The McPherson Story

Jennifer Anne McPherson was fifty-one. Her heritage was mainly Western European, mainly Scotch, English and Welsh. Her ancestors claimed to have obscure Royal connections to Queen Elizabeth and hence Mary Queen of Scots and Henry VIII. A touch of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian gave her statuesque proportions. At five foot nine, her beauty was outstanding, not too short of many famous movie stars. She often wore her daughter’s clothes, the designer jeans and tight fuzzy sweaters, high heeled boots and stunning hats. Without more than a slight amount of mascara, she looked like a slightly older Sue Lyons who played Lolita in Lolita as the disturbing teenage sexpot who had a love affair with a sixty year old man who had married her mother and caused her death. Jennifer was proud to say she had been asked her age at a bar within the last two months. She had natural long blond hair. A pony tail and NY Yankees baseball hat made her look twenty years younger. Men flocked to her at bars. She boasted that she could bed a dozen men at any one time, anytime she wanted.

What surprised most men is that she was a genius and a super athlete and had the credentials to back it up. Jennifer had been a champion of intercollegiate tennis and skiing. She had been enrolled at the University of Chicago Schools for gifted children, as the youngest in her classes. Mathematics, Physics and English were her majors as she achieved a Ph.D. in English at the tender age of twenty-eight. She took a year of Law School, at the University’s School of Law; she dropped out to get married to a man much less gifted than she. The marriage became boring to her after she bore him three girls, all looking, acting and operating like their mother. Michael O’Brian, her husband, was simply overwhelmed by his four intelligent, athletic beauties. She decided to teach English at a college in Hinsdale, a wealthy suburb, about twenty-five miles southwest of the centre of Chicago. It was near La Grange Park, where the O’Brians had a moderately large home and the daughters attended public schools. Michael became a manager at the GM factory in nearby Lyons, a 10 minute drive from their home. His salaries and bonuses were substantial. Jennifer drove a black Jaguar XKE. Michael drove a Ford Country Squire station wagon which easily accommodated the entire family of five, plus two Yorkshire Terriers and a Chinese Tabby.

Jennifer had her own money, her wealthy parents having left her millions when they died. Jennifer was the youngest of four wealthy sisters. Jennifer seems to have cornered the market on beauty, brains and athleticism amongst her siblings. Her mother and father, grandparents, aunts and uncles were brainy and athletic. Some had owned companies. Others had played professional sports. Virtually all were CEO’s, doctors, lawyers, dentists and physiotherapists.

Jennifer left her husband and moved into a large house in Western Springs, adjacent to Hinsdale. The two oldest daughters, and the Tabby, stayed with their dad by mutual agreement. The two dogs and the youngest daughter, Sophia, moved with Jennifer. Sophia entered the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, about a two hour drive south from Chicago. Her talents were much like her mother’s; she was one of the youngest women to ever achieve her Ph.D. in Psychology at that institution. She took a very lucrative job offer in industrial psychology at the IBM research centre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She met and married a computer nerd there, had three boys and settled down peacefully and satisfyingly, in one of the grand old houses in St. Paul, Minnesota, the twin city of Minneapolis, on the Mississippi River steep, cliff-like banks.

Jennifer’s job was with Hinsdale Community College, a branch of the University of Chicago system, teaching English to serious students of English who would go on to professorships. Jennifer became an assistant professor of English and second in command in the department. Within five years she achieved tenure and was made the Head of the Department. The next year, she was asked to take over the Department Chair at the main campus of the University of Chicago, in the Hyde Park area, near the Midway, a rebuilding, resurgent part of the South Side.

Dr. Jennifer Anne McPherson was a popular teacher and drew many students to enroll in her classes. She wrote several papers on Medieval English. On her University supported Sabbatical, she moved to London, England, for two years. Her research on Medieval English, Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, the Protestant Bible and the White Witches resulted in hundreds of popular papers and four text books. She wrote some fiction and poetry. Two of these became best sellers; this added substantially to her income. The books were titled, “Queen Elizabeth’s Secret Love,” and “The White Witch of Wickenham.” Both books were steamy romances, liberally sprinkled with poetry and heavily invested in real history and geography. Her down-to-earth writing style was given high marks by the literary critics. She was on the short list for many prestigious prizes.

In contrast, her reality was nothing like the stories she wrote about wild men and women and equally wild romances and adventures. Her main characters were consistently very smart and very attractive, very athletic and very wise. The men and women that knew Jennifer well saw her as conservative and aloof, shy and independent and, of course, brainy and physically active. She continued to play tennis at local tennis clubs and ski at famous European and American ski resorts. Though men flocked to her at pubs in London and bars in America, she always went home alone, as far as one could tell. She still boasted that she could bed a number of men, anytime and anyplace. She was always quick to add that no one intrigued her enough to make her bed messy and wet, as she put it.

Jennifer was plagued by two kinds of rumours that followed her everywhere. One was that she was a lesbian and had a secret lover that visited her at night. The other was that she had a married boyfriend that kept out of sight for obvious reasons. Certainly these rumours proved to be true about many other women with whom she worked and played.

Samantha Leah Weiss, a Jewish Professor of English at the University of Chicago, in Jennifer’s department as the Assistant Chairperson, was Jennifer’s best friend. She was a dazzling looking redhead who did bed most of her men, singly and in pairs. At bars and pubs, the two of them drew large numbers of admirers. Sam went home with one or two of them, most of the time. Sometimes, Sam went home with Jennifer and spent the night talking, drinking, dancing, cuddling and sleeping. Everyone was sure that they were lovers, but they knew the truth. They were just good friends who sometimes had some good, old-fashioned pajama parties. They had met casually in the gifted programme and had enjoyed many athletic and social activities together through the years. Samantha never married. They had arranged to take their academic sabbaticals at the same time and place, sharing a small, two bedroom flat in London.

“I really don’t like sex,” said Jennifer one night. “It’s messy and unpredictable. I can get as much pleasure as I want when I diddle myself.” Jennifer was in a silk, sexy black teddy which revealed her entire body, provocatively.

Samantha was dressed in a silk nightgown which revealed her lovely contours. Like Jennifer’s, her long hair tumbled on her bare shoulders. “I love it Jennifer. The whole gymnastic act of making love and feeling great is unequaled by anything I can do for myself.”

Jennifer arose gracefully from the couch on which they were both sitting and listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, Number three. She went to her bedroom and retrieved her prize. It was a rubber monk in a hood which vibrated. From the back it looked an erect phallus; from the front, it looked like a monk wearing a hooded robe. It had the outlines of a rope belt and a large cross handing from the belt. It had a soft light and it vibrated, there being a D cell battery inside. “It can’t be any better than this!” declared Jennifer. “Wait a second and I’ll demonstrate.” Jennifer went to her bathroom and retrieved a large beige fluffy bath towel. She put it down on the seat of the couch and sat on it after hiking up her teddy to be bare from the waist down.

Dear Reader, If graphic sexual writing disturbs you, please skip this next paragraph. I feel that it sets the mood for the scene I’m describing, but I know it is very disturbing to some people. Frankly, I put it in to round out Jennifer’s real personality.

She spread her legs and stimulated herself with her finger first. “I’m moist and ready for pleasure. Watch closely.” Jennifer lay back against the couch and lifted her hips to accept the monk’s head into her vagina. Her upper and lower lips parted as she slowly pushed the monk into herself, up the hilt. Only the closed lid of the battery receptacle could be seen. She closed her eyes and started moaning. Within seconds, she grunted and gasped. She lay back and relaxed. “See,” she said. “Neat and clean and exciting. No fuss, no muss and no man’s ego to deal with.”

Samantha smiled as Jennifer handled the towel gingerly and took it to the clothes hamper in the bathroom. She cleaned herself with a soapy washcloth, rinsed everything with water and toweled off.

Samantha asked, “May I?”

“Of course,” said Jennifer. She readjusted her teddy to cover up. Then she carefully washed with soap the little monk and dried it thoroughly. “Here,” she said as she handed it to Sam with a fresh towel.

Dear Reader: Sorry. The next paragraph is steamy.

Sam sat on her towel. She’d dropped her nightgown in a heap and was completely naked. She lay back and thrust the vibrating, lit up monk inside of her, burying it completely. Then she stretched and clamped her legs and buttocks, tightly. Then she arched her back and closed her eyes. Within seconds, she screamed and writhed, repeatedly.

Jennifer approached and put her hand over Samantha’s mouth which only served to make Samantha’s spasms harder and more frequent. Jennifer tried unsuccessfully to shush her up.

Finally, after several very hard convulsions, Samantha seemed to settle down. Her spasms became less frequent and less forceful. Her screams subsided to whispered gasps. At the end, she sat up and opened her eyes and laughed heartily. “It was great Jennifer. You’re right: no fuss, no muss, no fragile ego. It’s neat and convenient. Where’d you buy the monk?” she asked as she squeezed him out unto a thoroughly wet towel.

Jennifer hustled to get another two towels and helped Samantha clean herself and the couch up. “The couch is Scotch-guarded. The puddle you made should clean up just fine with a little water and laundry detergent and a Tide-To-Go stick.”

“Sorry!” said Samantha, sincerely. “I’m sorry for the noise. I couldn’t help it. That was the most intense orgasms I’ve ever had. That monk is great. I’ll have to get me one.” She smiled.

“The neighbours…” began Jennifer.

“Yes, I know,” said Samantha. “This flat has thin walls, doesn’t it. I’ll be quieter next time.”

“There won’t be a next time, my old friend,” said Jennifer in a guilt-provoking manner. “Thanks for the show, but no thanks. I don’t want to see the show again. The men and women you do it with must love you for your performances.”

“Sorry, Jen,” responded Sam. “That was no show. It was genuine. I repeat: that was the best I’ve ever had. I’ll do it privately next time as soon as I get my own monk, or a bigger monk, if available.

“Braggart!” said Jennifer and smiled. “That really was genuine, eh? You must have special equipment. I don’t ever respond like the way you did. My husband used to accuse me of holding back. Honestly, Sam, I was doing the best I could.”

“I can’t be sorry for you Jen, my friend,” said Samantha. “It’s obvious that what you had was all you have. Your talents are obviously in other sports and academics. I guess I’m lucky. I love sex. I do put up with funny personalities but the end result is highly pleasurable. It always has been since I’ve been a preteen.”

Both women became quiet and pensive. Jennifer retrieved heavy duvets for both of them. Like two moving teepees, they moved quietly to their respective bedrooms to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Pathatique, closed the doors and went to bed. Samantha slept deeply and dreamt of the last threesome she had. Jennifer slept only after an hour of restless legs and then fitfully. She had nightmares of being in a flood and having to swim to safety. The dream became really frightening as she fought a losing battle to keep her apartment from being flooded with smelly mud. When she awoke with a muffled scream, she arose and cleaned up the little monk. She tied it with a multi-coloured ribbon and attached a sticky note with the words, “Sam, It’s yours. Enjoy!” She re-read her message and added another sticky note. “It’s clean and sterile and all yours, with love, Jen.” She added yet a third note: “The battery is new.”

Jennifer started packing the next morning. To a sad-looking Samantha, she explained that the apartment was not large enough for them and that she would move into the student’s dormitories as soon as she could get a room. She was sure there would be a suitable large place open somewhere. She recalled she had seen several rooms for students in the residential areas surrounding the University.

Sam felt bad and she offered to move out. She had had several offers by several men for accommodations. Also, there was the Jewish Women’s Fraternity House, to which she had some connections. Three days later, it was Sam who found a professor that she’d met at one of the pubs who said he had an extra room that he’d be glad to rent to her at a reasonable price. She moved out of the flat the next day after some perfunctory good-byes.

Both knew that their friendship was changed, significantly. Though they mentioned they would call each other for coffee, tea or a Guinness, they both knew they wouldn’t call. However, they both knew that their professional relationship would continue. Jennifer, after all, was Samantha’s boss and they both had prestigious positions at the University of Chicago waiting for them to return to the USA.

Actually, it was no surprise to either of them that Jennifer helped Samantha resign and accept a Chair at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana’s Department of English. Like Dr. Jennifer, she was a Doctor of Philosophy, a published author of fiction, non-fiction, texts, poetry and research papers. Search committees were happy to hear from her and easily found the University of Illinois for her to send her resumes.

In the meantime, Jennifer decided to do more research on the work and life of Shakespeare. Also, her genealogy research had located a descendent of both Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare, living in Stratford-on-Avon. Jennifer made a month long visit to there and stayed at a Bed & Breakfast right next to the preserved home of Shakespeare, now a walk-through tourist attraction. She made notes of the personalities of Anne’s descendent and Will’s descendent. She had some odd flashes and fantasies about what life was really like in the Shakespeare household before William left to go to the “big city,” to make his fortune. She also had some strange thoughts about a visit there by the young Queen Elizabeth. She played with the idea that her personality was like the Queen’s. She thought it was just one of her many flashes that created many of her fictional stories, the steamy ones that sold a lot of copies.

Jennifer formulated a novel about the young princess, who would become the Virgin Queen, making a countryside tour on her own and enjoying the peacefulness of Stratford-on-Avon. She thought that a secret tryst with a poetic young William Shakespeare could have occurred. She conceived that Liz and Will hit it off and formed a deeper relationship based on mutual love of poetry and the intrigues of royalty. Of course, Elizabeth would have known all the palace scuttlebutt about King’s and Queen’s of England, Scotland and Denmark. Shakespeare would have joined Elizabeth in making up stories based partially on real history, the Christian Crusades in Europe and the Middle East, the special Magna Carta signing by King John after King Richard III had bankrupted the country with the war against the Muslims, the colonizations of many countries including the USA, the work on creating a strong Protestant Bible and opposing the still strong Roman Catholic and French influences in England and the strong superstitions involving ghosts and spirits, witches and witch’s brews, goblins and imps, astrology and mythology.

In secret places, still existing, Jennifer also imagined that Liz and Will recited intimate and loving poetry to each other, all in iambic pentameter and mostly in sonnets. She thought that the adolescent Elizabeth might have dressed as a young country boy to disguise her identity for her own safety. She felt that the secret lover that Shakespeare seemed to have when he was writing his sonnets in London might have been the one and only Queen Elizabeth I. She speculated that the Virgin Queen, after whom Virginia and West Virginia were named, populated and cultivated for England’s growing wealth and the very beginnings of the British Empire, “on which the sun never set,” continued to meet William in secret places in the Globe and Rose Theatres. Finally, she conceived that the Shakespearean folio was conceived and written in iambic pentametre by the Queen, herself. Of course she could no more take credit for Macbeth or The Tempest or the other plays as she could take it for the King James version of the Anglican Protestant Bible, which she obviously also wrote. Her linguistics and religious knowledge didn’t hold her back.

In fact, originally, the Queen wanted to write the bible in the poetry it deserved, inasmuch as she recognized that most of the Hebrew of the Old Testament was very lyrical. She noted that the Song of Moses and the Song of David had words with extra syllables to make them lilt, just like Petrarch, Shakespeare and Browning Sonnets. She also noticed the metaphorical nature of the Hebrew language of the Pentateuch and the Greek language of the New Testament. When the King James committee put their genius to it, they saw to it that the words they picked had double and triple meanings, just like the Hebrew and Greek. Unfortunately, they didn’t put in the works excluded by the Popes who generally omitted those passages which displeased them. They omitted the parts about Jesus’ social life and family realities and those gospel writers who were earthier than John, Matthew Luke and Mark. They left out the very important story of Jesus and Martha wherein he was spotted sitting on a hill stroking her flaxen hair. This passage was at the centre of the books by Wallace, “The Book,” da Quieroz, “O Crimo del Padre Amaro,” and Schonfeld, “Passover Plot.” The British Library has several whole Gospels, including the one according to St. James, which were omitted by the Popes around the second and third centuries.

Jennifer came across another biblical metaphor in the Book of Esther. Esther is actually the Persian version of Hadassah. The whole book doesn’t have any of the usual smatterings of references to “Adonai” characteristic of the other OT books. Scholars thought that it was written by a Persian Jew, one of the somewhat liberated Jewish Slaves taken over by Persia from Babylon. Basically, Iraq and Bagdad defeated the Jews of Judea and destroyed the temple of Solomon. They enslaved the Jews and either buried or destroyed the Ark of the Covenant. The Jews apparently vowed never to sing or dance until the Temple was rebuilt. Esther was perhaps fourteen and chosen for her beauty to be taken care of by the king’s eunuchs for the eventual pleasure of the king, who was displeased with his wife. Her care taker was her uncle, Mordechai, who became aware that Haman, the king’s Prime Minister, was offering silver for the killing of Jews. With the possibility of death, Esther was encouraged by Mordechai to approach the king and plead for her people. She did and was successful in revealing Haman’s anti-Semitic plans. Haman was hung and Esther became the Queen of Persia, according to the OT book. Mordechai was chosen to be Prime Minister of Persia, preceding Daniel, who miraculously survived the lion’s den to be recognized as a special Jew who was protected by his God.

Jennifer took the Persian legend of Scheherazade and found that there was an interesting parallel with the concubines. The Persians, under Xerxes I, do not mention the Jewish slaves at all. Scheherazade guessed rightly that the young virgins of the harem were being cleansed and prepared for spending the night with the king. In the morning, the freshly deflowered young woman was killed. When Scheherazade’s evening came, she started telling fictional adventure stories which so intrigued the king that he saved her life for another night so that she may continue. The stories of course are still famous: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” “Sinbad, the Sailor,” Aladdin and his Magic Lamp,” etc. They are part of the book, “1001 Arabian Nights,” supposedly covering more than three years of nightly serialized stories. Shah Xerxes, seemingly, gave up the nightly virgin routine and married Scheherazade, making her the Queen of Persia.

“Esther must have been Sheherazade!” declared Jennifer to herself one night, to herself. “Their histories are parallel and contemporary. Each woman was exceptionally brave and probably very attractive. Both of them are depicted by artists as partially undressed, extremely young, extremely beautiful adolescent women. Both of them changed history and culture values, significantly. The differences in their biographies is purely cultural. Their personalities and historical eras, and geographical regions, are practically the same. They’ve got to be the same person!”

“Esther and Scheherazade, ONE AND THE SAME, Twin Legendary Biographies,” became an international best seller for Jennifer. It made the most money for her than any of her other published works. Movie rights brought a bundle. The movie starred the young starlet, Jennifer Aniston, who won the Academy Award. King Xerxes I was played by Nicolas Cage. The movie was shot on location in Tehran at a time when the Shah of Iran was very friendly with the USA. The Shah appeared as a cameo which added to his popularity at home and abroad. Jennifer wrote the award winning, lucrative screenplay. It made her a candidate for several more screenplays which also added a lot to her income.

Professor McPherson left out another intriguing idea. Her linguist expertise allowed her to play with the name Xerxes. In Greek, Xepxeswould be pronounced like the Spanish, Jorge. This makes it likely that Xerxes is the equivalent of George. Thus King Xerxes I of Persia, would have been King George I of Iran! A Divinity student friend of hers said simply, “that’s funny enough to be true!”

The book about Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare, “The Royal Ghost Writer,” hardly made any money at all. It wasn’t her usual steamy romance novel but was more in the style of Irving Wallace’s and James Michener’s historical novels. It was also converted to a Hollywood film, nowhere near the blockbuster that was the Scheherazade/Esther film.