Mrs. Dent
by Arthur Bradford
October 16, 2007
I was twenty-six years old and working as a gym teacher at a private school for wealthy, troubled children. My day began at ten a.m. and ended shortly after three when the parents arrived to pick up their unruly offspring at the playing field after school.
Andrew Dent was a small, wiry fifth-grade boy who would never stop moving. He ran in circles on the sidelines during the kickball games, and when I asked him to stand still he would jump up and down in one place and weave his head from side to side. His mother, a slender, horse-faced woman in her forties, had taken to strapping him down in the backseat of her car for the ride home.
"He even moves in his sleep," she told me one time. "We put up walls around his bed."
On most days the children would all be gone by 3:30, and then I would clean up the equipment and head home to see my girlfriend Peggy before she headed off to work in the evening. She was a waitress and we had recently started living together, to save on rent. While at work, Peggy would sniff cocaine off the dinner plates, then come home frazzled and demand sex in order to sleep.
"I need an orgasm," she'd say, "or I'll stay up past dawn."
Peggy had red hair and freckles all over her body. She would masturbate vigorously as we had sex, and sometimes I wondered if I was a necessary part of the procedure. She'd grab my ass though, if I tried to pull out, so I supposed I was important in some way. I was still learning about sex and foreplay, and on the nights when Peggy wasn't too strung out from the coke she'd tell me what she knew.
"Be more gentle," she'd instruct. "Caress, don't rub."
One afternoon Mrs. Dent was late to pick up Andrew, and he and I were left alone on the ball field. He began running circles around the bases, and I was tired from the night before with Peggy, so I fell asleep. When I woke up Andrew was standing over me with blood dripping from his chin.
"I fell down," he told me.
His chin was split wide open. He pushed the skin back so I could see the pale flesh beneath it.
"Don't do that," I told him, grabbing his hand.
We went into the washroom and cleaned things out. Andrew was remarkably calm. He seemed to feel almost no pain at all. His shirt was covered in bright red blood. I pressed wet paper towels up to the cut, trying to stop the bleeding. The nurse's office was closed, and the first-aid kit was full of useless little Band-Aids which soaked through the moment I applied them to Andrew's wound.
"I think we need to go to the hospital," I told him.
"What about my Mom?" he asked.
Gustavas, the school custodian, was wandering around the hallways with his mop. I told him to tell Mrs. Dent we'd gone to the hospital, and not to worry.
"I'm not worried," said Gustavas.
"No, not you," I said. "Tell Mrs. Dent not to worry."
"Okay, sure."
We drove to the hospital, where they kept us waiting for about half an hour. They were in no hurry, I think, because Andrew seemed so calm. He just paced about in a small circle holding the soggy red towel up to his chin.
When the doctor saw him she said, "Oh, it looks like someone needs some stitches."
"Yes, I do," said Andrew.
Then Mrs. Dent walked in, and she was just as calm as Andrew about the whole thing. I'd expected her to be upset at the sight of Andrew and his blood-stained shirt, but she just took it all in stride.
"I'm sorry I was late to pick him up," she said.
"That's all right," I said.
Mrs. Dent looked particularly striking that afternoon. Earlier I'd described her as "horse-faced," and while that was technically true, I should say that she was on the most attractive end of this spectrum. I believe she'd been an athlete in college, a swimmer or long-distance runner, and she had an amazing set of long legs. I hadn't really seen much of them, but on that day she was wearing a tight-fitting dress and high heels. That's probably why I found her striking. She'd been at a social function, I guessed. I could smell a little alcohol on her breath.
The doctor asked Andrew to lie still for the stitches, but he couldn't do it. He kept rolling his head from side to side on the table.
The doctor asked Mrs. Dent if she wanted him strapped down or sedated, and Mrs. Dent said, "Sedate him, please." So they gave him a shot.
Andrew fell asleep, and they stitched up his chin. I stayed in the room as they were doing it. Mrs. Dent said it was okay if I did. I'd never seen someone sew up a wound before, and it looked just as if the doctor were sewing up a ripped shirt, except that it was skin instead of cloth. Afterward, Andrew kept falling back to sleep and stumbling as he walked. They'd over-medicated him.
"Would you help me get him in the car?" Mrs. Dent asked.
"Sure," I said.
Together we lifted him into the back seat, where he fell asleep with his face pressed against the window.
"Are you going to be able to get him inside?" I asked her.
"Sure, I think so," said Mrs. Dent. She rubbed her head and let out a sigh. Her hair was messed up now, and I wondered if she wasn't a little drunk. Maybe not drunk, just tipsy.
"How about I drive you both home," I suggested.
"Oh, no, I . . . I don't think that's necessary . . . "
She stood there holding her keys out as she said this, and eventually I understood that I was supposed to take them from her hand.
"Thank you," she said to me. "Thank you very much."
Their place was a nice, well-lit house surrounded by several other big, bright houses just like it. Mrs. Dent lived alone with Andrew here. She was divorced, and Andrew's father, a former rugby player from England, had taken a job overseas.
"Please come inside," said Mrs. Dent.
I carried sleeping Andrew up the walkway and into his bedroom, where we laid him down on his walled-in bed. It was equipped with straps which she said she sometimes used if he just wouldn't lay still.
"He won't be needing them tonight, though," she said.
The walls and floor of his room were coated with a bouncy rubber surface, protection against accidents like the one he'd just had.
"I'm really sorry about Andrew's fall," I told her. It was about the fifth time I'd apologized.
"Please," she said, "it could hardly have been avoided."
That was the kind of thing Mrs. Dent would say: "it could hardly have been avoided." Sometimes she seemed like a character from one of those old movies where people smoke cigarettes and speak in that strange formal manner.
Mrs. Dent asked me if I'd like a drink, and I said I would. Right after I said yes, it occurred to me that maybe she was just asking out of politeness and that I was supposed to decline.
"I don't need to have a drink," I called out to her as she fumbled with the ice tray.
"Well, I'm having one," she said,"and you can join me if you'd like."
So we both had a scotch while sitting in her kitchen. I had only tasted scotch once or twice before, and it made my throat burn.
"Don't drink it so fast," Mrs. Dent told me. "Sip it."
I tried to act like this information was unnecessary. Of course I knew how to sip scotch. Mrs. Dent poured a little more into my glass and already I was feeling somewhat drunk. Mrs. Dent had taken off her high heels, but still her legs looked nice.
"Were you ever a model?" I asked her. "Because you could have been a model."
Mrs. Dent gave me a curt smile.
"I mean you could be one right now," I said, "if you wanted to be. You look fantastic."
"I've never been a model," she said. "But thank you."
It was a stupid compliment I'd tried to give her, if it was even a compliment at all. I attempted a proper sip from my glass of scotch and some of it dribbled down my chin.
Mrs. Dent asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I told her about Peggy. The scotch had thrown me for a loop, and my judgment was off. I gave her much more information than she'd asked for. I told her about Peggy coming home high and demanding orgasms and how I was still learning what to do. I should have kept all this to myself, but Mrs. Dent seemed interested. She kept saying, "Is that so?"
Mrs. Dent finished off her scotch and looked me over carefully. "I'd like your opinion about something," she said.
"Sure."
"I want you to be honest with me," she said. "You have to be honest about this. None of that polite bullshit."
"Sure," I said, "I'll be honest."
I was surprised to hear Mrs. Dent say the word "bullshit." Until that point, it hadn't seemed like a word she might use. But seeing her sitting there in the kitchen with her hair undone and an empty scotch glass in her hand, it started to make sense. I pictured her like this every night after wrestling that bouncy Andrew into his bed. She'd have a scotch and watch old movies on television, staring at people who made sense to her.
"Do you know what labiaplasty is?" she asked me.
I recognized the word "labia" as having something to do with a woman's vagina, but that was as far as I could go.
"No," I said, "I don't."
"You know what labia are?" she asked.
"Sort of," I said. I thought I had a pretty good idea.
"For some time," said Mrs. Dent, looking down at the floor, "for some time I've been concerned about the size of my labia — that they were too large and got in the way of things."
"I'm sure they're fine," I said. I wanted to get off of this subject quickly and couldn't understand how it had even come up.
"I've had a procedure done," said Mrs. Dent. "I already had it done. A procedure to reduce their size."
"Okay," I said, nodding. I couldn't understand why a person would want to get her labia reduced. It made no sense to me. Then I wondered if I actually knew what labia were. Maybe it had something to do with the actual size of her vagina, the opening itself. I'd heard of women getting things tightened up down there.
"I'm not sure about the results," said Mrs. Dent. "I need a second opinion."
"I'm sure it's fine," I said.
"I want your opinion," said Mrs. Dent. "I want you to be honest with me."
She twisted her skirt to the side and began to unbutton it.
"You want me to look at it?" I asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Dent, "and feel it, please, if you'd like."
She slipped off her skirt and stockings and stood before me, naked from the waist down. I was sitting, now, so her crotch was right in front of my face. I couldn't look at it directly. I began to shiver even though it wasn't really that cold. I couldn't help it. I was very excited. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but my fingers were cold too, and I thought she might find it upsetting.
"What do you think?" asked Mrs. Dent. "Is everything in order?"
I peered at her vagina and tried to see if it was any different from the ones I'd seen before. It was neatly groomed, so that was different. But otherwise it seemed the same. I guess it was a little more red than the other vaginas I'd seen, and I wondered if that had something to do with her procedure. The labia, as I far as I could tell, were of normal size.
I looked up at Mrs. Dent, standing above me with her shirt still modestly covering the rest of her body. Her eyes were shut, and she had turned her head away. I could feel heat coming off of her.
"It looks good to me," I said. "You have a nice pussy."
I immediately felt wrong using that word — "pussy" — with her, but it just slipped out before I could come up with anything else.
"Touch it, please," said Mrs. Dent.
I rubbed my hands together trying to warm them up, then I reached out and gently touched her. I was thinking about what Peggy had been telling me about not applying too much pressure.
Mrs. Dent, it seemed, would require particular delicacy. She was very soft, much softer than Peggy. I tried to be scientific about this examination, but I really had no idea what I was looking for. Every vagina was wonderful to me.
"It's so beautiful," I told her. "So beautiful." I was trying to sound romantic, or erotic, but I don't think that's how it came out.
"You don't feel a hardness at the edges? I'm concerned about the scarring."
I felt around the edges, but it all just felt fine, sort of sqishy.
"Look, I'm not an expert on this stuff," I told her. "I'm not even really sure where your labia are."
Mrs. Dent let out a little laugh and put her hand on the back of my head, pushing me into her. She pressed herself into my face, nearly smothering me. Suddenly I was surrounded by this clammy wetness and I could barely breathe. I stuck out my tongue and as soon as it touched her she let out a stifled cry.
"Oh, God," said Mrs. Dent, her knees buckling. She fell down onto the kitchen floor and I was about to lunge upon her when I looked up and saw Andrew standing in the doorway, watching us. I flew backward and stood up.
"Hello, Andrew," I said.
Mrs. Dent flipped over and looked up at her son.
"My chin hurts," he told us.
"Of course it does," said Mrs. Dent. She scooted into the bathroom to make herself presentable and I was left there before him, thankful at least that I still had my pants on.
"Why are you here?" Andrew asked me.
"I helped your mom get you home from the hospital."
"What were you doing on the floor?"
"We were wrestling," I told him. It was the best I could come up with.
Mrs. Dent dashed out of the bathroom and swept Andrew upstairs back into his bedroom. "He was helping me," she kept saying.
I waited around for a while as she tried to coax him to sleep, but as time passed I began to think it would be best if I just left. I wrote a brief note and placed it on the kitchen counter.
"Thanks for the scotch and good conversation," it said. "You are very, very attractive." After I wrote it I wanted to cross out the second "very," but that would have been even worse, so I left it as it was.
I slipped out the door and walked through their quiet neighborhood back towards the main road. When I reached the main road I just started walking back towards the hospital. I was just thinking how I had an awfully long way to go when Gustavas, the school janitor, pulled up next me in his station wagon.
"You need a ride?" he asked me.
"Yes, I do." I said.
He was like a savior, Gustavas the janitor. I would have been walking till dawn. He asked me how Andrew was doing, and I said he was fine now.
"See, I told you not to worry," said Gustavas.
"Right, you did."
I had Gustavas drop me off at the hospital so I could get my car, and then he took off into the night. By the time I arrived home it was late and Peggy was in bed, masturbating herself to sleep. I took off my clothes and slid underneath the covers with her.
"Your face smells like pussy," she told me.
"What?"
"It does," she said. "I don't care."
She guided me inside her, and I thought about how this was the first time I'd felt two vaginas in one day. I'd remember this forever until I was an old man. I tried right then to concentrate on what was happening, to really experience each second of all this so that I would know it was really happening, and not just forget.
Peggy pulled my hand down between her legs and then threw her freckled arms over her head.
"Don't rub," she whispered. "Caress it."
©2007 Arthur Bradford & Nerve.com