Ted Mark: Dr. Nyet

It started in London. It started in darkness. It started in bed.

It started in Gladys – almost.

But not quite.

Gladys?

She was a pre-Pygmalion Eliza Doolittle with more frontage than the fair ladies of stage, screen, and video combined. She was a 'eavenly 'arlot with 'ot 'ips and 'eathenish 'aunches. And 'igh 'opes of cadging a sheaf of shillings from the American tourist she'd picked up at a bar in Piccadilly.

The American tourist was me. Steve Victor. The man from O.R.G.Y.

O.R.G.Y.? The official name is "Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth." Actually, it's strictly a one-man organization dedicated to providing food, shelter, clothing, and a few life-spicing luxuries for me. But don't get the wrong idea. O.R.G.Y. is on the up-and-up. Spurred on by assignments backed up by grants from various interested foundations, I conduct Kinsey-type sex surveys all over the world. And I do my job honestly and enthusiastically.

But I wasn't working the night I met Gladys. I was just out on the town for my own pleasure, barhopping the part of town known for London britches falling down. Sort of a bust-man's holiday, you might say.

So this bust marked Gladys cruised along right on schedule and made what I took to be its nightly stop at this Piccadilly pub. The doors swung open with a crooked blonde smile, and I boarded with the offer of a drink. Half an hour later we were jogging into her home depot, a three-room flat – not lavish, not cheap – in Soho.

The fair lady never mentioned the fare. She might drop her aitches and her panties, but not her pride. Gladys was only a sort of a semi-'ore, consorting only with those she judged toffs and relying on their generosity, rather than on the tawdriness of a pre-set price.

"'Ow habout a drink?" she asked when we were alone in her apartment.

"Hi'll 'ave an 'arf-an'-'arf," I replied.

"Hit's not very nice to make fun of the hway ha person talks," she pouted. "Hi can't 'elp hit, you know."

I restrained my Rex Harrison-ish impulses and shelved the Professor Higgins role. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I really think the way you speak is charming, and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Let's kiss and make up."

"Righto, Yank." She came into my arms easily and fastened her lips over mine.

(Note: The osculatory technique of English girls varies slightly from that of their American sisters. The temperature of the lips upon first buss is generally higher – an overcompensation, doubtless, for the chill fog of the London climate. The lips themselves seem softer, more pliable – probably because the juices have not been dried up by overcosmeticizing, as is so frequently the case on the lipstickier side of the Atlantic. The teeth and tongues of British girls move more freely and both take and provide more joy during osculatory activity – this, indubitably, the result of the simpler English diet which has not jaded the taste buds to oral sensations as the more spicily varied American foods have. Finally, the English girls are less peevish about having their hair mussed during a kiss, not being easily disturbed about having their over-teased tresses or permanent waves rumpled the way U.S. girls so frequently are.)

It was a helluva passionate kiss. I slid out of it and right into her brassiere – with my hand, that is. It was more than a handful, but I palmed as much as I could.

"Oh, you Yanks are so heager," Gladys complained. "That's the third bra-strap's been broken this week."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't talk with your mouth full, love."

I came up for air and took a good look at the bosom I'd bared. It was magnificent. I've seen a lot of mammaries in my business, but very few that could measure up to Gladys's. They were impressively large, perfectly round, and as firm as warmed- over basketballs. They were cloud-white with wide pink roseates so delicately defined as to be almost invisible. From their centres, blood-red nipples stood out like rocket-shaped maraschino cherries.

"Wow! I'll bet you have to go to a tent-maker for your bras," I observed, my awe negating my usual savoir-faire.

"Thank you." She giggled at the compliment. "But I really honly tike a size forty- two, C-cup."

"Only!" I dived back in with the exclamation point. I burrowed my face into the deep cleavage and warm, panting breast-flesh enveloped my cheeks. Her hands clasped over the back of my neck, urging my tongue deeper into the cleft. My own hands were on her hips now, and they ripped rhythmically under my touch.

I think it was just after that that Gladys slid her hand under the waistband of my pants and down my bare belly. Not too far down, the way things were positioned. "Coo!" she exclaimed. "Yankee Doodle's come to London, an' fair impatient 'e his, too!"

Not to be outdone, I trailed my fingers up her burning thighs. "Thumbs up for Britain!" I quipped.

"Well, we don't need all these clothes naow, do we?" She stood up and quickly undressed.

One look at her in the nude and I undressed even more quickly. Then I pulled her into the darkened bedroom, down on the bed beside me, and kissed her again. It was a busy kiss. She had both fists around me like a sports car enthusiast going gaga over a new stick-shift. And I was strumming her little passion switch like a banjo player mad with palsy.

"Are you ready, Yank?" she panted. "Do 'urry!" Her thighs clenched and unclenched demandingly. "Hi want hit naow!"

"The Yanks are coming," I assured her. I scrambled over her, and she jackknifed to meet me, wrapping her legs around my neck and raising her lower body off the mattress so that all her weight was on her shoulders and mine. "The Yanks are coming," I repeated, poised to fill the twitching cup of her femininity.

But the Yanks didn't come. Not that night, anyway. Just as I uttered the words, there came an aggressive knocking at the door and Gladys reacted with panic that she turned a somersault right out of bed. "'Oo-'Oo his hit?" she called in a trembly voice from the floor.

"Scotland Yard!" The voice was even more nastily aggressive than the knocking. "Open up!"

"What d'you want?"

"You'll find out soon enough! Now, are you going to open, or do we break the door down?"

"Just ha minute, I 'ave no clothes hon."

"That figures. Hurry up."

"Hi ham 'urrying." Gladys scrambled to the closet, threw on a robe, and hastened to open the door.

Two walrus types in plain clothes, both beefy, both red-faced, and both sporting identically ale-stained moustaches, muscled into the room. "Scotland Yard." They repeated it in unison like a pair of well-trained Anglicized parrots.

"Hwat does Scotland Yard want with me?" Gladys asked in a quavery voice.

"You've got a man in here!" one of the detectives rumbled.

"Me? Why, Hi never -" Gladys's voice rose and strained for high C. "Perish forbid!" she added, outraged.

"Oh? Then what do you call that?" The detective pointed through the half- opened door to the bedroom. Either by accident or design, his outstretched finger leveled directly at my exposed groin.

"That's me brother," Gladys said primly.

"Incest!" the detective crowed.

"Yes, Hi do hinsist," Gladys replied. "It's me brother."

"Me eye!" the detective growled. "Come out here, you!" he added, calling to me.

"I like it better where I am," I answered, modestly tugging at the blankets to cover myself.

"Move it, Yank!" the John Bull snarled.

"I don't want to," I told him. "It's nice and cozy here," I added, snuggling under the blankets. "And it looks like a cold world out there – not to mention hostile."

"Are you getting out of that bed voluntarily? Or are we going to go in and pluck you out?" He made an obscene gesture to demonstrate just how I might be "plucked."