Her hair took the light of the bonfire and threw it back as golden sparkles. Moonlight and firelight weren't enough to tell me her eye color, but with that gorgeous, frizzy permed blonde hair down past her shoulders I was willing to bet on blue. In the dark, her smile looked mysterious when she saw me gazing at her, and I flashed her back my best grin, thankful to the illicit booze for the courage not to look away when caught staring.
Closer to the fire, our fellow seniors danced and laughed. Some clustered around the punch cooler as Madonna and Bruce Springsteen music played on someone's boombox. But she and I were alone off by the fence.
Her body matched her face, with pert, generous breasts that made the letters on her Reagan/Bush sweatshirt curve around at her sides. The sweatshirt couldn't hide her flat tummy, and below... gently curving, feminine hips, and a miniskirt that might have been a bit premature in the early-April evening. I wasn't complaining, though. It showed off long, slender legs I wanted to kiss my way all the way up.
Again drawing on whatever liquid courage was in the punch, I walked over about ten feet to lean on the fence next to her. "Hey, how's the party for you so far?"
As feminine artwork went, she was the Mona Lisa, and I felt like a sketch from the high school art class. I'd been in one several hours ago. At eighteen, my stringy brown hair had never matured the way I'd always hoped. It ended not far below my neck, my smile just looked forced, since I was so scared to do it. My breasts were a cup size smaller than hers. I had legs too, I knew they were my best feature, but they were covered in old, K-Mart jeans, not a designer miniskirt that she just had to be cold in.
"Can't be going all that great for either of us if we're here talking to each other," she replied, eyes downcast, smile creeping down into frown territory. "The boys are being wierdos tonight."
"Au contraire," I thought to myself without saying it aloud. "The party's going very well for me."
She was Trisha White, eighteen years old, the most popular girl in my high school. She had been head cheerleader in this, our senior year at Clark High. But with football and basketball seasons over, there wasn't as much call for cheerleading. She had also been homecoming queen. She had also been dating the quarterback until recently. She was the most popular girl at Clark, and when I saw her standing alone away from the main party, my thoughts were the exact opposite of hers: "All of a sudden, the night's looking up."
It had taken me fifteen minutes of slowly trying to ease closer to her without being obvious about it before I was in range to speak. Now, finally standing next to her, I took another big swig of the mystery punch and replied.
"That's what boys do. Be wierdos."
She gave a dreary laugh. "I guess you're right about that. I feel like I've seen you around, but I can't figure out where."
"Probably at games. I've seen you cheering all the time. You're really good at it. Amazing high kicks."
She was a popular girl. She nodded at the compliment as if it were her due. "Your boyfriend play?"
I shook my head. "Don't have one. I just like to watch."
I didn't add, "The cheerleaders, not the game," but that would have been true. Those high kicks of hers I had so honestly complimented? It wasn't her ankles my eyes locked onto whever she did that.
"My name's Karla," I added instead.
"You should be in at the bonfire near the punch cooler if you don't have a boyfriend. But I guess, maybe not tonight. Like I said, the boys are all going after dumb sluts that don't deserve them tonight."
I took a gulp from the punch. I took another one, then a third one to drain my glass. I took a deep breath, another one, then turned, from my position where we were mutually leaning backward on the fence and staring at the fire, to instead face her.
She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
I couldn't say it. I couldn't say it. I couldn't do it...
"It's... actually kind of OK with me that the boys are acting wierd tonight. It means I get to talk to you alone."
"Oh shit I said it," went off like a fire alarm in my head. "This is the most popular girl in school! She's going to tell EVERYBODY I'm a lesbo. Oh crap I should never have..."
"Huh?" she asked, not even having understood what I meant.
Every ounce of my entire being screamed, "Back out of it! Back out!" But somehow - mostly what was probably everclear in the punch - I managed to stumble over a better reply.
"You... you're... well, I mean, you're... you're really... very... pretty."
She blinked, pursing her lips in confusion, and then all of a sudden her eyes went wide. She backed up a step and threw both hands up in front of her. "Oh! You're... I mean you... Oh. Um. Um... yeah, no. Sorry."
Well, now I was committed. Now there was no way to back out. I did my best to project as much confidence as I could, smiling slightly better despite my panic.
"Are you sure? You can just lie back, relax, think about your favorite boy... I promise I'll make it amazing for you."
Her mouth opened and closed as if she were trying to get words out, but eventually she just turned and walked away.
I wanted to run away as fast as I could. I wanted to sprint to the seventies clunker my Mom bought me for my first car and race home. But I also wanted another drink really bad, and at eighteen I was too young to buy it myself, so the too-strong everclear and mystery berry punch was my only option. I was afraid to go back there, afraid I might see her and she'd point at me and shout "Lezzie!" to all of her friends. So I circled the line warily until I could see she wasn't in line. Then I waited as long as I had to to pour a full plastic cup, and hustled to my rusty Toyota as fast as I could without spilling. I drove out of the field, left the kegger behind, and drove halfway home trying to get my panic under control.
I pulled over to the side of the road, drank half the punch, then drove the rest of the way home, finishing it as I drove. By then I was pretty tipsy, so I stumbled up the front steps of my house. Thankfully Mom was snoozing on the couch, trying to stay up to wait for me but failing. I bustled up to bed so she couldn't smell my breath, then cuddled up under the covers.
Remembering that I had actually, real world, genuinely and for real hit on Trisha Homecoming Queen White, my fear gave way to a wierd kind of arousal, focused on the fact that the most beautiful girl in school knew I wanted her to lay back and think about her favorite boy while I made her feel amazing. In my mind, I lived out the process of making her feel amazing, which involved easing that miniskirt up and discovering no panties under it.
I had been planning to use my fingers on myself even if she said yes, so the only disappointment was that there was no taste of her on my lips, no smell of her in my nostrils.
I had been with two other girls in my life. One, an older girl who gave me my first taste of wine, got me drunk, and then persuaded me to taste honey for the first time too. To my surprise, it was the hottest thing I had ever done. I could think of nothing else for weeks afterwards. And if the college girl was too embarrassed when she sobered up to ever speak to me again, well, she had shown me that pleasuring another woman was insanely hot, exciting, and arousing, and I wanted to do it some more.
My second lover was a girl my own age, one of my fellow nerdy, arty wallflowers. We were never actually girlfriends, but after I talked her into the first time, for a while she would call me every week or so when she got really horny. It worked for me too. I loved pussy, she loved orgasms. We had a good thing going until her mom caught us one time and forbid her from seeing me anymore.
That was three months ago. Now, I trepidatiously went back to school on Monday morning, half afraid that every kid in the halls was going to point at me and shout, "There's the lesbo who hit on Trisha!"
That didn't happen. Either she didn't tell everyone, or she did but they were all choosing to snicker at me behind my back rather than mock me to my face. I made it through all of Monday. By the time I was walking the halls between classes on Tuesday, I had gotten used to the idea that apparently the whole school had not been alerted to the fact that they had a pervert in their midst.
I saw her at a distance in the hall outside my Latin class. Lockers lined the walls, with Lakers and Celtics posters on them, or advance publicity for the upcoming LA olympics with their cartoon eagle. Past all the detritus of high school life, our eyes met, and then her head whipped away so fast I was afraid she might break her neck.
Tuesday became Wednesday, became Thursday became Friday. I was hustling to my second period Calculus class when there was some movement beside me in the hall. The person walking, not with me, but walking separately to my right changed. I looked over.
Trisha White.
She was staring deliberately forward, not looking at me. Today she wore a sweater about the recently-concluded Sarejevo Olympics. I looked back and, just at that moment, she turned toward me. My heart bounded up and down in my chest. I turned to her, but at that moment she lost her nerve and looked away again. For a while we just walked in the halls - not together, just two separate students on our way to different classes. I could see the door to Calc coming up in front of me, and I didn't want to get there. I wanted something to come of this walking side by side.
I slowed down to avoid having to leave her too fast.
She slowed down too.
Still, neither of us had the courage to say something, and the Calc door loomed ever closer.
I sighed, resigning myself to the fact that just walking next to a girl who knew I wanted to do her was the most erotic thing going to happen to me that weekend. That's when she leaned closer to me, still barely turning her head toward me.
