Supremo

wash and wax, a power wash followed by a hand finish.

My car is a bright blue PT Cruiser convertible that is, as far as I know, unique. I have the high-performance turbo engine mated to a five-speed transmission. To get it like I wanted it, I had to find the engine in a junkyard. I rebuilt it carefully, doing those little hot rodder's tricks that probably weren't really needed with new engines. The heads were milled, ported, and polished, everything was hand-checked and assembled to the ideal specification. It was what my cousin and his buddies called "blue printed." I didn't have access to a dyno, but I figured I had about 250 horsepower available, up from the stock engine's 230 hp. After I carefully trimmed a few pounds here and a few pounds there, I had it down to 3,035 pounds with a full gas tank. With that power-to-weight ratio, it was both quick and fast, although with that much horsepower, you had to be aware of the torque steer.

Anyway, it served its purpose, which, of course, was to attract chicks.

The car clean and ready, I started focusing on myself.

I trimmed my beard first. I was past the veteran-coming-home phase of thinking the Army owed me almost four years of shaves and haircuts, so the hair was back to my Rick-Nelson-at-18 length and look, and the beard was closely trimmed. I thought the first threads of silver in my hair and beard gave me a bit of

gravitas

.

I showered, spent a few minutes with a nail file while Mrs. Katt, one of the residents at Mom's nursing home, not the one who claimed my virginity but one with whom a spent quite a bit of time, told me in that coarse, high pitched, old woman's voice of hers,

"Keep your fingernails trimmed, Davey,"

as she carefully wiped at a line on her arm where I had scratched her during one of those lessons she enjoyed giving (and receiving). For some reason, that line stuck, and I always tended to my nails before a date.

I dressed conservatively in an Oxford cloth, button down shirt, khaki pants - my uniform pants, actually, but here in the World, just beige pants, bright socks, and black loafers.

And here I was, ready at a little after five to pick up my date at seven "on the dot."

"What are you, thirteen?" I asked the bonehead in the mirror because that is exactly what I felt like.

I flashed back to my sixth grade date to take the love of my life roller skating.

Yep. That's exactly what I felt like.

On some level, I liked being this keyed up. I played some

Call of Duty

on my Xbox for about an hour, looked at the clock, and it was 5:34.

My attempt to read the assignment for next week in my

Econ 101

class got me to 5:41.

"Well, fuck," I said aloud and then had a thought.

I gassed the car up, went to the mall, a place I almost never frequented, and went to the florist.

"Help you?" the high school girl working the register asked, the lack of interest in my answer pouring off of her in waves.

"I'm going on a date, and I'd like a corsage. You know? Like I was taking her to the prom or something like that," I said.

"We don't do corsages anymore," she said, finally bothering to look up from the phone in her hand.

"Don't do them here?" I asked.

"No," she said, hitting me with a teenage girl's eyeroll that almost made me laugh in her face, "for prom. For that matter, we don't do proms much except for the nerds."

"Soooo," I said, giving her my best boyish grin, "let's pretend I'm a nerd."

Now, I don't "feel" handsome. When I look in the mirror, I see a round-faced, curly-haired, kind of goofy-looking guy. But I've been told I'm good-looking enough times by people whose judgment I trust that I accept that I'm at least easy on the eyes as Josee, another of the ladies at the nursing home, might have put it.

So I turned on my absolute BEST, high wattage grin, "Show me corsages, please."

Sure enough, they did have some prepared. Fancy that, in a florist shop and all.

"I want one you pin on," I said, and beyond that, I didn't know anything about flowers. She sold me a very pretty thing with a single flower. I'm not sure what you call it, but it was a delicate pink color with dark spots on the petals, with a small bunch of tiny white and purple flowers surrounding it.

"Check me out on how to pin it," I said.

She looked at me in that way only a woman can pull off that is her equivalent of a man saying "What the fuck?"

"No," I said, chuckling, "I'm not trying to cop a feel. Show me how the pin thing works."

She relaxed and showed me how to pin the corsage to cloth properly.

That side trip got me to 6:17 by the clock on the dashboard.

"Well, fuck it," I said aloud to myself and then laughed and said, again aloud, "You haven't even met this woman and she already has you talking to yourself."

That exchange with myself somehow eased my nervousness. I drove to

Happy Village

and scouted around.

It was precisely what you would expect from a place that advertised itself as "The ideal setting for active senior citizens to enjoy the golden years." No, I didn't write that drivel, and whoever did should never be allowed to write copy again.

The streets were wide and far better maintained than the city streets I drove on to get to the place. Sidewalks and an extra lane, something I finally figured out was for bicycles and golf carts, bordered manicured lawns. The whole development featured a mixture of single-family, duplex, fourplex, and multi-story buildings I assumed were condominiums that had a family resemblance but didn't fall into the trap of subdivisions the nation over that will have a hundred houses built on two or three floorplans. There was the "sameness," to be sure, but the developers had avoided uniformity. I didn't particularly like it, but it was, well, "pleasant" is a plain vanilla enough word to describe it.

I drove around, more or less aimlessly, while I worked out the layout. And the place was huge. I logged several miles on the car inside the fences and didn't explore everything before it was time to find Estelle's house. The streets tended to gentle curves and

cul de sacs

that radiated out from a central complex that I figured out was a combination community center, medical center, shopping area, and park. As I wandered around, I found three other commercial clusters featuring grocery stores, fast food and sit-down restaurants, a movie theater, and a CVS drugstore, making me wonder if

Happy Village

had franchised CVS.

I killed enough time that it was, according to my dashboard clock, 6:59 when I pulled into the driveway at her house, and I stood, grinning, at the door, my finger poised at the doorbell button, until my watch blinked 7:00.

I pushed the doorbell, and my hand was still in the air when the door opened.

"You're prompt," she said and that damn voice sounded even better in person than it had over the phone.

My first impression, and the impression that has not changed a bit over the intervening years, was that Estelle was pretty. She wasn't beautiful like a Sophia Loren or Marilyn Monroe, or cute like Sally Fields or Meg Ryan. But she was pretty, the kind of attractive that made you lose concentration on your conversation when she walked by and look at her.

As I looked, starting at the top and working my way down, I felt like I was admiring a statue at the Art Museum or something. She had that kind of effect on me.

Her hair was a soft halo framing her round face. She had gone with that pale beige color with just a hint of pink in the gold, something I think they call

Strawberry Blonde

. Since I like older women, I tended to look, and this was the color that seems to have replaced that pale blue that was once the standard old lady color. Her face was round with enough plumpness that her skin was smooth and incredibly pink. I'm experienced enough to know that this was, at least in part, the careful application of makeup, but you need a good base to look as good as she did.

Her blue eyes were surrounded by about a million tiny wrinkles, and I thought they were sexy. Bedroom eyes, or maybe, as the old song put it, "Bette Davis eyes."

Her cheeks were plump and smooth, making lines of jowls that framed her chin, which had a cute dimple. Her mouth was small and full, and when she smiled, I felt a little KLANG in my head when I saw that she had fallen victim to the tooth-whitening craze. It looked out of place on her pretty face.

She was dressed for date night. Her pale blue blouse set off her pink skin, and I was sure she had chosen it for that purpose. Her dark blue skirt was wide enough to let her walk freely, but it wasn't that soft material that would sway with every step, something I had heard called a "flirty skirt." She had on stockings, making me wonder if it was pantyhose or, fingers crossed, a garter belt and nylons. Moderately high heels did good things for her legs, although I noticed she had the wide-heeled type, not spikes.

For jewelry, she had a necklace that looked like she probably bought it on a trip to a reservation somewhere. It was turquoise and nestled nicely right at the bottom of her incipient double chin.

She was of medium height, I guessed her at 5'5", and a little plump. The word "matronly" probably fits Estelle better than any other woman I ever knew personally.

I deliberately looked her up and down and liked that she stood still. She didn't fidget or act like she didn't like being looked at or say anything silly like, "Take a picture, David, it lasts longer." She just stood, casual, with good posture, meeting my gaze. I finished at her shoes, liking the way her plump calves gave her a moderate set of "cankles" as I had heard legs like that described in some old sitcom or other. You know, women's legs where accumulated fat cells make her calves kind of a tube all the way down to her feet, giving her very thick ankles, with cankles as a portmanteu of "calves and ankles."

Anyway, I liked her legs.

I liked the way the top two buttons of her blouse were undone. Not the sexy display that would have been the case if that third button was undone, but a casual display of some of that pink skin, just a hint of cleavage, and a nice frame for that necklace.

When I met her eyes, she was smiling.

"Well, do I pass inspection?" she asked.

I flashed my best boyish grin and said, "Oh yeah."

She giggled.

"Whatcha got there, Buster?" she asked, pointedly looking down at the box in my hand.

"Flowers, and if you'll allow me, I'll pin them on," I said.

"Oh, Dear," she said, "you'd better come on in then. I wouldn't want the neighbors to have a stroke."

Her house was about what you'd expect. The predominant color was beige, the contractor's choice no doubt, something neutral to help sell the house. It looked to me like she had gone to

Rooms to Go

or one of those big box furniture stores and bought furniture and artwork by the room set. It had that sort of generic look. I figured in ten years it would be full of woman stuff, but for now it could be photographed for an advertising spread.

She turned to face me.

Up close, she was even prettier.

"Now don't you stick me," she said, smiling.

I got the corsage out and very carefully worked my fingers inside the top of her blouse to hold tension where I would be putting the pin to hold the flowers in place. Her skin, where my knuckles brushed, was just as soft and warm as I'd hoped.

And the flower worked. I got lucky with the colors, of course, but the colors of the flowers set off her eyes and that wonderfully pink skin.

"I'm trying," she said, the smile making those tiny wrinkles around her eyes seem to tighten almost like the skin of a woman's areola, "to remember the last time someone brought me flowers."

I smiled back, I couldn't help it, and said, "I'll bring you flowers every time."

"Be careful, David," she said, "I'll hold you to that."

I just grinned and caught her hand in mine.

"Come on, Blind Date," I said, "The reservation is for 7:30, and we're going to be pushing it."

The restaurant, a place called

Pagliacci's

, if you care, was in the city's Little Italy. My first date when I came to town and started college had suggested it, and it has been my regular first-date treat since. Outside, it was just another storefront in a commercial strip. Inside, it was like a set from

The Godfather

with a dozen tables, all four-tops, chrome tube chairs with red cushions, red and white checkered tablecloths, and wax-dripping-coated wine bottles as candleholders.

Dinner was the Lasagna for her and Chicken

Alfredo

for me accompanied by breadsticks so hard they could be used as weapons and the house Chianti, wine so dry and strong that if you got a bottle by mistake and didn't like it you could use it as paint remover.

The food, as always, was excellent, but the conversation was even better.

One of the things I enjoy about mature women, and Estelle was the oldest woman I ever shared a dinner date with, is hearing about things as living memories that I have only read about. I'm a history major, and stories like "I remember when the first oil embargo hit. I went to bed and gas was thirty-five cents a gallon and when I got up it was a buck and a quarter," make it real.

And she had a lot of stories.

She had missed "duck and cover" drills, but told me of her first car, a 1963 Chevrolet, with an AM radio and the little triangle-in-a-circle symbols at 640 and 1240, the

Conelrad

(she pronounced it "kahnuhlrad," different from the "Cone Rad" I had used since I first saw it written) stations, and how her dad had laughed while she figured out how to get moving on a big empty parking lot by operating a gas pedal, brake pedal, and clutch pedal ("WITH ONLY TWO FEET" she said, making me laugh) and the three-on-the-tree stick shift.