When I got into MBA school, I was required to take some undergrad courses since I had been a non-business undergraduate major. In the accounting class, I met Marty, a late 40s mother of two divorced from an eye surgeon. I was 27. She had never worked and was going back to college to get her BA, had kids in their early 20s, and apparently made out very well in the divorce--had a big fine, paid-for house, drove a top-end Benz, and groomed and dressed impeccably.
Very assertive and sociable, she was an accomplished "networker," and could meet and impress 20 people in a single hour, as I had observed between classes. She was very smart, too--made straight As--and really enterprising, as well--taking most of the divorce settlement and investing it in houses that she leased. She already had like 6 or 8 and was buying more.
Her looks: The first thing you'd notice about Marty was her smile, full upper and lower lips, wide and friendly with large, fairly straight, porcelain-white teeth, and she was always smiling, always. The lines in her face sent a message of "interesting woman" rather than "lady getting on up there." Her emerald-green eyes sparkled over high cheek bones, and though she wore lots of make-up, she always looked like a Hollywood make-up artist had applied it, and the shade of her lipstick was always a perfect match with the polish on her professionally manicured nails.
Auburn with just a tinge of red (probably colored, but who cares?), her wavy hair was styled immaculately in a simple but appealing swept-back, medium volume fashion to just below her shoulders. She stood about 5' 5" in heels and had a classic 1940s "hourglass figure," but, even so, the expensive, "all-business" but not masculine style clothes she wore did not bring attention to her physique.
Overall, her appearance telegraphed utterly together and professional. But more on her looks later.
Her home-leasing enterprise is how I really got to know her. She'd buy the houses cheap because they needed repairs, and could charge high rent because they were in nice neighborhoods in the 'burbs, but needed to fix them up in order to do so. I had a home restoration business at the time which focused on renovating early-1900s inner-city homes. Though it was not my market niche, she asked me to give her an estimate on fixing up a home that she had just bought and was anxious to get leased in a hurry to turn the cash flow positive.
So I took a look at it, and it needed painting inside, carpeting, new linoleum in the kitchen and baths, some ceiling repairs, windows caulked--easy stuff--and, of course, it was vacant--fast work. I gave her my pretty high estimate, which she tried to negotiate down, but I held my ground and promised I could finish it in a week, so she said OK. I finished the job a day early and she was very pleased with the work and paid in cash.
I went to her own fabulous home one evening to drop off some supplies for a new house near her that she had bought but not yet taken possession of. As she gave me the grand tour of her place, I noted that all her stuff was only the best of the best--Persian rugs, antique furnishings, Lalique crystal, Yamaha stereo, Bosendorfer baby grand piano--the works.
She said she had not had dinner, asked if I'd eaten yet, which I hadn't, so she ordered some delivery Chinese and uncorked what I figured was an astronomically expensive bottle of 1957 Chateau Rothchild before we sat down to sip it and wait for the food to arrive. She was a great conversationalist and very interesting. She showed me lots of pictures of her son and daughter, who looked like Miss America, and told me she was single, not dating anyone at the time, and would be home from college for Christmas break the following week.
Really? Those pool party photos certainly placed her as a finalist in the swimsuit competition, and the sorority dance pics of her in that plunging v-neck black dress already had me puckering for her ample breasts. Then Marty said she thought her daughter and I would really like each other. So at this point, I figured Marty was laying the groundwork for a little get-together with her superb daughter, whose bones I had already decided would be appropriate to jump on our second date.
The bottle empty, Marty produced a second of the same vintage just as the Chinese food arrived. We ate the spring rolls, hot-and-sour soup, and moved on to the garlic beef as we talk, talk, talked.
We covered many topics, but then she asked if I thought she had a sexy voice. In truth, since we had a business/academic relationship, I'd never really thought about it, and I was surprised that she asked me such a thing, having sized her up as really quite conservative. Come to think about it, she did have an extremely sexy voice--low and husky with a refined Southern accent--so I told her, "yeah." Then I changed the subject back to her daughter, who currently occupied my interest as a most devine repository of my spermatazoa.
Marty said everyone thought she and her daughter bore a strong resemblance, that they had won some mother-daughter look-a-like contest the year before. Well, upon consideration, looking again at the pictures in the album, Marty and her daughter DID look very similar, remarkably so. Pointing at a large, full-length photo of her daughter, Marty proceeded to cover their similarities feature by feature: eyes, nose, mouth, ears, cheeks, chin, and "figure," which she stood up to model, quickly smoothing her perfectly manicured hands across her bustline, down her narrow waist, and around her hips.
Though I had always regarded Marty as an attractive older woman, I was now, for the first time, thinking of her differently, somewhat sexy. Marty was effectively transferring my interest from her daughter to her.
Then Marty told me why she had asked me about her voice, couching it as a secret I must promise not to tell. My interest was piqued, and I swore I would not tell. She said she made erotic tapes! Now, this was like hearing that Madeline Albright chews tobacco--totally out of character.
Marty told the entire story of how she'd gotten involved by simply answering the phone one day, and the guy on the other end had told her what a sexy voice she had, and then referred her to someone else, who, in turn, referred her to yet another person, a woman who owned the company who explained to Marty the business, what would be required of her, and how much money she could make--a lot.
Wow, erotic tapes, huh? What kind of erotic tapes, I asked. She asked me if I would like to hear one. Well, I guess I did. So she went into the other room and returned with a small (naturally high-end) tape player and handed it to me. Apparently, I would have to be the one to press play, so, after a moment of hesitation, I did. Long pause, then clearly Marty's voice.