Unedited opening lines from works in progress, brief glimpses into the author's working mind...

"You look interesting. I'll talk to you."

I had known her years before. She was the class slut long before we knew the word slut, in an age when words like that were disappearing as a slumbering society awoke to new possibilities and began thrashing about aimlessly at all that smelled of tradition. Her parents were swingers, a distinction also disappearing as group sex becomes a standard part of American life, but at the time it was new and daring.

A still small voice calls my name.

I turn from the elevator, my finger still on the button, staring acrossing the lobby. She is there, in an armchair, curled and tiny, barely visible, quite delectable, very wanted.

She has a little-girl-lost-in-the-woods quality about her. Except she's not little. Not big, mind you, but very buxom, very blond, very demure behind her owl-like glasses, and very married.

I strongly suspect that it's all an act.

I felt a hand moving through my hair, heard a sweet smooth voice say "hello darling." I turned. It was, as I had suspected from the voice, Jen, but it was such an uncharacteristic thing for her to do that checking had really been necessary.

In the old days, in order to look real, people started with offices, rented furniture, maybe hired a temp secretary, a good looking one, to throw in the vague promise of sexual adventure. Now the web site comes first, the cyber presence is more real to the average consumer, and the sex appeal comes in the fancy graphics.

He liked women who obviously enjoyed eating, and eating exquisitely. Not too thin, like they would run screaming from a creme brule or a good steak, and not too heavy, for there is a size at which food intake becomes a constant necessity and ceases to be a pleasure. No, he liked erotic women for whom food was an erotic experience, for he was a pastry chef, and a damn good one.

Every time he passed her, he touched her. Every time he caught her eye he winked. She would smile, as subtlely as possible, shaking her head at his audacity. This was her event, and he was supposed to be her secret.

"In here!" comes the response to my questioning "hello." The voice is sweet, low, playful, verging on raspy, it is a voice that makes my cock take notice.

Nobody ever goes into her diningroom. I think it's just there for decoration. That, and making out with me.

"No!" she yelled, pushing me away.

I looked up, startled.

She was smiling down at me, with a look sheer evil enjoyment, one hand forcefully on my forehead and the other forcefully tweaking her left nipple.

She had wanted to blow him for five years. She had flirted, she had hinted, she had come damn close to begging. Now, she was sure, she had him.

"He really wants to meet you. Says he likes your work and appreciates your attitude."

"Huh"

"But I kinda think it may be more than that..."

My right hand is down her pants. Her right hand is down mine. God only knows how much time we have. The house is full of people, my wife especially.

The winds were angry. Angry and loud. Almost too loud to hear his voice on the phone. The wind whipped their words away, then turned the lash on her skirt, pushing it up, exposing her to the world, though there was nobody left to see her. The sensible people, the people not ruled by lust, had long gone inside, and the beach was deserted.

They are in the shadows, about 30 feet ahead of me, walking briskly, huddled together, headed for the auxilary parking lot. They do not look around. His hand is on the small of her back.

I loved the way they sprinted out the door after the meeting, hurriedly waving goodbye, the rain and umbrella providing an obvious unspoken excuse for urgency and closeness.

Thanksgiving. The family has gathered. Big, sprawling, emotionally disconnected, brought together by a sense of obligation to the dead than a desire to be with the living.

And yet...

There are exceptions, odd behaviors, strange pairings, furtive glances, telltale signs of possible inappropriate attractions

They can hear the excited shouts of her husband as he leans into the television, his nose pressed almost to the glass, his hands working furiously on the new joystick of the new video game system he has purchased at the giant American mall.

I want to come on her face.

It's an incredibly stong and singular urge, to come on her face and then kiss her. I do not want to fuck her, for she makes me just a tad uncomfortable but definitely, definitely, I want to spurt my seed on her.

I've never seen my sister-in-law drink before. She's usally incredibly proper, wary, on-guard, masked. But with a couple of drinks in her, she's unable to maintain the facade, excuses herself to the front steps to smoke a cigarrete. I join her, uninvited, it being my house and all, I figure I'm entitled.

He was waiting for me when I got back downstairs, all smooth and hard and naked. Audacious. Very audacious. I like audacious men. Especially with long hard thick cocks to suck on. God he was huge. Huge and gorgeous.

She is on all fours in the middle of the bed, her tight revealing clothes in a pile on the chair, her cat's eye glasses perched neatly on top of the pile, work temporarily forgotten, groaning and moaning with each filling thrust.

She was out ahead of the crowd, still drinking wine from the glass she'd stolen from the bar when they kicked us out. I walked fast to catch up, trying not to look too obvious or spill my own drink. Within minutes we were a block ahead of the rest of the sales and marketing department, alone in the dark or as alone as you can be at any hour, on the streets of New York City.

She's not wearing a bra today. Which is a first. When she was married she always wore one.

His brothers' wives took pity on him, comforted him, treated him almost like a lost puppy, like a little kid, because he was, after all, the youngest brother, the sensitive brother, the caring brother. He was not by any stretch of their imaginations the handsome brother, but the handsome entrepenourial jerk act had worn thin on both of them years before, just as it had worn thin on him before he left the family business, before he got married, before his wife, in turn, left him.

It is late. She yawns and stretches, her sweatshirt riding up, her long tan flat stomach bared to the world, the word "Irish" stretched fetchingly across her Irish breasts.

She is dressed, as usual, in very little, and what little there is is very tight. She works, I presume, in the sort of job where a little skin, a great body, and a youthful face makes a big difference in how much you earn.

It was the ponytail that did it for her. Or maybe the little boy lost personality, or maybe the piano playing, or the fact that he was married, or who he was married to. Whenever he was feeling threatened by the big world, and the big people, he would sit at the piano, being his jazz, and she would hover as near as she could to seem protective without being threatening.

Sherry swayed to the music as the dancers danced. Somewhere near her her husband swayed too, but her eyes were only for the dancers, for the five women in their thongs and lace bodices and dark shining skin,

Finally Katelin snapped.

They'd been teasing each other for hours. It was subtle teasing, but teasing none the less, and even the most experienced seductress has her limits.

The elevator doors opened, and there she was. I'd had a long day at work. Rainy dreary days get me down to begin with, and there had been too namany complications and distractions to focus on anything including her impending arrival.

I feel the denim of her skirt with my fingertips and the force of her muscles against my palms as she twists and thrusts, her hands slapping the buttons, the machine dinging and buzzing as the ball collides with targets and bumpers. I am reminded of the noises she makes as my hips collide with her ass when I fuck her. As I want to fuck her now.

The attraction was pure and simple. The relationship was complex.

John liked Lynn's singing. He liked listening to her sing. He liked watching her sing. John had realized fairly late in life that what he liked most in women, what he found sexiest, was artistic expression in all its many forms. He liked painter, he liked sculptors, he liked poets, and he liked singers. He especially liked artists with large, prominent breasts. The only real problem with this realization was that Charlotte, his wife of thirty years, had not a single artistic bone in her tiny, small-breasted body.

We were a few minutes into the meeting, me and my boss on one side of her desk, her on the other, before I noticed her feet and what they were doing.

He had been married for too many years.

As a successful, idealist, non-profit legal services attorney in a fairly small Southern town, he met plenty of attractive, available, grateful women. He flirted with them to make them feel wanted, he fantasized about all of them, some he even took out to dinner, but he never ever touched them, for he was a decent moral man who loved his wife even if he could not stand her.

And then came Stacey. He was attracted to her the minute he met her, and being a creature of habit he approached her as though she was an attractive grateful client.

Sexual people notice each other. We recognize and acknowledge each other across the boundaries of society, despite differences in religion, color, ethnicity, language, age, and class. It's one of the things that makes us so dangerous, and so feared by those who like to keep the world in tidy, orderly, easily controlled boxes.

I was out at dinner with my family the other night, my wife, my kids, and my mother-in-law, when I noticed the woman at the next table, and she noticed me.

It was almost 30 seconds before she saw my reflection in the mirror and turned to face me, half-embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she said "I was just admiring myself."

"That's quite all right," I replied as she slipped past me down the narrow hall, "I was admiring you too."

I know it's not professional. I know she could complain. I know I could get in trouble. But what am I supposed to do, not look?

"Violet's always been very fond of Will" said John, looking askance at me, obviously wondering why she was fond of me, how inappropriately fond of his daughter I am back, and whether anything sexual has ever come of our mutual attraction.

Mind you, daddy's little girl is quite legal at thirty-one, and while I personally find John's interest in Violet's sex life understandable I hardly think it any more appropriate than my would-be participation in same.

She is disturbingly beautiful, seemingly cobbled together with the most interesting and prominent features of several genetically and geographically scattered people. But the eyes are most definitely hers, a penetrating pale blue that fades away into almost nothingness when she stands with her tight little Asiatic body very very close and stares deeply, lingeringly and hungrily into my anxious lustful soul.

"I've taken off my wedding ring."

The cell phone connection to the West Coast is a little choppy, it's early in the morning out there, even for her, and I'm just not completely sure I've heard her correctly. She said it so matter of factly and I cannot tell with the sleepiness in her voice and the bad reception whether she is hiding any of the feelings I might expect to accompany such a statement: exhileration, anticipation, wistfulness (she doesn't do guilt) regret.

I am snooping. Looking for the tidbits and trivia and exciting little details that make for the fodder of my restless imagination.

It is what I do at parties when I have nobody to play with, left alone in a big house, perhaps even your house (be careful what you leave in the open or even well hidden in your drawers and closets or you may find yourself in a story for you know not who I am) or in this particular case the house of one my wife's teachers and his family.

We walked back to the apartment together, the apartment I shared with my girlfriend, her arms around my arm, her body against my body.

It is raining. A hard driving rain on an unseasonably cold night less than a week after my wife's screaming fit over my suddenly figured out non-monogomy. Miserable weather for a miserable time.

Yet still life must go on. I am late getting home from work. My wife has gone off to choir practice leaving my daughter at a friend's to be picked up. Still contemplating my life I trude off to get her. I am too self-absorbed to care about the weather, but I do realize upon arriving at her friend's house soaking wet and shivering that making my daughter walk back home through this mess is unfair to her.

The girl talking to my wife is a closet submissive. I haven't figure out yet what to do with this information.

"It was a pleasure having you."

It's a throw-away line, the kind of almost-flirt I get all the time since I decided to become my father. So I pay it no mind, just turn away from her desk to the conference table, find a chair, sit in it, make myself comfortable, positioned (of course) so I can watch her work during the meeting.

Except she isn't working.

Twenty feet down the path it feels like we have almost left civilization forever. There are only the trees and the rustle of squirrels and the songs of the birds and the gurgle of the river and the damp smell of impending rain and of course her hand in mine.

I watch Stacie as we walk: her joyful little smile, the sparkle in her eye, the sway of her naked breasts beneath the transparent-in-the-right-light rainbow striped t-shirt, a pleasant fact realized as I sat in the passenger seat in her van in the parking lot at work, watching her lean in through the driver's side back door to rearrange her luggage in the back seat, the evening light exposing her dangling breasts and hard nipples as though the shirt was not there at all.

Superficially they are opposites. She is short and lithe. He is medium height and beefy. She wears a kerchief on her head. His head is shaved bald except for his goatee. She is a dark rich brown. He at best is lightly tanned. She is a lapsed Christian. He is a non-observant Jew with an unexplained Southern accent.

She grew on me rapidly. There was a vivacity and a readiness about her, a willingness, an eagerness, an obvious disdain for convention that always turns me on, especially in spectacularly cute women who make an effort to walk next to me when I'm leading a tour.

"So you finally found someone who can fuck you as good as me."

"well...."

"Go on. Compare."

"She said she wanted so sleep late, so we're not going to wake her."

"But..."

"Young man, you may be her boyfriend, but this is her house, and that was her birthday party last night, and it is her birthday today, and I am her mother, if she doesn't want to be disturbed then I am not going to let you disturb her."

Our new assistant minister is as cute as an undone button on a buxom woman's blouse. She's got wild curly hair, wide wonderous eyes, a sweet smile and huge breasts that swing and jostle underneath her oversized sweaters. She's all eager and earnest and young and naive and incredibly delectably fuckable.

Pregnancy and motherhood had not only sharpened her planning skills, they had given her time to act on them. Not when she was dealing with the baby obviously but in those times in between, the times her husband had spent with her before she became a mother figure. Seventeen months (the last five months of her pregnancy and the first year after her daughter was born) were spent in emotional loneliness, fantasy, and scheming.

I don't know why she started hitting me.

Her breasts are almost completely exposed.

Even for my office it's an inappropriate outfit, and yet, givn their quantity and quality, the breasts themselves fit in quite nicely. They are huge, and beautifully formed, and while some people may find them intimidating, I doubt that anyone will actually complain.

Riding her bike along the river path, her daughter in front of her, her husband behind her, she watches the lone oarsman in his single-man scull glide silently through the water beside them, keeping pace, his long strong muscular arms rippling in an endless succession of steady strokes.

She finds a single aisle-facing seat on the crowded bus for her son, wedging him snuggly and securely between two middle-aged matron types who are more than happy for the opportunity to sit next to a small child, then stands over him, both of her hands clasping the bar over her head, her wrists touching, her shirt riding up just a little over her small tan lean frame.

It's the teen furniture catalogs that really get me. There's something very cynical and exploitative about the whole design.

Nothing in the last forty years prepared me. I thought I knew. Thought I understood. Not just intellectually, emotionally, thought all that experience all that intense emotional closeness would somehow compare.