Turning Looney

Turning Looney

       by Ram 'em Reimer

I was on my way to a rendezvous with fate when a woman of great beauty and youthful gait turned toward me and addressed me.

       "Sir," she said, measuring my demeanor and costume with a practiced eye, "do you have it in your heart to spare some change for someone in a dire strait?" I studied her for a moment before reaching into my pocket for the few coins I carried. She took the money from me, profusely thanked me, and made as if to embrace me.

       "No," I said, and shook my head with vigor. "I do not wish for another woman to ever throw her arms around me again. I have had altogether too much of that sort of thing and my wife at home is adequate to meet all my personal needs."

       So saying, I turned to go, but the beauty followed me at a short distance, not taunting me so much as continuing to enquire if there might be something she could do for me. I had much time on my hands. Salesman for a wealthy firm, holding an executive position, with secretaries trained and capable, well paid as they were, my absences, when they occurred, bothered no one. I simply went where and when I chose.

       She did not desist and I decided that by the next intersection she must be gotten rid of. However, she stopped speaking before that could happen, walked up to my side, took my arm and placed it around her shoulders.

       "I am your long-lost great grandmother, Adina. I died in the Mekong Delta serving there as missionary to the Viet Cong in the nineteen-twenties. A bullet from a bad sort of man, a soldier of fortune, brought my young life to an end. Now, reborn, I come here to seek my family and wish only for some physical contact, some sign of recognition and love."

       I could not believe my ears. "Reborn?" I said, distainful and showing as much with my contracted brows. "My great grandmother? How do I know that you are speaking the truth? Of course you are not! There is no such thing as rebirth. Or returned great grandmothers!" I had finished with her, but she asked one more question.

       "Have you never heard of the distinctive birthmark your great grandmother carried with her?" I hesitated to commit myself. "The one shaped like a girl's pudendum?" I looked about me, hoping no one had heard.

       "Yes," I whispered. "The story goes that she did bear one of those blemishes on her person." I felt ill, knowing something momentous was in the works and I was powerless to stop it.

       "I wish to show it to you to prove that I am not an imposter. And remember, my only interest is to make loving contact with my family after all these years!" She questioned with her eyes and hands. I hesitated with my feet and torso. She approached. I retreated. Then we nodded and she began to walk away.

       "Well, aren't you going to show me ?" I asked, miffed that she would so soon forget her line of reasoning. She smiled back at me and said that the showing would have to take place in a less public location. I blushed, agreeing inwardly, chastising myself for a fool.

       In a McDonalds near my place of work there is a special room set aside for conferences. It has a long table with a few dozen chairs. The windows are curtained and opaque. I was known there and asked for the door to be unlocked. We were not to be disturbed, I said, until I gave them indication otherwise. We entered. We sat down. She reached for me. I balked.

       "First the birthmark," I said. She frowned.

       "No, first the embrace." I did as she instructed, which was to step nearer, place my arms about her neck, and hug her. I am not much given to embraces, especially such as smack of the intense and the passionate. Since this was my great grandmother, I felt that no great danger lay before me. I did as she instructed. I placed my arms about her neck and squeezed with a modest pressure. When to my astonishment I felt a warmth of the most disturbing sort enter my being. Her person, lithe, light, and tender to the point of astonishment to the experiencer, produced in me a set of emotions that left me perspiring and shaken.

       "I . . . ," I said. I looked at her eyes and they swam with love and joy, blue as the lightening playing along a mountain ridge in the humid dusk sometimes. She pulled at her skirt.

       "Now for the mark," she said, and looking straight into my eyes she raised the hem till her thighs showed, and higher, until her plebid and snuftling buttocks and sorters showed themselves to me, pale and exquisite as the lankiness of woman can ever be.

       She lifted one leg and indicated for me to approach.

       "Oh," was all I could manage.

       "Closer. Much closer," she said, taking my head in her hand and coaxing it into position, where it stayed the next ten minutes. On the upper reaches of her blighnesting, next to her central heating, sat the lucky mark, one of fine texture and lovely hue, shaped just like the part that resided kitty corner to it.

       "I . . . ," was what I said. She lowered her leg at last and whispered for me to lie down upon the conference table. In a moment she had stretched out on top of me and had my vestitures open and my womat taking the air. She manipulated it with willful vigor for a few minutes and then we joined each other in an embrace that I, for one, shall never forget.

       I never saw her again. She disappeared from my life. I do not think that I ever actually saw great grandmother but only imagined her in that state and story. To keep myself from repeating such flights of fancy, I took to working later, with greater energy, and with a new ambition that surprised my fellows in the office. They thought that I had turned looney, I now believe. Little did they know.