The Paraphernalia Dealer

Colleen tried to remember the last time she had felt human. Whole inside. A full belly.

She had felt that way nine months ago. Special time to be by herself. A special self to be with. Time by herself wasn't a privilege anymore. It was more like 'empty spaces.' Spaces between lovers. Spaces best spent sleeping.

"I can tell you're not into women's lib-- you're too feminine." said the man with the dark glasses.

"I've been a feminist since I was sixteen." She said it, but she knew it didn't matter.

"Look, if I change my flight, will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?"

"Okay."

He was a stranger, but why not? She felt abandoned. Her steady lover was gone all week-end. Just more empty spaces. Go to a bar, a party, meet a stranger. Here was one and he would do.

She wouldn't even be polite. She'd tell him just what she thought..about men and relationships. And he would listen. He didn't know he had to listen. He only knew she was female, and if he played his cards right...

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"Maybe I'll just let him THINK he can fuck me, and then not" Colleen told her room-mate. "We are the women men warned us about."

"It is easier to fuck 'em than it is to explain why you don't" her girlfriend replied. "Then you have to deal with the 'hurt little boy' act. It's better if they're from out of town. Then you don't have to see them again..."

Colleen figured she'd probably fuck him. But she wanted him to suffer, first. She was still filled with empty feelings from the last encounter. Maybe she wanted to get even. Maybe she just wanted to feel really wanted.

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The last time felt too good. An invitation for dinner and drinks. She should have known better. He was handsome. He was a professional.

She felt nervous being with him. She couldn't help but imagine being in love with him. He offered her a massage after drinks. At her house.

"What's happening in your personal life?" she asked.

"Ah, my one problem...three years together...moved in a year ago...want to get out of it...but after all this time..."

If Colleen had felt human, she would have sent him directly home. Feeling only half of a whole, she just followed his lead. Kisses followed massage and sex followed kisses. Colleen mentioned that she didn't want him inside her, but she didn't insist:

"We can stop any time you want to," he said as he rubbed his cock barely in and out of her vagina. Se didn't want to stop having sex with him. She also didn't want him to come inside her. Intercourse seemed to personal right off, for potential intimates.

His smell would slowly trickle down her for days. It would remind her of that night. But Colleen didn't explain 'potential intimates.' She had learned that mentioning intimacy to a man was too frightening. She kept quiet. She didn't explain anything.

He showed her his best sexual techniques. So as not to insult is masculinity, she told him she would have come...but didn't.

"I don't feel secure enough" she said.

He groaned when he came, and even spent some time holding her and laying beside her, before he commented on the time.

"I'll set the clock..."

"Don't bother. I have to go home. Is there a towel I can wash up with?"

Colleen felt like a mistress or a hooker watching him brush his hair in from of the mirror. He had successfully washed her smell off his cock and beard. He kissed her lightly before leaving. His smell would stay with her for days. So would his voice, style, and touch.

Before she fell asleep she began to wonder when ovulation occurred. Did it begin as a reaction to menstruation or was the timing different? She had her period now, but it was two weeks late in starting. The question was important because she had used no birth control. If ovulation started two weeks after her period began, she was okay. If the egg kept on schedule, however, she might be in trouble. She decided to research it sometime and went to sleep.

*******

Colleen went out with the man in the dark glasses. She liked not caring what he thought. She didn't even mind his wondering out loud how many men she picked up on the street like him or whether she was some kind of sex professional.

He wanted her to drink alot, but she only drank a little. She wanted to consciously decide to fuck him when she did. He made a lot of money selling paraphernalia and he didn't mind spending it, he told her. He also didn't mind spending a lot of words telling her how beautiful she was. "A little zaftig" he said "but so was he, so he could overlook it."

And she was mostly sober when she consciously decided to fuck him. It was a decision he had made the night before. The thought occurred to her sometime before his second orgasm that maybe the diaphragm wasn't so hot for orgasmic women. The men who had invented it didn't know that the cervix lifted up during high states of arousal.
"I really should get an applicator to put more cream in," she thought, as she counted the number of hours since she had first put it in. "Three to four hours. Not too bad" she thought, and prayed for the strength of the cream and a low rise of her cervix as he ejaculated the second time. She usually had her most creative brainstorms at times like this. She never shared them, though. This man would not appreciate the extent of her genius anyway.

When he left that afternoon, she didn't have the energy to walk him to the bus. He promised he'd return in a month...he's a busy man...he's becoming a millionaire...he would see her on his vacations...she would see him at his best...

She nodded her head and thought alot about his girlfriend back home. He was getting 'tired' of her. She gave him good 'head' every day. She was very good to him, but he was very good to her, too. Colleen imagined that meant that he paid her well for her role in his life. Men with money often have women who are paid well to be in their lives.

"That's better than most women who get paid nothing for their role in men's lives," she thought.

Colleen slept all afternoon, although she didn't need the sleep. She was tired of casual sex and casual emotions. She was mostly tired of not feeling human.