THE FRENCH DANCER
                         By Robert Mauro

     Gigi Ravel had once been a beautiful ballerina.  She was
tall, slim and had long, raven hair, which, in her ballet days,
she wore in a tight bun, at least when she danced in public. 
When Gigi danced happily in the nude for her lovers, she would
let her hair down, allowing it to fall freely over her perfect
body.
     Gigi had been an international sensation on the stage and in
the bedroom and ballrooms of the world.  She had danced at the
Kirov, the Balshoi, the Joffrey, the Stuttgart, and even at the
American Ballet Theatre.  Every ballet company had sought Gigi's
talents.  Whether dancing in "Swan Lake," "The Rite of Spring,"
or "The Firebird," she had received loud Bravos from her
audiences and rave reviews from the critics.
     Gigi was perfect.  When she moved, she exhibited charm,
grace, beauty and sensuality.  If the word "sex" could be put
into form, it would be Gigi dancing, whether on the stage before
an audience of thousands or in the nude before an audience of
one lover.
     Despite what everyone thought, Gigi had not, however, had
that many lovers.  While her fellow dancers, male and female,
slept with artists, musicians, millionaires, journalists,
writers, poets, and politicians (both liberal and conservative),
Gigi chose her lovers carefully, or so she thought.  Max had been
one of those lovers.
     Max was an impresario.  He created legends, especially his
own.  Max was also Gigi's cruelest lover.  He never abused her
physically, but emotionally he nearly killed Gigi.  He would call
her lazy, undisciplined, stupid.  Max publicly humiliated her
countless times.
     Max lied to Gigi.  In bed, he told her he loved her.  Lies. 
Max told her he was faithful.  Lies.  Max even told Gigi he'd
never hurt her.  Lies.  In truth, Max had used and abused Gigi. 
Ultimately, he dumped her, just before her performance in
"Sleeping Beauty."  That woke her up.
     Max had practically destroyed Gigi.  She had loved him.  It
had been a passionate love.  The sex had been unlike any sex Gigi
had ever experienced.  She had had one orgasm after another with
Max -- and they were unlike any orgasms she had ever had.  This
was love, she had felt.  Max had felt otherwise.  After they had
spent a long night of passionate love making, Max had slipped out
of her, slipped out of her bed, and slipped out of her life. 
Forever.  Max had torn out her heart.
     Gigi fell into a deep depression.  She began to drink.  And
there were drugs.  Pills, powders, potions.  Her dancing suffered
and soon no one wanted Gigi.  Not even Gigi.  It was then that
her life had nearly ended.
     It was a dark and stormy night.  Gigi was thinking of Max. 
She hated him.  He used her.  She had never done that to a man. 
Her lovers had always been her friends.  And had she never dumped
them.  She had never treated a man the way Max had treated her.
     Lightening flashed and rain fell in sheets that stormy
night.  The streets of Paris were slick, and Gigi was racing
through them in her Porsche.  All she could think of was Max. 
She hated him.  She loved him.  She missed him.  She wanted him.
She wanted to kill the bastard!  Suddenly a dog was in Gigi's
headlights.  Gigi swerved and her car flew over a curb, into the
air and over a guard rail.  Twenty feet down a cliff it ended up
in a ditch.
     When Gigi awoke a few days later, she was in the hospital. 
She could not feel her legs.  She looked down.  They were still
there, in casts.  She was in a body cast.  What had happened? 
Had she broken her legs?  She tried to move her toes, but she
could not.  She screamed.  A nurse walked in and a doctor soon
followed.
     "You'll never walk again," the doctor told her.  "You're
paralyzed from the waist down."
     Gigi refused to believe that.  She would not only walk
again, she would dance!  She was determined to find a way.  And
there was sex.  Love.  She wanted to experience, to feel, the
passionate joys of love making again.  She promised herself she
would.
     As the months passed, Gigi's body healed.  She loved music. 
So she had her assistant assembled a very expensive stereo system
for her.  Gigi'd spend her days listening to classical music on
that wonderful system.  She loved her stereo.  It had become her
savior.  Her joy.  Her life.
     One day her body cast was removed and Gigi spent her days in
rehab, trying to walk.  It was no use.  She could not get her
legs to work.  No one could.  She was paralyzed.  It was then she
found Doctor Franz.
     Franz looked like a god and he told Gigi he was exactly
that.  They were soon in bed making love.  She could no longer
feel a man inside her, but she enjoyed the pleasures of intimacy. 
And she could feel when Franz touched and kissed her lips, her
breasts.  The closeness of their bodies entangled lovingly nearly
made her climax.  It felt as if something deep inside her was
about to explode.  But it was not the same as before her
accident.  Still, Gigi loved this wonderful feeling, whatever it
was.  But Franz was not happy.
     "Why aren't you happy, Franz?" Gigi asked.
     "I want you to enjoy this.  And I want your legs around me,
as you enjoy what we do.  And --"
     Franz went on and on.  Franz wanted Gigi to be a "normal"
woman.
     "I am a normal woman!"
     Gigi was happy just being Gigi.  Her legs no longer
mattered.  Her heart was full.  And she loved Franz.  But Franz
was not satisfied.  He wanted more from Gigi.  He figured he was
just the guy who could fix her.
     "Fix me?  I don't need to be fixed!" she said, pushing him
away from her as they lay in bed.
     But Franz was intent on "fixing" Gigi.  He was, after all,
working on bioelectro stimulation of human muscle groups.  He had
successfully gotten the American football star, Joe "The Foot"
Nonameworthy, after Joe had become a paraplegic, to kick again. 
The NFL and AFL had fought in court over whether or not it was
legal for a "device" to be used to "enhance" a player's ability
to kick a football.  But after several years the decision had
come down: under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the
"device" was considered simply as providing equal access.
     Still, Franz knew it was one thing to get a football
player's legs to kick and quite another thing to get Gigi's
sensations to function as other women's did.
     And there were always risks, "side effects."  Franz
remembered how at one game Joe "The Foot" had been struck by
lightening, shorting out his "device."  As a result, "The Foot"
had kicked the football so hard, it had killed a cheerleader
named Cindy Sue.  But that was just a fluke.  An act of God.  It
had nothing to do with sex...or Dr. Franz's plans for Gigi.  At
least that's what he thought at the time.
     "It's just a small operation," he told Gigi one night after
they had made love.
     "Brain surgery is never a small operation, Franz," Gigi
said.  "I don't know if I want to try something so...new."
     Yet Franz was persistent.  He wanted Gigi to be a "normal"
woman.  And so eventually Gigi agreed to undergo the operation.
     As Franz was listening to his American hero Rush Limbaugh on
the radio in Operating Room Number 2, the surgeon implanted a
"small" computer chip in Gigi's brain.  It was a successful
operation.  Franz was excited.  He couldn't wait to see the
change he had made in Gigi.
     "I love you," he said, three weeks later, after he removed
the bandage from Gigi's left ear.
     "What did you say?"
     "I said, I love you," he whispered in her right ear.
     "Hey!  I can't hear a thing with my left ear!"
     "I know.  No big deal."
     "What?  What do you mean no big deal?!"
     Franz told Gigi that he had had to remove her left ear drum,
the ossicles, the cochlea, the vestibule, the semicircular canal,
the utriculus, the sacculus, and her auditory nerve to insert his
"small" chip.
     "Just look at it now as if you are a normal woman."
     "Ha?  What did you say?"
     "You might also experience a little ringing in your ear,
some dizziness..." he said, smiling.
     "WHAT?!"
     "But what's one ear and a little ringing when you'll finally
be able to walk, make love and --"
     "WHAT??? I can't hear you!"
     "ER......"
     "You asshole!  What about my music?  My dancing?  MY
STEREO???"
     Franz confessed that his chip was not that perfect yet.  She
might be able to do a wobbly two-step, but a pas de deux was out
of the question right now.  Perhaps in twenty years.  And she'd
have to be happy with mono instead of stereo.
     "You JERK!"
     "I love you."
     "What?!"
     "I SAID LOVE YOU," he yelled into her right ear.
     Gigi jumped.  She was furious.  But after she found she
could indeed walk and do a two-step, although a bit awkwardly,
she began to come around.  And she also noticed her sensations
were, in fact, pretty good.  There was one "small" glitch,
however: Gigi would be awaken at night each time the ham radio
operator next door began to talk on his transceiver.  Her legs
would twitch.  What was even odder was her urge to kick a
football.  But these things she never told Franz.  She hadn't
slept with him since her surgery.  She had slept alone in her own
apartment, miles away.
     "I want to make love to you, Gigi." said Franz.
     "What?"
     "I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU!"
     Gigi smiled.  She thought of the "small" glitch in her chip,
but she figured Franz lived miles away from her apartment and her
ham operator neighbor.  What could possibly go wrong?  So Gigi
agreed to make love with Franz.  After all, she enjoyed sex,
especially now.  And Franz was cute.  And, in ways, Gigi couldn't
wait to try out her new legs and her "electric" sensations with a
man, with Franz.  She did miss him.  Or was it just the intimacy
she missed?  Whatever it was, that afternoon Gigi and Franz made
love.
     "Oh, God!  Gigiiiiiiiiiii!  Ooooohhhhh, Gigi!  You feel so
good.  And your legs.  Ooooohhhhh, they're holding me so close."
     Franz continued to moan, faster and faster.  Suddenly his
eyes opened wide and he screamed in agony.  
     The doctors said Franz's "maleness" looked as if it had been
run over by a ten-ton truck.  It was beyond repair, and slightly
singed.
     Gigi felt terrible.  But how was she to know a new Talk
Radio Station had gone on the air the very moment she and Franz
were making love?  It was located in the building next to Franz's
apartment.  And on that very afternoon as Franz made love to
Gigi, the radio station kicked off its broadcast schedule with
Rush Limbaugh.  Just as Rush started to blast 50,000 watts of
talk into the ether, Gigi's legs twitched so hard...well, you
know the rest of the story.