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Message-ID: <52044asstr$1127200204@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Jim C" <jimc_author@hotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Lucky Stiff by JiMC (40 of 46)--MF, FF, mc, md, magic, romance
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Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 03:10:04 -0400
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This story is copyright (c) 2003-2005.  All rights are
reserved by the author, including that of publication.
Posting on-line is only allowed when permission is explicitly
granted by the author, and then only for the complete story,
including this disclaimer.  Contact the author at
<jimc-author at excite dot com> for more information,
referring to this story ("Lucky Tickets 2: Lucky Stiff").

I explicitly grant permission to post this story to
StoriesOnline.net and asstr-mirror.org.

The following is a work of fiction and is just a fantasy.
Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely
coincidental and entirely unintentional.  There may be
references to people in a historical context, but they are
not really characters in this story.

This is a story that describes sexually explicit situations
in a fictional universe that only vaguely seems similar to
the one we live in.  Most of the characters in this story are
under aged.  However, the target audience is adults (people
over the age of eighteen) with broad minds.

* * *

This is a sequel to the story "Lucky Tickets," and as such,
you may want to read that story first to get a better
introduction to the characters present in both stories.  Like
a lot of sequels, it's not really meant to be read out of
order.

* * *

Chapter 40--Wild Weekend II

        No, I can't forget tomorrow,
        When I think of all my sorrows,
        When I had you there but then I let you go.
        And now it's only fair
        That I should let you know
        What you should know...
                -- Without You (Harry Nilsson)


    We didn't do much Friday night.  Kristen suggested we
order take-out Chinese and she passed an order to the main
house to have somebody pick it up for us.  Harry arrived
about forty-five minutes later, our meals in those white
cardboard cartons.

    Lynette and Kristen drank white wine; Sherry and June
drank Tab, and I had some iced tea with mint leaves that
Lynette made the previous day.

    I excused myself after dinner and went back to my studio
to listen to the album that I borrowed from the Swifts.  My
intention was to try to figure out a suitable arrangement for
the song I was interested in that would do it justice.

    I was only interrupted once in the studio: Kristen asked
me what time I was going to bed, and I told her that I
intended to be there by midnight.

    I spent the rest of the night working on my arrangement
and then picked up an open reel tape with a song of my own
composition on it that I wanted to complete before Thursday.

    Midnight came and went, and when I realized the time, it
was past two o'clock in the morning.

    I put my music away and walked out of the studio.  The
door to the recovery room was closed, indicating that it was
occupied.  I realized that I hadn't said good-night to the
girls and regretted spending so much time in the studio.

* * *

    I woke the next morning to Lynette sucking me off.

    Usually, this was Kristen's job, but apparently the two
girls had made different arrangements in my absence the
previous evening.  I looked past Lynette and saw that she had
both legs spread out in a split with Kristen's body
underneath her.

    I couldn't see the girl on girl action, but my dick was
already pretty hard from Lynette's intense sucking.  I
reached down and caressed Lynette's head in a loving manner
to let her know that I was awake.

    Lynette moaned, sending thrilling tremors through the
shaft of my organ, bringing me very close to orgasm.  I tried
to will myself not to come, but Lynette was too talented.  It
was obvious that Kristen had ordered her to suck me off
quickly and she was putting her entire self into the act.

    I achieved my release much quicker than I wanted, and
pumped into Lynette's sucking mouth.  After a few strong
bursts, Lynette pulled off me and immediately attacked
Kristen's face, depositing my sperm into my beloved's hungry
mouth.

    I was too spent to do much more than look for a few
moments before shaking my head and dragging my ass out of
bed.  Lynette and Kristen were still playing around, kissing
each other ferociously.  I left them to their own devices as
I entered the master bathroom.

    As I was taking my shower, I heard somebody come into the
bathroom.

    A few seconds later, Kristen entered the tub.  "Can you
wash my hair?"

    "Of course, sweetheart." I soaked Kristen's beautiful
hair and then put a generous amount in her shampoo onto it.

    Kristen's shampoo (both lather and rinse cycles) took
about fifteen minutes.  I heard the toilet flush and realized
that Lynette was in the bathroom as well.

    I hopped out of the shower, grabbing one of the large
towels, and nodded to Lynette, indicating that she should
join Kristen.

    Lynette smiled at me, and got into the tub.  I could hear
the two girls squealing together as they worked very hard to
clean themselves up.  Of course, Kristen was already squeaky
clean all over her body, but Lynette would be the final
arbiter of that.

    Back in the bedroom, I pulled on a black pair of slacks
and saw a couple of new shirts in my dresser drawer.  I
decided upon a burgundy shirt and looked at myself in the
mirror.

    My hair was still wet and very unkempt.  I found a
rat-tail comb on the dresser (one of Lynette's), and tried to
get the majority of the knots out.  I wasn't completely
successful, and I knew that either Kristen or Lynette would
insist on running a brush through my hair to get it perfect
to their way of thinking.

    I could hear hair dryers in the bathroom, indicating to
me that the girls had left the shower.  I dawdled for a bit,
and finally walked out of the bedroom.

    I was surprised by the presence of Sherry in the dining
room, and the smell of blueberry pancakes coming from the
kitchen.  "Ooh, my favorite!" I announced to June in the
kitchen.

    "It sounded like you were still busy in the bedroom,"
June said as she came out of the kitchen with a smirk.

    "Wasn't me for the last twenty minutes, Juicy!"

    June blushed slightly at the mention of her nickname, as
did Sherry.  I wondered if June actually told Sherry how she
got that nickname.

    Kristen and Lynette surprised me by coming out of the
bedroom about five minutes after I did.  I was used to the
two of them taking close to a half hour just to dress, but
the two of them came out wearing sun dresses that were
identical except for color that I remembered Kristen bought
when she admired Patty's favorite dress style a year earlier.
Both girls' wore their hair straight and long past their
shoulders.

    My mind flashed back a year or so ago when Patty and
Kristen were dressed like twin sisters.  However, with
Lynette and Kristen with their similar builds and hair
styles, the effect was even more striking.  Both June and
Sherry noticed their outfits.

    "You guys look great!" June said as the girls came out of
the bedroom.

    The two girls took the compliment in stride.

    "Good morning, Sherry," Kristen said, smiling at June's
guest.

    "Hi, Kris."

    "How was the recovery room?"

    "I never slept in a water bed before," Sherry answered.
"It was a bit weird, but it turned out very comfortable."

    I nodded, remembering the smell of vinyl that took a
little getting used to the first time I used that room myself.

    Kristen looked at June and said, "June picked out the
color patterns for that room."

    "It's nice," Sherry said, smiling.  "It even has some of
Jim's clothes in it, including his costume."

    "Costume?" Kristen asked.  She was unaware of my greaser
outfit.

    Sherry looked at me as if she had violated a taboo, but I
smiled at her.  "Just a few props for a song, sweetness."

    "You're getting secretive in that studio of yours,
mister!"

    "Well, if you want to help out, I can use a bass to do a
fairly standard riff."

    "Sure thing... oh, wait!  Maybe tomorrow."

    "Tomorrow?" I asked, confused.

    "We have a guest, darling," Kristen pointed out.  "It's
not nice for you to disappear for hours at a time with your
music."

    Sherry immediately protested.  "Kristen, that's really
not a prob-..."

    "Hush, Sherry," Kristen said.  "I'm just reminding Jim
who the host is around here.  This is his apartment, after
all."

    I nodded, a bit sheepishly.

    June came out of the kitchen with five plates of
pancakes, balancing them like a waitress in one of those
diners you see in the movies.  "Breakfast is served."

    "Yum!" I said, grateful the topic had turned away from me
being a bad host last night.

    Lynette looked at the set up on the dining room table,
and without saying a word, she went into the kitchen and
quickly returned with an unopened bottle of the expensive
wild blueberry syrup that we were building up a nice stock of
in our pantry.

    "I didn't know where you guys kept that," June said,
smiling.  "I looked all over."

    "Back of the pantry on top," Lynette said.  "It's
Kristen's favorite--her mother has it sent in from a place in
Maine."

    "Bar Harbor," Kristen said, automatically.

    I had no idea where Bar Harbor or any town in Maine was,
so I didn't comment.  Kristen's family did a lot more
traveling than my family ever did; in the year since I
started dating Kristen, I had probably traveled further and
more often than I had in the previous fifteen years of my
life, and that wasn't much compared to Kristen!

    "What's the plan for today?" I asked.

    "June and I have practice later today," Sherry said.
"Lynette was thinking of helping out."

    I noticed that Lynette's reaction to this information was
to immediately look for permission in Kristen's eyes and she
smiled when she immediately received Kristen's silent
blessing.

    "That leaves the two of us, Kris."

    Kristen smiled at me.

    I smirked at Kristen.  "That means that I'll be able to
lay down that bass track today after all."

    Sherry and June laughed at my response, and Kristen and
Lynette joined them.

    "Jim has a one-track mind when it comes to music," Sherry
said, giggling.

    June giggled and added, "I think he calls it a four track
in his studio.  Anyway, he's unlike most boys his age, who
have one-track minds focused on something else."

    I felt a bit embarrassed at this.  "What's wrong with
playing music?  What's it that Mac Davis sings?  'Music is
the universal language, and love is the key.' Right?"

    Sherry came to my rescue.  "That's right, Oogie.
Everybody loves you for your music.  We're just having fun
with you."

    Lynette furrowed her brow, and then got up from her chair
and quickly left to the spare bedroom.  She returned a few
seconds later with a light brown wig with short, frizzy
hair--almost an Afro-style.

    "Where did you get that?" June asked.

    Kristen answered.  "Lynette has, like, five or six wigs.
She's always liked them, but she only seems to wear them..."
Kristen suddenly stopped.

    I think I knew why Kristen stopped.  Lynette usually wore
her wigs when she was alone with Kristen in the spare
bedroom.  When June wasn't around, the girls never closed
their bedroom door when they were together and I had seen
Lynette dressed up in wigs and costumes when they were
playing together.

    Lynette didn't blush, but proceeded to put the wig onto
my head.  "There.  Now he looks like Mac Davis.  He even has
that funny nose!"

    "Hey!" I protested, sensitive about my looks.

    "Do his voice, Oogie," Lynette begged.

    I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Mac Davis' voice.
I tried to make it a bit nasal, and tried a few lines:

        I could sit around making music
        All day long...


    This sounded a bit too nasal, so I ended up doing the
song more or less in my own voice.

        As long as I'm making my music
        I ain't gonna do nobody no harm.


    "Wow, that's eerie!" June suddenly said, interrupting me.

    "Yeah," Sherry said.

    Even my beloved Kristen was looking at me, a bit shocked.
"I was always trying to place who your natural voice sounded
like."

    Lynette didn't say anything, but was nodding in agreement.

    I was a bit confused until June said what everybody else
had been thinking.  "Jim sounds like Mac Davis!"

    "Huh?" I shook my head.  "His voice is more nasal than
mine!"

    "No it's not," Kristen said, shaking her head.  "When you
made your voice nasal, it didn't sound like him at all.  When
you relaxed and used your own voice, it sounds just like his."

    "You guys are crazy!" I protested, shaking my head
vigorously.

    Everybody except me seemed to be in agreement, however.

    I stewed over this quietly and let my so-called friends
continue to talk about my voice sounding like that of a
country-western singer.

    After a couple of minutes of good natured ribbing,
Lynette touched Kristen's arm and then nodded at me.  Kristen
and the others got Lynette's message and the subject was
mercifully changed.

* * *

    Later that day, after the three cheerleaders had left to
go to pick up my sister on the way to practice, Kristen
joined me in the music studio.

    Kristen was strumming her guitar as she watched me play
with the patch cords that led to the open reel and the
cassette tape decks.

    "You need a mixer," Kristen said.

    "Yeah," I agreed.  "We've never seen good ones in the
second hand shops, though."

    Kristen put down her guitar and left the studio for a
moment.  She returned less than a minute later.

    "Where did you go?" I asked.

    "I needed to fetch something."

    I looked at Kristen, and only saw a guitar pick in her
hand.  "A pick?"

    Kristen smiled.  "Nah.  A surprise." She picked up her
guitar and started picking a song, stopping a few times to
tighten or loosen her strings slightly to get her guitar in
perfect tune.  I soon recognized the song as Don MacLean's
_Vincent_, which I remembered Kristen playing at the music
store in Indiana.

    "You played that at the store," I pointed out.

    "I use it to warm up.  It was the first song I ever
picked out on my own, and I like to play it."

    I listened to Kristen play that song.  After she played
the chorus, she started to repeat the verse.  I started
singing along.

        Starry, starry night,
        Flaming flowers that brightly blaze.
        Swirling clouds in violet haze,
        Reflect in Vincent's eyes of China blue.
        Colors changing hue,
        Morning field of amber grain,
        Weathered faces lined in pain,
        Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.


    My lovely blonde Goddess smiled as she realized that I
knew the words to that song.  Heck, I had just about
memorized that entire album when _American Pie_ came out.
Based on what people told me about the title track, I even
started looking into Buddy Holly records at the time.

    I continued to sing, and Kristen joined me by singing a
harmony line on the second chorus:

        Now I understand,
        What you tried to say to me.
        How you suffered for your sanity.
        How you tried to set them free.
        They would not listen,
        They did not know how.
        Perhaps they'll listen now.


    Kristen stopped playing at this point.  "Do you ever feel
like that, Jim?"

    "Like what?" To me, _Vincent_ was simply a song.  A very
pretty one, but it was just a song.

    "Like people are sometimes too stupid to listen to you?"

    "No."

    "You don't feel like you're misunderstood?"

    "When I was younger," I admitted.  "My father was a
bully, but I always had my mother.  I don't feel like that so
much nowadays."

    Kristen shook her head.  "When I first heard that song, I
asked Daddy if he could get me a reproduction of that
picture."

    "What picture?" I asked, completely confused.

    "Starry, Starry, Night.  The picture mentioned in the
song."

    "The song's about a picture?" I asked.  This was news to
me.

    Kristen looked at me, surprised.  "Do you know anything
about that song?"

    "Somebody once told me it was about Vincent Van Gogh... a
painter, right?"

    Kristen shook her head.  "It's pronounced 'Van Gogh.'"
Kristen pronounced the last part the way it would be
pronounced in Dutch, with a back-of-the-throat guttural sound
at the end.  "You don't know what the song's about?"

    I decided to admit my stupidity.  "I originally thought
that he was singing about a friend.  Then somebody told me it
was about an artist, which sort of explained all the color
visualizations in the song.  I was never sure what to make
about the song, actually."

    "It's a short song but it is all about the life of
Vincent Van Gogh.  How he was misunderstood his entire life.
He was broke when he died, and nowadays his paintings sell
for hundreds of thousands of dollars--money the painter never
saw."

    "Starry, Starry Night was the name of one of his
pictures?"

    "You've been in my room.  The picture is on the wall."

    I tried to remember the picture that Kristen had hanging
over one of her dressers.  I remembered a picture with a lot
of swirls on it.  "The one with the yellow circles?"

    Kristen shook her head at me.  "Yeah.  That's the picture
that the song is about."

    I decided it wasn't a good idea for me to admit that I
had thought that particular picture was one that Kristen
might have painted herself when she was younger.  It never
occurred to me that it was a reproduction of a painting by a
famous artist!

    "I'll have to check it out the next time I'm in the main
house."

    Kristen again shook her head at my naivet�.  "I used to
lay in my bed strumming that song on my guitar and sing that
song over and over.  Nobody except Will ever understood me.
Daddy and Mommy try, but they never really know what goes on
inside my head.  That picture and that song seemed to
describe my own life."

    This was a revelation from Kristen that I never heard
before.  I couldn't think of anything to say.  "Oh," I
finally uttered.

    Kristen closed her eyes.  "I felt that way most of my
life.  The only time I felt differently was when I was with
my parents or when I was upstairs in the apartment playing
games with Will.  I really felt that nobody liked me... not
even the people that I hung out with."

    I remembered Kristen's circle of bitchy friends that, if
memory served correctly, included Patrice and even Lynette.
Had it just been a year ago that Kristen was such a different
person?

    "Do you still feel that way, Kris?" I asked, softly.

    Kristen started to shake her head, but stopped.

    "It was after I met you... and what you did to me.  Patty
came over to my house.  I was so embarrassed at what happened
over Wendy's house that I didn't want to talk with her, but
she was insistent.  I decided to let her come over, and we
talked.  I think we talked for a couple of hours.  I showed
her my play room, and she took one look and told me how
lonely it was in here.  It was as if she could just feel the
loneliness that I felt.  Then she told me about her past, and
somehow, the subject got changed to you."

    Somehow, I knew that this had happened, but neither Patty
nor Kristen had told me anything about it up until now.

    After a few moments, Kristen continued.  She wasn't
looking at me, though.  "I told Patty how much I hated you,
and that I wanted to kill you.  I told her what really
happened after I left Wendy's house that first day... about
how I couldn't contact my brother, which was a first for us.
Somehow, I felt that I could tell Patty everything.  I even
told her that I wanted to kill you, but I couldn't."

    "You wanted to kill me?" I asked.  This was news to me.

    "I wanted to cut your balls off with a butter knife and
force feed them down your fucking throat, Jim."

    The vehemence in Kristen's voice startled me.  I could
see a look of pure hatred in her eyes.

    "You were the personification of every person in the
world that I ever hated.  I told this to Patty... and more!
I played out scenes of killing you that I thought would scare
Patty, but she didn't get scared.  She just listened."

    The image that Kristen was painting was very frightening.
"You wanted to kill me?" I repeated.

    Kristen didn't answer me.  Instead, she continued.
"Patty listened to me as I ranted and raved all about you.
And then when I finally stopped to catch my breath, Patty
made a single comment."

    Kristen paused, waiting for me to ask the obvious
question.

    "What did she say?" I finally asked.

    "She said, 'If you kill Jim, you'll be an addict without
any way to feed your hunger.'"

    "Patty said that?" I asked.  Not only was I hearing once
again that Kristen didn't love me and that she wanted to kill
me, but now that my dear friend Patty insinuated something
very nasty about me!  This was amazing.  I was too shocked to
say anything.

    "Patty's very observant," Kristen said, nodding.  "It was
like she knew what I felt, and she pointed out to me that
anything I did to hurt you would end up hurting me.  It made
me hate you even more!  I've never hated anybody in my life
like I hated you the moment that became crystal clear to me."

    This news was very disturbing!  "Hate?"

    "Hate, Jim.  After what Patty said, it hit me that she
was right.  If I killed you, I'd be a junkie without a fix.
It was then that I was considering..."

    Kristen suddenly stopped.  She was still not looking at
me.

    From the tone of Kristen's voice, I finally realized
where Kristen was headed.  Softly, I said, "You were going to
kill me and then kill yourself?"

    Kristen didn't answer, but slowly nodded.

    I was shocked, but I was still curious.  "What did Patty
say about that?"

    "Patty let me rant on and on, and didn't really say much
at all, but simply nodded at me from time to time.  Finally,
I was tired of shouting and ranting.  When I went to catch my
breath, Patty told me a personal story."

    "Her rape?" I asked.

    Kristen finally looked at me.  "Yeah.  She told me that
she told you about it... you were the first person she told.
But she told me about what the guy did, and how she felt
afterward.  She had never been betrayed like that before, and
it almost made her lose faith in other people.  For a year
and a half, she lived a lie... she never told people what
happened, even her best friend.  She wanted to get even with
the guy who did it... she felt much the same way that I did."

    I nodded.  I had heard Patty's story, although I had a
feeling that Patty would be more open to discuss the details
of her rape with another female who had a similar experience.
I was still in a state of shock hearing about how Kristen
truly felt about me.

    Kristen continued.  "Then she told me that it was you--of
all people, the guy that did this to me!--that did something
to her that made her realize that what she had been feeling
was all wrong.  She told me that you could make people do
things that you wanted, and that a side-effect of what you
did to her made her realize that the boy who raped her
didn't--couldn't!--take away her sexuality, her femininity.
We ended up talking for a long time."

    I waited for more from Kristen but there was nothing else
forthcoming.  I looked in Kristen's tear-streaked eyes, and
didn't see the hatred that I saw in them just a few minutes
ago.

    "And you still hate me?" I finally asked.

    "No."

    "You said the other day..."

    "I said that Sherry loved you.  I didn't mean to imply
that I didn't, but when I realized what I said, it brought
back the memories of that day with Patty.  I felt guilty
because I never told you that before."

    "Oh."

    I wasn't entirely convinced, and there were lots of
questions in my mind--questions I felt should wait for
another day.

    Kristen's voice got even lower.  "Patty did something
strange that day."

    "Huh?"

    "She said, 'Can I try to make things better for you?' I
said, 'Yeah, right.' Like she can fix this addiction problem,
right?  Anyway, she comes over to me all of a sudden and
pulls me very close and kisses me.  It was totally
unexpected, and I tried to pull away from her, but she had me
pretty tight.  After a few minutes she finally stopped."

    "Patty kissed you?"

    Kristen didn't answer my question but continued.  "She
asked me if I felt any different, and I asked, 'You mean, do
I still feel the addiction?' and she nodded.  I told her I
did.  She closed her eyes for a few moments and then said,
'I'm sorry.  The only person that can probably fix this is
Jim."

    "Me?" I asked.  "Ha!  I tried and it didn't work!"

    Kristen ignored my outburst and continued her story.
"Patty then turned to me and asked me, bluntly, how I felt
about you.  I was about to say that I still wanted to kill
you, but then I stopped.  Somehow, something did change!"

    "What changed?"

    "Well, it was like Patty thought she could kiss me and
make the addiction go away.  I mean, that's nonsense, right?
But Patty really thought that... she really believed it!"

    "Yeah...?"

    "Anyway, after that kiss, it was like, all that anger and
hatred that I had was no longer there.  I mean, I could still
remember feeling that way, and I knew why I did, but the
emotions were just memories... they weren't... I don't know.
How do I describe it?  They weren't in the here and now
anymore.  It was like they disappeared!"

    "Disappeared?"

    Kristen shook her head.  "I know this sounds crazy, Jim.
It was like Patty figured she could, like, suck the addiction
out of me.  Only... she didn't do that, but instead, it was
like she sucked the bad emotions, the hatred.  Do you know
what I'm saying?"

    "That sounds weird."

    Kristen nodded in agreement.  "Yeah, but Patty had this
look on her face.  She started talking about you again, and
this time, for some reason, I found myself a little more open
to hearing what you did for her.  She told me what you and
she did in the mornings, and invited me to join her.  I was
about to tell her, 'No way!' but then that part of me that
feels the addiction... well, it got the better of me."

    "The next day was the day you came over with Patty?"

    Kristen nodded again.

    "Patty and I talked a lot after that.  Sometimes on the
phone, sometimes face to face.  She told me that I was a
better match for you than she was and she had a feeling that
not only did you feel terrible about what you did to
me--which took a long time for me to believe!--but that you
actually had feelings for me.  It took a few days, but I came
to enjoy being with you.  And then, the afternoon after the
first day of school... when you played that song for Patty
and me..."

    "For you," I corrected.

    "For me..." Kristen came over and gave me one of her
erection special kisses.  When we broke it off, Kristen
finally added, "I realized that we were both stuck with each
other.  As much as my addiction made me like a slave to
you--and I think that was the hardest part for me to
accept--you were just as much a slave to me.  Patty made me
realize that you felt guilty every time that I suck you.  You
do, don't you?"

    "Well..." I admitted.  I had mostly gotten over it, but I
still had twinges of guilt over it.  Surprisingly, that very
morning, when Lynette woke me up by sucking me, I felt a bit
of that guilt then!

    Kristen smiled.  "You do, and don't tell me otherwise.
Anyway, your guilt makes you just as much mine.  I told you
that more or less on New Year's Day, Jim, after I spent a
week in Europe thinking about everything.  I don't mind the
addiction much any more because it binds the two of us
together."

    I was about to answer Kristen when she gave me another
one of her special kisses.  It lasted a long time.  I knew
that I would need some private time to think about these new
revelations.

    I saw the light over the intercom was flashing and I went
over and hit the reply button.  "Jim here."

    Harry answered.  "Tell Kristen that her package is
outside the door to your studio."

    "Package?" I asked, turning to Kristen.

    Kristen didn't answer me, but instead opened the door and
there was a large box wrapped in red and white wrapping paper.

    "Happy Birthday, Jim!" Kristen said, smiling.

    "Huh?"

    Kristen dragged the box into the room, and told me to
remove the wrapping paper.  It didn't take me long to see
what it was: a sixteen channel mixer!

    "Kris!  I only have a four track deck!" I protested.

    "For now," Kristen said with a wicked smile.

    On the box, I noted a business card: Kurt Helmut from
Lafayette, Indiana.

    Kristen helped me set up the mixer.  We needed to
rearrange things around the room a bit, but it wasn't
difficult.  There were plenty of chords and switches that
would allow me to patch things a lot easier than my old
jerry-rigged setup from before.

    Kristen and I christened the new mixer by laying down
Kristen's bass accompaniment to a few tapes I had been making.

    After those tracks were laid down, Kristen and I listened
to the ones that were mostly complete.

    After listening to my tapes, Kristen made a single
comment.  "You need a drummer, Jim."

    I smiled.  I knew that, but my efforts on the drums were
almost as bad as my efforts on the guitar.

    "Can you play me a song that you played at that lounge?"

    "Which one?"

    "The one by Harry Nilsson."

    I nodded and moved over to the upright piano.  Kristen
set up the mixer to record my performance, so I made sure the
microphone was live.

    Kristen spent a few moments, first fiddling with the
mixer and then with the four track.  I saw her hit the peak
button that froze the VU meters to their peak levels.  She
asked me for a sound check, and I gave her a five count at
various volumes on the mike followed by a few scales on the
upright.

    When Kristen seemed satisfied with the preamp levels, she
turned the tape deck on and nodded to me, her index finger on
her lips.

    I silently counted my standard fifteen seconds and then
played the chords that started the intro of the song.

    Kristen had one eye on the meters and her other eye on me
as I performed.  I saw her nodding, satisfied, as I started
the second verse.

    After the second verse, I noticed that Kristen was
staring at me, waiting for the chorus.

    It was only as I sang the words did the meaning of this
song become clear to me:

        Can't live, if living is without you.
        Can't give, I can't give anymore...


    This was Kristen's not-so-subtle way of emphasizing the
discussion that we just had; her way of describing her life.

    For a moment, I wished I had Roy with me to do a harmony
line on the vocals for the next verse.  Of course, I could
probably double-track my own voice to accompany myself on a
subsequent recording, but something told me that Kristen
wanted this song live.

    When the chorus came around again, I think I startled
myself by actually hitting the same high note that Harry
Nilsson did on his version, and hitting it correctly.  I saw
the VU meters go far to the right and wondered if I saturated
the vocal track.

    Kristen was now staring only at me.

    Unlike Nilsson's version of the song, I had no orchestra
behind me.  I let my fingers do the best they could on the
piano, but I was now staring at Kristen.

    The song was over for about a minute before either
Kristen or I stopped staring at each other.

    Kristen quickly went over to the open reel, rewound the
tape, and popped the reel off.  She also popped out the
cassette that she had also apparently recorded as well.

    "These are mine, Jim."

    Kristen left the studio to put those tapes in some
special place.  She left the door to the studio open.

    Not for the first time, I wondered what it was like to
live Kristen's life: lonely, misunderstood, and now
physically bound to me by those damned tickets.  I thought of
the words to the song _Vincent_ and how they must have
touched Kristen's heart when she first heard that song.

    I made up my mind right then and there that nothing would
ever make me deny anything for that wonderful creature.  If
there were any way possible for me to do something for
Kristen, I would move heaven and earth to do so.

    The pent-up emotions that I felt from the moment I made
the realization during the first chorus of _Without You_
finally hit me hard.  I spent the next five minutes softly
crying, not caring if Kristen walked in on me.

    It was a few minutes after I finally stopped crying that
I heard the water flowing in the communal shower down the
hall.

    Kristen was softly singing an old Motown song from the
1960s.

        No muscle bound man
        Could take my hand
        From my guy!
        No handsome face
        Could ever take the place
        Of my guy!


    I walked to the shower, listening to Kristen's wonderful
voice.  Kristen saw me at the entrance and she smiled at me
as she made a slight alteration to the lyrics:

        He's gonna be a big rock star,
        And when it comes to bein' happy...
        We are!
        There's not a man today,
        Who could take me away
        From my guy!


    I know it is a crime to silence a voice as wonderful as
Kristen's, but I found myself unable to help myself.  I went
right over to her and gave her the biggest, sloppiest, and
wettest kiss ever.  Kristen melted in my arms.

    I would definitely have to find a dry pair of clothes
later, but that wasn't really on my mind at the time.

--
jimc_author@hotmail.com

JiMC is only a pseudonym.  Respect my privacy and I'll respect yours.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to 
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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