Naked Bloom

On October 18th, some time ago, I was born to Chuck and Kaylee Ryder. They named me Illiana, a variation of the poetic name for the ancient city of Troy. It means Trojan. Clearly they had a favourite brand of rubber, and since I was the supposed "miracle baby" (a.k.a., an accident) who came to be when all they were doing was using said rubbers, they thought it would be clever to find the name that came closest to the failure of contraception. From what I've heard, it was a toss-up between my name, and the name Cassandra, which means "man's defender, warrior". Yeah. I'm not saying I don't like my name. I'm just saying I don't like having to explain the meaning of it.

Anyhow, I'm 22-years-old as of now; which means that this story I'm telling you, happened way back when I was like, 19, almost 20. Wow, I sound like my mother when I say it like that. I'm short. Like most girls these days. I just barely make it to 5'1"; that teensy quarter of an inch just wouldn't happen, and I think I'm pretty plain, really. Except, I have these huge pale green eyes. I don't even know where I got them. Sometimes I swear I was adopted, but apparently my great Grandmother had them, so did my great aunt whom I've never met because she did the unthinkable and ran off with a black man, which wasn't tolerated way back whenever it happened. I have long eye lashes, a fairly straight nose (there's a tiny little bump about three quarters of the way down the bridge that happened as a result of colliding with a pole, but no one even notices it), and an okay mouth.

I have a cute cupid's bow. It's really defined, and my girlfriends absolutely hate me for it. I'm lithe. Meaning, I have smaller breasts. They're somewhere between an A and a B, and I have this cute little heart birthmark between them. Totally attractive when I'm showing a little bit of cleavage on a night out. I have a slender waist, the tiniest curve of hips, and of course slender legs to go along with it. Possibly the only non-slender thing about me, is my rear end. It isn't really that big, it's kind of like an apple bottom, only a little rounder, and stick-out-er. I'm a strawberry blonde chick with shoulder-length hair, and I have a nice dusting of freckles across my less-than-perfect nose and cheekbones. Those too, were inherited from my great Grandma.

I have an eclectic bunch of interests. I played violin for a while, learned how to play the flute. I was on the soccer team, the volleyball team, and I played tennis. I locked myself in my big brother's room sometimes when he was out and kicked ass on his videos games, and I also discovered a fondness for typewriters when I was a kid. Eventually I graduated to a computer, but that couldn't have been 'til my early teens. Something about the tap-tap-tapping and the whirring of a typewriter has always sounded so nice. I studied cosmetology in high school and now I'm co-owner of a salon, and I'm finally -- finally -- out on my own. Well, I'm alone most of the time, anyway.

Once I was old enough to know that they didn't have cooties, I found that one of my biggest interests, per se, became boys, and I couldn't figure out why. I grew up with an older brother (only a 2 year difference, thank The Goddess), I saw him and his friend all the time half naked on the deck during pool parties. They were nothing special. At all. Of course, that's what my brain wanted to believe, I think. It wasn't until one of these pool parties ran late into the night and became a sleepover did I ever see a naked guy. And I'll never, ever, forget that experience -- mostly because he was kind of small, and for the longest time I was obsessed with wondering whether every guy's dick was that tiny.

I got older, of course, and so did my brother - and things start changing. My flat chest became a little less flat by the time I was 15, and he, had become quite handsome. And very, very popular with the opposite sex. I know this, because he would have these herds of catty chicks chasing him down all the time, wanting to be with him, pining after him.

"Jude is so gorgeous, Lilly!" They'd swoon over him, those silly girls. Sure, Jude had good looks, or, at least what "normal" girls thought were good looks: curly brown hair, hazel doe eyes, and height (he ended up being a nice, even, 6'1", that bastard) -- heck, he even had a cool name! He was named after the title character from the Thomas Hardy book, 'Jude the Obscure' -- Hardy's last book that followed the themes like class, scholarship, religion, marriage, as well as the modernisation of thought and society. But my brother, mark my words, was disgusting. He grunted when he ate, he whined when he was sick, and he'd wait 'til he was down to the very last pair of socks before washing his clothing. G-R-O-S-S.

The first 'penis in action' I saw was his, though. I know, that sounds really wrong, but I swear to you, I didn't mean it like that. I was at practice, my parents were working, and the little one was at daycare. So of course, like the good sister I am, I just happened to catch him doing you-know-what in his bedroom. I try every day to cleanse my mind of that memory. Nothing works. At all. It's not like I was a stranger to the world of masturbation by then, but still. It was my brother, and... Ew. Just, ew. I'm telling you though, that experience then and there told me that Mother Nature did not curse every living man with a small dick. Amen.

Back to the point at hand.

My first kiss was a boy named Ellis Raymond. And what a beautiful boy he was. Skin the colour of black coffee, eyes a light mocha, hair cut short, and he had that cute, sort of flat nose that his father had. The pool party was over, I was in my bathing suit, and he was in his trunks. Somehow beneath our awkwardness and differences, we each thought the other was cute. We didn't say anything, though. He teased me; I acted like I hated him. It was the act we'd both held since middle school. So, here he was, over at my house, and he sat down beside me, completely out of the blue. He called me Lilly -- a name given to me when I was just a baby by my Grandad, whom just happened to bring me that same flower every one of my birthdays -- and he told me I looked nice that night. I thanked him. We smiled. I don't remember when, but his hand wound up in mine, and the next thing I knew, he leaned over and kissed me.

We kind of dated for a while, in secret though, because the last thing we wanted was Jude knowing about his little sister dating the black boy who was 2 years older than her. Nothing major happened between Ellis and I. Hand-holding, little kisses, late night giggles on the phone (my parents and siblings thought I was talking to a girlfriend), and love letters written in code, which we swapped in the hallways at school. We were young, and we definitely weren't in love. Neither of us was experienced and neither of us felt the other one was "right" for that whole losing virginity thing.

No one in their right mind who didn't know me would've known that I wanted to try all that sex stuff. By the time I ninth grade, I'd already begun masturbating nightly, whether I reached my Big O or not. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised I wasn't more of a slut in high school. I'd experimented with my girlfriends, but that didn't dull the ache that I had to be filled right up by some hunky boy. Hell, even some oral would've been nice. But apparently, I had morals. I wouldn't fool around with guys unless I was dating them. And Lordisa knows it pissed them the fuck off. Girls left and right dropped their panties to keep a guy around, and I just happily enjoyed my fingers and toys up until I turned 18.

When I was 18, I met Braylen Brown. Looking back, I must've had a thing for black boys because I always seemed to crush on them, and ache for them. And I promise it wasn't because of the way Mother Nature blessed them. At least, it wasn't mostly because of that. Braylen was different, though. He was quiet, kind of shy. He was half black, half white, and he was perfection. He was 20 when I met him; I was attending open houses for Universities and Colleges, and he just happened to be studying at U of T, which was the school I'd had my eye on since middle school. He was in the library, nose in a book, his beautiful tan skin hidden by his long sleeved rugby top, his dark brown eyes lowered to the text. He wore glasses, too. They had white, rectangular frames that suited his chiseled jaw so, so nicely. Unlike Ellis, and so many of the black guys I had been interested in before, Bray kept his head shaved. Smooth, and totally begging to be rubbed. He had these sexy broad shoulders that always made me think of gripping them while he pinned me against the wall, and he had long legs, like a runner. He was tall, too; 6'1" just like my brother, which also happened to be the perfect height in my eyes.

I wanted to get his attention, and I wanted to do so in a nice, classy, innocent sort of way. I thought I looked cute: faded blue jeans and a cute short sleeve blouse (you know, those really cute ones that have the rouched material on the bust to make your boobs look like they're twice their size?) so I figured what the heck. I also wanted to grab one of the books dedicated to the history of the huge, astonishing school which I was visiting. So me, being the smart scholar that I was, proceeded to attempt and pull said book off one of the higher shelves, with the possibility of asking him questions about what I've read in the book.

I, Illiana Gwyneth Ryder, while reaching for a book in front of the cutest boy I ever did lay eyes on, fell flat on my ass. And hard. I'm talking about tears stinging my eyes, and my nose turning pink. And to top it all off, the damn book was thick, and heavy, and it landed flat on my shins. Son of a fucking bitch.

Bray was great about it, though. He was the first one there to help me up. And I can honestly say that, falling on my ass was probably the best mistake I've made my entire life.