The majority of land-based creatures on Earth walk on more than two legs. What were there… humans and some apes who took to standing-up? One or three species of mammal that graduated through enough evolution to reach for the apple in the tree without growing some part of them out disproportionately like a Giraffe?
Alec supposed there was a kind of beauty to the human form that lent credence to the religious zealotry by which he found himself surrounded. Not to say he was about to embrace God and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his guidance and savior, but Hell, the human body was a goddamn work of art! So symmetrical, so measured, a delicate machine standing straight on a complex series of weights and counter-balances. By Christ, it was nearly enough to make a lesser man believe in a higher plan. Amen!
Of course, there were genetic defects: those parts of mankind who were destined to choose the shorter straw and thus lead a less fulfilling lifestyle as a member of species Homo Sapian. Y’know, stray toes, a third nipple, less brain cells. Tough luck, that. Fortunately, Toni Greenspan had no such issue.
She was in the “powder room” now, touching up her face, something that seemed to Alec a little like trying to improve upon a Monet. Shit, lady, once you got it, it’s all good! Why fuss?
Still, she was making herself beautiful for him, a man she had only met a few hours prior but would most likely see naked (and invite into her well-crafted body) before dawn arose, so he had little to complain about. And as he was originally thinking… she was quite the evolution graduate, hanging out in the choice end of the gene pool. Alec deduced her parents were probably gorgeous.
She had a rack on her that looked very much like two hand-sized grapefruits trapped under a tight white t-shirt. They were inviting items, almost with a voice of their own, and they called to Alec earlier on in the evening.
“Come to us,” they said in a high, stereo voice oddly reminiscent of young female twins speaking in unison. “Come and play with us.”
The liquor had hardly been at work on him at that point of the evening. He had knocked back a beer and a chaser, and though he hadn’t eaten since morning, intoxication hadn’t gripped his mind so much as it had begun to massage it. Now, several hours and several stimulating conversations later, he felt his brain in the clutches of a full-on wrestling match with a bear of a high. But was it the liquor or the girl making his head spin? These were love vibes, he deduced.
This made him take a step back. Love vibes? Hold on there. Perhaps a reevaluation of the current criteria was needed. Was Toni Greenspan was really all that hot to begin with? So she had great breasts. Her face, her hair and her legs? Are those measurable attributes?
Of course they were… and striking attributes at that. The result of a God who knows he’s done right with the wonders of creation! They had spent some of the evening’s discussion on how she maintained herself in such fine physical form. Her words seemed to travel slowly through the five or six beers he had drunk and the thick haze of barroom cigarette smoke, but he managed to accept them as formattable data.
“I have this trick,” she said to him earlier. She was leaning forward then and he cast a downward eye to study the chest-full of goodness provided by the v-neck of her t-shirt.
“It’s… well…” she sat straight again, pulling Alec’s eyes to her own round doe eyes, “maybe I shouldn’t talk about it. I mean, we don’t even know each other.”
A light giggle was offered and then a hit off the drink Alec bought her (the first of many.) Her face was terrific then. Smiling and bright, it was like a beacon in the dim bar-room, and Alec could see it reflected in the finish of the oak bar. Yes, pure perfection in evolution, and he was sure that was a conclusion reached well before the beer goggles.
“Go on,” he had encouraged. “I’d love to know because you’re really in… inspiring shape. Absolutely, I must know the recipe.”
At that point he was convinced he’d be more amazed by his own word choice than any answer she could provide. “Inspiring?” “Recipe?” Beer talk, pure and simple. He smiled warmly at her.
“Well…” she began again sheepishly, eyes looking to her Zinfindel. “It’s a really interesting way to keep fit. Very fulfilling.”
It seemed as if she were stringing him along. Did she really think this was the bait, or was she smart enough to know it was her body he was hooked on like a stupid fish?
“Tell me for the halibut,” he said drunkenly. She looked at him curiously.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Mental pun. Please go on. I need to know. Especially if it’s fulfilling.”
Her attention turned to her glass again and then the word slipped through her lips and threw a brick across his oversexed, liquored brain.
“Masturbation.”
There was the last string of syllables he though he’d hear come from this gem of a brunette, but there’s little in the English language that can be confused with it.
“Excuse me? Did you say what I think you said?”
“I told you it was weird,” she self-consciously admitted. Alec waved his hands.
“No, no… not at all. It’s actually quite fascinating.”
Indeed it was. It turned-out the vixen in the washroom kept her tummy tight by masturbating while lying stomach-down on her arm. Her hand reached perfectly to the appropriate spot and she just worked her body all around it, undulating on her own limb as if it were some great pony ride with a tremendous pay-off. She likened the experience to doing a set of rather gratifying one-handed push-ups. For Alec, the image alone of this woman writhing about naked while using her hand as a saddle was rather gratifying.
So there was something that trapped him besides her breasts and her apparent conquest of evolution. Would that private disclosure qualify as a credible personality trait? He supposed it would, as she’d have to be quite the interesting gal to be able to discuss something so… carnal during a first meeting. Of course, that was only the first of many such disclosures.
Though she wasn’t bisexual, she had been with a woman on more than one occasion. This managed to create wood in Alec’s crotch readily. He had to bite at that one. The need for details was, inside him, so deep-seated he could feel it in his soul. It was a couple of her roommates in college. Drunk coeds. Hell, they’d do anything. He inquired as to their looks and she replied with the mind-numbing, “They looked a lot like me… accept blonde.” One time it was a ménage-a-trois with some accounting major named Mike and an Asian girl. Alec had some matching experience here and both agreed Asians tasted more… exotic.
It was pretty incredible. But he had to keep himself in check. They were only midway through the evening upon those confessions and things could still swing away from him if he was too forward. In retrospect, Alec deduced he played her just right, allowing the conversation to rise and fall in titillating crescendos. The sexual tension constructed was palpable, something you could breath in and ingest like a wild drug. It made the images of her stories that much more vivid.
And there were plenty of stories. He never made a pass, but instead simply helped foster the discussion, sometimes lubricating it with another drink for the lady. Once or twice he caught the winking eye of the bartender wishing him luck. Ahh… the silent camaraderie of men. Give her one for me, Bub. No problem, man… just keep pouring the booze.
The harder stuff came later, both in drink and in stories. (And actually in his pants as well.) Alec assumed they were both pretty wrecked by Jack Daniels when they started discussing bondage and oral sex. And did he really think he’d like a finger up his ass while he was getting blown? Hell, probably, though the revelation was one he would normally keep locked away in his silent ruminations box. She was withdrawing things from him he thought he’d never tell a living soul, never mind a complete stranger in a bar.
But she wasn’t a complete stranger, Alec silently argued with himself as he checked his watch. It was quarter ’til one. The bar would be closing soon. And he would be going home with a woman name Toni Greenspan from Hinton, Tennessee, a Daddy’s-Little-Girl all grown up and ready to show the world just what kind of genetic superiority can arise from an often derided area of the United States. Her views on oral sex forced Alec to recognize that what he was dealing with here was no less than the perfect example of human sexual potential: body, brains and willingness.
So she wasn’t an unknown, an “x” factor in the equation of his personal experience. Quite the contrary. He knew this girl, felt as if he had always known her. There was even a hint of predetermined destiny sneaking behind all of the evening’s happenings like some kind of sweet-smelling incense that only Toni and he could smell. A lush aroma causing all the right chemicals in their bodies to communicate with one another.
This was all build-up… the sex talk, the physical/psychic pull, the matched bedroom prowess. It was all tension, like the greatest tectonic plates crashing together under the mightiest most jagged mountain peaks. And here he was waiting for the earthquake… the volcano. Oh dammit, in the purest form… the release.
It was to be stupefying… no doubt a religious experience. Hmm… perhaps this cosmically sexual gratification coupled with the perfection of Toni’s form could result in a conversion of faith. Was sex grounds for a religious reawakening? Alec had been baptized and received communion, but it had been a long time since he had set foot in a church. A bunch of those freaks were back at the office, but he figured they had no understanding of the entire scoop. No… they just wanted the quick righteous fix, the extended invitation to act pious as long as they outwardly treated their fellow man with respect and came to church on the Big Holidays. They wanted to believe they had the big answers, but Alec felt here, in the smoky, beer-mumbling tavern on West 23rd Street, that he had stumbled upon a true epiphany.
There was a God, there was destiny, and he was going to understand just why all five senses were developed once Toni Greenspan came back from the washroom.
“Another?” Asked the bartender, a big guy with a neatly trimmed mustache with handles.
Alec shook his head “no.” He had to maintain the level he was at now. Everything was metabolically balanced. Just the right amount of chemicals coursed through his veins so as to create the right kind of frenzied reaction between he and this Tennessean vision of loveliness.
Did she like country music? Christ, he hoped not. But that was a little thing. They could still keep a beat to the “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” could they not? Any music could be music for loving by, it’s all in just how your body interprets it. He would grow to love what she loved, regardless. How else could they make marriage work? And the kids? They could have beautiful children together. In the genetic battle that occurs upon the formation of the first zygote, his DNA would probably get wiped clean from the pallet and they would have the perfect children. Several of the little buggers running around and playing with toy airplanes. Entertaining themselves while mom and dad unleashed the bondage gear in the locked bedroom.
Alec sat on his stool pining away with a vacant look in his wide blue eyes as the bartender stepped over to a young, tired-looking Patron on the opposite end of the bar. The Patron was no doubt a student with a little extra time on this weekday night, and no one in particular with whom to spend it.
“Another?” Asked the bartender.
“No… I’ll settle up,” Answered the Patron, not taking his eyes away from the dazed Alec.
The bartender dropped the tab before the young man and as he produced his wallet the Patron returned his attention to Alec.
“Is he okay?” The Patron asked.
The bartender turned and gave Alec a quick glimpse. He did this only to illustrate he understood the subject of inquiry. He actually didn’t need to see Alec, for he knew the man’s face all too well.
“Him? He’s not quite okay, no. But he’s harmless.”
The Student/Patron raised an eyebrow to prod more out of the bartender.
“He comes hear every couple of nights and mumbles about Jesus and breasts and Darwinian Natural Selection.”
“Why?” The Patron asked. It was a completely logical question, and one the bartender had answered time immemorial.
“In his own words,” the bartender explained while cleaning some glasses. “He found the perfect woman – the apex of sexual evolution. He met her, right here in this bar. Picked her up.”
“This is a good thing,” the Patron asserted.
“Well, it would have been… only the night he met her, she went to the restroom and never came back out. Dodged him completely.”
“So you’re telling me this guy is what? Waiting here for her to come back?”
The bartender nodded his head slowly. “That’s about the sum of it. Something snapped inside of him. He assures me that they were destined to be together, to live in an eternal kind of religious bliss, but it looks more to me like he was duped for a few rounds of drinks.”
“How long ago?” asked the Patron absently, his young face drawn agape into a look of disbelief. His attention was wholly focused on the oblivious Alec.
“Five years,” answered the bartender frankly.
The Patron offered an exclamation followed by a long, pitying sigh. That was what they all did once the bartender told them how long Alec had been waiting. The next statement would undoubtedly be something along the lines of “that’s insane.”
“That’s crazy!” the Patron spat out.
“It could be,” deduced the bartender. “But my theory is that some people are plucked from the shallow end of the gene pool and this poor fool is just one of those defectives.”
The Patron silently agreed with a headshake and then took his coat off the chair.
“Have a good night,” he offered as he exited.
“You too,” said the bartender and behind him he could hear Alec speaking up again.
“Do you think maybe she might need a hand in there? Maybe with her make-up or something?”
“Maybe…” the bartender offered. “Maybe.”