Chapter 1
"Well, that's all the news for tonight, folks. But all you faithful fans out there in Listening Land can catch Dirk Dilworth's six a. m. farm and news report if you stay tuned to WKMI here in Kalamazoo. The early bird catches that worm, right?-hahaha! Now at the sound of the tone it'll be exactly eleven here in Michigan, home of our great President Ford, and so before we sign off the air we wanna remind all you teens under eighteen that it's curfew time. Hurry it up with those good-night kisses, okay-doke, artichoke-hahaha!
And parents: do you know where your children are tonight?! "
The vociferous voice faded into a strident squall of static punctuated by siren-shrill squeals, rousing Ms. Denise Aronson from her comfortably curled-up position against the couch cushions. FREE AND FEMALE MAGAZINE and her package of Camel filters tumbled to the uncarpeted floor as she leaned over to switch the station selector dial to some Nashville folk-rock nonsense, and one ripe-melon breast dislodged itself from the cotton confines of her sensible white percale nightgown.
"I ride high, high in the saddle an I'm tall, tall, tall in luv..." wailed the radio.
"Oh, for God's sake!"
Denise switched off the white plastic clock-radio and stuffed the offendingly exposed flesh back inside her high-necked nightie. They'd called that sort of eardrum-grating junk "music" back in the late forties when she'd been a small girl-hadn't human consciousness evolved at all over the years? Then, as she realized that there was now no sound in the sparsely furnished living room save the hungry hum of mosquitos and faint murmurs of animal gluttons gorging on her biodynamic unsprayed garden outside, she turned the machine back on.
"WLS in Cheee-ca-goooo! Bringing you down Memory Lane through them Fabulous Fifties with that oldie-but-golden goodie, 'Rock Around the Clock Tonight'! Are ya ready! Here we go!"
"What in God's name's wrong with me tonight?" the dark-haired divorcee muttered as she irritably rearranged her voluptuous figure on the lumpy sofa and picked up her magazine. "I'm all on edge and I can't even concentrate on this great article on rape in FREE
AND FEMALE. Maybe it's because my tits hurt so much ... or this awful sticky heat-it never used to get this way up here in northern Michigan..."
It had, perhaps, been a mistake to sunbathe topless this afternoon-but if you were going to burn your bra, wasn't it an unforgivable compromise to continue wearing a two-piece bathing suit? Of course it was! And if her breasts were now not only shaped like premium-quality ripe cantaloupes, but also the same orange-pink color of this fruit's succulent interior, wasn't it her own fault? Hadn't she succumbed over all these thirty-five years to the male myths of covered mammary glands originated by profit-greedy bikini manufacturers? There was no other reason why this particular portion of her anatomy ought to be so supersensitive, and she would have to tell her daughters that they should start sunning topless at once.
Her daughters...
"Parents, do you know where your children are tonight?" echoed the radio's voice in her memory's ear.
Well, at least that was one positive thing about this inexplicably frustrating evening: she knew exactly where her two tow-haired blondes were, and had nothing to worry about on that score. Twelve year-old Caroline with her coltish skinny legs and pigtails was safe in her survival-style tent at the Back to the Basics Camp up in the Upper Peninsula, no doubt sleeping peacefully at this hour. As for sixteen year-old Tracey, she and that dull but unthreatening Robbie Runions were no doubt still happily sock-hopping at the "Rock Revival" dance down in the basement of the local Birch Bay Methodist Church. She was bringing up her two darling fatherless children in the Right Way, now she'd climb up to her bed and finish this educational article about actual legal defenses against the ultimate male outrage, rape.
Maybe my weird mood's got something to do with the full moon, she thought drowsily as she snuggled down under the sheets some minutes later.
FREE AND FEMALE once again tumbled to the floor as Ms. Aronson's lids fluttered down over her big brown eyes and her full-sculpted white thighs drew together in a paroxysm of unadmitted yearning, and the droning of insects was momentarily muted beneath the half sobbing sighs of her guilty finger-induced release...