She held my crumpled note in her hand. When I walked into the room , my mother looked up at me with a strange unfamiliar smile.
” Where have you been, Johnny. I worried about you.” she looked at me, and she had an odd look on her face. I did not at once recognize that my mother pitied me. She had never looked at me that way before.
” Oh, just outside. ” My cryptic answer sufficed. I was glad she just nodded. She wasn’t going to scold me. But then, looking at that new expression on her face, I thought that maybe a scolding would be better. At least then I knew what to expect. Now everything seemed so new and unpredictable. I saw my note in my mother’s hand and gulped.
“Come here, Johnny. ” I walked to her without fear, though I was afraid of something else that I couldn’t identify. I was afraid of my mother’s explanations, I was afraid that she would try to explain and make right what could never be right. My trouble in writing the note stemmed from the un-childish knowledge that there are things that do not become less painful once explained.
” You know, your father has been away a long time now and sometimes I get lonely.”
She did not look at me as she talked, but stared into space as if the right words were written in the air. She was reciting a script she had prepared to handle the situation.
” The man you saw here last night, his name is Mr. O’ Neil. He is a friend of mine and he keeps me company while Daddy is away. Here, he bought you a present and asked me to give it to you.”
She took the GIRLIE MAGAZINE she had bought that morning out of her purse, which was next to her on the couch. It was not wrapped and I looked at it indifferently. I wanted nothing at all from that man, but I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings either.
” Next time you see him be sure to thank him for it.” While mother made a mental note to tell her lover to expect my thank you, I made a mental note to ignore forever the existence of Mr. O’ Neil.
I could not at that age express to myself in words how insulted I was, that she would think I could be bribed into feeling gratitude towards someone who was destroying my childhood, my family, my respect for her and somehow even my respect for my father whose absence made this possible. But the insult was there, and with it the self doubt that maybe I was of no better character than she presumed, she had always seemed to know me so well, better than I knew myself. She often seemed able to guess my thoughts, the ones I couldn’t express. Her attempt to bribe me into liking her lover was more damaging then her betrayal for it weakened the foundations of my own self respect.
The next afternoon, my decision to ignore this enemy was put to the test. When I came home from school, Mr. O ‘ Neil was sitting on the couch looking very much at home. I walked into the house and on seeing my enemy complacently sitting at the scene of his crime, I walked silently into my room and started rubbing my cock while looking at the magazine. I did this void of emotion, moving myself like I thought a robot would. The jerking off did send a subtle feeling of satisfaction through my mind. Maybe now my mom wouldn’t get angry if I came?
I walked out of my room with what would become later in my life, a wicked smile. Then I ran outside, before my mother or her friend could talk to me. I felt strangely triumphant.
Outside, I walked down to Ginger’s house. Ginger was the daughter of my mother’s friend, the divorced woman. Ginger liked to do things that while annoying, also fascinated me. The little bodied girl would take off her clothes and try to get me to look at her. This I did, though always from between my fingers as I pretended to be disgusted and covered my eyes with my hands. Ginger, unabashed by my reluctance, would pull at me and dare me to touch her.
Until that day, I had never dared. But now I felt a strange new freedom, an urge to break old patterns. Today I thought I would do anything Ginger wanted. True, I had not the faintest idea why Ginger wanted me to look at her private parts, why she asked me to touch her. But I would do it anyway because people do things that can’t be understood. Especially grown ups. I knew that I would have to grow up quickly now for my child hood was ending. My father was away, and my mother couldn’t be trusted. Growing up meant doing things that were incomprehensible. I decided that I would do things that were grown up.
I knocked on Ginger’s door. I heard Ginger’s mother call out for Ginger to open it because she was on the telephone. Ginger’s mother was always on the telephone.
Ginger opened the door. Whenever she saw me, she would break out in a wide smile and become excited. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me back into the house. I followed her into her bedroom, where she said she had new things she wanted to show me. On the bed in her room was an Indian outfit, in brown leather and it even had an Indian headpiece with a red and orange feather.
” Isn’t it wonderful? My mother bought it for me so I could wear it at the costume party we’re going to Saturday night at the Church. ”
I was not easily impressed by clothes, but out of politeness I said it was neat. Ginger held the outfit up against her body and looked at me for approval. And then she put the Indian outfit back on her bed and started to take off her clothes. This was a little quick for me. While I knew she would do what she always did when I came over, I nevertheless felt somewhat unreal when Ginger started to undress in front of me. Ginger did not just take her clothes off.
She stripped slowly and far more enticingly than my inexperienced sexuality could begin to appreciate. She was only a virgin herself.
Once, when she had been sick with the mumps, she had secretly watched her mother doing the same in front of a man who had come to visit one morning when Ginger was usually at school. Ginger’s mother had been sure Ginger was fast asleep in her room, but Ginger was very awake and from the vantage point of the hall, while on her way to the bathroom, she had seen her mother taking off her clothes in the living room. This was strange. So Ginger watched and saw her mother’s visitor sitting on the rocking chair, smilingly and admiring her mother’s motions. Seeing how the man had started to hug and kiss her mother, she was sure I would be delighted if she did the same for me. But I was shy.
This didn’t stop Ginger. She stood on the bed, now dressed in only her pink underwear. She twisted and turned her little body, this way and that, encouraged by the fact that I wasn’t hiding my eyes behind widely spread fingers, this time.
” You know what this dance is called, Johnny? ”
I was struggling with the fear that Ginger’s mother would come into the room and blame me for Ginger’s state of undress. Yet determined to experience grown up things, I ignored my growing anxiety and pretended to be interested in Ginger’s gyrations.
” It’s called a striptease.” and Ginger removed her little panties and stood stark naked on the bed. By this time, despite my previous resolve, I was feeling a strange mixture of waning determination and growing anxiety. I wanted to run away, but dimly aware that Ginger was trying hard to please me, I felt reluctant to express my feelings and besides, I thought with increasing dismay, this is what grownups do, isn’t it? My cock at this point bagan to guide me on natures course.
Ginger jumped off the bed and took my hand. I was frozen by confusion and couldn’t have moved with any self -determination. Ginger misinterpreted my wide-eyed expression as one of fascination, when in actuality it was a look of stark fear with but a hint of anticipation that I was about to be freed from inhibitions. She started to help me take my clothes off. This is what her mother had done for her visitor after he finished kissing her all over. It was only when the man was totally undressed that Ginger’s mother shrieked out at Ginger to get back into her room. Ginger hadn’t minded her mother’s shrieking, her mother shrieked often and besides, somehow she understood that people don’t usually like to be seen without clothes, so her mother was embarrassed on account of her naked guest. Ginger had gone back into her room and played with her self, pulling and pulling on the lips of her vagina till she came.
Now, Ginger had barely opened three buttons on my flannel shirt when her mother could be heard flushing the toilet. As she walked out of the bathroom she yelled
” Ginger, I’ve told you two thousand and seventy five times, not to forget to flush the toilet after you finish in there, I’m tired of having to do it for you every time you take a pooh.”
Ginger yelled back as if she were an experienced stripper disrupted in the middle of her act, ” Whatever you say, Mommy “, this while holding her gaze on me but by then I had taken two steps backwards and was preparing to make my exit. I couldn’t help admitting to myself, I just wasn’t ready for sex yet, whatever that was.
But Ginger told me not to move. “Show me your penis Johny”. I said “What for?”
She said “I want to see it.” and she came up to me and pulled it out of my pants and underwear and I let her because I had this feeling, like something was growing in my gut, a wave of that warm honey feeling and a hardness in the cock. “Play with yourself Johny”” She said, and I said “How?”. “Like this Johny” and she wrapped her little fist around my twitching penis and then she moved her little hand up and down the shaft. I moved her hand away and did the same.
Suddenly I was all alone with my feelings. They rose up in my gut like a balloon in the water. I burst my first orgasm all over Gingers face. “Wow, Johny” she said as she wiped the sticky liquid out of her mouth and nose, “you really got a cold” she said.
I didn’t go directly home. I took a walk, going no where in particular, just exploring the apartment complex in which I lived.
There were all sorts of people here. I walked by the two story buildings and tried to see where I could, what the houses looked like within, behind the curtains that hung across the windows and gliding doors of the cheap rented flats. I always felt somewhat envious of these other people, there seemed to be something more normal about them than I felt about my own life. It was almost as if they were real people and I was some kind of imposter. I did not know why I felt this way, I had no idea. I did not connect this feeling with the fact the I was always a newcomer, that I had moved so many times in my short life no place seemed like home. These other people looked like they belonged where they were, while I had not lived anywhere long enough to feel I belonged there. Just when I was beginning to feel at home, we had moved again.
Leave a Reply