After what seemed an eternity it stopped raining. Not that I really cared. It didn’t take me long to warm back up once I got into the hot tub. All of us were yentering in the tub when someone brought up the topic of the other two girls, Tracy and Samantha. We all wondered when they were coming in.
“I think that they’re coming in from out of town; maybe out of state. I can’t remember” Jessica said.
“Do y’all keep in touch or something?” Charlie asked.
“No. I just heard that they moved away some time ago.”
“Hey Mike, isn’t that shirt gettin’ on your nerves in this tub?” Deanna said, smiling.
“Not as much as you are” I replied and in an instant thought, ‘oh shit, I don’t even know her, where’d that come from’, so I just laughed real loud and said “Just bustin’ your balls, hun. Didn’t mean to be rude; sometimes smart-ass comments come out before I can stop them. Don’t take it personally.”
Deanna looked at me for a few seconds and said one word. “Bitch.” We all laughed at that and I mentally wiped the sweat off of my brow. I have no idea what made me say that.
“You know, it really is getting on my nerves.” I felt kind of awkward and was content to leaving my shirt on until ding dong said something. I took it off and sat back. I guess I didn’t have to be shy anymore since I was no longer a bean pole. That shyness is just something that you don’t ever get rid of. Oh well.
“I think I’ll do the same,” Scott said, and he proceeded to take his shirt off. Oye vey! I think that it’s pretty clear by now that the feelings of anger that I had toward him when I was younger were gone. He seemed like a really friendly guy and someone that I could easily slip into a comfortable friendship with. Top that off with the fact that I was attracted to him and you have….well, I don’t know what exactly you’d have. But I was definitely attracted to him. I knew that I was going to have to keep my lustful feelings in check. I’ve learned from experience that lust can sometimes get in the way of good clear thinking.
But then the shirt came off and all the good, clear thinking went out the window. He had a beautiful chest and was really quite toned. You could tell that he paid attention to his workout but he didn’t look like a ‘roid’. And while he didn’t have a 6-pack of abs his stomach was nice and flat. All of that was covered with hair. I think I got farblondzhet (for those of you unfamiliar with yiddish terms, it’s pronounced “furblungit” and means “all mixed up”) looking at him. I was dying to stare at him but, no-no-no, Mikey’s not out of the closet and we’re on television. Plus I didn’t want to embarrass him by drooling all over the place.
“Hey, do any of y’all want to show me where the liquor is? I’m not into champaigne and I’d like to make a drink that I really dig.”
“Hey, I’ll show you,” and Freddie got up out of the tub. He and I went downstairs and into the kitchen where there was a mini bar set up. I hadn’t noticed it when I first arrived.
“So Mike, where are you living now?”
“I’m in Marietta. How about you?”
“Vidalia.”
“As in the onion, Vidalia?”
“That’s it.”
“Well what sent you to the booming metropolis of Vidalia, Georgia?” I asked.
“Onions!” He said laughing. “My grandparents had a farm down there forever. My grandfather passed away when I was a sophomore at State so I moved down there to help Grandma run everything. When she passed away a few years ago I decided that I really liked the small-town way of life and country living, so now I’m an onion farmer.”
“Well, you don’t smell like onions” I said.
“Oh Vidalias are sweet.”
“I know. I was just making a goofy joke.”
“Ahh. Well the drink glasses are in here” he said pointing out the cabinet “utensils are in this drawer, and here’s the liquor. What are you going to make?”
“It’s called a week at the beach, and it’ll really knock you on your ass. Hey does this place have any tunes?”
“Yeah man check this out.”
We walked over to the entertainment center that had a ton of equipment. Big-screen t.v., DVD player, CD player, and some other things that I hadn’t a clue as to what they were. Freddie turned on the stereo and some great 80’s tunes were playing on Star 94.
“What’s that?” I asked pointing to something that looked like a cd player.
“That’s actually a cd burner.”
“Burner. You mean it smokes weed or somethin’?”
Freddie looked at me like the moron I was. “No, you can actually make, or burn, cd’s of your own.”
“No shit?”
“Yep. I don’t think that this one makes mp3’s, but it’ll make .wav files.”
“What’s the difference? I’m a teacher; I’m poor so I can’t afford these kind of tricks.”
“Well, basically an mp3 is a compressed version of a wav file. When you buy a cd the type of file you’re listening to is called a wav file. What radio stations play now are mp3’s because they are about one-tenth to one-third the size of the original files. If you go into a studio you’ll never find the old albums or even cd’s like they used to play. Everything plays off of a computer.”
“Well I’ll be damned. That’s pretty cool. But how do you even get an mp3 file?”
“Come here and I’ll show you.”
Around the side of the entertainment center was an area of cabinets that opened up to reveal a computer that had internet access.
“Check this out” Freddie said as he got onto a webpage. “This is a website that allows you to share music with other people.”
“Dude, I’m new to this whole internet thing.” And I was. I had a computer at home but it was basically used to keep track of grades and make lesson plans. My other time was spent managing my stable of man-whores.
Freddie went on to explain what eventually would become the whole “Napster” fiasco before they were sued, and how someone could download music onto their own computer. Once it was on the computer they could transfer it to a .wav file on the contraption over near the television which would put the songs on a regular cd that you could listen to in any cd player.
“Well hellfire. That’s pretty cool!” I said “So I could look for a song here, download it to the computer and then burn it to a cd which I could turn around and listen to on my cd walkman?”
“Yep.”
“Now how cool is that.” I looked at him for a second and said, “Not a lot goes on down in Vidalia, does it.”
He chuckled and said “Why?”
“Well, for an onion farmer you know a lot about electronics, and obviously your time isn’t taken up by a lot of social activity” I said dryly. I was joking with him and thankfully he picked upon it.
He laughed a bit at that. “Actually I was going to college to become a studio engineer, so a lot of that I picked up along the way. I’ve always been into music and hoped that I’d have my career in production someday. You can learn a lot from music. It always has something to say.” This statement was to become sort of Freddie’s motto in the apartment.
“Ah. I see. Well baby, I needs me a drank. Go fetch me some orange juice and cranberry juice and we’ll all get drunker ‘n cootie brown!”
I proceeded to whip up my specialty drink. 2 parts orange and cranberry juices, 1 part vodka and 1 part peach schnapps. Oh my! I fixed a couple of pitchers, Freddie grabbed some glasses and we headed upstairs.
“Alright y’all! We got some drankin’ to do!” I announced once we got to the hot tub. Deanna had snuggled up pretty close to Scott and was talking in lower tones to him. “Well ain’t you the comfy little ho!” I said to her laughing.
“I’m trying to be.” Scott started to look a little uncomfortable as she laughed and smiled up at him.
I just rolled my eyes. “Honey, you’re gonna get that nasty women’s disease if you keep doin’ like you’re doin’.”
Deanna out a huge laugh. “Nasty women’s disease! What the hell’s that?”
“Well, you can tell us in a few years” and I kicked water on her. Everyone laughed at that. “Alright then, now for the drink of the day. My mighty concoction.”
“Your going to give us your concoction?” Scott smiled.
I paused for a minute and said “Baby after a few of these you might even be offering me yours!” Again, laughter from the tub. “That doesn’t mean I’ll take it, mind you, but you still might be offering.” Yeah, right. I guess one way to describe my sense of humor is that if you took Carson and Thom from the show “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” and put them together you’d have my humor and sense of delivery.
“So what’s the drink, Mike?” Jessica asked.
“It’s a Week At The Beach, aka Sex On The Beach.”
“Funny, I’ve never had sex on the beach from a guy” Scott grinned.
“Well I’d have brought sand but didn’t know which side your bread was buttered on, stud.” He burst out laughing at that.
The drinks were flowing quite well. Everyone loved my “standard” as it became known that day. After a couple of drinks I was feeling quite tingly! The conversation changed from one thing to another. We learned about where each other was from, who was married, who was divorced. Nobody had children yet. I guess as a kid it would have sucked to have your mom or dad gone for 8 weeks, so I was glad for that.
“Hey, how did y’all find that secret door anyhow?” Scott asked. “I was only downstairs for a few minutes and y’all had all disappeared by the time I came back up.”
“Charlie was looking at some of the books on the shelf and went to take one off.” Deanna said. “He noticed that the shelves seemed to shake or rock or whatever and that’s when we discovered that it opened up.”
“Cool. Well that explains that. I didn’t even know that we were going to have a hot tub or else I’d have brought my swim trunks.”
“Same here” I said. Now if he wanted to get nekkid that was fine with me, but instead I just said, “Now don’t y’all go getting’ any ideas to get in here in the buff. We don’t want to spread them nasty women’s diseases around.” They all laughed at that.
“Hey Logan, that sex was good enough to drink twice,” Scott said.
“Baby, mine usually is,” I said in a mock-sultry-yes-I-really-meant-what-I-said-voice. “Or in your case, four times.”
“Hey man I only had one.”
“You had one big bullshit, because I saw you drink three.”
“Damn. I didn’t think anyone was watching” he said smiling.
I had a good buzz going and knew I’d better get out of there quick before I said something I shouldn’t. He locked eyes with me as I was getting up and I almost fell over onto him but I steadied myself.
“Uh oh, looks like Logan needs a chaperone” Deanna said.
“Not from you, gal.” She flung water at me and laughed.
“Keep that up and I’ll kick your ass” she said.
“Keep that up and we’ll get along just fine, baby.” I replied. You could tell that this girl was sharp and she had a great wit about her. I was liking her more by the minute – and by the drink too.
I got out of the hot tub, wrapped a towel around my waist, grabbed the now-empty pitchers and headed back down. I was feeling somewhat tipsy and it wasn’t even dinner yet. Oh well, screw it, I thought. I got the liquor bottles from the bar and set them on the island which overlooked the living area. I stood there looking out the window at the skyline. What a great skyline it was! Is! To the south is the Peachtree Plaza which is across the street from what I always thought of as the temple building. It’s a building a bit taller than the Plaza and had what looked like two temples at the top, hence the name. Then heading up Peachtree Street was another building by a locally-famous developer where the old St. Francis Hotel used to be. Then in mid-town you’d see the Southern Bell, the Bank of America building and the IBM Tower (lovingly referred to by a friend of mine as a gothic penis) as well as a few other mid-rise office buildings and Colony Square. Further north from that was the area known as Buckhead where all the yuppies lived. I loved my city.
Enough daydreaming. I turned from the island to get the juices from the fridge and before I could stop myself ran smack into a wall….again…..a Scott Dell wall. He was right behind me and when I turned I ended up with one hand at his stomach and the other on a pec. Whew!
“Whoa, sorry dude,” I said. “Didn’t hear you come in” and I quickly took my hands off of him. I could have stayed like that forever, though.
“I was just enjoying the view,” he replied, smiling.
I turned back around and faced the windows. “Isn’t it awesome?”
“Oh, I thought it was terriffic.”
“Dude, you like those weeks at the beach don’t you. Pal, you’ve had about a month's worth.” He laughed. I was starting to pay more attention to his laugh. It was really nice.
“Sex, Logan.”
I turned and looked at him. “Yes, I have it from time to time.” Oh douchebag! Mentally I rolled my eyes back in my head. Sometimes I say the stupidest friggin’ things!
“Goofball. I mean the drink. I’d rather call it Sex On The Beach.”
“Well, alrighty then” I stood back at the island and started mixing the pitchers of drinks.
“That way when I say ‘Logan, I want some sex’ you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
I shook my head and grinned. “Hey Scotty, we’re on t.v. remember? Let’s not let all of our secrets out, k?”
He laughed out loud at that. “Sorry man, I haven’t eaten lunch yet and I’ve had two of those things already.”
“Three.”
Smiling, “You don’t miss anything do you.”
I cut my eyes at his pecs and looked up real quickly. “I try not to miss a thing.” How flirty could I get here? I’d have to play it by ear. “In that case,” I continued,” I’ll have to make these a little stronger.” I got a big grin from him on that one. Perfect teeth.
Oye, this is going to be along 8 weeks!