The hot water of the shower banished the shampoo from Chris Jenkins' hair. It was a limpid spray, but effective. He soaped up his pudgy, 30 year old body after rinsing his beard and taking care to cleanse the leftover ejaculate from his genitals and legs. The early morning masturbation gave him long needed release after the night of stimulating dreams, and he was ready to focus on other things once his morning routine was over. Maybe it was time to work on his latest story; he'd been playing with an idea for a quest to rescue a damsel from a dragon, but needed a twist to make the story interesting.
His body washed, he emerged to towel off and complete his ritual. As he brushed his teeth, he focused on what his heroine should look like: a tall redhead with long flowing hair, breasts like turrets of a castle, and an attitude like Marian Ravenswood from the
Raiders of the Lost Ark?
The hero crossed his mind: perhaps a historian who left a monastery when he came of age and spent his life as a wandering merchant.
Clad in a long flowing bathrobe, he booted up his computer and checked his e-mail. There was an average amount of spam in his folder, as well as a note from an unfamiliar address. Opening it, he read:
Chris,
I am sorry if I embarrassed you yesterday. Obviously I went too far, too fast and scared you. Please forgive my impulsiveness. In future, I will conduct myself more appropriately.
Your stories online are quite good, and I want to help you get them published in hardcover. There are a few concerns I have about your story telling and would like to speak with you about them. If you could stop by before you go to work today, we can talk about this and anything else on your mind.
Sincerely yours,
Anna Pearson
Shaking his head, he stood up quickly and got himself a bowl of cereal from his little kitchen. The feel of Frau Pearson's breasts and their milky whiteness haunted him, and his exhausted loins began to stir again. Devouring raisin bran and milk, the embarrassment of his attraction to her returned in force.
He went online to play his favorite game, spending the morning in another world. Being lost in character gave his subconscious a chance to work things out better: there wasn't any reason he couldn't see Frau Pearson. She wanted to help him and she promised to behave. When she was his teacher, she was known for iron discipline, and now she was in her 70's. If he had any improper thoughts, he could control himself, after all, he was 30 years old and not a teenager anymore. He remembered his buddy Dave Chapman's confession how she was his lust interest in High School, and that made Dave weirder than he was. The insight helped him relax. Exiting the game, he took a look at his old stories on the Internet, and checked how often they were downloaded. The numbers weren't bad, but if he could get something published and actually be established as an author, he could kiss the convenience store job goodbye and maybe move out of his mother's basement. His fingers drummed the table as he thought: I need to see her, but. . . If he waited until 2:30PM and went in his working clothes, he could give her a small window of time to say her piece without a chance of anything else developing.
Frau Pearson's clean and neat house was shaded from the hot August afternoon sunlight. He knocked on the front door, and looked down the street to see if anyone he knew spotted him. Stupid, he said to himself, you've been doing the yardwork here for three weeks, nobody's going to think you're strange for being here.
"Good afternoon, Chris," Anna Pearson said, opening the door. She wore a demure, short sleeve brown dress and black flat shoes, her face and hair impeccable and golden stud earrings in her lobes. "Please come into my study upstairs and we'll talk."
They mounted the creaky stairs and took an immediate right into her study. This room was lined with bookcases as well, with new computer equipment resting on an elaborate doily topping an antique desk. Two glasses of lemonade rested on a sideboard across the room and she offered him one. They sipped the drinks, silent and tense, until she tapped a few keys on the computer keyboard and opened a window with his website.
"I have some observations about your work, Chris. You're improved greatly since you were in High School, and you have real promise. My granddaughter is an editor for a publishing house in New York, and agrees with me, however there are a couple of things you need to work on. Are you interested?"
He relaxed at the news, and leaned forward. "Yes, yes. Tell me what I have to do. I'll do anything." Chris immediately wanted to pull the last sentence back before it took effect, but she ignored it.
"You have a vivid imagination, which makes your plot lines very creative and unpredictable. The way you describe your scenes is brilliant: I think I'm actually standing on other worlds when I read your space stories. The dialogue is ingenious, I laughed so hard a couple of times I cried. Your heroes are all in their early 20's: I think you can branch out and try some heroes at different stages in their lives, but we'll talk about that later.
"The main issue Angela and I have is your characters are all 2 dimensional. I know what Princess Brenda and Sir Toadwart look like and what they can do, but I don't know how they think and feel, or why they are the way they are. This is particularly bad with your villains: it's like they're an obstacle course rather than sentient beings. I know a lot of movies these days don't draw their characters up very well, but you're better than that."
Chris bit his lip, then took a sip from his glass. He noticed how she said Ahn-ge-la with a hard G, the wisps of film at the corners of the window, the depth and sparkle of her blue eyes, the rich sonority of her voice. It wasn't far from the husky tone of yesterday. Trembling, he tried to assimilate what she was telling him. No one had given him such feedback since his brief collegiate career. That was why he dropped out: he couldn't take criticism.
"I can see you're hurt, Chris," her face soft and consoling. "Please don't take this personally. If you didn't have promise, I wouldn't have summoned you here today. You need something different in your life, something better. Take a deep breath and relax. I won't hurt you, I promise."
"Oh, I understand, Frau Pearson," he blurted like a teenager. "I never thought about it before. Ah, ah, do you have any suggestions?"
She smiled broadly "Of course. Are you writing a new story now?"
"Yeah, got an idea for a new story."
"After you get the scene set, take a few moments to think through where your major characters come from, what their childhoods were like, who they loved, what they feel their strengths and weakness are, how they reacted to successes and failures. Think about what their favorite food and colors are, how they like to spend their days off. You won't use all that, but it will help you make them more real. It will also help with the scenes between the action sequences, which will make the pacing of the story easier to handle."
They talked a little more and finished their drinks. His head was spinning as she showed him out, and they parted without physical contact. It took him an hour after he got to work to focus on what he was supposed to be doing.
He was sitting at the cash register of his Lawrence, Kansas convenience store the next evening, a slow Friday on a muggy night, staring blankly at a pair of shapely butt cheeks around 11:30PM; the dullness of the evening having sedated him. Jessica Smith, his underling, was mopping the floor with her back to him. The mop passed languidly back and forth and her hips shifted in rhythm. Most men would have found the exhibition tantalizing but Chris was not most men. He'd known Jessica all summer; her lousy work ethic and spoiled girl attitude had permanently disconnected her body's effect on his libido.
She rounded a corner and he returned to his inventory. A car went by, and he checked his watch: 11:35PM. In half an hour, he would be free to return home and cross town to his Dungeons and Dragons game at Dave Chapman's house.
Jessica finished her chore and wheeled the mop bucket in front of the counter. "I think you're gay," she said sharply, a sneer on her face.
He looked up at her in disdain. "What?" he moaned, his shoulders sagging.
"I think you're gay. Not interested in women. Fudge packer. Gay cabellero. Pansy Ass." Shaking his head, he snorted: "Little you know."
"I'll tell everyone you're gay." She tossed her head, flipping back her shoulder length multi colored mane. "Everyone'll think you suck dick."
He put his pen down crispy and glared at her. "Like you don't know what that's like. For starters, this is a university town. Queers and Allies is a recognized group on campus. The only folks who care who's what are a bunch of rednecks I never spend time with. Secondly, just because I'm not turned on by you doesn't mean I'm not attracted to women. You're such a bitch I couldn't get it up if you were standing butt naked in front of me. So it's no test of my gender preference that I'm not interesting in raping you at this instant."
"We'll see about that. You're a liar, liar, queer pants on fire," she huffed and pushed the mop bucket to the back.
After she faded from sight, a huge man with greasy grey hair, a long sleeved plaid shirt, jeans and flip flops strode in through the door. Chris kept his attention to his work until he noticed a gun in his face. "You'll only get fifty bucks," he said calmly, his heart racing inside.
