Looking for Hope

By Dawn DeWinter

Chapter 5 – Maid for Little Bill

Mortimer was wary.  Bill was quizzing Dawn and Frodo about their vital measurements.  He even wanted to know Dawn’s dress size.  “What are you up to?” Mortimer whispered.  “You’ll see,” Bill whispered back; then louder -- “By the way, Mortimer, what is your dress size?”

“Oh my, oh no,” Mortimer squeaked.  He fell silent, his nose twitching nervously. 

At the Salem Mall, Frodo and Bill headed off on their own, while Dawn stayed close to Mortimer and his credit card.  Bill was checking out women’s clothing stores; Frodo, music and computer stores.  As for Dawn, she had never been more irresolute.  Like a peasant seeing Notre Dame Cathedral for the first time, she seemed mesmerized by the grandeur of the Mall:  “It’s so beautiful,” she gushed.  “It’s a veritable cathedral of consumption, and we are two of its devotees.”

Mortimer shook his head.  A devotee of consumerism?  That didn’t describe him:  He hadn’t bought a new shirt in twelve years.  But Dawn?  She had the dazed eyes of a zealot as she hustled Mortimer around the Salem Mall trying to take in all of its marvels.

“Dawn,” Mortimer whispered, “are you all right?”  She actually had black tears streaking her cheeks.  “What’s the matter?” he asked as he dabbed at Dawn’s cheeks.  It was the most intimate Mortimer had dared to be with anyone since his wife’s death. 

Dawn reciprocated by tenderly smudging his eyeglasses.  She wanted Mortimer to hold fast to his illusion that she was as young as she dressed.  “Don’t fret, Mortimer; these are tears of joy.  I’ve been so poor and it’s been so long since I’ve been to a shopping mall.  This is a shopper’s paradise! Look at the dozens and dozens of stores, fully stocked with goods from around the world.  There’s something here for everyone.  Here each individual can nurture and clothe his innermost being.  One person eats vegetarian, another a meatball sub.  One person buys a peasant dress made by a commune, another an army flak jacket once worn by a communist.  One person listens to world music, another to bluegrass.  Name your soul food, and this place has it.” 

She paused, then asked, “You’ll buy me some jalapeno-flavored popcorn, won’t you, Mortimer?  With candied garlic sprinkles?”

“Of course, my sweet,” Mortimer replied.  He looked at her worshipfully:  Not until now had he realized that Dawn was the Kierkegaard of the shopping set.  “Never have I encountered,” Mortimer thought, “a more profound philosopher.  Dawn is definitely the one who will find Hope for us.  She has the simple, pure soul of a divine fool.  As the Bible says, ‘and the children will lead us’.”

Actually, the children were following closely behind Dawn.  At first, she had been pursued by hostile stares from adults, but these had softened as people became aware of her magical effect on young children.  Some of the kids were merely tittering and pointing, but others were skipping about with glee and several little boys were doing the bunny hop in unison.  “Look at me,” a seven-year-old Jewish girl called out, “See me smile.  I’m the kosher cat.”  She erupted into a giggling fit. 

“What charity are you collecting for, dear?” asked the mother of a velvet-suited toddler who was tugging on Dawn’s dress.

“Charity?”  Dawn looked around in bewilderment; the first thing she saw was a photo display commemorating the great Dayton flood of 1913.  It gave her an idea: 

“Disaster relief.  I’m collecting for disaster relief.” 

That seemed a better thing to say than, “What charity?  I’m not collecting for anyone.  I’m dressed like this in front of your kids because I’ve always wanted to go down the rabbit hole.”  And if anyone realized she was actually a male, she’d end up a no-hoper in the Dayton city jail. 

“Chrissie dear, please give this money to Alice.  It’s going to a worthy cause.  As the precious child handed Dawn a ten-dollar bill, Dawn couldn’t help but notice that he was wearing white tights under his red velvet shorts, as well as red Mary Janes on his feet.  His white blouse and ribbon tie told Dawn all she needed to know about the little boy’s future, but to make sure, she asked him in a stage whisper, “Are your panties red too?” 

Blushing, he nodded with a smile.  Dawn patted his head as she said to his mother, “He has such beautiful hair.  I do hope you won’t be getting it cut anytime soon.” 

“Chrissie may not get his hair cut for years. He wants to grow his hair as long as possible.  Were you once like Chrissie, … Alice?”

“I wasn’t as precocious as Chrissie.  But I’ve been where he is going, and I know you’ll find him the most loving child in the whole world, as long as you accept him heart and soul.” 

“Alice, you don’t have to worry about Chrissie.  He’s got a loving family.  He’s one of eight children and his father and I have agreed to let Chrissie follow his lodestar as far as he wants to travel.  We’ve decided to let him pick out a special outfit for his fourth birthday party; we expect him to select the pink cotton party dress with puff sleeves he’s been eying at Sears.  If he does, we’ll not invite as many kids, but I know of at least six families with children who’ll embrace Chrissie to their heart no matter what he wears.”

Tears of joy filled Dawn’s eyes once again as she saw Chrissie turn to wave to her as mother and son strolled off hand-in-hand. 

“I didn’t have enough coffee this morning -- just six cups of Acapulco Brown.  That’s why I’m so weepy today,” Dawn said to herself.  Or was it because she’d found hope in Dayton, even if she hadn’t yet found Hope? 

The city had a charitable spirit, Dawn decided, as several children handed over dollar bills, sticky with sugar, spittle and sweat, which they had wrung from their parents.  Dawn was so pleased with herself that Mortimer suspected her motives; timidly he asked, “Dawn, you are planning to give that money to disaster relief, right?”

“Of course, silly.  It’s all going to a good cause.”  And it did.  Dawn collected $227 that day for disaster relief.  To Mortimer’s relief, she actually gave the money to charity.  She was passing by three volunteers when she noticed that one of them was a short, blue-eyed, blond teenager.  His name was Leif.  Dawn hoped she’d get lucky.

She gave Leif the money in exchange for his phone number.  However, her dazzling smile or oversized breasts must have distracted him because he gave her the wrong number.  Or possibly it had been recently reassigned to the Dayton Police.  The police officer who answered the call said he wanted to meet Dawn, and Dawn, flattered, almost agreed to a blind date.  But on second thought, she decided it was time to continue her search for Hope – in another state.

 

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, as Dawn didn’t try to contact Leif until the following day.  Why the delay?  Well, a threesome can be very diverting, especially if it turns into a twosome from which one is excluded.  The first hint of trouble came when Dawn and Mortimer rendezvoused with Bill and Frodo at the entrance to Sears.  Bill and Frodo were carrying a steamer trunk.  “It’s bloody heavy,” Frodo said.  However, he had no idea of its contents.  Bill had done his shopping alone.  Bill said that there was something for everyone in the trunk. 

“The trunk must have lots of clothes for me,” Dawn exulted.  She remembered that Bill had asked for her measurements.  On the way home from the Mall, she rewarded Bill with fellatio – or was it cunnilingus? – in the backseat of the Chevy.  It would have been a memorable moment for Bill had Dawn not fallen asleep.  Instead, there was an anti-climax.  As Dawn dozed on his lap, Bill made his final decision:  He’d surprise Frodo that very night with two of his purchases. 

The threesome that night started off badly, for Dawn was in a foul, uncooperative mood after she found out that only one of Bill’s presents was for her, and even it she’d not receive until the following day.  Spitefully, Dawn refused to do anything at all to bring her partners to climax.  Even by Dawn’s standards, she was passive – indeed, so passive that Bill on two occasions took her pulse to see if she were still alive.  Each time Dawn moaned, “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

Meanwhile, Frodo was discovering what it’s like to be an eighteen-year-old male naked in bed with two live human beings and a third one watching from the closet with high-powered binoculars (Bill’s gift to Mortimer).  Frodo’s body, set to explode, craved release.  He begged Bill for intercourse.  “Bill, you’ve got a super body; it’s so tight, so firm, it doesn’t sag like Dawn’s.  And you’ve got a … vagina.  Oh please, I’ve just got to have sex with you.  I’ve just got to be inside you.”

“Frodo, you’re asking too much of me.  I’m a man now.  I want to forget the vagina.  It’s a vestige of my old self.  In time, when I’ve working again and making some real money, I intend to get rid of it – to become a man through and through.”

“But you’re still partly a woman!  Bill, I need to know what it’s like to have my cock inside a pussy.  How can you refuse me?  Weren’t you a virgin once yourself?”

“Yes, it seemed like only yesterday,” Bill thought.  To Frodo, he said:  “It will mess up my mind to have sex with another man – especially that way.”

“But you’re willing to have sex with Dawn,” Frodo objected.

“Dawn says she a pre-op transsexual.  Maybe she is; maybe she isn’t.  Dawn herself probably doesn’t know for sure.  One thing is definite, however, and that is the fact that she dresses like a woman – well, like a little girl – and she does her best to behave like a female, even though she’ll never be a lady.  That’s why I can have sex with her:  Dawn makes love like a woman.”

Bill’s tongue caressed Frodo’s thigh as the boy deliberated.  Not surprisingly – he had, after all, the biggest erection of his life – Frodo was willing to do almost anything to get laid.  “I could make love like a woman.  I know I could.  After all, I once took acting lessons.”

“Would you be willing to dress like a woman and to let me enter you?” Bill asked.

“That’s not what I want,” Frodo objected.  “I want my cock inside you!”

“And it can be, dear Frodo, just as soon as you agree on equal rights in the bedroom.  I’m a masculinist.  That’s like being a feminist.  We both insist on sexual equality.  So every time you screw me, you have to let me screw you.  And each time we have sex you have to look more feminine than the time before.  That’s my terms.  Take ‘em or leave ‘em.  It won’t cost you anything; I’ll provide the clothes.”  For the first time, Bill put his hand around Frodo’s rod – just to make sure that it did the boy’s thinking for him.

Frodo agreed to terms.  He’d agreed to almost anything to get his first pussy.  Consequently, he was wearing sheer white stockings and a white lace garter belt the first time he ever had vaginal intercourse.  He added a white lace chemise (graced with several white ribbons) for their second embrace an hour later; this time Frodo was on the receiving end of anal sex for the first time in his life. 

Both men had never had better sex, unsurprisingly, since they had previously only made love to Dawn.  It turned out that both would rather pitch than catch, but each was willing to play the backstop so long as each got his turn on the mound.  As Frodo was wearing lingerie – and Bill feverishly caressing it – the first time that they experienced the true joy of sex, both became confirmed fetishists. 

Dawn had that effect on people.  After a night with her, they became interested in sexual aids.   They knew they’d need some help to get aroused. Though Frodo refused for the moment to wear women’s lingerie outside of the bedroom, he shyly admitted that he was looking forward to adding panties during their second night of lovemaking.

“But what about Dawn?” Mortimer asked Bill and Frodo the morning after.  Dawn was still in bed, and sound asleep, judging from the snorts and snuffles issuing from her bedroom.  “What’s she going to do, Bill, while you’re getting into Frodo’s panties?”

Both Frodo and Bill blushed furiously at the memory of how much Mortimer had seen and heard from the closet.  Bill broke the silence:  “I’ve got plans for Dawn. I’m going to keep her so busy that she’ll scarcely notice that she’d not getting laid.  And whenever she does join Frodo and me in bed, she’ll obey our every command.  She won’t even dare fall asleep.”

Frodo and Mortimer looked at each other in confusion.  How was Bill going to control willful Dawn?   How could anyone tame such a wild child?  When Bill saw the doubt on their face, he said, “Let’s wake her up now.  It’s time for Dawn to learn her duties.”

At first, Dawn was angry at being shaken awake from an erotic dream.  She’d been Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and was – in her opinion – just about to seduce the Scarecrow.  After all, how could any man of straw say no to a woman with pick-up lines like “Come on, baby, light my fire”?

In any case, Dawn’s mood improved dramatically when Bill explained why she had to wake up.  “I know how much you enjoy playing dress-up, dearest Dawn.  How would you like to be Fifi today?”

“Fifi?  A French poodle?”  Hmmm, the costume had possibilities, for Dawn loved sex doggy-style.  However, she announced that she’d “refuse to wear a dog suit outside the house” unless it had a sign saying that she was “collecting money for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”  Dawn said she had her “dignity” to consider and to protect.  

“Dawn, don’t be silly.  No one wants you in a dog suit.  That’s a goofy idea.  Here – this is what I bought for you to wear.  It’s my gift to you.”  Bill pointed to a black satin dress with a rounded white lace collar; a white lace bonnet; white crinoline petticoats; a small white lace apron; black patent leather shoes with four-inch heels; sheer black stockings; a white satin garter belt; and white satin rumba panties with frills on the seat. 

Dawn clapped her hands with delight; she’d always wanted to dress like a French Maid.  Who doesn’t?  Isn’t it the secret dream of all males to spend a day as a French Maid?  Well, maybe not all males.  There are some who’d prefer to be an astronaut, a football quarterback, or a girl cheerleader.  But being a maid was definitely one of Dawn’s fantasies, and before you could say “Jabberwocky” she’d dressed as a maid.  As she twirled about in front of a full-length mirror, Bill told her that everyone wanted Dawn not only to look like a maid but also to serve as one.  “We all want you to be our sexy maid, isn’t that right, Mortimer?”

Mortimer wasn’t about to tell Dawn what to do.  So he slunk into a corner, his nose twitching nervously. Mortimer had no reason to worry.  Dawn said she was delighted to be their maid:  “I’ll start with the dusting,” she said.  “Where is a feather duster?  I must have a feather duster.”

Well, the French Maid ensemble even included a feather duster, and so Dawn set immediately to work.  She started with the furniture in the combination living-dining room.  Her three companions sat in the chairs to watch Dawn perform her role.  They soon decided that she’d had been disastrously miscast.  Never had there been a more incompetent maid. 

The four-inch, spiked heels were part of the problem.  As Dawn had never worn anything like them, she teetered about, constantly losing her balance.  She’d grabbed onto whatever was handy as she felt herself falling.  One time it was Bill’s most valuable painting – an oil he’d bought in the Florida Everglades of alligators lunging at land developers.  Her fist decapitated one of the gators, to Bill’s anguish and dismay. 

Dawn couldn’t see what the big deal was:  “It’s not like I ruined a family portrait or something,” she said.

It turned out that Bill’s single most valuable objet d’art also couldn’t keep Dawn from falling.   She and the antique Tiffany lamp both crashed to the floor.  Once again, Dawn thought that Bill was getting unnecessarily hysterical.  “Calm down,” she said, “Those lamps are easy to make.  You just glue together pieces of cut glass.  Anyone can do it.”

The third time Dawn toppled into B ill’s china cabinet, breaking several pieces.  At that point, Bill hurriedly moved all his valuables out of reach, as one does when a toddler comes visiting.  With less to break, and Dawn gradually getting the hang of her spiked heels, the cost of employing Dawn as a French Maid became more reasonable.  Even so, there was unanimous agreement that dusting should be removed from her list of duties.  And why was that?  Well, in a word, flatulence. 

As Dawn dusted, she wanted to show off the frills on her rumba panties.  So, bending over as far as she could, she’d wiggle her derrière in front of her friends’ faces.  Unfortunately, the closer that Dawn’s body came to doing a ninety-degree angle, the more likely she was to break wind.  After several noisy, smelly farts, Dawn was told she never needs dust again.

“Fifi, why don’t you wash the windows?” Bill suggested.  Dawn would be reaching upward while she did it.  “That should clear the air,” Bill hoped. 

Dawn wanted to be a good maid, just as much as she wanted to be a good girl.  So she was determined to do a better job with the windows than she had with the dusting.  As the windows hadn’t been washed in years, it took a lot of muscle to scrape off the caked-on dirt – so much muscle that Dawn accidentally pushed the glass pane out of its frame and into the yard, where it broke into a million pieces. 

After Bill had nailed some plywood into place, all agreed that Fifi’s duties should be limited to waiting at table.  But that didn’t work out very well either on account of Dawn’s humongous bosom.  As she served the soup, her breast dipped into each of their bowls. 

A real woman’s breast in one’s soup can be erotic – as long as the broth is not too hot – but Dawn’s breast forms, clothed in a dust-covered and glass-encrusted maid’s uniform, were anything but arousing.  The soup course ruined, the intrepid diners huddled for a minute.  Then Bill saying “you can only die once,” asked Dawn to serve the fish course that she’d spent two hours in the kitchen preparing. 

It was a large Atlantic salmon with glazed eyes that Bill had bought frozen while visiting Seattle some years back.  And it was still frozen, indeed rock solid.  “Fifi,” Frodo asked, “what have you been doing in the kitchen for more than hours?  You didn’t even cook the fish!”

“Of course not, silly.  I made ceviche.”

“Kevikee?  What’s that?” Frodo asked.  He looked around.  No one seemed to know.

“What is it?  Am I the only gourmette here?  Really!  Frodo, you are such an innocent!  But Mortimer, you must have had raw fish by now.  It’s all the rage in the finer hash houses.”

“And why is that?”  Bill asked.

“Because it saves on fuel bills.  All I had to do was squeeze some lime juice on the fish – which was real easy because Bill was thoughtful enough to have bought one of those plastic jobbies with real fruit juice.  Fish plus lime juice – presto, change-o, you’ve got ceviche.  It works like chemistry.”

Bill looked confused:  “But, Fifi, why did it take you so long to make this kevikee stuff?  It sounds real easy to prepare.  How come we had to wait for two hours?”

“Really!” Dawn huffed.  “Sometimes it’s not worth being a serving maid.  There is no fun in dishing up a work of art to Philistines.  Didn’t you notice the lace doily under the fish?  How about the little bonnet I made for its head?  And surely you noticed that I painted its tail with all the colors of the rainbow.  That fish is a work of art.”

“The only paint available,” Bill anxiously whispered to Frodo and Mortimer “is exterior house paint.  That fish is toxic!”  After another huddle, it was decided to circumscribe Fifi’s duties.  She’d be strictly a chambermaid from now on, her primary duties being of a sexual nature.

Sex with Fifi was bound to be disappointing, given that everyone was famished and in a bad mood.  But it didn’t help that Fifi ultimately proved to be no more responsive in bed than Dawn.  True, for a while Dawn got into the spirit of being ordered about, but as she grew fatigued, she became grumpy.

“I’m tired of being a maid,” she growled. “It’s no fun at all.  Here,” she said to Frodo, “you wear my outfit.  You be the maid for a while.” 

She then fell fast asleep.  At Bill’s urging, Frodo wore the rumba panties and lace bonnet as they made love.  Frodo was so turned on that he didn’t notice that he caught one more time than he threw that night.   

Early the following morning Dawn wandered around with a bath towel wrapped around her breasts.  “I don’t know what to wear,” she said.  There was too much choice:  two outfits.  Her phone call to the Dayton Police Station seemed to make her decision for her.  Alice she’d be.  And Alice was anxious to get back onto the road looking for Hope.

Would Bill join them in their quest?  Dawn definitely wanted him to join their expedition, for otherwise Frodo might elect to stay in Dayton.  Bill reflected on his options, then said: “Dawn, I’m an unemployed skywalker.”  Everyone looked at him blankly.  “That means I’m a high-steel specialist.  I build skyscrapers for a living.”

Mortimer was impressed:  “You mean you rivet steel girders together a thousand feet above the ground?  I couldn’t do that.  I’d be afraid.”

“But I can.  It’s in the blood.  I’m half-Mohawk, you see.  My grandfather helped build the Empire State Building.”

“So what are you doing here?”  Dawn asked.  “There’s not much demand for skywalkers in Dayton.”

“You’re sure right about that,” Bill sighed. “But there hasn’t been much work in the Northeast in recent years and I kept moving west until I ended up here, out of money and out of hope.”

“We’re looking for Hope,” said Dawn.  “You definitely should come along with us.  There may be more work for you further west, or even a new career.  What do you have to lose?”

Frodo squeezed Bill’s hand:  “You have to come along with us.  I’d be so desperately unhappy if you stayed behind.” 

While the two men soul-kissed, Dawn had eight cups of strong coffee.  Totally wired, she became frantic to leave town.  Only Mortimer had eaten any breakfast – a hunk of cheese – but Dawn insisted that they couldn’t waste any more time in Dayton.  They must find Hope.

Two cars – the Chevy and the white Rabbit – played leapfrog as they headed for Cincinnati, just sixty minutes away by the Interstate highway.  They should have been in Kentucky for lunch.  Instead, by lunchtime they’d lost Dawn somewhere in rural Ohio.   

Chapter Six – A Smoking Caterpillar

As usual, it was her coffee addiction that got Dawn into trouble.  She didn’t have a bladder large enough to handle eight cups.  So, about twenty miles north of Cincinnati, she flashed her lights to signal that she and Mortimer were getting off at the next exit; the white Rabbit would follow.

“I’m heading for Maud South,” she told Mortimer.  “Any place with a name like that is succor to a lady in distress.” 

“You mean they’ll have a toilet?” Mortimer asked.

“Precisely,” Dawn replied.  “And if it’s a town run by and for women it will have a heated seat.”

Perhaps they missed the town entirely. Perhaps the town didn’t really exist.  In any case, all that either car could find was an outhouse in an immaculately kept park.  It looked out onto a small pond around which several willows wept.  After relieving herself, Dawn wandered over to the water’s edge where she espied some tasty-looking mushrooms.  Or were they poisonous toadstools?  Dawn didn’t know.  She had no idea what toadstools looked like, but she was famished – she had been so anxious to fill up on coffee that she’d quite forgotten to eat anything for breakfast.  These “mushrooms” definitely looked like a tasty morsel even though she’d never seen anything like them in the supermarkets.

“Munch, munch,” Dawn said as she gobbled down several “mushrooms.”  Almost immediately she felt woozy.  She clutched at hear head:  “Oh, oh, they’re having a magical effect on me!  My head is inflating like a balloon!  Oh my, it’s now as big as a blimp.” 

Normally, Dawn would be upset to be a blimp, but somehow it didn’t matter that her head had caught the breeze and that she was soaring over the pond.  Or that’s what Dawn thought was happening.  Her traveling companions were appalled to see her dive into the pond and then breaststroke to the far side.  They watched her moving along at hyper-speed once her feet found solid earth.  With her arms flapping like wings, she ran into a black forest. 

Frodo threw himself into the pond in frustration, but Bill made sure he didn’t drown.  Mouth-to-mouth reminded them of how much they craved each other’s body.  By the time Mortimer reminded them that Dawn was missing, she truly was.  Her friends had no idea of where she’d gone.

After an hour of staggering through the woods, Dawn finally found a clearing and a gravel road, on which she saw a Caterpillar tractor, a giant earth-moving machine.  It seemed to be saying something to Dawn.  What was it?  Could it be, “Help, I need help!  I’m on fire!”  It did appear to be on fire, for smoke was billowing from its engine.  Dawn gawked in amazement:  She’d never seen a Caterpillar smoke before.  And she’d definitely never heard a Caterpillar talk.

But was it actually the Caterpillar that was talking?  Or was it the Caterpillar operator, the man who was rolling around in the dirt to extinguish the flames that engulfed him?  As the man got back on his feet, he seemed very angry.  Maybe he was burned?  Did that explain the color of his skin?  No, Dawn decided, the man was an African American.  An angry black man, he was alternately punching and kicking the Caterpillar.

“You useless piece of junk,” the Caterpillar operator was shouting.  “That’s it.  I’m through with you.  You can stay here forever and rust, for all I care.  You’ve busted me.  I’m flat broke.  You’re not worth fixing.  You haven’t been for years.”

Dawn was non-plussed:  she couldn’t decide whether the Caterpillar operator was angry with the machine or with her.  After all, Dawn had been rusting for years.  Maybe she wasn’t worth fixing.  Even plastic surgeons said she was beyond rehabilitation.   No, the man couldn’t be criticizing Dawn.  Even to imagine that he would accuse her of terminal rust without first poking a finger into her undercarriage meant that the magic mushrooms must be making Dawn paranoid.  There was no way the man could be knocking Dawn, for everyone loved her.  At least, they should.

“This guy will love me once he gets to know me,” thought Dawn.

But did Dawn want to get to know the Caterpillar operator?  She observed him more closely: He was dressed in a hard hat, work boots, a thick belt, an unbuttoned red flannel shirt, stained blue jeans with an inviting rip near the crotch.  And there, hanging down the left leg, was one of the largest penises Dawn had ever seen! 

Dawn longed to worship the phallus at close quarters.  It so mesmerized her that her eyes never moved north of the man’s equator.  Had she done so she would have noticed that the “man” had two perfectly shaped breasts. They could be seen through “his” sweat-soaked white T-shirt as clearly as if he’d entered a “wet T-shirt” contest.

Dawn began to appreciate her error, however, when the caterpillar operator took the “penis” out of his jeans pocket.  It turned out to be a giant cigar, and by the forceful way the caterpillar operator bit off its end (Dawn almost said “ouch”), there was no possible way that this “guy” could ever be trusted to give oral sex.

“Hey, you’re no guy,” Dawn finally realized, as cigar smoke obscured the head of the caterpillar operator, forcing Dawn’s gaze downward.  Yep, the “guy” had breasts – pear-shaped ones that Dawn would have given back her first-published story to acquire.  Was Dawn looking at a woman?  Possibly.  Or maybe the Caterpillar operator was transitioning from one sex to the other.  But which one had “he” started off with?  Dawn couldn’t tell.

Whatever his true sex, the Caterpillar operator was definitely a hunk.  Built like a champion body-builder, with muscles on his muscles, he resembled Arnold Schwarzenegger a lot more than he did Bill.  Bill looked like a drag queen by comparison.  If this wasn’t a guy, “she” had to be Miss Universe, the world’s butchest woman.  Dawn made a quiet decision:  “I don’t care what sex she – or he – actually is.  I want to make wild passionate love with her, him, it.  Look out world, Dawn is loaded for bear.”

Dawn wasn’t ready, however, for the operator’s rudeness.  “What in the hell are you?”  the operator asked before spitting a piece of burning tobacco leaf onto Dawn’s right shoe.

“What do you mean?” Dawn asked as her left foot scuffed dirt onto her right shoe.

“I’m asking whether you are male or female or something in between?  Explain yourself!” 

“I’m not sure I can explain myself.  I am really quite confusing.  I tried for several years to explain my inner self to my psychotherapist, but she finally gave up on me.  I heard that she joined a Trappist order – you know, they’re the monks who take a vow of silence.  I suppose she never wanted to hear another word.  I guess some people must find you a bit queer yourself,” Dawn suggested timidly. 

“Queer?  Me?  No way!  I’m a woman.  That’s obvious to everyone but you.  Possibly you need glasses.  People your age usually do.” 

“I am not old!  I’m in my prime,” Dawn objected.  “You’re looking at a sex machine in peak condition.  My name is Dawn.  What’s yours?” 

“I only have sex with males,” the Caterpillar operator replied.  “So once again, I’m asking you:  What sex are you?  Before you answer, you should know that I have a thing for older men.  You’re definitely an older something; but tell me, little Miss Alice, are you a male? Your Adam’s apple tells me that you’re no Eve, but I want to hear the truth from your own lips before I decide what to do you with you.”

That sounded like a threat.  Dawn now feared for her safety.  Here she was lost in the woods, her mind racing through one hallucination after another thanks to the mushrooms and coffee, and the most muscular woman she’d ever met was apparently threatening her.  Dawn had to say “apparently” because she wasn’t entirely sure that the woman was real.  Maybe she was an apparition.  Did the woman really exist?  Probably she did.  As she wasn’t swirling around Dawn’s head like the liveried fish, the talking mice, the horseshoe crabs, the dildos, and the cuckoo clocks were doing, the woman was probably real. 

Yet Dawn didn’t know what to say.  While it was conceivable that the Caterpillar operator wanted Dawn to admit she was a male so that they could say that she was in truth a male as a prelude to sex and intimacy, it was also conceivable that Dawn’s admission would be the prelude to mayhem and murder. 

Dawn searched her mind for any information she had filed about Ohio.  First, did it harbor any serial killers?  Second, were its women likely to be TG-positive?

Its nickname was the first thing that came into her mind.  Ohio was the buckeye state.  That had to be clue of some sort.  But what was a buckeye?  Dawn had no idea, but it did sound like something you might use in a shotgun wedding. She shuddered at the thought.

Ohio had produced a lot of presidents.  “Let me see,” she deliberated, “Garfield and McKinley were from Ohio. Oh my gosh, they were both murdered!”  She shivered at the memory.  “There must be something else I know about Ohio.  Yes, I remember now:  it’s famous for its giant, city-sized mounds.”  Her mind stopped what little thinking it was doing when she realized that these might be burial mounds.  “Giant burial mounds! Oh my, oh my.  I am definitely in the wrong state.”  Her mind then went as blank as her stare.  

“I’m getting tired of waiting for your answer.  What sex are you?  One answer is right; the other is wrong.”  The Caterpillar operator stamped her feet angrily.   

“I’m a little girl,” Dawn replied.  She had heard that the big lie worked best – at least for tyrants, terrorists and boxing promoters.

The Caterpillar operator guffawed.  “Look, honey, you may be dressed like Alice in Wonderland, but you’re older than my Aunt Trixie; and she was a cheerleader for the Cleveland Browns football team.”

“Okay, okay.  You’ve got me.  I am indeed a middle-aged man.  I know I look a lot younger, but I’m actually… thirty-nine years old.  I’m a member of the generation that followed the baby boomers.  You know – Generation Xstacy.”

Dawn had given the right answer:  Yes, she was old, but she was also a male.  The Caterpillar operator grinned broadly.  She gave the finger to Dawn.  No, that wasn’t it; she was beckoning to Dawn.  “Move your little skinny white ass over here, little Alice, because mama wants to show you how to make love like a black man.”

Dawn panicked.  “With a black man,” she’d heard.  “Are you really a m…m…man?” she stammered.  “If you are, w…w…we c…c...can’t have s…s…s…s…”

“What? Spit it out, little sissy dude.  What can’t we have?”

“S…s…sex!  I…much too…virginal to have sex with…black man.  You’ll s…s…split me open.”  It was an odd thing for Dawn to say, never mind think, considering that she owned the largest dildo ever sold in Jersey City.  The mushrooms must have been fogging her mind.  Maybe Dawn actually fancied herself a virgin.  If so, she was dangerously delusional.  The Caterpillar operator should be on her guard.

Instead, the Caterpillar operator laughed and laughed until her belly ached.  “Dawn, you’ve brightened a gloomy day.  I was really feeling down.  My tractor had just crapped out.  But aren’t you the joker!  You a virgin?  And you think all African Americans are hung like horses – even the women!  Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have no plans for that skinny little ass of yours, except maybe to spank it.  You the man, and I the woman.  You got that?”

“Yep,” Dawn gulped.

“But I hope, honey, that you’ve got a talented tongue ‘cause I ‘spect you’ve not got much yourself between your legs if you think that all black men are built like King Kong.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind being a little bigger.  Three inches is a wretched length to be.” 

“Three inches!”  The Caterpillar operator looked angry.  Or at least disappointed.  She finished off her cigar with three vigorous bites. 

Fortunately, Dawn got the math wrong, as she almost always did.  In fact, she was – depending on how you counted up her sums – off by a factor of two or three.  How could she be so wrong?  It’s difficult to know for sure, but possibly it had something to do with her short attention span.  It seems that every time she tried to measure her cock, sexual thoughts distracted her, and she was never able to count past three.

The Caterpillar operator was pleasantly surprised to discover that Dawn had an impressive “snake” that she knew how to wriggle.  To her own amazement, Dawn never fell asleep once.  Not once did she remind her sex partner of the living dead.  Indeed, she almost performed like the sex machine she claimed to be.   Granted, the machine was a drip coffeemaker (her favorite appliance), but at least her body was moving with some predictability and rhythm for a change.

This was Dawn’s first time with a woman, as Bill didn’t count as one, at Bill’s own insistence.  Dawn’s first sex with a woman was the best sex she’d had in years.  It wasn’t just the novelty of being on the mound pitching, but it was also the way that the Caterpillar operated.  She took complete command of their lovemaking.  When she saw that Dawn had difficulty rising beyond the perpendicular, she lay prone on the ground and then bench-pressed Dawn, up and down, in and out, until Dawn came inside her.  For cunnilingus, she moved Dawn’s entire body vertically up and down like a piston. 

Afterwards, as the Caterpillar operator smoked a gigantic cigar, Dawn thought to herself, “I’ve been a dumbbell all my life.  I had no idea women made love that way!  No wonder there are so many straight men in the world!  Wow! Double wow!  I’ve finally found the perfect lover.  I’ll never stray again.”

Did that mean that Dawn no longer wanted to dress like a woman?  Was she going to throw her Alice outfit down a rabbit hole and dress like a man 24-7?  No way!  What made the Caterpillar operator the perfect lover for Dawn is that she wanted Dawn to look like a woman, yet make love like a man – or at least, to have the right equipment for a sexual workout. 

“Please, I’ve got to know your name” were Dawn’s first words since she’d regained the horizontal.  “I know it’s going to be the perfect name for the perfect woman.”

“It’s Jim.”  That’s what the Caterpillar operator seemed to be saying.  But she blew a huge cloud of smoke Dawn’s way as she said it.

“I must have heard you wrong.  Your name isn’t Jim, is it?  That’s a man’s name, and you’re definitely a woman.”

“Look sugar, I’ve got a woman’s body and I’m proud of it.  I pity all you men.  You’re so incomplete.  But construction is a man’s world.  I started dressing like a man just to fit in.  But soon I dressed that way because denim and flannel turn me on.  My body tingles all day when I’m wearing men ‘s briefs.  I love the world of men.  I love making love to men.  But my lovers have to understand:  I’m the one who wears the pants in this relationship. You’ll stay in the dress if you want to keep me happy.  I like your name, so I hope you’ll keep using it.  As for me, you either call me Jim or you call me from a distance.”

“I want to stay as close as possible to you, Jim.  I want to share your bed every night.  That’s why I’m asking you to come away with me.”

“Now, why would I do that?  This is my hood.  I’ve got a trailer home beyond that thicket that you can see off to the right.” 

“But Jim, you’ve just lost your Caterpillar.  You’ve just lost your means of making a living here.  Come along with me and my friends.  We’re on a quest.  We’re looking for Hope.  She is my best friend on the Internet, and she’s been missing since the eleventh.  I got to find her.  I need to know she’s all right.”

Jim thought over her options:  “I’ve got no hope here,” Jim decided.  “Earth-moving work has been standing still in this county since the economy went south.  I’ll have to move on anyway.  I might as well go off with Dawn.  She’s so damn foolish that she must be incredibly lucky to be still alive.  That girl might have enough luck for the both of us.”

And so it was agreed:  Jim would join Dawn’s expedition.  She’d even transform it into a caravan of Hope by contributing a Jeep Cherokee and an Airstream trailer to the cause.  It was only after they’d sealed their deal with an embrace that Dawn suddenly realized that she was lost – that she had no idea of where Frodo, Mortimer and Bill were to be found. 

“Stop worrying,” said Jim.  “I’ve been living in this area for years.  I know exactly where your park and pond are, and I bet your friends will be waiting there for you.  It won’t take me long to hitch up the Airstream; we can be with your friends in less than an hour.”

As they walked along, Jim had her hands all over Dawn.  She wanted to be reassured before she pulled up stakes that Dawn had more than three inches to offer.  Dawn, turned-on, became quite shameless:  She took off her tights and little-girl panties and then used the tights to cinch her dress at the waist, leaving her “snake” dangling free for all the woodland creatures to see.

The pigeons didn’t like what they saw.  Somehow they thought Dawn’s snake was a threat to their nests.  At least, that’s the only rational explanation for what followed.  It was like a horror movie – like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.  The pigeons started arriving, first singly, next in pairs, then in flocks.  Nervously Dawn could count at least a hundred of them, and all of them were giving her that evil pigeon eye, as they murmured angrily.  Dawn had long dreaded this moment.  It had haunted her nightmares for years. 

She began to run.  The pigeons ran after her, speedily leaving Jim behind.  Dawn could see the Airstream.  She picked up her pace.  Never had she run faster.  Safety beckoned.  Shelter was so close. 

And then they struck!  The pigeons had caught up to her!  It was horrible! The horror!  The horror! 

One hundred pigeons started taking turns defecating on Dawn’s Mary Janes.  Her favorite shoes in the entire world were soon covered with white…. There is only one word powerful enough to describe the evil.  Her Mary Janes were covered with shit!  And did the pigeons care?  Their red beady eyes told Dawn everything she needed to know.  They had done it on purpose!

Dawn was almost hysterical when Jim caught up to her:  “There, there, Dawn.  Don’t carry on so.  They’re just shoes.  I’ll buy you some new ones, and a little girl’s dress to go with ‘em.  Come on!  Stop crying.  You’ve got Jim to protect you now.”

They went into Jim’s egg-shaped, little trailer to make love.  From a distance, it seemed to be moving up and down like a piston.  The pigeons, frightened by the ruckus, flew away.  

Continued in Chapter 7 – Kermesse the Frog