Bus Banter

Before I begin my contribution to the New York Hag lore, let me tell you a little about my sorry self. I'm in my mid-fif -- fif -- fifties. That's right, I have a slight stutter, an unfortunate remnant of a minor shoplifting incident when I was 16. I thought I was younger than that, but a classmate who worked at Newbery's (remember Newbery's?) witnessed the embarrassing episode, and she must have been at least 16 to have been working there. Anyway, I'm in halfway decent shape, being 5' '7", 130 pounds. From a distance, I'm not frightening to look at. Close up is another thing. My hair is unnaturally, but not hussy-colored blond. I wear glasses, and my nose is small, but the tip has been veering to the right for years. It's almost as if wanted nothing more to do with the rest of my face. My skin is an even tone, but my neck looks as if it's lined with flesh-colored crepe paper. I'm basically a grown-up tomboy who prefers men.

I am married, and have a great relationship with my husband. We are best friends and love to ski, fish, and play golf together. The problem is that our relationship is more like Gilligan and the Skipper, and I'm the little buddy. We've been together for over 30 years, and our sex life sucks. We rarely have sex any more, and I've been experiencing the myriad woes of middle age, that is, not feeling attractive and forgetting what it ever felt like to be aroused or even horny. This is where my story begins.

I commute to Manhattan from Staten Island. I know it is one of those far away, bridge-and-tunnel, junkyard boroughs, but for someone like me who's asleep on the couch by 8:30 pm, and spends most her time off in upstate New York anyway, it suits me just fine.

I've been taking a bus and subway to work in Midtown for years. Sometimes I engage in conversation with my fellow commuters, but I've always kept it to a minimum. Commuting is my time to listen to the radio (I used to love Howard, but am too cheap for Sirius). Traveling home, it's All Things Considered or my iPod. Two summers ago, I started to notice a man on my bus in the afternoons. He was tough to miss -- he's 6' 4", 330 pounds. His head sticks up higher than most, and he's the type I try not to sit next to because of the space constraints on MTA buses. He started to smile and catch my eye as I boarded the bus, and I started to say "Hi" to him. One day he made room for me, and, not to be rude, I sat next to him. He's got big, brown eyes, brown hair, what's left of it, a well-shaped nose and a great smile -- perfectly aligned teeth. He definitely looks Italian, and when he told me his name was Carmine, my first thought was, of course it is. We started talking, and when I mentioned my husband left me alone for days at a time to ski, I noticed a discernible change in his expression while he fantasized about the possibilities. I didn't think much about it, because he was not my type at all. I usually have an aversion to fat guys.

Several days passed  before I saw him again. He started catching the same bus as me in the morning too; then I saw him again on our way to the subway. I was really surprised to find that I was glad to see him. Before I knew it, and without planning, I surged toward him, and my arms were circling him (not an easy thing to do) in a hug. I really took him off guard, but he immediately hugged me back and said that this was just what he needed. Well, I still wasn't attracted to him -- I just like giving people hugs. The next day he expected another hug, and I had to tell him he wasn't going to get one every time he saw me. He seemed so disappointed that when I sat next to him on the bus I snuggled close to him and kind of hugged his arm. He expressed his appreciation with a deep-throated sigh. That did it. I was turned on. I told him that if I had been a man, I would have had a hard on. It had been so long since I had felt sexually attracted, I'd forgotten the feeling was one of arousal.

Why was I so attracted to this guy and why was he attracted to me? I'm a hag!!! He was not at all the type I would ever have looked at twice. Maybe it was the many episodes of Family Guy I had watched with hot Lois and fat Peter Griffin so obviously in love with each other despite his obesity. Or perhaps it was because he was 14 years my junior. Maybe it was simply that this dude, with his lovely brown eyes, perfect mouth, nose, skin, and scent, was into me. I hadn't sensed anyone being attracted to me in years. I looked forward to our trips into the city. He was so glad to see me in the mornings and evenings on our commute, and he was warm and nice to touch even if it was only his arm or hand.

On a few occasions we actually got together at one of those $50-for-four-hour places that dot our lovely roadways. You know the motels I'm referring to -- the ones that advertise vibrating beds, jacuzzis and all the porn anyone could possibly want to watch. Carmine was actually amused that I liked the occasional bit of porn. We never tried the jacuzzi (takes to long to fill the tub, and there was the size issue), and using the shower was scarier than skiing down a triple diamond slope. We tried taking a shower together once and found that there was an invisible layer of slime on the floor that made it as slippery as the Rockefeller Center rink. I could only imagine one of us falling, cracking a head open and needing to call 911. That might have been difficult to explain to our respective spouses.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, his penis was an enigma wrapped in a foreskin. It was weird, and I was confounded by it. It's not that I've never played with an uncircumcised dick, but he had a defect which kept a portion of his foreskin from unfurling. It hurt him if I stroked in the usual direction, and I don't know how he did it, but he could make himself come even without achieving a full hard on. That's right, make himself come. He loved it when I went down on him (kind of strange when not fully erect), but he usually finished himself off. Same with me; he could get me started, but I usually worked myself over before coming. Both of us liked the visuals. It didn't matter that the sex part was a bit off; we made each other feel like we were 17 and in love for the first time.