“Goddamn bunch of pansies!” he yelled at the TV as a Mariner hit into a double play. Beside him a glass of lemonade sat untouched so long the ice was melted.
“Jack, your language,” came drifting out of the kitchen.
He shot an irritated look in that direction for a moment and then turned to me. “There’s no hope,” he told me.
“No?” I asked carefully.
“None,” he assured me. “Well don’t just stand there. Have a seat. Watch this pathetic excuse for a game with me until dinner. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
“Okay,” I said, heading to the couch. Nina came with me. When she sat down she did it inexpertly, since she was not used to wearing a dress. It hiked all the way up to mid-thigh before she shifted and pulled it back down. It took every ounce of my willpower to keep from gazing at this directly, instead of with my peripheral vision. Somehow I managed.
Jack saw my struggle. I know he did. I think I gained a point or two with him.
He continued to explain the finer points of baseball to me as we sat there, while Nina looked bored. His conversation was peppered with the occasional “goddamn”, which was always answered by an admonishment from Mary in the kitchen, no matter how softly he muttered it. Each admonishment was met with an irritated stare back towards the kitchen.
When Mary called us to dinner we sat down at the table, Nina seated next to me. We dug into delicately basted and roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, and homemade biscuits. It was all as wonderful as I remembered it. Many boys, when taking dinner with their girlfriend’s family for the first time make the mistake of only eating one helping for fear of looking like a pig. I did no such thing. I ate until I was stuffed, refilling my plate twice. It wasn’t hard to do. I knew I’d earned some brownie points with Mary.
We pushed away our plates at last and Jack stifled a burp, an action that earned him a sharp look from his wife but no verbalization.
“Great dinner, Mare,” he told her affectionately, patting his stomach. “Up to your usual standards.”
“I agree,” I put in. “Your chicken was divine.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” she said tonelessly, though obviously pleased with the praise. She stood up. “Let me start clearing the table.”
While she began picking up the dishes Jack turned to me. “Chicken is good,” he told me. “Especially the way Mary does it, but there’s nothing like fresh meat you’ve brought down yourself. You like venison?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I’ve never had it.”
He looked at me in disbelief for a moment. “You’ve never had venison?”
“Never,” I said. “My dad doesn’t hunt.”
“So you’ve never had elk either?”
“Never.”
“Boy,” he said, “you’ve lived in Spokane all of your life and you’ve never had venison or elk?”
I shook my head.
“Amazing,” he said, staring. “So you don’t have a hunting rifle then?”
“I’ve never fired a gun in my life,” I told him.
“Bill,” he said seriously, “you and I are going to have to take a little trip one of these Octobers over to the panhandle. You’re not one of those goddamn animal rights activists are you?”
“Jack,” Mary warned from the sink.
“No,” I told him, wondering if he was really offering to take me hunting. Was this the same man who had stormed my house on New Years Day? “I suppose I’ve never been hunting before because my dad has never been hunting before. There was nobody to show me how to do it. I’d really like to learn how if you’d teach me.”
He nodded, smiling. “The first October you have free, you come see me,” he said. “We’ll get you a rifle and a license and we’ll head up. I’ll show you what it’s really all about.”
“That’ll be cool,” I answered truthfully. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
________________________________________
“I think Mom and Dad are actually starting to like you,” Nina told me as we drove towards downtown and the theater building.
“Yeah,” I agreed, resting my hand on her nyloned knee. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“They’re starting to see you as I do. Especially Daddy.”
I looked over at her. “I’m not gonna have to kiss him, am I?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe he’s a good kisser. He’s certainly done it more than I have.”
“Well, maybe we’ll play a little catch-up tonight,” I suggested slyly.
“Maybe we will,” she answered back, just as slyly.
We both enjoyed the play immensely. Nina because it was the first time she’d seen a live play and because the story was both romantic and tragic, elements she loved in her art. Me because it was one of my favorite productions and because I was seeing it with Topol, the Russian Jew who played the part in the movie, cast as the lead character, something I’d never been able to see in my previous life. The acting and singing were magnificent and by the end Nina had tears streaming down her cheeks as the Jews were forced from their village. I myself had to stifle tears despite having seen the play and the movie multiple times before.
We joined the throngs exiting the theater and made our way to my car, walking hand in hand, talking about what we’d just seen as we went. Nina went on and on about the story, the plot, the acting, the thrill of seeing it live. I was glad that I was there to share this first experience with her, to hear her reactions to it.
When we reached my Datsun I opened the door for her and she sat down. Her skirt rode up again as she did this, reaching well above mid-thigh. This time there was no father to think about and my eyes drank in the sight of her legs, clad in dark nylon and spread just a tad. I felt warmth spreading to various parts of my body as I witnessed this.
Nina saw where my eyes were glued and she smiled, pulling down her skirt demurely. “What were you looking at?” she asked teasingly.
“A work of art,” I told her, making her blush.
I got into my side of the car and started it up, heading for the freeway. My hand dropped to her left knee, leaving it only to shift gears.
“It’s still early,” Nina told me, glancing at her watch.
I looked at mine, seeing it was shortly after ten o’clock. “Kind of,” I agreed.
“It’s a nice night,” she said next, looking at me, her own hand dropping to my thigh.
“That it is,” I answered, suppressing a smile.
Silence developed. Finally she said, “So why don’t we go find a nice place to sit for a while and just look at the stars and the moon?”
“The stars and the moon?” I asked lightly.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “They’re very pretty tonight. I’d like to look at them. Surely you know a place where we can look at them alone.”
I grinned, nodding slowly. “I think I know such a place,” I said, putting on the gas a little.
“I thought you might.”
The place was a little used park near the falls, almost directly across the river from the larger park where the high school students liked to have their keggers. As a matter of fact we could hear the faint hoots and howls and drunken laughter mixed with the indecipherable sounds of car stereos drifting over the roar of the falls towards us. A kegger was going on as we sat there.
I had long since removed my tie and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. I’d also thrown my jacket in the back of the car. We walked over to a picnic table and sat on the surface of it, our feet resting on the wooden seat, looking out at the falling water, smelling the mist. Our hands intertwined gently and we simply looked for a while, not speaking. There was a light breeze, warm enough to keep us from shivering and the sound of thousands of crickets chirping came from behind us. The stars and the moon were shining in the sky.
“It really is a beautiful night,” I offered, edging a little closer to her.
“Yes,” she agreed, letting her head fall to my shoulder. “It’s too bad we don’t have a blanket or something so we could lie on the ground and really look at the stars. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I have the blanket in my trunk from when we went on the picnic last month,” I offered, thanking whatever gods there was that I was a lousy housekeeper.
Nina gulped and then raised her head back up. “Really?”
“Really,” I said seriously.
“Break it out.”
We spread it about fifty yards away from the car, near the cliff that led to the river below the falls. When the wind blew right a fine spray of mist would hit us delicately. We lay down on our backs, about a foot apart, our hands together, our heads looking upwards.
“Do you like astronomy?” she asked me, her thumb tracing circles around the back of my hand.
I shrugged. “I’ve read a little on it,” I told her, only semi-lying. In my previous life I’d taken an astronomy course in college as a science elective. That had been in my pot-smoking days. There’s nothing like getting stoned and heading up to the college’s observatory in the middle of the night. I got an A in the class.
“So have I,” she told me. “I bet I can name more stars than you.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What’s the bet?”
“Loser has to kiss the winner until they say to stop,” she offered.
I nodded, feeling my penis stir in my suit pants. “You’ve got yourself a bet.”
She pointed to the most obvious. “Polaris,” she said.
I pointed to another. “Regulus,” I told her, pulling out my big guns.
“Amateur,” she scoffed, pointing again. “Betelgeuse.”
“Not bad,” I allowed, pointing at a fuzzy blur. “You see that one?”
“Which one?”
Gently I took her face in my hands and pointed it in the direction I was looking. “That red one over there about ten degrees west of Cassiopeia.”
“I see it,” she said, looking at me instead of the star.
“That’s Mars,” I said firmly.
“No it’s not,” she told me. “Mars is a planet and the planets are all in the ecliptic. Besides, Mars isn’t visible right now.”
“It’s not Mars?” I asked innocently.
“No.”
“Bummer,” I said. “I guess I lose then.”
We stared at each other in the moonlight. “I guess you do,” she told me, angling her face towards mine.
There was no slow build up to our kisses, our tongues found each other in the first two seconds while our arms and hands pulled our bodies together. I felt the scratchy material of her dress beneath my hands, the outline of her bra straps bulging from beneath. Her hands yanked the back of my dress shirt out of my pants and then plunged beneath it, her manicured nails scratching at my back.
I rolled her onto her back, pressing my body to hers and began to kiss her neck, inhaling the perfume she’d applied, working my way down to the hollow of her throat. She arched her back as I kissed her there, licking lightly with my tongue, tasting her delicate skin.
“I’ve missed this so much,” she told me breathlessly as my hand slid up her flank and across the bulge of her right breast.
“Have you?” I muttered, nipping at her skin lightly, my fingers coming to rest on the silver button at the front of her dress. It was cool to the touch, round, and I swirled around it, playing with it.
“Yes,” she said, kissing the top of my head, her hands pulling free from my shirt.
Slowly I undid the button, leaving a gap in the front of her dress. She smiled, arching her back a little more. My fingers dropped to the second button. In the moonlight I could now make out the top of her bra and the upper swell of her breasts. I leaned my head down and kissed her chest, just above this, running my tongue down to the top of her bra. She shivered in delight, pulling me closer. I undid the remaining buttons, spreading the dress wide open, so her entire bra was visible to me.
I let my mouth travel between her breasts, feeling the cotton material pressing into my flesh and then I began to kiss her ribcage below the bra cups; teasing, soft kisses punctuated with licks. Nina moaned softly at the sensation, her fingers finding my hair. I worked my way back and forth beneath her breasts, my mouth kissing every inch of the exposed skin of her chest. Occasionally I would rub my cheek across her bra cup and feel the material and the protrusion of her nipples sliding across.
Finally my hands slid behind her back and found the clasp of her bra. With a quick flick it was undone. I slid my hands back around to the front and pushed upward, moving the now-loosened bra off her breasts, baring them. I looked at them in the moonlight, seeing the rigid nipples, seeing how they heaved up and down with her excited respiration.
“They’re beautiful,” I told her softly. “I’d like to kiss them.”
“Ohh,” she groaned, pulling my head down.
I took the right nipple in my mouth, sucking on it gently, as I had in the car that night. I swirled my tongue around it, suckled it, kissed it, made it stand out proudly before I switched to the other one. Nina held me firmly to her as my hand dropped down and landed on her knee, where it began squeezing and caressing through the nylon. Slowly I began to slide my hand upward.
I was ready to halt the exploration of my hand at the slightest sign of protest but I received none. Her legs slowly parted, encouraging further travel. I shifted to the inside, my digits trailing over the smooth nylon and tight muscle of her thigh. I reached the hem of her dress and slowly continued onward. She opened her legs wider. I squeezed her inner thigh, marveling at the feel of her legs in pantyhose and then the back of my hand reached the junction of her legs; the panty portion of the hose. I felt dampness against my knuckles and Nina drew in a sharp breath, pushing her crotch into me.
Continuing to suck her breasts I let my hand turn over so my fingers were now touching her. I felt the wet material and the outline of her swollen lips. I pushed slightly, making circles around the area, memorizing the feel of this moment, making out the bulge of her clit through the thin layer of clothing.
“Oh God,” Nina moaned, her hips bucking a little. “That feels so good.”
I raised my head from her breasts and moved it back up, so I was staring in her eyes. They were shining and very excited.
“It’s not supposed to feel bad,” I whispered to her, bringing my lips to hers once more.
Her tongue plunged into my mouth, attacking mine viciously, her lips sucking it into her mouth. Her hand slid down to my crotch and began to squeeze my erection through my dress pants, making my own hips begin an involuntary rhythm.
My fingers left her junction and continued upward, across her lower stomach, seeking and finding the top of her pantyhose just under her belly button. I slid one finger beneath the elastic, touching her bare stomach, letting it slide back and forth along the edge.
“Yes,” she whispered into my mouth, sucking my upper lip, running her tongue along my teeth.
I pushed downward once again, this time beneath the pantyhose, my fingers feeling the soft flesh of her lower stomach and finally encountering coarse, curly hair. I pushed onward and she spread her legs even more. I touched warm wetness and smooth lips, felt the erect clit and then my middle finger was resting against her lips. Her crotch began to push upward against my hand, demanding more, so I gave it to her. My middle finger slowly slid into her tight warmth, her membranes clutching at me greedily. It slid in easily, lubricated by her copious juices. She was tight, tighter than anything I’d ever felt before, tight enough that I worried if intercourse was even possible with her.
“Oh, Bill,” she moaned, squeezing me extra hard. Suddenly her fingers were fumbling with my belt. She pulled the end free of the loop and gave a sharp yank, freeing the buckle.
“Nina?” I asked, panting.
“I want to feel it,” she told me, nipping at my neck.
I nodded and her fingers popped open the button on my pants. She yanked the zipper down and plunged her hand inside, diving beneath my underwear. Suddenly her cool, eager fingers were around my cock, feeling it, touching it, moving harshly over it while her hips continued to move up and down under my own fingers.
She was inexpert at the job but that didn’t matter. The feel of her hand on my bare flesh was thrilling enough, the thought that she was touching me intimately driving me on. I let my finger slide out of her a little and I began pushing against her clit, rubbing my hand in circles.
“Ohhhh!” she moaned, her own hand becoming erratic and finally dropping away from me. “Yesss, Bill!” she cried, grabbing my forearm and pulling it harder into her. Her hips were now blurring up and down, moving with instinctive force. Her juices were soaking me as I rubbed her clit and slid my digit in and out.
She lost the ability to speak coherently. She only moaned and said things like, “Ohhhh yesss, ohhhhh Bill, ooooh.” Finally she arched upward and all of her muscles tightened. Her fingernails bit into my forearm painfully and from her lips came: “Mmmmm!”
I continued to rub her until she relaxed once more, her butt dropping back down to the blanket. A contented sigh escaped from her lips and she looked up at me. Slowly I pulled my hand from her crotch. It was dripping wet and I resisted the urge to put it to my nose, to inhale her special scent for the first time.
“Wow,” she muttered, taking deep breaths.
“Are you okay?” I asked gently, a little worried that I’d overwhelmed her.
“Yesss,” she breathed. “That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt. Having you do it is much better than…” She stopped suddenly, realizing what she was saying.
I must say that I was shocked by her words. “Better than what?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Though it was very dim lighting I could tell she was blushing again. “Well,” she said, giggling a little, “you know? After our other, uh, sessions, I had to do something to get myself to sleep at night. There’s nothing wrong with it you know.”
No there was nothing wrong with it. In fact the mental image of Nina laying in her bed and masturbating herself was so powerful and erotic that I nearly came just thinking about it. For some reason I just hadn’t considered the possibility that she was doing that, although my first act upon returning home was a quick session with my five best friends.
“I think that’s very sexy,” I told her.
She giggled again. “Now you know one of my secrets. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Of course not,” I said, laughing. Who would I tell? Her Dad? Her Mom?
“It’s just embarrassing,” she said, her hand touching my cheek. “But it was nothing like it felt when you did it to me just now. I mean, wow.” She shook her head.
“I’m glad I could help,” I said, kissing her lips.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you ever, you know?”
“Masturbate?” I asked teasingly.
“Well, yes.”
Now had I been a normal teenager I wouldn’t have admitted it under torture. I would have claimed that I’d never so much as laid a finger on my penis, not even to pee, not even to wash it. Teenagers have a horror of being discovered masturbating. But I was not an ordinary teenager and I knew that women were as turned on by the thought of a guy jerking off as guys were thinking about women doing it.
“All the time,” I told her. “Especially after one of our sessions. Especially then.”
“Really?” she asked, her eyes shining with arousal again.
“Really,” I assured her. “After we make out I have to. You see, when I’m uh, turned on for a long time without uh, relief, it actually causes pain if I don’t.”
“You mean blue balls?” she said clinically.
I laughed. “Nina, you never fail to surprise me,” I told her. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
“So every time you and I have made out you’ve gone home and…”
“Whacked off,” I confirmed.
“Wow,” she whispered, licking her lips. “What do you think about when you do it?”
“You,” I said. “Making love to you.”
She gulped, her eyes drifting down to my dick, which was still protruding through my pants, as erect as it could be. “So you’re going to do that tonight when you get home?” she asked.
“First thing,” I answered.
She hesitated for a second. “Maybe I could, you know, do it for you?”
“What?” I asked, my dick giving a twitch at the thought.
“You did it for me,” she said, sliding her hand over my chest. “The least I could do is return the favor, right?”
I swallowed. “Well… if you really want to…”
“I do,” she whispered, pushing me onto my back. “Just tell me how to do it.”
She reached out and grasped me once more, encircling my shaft with her fingers.
“Do I move it up and down?” she asked, doing just that.
“Yeah,” I breathed, lost in the sensation of her hand upon me. I directed her to move it upward a little more and to increase her speed and loosen her grip. Eager to learn, she complied. Her hand stroked me softly, finally gaining speed as my hips began to move up and down.
“Involuntary action of voluntary muscles,” she said, watching this phenomenon. She speeded up, increasing the pressure.
“Uh huh,” I grunted.
“How much will come out?” she asked me, just as I started to feel the tingles running up my spine.
“A lot at this point,” I groaned, actually humping her hand.
“Yeah?”
“Yeahhhhhh!” I breathed. “I’m gonna…”
She watched intently as orgasm assaulted me and my dick began to spurt jet after jet of pent up semen from the head. I groaned in pleasure, the exquisite feeling of relief, doubled by the fact that it was not my hand that was providing it. It shot straight up and landed on my stomach, my pants, my shirt. It covered Nina’s hand, running down the back of it, sticking to her fingers. The blue ball sensation, which had been building in my testicles, was relieved in an instant.
When the last bit dribbled out Nina removed her hand and looked at it. “Wow,” she said. “That was very sexy, Bill. Can we do that again sometime?”
“You bet,” I agreed, basking in the afterglow.
It took a few minutes to clean ourselves up. There was a hopeless stain on my dress pants that would require a dry cleaner to remove but Nina had somehow managed to only wrinkle her dress and run her pantyhose in one spot. It was high on her thigh, probably a result of my hand being in there and her mother would most likely not notice it.
When we were composed we kissed each other one more time and carried the blanket back to my car. From across the river the sound of the kegger continued. I smiled as I thought that I’d just had much more fun than most of them would have and that I wouldn’t wake up with a hangover as a result.
We talked of inconsequential things on the drive home, both of us still glowing from the experience we had just shared, both of us realizing that things were moving forward in our relationship. I gave her a long, luxuriant kiss goodnight at her front door, not even caring that her mother was probably watching, and then watched her until she was safely inside.
I drove home to a darkened house, my parents already in bed. I went directly to bed, smiling as I fell asleep.
__________________________________________________ _
I need to get some things done now bros.. will try to post the rest up asap.
Thank you to those bros who up my points to me to continue the story.
wonderful… keep them coming… glad to see tat Mr Blackmore survived his heart attack n the Blackmores are accepting Jack… can’t wait for the next instalment…
Great story.. guess next part will be even more exciting.. This couple is getting their way there.. Hahahah
Bro whiskynaam… no more????
Quick!!! Post all of them ASAP… otherwise I want a refund of my point!
Sorry sorry bros… got new development in my life..
so abit busy la.. will post asap.
Here goes!
Graduation night came at last. We put on our dress clothes and then covered them with gowns. We put stupid looking hats on our heads and filed into the school auditorium where our parents were assembled. We listened to a bunch of boring speeches by the principal, a guest speaker, and the school valedictorian, Carrie Founder, who had an appointment with a good-looking loser and an overdose of anti-depressants in her future. She rattled on and on so long that she began receiving catcalls from her bored peers. At last we filed across the stage where the principal read our names from a little card we each discreetly slipped to him and he then handed us a fake roll of paper with a ribbon attached to it. Our real diplomas, we were promised, would come in the mail in a week or so. Flashbulbs exploded from the audience like strobe lights.
Nina, Mike, and I hung together through all of this, passing the occasional comment under our breaths, Nina and I holding hands for much of the night. We got our fake diplomas and returned to our seats, watching, catatonic, as the rest of our class marched through one by one. Why are these so-called “great memories” that people go on and on about-graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs-so damn dull while you’re actually sitting through them? Most of the students, myself included, were looking forward to what came after the ceremony.
The school was of course sponsoring a graduation party. It was to be at a local community center and was touted as a fun-filled celebration with dancing, music, and food in a safe, alcohol-free environment. Of course no one but the geekiest planned to be there, although many had claimed to their parents that was where they were going. The real party was to be at the falls where three kegs were being brought in for the occasion. Marijuana sales had also gone through the roof in the preceding two days.
When the ceremony was over everyone headed out to the parking lot. Hundreds of students and parents hugged each other, slapped each other on the back, shook hands, posed for the obligatory pictures, and generally congratulated each other on surviving the Spokane Public School System with their lives and sanity intact. Then the parents began to drift to their cars, leaving the students to their own devices. Of course the memory of Lisa Sanchez’s untimely death on the previous graduation night was strong among the parents. Admonishments to be careful, and not to drink and drive, and other worried comments echoed through the parking lot followed by the reassurances of those who thought themselves immortal.
Even my dad, knowing what he did about me, was worried.
“You’ll be okay tonight, Bill?” he asked as we stood next to his car.
“You bet, Dad,” I told him. “I’m going to be the designated driver tonight. I’ll get everyone home safe.”
He nodded slowly and then climbed into the car, Mom beside him. They drove off and I returned to Nina, who was standing with her own parents.
“Congratulations, Bill,” Jack told me, holding out his hand. I shook it and then received a surprise when Mary, repeating his words, actually stepped forward and hugged me.
“Thank you,” I told both of them, giving Mary my best hug before she released me.
“Where are you two going tonight?” Jack asked next.
“Oh, just to a party,” Nina replied vaguely.
Jack gave her a knowing look. “And will there be drinking at this party?” he asked.
Nina hesitated and was probably about to give him a pathetic lie. Nina was not a very good liar, particularly to her parents. But I jumped in.
“There certainly will be,” I said.
Nina looked sharply at me, her expression disbelief. Jack and Mary also seemed surprised.
“It’s graduation night,” I went on. “I believe that the law states you must drink on graduation night. But have no fear. I’m driving and I take that very seriously. I’ll get Nina home safely, I promise.”
“You’re not going to drink?” Jack asked, skeptical.
“Maybe a beer or two at the beginning,” I answered, “but I’ll be sober when it’s time to come home. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Jack told me, his eyes boring into me. “Remember what I told you about my daughter. She’s the only one I got.”
“And remember what I told you about your daughter,” I shot back. “She’ll be safe with me. Won’t you, Nina?”
“Of course,” she said softly, watching the exchange and realizing it was taking place on a level she was not a part of.
Jack and Mary finally climbed in their car and drove off. Nina and I went to find Mike, who was explaining to his parents how he was going to the school sponsored party where no alcohol was allowed. His parents were reassured by this and were smiling as they entered their own car. When they were gone we all looked at each other.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Fuckin aye!” Mike put in happily.
We climbed into my car and headed for the falls.
I must say that it was very eerie being at the party. You see, I’d attended it before when I’d graduated the first time in my previous life. The only differences were the presence of Mike, who had not graduated before, and Nina, who had not been a member of the party-group before. Aside from that, everything was the same. Everything.
The kegs were scattered throughout the parking lot as they had been before, lines of people, still dressed in their dress clothes, winding their way to the tap to fill their cups. The same cooperative effort with the car stereos had occurred, with everyone agreeing to tune them to the local rock station and not to play any tapes. The music of Van Halen, Foreigner, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osborne, and others marched by and I was almost able to predict which song was coming next. The conversations were the same and though I hadn’t memorized them on my first trip through, hearing them as I went by it was uncanny how much my subconscious had absorbed seventeen years before. It was a little like being in the middle of a dream, one of those dreams you have of prior events in your life, but never had the sensation of déjà vu been so strong.
Nina, Mike and I paid our money and had our hands stamped. I quickly drank down three beers, giving myself a pleasant, non-dangerous buzz. The alcohol was able to dampen the sensation a little but not completely. It was very disquieting.
Mike of course was hitting the keg as fast as he could, filling his cup and then walking immediately to the back of the line. By the time he reached the tap again, his cup would be empty. He then repeated the process. He also had several joints with him, which he shared with those in line around him. It was less than an hour before he was hopelessly wasted. This was not surprising.
What was surprising was the fact that Nina was sticking with him and doing the exact same thing. She was drinking beer like water and hitting every joint or pipe that was passed her way. I’d never seen her do anything like this before.
“You might want to slow down a little,” I suggested to her as she came staggering over to me after her latest trip through the keg line. She was weaving and unsteady on her feet, spilling some of her beer on her arm.
“Fuck it!” she said, giggling. “I’m having a good time tonight. How many times in your life do you graduate?”
I nodded. “Good point. But be careful. If you keep up this pace you’re going to be unconscious before too long.”
She reached down and grabbed my cock through my pants, making me jump and look around to see if anyone had seen it. A few had, and they turned away, smirking.
“Nina!” I admonished, pushing her hand away.
“I’m not gonna pass out until I get what I want,” she grinned, taking a huge drink of her beer.
Apparently Nina wasn’t the only one whose inhibitions were being destroyed by alcohol. Every time she walked away from me some girl would come up and strike up a conversation. Most of them were girls that I’d bedded before during my “male-slut” period. Most of them made no bones about what they wanted.
I’d run into this before of course. When I stopped making my rounds and committed myself to Nina a lot of the girls continued to approach me for a while. They always used the line that I was used to, that they needed help “studying” and had heard that I was an awesome tutor. I would tell each one the same thing, that I had a girlfriend now and that my tutoring days were over. It hadn’t taken long before the grapevine had informed all but the most aggressive that I was out of circulation. Even the most aggressive gave up after a while. But the party atmosphere and the alcohol had renewed a lot of the aggression. I believe I gave up more sex that night than I ever would have thought possible.
One girl, Jessica Round, was especially persistent. She would not take no for an answer. I remembered her well. A redhead that was a member of the elite, she’d been well versed in sexual technique before I ever got to her. She had been one of my favorites both because of her staggering good looks and because of the fact that she was on birth control pills, which made a condom unnecessary. She had been one of the longest holdouts when I’d dropped out of circulation.
Three times she approached me when Nina was getting her beer refilled or heading off to the porta-can to pee. On the third time she became nasty in her suggestions.
“C’mon,” she pleaded, burping a little as she sipped from her beer. “I haven’t had my pussy eaten with any skill since I came over to your house that time. Ditch that little lisping, skinny chick you’re with and take a walk with me.” She grinned. “You won’t be sorry.”
I bit back my anger for a second and took a deep breath. An idea came to me.
“Listen, Jess,” I said softly, conspiratorially, “Nina and I are pretty much committed now so I can’t really do that.”
“Nina,” she scoffed. “What does that…”
“But…” I said.
“But?” she asked hopefully.
“Well, I couldn’t really take myself out of circulation without finding a suitable replacement, could I?”
She looked at me fuzzily. “What do you mean?”
I pointed at Mike, who was standing among a group of guys near the keg. They were all looking at the passing females with admiration and probably explaining to each other which one’s they’d fucked, how they’d done it, and when they’d done it. A joint was being passed around while they conversed.
“You see Mike Meachen over there?” I asked her.
“Yeah?” she asked confused.
“He’s even better at it than I am.”
“Mike Meachen?” she asked, scowling.
“I’ve lectured him on the proper study techniques so that my name could live on. You get him to go for a walk with you and you won’t be sorry.”
“Mike Meachen?” she repeated again.
“Trust me on this, Jess. He’s good. All you have to do is tell him exactly what you want him to do, and he’ll do it. Be specific. He doesn’t mind. He aims to please.”
She appraised him for a moment. “Well,” she said, “he is kinda cute.”
“Would I steer you wrong?” I asked. “Sensual pleasure is just waiting for you.” I winked. “And of course, he’s just as discreet as me. So go get him.”
She smiled drunkenly. “Okay,” she announced. “Thanks, Bill.”
She headed off in his direction. Nina returned a moment later, carrying a fresh beer. Her gait was very unsteady now and her eyes were glassy.
“What were you talking to Jessica for?” she asked with distaste and more than a little suspicion.
I shrugged. “She’s kind of aggressive,” I told her. “So I directed her attention elsewhere.”
“You’ve, uh… done her before?” Nina asked.
“Nina…” I started, uncomfortable.
“I only ask because she used to come up to me all the time and ask what the deal was with you. And then she started asking me if I liked the ‘vacuum cleaner’ treatment. She’s a ho.”
“I agree,” I said. “And I’m sorry you had to deal with her. She’s from a previous life, Nina.”
Nina nodded, kissing my cheek. Her breath smelled of beer. “Okay,” she said. “So what’s she doing over there with Mike?”
“Watch and see,” I said happily, taking the cup out her hand and taking a quick drink.
It didn’t take long. Less than thirty minutes in fact. I couldn’t hear what was being said but suddenly the attractive redhead joined the group that Mike was a part of. The other guys tried to flirt with her of course but she only had eyes for Mike. Within ten minutes she was rubbing against his arm. Within fifteen she was pushing her breasts into his back and shoulder. Within twenty he accompanied her to the keg and refilled her glass. There was one more whispered conversation and the two of them walked off into the woods, holding hands, carrying their beers with them. Even from my vantage I could tell that Mike was nervous. Again I found myself wondering if he’d ever actually been laid before. Oh well. He was about to get laid now.
“How did you do that?” Nina asked me, weaving a little.
“I can do anything I set my mind to,” I told her. “Anything.”
She leaned forward and kissed me again. Then she looked up. “I’m very drunk, Bill.”
“I know,” I said. “But you only graduate once, right?”
Mike and Jessica emerged from the woods about forty minutes later. Both were staggering and holding onto each other, their hair mussed up, their clothes wrinkled. Both were smiling. That was a surprise. Had Mike done a good job on her? Maybe a combination of her drunkenness and her instructions to him had done the trick. She seemed happy, which hadn’t exactly been my goal, but so did Mike. They hit the keg again and then split up, Jess heading over to a group of her friends, Mike heading over to his. It wasn’t a minute before he began his description of what just happened to him. By morning her reputation would be shot. Cruel? Maybe. But so had been the way she’d talked about Nina.
By this time Nina had gone back to the keg herself and was having difficulty standing. She giggled at everything and her words were slurred. She rubbed her body against mine shamelessly, pushing her breasts into my arm, grabbing my butt.
“I think you’d better lay off the beer,” I told her carefully, holding her up.
“Everything is starting to spin a little,” she admitted. “But I’m having such a good time.”
“When things start to spin,” I suggested, “that should be your warning sign that you’ve had too much. Believe me, you want to quit.”
“Then take a walk with me,” she said. “Let’s go into the woods like the other couples have.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I told her.
“Why?” she burped, nearly falling. “I want to make love under the stars. Come on, Bill…” she kissed my neck, nipping at it, “… let’s go.”
“Not tonight,” I insisted.
“Don’t I turn you on anymore?” she pouted.
“Very much,” I told her. “But I want your first time to be special. Doing it in the woods on a bunch of pine needles while you’re drunk would not be special. Do you want your life-long memory of your first time to be, well, nothing? Because believe me, Nina, you won’t remember anything that’s happened tomorrow.”
She looked at me for a moment and was about to say something else when her face suddenly soured. “I’m gonna throw up,” she said matter-of-factly.
She was right. I led her over to the edge of the woods, out of sight of everyone else, and she began vomiting up great gluts of beer. It went on for several minutes and I held her up while she did it. For the first time I began to worry about what her parents were going to think when I brought her home. Her dad would kill me.
I led her over to my car and placed her in the passenger seat.
“Sit right here,” I told her. “And if you need to throw up again, just do it outside, okay?”
She groaned in reply, but it was an affirmative groan. I headed back to the party to try and collect Mike.
Mike wasn’t in much better condition. He was sitting on one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed, concentrating intently.
“You okay, Mike?” I asked him.
“I feel sick,” he said. “I’m trying not to barf.”
“C’mon,” I told him, grabbing him by the arm. “Let’s get you back to the car. I’ll help you.”
He leaned heavily on me as we walked.
“Guess what, dude?” he burped, tripping and nearly falling.
“What?”
“I fucked Jessica Round tonight.”
“Yeah?” I asked, knowing I was hearing a true pussy story for once.
“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I ate her pussy and everything. That bitch was hot for it. She kept tellin’ me what she wanted me to do.”
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“Goddamn right,” he affirmed. He then went on to describe the encounter in greater detail. By the time we got to the car I had the high points.
“Oh, dude,” he moaned as we reached my trunk. “Take me home.”
“You need to do something for me first,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Stick your finger down your throat.”
“What?” he demanded, holding onto the trunk to keep the world from spinning out from under him.
“Stick your finger down your throat.”
“That’ll make me throw up!” he cried.
“Right,” I acknowledged. “You’re going to do it anyway so you might as well get it over with here instead of in my car. Besides, you’ll feel better. Trust me.”
“I don’t know man,” he said doubtfully
It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced him. He staggered over a few paces, got down on his knees, and stuck his finger down his throat. A moment later he was regurgitating beer all over the place. While he did this I went to check on Nina. A fresh puddle outside the passenger door told me that she’d had another bought of vomiting. She was currently curled up in the seat, her head against the doorframe, asleep. I elected not to disturb her.
When Mike finished I loaded him into the back seat and buckled him up. I buckled up Nina and then started up the engine. I headed back to the city.
Mike was easy to get home. A few quick shakes in front of his house and a helping hand getting out of the car and he went staggering up his walkway, giving me a slurred farewell. He had some trouble getting the door open but finally figured out he was using the wrong key. Once this was rectified, he was inside. I drove off towards Nina’s house.
The Blackmore house was darkened as I pulled to the curb and shut down my engine. I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Maybe I could get her inside without awakening her parents. Beside me Nina was unconscious, snoring softly. I began to shake her gently, trying to wake her.
“Nina,” I called, using a louder and louder voice. “You’re home.”
She stirred a little but would not open her eyes. She batted at me once when I shook her a little too hard.
“Shit,” I mumbled.
I began patting down her pockets, looking for her keys. Feeling the telltale bulge in the right front of her pants, I put my hand in, having to force it the pants were so tight, and finally felt the cold metal of the keys. It took a few moments of stern yanking before they popped free. Using the dome light I searched through the ring and finally identified a likely house key.
I got out of the car and walked up to the door, quiet as a mouse, and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock. It wouldn’t turn. With a curse I pulled it out and searched through the ring again, locating another prospect. This one did the trick. I released the bolt and pulled the key free. I then tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked too. Using the first key I unlocked that and gave the knob a quick turn to make sure it would open. Knowing that Nina had a cat that was not supposed to be outside, I did not open the door just yet, although that would have made my task easier.
I quickly returned back to the car and opened the passenger door. I shoved the keys back into Nina’s pocket and then reached down and picked her up, cradling her like a baby. This was easy since she only weighed about a hundred pounds or so. Even in her stupor her arm automatically went around my neck.
Tiptoeing, I walked up to the door and, after considerable twisting and stretching, managed to get my hand on the doorknob. With the layout of the Blackmore house in my mind, giving me the fastest route to her bedroom and back out, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, prepared to make the dash.
A loud sound blared through the house. “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
My eyes looked up to the lighted box next to the front door. An alarm code box. As soon as I heard the noise and saw the box a memory came to me, a memory of the days before our breakup, when Nina’s mother used to drive us to this house after school to study. I remembered either Nina or her mother punching in a code as soon as the door was unlocked. A code that shut off the infernal beeping before the alarm would start to ring. How in the hell had I forgotten about that?
I shook her up and down, trying to rouse her. “Nina,” I whispered frantically into her ear, “what’s the code for your alarm?”
“Huh?” she croaked, her glassy eyes creaking open a quarter of an inch or so.
“What’s the damn alarm code?” I asked desperately.
She giggled. “That’s funny.” She went back to sleep.
“Nina!” I barked louder.
A bedroom door opened from down the hall. A light clicked on.
“Nina?” came Jack Blackmore’s voice. “Turn off the damn alarm! What’s the matter with you?”
Footsteps began to approach. Mary’s voice spoke up. “Jack? What’s wrong? Why is the alarm going off?”
I could only stand there as Jack came around the corner. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and was shirtless, the surgical scar on his chest standing out like a zipper. His eyes locked onto me standing there and holding his unconscious daughter in my arms.
“Christ almighty,” he muttered, tromping over. He punched in a code and the beeping fell silent.
“Jack?” came Mary’s voice from the bedroom. “Is everything all right?”
Jack looked at me carefully for a moment and then at Nina, who was snoring drunkenly again. I wondered if he was going to go get his hunting rifle and blow me away right there or if he would at least give me a running start.
“Is she okay?” he asked tonelessly.
“Uh…” I stammered.
“She smells like a damn brewery. Is she okay?”
“She had a little too much to drink,” I finally admitted.
Mary came around the corner. She was dressed in a long cotton nightgown and pulling a robe around her body. She took in the scene before her and walked carefully into the living room.
“What’s wrong with her?” she asked.
“Too much to drink,” Jack explained.
“I tried to get her to slow down,” I offered weakly. My arm muscles were starting to cry out as I stood there. I wondered if we were going to end right back up at step one again because of this?
“And you?” Jack asked me. “Have you had too much to drink too?”
I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “I only had three beers all night, and those were when we first got there. I told you I take driving very seriously.”
He nodded. “You seem sober enough,” he pointed out. “Well don’t just stand there. Go put her in her room. Mary, can you take care of her once she’s there?”
“Of course,” Mary said, shaking her head sadly and looking at her intoxicated daughter with something that looked almost like affection. Strange.
“C’mon,” Mary told me, leading the way.
“Aren’t you guys mad about this?” I finally had to ask.
They both stopped and looked at me. “Mad?” Jack asked. “Why would we be mad? You got her home safely just like you said.”
“Yeah,” I stammered, “but…”
“You mean because she’s drunk?” Mary asked next.
I nodded.
They looked at each other for a moment and chuckled knowingly.
“Bill,” Jack told me, “we’d be about the biggest hypocrites in the world if we got mad over this. Why back in our day I drug Mary home many a time carrying her just like you’re carrying Nina there.”
“And I’ve dragged Jack into the house more than my share too,” she added.
My mouth was agape as I tried to picture what they were saying.
“Drinking is a part of every young person’s life,” Mary said, reaching out to stroke Nina’s hair. “She’s free and eighteen and if she wants to drink until she vomits, that’s her prerogative. Did she vomit?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You were a lot more responsible than we used to be,” Jack told me. “Why we used to go out to parties and when it was time to go we decided who would drive by whoever had to carry the other. A couple times we woke up the next morning and the car was in the garage and we had no idea how we’d gotten home.”
They looked at each other affectionately again. “It’s a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves back then,” Mary said nostalgically. She turned to Jack. “Remember that time we woke up in someone’s house in the morning and we didn’t know where we were?”
Jack laughed fondly. “Oh yeah,” he said, turning to me. “It was back in the late fifties or thereabouts. We went to this Christmas party and got drunk out of our minds. The next thing we know, we’re waking up the next morning in chairs at someone’s dining room table. Never seen the house before in our lives.”
Mary actually giggled, to my astonishment. “And the kid!” she said. “Remember the kid?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “There was this kid eating breakfast at the table. A bowl of cereal. We’d never seen him before, had no idea who he was. He just kind of looked at us and said hi and then went back to eating. Were we hungover? Oh boy I guess we were. Our car was out front so we got into and tried to drive home but we had no idea what part of town we were in or anything.”
“It took us about twenty minutes to find a street we were familiar with,” Mary laughed.
That this story would be one of their fond marital memories seemed strange at first but I finally realized I was dealing with the alcohol generation here. In their youths alcohol use did not have the stigma it would develop in mine. Drinking was a part of every social function and was seen as a rite of passage almost. The Blackmores seemed almost proud of their daughter for having her first vomitus trip through the land of intoxication.
“This is very weird,” I couldn’t help commenting.
They offered no reply to that. Mary led me to Nina’s bedroom where I gently laid her down on her bed. She shoed me out and closed the door while she began attending to her comatose daughter. When I returned to the living room, Jack was holding two bottles of beer in his hands. He handed one to me.
“Since you didn’t get to drink at the party tonight,” he said, “I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home.”
I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest. “You’re not supposed to drink, are you?” I asked lightly.
“Screw those doctors,” he told me. “If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn’t have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me.”
“I won’t insult you by saying no,” I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.
Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn’t quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.
________________________________________
Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn’t a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80-degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.
________________________________________
The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He’d picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks preceding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn’t be mailed to him for a week, he knew he’d passed. I couldn’t doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was “Congratulations”. His score was 91 percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o’clock the afternoon of June 20.
I didn’t believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I’ve mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner’s muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence he would do so.
The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he’d gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o’clock, that something was wrong.
It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.
“I didn’t pass, dude,” he told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.
“What happened?” I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I’d failed the same test before of course but I hadn’t wanted it as badly as he did.
He sighed, shaking his head. “My legs and my endurance were fuckin’ top rate,” he said. “I lit into that course like you wouldn’t believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat. It didn’t even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledgehammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn’t even winded and my time was pushing the record.” He gave me a bitter look.
“And then what?” I asked gently.
He scowled. “I’m tellin’ you, man,” he said, “I’ve spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that’s the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren’t working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom.” He sniffed a little. “Automatic disqualification.”
I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I’d never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I’d taken it I hadn’t worked my arms either. But I’d also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position, actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.
“I’m sorry, man,” I told him. “I know how much you wanted this.”
He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. “That kinda shit happens,” he told me. “Oh well. There’s always next year, I guess. I’ll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then.”
We smoked the joint together but it didn’t improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn’t like seeing him that way.
________________________________________
As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice, the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina’s time was taken up by much of the same process.
But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my dad’s boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He’d purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it’s engine broken, its paint faded, and its hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.
I myself had owned a small boat during my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I’d finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts. But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I’d gotten Dad’s tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could. I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.
And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the “engine doesn’t work” problem my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.
He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we’d installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.