A Bad Case of Nerves

I am a thirty-eight year old woman, and I have never had sex. Yes. That’s right. I am still a virgin. All through my childhood my sainted mother drilled into me the knowledge that all men were pigs. They would use a girl for their own pleasure and then dump her. Men were put on earth to ruin the lives of women. Hadn’t men ruined her life? Left her pregnant, alone and in poverty.

But she had triumphed. She had put me in day care and taken a factory job, until she had amassed enough capital to open a lovely little gift shop on Pine Street. During my high school years, I had helped mother in the gift shop and learned the business. Mother and I were always together, and it was such a wonderful excuse to stay away from all those rude disgusting boys who kept trying to ask me out.

Mother was not only disapproving of men. She was disapproving of the loose sort of women who would consort with them. Even those who would marry them. “All strumpets,” mother would trumpet. “All trash. Strumpet trash.” Mother was nothing if not judgmental.

It’s been around ten years now since mother died. I inherited the gift shop on Pine Street and I run it. I have an assistant in the store, Mella, a twenty-five year old divorcee. Her loathsome husband had cheated on her and finally abandoned her. Mella is very nice. She opens the store for me in the morning, and she takes charge when I am not there. Every week I go to the cemetery and bring flowers to dear mother’s grave, and thank her for her wise teachings. I have never suffered the misery visited on other women by the male sex. I have kept myself totally aloof.

Sometimes at night, when I am lying in bed, I have strange thoughts, which I try to put out of my head. Some of those thoughts make me want to reach down under my nightgown, and touch my private parts. But no. No. I mustn’t do that. Dirty. Filthy. Disgusting. I turn on the television and try to fill my mind with other things. The carnage in distant parts of the world. Yes. Carnage usually helps to divert my mind.

My life is very quiet and very peaceful and very uneventful. I work at the store all day, I go home and warm-up a frozen dinner, and I get into bed and read or watch situation comedies. I don’t know why it is that I’m getting nervous as a cat. When I drink my coffee, my hands shake and tremble, and I’m very irascible. Last week Mella asked me when the new shipment of birthday cards was coming into the store, and I snapped at her. She knows that it takes three weeks. Stupid woman.

This morning a terrible thing happened. The alarm went off, and I stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and the water wouldn’t go down the drain. The sink was just filling and filling. Sometimes, I let the water run and go into the kitchen to turn on the coffee. Fortunately, I didn’t do that today. If I had been in the kitchen, I wouldn’t have seen the water filling the bathroom sink. I would have had a terrible flood. A mess. This was so aggravating. Why did these things have to happen to me?

I looked in the phone book and called a plumber. Dylan O’Reilly. He was in my neighborhood. He told me his day was booked and he couldn’t come, but I begged him and begged him and he relented. I called Mella and told her I would be late at the store. That I was waiting for the plumber. I told her to hold the fort. Then I got dressed and sat in the living room, crocheting doilies, while I waited for Dylan O’Reilly.

Around eleven o’clock, the doorbell rang and I went to answer it. As I opened the door, I saw a tall, good-looking, powerfully-built dark haired man, who hadn’t shaved. He was wearing a green uniform, and his muscles bulged out in every direction. He was all male. He was repulsive.

He stepped into the front hall, and I looked down in horror.

“Look what you did,” I screamed. “You tracked mud onto my carpet.”

“Sorry, lady.”

“Sorry? There’s a mat in front of the door. Why didn’t you wipe your filthy shoes on the mat?”

“Sorry,” he repeated.

“Pig,” I muttered to myself. I led him into the bathroom. He was walking very close to me. I could smell his strong masculine aroma. The slightest scent of sweat, combined with all those hormones. My legs felt a little wobbly. I got a little faint. I think I may have been hyperventilating a little. He was making me nervous. I didn’t know why. He wouldn’t try to rape me, would he? My palms started to perspire.

In the bathroom, he opened up his toolbox and took a wrench. He lay down on the tile floor, his enormous legs stretching toward me. As he adjusted himself, I could see a slight bulge in his pants. The crotch area. I didn’t even want to think what it might be.

His sleeves were rolled up, and as he twisted the wrench, I could see his arm muscles rippling. He had an eagle tattoo, and as he rippled, the eagle stirred. I felt very hot. I had stopped hyperventilating. I had stopped breathing.

He twisted the wrench, and suddenly a gush of water spilled out of the pipe, onto my clean tile floor. Rusty water.

“You got water all over my floor,” I screamed at him. He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Men are such slobs,” I said, and then I started crying.

He fixed the pipe. He cleaned up the water. He stood up to go. I was still sobbing hysterically. I wrote out a check, and I led him to the front door.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

“You’ve got a bad case of nerves, lady. You need to get laid,” he told me. And then he was gone. I went into the kitchen, and made myself a cup of coffee. My hands were still shaking. I was almost in shock. What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me?

I started to think about Dylan O’Reilly. His black tousled hair, his dangerous looking dark whiskers, his long legs, his thighs, his bulge, his eagle. My hands got so bad that my coffee spilled onto the kitchen table. I put down the cup, and buried my face in my hands. That thing that he had said to me. Was he right? Did I need to….?

I thought, and I mused and I pondered. The more I thought about it, the more I thought he might be right. I had denied myself physical contact for thirty-eight years, and maybe I needed the touch of another human being. A caress. A kiss??? Did I want to lay my hands on male flesh? Did I want to stroke Dylan’s eagle?

Could it be that mother had been wrong? That all my life, I had been given misinformation, which had made me a cold, cut-off, stunted human being. A frustrated woman. Perhaps I needed to find out for myself what men were really like? Yes. I would have to find out for myself. It was time. I washed my coffee cup. I went into the living room and put my half-finished lace doily back in the knitting bag, and I went to the store.

All day long, I worked in the store, and made polite conversation with Mella. But I was thinking. I was planning. I was going to take my life into my own hands.

After work, I drove to Reynolds Department Store. I bought a whole new wardrobe. Lacy underwear, short skirts, tight fitted off-the-shoulder tops.

I went down to the cosmetics department and bought all those things I had never used. Foundation, rouge, lipstick, eye-shadow, powder, and the most expensive new woman’s fragrance. Raindrops by Dorothy Powers, the rich celebrity girl who had made a dirty movie with her boyfriend and released it on computers. I had always turned the station when she was on a talk show. Now I was sorry. I might have learned something from her. She was worldly. She was sophisticated. And it seemed, she wasn’t repulsed by men. “Oh, mother, what did you do to me?” I wondered.

After dinner, I put on one of my very sexy new outfits. The blouse had a built-in push-up brassiere. My breasts were literally spilling out. I realized I had terrific cleavage, which I’d disguised all these years. I let my hair out of the severe bun that I wore it in, and brushed it forcefully until it shone with a copper hue, and spilled exuberantly down my back. I was not used to such high heels, and had a little difficulty walking at first, but I held onto the walls and I was fine.

I had never been schooled in the art of applying make up. I knew that in Hollywood, they had experts to do that. Real artists. But I gave it a brave try. I evened out my facial texture with the foundation, and then I applied the lipstick and rouge. The lipstick shade was called ‘Color Me Crimson.’ I was not fooling around. No pale pinky flesh tones for me. Maybe I overdid the indigo eye shadow and the mascara. I don’t know. Before I had done my eyes, I had used the eyelash curler I had purchased, and now my black, black lashes curled upward saucily.

I gave one last look in the full-length mirror on the inside of my bathroom door. I could hardly recognize myself. I was a babe. Where had I been hiding all this time?

I drove into town and after parking in the lot, I entered the Westwind Lounge. A dozen pair of eyes turned toward me, and began assessing me. Men’s eyes. I went up to the bar, and climbed upon a stool. There were single men all around me. Maybe I wasn’t twenty years old anymore, but I figured I’d probably do all right.

Next to me on my right was a businessman type. He wore a light blue shirt, a dark blue tie, and a navy blue blazer. I was afraid to look down to see what color his pants were. He was joking with the bartender, and some of the other men at the bar. The bartender asked me what I wanted, and I told him a gin and tonic. I had heard of gin-and-tonics.

The man on my right, who had thick curly hair of mixed black and gray, was tall and imposing. Even though I had dowsed myself with ‘Raindrops,’ I could smell his bracing spicy lotion. If I had been that kind of girl, I would have thought that he was very masculine and very attractive.

The bartender brought me my drink, and I opened my purse to pay him.

“I’ll get that,” the masculine attractive man on my right said.

“Oh, no. I really couldn’t….”

“It’s on me. Phil, put the lady’s drink on my tab,” he instructed the bartender.