So.
My name is Taralee. My story begins at the end of summer, 1964.
Less than a year before, my city had been convulsed by the assassin's bullet that shattered our dream of the American Camelot: the unimaginable assassination of John F. Kennedy, followed by Jack Ruby's live-on-TV gunshot that created a generation's worth of conspiracy theories, then the awful drumbeat of the funeral procession as the gun-carriage rolled by JFK's black-veiled widow and our tears as little John-John saluted his father's coffin en route to its place under the eternal flame fluttering among the rows of military crosses in Arlington National Cemetery.
I was an 18-year-old junior in a D.C. high school. I lived in a huge old frame house, with squirrels in the attic, a basement crammed with boxes of books and dusty furniture, an older sister away at college, and an older brother with a bachelor pad downtown.
My dad was a lusty 55, my mom a tired-but-happy 45.
Photos of me show a happy, crooked smile, a few freckles across my nose, and long shining hair. I'd inherited my dad's light copper skin and my mom's light-brown mane, now sun-streaked after a summer hiking in the Green Mountains of Vermont. I think I inherited their love of sex, too. Hearing them at it most afternoons after dad got home stirred strong feelings in my belly.
Dad never talked about growing up; although he spoke unaccented American English, his buddies had nicknamed him Frenchie. I think he came from somewhere north of Vermont.
In a drawer in the basement there was an old scrapbook, mostly of him and mom before we were born. There was one faded snapshot of him as a young man — he might have been eighteen or twenty — shirtless in jeans and moccasins. He was handsome then with black hair in a long ponytail tied at the nape of his neck. His skin was dark from the sun, and there was a canoe on the rocks at his feet, and in the background pine trees that looked like the ones in those Canadian paintings our high school art teacher liked to show us.
Though he mostly had an easy banter with us kids — except when we were rascals and he had to play the stern dad, though even then he always had a twinkle in his eye — he clammed up if we asked about his family, and his expression changed as if a storm cloud had blown across the sun. After a while, we quit asking.
I think I inherited my love of the north woods from whatever mysterious place he came from; it's part of my very core. And the heat between my legs came from mom; she still got a goofy grin whenever dad walked in, and she didn't bother to hide the musical sighs and yips that rose as counterpoint to the rhythmic thumping of their afternoon delight.
Before the first tawny tendrils of hair sprouted down there my fingers had explored the folds between my legs, and I'd spent hours with my legs splayed wide and my bedroom mirror propped against a chair, trying to understand why the purplish folds down there looked to me like the ugliest things in the world, but created such wondrous sensations when I touched them.
Mom had long ago explained sex in pretty clinical terms, so I wasn't totally uninformed. She'd also told me how she'd given her virginity to a 40-year-old German count with a Heidelberg saber scar, months after her parents — ironically — sent her to a Swiss boarding school to get her away from an unsuitable beau. It was a story she said explained the difference between sex and love.
And my brother liked to sashay down the hall from the shower carrying his towel with his heavy penis swinging in front of him, making my sister and me go "eeewww!"
One time a few years before, I was on my way to the shower and to tease him, let my towel slip. His eyes lighted briefly on my B-cup breasts and tiny rosebud nipples, then his dick sprang straight out in front of him. Without missing a step he dropped his folded towel over it like a wall peg, and his sashay became a swagger as he brushed past me. I blushed. But heat swirled in my belly, my nipples stiffened and when I got to the shower, my fingers probed between my legs, finding a hard clitoris and slippery, swollen labia.
But I hadn't really begun to put the sex thing all together until the previous summer in Vermont, when I met Danny. He wasn't handsome, exactly, but he was young and strong with wiry legs in ragged khaki shorts, tanned arms bursting from sand-colored army surplus shirts, and scruffy, well-used hiking boots. His curly dark hair was uncombed and a great, open smile crinkled his eyes when he looked at me.
We met on a hiking trail near the home of the family I was babysitting for, and pretty soon we were spending most of our few days off together, wishing we had more free time. I couldn't help myself; I was wildly attracted to Danny and wanted to spend every possible minute with him.
His neighbors had a couple of quiet horses, a mare and a gelding, that we were allowed to ride. After a few canters through the woods, he taught me to ride bareback. At one with a beautiful animal, my knees grasping its flank and my fingers knotted in its mane, surrounded by green and ducking low branches along the trail ... I felt freer than I ever had. And Danny had a summer job looking after some of the huts the state kept for hikers: A recipe for a girl to get into mischief!
Our afternoons off he'd bring a couple of beers to a hardly-used hut and we'd sip them in the sunshine, then kiss and hug in the doorway and he'd slip his hands under my blouse and rub my back. I had a hard time getting over my shyness about my body, though, and wouldn't let him undo my brassiere. And no hands below the waist, no way! But the heat was growing between us. My thin summer bras couldn't hide my stiff nipples when he held me, and riding back I felt wetness between my legs. Watching him gallop away with both horses left my knees shaking. It took a long, cold shower to settle down after our parting.
Danny was a virgin too, and shy as well. So we didn't get beyond clothes-on petting that summer. But the fire didn't die out when he went back to college and I returned to high school. Even when I met a guy named Pierre, who was in my English and Biology classes.
He was Canadian, cute with way more freckles than me, and he won my mom over the first time she met him. She'd mother him outrageously (his parents seemed to be a generation older than mine). She'd feed him and soon he was coming to dinner a couple of times a week. Those days, mom and dad and whoever was at the house still sat down for supper in a dining room with no TV or other distractions.
Pierre and I would sit in a sunny courtyard beside school in our spare periods and talk. We hung out after school, playing on slides in a park and talking. We went to the library together and whispered. Pretty soon he was carrying my books and we were doing our homework together at my place and then holding hands, then walking in the woods, then engaging in some heavy petting.
He did seem to have great digital skills (in the pre-computing era, that meant his fingers were dexterous) and he applied them to my willing body every chance he got. We explored each other through our clothes then timidly, shyly, under them.
But there were love letters from Danny a couple of times a week, and I wrote passionate replies. I kept telling myself (and Pierre) that I had to break it off with Danny, let him get on with his life, find another love. I even wrote the letter, a dozen times. But I never mailed it.
One hazy fall afternoon when we were home alone I took Pierre down to the basement of our wonderful old house. It was full of furniture under drop-cloths, children's toys, overflowing bookshelves and my dad's pride and joy, a partly restored player piano which we kids weren't supposed to touch.
I was still wearing school duds, a Madras plaid knee-length skirt that hugged my hips, a white cotton blouse with a Peter Pan collar and pearl buttons, sensible shoes, a plain white bra and thigh-length cotton pettipants.
I was still trying to sort out my boyfriend confusion and stopped beside the player piano, teasing Pierre with my arms around his waist. He took the hint and kissed me, then kissed me again, long and hard, and his tongue slipped between my lips and met mine. One hand roamed down my back, softly stroking my behind, gradually working the fabric of my skirt inch-by-inch up my thighs. I turned sideways so his hand moved to my front.
His fingers felt the flimsy elastic of my pettipants and tentatively slipped inside. I kissed him deeper. His fingers explored lower. I broke the kiss only to sigh, take a deep breath and kiss him again, hard. His left hand held my bottom as his right slid between my legs. I moaned, encouraging him. He found the hard little knob of my clit and began to massage it, quicker and quicker. Oh ... Ohh ... Ohhh! What an exquisite sensation!
My pettipants were sopping. I could smell my musk and feel him inhaling great gasping breaths as he rubbed me and slipped a finger between my labia. Through his slacks I could feel his erection hard and hot against my leg.
My eyes were tight shut and every muscle tensed. Fireworks began exploding across my vision. A trembling started in the muscles of my thighs. I felt as if I was soaring higher, higher, higher into darkness lit by swirling flashes of colored fireworks among the stars.
My pulse roared in my ears. Suddenly my vagina clamped around his fingers in mighty spasms, I groaned and the world went black.
Seconds later, I came to. Or was it minutes? My breath came in slow, heaving sobs. I was slumped against Pierre whose worried face came slowly into focus. Was I okay, he asked? Had I fainted?
