From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
Subject: Stephanie and Me  (story)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 08:51:38 GMT




                     Stephanie and Me     







a story by Rick J. Rauser
Copyright 1992 by WNI and RJ Rauser
A Who Needs Isabella Publication










     Do you ever picture in your mind the "perfect" woman? You know
what I'm talking about. She might be based on a soap opera star or a
fashion model, and you might see those people's faces and bodies every
time you think of her, but your dream girl becomes much more than that.
She grows and develops a new identity all her own. Most guys probably
wouldn't want to admit this, but I don't mind pointing it out. It's true.
The dream girl. We all have one. Some guys have Maria, some have Jennifer,
some have Barbara. I had Stephanie. 
     It was the strangest thing I could ever imagine. She was my dream
girl, my ideal conception. I was a very lonely person - still am, for
that matter - and thinking about Stephanie gave me a strange semblance
of hope and energy. Sometimes. Other times it drained me, made me feel
tired and sad, made me long desperately for companionship. Either way,
I needed her, whether it was to hold up as a hopeless ideal and feed
my despair, or to pretend that she and I were lovers in another world,
and feed my excitement.
     Don't ask me to explain what happened, because I can't. I have no idea
how Stephanie came to life, or where she came from, or what she was doing
in my dorm room when I returned from my lab. I never did find out, I never
unravel the mystery. As a computer science major I wanted to understand
things logically, wanted to fit them into a pigeon hole. Stephanie...
impossible. 
     So there she was, sitting on my bed, wearing this beautiful, tight-
fitting dress from which her full breasts were struggling to escape
and which glittered and shone in the small room like a beacon. Her long,
flowing blond hair rested beautifully on her shoulders, and there was
a magical spark in her eye as she smiled at me.
     "Hello, David," she said. Just like that. Hi, it's me. Your dream
girl, you know, the one from your imagination.
     I managed to shut the door and I sat down at my desk, trembling
and terribly confused. I'm not going to tell you that I "wondered if it
were a dream" because that's cliched and silly. No one ever really wonders
that in real life. You might doubt your sanity, but people know when
they're awake and when they aren't.
     "Hi," I said weakly. My heart was thumping in my chest.
     She laughed. "Surprised?"
     "Uh...sure."
     She jumped up from the bed. "Come on, then. Let's go!"
     "Where...where do you want to go?"
     "Out to have fun!" She took my hand in hers. I almost melted from
the touch. 
       Now you have to realize that my idea of fun was eating Dominos
Pizza while I posted nasty articles to alt.peeve on Usenet. To needless
to say, when she suggested we go to a club, I wasn't exactly excited.
Sure, she was beautiful and wonderful and amazing...but I had a fear
and a revulsion inside me towards people which gripped my heart in an
iron fist and made it simply impossible for me to come into contact with
those around me.
      But Stephanie, she helped me. She put her arms around me and held
me close and assured me that everything would be all right. That's my
girl, I kept thinking. All right. She kind of reminded me of this 
female android from a story I had read, caring, patient, kind, beautiful.
But Stephanie was real. This wasn't a story.
     Now as to the sportscar, well, that caught me off guard. I know that
Stephanie was beautiful and powerful and that nothing was too difficult
for her to accomplish, but where did she get the car? A sleek black
Ferrari, that was it. We rode through the warm summer night with the
Italian V-8 (I think it was a V-8, but I loved computers, not cars)
purring and roaring behind us. The stereo was blasting and Stephanie's
wild blond hair was waving in the breeze. She kept her hand on my knee,
giving it a gentle squeeze every now and then which I felt in my pants.
"I love you!" I yelled out. She smiled and said nothing.
     The nightclub was so terribly noisy and crowded, and to be honest,
I really hated it. But Stephanie wanted us to be there so we went in, 
and the idiot at the counter didn't even let us in for a couple's fee
because Stephanie made a nasty comment to him. It was something about
his hair - can't remember quite now what it was - and I remember he
glared at her, or at me, and we had to pay separately. 
     She danced like a sleek, sexy vampire. I kept thinking of that 
dancing scene in Basic Instinct, the one where the cop is seduced by
that beautiful woman, and Stephanie was doing that to me, except I wasn't
even dancing, I was sitting at a table on the edge of the dance floor
watching her, because she had told me to. She smiled and grinned and
winked at me as she rubbed her smooth, beautiful thighs while she
gyrated to the music, to the horrible, pounding beat of the music which
kept banging and screaming and turning inside my head.
     When the waitress - I still remember this clearly - came to my
table and offered me a free drink if I left the place, I felt incredibly
insulted and looked to Stephanie for encouragement. 
     She smiled and nodded, and so I tried to explain to the waitress why
I didn't want to leave, because Stephanie was dancing for me on the dance
floor.
     The waitress was in pain for some reason, I remember that, and I saw
everybody screaming and ducking down and I looked at Stephanie for help
but she was running for the exit. I started to cry and somebody tackled
me really hard.
     The next while was horrible, it was like something from a nightmare.
I saw all these angry men yelling at me and all I wanted was Stephanie,
to be with Stephanie, and they kept asking me who's Stephanie? Who is she?
And what was I supposed to say? They shone this hot light on me and I
wondered if it were a spot light.
     Oh yes, how do we measure the passing of time. I remember that
Shakespeare did something very radical when he made there a lot of time
between the two parts of A Winter's Tale, because he broke the three
unities, you see, and you don't do that. It seems a lot of time has 
passed for me, and Stephanie has never come back, but I've been crying
and yelling out loud for her to come and help me.
     Oh, I see, now some men are taking me to this chair. Someone is reading
something to me from a black book. Will I find Stephanie at the chair?


--
Richard J. Rauser        "Sonic 2!"
rauser@sfu.ca                  -what Guile says
WNI