The Presence
	©C, 2004

“Why, yes, Bill, I’d love to go to dinner with you.”

The words almost floored me. Angel, her real name was Angelica del Alasso, was one of the prettiest girls in school, a dark-haired, vivacious, popular girl whose charms had attracted me since eighth grade. Now that it was Spring of our senior year, we were both legally adults, but Angel, I heard, still obeyed her strict mother in almost everything. Unlike ninety percent of the senior class, she didn;t even drive a car! She said, when one of her friends happened to ask her, in my hearing, why she didn’t drive, she said, “Why, pay all that insurance, and car payments, and all?”  

She had been courted by all the football team, but none of them had gotten anywhere with her “turn-off” mode, a perfectly and very charming, very complete, frost. She had been going fairly regularly with Walter Pickens, as Anglo a boy as you could want . . . originally form New England, his parents had moved to our locale to follow his dad’s job, and he was a breath of fresh — very fresh, some said — air in our sometime stodgy school life. Angel had appeared to prefer fellow latinos before Walter arrived like a breeze, and I was certainly not as brainy, or, I must admit, as good looking, as either Paul Francesco or Walter, her two most persistent and seemingly most favored swains.

Paul was a good guy, we were friends, but he was just a bit on the slow side; I helped him a lot in calculus that year, but then, he helped me in physics, which contained a lot of calc, so I couldn’t figure why he was slow with the math..His explanation was that since he was a “trade” student, he got a lot of work with physics in his engineering class, but I couldn’t believe that.  Maybe he just liked me to do his work for him?

Anyway, it was coming time for our big Spring Dance (most schools called it “Prom”) and I hadn’t made allowance for enough time to get a date with one of my regular girlfriends. So, feeling desperate and figuring any chance was better than going dateless to the Dance, I asked Angel, almost casually, as we were pressed together in the crush of between class movement in the hallway.

“You do mean to take me to the Dance after, right?” she smiled, striding ahead in that determined but very sexy way she had as a way opened before us..

I stopped at the doorway to my class and as she disappeared around the near corner I called after her, “Of course!” I almost added “please,” but thought better of it as I realised I was not talking to her any longer. As it was, I got enough odd looks as I took my seat in the classroom. 

The following two days to the week-end and the succeeding week were an increasingly nervous time. I had managed to rent a decent tux and trousers, made the proper arrangements for a corsage and boutonniere, tried at six different restaurants within reasonable driving distance to get a table, but was told at each that I should have called sooner. It seemed that two other high schools and a junior college were all having their dances, proms, whatever, on the same night, a really stupid thing to do. Well . . .

It seemed very strange, but although I seldom saw Angel during the course of the next week at school, our classes not always being on the same “path” when the bell rang, I did catch glimpses of her three times. Each time I tried to talk with her but she was, although in no way trying to ignore me, impervious to my calls at her. She was always talking to another girl, or to one of her male Latin buddies in Spanish, usually loudly so that they could hear each other over the mob-noise in the halls. I was just too far away to communicate with her.

Finally, desperate, on Thursday before the Saturday night Dance, I cut a class just to intercept and talk with her as she left her classroom from the previous period.

“Why, Bill Chalmers, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all week!”

“Angel . . . damn it, I’ve tried to speak to you three times this week and could never get close enough to make you hear me.”

“Oh, Lordy, I’m sorry, Bill. I would not have missed you, but something came up and . . .” That scared me so that I interrupted her.

“Angel . . . you’re not going with me to the Dance?”

“Oh, no, Bill, dear, it’s not that. It’s something else I was having to discuss with my latino friends, that’s all. It’s about scholarships, not the Dance. I wouldn’t miss that for the world, not with all the trouble you’ve gone to and all.”

That, you can believe, made me feel a great deal better. But . . . why would Angel be worried about a scholarship? I’d have bet her grades were close to valedictorian level, if not actually there. I didn’t ask, though; my grades were a perfectly secure B+ and I had about a 3.47 GPA. A little more work and maybe I’d be an A-?

Friday, as I was getting ready to rush around after school and was paying very little attention in my classes, Paul took me aside in the lunch break and said, very seriously,

“Look, amigo, you’re taking Anhel” . . . as he pronounced her name . . . “to the Dance.”  He made that a statement.

I had a faint idea he might not like my taking her, so I backed up a little bit and said, “So?”

“Have you met her mamacita?”

“Uh-uh. Never been to her house.”

“Dios! Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes. 128 Locasta Avenue, out by the big florist’s on Rambler Street.”

“Okay, buddy, her mother is a bit hard for an Anglo like you to get along with, maybe. She’s hard, man, hard. She treats Anhel like dirt in front of her friends, at least she has every time the gang of us has been over there to play cards. So, you’ve got that to face. Now, every time . . .”

I was getting a little bit angry. “Are you trying to tell me I shouldn’t be dating Angel? That she’s reserved for you and Walter?”

I could see that made Paul sorta mad, too. “No, you ass! Just this . . . you’re not used to latino ways, maybe, and you’ve gotta treat Anhel’s momma like a queen. We all treat Anhelica like a princess, so why not? Besides, when you meet la señora del Alasso, she’ll act like a queen, anyway.”

“All right. Look, Paul, I didn’t mean to get you mad, I’m sorry. Now, I’ve gotta rush, but thanks for the warning.”

So . . . I got the whole list of stuff I had to get, picked up my tux and trousers, added a bow tie (which I’d forgotten before) and went home to get ready. Oh, yeah, I gassed up and cleaned the ‘01 Toyota sedan I was paying through the nose for, made sure the tires were up to pressure and finally, after carefully eating a snack in my underwear, brushing crumbs off them before I dressed, I could feel the excitement building inside, but I tried my best to keep calm. Ha!

Driving over the Angel’s place — I took two wrong turns and finally arrived at the time I had said I would — I’d planned to be early, I passed two accidents and a lot of police cars.

When I knocked at Angel’s front door, my heart was hammering in my throat and I’ll bet I was red as a beet when a gorgeous older woman opened the door and asked me to enter in a pleasant manner.

“Uhm, you are Señora del Alasso, ma’am?” I asked, on my best behavior.

“Si . . . ye-as. You arre. . . “ she certainly rolled her “r”s . .  “ Meester-r Chalmer-rs, no? Welcome to our-r house. Nuestra casa es su casa.”

I’d learned that bit in Spanish class, way back in ninth grade, but damned if I hadn’t forgotten the proper reply. I tried anyway.

“I am gratified by your welcome, ma’am . . . uh, señora.” 

“And here is la princesa . . . dios mio, Angelita, tu estàs bellissima!” I knew that, too. My Spanish was coming back rapidly, and Mrs del Alasso was, oh, so right! Angel was an absolute ravishing beauty . . . she could have won the Mis America contest going away, as far as I was concerned.

“Whew!” was all I could say. Angel was in a sweeping dress of pale green, matching her eyes . . . you know, until then I had never noticed what color her eyes were! . . . with a necklace that looked like half a score of emeralds — or something that sure looked like emeralds — on it at intervals. The dress was low cut, too, showing the tips of her substantial boobs . . . which I of course had never seen up close before. Seemed like I was going to get an eyeful tonight.

“Well, Bill, shall we go? We have a dinner engagement, have we not?” She was in a princess mood, all right. Angel turned to her pretty mother and said something in Spanish, too fast for me to catch, but which made her supposed tyrant of a mother shrink and just nod her head.  Angel came to me, took my limp arm and steered us both to the door. Her last words to her mother were, “Don’t wait up for me. We’ll be late,” as we sailed . . . I was, anyway, about a foot off the ground . . . out the door and down the walk to the car. How I got her and that dress into the car I’ll never know.

Then it hit me! I didn;t have a reservation anywhere! We couldn’t dine in the style for which she was all dressed up! In a numb state of mind I started the car, put it in gear and said, miserably,

“Angel, I couldn’t get a reservation anywhere.” I felt like the most complete dweeb in the world, but it felt better to admit to my failure as a date at the start and perhaps let her figure out who she would rather have been with.

“Bill, I think you’ll be able to get us a table at La Frontera, if we get over there right now.”  La Frontera had to be the most expensive restaurant in town. I had about enough money for two decent, but not luxurious, meals there; I could offer her a better meal at The Grill, where I had wanted to take her originally . . . no reservation.

“Oh,” she said, smiling at me, “Don’t worry about the menu . We’ll be fine and eat well. I’ll enjoy walking in there on your arm. We might startle some of the Board, huh?”

Board? Hell, it’d startle the shoes off me if we could get a table, now. But . . . we did. There was a cancellation and we waltzed right into the diningroom, were seated by an overly servile waiter and presented with the wine list at once.

“Huh? We can’t drink wine, Angel. We’re not old enough,” I said in an aside.

She didn’t answer me, but turning to the waiter she said, “I’ll have a glass of the Merlot . . . my friend is unused to wines and will probably like a house brand.”

By some quirk of fate we were served, and no one raised hell or tried to arrest us! I tried the house wine and as far as I knew — I’d been raised on sneaked drinks of whiskey — it was all right. Angel enjoyed hers throughout one of the more fabulous meals I’ve ever eaten, save for the fact that my mind kept slipping back into adding machine mode as I ate, enjoyed and watched Angel do the same.  We ended with coffee. Just as well, I was nervous and that helped to give me a reason to show it.

When the waiter presented the check, my eyes must have looked as though they were about to fall out of my head. I just had enough to cover the bill, but that meant no stopping for snacks after the Dance!

	Angel looked across the table at me, smiled and took the check from my trembling hand. She asked me for a pen. I didn’t have one but the waiter did. Angel took it from him and with an imperious gesture signed her name, handed the bill and pen back to him and said, sweetly,

“I’ve included your gratuity in that, you served us decently well. Thank you.” He bowed more deeply, and, I’d like to think, more sincerely, than he had hovered during the entire meal. Somehow, after that exchange, I managed to rise and take her arm under mine. Only her insistent pressure on my arm kept me from running out the door.

“How did you . . .?”

“Hush, no matter, Bill. It’s done and we can go to the Dance, right?”

“Wow! Angel, that was the most amazing piece of . . . of . . . effrontery I’ve ever seen!”

“Porque, mi corazon? Estoy la princesa esta noche, no? So . . . “

I handed her into the car in a whirl of wild conjecture; yes, my Spanish, what little I remembered, was coming back to me in part. “La princesa” for tonight, eh? Boy, I was beginning to wish that she was more than my pleasant, pretty, nice, apparently wealthy and well-connected date for tonight and was a lot more than a one night stand.
Not, you understand, that I even dared to think that she and I could . . . God, what a thought! . . . make love . . . fuck.

But, not daring, I still was beginning to have an erection, perhaps from that display of apparent wealth, perhaps with the hope that with everything else that had happened so far, my date with Angel might possibly end with the two of us  . . . Stop the dreaming. 

I cannot remember to this day what the Dance was like. I have been told, occasionally, that Angel and I were the real king and queen of that Dance, not those elected to wear those tinsel crowns. I know we sashayed . . . yup, sashayed! . . . in, my tickets were in my hand and into the hand of the assistant principal at the door, we sat with someone or other, talked, danced, ate something, danced, talked, danced and left at whatever time it was.

“This is fun, Bill. Don’t you think so?” Angel asked me as we left the Dance. I never knew how the heck we did that, students wewren’t supposed to ever leave before the end of the Dance, but we glided out of there like two shadows on the wall, and no one stopped us or questioned our leaving.

“Drive us up the Hill, Bill,” Angel laughed.  The Hill was a small local mound, maybe sixty feet above the plain, with a lane that wound twice around it so the bicyclers would have no trouble surmounting it. It was wooded on top, three or four acres of trees and well-tended bushes.

“Park here, Bill, I want to watch.” I obeyed her, of course, this was a famous “parking” place, but I wondered if we wouldn’t be bothered by other students and their dates, or maybe the police, who knew as much about the Hill as we did. I did wonder what she wanted to “watch.”

“Bill,” she said, turning toward me, “Can you love me?” Not “do you,” but “can you.” That took me by surprise. I thought she had wanted to park here, knowing the Hill’s reputation, in anticipation of a little “lovemaking.”

“Uh, that’s a funny question, Angel,” I temporized.

“Look at me, look at me closely, Bill. You can love me, can’t you?” I looked at her, sitting there half-turned toward me, her breasts about to fall out of th gown, her skirt rucked up almost to her rump . . . I caught the glint of flesh, not pink or white panties as I’d expected!  What the hell?

I was quite quickly convinced that I could love her, love Angel now, next week, forever, if she wanted me to.

“Do you feel a change in me, Bill?”

 I gargled out an answer through my growing confusion. “Yes, the way you got us a table, your paying for the dinner, the dance . . . who did we sit with, anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter, Bill. None of it matters. Bill . . . I’m not her.”

“Wha. . .? You’re Angel del Alasso . . . you are.”

“Oh, I’m wearing her body, Bill, and I know most of her thoughts and have her memories, but I’m a stranger, Bill. That’s why I asked if you could feel a change . . . and if you could make love to me.”

“Why . . . why . . . . Angel,” I got serious as all hell, “I can make love to you if this boner in my pants is real. But what do you mean, you’re not Angel? 

“I’m not, I’m riding her, that’s all, Bill. But that doesn’t matter. Can you make love to me? Will you make love to me?” 

I moved over a little closer to Angel, still not sure where she was coming from, wondering if indeed I could make love to an apparently crazy girl . . . a girl who hadn’t seemed one bit nuts until now.  Truth be told, all those thoughts  I’d had earlier had sorta flown the coop. I was more scared than interested, yet there was an attraction about Angel that I could feel, pulling my arm toward her, around her shoulder and down almost to her right breast. When she snuggled against me, rubbing her left  breast and side against me, I guess I lost it.

We kissed, slowly and carefully for a little bit, then more and more sensuously, winding up in a battle of the tongues which must have made her mouth sore. I know that her hands were all over me, and I remember . . .  think I remember . . . that my hand wound up between her legs, stroking and fondling her as my breath went back to grade school (in short pants).

That dress and my clothes came off us without my seeming to do anything about it, and we were entwined, naked and rutting for what seemed like hours, before I finally could no longer stand the pressure and came for what seemed like forever.

I still do not remember what we did after that; if we went “home” even. I recall nothing more about that night. 

I do know that I am the first person to be seized by the Presence that occupied Angel that night. Angel and I are “married,” at least we’re living together these days, like almost all the rest of the world, and since the Presence made me not a breeder, Angel is a “milker.” Her udder is enormous, a fact to which I was quickly accustomed and made proud by the Presence, as is the fact that she is a champion milker, just as I am not a champion stud. 

After all, a “milker” for the Presences (there are now thousands, I suppose) cannot breed, so since we live together, I must have been sterilized and emasculated.  The Presence makes me feel good about that. After all, 98% of formerly male humankind . . . if that’s what you can call us nowadays . . . is sterile and without any secondary sex characteristics . . . primary, either, if the tame doctors get to a young fellow before puberty. 

Selected young males are allowed . . . forced . . . to retain their gonads until they grow up and can breed with selected females a they come on heat.