Before the Fall

This is the somewhat true story of Carol Mason's late teens and young adulthood. It is a prequel to the story "Fall Semester," which deals with Carol's sexual re-awakening later as an adult married woman.

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Carol Mason thought of herself as a fairly average high school senior in the Fall of 1965. She was an athlete and swam competitively for her school, specializing in the butterfly. She was competitive, though, fiercely competitive, in every stroke, and could be inserted anywhere on her relay teams to advantage, even swimming the anchor "freestyle" leg in the medley.

Carol was also a good student. Most of the time her peers spent socializing or on the phone, Carol spent studying quietly in her bedroom in the three-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother and younger brother.

Carol was on the leading edge of the baby boom. She had been conceived, like most baby boomers, when her father returned from duty during World War II, where he had served as a Navy pilot in the Pacific. Her mother and father were already married at that time, and rejoined, after the war, in Honolulu for the true honeymoon that had never gotten to enjoy during the war years.

Both her mother and father were pretty young. Her mother was a scant 19 years old when Carol was born. Two years later, Carol's brother Jack was born. By the time she was six years old and ready to go to school, her mother had been widowed when her father died from kidney failure at age 27. Her mother was only 25 at the time, and suddenly, her life underwent drastic changes. She was now the head of a family of three, and had full responsibility for raising two young children by herself. Carol's father missed by only about a decade the advent of commonly-available dialysis, which might have kept him alive until kidney transplants became common another decade later. With his condition today, he could almost certainly be assured of a long and vigorous life.

But that is now, and this was then. After staying with her husband's grandmother for a year or so immediately after his death, her mother moved her little family to another town and into the tiny apartment where Carol and Jack would grow up through high school.

At first, her mother was fully occupied with the demands of her new job at the bank and raising her two small children. She had to be both mother and father to them before there was readily available day care for single mothers, and before polite society had made accommodations for working women.

Eventually, though Carol came to be a very independent little girl, what we would now maybe call a "latch-key" kid ... one who came home after school to an empty home and had to take care of herself and her brother for several hours until her mother got home from work. Carol was very mature; by the time she was twelve, she worked summer jobs at the local swimming pool, and eventually earned her life-saver's medal and became a lifeguard there. Even when she was smaller, she would call her mother at work after getting home from school, to let her mom know she was safe and sound, and to get instructions about what to put in the oven for dinner.

Carol was one of those girls who did her homework as soon as she came home from school, to get it out of the way. Her brother, Jack was the more typical boy, going out to play instead, postponing his homework until just before bedtime, or maybe just blowing it off all together. Carol had always been a straight-"A" student; her brother scraped by with "C's" and the occasional "B" or "D."

Growing up pretty much on her own, Carol had been something of a tomboy, playing roughly with the other kids in the neighborhood.. In the summer, her mother would send Carol and Jack to Kansas to spend the summer "helping" on their father's sister's farm there. Everyone knew they weren't helping so much as giving their mom a chance to have a break, and the kids a chance to have some fun away from her constant supervision. Carol's aunt had two sons, and sort of took Carol under her wing as if she were the daughter she'd always wanted; her aunt showed her many things about being a lady that her mom simply hadn't had time for.

But now, almost finished with high school, Carol felt very adult and independent. She was almost financially self-sufficient; she had won a scholarship to a small church-related school where the daughter of a friend and neighbor was already attending, a year ahead of Carol's class. Carol also had Social Security survivors' benefits from her father's account, at least until she was twenty-one, by which time she expected to be a college graduate and working to support herself.

Carol was so anxious to get away from this tiny apartment. Her mother, now with more time for a social life and still very attractive and not yet forty, had a series of boyfriends over the course of Carol's high school years. Carol resented them a great deal; she knew her mother deserved to have a life and that her mother was hardly being unfaithful to her father, who Carol frankly could hardly remember now, but her resentment was more an emotional reaction than a logical one.

But far more than that, Carol was a normal teenage girl, with all the sexual awakening, tensions and uncertainty that that brought with it, and she hated Friday and Saturday nights. Her mother would come home late at night, drunk or getting there, with one of her long string of "boyfriends," and they would retire to the "big" bedroom, with her mother's queen sized bed, close the cheap hollow-core door as if that was going to make their activities private, and then the two of them would spend the next several hours noisily doing sexual things, banging the head of the bed against the wall between Carol's room and her mother's for what seemed like hours at a time.

Carol listened in spite of herself, and could easily hear them talking to one another, so she had a much better idea of what constituted an adult's sex life than the typical high school girl probably did in those days. The sounds of passionate and enthusiastic sex only inches from her own bed fueled hundreds of Carol's fantasies in those formative years, at the same time as it made her angry at her mom.

When eventually, her mother and her "boyfriends" (many were her "boyfriend" for only one night) would either tire out or pass out, silence would descent over their apartment, and Carol could finally be able to fall asleep to troubled dreams.

Not that Carol herself didn't have a "sex life." She was certainly still a virgin, as most middle-class high school girls were in those days, at least before their senior proms. Carol went out on dates, usually with a group, but occasionally one-on-one with some particular boy. As she grew more mature and more comfortable with herself and her new body, Carol allowed herself to go further with her dates, particularly if she liked them a lot. More often than not, the ones she liked weren't the most popular or the cutest boys (often those two were the very same boys), but rather the nice, level-headed, intelligent boys from her advanced-placement and honors classes. She just got along better with that type of boys (and girls!), and to tell the truth, she felt safer with them.

Finally, in her senior year, after she turned eighteen, Carol began to allow boys she dated a few times to put their hands underneath her brassiere, and eventually she permitted a boy to reach down into her panties and touch her most secret places. Carol was no prude; she was used to exposing her body in skin-tight racing suits at competitive meets, and was used to the rough-and-tumble kidding around and grab-ass that went on between the boys' teams and the girls' teams during swimming season. When she finally allowed one of her good friends from AP English to feel her up after they had been to see a movie and went out "parking," she had little patience for his nervousness and reluctance to expose himself to her.

She disengaged from his arms in the tight confines of his old Chevy Coupe, making him think at first that he had gone too far and offended her. Quite the opposite was true. Carol was a curious and healthy girl, and she was ready, after an hour or so of necking and heavier petting, to move on to something more exciting. She wanted to see her young man's sexual equipment, ANY man's sexual equipment, to feel it, to perhaps taste it and also to be fondled by a boy as she often fondled herself while listening to her mother's moans in the darkness of her bedroom. But her date seemed not to have the nerve to push things any further. Carol sat back, and while looking directly into her date's eyes, smiling with what she hoped was a reassuring smile, totally removed all her clothes, except for her bobby socks and penny loafers. Then, she simply demanded that he do the same. The poor boy looked cornered, but he knew he was seeing something that few of his friends had ever actually really seen ... no matter what they said ... a beautiful and oh-so-sexy naked girl. He hesitantly removed his clothes, starting with the "safe" items like his shirt and shoes, then finally, when he had nowhere left to run away from her hungry stare, he slipped off his trousers, and finally his tighty-whitey underwear.

Carol knew what a man's sexual equipment looked like, in a general sort of way. Sex-ed classes were mandatory by then in her school for sophomores. And she did live in a small apartment with her brother. All too often, she had seen her older cousins naked when she was spending the summers in Kansas. They made sure she did.

But she had never been INTIMATE with a man or boy. She had never seen a penis fully erect, had never seen one attached to a boy she might actually care about romantically. She had never seen one which was available for her to touch and explore as she intended to do to this one. She was fascinated, just as her date was fascinated by her beautiful athletic teen-aged body, so much more fit and strong than his own. Without guile or hesitation, Carol reached out to touch his penis, wanting to know how it felt. She was willing to do most anything with him, but had no intention to engage in intercourse with this guy, at least not tonight. At that moment, though, he didn't know that, and all the evidence was indicating the contrary. She was just curious and delighted. He felt he had suddenly been thrown onto a moving roller-coaster that he had previously only admired from afar.

As young men often do, as soon as her hand touched his cock, he ejaculated all over both of them and all over the painted steel dash-board of his old car. Carol didn't care; she knew what had happened, and although she was startled by the suddenness of it, she wasn't shocked or disgusted at all. She had been planning on giving him that pleasure tonight, anyway, at least with her hands. She kept her hand in place, and briefly moved her fist back and forth over his rapidly-diminishing erection. Soon, he was but a shadow of his former self. He wasn't all that large, even when hard, but now that he was soft; he was a little frightened and embarrassed by what was happening, and his penis and balls had shrunk to an even smaller-than-normal size. He was humiliated and verbosely apologetic.

But Carol knew him well ... they were truly friends. She had surprised him that week by asking him out on this date. So she just reassured him, as one friend to another, that what had happened was okay with her, and that she found it flattering that he was so excited by seeing her that he "went" so quickly, and so forcefully! She found a couple of tissues in her purse and helped him mop up all the streamers of goo that had been flung over her body and his car, and, to a lesser extent, onto his own penis as it drooled itself to completion. To help re-assure him, she made sure that HE was responsible for mopping up HER body, and SHE mopped up HIS body in return.

She also told him that he shouldn't worry, that they were not going to have intercourse this evening. He was visibly relieved, and noticed with delight that she hadn't actually ruled it out forever, just for tonight. Having seen her nude body, and it was far more delightful than he had imagined, he certainly didn't want to be forever denied at least the possibility that he might eventually enjoy her fully. She said it was only fair that he should be able to explore her body, since she had explored his now, and for the first time, she allowed a man, an awkward young man, to be sure, but a man, to feel around and look around and sniff around her breasts and pussy. Her date learned a lot from Carol that night, not the least of which was how to be a decent human being with someone of the opposite sex.

After a while, her date's cock was completely swollen again. This time, Carol asked him to put one or two fingers inside of her and stroke them gently in and out while she took a turn exploring his sex. Carol had long since lost her hymen while playing roughly as a child, so he was able to penetrate her vagina quite deeply, excited to discover the rippled lining and the oily moisture that had begun to flow there. While he did that, she in turn stroked his rigid penis gently up and down it's length -- having cum so embarrassingly earlier, he was not on quite such a hair trigger now. She bent to look at his cock in the dim light inside of his car, and began a life-long fascination not only with appearance of a penis, but with the simple fact of holding that hot, rigid (yet somehow soft), pulsing genital organ of a man. She relished the sense of abandon and sinfulness, the sense of naughtiness and over-the-top daring that it gave her. It seemed to her at that moment that she was more alive than she had ever been before; there was a feeling that abandoning herself to sex would give her pleasure for the rest of her life. Very soon, each of them enjoyed a much more anticipated, and therefore much more appreciated orgasm. Again, though, her date's ejaculation shot out with so much force that it struck her in the face and on her breasts and dribbled down her body.

She hurriedly mopped it up with tissues again; she didn't want any of this stuff anywhere near her fertile pussy. The "pill" was only brand-new then, and unmarried high school girls simply didn't have access to it. And he hadn't dreamed he would get as far as they had, so he hadn't thought to bring any protection, either.

Carol was very pleased with the results of their evening, and told her date as much while they were getting dressed. He was again relieved, and somewhat surprised that she thought he had done things well, and he was suddenly not at all embarrassed, but proud of himself. When he had at first squirted all over her so suddenly, he had thought that surely, she would stop being his friend now. He was stunned, in fact, when Carol asked as they were driving home, if he was interested in going out again the next weekend. Of course, he hurriedly said "yes."

Clearly, Carol wasn't a prude, but she also wasn't a slut ... or what was then called a "loose" girl. She was determined to wait to have intercourse until she was married ... or at least until she had met "the one." She couldn't deny her sexual feelings and curiosity, but she didn't want to be like her mother, screwing a string of losers week after week due to some pitiful craving.

For the rest of her senior year, Carol dated that same boy, and a few of others (well, maybe more than just a few), and on every date, every one went away quite happy with the results. She knew about oral sex from listening to her mother at night, and when she tried that out on her dates, they were over the moon with delight. She knew that swallowing was an extraordinary treat for her dates, and she had no hang-ups about doing it ... anyway, it was neater. She had less success convincing her dates to reciprocate.

But that was okay; they treated her well with their fingers, and she was happy with how things were going. All of the boys she dated were in her "set," the brainy, more mature kids who teachers just loved to have in their classes, and who the other kids liked in spite of the fact they often ruined the curve. So none of her dates (she made them swear never to say they were her boyfriends) ever blabbed her name or activities around. As long as she never heard anything like that, she was generous with repeat performances.

Carol made it clear to all her dates that she would be moving on when she went to college, and that they shouldn't get emotionally attached. If a particular boy seemed to be getting too serious, she simply stopped going out with him.

After graduation, Carol knew that she had been accepted at her desired little college in the next state. And she knew that she had secured her scholarship. But it wasn't a "full-ride" scholarship. Taken together with her Social Security allowance, she knew it wouldn't be enough to finance her even through her first year of college.

She also knew her mother was in no position financially to help her very much, either. So, instead of going to her aunt and uncle's farm in Kansas for the summer as usual, Carol got a well-paid job as the lifeguard at the county club pool near her house. She also taught swimming lessons there in the mornings before the pool opened for general swimming, and together, what she would earn that summer would be just enough, maybe, to get her through one year of college. The year after that was for worrying about later.

As the summer wore on, Carol if anything got even more attractive. She wasn't a fantastic beauty, but she was very wholesome looking and very cute, and she had that animal magnetism that healthy, athletic, vibrant young women seem to radiate. She enjoyed lots of attention from the boys (and the men!) at the pool over the summer. She also swam competitively on the country club's team in the summer club league, so she got to know several very attractive young men, young men of families who belonged to the country club, and who were several notches above her family on the social register.

Over the three months of that summer, her time under the sun and her competitive swimming turned her into an even more hard-bodied, well-tanned goddess, but she was only dimly aware of it, because, in spite of her maturity and uncommon common sense, she had all the insecurities and anxieties of any teenaged girl. She took to "frosting" her short, brown hair to disguise the damage from the sun and chlorine, and she looked like what later might be thought of as a poster girl for Bay Watch.

Several of the boys who spent time at the pool asked her for dates, and she accepted several of them. She knew her limits, and kept them, but her limits were quite advanced as far as most of the boys were concerned, and she never returned from a date with an unhappy or unsatisfied escort. No one who dated Carol in her senior year of high school or the summer that followed suffered "blue balls" so long as they were dating her.

She also never dated anyone who she thought might be "the one." These boys were all nice, and some were even among those cuter and more "popular" boys she had avoided in high school. She discovered, though, that a couple of those had bragged about what they had done with her after a date or two; they paid dearly for it by being dropped like a hot rock, and they regretted what they had said, especially when her other dates swore up and down that she would never do anything of the kind. They didn't want to be cut off, too!

Carol's mother was named Mary. Mary's social life continued unabated, too. As the time drew near for Carol to depart for college, Carol got less and less patient with her mother's drinking and boorish sex partners. She complained that they were leering at her when they were in the apartment, but her mother assured her that she was imagining things.