Squirt (Part 1)
Kathryn M. Burke
I first saw her at the drugstore.
I don't deny that I am something of a connoisseur of female beauty--and this lady was definitely worth a second look, and more. I'd say she was in her mid-forties, tall for a woman (about five foot eight) and curvy, with a well-styled helmet of blond hair framing a tender and delicate face. In short, she was a knockout--or would have been if there wasn't this look of permanent melancholy on her face.
I'm Rob Morton, and I'm a senior at the local college. I'm the starting tight end on the varsity team, so I'm pretty fit (six foot two, 240 pounds). I turned twenty-one over the summer and was looking forward to finishing the school year, which had just started. I was a pretty good football player, but there was no chance of my being drafted by the NFL (my college was only in Divison III); but I wouldn't have wanted to make a career out of football. My degree in business administration would get me a good job after college.
But my attention right now was on this beautiful, sad lady. Just looking at her made
me
sad. I saw her heading over to the pharmacy--and I suddenly thought, with a kind of horror,
What if she's going to pick up some antidepressants?
What a rotten world this must be, if it allows a woman like this to be down in the dumps.
I would probably have forgotten about the woman eventually if I didn't see her a few weeks later in a most unusual place.
It was a Friday in late September, and the Delta Pi fraternity was holding one of the first parties of the school year. These things could get kind of wild, and for some reason I wanted to check it out. By the time I got there around 10 o'clock, it was already hopping. The place was crammed with undergrads, male and female, downing fruit punch (no doubt laced with vodka or something like that), stuffing themselves with munchies, talking too loud, laughing over bad jokes, and even doing a little petting in dark corners.
This really wasn't my scene, and I was already getting a headache from the noise and the cigarette smoke. I was about to stroll outside to get some fresh air when I saw the sad lady from the drugstore wander in.
My first thought was,
What the hell are you doing here?
Almost no one outside of college students ever attends these parties, and for good reason. Professors? You gotta be kidding. They wouldn't be caught dead in an environment like this: too risky. These days, if a prof is caught even talking to a sweet young coed outside of class or office hours, he or she could get into big trouble. Was this woman in the administration? Somehow I doubted it.
What I didn't doubt was that she'd already had a few too many drinks even by the time she drifted into the frat house. She was unsteady on her feet, and yet she made a beeline for the long table that had the large and ever-replenished bowl of fruit punch. She stuck out a hand to the guy who was serving it, and he duly gave her a large glass, smiling and winking at her. She took a big gulp and then ambled about unsteadily to see what was going on.
Some of the guys took notice of her right away--and why wouldn't they? She may have come right from work, but she still looked fabulous in the tight and clingy blouse-and-skirt combo she was wearing. A few girls looked at her enviously, hoping they might look as suave as she did when they got to be her age.
I felt I had to follow her and look after her--especially when she headed upstairs.
I'll be frank with you: the second floor of the frat house was a place where couples--whether they knew each other or not--went up to make out, or sometimes even more than that. I could hear plenty of sounds from behind various closed doors that left no doubt what was going on in there; but there was also a lot of action in the narrow hallway, where guys and gals were guzzling the punch and flirting shamelessly. The woman took in the scene and at once began sashaying around as if she was Mae West in some old silent film. All she needed was a feather boa to complete the picture. Several of the guys near her responded with catcalls and whistles and such--and one guy even slapped her on the fanny, making her jump and laugh nervously.
It was when she began taking her blouse off that things became serious.
Most of the people around her suddenly stopped their yakking and gaped at her. When she saw that she was the center of attention, she milked it for all it was worth, peeling her blouse off entirely and flinging it around her head like some kind of lasso. And yet, I could tell (from the vague look of fear around the corners of her eyes) that this was really not her. She wasn't a vamp, and she certainly wasn't a middle-aged whore.
She really didn't belong here.
This was when Joe Danzig, the fraternity president, came up to me. I think he knew that I'd remained a sober spectator of what was going on, and he said, "Rob, this isn't a good scene."
"Yeah, I know," I said.
"I have no idea who that dame is, but she needs to get out of here."
Let me be frank: Joe may have been more concerned about the reputation of his own fraternity than about the reputation of this lady, who could have been the mother of any of the people attending the party. Frat houses have been shut down for a lot less than this.
"Rob," he said to me, "can you help?"
"Help how, exactly?"
He looked at me with some exasperation. "Get her out of here and take her home!" he snapped.
I sighed. This would be my good deed of the day.
I went up to the woman and said, "Okay, lady, we're done here." And, to a chorus of boos from both the guys and the girls surrounding her, I all but forced her to put her blouse back on. I won't say that I didn't regret covering up the spectacular knockers she had, even encased in her white bra; and though I managed to get her arms through the sleeves and one or two buttons fashioned, a substantial amount of cleavage still showed. She put up a token fight, but she was both too drunk and too ashamed to do much more than that.
I led her back downstairs, holding her tightly because she had trouble negotiating the stairs. When I got her outside, the cool, fresh air cleared my head a bit--but didn't seem to have much effect on her. I could see she was now royally drunk and barely able to stand up straight.
Luckily, she'd managed to keep her purse hooked onto her arm. I had to figure out where she lived, so I just opened the purse and fished for some ID. Was her house close by? If so, would I have to basically carry her back home? Or did she have a car? In that case, there was no way she was fit to drive.
I found her driver's license, and also a set of car keys. So her car must be somewhere around here. I pressed the so-called panic button on the key, and sure enough a little alarm went off a short distance away. She'd come in a car, even though she only lived a few blocks away.
We stumbled to the car, holding onto each other as if
both
of us were drunk. I won't say that I didn't like the feel of her big breasts pressing up against my side. But there was no way I was going to do anything more than that. Taking advantage of a woman, young or old, when she's not in full control of her faculties is a totally scummy thing to do.
I opened the passenger-side door of the car and bundled her in. She barely managed to remain upright, muttering incoherently to herself. I got into the driver's seat, started the car, and drove it to her house.
It was a large structure, two stories tall on a big lot. As I was pulling up to the house a sudden thought filled me with alarm. What if she was married? What if she had kids? I hoped they'd understand that I was doing nothing but engaging in this rescue operation. But the place was pitch-dark, which led me to think she lived alone there.