THE MALE CHAUVINIST - An Erotic Autobiography

Part Two - VII - VIII - IX

VII

The relationship lasts almost the entire fall. Carpe Diem Café becomes our regular haunt. We meet there two nights a week before heading to mine. As for being twice her age, Valda teases me just the right amount.

"Chronological age is just a number," I repeat to her. "Biologically, we're equals."

But reality occasionally shakes this belief.

"There's a bit of a draft," I comment one evening (we're at a restaurant, and I'm seated near a window).

An hour later, my back is paralyzed and in pain. "You've caught a chill, old man," Valda laughs as she helps me up from the chair.

Given our age difference and the casual nature of our relationship, she won't let me walk her to her door, preferring instead to be dropped off at the end of her street. I'm quite happy with this arrangement—less complicated. And frankly, I have no interest in meeting her family!

Unfortunately, it's not a relationship destined to last. It's inevitable that Valda will start asking questions (and questioning me). Legitimate questions, of course, but typically when those questions start, it means the end is near. Indeed, it all comes crashing down the day I lecture at the university... Not that I'm really qualified to lecture at a university, but given the success of my early novels, I pass as a decent writer, so some friends who have connections with the Faculty of Arts have the bizarre idea to invite me to give a short seminar. I see no harm in impressing a room full of university students, and who knows, maybe it could lead to a fling, since students have a thing for attractive teachers, and I happen to look like Brad Pitt compared to those old relics they have for professors.

The title of the lecture—"The Femme Fatale in Literature: From Angelica to Odette de Crécy"—is spot on.

"Are you pumped?" Ugo asks me before I enter the classroom.

"I just hope I don't spout too much nonsense."

"If it gets tough, just whip it out."

I wear a jacket and try to look the part, as people here are provincial: if you don't display confidence, you're not important. On the other hand, if you do display confidence, they dislike you. Difficult people.

The lecture goes really well.

I unleash all my charm, and as I venture into a vivid rundown of the bitches who have driven writers and their literary alter-egos to despair, I even catch a couple of students making eyes at me. My tangent on Daisy and Gatsby, which the audience knows, I fear, only through the DiCaprio film, is particularly well-received.

Valda is there, in the front row, looking attentive, the model student; she follows the lecture with a slight, ironic smile. That afternoon, we don't even make it to the car. Valda pushes me into the hallway of a doorway along Via Emilia and unbuttons my pants. It doesn't last long, as my maid has mastered her art to such an extent that she could make me come in less than a minute, which is fortunate because a certain gentleman, the father of three sisters I know (suddenly realizing this was their house), enters the hallway looking at us with a puzzled and somewhat inquisitive air. I had just pulled up my trousers and, taking Valda by the hand, I hurry away without greeting him (but this is a tactical error because he knows me by sight and the escape must have seemed all the more suspicious).

That evening, however, as I drive her home (or rather, to the vicinity of her home), Valda becomes somber. That morning, before she left for the seminar, her father had said something that she can't stop thinking about. He had said, "You know he just wants to get you into bed, right?"

No, daddy, you're wrong. I don't want to take your girl to bed. I just want to keep getting those wonderful blowjobs that your daughter does so well. Just those, so you don't even have to worry about her getting pregnant. You can sleep soundly, daddy.