To Heather, with remembrance, love, and a smile. I hope life turned out the right way. Thank you for redheads, teasing, the sounds of sex, and mostly for teaching me what safe feels like.
We were both older than 18.
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Every single person we meet along the path of our lives leaves an indelible fingerprint, usually so small that we are unaware of their impact, and sometimes in ways so large they completely change our course. Those latter people stand like signs along the path: "Turn right here" or "Stop!" Heather was one of those people for me, a very long time ago when I was young and so wonderfully inexperienced in life. Middle-age cynicism hadn't yet arrived, although unbeknownst to me, it was boulder already started on its roll down the mountain. The word mortgage wasn't in my vocabulary, and my parents certainly weren't worried about "launching" me. I was 19 at the time, which makes it the better part of 3 decades past. I think I was very sophisticated about some things, maybe many things, but certainly not about inter-personal relationships and definitely not about sex. I might have kissed a few girls and gone the "hand in gland, gland in hand" route on a couple of occasions, oral a few times, but that was about it. I think more than anything I was clueless about women's intentions; I guess I just didn't understand the subtlety of attraction between a man and woman. Not that I didn't want to have sex, I just didn't understand that it was probably available. "D'oh! You mean I could have gotten laid?" A lot of it was probably also a lack of confidence, as in "I know she can't be interested in me, so I won't even try." It's better to set the bar low. That way you'll never be disappointed.
At the time, I had a friend who I've long since lost touch with -- Brad - that lived in my neighborhood; across the street, along a path through a patch of woods, and across another road. Close enough that it was almost faster to walk there than to call on the old rotary dial phone (remember how much phone numbers with a lot of zeros sucked?) Brad and I were both products of single parent homes in which our fathers were absent, and in any event, ours was not a generation in which it seems parents had 'the talk' with their kids. Most of what we learned came through blundering experience or the random Penthouse Forum ("
Dear Forum, you'll never guess who I banged 30 years ago...
") I can't remember the first girl I kissed, but I can remember the first whose genitals I touched. Katie was a charming and rather toned competitive ice skater. Her Dorothy Hamel "wedge cut" hair was a sandy blonde and she had this cute little horizontal wrinkle just above her top lip that showed when she smiled. I can remember with clarity the day she straddled me and began to rub my back. Her inner thighs would clench along with her hands; who knew that wasn't normal? See what I mean? D'oh! I don't think Katie and I were ever 'going steady', maybe more of an early form of 'friends with benefits' type deal. At some point, we ended up in the back of a car, hands down pants, steamed up windows, and mutual hand jobs done with a couple of fleshy gonad hammers. I just hope I didn't cause any tissue damage. Katie was the first person I was ever intimate with, at least as far as it went.
Brad and I had found common ground in being the products of broken homes and shitty fathers, and through that connection, grew a strong friendship. We spent a lot of time together and over the course of our friendship, I got to know his mother. And this is where the story actually begins. Her name was Heather, and ultimately she became the first, and most significant, sign post along my path of sexuality. Since this story is about her, it would be fitting to describe what she looked like, being certain (and freely admitting) that time has left me with an augmented image of the stunning Ms. H. Red hair, more copper colored, long and with big 80s curls. God, I miss big 80's hair...Her eyes were dark brown and a bit more doe eyed, think Isla Fisher if you need a reference point. Heather always seemed to be taking in everything at once, but when something was off, her eyes would narrow and her forehead crinkle just enough that you knew the wheels were turning. She was subtle with her make-up, but always perfectly put-together, and her face was incredibly expressive. Smiles, laughs, scrunches, all of it spoke far more compellingly than mere words alone could. It's curious that I look back on my memory of her and know that feature-by-feature, she was probably pretty average, but it was the sum of her parts that made her so special.
She had a wonderful body full of curves and allure. I always remember her as having a big chest, but I think that could have been the view through the lens of adolescent lust. Regardless, they weren't small. What I do remember for sure is that she wore tight earth tone turtlenecks. I know she must have worn other clothes, but I simply can't remember anything else. I'm not being descriptively dramatic when I say that her nipples were always on display. I know this because I looked, a lot, and later I found out that she wore what is known as an "open cup bra", or perhaps you've heard it called a "shelf bra". If you're unfamiliar with these, you should educate yourself, but in the interest of literary expediency, it is a bra that supports the breast from underneath but does not cover the nipple. You're probably wondering how I knew this. In Brad's house, Heather's bedroom was upstairs, and his was downstairs next to a family room and the laundry room. There were actually legitimate reasons to be in the laundry room, and less legitimate reasons to innocently inspect her unmentionables. Anyway, to put it in a mathematical context, large breasts + tight turtleneck + open cup bra = big problem for a 19 year old man-child. Lest you think the ensemble complete, no, it wasn't. The 80s were a time of designer jeans for women, and that meant tight, tight, and tight, and the good Ms. H was never one to shirk her fashion duties. Sometimes she wore skirts, just normal workday skirts with panty hose. You'll see why this latter detail is important in just a second. But what killed me, and by that I mean kept me chronically dehydrated, were her boots. Simple fucking cowboy boots pulled over her jeans. I think I speak for men in general when I say that cowboy boots and jeans on a woman are like a salt lick to deer -- completely irresistible. While time may have spruced up her reality for me a bit, I really can't say for sure, the Heather of my memory was the Goddess Freya. Like layers of an onion, she always seemed to find a way to go one step further. Hopefully you have a vision in your mind of what she looked like. Maybe redheads aren't your thing (although I can't ever remember hearing a man actually say that...), but I trust you get the general sense of things. I look back and wonder if she had some sort of fetish that probably bordered on unhealthy. But as they say, there's a seat for every ass. Let me give you an example.
Brad and I would come and go from each other's houses freely; even if the other wasn't there, we would often hang out and snack, watch TV, whatever. On this particular day, I walked down and found no one home, so I let myself in with the 'hidden' key. Just off the front entry was the kitchen, and the far side of that was a bar with stools. Pretty regular. Except on this particular day, pantyhose were draped across the back of one of the bar stools. I'll admit it. I examined them. Judge me not, because what 19 year old man in this situation would not have done exactly the same thing? If they took the moral high ground and passed up the opportunity, I would argue that they're either gay or home-schooled by their mother. The crotch, or to use the seamstressly correct term gusset, was tinted with dried fluid. I'm not proud to admit it, but I smelled it. I gave it a bloodhound going-over. Just the faintest hint of that wonderful musky scent. You may as well throw a blind dog into a meat house. I sat there smelling this damn pantyhose crotch, about to baste myself in my own shame sauce, wondering what it was that got Heather wet. You know what question didn't cross my mind at the time? Why were her gently used pantyhose draped across the back of a stool in her kitchen? Maybe it was purely an accident, or maybe it was a booby trap.
Heather was always nice if a bit standoffish, and I was fortunate to learn later how gentle and compassionate she was underneath the daily grind. Being around Heather was a complex of mix of obvious and awkward attempts to look at her nipples without being noticed, and feeling like prey uncertain if the predator was about to strike. All of us have known people -- men and women -- who exude sex. This was Heather. It was like she was filled with sexuality that seeped through every pore on her body. Think about this -- many of today's kids learn sex through internet porn, which is not a very healthy or realistic introduction to human sexuality (I have to wonder how many young men have been shocked to learn that there are actually women in real life that don't orgasm when someone splatters semen across their face. Ah, to be young again...) My introduction to sex was through my friend's mother, and more specifically her pheromone-infused pantyhose trap. Like porn, not very healthy, but also like porn, a lot of fun.
Not long after my encounter with the Venus flytrap of the underwear world, the lovely Heather stepped up her game by going from scents to sights. It was spring, and on a particularly nice weekend morning I had gone over to Brad's early to go fishing. Instead we ended up getting lazy and sitting in front of Saturday morning television. The downstairs family room had a large screen TV (at that time, those were rare and expensive) with a sofa and chairs across from it. To the left of the sofa was a sliding glass door that faced the morning sun, and on the right were the stairs. With the morning sun pouring in, we had to close the curtains in front of the glass doors in order to see the television.
"You guys need to open the curtains and let some light in," Heather said, coming down the stairs, "It's a beautiful morning."
She was wearing a simple, light weight mint green bathrobe that went to mid-thigh, loosely belted so that it hung open just enough. Have you ever gotten caught staring open-mouthed? It's embarrassing until the woman you're staring at gives you a big smile and says "Hi Hon. How are you this morning?"
