Dirty Presidents and Me

By Carl Reader

Dirty Presidents and Me is a comical sexual romp through the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s starring Lauralee Bramble, the official White House courtesan and nymphomaniac. After learning her trade at Woodstock, Lauralee applies her talents to servicing one president after another, from Nixon to Ford to Carter to Reagan and Clinton. It's a satirical sexual autobiography to make the Lewinsky scandal blush.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Reader
• Release date: Dec 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452352251

Carl Reader

Carl Reader trained as a journalist at Temple University and has worked as a reporter, photographer and editor in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Montana. He's published short stories in literary magazines and on the Internet and has self-published a children's Christmas story called THE TWELFTH ELF OF KINDNESS.That book was partially published in Russia under the Sister Cities program. He's also self-published a novella called THE PERSECUTION OF WILLIAM PENN, which has been well-received in several college libraries. He works as a professional photographer and freelance writer.

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Preface

Fame knew her, but I never did. I never knew my sister, the famous White House courtesan, in life. I made her acquaintance only from reading the following manuscript, which I discovered at her home in Italy on the Amalfi Coast after her death. I can not vouch for the authenticity of the events she relates in this manuscript, or whether it was intended to be fiction or nonfiction, since it documents some very outlandish behavior on the parts of six presidents of otherwise wonderful merit. I would not presume that the accounts of all her sexual escapades with these presidents are strictly accurate, for I recognize in her a woman of great imagination.

Despite this, I think her tale rings true.

I love my sister enough not to question her too closely. I've gotten to believe that the world is a very strange place, not at all similar to our mundane everyday perceptions of it. I would as soon believe Lauralee Bramble's description of it set forth in these pages as that put forth by the daily reports of television and newspapers and the Internet.

Behind the pomp and circumstance and corruption, Dick Nixon might have been the two-headed creature depicted here, both vile and shy. Behind the bumbling image cultivated by the media, Gerald Ford might have been the extraordinary athlete and witless dolt written about here. Jimmy Carter might have been the reluctant sexual surprise revealed by Lauralee, and Ronald Reagan might have been as myopic and indifferent and great in that indifference as recorded here.

All these might-have-beens indeed might have been as written as true by my sister. It all depends on what the reader wishes to believe. I only know that her view of the presidency much corresponds to the general public's current view of it today.

I had for years wanted to get to know the sole surviving member of my family, but we were separated when our parents died at a very young age. My mother was flying our father to Martha's Vineyard for vacation and crashed in Boston. Lauralee and I were put in different foster homes. Tracking her down became an obsession very early in my life, but as is the case in most obsessions, the intensity of my search got in the way of its fulfillment. Never would I have believed during my early examinations that she would have risen as high as the White House, and I'm sorry that the early circumstances of her life led her into a disease as severe as nymphomania. But I also realize it led to her greatness.

I could not help her in that. I was sidetracked in my search for her by my early wandering from one foster home to another, as was my sister in finding me, I imagine. Then I had the added difficulties of establishing a career and a family without the support or help of a mother and father. I never forgot her, and when I reached middle age and things got easier for me in life in my tenured position at Princeton University, I began the quest again. To have it end with such a squalid depiction of life in the White House would never had occurred to me, but, then, I am an unimaginative man, prone to plodding and not gaudy flights of fancy.

I was flabbergasted at what I found in the manuscript, which is all that was left of her by that time and which finally ended my quest. Her college records at Georgetown University were the first inklings that I was on the right track in my hunt for her, for they were the first solid records I found of her after those of her foster homes. I can imagine that making it from Georgetown into the Washington scene had to be relatively easy, even for the hippie conundrum she had become. From everyone I talked to, she was a breathtakingly gorgeous woman, and as a journalist she rubbed shoulders with the great as part of her job. Her secret life in the White House as paramour to presidents is the most outlandish and astonishing part of her tale, its gist, and I am dull enough to believe it is not satire.

Even that secret life of sex rings true once you come to believe, like Pascal, that politics is a warehouse for madmen where they can do the least harm. From what I've read, I'm proud to say that Lauralee contributed mightily to keeping our presidents as harmless as possible, and ensconced inside that warehouse.

During my quest, talking to her classmates from Georgetown led to the name of Brian Fetterman, that Midas of the film industry, with whom they said she was involved in college. That famous name was easy to follow to his estate on the Amalfi Coast. Gaining access to Mr. Fetterman's estate proved not to be that easy, and convincing his executor that a manuscript in his possession by my sister was mine was equally difficult. It involved a court case of three years' duration, but I won't bore you with the details of that.

Instead, I'll simply ask you to read on, so that you can have in imagination what this lonely man never had in life - the comfort and humor of a wonderful sister who changed the world for the better with love.

Dr. Arthur Bramble, Ph.D.

Woodrow Wilson Professor Emeritus of International Studies

Princeton University

Chapter 1

All I ever wanted to do was make love, luscious love, to as many men as possible. Somehow, I ended up at the White House doing just that, endlessly, to the greatest leaders of the free world, and others.

It was a sickness, I know, constantly being stricken with overwhelming desire for the powerful. I'm not quite certain if there are levels of nymphomania, but from experience I would say there are.

At one point, I had convinced myself there were five stages to the disease and that I was at stage five. That was during my time in Ronald Reagan's Administration, the horniest days of my life. I might have been confused then, along with the rest of the country.

In my first stage, I used to think that having the best time possible while young was enough, and that if you looked back at any point in life to those good times, you would be happy. Wanting to be happy, I think, is the seed-time for nymphomania.

The disease grew rapidly from there, without my knowledge, of course, to stage two. That is fulfilling yourself as much as possible. Pleasure becomes a habit, and if the circumstances of the present don’t match those of the past, then the present is judged wanting. You want more and more.

From there, I moved rapidly to stages two and three, when a nymphomaniac loses control. The disease controls you, rather than you controlling your pleasure. I made it to stage four, and then approached stage five, when pleasure took me over completely.

It’s somewhat like being a salesperson. Every month you have to exceed your performance of the month before, or the boss is unsatisfied. When you are the master of your own pleasure, you become a very harsh taskmaster. You sell yourself on better and better times, more and more sex, a deeper and deeper involvement in nymphomania.

It happened progressively, as I stuck around through six presidential administrations. It finally reached stage five when I lost myself completely with my infatuation with Ronald Reagan.

I don’t know who to blame for my having that philosophy of endless pleasure - the nuns at the Good Shepherd, the pill, the late Twentieth Century, the silly cereal commercials on television or my first real boyfriend, Brian Fetterman. No one is responsible for creating the self, since we never choose our parents or early circumstances, but everyone is responsible for what they do - even at the behest of presidents. So don’t think I’m dodging responsibility for my degenerate life by calling myself diseased.

Certainly the times we live in make a difference, and sentence us to our predispositions. Ask yourself if Cleopatra would be the same person if she had been born in modern-day Iran, or if Nixon would have been Tricky Dick if he had been born twenty years later on Venice Beach. Imagine Dick Nixon as a weight lifter.

I had to make my way, and it was through pleasuring the presidents that I did so.

*

I have never been a very large person, physically, so I never got very big, but I’d like to think that I grew up - eventually. It took a long time and service in several administrations at the White House, but it might have been unavoidable.

So when I think of my early immature days, I can start blaming many things for turning me into a nymphomaniac, but I won't. I remember reading a book review that came in over the Associated Press wire one night. I was much struck by a line quoted from a book about the Sixties: The Sixties, the damn Sixties! Damn the Sixties!

Maybe it was the Sixties that did it to me. I certainly indulged in them as much as was possible for a middle-class girl ticketed for an education and the new freedom, although I never reached the point of damning them.

While reading that review, I thought about what I had done at Woodstock, that watershed of the times, with the clarity of hindsight. That might have been where it all started.

Brian, the love of my life, and I had gone up for three days of peace, love and music - or at least Brian had. I drifted off from him one night and ignored that famous warning, Don’t take the brown acid! It’s a bummer! that was broadcast over the loudspeakers so often.

I took the brown acid simply because I felt like it and because it might add to my sexual experiences.

I was approaching stage two.

I had often wondered what it was like to fuck a stranger without ever learning anything about him, even without talking to him or discovering one inch of his soul, so I decided to find out. It proved to be good training for what I later did with presidents. As the president changed from one administration to the next, I had to change with him.

I wandered in that sea of mud for a few minutes, stumbling in the loud dark of the early morning, and then sat down behind a good-looking boy I didn’t know. It appeared he also had ignored that warning about the acid. While he was listening to The Who in that sleepless, manic, early morning, I reached around and filled my hands with the soft bulge between his legs. I gasped with excitement at what I was about to do, in my daze.

It took some time for him to believe what was happening, once he turned around and saw who had grabbed him, and for me to lead him out of the ocean of people, but we found a spot alone on the hillside. Both he and I succeeded in saying nothing while we made love in the pelting rain. He was so excited I think he lost his voice. He was gasping, just gasping.

I don’t even remember what direction he went in and what direction I went in when it was over. We were all wet.

All I remember then is the dark and the lights flashing from the stage and the rain and the utter pleasurable joy of it, of the freedom, and the way things swirled around in my head.

To celebrate my triumph, I wandered around naked for awhile, my sodden dress in my hand, the mud between my toes, just an inch away from orgasm, which I fully expected from Brian later that night.

I liked the freedom of nudity and the way the flashing lights from the stage illuminated my flesh, but that must have been the drugs. There were plenty of other women dancing around naked and on drugs in the dark, but I knew none of them felt as good as I did or had been as free as I had.

When I found Brian, I was still laughing very hard at what had happened.

I looked up and down his long, emaciated body, nearly hairless and smooth everywhere but on its mop top, and giggled.

He appeared confused. His eyes always moved around quickly. Now they darted like the tongue on a lizard.

Look at you, naked and covered in mud. Wow. Lauralee, you are special.

I posed for him. Do you like me?

Oh, yeah. You took the brown acid, didn’t you, Lauralee?

Y-y-y-yes!

Is it a bummer?

N-n-n-no!

Now Brian broke up laughing, and I was pleased. I loved to make him laugh. I loved him, period.

Everybody said it was a bummer. You just turn things around, though, don't you, and make things great?

I fucked some guy!

I fell over onto my back into the mud laughing, and I heard him laughing loudly again above me, but I was so wet by now I didn’t care. I loved his laugh.

I also was very loud. A couple of people looked at me as the information about what I had done became generally known.

I did it. I did what we talked about. What was it I did? Oh. I ... Remember how we thought it would be neat just to walk up to somebody and fuck their brains out without saying a word? How free that would be?

Yeah? Cool.

I did it. I fucked a guy's brains out! It was incredible! I'm free!

Shit, you are something. All I've been doing is sitting here smoking dope.

This boy was thinking the same way, and didn’t say a thing. Or maybe he was too fucked-up to say anything. I don’t know. All I know is, I fucked his brains out without one word passing between us.

Shit, that's so cool. I didn’t get to do that.

No. I beat you. I can be as free as I want.

Brian rolled over in the mud and I saw his beautiful face above mine, all curled dark hair falling down toward me and his thin mustache set in passion. He passed me the joint. His eyes were moving all around as though a hundred people were about to hit him and he didn't know where the blow was coming from. Why were his eyes like that?

I drew him toward me and reached down for his skinny ass to pull him on top of me. He kissed my face and neck, and then he spat and laughed.

You taste like mud, Lauralee!

What do you expect?

Not mud. Love, always love.

I'm so happy! I’ve just been fucking in the mud!

I love you. God, I love you.

On stage, The Who was bathed in the gold and blue lights splashed over them from the huge floodlights on the sound towers and above the stage.

The night had tired itself out, but the energy from the stage was washing out over the audience and keeping it from sleep. Roger Daltry hollered his lyrics into the microphone My-my-my generation ... and then swung the microphone out by its cord and danced. He writhed and screamed, and Peter Townsend smashed another guitar against an amplifier.

I had a taste for a rock star in my mouth then as I watched Daltry and Townsend and felt Brian kissing me all over and the mud on my face, and my breathing was getting heavy with the combination of the three men and how I was thinking of making love with all three of them.

I reached for Brian, and he moaned when I touched him. I squeezed his balls until he groaned, and by that time I almost couldn’t stand being in the crowd and not alone with him and anyone else who would have me.

I'm so happy!

I know. You are? With me?

Yes, Brian. I'm so happy with you. Let's do it. I know it'll be better with you.

Yeah. I want to go down on you.

I rolled around in the mud with the anticipation of pleasure. Brian had this technique that was unlike anything I had ever felt. It was like nothing any other man had ever done to me, the way he used his tongue and mouth. I was thinking about it as we stumbled through the muck and music back to the tent. I wanted to feel it.

All you need is love, Brian said.

My legs were loose beneath me. I slipped down and stopped him several times while I kissed him and rubbed against him, both of us slimy from the way we had spent the day and night outside in the elements. I masturbated with the mud as he kissed me, and he did the same.

You can't believe how happy I am!

I know, Lauralee. You keep saying that. We are so happy together.

Our sleeping bags were dry inside the tent. He started with kissing me and feeling my breasts, and the kissing never stopped no matter what he did. I could feel him, or at least imagine him, having deep, dark thoughts that I could not understand. It made me love him, and it drew me to him. I watched his eyes still darting behind his closed eyelids. Even then, I wanted to understand him, I wanted to understand men.

I love you.

I just want to feel good, I said. I am so happy!

He licked up and down my vagina lightly with the tip of his tongue, and then he inserted it inside me and licked with a circular motion until I groaned. He broadened his tongue and licked up and down the full length of the slit, hard, and then pursed his lips and took my clitoris in between them and with his tongue flicked over it while holding it in place with his lips and sucking. I felt the sexual electricity spread from his mouth all through my being.

This was it. He called it his blow job for women.

I lay back in ecstasy and listened to the distant music and thought of fucking Roger Daltry and Peter Townsend and Brian Fetterman and sucking their cocks all at the same time and thought of what a lucky girl I was to have found a man who was as great as all three combined. I really was so happy.

When he finished me off, sucking hard, I sat up and screamed. I don’t think I had a sexual thought for a minute or two, for each time he made me come I thought he pulled the soul out of me. I lay back empty, unable to think or feel anything, but numb, without my soul. I knew I had to kiss him before my soul would return to me, so I did.

That is the best thing that ever happened to me, I said. I am so -

I know, happy!

He wanted to slide his cock into me after the orgasm. I rolled him over instead and told I wanted him to rate the blow job I was about to give him on a scale of one to ten.

Oddly, as I started, my mind was still blank, and fit into the dark of the night like a dark spirit into its cave. I thought for a moment that he had kept my soul in him, and his cock in my mouth felt like nothing more than sucking on a smooth stick.

As I worked on him, the excitement came on again, that electricity he spread throughout my being. I reached an orgasm that sent blue and orange and green streaks of lightning through my mind.

Ten, Brian gasped, as he came, too. I can tell you right now, ten. And I love you so much I ...

I wanted to ask him then to give me back my soul, but I was so happy I was speechless.

He fell asleep, like a rock falling into deep water. He never did have my energy.

Oh, well.

I quietly lifted the flap to our tent. I went outside to see what other adventures I could have. Dawn drifted down over Woodstock.

Once I got started with sex in those days, it was a long time before I was even partially satisfied. If I wasn't engaged in sex for many hours of the day, the happiness went away quickly, and I needed happiness.

I was only at stage two then.

Chapter 2

I spent my spare time in those days counting the men with whom I was sexually active. It varied from between four and six.

Brian, the great love of my life, was always there for me at school. In the summers between the years at Georgetown, he was at his house in New Jersey and I was at an apartment on Long Island. I had an old boyfriend there I saw now and again, a professor from Georgetown who came to see me some weekend, the town clerk, a boy at the grocery store and assorted other men. My parents had lived on Long Island before they had been killed in a plane crash, and I always went back to remember them in the summertime.

It was the only place I felt at home. The only thing I had left of them was a purple velour arm chair. I sat in it as much as I could, to feel close to them. I'd dream of Brian when I was away from him there, sitting in my chair, and I'd almost always get so aroused I'd have to seek out one of my other men.

I was lonely without him, and had to prowl for men.

Brian and I could visit on weekends, but two days out of seven weren’t enough days of sex for me. Silly Brian. He had actually tried what I had done at Woodstock the night after I did it. He took the brown acid, went walking through the mud and sat down behind a girl and groped around her for her breasts. Silent sex did not ensue. She lambasted him, swung and kicked at him, and her boyfriend nearly took all the peace out of the three days of peace, love and music.

His eyes were even more restless than usual, shooting from side to side endlessly.

You win, he said sheepishly, back at the tent. It’s dangerous even to try to keep up with you. I'm no where near as good as you. I'm so worthless.

You taught me everything. You're much better than I am. Don't say that.

No, no. I'm not even close. I'm just a stupid little shit.

Oh, no, no, no. You're wonderful. What would I have been without you?

I usually did win. Oh, but I had to have him near me. It was going to be our last night together for awhile, that last night at Woodstock, so I pulled him to me and stayed with him all night and didn't stray once.

*

When I returned to Long Island, the days I couldn’t see him we talked on the phone for hours. We would detail for each other the conquests of our sordid summers. It’s true that I made up some things to keep him on the phone, a dalliance with the mailman when he delivered the mail and a seduction of a 13-year-old neighborhood boy, but most of what I told him was true. I know that most of what he told me was, too. Sex was very important to us in those days, whether it was with each other or someone else.

My professor of political science, Dr. Gary Heim, a genius already going for tenure just a few years older than me, came up from Washington to see me many times. He was of a deep, serious nature, a physically beautiful man with soft brown hair and soft brown eyes that verged on haze, but very inexperienced in bed.

What I feel for you is love, he would say to me. Beautiful love.

I had Brian laughing for hours when I told him how Dr. Gary Heim described each of my body parts as he made love to it. You have such big, beautiful breasts. I could taste your vagina in my sleep. Your ass is a magnificent structure! I told Brian of how Gary and I drove out to the Hamptons on his motorcycle and climbed a fence to make love on the broad green lawn of an estate, and how the cops almost caught us, and then recounted how I met a devil worshipper in a bar and how we went inside a church and made love at midnight in a pew.

No adventure was too great for either one of us. My sex life covered a broad spectrum of men.

Brian's best spot for making love that summer without me was on top a geodesic dome that housed a small theater company called Theater in the Dome, in Lambertville, New Jersey. He said he’d find an athletic girl in town, climb up the supports of the dome, and then put her on her back while all the way up top, looking at the stars.

He said he saw some UFOs dancing high above them one night, shooting across the sky like clustered small lights riding the arches of the sky, but then admitted his climb up had been made difficult by some of the brown acid he retained from Woodstock. He yelled out for the aliens to come down and fuck, and he and the girl had great laughs about that.

I felt a little envious, and upset that I hadn’t done anything that much fun this summer. Aliens seemed appealing, especially when Brian wanted one.

See? You've done better things than me this summer.

Never. I could never match you, girl, and I know it. I'm worthless next to you.

Brian, no! I want to come visit you and the dome this weekend. Please? The aliens will come down once I call to them.

I bet they would. Anyone would. I'd scare them off.

No! They'd want you, too!

I could imagine having him do that thing to me on top of that dome with the extraterrestrials flying overhead watching. I didn't like the idea of his doing it to other girls. I was so turned on by it that I started breathing heavily.

He was silent.

I could come down Thursday night, and we could make it a long weekend. Please? I’ll take Friday off from waitressing.

Eh, don’t you need the money for school?

Not as much as I need you and the dome and those extra-terrestrials.

I was thinking of going to Europe this weekend.

I gasped. He was leaving me.

Then I thought, no, he never would. He was taking me with him.

I would love to see magnificent old Europe, and forget for awhile of my nostalgia for my parents. I was sitting in my purple velour wing chair.

You were thinking of it? How can you afford that? This is the first I heard of going to Europe.

I was more than thinking about it. I am going. I’m flying to Amsterdam Friday morning.

I waited for a moment.

Then ten seconds ticked off.

I expected the invitation to come all at once.

Then ten more seconds ticked off.

I gave a little laugh.

Another twenty seconds ticked off and I became worried and frightened.

When another minute had gone by and he had said nothing, I cried.

So I’m not going to see you for the rest of the summer?

I guess not.

The whole summer?

It might be a little longer than that.

Longer? What do you mean? We have school in another month.

I’m not going back to school. I’m dropping out.

"What?'

I'm done with school. Finished. Fuck it. It's just a part of the whole corrupt system.

You're leaving without a degree?

Yes. Fuck it, fuck it two times. Who needs it? I’m going to Europe to work. The hell with this racist, warmongering shit-hole of a country. Why should I wait around to get drafted, when I know I'm not going to go? There's no way I'll ever murder any innocent Vietnamese peasant for the capitalist creeps who run this country.

I was taken aback by the vehemence of his speech, but I was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for him. I hadn't seen this coming at all.

Then I’m dropping out, too. The hell with Amerika. I’ll come be with you always.

God, Lauralee. You know you have to get your master’s. A woman doesn’t stand a chance without it. I have other things to do. I don't want you ruining your life just because I have to ruin mine because of this shit-hole of a country that wants to draft my ass and make me kill innocent civilians.

But you’re going without any sort of degree, and without me? This is so weird. I want to escape, too, and be free. I don't care about my master's, either.

Lauralee Bramble, I will never be without you. I just won’t be there with you as much as in the past. Believe me, our time together is just beginning, but we gotta be free. I can't stand the idea of getting drafted and killing people, and having them kill me.

This definitely seemed like an end. I had to think about it, and it confused me. I realized I was confused, and tried to think my way out of the confusion, but that only made it worse. I hadn't expected this at all. I wished I had a joint.

The man I had spent three great years with, three great years of exploration and freedom and wild new sex, was going in search of horizons. And even more women. He said he had to, to avoid being a murderer.

And he was going without me.

Remember what we always talked about? he asked. How we always felt we were like soul-mates in prison, connected, in a country that enslaves its blacks and kills its youth in war? Lauralee, you were the first person I ever met who actually wanted to break out of that prison, because the world is a prison, and you were the first person I ever met who made any real attempt at a jail break. And you made it with me. Sure, we're in the gutter, but we're looking at the stars. You made me realize it was possible to be free, in everything, and I think I made you realize the same thing. This is just the final step. Freedom is one inch away, but like all real freedom, it’s only an inch away for me as an individual. As individuals it’s there right in front of us, and I’m going to leap at it and sink my teeth into it. I can't take you with me. I just can't keep up with you, or destroy you, and you are just so much better than me.

All at once the skies cleared and the light broke through. I understood immediately what he wanted. And I understood the only way to keep him near me was to let him go.

I'll slow down.

You'll never be able to.

Yes, I can.

No, you can't. It's not in you.

I knew his eyes were darting around.

Don't you think I can be better for you?

You're always better than me.

I mean I can do better than the dome, or better than any of the Swedish girls you’re going to meet on the beaches of Greece and even better than any whore you might pay in Amsterdam. I can have more fun and do more free things.

He laughed. You always have done better than me. You’re going to be stuck in America, which is the most repressed country on earth, and I’m going to fuck anything that moves anywhere on earth and maybe someday I'll be as good as you, as desirable. Man, is it going to be great.

He was silent for a moment. It seems hopeless doesn't it? I do love you. I just can't do what's required of me by the power elite, and I can't keep up with you.

He had me there. I couldn't say it.

But Brian, what about the films you always wanted to make? Are you going to forget about those? What about your film courses?

Strangely, he was as quiet as I had been for that moment he had startled me with the truth of sex BB - Before Brian.

Brian?

Yes?

What about film?

I will be a bigger success in film than you could ever imagine. His eyes must have been darting around madly, and it drove me insane. It sounded as though he was sobbing. There was no reason for this. Someday in the future you can say that you knew me when. I have plans for that. I have bigger plans than you can imagine. You’ll see.

Quietly, without making any noise into the phone, I sobbed, too, for I understood that this was an end. I felt as though I was coming apart inside. I think he knew I was crying, for he did nothing to hide his sobs. His voice was breaking up.

I love you, Lauralee.

I stifled the tears and spoke in a voice that I wouldn't allow to break.

But you’re forgetting all about me. How can you love me?

No. I love you. You haven’t heard the last of me. I'll beat them all, beat all the bastards who did this to us.

I haven’t seen the last of you?

This gave me hope.

I’m going to write to you about everything I do, and I want you to write to me about everything you do. I want to know it all, because we're both going to do great things. Do you think I would give up that part of our relationship? No way. It’s too much fun knowing you, and talking to you about all the wild things we do, and trying to do more great things than you can. No, I’ll be in touch.

Then came silence. He had hung up.

I felt as though someone had died when I cradled the phone in the receiver. I thought I had heard his soft, beautiful voice for the last time. I hated this silence immediately.

With my hands trembling and knees buckling, I stumbled away from the phone and across the floor until I fell into my chair in tears. I heard a noise. I jumped up again. In a hurry to back away from our house was the mailman, who dropped our mail through the slot and ran down the sidewalk toward the street. Hey, wait a minute, I shouted out, running to the door and thinking I could make one of my lies to Brian about sex come true. I want to blow you.

Away ran the mailman down the street, his blue-gray uniform a blur. I actually regretted not catching him in time. He looked kind of cute from the rear, and I needed sex to ease the pain of separation.

My hands trembled as I thumbed through the mail. I was numb. Then I came upon a letter that made them shake. It was addressed to me in Brian’s handwriting, with no return address. I tore it open.

Dear Lauralee,

I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell you on the phone today, so I knew I would have to write to you. I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I know I am now. I didn’t want to tell you, but this summer I’ve been making porn movies. Things have really broken for me, since the people I’ve been working for really like my work. They’re the ones taking me to Europe to work there. I think this could be something big, and I have no one to thank but you for it. You made me what I am.

More to follow.

Love,

Brian

What was I going to do now, bereft of my only friend, who preferred working in porn movies to me?

What I did was faint. I woke up in the dark, late for my shift at the restaurant.

I had stepped over the line into stage three that day, courtesy of the great love of my life.

Chapter 3

After taking the bus to Brian's New Jersey apartment, which turned out to be empty, I rushed back to Washington before the summer was through. The bus into town dropped me on a nearly abandoned Capitol hill.

I went to all the places Brian and I used to go on the East Campus, hoping he still might be somewhere in town and that all this was a nightmare. I visited the banks of the Potomac where we made love on springtime nights, and I walked all the way up to the National Cathedral on Garfield Street to pray he had not left me. I hung out in Dumbarton Oaks Park, looking for sex, and spent time looking at the exhibits in the National Gallery, where we had so often gone for the art and to hold hands. I came away from each place surer than ever that he had left the country and I was alone. I hadn't realized his disillusionment with the government was so complete, his hatred of the draft and war so strong. We had had so much together, all of Washington, and he had left me alone in it.

I spent the last few days before continuing my master's program sobbing in a cheap motel by myself and my nights walking Thomas Jefferson Street and Prospect Street all the way up to Reservoir Road. I lived on tap water and the thought that Brian might show up at my door, ready to run away to Sweden with me, where we could be safe.

It never happened.

Finally, my pent-up energy drove me out of the motel and back to Georgetown once school started. I looked all over the Yard where he had been enrolled in the college of arts and sciences, and then sadly went back to the School of Foreign Service. I was desperate for sex and a place to stay and a person to stay with, since I had planned to live with Brian again and his apartment had been rented out from under me. He had left me homeless. I found Dr. Heim's house, sweet Gary's house, as I was walking around looking for Brian after my first class, to my great relief. It was the usual red-brick Georgian-style residence, and I was in my usual mood whenever a man was around, even if he was around behind closed doors and present only in my imagination.

Well, I guess there's nothing else to do.

I knocked on his door, strangely eager for sex. I had to redeem myself after my failure with Brian.

Lauralee!

Gary was truly surprised to see me. He had on jeans frayed at the cuff a blue work shirt, and he held some papers. He was barefoot, and his mop-top hung far down over his ears and into his eyes. He looked far more like a student than a professor. Oddly, his eyes flashed brown, and then they flashed green. I had seen weirder things.

What are you doing here?

Don't you want me here?

Of course I want you here. I wondered when you were coming back. All I think of are those summer nights with you.

I got lonely. You know how I get when I get lonely.

Oh, boy, yeah. What a lucky day for me. Do you want to come in?

Only if you want me to.

He pulled me to him and kissed me, and I pushed up next to him and writhed, not even thinking what I was doing, but just acting naturally and out of my need. I reached down to rub his cock. When I did, he pulled me inside with a look out at the neighbors and a hand on my ass.

I quickly worked my way into his bedroom, almost without a word, on his tour of the house. I don't know why he even asked if I wanted a tour. He knew why I was there. I burst into his bedroom and had slipped out of my clothes not long after he had a chance to say This is where I ...

Hurry up and get undressed. Hurry up! I need it! I need to fuck you.

What is this? A rape?

No, it'll be friendly. God, I just need to fuck now. Hurry up!

What a way to show up at my front door.

Hurry!

He hadn't any underwear on, and he was naked beside me in an instant. In his bedroom, he had a Tiffany lamp hanging over a simple mattress and box spring on the floor. There was a poster of a scowling Nixon with a clenched fist with a headline of Peace with Honor?, and there was a mirror strategically placed where we could watch our activity, which I forced without a word. Nixon watched us. On the wall over the bed was a poster of a little Vietnamese girl, crying and in agony, running from a burning village that had been bombed. The headline over the picture asked Have You Napalmed Your Child Today?

Are you back in town now?

What do you think?

I couldn't take my eyes off the poster, and was angry. He was being stupid again.

I just wanted to know -

Gary!

What?

Don't talk now, not during sex. This is holy time. Make love to me.

Holy time?

Just don't talk.

I looked away from the poster.

You are one beautiful woman, Lauralee. You know that, don't you?

I had to find some way to shut him up, so I worked my way up to his face and settled my vagina on his mouth, thinking of what Brian could do in a situation like this. On the wall over the bed was another poster of Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar, so I stared at that while he performed oral sex on me. In the air was the smell of jasmine emanating from an incense-burner. The smell seeped down even into the pine floor. I could still feel Nixon's eyes on my back and hear the little girl's screams. A lava lamp stood on an oak dresser, and the rug was made of hemp. A rubber tree stood just before a long window that looked over the city, but I couldn't get the idea that someone was watching us out of my mind.

That's not quite right, not right.

I dismounted and pushed Gary down on his back and sucked his cock before even kissing him, all the while looking at the poster of the president looking at us. I was thinking of Brian. When I could finally concentrate on what I was doing, it was an immense relief for me. I had Gary screaming a few minutes after I walked in the door. He pounded his fists into the mattress.

Good god! Good god!

I hoped he wasn't going to start talking again during sex, so words came out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. The little Vietnamese girl was still crying up on the wall. I felt empty.

It can be yours all the time, you know.

That perked him up. All the time?

I mean it.

Are you serious? Every morning when I wake up, just like that? With you here all the time for me?

He stroked my hair. I took his cock in my mouth again.

Uh-huh.

He moaned.

I feel like I need you in my mouth as soon as I open my eyes in the morning.

He gasped.

I have to admit, all I did was think about you this summer. Those times I came to Long Island to see you, I didn't want to come home.

I look at you and get horny.

You do?

I didn't tell him that happened with every man I looked at. Nixon was scowling at us.

I think you have a roommate.

For good?

Forever. For as long as this goes on. I'm not an idiot, Lauralee.

I smiled. It was exactly what I needed. I went down again and licked his balls for a while. It was that easy to find a residence in Georgetown at the time. I covered my ears as the little Vietnamese girl continued screaming.

I settled back in bed.

The empty feeling inside me got a little smaller, and I was a little more comfortable. I held on to Gary and tried to mean the feelings I was somehow feeling for him.

*

After I moved in with Dr. Heim, I would suck his cock each morning when we woke up, as I promised. I looked at the poster of Nixon scowling as I did so, and sometimes the little Vietnamese girl was silent.

I was not one to go back on my word. I was desperate to please him and me. I didn’t think this was such an extravagant promise to make or too much to do, since giving just one blow job a day was light duty for me. I was fucking every man I could get my hands on, trying to ease the pain of separation from Brian, and blowing everybody with a zipper on his pants. I haunted the clubs at night and the hallways at school during the day. I got caught so often with a strange cock in my mouth that the rumor spread rapidly about a crazed young woman who wanted to do noting but suck cock and fuck.

I was becoming famous for it.

Poor Gary. He loved me already.

I was certain Gary would get tired of all-day sex before I did, just as Brian got tired of me and left. That's what men did, they got tired of me. I needed plenty of men to make me feel wanted. I needed backups. I needed strangers. I needed old men, I needed young boys. I couldn't believe I had been dumped. I still walked around Washington trying to catch a glimpse of Brian, hoping to see his long black hair trailing behind him or his darting eyes in a crowd, and then I would see something of him in a stranger and I would ask if I could blow him. Brian was off seeing the world, just as I wanted to do but couldn't, and the stranger would get lucky.

Hey, Lauralee.

Gary's easy grin and soft voice comforted me each time I heard them. Maybe it was