Youtube link to audiobook of Chapter 4 and the rest of the book!

Chapter 4

A spoon does not know the taste of soup, nor a learned fool the taste of wisdom

Welsh Proverb

From:  Nick  

so i guess you really miss me now.… cant get enough of me out of your head.… hmmm … i think i know what you need.… i know your … must be screaming to be…. i would love to do that while i.… yah baby, you need it…. you want it…. im gonna give it to you.… 

It was another weekend. Nick lunged toward Lori. He chomped at her mouth, he placed his hands under her clothing, and he boldly turned his poorly-written cyberspace messages to her into a sinful, twisted reality that she had never before experienced.

“You’re a good kisser,” he said breathlessly. He mashed his lips forcefully against hers.  The phone calls that poured in from listeners responding to the stale program being aired only perversely added to the intensity of the moment. He continued to press his lips hard against her mouth, his sweet breath caressing her cheek and jaw, his tongue wrestling with her own and sliding behind her front teeth. She softly bit his lower lip and slowly moved her mouth along the length of his bristly jaw and down toward his neck. She was just starting to feel the tangled hairs on his chest with the tips of her fingers as she moved her hands from the base of his neck toward his torso. His hands slid past her clavicle and swept over the neckline of her shirt, his fingers gently digging underneath the fabric. She soon felt the two of them melt into one, and as they wrapped around each other in a tight embrace. She didn’t want him to ever let her go.

“I’m gonna put you in my book some day,” he said to her afterward, hovering over the pots of the mixing board and grinning devilishly at the VU meters.

Lori tried to imagine him disciplining himself enough to sit and pen a book, a book with proper grammar and spelling. She tried hard, but couldn’t see it happening. Not him. Yet just the idea of him wanting to think and write about her forced a broad, endearing smile across her face.

From:  Nick  

missin me yet…. i know your thinking of me…. you turn me on Lori

call me

She dialed his number. 

“Hey.” He answered immediately.

“I was asked to fill in for Burt at the radio station tomorrow night,” she said. “It’s a live remote, and I’m finishing up the last hour for him after my class.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll be the one handling all the remote gear for the show. I might bring the equipment by the station tomorrow night,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Okay,” she said, a hasty pang of anticipation shooting through her insides. 

“Will ya make sure to wear a dress for me?” he asked.

The following evening, Lori nervously small-talked her way over a line feed through the last forty-five minutes of the live broadcast with one of the show’s producers.  Although she generally knew at this point how to operate the equipment by herself, she still liked the idea of having another human being physically present should the unforeseen and horrible happen.  There was nothing that Lori feared more than the deafening sound of a long pocket of dead air, the feeling of not having the slightest idea of how to fill it, and the invariable and inevitable nasty verbal lashings that followed.  

A few days earlier she listened to a first-time radio disc jockey on a major Springfield FM station play the same repellent pop song over and over again for five and a half hours in the absence of station identifications and commercials, all because he was left alone to try to operate faulty equipment.  Some teenage listeners called in and made mock requests for the song so they could dedicate it to their friends, while others described how certain music caused them to have spontaneous orgasms and how listening to the station that evening had forced them to climax dozens of times within a span of several hours.  All the disc jockey could do in between listening to the comments and waiting for an engineer to arrive was apologize profusely for the thousands of dollars he was costing the station in lost advertising revenue.

Lori’s belly began to twist and turn and spasm shortly after she sat down in what had been dubbed the station’s “hot seat,” an appropriate label considering all that was bound to go awry once one sat down in it. She wasn’t sure if the pain was caused by something that she had eaten that had not digested properly, or if it was the silent dread of what could transpire during her first independent shift at the station. All she knew was that she had to somehow will the discomfort away, to be able to make it through the next few hours before the station’s signature sign-off. While the idle banter over the line feeds helped somewhat to calm her nerves, her churning stomach and wrenching intestines made time pass agonizingly slowly for her.

The broadcast was finally over, and she began airing a dusty stack of old previously recorded shows on cassette. She blew a gust of air from her mouth and pressed her fingers hard against the center of her bloated gut in a vain attempt to get the swelling and discomfort to move to a different part of her body. Looking outside the window of the control room, she could vaguely see a cold, wet mist forming in the glow of an oil lantern lighting the outside walkway.  She glanced away from the light and toward the cloudy night sky, and her eyes fell on Nick Warren’s parked lipstick red Ford Thunderbird against the horizon.

He assertively strolled through the door, sat down in a chair and said, “I heard your voice over the feeds and thought, ‘hmmm, my girlfriend’s there at the station.’  Figured I’d pay a visit.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually come by tonight,” Lori said. “I’m feeling kind of tired. Maybe you should just go home?” Her sickness, although uncomfortable, was making it easy to resist him.  And this was refreshing in light of the fact that lately she had been feeling far too much like a chunk of modeling clay being kneaded and sculpted by his sweaty, busy hands. She didn’t like the feeling of being out of control. And that was exactly what she realized she was, with Nick. 

“No,” he said, defiantly.  “I want to stay here and admire your …” He waved his hand expressively. “Your … beauty.”

“Please go home,” she wheezed. My beauty, she thought. Real sincere the way you put it.  She pulled an oversized sweater over her shoulders and crossed her arms. Please go away. I’m not feeling well and even if I were… I… Please just go. 

“No,” he said stubbornly. “Come over here.”

He reached out to her. She hesitantly walked over to him. He clutched the pockets of her jeans with his fingers and slowly moved his hands up toward her waist and bosom. He gently pulled her body down toward him, and she straddled his hips with her legs and sat hard on his lap. She leaned her face in toward his and began softly kissing him on his lips and stubbly cheeks and neck.

Without a word, she succumbed.

From:  Nick

well i bet you been really thinkin of me

From:  Nick  

call me here.… ill be waitin for your call hunny

A week had passed. It had been a week of justification, a week of rationalization, and a week of abstinence. Every day of that week, Lori dutifully sat in on her classes, automated, and emotionally detached.  As she went through the motions, her thoughts revolved around the underlying impetus that placed her at Nick’s mercy every weekend. She figured the driving force could best be summed up as a cry for freedom. Freedom that she knew could lead to either mind-numbing cycles of constant yearning and agonizing disillusionment, or delicious enlightenment.

Instability and restlessness were not going to disappear so long as the fear of stepping upon the unsteady platform of risk paralyzed her. She had already taken the first step in breaking free from the confines of the mundane, once she realized that she needed to get out there. Wherever “there” was, that was where she felt she needed to be. Even if it was just to get a taste of “there” while still staying within the safety zone of “here,” Lori felt that it was critical that she do so, if for no other reason than to feel like she was alive.

That weekend, she and Nick slithered like slimy snakes on the soiled and worn rug of the station’s fusty basement.  Her hands moved fast and furiously across his hairy back and up and down the sides of his solid, narrow torso. She tried pulling his body, tight and muscular, closer, so that she could hug him, and somehow … some way … get all the aching, wrenching passion she was feeling to diffuse out of her own body and into his. The light-headedness she felt, like she could easily faint from complete and utter loss of control, was overwhelming her.  How could she feel so much for someone? And how could she feel so much for someone that she felt like she barely even knew?

She skulked through the darkened corridors of the old building afterward, feeling odd and confused, and at the same time peculiarly jubilant. Nick had tapped into something inside of her, a very primal part of her sexuality that others in the past may have come close to but never hit the central core of.  She felt energies that had been pent up her whole life come rushing forth, carrying with them unleashed fantasies and leaving behind an ironic sense of peace and fulfillment.

Yet that night at the station would be just one of many fiery hot nights lying ahead of her, with an icy cold chill in the air willing any feelings of composure and serenity away. The nights would come and go fleetingly, so fleetingly that at times she was actually left feeling dumbfounded, wondering why she had allowed this gremlin of the night to feast on her flesh according to unspoken terms that only he understood and abided by.  

Nick would learn whether or not Lori was working closing shifts on Sunday evenings at the station. He would visit, and slip his arms possessively around her shoulders, and then turn otherwise unremarkable evenings … unchaste.  He would then leave like an endorphin-high actor taking a quick bow after a lengthy performance and leaping off the stage.

But there was an unsettling side of him that was apparent to her even long before his “visitations” became increasingly businesslike as though he were some kind of hired gigolo. It was a part of him that ironically seemed to lure her into his baneful clutches even deeper.   Just as quickly as he would lather her with soul-penetrating attention, his eyes would avert and his posture would change and his entire aura would turn frosty and gray.  It was as though he were a catatonic schizophrenic slipping into and out of a trance. And even more disturbingly, Lori found that, over time, she was becoming drawn just as much to the hollow echoing darkness as to the occasional bright warming light.  

Something was terribly wrong.

From:

Subject:  the Di is cast

To:

My honest gut (big beer gut) instinct tells me that if you think there’s a problem, you’d better nip it in the bud (or is it “butt”? I could never figure that one out and I’ve been too embarrassed to ask someone) right now.

Rutherford

Time passed.  Lori and Nick were no longer scheduled to work together on weekends, and so they did not see each other for weeks.  While a part of her longed to see him, another part of her was relieved not to. There were too many questions running through her head and not nearly enough answers. Where was it all to go? How long would it continue? How would she feel about it in time? How did she feel about it now? 

Wouldn’t the simplest move on her part be to settle in with Paul Polansky, a firm and beefy box-spring mattress positioned underneath her for strength, support and leverage? Once in place, couldn’t she blanket herself with whatever adventure or excitement she desired, without the danger? 

There was a pacifying and sleepy comfort in knowing that Paul could be there for her, with open arms for her to embrace, and his quiet, unthreatening nature, and his nice, pleasant ways. Yet if Lori were to be completely honest she knew that deep down inside her, Paul’s Hallmark card style tenderness could only chip away so much at the thick scab that had for a long time encased her scalloped heart. She seemed to find herself, time and time again, grasping for the unfamiliar, lunging toward uncertainty, tirelessly sifting through desert sand in search of an oasis. It was like trying to calm a restlessness, to fill a dark emptiness. Yet why was it that what she seemed to always reach out for ended up being more barren than what she was trying to fill?

(stay tuned for chapter 5…)

Here is a link to a real-life illustration of a challenging relationship dynamic, entitled “Reeling.”

And here are some other interesting and pertinent links:

DeMars Coaching – YouTube (DeMars Coaching)

Surviving Narcissism – YouTube (Dr. Les Carter)

NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone – YouTube (NARCDAILY- You Are Not Alone)

Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc – YouTube (Lisa A. Romano Breakthrough Life Coach Inc)

DoctorRamani – YouTube (DoctorRamani)

Dr. Todd Grande – YouTube (Dr. Todd Grande)

Crappy Childhood Fairy – YouTube (Anna Runkle- Crappy Childhood Fairy)

Donielle Jolie Yanez – YouTube (Donielle Jolie Yanez)