Charlotte

 

 

            This woman had been telling the truth—he was certain.  All the others who claimed to have big muscles, no matter how convincing they might have sounded in the beginning, had all slipped up and said something ridiculous that had blown the fantasy.    

            Those slip-ups had ended his requests to speak to the ones who had seemed most promising; Dawn, Roxanne, and Mary.  He had thought the one who called herself Dawn might be the one he would talk to for a long time until one night, just as he was about to have his orgasm, she told him she had a ten-pack.  That had put an end to his hardon and to the call.  He had slammed the phone down in anger. 

            He shook his head at the memory.

            But Charlotte was different.  Closing his eyes, he remembered their first conversation.  The recollection was clear.

 

*   *   *

 

            “Hello?”

            “Is this Victor?”

            “Yes.”

            “This is Charlotte.”  The voice was southern, honeyed.

            “The dispatcher told me you had big muscles.”

            “I do.  Is that OK?”

            “I asked her specifically if she had a muscular woman I could talk to.”

            “I can’t believe it!  Most men are intimidated by my muscles.”

            “Really?  I love women with big muscles!”

            “You do?”  Her voice had sounded like the sweet smell of jasmine. 

            “As far as I’m concerned, the bigger the better!” 

            “Well, you’d love me…I’ve got eighteen inch calves and twenty inch arms!”      Hearing those measurements had made my dick hard as a pole, but then a doubt came gnawing immediately into my mind and I wondered if she were lying like all the rest, and I began to lose my hardon.  But I had pressed on, still hopeful.

            “Were you muscular as a girl?”

            “Yeah.  My best girlfriend used to tease me about having ‘football player shoulders.’”

            “How did that make you feel?”

            “I was self-conscious about them anyway”, she had said, ‘it was the last thing I needed to hear.”  As she said that, her voice had the ring of truth; she seemed to be relating something that really happened.  I unscrewed his tube of KY.

            “Go on.” 

            “Well, I started lifting in High School, and at the time, it was just to tone, you know.”

            “Yes.  Go on.”

            “And I was an athlete back then; I played basketball and softball.”

            “But when and how did you get so big?  Twenty-inch biceps—that’s really big for a woman…”  I wondered again if she was lying. 

            “It was because of my boyfriend in college, he was a lifter, and he wanted me to lift really heavy.”

            “Yeah?”

            “The thing about him, though, is I don’t think he was interested in me as a woman somehow…”

            “Why do you say that?” I had asked, squirting KY on my throbbing dick.

            “Well, he never, you know, acted like my muscles turned him on.  I wanted him to feel them while we were fucking, but he didn’t.” 

            She had sounded suddenly very sad.

            “They would’ve turned me on…in fact, I’m about to come right now, just listening to you talk about them.”

            “Really?  God, you make me feel so sexy, being what I am.”

            “I think women with big muscles are sexy.”  I was at the point of ejaculatory inevitability. 

            “My ex-husband used to call me fat…”  She was almost crying.  I could hear it plain.

            “But you’re not, are you?”

            “No…I’m just muscular.  My arms are big, my legs are big, and I’ve got these broad shoulders.  I’m all hard”, she said finally, “except my tits!”  She laughed and I came, groaning into the phone, thinking about this woman with the broad shoulders and big arms and soft tits and the honeyed voice. 

            She had been surprised and delighted to hear someone come listening to her talk about her muscles.  “Thank you, Victor, thank you for coming for me!”  she had cried.

            “No”, Charlotte, I had countered, ‘Thank you!”

            “Please call me again, won’t you?” she asked.

            “You can be sure I will, Charlotte.” 

            I meant it.  And I had called again, many more times.  

 

*   *   *

 

            Victor and Charlotte had learned much about each other, talking at least once and sometimes twice a week in the six months following their first conversation.  She was 44, he 55.  They were both divorced.  She had been doing phone sex for six months when they first had spoken; he had been making calls for a year or more. 

            She had gotten a job as a phone sex girl simply to make some extra money, but had discovered it had opened up an “exciting new world” for her—a world in which she could explore her ability to read between the lines her clients fed her to find out what really turned them on.  And she had found she was quite good at getting to the heart of the matter, and become one of the most asked-for girls. 

            Most of he clients, she had said, were interested in talking dirty, or liked to insult her, calling her “bitch”, and “cunt.”  That, she said, was the part of the job she disliked most. 

            Some wanted her to demean them, and begged her to tell them what ‘bad little boys’ they were.  She felt sorry for them, she confided.  Hearing them achieve orgasm while they were being reprimanded for imaginary crimes was heartbreaking. 

            Neither did she like talking to men who wanted her to say she could beat them up, or pin them in a wrestling match, or lift them above her head.  “I could do that”, she had told him, “but I wouldn’t really enjoy it.”  She was strong, she said, probably stronger than most men, but the idea of dominating a man did not turn her on. 

            What she really wanted, she had said one night, was someone like him—a man who enjoyed her big muscles, but did not want her to use her strength to best him.  She simply wanted a man to love her.  And if sex with such a man was made better because of her muscles, so much the better.  And as she had talked more about that, she had said she was searching for just that sort of man.

            For his part, Victor was searching, too.  He was searching for a woman like Charlotte: sweet; soft in all the right places; appreciative of his admiration of her muscles; and one who would not use her strength to dominate him.

            Victor was not a masochist.  His attraction for muscled women did not disguise a secret wish to be humiliated.  For him, muscles were his fetish; they enabled him to enjoy his sexuality. 

            He was muscled, too.  He had been a competitive soccer player for over forty years, and been lifting hard for thirty.  Although he did not have the genetics that would allow his muscles to grow as large as Charlotte’s, what he lacked in size, he made up for in hardness, definition, and grace on the field.  He was often mistaken, he had said, for one of the players from the over-30 league.  In truth, though, he said, he played on a team in the Latino over-50 league.   

            Charlotte had liked hearing that, and had asked Victor to talk about playing.  His descriptions of the goals he scored excited her immensely, and she began to masturbate with images of Victor’s powerful legs in her mind.    

            The relationship between Victor and Charlotte had changed ever the course of the time they had been talking.   They had grown as close as a man and a woman could, given the parameters within which they had to operate, and when they had gotten to the point of saying, “I love you”, and “I love you too”, at the end of their sessions, it was clear that they wanted to break the rules. 

            One night, after they had both come, they said it as one: “Let’s meet, face-to-face.”

 

 

*   *   *

 

            All of these things were in Victor’s mind on the flight from Indianapolis to Columbia, South Carolina, and they were also in Charlotte’s mind as she waited in the airport with the sign that had ‘Victor’ written on it in black magic marker.

            The man’s heart raced as his plane made its final approached, and hers raced as she saw the 727 break through the clouds.

            What if she lied?  he thought, walking up the skyway.

            What if he lied? she thought, holding up the sign with the name on it. 

            But the instant they saw each other they knew the other had told the truth.  They raced to each other and held each other tight.  I am so relieved, they thought. 

            “You look wonderful, Charlotte”, he said in the car.  She had worn the dress she believed flattered her most: sleeveless, knee length, red.  She loved how the contrast between the green and yellow flowers and the deep red fabric accented her natural coloring, and because it was knee length, she knew her thick calves were clearly visible.  He will like that, she had thought as she slipped it on.  And he will like being able to see my arms.  When he sees me he will know I have told the truth. 

            White sandals, a silver bracelet and matching barrette in her thick black hair.  Bright red lipstick.  He felt blood rush to his loins, and reached over and felt her heavy biceps. 

            “And you, Victor, are all I had hoped you would be.”  He had dressed for the occasion, too.  Shorts, Adidas sandals, flowered shirt, and a heavy gold bracelet—not a chain, but a bangle, thin on one side, thick on the other, with a small gap on the thin side.  She put her hand on his crotch.  “Can you wait until we get to my place?” she said, laughing.

            “Maybe not.  Can you?”

            “Yes”, she said, “we’re only three blocks away!”

            “Here we are.”  She turned off the motor.  They fell into each other’s arms, kissing and hauling at each other.  “Let’s go inside”, she whispered.  “My condo’s on the second floor.”

            At the stairs, Victor said, “After you”, beckoning to the steps.

            “You just want to see my calves, don’t you?”

            “You’re damned right I do!”

            “I’ve been working them extra hard, hoping we were all we said we would be, dreaming of your eyes watching my calves work as I climbed the stairs.  They’re nineteen inches now.  Watch.”  With that, she began her climb.   

            Victor’s mind suddenly swarmed with thoughts.  She wasn’t lying!  They’re everything…she’s everything she said she was.  I want her.  I am going to have her within minutes! 

            At the door of her condo, Charlotte turned and kissed him.  She pushed her tongue deeply into his mouth.  “Victor”, she said, between breaths, “I will do anything you want me to.”

            “I want this, Charlotte: do what you want.  I am no longer your telephone client.  With luck, I will be your lover.”  And they went inside.

 

*   *   *

 

            “Are you asleep?”  The words were southern-accented, now honeyed more than ever, whispered only a few inches from his ear.

            “No.”

            “Where did you learn how to make love?”

            “Why do you ask?”

            “I’ve never cried after an orgasm.  It seemed to come out of nowhere.  It was like an emotional orgasm after the physical one.  You must have learned how to do that before!” she declared.

            “Charlotte”, he said, propping himself on an elbow, “I did only what I wanted to.  I didn’t set out to make you cry.  I thought you were sad, actually.”

            “No, Victor.  I wasn’t sad…I wasn’t feeling anything, and yet, I was feeling everything at once.  It was like all my emotions were wrapped up into one.”

            “And now?”

            “And now, I feel more fulfilled than ever.”  And with that, she drew him near and kissed him and he felt her body that was hard and soft in all the right places, and he drew her to him again and she slipped him inside her and he entered her like a child sliding into warm bathwater.  And when they had finished, she wept again, and he held her until she quieted.

 

*   *   *

 

            As she slumbered, Victor lay on his side and looked at the kudzu-covered trees that grew near her window, and his mind was full of thoughts about this woman with the broad shoulders; this woman who had been teased about her muscles when she was a girl; this woman who had longed for a man such as himself;  this woman who cried after she had orgasms, and he began to weep himself, not from sadness but of relief, for at that moment he believed himself happier than he had ever been and he allowed himself to believe his search was finally over.   

            When he quieted, he scooted himself next to her and made spoons with her in the bed, and listening to the sound of her breathing, thought, I am glad we broke the rules, Charlotte, I am very glad. 

            Then he let sleep take him, too.