Paul and Mary, part 4

The festival finished on Sunday with a big beautiful concert. When Mary and me were listening to the last piece we were holding each other’s hands. I felt the warmth of her skin; I often looked at her beautiful profile and enjoyed the music.

After the last tones and the last applause ended, the time to say each other good-bye came. I asked Mary for her address and her phone number. She smiled and told me I should be patient. She gave me her mobile phone number, but her address remained her secrecy. I was not sure what to think about it. Why did she not want to tell me where she was from? I told her where I lived and what my job was. I told her almost all the basic information except for my “hobby”, my desire to wear strong glasses that drove me to wear glasses of minus 18 diopters over plus contacts. You see it is not easy for me to confess a person that I am a high myopia pretender. I do not think most people are able to accept the fact let alone to understand that.

But still there was a positive moment. We arranged a date. Our next meeting was planned to be in a small town with a castle and a large park after two weeks.

I drove home, removed my contacts, put off my strong glasses to replace them with my standard weak pair, and returned to my daily routine. However, something had changed. I was in love. I kept thinking about Mary every day. I saw her in my mind again and again. The images kept running: Mary rolling her wheelchair on the square; Mary having dinner in the restaurant; Mary sitting in front of the Kuks castle on the bench made of stone; Mary listening to the music. Two of the most frequent images were: Mary trying my spare glasses on and Mary moving from her wheelchair into my car. The more I thought about the two scenes the more they turned me on. 

At the end of the first week I could not help myself thinking how it would be to make love to her. Can a paraplegic woman have normal sex? How? Are there any differences? As I did not know any of the answers, those questions kept coming back.  Mary started to fascinate me. Before I met her I had thought paraplegic people spent their time alone watching TV. Many people think so in my country. Mary was anything but a lonely TV watcher. She knew how to enjoy life. Can she enjoy sex? If I asked her to become my partner, how would she react? You can see I was mad about her.

The next weekend after the festival, I went to Prague, the capital. I needed to visit my relatives who lived there and I also made it a trip in my GOC again. I set off on Saturday morning to get there soon so that I could take a long walk in the center and visit some optic shops that open on Saturdays. The weather was nice and the historical streets were full of tourists. I saw some nice women with glasses; I even saw some women with quite strong glasses and a few women in wheelchairs, yet my memories kept drifting to Mary. 

Just before the noon I went to McDonald’s to wash my hands and to remove my contacts. My relatives had never seen me wearing those strong coke bottles that I enjoy so much. So, I had to become “normal” again. When I was going out of the fast food restaurant I spotted a fair hair woman standing in a queue. As she was turned towards the counter I could not see her face, but I have noticed she wore glasses. I turned back at the door to see her carrying a tray with food. My heart stopped. She had the face of Mary. She looked so similar, that I got frozen. The hair was the same, the glasses were the same, and the face was the same. 

I was standing there watching. It could not be Mary because she was not in a wheelchair; she was walking. But she was so similar that I felt like in a dream. Was it possible, I thought, was she a twin of Mary? I turned and walked out. I stopped outside again to have a look at her through a shop window. The woman sat down and started to eat. When she was sitting she looked exactly the same. The moment she raised her head and looked my direction I thought I was sure. However, although I was only 5 meters far from her behind the sheet of glass of the shop window and she must have seen me, she did not seem to recognize me. She had a sip and turned her head towards another woman who was putting her tray on the table.

I walked off to go to the parking lot where I had parked my car in the morning. I felt like a crazy. Paul, Paul, you really had fallen in love, I said to myself, you are getting hallucinations. Driving helped. I found my way to the main thoroughfare and sped along the fast lane racing with more powerful cars. I knew twins appeared only in rubbish literature; I knew look-alikes are in trash magazine stories; I knew paraplegics could not walk. However, the event ran in my mind like in a loop, like a sequence of a movie. 

After 30 minutes I stopped in the front of the apartment building where my Mother lived and my soul found peace. You know how it is: hundreds of questions, home-made Hungarian vegetable soup, roasted duck, cakes, tea, coffee with thick cream, and so on. If you see your Mother just three of four times a year, you are taken care for and overwhelmed with food and goodness and love so much you cannot think about your troubles at all. Then my sister came. She was wearing a new pair of glasses. They were exactly the same type and the same shape of the rimless glasses Mary wore. After I complimented her, she said I should keep the nice words for another woman. I asked what woman she was talking about, and both my sister and my Mom started to persuade me that I should find a partner, a girl friend. “Paul, it is just the right time!” Oh my God, could I tell them about my rather mysterious love? Could I tell them about the gentle girl in the wheelchair I had to think about every single day? How could I tell them about my doubts, about all the concerns I had? What would they have said? If I spoke up and spilled out all those information about the two meetings?

I lived two different lives. A live of a normal single man and a life of the high myopia pretender who happened to meet a disabled woman and fell in love with her like a young student. 

I did not tell them anything about it.

On Sunday morning I left Prague. Well, I had a short walk along the river after I had put my plus contacts in and strong minus glasses over them, but my thoughts were already back with Mary. I sat into my car, shoved my favorite cassette with Bill Haley into the recorder and drove home.

The girl in McDonald’s was still somewhere in my mind, but I knew I was mistaken and mislead by my own heart. It was so simple; I wished to see Mary so much that I was able to project her face to any woman who just resembled her. It could happen to anybody, couldn’t it? 

The week was dragging on slowly. I could not wait to see Mary. 

Then the day came. I ran out of my office, jumped into the car, drove to a filling station, had the car washed and the seats vacuum cleaned, drove home, took two showers, shaved, put on a lot of after shave, brushed my teeth several times, took new trousers, new shirt – shall I continue? I behaved like a crazy in love. Then I put my contacts in and set my strong glasses with minus 18 diopters lenses on my nose. I felt happy. I looked into a mirror. This was the real me - a young man with severe shortsightedness. This was who I wanted to be. 

I got to the hotel sooner than Mary. When I asked the receptionist, he said he had had the reservation, but the lady who booked the room had not arrived yet. I went to a local bar, had a glass of vodka and waited until Mary called.  Went back to the hotel. Then I saw her again. She was sitting in her wheelchair in front of the reception desk and as soon as she spotted me, she smiled so lovely that I ran to her and hugged her and kissed her the way I had never hugged and kissed any woman in my life.

“Hello,” said she, when I squatted myself at her wheelchair, “I was looking forward to you. Do you know that?”

 “And I was looking forward to you, Mary.”

 “Let’s go out.”

She pushed her wheelchair and rolled out of the hotel. She headed towards the castle. There we found a quiet wine hall. It was not wheelchair accessible so I could help her up two small stairs. I took the handles of her chair, bent the whole chair backwards and pulled her up the stairs. During the maneuver Mary leaned against the back of her wheelchair, closed her eyes and let me see her beautiful face. Her rimless glasses made her features gentle and sweet. I wished there had been more steps than just two.

“Mary, I am crazy.” I started after we sat at a table.

“Yes? Why.”

“I could not stop thinking about you so much, that last weekend, when I was in Prague, I thought I could see you.”

“Really? Where?”

 “Well, in Prague, at one of the McDonald’s restaurant?”

 “Oh, there was a woman in a wheelchair and you thought it was me, didn’t you?” Mary smiled and caressed my hand.

 “Oh, no, it was even worse. There was this blonde girl who was not in any wheelchair, and you see, I had thought it was you because she seemed so similar to you. I think I got crazy.”

Mary gave me a very serious look, put her hand on my arm, and caressed the back of my hand. 

 “Paul, I know that my wheelchair is a real obstacle for many people. You may wish I were not handicapped. If it is too difficult for you to accept my disability I …”

“No, Mary, no, it is not the problem. Please, …” I interrupted her.

“Paul!” Mary stopped my speech with a serious look. “We will have to speak about it. I am not sure if it is the right time to discuss this topic now, but some time soon we will have to.”

I could hardly breath. I was not ready to speak openly about her being paralyzed. I still had the unsolved problem of mine that did not let me relax for some time. The problem was, if she started to speak with me about her handicap she would probably asked me about my glasses and my – of course - fake visual handicap. I still did not know how I should react.

I took a drag from my cigarette to get time and then suggested we could plan our weekend. There were some leaflets about the history of the castle, the park and the vineyards around the town. 

So we were sitting there talking, planning, handing the folders to each other and bending our heads of a map. I stole some looks through her lenses when had my head beside her face. They were very weak. Last time we saw each other she told me she had only a 0.5 diopter. So they were more a fashion item than a necessity for her. In spite of their weakness I like them a lot. I could smell her perfume too. It was fresh and sweet smell. It was a nice moment. I could search thousands of maps if she was with me, if I could smell the perfume and if I could feel her near to me. Our hands touched when we were showing each other places on the map. Every touch gave me small electric, magnetic or gravitation shock. Whatever it was, it was very pleasant. I felt like hugging her.

Suddenly she turned her head, looked into my eyes and said: “Why don’t you kiss me?”

I kissed her, of course. We kept kissing for a while not realizing we were in the restaurant. 

When we stopped our plans were settled much faster. A good kiss can bring a great inspiration. Try it some time. 

x x x x x x

Later that day we had a small walk around the town. This time I noticed people looking at us. Probably they were not used to seeing a couple like us every day. You know what I mean, a young pretty woman in a wheelchair and a man with 1.5 cm thick lenses in his glasses are not a normal couple you meet every day. A normal person would not like to be in the focus of the others, because of what is generally considered a handicap, but I felt OK, I even enjoyed some moments. 

I wanted to take my car and go for a short ride, partly because I wanted to see more than the town and partly because I could not wait seeing Mary transferring from her wheelchair into the car. Mary thought for a while and then asked me if we could put out trip off for the next day. I did not protest for I knew I would have two more days to spend with her, watching her, admiring her beauty, and feeling her warmth near me.

In the evening we had dinner at the hotel restaurant and later we went to our rooms. There were a lot of looks from other guests as we were holding each other’s hand all evening and kissed every other minute. I hoped we would sleep only in one of the rooms, but when I tried to suggest that, Mary smiled gently, put her finger over my lips and whispered we would have time to lie in one bed in the future. “Just do not hurry, Paul.”

I was to be patient. When I was lying in bed I had to think about the possible problems sex with para might bring. Well, Paul, I said to myself, if it is not possible, then there are other techniques; sex is not only the simple coitus. The whole thing started to seem quite interesting; I decided to find some information over Internet. People say there is everything; we’ll see if there are any methods how to make love with wheelchair girls. 

The morning welcomed me with sunshine and a phone call. Mary called from her room, that the owner of the hotel offered her he would have our breakfast brought to her room. She told me he literary said for you and your boy friend. 

“What did you answer?” I wanted to know.

“I answered, yes, please. And you should hurry up since the coffee may get cold, you sleepyhead.”

I rocketed out of my bed, threw my clothes on washed my hands, slid the contacts under my eyelids, blinked, put the strong glasses on, and hurried out to knock the door of the adjacent room.

Mary was sitting in her bed, beautiful like a dream and there was a table with small casters full of cups, pots, plates, bread, cakes … in short, it looked great. I kissed her, caressed her blonde hair and we started our breakfast. She had not put her glasses on yet. They were still lying on the nightstand. I looked at them several times and Mary smiled and put them on. 

“Is it better?” she asked me.

I did not know what to say, because I did not want to start the glasses topic not being ready to speak about it, but then I said it was.

“Do you like women with glasses?”

The question gave me a little shock.

“Eh, well, I don’t know, all I can say I like one blonde girl with glasses quite a lot.” I tried to make the situation easier for me.

“I know, and I like one black-haired man with glasses.”

So far so good, I could enjoy my breakfast. 

When we finished, Mary asked me if I would help her. I was ready to dress her, to wash her, to carry her to the bathroom. I was ready for anything but for what she asked me. She wanted me to prepare my car for our trip, buy something for the picnic we had planned the day before and come back. I was really disappointed. When I got back, she was dressed, sitting in her wheelchair and ready to set off. 

She refused my help with transferring into the car so I watched her moving her bottom first and then dragging her legs with her hands inside. She did not look helpless, although her ability to move was obviously restricted. Then she folded the chair and asked me to put it into the trunk. When I sat behind the steering wheel I asked her if she was comfortable and kissed her. She held my head tight, opened her mouth, and started French kissing me. I put my hand on her knee and caressed her thigh. She slowly took my hand and held it firm on her stomach. 

…to be continued