The Marriage of Balzaminov. Part 1

A young man met an adult unmarried woman. He liked her. But she turned out to be a cunning hunter and wanted to subjugate him.

LARISA

In that distant year, I became almost ‘an old maid’ again. My youth was long gone, although I didn't consider myself an old woman. Of course, my appearance faded with age, but in my heart I remained the same girl I was at 17. I approached my forties as a free woman, although I had been married three times. I had had many men, and still do! But now I wanted something special. I wanted not just carnal pleasure, which had already begun to wear thin, but some new, necessarily thrilling sensations. In my erotic dreams, I commanded men, and they obeyed me unquestioningly. Something like: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant! But that was in my dreams! I wanted it in real life. I wanted it very much! But where could I find such compliant men who would want to be under my thumb?

At that time, I rented a small space in the sales area of an office equipment store. However, I did not sell office equipment. My profile was printing products. Of course, there was no clear specialisation. There were newspapers, books, posters, calendars, magazines and other paper products. As I remember now, the buyers were mainly middle-aged and elderly people. Young people clearly ignored me and my goods. So I resorted to a little trick, which today would be called a marketing ploy. I added a little spice to my products, and in some cases, a little pepper. To put it simply, I secretly placed a stack of erotic publications, beautiful glossy magazines, among the periodicals. I didn't advertise this fact particularly. Those who were interested would find the strawberries themselves. And they did. This category of magazines sold quite well. Moreover, the contingent of such buyers quickly became clear, and I began to recognise them by sight, even when meeting them in town. Among this crowd, a young man of about twenty stood out. At first, he came in every three or four days. But over time, his visits became more frequent, and eventually he started coming every day. He wanted to show that he was interested exclusively in erotic topics, although I caught his interested gaze on me more than once. It amused me, then I began to wonder, could he have fallen in love with me? Well, it happens. Young guys sometimes fall in love with mature women. I even wondered, what if he... It would be funny.

VENIAMIN

For as long as I can remember, I've always had problems with my surname. You have to admit, the surname Balm is not exactly common. And anything that's not quite normal immediately attracts attention, followed by ridicule. My classmates and the kids in the yard teased me. They called me all sorts of names. I was ‘tincture,’ I was ‘elixir,’ I think there was even ‘extract,’ I can't remember them all. But something else finished me off. Once, our literature teacher fell ill. For a long time. Another teacher was appointed to replace her. She had been retired for a long time, but was still working.

‘My name is Zinaida Pavlovna,’ she introduced herself.

‘Baba Zina,’ said our class joker, Zhenya Bortsov. He said it quietly, but everyone heard.

Her glasses caught my eye. I had never seen lenses like that before. Probably minus 5 or 6. She began to get acquainted with the class. She read the surnames, holding the register close to her face. There were students in the class whose names were listed before mine, and their surnames began with the letter ‘A.’ It was my turn. I had a feeling that it wouldn't be that simple.

‘Balsaminov,’ the old woman drawled, and I rose resignedly. The class laughed, as expected.

‘Well, that's it,’ I thought, ‘now all my pharmacy nicknames are in the past.’

And indeed, from then on, thanks to Baba Zina, I was called exclusively by my surname. True, now it sounded a little different - Balmisinov. Very soon, the same Bortsov learned from his older sister, who was either in tenth or eleventh grade, who Balzaminov was. Naturally, very soon the whole class was teasing me, asking if I had found myself a mature, rich bride, if I was going to marry a merchant's daughter soon... It wasn't easy for me then. But I somehow endured it.

Probably because I was quiet and calm by nature. A real nerd. I didn't wear glasses to complete the look, as my eyesight was good. That's why I didn't have many friends. I was more interested in books. I had another passion: I loved soft toys to the point of obsession. I had a lot of them, a whole lot. When I went to bed, I took several of them with me. I enjoyed feeling them next to me under the blanket. I must say that over the years I have not changed my habit. Even now, at the age of nineteen, I still have soft toys in my bed. Along with toys, about five years ago I developed another hobby. One summer, I was at the dacha with my parents. Actually, you can't really call it a dacha. It's a house in a suburban village. It's a nice house with an attic, a good estate. Now I live there during the flying season, and my parents come for the weekends; they like the flat better. Strange!

They immediately hissed at him.

‘Are you crazy, Fedka?! Where are you inviting the lad? Have you forgotten what cards we're playing with?’

‘You're right, lads, I didn't think about it,’ Fedor apologised.

The merry company played for a long time, interspersing the game with drinking. They drank beer, they had plenty of it. But in the end, they all got together and left, leaving behind a pile of rubbish and forgetting the crumpled blanket on which they had been playing cards.

‘What pigs,’ I couldn't help saying, looking at the rubbish they had left behind. I thought it would be nice to clean it all up. But what to put it in?

‘What if I use the blanket?’ I thought.

The blanket would do just fine. I picked it up from the grass and shook it to smooth it out. Something fell out of the folds of the fabric. I bent down, picked up one of the items and froze. It was one of the cards they had been playing with recently. But what a card it was! My hands trembled and my heart stopped for a moment. From a small piece of glossy cardboard, measuring 6x9 cm, a half-naked red-haired lady was looking at me and smiling. Women generally like to smile for no reason. But this one had a reason. And what a reason! A young man was leaning over her, touching her most intimate parts with his tongue. What was happening to me at that moment! I forgot about the rubbish I wanted to collect, what rubbish! I quickly picked up three more cards from the ground and, looking around to see if anyone was watching, stuffed the precious cargo into my shirt pocket. I crawled around on my knees for another five minutes, rummaging through the grass, hoping to find more. I found one. Five in total.

...I didn't walk home, I literally flew. I wanted to be alone with my find. It was too intimate to look at it on the street or somewhere in the bushes. I remember that my parents went out that evening and I had enough time to admire my find. With trembling hands, I laid the cards out on my desk and began to examine them. I liked them all, but one of them was in a league of its own. It got the lion's share of my attention. The others were good too, but... It was a card of a red-haired minx. I studied it for a long time, down to the smallest detail. I was interested in everything: the colour of her panties, the patterns on the elastic bands of her stockings, the size of the mesh in the stockings themselves, the colour of the nail polish on her nails...

My parents came home late, but I didn't sleep. How could I sleep!

‘Venya! Stop reading, it's time to sleep. You won't be able to wake up in the morning!’
I didn't argue. The cards quickly went under the pillow. A small torch went there too. That's it. I'm ready to sleep. But I didn't fall asleep right away. Covering myself with a blanket over my head, I turned on the torch and continued to drool over my ‘trophies’. Looking at the guy caressing his partner's genitals with his tongue, I suddenly realised that this was the scene I had been dreaming about. Until then, waking up at night from an inexplicable longing, feeling my hardened penis, I couldn't remember what I had been dreaming about. Something was visible as if in a fog, some pieces, fragments. But they did not yet form a single picture. Until that night, they did not. It was something like an encrypted message. But on that day, I accidentally got my hands on the key to that cipher. The key was the image of that red-haired, lustful nymph smiling at me from a pack of cards. Only then did I understand what I had been longing for at night, what had been calling me so strongly. Yes, everything fell into place. I was terribly jealous of that young man who was so lucky. He was doing exactly what I wanted so passionately to do myself. I wanted to, but I couldn't. I couldn't because I was afraid of women. I say women, meaning the age of the lady on the card. Girls my age and those who were a little older were completely unsuitable in my opinion. I don't know why, but from that moment on, I became attracted to women much older than me. From then on, I began to remember what I had dreamed about. I won't say every night, but quite often I had very vivid dreams with the same plot: I was pleasuring my ‘latest lover’ with my tongue. Over time, this began to be accompanied by wet dreams. If I hadn't been ready for it, I probably would have been scared. But, in order not to wander in the dark, I asked Kostya, my neighbour upstairs, for a textbook and an atlas of human anatomy. The guy smiled slyly but understandingly and gave me the books. Kostya had recently graduated from medical school and worked at the ambulance station. He was much older, but we were not friends, but we had a good relationship. Using the books, I studied the structure of the female reproductive organs in detail, both external and internal, and knew everything about them, no worse than a real gynaecologist. I felt a thrill when I said their names out loud. They sounded like music to me. Seeing my unusual enthusiasm, my mother thought I was preparing to apply to medical school.

‘Isn't it too early?’ she asked. ‘You still have a lot of school left...’

‘I don't want to be late,’ I joked.

This went on for quite a long time, several years. I grew up, though not very tall. But I didn't change my ‘hobby.’ I spent a significant part of my free time in erotic dreams. There I met women and impressed them with my sexuality. In my dreams, of course, the ladies were unable to refuse me anything... And for some reason, they were all of Balzac's age. In reality, my ‘exploits’ did not go that far. All I could do was stare at a woman who interested me somewhere in the park or on the beach. I relieved the tension by holding a beautiful erotic picture in one hand and with the other hand...

Once, one of my few friends, Denis, dragged me to an office equipment store. He had long been obsessed with the idea of buying a PC.

‘Dan, I don't know anything about this,’ I tried to wriggle out of it.

‘Just come along for company. What's it cost you? Maybe you can give me some smart advice.’

‘Well, let's go.’

Dan didn't buy a computer that time, the prices were too high. My friend left immediately, feeling upset, and I stayed and wandered around the shop. From one display to another. I looked at the products, at the people... And then I saw HER! She was standing behind a low counter, talking to some woman about something. I was stunned. She looked strikingly similar to my ‘beloved’ from the dozen worms. Her hairstyle was different, though. She had red hair and a short haircut. Here, the situation was slightly different: longer, below the shoulders, light, well-groomed hair. As for her face, there was a very strong resemblance. I must have been staring for too long, and the woman sensed it. She glanced at me, and I had to pretend that I wasn't interested in her at all. I demonstratively began to examine one of the monitors in the shop window. ‘My’ blonde finished her conversation with her companion. As she left, she said

‘So, it's settled, Larochka? Call me if it shows up...’

Of course, I didn't know what was supposed to show up, and why would I need to know? But I did know that her name was Larisa. What a lovely name.

Since then, I became a frequent visitor to this shop. Of course, I was interested in erotic magazines, I won't hide it. I took them, leafed through them, and enjoyed myself, I won't hide it. But most of all, I was interested in Larisa, of course. To say that she was a beauty the likes of which the world had never seen would be an exaggeration. Her face was quite ordinary, like many others. But her breasts made me tremble. Her hair also did not leave me indifferent. And most importantly, she resembled my red-haired model. And I already began to think about what excuse I could find to talk to her. And then..