Introduction: She made him up, and she was right. DAYDREAM BELIEVER Ginny Adams was very glad to be where she was, but she still woke up every morning wishing that she wasn’t. She had felt lonely when she was living on the family farm; the boys (and later men) around there went much too quickly from being too young [...]

 THE BEACH-HOUSE JAMES THORNTON: When I came home at Easter break from my first year of college, the seasonal gathering of relatives was at my parents’ place. There were more relatives than usual, I think. My uncle Herb, my mother’s brother, was there for the first time in a couple of years. He ran a restaurant in [...]

Introduction: She wanted to learn, but he changed the subject. FULL COURSE Oriole Greene came to work at my company as a secretary, but she had ambitions to be a lot more than that. The young woman was taking a night course in programming fundamentals, but she wanted to learn more and faster than the school would [...]

 Introduction: He convinced her at last, and on time. The Day He Did It “Come on, Judy, you know you want to. All those times that you said no, you really wanted to go ahead. Let’s go the last step.” “Richard, it’s because I want to that I don’t want to! Oh, I don’t know, I’m not [...]

Introduction: She hesitated, then he made her happy COMING CLEAN Lucy Selfridge moved out of the house that her parents lived in as soon as she could afford to rent an apartment. She got along with her father all right, and she got along with her mother except on one subject, but that one was enough to [...]

Introduction: Making sweet music together VERSTORY (These poems have all been posted elsewhere on the internet, years ago, but I decided to string some together to partly tell a story.) I had dated Jackie David perhaps a half-dozen times before we went dancing. I had found her more and more attractive each time, but had gone slow with [...]

Introduction: He gave her the finger, and she liked it! BONE OF CONTENTION It was a good thing that I did not learn Melissa’s last name until after I had talked to her for a while, and indeed after I had asked her for a date. I would have been too nervous. As it was, she was just [...]

Introduction: Jenny was ready to think about it, and ready for action BLONDE IN BLACK AND SILVER For the long Saturday afternoon that she was going to spend with Russell Clayton, Jenny Craig put on a long black cotton dress that fit her snugly all the way down, with a thin black scarf around her head. The [...]

Ralph was at the beginning of a two-week vacation at a ski resort in Pennsylvania. He was coasting along with the momentum of a trip down a long slope and passing by the side of a rather steep cliff when another skier, evidently a beginner, sideswiped him slightly. He stopped, as she did (he didn’t know [...]