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Overview
There are perks to working at a men’s magazine that unabashedly celebrates the unclothed female form. However, the constant parade of exquisitely beautiful women strolling in and out of Oliver Bacon’s office can prove most distracting.
Oliver opts to treat his situation with extreme measures: he resolves to try celibacy. But being chaste is easier said than done when one is toiling in a garden of earthly delights, with temptation blooming all around. The challenge gets even more difficult when a particular darling turns up to plunge Oliver’s life and libido both into pure chaos. In an insightful and outrageous romp, Charles Simmons wickedly charts the minefields of lust and love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781480467552 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 02/04/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 202 |
| File size: | 979 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
An Old-Fashioned Darling
A Novel
By Charles Simmons
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1971 Charles SimmonsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4804-6755-2
CHAPTER 1
Sometimes Oliver thought he was in love with Long Island. Long Island was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen; and how many men, as he once put it to his friend and colleague Arf, have slept with the most beautiful girl they have ever seen?
Long Island had white skin with a touch of pink in the cheeks, green eyes, and black curly hair. Her legs were short; but she wore high heels, even when she walked naked around his apartment; and this not only disguised the fault, it brought back the bathing beauty contests he had watched on television in his adolescence. Her breasts were thin and pointed, like sweet potato halves; but the nipples were prominent and very erectile, so that Oliver felt an immediate sense of accomplishment when he began to play with them. She was not intelligent in the big-city sense of the word; nonetheless, Oliver could talk to her for hours on end and enjoy every minute of it.
She would tell him about her house and garden, her two children and the affairs of other women in her suburban community, about her new clothes and the car she and her husband were buying; and often she discussed her theory of "the sex people"—"I can recognize them," she would say. "They're sexy. They're interested. It's a kind of underground. I know them, and they know me. And most of them are married to duds." "You mean, like Gus," Oliver would say. "Oh, God, yes," and she would then describe Gus' latest failure in bed.
It all made Oliver feel that he was Long Island's real husband, and Gus only an attendant. In fact, whenever he visited them as a family friend, after a few drinks he would think of the children as his children and drive back to town at eighty miles an hour determined to take Long Island, along with the kids, away from Gus. But the feeling would last only till the next day, when the practical difficulties of such a step became all too clear to him.
Oliver's affair with Long Island had been going on for two years. Although they met no more than once a week, they spoke by phone almost every day. It worked this way. They had an understanding that he would call at 9:15 in the morning. If by 9:15 Gus hadn't left the house or for some other reason Long Island couldn't talk, she would take the phone off the hook and he would try the next day. If he himself couldn't talk at length at 9:15 but wanted to talk later, he would make the 9:15 call and arrange to phone from his office at, say, 2:00, when his boss would not yet be back from lunch or her kids from school.
It was chancy for her to phone him, because long-distance calls were recorded on her bill. So if she had to call—to warn him, perhaps, that her husband would be home at the time he was scheduled to make an afternoon call—she would use a pay phone. And, if he was not at his desk, their plan was for her not to leave her real name but say that Perdita was calling. Perdita was their danger signal. It meant that Oliver was not to call her until he got the all clear.
Only once had she used the signal. After staying at Brooklyn's place for the night, he had come in late to his office; and there on his desk was a note saying that Perdita had called. He waited seven days to hear from her. At exactly 9:15 on the seventh day he phoned her, and she told him that she had used the signal so that she would never have to talk to or see him again: the affair had made her feel like a whore. He in turn told her that he had been half crazy during the week, which was half true, and soon had her agreeing to come into the city for an exploratory lunch. They met at a restaurant within walking distance of his apartment and after the first drink sped there and to bed, where she made him promise that he would not abandon her if her husband ever found out.
The electric clock next to his bed said 9:13. Dressed for work, Oliver sat in the leather sling chair by the phone watching the second hand. At exactly 9:15 he picked up the receiver and dialed area code 516 but found he had forgotten the number itself. It had dropped from his mind like the name of an old friend about to be introduced at a party. He hurried to the hall closet, where he kept a filing cabinet that contained what he called his daybook, a record of sexual appointments and fulfillments, along with pertinent addresses and phone numbers. As it should be, the cabinet was locked, so he hurried back to the bedroom for the key. But when he opened the cabinet he remembered that he had left the daybook on the phone table under the Manhattan directory. By the time he dialed the number it was 9:17.
Long Island's phone rang at the other end and was picked up instantly, but no one spoke.
"Hi," he said tentatively.
"There's no Perdita here," Long Island said. "No, no Perdita," and she hung up.
Walking to his office, he wasn't upset. In fact, he found himself singing, "Yes, we have no Perditas, we have no Perditas today." What did trouble him was the fact that he had left the daybook on the phone table. Florida had used the phone the previous evening to talk to her husband. This meant that between engagement one and engagement two she had been alone with the daybook for half an hour. He tried to remember whether the second engagement had been different from the first. No, it was standard. And afterward, he had gone downstairs with her, put her into a cab; she blew a kiss through the rear window. All as usual. Anyway, even if Florida had examined the daybook, his lovemaking was coded in Greek initials. Thus Long Island was lambda iota, Brooklyn was beta, and Florida herself was phi.
His mind slipped to an old consideration. Shouldn't he refine his records? At present he kept only the date, the girl, and the number of times he had made love to her. Last night, for instance, was "8 17 phi 2." August 17, Florida, twice. Why not also the girl's orgasms? His and hers, which would have been "8 17 mu 2 phi 2," mu being the Greek initial for "me." Why not the hour of the day, too? The duration of the act, the fore- and after-play, the intensity of the climaxes, an evaluation of the satisfaction, the positions. If he had time during the day, he would work up symbols for the major positions. They might even make an amusing piece for the magazine.
As he sat down at his desk in the office, his phone rang. "Whom am I speaking to?" a strident female voice asked.
"Whom am I speaking too?" he said. He was used to nuts calling the magazine.
"Is this Oliver Bacon?" The voice was familiar yet strange.
"Yes."
"This is Lillian Bauer, do you remember me?"
Remember? Lillian Bauer was Long Island. What was going on?
"Sweetie...."
She talked over him. "I'm calling because something very serious has happened. I'm very upset. A woman phoned this morning and said the most terrible things...."
"Hon...."
"She said my phone is tapped and I'm being watched. She accused me of seeing you. You have lots of girls, Oliver, and I'm sure they're crazy about you, but you can tell this one I'm going to the police. A friend of my husband's is an FBI agent, and I'll turn the whole matter over to him. If I wasn't afraid of upsetting Gus, I would have called him instead of you. I want to give that woman a chance, Oliver, because if she bothers me again I will see to it that she goes to jail."
"Lillian, I don't understand what she did."
"She said my phone is being tapped."
"You told me that."
"This woman accused me of having an affair with you. My God, I hardly know you. I hardly know you."
"OK. What else did she say?"
"She said she had a photograph of me coming out of your house and that if I ever saw you again she would send it to Gus."
"No one could take a photograph of you coming out of my house without being seen, Lillian."
"Seen! I've never been to your house. I don't even know where you live. I haven't been to the city in six months. The last time...."
"Where are you?"
"I was so distraught I had to get out of the house."
"Where are you?"
"At the shopping center."
"Well, what was all that crap about the phone being tapped? ... Can you get into town for lunch? A sit-up lunch."
"Lunch? I can't have lunch with you. I hardly know you. And what if I'm being followed? What if your phone is being tapped? I hardly know you."
"Lillian, I get the message. My phone isn't tapped."
"I'm not trying to get any message to you. I'm merely telling you that I'll go to the police if that insane woman calls again, and if you know who it is you can tell her so."
"Lillian, don't hang up." But she did.
Oliver went down to the lobby coffee shop and tried to figure out whether Long Island had been having a nervous breakdown by phone or had really received such a call. She surely was a guilt-ridden, nervous type; but there was never any evidence that she was actually cracked. In either case he would have to talk further with her. This meant calling her at home, which would be difficult, considering her suspicions. He went back to his desk and waited half an hour.
"Yes?" she said.
"Lillian, this is Oliver Bacon. I hope you're not too upset to talk to me, because I think this phone call business is very serious. Could you possibly come into the city and have lunch with me so that we could discuss it?"
"Lunch? Lunch? I hardly know you...."
"OK. But we can talk now, can't we? You're not too upset to talk, are you? I understand about the phone and all, but it's very important that we talk. I mean, a crime has probably been committed."
"All right."
He sighed.
"What time did she call?"
"Twenty after eight."
"Oh. Now, tell me what she said. Try and use her words."
"She asked me if I was Lillian Bauer."
"Yes."
"Then she said she was calling as a friend, that she wanted to save me heartache."
"Did she use the word 'heartache'?"
"Then she said she knew we were having an affair, claimed we were having an affair. She said my phone was being tapped and there were recordings of our conversations, conversations I was supposed to have had with you."
"For Christ's sake!"
"Yes"— hysteria rose in her voice —"and she has a photograph of me leaving your house...."
"Use her words!"
"'I'll be forced to send the photograph to your husband. You'll be exposed before the entire community as an adulteress.'"
"Did she say 'adulteress'?"
"Yes, 'adulteress.'"
"That's some great word!"
"She said she was 'an angel of mercy.'"
"A what?"
"An angel of mercy."
"Oh, Jesus, I know who it is."
"Who is it?"
"It's a girl. But listen, your phone is not being tapped. There's no photograph. This is all Southern fried bullshit. She had a Southern accent, didn't she?"
"She had an English accent."
"An English accent! What kind of English accent?"
"It sounded like a fake English accent."
"Fake how?"
"English on some words and not on others."
"Was it Southern at all? Think!"
"I don't know, Oliver. Oh, Oliver, I'm desperate. What will become of me?" She began to weep into the phone. "He'll kick me out in the street and take the children. Oliver, what will you do then? Will you kick me out in the street, too?"
"Honey, she's not going to tell Gus. And, even if she did, she has no proof. In the first place, phone-tapping is illegal. It costs thousands of dollars to have a phone tapped. And, as far as a photograph goes, she doesn't even own a camera. It was all bluff."
"Oliver, how did she know about me? You told her, didn't you?"
"I give you my word of honor, may I drop dead this moment on this spot, if I told her or anybody else about us."
"How did she learn then, Oliver? If you didn't tell her, she found out by herself and maybe she does have proof."
"I'll find out how she found out. The thing now is not to worry."
"Oliver, she's one of your girlfriends, isn't she?"
He didn't answer.
"She said you had lots of girls and a steady mistress and she said you did dirty, perverted things with them. She's the steady mistress, isn't she?"
"What do you mean, 'dirty, perverted things'?"
"That's what she said."
"What do you say?"
"About what?"
"Do I do dirty, perverted things?"
"I don't know what you do."
"I mean, with you."
"I'm only telling you what she said."
"I want to know what you think."
"She is your mistress, isn't she?"
"Sweetie, we're not even sure who she is yet."
"You're sure."
"I'm not sure. The point is, not to worry, because nothing is going to happen."
"And if it does? ... Oliver, if it does?"
"It's not going to."
"If, Oliver, I said if."
"I'll take care of it then."
"I'm not worried about it. I'm worried about me. Will you take care of me? Me, me!"
"Yes, yes!"
"You won't. I know you won't. You won't, you won't." And with a last sob she hung up.
Oliver's boss had a normal-size body under a thick neck and a large head. He laid his hand on Oliver's shoulder. "The tit bit, Ollie. Arf's here." From his tone Oliver knew that he had been standing nearby during the call. It wasn't that the staff shouldn't make personal calls from the office, but this was a very personal call, and hearing it somehow put the boss one up on Oliver. The boss enjoyed learning of people's weaknesses; they seemed to confirm his view of human nature. "Titty bitty, Ollie-dollie," he said and squeezed Oliver's shoulder. Oliver's stomach turned. The boss' fingernails were manicured; he cleaned them frequently with his letter opener and wore a gold signet ring on his right pinky. Commenting on these signs of vanity, Oliver once said to Arf, "Does he think he's attractive or something? If I were Mather, I'd go to the toilet and never come out."
Ernest Mather, whom everyone called Mother, was an unlikely editor for Quiff. By way of New England storekeepers he was descended from the Puritan clergyman Increase Mather and had no feeling whatever for the kind of thing Quiff dealt in. Some people claimed he originally got the job because the organization needed a respectable front for its one girlie magazine, others that Quiff was started reluctantly and Mather was thought just the man to keep it from the extremes of vulgarity. Actually, Quiff was very vulgar. But, whatever the reason, Quiff had done well under Mather's editorship. It was currently the second or third money-maker in the field.
Although it was August, the staff was working on the Christmas issue, which would come out in October. Mather, Oliver, and Arthur Arf, the corporate art director, assembled around a conference table in Mather's office. "Ollie, do you want to fill Arfie in?"
It was a rhetorical question. Every month when Arf, making his rounds of the organization's magazines, stopped at Quiff to lay it out, Mather would say, "Ollie, do you want to fill Arfie in?" and Oliver would straighten his clipboard, sigh, and begin describing the issue in progress.
"The thinking is this, Arfie. Our strongest piece is on an L.A. mail-order house that sells prosthetic sex organs—artificial vaginas and penises. They're supposed to be substitutes for surgery victims and the otherwise impaired. Actually, we figure most of them are used by fags masquerading in the dark as women, and the penises are just old-fashioned dildos with a new wrinkle." The plastic penises were realistically wrinkled, and Oliver repeated his pun. Arf made a little barking sound, and Mather smiled. "The other wrinkle is that the firm is run by a group of L.A. physicians, whom we're naming."
"Illustrations?" Arf said.
"That's the problem. They've put out this brochure," Oliver passed it to Arf, "with crummy line drawings, which we can't use. Now, if it wasn't the lead piece, we could leave it unillustrated or stick in a cartoon."
Arf turned through the pamphlet slowly, nodding, clicking his tongue, frowning. Oliver glanced at Mather and recognized once again the look of quiet satisfaction on Mather's face when someone in his presence was deep in sexual thought.
"Do you have any samples?" Arf asked.
Oliver shook his head.
"OK. Get one twat, one prick! We'll hook them up and photograph them on a bed. Zzzzz!"
"Terrific!" Oliver said.
Mather wiped his eyes and looked quickly from side to side.
"Terrific!" Oliver repeated and waited for Mather's assent.
"Nnnnn," Mather finally said.
"OK," Oliver continued. "Now the present schedule follows with the Norman Mailer interview on masturbation."
"Is he for or against?" Arf asked.
"Against," Oliver said.
"What's the matter with masturbation?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from An Old-Fashioned Darling by Charles Simmons. Copyright © 1971 Charles Simmons. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
An Old-Fashioned Darling,About the Author,