Message-ID: <54651asstr$1160165402@assm.asstr.org>
From: "Samantha" <samanthak@fastmail.fm>
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Subject: {ASSM} My Dinner With Andrew  (no sex, sorry)
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Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:10:02 -0400
Path: assm.asstr.org!not-for-mail
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d


This is a new story, inspired by and dedicated to all those who emailled
me and told me they liked my work.
I wrote this in just a couple of days and you really have to have read
the book to understand it.



-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Faster than the air-speed velocity of an
                          unladen european swallow

<1st attachment, "My Dinner With Andrew.doc" begin>

My Dinner With Andrew
(no sex, sorry)
By Samantha K.
[comments welcome: samanthak(at)fastmail.fm]

I knew it wasn't the best idea in the world, but he seemed so
nice in his emails that I had to consider it seriously.  I mean I
know everyone says it's risky to meet people face to face that
you have only talked to over the Internet, but I felt that this
was a special case.

He said his name was Andrew.  His screen name was Andrw1066.  He
was one of the people who read my book in the ASSM group on
Usenet and sent me an email telling me how much he liked it.  

If you haven't read it yourself, go Google for '{ASSM} Sam -
Part'.  It will turn up on one of the archive sites.  I had to
break it up into 21 chapters to get it into small enough pieces
to post.  The whole thing is like 900 pages and I swear I had no
idea it was going to turn into the War and Peace of erotic
literature!

The amazing thing was the number of emails I got from people
saying how much they liked it and even asking for more stories. 
It seems it was popular among the - ahem - more discerning
readers of 'pawnogruffee', as it is called here in the South.  I
was highly flattered by all the nice comments, and I may have let
it go to my head a bit.  By the time I got to the one from
Andrw1066, I was positively giddy.  

I won't repeat what he said verbatim, but he basically told me
that he found the book to be well-written and very moving.  I
assumed by 'moving' he meant he had only one hand on the keyboard
while he was reading it and he had to stop frequently to
recuperate.  I know that's a big assumption, but hey, that's how
it affected ME and I wrote the darn thing.  I had to hike my
skirt up and sit on a towel whenever I worked on it or I'd soak
the chair.  I'm hardly going to pretend to be shocked to hear
that some guy jerked-off while reading it.  Beyond the fact that
I think it's the best review I could get, it makes me feel that
I've shared something intimate with a lot of people.

Andrew seemed sincere, and I sent him a reply right away thanking
him for the kind words.  He answered back and things kind of took
off from there.

After we had exchanged a few messages, he started saying how he'd
like to meet me and even take me out somewhere.  I thought he was
just flirting, but then he said he had figured out where I lived
from the clues he found in the book.  This was something of a
shock to hear, since I didn't put any 'clues' in the book.  In
fact, I thought I had changed enough of the names and places
around so that no one would know where I really lived.  Andrew
knew.  He told me where and he was totally right.

I was so shocked that my first reaction was to shut down the PC
as fast as I could, as if that would keep him from crawling
through the wires.  When I calmed down enough to think clearly I
realized I had accidentally sent him a couple of emails from my
personal account.  Still it was probably silly to be scared.  All
he knew from that was the city, and it's a good-sized place.  I
was sure there wasn't any real chance he could find me unless I
gave him my address.  Still, it was startling to have someone
figure that out.  It reminded me of what Neeka says, that the
Internet isn't the big anonymous place everyone thinks it is.  If
you are online, it's just like a phone call   it can be traced.

I decided right then to only use my off-shore account when
responding to reader's emails.  It's way off in Micronesia, which
is a place you can't hardly find on a globe using a microscope.

I left the PC off the rest of the day anyway, while I thought it
over.  Even so, the baleful stare of the dark monitor screen
seemed to follow me reproachfully whenever I walked by, radiating
waves of electronic guilt.  

"Oh, stop being such a wuss!" I told myself, finally.  "Either
agree to meet the guy or just tell him to get lost.  But make up
your mind."

I sat down and turned the PC back on.  While it came up, I tried
to figure out what I was going to tell Andrew.  Nothing brilliant
came to mind.  With the blank reply box on the screen, I finally
caved.

"Sure," I wrote.  "I'd love to meet you.  How about dinner on
Friday?  We could meet at the Green Grotto at 7."

The Grotto is one of several places near the college.  It's the
one where students take dates they want to impress, since it has
a more sophisticated ambience; good, but still reasonably-priced
food; and a great deal of greenery and fake rocks arranged to
give the illusion of privacy.  Some of their booths are downright
secluded, which I thought would be ideal for a private chat with
someone who already knew more about me than I was totally
comfortable with.

The message I got back said, "Wonderful!  I'll see you then." 
That was all.

I wondered for a little bit about how he planned to find the
place, but then I remembered all the map sites Neeka had shown me
and how you could get directions from anywhere to anywhere else.
Just for the fun of it, I went to one and typed in my address and
the address of the restaurant.  It showed me a map and gave a
list of directions that might have got me there, but wasn't at
all how I knew to go.  I hoped Andrew wouldn't get lost.



Friday evening came around very quickly.  I must have been
nervous, because I spent a lot more time than I planned getting
ready.  I even changed clothes twice, although I wound up wearing
what I had planned to from the start.

My dress was one that Mom bought me to wear to the fancy parties
she liked to go to and was nice enough to take me along.  It's an
incredibly slinky thing, deep blue synthetic fabric with the
draped, backless halter-top that looks so good on me, and a
separate skirt that is just two gathered panels of material held
up by a thin string that rides my hips.  The skirt is
calf-length, but the panels mean there are two slits all the way
up on both sides that let my legs show.  It's a dress that shows
a lot of skin, but nothing really scandalous.  At least it does
as long as I remember to move slowly so it stays put.  It got me
a lot of compliments at the parties and I hoped that Andrew would
like it, too.

The shoes were he tallest pair of heels I owned.  They didn't
exactly match the dress, but I wanted very much to look like an
adult when I met Andrew, not a little girl wearing her Mommy's
clothes.  That's an issue I guess I'll have all my life   that
I'm afraid people will look down on me figuratively as well as
physically.

I walked into the restaurant with as much grace and poise as I
could manage.  Meaning I didn't stumble or fall on my face.  I
was about to ask the hostess if there were any unattached
gentlemen hanging about when someone touched my shoulder.

"Sam?" He said.  Then added, "I hope."

When I turned to look at him, I'm afraid my face must have
betrayed how startled I was.  I nodded, briefly at a loss for
words.

"Not what you expected?" He said, seeing my expression.

"No!  Yes!" I said.  "At least, I...well, I guess not.  I didn't
know...."

This wasn't going at all well.  I had let my imagination draw a
portrait of Andrew and the man before me just didn't fit it.  The
real man was just a little bit taller than I was in my high heels
and slim, with a handsome face and a head full of wavy black hair
that had gone steel-grey at the temples.  He had to be in his
middle to late 40s.  What startled me so was finding that I was
on a blind date with someone old enough to be my father.  Older.
Daddy was only 39.

"You look very..." I started, and ran out of diplomatic
euphemisms.

"Please don't say 'distinguished'," he said, smiling.

"OK," I agreed.  "'Handsome', then.  Why not 'distinguished'?"

"Because it's usually a synonym for 'old' and I may be over 40,
but I don't feel old   yet.  You look wonderful.  That dress
suits you.  But I thought...."

"You thought I'd be shorter?"

He nodded and I wondered if I wasn't being given a quid pro quo
for my faux pas.

"It's the heels."  

I did a turn a little too quickly and bent a knee to bring one of
my four-inch heels into better view in the low light.  

"Once I learned to how walk in them without falling on my face, I
wear them whenever I get a chance, which isn't too very often. 
It's just so much nicer not having to look straight up at people
all the time."

The way he jerked his head down to look at my feet told me he had
been looking at something other than my shoes while I was doing
my twirl.  I didn't know how to take that.  I mean, I appreciated
him looking, but there was a big difference between being ogled
by a middle-aged businessman at one of Mom's cocktail parties and
being given the once-over by the same kind of person while we
were on what I kept thinking of as a date.  I wondered when it
had gone from 'dinner' to 'date' in my mind.

"Well, you wear them beautifully," he said.

I smiled and tried not to blush.  I'm a sucker for flattery, even
the total-BS kind. 

The hostess showed us to our table, a booth way in the back
corner that could have been in a rain-forest for all the plants
around it.  I didn't know if this was something Andrew had
arranged or if the hostess was just giving us the usual 'man
taking mistress to dinner' table, based on the obvious difference
in our ages.

Of course, as soon as I thought of it like that, my stupid libido
started making suggestions.  I tried to ignore it, but some of
the things it wanted me to do sounded really wicked.  I managed
to shut it up, but I couldn't turn it off.

Andrew held out his hand as I slid into the booth and I
gratefully braced on it as I lowered my rear down from the lofty
shoes.  If you've ever worn heels that keep you up on your toes,
you know it's possible to walk in them, but getting up and down
can be tricky.  I thought it was very considerate of him that he
was aware of this.  Then a small voice in my head asked if there
weren't other things that an 'older' man might know about how to
treat a younger woman.

Andrew ordered a Whiskey Sour and rather than get into the 'I
don't really drink' thing, I asked for a glass of white wine. 
Both were served in record time.  When I reached for my glass, my
elbow hit the edge of the table and I realized that I was
'sitting in a hole' again.  This time it wasn't too bad.  I was
just a bit too low to reach over the table comfortably.  I have
been in places where it was my head and not much else above the
level of the table.  This is a common problem for those of us who
are somewhat vertically-challenged and I had a few tricks to deal
with it without asking for a booster-seat.

I reached down and undid the straps on my shoes, slid back into
the booth so I was leaning against the far end, and pulled my
legs up under me.  With my back braced, sitting on my feet wasn't
uncomfortable.  And it did give me a few extra inches of
altitude.  This time when I reached for my glass, I didn't have
any trouble.  We both took a sip before continuing the
conversation.

"So, do you come here often?' Andrew asked, ignoring my
difficulty, which I appreciated enough to excuse his trite
question.

"Not really.  When I go out with friends from school, we usually
go for pizza.  A couple of guys have brought me here on dates,
but they were trying to impress me."

There I was with the 'date' thing again.  I wondered where this
was going and if I should really be going there.

"And were you impressed?"

"I guess a little.  It's nice when someone makes a special
effort.  They just tried a bit too hard, you know.  It
seemed...forced."  

As opposed to Andrew, I noticed, who seemed much more at ease. 
Another plus for a man of experience.  Andrew had invited me to
talk about my writing, but I wanted to know more about him
first.

"So, what do you do?" I asked.

"I'm what you call an entrepreneur.  I have several businesses
all over the country, but my involvement is purely as a silent
partner.  I don't actively manage any of them."

"What kind of businesses?"

"Whatever opportunities I can find that I think will turn a
profit.  A franchise chain here, a service firm there   it has
more to do with investing in people than in the businesses.  I
find people whom I think can make a business successful and I
partner with them.  I provide the money and they provide the
imagination and the drive."

"Imagination?"

"Oh, yes.  Edison said that genius is one percent inspiration and
ninety-nine percent perspiration.  I think business is like that,
only the amount of inspiration needs to be higher.  You have to
invent a business like you invent a product.  No matter how much
effort you put into it, it mostly depends on how good your vision
is of how the business should work."

"How do you find people to invest in?"

"I keep my eyes and ears open.  I talk to people.  Lots of
people!  Sometimes I see that spark that tells me that this is
someone with a vision.  If they seem willing to make the effort
to achieve that vision, then I make them an offer."

"You're a Capitalist!"  I said, flashing back on my Econ 101
class.

"Guilty as charged!  And I don't happen to think that is a dirty
word."

"Oh, it's not that.  I just never met anyone who actually fit the
definition before.  Everyone always seems to work for someone
else."

"Well, I help people who are willing to work for themselves. 
When they succeed, I succeed."

"Must be very rewarding work.  In more than one sense of the
word."

"It is.  And you are very perceptive to see that."

"It's part of being a writer.  I have a great deal of empathy.  I
like to get into people's heads and find out what makes them who
they are."

"Then you write about them?"

"Then I can explain how people interact with each other."  I
danced around that because I didn't want to say that some of the
people in the book were quite real.  Andrew seemed impressed with
my talent and I didn't want to confess that I wasn't as creative
as he thought.

"Your book seemed so...believable.  I know that sounds strange,
considering the subject.  I mean, a 'real' superhero?"

"Superheroine," I corrected him before I could stop myself.  I
started to add something else, but it was too soon to get into
that.  If at all.

"You must travel quite a bit?"  I made it a question.

"I'm on the road almost constantly."

"What about your family?"

"You mean, am I married?  I was."  He paused and took a sip of
his drink.  "She went shopping one day and a man tried to steal
her car.  He pushed her out, but she fell under the wheels and
was run over.  They told me it was quick.  That was several years
ago."

"Did they ever catch the man?"

"No."

A flash of anger at the senseless brutality of the crime and what
it had cost Andrew and his wife went through me like a strobe in
a rave club.  I felt my face get hot and I clenched a fist trying
to fight down the anger.  Fortunately, I wasn't holding the wine
glass at the time.

When calmed down, I saw Andrew staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing.  Just for a second I thought....  No.  Nothing."

"If you travel all the time, where do you go on vacation?" I
asked, more to keep the conversation going than anything.

"All the tourist spots.  Cancun.  Venice.  Paris.  Jamaica.  Did
you know that this restaurant is probably named after one of
Jamaica's big tourist attractions?  They have a big cave called
the Green Grotto and everyone who visits the island usually goes
to see it."

"An island with a cave?  That seems odd.  I haven't had any
Geology other than what was in my college-prep advanced science
course, but don't caves form from underground rivers and
limestone and stuff?"

"Many islands are, or were, volcanic.  Volcanoes leave lots of
caves, apparently.  I assume it's the gas forcing its way through
the lava."

"How interesting!"

"National Geographic stuff.  You like that sort of thing?"

"Oh, yes!  I'm a big science-special fan.  I watch all the
educational TV I can."

"Speaking of education.  I hope this isn't too personal, but are
you still in school?"

He got that look like he wondered if I were underage.  That's
something I get a lot of   people who are attracted to me that
suddenly wonder if they might be about to break the law and get
themselves branded forever as a pervert.  I sympathize with the
goal of that kind of legislation, but I wish they would be more
realistic about the age limit.  Teenage girls today are quite
capable of deciding for themselves if they want to have sex with
someone without the whole darn government interfering in their
social lives.

"College," I assured him without being more specific.  "It's been
a while since I wrote that book."  Not actually as long as all
that, but I wasn't going to start naming numbers and stuff.  A
girl's got to have her secrets.

"Have you decided on a major yet?"

"Not yet.  I'm leaning toward something in the applied sciences,
but I'm not sure what?"

"Have you thought about pre-med?"

I had.  I was.  I am.  He surprised me with that one.  I was
trying to decide how to answer that when our server came back to
take our order for dinner.  I chose the snapper and Andrew wanted
shrimp scampi.

When the girl left, I was suddenly uncomfortable.  Andrew had hit
very close to home with his question, and I still wasn't sure how
much personal information I wanted him to know.  I tried to shift
into a more upright position on the bench seat and managed to get
my skirt bunched up under me so it felt like it was trying to
slip off my hips.  Rather than look like a doofus and make a big
deal of rearranging and getting situated again, I discreetly
tugged on the bow in the string to loosen the skirt.  To cover my
adjustment, I stretched my legs out beside me and then slid a
hand onto my hip.

I became aware that Andrew was looking somewhere other than at my
face.  This time, he didn't stop looking right away and I didn't
try to distract him.  When his eyes got full and he went back to
looking at mine, he said, "You remind me of an odalisque."

"As in the paintings?  The reclining nudes?"

"Yes.  There was a museum in Venice that had an Orientalism
exhibit.  They even had a Lefebre.  The way you are sitting
brought it to mind.  You look remarkably like the girl in the
painting."

He went on about the other things he had seen on his trip to
Italy and I'm sure it was all very interesting but I didn't pay
very close attention.  I kept seeing myself lying nude on a couch
with a slave girl feeding me grapes while Andrew painted me.

No one had ever said anything to me that was even remotely that
sophisticated or that urbane.  My flattery meter went off the
scale and I started to pose before I could stop myself.  Even
when I realized I was doing it, I didn't quit.  The nice man who
thought I belonged on the wall of a Venetian museum deserved a
reward, so I gave him one.  I stretched like a cat and ignored
the way my skirt was sliding around on my legs.

I coyly put a hand into the deep neckline of my top and let it
rest on my breast, where I stroked my fingers casually.  That
always gets a guy's attention.  It worked this time, too.  The
travelogue petered-out in mid excursion.

Andrew stared at me like he wanted to take a photo, but had to
settle for memorization.

I let him stare as much as he wanted.  It was nice to be
appreciated like that.  The staring itself was very flattering. 
It was also more than a little stimulating and I began to feel
warm, despite my well-ventilated dress.  When I felt the
tightening that meant a couple of things were beginning to
crinkle-up, I thought maybe I should quit before I got carried
away.  The man was older than my father and I should try to keep
thinking of him that way.

Our server brought the food during the lull in the conversation.
She also refilled my wine glass, which had somehow gotten empty.

I took a big sip of the wine, which wasn't the best way to clear
my head, but was the only thing I could think of to do besides
sit there and smolder.

"I like your dress," he said, abruptly.

I was convinced that what he wanted to say was that he liked what
was in the dress, but he managed at the last second to blurt
something else.  I smiled slyly at how much I had rattled his
urbane composure.

"This old thing?" I said, picking at the drape of the top as if
rearranging it.  Andrew's eyes locked onto my hand as if I might
tug too hard and uncover something,

"Just something from the back of my closet.  It doesn't get out
much.  One of the biggest shocks I got when I started college was
how much more casually everyone dressed than we did in high
school.  Back then, we all took great pains to look nice and we
tried to keep up with the current fashion trends as best we
could.  On campus, everyone grunges around in clothes that I
would have reserved for working in the yard or playing with the
dog.  Once, I even saw a guy show up at our 8am English Lit class
in his pajamas.  No one said a thing to him.  I guess colleges
are out of the jurisdiction of the Fashion Police."

Andrew chuckled politely at my joke.  

"I think it's because most of the students have very little
experience doing their own laundry.  I'm pretty sure most of the
guys have never held a hot iron in their lives and I think they
take the term 'permanent press' literally.  I very much wanted to
buck the trend and wear my nice clothes to class, but that would
have been rude and I wanted to fit in.  So I had to wear the same
baggy and wrinkled stuff that everyone else did.  Mom had a fit
when I refused to let her iron my things.  Almost as big as when
I told her I wanted to live on campus."

Somehow my privacy-filter had slipped.  I was blabbing stuff I
shouldn't have.  Andrew very kindly interrupted me before I told
him my phone number, my social security number, and my real bra
size.

"Seeing you in that dress and hearing you talk about clothes, I'm
reminded of something you said more than once in your book,
something about being so beautiful that you shouldn't be allowed
to wear clothes."

I felt the blood rise to my face and spread down my neck onto my
chest and into my cleavage.  The flush of heat that followed
close behind was so strong I almost looked around for the fire. 
I wanted to say something casual, to deflect the implication that
he was referring to me, but my brain had gone into 'dumb blonde'
mode on me and all I could do was sit there and grin like an
idiot, while I stuffed my face.

We both took a break to eat our food before it got cold, but
every time I looked up I saw him looking at me.  It was
distracting and I kept thinking about his last comment and
whether I should take the flirting any further.  I was hungry and
the snapper filet was small and I when I finished it I was still
thinking about being in a painting.  The image kept shifting to
me sitting there in the restaurant without a stitch on.  I kept
sipping the wine.  It was very good wine.

Andrew's eyes dropped to my bust and the thin material of my top
and I knew that he knew that I was having one of those moments
when there isn't much you can do to deny what is going on inside
your head.

"Lovely," he said, making me twitch as the tightness bloomed into
fullness and my resolve to keep this meeting at the level of
friendly cordiality started to crumble.

"So, why did you start writing?" he asked, changing the subject.


I was so distracted by the sudden shift of topic that the truth
jumped out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.

"I had to get some things out of my head.  I thought if I wrote
them down, I could exorcize my personal demons by transferring
them to the story."

"You weren't writing for publication?"

"Ha!  Who would print it?  No, I did it just for me.  It wasn't
until I started reading what I had written that I changed my
mind.  This is going to sound vain, but I thought it was good. 
At least, I hoped it was.  I still thought about it for a long
time before I posted it in that newsgroup."

"You weren't wrong.  It is good."

"For what it is, you mean?  For being a 'dirty book'?"

"If you want to think of it that way.  I enjoyed it.  I'm sure
others did too.  Haven't you gotten a lot of fan mail?"

"Oh, please.  Don't call it that.  You're going to inflate my ego
so big my head will explode."

"How much of the book is true?"

"Too much.  I shouldn't have done that.  I won't make that
mistake again."

"Why?"

"Because I can't write my life like I can a book.  I started by
making a character just like me, someone who I could transfer my
problems to and have her solve them.  I needed someone who could
save me.  I created my own personal superheroine to save me from
myself."

"Did it work?"

"Sort of.  Not the way I thought it would.  Instead of her saving
me, I became the one responsible for her.  I was the writer.  I
had to help her get out of the situations she kept getting into.
The way I found to do that was by making her tough enough to take
whatever came at her no matter what it was.  She takes it and
transcends it and wins out in the end.  It's very therapeutic to
write that.  When she wins, I win.  When she can go through
everything and come out of it not only without having it break
her, but saying, 'Damn, I enjoyed that.  Let's do that again!' it
makes me feel like I can do the same - that I can get through any
adversity with the attitude that not only wasn't that so bad, it
was actually kind of fun and now I'm a better person for having
survived it."

Andrew looked at me about like I would expect someone to after
hearing all that.  

"I know," I said, avoiding his eyes.  "It sounds crazy."

"No.  It sounds human."

I wanted to crawl across the table through the plates and the
tartar sauce and the bread and kiss him for that.  I almost did.
Almost.

Instead I cried.  Right there in the restaurant with the plastic
palms hanging over the table and the taste of wine and fish in my
mouth and my skirt halfway off my butt I sat there and the tears
rolled down my cheeks and I cried like a big baby.  I managed not
to wail and I held the sobbing down so no one could hear me but I
was helpless to stop.

Andrew came around and slid into the booth next to me and I
grabbed the lapels of his expensive jacket and I cried all over
it.  He put an arm around me and rocked me like my daddy used to
do and I cried even harder until there were no tears left.

When I was able to get it together again, he paid the bill and
walked me out to my car.  Actually, it's Neeka's old car.  She
got a new one and Mom bought the old one for me to use while I
was still learning to drive.  I haven't totaled it yet, which is
something of a miracle.  I discovered that the nervousness I felt
when riding with other people vanished when I was behind the
wheel.

I drove back to my dorm the way I knew to go and when I got
there, I felt better.  Dinner was mostly fun and I looked forward
to doing it again sometime.  Maybe next time I could manage to
tell myself the truth and lie to my date rather than the other
way around.



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