Almost a Dozen Curious but True Stories of Suzanne -- The Woman Whose Life You Helped Save

[Sunstone]

Everyone has a crazy friend or two.

Some dress crazy. Some talk crazy. Some are crazy enough to masturbate their pet spiders. Some are just plain crazy as a dancing duck wearing a tuxedo is crazy. But everyone's crazy friend is crazy in his or her own unique way.

This thread is dedicated to one such person -- Suzanne -- who is crazy in the astonishing things she routinely does, things that she herself never seems to grasp as crazy. At least, not at the time she does them.

Beyond being crazy, Suzanne is human. She has her flaws like everyone of us. I've known her for 22 or more years now, and she's certainly got both virtues and flaws. Among her virtues, Suzanne is remarkably resilient, endlessly buoyant, impossible to defeat. Among her vices, she is brash, blunt, over-confident, and a bit blind to points of view other than her own. But she's human. These are true stories. None of this stuff is made up.

Suzanne, by the way, is the woman who several RFers pitched in financially a few months ago to help save her life when she contracted throat cancer. That allowed her to start treatments earlier than she would have been able to otherwise. Today, her doctors have declared her cancer free. And that's one big reason for this thread -- I figure some of you might be interested in knowing a bit more about the young woman whose life so many of you helped to save.

Please feel free to comment on the stories or to even tell true stories of your own crazy friends in the comments.

(Scroll down to find a photo of Suzanne)

 

[Sunstone]

The Strange and Eerie Way Suzanne and I Met​

The story of how Suzanne and I met is so unusual, so out of the ordinary -- and I might even say, so eerie -- that I think it could be of general interest on a religious forum.

It begins more than 25 years ago when I owned and operated a tiny little business in Illinois employing 13 people. To make this brief, I won't go into the details of how one day I found myself shuffling through Victoria's Secrets catalogs on a business mission to find flannel pajama prices -- but it happened that one day I found myself doing just that.

I was thumbing through the pages quite rapidly when I felt stopped in my tracks. What had I just seen? I thumbed back two or three pages. There, posed on a bed, was a young model in her underwear looking straight at the camera.

Any other time in my life, I would have been more likely to fixate on her underwear than on her eyes. But it was clearly the eyes that I'd noticed, and that had caused me to thumb back to her.

She had an arresting look in her eyes. I thought it might even be familiar in some way, but I couldn't place where I might have seen it before. I was all but hypnotized looking at that expression. I felt a huge desire to meet her, and then an ache in my chest when I realized I never would. I remember thinking, "I just want to meet her so I can find out what that look in her eyes is all about." I thought it almost like a prayer, even though I was a non-theist.

A few minutes went by and I finally noticed, down in a bottom corner of the page, the same model in flannel pajamas. That woke me up, the spell was broken. I jotted down the price and other pajama information, and then started thumbing through the catalog again.

Fast forward a couple years. I've closed down my business, left my wife, and -- finding myself without any ties or obligations left in the world -- decided to move to Colorado. In Colorado, I have become a regular at a certain coffee shop a city block from my apartment that happens to be the most popular coffee shop in town. The customers most nights are so many they can't all fit inside, and the crowd overflows onto the sidewalks.

One night, I'm standing on the sidewalk with the overflow crowd when I'm a bit alarmed to spot a tiny white sports car with its top down swoop into a parking space at such speed that I think for a moment it's about to crash into the car parked in front. Nevertheless it comes to a halt in time -- just barely in time, though.

The driver -- instead of opening the door -- stands up in his seat and leaps over the door onto the ground. "Cocky", I think. The moment he reaches the sidewalk, he turns in my direction, and begins strutting towards me. "What a cocky strut!", I think. Then -- twenty feet away -- I am able to see his face well enough in the night to realize he is a she.

Moreover, not just a she, but the she. The underwear model from the catalog.

You might expect that I'd be a bit shocked. But I wasn't. Long story short, this was to me just another one of a whole series of very strange events that were happening to me on almost a monthly basis back in those years. My attitude that night was far closer to "Again? Another one?" than it was to shock.

She strutted right up to me, looking neither to the left nor the right. When she at last came to a halt in front of me, she looked up straight into my eyes and said, somewhat cryptically, "So this is the place for coffee?" I told her where to look inside the shop for the service counter (there were so many people inside, it was a bit difficult to spot).

Off she went.

I had just begun to think that I'd never see her again, when she popped back out of the store with a cup and a pitcher. Again she came up to me, and we got into a conversation that lasted perhaps 30 or 45 minutes, and during which I avoided mentioning anything about having seen her photos in Victoria's Secrets.

Within a few months Suzanne and I had become platonic friends, and we were hanging out together for a few hours in the evening nearly every day of each week. We did all sorts of things from taking road trips in her sports car, to attending movies, to shopping, to soaking nude in hot springs, to midnight mountain hikes, and more -- but we never became romantically involved with each other.

She was 16 the year we met. I was 39 or 40. She had posed for the catalog when she was 14 -- yet both in person and in her photos, she looked like a 19 year old.

About six months after we met, I finally got around to telling her where I'd seen her before. Her response: "You're the sixth man I've met who saw my photos in Victoria's, but you're the only one who remembers the flannel pajamas."

And the look in her eyes? I have come to believe that peculiar look might be associated in some people (but not in everyone) with certain mood disorders. Suzanne, as it turned out was bi-polar. A few other people I've since come to know have the same look, and the same illness, or a closely related illness.

I have absolutely no explanation for any of the strange things that happened between Suzanne and me beyond calling them "coincidences". But I've always thought the events that happened with her, were the least strange of all the strange events that happened back in those days.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Decides to Get Some Legal Advice​

In the over 20 years I've known her, Suzanne has routinely done the most improbable, astonishing things -- without herself even beginning to think how astonishing they are.

For instance, she was out in Boston one Sunday afternoon, driving through the Harvard area, when she saw the famous law school's sign. Not at all knowing how prestigious the school was (Suzanne doesn't concern herself with such trivia as which universities are notably good universities), she decided on the spot she needed legal advice about something.

So, she parked her car, marched into the offices of Harvard Law School, searched around for someone to talk to. Finally, she found a man alone in his office, working on that Sunday afternoon. She actually managed to get the man to give her free legal advice.

After she thanked him for it, she got curious. "So what do you do here, sir?"

He told her his position.

A day or two later, she called me up to tell me how she was doing. She mentioned the incident in passing, told me the man's name, and then asked, "So Phil, is a dean, like, the head guy, the guy who runs things? I think that might be what a dean is, but I'm not sure."

Later I googled the name she'd given me. Sure enough. Suzanne had gotten free legal advice from the dean of Harvard Law School -- arguably the best law school in America.

 

[Sunstone]

How Suzanne and David Bowie Became Friends​

Suzanne was surfing David Bowie's website one evening when she came across a conversation in his chat room that she just couldn't leave alone. Four or five fans were discussing something either about Bowie or his music -- I no longer quite remember which -- and Suzanne was sure, absolutely sure, they were all wrong. All of them.

As it happened, she not only immediately decided to correct them, but she launched herself at the task with passionate bluntness. She wasn't actually trying to insult every last one of them, but Suzanne and tactfulness just don't mix. Naturally, most of them shot back with real insults. Suzanne, being Suzanne, was honestly surprised. Why on earth would anyone take unkindly to being informed of the truth? It was a mystery to her.

The fight went on and on and on. Suzanne was not about to give up -- despite two or three hours having passed getting nowhere. She poured facts and sarcasm on them in fire hose quantities, but of course, they were to a person unyielding.

Then it happened. Someone calling themselves David Bowie announced he'd been lurking for awhile and -- more to the point -- Suzanne was right, completely right, and everyone else was wrong. The mysterious person then invited Suzanne to chat privately with him.

Suzanne soon concluded that the person she was chatting with was so knowledgeable of David Bowie that he must really be David Bowie. She was very pleased and happy to be chatting with him, but it never occurred to her how improbable all of it was. Don't such things just happen? In Suzanne's worldview, such things just happen to almost everyone.

A week or two later, she received a huge package from England. Inside it was a handwritten note from Bowie thanking her for "defending his honor", and informing her that the enclosed object was a one-of-a-kind full-length coat, by a certain Italian designer, that he'd worn only once -- in concert.

Suzanne reciprocated by sending Bowie her profound thanks, along with a recording of her two sons -- who were then in the six year old range -- singing one of Bowie's songs. Bowie graciously took the time to email her back with some detailed comments and encouragement about her son's singing abilities.

That was the start of Suzanne's online friendship with Bowie. Over the next ten years, until Bowie died, the two exchanged occasional letters, emails and gifts. Bowie, for instance, made a point of sending presents to her sons on their birthdays. Yet, they never met in person.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Decides to Seduce the Sheriff​

Today, Suzanne is in her late 30s, and she's begun to develop a broader and deeper sense of morality. But when she was much younger -- especially when she was in her teens -- Suzanne's sense of morality was admittedly quite shallow.

It mostly consisted of loyalty to her friends, indifference to anyone she didn't personally know, and a straightforward and brash pursuit of her own interests -- which were not always the wisest interests to have.

Among other things, she felt a sexual attraction to much older men that bordered (in my opinion) on being a fetish. She wouldn't even look at a man or boy near to her own age. As romantic interests, they bored her. But when she was 16 -- the age we met -- middle aged men were her thing.

With all of that in mind, the year before Suzanne and I met, she was pulled over one night for speeding by the sheriff of a small Colorado county. Of course, he not only discovered that she had been driving without a license, but that she was also too young, at 15, to even get a license.

Suzanne noticed the man's age -- which turned out to be 55 -- and without thinking it through more than that, decided being pulled over by him was, as she put it, "a gift of the gods to me" -- an opportunity to get a boyfriend.

I no longer recall the details, but either that night or later on that week, she achieved her goal. Of course he was married -- and of course he told her the same story about his being on the verge of getting a divorce from a wife who no longer loved him that so many unfaithful men tell women -- and of course Suzanne was young and naive enough to believe him, and of course she was foolish enough to feel sympathy for him.

It took her about five months to wise up, but when she at last realized that he wasn't about to divorce his wife, she got a pang of conscience about what she was doing with a married man, and dumped him. To give her a little credit, she learned at least one remedial lesson from the experience: By the time we met, she was thoroughly against dating married men.

Will Rogers used to say that there are three kinds of people. A very few who can learn wisdom from books. A few more who can learn wisdom from observing other people. But, as Rogers put it, "Most folks have to pee on the electric fence themselves".

Suzanne is to be numbered among those people who have to pee on the fence themselves.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Screws Up Falling in Love​

Suzanne met Jeff the same night she met me. In fact, Jeff and I had met for the first time that same night, too. Just a few hours before Suzanne showed up.

As Suzanne and I stood talking with each other on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, I noticed Jeff was intently watching the two of us. Soon enough, he came over, drew me aside, and in a whisper asked, "Is she someone you're interested in? I mean sexually?"

I told him no -- which was true. He then asked if I would introduce him to her, and so I did. Had I known Jeff better, I would never have agreed to introduce him to her.

Jeff was my age -- 39 or 40 -- and perhaps the best things that could be said about him were that he was highly intelligent and quite charming.

He was also the sort of man that experienced women his own age tend to see right through and then label those men as "losers". Not being able to get a woman his own age, Jeff had a history of hitting on much less experienced and more naive women that were usually at least ten years younger than him. But I had yet to learn all that about him the night I introduced him to Suzanne.

To my thinking, men like Jeff resemble fish. When a woman first pulls one from the water, he is charming, vibrant, and colorful. But as soon as she gets into a relationship with him, his colors rapidly fade. Soon enough, he's just a dull, slimy fish, and he's begun to stink.

I think men like Jeff don't know how to handle women. They're insecure, fearful of losing a woman, so they want to control her, possess her. They try to cage their women, so they quickly turn even the happiest initial relationship into some sort of imprisonment for them. Their "love" can be passionately felt by them, but it is in every way indistinguishable from needy, clinging, emotional dependency.

Jeff was perfectly charming to Suzanne at first. They went places, did things. He used his quick wit and gift for words to compose flowing blank verse for her on the spot. She found his spontaneous poetry thrilling, even sexually exciting. The two were a couple within a week of having met.

But once Jeff realized that Suzanne had fallen for him -- realized he had his hooks in her heart -- he began abusing her. As abuse usually does, it started mild enough, but progressively got worse and worse. Whenever Suzanne would get fed up with it and rebel, Jeff would promise to change, reform himself, and beg her to stay. Then he'd pour on the charm again.

But after a week or two, he was right back to abusing her. Unfortunately, Suzanne was far too naive and far too emotionally dependent on him not to be easily manipulated by him.

Jeff worked two low-paying jobs that took up his afternoons and nights until midnight or one o'clock. That's when Suzanne and I would get together. Among other things, we took a lot of short road trips in those days -- 200 or 300 mile dashes across Colorado in her tiny Miata sports car. As Jeff became more and more abusive, her car conversations with me increasingly focused on him, and she fell into the habit of repeating herself, telling me the same things about him over and over again. It got that I could seldom break her out of it.

Suzanne would ask me for my opinions and advice, but she didn't really want to hear my opinions and advice. Her questions were only rhetorical. She cut off any attempts to genuinely answer them. Some people can't learn from others and have got to pee on the electric fence themselves.

Their relationship lasted three, maybe four years. Jeff is the father of both of her children. In the end, she had an epiphany of sorts -- one day, she came to the vivid realization that Jeff would sooner or later start beating her children. She dumped him the very same day.

 

[Sunstone]

How Suzanne Seduced the Hollywood Actor George Clooney​

A few years after Suzanne dumped Jeff, she found herself working in Hollywood as a make-up artist on the set of The Walking Dead. They were paying her $40,000/year, but for certain reasons, she was homeless and living out of her SUV.

Mainly it was a matter of the high cost of living in the Hollywood and LA area. 40k sounds like a fair amount of money to many of us, but Suzanne had it figured that if she got a house or apartment for both her and her two sons, she'd barely have money for food after taking out all the other expenses.

She concluded in typical Suzanne fashion that the boys would be better off in Nevada with their grandmother where she could send them money and commute to see them on the weekends. As for her, a car was just fine. Why does one need an apartment when one has a car anyways? Don't they both have roofs? Do you really need much more in a residence than a roof, along with nearby public restrooms and beach showers? Homelessness made perfect sense to Suzanne, being Suzanne.

One night, Suzanne was sitting in the balcony of a Hollywood movie theater when she began to wonder who might be sitting beneath her on the main floor. Suzanne leaned over the balcony rail to take a look. She gasped in delight! Just about directly below her seat was seated none other than George Clooney. Suzanne had never met Clooney, but she had long had a fan-crush on him. She was seized by a huge desire to introduce herself -- but how?

Obviously, whatever way she did it, it had to be memorable. Who wants to introduce themselves to someone only to be forgotten in the next ten minutes? No one! Suzanne began to ponder.

Soon enough, she had a plan. She explained to the people sitting around her what absolutely must be done. They agreed it absolutely must be done.

It took four or five strangers to suspend Suzanne upside down from the balcony so that she was more or less facing George Clooney from a position somewhat above and in front of his head. She called out to him her cheerful greetings and just how pleased she was to see him. He looked up at her and broke out laughing.

Shortly before the movie ended, Suzanne rushed to the lobby. When Clooney was leaving, she intercepted him. For some strange, inexplicable reason, he remembered her. Then -- quite unexpectedly -- he asked her to dinner the coming Tuesday.

According to Suzanne, Clooney had five girlfriends at the time. She quickly became the sixth.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Decides to Get Naked​

One afternoon, Suzanne and I were walking past a Victoria's Secrets store in the mall when she without warning grabbed my arm with both of her hands and said -- somewhat cryptically -- "Come! We're doing this!" She then almost dragged me into the store with her.

Once inside, she said, "I want you to pick out three sets of bras and panties. Just do it."

"Why? What's up with that?"

"Do it!", she commanded.

It occurred to me that she had somehow gotten it into her head to see what my taste in women's lingerie was. But when I showed her my first choice, her reaction was decidedly sour. "Come on! Think hot and sexy. What you just picked would freeze down a summer sidewalk."

I went back to my chore. After a bit, I had three sets for her -- two of them skimpy, lacy, drool-material, and one set of vibrant emerald green, silk boxer shorts with a matching cameo top. Suzanne regarded the boxer set skeptically. "Are you sure?"

"What's wrong with them?" I asked.

After a few moments: "Nothing. Nothing." Then she said, "Let's find the dressing rooms."

Once in the dressing area, she picked out one of the rooms, and entered it. A moment later I heard, "Well, are you going to come in here, or just stand outside like a dumb bodyguard, my friend?"

Inside, I sat on the floor while she slowly and teasingly stripped down, then asked me which set she should model first. I picked out what I thought was the sexiest. When she had them on, she was full of questions. How did they look on her? Were they arousing? Did their color go with her hair and complexion?

It was about then I asked if she was trying to find lingerie to please her abusive boyfriend, Jeff, because, I explained, "I doubt his tastes are quite the same as mine".

"No, this is for you. All for you. Jeff's never going to even hear about it."

She took her time modelling the sets. I was naturally titillated, but less so than you might imagine. That is, I certainly appreciated her beauty -- after all, she was drop-jaw gorgeous in both face and body -- and I think, had she been almost any other woman, I might have chosen the moment to hit on her.

But for reasons I still to this day have never figured out, I've very seldom felt more than a mild sexual interested in Suzanne. Sometimes that's just the way it is with someone. Still, it was fun to watch her that day

Later on, after she was back in street clothes, I told how much fun I'd had, and asked if she'd ever done the same thing for Jeff. "Never", she said forcefully, "He'd think I was a ____". -- using the common "s" word for a promiscuous woman.

That's when it suddenly struck me how much more Suzanne and I did together than she and Jeff did. We were adventurous and free-spirited together. We sought out new experiences; daily went places, did things that she and Jeff never managed to do together.

Of course, I already knew by then he was abusing her, but it hit home that afternoon just how much his abuse of her was costing him. Suzanne was certainly paying a price. But so was he. And in some ways, perhaps even a greater price than her, for he didn't know the woman. I probably knew sides to her he didn't even suspect existed. By oppressing her, he made her reluctant to fully reveal herself to him. And I certainly enjoyed her company -- most likely much more than he did. Abusers so often seem to me to lead dull, pathetic lives. In caging others, they cage themselves; in shrinking someone else's world, they shrink their own.

A couple days later, I went back to the store without Suzanne, found the boxer set, and bought it for her Christmas present that year. I had decided that if I was going to buy her lingerie, it had to be comfortable, and she had said that was the most comfortable pair. Besides, it went the best of the three sets with her dark red hair and complexion.

 

[Sunstone]

That Loud Pounding Sound You Hear Near Midnight​

Suzanne loves to hike moonlit mountain trails, and her favorite hour for it is midnight.

To give her credit, there are few things so magical as the mountains on a moonlit night. The trees, the bushes, the rocks, and even the occasional animals, all look ghostly, enchanted.

Add to that, the charm of sometimes being able to come within a stone's throw of wild animals, such as a herd of mule or whitetail deer. Mule deer -- at 30 or 40 feet away in the night -- are so well camouflaged they can barely be seen at that distance, even in moonlight. And once they spot you, they don't flee, as they might during the day, but stealthily move off, as silently as they can.

Large, silently moving, dimly seen shapes have a short of eeriness to them. An eeriness that appeals to Suzanne like rain puddles to a child. She loves how the moon enchants the mountains.

For a few years, it was a dangerous assumption on my part to think I might get to bed early on the night of a full moon. If I were so foolish as to try it, there was at least a 50-50 chance that around 11:30 or so, the door would be shaken by an extraordinarily loud pounding. BAM! BAM! BAM! Ten seconds later. BAM! BAM! BAM! And so on every ten seconds until I answered the door.

Suzanne was never one to risk that I might sleep through her knocking.

"Hi, Babe! Grab your coat! The Mountain King demands our presence at court." I'm quoting her there. To Suzanne, things like mountain kings are within kissing distance of reality. She has one of the strongest imaginations for such things of anyone I know who does not actually and really believe in them.

So off we'd go to one or another trailhead. Seasons of the year didn't matter to Suzanne. She was just as ready to hike a chilly summer night as she was to hike a freezing winter night. Often, we'd find at some distance down a trail a rock outcropping to sit or lie down on in order -- as she would put it -- "to get a moon tan". That's when we'd softly chat -- during the hikes themselves, we were usually as silent as the deer.

The hikes typically lasted two to three hours.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Decides to Shun a Dangerous and Risky Perversion​

There came a time in her life when Suzanne became fed up with sleeping alone. It was, after all, lonely -- at least for her. But, being Suzanne, she couldn't quite leave it at, "I'm tired of sleeping alone", or at, "I feel lonely when I sleep alone".

Instead, she became rather opinionated about the whole abhorrent practice of sleeping alone. Sleeping alone, she decided, was not only unnatural -- and therefore dangerously perverted -- but also alarmingly risky.

For what if you were sleeping alone and some creep like your ex-boyfriend Jeff broke in? Who then would help you properly trounce his butt? Quite obviously, the gods never intended her to do such an unnatural, perverted, and risky thing as sleep alone.

Now I believe I've known many women who -- tired of sleeping alone -- have solved the problem in a sensible, down to earth, and practical manner by getting a boyfriend (or sometimes a girlfriend).

Nothing so conventional, however, seems to have occurred to Suzanne.

Instead, Suzanne observed that she owned at the time a king-size bed. Why would the Fates give her a king-size bed if they meant her only to sleep with just one other person? It made no sense. No sense at all to think of sleeping with just one other person.

Fortunately, she had friends. Suzanne reached out to her friends and she eventually charmed four or five of them into becoming regular sleeping buddies. For about two years -- until she left town to go work in Hollywood -- she never spent a night wholly alone, and almost always slept with three to five other people -- the natural way to sleep.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Causes a Stir -- Yet Again​

Suzanne doesn't always make the wisest life decisions. She's a bit too impulsive for that. Sometimes she gets herself into a bit of trouble. But she is remarkably resilient and unusually resourceful. She always bounces back.

In fact, her ability to bounce back from adversity is one of the things I most admire about her. I know of very few other people who do it as well or as consistently as Suzanne.

Sometimes I'm able to help her bounce back.

One day, she and I were siting in our favorite coffee shop when she suddenly announced, "I'm going to start keeping track".

"Keeping track of what?"

"Of all the times you save my butt. Starting today, staring with your saving my butt earlier this morning. So someday I can repay you." she said firmly.

"Oh? How are you going to repay me? I don't think any repayment is necessary."

Surprisingly, Suzanne took my question seriously. She paused for a few moments, thinking. Then she said: "Yeah, I'm keeping track now. And someday I'm going to give you a blowjob for each and everyone of the times you've saved my butt."

We both laughed, but I got her subtle message: She didn't expect to ever be able to repay me, but she wanted me to know she appreciated my occasional help.

A few weeks went by. I had another opportunity to help her a little bit. "That makes two now."

"Two what?" I asked.

"I owe you two blowjobs now." Apparently, Suzanne was taking her count seriously. And so it became a running joke between us. Whenever I did something for her that she considered important enough to amount to "saving her butt", she would make a note of it in her diary.

One day, her tally caused a minor stir.

We were waiting in a bank line to get her a money order. That morning, Suzanne had accidentally spilled soup into the workings of her desktop computer, destroying the machine. When she later came over to my cottage -- as previously planned -- she mentioned the incident.

By sheer good luck, I had just gotten a new desktop. My old one sat in the corner, waiting to be taken to Goodwill. I pointed to it, "Will that do?"

Later on that morning, in the bank line, Suzanne brought it up again. "No way I could have afforded a new computer for months, Phil. You saved me again -- you always do."

Her voice was so enthusiastic that people turned towards us, breaking into smiles. A sweet looking elderly lady directly in front of Suzanne began to speak to her, "He must be a real...."

Suzanne didn't notice her. Instead she went on, her voice even more upbeat, more cheerful, and more enthusiastic than before: "Fifty-four! That now makes fifty-four blowjobs I owe you!" She beamed up at me.

The elderly lady's mouth hung open, but whatever words she might have had were frozen in her throat. Her eyes went wide as nickles. After a moment, she stuttered out a meek, "excuse me", and quickly turned back to the front of the line. Behind me, I heard loud giggles.

Of course Suzanne noticed none of it. Her attention was focused only on me. Being Suzanne, she was so accustomed to causing stirs that she no longer tended to notice the more minor ones.

 

[Sunstone]

Suzanne Picks Up the Ball and Runs With It​

"What's that?", I asked, pointing at a large billboard we were passing on the highway.

"I couldn't read it in time." Suzanne replied from behind the wheel.

"It said something about a hot spring called 'The Well'. Ever hear of it?"

"Nope."

"Take the next exit South."

It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and there were almost no other cars in the parking lot as we pulled in. A sign announced that The Well was "clothing optional", which meant nudity was permitted, but not required. Another sign gave the admission prices. Child. Adult. Senior. No pets.

"Let's go check it out", I said, but Suzanne immediately objected.

"It's fifteen dollars each. I don't have the money, do you?"

"Nope. I'm as broke as you, but I at least want to take a look at what's inside the fence. Come on."

Inside and off to the right was a huge swimming pool. Off to the left were a couple of buildings, one of them labeled, "Office".

No one was in the office, but there was a bell on the counter. Suzanne rang the bell. Five or so minutes later, a casually dressed, pleasant looking man appeared from a room behind the counter. He cheerfully greeted us while tucking his shirt in. "Sorry to keep you waiting. I was napping and had to wake up."

"No worries. This is Suzanne, and I'm Phil." Then -- for reasons I'm not sure of even to this day -- I surprised myself by spontaneously adding: "I'm the vice-president and Suzanne is the events chairperson of a Colorado Springs social club. Recently, our membership has become quite interested in the prospect of taking a group trip to one of the Colorado's fine hot springs. That's why we're here. To gather information about your pool so we can present it to our members for a vote."

I turned to Suzanne and gave her my biggest, widest "please, please bail me out of this" grin, because I had abruptly run out of ideas about what to say next.

For a moment, Suzanne looked back quizzically, confused. My heart began to sink with the thought that I'd lost her. Then suddenly I saw understanding rush into her eyes, along with a grin just as big as mine spread like a wildfire across her face.

She quickly turned to the gentleman, "That's right. We're very interested in your pool. We'd also like to know if you offer group discounts for ten or more people. And of course, we'd like you to show us the springs so we can describe it to our members."

The gentleman, whose name turned out to be "Gomer", looked pleased. He told us a little bit about the history of The Well -- a crew drilling for oil had discovered a deposit of thermal mineral waters instead. Then he asked what kind of group discount we were looking for.

"Fifty percent off", Suzanne said.

"Fifty percent?", Gomer replied. "Tell you what. I want your business so I'm going to do you even better than that. Two-thirds off for ten or more people. I guarantee no other hot springs will give your club a deal like that. How does that strike you?"

"Very competitive", I replied, "Very competitive." Gomer wrote down the discount on the back of a business card, signed it, and handed it to me.

"Would it be alright if we take a look at the pool now?", Suzanne asked.

"Why not do more than look?", Gomer said, "Take a free dip. It's on the house today."

Later on, as the two of us were splashing about the pool, Suzanne said, "That's a side of you I've never seen before. I didn't realize you were any good at BS."

"I don't know where that came from, Suzanne. It genuinely puzzles me. It wasn't planned, and I haven't done anything like that in years -- not since I ran my sales agency back in Illinois. Maybe it was an old reflex or something."

"You've never told me you had a sales agency. Suzanne is impressed, very impressed." She paused. "But what's a sales agency? Is it something like a talent agency for salespeople?"

"Something like that. And I see that look! Don't you dare splash me!"

 

[Sunstone]

A Photo of Suzanne, Late 30s
This is the woman whose life so many of you helped save.​

 

[Terese]

I wish there was a "wow" rating button we could click. So many interesting stores!

 

[Sunstone]

For anyone who is interested, I've added a seventh story to this thread.

 

[Vinayaka]

You have the rare ability to connect to people in a way that goes way beyond looks. Not sure if that many people have the same. I have female platonic friends, and always have. It's interesting. Suzanne does sound rather magnetic, and charismatic.

 

[Sunstone]

I've now added an eighth story.

 

[Sunstone]

You have the rare ability to connect to people in a way that goes way beyond looks. Not sure if that many people have the same.

That's very kind of you to say that. Thank you so much.

I don't know how related this is, but there was once a woman, a scientist, who devoutly followed my blog for seven or eight years. When I got around to asking her what she liked about it, she told me, "I love your people stories. But there's something I've never been able to figure out about them. I've never figured out whether you know more than your fair share of remarkable people, or whether its more like you see the remarkable in ordinary people better than most of us do."

I have female platonic friends, and always have. It's interesting.

I'm curious, Vinayaka, are there any ways for you in which being friends with a woman is remarkably different than being friends with a man -- basically because of the difference in sexes? Does it make sense to you to say there are some differences?

Suzanne does sound rather magnetic, and charismatic.

She'd love to hear you say that about her! She values charisma in herself and others quite highly.

One of the odd things about Suzanne and I is that our tastes in people tend to be quite different. She doesn't mix well with my other friends, and I tend not to mix well with hers. But she and I get along just fine.

 

[Vinayaka]

I'm curious, Vinayaka, are there any ways for you in which being friends with a woman is remarkably different than being friends with a man -- basically because of the difference in sexes? Does it make sense to you to say there are some differences?

Just after high school. or perhaps during high school, I had the realisation that it's the person, not the gender. Doubled my potential friends immediately. So I became friends with a group of 5 girls. I didn't chase them, and was big brother more than a few times, pretending I was their boyfriend, so they could get some horny idiot off their backs. I was the only guy. We'd drive around, go for coffee, go for walks. At university, I was taking elementary education, so there were naturally more women about. Coffee, group projects, and all that. Then I was an elementary teacher for 30 years, so again, just more women around. Former students who I've stayed in touch with are all female. I coached girls volleyball, they saw me as friend/older brother.

I asked my Guru about it once ... as there is some degree of gender separation in my faith. (At social functions the women visit each other, and there is a mens corner too, things like that.) Gurudeva just said, simply. "Fine, just see them all as your sister." So it's like that. Your friend Suzanne sounds like that hot tomboy kid stereotype. lover of adventure.

But the bottom line is I think I find men sort of annoying. Not all men, but some. Seems they have bigger egos, harder nuts to crack, and hence I've never really ever had many close male friends. Some, sure. On the same note, I discard age in friendship, as do you, I suspect. Former students are all much younger than me, but the guy who ran the pool hall in my home town was 40 years my senior, and he was a friend.

Of those 5, I married one, and am still close to another. (Boss too) On the recent pilgrimage to Toronto, she came along, and the three of us had a great time, went to Niagara Falls, got lost, saw a bunch of temples. There is a comfort level there I can't quite explain.

 

[Sunstone]

Just now added the ninth story.