Thirst Satyrday for Eros (in fiction)

Portrait of the author
by Susan C. Price

William the Conjuror (a short story)

By W.M. Dean

Editor:
    I haven't written many letters to editors. Certainly none on the subject of this letter, a subject that I've never even talked about with anyone—strange as that will seem to your more sophisticated readers. But, truth is, I've been until very recently a modest, retiring fellow.
    Remarkable things have taken place today in San Francisco. No one but myself and a few girls know about them. Nevertheless, they had a profound effect upon me, particularly profound in that the girls experienced them in the same appreciative and natural manner that the girls of Italy do, at least according to the article, "Italian Girls Love It," which appeared recently in your magazine.
    The article contrasted Italian and American women, and it is the implication that American girls don’t love it too that I want to take exception to. In all honesty, however, I’ll admit that when I read the article I didn’t believe that any woman, Italian or American, would stand for it. My mother apparently never stood for it. And until I tried it on my wife it had never occurred to me during all the years we’ve been married that she might stand for it either.

This morning, she was leaning over the sink sectioning grapefruit for our breakfast. I was observing her through the door joining kitchen and the dining room, planning how best to approach her. What I had in mind was an experiment, pure and simple. It was not primarily my wife’s reaction that I was testing, although I did suffer some apprehension just what it might be. You could say more accurately that I was practicing.
    I was practicing for the girls of San Francisco, broadly speaking. No pun intended, of course. It was they who had attracted my fancy, stronger and stronger over the years, while my wife fascinated me less and less. It had finally become imperative that I do something about the girls.
    I realized this one day last week. I was following a leggy blonde in a crocheted mini-dress. She walked fast, being tall and athletic—faster than I, being more than twice her age. The pedestrian traffic in the Financial District was heavy, and I had to weave around people to keep her in sight. The crowd seemed to stand aside for her, while I had to contend with the men (and a few women) who would pass her and stop to look around.
    The view I was struggling to maintain was simply breathtaking. If that is a cliché, I say it only because it is literally true. This was another reason I was having so much trouble following the vigorous young lady. I was concentrating so on her backside, I can only conjecture that I must have been in a terrible state.
    But what rapture it was! It was an absorption, an inspiration, a single-minded devotion. It was a state of grace, intoxicating in its purest manifestation.
    The ravishing beauty stopped at a bookstore window to look at dust jackets, and I stopped too. It was here that I made a revealing discovery of my condition. I must have gone into a trance. I remember feeling puzzled at something I saw reflected in the window, between the girl and me. I had the sensation that this object was a part of me, but I was dissociated from it, and it was moving of its own accord.
    It was a hand, going through what seemed a ritual, so slow were its movements as it rotated counterclockwise till the palm was toward the girl’s thigh. The first two fingers came up to meet the thumb in what was unmistakably the rehearsal of a pinch.
    I looked down into the space where this hand would be, and, yes, it was my hand. The amused look on the lovely girl’s face (her strong white teeth, the healthy complexion!) told me plainly what look must be on my own face: I was a man who had discovered he was losing his sanity.

How long had my hand been living this open life of its own, unbeknownst to me? I had several alternatives. I could try to get a hold of myself—or rather of my hand—to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Instinctively, I understood that this would be nearly impossible. Perhaps I could keep my hand in my pocket. But was it just my left hand? Was I going to have to keep both hands in my pockets all the time?
    The alternative I found myself leaning towards (or perhaps being pushed towards by both hands) was the possibility of replacing this unconscious fantasy with the real thing, conscientiously pursued. My habitual avoidance of this kind of behavior caused me several sleepless nights, as I wrestled with the real possibility of engaging in bottom pinching, as I like to call it.
    I reasoned that, after all, my hand had been practicing the basic movement for some time, perhaps for years. If I confined its activities to ambiguous situations, such as in dark and crowded movie theater lobbies, there would always be some other man (or woman for that matter, the way things are these days) to take the rap. It seemed that there would be little risk of embarrassment.
    All I needed was to give my hand a dry run in a more or less real situation. It may have got the basics down, but so far as I knew, it had never actually pinched a bottom before.

This is where my wife comes in. Though I very much doubted that my hand had any designs in her direction (but then it had already fooled me badly), she was a woman, and I decided that my hand would have to be satisfied with her backside for a beginning.
    I folded the morning paper and stole quietly into the kitchen. The nearer I got to her leaning over the sink, the greater was my apprehension about what she would do. I almost forgot about the primary object of the undertaking.
    During the day I would learn that a similar apprehension would rise up strong and pounding in my chest each time a curvy bottom beckoned me. I would learn that this was the name of the game, as they say. It was two-fold. First, could I go through with it? Second, what would she do?
    Is it necessary to say that my wife jumped? In fact, she squeezed the grapefruit she was sectioning and got squirted in the eye. This interfered with a pure response on her part, but it was evident that she was surprised. I believe she said, “What on earth!”
    But I also was surprised. For it was pretty clear to me that she was standing for it. Indeed she was. I remember thinking, This does have possibilities, and I gave myself an A.
    “Would you like that, my dear, if a stranger did it to you—say, in the supermarket?” I asked her, fishing for a hint what to expect from the San Francisco girls.
    “But other men don’t pinch me in the supermarket—only you. I mean—”
    My wife was overcome by the enormity of the possibility. It was a fair assumption that few women could answer such a question with certainty, though most of them might readily tell you what they thought they would do. Was it any wonder that I should not know what to expect?

Since today was Saturday, after breakfast I went to a big, bright Safeway store, ostensibly to shop for groceries. Sparkling bottles, shining packages, colorful produce, row upon row. I often wonder whether there are any supermarkets in Russia, and if so whether they are nearly so splendid as the ones in California.
    Right then I was musing about the possibility of a Russian woman even beginning to rival the superb figure down the way who seemed uncertain whether she wanted red onions or white. Russian women dig onions.
    “Nice onions, aren’t they?” I ventured.
    She repaid my interest with a cold once-over. I must have forgotten to smile.
    I did some “shopping,” wandering up aisle and down, choosing crowded ones in favor of the empty ones that would have been more suitable for serious grocery selection.
    “What’s the best way to eat those marinated artichoke hearts?” I asked, and smiled.
    She was small, well-proportioned brunette wearing leather shorts and sandals. Her toenails were unpainted. I noticed (pitty-pat of the heart) that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
    “Well,” she said, “I’ve never tried them before.” (Oh, Jesus, what a lovely, friendly, nice smile she gave me. I was thinking, Thank you, thank you!) “But I had steamed artichokes last night, and the hearts were so good in melted butter, I thought I’d try some of these.”
    “You smile so beautifully.” (I had said it without choosing to say it. I had to warn my heart, Quiet, quiet, quiet. Be quiet.)
    “Why, thank you. Sorry I’m no help on the artichokes.”
    I raced my shopping cart exuberantly down the rows of canned oysters, mushrooms, chilis, boxes of oatmeal, pancake flour, laundry detergent. I rounded a corner into the produce section and took up my station at the walnut bin.
    I was lauding the bottoms of women, so strong and resilient, thinking that the black woman’s in the tomato section was particularly so. She was bending over to reach the back of the stand, and I could see in the mirror behind it that the top of her was strong and resilient also. I pushed my cart slowly toward her magnificent rear end. It seemed alive even in its motionlessness, struggling to burst her tight corduroy trousers.
    “Would you like me to feel it for you?” I asked her in my most pleasant voice, remembering amidst the roar of my chest to smile warmly, as I gently put all five fingers around her left buttock.
    The results were unexpected. But no particular results had been expected. I was so caught up in the euphoria of the market, with its wide selection of female shoppers, that I think I must have put my palm to this woman’s rear end out of sheer excess of animal joy. Had it been true that fear of certain consequences had deterred me all these years?—the fear most of all of a scene in which I would be cast as a monster, horrible and misshapen. But there were occasions—on park paths, in empty streets—when there would have been no audience for such a scene, when only the woman and, of course, I myself were present to pass judgment. It was a foregone conclusion that judgment would be passed, even though it was not entirely certain that it would be a condemnation. In fact, as I’ve indicated, wasn’t this uncertainty easily the most fascinating aspect of the whole business?
    I now felt a double relief. I felt, first, even in the moment my palm rested on the woman’s buttock, a release from my own inhibitions. And, next moment, I felt the liberating judgment expressed by her smile reflected in the mirror among the tomatoes.
    “I bet you could pick out a good tomato,” she said.
    I was utterly at a loss for words. I was giddy from the extreme height, its thin air. I stood there transfixed, as puzzlement and then amusement took their turn in the good woman’s big, long-lashed eyes, and as she took her tomatoes and moved away.

I decided to hit Macy’s next. Among the crowd of Saturday shoppers on the sidewalk outside, I spotted something that had now and again occasioned a provocative thought. It was a couple walking along with an arm around each other. I had often asked myself whether the girl would not think it was her boyfriend if I were to pat her lightly on the derrière. But I could imagine contingencies in which what the boyfriend thought could become even more relevant. Clearly here was an experiment whose proper laboratory was surely that dark theater lobby.
    Macy’s was a human sea—or perhaps less than human. I had observed department stores shoppers before, as they entered a tense wind-up frame of robot mind, had even felt it happening to myself.
    Prevaricating a bit, I first went to Men’s Socks. While making a selection, I noticed that women’s footwear was across the way, and there were twice as many customers as the sales staff could handle.
    “Sit down here, my dear, and let me measure that lovely foot,” I was pleased to hear myself say to my choice among the waiting lovelies.
    “I was here first!” said a stout woman who was definitely not my choice.
    “Shove off, honey. I’m about to measure this lady’s foot. Sit down, my dear.”
    My antagonist disappeared. I made a note that I had handled that very well.
    “Ha, ha, that tickles,” said the young woman whose foot I was caressing.
    “This is the man,” said the stout woman, leading the floor manageress up to where I was appraising the calf and knee (and more) of the leg whose foot I was supposed to be measuring. “He was unspeakably rude to me.”
    “You don’t look familiar to me, sir,” said the manageress, a woman of about my age.
    “I only began to work here, madame, at this very moment. Excuse me, my dear,” I said, taking leave of my customer and drawing the manageress aside.
    “I was purchasing socks, madame, when I noticed that some of your customers were becoming annoyed having to wait. Just trying to alleviate their anxiety.”
    The woman’s mouth dropped open. “Well, uh, thank you, but—”
“Quite all right.” I’m sure I withdrew with great dignity.

There’s more to this tale. But my letter already approaches the length of your article on Italian girls. I went home a couple of hours later, satisfied (elated) that the door to this new paradise was open to me now, and that it would be open tomorrow and the next day. My wife seemed to notice the new power expressed in my level look (I studied it in a mirror this evening), my sprightly bearing. I imagined that she was anticipating new things from me, and I felt unaccountably pleased in my assurance that new things she would indeed be getting.
    I put my arms around her waist and cupped her wifely buttocks in my hands. This afternoon was the first time we’ve made love during the daytime since the first year of our marriage seventeen years ago.
    I feel indebted to a handful of girls in San Francisco (again, no pun intended), and I fully mean to compound that indebtedness again and again in the future. Your article didn’t dissuade me, fortunately, by its unflattering comparison of our great nation’s own great women to the women of the Mediterranean. But I am concerned for my countrymen, who may already, most of them, have lived for years with grave inhibitions of the kind I have so recently overcome. I write this letter on their behalf, hoping to loosen the chains that your article may have served to tighten, and to give them their freedom. And in the process, the women too, bless them, will be getting theirs. (Pun intended—ha, ha.)
    On Monday I can look forward to catching sight of my lovely in the crocheted mini—or whatever she may be wearing: girls of her physical beauty, who have long enjoyed the approving eye of all men, know what to wear. I applaud these girls and hope that they will soon be enjoying the approving hand of men who will join with me in this applause.
                    Yours truly,
                    William Smith

Editor’s Note: Our readers will be interested in the subsequent activities of William Smith (a name we had believed to be fictitious until we learned otherwise by reading the back pages of the San Francisco Chronicle). The following newspaper clipping appeared ten days after the Saturday Mr. Smith wrote his letter:

A charge was lodged jointly yesterday by several female employees of the Fundamental Foundations Co. against a male employee, William Smith. The women, who model lingerie and foundation garments, complained that the defendant had made improper advances toward them.
    They were preparing for an underwear show at a meeting of designers and advertisers here. Smith accompanied them in his capacity as a public relations official for the San Francisco firm.
    He allegedly made lewd and suggestive gestures with his eyes and hands.
    “Why, he put his hand right on my—my butt!” said one of the models, Mrs. Irene Cooker. “Mr. Smith has always been such a very wild [typo? –Editor] mannered man, too. I was shocked.”
    Neither Smith nor the other women could be reached immediately for comment.
    Smith, whose job is in question, pending an investigation by Fundamental’s top management, has worked for the company for nine years.

The author of “Italian Girls Love It” was going to reply to William Smith’s letter, but he declined to do so after seeing the story in the Chronicle.

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean