Miss Bolton

 

 

           

 

            Miss Bolton was eighty-five years old.  Several of my friends and I rented rooms on the second floor of her large old Victorian house when we were graduate students.  She barely spoke to my friends, but would often ask me to stop and visit with her for a moment as I left for class in the morning, or when I returned in the afternoon. 

            As the weeks went by, our visits lengthened.  Soon, we were having regular ‘conversations’ over coffee in her parlor.  Most of our so-called conversations were really monologues.  She was lonely; she had lost her fiancée in World War One, and had never dated after that.  She had no close friends, and really didn’t like television.  She liked to read, but there was no substitute for ‘real human contact’, as she put it. 

            Even though Miss Bolton tended to monopolize our conversations, she was genuinely interested in me, and would occasionally put questions to me I had never been asked before.  Despite her age, she hadn’t lost a bit of her intelligence—she surprisingly alert and as sharp as a tack.  But what surprised me most about this old woman was her interest in my sex life. 

            The first time she asked me what turned me on about a woman, I nearly choked on my coffee.  I couldn’t believe that little old lady had asked that question.  And if that weren’t enough, she waited for me to answer with what I knew was more than mere curiosity.  Her slightly tilted head and the way her fingertip moved slowly around the rim of her cup could only mean one thing—she was seducing me—and that question was the first step. 

            But the shock of hearing that question come from between wrinkled lips wasn’t the only reason I nearly choked.  Miss Bolton had asked me about something I had never told anyone.  For as long as I could remember, muscles on a woman had turned me on more than anything else.  Since I was a boy, the girls I had been attracted to had been muscular—and the bigger their muscles, the more I liked them.  My friends had all made disparaging remarks about the kind of girls I liked, saying they looked like musclemen, and hooted insults at them as they walked past.  Consequently, I had kept my passion a secret—I didn’t want my friends to make fun of me.  What was more, I had avoided going out with the very girls I wanted to be with most.  Instead, I dated conventional-looking girls; cheerleader-types, with big boobs, and slender, unmuscled legs and arms.  But when I masturbated, a memory-tape of all the muscled calves and bulging biceps I had ever seen played in my mind—there wasn’t a boob in sight.    

            Miss Bolton’s question had given me pause; so much pause, in fact, that she reached out and touched me on the arm, and asked me if I was OK.  I apologized, saying that her question had taken me by surprise.  That was putting it mildly—she said I had been staring into space for three minutes! 

            “If you’re OK”, she began, “Would you mind telling me what you were thinking about?”

            This old woman had really put me in a bind.  Carrying my secret around ever since I could get a hardon hadn’t been easy—I had wanted to tell someone for years.  On the other hand, the prospect of actually sharing my secret with someone; to say the words out loud, was daunting, even frightening.   “Well”, I squeaked, “It’s kind of personal.”

            “I’m sure it is”, she said, reaching across and taking my hand.  “Sexuality always is.”  

            I was silent, debating the wisdom of telling this old woman what no one else had ever heard.

            “You know”, she said, “It might do you good to get it off your chest.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, defensively.

            “I meant no offense”, she said gently, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze.  “I had the sense you were hesitating because you were embarrassed about what you liked…that’s all.”

            That was all it took.  I told her everything, beginning with the first time I masturbated up through the last, and all the girls with muscular calves and arms I had seen in between.  What the hell, I thought, she might be right—it might do me good to get it off my chest.

            She was right.  A half-hour later, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.  “Miss Bolton, you were right.  I do feel better!”

            “Good”, she responded.  “Now then, now that what you like isn’t a secret anymore, what are you going to do about it?”

            “I hadn’t expected I would have to do anything about it…what do you mean?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.

            “Well”, the old woman began, “by telling me, you’ve come to terms with your secret preference.  Now, I would think”, she said, her fingertip moving slowly around the rim of her cup again, “that you would want to start having sex with girls—or women—with muscles.  That way, you could reify your fantasy.”

            I felt like my heart had jumped into my throat.  It was the way she had said ‘women’.

            She went on.  “And maybe you’d like to start with me.”              

            “You?”

            “Yes, me.”

            Her suggestion reminded me I had never seen her dressed in anything but slacks and long-sleeved blouses—even on the hottest summer days when she was out working in her garden.  I had thought at the time it was because she was worried about skin cancer, but I also remembered noticing how easily she moved and how easily she lifted heavy things.  I was surprised, in fact, that she never asked me or my friends to help her carry in her groceries.  Now that I thought about it, I remembered I had once seen her lift a fifty-pound sack of water softener salt out of the trunk of her car and carry it up her front steps and hold it under one arm as she unlocked her front door—without even stopping to catch her breath.

            “Since I heard your ‘confession’” she said, “I have something I would like to confess.  Will you hear it?” she asked.

            “Of course, Miss Bolton”, I said, feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience.  What more could there be, I wondered.

            In fact, there was much more.  My eighty-five year-old landlord told me she had been one of those girls boys made fun of because she had big muscles.  In fact, her muscles were still so big, even at her age, she said, that she always wore long-sleeved blouses and slacks so people wouldn’t see her bulging biceps and thickly-muscled calves.  People can be cruel, she said, a half-hour later.   

            She took a sip of her now cold coffee.  “There’s more.” 

            Miss Bolton went on to say that she, too, had a secret.  Hers was a longing for a man who would admire, even worship, her muscles.  This is what her earlier offer of ‘starting with her’ pertained to.  Would I be interested, she wondered, in a mutual reification of fantasies?  Just the two of us, she proposed, exploring our secretmost desires in the safety of a relationship with no strings attached.  For her, it would be a fine finish to what had been a long, frustrating life.  For me, she said, it would be a precedent, and would make ‘coming out’, so to speak, easier for me.

            Her logic was flawless.  She was right:  If I could learn to thoroughly enjoy female muscle in this old woman’s bed, I would be freed of my burden and be able to choose a woman who really turned me on, instead of choosing a woman I thought would fit within my friends’ parameters. 

            And she would find fulfillment in the sunset of her life.  Yes, I was willing, I told her.  I wondered, though, how we would begin.

            “Like this”, she said, and unbuttoned her cuff.  She began rolling up the sleeve of her silk blouse.  My jaw dropped.  Heavy blue veins covered her thick forearm.  When the cuff rolled to her elbow, she pushed it up to her shoulder.  I watched, spellbound, as she raised her arm and bent her elbow.  Her old biceps expanded into a softball-sized mass of quivering muscle.  I was afraid the burgeoning mass would burst through her thin, milk-white skin.    

            My dick was hard as a broomstick.

            “Feel my muscle”, she whispered.  I stood up and walked to her side.  Her arm was as hard as stone.  “Keep on feeling it, my sweet young fellow”, she urged, as she unzipped my pants with her other hand.  In a moment, she had me in her mouth, tasting me as if I were as sweet as candy.  The harder I squeezed, the more vigorously she moved her head, sucking, licking, and finally, swallowing.    

 

*   *   *

 

            “That was the day my life began to change”, I said, brushing the dirt from my hands. 

            “It sounds like it, honey.  The pansies are beautiful.”

            “Purple ones were her favorite.” 

            “You must have loved her.”

            “I did—I still do.  She freed me.  Without having known her as I did, you and I could never have what we do.” 

            “Are you ready?”

            “Yes”, I replied.  I bent and kissed the headstone that read:  “Cora Bolton, 1890-1979”, then turned and followed my wife to the car.  I couldn’t help admiring her thick, diamond-shaped calves.  Even in flats, they were spectacular.  In heels, they were beautiful almost beyond imagining.

            I always did like muscular girls, I thought, as I looked at Cora’s headstone one last time.