A Letter from Paradise, Part 3

    3. Be it Ever So Humble...

    Laurie retrieved her car (I had taken the bus that morning, about 70 years
ago), and we headed east, toward Bexley.

    It was two short cigarettes to her house. As Laurie and I exhaled our
first puffs, smoke spreading over the windshield, I cracked my window a couple
of inches.

    "Don't do that!" said Laurie, who was driving. "It's cold! Also, we need
that smoke. It increases the value of the cigarettes."

    Chagrined, I closed the window. My eyes were still watering from the
restaurant. Smoker or no, I would need to get acclimated to the incredible
tolerance for smoke here. I looked forward to the process.

    When we turned north on Columbia, I was a little surprised. This was
definitely the high-rent district, a stone's throw from the governor's
mansion. When we pulled into the driveway of an equally impressive estate, I
blinked. Then I remembered a piece of financial advice I had given to her
great-grandmother and understood. This was one rich...lovely lady. We emerged
from the clinging cloud inside the car, and entered Laurie's Xanadu.

    Laurie mixed a pitcher of dry martinis (ah! Tradition!) and we retired to
the media room. Yes, she had a media room. She had more rooms than they have
names for.

    One wall of the room featured the most elaborate audio-visual setup I'd
seen outside of a studio. A Sony 50-inch direct-view TV, Studer Revox and
Nachimichi audio components, Super VHS deck, the works. She put on a Mannheim
Steamroller disc ('twas the season, after all), and I sat on a leather
loveseat that molded itself lovingly to my contours. When she joined me, the
soft leather seemed to squish us together like a good loveseat should. We
sipped martinis. We talked. We smoked. I had never been more comfortable.

    "There's one thing I'm curious about," I started. Actually, there were
about 10,000 things, but I had to start somewhere. "How is it your name is
Banning? Didn't any of your...forebears take her husband's name?"

    Laurie chucked, expelling smoke like a schoolgirl. "My great-grandmother
Doris started the tradition. She appeared in a couple of silent films, "Pearl
of the Orient" and "Swashbuckler Alley." She decided to keep her "stage name,"
and the tradition stuck. It's nothing unusual today, as you should know if
you're a sensitive New Age guy."

    "My middle name," I said, wishing it was. I try always to give only my
last name. Grant, just Grant. My other two names don't bear repeating.

    "I have her films on tape somewhere..." she said.

    "Well, pop one in. I'd like to see her..." again, I didn't add. We were
still playing our "mysterious stranger" parts.

    We watched some of "Pearl of the Orient," her only starring role. She had
some good, seductive smoking scenes in it, especially when the handsome tramp
steamer captain first finds her, a mysterious white woman in a Singapore bar.
She lights up as he sits at her corner table, exhales in his face, and smoke
continues to billow from her mouth and nose as she soundlessly speaks.

    We were doing a lot of smoking ourselves as we watched. The loveseat was
enveloped in a blue-white haze, smoke hanging endlessly in the still air. We
reinhaled our own exhales, basking in the friendly warmth and sweet odors.

    By now my left arm was around her soft shoulders, and my right hand was
beginning an exploratory mission to her thigh. She didn't seem to mind a bit.
She nestled closer (which was a feat in self) smoke pouring forth with her
contended sigh.

    She kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear. I could feel her warm, smoky
breath on the sensitive tissues. "Well, if you're not sure you have anywhere
to go, and it's a pigsty if you do, why don't you stay with me tonight?"

    Call me anything you want, but don't call me late for sex. Electronics
powering down and other systems powering up, we ascended to the third floor.

    Laurie's bedroom was just slightly smaller than Ohio Stadium, and her bed
would have comfortably slept any of the teams which play there. I was a little
intimidated, I'll admit. "I hope I can find you in that bed," I said.

    "Why, Mr. Grant!" She looked at me sternly. "Whatever gave you the idea
you're sleeping in THIS room?" The act lacked conviction, however, since we
were both mostly undressed by then.

    As she shed her last garments, I became breathless with admiration and
again had to restrain some involuntary muscles. Her breasts were even larger
than I'd guessed, and pleasingly defiant of gravity. Her hips swelled like
gentle grassy hills below her narrow waist. I was right about the baby fat.
The little blond thatch on her mons veneris looked already pearly with dew in
the indirect lighting.

    As I was preparing to impale her where she stood (or so my glands were
urging), she looked at me seriously.

    "There is one thing I must know."

    "What's that?"

    "Did you sleep with my mother?"

    After I climbed back to my feet from where I'd fallen down, I managed to
choke out a reply "No! Of course not. I never...I mean I didn't..." A lower
extremity had shifted from "attention" to "at ease."

    "It's all right, Grant. I didn't really think you had. I just needed to
hear you say it." She sat on the edge of the immense bed and patted the place
by her side. I found my pack, but it was empty. I grabbed a glass ashtray
instead while Laurie uncovered her purse from the floor beneath her bra. Her
purse was a little like a good guy's gun in a bad action movie. It never ran
out of cigarettes. I sat close by on the bed, the ashtray sitting over my
withered member. We lit up, and rivers of smoothly flowing smoke accompanied
her words.

    "My mother, you know, was in Dallas, when it happened. The assassination.
She's told the story a thousand times. She was at ground zero, in a soda
fountain. She met a boy that day, a boy who taught her to inhale." As if to
demonstrate, she blew a fountain of smoke from deep with her overexpanded
chest. "That boy had your name. It's an unusual name."

    "Thank god for small favors," I quipped. I noticed the ashtray was
beginning to develop a life of its own. I shifted it on my lap.

    "It was all the tension after that that made mom a confirmed smoker for
life. But that's not what she remembered most. The thing was, this boy seemed
to know what was coming. He ran out and chased the motorcade just before the
shooting started. She never saw him again."

    "Ummmm," I added enlighteningly.

    "The FBI didn't give up questioning her, or the kids who were with her
that day, for years. They weren't satisfied that a boy could come from nowhere
and return to nowhere without anyone knowing SOMETHING about him. And after
Oswald mentioned him..."

    "Oswald?" I asked. This was getting close to something I didn't want to
remember, 33 years ago but not even yesterday to me. The ashtray ceased its
stirring.

    "He told the police he bummed a light from some kid near the plaza. The
kid had blood on his pants. Said the police should be looking for that boy,
not him." She paused to empty her lungs once more of white smoke.

    Jesus! I'd almost given Oswald an alibi!

    "Anyway, they never found him, Oswald was killed, and eventually they left
mother alone."

    "What do you want me to say, Laurie? That the boy was me? It was. But
someday I want to hear your story..." Someday. I was hoping other matters
would come up shortly.

    "Eventually." She smiled and crushed out her cigarette, blowing smoke at
my crotch. The ashtray twitched, tilting once more. "I wanted to know for sure
it was you so I could thank you."

    "Thank me? For what?"

    "For making a smoker of my mom. If she had given up on it, I might never
have started. And I do so love to smoke."

    "But everyone smokes here!" I said, confused. "Surely you would have..."

    "Yes, everyone smokes here, or almost." Again, that mysterious smile.

    "Does everyone have sex here?"

    "No...at least not with just anyone."

    "How about us?" I had to grip the ashtray as I saw her eyes flash.

    "Good idea." The ashtray fell to the floor. We ignored it.

    Somehow we found each other in the center of that awesome bed. Buried
under a comforter against the chill, I learned again how wonderful it was to
hug a warm girl on a cold night. Caressing Laurie was like stroking an infant;
skin newly made, soft as eiderdown, infinitely pliable. I wanted to know every
part of her body better than she did herself, her satiny breasts, firm but
squishy tummy, her endless, smooth thighs and calves. Her hair enwrapped me
like a living thing, looking like spun white gold, but infinitely more
malleable and somehow as warming as her enveloping flesh. Kissing her lips,
tasting the lingering traces of mentholated smoke, probing deeply with my
tongue. Kissing her breasts. Kissing everywhere.

    First times are usually unsatisfactory, sometimes disastrous. This one I
wanted to be perfect. I would be patient, loving, caressing, sacrificing my
own pleasure for hers. Nothing would be rushed. Everything would go slowly. I
was in total control.

    That is, I was in control until my wandering fingers found the moist cleft
between those marvelous thighs. Moist? It was slicker than Niagara Falls!
Suddenly she was pressing against me with urgency. She was getting impatient!
Gently, she pressed me down on my back and straddled my hips, making of the
comforter a tent above us. As she lowered herself onto my penis, I had again
the sensation of coming home. At that moment, we were one person.

    As she bent to kiss me, I half-saw her arm reaching under the cover. It
returned with an ashtray, cigarettes, and a lighter.

    "This won't bother you, will it, darling?" she said huskily, beginning to
slide up and down on my pelvis. Finding the rhythm, I pushed up with my hips
in time with her strokes. "We do have to keep to our schedule."

    It was all I could do not to answer with an explosion of semen inside her.
This was a fantasy long-treasured but never achieved. "No, no, please do," I
managed. "We don't mind at all if you smoke..."

    With a smoothness that suggested practice (yeah? With who?), she withdrew
a cigarette for each of us and placed one in her lips, one in mine. She
clicked the lighter between our faces, and the tips of our cigarettes found
the flame together. We dragged heavily in unison, and our exhales made of the
comforter-tent a smoky cave of warmth and pleasure.

    How I held my load through that I'll never know. There should be some sort
of presidential award for it. However, I was determined not to lose it until
Laurie came. I was 36 years old, and could not reliably depend on more than
one pop per night. As it turned out, my fears were again misplaced...

    Another minute, another fantasy fulfilled. Laurie took a long, slow drag,
and as she removed her cigarette she fastened her smoky lips to mine. I
greedily sucked the smoke from her lungs, and as we parted, I let the smoke
escape convulsively with little moans, tilting my head back, trying to covey
my excitement to her.

    It worked. Her thighs clamped my hips with brutal pressure, and I could
feel the small muscles in her legs spasm. Her tummy twitched, her breasts
shook, her head snapped back as the orgasm shot up her spine and into her
brain.

    "Uhnnnn..." She made a sound as if shot, a cry of shock, surprise, and
pure pleasure. Wisps of smoke escaped her mouth as she shivered. Hearing and
seeing this, my orgasm instantly followed, rocketing through me like a streak
of fire and electricity. I nearly threw her off with the intensity of my
reaction.

    She took a drag from her cigarette, thinking it done, but amazingly I was
still hard, still stroking. Again, the orgasm took her unawares, and smoke
exploded from her mouth and nose as her body shook, not once but many times,
until she collapsed on me, limp and gasping.

    I saw through my own fog of pleasure that she had dropped her cigarette.
It lay burning on the sheet. I reached weakly, but she retrieved it first.
"Don't worry....," she breathed weakly. "Everything's...completely fireproof."

    Fireproof sheets, I thought. Makes a lot of sense...

    How many times did we make love that night? I can't say, but it was
several and then some. One thing I remember is holding her close at some
unknown hour of the night, lazing in afterglow, sharing a series of
cigarettes. It was so smoky in the room by then it was as if the bed was a
raft becalmed in the fog, floating on a still ocean. We shared smoky kisses,
and the first time I saw her exhale a puff I had inhaled, the beast with two
backs returned yet again.

    "I think..." I spoke softly, "We made the RDA..."

    "Yes," Laurie said, exhaling one last plume before unconsciousness took
us, "and for more than just smoking..."

    Sadly, even the most magical nights are followed by a morning after. As an
alarm sounded, I first thing I was aware of was the need for a smoke. The
second was a never before experienced empty, achy feeling in my cojones. I had
been squeezed dry and then some. It was a sort of pleasure/pain mix that I
definitely wanted to experience again.

    Which led to a less pleasant thought. I hadn't worn a condom last night,
and had failed to ask Laurie if she was "protected." Usually I'm more
responsible than that. I didn't yet know of the AIDS immunity drug in
cigarettes, but I was not so much worried about that as about that other, more
common disorder of the female reproductive system that was very draining on
the wallet.

    However, my question was answered when I found Laurie's pack of
cigarettes. Printed on the front panel in small letters were the words "Female
Contraceptive Added."

    They think of everything, don't they?

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