scene in a small town diner, 1971

          The radiator is fixed but it needs a new thermostat which won’t come in until tomorrow.  That’s ok -- I want to stay in this town until I find out more about Sukie, the girl who is always naked.

            I wait until just before school is out before walking into town.  I sit on the same bench, at the same time. Again, the school bus empties with middle-school kids.  Again, some high school kids walk by.  But no Sukie, nor any of her friends (I think).  Half an hour goes by and still, nothing.

            There’s a restaurant near the high school which one assumes attracts the after-school crowd.  I go in and sit at the counter, next to the local characters, each of whom smokes.  It’s apparently allowed in here.  As for the tables, I was right: the place is filled with teenagers, filling the air with constant high school talk.

            At a table near the back I see the three girls Sukie was walking with yesterday.  And -- behind them, behind an empty table, on the cushioned bench seat in the corner of the room, Sukie.

            She doesn’t look well.  She’s facing in my direction.  Her knees are up, her hands are wrapped around her calves, and her face is resting against her knees, eyes closed, eyebrows knitted.  She looks like she has a headache. Her feet are flat on the bench in front of her, together, her toes twitching.  Looking closely I see she’s not really naked now. She seems to be wearing a black bikini bottom.  And I see what looks like a black bra strap behind her elbow.

            Is she in some kind of personal crisis?  It’s odd that her friends are not paying attention to her, or somehow trying to comfort her.  And why is she wearing what looks like a bikini?  Now her body starts shaking.  Her head leans to the side and I see her teeth gritting.  The shaking gets more violent, then subsides.  I hear a faint kind of strangled groan.  It’s as if she wants to scream out loud, but is suppressing it because she’s in public.  Still, her friends keep talking, as if she wasn’t there.

            She exhales, and takes some deep breaths.  Now her body shakes again, another groan.  Suddenly I realize it looks like she’s having an orgasm.  This explains the more violent shaking, then rhythmic spasms, three, four, five . . . after the eighth there are two more irregular ones.  Now I see a sheen of sweat over her body.

            Not thirty seconds have gone by before she suffers another orgasm.  “Suffer” is the right word -- she doesn’t seem at all like she’s enjoying these.  How many times has she “come”?  The one I saw probably wasn’t the first. How long does she have to endure this?

            I order an omelette even though I’m not hungry.  Out of the corner of my eye I count five more orgasms, if that’s what they are.  Now she exhales again, her body practically dripping with sweat, and seems to relax.  The bikini must have some internal vibrators and now it seems they’ve finally stopped buzzing.  She starts quietly sobbing.  This poor girl -- suffering through multiple orgasms she doesn’t want, and no one helping her!  She sniffles and rubs her nose.  Through all this, nobody notices, certainly not the chatterboxes at the counter.

            Finally one of her friends comes over and takes her hand.  She leads Sukie unsteadily to the rest rooms.  As she walks by on wobbly legs, her bare feet slapping unevenly on the tile floor, I see she is indeed wearing a bikini, but an odd one.  It looks like shiny black leather, and there are bumps over where her nipples would be.  I see another bump in front of her crotch.  As she turns to open the door I see another bump sticking out behind.  One can only imagine!

            Ten minutes later she emerges, totally naked again, seeming a little tired, but smiling.  She rejoins her friends as they get up to leave.  I don’t know what happened to the bikini.  It left marks on her skin which I suppose will soon fade.

            Obviously this was not the first time Sukie was subjected to this ordeal.  It seemed like a regular event.  I suppose when she has to endure this, she wants to be left alone.