Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Pre-perversity

I'm picturing my uncle's house late in a summer afternoon. It was the same day that we'd seen E.T. Eight kids sat in a circle on our towels facing each other like a summer pool party version of King Arthur's court. This court was owned by Hillary, she was our leader in that she was an inch taller than me, had been to Europe and New York with my aunt and uncle, and could beat up just about any of us. Older by three and a half years, my older cousin and her brother Chuck who was my age ran their house like a summer camp. Their pool was the focus of all of Hillary and Chuck's friends, and unlike most siblings over ten and not quite the same age, they merged their cliques perfectly.

Back then water fights and waiting for the old people to hurry up with the hamburgers on the grill were part of that extremely long half of the year that was summer vacation. During days when my parents were at work I'd been deposited at my uncle's place with my brother every summer for as long as I can remember. The same kids would come over in the early morning and eat my family's food and drink our juice like it was their own. My aunt seemed to never be flustered by unknown children trolling through her kitchen asking for napkins or band aids or another bag of potato chips and every summer was the same brand of G-rated fun until that one stinking hot day in 1982.

After coming out of the cinema where she'd tortured my young brain for hours, the fifteen year old Melanie seemed to take ownership of my twelve and a half year old ass. It can't have been obvious because in my own bubble I was in full denial of the chemistry between us and therefore assumed everyone else was oblivious. There was no teasing, there was no awkwardness, and desperate as I was the prove to everyone that nothing was different from the last year, I was successful at least from my perspective.

At twelve and a half I hadn't realized how much I'd grown even though seeing my mother's height approaching like gas station on the highway and then slowly seeing her forehead drop below my eye line should have been a dead giveaway. I was just as tall as Hillary and all of her friends. My legs were shaped from running, my chest defined from the military routine my old man had subtly faked me into adopting on a daily basis since I was nine, and I had a muscular line down my stomach that defined me along with my jaw line and thick hair as unlike Chuck or Barry and more like Superman. Even the fifteen year old boy who lived next store, Robert, was shorter than me and blobby. Hillary called him Blobby Bobby and her and Melanie and her other catty friends would ignore him as if he was a mailbox that stood in his yard and watched them walk by semi-naked all summer.

Melanie had a long body with skinny arms and skinny legs. Since I have known her for twenty odd years I can rest assuredly inform you that she has never needed more than a thirty A-cup. She still has her narrow face, but always had good cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. Her smile was broad and she had big white teeth that back then were probably too big. Since then she's grown into her face and became quite beautiful. Even now in her thirties she's an attractive woman in a modest way. I see her and her husband once or twice a year but In my own mind her long since gone dark Claudette Colbert bob-style haircut framed a face that my dirty old mind puts in that memory bucket that still makes me sigh and yearn for that new car smell of life. In that particular memory she's never older than fifteen.

We were sitting around on the towels talking about crap that only kids find appealing, how the bad guys came out on top in the Empire Strikes back, how hot it was that Mr. Drummond put an athletic black hunk in the same house as his virginal sweet daughter, at how our teachers sucked, football, baseball, Pepsi vs. Coke, Michael Jackson and the upcoming LA Olympics.

Melanie was lying opposite me on her front with her head supported by her arms. Every now and again she'd be stealing glances at me trying to lock my stare with her eyes. When she'd caught me looking back she'd beam a smile at me and then quickly look away leaving me with nothing while she went on to pretend that I didn't exist. Then she'd start the whole routine again, each time sucking me in deeper and deeper, making me look closer and closer to the way her lips moved when she spoke, or the way her dimples would crease when she laughed, or how even with her tiny breasts she was giving me my first cleavage show down the front of her bathing suit. When she was thinking she'd lick her teeth just a little, and it would trigger other chemicals in my body.

All afternoon Melanie played me going hot with her subtle body flirtation, then quickly ignoring me. She did this until she was sure that my own body language was begging her to pay attention to me again. That day, my mostly smart mouthed humor was deluged with that terror of confusion over if she was just messing with me or if she was determined to take me the way she wanted. In a carryover from "our time" in the cinema, I was rigidly locked in place lying on my stomach making sure that my obvious attraction was not to be noticed by the teenage peer group that would surely flay my twelve and half year old innocence alive had they known my developing penis was trying to dig it's way to China.

As wrong as it is, I still sometimes compare women's bodies to Melanie's skinny athletic mid-teen shape. I'm still too distracted by a svelte woman in a slinky orange one piece lycra bathing suit. It's especially potent if she's has a dark and square cut short hair and if her hips and longer than usual legs make the bikini line of the suit ride high over her hips. The deep core of my sexual image perversion subtly rests in the memory of a fifteen year old opportunist I met twenty four years ago that completely blew my mind out of boyhood and into adolescence.

In what felt like that last plane out of Casablanca before the Nazis arrived, my uncle loaded up his sedan with four of the eight kids and pulled out of their driveway taking them home after the long day. This left my brother asleep and snoring on their sofa in front of the TV, Hillary, Melanie, and myself.

Melanie was staying over.

3 Comments:

Blogger Charlie Brown said...

Unlike you, I was extremely short and way too skinny at 12. In elementary school it didn't bother me, because I was surrounded by other kids. But in high school, I became aware of my own immaturity by being surrounded with teenagers. I would still be a boy for a while psychologically. I would deny my sexuality until 15. And at that point, I was too messed up by my body transformations, growing nerdiness and lack of self-esteem to start gaming girls, especially when other guys, cooler and more mature, were already dominating the field.

Your father was really smart. He gave you the greatest gift any boy could have.

7:36 AM  
Blogger marriedwithsex said...

This is lovely.

I often remember things from pre-teen and teen years, in detail. When I wake up from a dream about the boy who was my boyfriend for many of those years (which happens more often then I care to admit), I wonder why I remember so many odd details so well...and wonder if it the same for him.

I loved the part about sitting on the towels and talking, such a great kid thing.

7:44 AM  
Blogger J said...

I have no room for depression or melancholy... just how I can turn things around today. I've suffered too much loss to really worry about whats next, even if that includes not being who i was 20 years ago, or feeling how complicated life is today compared to before. It's never too late to turn everything around...

8:57 AM  

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