Thinking of my friend, Janet

A story first published in January, 2005 ................
How it looks outside my window right now, where a blizzard mixes with Eagles' fever.


As I sit here, I can only think of my friend, err, Janet. I think of her beautiful smile every time she picks me up at the airport in Tampa once a year. I think of why she's smiling.Here I am, stuck inside and she's relatively warm in Florida, free to walk outside of her house naked whenever she wants. (At least she was when she lived in Paradise Lakes, a nudist resort north of Tampa.)
Janet originally is a transplant from a state even farther north than Pennsylvania, where this kind of thing is more the norm. In Philly, this happens once, maybe twice, a year.In the very cold state she's from, maybe 10 times.
Smartly, Janet up and left there some time ago. She didn't have much money, just a belief in herself.She's done pretty well down there. She survives and is happy and, really, that's what living is all about.
As far as I'm concerned, she's living what I simply call "The Dream." She's me in a woman's body, really.
I've done a lot of things in my life and have few regrets but one of the things I'm most proud about is having the guts to ask Janet to dance. It was about seven or eight years ago and I saw her walking around the resort with her boyfriend and she had the most beautfiul body I've ever seen and pretty dark brownish blonde hair.
"She's clearly out of my league," I thought to myself.
She was taller and absolutely stunningly beautiful with eyes that sparkle and a smile to match. I usually don't have the guts to ask taller girls to dance. However, in the packed Paradise disco, I noticed her standing in the aisle behind me, wearing a black dress.I was with my friends, Mike and Paula from Indiana, and we were having our usual yucks. Janet was behind us and I could see her laughing out of the corner of my eye. Stuff I was saying was causing her to laugh. Not surprising, because I'm often funny.
Fueled by the Miller Lites and Mike and Paula, I got up the courage to ask her to dance. I was braced for rejection, since I was naked and a stranger. It was the kind of bracing you do before impact of a small plane crash.
Much to my surprise and delight, it was a smooth landing. She said yes. I remained calm on the outside but my insides were screaming yes and high-fiving themselves.
We danced. The spontaneous combustion of our bodies had a powerful effect on Junior.
Janet, in a reverse role, was a "gentleman" _ or "gentlewoman" _ and guarded my excitement by keeping her body in front of mine all the way back to the barstool.
Another friend, Cherie the bartender, noticed my arousal and decided to have a little fun of her own. She smiled, rolled her eyes in my direction and grabbed a fistful of popcorn. Cherie is now a psychiatrist. I wonder if this story comes up in therapy sessions.
"What are you looking at?" I said, laughing.
She smiled again, looking directly at my throbbing manhood.
She playfully fired the popcorn kernel by kernel. Some landed on top of the shaft. Some stuck in my pubic hair.
It was all in good fun.
Janet and I had a wonderful lunch in the Key West Bar the next day. Both of us were butt naked. I think we had salads, but the only endearing memory I have of the day was that I could not keep my eyes off her stunning and beautifully tanned naked body.
I never had any expectations that Janet and I would be anything more than buddies, although I asked her back to my room every night. (I still don't know where I found the balls to do that.) Every night, she politely declined.
Until the last one.
"No intercourse," she said.
"Absolutely," I said. "No intercourse."
So we, err, played. It was incredible fun and I loved going down on her. I kept getting this feeling at that moment that I was the luckiest guy in the world. I'm not incredibly good-looking, maybe average or slightly above, and there I was going down on the prettiest girl in Paradise and she was returning the favor. Nobody understood that reality better than I.
It was one of the most exciting episodes of my life.
Heck, if I knew this was going to happen, I would have drank diet coke but I had a Miller Lite buzz. I still remember every detail. Meanwhile, Janet and I are friends to this day and it's been strictly platonic ever since.
She's got a guy now and she's happy.
That usually what happens when you are living the dream in the warmth of Florida.
It's a lesson I learn in a particularly hard way on days such as these.