Illusioned Intuitions E-Book

Jeremy McHarry

• Herausgeber: Bentockiz
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It’s not much longer before she gets up, they have breakfast together, and she starts the rest of her duties. With his help, she is able now to manage all of them easily. She makes a note on her calendar to pay attention to her level of desire over the next several cycles to see if that can be the explanation or if she needs to look for another reason.

Leseprobe

Title Page

Illusioned Intuitions

Floods in the Spring

Jeremy McHarry

Illusioned Intuitions / 6th of series: Floods in the Spring / By Jeremy McHarry

Published 2023 by Bentockiz

e-book Imprint: Uniochlors

e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden

e-book ISBN: 9789198834109

e-book editing: Athens, Greece

Cover Images created via AI art generators

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Introduction

Through books we come into contact with everything important that has happened in the past, analyzing also current events and putting our thoughts together to predict the future. The book is a window to the world, acquiring valuable knowledge and sparking our vivid imagination. It is a means of entertainment and is generally seen as a best friend, or as a slave that carries together all valuable information for us. The book is a friend who stays together without demands, a friend you call upon at every moment and abandon when you want.

It accompanies us in the hours of boredom and loneliness, while at the same time it entertains us. In general, a book does not ask anything from us, while it waits patiently on a dusty shelf to give us its information, to get us out of dead ends and to travel us to magical worlds.

This may be the travel mission of our books. Abstract narration, weird or unconscious thoughts difficult to be understood, but always genuine and full of life experiences, these are stories of life that can’t be overlooked easily.

This may be the start of something amazing!

Chapter One

She kneels down on the floor beside his bed so her face is about level with his on the bed and watches him for awhile. Later, she reaches up and gently caresses the left side of his face with her right hand while she softly calls his name. After awhile, a dreamy smile softens the line of his lips and she occasionally catches his hum of pleasure.

She softly says, “Good morning, George. It’s time to wake up.”

His eyes slowly start to open. When he sees her, his eyes pop open, his head rears back, and he stutters in surprise, “Wh . . . Who are you?”

While she does her best to keep her facial expression from changing while her heart cries alligator tears, she answers, “Sharlene.”

“But . . . but Sharlene is . . . in my dreams, a fantasy, a . . . a figment of my imagination.”

“No, George, I’m not a figment of your imagination. I’m real, just as real as you are.”

She leans forward and as she begins to gently caress his face again, she’s pleasantly surprised to see that he doesn’t try to evade her.

“Real?”

“Yes, George, real.”

“You look like Sharlene. You sound like Sharlene. I thought I was waking up. Maybe I just dreamed I was waking up. That’s it, I’m still dreaming.” He reaches out his left hand and begins to caress her face as he says, “Oh, how lovely you are this morning, my love. I really don’t want to wake up and leave you.”

“George, you did wake up. You didn’t leave me. You woke up to be with me.”

“I can’t be awake. The only way someone as beautiful as you could want to be with a boring old man like me is in my dreams. You are here, so therefore, I must be dreaming.”

“Oh, George.” She slides her right hand up his left arm, holds his caressing hand still, starts to kiss his palm, then slowly kisses out towards his fingertips. She gently pushes his thumb into her mouth, turns her head a little, and, when the tip of his thumb is between her molars, she bites down, hard.

“Oww!!” He yanks his hand out of her mouth, sits up away from her, and almost yells, “You bit me! What the hell did you do that for!?!”

“George, is the pain real?”

“Damn right, it’s real!”

“Then I’m real.”

“What!?!”

“If you’re experiencing real pain, then I, who caused the pain, am also real.”

He stares at her with wide eyes for quite awhile before he can get out a single word, “Real?”

“Yes, George, real. I’m not a figment of your imagination nor am I only in your dreams. I’m real and I’m really here. . . . I apologize for biting you. Here, give me your hand.”

He holds it to himself for awhile before he cautiously extends it.

As she holds his injured hand in her right hand, she gently caresses it with her left hand while she tells him, “I know this won’t take the pain away, but do you feel it?”

He nods his head.

“Does it also feel real??”

Hesitantly, he nods his head again.

“George, you’re awake and real. So am I real, so is Molly, and Aunt Paula, and Uncle Paul.”

He looks around the room as though to confirm where he is then he turns back to look at her and asks, “Real!?! If you’re real, then what are you doing here with me?”

“That’s the crux of the matter. You think I’m too beautiful and too wonderful for me to want to be with someone like you.”

He nods his head and proclaims, “That’s right.”

“George, do you think it’s right to treat or judge people based on their external appearance?”

“Of course not.” He sees her raised eyebrows, then realizes, “But I’m doing it to you.”

“I’m afraid so. I understand that for many years, people with beautiful external appearances have disdained you because of your less than attractive external appearance. I also understand that our society places almost exclusive attention on the value of a person based on their external appearance. Already you’re fighting a double uphill battle.

“And then I come along. You see that I have a beautiful external appearance and so you automatically lump me with the group of people who don’t want anything to do with you. You also put a lot of energy into convincing me that I am attractive to you. That doesn’t make much sense unless you’re trying to convince me that I belong in the group of people with beautiful external appearances who disdain people of less than attractive external appearances.”

“Sharlene, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t really blame you. You’ve overcome and rejected a lot of society’s stupidities, but the central importance of external appearances is deeply ingrained, probably helped along by the genetic makeup of a human male to value the external appearance of the human female. Since external appearance is important to you and everyone you know, you therefore assumed, quite naturally, that it’s important to me also.

“As a result, you quite logically reasoned, how could someone like me, with such a beautiful external appearance in your opinion, have any interest in you, who is considered to have an unattractive external appearance? Therefore, the reasoning goes, it’s highly improbable that I would want you to touch me other than as pure selfishness on my part, it was impossible that I would want you to be in my life, and anything more is simply unimaginable.”

He drops his head in embarrassment before he admits, “Yes.”

She gets up off of the floor, sits on the bed near his left side, reaches over, and gently lifts and turns his head to face her. “George, I’m more at fault for this misunderstanding than you are and for that I’m truly sorry. Because I didn’t explain myself, you’ve been hurt, confused, and suffered a strong shock to your psyche. Can you forgive me?”

With an expression of confusion on his face, he asks, “Forgive you for what?”

“For not explaining myself.”

“About what?”

“Huh?”

Since he’s only becoming more confused, he asks, “What didn’t you explain about yourself?”

“I did it again. I made a leap in my reasoning and expected you to follow along. I’m sorry.”

“Sharlene, please!! I wake up to find my dream is reality or is my reality a dream, I don’t know which and from there I got lost. No more sorry’s, no more explanations. What is the misunderstanding? What didn’t you explain about yourself? Please, in very simply one syllable words, say what you mean, so a stupid old man can know what you’re talking about.”

* * * * *

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As Sharlene stares at George in amazement, she starts to say several different things, mostly along the lines of ‘I’m sorry’ or explaining her reasoning, but stops each time as she sees how confused he is, as well as how near to being angry he’s become. While she hopes she can adequately express what she thinks might provide at least a partial answer to his dilemma of trying to understand why she wants him, Sharlene explains, “I don’t know why or how, but I don’t understand our culture’s emphasis on external appearances. When I look at a person, I see their appearance. I may recognize their body shape as tall or short, fat or skinny, smooth or wrinkly, but the words like ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’ in regards to a person’s external appearance don’t mean anything to me.

“Over the years, I’ve learned some of the standards which society applies to those words and have learned to mimic their use, but I personally feel nothing when those words are used. You have a body. I have a body. That’s it. Neither of our bodies is attractive. Neither of our bodies is unattractive. They just are. They’re the vessels we happen to carry ourselves around in.

“I’ve slowly come to realize that my external appearance contains many of those elements which our society considers beautiful. I understand that you enjoy looking at me because of those elements. I know it sounds contradictory when I say that I don’t consider my own body as beautiful, yet I feel thrilled when you tell me that I am beautiful. I really don’t understand myself. I also know that according to society standards, your body is considered unattractive. But to me, your body is neither attractive nor unattractive by itself.

“I like your body because it’s a part of you, the kind, generous, giving, and comfortable man who I desire to be with more closely every day. I want to touch your body because I want to touch you and because I know the physical sensation of being touched pleases you. The more you’ve touched me, the more my body enjoys you touching me. I want to share those joyous sensations with you. I know I’m not being very clear, but the bottom line is, I want you, George, for the person you are and that includes your body, regardless of its shape or age. I, as a person, want to touch you, as a person, and the only way I know how to do that, is for my body to touch your body.”

“The shape of my body doesn’t matter to you?”

Sharlene shakes her head as she assures him, “No, it doesn’t.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“No more unbelievable than you. You’ve proven multiple times that my feelings of pleasure are more important to you than taking advantage of what you consider my beautiful body. I also found out last night that you refused Mariam’s offer of pleasure with her beautiful body because you didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

He hesitates to ask, “She told you about that?”

“Yes, she did and I can’t tell you how selfishly proud I am of you for your concern about my feelings.”

“I was only doing what I thought was right.”

She assures him, “I know that’s how you feel and that’s part of why you’re so special to me.”

They just look at each other for awhile and aren’t sure what to say. They also want to touch the other person, but they’re hesitant to be the one to make the first move. Soon, George drops his head then begins to poke and pull at the bed covers with his fingers. Occasionally, he stops plucking at the bed covers to glance towards her and open his mouth as though to say something, but nothing comes out. After quite awhile longer and without looking up, he finally asks, “Sharlene?”

“Yes.”

“You say that in your opinion, my body is neither attractive nor unattractive, while you recognize that according to our cultural standards, my body is unattractive.”

“That’s correct.”

“And because the shape of my body and its obvious age doesn’t offend you, then you’re willing to touch my body because you want to touch the person which my body contains.”

“That’s right.”

“At the same time, you recognize your body as beautiful . . .”

Sharlene shakes her head as she interrupts him, “No, George. I don’t, personally, see my body as beautiful. You’ve made it very clear that you consider my external appearance to be beautiful. You’ve also helped me to understand that my body contains many elements which match the cultural standards of beauty. Thus, I recognize that my body is considered beautiful, not by myself, but by others within our society who may observe it.”

“Thank you for the clarification. That makes more sense. Sharlene, are you offended that I and other people do consider you beautiful?”

She briefly hesitates before she responds, “No, I’m not offended. I’m saddened that some people who are beautiful on the inside are rejected or ignored simply because their external appearance doesn’t meet our cultural standards of beauty, like what you’ve experienced.”

“There are many areas of my personality which aren’t exactly attractive and those people who can tolerate my external appearance, usually find my personality offensive, well, maybe not offensive, but certainly not likable, which produces the same results in the long run. Even though my external appearance may not bother you, I still have trouble understanding why you like my inner person when so many others haven’t.”

“I think a lot of people probably ignored or rejected you because you’re not a very social person. You probably score very high as an introvert.”

“I do.”

“That’s something else we have in common.”

He looks at her in surprise for awhile before he asks, “You, an introvert?”

She nods her head as she answers, “Very much so. Other than my family, the only people who I’m social with are you and Mariam. But you were right when you talked about people either being more forgiving or making a bigger effort when they consider the other person attractive. I hadn’t realized it until you explained it.

“I had often wondered why some of my classmates who were just as smart as I was and even more socially oriented would be ignored when I wasn’t. I realize, now, that it was simply because their external appearance wasn’t socially considered as attractive as mine. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t make any effort to befriend them either. I guess it was assumed that since I’m attractive, I must be an extrovert. Why those two characteristics are supposed to go together, I have no idea.”

He suggests, “I think it’s because when a person is attractive, they are given more positive attention. People generally like to receive positive attention. So if they’re quite attractive, they receive lots of positive attention from lots of people and because they like the positive attention, they like lots of people to give them that attention.”

She thinks for a few moments before she responds, “You’re probably right. I like positive attention, but to be around a lot of people like at a party or a theater or even the mall, absolutely makes my skin crawl. I’ll do almost anything to avoid those situations. My parents could never understand why I didn’t want to go to the fair or the circus or any place where there was a crowd.

“Because I was so small, I could get away with having my parents, especially Dad, pick me up and carry me for years longer than other kids could. If we were anywhere near a crowd, Dad could be holding me and I would quite literally be shaking. I couldn’t explain it, but it soon became clear that if they wanted to go to some social activity, they went without me. I want positive attention just as much as anyone else. I just prefer to receive it from a few people who I know actually care for me, rather than from a bunch of semi-strangers who give me attention because they think they’ll somehow benefit from it.

“The many things we have in common make it easy for me to see and to like your inner person. But more than that, George, I think you’re the kindest, most gentle, and considerate man I’ve ever met. You’ve made no attempt to exert any kind of control over me, which means that I feel very comfortable in your presence. I feel safe being with you. Even though you’ve made it very clear you greatly desire my body, you’ve shown incredible restraint. That allows me to be myself. With no other man I’ve been around, did I feel the freedom to totally be me, there was always some sense of needing to be on guard for one thing or another.

“George, one of the many things I really appreciate about you is that you don’t put on airs or try to impress me. I guess you don’t think you have anything to impress me with. Regardless of the reasoning, it’s comforting to know that you are yourself, as you told the story about the young couple considering marriage, ‘what you see is what you get’. I’m thankful I didn’t have to deal with it much, but just a few times of having insincere people try to gain my attention, was revolting. There’s so much about you that I like and appreciate, in fact, when I add them all up, I think the inner person contained in this body,” she lays her right hand on his knee, “is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.”

He stares at her in disbelief.

“You heard me right. But just to make sure you did hear me right, you, George Greyson, are one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. So when I say I want you, or when I say I want to touch you, I’m not being some sort of self-sacrificing martyr who lowers herself to share wonderful me with the little people. I’m being very selfish and self-centered in wanting this beautiful person called George Greyson to be near me, as near and as close as I can possibly get to him.”

“You . . . You . . . You . . .” he finally forces it out, “the most wonderful and beautiful person I’ve ever seen or met, thinks I’m beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“This boring, antisocial, overweight, balding, cynical, ugly old man?”

“If that’s how you want to describe yourself, then yes, I think you’re beautiful. You’re also kind, generous, caring, considerate, supportive, and encouraging. You make me laugh, you make me think. The only thing I would want to change about you is your age, so we can have many, many more years to be together, to explore each other’s personalities, and to explore each other’s bodies. But since I can’t change that, then the time we have together is even more precious.”

“You . . . want . . . ME??”

“I know it goes against so much of what you’ve learned and experienced, but I really do want you.”

Chapter Two

While George looks at her with disbelief in his eyes, she just gently smiles at him with love in her eyes and then wipes away the tears which begin to roll down his checks. After a minute or so, she turns and sits cross-legged right next to him, pulls his head down to cradle on her chest, and holds him as he starts to quietly sob.

Several minutes later, he starts to settle then asks, “Sharlene, are you . . . sure . . . you want . . . me?”

“Yes, George, I’m very sure I want you.”

The silence stretches out even as she can feel his tears continue to spill onto her arm. A long time later, he slowly sits up, turns around and reaches for a tissue from the box on the headboard to dry his face and blow his nose. A moment or two later he tells her, “I’m sorry I cried on you.”

“I’m sorry you were sad enough to cry, but I’m glad you were willing to let me hold you and catch your tears. I want you not just when you’re happy, but when you’re sad, too. I want all of you and that includes the tears just as much as the smiles.”

“Please, you keep saying that and I’m going to start crying again.”

“Then my love, come here and cry again,” she pulls his head down to cradle it on her chest, “because I want you, and I’m happy to hold you while you wash away your hurt and your pain. How many times have you held me when I was hurting? I want you and I want to help you heal.”

Many minutes later, when his tears have reduced to an occasional trickle down his cheek and across her left arm which is holding his head, she undoes the buttons on his pajama top and soothingly caresses his chest with her right hand. He tenses up for a little while before he slowly starts to relax. A little later, immediately after he deeply sighs, he almost slumps on her as the tension flows out of him. When her left arm is beginning to ache from holding his head, he slowly pushes himself up to a sitting position, swings his legs away from her so he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, grabs a tissue from the box and again begins to dry his face and blow his nose.

She slips up behind him, spreads her legs along the outsides of his legs, and hugs him as she snuggles up to his back. When he’s done with the tissues, he leans back slightly on her and caresses her arms which are holding him across his chest. He hesitates just a little longer then tells her, “Thank you, Sharlene. Even though it may be awhile before I can fully believe that you want me, just to hear you say you want me and for you to even give me some of your reasons is wonderful. I really don’t deserve you, but I intend to appreciate every moment you want to spend with me.”

She slips her heels over the top of his legs to between his knees, and asks, “Can you show your appreciation by caressing my legs?”

“Of course.”

She caresses the bare skin of his chest while he caresses her pants clad legs. After a few moments, she says, “Mmm, that’s nice. George, this one time, can you please caress me no higher than my knees?”

Although he thinks her request is somewhat unusual, he nevertheless agrees and soon dismisses the strangeness of her request since he enjoys caressing her legs while Sharlene caresses his chest and upper abdomen. He’s so caught up in the enjoyment of her caresses after his earlier emotional storm that he’s not consciously aware she has been caressing his lower abdomen and along the fronts and insides of his upper thighs, until she’s gently pulling his erect penis through the open fly of his pajamas.

He grabs her hands in shock and asks, “What are you doing?”

“I’m just giving you a little demonstration that I really do want you, all of you, including your body. Please George, relax, let me learn how to touch you, let me learn how to give you pleasure.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I certainly don’t intend to hurt you. You’ve given me a lot of pleasure, please, let me give you a little back. I’m not taking my clothes off and I’m not going to push you to make love to me. I just want to touch you a little, to give you a little pleasure. I know you want me to. There’s certainly nothing wrong with me touching you. Please George, caress my legs and let me caress you.”

Slowly, he relents and reluctantly begins to caress her legs again while she moves her hands back up to caress his chest and upper abdomen which helps him to relax. After awhile, she feels the tension drain out of him and she slowly works her caressing hands lower again. When her hands reach his somewhat limp penis, he tenses up, but since she just holds his penis in one hand and caresses him in the general area with her other hand and then switches what her hands are doing, he slowly starts to feel the emotional tension begin to drain away, while a more pleasant tension begins to grow. Since she’s pressed up to his back, she can’t see what she’s doing even while she continues to gently fondle his stiffening penis.

As she thinks about how she would want to be touched and tries to remember back to what she overheard some of the older girls at the university say about their sexual adventures, when she guesses that his penis is fully erect, she slides her left hand into the open fly of his pajama bottoms to fondle his scrotum, while her right hand gently slides up and down the length of his penis. Soon, his tension builds and as he grips her legs, he tries to thrust his hips up then she feels muscles contract, something moves under the skin of his penis, then she feels something warm, wet, and sticky on the back of her hand as he almost slumps on her with the sudden release of tension. As she continues to gently touch him, it takes him a little while to become aware of what happened.

“Oh, no. I made a mess on you.” He quickly grabs some tissues and starts to wipe up his release as he proclaims, “I’m terribly sorry.”

“George, don’t be sorry. I had forgotten about your release, but it’s okay. The important thing is, did you enjoy it?”

He stops for a moment in his efforts to wipe up his mess to admit, “Yes, Sharlene, I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.” After a couple of more tissues are used up, he asks, “Can you please move your legs and hands? I really should go wash up. It looks like I’ll need to change the sheets too.”

When she moves her hands and legs away from him, he starts to stand up, but quickly sits back down again.

“What’s the matter?”

“Dizzy.”

“Then sit still.”

She gets off of the bed, goes to the bathroom, washes her hands, gets a washcloth wet, grabs a dry hand towel, goes back into the bedroom, and leans over to start washing him.

“I think I’d better do that.”

“Don’t you want me to touch you?”

“It’s not a matter of whether I want you to or not. I’m just not comfortable yet with you so obviously touching me, especially when the journey isn’t to the point where I can be touching you in return.”

As she hands him the washcloth, she says, “That’s a reasonable answer.”

Although he’s embarrassed, but is unwilling to push the issue further, he bites his lip and washes himself while she intently watches. When he reaches for the dry hand towel, she takes the washcloth and goes to the bathroom to rinse it out while he quickly dries and then covers himself. He’s amazed that for someone who had previously never been with a man, she seems remarkably unfazed by his bared male anatomy and exhibits no revulsion to touching him or enduring the mess he made.

As she comes back to the bed to get the hand towel, she recommends, “Don’t get up until I get back,” takes the hand towel, and hangs it up in the bathroom. When she returns to stand close to him, she extends a hand, braces herself, and says, “Come on, stand up, and lean on me. We need to get some food in you.” Reluctantly, but with necessity, he accepts her support as they slowly walk down the hall to the dining room where she sits him down and quickly gets him a glass of orange juice. As he takes the time to drink it slowly, she warms up some frozen egg batter fried bread, gets out the syrup and peanut butter, and soon has food in front of him and they quietly dig in.

When they’re finished eating, he pauses then turns to her and says, “Sharlene, I’m sorry I’m such a burden on you, but I very much appreciate your help.”

“After I gave you a big shock to your psyche last night and then gave you a different kind of shock this morning and wore you out, the least I can do is to help you get back on your feet again. George, did it bother you that I touched you this morning?”

“Um . . . direct, aren’t you? . . . Well, the answer is yes and no. No, because I like and want to be touched. Even without experience, you certainly know how to touch me in a pleasurable and exciting manner. Yes, because it’s been a long time since I’ve been seen or touched by a woman and never by one as beautiful as you. And yes, because I feel guilty about you touching me when I’m not ready to touch you the same in return.”

“Would it be so bad if we were to make love soon?”

He hesitates then shakes his head before he says, “It wouldn’t be bad, it would be wonderful, at least I think it would be, but you would wonder what you had missed out on. The odds are strong that the sooner we make love, the more likely we’ll be inclined to almost always want to culminate our intimate activities by making love. But there will be times when it’s not appropriate to make love, like during your menses or when one or both of us are very tired. In addition, the more ways we find to enjoy pleasure, the more options we have to enjoy ourselves without feeling like we have to make love. There were a few occasions when I was much younger that I was interested in giving pleasure to my woman, but the risk was too great for being caught without our clothes on, so we had to forego the pleasure.”

“You mean like yesterday afternoon.”

He thinks for a moment then says, “I suppose that could be an example. We might have been somewhat embarrassed if someone came to deliver something, which is highly unlikely, but still possible, or if an airplane flew low overhead. But we couldn’t have been arrested for indecent exposure or suffered the much greater embarrassment we would have felt if we were seen buck naked.”

“So the more ways we find to enjoy pleasure, means many more options to do so.”

“That’s a good way to put it. Besides, I think you would become bored if the only way you received pleasure was laying on your back with your legs spread while an overweight man crushed you.”

* * * * *

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George pauses then says, “That reminds me of the story of a couple who made love and immediately afterwards, she looked at the ceiling and said, ‘Beige. I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige.’ Obviously, their love making left something to be desired, at least from her perspective.”

Sharlene looks at him in surprise and asks, “Did that really happen?”

“I have no idea, but it wouldn’t surprise me if similar things happen very frequently. It does illustrate a common approach to the sex life for many couples, he feels the need for relief, she puts up with it as a wifely duty, and neither of them have much fun. Yet, he’ll be bragging to his buddies about his sexual prowess because his woman willing spreads her legs whenever he wants.”

“I suppose that when I touch you intimately before you’re ready to touch me in return, you feel somewhat guilty about having ‘the little woman’ give you pleasure without making sure she’s also enjoying the event.”

He hesitates then nods his head, “Yes, even though I know I’m not forcing or even asking you to give me pleasure. Sometimes I feel like since I’ve been continuously exposed to the idea of the man in a relationship controlling or sometimes just taking the pleasure for himself, I tend to go overboard in the other direction of trying to give pleasure to the woman to the point of ignoring my own desire or pleasure.”

“That explains something I’ve been wondering about, but I was never quite sure how to appropriately ask the question.”

“That may explain how I feel, but I still haven’t been able to figure out why I feel that way in contrast to the culture all around me. Even during those times when I would look at pictures of women who were almost or fully naked and enjoy their beauty, more often I wondered what it would be like to please them rather than thinking about how they could please me. I know it doesn’t make much sense, and I can’t prove that was what I was thinking, but, there it is, one of my dirty secrets exposed.”

She pauses a moment before she responds, “You obviously like to look at more than just naked women, considering how often you look at me and you haven’t seen me anywhere near naked. So when you’ve said on more than one occasion that you like to look at naked women, are you trying to shock me or something?”

He thinks for a moment then says, “I don’t know. I suppose subconsciously I’m trying to make you see what a thoroughly despicable and undesirable person I am. I would prefer that you know me for who I am ahead of time, rather than for us to build a relationship on a false premise and have you be hurt or disappointed later on.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, old man, but I quite thoroughly like you just as you are, regardless of your exposed dirty secrets. I doubt if you’re much different than the vast majority of men who would happily look at naked women if they had the opportunity. It’s not the looking which is bad, it’s the attitude which might develop and the possible actions that follow which cause problems. From what I’ve seen and from what Aunt Paula has told me, there’s nothing wrong with your attitude and your actions have been exemplary. Certainly much better than we could have expected or even imagined. So just out of curiosity, do women have to be half naked before you look at them?”

His half laugh is bitter before he answers, “Absolutely not. My ex-wife would get women’s clothing catalogs in which the models were fully clothed such that only a prude could object to them. I found it very difficult to see those catalogs lay around the house and not pick them up and look at them. When I go to the store, or even drive down the street, I have to force myself to look straight ahead and not look at the females around me.”

Sharlene hesitates before she says, “To help me understand something, you like to look at women whether they’re living or photographs, whether they’re fully clothed or naked.”

George nods his head as he answers, “Yes.”

“And you’ve been looking for years, I take it.”

“Decades, actually.”

“I suppose it would be decades since you were a teenager.”

“I was interested before I was a teenager.”

Her eyes open wide as she asks, “Before?”

He nods his head again and answers, “The first I remember thinking of females as special people who I wanted to get to know, was when I was in the middle of elementary school. Of course, I wouldn’t have known what to do with a female at the time or for years after, but that’s when I first remember being interested in the fairer gender.”

“That young?”

He nods his head again.

“Oh, my. And you never had a girlfriend until you were out of high school?”

“That’s right.”

“So, for all of those many years of interest in females and looking at them and pictures of them, you still think I’m beautiful?”

“Very much so.”

“Come on, George, if you’ve looked at as many pictures of women as you imply, and commercial pictures of women, whether in catalogs, television, or online, tend to lean heavily towards those who are considered the more attractive, then you must have seen many women who are much more attractive than I am.”

He shakes his head as he says, “Nope. In my opinion, you beat them all.”

“George!”

“I’m sorry, Sharlene, but I’m sticking with my opinion. Now if you want to revise the standards of beauty which are being used to make the comparison, then, yes, there are some women who are more beautiful than you. If you want, you could change the standards of beauty to make almost any woman become the most beautiful in the world. But in my opinion, you’re the one who I would vote for as the most beautiful woman in the world. Actually, my opinion of your beauty has only increased as I’ve gotten to know you as a person and to realize that you are much more than a woman with a gorgeous body. And as I become more accepting of the idea that you want me, I wouldn’t trade you for any number of other women who might be offered in exchange.”

She thinks about that before she responds, “Even though I don’t see myself as beautiful, especially considering the models who are paraded before us on television and other media, I have to believe you feel that way about me. And because you do, I feel flattered and appreciative of your feelings towards me.” She gets off of her chair, sits on his upper legs, gives him a good long kiss, and tells him, “Thank you George.”

When he can breathe at a normal pace again, he says, “I certainly enjoy your way of thanking me, but I don’t deserve it. I’m only trying to honestly express what I see and feel about you. Maybe you ought to wish I didn’t find you so attractive.”