|
|
Don Greenwood
Redheads
David’s first best male friend was a redhead named Bill Byron. He along with a
dark-haired boy name Tommy Gold were the only friends David had in high school. They
were both taller and stronger than him, so he felt protected.
Bill was the last male redhead in his life, but not the last redhead. Even though David
was very shy with girls, and only had three dates in high school (two of which were girl ask
boy dates) he didn’t feel any attraction towards Bill.
But in the more than forty years since high school in Riverside, California, Dave has
had a good number of interesting relationships with redheads of the opposite sex. As he
looks back over the years, he sometimes wonders if there is something about his
appearance or personality, which attracts redheads.
There has been Jeanie, his college steady, Patty the young lady at his job between
college and the Army. As a young seminarian in field training, there was a young housewife
named Amy. In the first church David pastured, there was the young doctor’s wife, Susan.
In North Carolina, there was Rebecca; and in Ohio, Laura, the wife of his seminarian in
training. Just after he retired and joined a community recreation center there a personal
trainer by the name of Jennifer. After Dave and his wife moved to the Pacific NW, and
joined an Athletic Club there has been a redhead he guesses to be in her forties, who follows
him from one exercise machine to another. As yet he doesn’t know her name.
Dave knows there have been more that he cannot recall, but several were strongly
attracted to him. He knows they were. He has not been imagining it. Not that blondes and
brunettes haven’t found him interesting. Nor is Dave contending that he favors redheads
over blondes and brunettes. He likes all attractive women. It’s just that redheads have
seemed to be more emotionally intense in their interest.
Is it because having red hair makes a person more volatile or emotionally expressive?
If there’s been a scientific study, which proves redheads are more sexual, passionate, or
romantic David hasn’t heard about it. He just knows whenever a redhead has shown some
interest in him it wasn’t hard to tell. They are not very coy about showing their interest. It’s
easy to notice when they blush or otherwise get excited.
Dave wonders if he has found redheads more exciting and sexually arousing? Has he
given off a stronger scent when around an attractive woman of reddish hair? He’s not
aware of it.
Now in his sixties he feels more of a sense of urgency about all this. He doesn’t want
to leave this life not knowing why redheads get so excited around him. It would be a major
disappointment in his life’s journey to be on his deathbed without the answer to this
question. And it would be just his luck to have a redhead as his last nurse in this life.
Dave met Jeanie his junior year of college. He was at a fraternity brother’s party,
and there she was with her very dark red hair and perfect figure. He proceeded to get
smashing drunk, and vaguely recalled getting fresh with her. The evening after the party he
returned to his friend Bob’s apartment and asked him who had torn down all the stuff he had
on the walls. It was Dave who did it, along with making a fool of himself over Jeanie.
He called her to apologize and she ended up asking him out. Months later they got
pinned at the annual Fraternity Ball, and he was ready for marriage. Jeanie wasn’t.
Besides being an elementary school teacher she was a great dancer. So away she went on a
long cruise, where she had been hired as a dance instructor.
Dave’s heart was broken until a year later, as he waited to enter the Army as a
ROTC commissioned officer. While selling clothes at a men’s store he was literally
knocked down one day by Patty, who purposely pumped into him. She had very bright and
shiny red hair, and lots of freckles, all over. She asked him out to the movies, but wouldn’t
even French kiss. Patty was a little on the chubby side, but had large breasts.
Her father had left her Mother years before, but Patty wanted to Dave to meet her
mother and younger brother. It seemed like a nice meal, but her mother kept disappearing
into the rather dark adjacent room. When her mother came staggering to the table with
dessert, Dave realized she was very drunk. The evening ended with Patty’s mother slugging
her, and the two of them running from the house and driving away from this screaming
maniac. Two weeks later David reported for active day in the Adjutant General’s Corps.
It was while he was in the Army that he met his wife Anita. She was not and never has
been a redhead. For most of their forty years of marriage her hair has been a lovely dark
brown, although now it is almost totally gray. Dave’s never asked Anita to color her hair
red. Maybe it was because he was afraid she’d become too passionate.
Amy was a young redhead active in the little Georgia Church, which Dave served for a
few months in the summer between his second and third year of seminary. She had just
married, and had a baby boy about one year old. Boy was she sultry. Dave was still very
naïve, when it came to understanding the meaning of another person’s actions. Part of this
had to be his very low self-esteem. He couldn’t imagine anyone as beautiful and perfectly
figured as Amy being romantically or sexually interested in him.
He’ll never forget the day he and his wife to go boating with she and her husband. She
had on a brief two-piece bathing suit, which left no doubt about her figure. He was amazed
that she had few if any freckles. He had falsely assumed all redheads had lots of freckles.
As she lay there on her belly, she handed him the sun tan lotion and asked him to rub it
on her back. She had just unsnapped her bra strap, and he was so excited that his hands
shook. All this was right in front of her husband Bill, and his wife, Anita.
Two months later, when Anita and Dave were back at seminary, one day they looked
out and there was Amy and a teenage member of the little Georgia church. They had
decided on the spur of the moment to make the four-hour trip to see the Gregory’s. When
Dave came to the driver’s side of the convertible Amy was driving, he could barely speak.
He was so shocked, and actually scared. Amy and her friend Joy left after a brief visit, and
that was the last he saw of her.
Five years later they returned to Georgia to take Dave’s first pastorate. In that
suburban parish there was a young resident physician, who had a beautiful and full figured
wife named Susan. She had red hair that was a mixture of different tints and shades. When
she would kneel before Dave at the communion rail, the passion in her eyes would burn
right through him. Susan often showed up unannounced at his office, needing to talk about
how her Jim was so busy with his work that he neglected she and their two young children.
Once Susan invited Dave and Anita over for supper, and when he excused himself to use
the restroom, she followed him down the hall and brushed her breasts against him. However,
Dr. Jim soon received a fellowship grant, and they moved to Texas.
Rebecca was the wife of a successful North Carolina dentist, and a very active
member of Dave’s second parish. She was an alcoholic, whose Methodist Father came to
Dave as Becky’s Episcopal Rector, to see what could be done about his daughter’s
drinking. There was nothing Fr. Dave could do. Becky wore her red hair long and far down
her back. It was naturally wavy and shined brightly in the Sun.
One Halloween Night, when Trinity Church was hosting an All Saints’ party for the
children in the parish hall, Becky pulled a pint of Jack Daniel’s from he purse and offered
her priest a swig. He of course declined her offer, but wondered if this was an indication she
wanted to make a more personal offer. Several months later Becky entered an alcohol
treatment center, and when she returned to her hometown, she attended the Methodist
Church with her father.
Dave cannot recall any more prominent or passionate redheads in his life until his last
church in an Illinois suburb. His last year or so before early retirement, he had a seminarian
in training who also was a police officer. His wife, Laura, was the most beautiful redhead he
had yet seen. Perhaps it was her intense green eyes, or full lips and figure, or the fact she
couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Her obvious interest made him uncomfortable and was
embarrassing. Her stern husband Mike didn’t think it all how funny. When he would see
Laura all red and blushing while talking with Fr. Dave, he would come between them and
say something very rude to his wife.
Dave came close to trying to start an affair with Laura, but retreated out of fear of her
husband, and what it would do to his own marriage. But boy did he think and fantasize about
her for years following the last time they saw each other. That was in the airport, very early
one morning when she and her family were on their way to a Florida Bowl Game, and he and
Anita on their way to look for a house in the Pacific North West. Of course, when he was
talking to Laura, she blushed her usual deep red.
So Dave retired at age 62, and one of the first things he did was join the community
recreational center. Wouldn’t you know there was a personal trainer by the name of
Jennifer, who was in her forties and had short light red hair? Jennifer also had the figure of
a woman twenty years younger. When she first saw Dave using a weight machine, she was
on a treadmill next to one of her trainees. Dave thought her head was come off from turning
and staring at him so many times.
He couldn’t believe she found him attractive. He was probably twenty years older, and
had a moderately protruding stomach. But, each time she saw him, she would smile and say
a pleasant hello. She would bring her clients to the machine next to him, and give him
several quick looks. One day she wore a suggestive t-shirt, that read something like, “This
old gal is still good for lots of intense sex.” He couldn’t believe in her position she would
wear something like that. This excited him so much that he searched her name on the
Internet, only to find she was a professor at the local community college, married, with two
sons.
Several months went by and he and Anita sold their home and moved to the Pacific
North West, to be near their sons and grandsons. They joined the Riverside Athletic Club,
just one mile from their retirement home. After a few months Dave began to notice a
slender sandy red haired women in her forties. He noticed her because she was very often
close by. He would move from one weight machine to another, and she would follow him.
When he did his jog around the indoor track, she would be on an exercise bicycle at the
edge of the track, and stare him down each time he passed.
She started waving at him and blushing when he smiled. He began getting hang-up
phone calls, and wondered if it was she. He didn’t know her name, and had only said “hello,
how are you,” to her several times. She was kind of a “mystery lady,” who he was afraid to
identify. So he started coming in the early morning instead of afternoon, so that he would
not be tempted by her obvious interest.
In the after breakfast hours most of the clients at the club were young mothers and
housewives. He was surprised that he saw no redheads! Was this meant to be? He felt
relieved; although a couple of bleached blondes in there forties seemed very friendly.
On a beautiful fall day, Dave and his wife were sitting on the patio, enjoying lunch and
the warm Sun. He innocently began to tell her his dilemma with redheads, but not going into
a whole lot of detail. He did mention the latest redhead at the club, and how intense she
seemed in her pursuit. Anita exploded. She did not think his tale of the redheads either
interesting or acceptable. Pushing her food to the center of the picnic table, she abruptly
got up and stormed into the house.
For two days Anita rarely spoke to Dave, except to give him that look that all
husbands know. Dave cowered in fear and felt very shameful for his long years of emotional
unfaithfulness to his very faithful wife of forty years. When he went to the Riverside Club,
he tried not to look more than three seconds at any woman redhead, blond, brunette, or
gray.
At night he was restless, and so was Anita. Several nights she got up and went into
the next bedroom. Then Saturday morning he awoke from out of a restless sleep and turned
towards Anita. He screamed out in surprise and shock. Her hair was a very bright red!
Dave’s heart started beating very fast, then it was pounding and seemed like it would
come right out of his chest. He felt sharp pains in his left arm, as it radiated up his arm to
his chest. He felt sick to his stomach. “Anita, help me, I think I’m having a heart attack!”
Somehow, at the same time, it came to him the food at supper had tasted different.
Anita turned towards him calmly and said in a whisper, “You’ve always been so fond of
redheads, dear, now you can tell God you’re prayers have been answered. You’ve died in
bed next to one!”
By the way, I’ve known about some of your redheads. I’ve had enough of you treating
me strictly as a friend, instead of your wife and lover. Enjoy heaven, or is it hell?
Want to respond to this work of prose? Do it here!
Return to Prose
|
|
|
|
