Baumgartner Generations: Henry

Prologue

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that every man should at some point in his young life be under the tutelage of an older woman, but I do know that if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t even consider changing what happened during my freshman year in college.

What did Mrs. Toni Franklin teach me that was so valuable? It wasn’t what you might think-it wasn’t the tips or tricks or techniques she taught me to use with a woman in bed, although I have to admit, those were undeniably helpful. It wasn’t really the sex at all, to tell you the truth.

Toni was a goddess, and she knew it. She taught me to worship her the way all women should be worshipped-not from afar, put on a pedestal like some untouchable, but in the flesh, as the sleek, voluptuous creature of the earth she was.

Women are amazing, amorphous, changeably delightful creatures, and I know most men spend their whole lives trying to figure them out. Toni made me realize that most men too often hit the tree, but miss the target. The lovely mystery of woman was meant to be experienced and enjoyed, not measured and controlled.

Toni taught me that women are the weather.

If you want to know what the weather is like, open the window. Can you predict the weather? Sometimes you can feel a storm rolling in, or see a gorgeous blue sky and know rain isn’t anywhere in the near future. But how much energy have we wasted trying to control or manipulate it, living in fear of storms? Men have created all sorts of instruments in an attempt to predict the path of the weather, and while we have advanced to some degree, there are always rainbows that go missed, tsunamis that could never have been foreseen.

It is an impossible and futile task, when a man makes a woman a problem or puzzle to be solved. They are and always will be unpredictable. I’d rather spend my time basking in the sunshine and walking in the rain than fiddling with instruments and planning a siege against the next onslaught. If you’re not living in the present, you’re not living at all.

I was nineteen when I met Toni. I would never deny or discount how much I learned, the invaluable gifts she gave as my tutor-and not just in the lessons of love and women. Toni opened my life, unlocking parts of me I hid from everyone, even myself. And when she discovered my deepest secret, she still didn’t falter.

Instead, she just taught me how to read.