(Merry Christmas everyone from Nicole!)
As a young man, I had followed the path set out for me by my parents. After prep school, I had been sent to The Leys School, Cambridge, one of the top public schools in the United Kingdom but nowhere near as prestigious as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester or Clifton College. At that time, it was in its last years before becoming co-educational meaning it was a boys-only school. Standing only 5’ 7½” tall, that extra ½” is very important to me because by the laws of rounding numbers I can then claim to be 5’8”, I did not have a particularly distinguished School career. The one sport I ever was any good at was cricket and I only made the Second XI as a batsman in my final year. While adequate, I was never good enough at sports to be considered for anything more than prefect, a partial disappointment to my father as he had been both Head of House and School pre himself in his day.
Academically, I did not disappoint. I was always at or near the top. In the UK, we have a system of education that differs from almost everyone else’s. Up until the age of sixteen, we study pretty much the same subjects as everyone else in the World. From just after the beginning of the Summer term in the 5th form, we sit down for our lengthy GCSE O-level examinations. I managed to pass ten of those which is a very good result, but only what my parents expected of me. At the end of our two years in the 6th form, Lower and Upper, when we only study three or four subjects, it is time for us to take the critical A-levels. I passed with flying colours obtaining A passes in Biology, Chemistry and Physics with a B+ in Mathematics and my application to the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals was accepted. My father, himself a Royal Dental Hospital of London man (which had merged with Guy’s and St Thomas’ in 1983), was very pleased. After five years of study mixed with undergraduate frolicking, I obtained my BDS, Bachelor of Dental Surgery, graduated as a dental surgeon and joined my father’s practice in Colchester which I took over when he retired some eight years later.
In one respect, our system of education is downright stupid and leaves us true-born Englishmen emotionally handicapped. You see, the single-sex educational system of our old Public Schools ensures that almost the only women we ever see in a social setting are our mothers, sisters (of whom I have two), aunts and cousins. It is not until we leave for university that we encounter eligible women regularly, start to appreciate them and learn how to behave around them. Not only do we give everyone else a head start, but it interferes with higher education as well. No wonder the preponderance of homosexuality amongst the higher echelons of British Civil Service and in general society!
As I went through this system too and also from being a “vertically challenged man”, it is no wonder that I am still a bachelor even if I am absolutely certain that I am a man who loves ladies. I am, as our American cousins would put it, “100% straight”. Since our women are genetically predisposed towards sharp, slightly curved noses, being “toothy” and often with the kind of chin that must have inspired naval architects to come up with the bulbous bow on tanker ships, the number of truly attractive English ladies is somewhat limited and they all tend to have been claimed at a very young age. That’s one of the reasons I took to vacationing in the Scandinavian countries as soon as I graduated but this far, no luck.
Three years ago, my father’s old Dental Nurse, Mrs Ashwell, retired after seeing me through the first two years on my own and I had to go through a recruiting process to find her replacement. I was very lucky to be able to obtain the services of one Mrs Sheila Napier, NEBDN, then a 27-year old qualified Dental Nurse with an excellent record. She is very competent both professionally and as a person, quite attractive without being truly striking, and we get along very well. But she is already married to Michael, happily so, and at 38, I am still a bachelor.
You may recall that dental staff wear glasses with small telescopic attachments called Dental Loupes? We do so because our work places quite a strain on our eyes. My own are PL Add +1.50 with 2.5 – 6 X loupe clip-ons and I know Sheila’s were the same because I ordered and paid for them as job-related equipment. A couple of months ago, right after her annual vacation in August, Sheila turned up wearing quite strong glasses in a very non-professional looking but exceedingly feminine and modern pink cat-eye frame with the explanation that she could no longer wear her contact lenses due to corneal wear. Now I knew that was not true as I have never seen a trace of contacts in her eyes before! And I have looked, believe you me! Of course I asked her for her prescription so I could order her a new pair of professional glasses and it was an identical –12.50 for both eyes with no astigmatism whatsoever, very unusual from what the optician told me when I placed the order. If only he knew how unusual! I say, to go from perfect vision when you go away for your vacation to –12.50 when you come back four weeks later? Ridiculous! It just did not add up.
Anyway, she was so d----ed pretty in her new glasses that it began to affect my professional performance. I took to having my loupes flipped down half-way so I could sneak a look at her while I worked, or rather, pretended to work on my patients and to compensate, I became even more formal than I usually am and have been. It is affecting not only my professional performance but also our work relationship and last week, Sheila had been decidedly cool in her manner towards me. After agonising over the weekend, I informed her that I would like to have a word with her, privately, after work and could she please tell me when it would be convenient? She replied that if I hadn’t mentioned it, she would have done so herself and that this evening would be fine. Even if there weren’t tears in her eyes, they were decidedly damp. Today has dragged on for ever, and mostly in an awkward silence.
‘Sheila’, I said as we finally sat down in my office. ‘This is going to be the most darned difficult conversation I have ever had but before I say anything, you must know that I hold you completely and absolutely blameless. If there is any fault, it rests squarely with me. You are by far the most competent Dental Nurse this clinic has ever had since the day my great-great-grandfather opened it in 1879’.
‘I know Doctor Hammond. May I say that it is mutual? You are a very competent dentist in every respect but also a very good man and a person I greatly respect and admire. If you are saying that you are asking me to resign I shall of course do so immediately, but I would do so with great reluctance and regret’. Now there were definitely tears.
‘Sheila, first of all I shall insist you call me Richard as I do not want to revert to calling you Mrs Napier. Friends should be on a first-name basis in private’, I replied, thus in a roundabout way reminding her of her marital status and obliquely saying that I had no intention of challenging it. ‘But you cannot have missed how greatly you have affected me since you turned up in those beautiful pink spectacles of yours’.
‘No Richard, I could not miss that. At first I was very pleased, both for myself and for you as I like you very much. Then I began to worry because you became more and more distracted and as you did, more and more formal and cold in your manner towards me.’ She was now dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief I had automatically offered her. A nice, clean one. I am not one of those pigs who blow their noses continually and keep using the same hankie for weeks until stiff as a board and rivals the Thames for bacterial content.
‘At times it was all I could do not to succumb to my desires and grab you there and then, but what truly happened Sheila? You know that I know that you have never worn contact lenses before, that you aren’t now and as far as I’ve been able to tell, there are no signs of any surgical implants. When you went on vacation you had perfect eyesight, and when you come back you are wearing glasses that correct for what is quite definitely very strong myopia? In the name of the Almighty, what’s going on Sheila?’
At this point, Sheila blushes and breaks eye contact. I keep silent as she seems to be struggling with something before she comes to a decision and looks me straight in the eye.
‘If I tell you, will you swear that you will tell no-one and talk to no-one about it except my husband? But only if Michael or I bring the subject up’. I give the assurance without much hesitation as I immediately realised that such a promise works both ways. It would do me no good at all if it became publicly known that I had fired my very capable and well-loved DN because I was so sexually attracted to her that it was the only way I could keep myself from raping her at work.
‘Both I and my husband are what is known as Optic Obsessives, 00s, people who love visual impairment and to wear glasses. Michael loves women who are very near-sighted and wear very feminine glasses such as my pink ones. Myself, I am very attracted to men who are slightly hyperopic which you may have noticed Michael now is? And yes, you too are a very handsome man Richard, and especially to me…’ She is telling the truth, she is definitely communicating her arousal to me the way she looks at me, straight through my eyes. Self-consciously, I remove my dentist’s glasses.
‘Please, leave your glasses on even if I know you don’t need them. I like to look at you wearing them and I like the way it makes me feel and I am very happy to see that you realise the effect you are having on me too’.
Now it is my turn to cry. ‘You do realise that now, we only have a choice between two great evils and that is for you to resign or for me to fire you? And truly, I do not want either…’
‘Must it be that way, dearest Richard? There is one solution that would allow us to continue to work together, one that does not challenge your sense of chivalry and propriety nor my honour as a lady. Please… …listen to me?’ I nod between sobs, squeezing the hand she has slipped into mine, the thought of losing this exceptional colleague and truly wonderful woman and, yes, dearest of friends, too horrible to contemplate.
‘There is a clinic in France that specialises in the treatment of BDD, Body Dysmorpic Disorder. Both Michael and myself suffer from it, if that’s the word. We did not feel whole as people unless both ourselves and our partner wore glasses and have to wear glasses that correct what we feel is the appropriate amount of visual impairment in the other. Never mind how we got to hear about it, but that’s where we spent our vacation.’
‘First, there is a very thorough psychological evaluation involving deep hypnosis that explores what is hidden so deep inside your mind that you do not dare admit it even to yourself. They then present possible solutions to your problem, in our case since we are a couple, to our common problems, before they make it happen and that is why I am suddenly very myopic.’
‘If you are interested in details, once they had determined the amount of impairment desired psychologically, they set about a course of injections that forced my lens to contract to close to the desired visus. This is permanent, but don’t ask me how as it’s their trade secret. Finally, they used lasik to shape my corneas until the correct spherical refraction was achieved whilst ensuring that there was no astigmatism induced or left over. It is quite precise as I ended up with –12.50 where the target had been –12.00D. Even if deep down, I really wanted to be far more myopic than this, it is the best possible compromise between my desires and those of my husband. But since you reacted so strongly to me when I came back, isn’t there a very good chance that you too suffer from this form of BDD, even if you have never known or even suspected it yourself?’
I consider this. True, I was not as attracted to Sheila before she went on holiday as I was when she returned, understatement of the Century by the way, but had I always felt this way? I wasn’t sure. Certainly, I have never once looked upon a bespectacled lady and then looked away because she wore glasses. Because she was unattractive, yes. Because she wore spectacles, never. But wasn’t that more for the reason that I hadn’t allowed the spectacles to interfere with my assessment of feminine beauty?
‘I truly do not know, Sheila. I will readily admit that while I have always found you very attractive, it wasn’t until you returned an incredibly delectable spectacles-wearing beauty, and I mean really drop-dead gorgeous, that I completely lost the plot. But I cannot say that I have appreciated women more, or less, because they have been wearing spectacles. I just don’t know…’
‘Sweet Richard, would you consider setting a weekend aside for an evaluation at this clinic? Wouldn’t it be worth your while to discover what your true feelings on the matter are while you’re still young enough to do something about it?’
I don’t have to think long about this. ‘Yes, I will… no, I definitely must do that. But what if it should turn out my deepest desire is to become your twin sister, spectacles and all?’
Sheila laughs and finally, there is a smile in her eyes. ‘Dearest Richard, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it! But I can tell you straight away that I would always love, cherish and adore such a sister. In every conceivable way… Now, there is a price on the contact details of that clinic, Richard. You must make love to me, freely and without feelings of guilt or shame. Or I shall have no other option but to tell my husband and resign. Tonight.’
‘Dearest Sheila, please, please don’t twist my arm! It’s not that I do not want to, you do realise how badly I desire you. But how could I ever face Michael again and look him in the eye? He and I are friends for Christ’s sake!’
‘Oh, that! It’s easily taken care of!’ She picks up her cell-phone and speed-dials.
‘Michael darling, it’s me...’
‘Not badly but not very well, I’m afraid. It went exactly the way you said it would…’
‘Oh, alright my treasure, I’ll put him on. Love you!… Here, Michael wants a word with you.’ She hands the phone to me.
‘Richard, you daft old bugger! What is this nonsense I hear about you refusing my wife what she truly desires? No, you shut up and listen! You have to realise that when my wife is unhappy, I too am unhappy and since she is unhappy for you and because of you, there is nothing I can do about it except be unhappy as well. Both she and I are very happy that she has an employer such as yourself and we both want this to continue even if that means you shag her every once in a while! Oh, I am being deliberately vulgar to shock you out of your antiquated Victorian attitudes. ’
‘But Michael, you are my friend, and I could never do that to you! Not to mention that I would never sully your wife by forcing my attentions on her.’
‘Don’t be so f’kin medieval about it Richard! Or perhaps I should say – be more medieval about it, “droits de seigneur” if you recall. Listen, if you truly do love Sheila and if you truly are my friend, for all our sakes, take her to bed and make it as good for her as you possibly can – without any awkwardness – because she f’in well deserves it! If you don’t, I will come down straight away and teach you how to myself until you’re perfect at it! And another thing, do knock her up! We both want to have children and have for ages, but it seems I am sterile and I would never want to force the indignity of tubes and hoses in a gyn chair plus some unknown bastard’s brat on Sheila just to salvage my male pride. We are both agreed that you’d make an excellent donor, the very best possible father for our children, so please accept what must be! Now, put it on speaker phone, then say after me…’
‘…I, Richard Ernest Hammond…’
‘…solemnly promise to make love to you, Mrs Sheila Marianne Napier…’
‘…to the very best of my ability…’
‘…without remorse, regret, shame or guilt…’
‘…until you pronounce yourself completely satisfied…’
‘…Sheila, will you please put on your beautiful glasses that both Michael, your husband, and I, Richard, like so very much and make love to me?’
******
The week at the Institute in France was indeed well spent. Sheila had said a weekend, but when I got in touch with them, they suggested I take a whole week off as they could then assess my needs far more accurately. Since Colchester is just up the road from London, little more than an hour by train from Liverpool Street, there was no trouble getting a locum, that is, someone to stand in for me. When I got back to a typically English November day with heavy rain, Sheila and Michael met me at the station and they both looked radiantly happy. They both hugged me and there was no mistaking the love and happiness in Michael’s eyes when he told me Sheila was expecting their first child around June 20th, Midsummer’s Day. Seeing how happy he was drove away the last remaining traces of remorse and guilt that I had harboured and I was genuinely pleased and very happy for them as I congratulated them both.
Michael dropped Sheila off at their house, then drove me home but told me just to dump my bags and come straight down as they were inviting me to a celebratory evening at their place and wouldn’t take no for an answer. When we got there, Sheila had everything laid out and we had a very pleasant evening together. They revealed their plans for their child, the various names they were considering and told me in no uncertain terms that I was going to be the godfather, a proposal I was delighted to accept. Something has definitely changed inside me. I am no longer the neurotically uptight Galahad I used to be and I have Michael and Sheila to thank for that.
It wasn’t until we sat down for coffee that Michael broached the subject of my trip to the Institute, having first apologised for being so rude as to talk only about themselves. I assured them that it suited me just fine as theirs was the really important news. Sheila had surprised me with her frankness by saying that she fully well intended to breast-feed all her children as it was the only way Michael would accept her getting stronger glasses. I was surprised, I didn’t know having children and breast-feeding them could lead to an increase in myopia? Oh yes, Sheila had replied happily, she had been told she should expect an increase of as much as up to –2D for every child. So how many children were they going to have? Two, Michael instantly replied masked by Sheila’s equally insistent reply of seven.
‘But surely, that could leave you with a prescription as high as –20 or even greater?’
‘Yes! –26D actually. Isn’t it wonderful!’ Sheila’s happy retort made it absolutely clear that it is what she truly desires.
Michael put his arm around his wife, pulled her to him and gave her a kiss. ‘Now darling, that really wouldn’t be fair on Richard as he has his own life to live and cannot cater to your whims and needs forever. So tell us, how did it go?’
‘Yes Richard, tell me! Am I going to have my highly myopic twin sister at long last?’
I had to laugh at that! ‘No, not really. Mind you, it was one of the options discussed but since I would never be even remotely as beautiful as you are, they had this programme on the PC to show me a picture of how a possible female “me” might look, not well that is, plus the fact that my sexual orientation is so exclusively fixed on women, they strongly dissuaded me.’
‘Well thanks for small mercies, Richard! I doubt either of us could have put up with that, not even Sheila!’ His wife pouted at him. ‘But I really do want to have a highly myopic twin sister!’, she replied, then winked playfully at me. ‘No, seriously, I prefer this billy-goat as he is. But do tell us Richard, are you one such as Michael and myself?’
‘Almost, but not quite’, I reply. ‘While I would be perfectly happy to wear, permanently, whatever prescription my partner required of me, within moderation, it appears I crave a lady with a rather large correction for myopia. And no Sheila, I did not imprint on you, worse luck, or I would never have been so neurotic about it. It’s something that happened when I was six and my oldest sister Elizabeth started to wear glasses. She is five years older than I, and when she hit puberty, she would pick me up and hold me to her while she kissed me. I loved the way her eyes looked behind the glasses and how she looked at me. But because of her being my sister, I always connected my fascination for glasses with sinful desire and so managed to persuade myself that I was not attracted to ladies who wear glasses even when in truth I was. Isn’t it quaint how we English have managed to poison our lives with antiquated morals and attitudes…’
‘So what’s going to happen now, Richard? Are you going to remain my lover?’ There was a sort of contradictory “please say you will” mixed with “I really want you to find your Lady Love, my love” in her reply.
‘Only if both of you want me to. But what they suggested, that is, if you would be willing to help me, is that they send along compatible ladies and that the appointments go through my DN so I need never know whether or not a new patient is simply a new patient or a prospective mate.’ Sheila wholeheartedly agreed and Michael gave me a hug as we left the subject and spent the rest of the evening discussing far more mundane matters.
******
Five months and a bit later and Sheila is now only eight weeks away. They have refused to be told in advance if it’s a boy or a girl and Sheila is radiantly beautiful. A second replacement, the first one not having met Sheila’s standards, starts tomorrow so Sheila has insisted her Galahad make love to her tonight one final time before she is due. Over the past six months, she has demanded we do this at least once every month, with Michael’s blessing, as it keeps all three of us happy and functioning. I have told both her and Michael that he is a far greater man than I will ever be and her reply is yes, or else she would have left him immediately and married me instead. But at the same time she says, it takes a very special man to settle for as little as I have and never ask for it all. The truth is that both Michael and myself are very lucky men. There is only one of Sheila in the whole wide world, for what other woman could keep two men absolutely happy and not jealous of each other? It takes a truly unique talent.
There is only one thing we must do before we indulge in our passions, Sheila says, and that is to compare notes. In order to keep me guessing, she had taken to writing down comments about every new female patient between the ages of 15 and 50 in a private diary she keeps I know not where. At first I grumbled about the age limits she imposed, saying that while I did want the possibility of children, she’d see me damned before I banged a teenager as young as that. Her reply, practical as always, is that I shouldn’t be so stupid as to let age interfere. Age is completely irrelevant to happiness. She is of course absolutely correct.
‘Let’s see then Richard. Over the past six months, there have been three candidates including the one today.’
‘Today? But there’s only been that “African” girl today, the rest have been men and old ladies?!? Surely she is much to young?’ Oh, she was very pretty and quite sexy too but she was also quite young and even if I have absolutely no prejudice against “black” or “brown” people, unfortunately they often seem to have a few hang-ups when it comes to us “honkies”. I had noticed that while she wore reasonably strong spectacles, just strong enough to arouse my interest, she also wore contact lenses underneath, what is known amongst 00s as GOC, Glasses Over Contacts. Later, I found out that she had only worn contacts in order to increase her own then mild prescription of –2D to –10D on Sheila’s suggestion.
‘Yes, Chenaya is the one. And she is far more suitable than you could ever guess from just seeing at her as a patient. She is actually 22 and in her fourth year at the Dental Institute, your Alma Mater (it had changed names again). She too has four A-level passes, two A and two B+ almost the same as you do, and her greatest desire is to be employed by just such a clinic as yours, but she fears she’ll have to accept any NHS position offered, probably in some god-forsaken community, her words not mine, such as Bradford or Brum* and be lucky to get even that. She asked me to tell you that she thinks that you are a very handsome man and that you must not worry about an age difference because to her there is none.’
‘But, but…’ I splutter, unable to coherently express my objections.
‘Oh go on Richard! Admit that you were indeed quite attracted to her! Or do I need to remind His Lordship of a dentist I once knew whose completely archaic sense of proprieties prevented him from accepting a love freely given and from giving plenty of happiness in return?’
I know when I am beaten and after all, Chenaya is a very beautiful woman with sterling qualifications to whom I am very attracted. Even if I at 39 am almost an old man to her. I worry not so much about her youth as my age, because by the time she is forty I will be well on my way to sixty and God knows what shape I will be in by that time! A woman should be happy and be kept happy all her life!
‘Don’t worry, Richard. She will keep you young and both Michael and myself look forward to us working together and for us to finally be two happy couples. You know Michael is actually thinking about chucking teaching and retrain as a DN? We truly love you Richard, in case you hadn’t noticed, and we want what is best for you.’
‘Erm… Shouldn’t we, just for the sake of completeness mind you, take a look at the other two?’ I am procrastinating and we both know it.
‘But of course! Hmm, Susan Howard – that’s the 42 year-old reddish-blonde woman with the sharp nose, prominent teeth and rimless round glasses you saw in February. She says that while you have nice manners she prefers a much taller man. Fancy her?’ I did not. I remembered her because of the intense visual examination she had subjected me to and to be quite frank, she had given me the heebie-jeebies as our American cousins say. To top it all, she’d had the infernal cheek to damn me with faint praise.
‘Miriam Stokes, you saw her on April Fool’s Day of all days. She’s the buxom 16-stone jolly with the horn rims. No? Are you quite sure Richard? She thinks you’re a cuddly little “wabbit” and she would take very good care of you, she said. The notes from the clinic has an asterisk next to her first name which indicates that she’s a nympho, so you two really are well-suited to each other. And should you find her acceptable, this poor gal can finally have some well-earnt peace and quiet from your libidinous attentions.’
‘Sheila, please stop! You know I’ve already made my decision, so why continue to tease me?’
Instead of answering she comes into my arms, resting her head against my shoulder. She is crying. ‘Because I am about to lose you, Richard. I’m so very happy for you yet I am also very, very sad, because I truly do love you every bit as much as I love Michael and I want to make love to you and have you make love to me for as long as I live.’
‘Dearest darling beloved Sheila, you will never lose me! It is impossible! Remember, the Institute will find out what one’s deepest desires are and incorporate them into any suggested solution! Since I will always love you, and Michael as well, there is absolutely no way there will be a solution for Chenaya and myself that will not include the pair of you! It just cannot be! So wipe those tears away beloved, and tell that straight-laced husband of yours that he must be prepared to love Chenaya every bit as much as I love you or I will have to come and teach him myself until he’s perfect at it. No remorse, regrets, shame or guilt attached! We will be one happy family of four, not just two separate couples who happen to be friends. Our children, yours and Michael’s, mine and Chenaya’s, will grow up together. And if you want to, you can have all those seven children and breast-feed them all. There is certainly room for each and everyone of them in your generous heart and I most certainly will want mine to grow up with you as their role model.’
‘Now Milady, what is thy fancy and preference on this fine night? On the roof, the middle of the Town Square or…?’
(An aeon later)
‘Darling?’
‘Yes, my precious?’
‘Do you think that Chenaya too may want to have seven children and breast-feed them all?’
‘Of course she will my love. You will have that perfect sister you have always dreamt of.’
‘Thank you, dearest Richard. When dreams come true…’
*Brum, English pejorative for Birmingham,.
Statistics: Posted by Zennia — Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:36 am