My name is Maggie. I've written stories about my sex life in my 30s and 40s -- and I don't regret that I had more than a few sex experiences with more than a few men. However, I wasn't always that way. This is the story of my first romance.
I grew up in Arapaho, Kansas, population 2,000. I turned eighteen years old still a virgin. In fact I had hardly ever been kissed. I was small and shy, one of those high school students who nobody recognizes when the class has its fortieth class reunion, as mine did a few years ago. Reintroduced to me, my former classmates said, "Oh, yes, you were Sue's friend" or "You were Mr. Devine's favorite student in algebra class." For a few classmates who had also attended the Baptist Church I was remembered as the girl who always won the Bible quiz held in front of the whole congregation every year around Christmas.
Religion was my crutch. I planned to marry a preacher. I later did and I dedicated my life to gentile poverty, service, and being pure in heart, spirit, and body. I don't regret the idealism of my youth.
To be frank, as a girl I didn't have many temptations to be impure. Panting boys were not besieging me. I was slow growing up. I didn't get my period until the eighth grade and my boobs were still rosy little buds when all the other girls were stuffing theirs into woman-sized bras. I was humiliated by the nickname the boys gave me. In the hallway at school one day, a boy put his thumb on my nipple and pushed and said, "Oops, I thought that was the button for the elevator." Everyone called me "Buttons" after that.
The day I turned eighteen, Christmas 1978, I looked at myself in the mirror. I realized that I had finally progressed toward adulthood and I was pleased with what I saw. I was slender, average height, and almost pretty with silky, straight, light-brown hair and large, waif-like brown eyes. True, I wore thick glasses and my breasts remained small. They were like two fried eggs topped with cherries -- large, plump, red cherries that embarrassed me with their prominence. I kept them well covered, as I did the rest of my body, by wearing loose blouses that buttoned up to the neck and skirts that reached below my knees.
I daydreamed of romance -- especially with a dreamy, handsome, charismatic preacher who would see in me the qualities of character that the popular cheerleaders and beauty queens lacked. I masturbated frequently, conjuring up situations in which I found true, pure love -- but my fantasies stopped short of sexual relations. The handful of dates I had never proceeded beyond a goodnight kiss.
Oddly enough, my best friend was my total opposite. Sue was the preacher's daughter but she went out of the way to prove that she was no religious prude. She had chosen me, her Sunday School colleague, to be her best friend and to follow in her boisterous wake like a silent secret sharer. Sue was not popular with other girls. She attracted too much attention from the boys. She was always surrounded by a crowd of boys laughing at her jokes and eyeing her impressive cleavage.
Romance finally found me at a New Year's Eve party at the Church. Sue had to go to the party because she was the preacher's daughter and I was there because I wanted to be. On New Year's Eve far be it from me to be like many of my classmates: drunk and making out -- and more -- in the back seat of cars parked on lonely country roads.
A boy named Don sat down beside me at the party while kool aid and cake were being served. I knew him of course. Our high school was small and he was in some of my classes. Sue was on my other side, entertaining a brace of boys with off-color stories and not complaining when their eyes focused on her breasts straining against the fabric of her blouse. She directed a quick look at Don and gave me the suggestion of a wink.
"Would you like to go to the movie with me tomorrow?" Don asked suddenly -- and nervously. The nearest movie theater was in Hickok, fifteen miles away. "My father will let me take our car."
I was taken aback. I stuttered for a moment and couldn't come up with a reason to say no. "Why, yes, That would be nice. Thank you for asking me."
Don had not been an actor in my sexual fantasies. He was, as I was, undistinguished in school although I was an honor student and he was only average. He was tall, lanky, and rather good-looking -- though clumsy and inept in social situations. In the vernacular of the time, he was in the high school social class of "grits" -- which was better than being a "hood" but well below the prestige of a "jock" or a "prep." I was in no-man's-land. I was too smart to be a grit but my pedigree and personality didn't measure up to being a prep.
We could hardly find a word to say to each other on the date, but as Don walked me to the door of my house after the movie, he asked, "Would you go to the dance next week with me?"
The more conservative members of the congregation at First Baptist Church considered dancing a sin. "But Sue dances -- and she's the preacher's daughter," I said to myself, "and a boy has asked me to go!"
"Yes, I would love to," I answered -- and I kissed Don on the cheek. I was confident that the jungle sounds of rock and roll music and the hot, feverish contortions of bodies on the dance floor would not lead me into temptation. Rather, my faith would shine like a beacon. My deportment would say. "I can dance and still be a good Christian."
Don and I soon became a couple. We went to church parties, watched television, studied together and, when he could get his family's car, went to the movies. We cuddled on the sofa in the living room of my house and kissed chastely, but we never allowed their hands or mouths to stray to forbidden zones and I kept my lips closed -- one of the tips the handsome preacher at our church gave youth to help avoid temptation.
Don, I fantasized in the dawn of first love, had potential to become a good Christian -- even a preacher as outstanding in work for the Lord as the youth group leader with the golden tongue and the black, swept-back hair. I day-dreamed that Don would become a famous preacher and I would pass all the days of my life as his helpmate, a shining example of virtuous womanhood. Nor did it hurt my social standing in high school to have a boy friend. Later, I would gain a little perspective.
Sue's opinion of Don was grudging. "Yes, Buttons," she said. "He's a nice boy and good looking, and all that...but you've got a future to think of. You and I, we're going down the yellow brick road to something better than this town." Sue had abundant boys at her beck and call, including J.B., the star halfback on the high school football team. I believed that Sue was a little jealous of my happiness with Don and begrudged the time that I spent with him. Sue needed me. She didn't have any other girl friends.
It was on a cold winter night in February while cuddling together on the sofa in my house that Don moved his hand from my shoulder to my waist, his fingers passing slowly over my breasts. My nervous giggle ended in a gasp when his mouth found mine and he pushed himself close to me and his hand ran down my back and under the waistband of my skirt, touching the top of my buttocks
I allowed the kiss to continue longer than I should have before I shook myself free from him. "Sorry," he apologized.
"I understand," I said. I had been taught that it was the woman's responsibility to restrain the savage sexual beast that lurks in the heart of men. I patted Don on the knee to show that he was forgiven and we sat a little closer than usual the rest of the night, his arm over my shoulder and his chest pressed against my ribs, my large, hard, right nipple enjoying the feel of the friction our their clothing.
I masturbated that night with the fantasy that Don and I were married and enjoying the blissful delights of first night in bed. It was the first time I had ever carried my sexual fantasies all the way to intercourse.
The next evening, while we were sitting together on the sofa, one hand again found its way to my breasts and lingered while the other felt the curve of my buttocks. His hands stayed in place while we kissed -- and I broke another rule I had learned for avoiding temptation. I took my feet off the floor and reclined on the sofa. I allowed him to unfasten the top buttons on my blouse and his fingers to reach under my bra to touch my nipples. I sensed the hardness of his penis beneath the fabric of his blue jeans.
