This is a continuation of an earlier story. It would probably be best to read that first. This one goes over some of the events of that story from the perspective of the woman but then takes a darker, troubling turn. Be forewarned.
*
Kathy Allerton's testimony before the Environmental Committee of the State Legislature had been spectacular. Her weeks of late-night preparation showed in the quiet confidence of her presentation and the assured way that she handled each of the questions fired at her. So effective was she that even the most conservative committee members, not normally friends of the environment, were nodding in agreement at many of her points.
So why did she feel so empty and dissatisfied? Many of her colleagues, looking at the exhausting schedule that she kept, accused her of being married to her work and she wondered if there wasn't something to that. If her work was a surrogate for romantic interests, children and family, perhaps her current feeling was the equivalent of post partum depression, the numbing emptiness that follows nine months of the preparation and anticipation of childbirth. As she sat in a stall of the women's room of the State Capitol Building, she tried to remember the last time she had worked so hard and had succeeded so impressively to see if this mini-depression was part of a pattern. And the realization of when that last time was brought a flush to her face and a flood of memories engulfed her.
The last time had been the day and evening of her argument before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans several months before. The day had started with a court appearance capping months of preparation and had ended with an evening of sexual excess that even now seemed completely unreal to her, as if it had happened to another person.
But it had happened to her. And, upon reflection, it occurred after a period of feeling the same disquiet she was experiencing now. On that night, after packing up her copies of the briefs and the binders of exhibits, she had begged off the post-argument drinks and dinner that the other members of her legal team were heading off to claiming, honestly, that she was tired and, somewhat dishonestly, that she was feeling unwell. She had intended to return to her hotel room in the French Quarter, order up a room service dinner and watch CNN before retiring early in anticipation of her flight out the following day. But once in the room, she found that Anderson Cooper held no interest for her and the prospect of sitting alone in a room eating by the light of the television screen seemed particularly unappealing.
Although she was not inclined to venture out into the rowdy French Quarter by herself, she felt that she could at least eat in the hotel dining room and perhaps feel not completely isolated. Within minutes of leaving her room, she began to regret her plan. She got onto an empty elevator and pressed lobby, only to have the elevator stop on the floor below hers. At that floor floor, five men lumbered into the car. Although they were on their way out, they had clearly already started drinking. Boisterous when they boarded the elevator, they suddenly became quiet when they caught sight of Kathy, who, still dressed in conservative but elegant courtroom attire, was undeniably lovely. Kathy tried to disregard their blatant staring but could not ignore the comments delivered in the stage whispers used by people whose alcohol intake had drowned any sense of propriety or discretion .
"Look at this one, she's a real piece."
"Yeah, maybe we should push the emergency button, I wouldn't mind getting trapped in an elevator with her for a couple of hours."
"You couldn't afford someone like her."
"You think she's a hooker?"
"Who knows, she could be one of those high-price escorts."
"Whatever, she is, I bet she could fuck you to death, it's those quiet ones who are the hottest."
Not a moment too soon, the elevator arrived at the lobby and the men stumbled out, giggling like high school boys. Kathy stepped out of the elevator red-faced and angry at the indignity to which she had just been subjected. She was surprised at the depth of her anger. What they said was ignorant and offensive, true, but the way men who were drunk and away from home behaved shouldn't have been a complete surprise to her. What surprised her, though, was her own response to their crude comments. Somewhere, beneath the seething anger was an emotion which confused her. She remembered their comment about her being a prostitute and remembered experiencing a quickening of her breath which she couldn't quite understand. Whatever her feelings, though, she decided that she was not going to be deterred from her plans by a group of drunken louts and she strode off to the hotel's dining room.
Her first thought when she entered the dining room was that she was glad that she gone ahead with her plan to take dinner outside of her room. The dining room was beautiful, heavily mirrored with extravagant tropical floral arrangements, large glass chandeliers and wait staff in crisp black and white outfits. Her enthusiasm was dampened, though, when she looked toward the bar and saw her former elevator-mates joining a group of equally inebriated colleagues already at the bar. They saw her too and she watched with disgust as grins crossed the faces of the five men as they recognized her.
She was just about to turn and leave when she spotted a man, quietly eating by himself and reading a newspaper. Thinking that her being with a man would protect her from the leering advances of the men at the bar, she impulsively and uncharacteristically approached and addressed the man. The lone diner was so engrossed in his reading that he didn't hear her the first time she asked whether she could join him and, looking up after the second request, seemed too shocked to respond. Only after the third request did he ask her to sit. When she explained why she was intruding, he reacted gracefully and quickly making her feel like it was the most normal thing in the world to be approached by strange women asking to join you in the middle of a meal.
From the outset, Kathy felt comfortable with Steve (whose name she learned immediately upon sitting down). She could not remember the last time she had so quickly reacted so positively to anyone. Attractive but not drop-dead handsome, there was something about him that put her at ease immediately. The conversation (he did not return to his newspaper although she told him it would be okay to) proceeded smoothly as he talked about his work and, later, about his obvious love for the city of New Orleans.
So natural was the conversation that she saw nothing amiss about his relating a story about a colleague, a shy young woman, who had ended up locked in a hotel room over several days with two Italian tourists whom she had just met. As Steve described the unassuming and quiet woman, whom none of her coworkers would ever suspect of potentially being involved in any extravagant sexual conduct, Kathy could not help wondering what her colleagues thought of her and what they might think she was capable of doing. Unlike the woman in the story though, she had never departed from the path in any way. She had no secrets. For the first time, rather than making her feel virtuous, her conventionality made her seem dull and lifeless. And, without realizing it, she found herself withdrawing from the conversation, feeling some tinge of regret at the fact that she had never once ignored possible consequences and simply let go.
After being roused from her sad reverie, and with the feeling of regret hanging around like a deep fog, she excused herself to go to the women's room. Despite the turn that her conversation had taken, she was surprised when Steve tentatively and abruptly suggested that she surrender her underwear upon her return. As an experienced trial attorney, she had long before perfected the ability to appear calm in the face of any surprise, but underneath her poker face were overwhelming feelings of shock and astonishment. As she walked away, she found herself fighting with wildly conflicting feelings. Was he exactly like one of the men at the bar, only a bit less drunk? But her conversations with him and her inner sense told her no, that he was somehow different. His somewhat nervous request seemed more like a shared joke rather than a crude aggressive act. And although she briefly thought of throwing money on the table and storming off, she had an overwhelming sense that an opportunity was being presented to her that she would never have again. And so when she returned to the table, in what would be a continuing series of firsts that night of which she would never have predicted herself capable, she folded her panties up and placed them in the breast pocket of his jacket.
And even though the ensuing conversation was entirely of a non-sexual nature, she could not completely ignore the voice in her head repeating with excited incredulity "I can't believe that you gave your panties to a complete stranger and that you're sitting across from him naked under your skirt and that you are SOOO EXCITED!"
When the dinner was over, Steve picked up the check but managed to make it clear that he did not think it entitled him to anything more from her. And that lack of presumption contributed to her appreciation of him. Not wanting the evening to end, she proposed an after-dinner walk through the French Quarter to which he enthusiastically agreed. Stepping out of the over-air conditioned hotel into the hot, humid Louisiana night was only the first shock to Kathy's senses. Bourbon Street presented something to each of the senses and each presentation was somehow larger than life. The music spilling out from the clubs lining the street joined the cacophony of the street musicians and the calls of men lining the street trying to lure people into the various strip shows. The smell of spicy, Creole and Cajun seafood hung in the damp air and everywhere you looked, there was something unexpected and extreme to experience. Kathy found her attention being pulled constantly from one place to another until the stimulus overload became too much and she asked Steve if they could walk down some of the quieter streets.
She instantly became more comfortable as they passed small, quiet restaurants with white table clothes, Spanish moss encrusted courtyards and antique shops and antiquarian book stores. The wine she had with dinner along with the exotic surroundings seemed to go straight to her head and she found herself speaking at great length about each of the beautiful things she saw in the shop windows. Steve listened intently to everything she said with a wry smile of appreciation and amusement and, as she grabbed his arm and they sauntered down the street, she found herself thinking that she could not remember ever feeling that close to anyone in her life.
Just as Kathy began to wonder with increasing frustration when he would kiss her, he pulled her to him. One sweet kiss led to another and, abandoning herself to her sudden, spontaneous emotions, Kathy pulled him over to a dark alley and, to both his and her own surprise, squatted in front of him, quickly taking down his pants and taking his erect cock into her mouth. She could not remember how much time passed before he came in her mouth because she seemed lost to everything except for the excitement she was feeling and the reality of his hardness pumping in and out of her mouth.
So lost was she that she failed to notice the appearance of two onlookers who, mistaking her for a hooker, asked how much she charged. As had happened earlier, she found her self conflicted about her reaction to the question. On one hand, she was embarrassed to be caught doing something so public and so brazen. This time she could hardly fault the men for thinking she was a prostitute. But with the accumulated excitement of the evening and her slightly intoxicated state, the prospect of, for the first time in her life, behaving like a slut with more than one man seemed thrilling and wicked. When she looked at Steve, she saw a combined look of confusion and excitement which only intensified her own feelings and she made a gesture with her head that indicated a willingness to go along with the men's misunderstanding. This time, her reaction was more than a quickening of her breath. She could feel herself growing wetter and her heart quickening as she thought with excitement, "I'm going to suck three cocks tonight, like a cheap whore". And she proceeded to do so, enthusiastically taking each of the men into her mouth and swallowing every drop of their cum.
The taxi trip back to her hotel was one of the oddest journeys of her life. Although she feared that Steve would despise her, she was surprised to see him looking at her with wonder and a strange kind of appreciation as if he could tell that her conduct that night was atypical. He seemed to know that she was pushing herself to do something different, in the name of adventure and that, rather than looking down on her, he appreciated the impulse that had driven her. But what Kathy saw in herself had so surprised her so that she was unable to imagine continuing to have any contact with anyone who had witnessed it. And so she steadfastly rejected Steve's request to stay in contact. Although she thoroughly enjoyed what she remembered of the remainder of the evening with Steve in her hotel room, she felt confident that she had made the right decision in decreeing that the evening would be a one-night only occurrence.
Her confidence that she had made the right choice disappeared with the morning light. She awoke, groggy and somewhat hung over with the worst case of morning breath she had ever experienced. She groaned with embarrassment as she thought about what had happened the previous evening but she was surprised how the feeling of shame was quickly replaced by regret at not having asked for Steve's contact information. That day, and in the months that followed, Kathy found herself thinking that her insistence on never seeing Steve again was one of the greatest mistakes of her life.
