Acrophobia 1

Sex was the last thing on my mind when we climbed those intricate, scrolling stairs of the Monadnock Building in downtown Chicago, ascending from the public sixteenth floor to the roof.

Well, let's be honest here. I don't care who you are. Sex is never really exactly the last thing on your mind, is it?

Still, I can honestly say I wasn't thinking about sex when me and Javier carried our gear across the silver roof through deceivingly gentle spring winds and I looked out over the edge. Sixteen goddamn floors down, I could see pavement and sidewalks and cars and pedestrians and for a moment the vertigo hit me bad enough I worried I might just topple over. I stepped back before Javier could notice.

I don't like heights. I hate 'em. Fell out of a tree when I was eight and never got over it. That feeling of reaching out to grab a branch, fingertips just brushing the rough bark, not enough to stop that sickening feeling of falling. Gravity is a force you cannot argue with, you cannot reason with, you cannot plead with.

Once, a therapist had me do the math. I liked her, maybe because of her tight sweaters. But then she went and sprung this on me out of the blue, this one session. No warning, no nothing. Just here, face your darkest fear in black and white. She'd had a revelation, maybe thought she'd get a paper out of it, get published somewhere. She brought in a whiteboard, colored markers, the whole nine yards. She thought that if I faced my fears as mathematical equations, I could break them down, understand them, make friends with them. We laid out exactly how fast gravity wants you.

I don't see her anymore.

Gravity is hungry. Downright horny. She will embrace you, starting at almost 30 feet per second, and she'll just get faster and faster; if you start out far enough, you can even hit a speed of 165 feet per second. People bounce sometimes when they hit something that fast. If they don't break into pieces.

So of course, later in life, I found myself working as a high-rise window washer. It's a long story. Life isn't particularly kind to a lot of people, and this isn't about my hard times. I was 29 at the time. Divorced. No kids, thank god. I've got a brilliantly clever PhD in business models, and only realized too late that I should be in academia, not the corporate world.

Again, long story. I was living in a studio apartment the size of a decent closet, so close to the El I had to use plastic cups and plates. After the divorce and all that chaos, I was lucky enough to get a job as a low-level manager at this window washing company. They worked on everything from supermarkets to most of the skyscrapers around Chicago. Mostly, I sat in a back office and shuffled paperwork.

But when a washer calls in sick, guess who they call? I've been lucky so far. One-story businesses. Two-story factories. I can handle those. It's no fun getting up on a ladder, and I usually get stinking drunk after, but I can handle 'em. Then there's the three flats. One time, washing the third floor windows, I got panicked. Froze. They had to lower me down to find out what the hell the problem was.

I had a talk with upper management about that one. Didn't have a choice; I had to come out and admit my phobia. It amused the hell out of them. At least they didn't fire me. And for the most part, they only used me if they didn't have a choice.

Like this day.

Javier was going on and on about the Cubs. I'm a Sox man myself, and he damn well knows this, but it doesn't stop him from telling me about next year. Always next year. I shouldn't be too hard on the guy. Life had hit me hard enough that sports felt... unimportant. That's sacrilegious in Chicago, and might get you shot, so I feigned enthusiasm.

I tuned him out and focused on gearing up. Nobody checks all the safety redundancies more than I do. Nobody. A lot of skyscrapers, you clean the windows with a scaffold. These modern buildings are mostly solid sheets of glass; it's no walk in the park, trust me, but at least you're standing on solid metal that slides evenly down the side.

You can't use a scaffold on the Monadnock, 'cause she's an old girl. Old and badass. Tallest load bearing brick structure in the world in 1891. Now that's an old dame who commands respect. I loved her inside and out. I just didn't want to be way up there, hanging off the goddamn roof. She was built back before air conditioning, when you needed a cross breeze, so her wide bay windows could be opened.

Therefore, you have to use harnesses to navigate around the bay windows. I strapped into that sucker tight enough it hurt to breathe. Since we were shorthanded, and I was slower than hell, poor Javier had to start on the Dearborn side, and would most likely wash at least three quarters of the windows before I finished with my side. The north side was the narrow one, so I got that, hanging my ass out over West Jackson Boulevard.

He helped me over the edge, even though I didn't want him to see how scared I was, to hear my voice from behind gritted teeth. He's a good guy though, like I said, and he pretended not to notice. I checked all the connections for about the hundredth time, then swung my feet out over the nothingness. The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I felt like I might throw up.

It's the same every time. My toes curl my feet into deformed, useless fists, the hairs on my neck stand on edge, and my balls try to crawl up somewhere around my heart, hiding out inside my ribcage. It's like they're telling me, hey pal, don't blame us, this is your dumbass decision.

The worst part is when you swing out over the edge and put all your weight into the harness. It's nothing but superstition, I know, but I never lose contact with the building. I don't pray, but in my mind, I'm making a pact with the building; I won't stop touching you if you just take care of me. So no matter what, I only use one hand to wash, because the other has to be flat against the weathered bricks.

And as always, I spent a few seconds trying to find my breath; once I'm over the edge, I can't breathe. It's gone, like I've jumped into an icy pond. The winds exhale for me, swirling through the streets. That's the problem with these man-made canyons; all these cliffs of steel and concrete and glass can funnel the winds into near hurricane strength. When that happens, you stop, and get everybody back on the roof.

I bounced gently against the cornice. Luckily, it's not too extreme. There's not a lot of fancy, ornate makeup on this old girl, and I'm glad. I always liked my women with only the barest amount of makeup. Every movement I made seemed final, and I was seriously thinking I might die at any second.

My mind, totally against my will, did the math. Sixteen stories up, you're gonna reach maximum velocity; yeah baby, you're gonna hit the pavement somewhere around 70 miles an hour. That's about... two seconds. Two seconds is a long goddamn time to consciously think about things when you're falling to your death.

Javier gave me a big grin and a thumbs up.

I mumbled out something that might have sounded like thanks. Then it was simply a matter of lowering myself, but of course, only with one hand, while the other slid down the dusty surface, to the first set of the windows. The sixteenth floor.

This office was dark. Empty.

Another bad part is feeling around for your tools, the water sprayer, soap already included, thank god, cleaner, and your wiper blade. Mercifully, focusing on the job helped distract me from how high I dangled, how far the street waited below. Finished that first set of bay windows, and lowered myself to the fifteenth floor.

This office wasn't empty. The first thing that got my attention was the porn. Man, it was stunning. Full HD, spread out across a blazing display on a huge black desk, like it was some futuristic drive-in theater. Some guy's giant cock was pounding a very wet pussy like it was particularly angry. Doggy style.

Now, you gotta remember, I was divorced then, hadn't been laid in months. So it's not like me and porn were strangers, but this, this was expensive, high quality, full-on pornorama. I'm not kidding. There was something almost magical about it.

In spite of hanging off a building, fifteen floors up, my cock started to react. My balls were like, hey, maybe this isn't so bad.

The realization that I was probably spying on some old dude jacking off hit me like a bucket of ice water, and that killed it. The vertigo was back with a vengeance. I put both hands on the bricks on either side of the window and tried to find oxygen.

Then I saw her foot.

A high heel, blood red and sharp enough to spear a fish, was wedged against the side of the desk. Black stockings, with patterns that almost matched the ornate Monadnock stairwells. A strong, beautiful right knee peeked out from over the armrest on an extremely expensive leather chair.

My breath caught again, but it wasn't the vertigo.

She must have seen the shadow or my reflection in the giant screen because the chair whipped around, and I was suddenly staring at a wet dream in the flesh. Our eyes locked, both of us panting, but for different reasons.

She was drop dead gorgeous. Not young, exactly. Experienced, maybe? I have no idea how to tell women's ages, especially when they're strikingly beautiful. She was no college intern, that's all I know.

Short hair, half conservative, half punk, framed this heart shaped face, her eyes flashing behind cat's eye antique glasses. Lips... Oh God. Those lips. The word full doesn't quite do them justice. Her mouth was half open, face flushed from her activity. Her lipstick matched the color of her shoes.

She wore a tight white blouse. Her black skirt was pulled back to her hips, revealing stockings that stopped mid thigh. Both legs were still thrown wide-open, pressing against the soft leather armrests. I could see that her black lace panties glistened when the sunlight hit her. Her right hand had frozen inside the lace.

She had the kind of curves that cause car accidents, as if Sophia Loren's body had been reincarnated even before death because she was so fucking hot.

The whole effect was this sexy librarian innocence, tempered with the look of an executive that liked wearing short skirts because she damn well knew the men in her office would fantasize about bending her over a desk and she had no problem taking advantage of their primal, inarticulate lust. It made it that much easier to manipulate them.

My mind immediately started coming up with garbled excuses. I wasn't looking, it wasn't my fault, the window washing company always was clear when we'd be there...

She gave a little smirk and dragged her bottom lip across her upper teeth.

Her right hand started moving again. Slow at first, then more purposeful, more deliberate. Her eyes never left mine. Those plump lips parted and I could see her tongue slip out and slide across her top lip as she started panting again.

I stopped trying to think of excuses and just tried to breathe.

She rocked her hips forward, thrusting her pelvis against her frantic right hand, arching her back and gasping. Clearly, I'd interrupted her close to orgasm and she wasn't about to lose that momentum. Her entire body shuddered; her knees slammed together, crushing her hand between her tight thighs.

Then, almost too fast for my eyes to follow, she was on her feet and on the other side of the window, still staring at me, not two feet away.

I was too scared to move. Scared that I might fall, scared that if I looked away, the spell would be broken. So we played this sexually charged contest, daring each other to be the first to blink.

She opened the window, pulling it inward, but never, ever broke eye contact.

I couldn't do anything. Couldn't swallow, couldn't move, still couldn't breathe.

The battle between uncompromising fear and total lust must have been obvious in my eyes. I think it was the fear that drew her close. She must have been used to lust in the eyes of men that surrounded her, and I so I wonder if it was my absolute terror that turned her on.

Either way, I wasn't complaining.

Because she reached out, trailed her still-wet fingers down my face, lingering on my lips, giving me a chance to taste her juices. My tongue was able to break my paralysis, tentatively flicking at her first and middle fingers. She tasted like sunsets in a tropical village, like the air inside a steamy hot rod at a drive-in theater in the '50s, like steak marinated in honey. She tasted like heaven.

Her left hand deftly undid my belt under the harness, and I could hear the slow unzipping of my fly over the faint echoes of traffic, El trains, and sirens. She gave that sly smirk again when her hand slipped inside my jeans and pressed against my cock, which was now harder than the bricks that held up the Monadnock herself.

She was close enough now that I could see her eyes were a startling shade of green, like some old-growth forest, and her cool hand pulled the top of my boxers down. The tip of her pink tongue slid slowly, suggestively between those blood red lips.

She broke eye contact, and almost immediately, as she bent over, I felt the tip of her tongue gently probing the tip of my cock. Her tongue traced slow, abstract circles, sometimes figure-eights, around the head of my dick.

I still couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.

She extended her tongue, further, further, tracing a slick wet path from the tip of my cock to the base. Her left hand slipped deeper into my boxers, cupping my balls, squeezing the way one would test a fragile fruit for ripeness. She sank slowly to her knees, still keeping her insistent tongue sliding up and down the length of my shaft.

In a split second moment of clarity, I realized I was hanging fifteen floors above Jackson, but the mass of people below couldn't see anything but a guy washing a window. And Javier was around the corner, so he had no idea.

Those amazing lips parted, ever so slowly, and engulfed the head of my cock in slow motion. Inside, her animated tongue swirled around and around.

Now, let's be clear. I'd had blowjobs before. And let me tell you, like every other red-blooded male, straight or gay, I was a fan. I even had some amazing ones, where the girl threw herself into the task like it was some kind of test, bobbing her head back and forth like a Nascar piston in the last lap of a race. I'd heard girls boast that they "could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch" before, and I'd always flirted back, because seriously, that's a great line, but nobody had ever proved it. Until now.

This... this was different. She didn't move her head. At all.

Instead, she drew me closer with her own suction.

That is, I felt her swallow my entire dick through sheer force of sucking. She opened her mouth, just slightly, releasing me, and I slid back, pulled by the harness and the ropes. Then she sucked me closer to the building, over and over again, pulling my hips in close to the building, her cheeks forming hollows, and then she would release the pressure, letting me slide back through those magnificent blood red lips that never quite left the surface of my shaft.

And all the while I'm looking at those smiling eyes, because she knew damn well what she was doing to me.

It didn't take long for me to start to feel that she was the only power holding me to the building, that the sheer force of her blowjob was enough to pull me away from gravity's cruel embrace, and that the only reason I wasn't plummeting to the sidewalk far below was because she was saving me by sucking my cock, closer and closer to the building, closer to her essence, holding me this far up through the simple mathematical equation of how her mouth could form the suction required to defeat gravity.

As if this blowjob meant life or death.

I pulled both hands back from the bricks, holding them up like I was a reluctantly surrendering in a bank heist, and for several moments that felt like an eternity, the only thing connecting me to the building was my dick in her mouth, her lips and tongue pulling me in and out, in and out.

I couldn't help it, and cupped the back of her head with both hands, leaving my fate in her wonderful mouth.

The orgasm started somewhere in my curled toes, roiling up through my legs as it gathered in intensity. The feeling marched up my spinal column, locking every muscle in place through the sheer force of ecstasy. She matched every miniscule moment, as each and every muscle in my entire body gave up and froze, one by one, overloaded with pleasure.

I came with the force of a fire hydrant unleashed in the beginning of spring. In the back of my mind, I wondered if the explosion was somehow faster than the pull of gravity.

She closed her eyes and swallowed.

I spasmed for a while, totally out of control, like I'd pissed on an electric fence. Finally, she released me. I swung back away from the building, gasping for breath. Everything had gone numb. I couldn't make my fingers grab anything. If I hadn't been strapped in, I would have slowly toppled backward and tumbled, faster and faster, to the pavement.

She gave me that sly smirk again, then in one abrupt motion, shut the window and pulled down the shades.

It took a while, but I found my bearings, managed to zip my jeans up, then went about numbly washing the bay windows. My mind spun, but beneath it all, I found I wasn't scared. The fear of falling was no longer foremost in my thoughts.

And from that moment on, I was never scared of heights ever again.