A Line A Day: FEEDING THE SQUIRRELS (Chapter Two)

There has never been any need for me to hold down a nine-to-five gig, a fact that I never cease to be grateful for. Corporate America holds absolutely zero appeal to me. Just about everyone I know who is caught in that trap complains endlessly about it, and the rare few who don’t seem to mind their captivity are to a man or woman the least interesting people I’ve encountered.

Having been spared from such a fate by a generous inheritance, I have never experienced one of the more popular forms of interplay amongst the sexes – the interoffice romance. On the plus side, this has exempted me from the risk of being accused of sexual harassment. It also means I’ve never been the boy-toy of a female superior, which strikes me as a considerable perk that I’ve missed out on. Although I do not don a suit and tie five days per week and schlep a heavy briefcase to some office, or worse yet, some cubicle, I have done beyond my fair share of hiring. Since my home and my office are one and the same, and in part because I was raised by a woman who came pretty close to the textbook definition of germaphobe, I am rather obsessive about cleanliness and order. As result, I have gone through a great number of cleaning services in search of a crew who would meet my demanding white glove standards. One after another they failed to measure up until the day Gladys and Carmela entered my home and removed every last speck of dust from all nooks and crannies to be found. I was nearly brought to tears by their thoroughness. At last my search was over. For three years they dutifully showed up once a week and worked their magic, sweeping, mopping and dusting with a fervor that allowed me total peace of mind.

One day Gladys showed up with a new comrade. Carmela was feeling under the weather, so Natalie had agreed to temporarily step in for her. In three years I had not had a single sexual urge while my apartment was being cleaned, and one look at Gladys and Carmela is all it would take for anyone to figure out why this was so. They were both darling women, but neither of these middle aged Columbian women warranted a second glance. As for Gladys’ twenty four year old daughter, I never took a second look at Natalie because I was incapable of unlocking my initial gaze, even though I had much difficulty fixing it to one particular area. Her pouty lips seemed custom designed for the activity I most loved to be performed on my favorite body part. A snug, abbreviated shirt could barely constrain natural breasts that were remarkably perky for their impressive size, and also showcased an athletically taut abdomen. Tight shorts highlighted flawless legs and an ass that surpassed perfection. Apparently she had no idea how to properly dress for a cleaning gig, much to my distraction and delight. Her incredible array of curves had me hypnotized, mesmerized, and if I be permitted the artistic license to invent a word here – hornyized as hell.

As luck would have it, Gladys needed to run out for five minutes to restock her cleaning fluid. This gave me a minute and half longer than I needed to convince Natalie to stop by later that evening on her own. Her command of English was rather shaky, but the passion burning in her eyes spoke the same language as my own. I did suspect that her lust was perhaps of a slightly different variety than mine. She may have been in search of a sugar daddy who would guarantee that this would be her last time cleaning someone’s apartment for spending money. It could have been that she had a thing for older men, not so old that stamina would be an issue, but old enough to have mastered what they were doing to a woman’s appreciative body. Or maybe she simply got a mildly perverse kick out of being paid to make a man’s bed only to return and mess it up again. I could not say for sure, nor did I really care. My only interest was in paying homage to the magnificent job that God had done in molding such a splendid specimen of womanhood. I have known women who spent a fortune on personal trainers, Botox injections, liposuction, plastic surgery, the most exclusive make-up, hairstylists, facials, etc. simply to be a distant runner up to the likes of Natalie. The sex would no doubt be amazing even if she was relatively inexperienced, earth shattering if she possessed the basic requisite skills, and due to our language barrier, conversation before and afterwards would be minimal. I had no complaints whatsoever.

Natalie became my weekly fix for the next few months. Our affair was kept secret from Gladys upon my request. Natalie did not have a problem with this. Her love life was her business and now also my leisure. At first she surpassed my most erotic wishes to such a degree that I was genuinely smitten, my version of it anyway, which means an erection would start forming as soon as the buzzer of my apartment let me know each Wednesday that she had arrived. But by our fourth bout of furniture breaking fornication it had become obvious that her biggest language flaw was not a limited grasp of English, but rather, that she had very few interesting things to say. We had virtually nothing in common. She didn’t seem especially interested in learning anything new about the world from me, and since I was already acquainted with the words of Spanish she screamed out in the heat of the moment due to previous dalliances with Latinas, there was little for me to learn from her. This was a guaranteed recipe for boredom regardless of how good the sex was, and once I was thoroughly familiar with her body and no longer needed to fantasize about what every naked square inch looked like, even the sex became merely ordinary. When she started to hint that it would be nice for me to expand our routine by taking her out to the movies, or clubbing, or shopping, or getting together with her friends rather than just erotically occupying ourselves in the confines of my apartment, it was clear that the status quo would have to change one way or another. She was interested in dating as well as fucking, whereas simply the latter served me quite fine. I was almost surprised to discover that my appetite for her was not insatiable. Apparently I preferred a relationship with Natalie that was sort of similar to the one I had with her mother. I wanted her to come to me and service my needs, at which point I was content for her to leave. Since I did not pay Natalie for her time as I did her mother, the writing was on the wall that our time together had run its course. She seemed to handle it pretty well. There were no tears, no anger, no doe eyed asking for another chance. Natalie was so composed and mature about our break up that I almost rescinded it at the last minute. But the big head prevailed over the satisfied one, primarily because I waited until after we had made love one last time to deliver my prepared speech. The following week Gladys and Carmela did not punctually arrive at my door as was their habit. Once they were past fifteen minutes late I began to fear the worst case scenario. It was confirmed when I called Gladys’ cell phone and was cursed out in Spanglish for messing around with her beloved daughter.

No matter how poor the service, I know not to treat wait staff rudely if I don’t want something unappetizing to be placed in my food as revenge. I would never offend the barber who was cutting my hair because I’d rather not have to shave my head or wear a hat every day for several weeks. And thanks to Natalie, who ended up teaching me something valuable after all, I’ve learned that regardless of how fine her daughter may be, never to jeopardize my relationship with a top notch cleaning woman. They are too few and far between. I’ve lost track of how many I’ve gone through in the year since I last saw Gladys and Carmela. I remain picky and dissatisfied about the one facet of my life that was happily settled for awhile, with no one but myself to blame.