I Wouldn't Call Her a Hooker Until Ch. 01

Should I ask the good doctor to test for STD's as he cured her flu?

"Well!" I said grandiosely, suddenly at ease with the situation. "This is fortuitous since I need to be away for several days."

I averred that I was pleased that my wife was "in good hands" and began my retreat down the stairs toward the front door. Doctor Gangbanger and the gilt edged goons stood at the top of the stairs watching my departure with interest.

What had just happened?

They were surprised. They were perplexed.

I was surprised. I was perplexed.

Living at the Marriot for a week was no sacrifice. I enjoyed my bizarre vacation. It comported with the bizarre derangements that suddenly had appeared in my little world.

Grace played the concerned and diligent PA and Vernon's close friend. She made ostensibly obligatory visits each day. Of course, she was concerned about her best friend; but Grace was reconnoitering and seeking advantage for our cause.

It was the first day of my absence from home that Grace appeared unannounced and found Vernon by the pool sipping a Margarita. Only the housekeeper and Vernon's PA were in the house.

Vernon's entourage had departed. With admirable recuperative powers and no lack of deceptive dramatics, Vernon was proving her mettle as a campaigner and survivor. Zounds! Did I not excel at choosing a wife? Score one for me! Wretched me!

"Vernon walked as if she had a squirrel between her legs," Grace reported to me. "But she was working on a brief of some kind for the university."

When I returned home, I conducted a carefully planned interview with my wife. My resolutions of my tedious conflicts required time. I was stalling while maneuvering into position to execute.

Of course, I refrained from raising questions about Vernon's performance at the Fourth of July Picnic.

Life rumbled onward. Nothing could have pleased me more. Fate was smiling on me, providing the low key universal confusion I needed to align my stars. More than a billion dollars in assets rode on the waves of some of the decisions I was making.

Vernon resumed her smooth though covert domestic manipulations. She insisted that all was well with us, astoundingly offering sex that almost met the requirements of a marriage in which the wife observed the strictures of fidelity.

"So!" Grace joked. "On your tombstone we'll say that she fed you a witch's soup of STD's and you fought in line to screw her."

How do I answer that cruel witticism? As usual, Grace had stated the case.

"I'm just fulfilling my obligation to protect and preserve the foundation's billion dollar endowment," I responded. "I must maintain the status quo with Vernon and the Provost until we are ready to move to our new campus."

Sex with Vernon always defied description. Vernon was a virtuoso. Like an incomparable violinist who spellbinds an audience, she conjured an experience for which there was no material quid pro quo.

Vernon undeniably was conceived to lead Western Civilization to unimaginable orgasms. Of course, significant orgasms, including the mechanistic, invariably produce momentary insensibility, what the French call la petite mort.

Voila! Give the world a "Little Death" and the anarchists will couple with the Nihilists to take advantage of the orgasmic pause to administer the last rights. Then we will understand orgasmic liberalism as a political science.

With orgasms from the institutional neoElysium, always comes the exquisite mythology of conquest. To be sure, conquest implies deconstructionism. Such a phenomena assaulting the teetering defenses of Western Civilization, furthermore, wiould decree ruin. So tenuous were the bonds of freedom.

Such recreational reading that I might find time to indulge was the catalyst to alerting me to the signs that the resolution moment was drawing near. It was The iliad. Homer had always entertained me and given me pause.

When I arrived at the office one Monday morning about three weeks after the Fourth of July, Grace greeted me with pictures of the destruction left by the orchestrated rioters the previous night. We had witnessed a sudden onslaught of the mob.

Any night we had scheduled a guest lecturer with whom the administration disagreed, the mob materialized from the deep purple of night fall. Our shower of raw feces, rotten eggs and brickbats had become a nightly ritual.

All six feet one inch of Grace's slim tight body appeared to be ready for war. Damn! I loved this woman, I thought with more than a modicum of guilt. I had said nothing to betray my interest or invite speculation. But, damn it, I realized that I must act soon to dump the cheating, traitorous Harpy known colloquially as my wife.

Grace was a Fury. My wife, Vernon, the Provost's mouthpiece in more ways than one, was a Harpy.

"Who are those four officious women sitting in my outer office?" I asked Grace the morning after the protesters drove one of our guest lecturers off the campus with threats of disembowelment.

"They are here to audit the books of The Foundation," Grace informed me, compressing her lips and arching her brows, ready for the interrogatories. "So! Vernon has launched final assault."

Homer had scored once more with his Iliad. He hit me upside the head. In The Iliad, The Trojans stupidly permitted the Greeks to roll a giant wooden horse inside the city's walls as a token of friendship. Hiding inside were elite Greek warriors.

"Trojan Horse," I shouted.

Chaos ruled in the outer office for the next five minutes as Grace demonstrated her perfected rudeness in ejecting the four Harpies. Flaring the nostril of their hooked noses, they waved their CPA's and threatened to get a warrant.

"They were the shock troops in the university's quest to steal the Foundation," Grace said. "Your wife has upped the ante and started her 'Sherman's March to The Sea'."

"Sherman's March to The Sea?"

"It was called a military campaign," Grace said. "But it was genocide, murderous insanity and wanton destruction."

Georgian families were denied food. Their homes and businesses were burned. Murder was the tactician's order of the day. Rape on a demonic scale was an implicit reward.

Grace, a Civil War history buff, chilled my bones with her account of General Sherman's Union troops scorching the earth in a 300-mile swath from Atlanta to Savanah.

With more than a billion dollars whetting their rapacious appetites, the ambiguous university was my Lincoln, The Provost was my General Grant and my wife was my General Sherman. Who was me Abraham Lincoln?

Could I have countered logically that the "people of The South" had initiated and written this catastrophic chapter in American History? Of course not. I proudly included Robert E. Lee as one of the roots of my family tree.

Graphic stereotypes of "destruction," however, governed my thoughts for the remainder of the day. All wars in the 21st Century will find their resolution in the story of how President Lincoln, General Grant and Genera Sherman ended the Civil War.

"Destruction, scorched earth and take no prisoners," Grace intoned, succinctly summarizing the implications of our pending battle to the finish with the coalition of factions throwing feces on our lawn.

History's "March Through Georgia" had come to epitomize our jeopardy in Grace's mind.

My puzzlement at Grace's equating our conundrum with a canonized Civil War atrocity only elicited a shrug from Grace. Obviously, she was chagrined that I did not understand.

Neither sparrow nor earthworm was spared in Sherman's "March Across Georgia." Ergo! Neither sparrow nor earthworm would be spared in the march of our assassins across our law.

"That's the way wars are won!" Grace growled mysteriously.

LADY MacBETH IS HERE...Double, double toil and trouble...

"I think your wife just fired on Fort Sumter," Grace said laconically as she set the phone to conference call.

Grace, the American Civil War buff, had just told me that the war to seize The Foundation had moved from low heat to roiling boil. Grace was alluding to the historic fact that April 12, 1861, the rebels had stupidly fired cannon balls at government troops stationed on an island in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. Thus began a human conflagration that cost the lives of 620,000 American soldiers.

It seemed that my wife, as the university's general counsel, and her friend, the university's Provost, had moved their campaign to steal The Foundation up a notch. My chief administrator of the complex financial giant could hardly contain his anger.

Each morning I receive a 15-minute telephone briefing from the Executive Vice President of The Foundation.

This morning Thurgood Manning was convinced the "shooting war" had begun.

Our CFO had joined in the conference call. Theresa Burden suffered from intense vexation. Since she was a close friend of my wife, Vernon, as well as a sorority sister, she could not understand Vernon's leading the assault to seize The Foundation.

"Your wife and the four Harpies that Grace threw out of your office are here," the CFO said. "Your wife has a paper in her hand that she says is a court order."

"Don't accept the paper!" I commanded.

"And call the sheriff's office and ask for Captain Adams," Grace interrupted. "Tell him some women broke into your office and threatened to rape you."

"What!" we all shouted as a chorus.

"Just do it!" Grace hissed. "Captain Adams won't look at your wife's court order until he gets them to the sheriff's office; and before they get back to The Foundation's offices, we'll already have moved the computers and other pertinent records."

So! Our "The War Between Us and Them" had moved to a violent dimension.

Indeed, that night human feces rained upon our lawn in their response. Attendant to this progression was the appearance of our first wave of paid hellions. Also, arriving as if on cue were seven vehicles bearing the logos of news organizations.

In the first assault, programmed to last two hours, their weapons were limited to wet human feces, brick fragments and fireworks.

Of course, we were within the jurisdiction of the campus police. They arrived precisely one minute after the raiders departed.

No surprise, I confess. I did not expect Vernon to come home that night.

Well!

My incredibly busy wife was "away on the university's business" for the next three weeks.

For some reason never made clear, Vernon did not return to The Foundation with her "paper," presumed to be a warrant to seize our records. Captain Adams said she seemed to have lost the "paper" before she arrived at the sheriff's office.

At this point, we settled in for a siege.

TIME MARCHES ONWARD WITHOUT RESPECT OR FAVOR

They would come soon to serve a court order directing me to vacate my office and leave Trevelander Hall, the home of the history faculty for 125 years.

Without a doubt, the Provost and her entourage would accompany the sheriff's deputy. Firing me as history department chairman and dean of the New School of Social Sciences stood as a resounding victory for the spear carriers of the New World Order of Authoritarian Alignments.

"You've got to be as loony as the Provost herself if you think your wife is part of this lynching," Grace said. "Vernon might be the world's most accomplished slut and a corrupt lawyer, but she would never lead a mob to draw and quarter you and roast your body parts in the quad."

My personal assistant had a point. My wife's job as general counsel for the university did not de facto make her a leader of the lynch mob. I refrained from arguing that the Provost would never have incited the mob to attack without consulting her general counsel, my wife.

Of course, Grace and my staff were too refined and culturally seasoned to acknowledge their awareness that Vernon recognized no moral parameters.

Vernon obviously had become a consummate whore and masterful warlord.

Then, too, Grace was loath to condemn Vernon on a more personal level. They had maintained close ties since their college and sorority years.

My most persistent problem arose from the fact that Vernon, as an attorney, served as theoretician to my demonic enemy. In accepting such a brief, my wife would devise all strategies for the Provost, the quintessential spirit of evil.

Stealing the billion dollar endowment would be tantamount to pinching the Queen's jewels. To be sure, that was exactly their plan. Anyone who has watched the board of directors of a functioning American Foundation understands the implications.

As nonprofits with incredible funds, foundations have almost unlimited power in all social and political institutions. Directors of these organizations have financed the putative overthrow of the constitutional government of the United States.

Grabbing the Foundation's endowment arguably would make the Provost and general counsel the most powerful duo in the region.

As Grace reviewed my agenda that morning, I experience an eerie chill portending a catastrophic event in my life. Once again, sensing my pessimism, Grace cautioned that we could not condemn Vernon based on the implications of her professional responsibilities.

Of course, Grace, my wife's most durable friend, would strain to the most elastic degree in finding an atom of hope for my marriage.

Vernon was only one of 85 lawyers employed by Lloyd, Granstaff and Lloyd, the largest and most prestigious law firm in the three-state region. My wife's serving as the university's general counsel, Grace counseled, did not compromise our marriage.

It wouldn't wash. I knew in my profundity that Vernon had to be the driving force in the scheme. Is that not the attorney's reason for being?

My rather prosaic mentality simply would not be intimidated.

"Her law firm has received the retainer as the university's agent of record since 1920," I said, "and about ten years ago, Vernon was designated as the firm's general counsel for the university."

Of course, as a corporate attorney specializing in institutions of higher education, Vernon was the logical choice. Not wanting to intensify the heat beyond reason, I refrained from charging that Vernon had exceeded her professional brief.

It was impossible, however, to maintain such a preposterous stance.

"My wife is wielding the longest, broadest and heaviest sword on point for that gang of thieves," I hissed when I could no longer contain my rising anger.

Lamont Gentry, my celebrated specialist in Eastern European social and philosophic underpinnings, leaned into the office grinning. He was reporting having sighted "the mob" turning the corner, marching lock-step behind a sheriff's car.

"Everyone's assembled in Lecture Hall A," he said. "I've got all the auditorium doors unlocked and Reggie and Arch are outside to direct them."

My plan was simple. My trusted palace guard, my elite troops, would cut the faculty from the herd and seat them in Lecture hall "A". Grace would then saturate the atmosphere with video and display sized pictures of the Provost and my wife, the Provost's theoretician and general counsel, indulging their outrageous sexual proclivities.

Adolescent stupidity in the extreme! You spat contempt at me.

Absolutely! To be sure! Lunacy personified. This was my impotent response.

Any rational mentality would find this beyond nonsensical, I agreed.

"Ah ha!" my detractors chorused. "You have fashioned yourself into the exemplary fool."

"But! Have you faced the university denizens of the 21st century?" I demanded, exhibiting devilish stoicism. "No! you have not."

Our Provost and her raging minions gave my absurdities credibility with each opening of their mouths. My wife's theories apparently lay at the base of their strategies; therefore, Vernon had placed herself in the line of fire vis a vis her husband.

As the custodian of my laptop and several briefcases, Grace was rifling through my 400 photographs and organizing the content as expected. Suddenly she whooped that the Provost was an "Orgasm Ball" freak.

My $20,000 payout to a PI firm for precise and comprehensive evidence of the Provost's perversions had paid off. Who could have guessed that she strode about the campus with a snatch filled electronically activated Ben Wa Balls?

"Our Supeme Being of a status leader is a Pussytator Freak," Grace howled as she shook so hard she almost fell from her desk chair. Proving her point by waving an 8 by l0 color photograph of the Provost positioning herself to insert the remote-controlled Ben Wa balls, Grace ran to the hall shouting her incredible message. So successful was she that half my faculty trotted from the auditorium to join her.

"Looks like she's getting ready for a budget meeting," someone said. "Damn! That's a sophisticated control box and that other thing looks like a miniature generator."

Handing out more pictures, Grace was knocked on her butt by the surge of the small mob of history professors who had gathered around her.

"It's wireless," someone observed. "Damn! This picture shows her eyes bulging after she inserted the balls."

"I've always wondered how she kept that grin on her face 24/7," Samantha Glorystory, the East Asian specialist whispered. "And look at the size of her gash!"

"Gash! What gash?" Grace asked snatching the photograph away from Samantha. "Her slit's got to be ten inches long. Good Gawd!"

"Fire up the DVD projector!" someone demanded.

I smiled as I leaned against the door jamb and attempted to light the char in my old pipe. Though the laptop contained 20 hours of effing and slobbering, I would short circuit the feeding frenzy very soon; for we must move on to the auditorium.

"Holy crap!" Grace said, rolling her eyes heavenward. "We've got the makings of a horror porn movie."

"I hesitate to break up such a dignified and professionally progressive impromptu seminar," I said casually with what I hoped appeared to be aplomb. "But we have an obligation to our esteemed audience."

My close faculty associates and personal friends had come to work that morning convinced that I would suffer the slings and arrows of the Provost's legendary evil. They were ready to go down with me.

"We're about to have a movie premier for those morons out there," Grace surmised. "It will be a blockbuster extravaganza starring our Provost with her Ben Wa Balls and her general counsel doing two dozen Mister Money Buckets on a parking lot."

"Indeed," I said, "The show must go on."

Now everyone pressed about me eager to participate in what the expert on revolution called my "coup in the palace of educational common causes."

"So! We're not out of business, boss?" someone yelled.

"Far from it," I responded as I continued to direct them back into the part of the auditorium designated Lecture Room "A". "I believe you would call this our expanding into other markets."

Lamont had walked away laughing maniacally to aid Arch and Reggie in directing the screaming contorting mob of professors into the auditorium. Grace had stuffed the pictures into the briefcases, closed the laptop and was following me toward the control room.

Time was of the essence now. I had calculated, however, that unforeseen intervening forces might arise. Grace was quick. She moved without further explanation to set up the laptop with the DVD projector for viewing on the wall mounted giant screens in the auditorium.

This would serve as Grace's war room. There was nothing about the communications system that Grace did not know.

As we strode out of the backstage control room, I concluded Grace's instructions. As expected, she had begun to understand that the night had potential for extraordinary events that could shape the future of the university.

Uppermost in my consciousness lay the awakening realization that our war of nerves probably stood on the brink of insatiable violence. Perhaps the time for throwing feces on the lawn had ended. Conceivably, tonight would bring the opening shots of vile, bitter blood bath.