Sic Transit

Dublin. A.D. 2003.

Georgia O’Connor stepped from the shower onto a fluffy pink bath mat in her en suite. Taking a towel from a hook on the wall she began drying her beautiful, tanned 20-year-old body. Bending over, her hair fell forward—blonde, wet and tangled—until it almost touched the floor. She bunched it together tightly, squeezing hard, as a thin line of water came forth. Straightening up again, she wrapped her mane inside the towel and walked naked to her bedroom.

The room was exceptionally neat to a near obsessive degree. Unlike many girls of twenty, Georgia took great pleasure in such tidiness. It helped her to feel in control—a feeling she loved very much.

She was in fine fettle this bright May morning, tingling with excitement at the thought of her upcoming three-month stay in Boston. The college year had just finished—this was adding to her sense of happiness—and she was due to leave for the States in a couple of days. If it turned out even a fraction as good as last year’s, the trip was going to be a blast.

She sat down at her dresser and took a long admiring look at herself in the mirror. I really am a beautiful creature, she thought, verily the gods must shine upon me—and it was true: her beauty was undeniable. She had been blessed with the looks of a leading lady and the body of a swimwear model.

Her eyes moved to the window to survey the vast back garden of the house that she—an only child—shared with her parents, Chris and Norma. The warm sunny day outside looked full of promise and was certainly in keeping with her mood. She flicked the radio on low and heard the DJ confirm what she had just gleaned from the garden—namely that the day was pleasant and that the spell would last. With his soothing mid-Atlantic accent, the DJ referenced a Top 40 hit and promptly spun it. The up-tempo track with its catchy chorus added further to her cheeriness.

Rather than feel fortunate to live in such opulence—her domicile was more mansion than house—Georgia simply felt entitled. She loved to display her entitlements to friends, particularly those less fortunate girls at college whose parents had struggled to get their daughters to third-level. Georgia occasionally invited these poorer creatures to dinner purely to show off the house and gardens. She delighted in watching their envious expressions as she took them on the tour.

Laughing to herself over the wretchedness of these jealous girls, she picked up a brush and hairdryer and went to work on her tresses. Five minutes later, with the job done, she got up from the dresser and walked to a full-length mirror on the other side of the room. Again, she gazed adoringly upon her image; this time at her nude form, before bending over—she was fond of testing her suppleness—to let her hair fan out like an inverted peacock’s tail. After a moment or two in this near-yogic position, she flung her head back—a proud lioness—and decided it was time to apply makeup and get dressed. 

She would be heading to campus shortly to empty out her locker and partake of an end of year coffee with some girl pals in the canteen. Yesterday she had finished her last exam of second year. Georgia was doing a three-year degree in English and it was going swimmingly, thank you very much. She had full confidence that come the end of the degree the examiners would confer first-class honours upon her golden head.

She returned to the dresser and looked again at her lovely face. This won’t take long, she thought, as she dabbed a hint of blusher to her cheeks. Reflecting on her reflection, the matter was simple: her complexion was so good that little else was needed to improve on what God had already done. Finishing up with some light-red lipstick, her countenance broke into a broad smile and for the fourth time in a few short minutes she considered herself an epic beauty.

With the weather so good, she chose to dress lightly for the day ahead. From her well-stocked wardrobe she took a yellow t-shirt that complimented her naturally blonde hair. The garment revealed her midriff in all its tight glory—not to mention causing a succession of men to stare at her in the street whenever she wore it. Let them look, was Georgia’s attitude. It wasn’t her fault that she’d been born with such a sublime form. She loved it when men gawped at her bared flesh—their stares made her tingle inside and invariably caused a pleasant rush of blood to her head. Girls on the street, too, not as physically blessed as Georgia, were always good for a laugh. They would shoot her looks of pure hatred whenever they caught sight of that slender sensation: Georgia O’Connor’s body.

Speaking of which, let’s move on to her great legs and the question of how to attire them on this fair morn. Georgia reached into the wardrobe again and pulled out a pair of tight, white cotton trousers that she’d bought on a recent Continental break. She and some girlfriends had flown to Rome for a long weekend of shopping days and drinking nights. Georgia had used the trip as a means to exorcise the memory of Willie—a guy from college with whom she’d had a messy break-up. The white pants had been perfect for Rome’s heat—she’d picked them up in an open-air market near her hotel on her first morning there—and would do just the trick today on her trip to campus. Pulling them up over her fine behind, she felt that sense of entitlement again. It was her foremost feeling on most days. The concept of a sense of gratitude for anything at all was quite alien to Georgia. Entitled to a fabulous body and amazing good looks; entitled to a wonderful home and to all the luxuries that wealthy parents bring; entitled to shrewd intelligence; entitled to an amazing academic lover. She hadn’t been long parted from Willie before hooking up with the head of the English department, Professor Luke Ogle. That affair was carrying on apace, and torridly.

Thus, to complete the picture, and coming to her feet, Georgia slipped on a pair of straw-coloured sandals with a variegated covering around the toe. They had cost her a pretty penny in Brown Thomas. She took a suede shoulder bag—also from Brown Thomas— from off the back of the bedroom door and stood in front of the mirror for a last look before heading outside.

All told then, she appeared deliciously summery—nay, edible. In fact, she reminded herself of some beautiful sweet you might see in a confectioner’s window. Luke, come to think of it, was forever telling her how gorgeous she tasted.

Now, showered, dressed and eminently pleased with her appearance, Georgia switched off the radio and left her bedroom. She sped down the sweeping staircase, ran into the dining room, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and promptly left the house.

Outside, wandering past the other mansions on the street, she recalled the exam she had sat the previous day. She’d found the questions tricky in the extreme and had slipped up badly on some of them—her mind had been elsewhere, already in Boston, as she chewed her pen nervously at the little desk in the exam hall. Nevertheless, despite her poor performance, she wasn’t worried in the least about her scores due to be revealed in the autumn. Georgia knew she would pass her English test with flying colours—partly because the answers she had given reflected her intelligence and ought to be enough to carry her through. But, mostly, she felt sure of passing because of something Luke Ogle had said following a particularly frenzied bout of love-making: “You will pass with distinction, my angel,” he had uttered softly in her ear.

It really was a beautiful summer’s morning, she reflected, and how gladdened she felt to glide along these streets where she’d grown up—this prosperous part of town that she could call her own. The college campus was a mere ten minutes from her house and in dry weather she sometimes walked to lectures during term. More often than not, though, she drove. When it rained she never failed to get a kick from revving her sporty yellow Mini—a gift from Daddy—as she entered the groves of academe, much to the annoyance of those less fortunate students struggling in the rain. On drier days she would make her entrance with the top down and her eye-catching hair fluttering in the breeze. Still, she didn’t feel like taking the car today. In fact, she was highly geed up and in the mood for a stroll, feeling that all things were possible in the hopeful summer air.

She thought about Boston again and the three-month working holiday on which she would soon embark. For many years it had been considered a rite of passage for students at college to spend the months of June, July and August working Stateside. The girls usually took low-paid jobs in bars and restaurants while the young men laboured as house painters or on building sites. Whatever time off the kids got they used it in perfecting the fine art of debauched socializing. Georgia felt a frisson of something decidedly orgasmic when she considered the various sexual exploits she intended to pursue with American men.

Her father Chris—how he doted on Georgia!—had stated at dinner the other night that his daughter did not need to take up bar work (as was her plan) when she got to Boston. Chris, as a sign of the natural love and affection that he bore for Georgia, offered to pay for her stay in the Cradle of Liberty by means of a generous allowance. Georgia rejected the idea out of hand. She wasn’t going to lord it over her travelling companions when on a foreign shore. Such behaviour might well lead to resentments forming on their part. Georgia could wind up isolated if she idled all day while her friends went out to work. And, besides, weren’t bars the perfect place to pick up men?

As she scampered, Georgia scanned some of the lawns along her route. In one or two she saw gardeners setting about their chores—adjusting sprinklers and bending over herbaceous borders. She remembered the phrase: “An ounce of breeding is worth a ton of feeding” that her mother, Norma, always used whenever she caught sight of the O’Connors’ own gardener, the young and muscular Dermot, a’planting and a’digging.

From several driveways middle-aged women, who’d clearly had work done, emerged with small dogs on leads to take a morning constitutional. A postman cycling rather dangerously on a jalopy skimmed by Georgia and appeared the worse for wear. To Georgia’s amazement, the black cap was reciting Molly Bloom’s soliloquy as he rode. The soliloquy was a favourite of Luke Ogle’s. He had recently begged Georgia to recite it as she sat on a chamber pot—brought along specially for the occasion—in a hotel room they had hired for a tryst. She’d obliged him his wish and actually found the experience quite thrilling. Nonetheless, she was forced to conclude, that dear old Luke was a perverted devil indeed.

She reached the roundabout at the top of the street and headed down a short avenue, five minutes from the college now. Her phone rang. She fished it from her bag and put it to her ear. Sive, a girlfriend, was on the line. The girls were waiting for Georgia in the canteen and wanted her to hurry along. After reassuring Sive that she was on her way, Georgia put the phone back in her shoulder bag and continued at her brisk pace.

Luke’s long beard leapt into her mind’s eye. She pondered, in particular, its length and thickness. On a number of occasions, she had asked the professor to have it trimmed. Its coarseness irked her, especially when Ogle came in close for a kiss or at those times when he insisted on holding one of her nipples in his mouth—not to mention the sacred moments when he went “down there”. In defence of his bristles Ogle pleaded that, psychologically, he found them a great buffer against the world, and that facial hair helped him overcome his latent shyness on a daily basis.

An uneasiness settled on Georgia as these physical details of her affair with Ogle swam around in her head. A stark image from their hotel rendezvous stood out in her memory. They had made love—humped frenetically in fact—for the second time in an hour and she’d turned over in the bed hoping to nod off, expecting Ogle to do so too. After a few moments, however, she opened her eyes with a start to see him stroking his phallus at the end of the bed, evidently eager to have a third go. The hirsute intellectual then pounced upon her with wild abandon and off they went again.

Fair enough, certain things about him were highly irritating but Luke Ogle was unquestionably the best lover she had ever had. His sexual technique was nothing short of breathtaking—his sexual appetites gargantuan. Undoubtedly, he was to be applauded for both stamina and willingness to please. Georgia relished the good fortune heaped upon her by this academic lover—an easy ride at exam time plus the regular, strange and blissful sex.

He’s clearly besotted with me and long may it continue, she thought, for she had every intention of resuming their dalliance once she got back from America. Luke, the old satyr, had even mentioned leaving his wife of twenty years—dear, loyal Doris—in order to be with his young student. 

Georgia sincerely hoped Luke would follow through on this aspiration. In point of fact, a supremely spiteful side of her would take great delight in watching him destroy his marriage in the false belief that she really cared about him. In reality she gave not a tinker’s curse as to what degree she messed up Ogle’s life. Nor did she care a hoot about how much the old trout Doris would suffer from being abandoned by her husband. If he wants to screw me, then he should be ready to be screwed up by me was how Georgia saw things.

She certainly had no time for the quite ridiculous concept of falling in love. For sure, the sex was great but Georgia, for the most part, was not the kind of girl to get emotionally involved. For someone of such tender years she had gained a considerable amount of experience on the battlefield of sexual relations. Love never came into it at all.

As the singing of the birds filled the air along the tree-lined avenue, Georgia dashed along pondering her taste in the opposite sex. Her sap was rising from the brisk walking and her erotic thoughts about her professor lover. Is my preference ultimately for the older man, she wondered? The young bucks at college certainly melted her butter whenever she bedded them, but it was Luke Ogle who moved her like no man had ever done before. 

She also took a moment to consider, in the sunshine of late May, her masturbatory life. It was quite clear: her orgasms were always deeper if the fantasies involved a man of more senior years. Continuing this carnal train of thought she realized that it was the same when having real sex. She never failed to enjoy it more if the guy was old enough to be her father. I know what I like, she concluded, and was fully determined to continue having sex with older men for many years to come.

As she came to the end of the avenue the imposing campus entrance appeared in view across Route 11, the motorway that bisected her suburb.

She couldn’t wait to meet her friends and share some gossip and laughs over coffee. Perhaps we can share something a little stronger later, she imagined, to celebrate the end of term and our upcoming travels. She thought it would be a wonderful idea for the lot of them to go out dancing that evening and get royally pissed into the bargain. I’ll run the idea past the girls in a couple of minutes, she decided.

A lorry hurried by bearing the logo: “O’Connor’s Box Print & Packaging” emblazoned on its side. As it caught her eye, a cold eerie feeling seized her for a moment. She conjured an image of a pine box with her own name and a crucifix on its lid, but quickly dismissed such a morbid thought. As a general rule, she didn’t do premonitions.

Meantime Des Troy, a hearse driver, was between funerals and well behind on his schedule. He was rattling down Route 11 in great haste returning from an early morning burial in the southeast.

Georgia knew that the safest and easiest way for a pedestrian to negotiate this teeming road was to make for a set of traffic lights at the next junction down. She was aware that over the years there had been a number of accidents, including fatalities, at this spot. It was a notoriously dangerous stretch of road and students were forever being warned to avoid crossing there, which they so often did when running late for lectures. Only recently the council had finally unveiled plans, in conjunction with the college authorities, to erect a footbridge that would carry walkers safely into the halls of learning. Building work was due to begin shortly and the bridge was expected to be up and ready by the autumn.

Alas, this grand design was too late in the coming for this most vain of girls who considered herself exceptionally agile and well able to traverse the black spot.

She decided to forego the safety of the pedestrian lights further along and to make a run for it through the thick traffic in order to reach the college.

She believed, right down deep into the core of her being, that she wasn’t meant to die for a long, long time; that her number would not be up for decades yet.

When the hearse struck her at considerable speed, she didn’t stand a chance. Young Georgia O’Connor died instantly.

 © Brian Ahern 2011