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Carlotta Graham has done an outstanding job at portraying the facts and fancies behind middle-class morality in the United States, picturing the torment of desire and guilt which festers just beneath the prim exterior … and which often explodes with bitter consequences.
Using the poignant vehicle of a sexually frustrated high school teacher, Miss Graham has woven a tapestry of what can happen — nay, what too many times does happen — when the “proper” outlets for physical gratification are blocked. Having failed at marriage, divorced Lisa Hamilton tries desperately to quell her bodily wants, only to find that since relations with a man have proven so disastrous, she must turn to other, more questionable areas of contact for her release.
Lisa Hamilton paced the outside aisle between the last row of desks and the windows. She could see the schoolyard and the small park beyond, its trees and shrubs just beginning to bud with spring, and because of the slant of the afternoon sun, she was also able to see her image reflected in the glass.
She paused for a moment, the way a woman will when passing a mirror, and primped her long blonde hair with her fingers, inspecting herself abstractly in the window’s reflection. Never, though, did she pause in her lecturing, the day’s lesson on chemical reactions between basic oxides and acids flowing from her lips in a never-ending stream of words. Lisa Hamilton was known as a hard task-master by her high school students, even though to look at her, one would think she would be warm and tender and perhaps too soft on the freshmen who took her course.
In fact, there were some who couldn’t understand how Lisa could stand being a teacher at all, when there were so many more exciting and pleasant things for somebody as beautiful and provocative as she. Most of these were men who had tried dating her at one time or another, and who had subsequently been firmly rebuffed in their amorous efforts. Lisa was thirty-one, of medium height and a little on the slender side, with full high-peaked breasts and firmly rounded thighs, long sculptured legs and a flat taut belly — all of which were more in keeping with the budding figures of the girls in her classes, instead of a woman twice their age. Her face was a heart-shaped oval with a pert stubby nose and large Koala-bear eyes with bright ice-blue pupils. Her lips were naturally crimson and needed very little lipstick, and they habitually curved outwards and down in a mock, seductive pout. Her smooth skin was the ivory of a natural blonde, although during the summer months she took a tan readily and became a golden hue. Add to all that a melodious voice with a seductive, throaty purr, and it was no wonder that the vice-principal chewed his report cards with frustration!
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.