Bawdybodies.com by Barry Rachin (highly recommended books txt) 📖

Every woman Ernie Summers dated possessed a fatal flaw. A case in point: the previous winter the thirty-five year-old mechanic spent time with a woman of Chinese background. An English major, Maureen Kwong went back to school for an advanced degree in education. When the vice-principal at Brandenberg High School left on maternity leave, Ms Kwong got bumped up to the administrative position.

"There’s a school committee meeting tomorrow night," Maureen explained, "so we can’t get together." They were sitting at Starbucks down from the Emerald Square Mall sipping mocha latte cappuccinos. "The PTO is considering a car wash to raise money for the senior dance. I suggested selling magazine subscriptions or a bake sale."

"What's wrong with a car wash?"

She scrunched up her bronze nose. "High school girls… they dress too provocative. The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance - it sends the wrong message."

The statement made no sense. It was the middle of December with a foot of slushy snow on the ground. Nobody would be prancing around in halter tops and cutoff jeans! And even if they were, it was a carwash. Ernie gawked at the woman. "You see," Maureen pressed her point with brittle obstinacy, "these dopey parents lack common sense, so I constantly need to redirect their misguided energies elsewhere."

The skimpy clothes and all that fleshy exuberance - it sends the wrong message. This from a woman who was wearing a slutty, low-cut blouse and stiletto heels when Ernie met her three months earlier at the Foxy Lady lounge! Maureen Kwong had no compunction about cleavage, risqué small talk or casual sex on a first date but was worried half to death about middle-aged men getting erotically aroused at a car wash. Despite a doctorate in education administration, the vice-principal suddenly seemed like the stupidest cow on the planet. Sipping at his tepid drink, Ernie glanced about the coffee shop. A pimply-faced youth several booths down was ogling Maureen Kwong with a fawning expression. The horny teen wished he had an exotic, oriental firecracker of a girlfriend. "What about the graffiti outlaw?" Ernie asked shifting gears.
"I'm still working on it. These things take time." The week after New Years, somebody decorated a stall in the second floor, boy's bathroom with an obscenity-laced poem. The first stanza read:

Roses are red
Lemons are sour
Open your legs
and give me an hour.

The janitor scrubbed the rather lengthy verse away but not before Ms. Kwong took half dozen digital pictures of the raunchy musings. A week passed and a second somewhat shorter and more intellectually challenging poem appeared on the same spot. Both were scribbled using indelible markers.

Sex is like math
You subtract all the clothes
Add in the bed
Divide the legs
And Pray to god
You don't multiply.

The pithy verse was far too clever to be the work of an adolescent mind. Ms Kwong hypothesized that the writer had plagiarized it from a collection of erotica, passing it off as an original creation. Needless-to-say, no Brandenberg student claimed literary credit. The vice-principal, who was in charge of disciplinary matters, grilled a handful of prime suspects, who pleaded ignorance; long after the metal walls had been scoured clean, the woman was still hard at work trying to solve the adolescent caper. "A few dirty words scribbled on a bathroom stall," Ernie assumed a breezy tone, "it's a victimless crime - hardly worth getting your panties twisted in a knot."

"Maybe for you," Maureen's voice soured. "I’m having several photos enlarged."

"What for purpose?"

"To check handwriting against samples from some of our more troublesome students."

Ernie imagined her brandishing a high-powered magnifying glass over the script, examining each verse for distinctive flourishes, embellishments, misspellings and grammatical inconsistencies, as a prelude to more extensive interrogations. "That almost seems like an invasion of privacy." He no longer made any effort to mask his irritation.

"We're running a public school not a Bonanza Bus station."

"Are the poems in bad taste? Yes, of course. Are they mean-spirited, vulgar and crass? Yes, again, but teenage boys - and I speak from personal experience - are like that."

"And you're not embarrassed to admit as much?"

Ernie leaned halfway across the table. "Not in the least." He wasn't even trying to humor the woman anymore. "It's a quasi-degenerate stage most kids go through… a pubescent rite of passage."

Roses are red
Lemons are sour…

No heroic measures! In the Starbucks Coffee Shop on a Saturday night in the middle of winter, Ernie decided to pull the plug on Maureen Kwong, the newly-minted vice-principal of Brandenberg High School. Not that the Asian woman was an anomaly. There were a million females out there just like her - well-educated, bright, sexy, professionally competent and dangerous as hell. You couldn't marry a woman like Maureen Kwong. Even as a casual date, Ernie could tolerate her fusty eccentricities for no more than a few hours back to back.

* * * * *

Easing a corroded water pump out from under the hood of a Ford pickup, Ernie gingerly placed the damaged part on the concrete floor and wiped his grimy hands with a rag that didn’t appear much cleaner than his fingers. Only when he stood fully erect did he notice the olive-skinned woman waiting patiently near the hydraulic lift. In her late twenties, Jillian Crowley was short with black hair gathered in a tight bun. The face was equal parts guileless ingénue and femme fatale. "Can I help you?"

She gestured with her eyes at a maroon colored sedan parked near the furthest bay. "My Toyota Celica... the air conditioner’s busted."

"Leave a number where you can be reached. We’ll take a look and call you in a few hours."

She pursed her lips and stared at a mound of gashed, punctured, crushed and otherwise ravaged tires heaped in the far corner of the repair bay. “I work over at the library in reference and am on a rather tight budget."

"I'll see what I can do."

After replacing the defective water pump, Ernie did a brake job, junking the scarred rotors on a late model Subaru. Around eleven he pulled the Toyota into the bay and raised the hood. Twenty minutes later he called the library. "The compressor is shot… completely dead."

"Oh dear!"

"New units cost a small fortune, but I can scare one up at salvage for a fraction of the cost. Even though it's used, we’ll warrant the part for a year just in case anything goes wrong." He wasn’t quite sure why he said that as the garage never offered warranties on used parts.

There was a short pause. "That sounds fair enough."


Three weeks later in mid-July, Ernie visited the library on his lunch break. "How's the air conditioner?"

"Wonderful! I can't thank you enough."

"Well just remember," Ernie added magnanimously, "if anything goes wrong, you bring it back to the garage and I’ll set things right." He shifted back and forth on the heels of his feet. "I was wondering…" His original intent was to ask the librarian out but his mind got hamstrung. "Reading material… I was wondering if you could recommend a good book."

Jillian folded her hands together on the desk. "What type of fiction do you prefer?"

Ernie became flustered. "I don't know… nothing too demanding. Since high school, I mostly favor hot rod magazines."

She led the way across the room to the stacks and in the very first row pulled a slim volume down from the shelf. "Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. It's an American classic."

"Anything else?"

Yes, you voluptuous vixen..., you mouth watering, luscious, heavenly creation. You can go out with me - a first date leading to a second, and then carnal relations followed by a trip to the marriage altar and half a dozen babies, each one more beautiful than their divine mother.

"No, I think that about does it," Ernie replied meekly. Jillian stood there with her delicate fingers laced together, the nails polished with plum colored lacquer. He turned to leave.

"He sold paint."

"Excuse me?"

"Anderson…when he wrote Winesburg, Ohio, which is generally considered his greatest work, he was writing advertising copy and working days for a paint factory." Uncoupling her fingers, the hand drifted down to her hips. "It's just a bit of literary trivia that I thought you might like to know."


The day that the librarian had her air conditioner fixed, Buddy Evers, who pumped gas, stuck his head in the garage. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me yesterday, or was that Jillian Crowley?"

"Where do you know her from?" Ernie asked.

"Went to high school together. The guys used to call her the 'Virgin Mother' ‘cause she was such a prude. Even though I never moved in her circle, Jillian always treated me swell."

"Which circle?"

"You know… the straight 'A', goody two-shoes set.” A rusty van pulled up at the self-service pumps. “You still seeing that Chinese teacher?"

Ernie grimaced and shook his head violently. "That blockhead?"

"I thought she had a half dozen sheepskins hanging on the wall."

"Just one - a PhD in stupidity," Ernie muttered. "What else can you tell me about Ms Crowley?"

“Her parents brought their Chevy Cavalier here for oil changes but moved to Florida a few years back. She shares an apartment over behind the fire station with a younger sister."

"What's the sister like?"

"Abigail?" Buddy flashed him a queer look. "Nothing like the Virgin Mother!"

"Which tells me nothing."

"Town slut," Buddy sniggered. "Jillian... she's plenty smart but don't flaunt it. Always had a kind word for everyone." "Of course, that slutty sister of hers is a whole different story," Buddy lowered his voice several notches. "The parents took out a 'wayward child' petition against Abby after she ran away from home for the third time. The girl did a stint at juvenile hall, but that only made her twice as ornery. Next thing I heard, the Crowleys relocated to Florida, leaving both daughters to fend for themselves." Buddy made a disagreeable snorting sound through his nose. "Ain't life swell!"


Ernie promptly went home and read the book. He liked it well enough but wasn't terribly sure that he understood the half of what he had read. Winesburg, Ohio - it was sort of like Jillian Crowley. The woman confounded his sensibilities, but if Buddy Evers said she was a decent sort that's all Ernie cared about. Buddy had been married to the same woman since a year out of high school. He coached Little League, never drank to excess or fooled around. Buddy mentioned that it was no great surprise Jillian, who was always reclusive, became a librarian. The only mystery was why such a ravishingly pretty woman was still unattached.

The following Tuesday Ernie returned to the library. "Which story did you like best?"

"The one at the beginning about the middle-aged school teacher."

"Yes, it's rather sad but beautifully written." Jillian agreed. "Are you looking for more books?" Ernie nodded. Again he trailed her across the slate blue carpet to adult fiction where she gathered up an armload of hardcover offerings.

"I was wondering," Ernie screwed up his courage, "if you might like to go out for