Chapter 6

6

I met Jamie at one of my poetry readings here in town a little over a year ago. It's my admittedly shallow way of picking up women of the younger variety. It's sort of like being a rock star; impressionable young 20-somethings are extremely easy to pick off when you're a published and respected American writer. I locate my target while reading and follow up during the subsequent meet and greet book signing. I simply ask the young woman to accompany me for dinner. To this day I have never been turned down, regardless of the woman's relationship status. My charisma is usually at an all time high, and poetry has a tendency to dribble from my mouth. It's impossible to feel self-doubt when a room full of adoring fans are hanging on your every word.

Jamie is small and slender, a brunette with beautifully engaging brown eyes. I notice her from the podium; she is sitting in the second row, dead center. Like a bull’s-eye on a dartboard I make my mark directly, meeting eyes with her for a split second, watching her face light up. The rest is child's play.

We have dinner at a corner cafe close to the reading. She's a dancer with a local ballet company, fresh out of college with aspirations of dancing in New York. She has a boyfriend; some kid named Mike who is an aspiring writer. Mike's a huge fan of mine who introduced Jamie to my work when they first started dating two years ago. Unfortunately for Mike, he had to work this evening and couldn't come to the reading. Fortunately for me, Jamie decided to go it alone.

She orders a salad, I, the club. "I'd really like to see some of your unpublished work," she tells me between bites of salad and pointless, driveling banter. This is going to be too easy.

Back at my apartment she is in awe. "Look at all these books! I can't believe I'm actually here in your apartment! Mike will be so jealous," she says as she runs her fingers down the spines of my novels. I offer her a glass of Boudreaux, she accepts while telling me that she's not much of a drinker.

Two hours, twenty three stories and twelve books of unquestionably distasteful, unpublished, poetry later I have my right hand down the front of her pants, fingering the delicate outside of her freshly shaved vagina. She moans, pushing herself up against my hand and demands to see my bedroom.

"Are you sure?" I ask, clearing my conscious of any wrongdoing and in the process making this her decision to be seduced into bed by a man twice her age. She nods breathlessly and I lead her to my room.

The rest is hardly poetic, hardly a scene you'd find in a completely ridiculous bargain bin romance novel. My pulsating shaft did breech her haven of quivering flesh; her moans did turn to whispers as I slowed to a climax. But all in all, pre-fabricated plot lines aside, we adulterously fucked, me taking full advantage of a younger woman who was star struck with her boyfriend's favorite writer.

When we finished I rolled over and lit a cigarette while she continued to stroke me, trying to get a repeated rise. By the time I'd hit the filter I was ready to go again.

Three months later, she moved in with me. For this, I am a horrible person.