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.