Selfies: A Novel

By Gabriel Gilbert

"Brutally honest." "Guilty indulgence." "Inventive." Critics describe Gabriel Gilbert's debut novel, "Selfies," as a literary mash-up of erotica and adult thriller. Carinda Campbell, a streetwise southern woman, seeks refuge in the wake of her ex-husband’s white collar crimes. Online, she captures the interest of Ray Welles, former Marine and tech entrepreneur, who aims to hold together his children, business and teetering health. Explosive chemistry leaves a wake -- and exposes long-kept dark secrets. The heat and wealth of Boca Raton. Florida collide in the humble wards of working class Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Gilbert's mastery of psychology and technology expose the casts' sex, lies, and viscous motivations. Erotic and whip-smart, Selfies unfolds the love, lust and law that create a perfect storm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483473574

Book preview

1

Carinda

F irst impressions?

Square-shouldered, a handful of extra pounds. He carried them comfortably on a tall, lean frame. A former athlete or a man raised doing backbreaking work outdoors. It was both, I would learn later.

Boyish oval face. Rugged, with a defined jaw and broad nose made gentle by his round chin. His dark, wavy hair was mostly brown, bordering on black and new gray at the temples. The eyes appeared brown until viewed up close. There, they seemed spun with brindles of green and rust.

Judging by his somewhat mannered, practiced gait, this was a man who learned by observing and doing, no matter his upbringing. Dignified, his shoulders neither slumping forward nor his broad chest pushing outward in a show. He must have cultivated this easiness over the years, suppressing any pride and self-knowledge of his good looks or the presence of an officer. He’s the type who, as he closes in, only then do you sense his natural side—the openness, the warmth, and a dose of gullibility.

The first impression? Handsome. Well put together. Self-made. Smart and scrappy. If a door is not answered, this man will build his own and walk in. Authentic with a tinge of vulnerability, anyone could imagine being his friend. In conversation, there was a raw sensitivity to him, a defensiveness that you know he knows is there and works to suppress. When relating his life, he had no filter, and he knew this, too, and apologized intermittently. It bordered on the annoying. But his quick-witted, self-deprecating humor and self-awareness kept him sexy.

Through all this transparency, good and bad, I could absorb his creed even more quickly. Every success, even in its most beautified state, remained fragile as glass, and each new creation—in business, family, faith, and love—was painstakingly molded from clay.

Hi, Raymond Welles. Very nice to meet you.

Thick lips, deep voice, maybe a former or social smoker. Large hands, warm and soft, he responds equally to the pressure you apply in your handshake. Large, white teeth, natural in their imperfect alignment, they made him more pleasant. No rings or jewelry of any kind. Slap my head and call me silly, he was a finder’s keeper.

And so, the games began.

Ray, I’m Carinda. How are ya?

The first date flashed by, and seven hours seemed like one. Our life stories tumbled out, at least the versions we wanted to tell. We stayed at the restaurant until it closed, and he tipped the young waiter generously. During lulls in conversation, I let myself think of how he might kiss but stopped my mind short of being taken. Not this one, not yet.

Outside, the valet ran off for my sports utility vehicle. I sensed that Ray wanted to kiss me at the curb, but that he would not try. I thought at the time that his hesitancy was because he deduced from our evening tales that I only offer my cheek on first dates. But later, when he described the moment, his reasoning was so complex—and he knew it—that we both ended in hysterics. He said the trouble with a first kiss at the time was the combination of our view being an empty parking lot and the two carhops who stood and stared, their shirts soaked from a busy shift in Florida’s August heat. The sensuality of the time and company, he joked, fell short of his standards for a lifelong first impression.

Returning to my condo, I smoked on the patio overlooking South Flagler and the inlet’s smooth intracoastal waters. The dock lights illuminated the yachts below with their tinted windows and colorful hulls. Peace swept over me as I recalled his effortless company. His company was effortless. I stripped down, sweating in the heat, and finished my cigarette with my other palm against my flat stomach as I stood at the rail.

Once inside, after hanging my black silk blouse and faded jeans, I stood in my walkin closet, brushing the pearls of tonight’s lace bra. I tossed it with the thong into the laundry basket for another time. I reminded myself to leave a check on the counter for the housekeeper in the morning. Before washing off my makeup, I looked in the mirror, first turning left, then right. I looked good tonight.

I took my medicine, then slipped under the covers, nude and numb. I slept without waking for the first time in as long as I could remember.

2

Ray

W e met online. That whole process of finding someone online became a part-time job that involved viewing literally hundreds of women’s profiles. The lion’s share of the photos women posted boggled the mind. Puckering lips at the camera, selfies of cleavage and ass, or posting shot after shot where they stood amidst handfuls of other women to the extent that you could not guess which one she might be.

Selfie after selfie—in cars, the mirrors of public restrooms, the interiors of messy, dimly lit bedrooms. Filtered photos and grainy ones, wearing sunglasses in every image—even indoors. Or, just plain old selfies. One after another. Women alone in a car or shooting themselves before full-length mirrors in nondescript walkin closets—suggesting they have no friends and would offer little of interest to a relationship other than a frequent change of clothes.

Then, there were the profiles dominated by the women’s minor children or, frankly, more alluring, college-age daughters—which tossed the mind into a mix of guilt and reflection, how we create lives with our spouses, and while in loving service to our children and our work, we found we drifted and decayed as our babies grow beautiful and our careers frustrate and disappoint. The mind ended this stream in milliseconds with a dosage of reality. Know that our children and their children, not our spouses nor any bosses, will attend our funerals.

There were hordes of fluffy cats and lap dogs, ladies in fetish outfits at Halloween parties or wearing gruesome zombie and vampire makeup, and even more with animal parts superimposed upon their faces. In other profiles, you found just one image—a greeting card sentiment with no photos of themselves at all, as if screaming carpe diem in a large font would refresh a tired cliché.

Then, there came the reading of thousands of words in the remaining profiles of any interest. No players need apply, as if a player would tell you he is playing, or looking for the finer things, which could only mean the man pays the bills and maintenance will be high. Others listed every slight and poor habit of past men.

Once I found someone seemingly normal, next came the texting chit chat, only to call her and not like the sound of her voice or to learn that her temperament did not reflect what was written.

Shallow, yes, maybe I was. Imagining what I was narrowly avoiding, I had no qualms with my aggressive filters.

Over the course of a decade of marriage, I discovered myself compromising one inch after another in a soulless, sexless charade. In the beginning, Kimberly was an incredible actress. But before the honeymoon was over, it was already over. The wolf showed herself in Italy on day three. She said she didn’t like French kissing with me. From there, the dominos fell. Next, there was no oral, going either way. As a Catholic, I manned up and stuck it out. That’s what Catholics do. Maybe this was some passing buyer’s remorse. Maybe the more and more I demonstrated good humor, flawless hygiene, rising income, and so on, she would return to the fiery, fun, and gainfully employed woman with whom I had fallen in love.

Before I knew it, we’d had a couple of kids despite a cold bed, and then it got worse. Kimberly began undermining every reward or discipline, confusing the hell out of the girls. I didn’t put their seatbelts on right. I couldn’t do the laundry right. I didn’t make enough money working twelve hours a day and ingloriously traveling forty percent of the time to the various continents I had found my company needed to operate to grow. Then she wanted a larger house, a loaded SUV, and more vacations. That was followed by her vacations with just the kids, ostensibly because I was too busy, followed, of course, by vacations by herself. I welcomed those. I had the girls to myself, and I did not fear like she did that every sitter was a child molester. So, I let her run wild as she wanted. As for me, I was happy to have a couple nights out with my buddies for beers and my two little ladies all to myself. Pancakes for breakfast. Forts made with blankets on the furniture. An hour at the beach with no sunscreen.

And on it went with my former wife. I would grin-fuck my way through parties while Kimberly cast me as the stupid husband in one exaggerated tale after another.

Oh, there is more, much more, but who wants to hear it? How does one guileless man’s bad marriage start and end any less disastrously than another’s? The point here is, after ten years of death by a thousand cuts with a woman who was as impossible to please as she had been to love, I didn’t like a woman’s voice over the phone, why waste her time and mine? Abrupt? Yes, but I have always tried to remain very polite and cordial, despite how I may seem in this journaling of events.

Carinda had the radio voice. It was low but still womanly, silky as it rose and fell with sudden high-noted phrases, punctuated by welcoming laughter. She sounded confident, sexy, articulate. How we came to speaking on the phone was itself miraculous. Neither of us had our photos on our online profile pages. I read hers and messaged her based solely upon her words.

NEW CHAPTER: SWF, 39, 5’10, Athletic Build, Blonde, Hazel Eyes. Old school Southern girl, believer, mother, professional—and, yes, no drama! Bookworm (old-fashioned, printed kind). Dogs yes, cats no. Passionate when its right, loyal from start to end. Selective (sorry) but you will not be disappointed, promise. You? Kind, caring, self-actualized, educated, and above all, a sense of humor. The total gentleman. Take the lead, because next to you is the best life partner and greatest fan you will ever have. Oh, and please be tall. I’m 6 ft. in heels."

And with only words, I was sold.

The first meeting was at a newer restaurant on an ocean inlet overlooking a lighted bridge. I parked, arriving early, thinking I would get there early and wait at the bar as agreed so the lady could have the first look. That way, when she introduced herself, she would have had an opportunity to observe me. But when I turned the corner from the hostess station, I literally questioned my eyes and then swallowed hard at such good fortune. That could be no other than her—Carinda.

She was stunning, and I mean stunning. Her face illuminated the room and was shaped in classic Greek proportions like the statues and bas-reliefs I’d studied as an undergraduate. Her forehead and nose, the distance from the brow to her cushion-like lips— every feature she had were of a dimension gifted to those who have no choice but to become high-end models. Her straight, blonde hair was streaked with auburn and crisply cropped around her neck, descending around her shoulders to a point just above her collar bone in the front. She was indeed tall and square at the shoulders, slim, but not skinny, and modest. I don’t have a wandering eye for every woman’s curves, but, of course, I instantly studied her from the neck down. She wore a fitted, black silk blouse and a black, long-sleeved waistcoat, tastefully toning down the high, full breasts beneath it. Her dark gray slacks were just ever-so-snug, enough to demonstrate healthy calves and thighs that arose to the most exquisitely shaped and muscled, yet feminine ass.

Every woman born comes gifted to us with a certain imperfect perfection. She arrived at this world twice blessed by what could only have been computational science, matching the genes of a romantic lead actress with an Olympic swimmer.

Were I a lustful man—and I guess I am, but a controlled one—my mind would have raced to imagining the feel of her soft, firm curves, the dashing of a pink tongue from between those red lips, and the thrill of discovering what awaits between her thighs. I held back those fantasies for a day or two. Sooner than I thought, all of that—and she, too, would say afterward—all of that and more would be real.

But tonight, this was an evening for sheer, unsullied intellectual foreplay. I would not try to even kiss her. Yes, I had my doubts she would want to meet again. However, there was something about Carinda, her southern belle-tinted speech, her transparency about her life and belief system and what we found in common, point after point. If she said no to another date after such a quick and promising bond, either I am a delusional moron, or she is first class crazy.

3

Carinda

B efore Ray, I was running through men like shit through a goose. At first, I had been quite the advertiser. Between online dating sites and a local millionaire matchmaker, I became overwhelmed just clicking through the alerts and emails. Hundreds of men saw my pictures online or were thrown over the wall by the matchmaker until it became a full-time job just to find time for the first dates and keep straight their first names. Finally, I took my photos down to stop the flood. But I knew I still needed to build my Noah’s ark.

There were many first dates and some seconds both before and after.

One was a salesman at a major technology company. Jeremy was handsome and charming, educated and worldly. He checked all the boxes. Our first date was, like the others, at the same restaurant I would eventually meet Ray. Valet parking made an easy in and out without any less-than-desirables stalking me to the door of my SUV. The finishes and lighting were new and crossed the modern with the traditional. It was comfortable and the prices, while reasonable, set a kind of standard. This southern gal does not meet up at the local watering hole.

I let Jeremy have me before the third date started. He came to pick me up to go to a hookah coffee bar where an eclectic Mediterranean band was performing. I did not want to go, I had other things on my mind.

The condo elevator is coded to open directly into each resident’s foyer. I buzzed him up, and when the elevator doors opened, his eyes lit up. I stood in the foyer with hair and makeup ready to go but wearing only a blue silk robe. My nipples shot him squarely between the eyes. I greeted him smiling and folded my arms to demonstrate some show of class. I knew that he saw, and he knew that I saw where his eyes first locked in. I have a nice pair and damn proud of it.

I offered him a seat on the couch and asked what kind of beer he liked. Name it, I said, and I probably have it. He was so ripe and ready, I could feel the energy washing across the room in waves. I opened the refrigerator with my rump half-turned in his direction. I bent and leaned in, the cool air passing down my breasts and between my legs. The rear hem of the robe rose as I searched the shelves and drawers, shouting out brands. In my periphery, his eyes were locked to my hamstrings and ass. I had exhausted the list of beers and began repeating them. He settled on a dark porter.

I leaned and raised a leg as I handed the bottle and a napkin across the coffee table. My left breast felt exposed and who knows what he saw up skirt as I balanced on one foot. He worked like a dog to keep two eyes above my neck. Too bad, he would have seen a rock-hard tit or a shaved flowerpot. The stirring between my thighs had begun, too.

Long and short of it, Jeremy started out with me by trying to simply make love. I took a sip of wine. Kissing him, I let cool pinot noir trickle into his mouth. He knew then that the leash had come off.

Jeremy was more toned than his clothes had let on and we fucked for what must have been two hours—or maybe afterward, it just felt like I had done two workouts. Average in girth and length, my girl was left a little less than full by Jeremy. My flowerpot requires a good-sized member, and Jeremy’s checked in just shy of my needs. But he pumped hard and fast, I nearly came, which is rare for me during intercourse. It takes a lot to fill me up, and a long session of rhythmic pounding, to take me over the top to an orgasm. Often, I masturbate once the man leaves or while he sleeps. If he is next to me, even snoring, I come fast by just laying one leg over his knee, occasionally petting just above his package with my left, while working myself as rapidly as my right hand will go. If they wake up, I could give a shit. When they do, they want to fuck and please me all the more.

Before Ray, there was Jeremy the salesman, three doctors, and West Palm Beach’s king of the interstate billboards for personal injury law. I found that doctors do not know or do not care how to fuck. But Nathaniel the attorney was another story. There is nothing better to pass the time like an attorney drowning in settlement fees. While his situation made for the perfect Noah’s Ark that I sorely needed, I ended it in California on the last night of a long weekend with Nathaniel in wine country.

After dinner, Nathaniel suddenly floated by me some photos of a sunkissed, green eyed brunette, testing the waters for a threesome. Listen, I wanted that brunette more than he did. But this was too soon to let him lead the band. I made a scene in our hotel room. Too bad I didn’t get the woman’s number. I would have spent that night with her in the hotel room he got for me—after berating his ass for an hour for presuming that I was that kind of girl. The look on his face. Do I laugh or cry for him? Poor thing.

Ray was different, a bit rough around the edges but a gentleman, pliant, deferring. He would let me captain the ark, which I liked. I liked the prospects of that much more.

4

Ray

S ince she laughed and agreed I was not a stalker, I suggested for our third date that I would pick her up at her condo in the yacht club. The yacht and golf club sets had never been in my circle, nor me in theirs. But I was impressed that she could afford to live on the inlet in one of the most affluent postal codes in the country. It impressed me because I had learned on our first date that Carinda did not come from money and that she is a fellow bootstrapper. I did not want her money. I certainly did not need someone angling for mine.

On the second date, there was a comfort and familiarity between us from the start. Our time was easy going, walking on the beach at sunset, making out in her mammoth white SUV. I found myself engorged on the drive to meet her and most of the entire time we spent together. I wished I had worn some elastic warmup briefs. As it stood, my running shorts all by their lonesome gave away my excited member early on. She saw me attempting to readjust and hide it and made a funny comment, relieving me of any self-consciousness. We ended the night at a dive bar. Our lips fell into one another’s as if our first kiss had been the fiftieth. Hers were plump and warm, her tongue quickly met mine.

Our mouths fit together, she said, with one of her deep laughs. Long kisses followed and we explored each other’s upper bodies through our t-shirts. Her back was v-shaped and muscled, her curves from the waist into hips pronounced and fleshy. She exuded sex. I wanted her and I liked her, the deadliest combination I had ever felt this intensely. The whole scenario seemed so beyond credulity, likely too much, too soon. With all my recent history, it generated old fears and a teenager’s possessiveness. I needed to pass this by my brother sooner or later, I told myself, step by step, inch by inch.

For the third date, I gave my name and ID to security and drove into guest parking. The towering condo sat on Flagler Drive in West Palm overlooking the yachts at the dock. Inside, the lobby was decked in old Florida style with Mexican tile, cypress ceilings, and beams. A perfume like teak and pine straw put me at ease.

The elevator opened right into her condo. Travertine tile, high ceilings finished with wide, ornate crown moldings, and her coordination of old and new furnishings nearly overwhelmed me. This was class and wealth all in one. If ever I had the time and inclination, this is how I would spend a windfall.

She appeared from around the corner just as my senses encountered the scented candles and music. She wrapped her arms around me before I said a word. I listened to a bar or two, then laughed, still in her arms.

What?

Barry White. This is almost too much for me to take. Or not, I said with a wink, holding this amazing, high IQ Barbie doll to the sounds of Can’t Get Enough of Your Love. She winked back and smiled.

Pinch me, I am dreaming, I thought to myself.

She laughed back and she did pinch me hard, on the ass, then gently swatted it away. We kissed. She got my sense of humor, however dry or edgy it may land. I was hard again and again. This went on most of the night.

If a sophisticated woman described how Carinda dressed, it would fill a book. What I know of women’s fashion would fill a pamphlet. But like knowing porn when you see it, I know style when I see it. Carinda had impeccable taste and purchased quality ahead of any soup du jour. As a result, her wardrobe was upscale without the saccharine trendiness or ostentation that infects Florida’s east coast from West Palm to Miami.

It is difficult for even modest women to hide a killer body. Carinda, being no different, could wear crisp slacks and a fitted blouse buttoned to her collar bone. While never salacious in her intent, her D-cup breasts, slim waist, and well-formed rear caught attention wherever we went. Her inseam was longer than mine, and I stand a little over six feet. Athletic does not do justice because her form went beyond the athletic to the ridiculous—the kind of body other women love to hate, like a West Coast women’s volleyball pro with the chest of a 1940s pinup. Yet, a tinge of self-consciousness, her knowing the impact her mere presence had upon people, exuded class. Walking around restaurants, every man could not control his eyes from studying her head to toe, the silky blonde hair, the tits out to here and hips that could not help but inspire step-by-step fantasies of them being undraped, grasped by their flanks and thrust on top of the man’s member.

For our third date, I took her to a quiet Italian restaurant in West Palm, where you wend your way down the old city’s weathered Mediterranean streets, down cozy alleys, and into an intimate piazza. We conversed without stop, hopping from the silly to the serious. She got my humor, which I know takes a special person. Once settled at a table outdoors, we drank a bottle of cabernet, shared pasta and flatbread pizza, and teased the waiter to marry his girlfriend, who was minding the hostess desk and smiling the entire time. I spoke up to him.

Armin, very frankly, even the two of us put together are not good enough for that girl.

Carinda piped in without missing a beat.

Shitfire, Armin, I am going to ask her to marry me if you don’t.

The time passed quickly, laughing and flirting beneath the twinkling bulbs hung crisscross like a constellation above the quaint square. We split some cheesecake, had lattes and wandered back to my car.

Driving her home, we became quiet, getting that peaceful easy feeling, as they say. For me, it was momentous. My instinct was to check my emotions which I did by not speaking.

The Brazilians have a word, saudade, and there is no perfect translation into English. Saudade means something like the saddest of pleasures. I think that is what came over me in those moments of silence. I cherished this eclipse of my otherwise shitty burning reality of a life. How simple this seemed for two people to come together so effortlessly at every level. Yet, there arose a kind of bittersweet salt as I played the old tapes in my head—all the years lost with Kimberly, giving her my all, compromising myself, praying and hoping to reforge some kind of tolerable life with Kimberly. She had been the entirely wrong person for me from the very beginning, and what literally dropped into my lap with Carinda blotted out the hot sun of Kimberly, of all the lost days to a lost cause. Yet, would this last with Carinda and for how long? If it did last, when and how do I face down my anger and regrets over the past, until I am made whole, that my days ahead are ones I deserve—and that my health allows days enough to compensate for a decade lost to a hateful, disturbed ex-wife who had still not finished with afflicting me?

Perhaps that is what the Portuguese word, saudade, means: The sweetness when holding tight to a dying thing. Fragile, fleeting pleasure in the embrace of a lover when you know it is for the last time. Or, maybe all of this was my mind’s newfound tendency to entertain all these competing thoughts and emotions, all at once, all at random. My heart and mind raced ahead, these days, overthinking and overshadowing most every waking hour of my existence. And it was happening here.

All good things have a beginning and an end, I told myself. This is saudade. This flame will go out and, sadly, I will foresee and I will witness the hour even as I participate in it.

Why had I not made better decisions long ago to have this sweet but fragile thing earlier in life? Carinda and Ray.

As I drove, savoring her and bashing myself for the lost years with Kimberly, Carinda reached over and lay her warm dry palm on my neck, then gently combed her fingers through my hair. I laid my hand on her mid-thigh and she swiveled her knees my way to make it easy. I stroked and petted, enjoying the mix of muscle and feminine fleshiness beneath her cream crepe knee-length skirt. She stared at me, then out the windshield, then at me, always with a smile on her tender, full moist lips, exposing those shining white teeth.

My mind flooded with urges to invade north up her dress. I imagined the suppleness and warmth of her inner thighs. She had shared with a laugh that she hadn’t worn panties in years, except special occasions. Having soaked in her hind quarters numerous times that evening at every opportunity, I knew there was absolutely nothing beneath that skirt. Nothing but ass and hot wet pussy. What was hers like? Did she groom it? How and how often? How responsive would it be to my hands? Would she tell me what she liked so I could please her the first time? What would she taste like? Sweet like salt and syrup or smoky like light musk perfume?

We necked in my car forever. We both went free range over one another’s bodies without hesitation or resistance. I realized she was curious to check out the goods just as much as me. Her long pale hands examined my ribs, my abs, and biceps. Her nails gently dug into my chest and she ended the night with a tickling crawl below my belt buckle. She laughed.

We’re not going to have any problems in this department, are we?

She playfully gave me two light pats on the