We lay together for a long while after that with our bodies still interlocked, heavily breathing, gasping, murmuring all the words of love and enslavement, exchanging warm, slow kisses of a lassitude and tenderness that was beyond passion.
Then I withdrew, and slid along her body to nestle my head on her breast. We stroked each other and sweated against each other and listened to the brook slide by.
I fell asleep, and when I woke up saw Sandy asleep too. I slid off of her and alongside her and she woke up. She smiled, the freest, happiest smile I've ever seen. I returned it. I was so overcome with joy that I threw myself against her and started to sob. I pulled away so I could see her face again and she was crying too. For once in our lives, we were happy.
We talked for a long time about nothing, about the birds and the moss and the leaves and the sun and the brook and the mosquito which landed on her ass and which I killed with a sharp whack, making Sandy scream and raising a beautiful pink splotch on her behind.
I kissed it, and sucked on the insect bite to try to reduce the swelling, but only succeeded in leaving teeth marks and another bruise.
“Was this your first time with a girl?” she asked. “This morning?”
“Yes. Your feet received my virgin seed.”
“That sounds like a poem.”
“What kind of books have you been reading?” I asked. “What about you? Have you ever done it before?”
She nodded her head. My face dropped a mile. She saw this and stroked it. “Now don't get jealous.”
“Who was the bastard? If I ever meet him I'll tear his guts out. My own sister!”
“Just a boy I met while I was at school. He took me out a lot on weekends. To drive-ins and stuff. He had a car.”
“You can always walk to drive-ins.”
“Don't get funny. His name was Don and he had red hair, a red face and freckles.”
“He sounds ugly.”
“He wasn't. He was very good-looking.”
“I'll bet.”
“If you don't want to hear about it, Terry, I'll shut up and, you can go back to Grandma.”
“I'm listening.”
“Well, we moved from the front-seat sitting position to front seat horizontal. Then to the back seat vertical to back seat lying on my back. In the process, according to the accepted rules, we went, date by date, from kissing to light petting above the waist with shirts on to light petting below the waist outside the clothes to heavy petting above the waist under the clothes to heavy petting below the waist under the clothes to heavy petting above the waist with our shirts and my bra off to heavy petting with masturbation with our clothes on to heavy petting and mutual masturbation with all our clothes off to coitus interruptus-you know what that is?”
“No.”
“It's when you pull it out before anything happens.”
“Oh. What was the next step?”
“Screwing. Just plain screwing. He used a rubber the first time, and by the time he got it on he couldn't get it in. The second night he put it on beforehand.”
“So what happened?”
“It hurt him so much he had to take it off.”
“And this was your big love?”
“I haven't finished yet. Finally one night he got it on and got it in but after about five minutes a cop car came by and we crouched down in the seat so they couldn't see us but Don got scared and couldn't do anything more so we went home. I never saw him again after that.”
“True love always ends in a tragedy.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Did he mean anything to you? Did you like him?”
“In an offhand sort of way. He was somebody to go out with. He was nice to look at, he had a car and plenty of money to spend on me. But by the time he went through the whole crazy routine of touching one part of me one night and the next part the next I got so frustrated I could scream. I don't think he even wanted me as much as I wanted him — he just wanted to prove himself on me. And what a miserable flop he turned out to be.”
“Was he the only one?”
“Until you. You're the first one, Terry, the first one to make love to me like that and make me feel like a goddess. Boy, did you learn fast. I can't believe you never did anything with a girl before.”
“I've never been much interested in them, I guess. Between you and Mommy, you make other girls look so dull and grubby. Maybe I've been saving my hymen for you.”
This broke her up for some reason I didn't understand.
“Hymen! Boys don't have hymens, that's what girls have.”
“What do boys have?”
“They don't have anything. They just squirt it all over the place from the minute they're born.”
“Oh.” I paused for a moment, wondering if I should dredge what was on my mind out of the past, or not. “There was one other thing that happened to me. I don't know if I should tell you or not.”
“What is it?”
“It happened so long ago, I'm not even sure if I want to or ought to…”
“Tell me, Terry.”
“It happened just before Daddy and Mommy busted up. He came into my room one night and he was drunk. He snapped on the light and told me that I did something wrong or said something wrong — I don't even remember what it was. He yanked me out of bed and made me take off my pyjamas and lie in his lap, face down. Then he spanked the living shit out of me. And a funny thing happened- I got very excited and had an erection. When he let me go he saw it and made me lie in his lap again- only this time, face up. And he took me with his mouth. I was scared to death. It felt good, but I was really scared he was going to bite it off. Finally he got tired, kissed me good night, apologized, made me promise not to tell anybody what happened, and he left.”
“Oh, my God, Terry. What did you do?”
“What could I do? I got scared, that's all.
Scared and ashamed. And when Daddy left I was sure it was my fault.”
“How could it have been your fault?”
“It couldn't have been, but that's the way kids think. Everything's their fault.”
“Poor Terry,” she said, and laid her head on my chest, kissing it. Her warm presence wiped away the ugly odors of the past.
“So that's my wonderful sex life. Except for one other thing.”
“What's that?” she asked.
“I used to play with myself a lot.”
“When did you stop?”
“Today.”
She ran her hand across my belly and downward. “You better stop. You've got to save it all for me.”
“Know what I thought about?”
“I don't know. What did you do? Read dirty books?”
“Nope. I thought about you.”
“You're kidding me,” she said.
“No I'm not. Everything we did today was like right out of a dream. I used to think about us on this rock all the time.”
“That's fantastic. I don't believe it.”
“Suit yourself, but it's true.”
“What about the first time? In the bathtub with the feet?”
“I never thought of that before,” I said.
“See? Look at the sun.”
“It's right overhead, just about.”
“That means it's noon, and Grandma's got lunch for us.”
“All you ever think about is eating.”
“Yup,” she said, and rolled over on top of me, pressing her breasts into my thighs and grabbing me with both her hands. She let her tongue and lips lick and brush against the red erected tip while I lay back moaning. Then she entered it into her mouth all the way to the back of her throat, running her tongue along the length of it, and withdrew, tickling the tip. She repeated the motion, repeated it again, her speed and suction increasing as she gathered momentum. Digging her nails into my buttocks she pulled me up into her and I responded by thrusting and withdrawing to her rhythm until I stopped, stiffened all the way up into her with the sun beating down onto my head.