Touch Me There

  Touch me there

  by

  Phaedra Weldon

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Caldwell Press on Smashwords

  Touch Me There

  Copyright © 2010 by Phaedra Weldon

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Touch me there

  by

  Phaedra Weldon

  My best friend was Gary Herndon, a gay male of thirty-five, who wrote a popular daily sex-advice column entitled Touch Me There, under the pseudonym Sally Forth. I loved Gary till the day he died. What I didn't know was that he loved me as well. All he ever wanted for me was happiness, health, and a good lay.

  Gary never really knew how his sex-pert advice changed the life of a bitter, thirty-four year old woman who had given up on finding love. But I owe him my happiness.

  My life opened up wide one night when an on-line friend asked me a very strange question. Hey Andrea, have you ever had cyber-sex?

  I reeled back from the computer in my bedroom. I had taken a late night break from my reading for this? The garlic aroma of pizza still clung to the air. My cat curled on the edge of the bed, her green eyes half closed in contentment. The only light came from my desk lamp.

  The chatter's name was Eric Cook, a young man I'd spoken with several times over the phone. He worked for the company's New Zealand division as a stable artist.

  We corresponded by email for months before we progressed into a daily chat on Skype. I saw his picture on his web site and drooled. Dark, smoky eyes, long dark hair and a face that spoke to my wildest dreams. We shared so many of the same likes and dislikes, had much to talk about during the wee hours of the night, mid-afternoon the next day for him in New Zealand.

  I found myself enjoying his company more than that of the friends I interacted with physically. I thought about him, wrote him emails about my day which he read when he got in. His responses were silly most of the time, but on serious questions, he gave me the best advice. He in turn asked me questions, mostly about issues he had with the company politics, and about his dating life.

  Not long before the cybersex question, I received a long email inquiring on my age. Eric pleaded with me not to be mad, but he really wanted to know how old I was. He'd guessed I was his age.

  For two nights I danced around the issue, believing this man would stop emailing me or worse, Skyping with me or being my friend, if he knew my age. He admitted to being 29. I was older. Over the hill. Middle-aged.

  I scolded myself on the third night, wondering what I was afraid of, and typed in, I'm 34, Eric. An older woman. If you want to discontinue our late night talks, I'll understand.

  The response took longer than usual, and I feared my worst nightmare was true. My age had revolted him. He had hoped I was a young thing.

  I also knew Skype could be unpredictable, and there could be something happening there at work to prevent him from answering me. Yep, keep up the excuses there. You're old. And he knows it now.

  After an hour I gave up, and was resigned to the fact that I had lost my nightly buddy.

  Until the response came.

  Sorry for the delay. System backlog. It's that Vista mentality, right? LOL. 34, huh? Why would I want to stop talking to you? Do you really think I'm some git that would judge someone by their age? Talk to me. What's up?

  I blinked at the screen, feeling very small and self-centered. I had offered him a way out of the on-line correspondence and succeeded in insulting him instead. I vowed never to do that again, and we continued our cyber-bouts for two more weeks.

  Then came the cyber-sex question.

  I took in a deep breath and typed, Cyber-sex? Why did you ask me that?

  Eric responded quickly. Just curious. You mentioned the batteries and vibrator thing in your last message, and I just wondered. :)

  Oh great. The possible caving in of my dream man visions would be my fault, due to my twisted, sick sense of humor. I really needed to stop hanging out with Gary on a regular basis. I had to remember Eric was a straight man.

  Obviously a horny, straight, young man.

  I sipped my soda. My nose wrinkled at the flat taste. The outside aluminum of the can was greasy from the pizza. I wiped my fingers on my jeans and typed.

  /me rolls her eyes. Have you ever had cybersex?

  I wanted his answer to be no. I demanded in my subconscious his answer had to be no. I realized I had placed Eric on some vaulted pedestal, higher than the meager horde of male cattle I worked with in the corporate world. Those mindless assholes, bent on subduing the female race.

  I sat back. The old wooden chair creaked beneath me as I folded my arms over my chest and noticed my jeans were a bit tighter than they had been a few months ago. The room felt stuffy so I rose and opened the window. Rain fell in clicking noises on the magnolia outside as a cool breeze brought goose bumps to my arms.

  The speakers on my computer pinged. The signal of his Skype response downloaded from the server to my hard drive.

  It was Eric.

  Oh please say no.

  He had to say no.

  Mmmhmm. I've done it twice. It's a bit like verbal masturbation, only without the fulfillment for obvious reasons :) I really can't bring myself to...you know, at work. Though I'm sure my coworkers would get a show! LOL!

  The sound of one's expectations crashing heavily over one's head is deafening, and damned painful, much like having a six-tiered parking garage land on top of your car.

  With you inside.

  I sat there stunned. My perfect man actually participated in this vile act of perversion and obviously thought nothing about it.

  The act of cybersex sounded so...pornographic to me.

  I received a second response before I could bounce my own.

  Gotta cut the day short! A meeting in two minutes. I'll just have to leave you with thoughts of sex for the weekend! LOL! Talk about your coitus interrupt us, huh? 'Nighters.

  He was gone. And I hadn't responded. Stunned, I shut down the computer and went to bed.

  I couldn't sleep. I decided at four a.m. I needed some advice, and who else to go to about sex, but my best friend, the sex-pert.

  * * *

  Saturday Gary met me at Murphy's Restaurant, a brunch place in the middle of downtown. It was a converted house with marred hard wood floors, mix and match tables more suited for a kindergarten class, and a patio in the back. We asked for a patio table so Gary could enjoy the sun.

  Gary needed the sun in those days. After being diagnosed as HIV positive, the disease given to him by a bad blood transfusion after a car accident ten years earlier, he took every opportunity he could to be outside.

  Mid-morning was crisp, the bright sun already burning away the dew. I had goose-bumps on my arms. A small barrel of colorful pansies in Easter colors waved beside us in the breeze.

  I liked pansies. I was saddened they only grew in the cold and would be gone soon with the coming of summer.

  Gary and I had known each other since our first jobs at PowerBank, Inc. He'd been in the mail-room pushing a cart and spreading gossip. I'd been a new low-level techie working on database entry.

  Our first encounter was over a piece of mail he'd tossed at me. It was a ceramic trinket for Easter from my mother. It broke when he tossed it at me and I yelled at him. He pounced back in full drama-queen mode, then surprised me the next day by replacing the little obnoxious ceramic rabbit with a bigger one the size of my 27" monitor.

  We'd been the best of buds ever since.

  Which was why he knew immediately there was something wrong.

  Dogwoods bloomed across the way, along the roadsides, and in my sinuses. Sunlight bounced off a nearby Mercedes' windshield and I noticed where a bird had deposited its baggage on the glass. My runny nose and itchy eyes didn't hide my internal turmoil from Gary.

  "What the hell is up with you?" His voice was deep and attention catching when he wanted it to be. His appearance had always turned heads.

  Until the diagnosis.

  His short brown hair looked flat, whereas before he kept it highlighted in golds and yellows. His usually olive, smooth complexion reminded me of onion skin. His blue eyes glowed in the sunlight, powered by an inner strength I envied all of the time. Today he adorned his once muscled body in a white golf shirt and baggy khakis.

  That was the first instant I knew I was going to loose my best friend very soon. Too soon. Panic seized me. A small knot formed in my throat, worked its way up to some strange place behind my eyes. Tears welled up. I forced them back down.

  Gary would always be beautiful. To me. And perhaps, if he'd been born straight, we might have been a couple. Happily married with kids.

  Get it together girl. Don't let him see you sad.

  He was staring at me. "What?"

  "Did you know you've got two lines etched into that dinkly little space between your oh-so-in-need-of-a-tweezing eyebrows?" He pointed to the unibrow he himself had.

  But of course, it looked great on him. "I'm pondering the course of my life."

  "Careful.
You know it's dangerous embarking on long journeys like that without a rope strapped to your ass."

  I raised my eyebrow at him in Spock fashion. He hated that. He hated Star Trek, Star Wars, as well as most things Science Fiction. Gary was a total drama buff; independent films only. No special effects allowed.

  Except those he made himself, of course.

  I stuck my tongue out at him and then leaned forward on the sticky green table covering with my elbows. The waiter had taken our order and returned with a sparkling apple juice for Gary and a Café Mocha for me. "Have you ever had cyber sex?"

  He didn't miss a beat. I don't even think he blinked. "Hell yes. What a relief it is too. There's no messy commitments, no fussing with who gets the wet spot." He frowned at me. "Are we considering something very outside the realms of Andrea's Prude Ride?"

  "I am not a prude."

  "I wouldn't try and shove a vibrator up your snatch, chickie. You're wound so tight, even the man of steel would get his chubbie squeezed off...if," Gary leaned forward and pumped his eyebrows up and down, "he could get it in. Now," he sat back, "what are we talking about here? Has someone offered it to you?"

  "In a way." I considered his earlier remark about me being a prude. "Gary, I'm not a virgin. I've had sex."

  "Ah, but not good sex."

  "There's no such thing." I sighed. "Sex is for men, not women. He gets it in, pumps a while, gets off, then it's out the door and I'm sore as hell for a day. That last lover made it impossible to for me to even ride my bike. He was insatiable."

  Gary's eyes widened. "Really? He bi?"

  "Knock it off, silly. I'm serious here."

  "What about oral sex? Most women get off better to oral sex since a man's mighty sword doesn't quite hit all the right spots. A little tongue action?"

  I considered my past two lovers. "No. Most of the time I'd see them doing disgusting things with their mouths and not want it anywhere near my stuff."

  "Here, here." He lifted his apple juice. A nice looking man in green shorts walked by. "Oh...my...god."

  "Down boy." I was used to Gary's sordid comments, though most of my straight friends didn't know how to take him at times. "With a grain of salt tossed offhandedly over your shoulder," was always my advice. "What is the allure of cyber-sex?"

  Gary kept his gaze focused on green shorts, who, I noticed, had acknowledged Gary scoping him. "Haven't you ever read my sex column? Any Erotica?"

  "No and you know that."

  That response tore his gaze away and he tilted his head down and looked up at me through brown eyebrows. "No, I didn't know that. You're kidding me."

  "No, I'm not kidding. Why write and email sex? Sex is physical."

  Gary shook his head quickly. "No dear. Let me explain. Sex is based on communication and imagination. Why do you think I named the column Touch Me There? Statistics show that sex is over forty percent mental, thirty percent verbal and then there's the rest."

  Now that was not the kind of answer I expected from someone like Gary. He loved the physical act of relationships like holding hands in public, kissing in the grocery store, then the things he did in his condo, which, after a late night gutter-crawl through the clubs of the city, I had been party to hearing about.

  All freaking night.

  The waiter brought our brunches then. Gary had eggs benedict. I had a Texas omelet, no meat, heavy on the tomatoes.

  I opened the ketchup bottle and poured a healthy amount over my omelet. "Mental and verbal?"

  Gary stopped his dissection of his eggs and glared at the ketchup bottle. "That is so gross. Looks like you've gutted something." He shook his head and poked a knife in the eggs that bled yellow over his plate. "The mind is a powerful tool over the body. Okay, let me take this further. Listen carefully."

  I screwed the top of the bottle back on and glared at him.

  "When we're out at a club and you see a nice looking young thing, what happens?"

  "Nothing. They're usually gay."

  Gary gave me a long, harried sigh. "Work with me here, wench. In your mind, what are you thinking?"

  I pulled myself back to the last time Gary and I went out. There had been a guy in a red tartan kilt, Doc Martin boots, and fish-net shirt. A black pony-tail had whipped nicely down his back. "I fantasized what it would be like to run my hands over his naked body."

  "Really?" The level of surprise in his voice keyed me to the fact Gary did not consider me a sexual creature. "Sorry. But in that image, did anything happen to you physically? Did your body react?"

  I leaned forward, my hands in my lap. "Well duh, yeah."

  "And if that person had've walked up to you and said something like, 'touch me here', what would have happened?"

  I chuckled with the visual in my head of my pounding on that poor guy. "A rape."

  He clapped his hands together and sat back. A couple at the table to the right glanced at us. "There, you see? Sex is mental. Sex is verbal."

  Oh god he could be loud at times.

  Embarrassingly loud.

  "Who is this vermin that threatens to rock your world with verbal masturbation anyway?"

  I smiled. "Remember Eric? The guy in New Zealand?"

  "Him? My, my, my. As I recall, he was nice looking piece. He still in the same department down there?"

  "Yeah."

  "Andrea," Gary smiled at me. "Go for it. It's a clean, non-disease carrying way to enjoy each other." Gary stuffed a fork full of eggs and toast in his mouth and then mumbled around his food, "And besides, it's not like you guys will ever meet IRL."

  IRL.

  In Real Life.

  Hell no.

  * * *

  Andy, are you mad at me? I mean, it's been two days and I haven't gotten an email. :( I'm sorry if I've offended you in some way. Was it the question about cybersex?

  I stared at the message from Eric. A cup of tea sat beside my monitor. A wisp of steam rose from it. The cat perched on the monitor again as Stagga Lee's "Roc Ya body, mic check 1, 2" thumped softly from the computer's speakers. It was nearing midnight.

  Should I answer him?

  Why was I hesitating? Because the perfect man was sullied, right? Eric wasn't the fresh, innocent I thought he was. No, he was a mad pervert that had cyber-sex with women he'd never met.

  Women he didn't, nor wouldn't care about.

  Then why was I caring?

  I sighed and tapped out a reply. Hi Eric. Sorry I've been away. I've been thinking about the Cybersex question.

  I moved the cursor over send and pressed the enter button.

  I received several more messages from friends before Eric replied.

  Ta for the response, Andy. I was afraid I'd really upset you. We don't have to go into the cybersex thing again, if you don't want too. It was just something to talk about. Really. :D

  His willingness to just drop the subject pulled me in deeper. What would cyber-sex be like with Eric? What would sex be like with his body? The very thought caused my heart to skip a much needed beat.

  I typed in, Actually...you've got me curious. I paused before I hit return. With a tiny, plastic click, my life changed forever.

  Eric's response, nearly thirty minutes later, made heat rise to my face. I blinked at the monitor. Had he actually done those things to someone? Just how long had the doctors worked to get the smile off her face if he had?

  I became aware real fast-like that the corners of my mouth were stretched to their ultimate limits.

  Not to mention my body reacted with my first read, and my second read of the email.

  I hadn't had this sort of reaction in the presence of a real, physical man.

  I typed, I'm blushing, Eric. Really. Let's see, what can I do in return for you...

  I sat back in my chair, listened to it creak. The cat moved her head, blinked at me with green spotlights and purred. The tragic vocals of Jem's "24" thumped from the speakers.

  What could I do? How was I going to surprise Eric just as he'd surprised me? I wanted him to blush just as I had. I wanted him to get excited. And it was even better for me because he was at work. I was alone.