I walked toward the living room and stood in the doorway, allowing
the sheet wrapped around me to make as much noise as it wanted, and
hoping she would respond if she were awake.
Dimly across the room I saw her rise and look toward me. “Speedy?”
“Yes,” I answered. “It’s me.”
“I thought you were going to sleep?”
“Are you awake?”
“What do you think? Of course I’m awake. I was worried about you.”
I told myself: Do something, show her some fight.
In the faint light I saw a pencil on the lamp table near the door.
I reached for it and held it like a cigarette, twiddling it gingerly in
my fingers and puffing on it. The bedsheet wrapped around my waist and
below, I walked into the middle of the room. Martha Jane had turned
toward me on the sofabed and was lying on her side, staring at me
quizzically.
I took a deep breath and started my act in full force. I opened with
my Deep South truck driver’s gruff and heavy drawl.
“Hey, bay-beh! Wonna beer?”
She smirked. On her side, she leaned on an elbow and propped her
head in her hand. “Oh my, what is this strange child up to?”
Then I made the pencil a cigar, touted and flipped it one hand. and
with my other hand on my hip I faked the higher-pitched, tightly clipped
voice and speech of the Bowery Boys’ Leo Gorcey.
“Dey call me Doubtless Dan. ‘Cuz “When Dan’s About, There Ain’t No
Doubt!'” I smugly pretended to straighten my tie. “Pahdon me, ladies,
while I make myself presentable.”
Then I jammed my hands deep into my pajamas’ pockets, stuck out my
tummy to simulate a beer-belly, put the pencil in one corner of my
mouth, and rocked back and forth as I did my W.C. Fields.
“I recall when were stranded in the Andeeees. It was TERRibble,
couldn’t find a bottle o’ booze anywherrre. Had to live on nothing but
food and waterrr for tennnn daaayzz!”
Each character brought me a step or two closer to the sofabed where
she still lay propped on an elbow and keeping a straight face.
Then I put one hand behind my back, pursed my lips, and at the same
time raised my eyebrows and squinted my eyes–not easy to do, but it was
essential for an effective Clark Gable.
“Now listen, Scarlett. I know we haven’t been gettin’ along, sweet-
heart, so…I’ll make a deal with ya. You keep the child, and the money,
and the lumber company, and…I’ll stay here at Tara with Ashley Wilkes.”
With understated sarcasm she broke in. “Does this have an end?”
“Why, Scarlett, whenever you say.”
“End, please.”
Myself again, I dropped to my knees and my face was level with hers.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Speedy…What in the world are you doing?”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re trying? Trying what?”
“Trying. You wanted me to try harder.”
“Well…that’s not *exactly* what I had in mind, angel.”
“Well,” I said, simply, “that’s…right now, that’s all I know.”
“Oh,” she said forgivingly. “Well then…what’s next?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“Kiss me?”
“Yeah. Kiss me, you fool.”
She looked at me blankly. Perhaps she realized, as I did, that we
had never truly, romantically kissed.
I prompted, “Alright?”
“Well…sure. I guess so.”
“You sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” She frowned. “What are you going to do?”
“Kiss you.”
“So kiss me.”
I took a deep breath for courage. “Okay.”
This was something I had not only never done, but had never imagined
doing and had no idea how to go about it. I walked the short distance to
her on my knees, stretched up over the edge of the sofabed, and brought
my face close to hers. She appeared a little apprehensive and unsure,
but she didn’t flinch. A step at a time, I gently took the arm she was
propped upon and laid it flat on the bed, which forced her to recline on
her side. I touched her hips and nudged her to lie flat on her back,
which she did, smiling indulgently and watching me closely. I leaned
forward a little more and put my right hand on her cheek, then I slipped
my left arm under her neck. Cradling her in the best romantic style of
the movies, I held her thus and brought her a little closer to me. She
adjusted herself uncomfortably and I waited until she was settled.
I looked into her eyes. At first I attempted to do this with a
certain panache, or a soppy, longing Charles Boyer gaze. But her eyes
and her face undid me. Immediately, I fell victim to her effect on me,
and the phoney gaze disappeared. Her half-lowered eyelids, her milk-
smooth, softly sculpted face, her slightly parted, expectant lips with
their moist, dewy glaze, and her lucid, penetrating, expectant blue-green
eyes…
All pretense disappeared. I wanted, more than anything else in the
world, to give Martha Jane the kiss of her life. A real kiss. A kiss
that would be uniquely me. The kiss of the century. I returned her
waiting gaze with one which I’m certain must have reflected the piquant
tenderness that swept over me. Gently I lowered my lips toward hers,
miraculously managing on my first effort to get the interlocking tilt of
our faces just right. I waited ever so momentarily before touching my
mouth to hers. Then I joined our faces. Never before had my lips felt
hers — and never before had they felt anything like it! Meeting no
resistance, I mouthed her gently at first, massaging my way into a com-
plete awareness of the shape and texture of her yielding petals. Amazed,
I felt her return my kiss with a slight, tentative, moist pressure
against me. I settled my lips into hers until her almost imperceptible
return of movements matching my own told my lips that her lips had found
the most agreeable, the most telling contact. Suprised, my lips began
melting into hers, into the wondrous, creamy silk of her that met my
seeking mouth with a seeking of her own, which I learned to read and
respond to like a mirror image of her every oral gesture. Enthralled, I
allowed my lips to caress hers with slightly more pressure and a series
of small, slow, ovular movements, which seemed as natural to me as
breathing. She, too, returned the pressure and the movement. Enraptured,
my insides sizzled as she slid one arm along and then around my should-
ers. A wild hunger rose in me; but I controlled and tempered it, ex-
pressing it with my hand on the side of her face as a small caress and a
tender hug, a subtle drawing of her head closer to me. Captivated, I
lifted my lips only slightly and, still touching hers, I allowed mine to
caress hers like a tantalizing, slippery, mothering feather. Enchant-
ed, I felt her return the favor. Intoxicated, I moved my mouth closer
again, this time with a sure but carefully restrained ardor, and simply
allowed my lips to disintegrate into hers. Gently we writhed our mouths
against each other for another long and nourishing moment, increasing the
pressure gradually, then releasing, withdrawing with languid, reluctant
slowness, until I opened my eyes and saw hers still closed, blissful,
tranquil. Never had I been so close to her mouth or her face, which
filled my view and shut out any and all interference from the rest of the
universe. My lips were still wet with hers; my own felt hers, felt like
hers; mine seemed to have disappeared, her own lips taking their place.
Gazing raptly, I stroked her cheek.
She opened her eyes sleepily. At first they were questioning,
uncertain. Then she seemed to come awake and she gently pushed me away.
“Where,” she asked skeptically, “did you learn to kiss like that?”
“That’s the way I kiss.”
“No, Speedy, nobody kisses like that. I bet you picked that up from
the movies. You kissed me the way somebody like William Holden kisses.”
“That,” I insisted, “is the way I kiss.”
“No. That’s the way William Holden kisses.”
“He got it from me.”
“Oh…I see. Well, that’s some kiss.”
“Thank you.” Daringly, without pause, I declared, “I wanna sleep in
here.”
“There’s not room enough for two.”
“Then, uh…” My eyes rolled as I tried to overcome this latest
obstacle. “Okay, I’ll have to sleep on top of you.”
“That would be very uncomfortable, Mister Holden.”
“Well, then…I guess we’ll have to sleep in the bedroom.”
She smirked. “Well, then…I guess so.”
“Well, then…” I echoed, waiting.
But she didn’t move. After a pause she queried me with her big,
smiling, waiting eyes. “Well?” she said in a small voice.
I leaned toward her and took her free hand which rested near the edge
of the sofabed. “I want you to sleep in the other room with me, because
I haven’t seen you in two years. And because I want the first thing I
see in the morning to be you. And because I might never get the chance
to do this again.”
Her eyes softened. “That’s better,” she whispered. She tilted her
head and looked at me warmly, tenderly. “That’s more like what I wanted
to hear you say.”
Then she rose from the bed and headed straight for the bedroom in her
floppy silk pajamas.
Perplexed, I rose and followed her. “Well…why didn’t you
tell me that’s what you wanted in the first place?”
“Oh, how unromantic.”
“But why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because all this time, I made it too easy for you. Because I wanted
you to learn something. Because I was playing hard to get.” She settled
into the bed near the lamp table, lying back with her hands behind her
head in the dark. “That’s the way girls behave in real life, hon. They
want you to figure them out.”
I stood near the bed. “But why do girls have to play hard to get?”
“Because they’re girls.”
“But boys don’t play hard to get.”
“I know. They’re boys.”
“I see,” I pondered. “So the girls play hard to get…and the boys
do the getting.”
She winked.
In the two years that I had been away from her, I had forgotten what
it was like to look down on her alluring body in the dark. As I stood
watching her from the edge of the bed, it all came back. And it came
back with a vengeance. I did not pause, but followed my impulse and
climbed onto the bed from the foot of it, and in one smooth motion I
stretched over her and lay on her, both of us fully clothed.
She smiled, opened her arms, and I snuggled into her neck.
She asked, “The lesson wasn’t too hard on you, was it?”
“Did you like my Clark Gable?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I liked your ‘you’, though. And what a kisser.” She hugged me.
I hugged her back. I lifted my face and looked at her. I felt it
was my move. I shifted my weight to her side, letting my right arm
cradle her neck. I looked down at her breasts. Her nipples stood out
tautly under the cloth of the pajamas. They were different now, less
girlish, more womanly. Or perhaps I was two years older, had new juices
flowing from my glands, and saw her differently. I lifted my hand to her
right nipple and with two fingers cradled and squeezed it gently over the
cloth. She shifted slightly, leaning into me. She watched my fingers,
then she watched me. I allowed my hands to sweep across her chest, down
her tummy, around to her hip. She felt different; more firm, more sleek,
more smoothly sculptured. At the crotch of her pajamas the shape of her
tuft and mound were revealed in sharp relief. She had lost some baby
fat; her mound was more distinct, more feminine, its contours more
erotically enticing.
With my hand I covered the gentle swell between her legs. Right away
I realized she wore nothing underneath. I felt her heat. Her tuft was
thicker now, crisper. I made a small circle on her cunt with my palm,
which could feel where her thick outer lips gently folded in and parted.
As I continued circling, I felt her hand go to the slit in my underwear.
With three fingers she formed a cone with which she lightly enclosed the
outline of my tip. Cupping it, she squeezed almost imperceptively, with
a slow rhythm. I felt an incredible itch that ran the length of my cock.
As I caressed her over her pajamas her thighs parted. I looked at
her. “Feels different with clothes on,” I whispered.
She nodded lazily, slipping her lower lip naughtily under her teeth.
“Feel good?” I whispered, smiling.
Her eyes narrowed. She nodded slowly again.
I rubbed her another moment until I sensed moisture in the cloth
under my hand. Her slit had widened. And my erection was underway.
I searched her darkening eyes. “Do you think it would still feel good
fingerfuck you like I used to?”
She shrugged. “I guess,” she said, grinning impudently.
I sighed a little laugh at her joke. I lay down flat, lifted my
hips, and pulled off my underwear, flipping it onto the floor at the foot
of the bed. I had expected she would take a while to unbutton her pajama
top, but she sat up and grabbed the hem of the shirt and pulled it over
her head and off, like a sweater. She lay down and arched and pulled off
her bottoms.
She was nubile and naked. She was beautiful. Her pubic patch had
indeed thickened and darkened and extended below the top of her slit.
Her nipples were larger and a darker pink. As soon as I saw her I
realized I would have to learn about her all over again.
Settling on one elbow I carefully fondled her outer fold, which was
already slick and blossoming open to invite my finger’s search for her
clit. When I found it she swallowed and her staring eyes softened. I
began to stroke her nub in slow tiny circles. Immediately it began to
lubricate and stiffen, and her long thighs drifted apart…
She whispered, “Yes…”
With her fingers she formed a small cone around my tip again, then
she found I was hard. Her fingers searched, finding that I had smooth
curls now instead of fuzz, and she investigated my balls and my hardening
shaft, then enclosed me, gripped, squeezed up. Her fingers found
pre-cum at my tip.
“Speedy,” she whispered.
I looked at her. “Hmm?”
“Your not a baby anymore, hon,” she whispered, circling my corona
with a wet finger. She shook her head and smiled, repeating to herself,
“Not a baby anymore…”
