"You know, some days I just can't believe you!" I said to Leslie, my girlfriend.. "You want me to approve your going out with this other guy, this Bright bastard..."
"He's not a bastard, Nick!"
"OK, so maybe he's not even bright, but I don't even know the . . . guy . . . and you want me, sight unseen, to say, 'OK, Leslie, have a date with Mr. Jason Bright, just because he's got you all sexed up?'"
"He
doesn't
have me all sexed up, as you so crudely put it, Nick. He's just a very interesting fellow I met in Philosophy class, and we got talking . . ."
"He's a 'fellow,' is he?" I put all the nasty inflection on that word that I could.
"Oh, shit, Nick, he's a man, damn it! You keep this up and you are
really
going to get me angry!"
"Well, can I at least meet him?"
"Yes, certainly, you're invited, too! He told me he wanted to meet you in the worst way."
"What . . .the hell does that mean, 'the worst way?'"
"I don't know, but he wasn't drooling or anything, Nick. Now behave and get dressed. You can't come to dinner in your skivvies, you know!"
"Come on, Les', you're wearing a camisole and no panties, and you're on
my
case? OK, love, let's do it."
We got dressed to the nines โ I didn't know it then, but I deep down wanted to impress this Jason character, and as it turned out, I did, in a funny sort of way.
Now, Leslie and I made an "odd couple," but we'd been together for three years, pretty solidly a pair until the dinner with Jason Bright and its aftermath.
I still don't know what got us two together, but something clicked one day in a restaurant, we looked at each other, I walked right over and asked her for a date, she locked eyes with me for a moment, she smiled, and we kept on from there. I don't know why, I told you.
Anyway, I'm five feet four, not so bad a bod', I'm not dumpy or anything. Leslie's five foot seven, and in heels a bit more. As I said, she's got a good figure, 34C-24-34 and weighs about 118, last time I peeked around her at the scale โ she purely hated for me to do that! When we first went on dates there used to be a bit of the "Got a new mascot, Leslie?" but that soon stopped when our friends understood that we were a definite couple.
Leslie was great in bed and out of it. Sometimes when I'd come home from work โ I do free-lance contract and consulting work for a big construction company, bookkeeping and the like โ she'd be waiting with a cool drink in her hand, stark naked. Naturally, she'd strip me bare as quickly or as slowly as she felt like that day while I playfully tried to get to the drink, which she'd placed on a table near โ but not too near โ the door. Having won the "battle" for the life-saving fluid, I'd sit down and sip the drink, teasing her while my cock got rigid. Then Les', her head on one side, looking at my throbbing cock, would say something like,
"Your brain's all in your gonads, you male, you," and I'd answer,
"Maybe, but what matters to you is right here," waving my drink over my glans, "waiting for you."
Silly games, I know, but I think we were in love with each other. Except that we seldom fought, and that over silly things, too, we might have been married. I wish we had been.
At any rate, as we started out to go on this 'date" with Mr. Jason Bright, Leslie told me to drive to Le Coq d'Or, one of the ritziest and most expensive restaurant-bars in th city. I was shocked and amazed โ to tell you the truth, a little bit frightened, too. Who was this guy to be spending so much, for even an unkept reservation at "The Cock" (as we all called it) cost an arm and a leg? Jesus! He certainly outclassed me. I could maybe take Leslie there twice a year โ a good dinner with tips and parking could run over $250.00. Well I figured, what the hell. We'll eat and drink โ easy on the last โ on this guy Bright, and let it go at that, I hoped.
Leslie looked as excited and scared as I was, but she put on a bold front as we walked into the lobby from the
porte-cochere
where the valet had taken the car โ Crikey! That was going to be a twenty-five buck fee and a $10.00 tip for sure! Her arm in mine helped me to steady myself, and we looked a proper couple, if slightly mismatched, me in my tux, she in her strapless, well-filled, dark blue shiny gown. Les' had on a couple of beautiful pearl dangles and a pearl-and-ruby ring, a set that I'd saved a lot to get her for her last birthday.
Mr. Bright โ it could have been no one else โ stood by the
maรฎtre d'
and actually beamed at us. His smile and rubicund face looked like the sun rising over the Pacific seen from some peaceful atoll, and I wondered how I had come up with that simile?
"Miss Carr, Mr. Petty? So nice of you to come this evening." To the
maรฎtre