My Best Friend's Father Ch. 01

Based on my life: Names and places have been changed to protect privacy.

*****

I hadn’t seen him in close to seven years. Amazing how even now, as a grown woman, I still avert my eyes when he looks at me. It wasn’t until that moment, standing there at my childhood friend’s wedding that I realized the seriousness of what had happened between us; the immense effect that what he had done to me – what I had allowed him do – has had on my life.

Standing there in a surprisingly tasteful bridesmaid’s dress, I listened to the readings “When I was a child I spoke at as child, understood as a child…” he was looking at me – I could feel his eyes burning into my back from his seat in the pew. “..I became a man and I put away childish things…” Was I ever a child? Here, almost twice the age I was when our relationship had first changed, when I’d gone from being a child to being his lover. Now memories were flooding back into my head at an alarming speed.

“…Now I know in parts, but then shall I know even as also I am known…” the voice recited. Memories that had been pushed far back into my mind came crashing into my reality: One of his hands on my stomach, the other around my neck pulling me into him. His soft voice whispering in my ear, “You’re so beautiful…” My muscles spasming violently around his cock.

I really hate weddings.

I don’t need to hide this anymore. Here is how ironic life can get – well at least my life.

It all began on the way home from a high school football game one Friday night. I was so young then, very different than the woman I am today. I looked pretty much the same, same dark hair and skin. My body seems very small compared to the one I inhabit these days. Very thin, maybe 110 pounds stretched tightly over my 5 foot 11 inches, the muscles and curves that I see in the mirror now were barely there. I was in high school. My girlfriends went to a party after the football game, but I had to be up early in the morning to run in a race so I didn’t want to go. My friend’s father gave me a ride home, like he’d done many times before…

“Have a good time?” He said quickly, glancing over at me then returning his eyes to the road.

“Yeah… I’m nervous about the race tomorrow, sorta distracted. You ran, you know how it is.”

“No one expected me to finish” he laughed, “let alone win the race.”

I smiled nervously. I hated it when anyone mentioned anything to me about “winning”. I was a “winner” though. I’d always been top 3, but that year, I’d been unbeatable. Every time someone mentioned winner, win, first, champion, number one, I could hear my mother’s syrupy sweet voice whispering “I didn’t come to see a loser, Lola…”

I shivered unconsciously. “Too cold, Lo?” Lisa’s father said, turning the knob of the heater.

I shook my head, “No, I’m fine.” I took a deep breath and laid my head against the leather of the seat and closed my eyes. We didn’t speak until he pulled into the drive of my house.

“Mom and Leo gone again?” he said, stopping the car.

“They’ll be back sometime tonight,” I murmured, eyes still closed.

“Hey” he said reaching over touching my cheek softly “you’re gonna do fine…” When I turned to look at him I was startled. I’d always known he was handsome, but suddenly I felt my body shivering as he looked at me.

“Thanks” I said into his hand, as it still rested on my cheek. I looked at him as he looked at me. Suddenly, he kissed me! His lips were soft, and I could feel the stubble on his face scratching my skin. My body was responding to his kiss, and I was kissing him back – although I didn’t have any idea how. His tongue slipped between my lips as my own explored his mouth. I felt my hand reaching for his neck.

Suddenly my brain caught up with the moment and set off the catholic guilt alarm. I pulled away quickly, my hands searching for the door handles “Thanks, Mr. Jones!” I said, managing to make the words come out in the same way they had every time he’d taken me home since I was eight. I ran into the house, slamming the door behind me, my heart pounding. I was breathing fast. The father of one of my best friends had given me my first kiss!

That night I cried myself to sleep from guilt. Not because I had kissed Lisa’s father, but that I had lain in bed that night, rubbing the soft wet special place between my thighs until my body exploded in pleasure. Masturbation was a big enough sin, according to everything I learned in Sister Helene Joseph’s Sex Ed. And touching myself to orgasm by thinking of my best friend’s happily married father was certainly going to send me straight to Hell. Ahh, good old Catholic School angst.. Those of you who have been there understand; those of you unaware of the handicap of catholic guilt never will.

I was sure that I was going to Hell for touching myself while thinking about Lisa’s father, but I certainly didn’t stop…

A few weeks later, after the homecoming dance and parties I found my self-alone in Lisa’s kitchen. The other girls had long since fallen asleep, but having been a full-fledged insomniac since the age of twelve, I was of course still awake.

I was standing at the counter with a cup of water staring at the tile pattern on the kitchen wall. I shook off the gaze and turned back to the sink. Then I saw him. He was at the door. I hadn’t even known he was home! Startled, I dropped the glass into the sink, shattering it. He was looking at me, his face blank except for something – I can’t recall if it was fear or pain or something else. I stared at him. I had no idea what to say; it was the first time since the car we’d been alone. I was frightened and excited, but I couldn’t smile – I couldn’t say a word! I think I leaned back against the counter, both my hands on it. I saw him take the first step towards me. It was like in vampire movies how quickly he moved across the room. He was against me then, kissing me. I was kissing him back, my mind was screaming for me to stop, my heart pounding so loud my ears were ringing. I felt his hand, gripping me firmly on my hips, sliding slowly up my stomach to my breast. He touched me gently and I cried out in pleasure or shock or something. Suddenly he let me go and walked away.

I just sat there against the counter, not breathing, then gasping – the wind gone from me, my body ON FIRE. He was there, then gone, as if it was a switch – on then off. All the while, he said nothing. Not a word. I couldn’t speak. My breasts were much smaller; I recall so well his hand on me, most of all his fingers – his thumb and index finger gently putting pressure around my nipple. It sent heat searing through me, making me lose my thoughts, even now. God, this man’s hand on my tummy, under my navel up to my breast – ahh, I was shaking the whole time!

There I was, hot, wet and terrified, standing there in that huge black and gray kitchen. I wanted more but everything about it was wrong.

I prayed and prayed for the urges I felt for Lisa’s father to go away. During daily mass at our school’s chapel, I stood in the line at communion, my conscience racked with guilt for accepting the host (catholic symbolism or the lamb of god, Jesus, the man, what have you… we feel the need to physically ingest part of the lord daily… I don’t know, its how I was raised – don’t ask questions just listen…). How could I take something so pure into a body steaming with impurity? As the weeks passed and I continued to torture myself with guilt it faded away like most things do when you are that young. The guilt from enjoying what Lisa’s father did to me may have faded away but the enjoyment of recalling it over and over at night in the darkness of my bedroom didn’t!

Midnight Mass is a big holiday thing where I am from. My catholic prep school choir always sang during that mass, all classic Latin chants, and then for the big finally after communion was Handel’s Messiah. That seven-minute ode to the lord, that as a soprano I found gut wrenchingly painful. Of course, during the 3 hour holiday guilt trip of that mass, (which I attended alone, seeing as my parents – the divorced and remarried sinners that they were then – wouldn’t dare show up at church.), Carrie and I had gotten into trouble.

Carrie felt it necessary to voice, “I WANT YOU…” – and other much more inappropriate phrases to the visiting seminary student (priest in training). It was either my own hysterical silent giggling or the seminary student’s blushing that caught the attention of our choir director, Brother Kay, but Carrie and I were busted. We were punished by getting the dreaded job of putting the choir’s folding chairs away. Lisa’s parents had always dropped me off at my house after midnight mass. Since Lisa was an alto she’d only witnessed the debauchery, not joined us; she told me she would have one of her older brothers drop the family off and then come back and pick me up, since my mother was, as usual, not likely to wonder where I was.

Carrie’s brother Chad, who was older than us, was also in the choir. When he found out that Carrie and I had to stay after church he was furious. It was 3am on Christmas morning, and he and Carrie lived about an hour from the church, over in the bad side of town, so I told them both to go home. I explained and that by the time Lisa’s mother returned I’d have everything done and Father Luke would never know.

The basement of the huge of church was a cavernous place, a catacomb of ancient catholic icons. There among the paintings of dead pontiffs, broken marble virgins, and oak and cherry altars, I began my daunting punishment. As I put the chairs away I was trying not to be afraid, or even notice the eyes of the old stained glass saints and angels were following me as I folded up the chairs.