"Onward and upward, and downward," she said, as she bounced for Brad's enjoyment.
* * *
It was seven-thirty in Toronto, on an overcast and humid August evening, when Betty-Jo strolled onto the stadium court to warm up. When she removed her warm-up jacket, a collective gasp escaped from the crowd. That was followed by silence. Then the clapping, and the wolf whistles began.
She knew from Brad's earlier reaction, how breathtakingly beautiful and provocative the men would find her, in her pink and black fantasy outfit. Her tawny hair was brushed back until it caught behind her head in a bow or cascaded downward until it curled on, or just below, her shoulders. A full, pouting, and sensuous mouth begged to be tasted, while penetrating emerald-green eyes, appeared to be on a search and destroy mission for men's souls. Broad shoulders, supported large jutting breasts, a slim waist flared into ample hips, and long shapely legs led to what even God might have been unable to imagine.
Having revealed her charms to the crowd, she immersed herself in its adulation. Giving herself to Brad was gratifying and thrilling, but dressing for the pleasure of many men, produced a different sort of awakening in her. She felt an adrenaline rush that soon gave way to the feeling that she had taken some sort of aphrodisiac—she was on an immaculate sexual high—and she loved it. She bounced a few times, and gave herself to the crowd. Whatever it was, that was stirring within her, she knew she would need to feel again.
Within a minute, she had bounced and bent her way down to the focal point of Canadian manhood. What was happening on the stadium court, was so extra-ordinary that word went from household to household. Males phoned other males to tell them about the surreal beauty that had appeared on the tube from out of nowhere. Across the country, men scrambled to record for posterity the enticing bounce of Fun and More Fun.
After she had won her match, in three tight sets, Brad whisked her away. But soon, across America, highlights of her match were being re-broadcast to the many lustful males who had missed her live performance. The call in America, for live coverage of her quarterfinal match, was unprecedented. Abc responded.
On Friday, she again drew the evening time slot. The National Tennis Center stadium court was packed to its 8,000-seat capacity, and demand for tickets was five times that. Never before had so many people wanted to attend a tennis match.
Everyone in the stadium knew what he was supposed to be focusing on, because Betty-Jo was wearing a sheer-white aerobics top with pink, expanding circles that corkscrewed out from the tips of her breasts. She also sported a short white skirt and white nylons, which were held in place by a white garter belt, that stood out in contrast to her pink panties. A pink hair ribbon, lipstick, and choker completed her tennis ensemble.
The decision to wear a garter belt had been difficult. "What do you think Brad?" she'd asked.
"Might as well be hung for a Tawny lion as a Tawny lamb," he'd replied.
So here I am, she thought. Dressed for show, but afraid to go.
When Betty-Jo moved onto the court, the roar that greeted her was deafening. Wolf whistles and catcalls mixed with the delighted chorus. She returned the endorsement with a curtsey and a wave, which brought another roar of approval from the enchanted, and in the case of most males, aroused crowd.
Betty-Jo was up against Valerie Chezkovitch. Unfortunately, the Russian looked like an ugly duckling that had been juxtaposed with a swan.
When the match got underway, the television cameramen realized they had a few problems to sort out. They couldn't decide whether to focus their close-ups on Fun and More Fun, or on Betty-Jo's butt. They jumped back and fourth between the two, like children torn between an ice cream cone and a chocolate bar. And they forgot to follow the ball, preferring instead to focus on Betty-Jo. But that didn't matter because their male viewers also could have cared less about what the ball was doing. They were delighted to stay with the cameramen and watch Bouncer.
At one point in the match, Valerie disputed a line call. When the chair umpire ruled in Valerie's favor, Betty-Jo applauded the decision, but the Russian mistook Betty-Jo's support for condemnation, when the Betty-Jo partisan crowd roundly booed her. Enraged, Valerie marched up to the net, and had a hissy fit.
"You think 'cause you dress like slut, and people like theese, you can be peeg? I not forget. You pay for theese, sveet cheeks!"
Before a stunned Betty-Jo could get a handle on Valerie's problem, the Russian turned and stomped away.
Betty-Jo was sympathetic to Valerie's plight, because the Russian should have been in the match. But Valerie, flustered by the overwhelming crowd support for her 'peeg,' opponent, lost in straight sets.
Following the match, a scrum of reporters swarmed around Betty-Jo. The crucial question was what would she be wearing for her semi-final match the next evening.
"I'm uncertain what I'll wear. The press has been good to me. So why don't you tell me what you'd like to see?"
The men in the scrum lost it. Near pandemonium broke out before she could get them calmed down. "The consensus seems to be for a black aerobics top."
"Tight," somebody yelled.
"Tight it is. And you want a black tennis skirt, garter belt, and nylons. Now what color panties, pink or white?" A serious debate on panty color, was followed by a brief scuffle.
"Hold it boys! We'll flip," Betty-Jo said. Pink won the toss. "There's only one problem. I don't have a black top or black tennis shoes, and I'm not sure I'll have time to shop for them."
"Not to worry," said Tony Vaccaro, the head of the abc camera crew, "I'll get them for you."
"Thanks, Tony. I'll pay you."
"Whatever. Give me your measurements."
She grinned at him. "Do you promise to be discreet?"
"Trust me," Vaccaro replied.
"The top should be large."
"What's your bra size?"
She hesitated for a moment. This seems to be getting a bit personal, she thought. Soon that boy will be wanting to count Hermans. "Thirty-six double D."
"Yep, that sounds like a large. So I'll buy you a medium."
The following morning, her tennis attire, or lack thereof, was front page news, and the talk shows considered only two topics—was her dress appropriate for tennis, and should she wear white or pink panties at her next match.
* * *
At WTA Tour headquarters, Betty-Jo had created a major dilemma for Reginald Harrison, Executive Director of the women's professional Tour. For two days, he had refused to become involved in the controversy she had created, but the pressure for him to make a ruling on the suitability of her tennis attire, had become unbearable. The board was convened, and a vote taken. The tally was four to three in favor of banning inappropriate tennis wear at WTA Tour events, and B-J's tennis wear was deemed to be inappropriate. Three of the women on the board voted in favor of the ban, as did Harrison himself. But Harrison felt like an ass—he believed that what Betty-Jo was doing was the best thing to happen to women's tennis in years.
-48-
BETTY-JO CHANCE & BRAD RAIDEN
Moisture Conducts Electricity
As promised, Tony Vaccaro arrived at The Prince, the following morning, with a sheer black aerobics top and black tennis shoes.
"Tony, grab yourself a coffee, while I change into my new tennis outfit. Since you did the legwork, I'll model it for you."
On her way to the bedroom, Brad pulled her aside. "Do I get to participate in this?" he asked.
She picked up on the irritation in his voice and smiled. "Of course you do, as long as you behave yourself, and don't try to handle the model."
She was enjoying the moment. Perhaps a bit too much, because Brad gave his head an irritated shake, and said, "As soon as I can get that clown, Vaccaro, out of here, you are in serious trouble."
In a few minutes, she was back in the living room. She gave a quick twirl to show off her panties and garter belt, bounced up and down, and then stretched nonchalantly.
"So Tony, what do you think?"
she asked, but she already knew the answer. She'd studied herself in the mirror, and knew that her outfit was indecent. The top was so tissue-paper-thin that even though it was black, Fun and More Fun, with their dark aureoles and hardened tips, were clearly revealed. I might as well be wearing nothing, she thought. Nobody will even notice the French-designer stockings I'm so pleased with. "Tell me," she teased, "did you select this translucent fantasy all by yourself, or did some dirty-old-man help you out?"
Tony's eyes never left her chest. "Bouncer, I'm sorry. Honestly, I had no idea it would be this revealing."
"You're sweet, Tony." She gave him a too-friendly kiss. "I love it, but there is some overexposure. I suspect you know where a cover-up will be necessary."
Tony licked his lips. "I've figured that out."
When Tony left, Betty-Jo made a dash for the safety of a locked washroom door. She didn't make it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll do anything you want," she said. But the sincerity was lacking. For one thing, she couldn't stop laughing.
"Yuck it up while you can, Tawny Cat," Brad growled, "because you're about to pay for flaunting yourself to infuriate your lover."
I really wasn't very ladylike, she thought. "You misunderstood. I was only trying to be polite." She tried, without success, to stifle a giggle.
"Sure. You were being polite, while your friend Tony was arriving in his pants."
She grinned at Brad. "Do you think so?"
"But you'll repent soon enough when you're being flogged with a cat-of-ten-tails."
"Why not nine tails?"
"Why do you think?"
"Because nine tails are too good for me?"
"You've been spending too much time with me—you're becoming too insightful."
He tied her wrists to the headboard of the bed. Then, moments later, he undid her garter belt, removed her panties, and tied her feet to the posts at the foot of the bed.
"Why do I suspect that something indecent is about to happen to me?"
"Indecent is what happens to you when you've been a trouble maker. But this time, Tawny Cat, you've outdone yourself. If I were you, I'd worry about something awful coming your way. I don't remember who said 'The horror! The horror!' Maybe Jack the Ripper. But whoever it was, he must have had your predicament in mind when he said it."
She was feeling more confident despite Brad's threats. It was never a good sign when he called her Betty-Jo, but he'd been calling her Tawny Cat.
He admired her, while he did up her garter belt, and then gave it a snap. "That weasel Tony has selected a very revealing and arousing top for you. You've never looked more ravishing."
"Then why don't you ravish me now, and flog me another time?"
"Ravishing is much too good for you, and even flogging isn't punishment enough." He looked glum. "Sadly, what's about to happen to you is a despicable shame."
"What do you mean 'what's about to happen to me?'" She was becoming apprehensive again.
"Tawny Cat, with you it's all a joke. Your attitude is, just for the fun of it, I'm going to give Brad his Christmas goose four months early."
"I'm sorry. I really am. It won't happen again."
"You're right about that." He approached her with a strange looking rectangular metal box, that had an electric cord, and wires with pennies attached to it.
"What's that?" She struggled against her bonds.
He flashed her his grin. "Trust me, you don't want to know."
"I suspect you're right, but why do I feel I should."
"Woman's intuition, perhaps. This, my Princess, is the transformer for an electric train—normally it would be used to power an electric train engine, but today it's going to be used to power you."
"You mean I'll soon be thrilling to a surge of electricity?"
"I'm not sure 'thrilling' is the operative word. Repenting to a surge of electricity is more like it."
"Dare I ask what you're planning to do with those pennies?"
"They go in here." He took the pennies, and slipped them into her pussy. "Whatever you do, don't get wet. Moisture conducts electricity."
She bit at her lower lip. "I can't help it!"
"Then, Wayward Cat, I can't bear to watch."
-49-
FELICITY READY
A Man for Felicity
Two years after she received her arts degree, Felicity had an MBA from Princeton. Accounting had pulled down her grade-point average, but she had still graduated in the top quarter of her class.
Following the stock-market meltdown in October of '87, she had been fortunate to find a position on Wall Street. Most firms were laying people off. But at the prestigious investment bank of Bourbon and Fry, the retail sales manager had liked her looks, and had offered her a position with a guaranteed draw of $40,000 for a year. Felicity accepted his offer. She knew that it was possible to make a comfortable living in retail sales. The average Bourbon and Fry salesman made over $175,000 a year, and top producers netted in excess of a million dollars.
Over the previous ten years, many women had gone into retail sales, and most had been successful. That was because female brokers were less pushy than their male counterparts. They tended to be financial planners, rather than gunslingers. Also, there was that magic combination of money, and the potential for sex, that the male clientele loved dearly. Full service female brokers—those who handled their clients as well as their client's investments—had a leg or two up in the bastion of power, money, and sex that was retail sales.
For seven years, Felicity had struggled, but she never quite made the grade. While the average broker—or financial planner, as they preferred to be called—made $175,000 a year, a number of brokers made so much more that those on the bottom rungs of the ladder made considerably less.
Felicity was limping along earning $50,000 a year, a subsistence wage for a quasi-professional in New York. The need to generate commissions led to mistakes in her client's accounts; two of her clients were suing her, and the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating her. And then there was the humiliation of having to submit to persistent fondling from her boss. Her life was a shambles, and she couldn't see it improving. At such a low ebb, Felicity would never have guessed that she would soon be showing the enemy her garter belt, and more.
The grounds for one of the suits against Felicity was over-trading, or churning, and the grounds for the other was unsuitable investments. The churning charges arose from trades she had made for a client in 1994. She was investing in junior growth stocks when the market came unglued, after Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, jacked up interest rates in February that year. It was Felicity's first experience with a rolling stock-market correction, and for the better part of the year, she was hopping into strong stocks near their peak, and then bailing out of them just before they began to recover.
Felicity lost her clients a great deal of money, and she would have been facing many more lawsuits, were it not for the good rapport she had with most of them. Her male clients adopted the attitude that it served them right for allowing a woman to handle their finances, and besides, they weren't anxious to reveal the magnitude of their losses, or the charms of Felicity Ready, to their wives.
The unsuitable investments lawsuit had merit. Felicity's client, Elizabeth Winslow, was a sixty-five year old widow. She had entrusted her life savings of $500,000 to Felicity, and Felicity had put half of it into speculative junior growth stocks—investments that were outside the written guidelines of the client agreement. In a favorable stock market environment, Felicity would have been a heroine, but thanks to the 1994 mini-bear market, $80,000 of widow Winslow's nest egg was gone, and her son was incensed.
To make matters worse, it seemed to Felicity that every broker in the office had taken a run at her over the previous six months—and in fact they had. Fifteen of the young bucks had pooled $100 each; the first guy to do tight-assed Ready would pocket the $1,500. For those who were participating in the 'Wench and Tell Invitational', it was
just one more sporting event.
The front runner in the 'Invitational' was Draper Greeley. He had already begun work on bedding Felicity. The 'Wench and Tell Invitational'—which he had proposed—only made the challenge more interesting.
After Felicity landed her job on Wall Street, she had tried to hide her radical gender-feminist beliefs—without success. When men hit on her, sued her, and oppressed her, she found it impossible to disguise her disdain for them.
Thank heavens for Draper, she thought. He's the one man in the office who sympathizes with my plight, and with the plight of women in general.
Adding to Felicity's difficulties, was a nut case she had attracted. He sent her obscene letters, and phoned her with graphic descriptions of what he would like to do with her. She never suspected that the nut case was Draper using a voice synthesizer. When she told the cops about the nut, they ignored her. Although one cop, a chubby Lieutenant Harper, offered to protect her for payment in kind. Safety for sex was the way he put it.
"If you spent less time molesting donuts, you'd have more time to find the guy who's harassing me," Felicity angrily informed him.
It was following the cops' refusal to help her, that Draper came to her rescue. He started to drive her to and from work. One Friday, when he dropped her off at her Jackson Heights apartment, she invited him in for a drink. Over beer and pâté she discovered that they were birds of a feather. She felt uplifted.
He reads the books I read, and he feels the same way I feel about women's issues.
In fact, Draper Greeley had only skimmed the books that were written by gender-feminists like Susan Faludi, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon. He then parroted their beliefs back to Felicity.
One evening, Draper told her he loved her—that she drove him wild. "All I think about is you," he said. Then he left.
She thought about Draper while she brought herself to two climaxes in quick succession, but they did not provide their usual satisfactory release. Why did I let him leave? she asked herself.
The American Princess - Best Love Story Ever Page 23