The Mar of the Immature Man

This is Part One of a two-part story.

Six years ago, during the summer after my senior year of high school, I got a job working for a laboratory in my hometown. My title was "Materials Manager," but that was euphemistic at best. It was peon work and not very interesting. I didn't "manage" anything; instead, I was responsible for organizing and restocking inventories of lab materials – media, reagents, glassware, and kits that we used in testing, as well as collecting or sending mail shipments.

Still, the money wasn't bad, and at least I didn't have to work in some fast food restaurant, wearing a goofy uniform so that everyone could see me dressed up like some cartoon character. Far too many of my friends had

those

jobs, and not one of them could stand theirs.

The lab did most of its business transactions online, and so customers almost never came in to either of the two buildings that we occupied, leaving me a virtually invisible man in the small city where I lived. That was good, as far as I was concerned. I could collect a paycheck in anonymity and, because I was living with my parents, I could save most of my money for college. I was going to the U of M in the fall.

I cannot define or describe maturity, but for some reason, it seems simple enough to define or describe immaturity. I have come to believe that a person has not transcended the latter until he has stopped thinking about achieving the former. Thus, it is only when you stop worrying about growing up that you come to realize that you actually have.

But that summer, I clearly had not yet done so, and based on my definition above, I still haven't. Then again, I

can

say with complete confidence that I grew up a

little

that summer. In all likelihood, I grew up a

lot

. If I did, it was all because of Tina Roche. And now six years later, Tina had found me again, and all of my concerns about my immaturity seem to have vanished as quickly as she did. But I am getting ahead of myself. Back to my story.

The lab that employed me did mostly clinical work – testing blood, urine, or stool samples for the internationally known hospital in town and for Rochester's four or five major clinics – as well as research testing for doctor's groups and the University of Minnesota and its numerous campuses. The Mayo Clinic is massive, drawing patients from all over the world. It employs over 60,000 people, which is over half of Rochester's population.

There were a lot of drawbacks to living where I did then, but the one thing that made Rochester unique – and a veritable paradise – was the number of women that lived in our fair city. Physicians were once viewed as a male-dominated subset of the population, but that has certainly changed. Today, the Mayo Clinic employs thousands of doctors, both male and female, but most of

them

are a bit older and tend come to our town already married. On the other hand, Mayo and its associated clinics and doctor's offices require the services of literally tens of thousands of nurses, nursing assistants, technicians, tech support personnel, coders, transcriptionists, and secretaries, and most of

these

employees are younger and predominantly female.

When I was in high school, I had to do a research report in my Sociology class on gender and employment. I chose to research the medical profession right here in town, and

one

fact that my report unveiled stunned my fellow male classmates – because of all of the young, female employees in the assorted medical professions, the number of single women in Rochester was six times that of single men! For young guys like me, those were pretty amazing odds!

So, it is ironic that a short time after I started that job at the laboratory, I found myself in a relationship, not with a young, single nursing assistant or radiology tech just a few years my senior or with one of my college-aged cohorts, but with a married woman 25 years older than I was.

Thus, I learned the art of lovemaking, not by fumbling my way from one awkward sexual tryst to another with someone as inexperienced and ignorant as I was, but instead from an incredibly hot, mature woman, who introduced me to a world of sexual gratification that I could never even have imagined before meeting her.

But it was much, much more than sex that I gained from my time with Tina Roche. I learned a whole lot more about the redeeming power of love and the lengths that people will go to show their love to those they care about the most. I also learned the most striking oddity about love – sometimes it is best expressed by just leaving. I guess

that

is the real plot of this story.

I distinctly remember the first time that I saw Tina. I guess it would have been pretty memorable, even if she wasn't the hottest woman I had ever met. It was a Friday afternoon, a week after I had started at the lab, and I had to run postage for a shipment of packages that needed to be taken to the post office before the weekend.

I had never been to our other building before that day. It housed all of the executive offices and the accounting department employees, and it overlooked the golf course of the most exclusive country club in town. I found out that the lab's only postage machine was housed in one of the accounting department offices, Tina Roche's office, to be precise – Room 4B.

Late that afternoon, I drove over to the other building. I thought I would find the office first before bringing in the packages, and so after opening the front doors, I entered an impressive lobby from which I discovered a long, L-shaped hallway that led to offices on either side. Once I located the correct room, a plush office that afforded a scenic view of the pond and bunkers that surrounded the green of the 4th Hole, I walked in the open door to find Tina standing sideways atop a large foot stool three or four feet off the ground.

She was attempting to pull a large box out of an upper cabinet, so her head was turned and she was staring up at the shelf two feet above her head. Because it was casual Friday, she was wearing tight-fitting jeans that dripped from her waist, and standing as she was in front of the window that was backlighting her silhouette, through her sheer blouse I could see the shape of her big tits, corralled by her black bra, pushing against that silky fabric.

She was clearly struggling with the package that still remained inside the cabinet. I could see the problem right away – the top of the box was hitting the top of the cabinet opening. Because it was above her head, she couldn't really see very well and hadn't yet determined that in order to remove the box she would have to turn it on its side to slide it out. Since she didn't hear me come in the room, I stood for a moment, just ten feet or so behind her, admiring the view – the stunning scenery outside the window paled miserably in comparison. After seeing her struggle with the package again, I decided a little chivalry was in order.

So after a few seconds, I decided to announce my presence, asking innocently enough, "Can I help you with that?" in a timid, subdued voice.

Not realizing that I had entered the room, Tina squealed with shocked surprise, "Jesus Christ!"

As she turned toward the voice to her side, she teetered dangerously on top of the stool until, having overcompensated when she instinctively shifted her weight toward the cabinet, she lost her balance and started falling the other way, sideways toward me.

I reacted intuitively, considering that I was the inadvertent cause of her fall, and so, as she tumbled, I took two quick steps toward the toppling stool and caught Tina's shapely torso in both of my arms. One of my hands, quite unintentionally, wound up palming her huge tits, while the other one found her hips and her tight, round ass. Embarrassed that I had touched a woman who I did not know and who was more than twice my age in such an inappropriate manner, I quickly set her on her feet, and repositioned my hands so they held her about her shoulders until I was sure that she could stand again without assistance.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to frighten you," I said apologetically.

After she composed herself, and realized she'd been pawed by a young kid barely out of high school, Tina smiled at me wryly and said, "You're pretty good with those hands! I guess I should be happy that they were in the right

place

at the right

time

." The emphasis she placed on those two words seemed to imply that I had touched her tits and ass on purpose. "What brings you to my little piece of paradise?" she asked sarcastically, smiling even brighter.

"Oh, I'm here to run postage for some packages that I need to mail," I answered turning a bright shade of red. "I... I was told you have the postage machine in this office."

"Oh, you work here, huh? How come I've never seen you before?"

"I... I... I just started a week ago," I stammered.

"Aren't you cute? Scared to talk to an old, married lady, huh?"

"No... no ma'am; I'm just sorry I made you fall, that's all. I didn't mean to," I apologized again.

"Tell you what, honey, if you promise never to call me 'ma'am' again, I'll show you how to use that postage machine, okay?" she said, smiling slyly. "I don't look like some kind of old granny, now do I?"

"No... no... no, you don't ma... ah, ah, I mean, miss." Now, I was really blushing.

"You

are

cute! I've really got you flustered, haven't I?"

"No... no... no, ma... miss. If you'll excuse me, I'll go get those packages." I turned back toward the hallway and left the room, so embarrassed that if I didn't absolutely have to, I wouldn't have come back at all.

But I did come back, only a few seconds later, pushing a hand cart loaded with five or six packages, and when I did, I found Tina back up on the foot stool, still unable to remove the package from the cabinet. I didn't want a repeat of the earlier scene, so this time I dropped the hand cart so as to make enough noise to alert Tina to my return. Jesus, she looked good standing there!

So, having recovered my confidence just a bit from another glimpse of her stunning form, I decided to try chivalry again. "Here, let me get that down for you," I offered. "I'm a little taller than you are; it will be a lot easier for me to do it."

"Oh, aren't you a sweet one!" she answered, and I offered her my hand as she climbed down off the stool. Then, I climbed up it myself, and in a few seconds I had pulled the box out of the cabinet, stepped down, and stood before her cradling it in my arms.

"Where would you like me to put this,

ma'am

? Oh, I'm sorry, I did it again!"

She laughed once more, a bemused, feminine laugh that had me blushing for a third time. "Oh, honey, it's alright! You're just too polite for your own good! I'm Tina, by the way. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"I'm Evan. Evan Hughes."

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Evan Hughes. Why don't you put that box over on my desk?"

I did as I was told, and Tina proceeded to show me how to use the postage machine. Mailing those boxes was the last thing that I needed to do to end my first week of work. So, after I put the postage labels in place, I took the boxes to the post office, and then rushed home, to my parents' house and locked myself in the bathroom, so I could beat myself off thinking about Tina's beautiful face and unbelievable body. For the next month, I did the same thing every day, on most days several times a day.

After that first visit to her office, I returned nine or ten other times in the next couple of weeks, and every visit pretty much went down the same way. Tina flirted with me unabashedly, and I blushed and tried to conceal the hard-ons that I started getting every time I saw her, or after the first two times, even before I walked into her office in anticipation of seeing her.

Though I did my best to hide them, I suspected that Tina noticed. She really had an effect on me. She was gorgeous, and just so much more woman than the scrawny girls that I had dated in high school.

And for some reason, Tina really seemed to like me. I would offer to do favors for her – moving boxes or carrying things. Once she even asked me to look at her car, which she had been having trouble starting. Though I'm not all that mechanical, I discovered that she had a loose battery cable, and so, when I tightened it, her problems disappeared. She told me after that that she was "eternally grateful."

We talked at length during every visit, and I learned a lot about her – what she liked and didn't like: her favorite books, music, and movies, as an example. We had pretty similar preferences and interests, and for some reason, Tina thought that I had really good taste in most everything that was artistic. She also told me that she couldn't believe that I knew as much as I did about pieces of art, film, literature, and music that were created long before I was born.

I specifically remember one conversation in which she expounded on her favorite book, Salinger's

The Catcher in the Rye

. I was kind of amazed, because it was my favorite book too, and so we went on to discuss it at length, each of us explaining the reasons we thought it was so great.

After several weeks and only after she had started flirting with me, she would even talk, albeit vaguely, about her sex life and intimated to me that her husband was one randy motherfucker. Still, I got the impression that there was something that wasn't quite right about their relationship.

I found out that she was originally a Southern girl who'd relocated to the North to go to college, and though I couldn't detect a drawl in her vocal patterns, I did notice that she always called me "sweetie," or "sweetheart," or "honey" or any other term of endearment that most Midwesterners that I knew reserved for family members or loved ones.

After I got to know her a little better, she told me a bit about her marriage, confirming that I was right about her and her husband's strained relationship – that they'd been together for long time, but that despite the fact that she'd always hoped and planned to have children, he'd ignored the topic for years, until eventually nixing the idea altogether, and that now, she too had given up on the plan, reasoning that she was too old to be a mother.

I could tell that it bothered her, and those were usually sad conversations, but as quickly as she brought up the subject, she would change the discussion to something more lighthearted, and soon she'd be back to laughing and smiling and flirting with me, causing the stiffness in my pants to return.

That same day that she first talked about her marriage, she asked me something curious about myself that got me wondering about her intentions. It came out of nowhere. "Do you have a girlfriend, Evan?" she asked in a much more timid manner than she usually addressed me.

"No, not now," I answered with embarrassment.

"Did you ever have a girlfriend?" she continued probing.

"No, not really. I dated a few girls, but I was never really serious with any of them."

"Why not? You're a handsome guy," she said, smiling brightly.

I blushed. She always managed to say something overtly complimentary to me, and though I always enjoyed that flattery, I didn't always know how to respond. For some reason, her compliments always seemed genuine, like she really meant what she said, and wasn't just bullshitting me.

"I didn't really like any of them, I guess. All the girls at my school seemed like they were really snobbish and superficial. I guess I wasn't interested in trying to elevate my own social status by dating someone that I didn't really like."

"It was their loss, Evan," she said smiling. I blushed again, and then I changed the subject somehow, but I thought about that conversation a lot after that. It seemed like Tina must have had some motive for asking me about my personal life. I knew she liked me, but it just seemed beyond the realm of possibility that she could like me in

that

way.

Pretty soon I figured out that I could waste an extra half hour in her office every time I had to take something to the post office, and then I started coming up with excuses to go see her. After the first two weeks of going there, when Tina flirted with me, I tried, however ineffectually, to flirt back. I had plenty of inspiration.

Tina Roche was about 5' 6" tall, with long, platinum blonde hair with dark roots. Her soft, feathery tresses were accented with darker blonde highlights and were styled in a different way most every time I saw her. Sometimes, she wore her hair down, curling seductively about her shoulders, other times it was up, and occasionally she wore it in a bun or in braids. I could tell she was not a natural blonde, and was probably born a brunette, but I think that invention only made her appearance more appealing.

The first few times that I saw her, she always wore glasses, but I soon discovered that they were only for reading, and any time I was in her presence for more than a minute or two, she always removed them, fully revealing her beautiful face to me.

She had stunning blue/green eyes, with dark, arching eyebrows hovering over them, and high cheekbones, soft, pink lips, a delicate nose, and a perfect set of white teeth. She always wore dangling earrings, and usually added some matching necklace that was almost always grasped provocatively by the cleavage that she proudly displayed, regardless of the outfit that she wore.

But it was her body that had me transfixed. She possessed the classic hourglass figure, the kind that launched a thousand erections. Later, once we had started sleeping together, I learned that her natural measurements were 38E-23-34. Her tits were simply huge and perfectly round and didn't sag in the least, despite the fact that they were real! Regardless of the types of bras she wore, they just weren't able to contain her breasts, so those delicious fun bags spilled out of her tops for appreciative eyes like mine to admire.

Then there was her ass. It was also round and full, but also tight without a hint of fat. And in between, she sported a slender, toned waist that proved that, despite her age – she was 42 and would turn 43 in the fall – she had clearly taken care of herself.

But one day completely changed our relationship, and it is there that my story really begins. About a month after that first visit, I carried four or five small packages into her office late on a Friday afternoon, but this time, I entered to a very different scene than what I had become accustomed to. Tina was hunched over her desk with her head down, and her massive tits cradled in her left arm on the desktop. In her right hand, she held her IPhone. On the desk next to it was a crumpled piece of paper. She was crying.

By this time, I always knocked on the door frame before I entered so that I knew she heard me when I came walking in. "Tina, are you okay? What's wrong?" I said in a concerned voice. She insisted that I call her "Tina" even though it took me at least two weeks to get comfortable enough not calling her "Ms. Roche" or "ma'am" and wasn't falling all over myself, stammering one excuse or another for using such polite mannerisms.

At first she didn't answer. I made another request, "Tina, tell me what's wrong." I was worried about her. She had become not only my fantasy dream woman, but a friend that I liked for plenty of other reasons besides her stunning beauty. She was bright, quick-witted, and funny. Besides, she liked me.

Finally, she lifted her head from her arm and smiled up at me bleakly with tears running down both cheeks, "It's nothing, Evan. I guess I just get emotional at times." I knew her well enough by now to know that wasn't true.