In Praise of Older Women

Summer 1944, I was a skinny, rootless eighteen-year-old just out of high school. The world was at war, and I was waiting to be drafted. I'd never been laid, and there weren't many guys my age who had, though we thought about it plenty.

We lived a ways out of town in a house at the end of a long driveway that wound through some woods. There weren't many houses out there, and those that were, were nothing to speak of. By today's standards we were poor.

A bunch of us hung out at a drug store in a market by the end of the streetcar line. There was a candy store in the market, too.

The night clerk at the candy store was a young woman named Fern, twenty-two, nice looking, with great tits. She lived across the field from me, and as a teenager, had a reputation for sexual promiscuity. She found a steady boy friend, and at twenty got married and settled down. Then he joined the Marines, and was killed in the Pacific. After that Fern lived quietly at home with her parents.

On the night in question, most of my crowd had gone home, and I decided to go, too. I came around the corner, and stopped for a moment to admire Fern's tits through the candy store window. She leaned on the top of the showcase with her arms spread out to support her, talking with Jake Carlson. Her stance gave me an eye-popping view of her magnificent chest. Jake was leaning on his elbow leering at Fern's tits, and she looked uncomfortable. Suddenly Jake reached out and grabbed her breast. She reared back and smacked him so hard his head snapped around. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and I thought he was going over the counter after her, but he turned around and strode out the door. His nose was bleeding, and his face had a look of fury that frightened me.

I faded into the shadows while he ran to his truck, an old pickup with a loud muffler, and he roared off in a shower of gravel. I came around the corner to look at Fern, and she saw me.

"Sammy," she pleaded, "wait for me, please?"

I nodded, and watched her turn out the lights and lock up.

She said, "Sammy, I'm in trouble, will you walk me home?"

I didn't know what she was so scared of, she had a brother named Ralph who was at least as big as Jake, and even meaner. He'd beat the crap out of several guys who tried something with his sister.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into, but I couldn't say no, so we headed out almost running. We were just at my driveway when we heard Jake's truck coming.

"Oh God," Fern wailed. I've got to hide."

"In here," I said, and grabbed her hand to pull her into the driveway. We ran a few steps up the drive, and I pulled her off the roadway, down a little slope to a big evergreen tree.

The branches swept the ground, and since I was a little kid, I had a secret hideaway under them. I had scraped the ground level, and padded it with a thick layer of dead leaves I renewed every year.

I pulled Fern in behind me as Jake's truck roared by. When he passed, she started to get up, but Jake came to a screeching halt, made a squealing U-turn, and roared back to pull into our driveway.

We lay still, hearts pounding, while he tramped around searching with a flashlight, muttering about goddamn cock-teasing whores. Scared silly, we held our breaths, but Jake never looked under the branches. At last he got back in his truck, and roared off.

The space was small, and I held her close with her sweet breath in my face, and her wonderful tits pressed to my chest. I'd never been that close to a woman except my own mother, and Fern had a scent that gave me strange feelings. I was deathly embarrassed to realize I had a hard on.

I tried to pull away, but her hand strayed to my groin and kneaded the lump. She gasped, and whispered, "Omigod," and started kissing me. I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't stop.

She sucked my lips into her mouth, and I could feel her fumbling with my belt. I knew that thing had to come out or it would break, and the rush of relief as it came free, and she began to fondle it, is something I remember today.

She began to stroke it in a way that created sensations I'd never felt before. Suddenly, she stopped kissing me, and put her mouth around my cock. She licked and sucked, and stroked until I thought I'd explode. When my back began to arch, she took her mouth off my cock, and finished with her hand. I came, and came, and came, and came, shooting a load like I'd never done before.

The moon was bright, our eyes had adjusted to the dark, and dim light penetrated our hiding place. Faintly I could see she her smearing my cum along her inner thighs and over her pussy, squirming, sighing, and breathing hard.

The sight was getting me hard again, and she began to fondle my cock as though she were growing it up to size. When it was full, she hiked up her skirt to straddle me, and lowered herself on it. She began to ride me, slowly at first, then with increasing tempo. Befuddled though I was with this new experience, I began matching her strokes with thrusts of my own, as she moaned and whimpered through teeth clenched to keep her silent.

At the end we were fucking wildly, and finally, I exploded while she thrashed her hips side-to-side, and collapsed on top of me. We lay quietly now, gasping. I had my arms around her, caressing her back, as we returned to the world. Quickly she climbed off me, and wordlessly went about brushing herself off, and smoothing her clothes.

Then she changed. From the bundle of uncontrolled passion she had been moments before, she turned into a spiteful, vicious bitch. Through clenched teeth she hissed, "Listen, little shit, you breathe a word of this to anybody, and I'll sic Ralph on you, and you know how he is."

At that she crawled out of our lair, and strode off. I lay there a few moments longer, not sure whether I had a real experience, or just a dream.

The next day's mail delivered my draft notice. I never went back to the candy store, and in two weeks I was gone. A year later I was in the Philippines, but the shooting was over, and soon I was in the Army of Occupation in Japan.

I got laid there. It was hard not to. You bring thousands of healthy young men who've been living with danger, into a defeated country, most of whose young men have died in battle, where there's a surplus of young women and people are starving, and soon the drives to survive and procreate take over.

That's an old man's wisdom talking. Then, it was simple. You wanted ass, you got it, at rock bottom prices. We sang a little ditty to the tune of, "My Darling Clementine." It described the situation perfectly. It went, "Chewing gum-o, chocolate-o, cigarette-o, thirty yen, all night sleep-o, no present-o, arigato, come again." "Arigato," is Japanese for, "Thank you."

There were rules against fraternization, and the Japanese frowned on their women consorting with the hated white conquerers, too, but all of them might as well have told the sun not to rise. Nature trumps the rules and traditions of men, always.

I got home in August 1947, taller, heavier, and a lot more worldly than when I left. I barely had time to say hello when Mom asked me to get a dozen eggs so she could make me a special welcome home dish.

I asked her where to get them and she said the milk store. I asked where the milk store was and she said it used to be the candy store. I got to the door and saw Fern behind the counter. She was older, as indeed I was myself, a little heavier, and highly pregnant. I hesitated a moment before going in. The memory of the night three years before was vivid in my mind.

As I came to the counter her eyes widened with recognition, and I sensed she remembered, too. Then she smiled.

"Hello Sammy." She cocked her head, looking me up and down, "I see you've grown some."

I noticed she had a fair-sized diamond and a wedding band, and looked serene and happy. I smiled, and said, "Hi Fern, you're looking pretty good yourself. Mom wants a dozen eggs."

"I'll get 'em," she said, and returned with the carton.

I handed her the dollar Mom gave me, and as she returned the change she held my hand for a moment saying, "I'm sorry I never thanked you."

I was nonplused. Never thanked me for what, I wondered. For saving you from Jake? For taking advantage and screwing you silly when you were lonely, grieving, and scared to death? For not telling anyone about it?

I didn't know why she was thanking me, but I said, softly "Hey Fern, it's I who should be thanking you."

Out on the street, I turned and waved, and Fern waved back. I never saw her again.

A week later I was in another state registering for college on the G.I Bill, and six months after that, I was having an affair with my English professor, a cool and lovely woman with a silver streak in her hair. I was twenty-two, and she was a Ph.D., so go figure. I do have this thing about older women.

I was gone another six years getting a Ph.D. of my own. When I came back that time, I caught up on the local gossip. Jake was doing time for manslaughter. Not much of a surprise there. Ralph was in the priesthood. Big surprise there, I didn't know he even went to church.

Fern was married to the local banker. She bought the candy store with her first husband's G.I. Life Insurance, turned it into the milk store, parlayed that into owning the market, bought surrounding properties, and developed the town's first shopping center. She was a power in the community from her business acumen, and her charitable work, as well.

Years later I received tenure at Stanford, and it was reported in the local paper. By then, our little town had grown past 100,000. Fern was still the "queen bee," and I mean that in no derogatory sense. She was rich, but she was unfailingly courteous and pleasant to everyone, was loved by many, and envied by some.

In Mom's last letter before she died, she told me she'd run into Fern on the street. Fern complimented her on raising a fine son, and told her she was proud to have known me, too. Mom thought it was a wonderful compliment to both of us, coming from such an important person. You just never know how people are going to turn out.