"Won't you at least let Charlie apply to the university near me?" said our long-time dear family friend, Rebecca Romano, pleading with my parents way back in the year 1967. The Vietnam War was raging then and, unfair though it was, during that war college students could usually defer getting drafted. I was 18 then, and about to graduate from high school.
Aunt Becky as we called her (even though she wasn't really my Aunt, although our families were distantly related), was an Italian-American beauty. She had dark medium-length hair, just beginning to go grey, olive skin, lovely features (including a large mouth and luscious lips that were sometimes painted bright red with lipstick), and a shapely figure. 37-year old Becky was also a somewhat scandalous divorcee. She, my family, and many of the people we were close to were Catholic, and divorce just wasn't accepted well back then. She was a nurse, and had moved several years ago about a hundred miles away from our rural town to live in a big city, which was where the university was that she now wanted me to apply to.
Becky had always been close to my family, and had for years taken a special interest in me. She often talked with me when we were alone, either on long country walks or in my room. As she heard of my challenges and worries about the future, including about possible future careers, women, the war, and whatever else, she also told me about her challenges involving her work and personal life. She would sometimes hug me, and just generally she encouraged me in life.
After I turned 18 I realized I had a big crush on her. And I could tell she knew it. After I turned 18, after our long heartfelt talks she would always hug me close when we were alone in my room, pressing her soft breasts and her whole body against me for a few minutes. She would just hold me against her, which felt really good, but also a little weird, especially because I would get hard.
The first time she hugged me for a long time that way I could feel my manhood growing against her crotch, and I started to pull away. But she held me against her body as I got completely hard, all the while talking into my ear about how everything would work out for me, that she would always be there for me, and so on. Even between our clothes, I was pretty sure she could feel my nearly seven-inch (I'd measured it) erection against her body.
After our long hugs she would give me a knowing smile, and often say, "what a handsome young man you are," and then sometimes she'd glance down at my crotch, which would make me blush.
After a while, even before she hugged me, which she would do at least once each visit, I would sometimes get hard from just being in the same room with her, as she talked with me about my interests in cars and movies, of my future, about whether I had a girlfriend (I didn't), and so on. I would ask her about what it was like working at a hospital, and she would sometimes tell me hair-raising and sometimes funny stories about medical emergencies, doctors, and fellow nurses. Sometimes during our entire conversations I could feel my cock pulsing with desire for her.
Becky would encourage my attraction to her by being a bit affectionate and flirty, like by gently putting her hand on mine while she was telling a story. But I noticed she wasn't nearly as affectionate with me when my parents were around.
My parents were farmers in our midwestern state, and middle class. But unlike Becky, who still looked glamorous and sexy to me for someone in her late 30s, my parents, just a few years older, already seemed faded by life. My parents in 1967, the year that this took place, looked rather like the faded parents in that original Superman movie from 1978.
Anyway, farming corn and wheat wasn't paying very well in 1967, and what with all the expenses involved my folks were often strained for money, and especially so in the year that this story takes place.
1967 is well over fifty years ago as I write this, and in some ways it seems eons ago. But my memories of losing my virginity then to Becky are still fresh.
As this story begins, we were sitting around the kitchen table in our old fashioned rural farm house, having just eaten a big homemade Italian spaghetti, meatball, and red sauce dinner, with a big salad and garlic bread. The mixed scents of garlic, tomatoes, spices, and cooked meat filled the house and smelled delicious. And the tongues of my parents and Rebecca had been loosened by a few glasses of red wine. My parents were strict about most things, but starting when I was 18 they allowed me to have a one glass of wine with dinner too.
Becky's family, like ours, had ancestors in Italy, and there was a certain closeness, warmth, and openness found in family dinners around the table. And Becky was such a close friend for so many years she was almost like family, and as mentioned we all called her Aunt Becky. She and my mother had been close since they were teenagers, even though they were different in some important ways.
My mother tensely answered Becky's question by saying, "Even if Charles got into the university I'm just not sure we could afford it."
Because what we were talking about was a state university, and this was the 1960s, the tuition was actually not that expensive. But when you don't have an extra thousand dollars or so a year for tuition, it's not cheap. And a thousand dollars back in 1967 would be about eight thousand dollars in today's money--still fairly cheap for a year's tuition, but that's still a lot when money is tight.
Becky answered with even greater urgency, lowering her voice and looking at each of us in turn as she said, "If Charlie doesn't go to the university then you know what will happen. You know that he'll be drafted. Do you want him to go to Vietnam?" She paused, and then added, "Do you want him to come back like Greg?"
Greg was the neighbor kid who had come back from Vietnam in a casket just a few months ago.
Since Mom was also close friends with Greg's Mom, she'd known Greg since he was a kid. He was just a couple of years older than I was. He and I had actually been good friends. Greg was like the big brother I never had. Greg had died just a few months ago, and the funeral had been a stunning event in our mostly rural area that hadn't lost a kid to combat since Korea.
My Mom choked up thinking about Greg--and my possible fate--and started quietly weeping.
"Oh Becky!" was all she could say, as she hid her face in her hands.
My Dad, who had fought in Korea, but almost never talked about it to me, had been listening to this discussion without barely saying a word.
Suddenly my Dad gruffly said, "We've got some savings. If you get in, son, we'll use some of that. But you'll also have to get a job there, work hard, and get good grades."
Since my Dad had been drafted and served in combat in Korea, you might think he'd be more gung-ho to have me go, but in fact it was just the opposite. Dad was proud of his service, but traumatized by it too. Some of his friends from Korea hadn't come back. And I got the idea that he'd experienced things there that were too terrible to talk about.
Anyway, I replied to Dad's startling announcement that determined my future, and saved my future in so many ways, by saying, "Yes, sir. I'll get a job. And I'll work hard and get good grades."
Since I already worked around our farm, and at the small local public library where I had a paying job, he knew that I could and would work to make ends meet. And my grades in high school had been mostly As and few Bs, and so I'd already shown some academic potential.
****
And so, a few months later, in the Fall of 1967, I moved to the relatively big city where Becky Romano lived.
Becky had managed to buy her own home on her salary as a nurse, but it was a small house in a modest middle-class neighborhood. It had just two bedrooms, and one bathroom--as she explained to me as soon as I moved in.
"We'll have to share the bathroom," Becky said with a warm smile as she helped me through the front door with my two big suitcases. I'd arrived by Greyhound bus, and then she'd taken me home from the bus station in her VW Bug.
