Anatomy 601 - interlude
By Dreamspinner



In some ways, Portland was the same city I had left four years earlier. The
hills surrounding downtown were still dotted with homes precariously balanced
on impossibly steep inclines, held on the level by long pilings driven into
bedrock, and the older neighborhoods in the northwest quadrant were still home
to a diverse mix of artists and nouveau riche who desperately wanted to be
bohemians.

But in other ways the city was not the same. In four short years, the skyline
had changed completely. Shiny new office buildings interrupted the previously
unobstructed view of Mt. Hood from all but the highest points. For another
thing, the old concrete two-lane Sunset Highway leading into the city from the
west was now a full six lanes of smooth blacktop.

When I left 1968, Vietnam was just beginning to stretch the fabric of society.
I distinctly remembered the hoots that had greeted one of my professor's
remarks against the war in the first semester of my freshman year at Portland
State. But when I returned in 1972, the mood on campus was very different.
Protesters were everywhere ... on campus and on the streets of the city. Not that
I gave a shit about the issue ... my conscience was clear about what I had done,
but when I found myself attacked personally ... that was a different story. More
than once my short hair and jungle boots identified me as a veteran and drew
the attention of an angry handful who taunted me. Once a bunch of them
followed me as I was on my way to class, singing, "Hey, Bungalow Bill, what
did you kill, what did you kill?" as I walked along. It took every bit of
willpower I could muster not to turn and beat the shit out of every one of
them.

The strain of it was wearing me down. I longed for my old mama- san ... she had
been grateful for us being over there and often told me so. I wanted an
expression of the same kind of gratitude from even one person. But nobody ... my
so-called high school friends included ... even offered to take me out for a beer
the day I came home.

I was wanting to lie down with a woman real bad even before my first
one-on-one with Professor Hensley in the stairwell of the Morris Building.
Holding the little professor in my arms and feeling her tongue playing against
mine had intensified my longing and as the time for our second one- on-one
drew closer, she came strongly into my mind ... especially in the late
afternoons.

I had been surprised when the sight and feel of her big calves made my dick
stiff and for the first few days afterwards I resisted thinking about it when
I put my hands on myself ... the idea of muscles like hers on an old woman seemed
somehow, well...wrong. But hardons being what they are, mine took over and I
came to nurture the idea of feeling those hard legs ... whenever it occurred to
me and wherever I happened to be when it did.

"Hey!" the cute waitress said. "You OK?" Her warm hands were on mine.

I looked into her brown eyes. "Why?" I asked. I left her hands where they
were.

"You were staring," she said. "You stopped eating and were just staring," she
said. She rubbed my forearms.

I turned my hands over and took hold of hers. "I was thinking about
something," I said. "That's all ... just thinking."

She squeezed my hands. "You seem do that a lot, I've noticed," she said. "What
were you thinking about?"

Her questions drove the image of Professor Hensley's bulging calves away, and
I felt the blood slowly draining from my penis. I shifted a bit on the stool.
I looked at the bowl in front of me and then to her name tag, pinned
strategically on her lapel. "I was thinking how good your bean soup is
tonight, Roseanne," I said.

"You were not!" she declared. "C'mon, tell me!"

I still had hold of her hands. They were warm and soft. I lifted them to my
nose and took in a long breath. "Detergent, beer, fried chicken, beans, and
four-hour old nail polish," I said. I opened my eyes and met her gaze.

Her mouth fell open in mock astonishment. "Very impressive," she said. "But
you didn't answer my question." She pulled her hands away and put them on her
hips. "Tell me what you were thinking about, willya?" she asked. She walked
around and sat on the stool next to mine and crossed her legs. I couldn't help
noticing how big her calves were. "Now," she said, "Would you please tell me
what you were thinking about?" She gave me a jab in the ribs exactly where I'd
been shot tens months earlier. I went far away. The memory of a hot slug from
an AK 47 tearing into my flesh filled my mind. I'd had the strangest
recollection the instant it had happened and I had the same recollection
again, sitting there next to Roseanne. I remembered when my father and I were
walking along a creek in the Ozarks. I was eight years old. My dad told me to
watch my step, but being eight years old I had disregarded his warning and
slid down the bank and landed on top of a cottonmouth. He bit me on the
shoulder and it felt like somebody turned a blowtorch on me and that's exactly
what it felt like when Charlie nailed me. The next thing I remembered was the
feeling of a Huey pulling G's, trying to get the hell out of a hot LZ.

"Hey! Hey!" Roseanne said. "Where'd you go?"

I wiped my eyes.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

There was a napkin dispenser on the counter. I pulled out a handful and gave a
big honk into the wad. "I'm OK," I said. I took in a long breath and blew it
out. "I'm OK," I said again.

"Are you sure," she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Now, what were we talking about?"

"You were staring," she said. "When I asked you what you had been thinking
about, you said you were thinking how good my bean soup was, but I wasn't
buying it. Remember?"

I shook it off and looked around. My eyes found a calendar on the wall.
'August, 1972,' it read. There was a picture of Crater Lake above the grid of
dates. The cute waitress uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Her bulging calves
caught my eye and brought me back. "Oh, yeah," I said. "I was thinking about
this anatomy class I'm taking...or rather, the professor who teaches it," I
said.

"Really?" she said. "Then I'd say your professor was a woman."

"Now it's my turn to be impressed," I said. "What gave me away?"

"You were shifting around on the stool like you were getting a boner," she
said.

That was the other thing that had changed since I'd been away ... when I left in
1968, people watched what they said, but now it seemed like people talked
about anything that entered their heads no matter where they were, who was
around, and regardless of whom they were talking to. It was like the lyrics of
the old song, Anything Goes. I wasn't adjusting to that very well either, but
it didn't look like it was going to go back to the way it used to be any time
soon. "I was," I said.

She banged her palm on the counter. "I knew it!" she declared. "What's she
like?" she asked. She hopped off her stool and struck a pose. "Is she as
pretty as me?" She twirled around on her toes like a ballerina. The only other
two customers in the place barely looked up from their coffees.

It came to me then that the way Professor Hensley stalked into the classroom
was exactly the way I had seen a ballerina taking center stage when I was
thirteen. My mother had dragged me to a performance of the Joffrey. "It will
be good for you," she had said. "It will expand your horizons," she insisted.
I wanted to be out playing catch, but went anyway.

"Hey!" Roseanne said. "You're thinking again, aren't you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry."

"Well," she said. "I'll ask again...Is your professor as pretty as me?"
Roseanne stalked around between the tables in that ballet way. She lifted her
skirt. "Don't you think my legs are excellent?" she asked, turning away,
rising on her toes. Her calves bulged. She looked at me over her shoulder.
"I've taken ballet ever since I was four years old," she said.

Roseanne came up and wrapped her arms around my neck. "Do you muscley legs?"
she asked. "Some people don't, but my ballet teacher does. She says they're
excellent."

"Really?" I asked. I worried that the other two customers would overhear our
conversation, but they were having a quiet argument.

She pushed away and twirled around again. "Yep," she said, still twirling. She
stalked past me on her toes and said, "If you saw my ballet teacher on the
street you'd think she was just an old lady, but if you saw her in a leotard
and tights...wow! She's got muscles everywhere...and especially in her legs!"
She came back and put her foot on the edge of the stool next to mine and
pointed her toe. "Look at my calf," she said, patting the hard muscle. "I
measured it the other day. It's fifteen inches around, but hers are
seventeen!"

I reached out and felt her leg. I squirmed in my seat again.

"You're getting a boner, you're getting a boner," she sang. "You like my
muscley legs, you like my muscley legs," she sang again, pointing her toe. The
two arguers were still going at it, hammer and tong.

My hand went to stroking Roseanne's big, hard calf. I couldn't believe it. I'd
only been back in town a few weeks and I'd met two women with big calf muscles
who liked it when someone got turned by them. It was amazing, really. I
wondered if every woman in town was like that. If that was so, I thought I
could get used to it.

The two others got up and came to the register to pay their bill. They were
still hissing at each other, totally focused on their argument and evidently
oblivious to Roseanne's antics and, what my hand had been doing.

Roseanne got up and took their money and locked the door behind them when they
left. She came back and reached into the utility closet and flicked off all
the lights in the place except one over the counter. Then she walked to the
windows and started to pull down the blinds. After she'd drawn down the third
one, she turned and said, "Hey! I just remembered...there's a party at my
ballet teacher's house tonight. Would you like to go?"

"Who's going to be there?" I asked.

"Usually she has a lot of dance and theater people at her parties. Her lover
will be there, of course."

"Her lover?"

"Yeah. A woman named Greta...a German woman. Kind of a housekeeper- friend...I
don't know. I could never figure it out exactly. Greta's a dealer, too,
somebody told me."

"I don't know," I said. Roseanne's remark about Greta being a dealer made the
alarm bells in my head go off.

"C'mon," Roseanne said. "It'll be fun. One thing's for sure; there'll be
plenty of dope. If we're lucky, Greta and Mademoiselle Ruth will get so fucked
up they'll do a naked tandem bump-and-grind."

Marijuana was one thing Vietnam and Portland had in common. It was everywhere
in 'Nam. You could smell it a mile away if the wind was right. If you were
smart you wouldn't even cut one if you thought Charlie was around ... what we ate
made our farts smell different than his and the foreign odor would lead him to
our position. Smoke a joint and he'd be on you in a split minute. A black guy
I liked real well was enraptured with the shit. He couldn't pass up a chance
to get stoned. One day when we were hunkered down he went ahead and got real
fucked up. He was listening to Jimi Hendrix on his headphones and got into
playing his piece like it was a guitar. He stood up to bend his pretend guitar
strings and Charlie blew his head off with one shot. His headset landed next
to me. I could hear Purple Haze coming out of the little speakers with him
lying there with his brains splattered all over me.

The shit was everywhere in Portland, too. In the apartment building where I
was living a few blocks from Portland State, the sweet, sick smell of burning
pot came up through the register every night. I'd had enough to know I didn't
like the way it made me think and I didn't like what the smell made me think
about so I shut the registers. Being at a party with a bunch of stoned-out
theater people wasn't something I was wild about, but seeing two lesbians
doing a naked tandem bump-and-grind ... that was another matter. One time I'd
seen two Vietnamese girls fuck each other in the ass with a two-headed dildo
on a bar top in Saigon and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Besides, if there were
other dancers at the party, odds were that I'd get to see more calves like
Roseanne's. That would be a good thing, I thought.

Roseanne had her arms around me again. She nuzzled against my neck. "Are you
finished thinking?" she asked.

"Is it really that obvious?"

"It's like you go far away," she said. "Where do you go?"

"Far away," I said.

"You shit!" she said, and went to smack me on the shoulder, but I caught her
wrist and turned it ... hard. "I'd like to ask you not to hit me, please," I
said.

"I was just playing," she said. "Jesus...you don't have to be so sensitive."
She rubbed her wrist. "You really hurt me," she said. Tears came to her eyes.

"Look," I said. "I am really sensitive...to certain things. I didn't mean to
hurt you and I'm sorry if I did. It's just that I'm..." Words were failing me.
A thousand images pounded across my mind. All I wanted to do was lie in bed
with Roseanne and fuck the night away but instead I said, "What's the use
trying to explain. Let's just call it a night, OK?" I stood up and went to the
door without looking at her.

I turned the knob and pulled on it. Roseanne came over. "I locked it,
remember?" she said. She put in the key and turned it.

I didn't open the door. I let my forehead on the glass and just stood there
staring at Roseanne's reflection. The lone light over the counter made the
cute waitress a silhouette. "I think you need to come with me tonight," said
the silhouette. "Being around people will help take your mind off what
happened to you in Vietnam," she said.

"How did you know?"

"Do the words 'open book' mean anything to you?"

I turned around and let my back to the door. "Open book?"

"Yeah," she said. "Look at you ... you're wearing a camo jacket and jungle boots,
your hair is well...whitewalled."

"And what else?" I asked.

"And you act like your walking on eggshells ... that's what else," she said. "The
only time I've seen you relax is when you were feeling my calf muscle...that
seemed to pacify you. Otherwise...well, you're on edge."

She stepped close and wound her arms around my waist. "On second thought," she
said. "Let's skip the party. Come with me," she said. "Let's go in the back
room." I hesitated. "It's OK...really. My dad owns the place. He leaves it to
me. C'mon," she said. She took my hand and pulled. "It's OK," she said.
"Really."

I went, my stiffening dick leading me like a dog straining at its leash.

Roseanne left the one light over the counter burn. Its light shone dimly into
the back room. She took her clothes off in a hurry. In the dim she was no
longer simply cute ... she was beautiful. Fifteen watts of light playing on her
lithe, hard body made her look as if she had been torn off the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, given life, and plunked down in the back room of a greasy
spoon in Portland, Oregon.

"Let me undress you," she said, and without waiting for me to give her the
go-ahead, took hold of my belt buckle. With her strong, waitress hands she
undid me and before I knew it my pants were down around my ankles. In a
moment, my jacket was undone and lying on the floor, and in the next, my shirt
was gone. Roseanne's hands played on me and the memory of my mama-san came
strongly to me.

She went to her knees and took me in her mouth. My hands played across her
strong shoulders and arms. Roseanne was a powerfully-built woman and I liked
it very much.

To be continued