A Woman at a Distance-Epilogue
By Dreamspinner



Six months to the day after the Editor gave the nurse his business card, Kathy
fetched the card from the innermost pocket of her billfold and held it up to
her nose. She thought she could smell him on it still.

"Give me a call when you're ready," he had said at the door that past August.
His words were wise ones. It had taken all of six months to get 'ready.' There
were websites that featured muscular women, he had said. Kathy had spent many
late-night hours surfing and had much to tell him.

She picked up the receiver and dialed.

The Editor was glad to hear from her, he said. He had been wondering about
her, he said. Would tomorrow be too soon, he asked. There was a flight first
thing in the morning""he could be there by early afternoon...if that was
convenient. Kathy had told him that would be fine. As an afterthought, she
told him she had been thinking a lot about his suggestion that they
collaborate. "Good" he had said. "See you tomorrow, then," he said, and hung
up.

Thoughts of him rose up unbidden in the Nurse's mind the instant he clicked
off. She had admired the shape of his mouth when he spoke, and the shape of
his mouth and other thoughts about him came strong upon her. She held his card
to her nose again, and thought of the feel of his hand in hers. She remembered
how she could almost feel his eyes on her as they sat together in her living
room and she grew wet between her legs.

Thoughts of these things and more pressed in upon her in the minutes before he
was due at her door. She was pacing in her living room, admonishing herself
for being nervous. When the knock came, she opened the door and he stepped in
and kissed her on the mouth. She did not resist""she had imagined what it
might be like to kiss him many times as she lay in bed, waiting for sleep, and
now that he had his mouth pressed against hers, she found it was as good as
good as she had imagined. She liked it very much.

He drew away. "Well, hello Kathy," he said. "I've thought of you often."

She cleared her throat. "I've missed you, too," she said. "Can I get you
something...a soft drink, maybe? Or I have some beer. Would you like a beer?"

"Do you have coffee?" he asked.

"I'll make some."

"I don't want you to go to any trouble." He put his bag and briefcase down.

"It's no trouble, really," she said. She turned and walked to the kitchen.
"Make yourself comfortable," she said from there. "Did you have a good
flight?"

He collapsed on her couch. "Long flight from LA to here," he said. He
stretched. "Do you mind if I put my feet on the coffee table?"

"Please," she said. "That's what it's there for."

He could feel the tension leave his body. The flight had been bumpy and the
Editor really didn't care for turbulence. It was good to be on solid ground
again, he thought""and good to be in the presence of this woman. She was
reassuring somehow without trying to be. She felt solid to him""not only
because of her densely muscled body, but also because she seemed more herself.
That was the kernel of it, he thought suddenly""this woman knows who and what
she is and likes it. She hadn't seemed as comfortable in her own skin when he
had seen her before, but she did now. He wondered why.

She came back in, carrying two cups. "I forgot to ask...do you take your
coffee black, or..."

"Black" he said. He took the cup.

The nurse sat next to him and to a sip of her own. He saw she took it black,
too. "I've been taking black coffee ever since nursing school," she offered.
Sugar and milk spoil the taste...at least for me." She took another sip. "Is
yours OK?" she asked.

"Just right." He took a sip. "In fact, I don't think I've ever had better."

The Editor awoke to the sounds of kitchen noises""the clatter of a spatula,
the heavy scrape of an iron pan on a gas burner, a quick jet of water followed
by a muttered oath. "Hey!" he called. "Why did you let me sleep? How long was
I out?"

She came out and sat beside him on the couch. "An hour," she said. "I couldn't
bear to wake you. You went to sleep holding the coffee on your lap. I put it
on the coffee table. I didn't want you to spill it...you might have, 'injured'
yourself." She laughed a little, uncomfortable laugh.

He took in a big breath, blew it out and smiled at her. "God, I must have been
tired," he said. He sat up suddenly as if he was going to stand. "You didn't
need to cook," he said. "I would have been glad to take you out."

"It's no problem, really," she said. "It's been a long time since I've cooked
for anyone." She pushed him back against the cushion and patted him on the
inside of his thigh. "I've got to check on something." She rose and went back
into the kitchen. He followed her with his eyes. He compared what he saw with
what he remembered: same thick calves, same solid ass, same narrow waist. He
remembered how he had stiffened as he drove along after the first time they
had been together and he stiffened again, sitting there on her couch, watching
her move around her kitchen, her calves making corners when she reached high
for something.

The Editor and the Nurse ate without saying anything until the silence became
more than he could bear. "Kathy," he said. "Let's plunge right into it."

Her fork stopped halfway to her mouth. "Plunge into it?"

"Pardon my clumsy way of putting it," he said. "What I mean is, ah, well..."
he stopped, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks.

"You're blushing," she said.

He laughed. "Yes," he said. "I hate it when I do that."

"It's cute," Kathy said.

"I don't like thinking of myself as 'cute,'" he said.

She waved her hand. "Never mind, then. Go on with what you started to say."

"Yes, OK," he said. "Plunge into it. Right! Was that where I was?" he asked.

Kathy nodded. "Plunge away," she said.

"I've got something I think you'll be interested in." The editor got up, went
to his briefcase and pulled out a manila folder. He brought it back and handed
it to the nurse.

She turned it so she could read what was written on the tab. "'An interview
regarding the subject of female muscle.'" She frowned. "What's it about?"

"Exactly what it says," he said. "Incredible as it might seem in light of the
Writer's secretiveness about his particular fondness, he once granted an
interview to someone who""ironically enough""turned out to be a writer for a
major men's magazine. I found his scribbled notes about how it happened when I
was cleaning out his place. It seems that the Writer was looking at a women's
muscle magazine at a newsstand when this guy came up to him and asked, 'Aren't
you so-and-so?' He said he tried to deny it but the guy pressed on. Anyway,
they had drinks. One thing led to another and before he knew it, they ended up
back at the Writer's place having more drinks and he let the guy interview him
and...he let him tape the interview! The guy sent him a transcript of it,
which is what's in the folder. I was so intrigued by the title I sat right
there on the floor and read it straight through."

Kathy had already opened the folder and was leafing through the pages. "It's
printed out like an interview you'd read in a magazine, isn't it?" she asked
without looking up.

"Yes."

The nurse looked at the Editor. "Let's read it""you and I. I'll be the
interviewer and you be the Writer. What do you say?"

He smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that. I made a copy of it. It's in my
briefcase." He got the copy and came back to the table.

"Let's sit on the couch," Kathy said.

"Here, Kathy said," scoot close. She patted the cushion next to hers. The
Editor moved over.

"Start with the handwritten preface," he said. He put his arm on the couch
above her shoulders.

"OK," she said. She cleared her throat. "This is an interview about the role
female muscle plays""and has played""in my sexual life. Female muscle is,
after all, all about sex. My opinion, anyway."

She went on. "I granted this interview in a weak moment. My interviewer is the
only one on earth ever to hear my thoughts on the subject. I suppose I let him
question me in an effort to get to the bottom of this thing that has plagued
me ever since my early hardons. Sadly, even though I spilled all the beans,
I'm no closer to getting to the nub of it than before it started, but some of
it is quite interesting. I made my interviewer sign an agreement not to
publish it while I was still alive."

"The bastard got me drunk""in vino veritas. I gave him my signed permission to
get with that prick of an editor I've got so they could make an agreement on
publishing my remarks. He persuaded me that if someone with as high a profile
as me made a clean breast of how I felt about female muscle it would help
reshape how muscular women were perceived generally. It seems like a crock of
shit now""the morning after""but last night I bought his argument
completely""hence my blathering about the damned thing, carefully transcribed
in embarrassing detail herein."

Kathy looked at the Editor. "Let's start."

"OK," he said. "Remember, you're the interviewer and I'm the Writer."

Kathy cleared her throat and said, "I'd like to begin by thanking you for
agreeing to be interviewed, sir."

"I'm drunk, you fuck""you've taken advantage of me."

Kathy put the folder on her lap and said, "I'm sad already."

"It gets worse," the Editor said. "Go on."

She cleared her throat again and said, "Right you are. Let's begin. When did
it all start, anyway?"

"The business of girlie muscle, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Truthfully, I don't remember muscle not being part of my sexual life except
for very early on."

"Tell me more."

"Well, when I got a stiffie for no good reason, it was just there, you know.
Just there, this hard 'thing.' I didn't understand it, so I asked my Dad about
it. He said I'd understand when I got married. That was my 'birds and the
bees' talk. It happened when I was about nine years old."

"If muscle wasn't part of it from the very beginning, when did it enter in?"

"Before puberty""that I know for sure. Of the memories I have, one in
particular stands out sharply. I remember getting a boner at the sight of a
woman flexing her muscle. She was on TV. We""I mean my family and me""were
visiting my aunt and uncle and we were all watching this program. I have no
idea what it was about, but there came a point in the show where a man and a
woman were getting ready to fight for some reason. The man was puffing himself
up in an attempt to intimidate the woman. She responded by rolling up the
sleeve of her dress and flexing her biceps at the man. The sight of her muscle
popping up made my little dick as hard as a pole."

"Do you remember what you thought when you saw that?"

"I do. I remember thinking that her muscle wasn't supposed to be there""I mean
that it was somehow wrong for her to have one. It was so 'visible'."

"Did it have anything to do with the fact that she was flexing her muscle at
the man in an attempt to intimidate him?"

"No."

"OK, you said she rolled up the sleeve of her dress and flexed her biceps. She
was wearing a dress, you said."

"Yes, a cotton print dress. Late 1940's style. Cap-sleeve, as I remember."

"I see this made quite an impression. Did she remind you of anyone? Your
mother, perhaps."

"Far from it. My mother was very soft and 'unmuscled,' to put it mildly."

"Did you tell your father about this?"

"No. By this time, the idea of getting a hard dick seemed like something I
needed to keep secret""as if I was the only one on earth who ever got one."

"So it went from something you could be open about to a forbidden idea in a
matter of a few years."

"Yes. The 'end of innocence,' if you will."

"Tell me about the first time you masturbated."

"When I was about twelve, a friend told me about this real cool thing you
could do. It sounded good, so that night I tried it."

"And?"

"And it was very cool. Just like my friend recommended, I used short, swift
strokes and went off in seconds. But my penis stayed swollen for hours""even
though it was flaccid. I kept taking it out and looking at it to see if it had
returned to normal. When I saw that it was still swollen I thought I'd damaged
it somehow."

"What happened?"

"I managed to go to sleep, even though I was desperately worried. When I woke
the following morning, it had shrunk back to its normal size. I was relieved,
of course. So the next afternoon I did it again. Clearly, it owned me. The day
after that, I did it again, and so on. Good thing it's nearly indestructible."

"Was the idea of female muscle part of sex back then?"

"No. That came later, if you'll pardon the play on words."

"What changed it""or why did it change?"

"I don't know."

"You seem sad. Are you sad about that?"

"Yes. I wish sex had stayed pure."

"You think it's contaminated in some way?"

"I do. Now, I have to conjure up some image of a woman's muscle if I want to
come. I just can't let the sensation alone carry me away."

"But is that really a problem? You used the word 'contaminated,' as if
thinking about a woman's muscle while you jack off has somehow spoiled it."

"You've gotten to the nut of it."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"What can I do?"

"Find a woman with muscles and fuck her."

"Well, that is an appealing idea, I'll grant you."

"But..."

"But that would take more courage than I can muster."

"Why is it frightening?"

"I don't know, but it is. Always has been. That's the hell of it""on one hand,
it's what I want more than anything. But on the other hand, something stands
in the way."

"What is it that's in the way?"

"If I knew that, I'd have done it already and you wouldn't be pestering me
with these damned questions!"

"Let's get back to a safer subject then!"

"OK, if we must."

"We must. Now then, what are your favorite muscles on a woman?"

"Calves and biceps""in that order."

"Why those in particular?"

"Well, it has something to do with the shape of them, for one thing. The other
is that they're visible."

"Let's start with shape and then we'll get to the 'visible' part. What is it
about the shape of them?"

"Take the biceps, for starters. When a woman lifts something, or combs her
hair, her biceps seems to bulge up out of nothingness. It contracts into a
lump every time she flexes her elbow, or supinates her wrist as she brings a
fork to her mouth""now that's a real turn-on!"

"Explain what 'supinates' means."

"You are ignorant, aren't you?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"And a smartass, too."

"Please explain 'supinates.'"

"If I must."

"Please."

"All right. The medial head of the biceps assists in supination of the
wrist""that is, turning of the palm of the hand towards the body is
'supination.' Turning the palm away is 'pronation.' Anyway, when a woman
supinates her wrist, the medial head of the biceps contracts""really, it's the
other way around. The medial head contracts and that assists in supination of
the wrist. If a woman's skin is thin enough (or her muscle is developed
enough) you can see both the medial and lateral heads squeeze into nice lumps.
My 7th grade teacher had good ones. I used to watch her sitting at her desk,
leafing through a stack of papers. After she'd read a page, she'd flip it over
so it would lie face down. It was the turning over of the papers that was the
important thing. As she turned her wrist over""that is, as she 'supinated her
wrist'""the muscles of her upper arm ran up into a lump""or rather, two
lumps""one on the outside of her upper arm, the other on the inside. The lump
on the inside is the medial head and the one on the outside is the lateral
head. There""that's your anatomy lesson for the night."

"I can feel the heat coming off you."

"Very funny."

Kathy put the transcript down. "I can just see him sitting in his seat,
watching his 7th grade teacher at her desk," she said. "Can't you?"

The Editor thought for a moment. "He was at his best when sex propelled him."

Kathy nodded. "I don't know his other works, but I'll take your word for it,"
she said. "Let's go on," she said.

She picked up the transcript and began to read again. "OK, what about calves.
Talk about them."

"They're probably the most visible of a woman's muscles, because of the simple
fact that women often wear dresses."

"And?"

"And because of that, I notice them."

"And?"

"They, too, seem to come out of nothingness""as a woman climbs a flight of
stairs, for example. The heads of the gastrocnemius contract and extend her
feet, propelling her up. One squarish lump next to another, appearing where
there were only smooth curves before."

"So you conjure up memories of all the calves and biceps you've seen over the
years, and..."

"Yes, and I jack off to them. So what? Is that a crime?"

"No, but if that turns you on so much from a distance, why didn't you go for
it in the real? Might that not be better than experiencing it in the
abstract?"

"I can't""that's all I can say about it. I just can't and never could."

"What about the girl you told me about in the bar""Lorraine""the first and
only woman you were with? She had muscles, you said."

"Don't remind me."

"Why not?"

"It was the chance of a lifetime and it went awry. I was on the verge of
asking her to flex for me when my store of memories of calves and biceps came
to mind instead. I got off immediately. I was ashamed. It was like I'd been
unfaithful to her""strange as that might sound. Anyway, I didn't go back to
see her. It was a signal event""since that moment I've lived in a fantasy
world when it comes to sex."

"Why didn't you ask her?"

"I was afraid to. I can't be more specific."

"OK. Different subject: You've used the word 'visible' with special emphasis.
Exactly what do you mean by 'visible' in this context?"

"I mean you can see the muscle."

"Yes, of course. But I gather from your earlier remarks that in some way at
least, when you see a muscle on a woman's arm, you think 'That shouldn't be
there,' but at the same time, it's that very notion that turns you on. Is that
the way it goes?"

"Yes. It has to do with the 'popping up' of the muscle.

"Do any specific memories come to mind?"

"What are you, an analyst?"

"No, but I'm a believer in the impact of early experiences."

"So am I. The thing that comes to mind when I say 'popping up' is watching a
girl show off her muscle for a bunch of boys in our school cafeteria. I was in
the fifth grade, I think. Anyway, I went to a rural school, and the girl in
question lived on one of the nearby farms. She had obviously put up a lot of
hay. Her biceps looked like two fat mice running up under the skin of her arm
when she bent her elbow and back down again when she straightened out her arm.
The boys at the table were hooting and hollering with astonishment. She asked
if anyone wanted to feel her muscle. I wanted to, but didn't. Another boy laid
his palm on her arm when it was straight. She bent her elbow and as her biceps
swelled up his eyes bugged out. He took his hand off and shook it like her
muscle had hurt his hand somehow. They all laughed""all of them except me. I
wanted there to be a hole in the floor I could jump into. There wasn't, of
course, so I did the next best thing."

"What was that?"

"I ran out of the cafeteria."

Kathy put the transcript down. "I don't want to read any more," she said.

The Editor nodded. "It's depressing, isn't it?"

She wiped a tear away. "It's more just plain sad than depressing."

The Editor said nothing.

Kathy took a Kleenex from the coffee table and blew her nose. "You know," she
said, after a moment. "I was like that girl""at least early on."

"Tell me more," the Editor said.

"Well," she said. "I am quite muscular, as you know."

He smiled. "Yes, you are."

"I was proud of my muscles up until about my sophomore year in high school,"
she said. "Then shame entered the picture."

The Editor frowned. "But you told me when I was here last August you had
longed for a man's appreciation of your muscles."

"That's the hell of it," she said. "On one hand, I was still proud of my
muscles, but on the other hand, I was embarrassed by the size of them and
that's gotten worse as I've gotten older."

"But you showed me your biceps when you told me about the Writer's last
moments," he said. "Were you self-conscious about the size of your muscle
then?"

She blushed. "Yes," she said. "Really, I wondered then if I should show you""I
wondered if you would react badly."

"Really? You didn't seem the slightest bit self-conscious."

"I was, though," Kathy said. "Maybe I didn't seem to be, but I was."

The Editor was silent.

Kathy squirmed. "What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"I wonder if you are as self-conscious about the size of your muscles now as
you used to be." He could feel blood flowing into his loins.

"No."

"No?"

"No," Kathy said. "Look." She pushed up her sleeve and bent her elbow. "Feel
it," she said.

The Editor cupped his palm over her biceps. "I like it," he said.

"Keep your hand where it is," she said. She pronated, and then supinated her
wrist. The heads of her biceps contracted under the Editor's palm. "Do you
like that?" she asked, turning her face to his.

He kissed her on the mouth. "Yes," he said. "I like this hard thing very
much." He put his hand on her breast. "This soft thing, too," he said.

Kathy let her hand slip down between the Editor's legs. "Oh! You do like these
things of mine," she said. "My hard and soft things have made your thing
hard." She kissed him deeply and in a matter of moments their clothes were in
a pile on the floor and they were pitching together on the couch, gasping and
clutching at each other in a frenzy.

They woke an hour later. "Goodness," Kathy said. "We're naked!"

The Editor laughed. "Indeed. Do you have a robe?"

"I have two," she said, and got up and went for the bedroom. He followed her
with his eyes, admiring the way her thick calves, solid ass, and broad
shoulders worked together. She came back wearing a navy silk robe and carrying
another.

"Stand up," she said.

He felt her skilled nurse's hands efficiently slipping his arms in the sleeves
of the robe, tying the waist, pulling it tight. She wended her arms around his
waist and kissed him, then pulled away. "Another coffee?" she asked.

The Editor nodded and sat down again.

Kathy went to her kitchen and brought two cups, handed one to him and kept
hold of the other.

They sat for minutes, sipping. Finally the Editor cleared his throat and
turned to the nurse. "Tell me what you've seen."

Kathy told him about what she had found on the Internet. Some of the websites
she found were repulsive to her sensibilities""they showed men being injured
or humiliated, she said. She had even found a site where one could read
stories of men being castrated. She didn't like those, she said. In fact, she
said, they were awful. But she said she had found others where the muscular
female was shown artistically photographed under raked lighting, partly
concealed in shadow, elusive and seductive. She had posed in front of her
mirror the way the girls were shown on those sites, she said, and she grew to
like the way she looked and she came to enjoy looking at her muscled self.

The Editor nodded as he listened and understood by the tone of her voice why
she seemed so much more comfortable now than she had last August""she had come
to terms with her muscle. He wondered how long she had wrestled with herself,
and what was the nature of the agony she endured.

Kathy stopped talking. She jabbed the Editor in the ribs. "Are you listening?"
she asked.

He nodded. "Indeed I am, Kathy," he said. "But I'm thinking, too."

"Thinking what?"

"For our friend the Writer, muscle was the love object per se instead of being
simply a bridge to intimacy...if you see what I mean."

Kathy picked up her cup and took a sip, staring straight ahead. "No," she
said. "I don't."

"Well," the Editor said, "In my opinion, we all need a ramp we can run our
motorcycle up and off into the arms of love""speaking in the metaphor, of
course."

Kathy made a face.

The Editor waved his arms in the air as if he was dispelling a cloud of smoke.
"OK. That's too corny. More plainly, it's really a matter of some
'thing'""muscle-or anything else, for that matter...getting you hot enough to
go ahead and be next to someone. 'Get off' or however you want to put it.
That's the crux of it, you see."

He sat up, got to his feet and began to pace. "Finding a way to do that""some
method of doing that""is something we all have to do. It's really a search for
some 'thing' that allows you to bridge whatever you have to cross over in
order to get really next to the other person."

Kathy shifted her weight. "I'm beginning to get it...I think. Go on."

"I think everyone has a bridge of their own""some secret; a fantasy, a ritual,
having the lights just right""seeing a favorite dress, or wearing a tie they
think makes them look really good, listening to a song from the 40's...some
'thing' that gets them ready. Gives them the push they need to go ahead and do
what comes naturally."

Kathy looked as if she was a thousand miles away. "When I was married, I had
to wear a certain teddy if I wanted it to be really good."

The Editor sat down again. "That's exactly what I mean. I think you needed
that thing""that teddy""in order to make getting next to your husband
possible. I mean really next to him""not just physically, but 'psychically,'
or psychologically."

"Why would we need it, though? Why can't we just do what comes naturally?" she
asked. "And doesn't having that 'thing' keep us from real closeness? Isn't it
a barrier instead of a bridge?"

"All good questions, Kathy." The Editor stood again and stood close to the
window. The nurse watched his breath condense on the glass. She could see the
outlines of his body beneath the robe and studied his form. "Here's the nut of
it," he said. "We want it and we fear it."

He could hear her hair brush rhythmically against the collar of her robe and
knew she was nodding. She was getting it. He pressed on. "We fear 'it'""the
getting psychically close. It's as if our fear is a river""if you will allow
me to be symbolic""that has to be crossed somehow. We can see what lies on the
other side and we want it so. That's our life's dilemma. So we find a bridge,
or 'stumble onto it' is the better way to put it." He came back to the couch
and sat down.

"Muscle is the bridge for many, isn't it?" Kathy asked.

"It is for me," he said.

Kathy smiled coquettishly. "So I've noticed," she said. "But it was a bridge
to nowhere for the Writer."

"It's a damned shame you two never got to know each other," he said. "You
might have crossed it together years ago. Who knows what might have turned
out."

"What about us two?" she asked, taking his hand and turning on the charm.

"I wish I had met you years ago, Kathy," the Editor said.

"It's not too late," she said, drawing close.

The Editor felt the thickness of her hand in his and thought about how her
strength had excited him earlier and he stiffened, wondering about the ways in
which they might collaborate.

The End