Tag Archives: history

For adults only [NSFW]

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This blog entry is a very personal record of my life that delves into subjects that may or may not be safe to read in the presence of fellow workers, students, and/or family members.  Read at your own discretion.

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My newfound friends have inspired me to talk about my thoughts in this online diary that somehow is found by people who’ve bothered to read my blog/journal/diary entries and responded to them, reacted to them and told me they read them.

I used to write this blog with one eye toward whether I could offend or have offended others.

What I’ve discovered lately is that I no longer have time in my life to worry about others’ opinions, thoughts or lives — they have to live their lives in accordance with their own beliefs, not mine — I struggle enough just keeping up with myself.  Friends my age are dying more frequently, telling me I may not have several more decades to wait to write as a curmudgeon.

Let this blog entry begin…

I don’t remember the first time I discovered that there was a sensation in the general area of my genitals that caused an excitement I hadn’t experienced before.

The first full memory was of me lying down on top of an afghan on the floor of our living room, my sister at a friend’s house, my parents out of the house for the evening, trusting me at home by myself, and I was watching television.

A movie was on the TV, one of those made-for-TV shockers that showed the life of a nice teenage girl who fell into the wrong crowd, got hooked on drugs, was infected by a venereal disease, eventually overdosed and died.

The character the actor portrayed was not old enough to drive at the beginning of the movie so she was supposed to be 15 but the actor was probably in her early 20s which meant the actor was more mature-looking at first until the character she played died at the age of 18 or 19.

I was 10 or 11 years old at the time.

When I was eight or nine, I had kissed a girl a couple of times only because the two of us wanted to know what her older sister got out of kissing a boy for hours at a time in the backseat of their parents’ car in the cold weather.  We laughed more than anything else at the “slobber” of our wet lips touching.

While I sat watching the movie on the tellie, I noticed my penis felt warm.  Not an erection but just a tingling feeling.

I talked with a couple of guys at school about it and they told me they had had their first erection already and it was no big deal.  One claimed he had a five-inch erection and the other one said his was six inches — they told me as soon as I got an erection I was supposed to measure it because that’s what their older brothers told them to do because their girlfriends who weren’t ready to see an erect penis were still interested in how big their boyfriends were.

My parents stressed to me the importance of schooling over the fleeting temporary feelings of sexual attraction, my father giving me a book called the Life Cycle Library to answer any questions I had, including a few briefs paragraphs on masturbation which I knew nothing about until I turned 15 years old and a guy at school asked a girl friend of mine who explained to both of us what she knew about playing with your genitals.

I knew my father kept copies of Playboy magazine in his clothes closet.  I had shown the copies to friends of mine who laughed about the airbrushed perfectly-posed photos of women in their college-age years, like no girls we knew so they were more like impossible fantasies not worth thinking about.

Therefore, from age 11 to age 16 I was able to concentrate on my academic studies and extracurricular activities much more than many guys at school who had one steady girlfriend after another occupying their hours during/between classes and afterschool.

[Not that I was all that good at studying.  Instead of studying for exams in the afternoon, I often read science fiction books or took walks in the local woods and wrote in my journal while seated on a log at the top of the hill behind our house.]

In that time period of my early teens, I accomplished a few goals.  I completed my requirements for Eagle Scout at age 13.  Of my five years of weekly piano and baritone horn lessons, I probably practiced about one-fifth as much time, if not less, than the time I spent with my teachers.

When I was 16, a girl one year younger than me finally got through to me sexually, helping both of us discover that our bodies were good for more than marching on the football field and sitting in student desks.  Our relationship lasted maybe three months before the pressure for us to have sex, especially by her mother who was interested in my getting her daughter pregnant, was too strong for my…well, I wanted to say stoic but more like monastic lifestyle.

After we broke up, I was left feeling that a sexual relationship with a girl my age was just like my parents said: a big investment for so little payback.  However, I still had sexual desires and finally turned to a weekly habit of masturbation to refocus my attention on academics and journal writing.

If I had kept good records, the cycle of masturbation would be a good indicator of the stresses in my life, going from months between sessions to days or weeks and back to months.

I have been a paramour once but otherwise my dating skills and fear of venereal diseases have limited the number of women with whom I’ve had an intimate relationship — counting my wife, maybe three or four?

So, why am I writing about the subject of sexual feelings today?

Well, it’s to record this observation: I have recently lost the desire to masturbate.

I don’t know whether my age — 51 — or the circumstances of my life has determined the change.

I still think about women’s bodies as sexually attractive but it’s like my body no longer has the motivation to act on the desire.

I can still get it up, as they say, but playing with myself has gradually taken backseat to my writing over the last few months as a means of clearing my thoughts and associated stresses.

Is it the exercise of dancing and running, perhaps?

It may be.  I don’t know for sure but I can say that the act of walking/jogging/sprinting calms my thinking.

Dancing at first was so much sexual tension for me that my desire for sex drove my wife crazy (“I’m too tired” became such a recurring echo that I finally imagined her response without trying anymore) until I gave up associating physical contact with women as any hint for future sexual activity.

In fact, last night, just thinking about having to look into the face of a dance partner for two or three minutes was enough of a turnoff not to ask a woman to dance.

All of these thoughts have led me to today, when my wife and I went to the dance studio to practice a routine for a showcase taking place in less than two weeks.

Until today, the thought of dancing with my wife was equivalent to getting my teeth pulled but better her when there’s at least a small chance of sexual activity than with someone else I know nothing is going to happen between us after the dance is over.

I think the last lesson I had each with Abi and Jenn set the mood for today — there was no longer any sexual desire on my part for them as members of the opposite sex — they had become once-and-for-all simply like my sister, releasing me from all the old fears of playing the dating game that haunt and taunt the nerdy guy inside my thoughts.

My wife has looked at our financial balance sheet and decided we can no longer afford for me to take dance lessons after the showcase this month.  We have overextended our frugal budget which has added out-of-town dance competition weekends to our already-stretched fall budget for college football weekends.

Abi and Jenn enjoy teaching and I have enjoyed taking dance lessons from them, their attention toward me making me feel like the man my wife has not.

For them, I owe a debt I cannot repay — they have restored a confidence in me which has opened up my thoughts and allowed me to speak my mind, letting the bad thoughts flow onto this page and put the real me here, the empty vessel which has layered itself over the years with lacquered images of sophistication that from a distance is interesting but from up close is what it is — a cardboard illusion has been revealed.

As I force myself to practice this next two weeks, practicing or studying is a habit I’ve never had, using a minimum of talent and latent skills to skate through society, I have the rest of my life to examine, while evaluating the changes to me over the past two years.

The breath of fresh air that flowed across me the day Jenn sat next to me at the pavilion on the banks of the Tennessee River two summers ago has been more than I can ask for.

The wealth of exotic adventures that just a few months ago stepped onto the dance floor the evening that Abi appeared at Kinesthetic Cue Dance Club has been so overwhelming I’m not sure who I am anymore.

It’s like I’ve been two different people, the old me and the new me, the old one trying to assert its old habits in some sort of protective shield against the assertion of the new one.

To encounter two polyamorous women who’ve been willing to dance with me freely and as paid dance instructors, becoming friends rather than hoped-for lovers at the same time I’m passing into the sixth decade of my life has been a bit confusing, on top of the loss of the desire to masturbate, has really flipped me for a loop.

I’m not sure where my life is going, except toward death, of course.

My wife and I are within a few years of being able to fully retire, our bodies aging toward quiet comfort on the sofa in front of a TV and a computing platform (PC/tablet/smartphone/???), our house a hoarder’s dream falling apart at the seams.

Between now and retirement, I don’t know what will happen to me.  Or us.

I really enjoyed dancing when there was still a thought in me that I could become the Casanova or Don Juan that I never was — having had many girlfriends at once in the past but none in a physically-intimate relationship — experimenting with the “vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” as they say.

Now that dancing has turned into a chore, a means to put me in a showcase so Abi and Jenn can fulfill their with to make me a stronger leading dance partner, I have joined many a person who lost interest in dancing, looking forward to life after the showcase and returning to the observe-and-report guy safely ensconced in his limited dictionary, typing up his view, one of billions, of the vastly-unknown universe in which we live, entertaining himself one day at a time until he’s dead.

I am almost burnt out and there are only 13 days left for me to perfect the moves that’ll make Abi and Jenn look good on the dance floor trying to make me look good as a leader.

In times past, I would construct a sexual fantasy to overcome the burned-out feeling or fear of upcoming event, creating in my thoughts an imaginary lover, someone who does not exist in real life, about whom I would masturbate, hoping that there would be somewhere out there in the not-so-distant future a real lover who might bring that fantasy to life, if only I just make it through the next few days.  [Writing that last sentence and leaving it here for posterity is one of the most difficult things I’ve done but about the easiest to write — I’m going to avoid putting those words in the thoughts of a thinly-disguised character like “Lee” just to force the old me to see where the new me is going, trying to rid myself of passive-aggressive tendencies.]

It’s not fair to my wife, Abi and Jenn that the recent confusion of my sexual feelings is intermixed with the changes in my friendships with them.  Unfortunately, my magnanimity is limited.  In my thoughts, the separation of them as great people who’ve seen parts of the world I have not, and accomplished goals I could never dream of, from them as sexually-attractive women has not been easy, through no fault of their own.

Luckily, I am not one to act on my libido.

Soon, the showcase will be over and my interactions with Abi and Jenn as dance instructors will possibly cease.

I’ll move into the new phase of my life, more frugal as I get older, a domesticated animal tethered to this planet, his chances of exploring the stars left to the generations to come.

The flicker of light that briefly gave me hope will soon die out, my love of dancing dying with it, lost with my love for academic studies, piano playing, mowing lawns and masturbating that became habits for habits’ sake, their original intents lost.

Who is the new one?

I’m not quite sure yet.

Like many an aging person before me, the closer I get to my natural death the more likely I am to speak my thoughts regardless of how insensitive they may be stated at inappropriate times, no longer concerned with being nice or considerate of others’ feelings, like a dog tied up in a backyard, contently sleeping in the sun until someone steps into my personal space and stirs my innate territorial sense into barking in this blog.

For a while, Jenn and Abi helped me believe I might be a better person than I am but slowly I have let them see me as I see myself, unable to perpetuate the elaborate masquerade pasted hastily over a faded facade of a lost youth and meager adulthood.

At the end of this weekend, I realise it’s okay to be who I am, quietly contented with my lazy flaws rather than working hard at perfecting new habits of someone else I would always struggle to be.

I want to feel sad about this admission I may have to say goodbye to them not only as instructors as also as friends leading complicatedly-appealing polyamorous and mentally-attractive technological lives, but the more I get to know Abi and Jenn, the more I see I was luckier to have had them in my life than the other way around.  They gave me more and had more to give than I could ever give of myself.  They are far and above more honest about the way they treat people around them than I am.

I get to know people in order to write an entertaining diary entry disguised sometimes as an extended story-turned-novel, a spider trapping prey to be sucked dry and tossed aside unceremoniously.  They get to know people because they care.  You can tell me which kind of person benefits our species better!

I post these blog entries solely in the hope that someone who might take the time to read these can see a similarly flawed personality trait in him/herself and still have the personal desire to become a more caring person than I am.

As I overheard a coworker once say about me, “Well, if nothing else, Rick serves one purpose — as an example to others what not to be.”  Beware the wish to know what people say, let alone think, about you!

Yep, that’s me…an example to others…aren’t we all?

At 51, I return to the life of the after-school teenage tinkerer with a miserly budget playing with electronic components in his pretend laboratory, breadboarding test designs, soldering together haphazardly-constructed playthings for personal edification, using the Internet as my lab notebook while people his age with better social skills are playing God with our species and the inner solar system.

The universe is benign.  For that, most of all, I am thankful.  Good night.

Is civility civil in “civil war”? Does it matter if it’s Spanish or Syrian by nature?

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Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
the fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,
the chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. but to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
“O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.”

And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
“But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.”

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: “Our day is our loss. O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser. Time the refreshing river.”

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror:
“Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

“Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin’s plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.”

And the life, if it answers at all, replied from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city
“O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I’m the

“Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

“What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.”

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen’s islands
Or the corrupt heart of the city.
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad, and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people’s army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
the photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty’s masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The consious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

Tolerance for pain

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Bai jumped across the colony’s esplanade with Shadowgrass.

“Mom told me that you’re one of the main reasons I’m here.”

“She did?”

“Something about your grandfather and a war?”

“She remembered!  That’s great.  Yes, my grandfather was a soldier a long time, during the period many on Earth call World War II.  He was a radio operator.”

“Dad told me about those.  Specialists who were responsible for sending signals between groups of people because they didn’t have a love/hate relationship with the ISSA Net yet.”

“Hmm…hahaha.  True.  But my grandfather is famous back home in the Philippines.  He was the man who first contacted General MacArthur, an American soldier in charge of many troops.”

Shadowgrass nodded, mentally scanning the information about World War II as they skipped and hopped.  “So how does that account for me?”

“Oh, yeah, it doesn’t make sense, does it?  Well, you see, my grandfather was a strict soldier which led to my father’s interest in discipline but for a totally different reason.  You’ve probably never heard of ‘Star Trek,’ have you?”  She watched his eyes flicker slightly.  “Well, I guess you know about it now?”

“Yes, Bai.”

“My father fell in love with the TV show.  It was like having his grandfather and all of his grandfather’s friends and uncles live the life of space soldiers.  When I was old enough, he made me watch every episode of the original TV series, all the spinoffs such as ‘Next Generation,’ up to ‘Enterprise,’ and, of course, the films as they were released.  Inside of you is a little bit of Data with a little bit of Wesley Crusher and Jake Sisko.”

“Mom said you were able to infuse my genetic material with the propensity for personality traits of fictional characters.  How did you do it?”

Bai ran her gloved hand across her faceplate, intending to but unable to rub her eyes.  “Did Guin tell you I used to date Brannon Braga?”

“Huh-uh.”

“Yes.  He was the one who inspired me.  I hope I inspired him some, too.  His place in Melrose, not far from the film studios, was amazing.  I remember one party he had, it was a food bar from front to back.  You walked from his kitchen to the backyard, which opened onto an English garden, and then the pool…the pool…”  She stopped and looked up at the Martian sky.

“What is it, Bai?”

“He said he put me in one of his scripts.  I never asked him which one.”

Shadowgrass flipped a few times in the air, bounced up and down like a kangaroo and landed in a three-legged stance.  “Did he write about me?”

“No.  You are my creation.  I mean, it was me who gave your parents the idea to call you their son.”

Shadowgrass flipped up in the air and landed in a standard bipedal configuration.  “That’s what Mom said.  But I thought you might know something else.”

Bai heard a note of disappointment in Shadowgrass’ intonation of curiosity.

“Shadowgrass, you are a part of everyone’s life, don’t you know?  You are the culmination of our species’ achievements.  Do you know how many kids on Earth dream of being you, able to change out body parts on a whim, with superstrength and superspeed?”

“Yeah, but…”

Bai nodded.  She knew where Shadowgrass was taking his thoughts.  His mother, Guin, had been a competitive boxer from an early age, trained by her father, a former member of the U.S. Marines, with assistance from his military and boxing buddies.  Growing up on a farm, she had been kicked and stomped on by calves and cows, raising her pain tolerance above normal levels.  She had later become a ballerina before switching to a career in rocket science.

Shadowgrass wished he had his mother’s natural abilities, and didn’t have his enhanced abilities that made him so much more capable than his parents.

At age two, he had completed his space exploration vehicle.  When his parents were two, they were barely walking and talking.

That’s why Bai had asked to spend the afternoon with him.  He needed encouragement to take Martian society to places he couldn’t believe possible when he’ll look back in a few marsyears.

She couldn’t believe she was with him herself, remembering the nights decades earlier, alone with her thoughts when she was at her lowest, torn between her French lover and being near her children on the North American continent.

She wanted to teach Shadowgrass to embrace his emotional side and use the energy he generated to plant seeds in his thoughts that would sprout into giant oaks in no time.

She had done that for so many other people.  She knew she could get Shadowgrass to, too.

Sayeth the Bitter Road to Freedom

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“This was a foreshadowing of things to come: UNRRA staff across Europe would soon find that refugees, especially when gathered in national groupings, tended to guard their autonomy jealously and to view relief workers as interfering do-gooders with insufficient respect for the struggles and sacrifices their peoples had made in the war.” Page 226

The good kind of flashback

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Talking with a friend, I had a flashback to a previous career where I tracked and calculated MTBF using FMEA techniques — started at GE with Navy CASS test equipment, carried over into sewer diagnostic sensors and ended with computer peripherals.  Seemed like I studied the mathematics in statistics class, too.

Memories…where and who would I be without ’em.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

A new character enters the picture

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Eoj was hired by the Mars Tourist Bureau to train travelers who would spend a few weeks in a space capsule, their bodies confined to not much more than a water closet there-and-back on their Moon-to-Mars holiday.

Eoj, half-Greek, half-Egyptian, had survived wars and skirmishes his whole childhood and jumped at the chance to serve aboard the ISS Dionysius, the flagship vessel that traveled from the Moon to Mars, packed full of tourists and their supplies needed to feed and care for them during their whole time traveling through space, in acclimation facilities orbiting Mars and on the Red Planet itself.

During the offseason, when Earth and Mars alignment made the trip prohibitively expensive, Eoj took martial arts and dance lessons which he in turn was able to share with tourists during their spaceflight, using a small corridor between their living quarters to exercise tourists in small groups of two or three.

Before his Mars Tourist Bureau job, Eoj had met Guin at an Earth dance studio when Guin was first brought in for physical therapy.  They had become dance partners because they shared the love of dance over many of their other hobbies and interests.

As Guin was finishing her PhD in rocket propulsion, she accepted the assignment to become an integral part of the ISSA Net, allowing her body to be monitored in realtime, accelerating her physical conditioning, with a bonus network interface that gave her the ability to simply think her thoughts to members of the ISSA Net without talking or using archaic input devices like phones or computers.

Eoj had opted not to accept full ISSA Net interfacing, believing that a “real” man kept himself in reserve.

Eoj and Guin excelled in their dance training and soon become part-time instructors at the studio, each taking on a small number of students, sometimes passing one student to the other when their regular work schedules conflicted with the students’ availability for lessons.

From this perspective, Eoj was able to observe more about Guin.

Eoj saw that he was not the only one who wanted to dance with her.

He had taken on Lee and Lee’s wife, Karen, as dance students early in Eoj’s dance instructor days so the three of them were guinea pigs for the dance studio owner, Disdry, a veteran of the World Peasant War, a set of military skirmishes that spread around Earth, wiping out whole sections of the peasant population desperate for food and a meaning for their miserable existence, including jobs or positive views of them in the mainstream press.

Thus, Disdry, although a smooth dancer, was a stern taskmaster with his instructors, a little rough around the edges.

Vulnerable during their first few months on the job, Eoj trying to get back on his feet after a tough job loss and Guin during the mental recovery associated with her physical therapy, Eoj and Guin gave Disdry more leeway to control them than had they been stronger socioeconomically.

Eoj worked with Lee and Karen under Disdry’s watchful eye.  Sometimes, after a particular tough time getting Lee or Karen to learn what should have been a simple dance move, Eoj would sigh and plop down in Disdry’s office.  Disdry would frequently offer constructive criticism but sometimes he would lash out, using cold, cruel humour to knock Eoj’s ego to the ground, which didn’t help Eoj at all for the next lesson with Lee and Karen, conditioned to expect verbal abuse from Disdry if Eoj was unable to show progress with a couple who sometimes just didn’t get it, regardless of Eoj’s instructing ability.

One day, Eoj was out of town and asked Guin to teach Lee and Karen.

Although Lee and Guin already knew each other, they walked into the dance lesson as newbies.

Guin had her own problems with Disdry’s treatment of her but had not yet received beratement in relation to training Lee and Karen so she was able to look at them without fear or trepidation.

Guin spent most of the lesson showing Lee the leader part of the waltz and foxtrot moves he had learned the week before, the two of them moving more easily as one than Lee had been dancing with his wife.  Karen spent most of the lesson watching and feeling ignored, not wanting another lesson with Guin because she felt that all Guin had done was teach Lee had to dance with her rather than with his wife.

The next week, Eoj noticed a change in Karen, sensing that she was more interested in him as an instructor and devoted his time to teaching them, getting more progress in that lesson than in the previous two months, even showing them a few fun moves that were not part of their official curriculum.  Although they had fun, Eoj was scolded by Disdry for going outside of the syllabus, dampening any enthusiasm Eoj had for seeing Lee and Karen the next week.

Because of this up-and-down treatment at the studio, Eoj built up expectations for the weekly social dance on Fridays when the students had the opportunity to try out their newly-learned moves in an actual social setting, the instructors available for advice and social dancing.  Eoj anticipated dancing with Guin and she with him, so they could practice moves they wanted to perfect for other venues.

As much as Eoj liked dancing with Guin, and noticed she did, too, he also observed that he was not the only one.

There seemed to be a virtual line of guys waiting to dance with Guin, including single and married men willing to leave their women alone in order to get a dance with Guin.

Added to that, Disdry informed Eoj that one of the students, a single women in her early 40s named Eternia, desired to dance with Eoj but Eoj always seemed to dance with Guin just when Eternia got up the nerve to ask Eoj to dance with her, or just felt outright ignored by him altogether, complaining that Eoj and Guin spent the whole Friday night dancing with each other rather than with their students.

Eoj accepted his “punishment” and reduced his dancing time with Guin, asking students, both his and those taught by Guin or Disdry, for individual dances.

Guin followed Eoj’s example and danced with students, including her boyfriend, Kirby, who showed up occasionally but had a problem with large crowds so he tended to avoid coming unless he had to.  Guin found herself dancing more often with Jersey, a shy man who had started social dancing lessons in order to look and feel more comfortable when he ventured out to nightclubs.

Guin was an encouraging instructor and boosted Jersey’s confidence, taking him with her to a dance competition in New Orleans.  Even though they didn’t win, it gave Jersey the impetus he needed to try other things, such as volunteering at the local youth symphony and competing in mountain bike races, eventually leaving Guin without a competitive dance partner once again.

When, with guidance from her new friend, Bai, Guin got the assignment to go to Mars, Eoj began questioning why he was stuck at the dance studio “alone” with Disdry.  Guin wanted to help Bai so she convinced him to get a job working with Kirby transporting blood products to hospitals and clinics in the area.

Eoj enjoyed his transportation job as the “Blood Man,” every now and then running into a former student or someone who knew who he had to be because of his unique rugged look as a GrecoEgyptian, shorter than average but built like a football player — broad shoulders, large chest and muscular arms — able to lift and throw a woman like Guin, several inches taller than him, with ease and grace.

A member of the board of directors for the Mars Tourist Bureau, Minten Kyun, badly injured in a helicopter crash and in critical need of blood transfusions, later heard, during excruciating recovery, that the well-thought-out, timely-but-safe driving by Eoj of blood from one hospital to the one where Minten was being pieced together, saved Minten’s life.

As soon as he could, Minten sent the word to Eoj to see him.

Eoj had never heard of the Mars Tourist Bureau so he was surprised that a complete stranger would offer him a job in such a specialised field as space travel.

“Welcome, Eoj Cappernopolus.  I’m Minten Kyun.  Please have a seat.”

Eoj plopped down into a plush red leather chair beside Minten, whose eyes flicked back-and-forth every now and then, a sign that he was communicating over the ISSA Net using the visual neurons of his brain.

“Thanks for asking me here.  So, your voicemail said you want to hire me for the Mars Tourist Bureau?  You know I don’t have any astronaut training, I assume.”

“Yes, Eoj, I do.  But not every job at the MTB requires a specialised pilot’s license.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you knew nothing else about the job, would you take it?”

“Umm…”

“I mean, how would you describe what you think about a job like this?”

“Well, that’s the thing.  I don’t know what the job is.”

“Good point.  What have you heard about the MTB?”

“Not much, frankly.  I’m sure I’ve heard of it in the news but I haven’t been focused on it, if you know what I mean, my financial situation not geared toward exotic space travel.”

“Of course.  So you’re not a fanboy of space exploration?  You don’t fantasize about a life on the Moon or Mars?”

“Not really.  Does that mean you aren’t interested in me, then?”

“Quite the contrary!  I want someone for this job who wants a challenge but doesn’t go into it with starry eyes wearing rose-coloured glasses, or who holds high hopes for a job and makes a mistake because he was so disappointed by reality he lost focus.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s the other thing about you.  You follow orders from others without letting your questioning authority get in the way of the whole organisation achieving its goals.  Do you know how hard it is to get someone who thinks independently outside the box but knows there are larger issues at stake?  I believe you are the man for this job.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t you want to know when you’re going to start?”

“Haha.  Isn’t there paperwork I’m supposed to fill out, a personality profile and physical fitness test I’m supposed to take or something?”

“Yeah, yeah.  We’ll put you through the formal wringer but I’m assured you’ve already passed.”

“So, when do I start?”

“That’s what I wanted to hear!  You start right now.  Welcome aboard, Eoj!”

“Thank you, Mister?  Misses?”

“Ah, I appreciate you not assuming anything about me.  Just call me Minten.  If you don’t mind, I’m going to hand you over to my assistant, Naad, who will get you started on a career that only two other people have been offered and accepted.  Eoj, you are an exclusive club member now.  I hope you know that.”

“Thanks.  I’m sure if you say it’s as good as it sounds, it probably is, being who you are and all that, a megabillionaire they say.”

“Don’t let money fool you, Eoj.  Wealth does not make you wise.  I hope I’m richer in wisdom than the rest.  But let’s get you on the road to your own riches, shall we?  Once you’re part of the MTB, you get shares in the corporation just like me and everyone else.  Here’s Naad.  Best wishes, my friend.  I’ll see you soon, perhaps on a trip to the Moon or Mars, if not sooner!”

Months passed before Eoj saw Guin again, his training schedule filling his days, simulating the space trip several times in a row so that Eoj was fully capable of handling both calculated emergencies and unanticipated calamities as well as integrating his personality traits into the ISSA Net for processing and compatibility training for the other crew members as they were hired and put through the simulator training.

Entering the simulator phase of the MTB “boot camp,” Eoj had resisted being wholly integrated into the ISSA Net so his trainers had offered him a track of gradual sensory input connectivity enhancements, showing him how his body became more alive and alert with the aid of ISSA Net body monitoring, holding off on full mental connectivity until Eoj convinced himself it was for not just the betterment of society but also his personal gain.