BobWrites

Henrietta Loveless is not the name you would expect. After all, she was an enthusiastic nymphomaniac.

As sole heir to the Loveless fortune, she had no financial problems whatever, unless you considered her income taxes. About three times a year her accountant would come to the house. They would review her bank balances and how her investments had grown. Then they'd discuss by how much she wished to increase donations to her favorite charities. She’d sign a few forms, and finally they’d tumble into bed. He wasn’t one of her favorites - he’d never do as a regular.

Henrietta was thirty-one years old and lived in the house her grandfather had built - a twelve room Tudor structure, really too large for her needs. Situated in the center of fifteen acres of woods and meadows, it afforded her plenty of privacy, which considering her lifestyle, she heartily welcomed.

Farmland surrounded Henrietta's property. Dairy cows, grazing in a meadow could usually be seen from her back porch. Henrietta often stood there alone, enjoying the vista. Behind the meadow, foothills of the Berkshire mountains were visible in the distance. "I'm so lucky," she would think to herself.

The house was set back about 300 yards from the one road servicing the area – Old Mill Creek Road. The Old Mill Creek meandered alongside the road, flowing southward, down into town, a mile and a half away.



The town of Westlandings was an avant guarde affair. The Chamber of Commerce boasted that it contained 1,200 homes, 5,000 year round residents, four bookstores and three Churches. It was obviously a secular community.

Westlandings College, a Liberal Arts school contributed an additional 4,000 students and faculty to the community 's economy.

South of the town was a small industrial park primarily hosting electronics software companies - providing jobs, not only for Westlanding's residents, but for many students as well. Westlanding was affluent. But the real character of the town devolved from its artistic community. Artists, actors and students formed a bohemian enclave which nourished a rich nightlife.

Henrietta thought of herself as pretty. Lots of men had told her so and she believed them. "I think my dark eyes are my best feature," she would muse as she admired her naked form in her bathroom mirror. Her hair, long, black and lustrous, she generally wore pulled back, to best show off her delicate ears and long angular neck. ‘Nibbling area,’ she often thought. Her five foot seven inch frame was curvaceous without being voluptuous. "Slender and ample," she'd mumble, while half turning to view her body in profile.

You might say she lived alone but that would be ignoring the housekeeper and landscaper, both of whom came for four hours early on Thursday afternoons, and her regulars who visited five days a week, Monday through Friday. Charley visited each morning from ten till twelve and Hank in the afternoons from five till seven.




Portrait photos on her dresser of Charley and Hank as well as six other men smiled toward the bed. These, arranged in a semi-circle were all her regulars, past and present, and Henrietta loved them all. She knew that for these men sex with her was purely recreational, and that’s the way she wanted it - no emotional complications.
Once she had been asked how she could claim to really love more than one man at a time. “Does a mother have trouble loving more than one child?” she had replied.

Henrietta reserved her evenings and weekends for socializing - for meeting new men. If an opportunity for sex arose, so much the better. It was so easy to meet them. Just go where the men are. If you wanted loud, boisterous and empty-headed, go to a sports bar or a ball game. If you wanted intellectual conversation, The Bookstore. If a married man, an evening little league game. Take your pick. What's your mood?

She didn't care for group sex or orgies. She prized the physical intimacy with one partner at a time. And she didn't agree with those women who felt like victims of male aggression. During sex the male was her captive, unable to bring himself to escape until she released him, exhausted, enervated, shrunken and flaccid. Then as they relaxed side by side, she'd encourage her partner to talk. What were his hopes, his fears, his triumphs, his disappointments? Henrietta was genuinely interested.

She knew Jimmy would never be a regular - he hadn't the stamina. This was the third time they'd been together. After a little more than an hour she knew he'd have a reason to dress quickly and hurry off to his wife. What was it about married men?

She found the younger single men were usually full of optimism, brimming with plans about the great things they would surely achieve. The married men were less optimistic, resigned somehow to feeling trapped by their commitments to job and family. Married men, like Jimmy, also had an aura of guilt about them, however cavalierly they attempted to portray themselves.

Generally she seemed to gravitate toward men who were divorced - their time was more their own and they were usually more realistic than the others about their expectations. What she found most appealing was the hidden air of sadness they carried, which she attributed to a sense of failure in making their marriages work. Somehow, this sadness more than anything else, brought forth her maternal instincts.

Charley was divorced. One morning as they lay on their backs in bed, recovering from their exertions, Charley asked her if she ever thought of marrying. "God forbid!" she giggled. "I enjoy sex too much. And I hate to wake up in the morning with a man in the bed. Their whiskers scratch and their breath stinks. I'd rather wait for you, all nicely washed and shaved and smelling of cologne."
"But wouldn't you like children?" he persisted.
"I've thought about it. Lots of people I know get all gooey and say they'd like to have a baby. But babies don't stay babies. They become teen-agers. Have you ever heard anyone say they wanted a teen-ager? I haven't."
They both laughed and Henrietta felt that itchy tingle beginning again. She ran her hand over his loins and felt him beginning to respond. They turned to each other, smiling, and another amorous bout began.

When, in her late teens, she had become aware of her insatiable sexual appetite, she read ravenously about the history and the ‘pathology’ of nymphomania.
She began by tracing the etymology of the word - from the Greek ‘nymph’ meaning a bride or a maiden and ‘mania’ meaning madness or frenzy.
“I’m following in the footsteps of many a powerful woman.” she thought. Valerie Messalina, wife of Roman Emperor Claudius I, Cleopatra, Josephine - Napoleon’s wife, and Catherine the Great were among her favorites. She felt a sense of camaraderie with them. She believed that she understood them in a way that others could not.

Henrietta was aware of the social stigma attending her lifestyle, and she was careful to be discreet. She knew of the historical attitudes toward highly sexed women. In her reading she had learned, to her indignation, how Victorian women were expected to act solely as guardians of their husband’s homes and children. They were to have no sexual appetites of their own. Indeed, one Victorian woman confided shamefully to her doctor that she had sexual fantasies. In her dreams she had erotic adventures with men other than her husband. The doctor prescribed celibacy, cold sponge baths, a daily enema and other more intimate nostrums.

“I’m certainly glad I didn’t live then,” she had thought. "Who decides how much sex is enough? Who decides how much too much? I decide for me, not some frigid puritanical wife or her hypocrite husband."

It wasn't until 1987 that the American Psychiatric Association* abandoned references to nymphomania as a mental disorder. Some Freudians still view it as a woman's desire to castrate the male. "Not me," Henrietta had thought, "that would be a real tragedy."

Henrietta's reading had taken her back before the Christian era, when women were viewed as more concupiscent than men. They were viewed as temptresses in so many myths and tales. These were the stories she really enjoyed, even though so often the women's sexuality led to her man's downfall.

One Monday morning, her telephone rang at nine o’clock. Charley couldn’t make it today. An hour later Hank called. He too had to cancel. This left Henrietta in a foul mood. She needed her sex. “Sometimes I have such lousy luck. I’ll just go out and find someone,” she grumbled to herself. “I’ll start at The Bookstore.”


* American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
Main Street hosted several art galleries, an Indian museum, and a celebrated summer theater which operated year round. The non-summer months featured plays and players from the college. But the most prominent building on Main Street was The Bookstore.

The town, as you'd expect, had several bookstores, but The Bookstore was something special. It had been in Ernie Pinkerton's family for four generations, and he tended it with both skill and a true bibliophile's love of books. The store occupied the entire building at the southern end of Main Street, three stories tall. The street level contained one large open room packed with bookshelves. There was an ever-busy cashier counter at the entrance, and Ernie's small windowed office in the right rear corner. Next to Ernie's office an elegant circular stairway led to the second floor.

The books on the main floor were what you'd expect to find in any large mall - best sellers, travel books, how-to's, garden and nature books, cookbooks, adventure stories, kids books. You know, the typical assortment.

The second floor featured textbooks, both used and new. Here too were the markdown tables. Adjacent to the stairway was a cashier's station for the second floor.

A narrow wooden stairway led to the third floor. Here is where most of the store's treasures were located. Collector editions, antique encyclopedias and histories were in abundance, and framed, hand scribed individual pages from Middle Age tomes adorned the walls. In the far corner was the 'Adult' section, featuring and extensive selection of both books and magazines. It was reputed that customers would travel from two hundred miles away to shop at The Bookstore's third floor, but it was never made clear whether they were shopping for 'collectors' items or 'Adult' fare. Ernie knew of course, but he wasn't telling.

Henrietta and Ernie were good friends. He had, in former days been one of her regulars, until he fell in love with the proprietress of the art gallery next door. They married. Now he never lost an opportunity to regale Henrietta with the latest additions to his swelling collection of photos of his two plump little girls.

It was at the Bookstore that Henrietta first met Charley about six months ago. The third floor was prime territory for meeting new men. Today, to her dismay, there, browsing in the ‘gay’ racks were Charley and Hank, holding hands.

When they saw her they blushed. “Sorry,” said Hank, as the two men hurried from the store.

Henrietta realized that she too was flushed. Tears of frustration filled her eyes. The loss of her two regulars at once was bad enough, but now this? Holding hands! She later learned that the men had met a week ago by accident in The Bookstore, each recognizing the other from the photos that watched them in Henrietta’s bedroom.

As she daubed her unwelcome tears, thinking this was the unluckiest day of her life, she became aware of another set of eyes watching her intently. The woman smiled and Henrietta smiled back.

“It’s a grand selection, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes! I’d like to read them all!” answered Henrietta.
"Who's your favorite?"
"George Simenon," Henrietta answered at once. "I like everything he does - the psychological novels, the Inspector Magrait detective stories - -"
"They're psychological novels too," interjected the woman.
"Yes they are," agreed Henrietta.
They continued to chat for a few minutes and then the woman said, “I’m going for coffee. Would you like to join me?”
"Sure. That would be nice."
"By the way my name is Shirley," Shirley volunteered.
"I'm Henrietta"

Out on the street Shirley set a brisk pace. Henrietta glanced at her, liking the way she bounded along. Shirley was about two inches shorter than Henrietta. She had short blond hair, a pug nose in the center of a pretty sun-tanned face, and a generous bust. All seemed to bounce merrily with every stride.

The coffee shop was two blocks away. By the time they reached it Henrietta was out of breath. "I guess sex doesn't condition you for fast walking," she panted to herself.

They selected an isolated booth in the back. Both ordered Lattes and sat back, still and silent. Both smiled as they studied one another's form and face. Finally Shirley spoke.
"What do you do Henrietta?"
"Nothing really. I'm a sex addict. I can never get enough."
"Sounds great!"
"It is in its way, except that it takes up so much of my time."
Again a silence. Again broken by Shirley.
"You seemed upset back in The Bookstore. Is anything wrong?"
"Two of my men have strayed. Apparently they've found each other more appealing than I am."
"Are you into men only?" Shirley asked.
"So far. They do carry the equipment," Henrietta giggled.
Shirley said nothing.
"What do you do Shirley?"
"I paint portraits. I guess I'm pretty successful. The higher I raise my prices, the more people clamor for my work."
Shirley sipped her Latte and then slowly shook her head.

"Men!" she said. "Such a waste! They're so empty!"
Henrietta laughed to herself, "And I sure help to empty them."
"Why empty?" Henrietta asked aloud.
"Haven't you noticed that as you and I talk we're reading each other's face," began Shirley. "Men can't do that. It's like when they're color-blind or tone-deaf. They don't process all the information that's there. They really miss all the subtleties when we talk."
"I've never thought about it. Are you sure you're right?"
"Absolutely! Think about cave men. They had to hunt. This meant either being silent or yelling while chasing a herd to stampede it. No need to develop conversation skill."
"I think I've been with some cave men," joked Henrietta.
"Meanwhile the women gathered roots and berries. They stayed close together for protection. Or they huddled near a fire and took care of the kids. This gave them time to develop their language - their communication."
"Sounds reasonable."

Shirley sensed that Henrietta was not yet convinced. "Think about children in a playground. The boys are running, yelling , and throwing balls. They hardly look at each other. The girls, likely as not, are sitting in a circle having a conversation. And they're continually looking into one another's faces, as we're doing now. Men are blind to all that."
As Shirley warmed to her argument she became more and more animated.
"She's so alive," thought Henrietta as Shirley continued. "And what do they want to do after sex? Sleep! Just at the perfect time to talk about the things that really matter to you."




Henrietta's left hand was resting on the table. Shirley reached across and placed her right hand on top of it. Henrietta felt that rush of excitement that came with the first physical contact with a new prospective lover. She placed her right hand on top of Shirley's and they sat silently studying one another.

'My pad is only three blocks from here. Would you like to see my work?"
"Love to."
They left the coffee shop hand in hand
“I have a hunch I’m about to have a change of luck,” thought Henrietta.






Bob Shinberg
Revised 5/18/07