Miss Tuscaloosa

The lights were dim and the air smoky in the Ink & Type Pub one Thursday afternoon in New York. The bar known throughout the American media as the hangout for newspaper reporters, editors and wannabes was crowded and noisy as the young woman came in through the front door. With her shoulder-length brunette hair, cream-colored blouse, and short-but-not-too-short skirt, she would have been greeted in another time with wolf whistles and catcalls. But times change, and the crowd at the Ink & Type was most definitely coed.

The woman looked around, her eyes widening as she recognized someone. That someone sat alone at the back of the bar, at a private booth, hands cupping a cognac. The young woman made her way through the crowds, past the Teletype that in previous days had announced everything from the 1929 stock market crash to the Kennedy assassination. Past the Pulitzer Prizes donated to the pub by their recipients, past the framed newspaper headlines (“NIXON RESIGNS,” “MEN WALK ON MOON,” “HAPPY 200TH, AMERICA!”), past the ceremonial spittoon from the days when printers stopped by the pub for a chaw on their way back to the presses — she sidled up to the booth and leaned in to speak with the occupant.

“Excuse me,” she said, “Are you Doris?”

The old woman looked up at the young woman, the life in her eyes belying the appearance of her face, with its wrinkles and its halo of silvery curls. “I am,” she said in a voice both mildly amused and curious.

“May I join you?”

“If you’re buying.”

The young woman sat down, signaling to the bartender for a round. “I’m Heather Seldon. I just started at the Clarion and I heard you were here and…well, I just wanted to meet you.”

Doris was a very large part of history at the New York Clarion. Starting as the paper’s first female cub reporter in the days when all reporters were men, she fought her way up the ladder, finally serving as Editor in Chief for two decades. A heart attack had ultimately forced her to retire at seventy-nine, after an astounding fifty-six years at the paper, and she now spent her retirement in her second-favorite environment. In deference to her status in the newspaper community, the Ink & Type’s current owner, himself a retired newspaperman, always made sure her favorite table was waiting, and her drinks were always on the house.

“Me?” Doris asked with some delight. “Why me?”

“You’re a legend!” Heather blurted out. “You made it possible for women — for me — to make it at the Clarion. And I want to thank you.”

“Well, it’s been a lot easier since then,” Doris said in the southern accent made famous by numerous TV shows and interviews.

“Can I ask you,” Heather said, “how you broke in? How you got past the door to begin with?”

Doris grinned nostalgically. “Well, that was a long time ago.”

“Please? It must be quite a story.”

“Oh, it is. It is…”

***

Let’s see now. This happened way back in 1936. I was twenty-three, brand new in New York, having just got off the bus from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Of course, nobody but the really rich had their own cars back then. Everyone took the bus. If you lived in a city like New York, there was also the subway. Cheap too — didn’t cost an arm and a leg like it does today.

But anyway, I got myself this little hole of an apartment in the Bowery, because it was all I could afford. I had to share it with three other girls, and even then we had to take turns sleeping, because we only had two mattresses. During the day, one girl and I would go out and work while the other two slept. At night, they went out and worked on the night shift while we used the mattresses.

I had a job as a secretary for a bank on Wall Street. The crash had hit the banks pretty hard in ’29, but things had gotten more or less under control by then. Now, the secretary job, it was really the only kind of a job a woman could get back then. If you weren’t a housewife, you could be a secretary, a nurse, a teacher or a sales girl, and that was pretty much it. The pay was lousy and my boss was this creep who was always trying to look down my blouse. This was a long time before all women’s lib, you see.

Anyway, I hated the job, and it wasn’t what I had come all the way from Alabama for. You see, back in Tuscaloosa, I wrote for this little newspaper, the Tuscaloosa Talker. Little piss-ant newspaper. Eight pages, five of them were ads. But it was a newspaper, and I wrote for it. The editor was such a jerk that he made me use a man’s name to write my articles. Would you believe that I had to use a byline of “Sam Simons?” Stupid redneck thought the other stupid rednecks wouldn’t read the paper if they knew a girl wrote for it. Like they could read anyway.

So I got tired of putting up with all that bullshit and just walked into Walter’s office — Walter Sherman, he was the editor — I walked into Walter’s office and said, “Walter, you can keep this Sam Simons crap. You won’t let me write under my own name, you can do it yourself.” And I just turned around mecidiyeköy escort and walked right out of there. I just didn’t give a shit for this small-time crap anymore. I wanted the big time. I wanted New York. And so I kept right on going to the bus station.

Poor Walter, he was so pissed. I still remember him running to the office door, shouting at me to come back, then shouting at me to keep on going because I was such a stuck-up bitch no one would hire me. I think the paper closed down a few months later. Poor Walter. I wonder what ever happened to him.

Anyway, when I got to New York, I went to newspaper after newspaper, magazine after magazine, and nobody would let me in the front door. They just looked at me, said something like “girls can’t be newspapermen,” and slammed the door. Even at those so-called “women’s magazines,” like Family Circle and Bazaar, I couldn’t get arrested, and I finally took that crappy secretary job.

Finally, one morning, after swatting that bubblehead’s hands off me for the twentieth time, I couldn’t take it anymore. Hell, he didn’t even bat an eye when I threatened to tell his wife. He said she didn’t give a shit what he did. He said she was so hopped up on booze and pills he could butt-fuck every one of the Rockettes, one right after the other, right out in the middle of 6th Avenue, and she wouldn’t even notice. So I dumped some hot coffee over his head and walked out.

Now I was in trouble. Here I was with no job, so I had to find something soon. I went back to all the newspapers and magazines, showed them my clippings and bylines, everything, and still nobody would come near me with a ten-foot pole.

Then I came right here, to this bar, and I was sitting at that stool — that one, right over there — when I heard two reporters talking about an interview they couldn’t get. Seems the President of Freedonia was in town for some really mysterious reason. Nobody could find out why, and everyone wanted to know.

You believe in miracles, Heather? No? Well, you will, because this one was a 100% pure miracle. I heard one of the reporters saying he worked for the Clarion, and how his editor was a hardass who was demanding this interview that no one could get, and how he was going apeshit in his office, and making everyone miserable.

Now, I had no options left, so it was worth a try. The worst he could say was no. So I grabbed my folder and ran out. For fifteen blocks in a skirt and heels, I hightailed it for the paper’s offices. I’m lucky I didn’t get arrested or a hamstring. I went right past the same door guard who a few days earlier had told me to get lost, took the elevator up to the seventh floor, and was in the editor’s office before anyone could stop me.

Now, Tom Fitzgerald was the very image of one of those newspaper editors you see in the movies. Chomping on a cigar, yelling into three phones at once…he was really something. So here I was, standing in his office, I could barely see him behind this cloud of cigar smoke, and he finally saw me.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Doris Burkhalter,” I said, not giving an inch.

“What do you want?”

“I want a job.”

“Not hiring. Get out.”

“No, wait!” I could feel my dream slipping away again as I waved my clippings folder at him, also fanning away some of the smoke at the same time. “I can write, I’m a good reporter, I wrote for the Tuscaloosa Talker in Alabama…”

“You and everyone else. Get out.”

This was it. I took a deep breath, prayed to Jesus, Mary and all the saints, and played my trump card. “I can get you a story on what the President of Freedonia’s doing here.”

He stopped and really looked at me. “Are you bullshitting me?”

“No, sir. No bullshit.”

He thought it over for a moment. “Let me see that thing.” I handed him my folder and he flipped through it. He didn’t shove it back immediately, that was a good sign right there.

It felt like I was waiting in that office for about a year when he looked back up at me from his desk. He had a tiny smile on his face, like he couldn’t believe what balls I had to just walk in like that. “Well, Miss Tuscaloosa…”

“My name is Doris.”

“I’ll make you a deal. You get me that story, and you’ve got a reporter’s job here.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Under my own byline?”

“Under your own byline.” He barked something into one of his phones, then looked back at me. “What the hell are you still doing here? Go! Get on that story!”

“Yes, sir!” I said with a big, ear-to-ear grin, and ran out of his office almost as quick as I ran into it.

It wasn’t until I was back on the street outside that I started thinking again. After all, promising a story no one else could get and actually delivering it were two very different things.

The President of Freedonia was staying at the Plaza. You know the place, right? Huge fancy hotel on Fifth, the one they use in making all those movies. Anyway, I went straight to the hotel, parked myself taksim escort in the lounge and checked everything out. I felt like some kind of secret agent, looking at people and procedures from behind a newspaper.

Now, I already knew that just walking up to his room and asking, “Hey, Mr. President, what are you doing in New York?” wouldn’t work. Every other reporter had tried it, and they had all gotten kicked down the hall for their troubles. So I had to be different. I had been watching the main desk for about an hour when I saw someone official-looking fellow come out of the elevator, go over to the main desk, and ask for the President’s mail.

Let’s be realistic — how many Presidents could there be staying in one hotel at the same time, even at the Plaza? So I watched a guy behind the desk give Mr. Official-Looking a few letters, then Mr. Official-Looking went back to the elevator and took it up to the 18th floor. I knew he got off on the 18th floor because there was only the elevator boy in there with him, and because it was one of those old-style elevators with the floor numbers on a dial outside, and the needle on the dial stopped at 18.

So if walking in there as a reporter wouldn’t work, how could I get in there? Mail delivery? No, he had someone come down to get it. Room service? Maybe, but that would involve hanging around in the kitchen area, and I’d be kind of noticeable. Housekeeping?

There was something.

I left the hotel by the front door, went around to the service entrance and told the guard on duty I was starting work today in Housekeeping. Nice guy, he told me where to go to get my uniform and to sign in. I found a locker room with a whole bunch of lockers, folded uniforms, and a changing room.

No one else was around, so I grabbed a uniform in my size — sorry, not telling what it was — and changed as quickly as I could. I stuffed my regular clothes in a locker, hoped no one would notice them, and headed out to the main Housekeeping area. I grabbed some towels, headed for the service elevator, and went on up to 18.

It wasn’t hard to figure out which room was the right one; it had two very large bodyguards in front of the door. Mr. Official-Looking wasn’t there, he must have been inside. I took a deep breath and walked right on up to the door, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. The two gorillas looked at each other and let me in.

And there I was! In the suite of the President of Freedonia! The place from which every journalist in town had been kicked out, and here I was. I looked around, heard some pen-scratching coming from a room off to the left, and headed over that way.

Friedrich Andruszkiewic, President of the Republic of Freedonia, sat at a writing desk, writing furiously. Mr. Official-Looking stood by as they muttered to each other.

For a moment, I felt like Oliver Hardy — you remember, from Laurel and Hardy? You don’t? Damn shame, all people know nowadays is Ah-nold and crap like that. Anyway, all I could think of “well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”

So here I was, having gotten into his hotel room, which was a hell of a lot farther than anyone else had gotten, and I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do next. I could just drop the towels and start asking questions, but that would get me thrown out damn quick. So the problem was, how to ask him a bunch of questions without having him think about being asked questions?

Simple: distract him so he doesn’t realize it.

And how to do that?

I thought about how all the other reporters who got tossed out were men, and how I was the only woman to try this, and it’s like a light bulb went off over my head. Except this was 1936, so make it a gas lamp.

That’s a joke.

Anyway, they hadn’t seen me yet, so I ducked back out of sight, reached under my uniform blouse and took off my bra, then unbuttoned enough buttons on front to almost, but not quite, let my tits hang out. I looked at myself in the mirror, pulled a couple of blonde curls loose to make myself look really good, then dumped the towels and stepped back into the doorway.

I heard the President say something to Mr. Official-Looking. I couldn’t understand it, sort of like a mix of German and Russian, but Mr. Official-Looking didn’t like it one bit. They exchanged some sharp words and Mr. Official-Looking stalked out, not even looking at me, mumbling something under his breath that didn’t sound nice at all. The President watched him go, then said something which sure sounded like a curse.

I waited for him to stop, then took a deep breath. “Mr. President?”

He finally noticed me and blinked in my direction. I think he was either thrown that I was there at all, or that half my chest was hanging out. “Yes?” he said in this really strong accent, sounding almost Russian but not quite.

“The hotel sent me up for your massage.” It was the only thing I could think of that sounded faintly plausible.

Oh, don’t look at me like that. What was I supposed şişli escort to do, tell him, “Hi, I’m trying to get a scoop for the Clarion. Can I ask you about a million questions?”

Anyway, he said, “Yes, a massage. That would be nice.”

“Lie down on the bed. Please undress.”

And undress he did, right down to his skivvies. He took off his suit and shirt, pants and shoes. He looked pretty good, too — lots of dark chest hair, nice physique. When he lay down face down on the bed, I straddled him, my legs on either side. Fortunately, I had done some massaging for friends back in Alabama so I wasn’t a complete greenhorn at this.

I started on his shoulders, really deep. He groaned like he really liked it and relaxed. I worked my way down his back, kneading the muscles there, and when I got to his backside, I paused for a second. Then I thought “why not?” and just pulled them down and off. He had this really cute tush, tight and masculine. He relaxed even more as I worked his butt, then when I finished with his legs, I got off the bed and told him to turn over. And he did.

I gotta tell you, he had one of the biggest pricks I’ve ever seen. And in all the years I’ve been on this Earth, I’ve seen a lot. He wasn’t stiff at all, just lying there. He wasn’t circumcised either — most European men weren’t at that time.

So this was it. I could either go for it and somehow get the story — and I still didn’t know just how that would happen — or I could step back, leave him alone, and lose my chance for the Clarion.

What was that? What did I do? Well, I’ll tell you. His eyes were closed. He was totally relaxed. And I knelt down next to that bed, next to him, and I took him in my hand. His dick was so soft and warm, then he opened his eyes and muttered something in his own language, and he started getting hard.

Oh, don’t look so shocked. I know I grew up in the Bible Belt, but being from Alabama doesn’t mean I didn’t know anything about sex. I was over 21. I had been with men before.

Anyway, he just kept getting longer and harder until he was fully erect. He must have been seven or eight inches long, he was pretty big. No wonder they made him President. I started stroking him, up and down, up and down, the foreskin sliding over the head and back. And what a head! It was big, and spongy, and it looked really really delicious.

I looked up at him and he…well, he was just gone, like he was in some sort of other world. He was enjoying it that much. So I bent over him and kissed the head of his dick, then licked it. He really tasted good, kind of meaty and masculine. I just let my tongue move all around it, getting it nice and wet. I licked the shaft up and down, playing with his balls. They were big and round and hot, and you know, I could almost feel all those sperm inside, trying to get out.

I opened my mouth as wide as it could go and just popped it over his cock, letting it fill my mouth. He moaned something, I couldn’t make it out, and he pushed his hips up. Now I had sucked off a couple of guys in my time, but I had never been able to deep throat anyone. You know, like in that old porn movie with Linda Lovelace? You never saw it? I saw it when it came out. It was a real scandal, a gen-u-wine Southern woman like myself seeing a porn movie!

Oh, well, anyway, with this guy, it was just so easy. I don’t know why, but the back of my throat opened up as easy as a soda can and his cock went right in. I had to fight the gag reflex, but after that, it felt really good. I started moving my head up and down, sliding him in and out of my throat, and after a few minutes, he was jerking around on the bed like he was having some kind of seizure. But I knew he wasn’t.

I took my hands away from his prick and unbuttoned my blouse, letting my tits out. And I really used to have nice tits, not these dried-out bags. My tits were rich and full and soft, and when I had them out of my blouse, I let his cock slide out of my mouth and put it between my tits. I cradled it between them, feeling it against me. It was so sexy and so erotic, like nothing else I’d ever felt before.

He looked at me, and it was kind of funny, like he really had to concentrate to speak in English. I still remember what he said. He said, “I want to fock you.” He didn’t say fuck, he said fock. Like his English didn’t extend to sex talk. Makes sense, I guess — I mean, when I took high-school French, they didn’t tell me anything about how to ask for a fuck in French.

Anyway, I just smiled at him, gave his prick a kiss, and let it go. I stood up and took off the rest of my clothes, I just let them slide off into kind of a puddle on the floor. And before you ask, yes, the carpet did match the curtains. At least it used to. I used to have really vibrant blonde hair, long and thick, and my bush was also blonde.

So there he was, lying on his back, Little Mr. President waving in the air, all big and purple and quivering. I got back on the bed, swung one leg over him, and settled onto him. Now I had only been with two men before in my life, and neither of them had been that big. Did you take sex ed in school? You did? Good. Remember the bit where they said how since a woman’s pussy can stretch to let babies come out, it can stretch to let a man’s cock go in?