A few years ago when sales were extremely good, one of my neighboring store keepers and I made a little business agreement. She had a store a few houses down the street that sold baby clothes, outfits, toys, stuffed animals and the like. She asked if I would care to put some of my cuter antique furniture in her shop on consignment. It would look nice in her interior and I’d get better coverage by having my stuff in two locations.

The neighbor’s name was Nancy and she was about 10 years younger than I am. She was certainly much better looking than me by far, with long blond hair parted in the middle, a shapely figure and an almost perpetual smile on her face.

I didn’t need much convincing to come to an agreement from which we both profited during the coming two years. I gave her a large discount on the pieces she took from me and she steered customers my way. Everybody happy.

But the good times don’t last forever and Nancy had to give up her shop due to economic and personal circumstances. She ran through a series of boyfriends during that time. I don’t think that helped out much. She went to work for a while and then opened up a new store with a lady partner. They are in the interior decorating business now, doing upholstery and a trendy wall decorating line as well.

Since her shop is now even closer to mine than her baby outfit store, we still see each other on the street regularly, exchange greetings and compare sales. She’s doing Ok, I’m doing OK and generally speaking business is good.

What’s even better is her looks. Like I said, Nancy’s blond, has a good figure and usually seems to be of a cheerful disposition. But she’s also one of those girls that wives don’t like having around. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is, but there’s something arousing about her, this hint of availability, of being ‘easy’. Maybe she also has a reputation in the neighborhood, though I for one never indulge in gossip. (more…)

It was January of 1994 and I suppose by this time we had all finally accepted that the Cold War was over, done and past. There were no more surprises lurking around the corners of history, it was truly finished. At the same time we lost that sense of danger that comes from living under the volcano. It had been said again and again that we were just 48 hours away from being overrun by Warsaw Pact armored divisions and who really knows how much truth there was to that pessimistic prophecy ? I’m glad I never found out.

In any case I have always been fascinated by the old Soviet Union, having just missed out on learning Russian in school back in the States when my family (and my feebly protesting self) moved to Europe. And even though I wrote my college thesis on Cold War origins, for some reason or other I never traveled across the Iron Curtain. Was it prudence that undoubtedly came from listening to my father’s old war stories ? In 1942 in Archangel way above the Arctic Circle, he had come just a hair’s breadth away from being either summarily executed or shipped away to a camp in the Gulag by Stalin’s goons in the NKVD. Or so the family tale went. And that just because of his sailor’s lust for pussy. Maybe it was all somewhat less harrowing in actual fact or maybe his stories grew in the telling. Who really knows, or cares ? Still, whatever did happen, it instilled a healthy sense of caution in me that persisted longer than was actually necessary. (more…)