Tammy & Martin: A Love Story

Sometimes two people fall deeply and madly in Love. Then they talk with each other for a few minutes. I’m thinking of two people in particular: Tammy and Martin. Tammy was a bucksome young package with neatly wrapped thighs and a distant laughter that could cull the young from their gentle slumbers—forcing their one, two, or more than two—seriously who can keep track of the collapse of family values?—parent(s) into a bit of a tizzy. Tammy’s friends and acquaintances would remark on her wayward whimsy for several minutes after she’d leave a room. Little did they know, Tammy had just sneaked around the corner to listen intently, whilst silently gurgling her tiny laughs—chuckle.

“What’s her deal anyway?” One colleague might ask once it appeared that Tammy had left the room.

And Tammy would tingle at the sound of her own name as it escaped from the lips of some self-aggrandizing coworker. She’d grow almost hysterical when the others would laugh at her. She’d breathe heavily, and discretely caress herself—replaying that fantasy in her head—the one where Martin would come around the corner just in time to see her and he’d be suddenly overwhelmed by desire. And she would just chuckle at him like a slightly-scared child. How many times did she masturbate to this thought in the comfort of her own bed, shower, couch, step-stool, etc.? Numbers didn’t seem to provide a satisfactory answer to that question.

Then one day Martin actually did come around the corner just as she’d imagined he might. He brushed against her, the faint ambience of ridiculous laughter subsiding in the background.

“Oh, sorry,” he said to her. But when he realized it was her, Tammy, the one whom he and others had just been surreptitiously mocking, a bout of something resembling panic gripped him. Tammy could see it in his eyes, and, rather than laugh, as she had planned, began to cry— then scurried away.

Martin was left there, finding himself feeling quite dumb, as it were. That night, at home, he replayed the event in his head over and over—numbers don’t really…. Could he have possibly seen what he thought he saw? Was she touching herself? He began to obsess—his weak will fueled by a malleable memory. He tried to find solace in the calm and gentle waters of sleep, but almost the moment he got into bed, there she was again. The more he thought about it the more clearly he could see her touching herself and, as such, did what seemed rather normal to him since about the age of twelve, the same. Once he had “finished,” Martin recalled that Tammy had cried as well, and this made him feel quite disgraceful.

The next day Tammy wasn’t at work. She had called in sick.

“She’s out on paid health leave,” the human resources representative informed Martin in response to his less-than-subtle queries. Needless to say, he was devastated.

The day after that she was at work, but Martin had come down with a stress-induced migraine and taken the day off.

“He’s out on paid health leave,” the HR rep informed Tammy in response to her less-than-subtle queries. Needless to say, she was relieved.

The day after that (the third day following the “incident” if you’re keeping score) they were both present at work and, despite a recent and abrupt decrease in their accrued health leave, were in reasonably good spirits respectively. They glanced at one another from across the room several times, but neither could muster the nerve to initiate any conversation.

Two months later Tammy got another job. They never saw each other again, and they never fell out of Love.

THE END