Until I met Susan. She was a “townie,” which meant that she lived at home with her parents. That gave us more flexibility about curfew and privacy.
My problem was compounded by love. Susan and I were so infatuated with one another that we assumed from the start that we would go on seeing each other through four years of college and then get married and live happily ever after. That was not to happen, but the belief affected our sexual behavior.
Until one Saturday. I showed up early because she wanted to surprise her parents by painting the kitchen, and I had promised to help. She greeted me wearing overalls and one of her father's old shirts, the sleeves rolled up. She had snitched her hair back into a pony-tail, and wisps of it were loose around her freckled cheeks. She looked adorable, and as soon as I was in the door I pulled her into my arms and kissed her deeply, my tongue plunging. By the way her hands tugged at my shoulders, I was sure her mind was not on the planned paint job.
She was tiny. Standing on tiptoes, she had to strain to reach my lips. I put my hands under her buttocks, surprised by how small and firm they were, and lifted her to. me. Heading for the couch, I laid her down full-length in one motion, never removing my lips, my hard cock unabashedly pressing her thigh, and she clung to me, encouragingly. After a few moments of writhing on her leg I lifted my head and looked down at her, my face full of a silent question. She did not smile. Her face showed eager fear. I took that for consent.
On my knees beside the couch now, I calmly unfastened the suspenders of her overalls, flipped down the bib, and one-by-one undid each button of the long white shirt. My eyes were on hers as I did this, and I saw her sweet lips tremble, but she made no protest. Her shirt was open now, revealing a slightly padded little A-cup bra (I can say say that now, though at the time I knew little about such garments). How was I to get
that
off? Carefully, I slipped one, then the other strap over her freckled shoulders. She let them drop to assist me. She wanted this, I thought. What more does she want?
I tugged at a cup and was able to slip it off her breasts, all limp and soft and pinkish white in the dappling sunlight angling in from the window behind the couch. Freckles like a golden dust came down her chest and over the top of her breast, then stopped. Her aureole was no bigger than a quarter, the little nipple like a pink raisin. Delicately I kissed it, then brushed it with my cheek as my hand worked to free the other breast. She shuddered slightly, a shudder that traveled the length of her body, but she offered no resistance. I saw little fists clenched along her denim-covered thighs.
She whispered huskily, “Let's lock the doors.”
I nodded and got up to lock the front door while she, holding her overalls up by the straps, went to the back door. Then she went not to the couch but to her bedroom—a sanctum I had not seen: all lavender ruffles and pennants and pictures on the wall, her texts stacked neatly on a small desk. She closed the Venetian blinds while I sat on the single bed with its ruffly-skirted spread.
With the blinds closed the room was dusky. I watched her drop her straps and reach behind her to unfasten her bra, then drop it to the floor. Her overalls slipped to her ankles. In the dim light I gaped at all that exposed skin, the little pink triangle of her panties covering the smaller dark triangle of her mound.
She stepped out of the overalls, then bent to remove her sandals while I stared at her round little ass, her soft thighs. My hands went to my own shirt buttons, but I paused. I didn't want to alarm her by seeming too forward. I felt as though I were capturing a wild bird, almost afraid to move for fear of startling her.
Susan was more self-possessed than I. Did she have experience? I wondered. No. Her hands were trembling. But this was her house, her room. And she knew she was in command. Now she lifted her arms to unfasten her pony-tail. Her underarms were bare. Shaved, I thought. Girls shaved their legs, too, I had heard. Hers looked smooth and soft. She was shaking her loose hair, which came just to her shoulders. Then she put a knee on the bed and opened her arms to invite me to her.
I panicked, thinking
Vaseline.
On the nightstand beside my parents' bed, and beside every marital bed I had ever seen, there was always a little jar of Vaseline. Little was popularly known in those days about foreplay. I assumed one had to have lubrication to get in and did not know whether one could do it otherwise. I had heard about maidenheads, and winced to think I might cause Susan pain and bleeding. I was awed by the unknowns opening before me as she opened her arms.
But I moved to embrace her, nonetheless, and bore her down to the bed. My hands now freely explored down her thighs, as I felt the nubbins of her breasts through my shirt. She was responding eagerly. Her small hands slipped under my shirt collar, over my shoulders, and she pushed me away to unbutton my shirt. I helped, unbuttoning from the bottom as she came down from the top. Now our chests were bare together, and we lay that way for several minutes, kissing, her hands lovingly exploring my bare back.
When does one go further? I wondered. I slid a hand between our bare bellies and slipped fingers under the elastic of her panties. Paused. Slipped further, the tips of my fingers grazing her pubic hair. Paused. She squirmed. Resisting? No. Encouraging. My fingers slipped further, into the hair. Further. The tip of my index finger touched dewey flesh in the midst of hair. She squirmed more violently. Onward the finger, into the warm cleft. My aching penis pressed her thigh and I began hunching as my finger dipped into her. Her clenched legs prevented my entering entirely, so I massaged. She squirmed.
I did not learn the word
clitoris
until long after I was married. Such matters were simply not popular knowledge. But Susan, of course, knew where her pleasure button was. By pressing her thighs together she kept my finger where she wanted it. This is speculation. We never talked about it, then or later. People just did not talk about such things. What a young man might learn about a woman's body was garnered from studying Varga girls in
Esquire
or bare-chested natives in
National Geographic.
And lockerroom scuttlebut. And gross jokes.
All that background seemed irrelevant to Susan. I backed away, still keeping my finger in the cleft, to gaze at her. She was smiling, her eyes closed, her hair spread softly on the pillow, the girlish length of her all bare except for those panties. My free hand grazed her chest, toyed with her nipples, traced down between her breasts and over her ribcage, her navel, the flat little belly. With her eyes still closed she shyly lifted a hand to my belt, then moved down and clenched my hard penis through my pants.
I continued fingering, but I loosened my belt with my free hand and unzipped. Her hand moved inside to the bulge in my underwear. She felt for the elastic, pulled it down, releasing the tip, and touched it gently. Then she boldly gripped the shaft. I could not believe it. I did not know a girl would actually
touch
a man down there. With her
hand.
Not since the days of playing doctor in our clubhouse, long before puberty, had a female hand touched me there. I shoved down my underwear and trousers, lifting my body to take them off. My shoes were in the way, yet I dared not stop my fingering. Awkwardly, with one hand, I untied and kicked them off. Then my pants. Socks. It seemed somehow indecent to be wearing my socks, so I slipped them off, too. All this while Susan held my cock tightly. I do not think she had any idea of how to masturbate me, so she simply clung.
And now was pulling me toward her. She wanted me
in!
Neither of us would have dreamed of oral-genital contact in those days. In the army, an older soldier told me about how he had divorced his wife for trying to “go down” on him, and I remember guessing what that meant. “I've had whores do it,” he said, “but I didn't want my wife acting like a whore.” Similarly, we talked about “sucking pussy” as a dirty joke. People did not actually do such things, we thought. Not decent people.
Ready or not, we were moving on. With her free hand she began shoving down her panties, lifting her hips to slide them under her. I took over that job, pulling die soft little garment down those tallowy thighs, over her dimpled knees, down her shins, over the little feet that were tense and pointing together. Painted toenails, I noticed. I flung her panties off the bed.
She parted her thighs as I moved over her, and I slipped my finger down and into the juicy channel, tentatively at first, then all the way. She gasped. She was still holding my penis, pulling it down to her. I felt the glans graze her hair, felt its tip against her moist labia, and removed my finger so that it could enter. There? No, down further. There. She guided me, but we twisted our hips trying to get it into her vagina. At last—the tip, at least. About an inch in. It was too tight. I hunched a little, going in and out that inch, and slipped out entirely. We both gasped as she gripped me and again guided me into the hole. A little farther this time. I could feel her opening. She was so slippery I couldn't imagine what people used the Vaseline for. So slippery I popped out again, and again had to be guided home. This time farther still.
Then there was the barrier I had momentarily forgotten. I was definitely bouncing against something, as though she had an internal trampoline. I could see sweat break out over her upper lip and along her temples, could feel dewy sweat on her chest. I was supposed to break that trampoline.
Could
I? I pressed. My cock ached with the effort. Maybe I could just keep slipping in and out this little bit until. … But no, my hips sagged and something opened, something gave, and I was in another inch or so, feeling the warm ooze of fluid around my shaft. I looked at Susan's face: she was biting her lips, wincing. I stopped a moment and her hands went up to my buttocks. They felt tiny and cool. She was pulling me down, into her, into her, deeper, until finally our pubic hair crushed together.
I felt a sigh escape my lips. Victory. Yet we had only begun to fuck. Her hands still on my ass, urging me, I began pumping. She was heaving and twisting under me, her hands holding me in. Her face seemed to be twisted with agony—or passion. I could not be sure which. I was panting, sweating, pushing, thinking this was all just what I had read or heard about But this was
Susan,
my love, my wife-to-be. I felt like I was
using
her, and something within me hated it At the same time she had obviously encouraged me, and she seemed to be enjoying it Was that demeaning to her? I could not worry about it now I pumped and pumped and came, a scalding squirt, then collapsed against her, feeling my cock throb inside.
When I started to withdraw, the tip was so tender it hurt I sank into her again and lay there hugging her. Her hands were now caressing my back and neck Then her fingers ran through my hair as we kissed. I almost dreaded looking her in the face because of the wave of shame passing over me. Shame for what? I thought, we have done something that is, well, very
important.
Then I thought of birth control Women get pregnant doing this. An army training film taught us the importance of using rubbers. Where do you get rubbers? In the army you got them from the sergeant, as I had heard. But can you buy them? At the drug store? Will they sell them to someone who is not married? Who is under 21? I could not imagine myself going in and asking the pharmacist for—what did they call them? Condoms.
I assumed that Susan was probably pregnant already. By now I had grown soft and rolled off. We lay there side by side on the single-bed looking into one another's eyes in silence. She looked worried, too. I certainly knew nothing of ovulation cycles, nor did she. Though I knew that not every screw resulted in pregnancy, I had no idea why or how it worked. So far as I was concerned, it was Russian roulette. We might find ourselves getting married within a few months and perhaps dropping out of college in order to raise and support a child.
We did not talk about it. Instead, after a few minutes of troubled silence, we got up. The bed spread bore a bloody stain. Susan ripped it off to put it into the washer, hoping it would dry before her parents returned that evening. We dressed, and painted the kitchen. When I think about the relative ease and sophistication with which young people deal with sex today, I remember with sorrow that innocent couple of 40 years ago rolling paint as though to cover their shame and worry.
PERVERSITY IN EVERY PORT
By Andrew Potter
When I was a teenager the British government gave me a choice—go to jail or join the Boys' Navy. Though a sexual innocent, I had made a reputation for myself in the East End of London as a young hellion. This was in 1965. For two years I lived with 250 boys on a four-masted sailing ship. We went barefoot, slept in hammocks, and underwent rigorous basic training. At night the biggest problem for some of us was sheer survival. Many of my mates were far tougher than I. We drank everything from aviation fuel to brass cleaner, took opium and heroin, fought and gambled, and in general behaved like animals. But I remained a virgin all this time. Homosexuality and homosexual acts were almost completely absent. Masturbating into a blanket was my only sexual relief. That—and visiting the Crown and Anchor on the London docks every fortnight when we got weekend leave.
A lot of us lads used to go to this pub, which was run by an old queer. He was an amazing person. Some nights he dressed like a woman in a formal evening gown, but the next time we visited, he might be dolled up like a lumberjack.
When the place closed down, he locked the doors. About 50 boys would be there, plus a few foreign sailors and whores. About 20 or 30 of us would stand around a table and put a pound note each into the middle of the tablecloth. The idea was for all of us to “wank off” and whoever came first collected the kitty. The owner stood on the bar, watching us and playing with himself. This was my first sexual experience, in a way. It was weird but marvelous because I thought it was better than going to school.