Excerpt



CHAPTER ONE



Naked men are ugly. Humans are not like beasts and birds where the male is the beauty. One of Gods miracles was programming women to sometimes actually want a male lover. A foresighted move or otherwise reproduction would only be accomplished by rape.

Emma is still asleep so I crack my front door open for a peek. Im naked. With no one in sight I grab the newspaper and carry it out back to my Jacuzzi where Id left my shorts.

I wear my walking shorts into the kitchen where the coffee has been done for an hour. I balance a cup to my roomy breakfast nook where I expect Emma will join me after her shower. Im Frank Steward, a thirty-eight year old bachelor and novelist, and Emma, thirty-four, is a curvaceous widow who tolerates me. (Actually, likes me) She owns Charlies, a small diner I favor. She lives above it.

The front page is headlining the Catholic fiasco again. More Priest are accused of pederasty. I recall a statistic I learned doing research. There were some 48,000 Priests in the United states, and it was estimated some 177 had recently resigned. My curiosity momentarily wonders how many pedophiles hide in other religions? Probably more, if all were totaled. The thought is cut short.

Emma comes buoyantly into the kitchen; shes always sparkly up to the instant she crashes in sleep. Shes smiling with her mouth slightly pinched as though to cover her amusement, for she knows I'm annoyed. Shes come for coffee with her robe closed. Im a victim or her gymnophobia (fear of naked when not making love). Weve been an item for two years, and she still hides herself.

Emma Joan Jackson has shapely, jutting breasts and she keeps the beauties covered. I only get to see and fondle them during foreplay when making love, then she covers up.

I chide her, "How come you're wearing a robe?" she knows Id rather ogle her than read the paper. She pours her own cup and slides into the booth across from me. She teasingly flutters her pretty eyes like shes a bashful virgin in the twenties, then she sips her coffee. She does answer.

"Mother told me."

"Your mother?" Emma's mother died ten years ago.

"Uh, huh," she insists. "To never go nude around a lover, except during sex. And to cover up immediately afterwards. If I do, she said Id always keep a lovers interest.

Im more than just your lover.

Yes, youre half again as big as any man Ive known.

How many have you known?

You lie first.

I could remind her we are astute adults but Im in a losing discussion. I pull the sport page out and shove the rest of the paper to her. Emma and I are more than intimate friends; we may marry. Back a time she occasionally dated other men knowing I was trying to date women whod sleep with me. She would not, not ever after she went out with me three times. I suffered the ambivalence of anger and respect. I was leery of girls who would sleep with me on a first date. If I could not resist them, I used condoms and gargled with a prescription stringent to avoid infections in the throat. The stringent may have been the catalyst that convinced Emma I was safe for sex? She examined the bottle in my bathroom. I later noticed it had been moved.

It was our fourth date that I persuaded her to see my huge swimming pool and Jacuzzi. Wed had dinner out and I took her to my house. Before I could show her my home she asked to use the bathroom. It was a blue sky warm night with a quiet darkness when I ushered her out back to the pools decking. The crystal clear water of my lighted pool enthralled her. She turned and pulled my head down for a succulent kiss, after which she grins, Frank, lets skinny dip.