No graphic sex.
No wives actually burnt at the stake.
Not a true story.
You've been warned.
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It was my eighteenth birthday and I was sort of hoping that it was going to be special, and my girlfriend Steph had sort of hinted that it just might be.
At the time we were both still at school and in the same year even, though Steph was actually some four months older than me. We'd been going steady for the whole of our final year at our school, the pair of us two of the brighter students and both expected to pass our exams and get into one of the good universities. The same university if we had anything to do with it, as even at that young age, we saw our futures forever linked.
Steph was a pretty girl in a class of mainly pretty girls; tits nowhere as big as some of them, but legs probably longer and more shapely than most. Some of her classmates had gained themselves a certain reputation, a few more and a few less so, but my Steph, as much as I may have wished otherwise, was a confirmed virgin, and often reminded me that she intended to stay so, until the right moment.
Ok, we messed around like all young couples do, and I knew what her tits felt like, even though I'd never really seen them properly.
Beyond that? No chance!
So I found myself still a virgin, a rapidly disappearing species amongst my pals, and I had no great wish to be the only one preventing it from being declared extinct.
So that's why I was looking forward so much to that evening, doubtful that I'd get to home base as it were, but certainly with some expectations of progressing our relationship. Was that night to be the 'right moment'?
It was young love but oh so real at the time, the sort of love that twisted your gut when you had to say goodnight, the sort that found you dreaming of later when you should have been concentrating on what your teacher was saying.
Yes, I had it bad, and so did she.
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We started the evening out by going to one of the popular pubs in town, not my first visit to such a place, but now at eighteen, my first fully legal one.
"A pint of Bombadier and a gin and lemon please," I ordered full of confidence at my new status, ordering drinks at a bar for the first time ever.
"How old are you son?" demanded the barman, puncturing my confidence.
"Eighteen," I told him. "It's my birthday."
"You don't look it," he further deflated me with. "Got any identification?"
"I don't need ID," I protested. "I'm eighteen."
"Sorry lad but I can't take the risk," he went on. "You don't look eighteen, so no identification, then no alcoholic drinks."
"But I haven't got any identification," I told him. "I didn't know I needed any."
"The sign's quite clear lad," he said pointing to the sign above the bar, a sign that in a few short sentences made it quite clear that I simply wasn't going to get served.
"Haven't you got a driver's license?"
"Yes, but not with me," I groaned. "I haven't got a car."
"Sorry, can't help you," he ended our conversation with, and I was effectively dismissed.
My face burning with shame, I eased my way back through the customers crowding round it, convinced that they'd all heard the debacle, and that they were all laughing at me.
What a bloody start to my birthday evening out!
Maybe Steph would have something with her, at least her driving license, I thought, as I made my way back to where I'd left her. I was hardly looking forward to having to ask my girlfriend to have to go and get the drinks for us, but there didn't seem to be anything else to do.
"You what?" was her reaction, when I explained what had happened. "You take me out and you expect me to go and get the drinks?"
"I'll pay," I whined unhappily. "You just have to go and get them."
She wasn't happy, any more than I was, but with a flick of her long blonde hair, she gave me her jacket to hold, and started to thread her way through the crowd towards the bar, my chest tightening as she stopped at least twice to chat briefly with groups of guys that she somehow seemed to know. Her giggle when one of them playfully slapped her on the bottom as she left them, hardly improving my humour.
"Here you are Ken," Steph eventually got back to me with, handing me a glass of something that obviously wasn't the beer I was expecting."
"What's this?" I asked, noting that she had the gin and lemon that she'd wanted.
"Orangina. He wouldn't serve me with anything alcoholic for you," Steph growled. "He must have seen you with me and refused."
"Did you show him your driver's license then?"
"He never asked," she told me, and oh boy, did that make me feel small.
I wanted to go, but she didn't, saying she liked the sophisticated atmosphere. It was nothing of the sort of course, but to a couple of eighteen year olds embarking on life's great adventure, then it certainly did seem so. Steph was all eyes, looking around her excitedly, pointing out the odd person that she and sometimes we knew, all of them older than me which did little for my already shattered confidence.
I wanted to leave or maybe crawl into some corner somewhere, especially when I found myself clutching my second Orangina. I was about to put my foot down to insist that we found somewhere else, or better still move onto the next part of our proposed night out, when the date that had promised so much took a further nosedive.
"Hi Ken," someone greeted me from behind. "Who's this you're with?"
Oh shit!
"Hi Lenny," I greeted my ex neighbour from up the street. My five year older, three inches taller and far broader shouldered, until recently neighbour. The one that had bullied me when we were younger, though in fairness more recently had run off a couple of local roughs who had been giving me a hard time.
"This is my girlfriend Steph," I introduced him. "You must have seen her at my house before."
"You mean that pretty young thing in the school uniform," he grinned, addressing himself directly at her. "You're telling me this young darling is still at school? I doubt she'd be allowed to wear a skirt that short to school, would she?"
I reluctantly agreed, Steph fluttered her long eyelids and generally bubbled, while Lenny wriggled his way round me to plonk himself firmly right alongside her.
"So what are you doing out with a dweeb like Ken," he asked her, laughing and jabbing me on the arm as if to make a joke of it, though it hardly felt like that to me.
"It's his eighteenth birthday today," my girlfriend informed him. "I'm a bit older than him of course, but ...."
She left the rest of her comment unspoken, shrugging her shoulders as if that said it all.
I'm Lenny," he introduced himself, me having pointedly failed to do so, hoping he might take the hint and leave us alone.
"I know," Steph surprised me with. "Lenny Jones. You used to go out with my cousin Gorgina Flowers."
"Golly, that must have been six or seven years ago," he answered, half turning his back to me as he concentrated on her. "You're not telling me you're that skinny little kid that we used to babysit?"
"The very same," she admitted, grinning wildly.
"My God, have you grown up," Lenny went on, leaning back to give him room to give her a long, unhurried look up and down. "You never had legs like that back in those days."
"There's lots of things I didn't have back then," she squealed girlishly, whether by accident or design, leaning back against the wall behind her, and sticking her small but firm and pointy breasts out at him. "You used to put me on your knee and tickle me."
"And you used to squeal like crazy," he reminded her, laughing out at the memory. "But you always came back for more."
"I had a crush on you Lenny," she admitted, blushing deeply. "I used to fantasize about being your girlfriend when I grew up."
"Well, you're real grown up now girl," Lenny responded, almost growling, again raking her body with his eyes.
"Steph and I were just leaving," I butted in, well pissed off by the direction their conversation was going.
"Oh don't go yet," he retorted, still not facing me. "Let's get you another drink."
"I don't think ...."
"Thanks," Steph interrupted me. "Mine's a gin and lemon please Lenny."
"Get them in Ken. Here's a twenty," Lenny jumped in with, digging some money out of his pocket and thrusting it at me. "A double gin and lemon for the beautiful young lady here, a pint of Directors for me, and whatever you want for yourself."
"They won't serve him," Steph smirked, adding to my embarrassment. "They don't think he's eighteen and wouldn't serve him."
"The bugger they won't," he at least seemed to sympathize with me. "Tell Joe behind the bar that you're with Lenny and you'll be alright."
My admittedly half hearted objections were ignored, and I found myself being eased away from the two of them in the general direction of the bar, at least somewhat consoled with the prospect of a beer at last, rather than sickly soft drink I'd had to put up with.
Of course when I got there, it was much busier than before, and it seemed to take ages to get served, the three barmen seeming to look straight through me whenever I tried to get their attention.
But at last!
"Double gin and lemon, and two pints of Directors please."
"Didn't the manager refuse you earlier," the new barman, probably not much older than me demanded.
"Lenny said to say I'm with him," I spluttered out, suddenly feeling like a pathetic little message boy, trying to do a man's job."
"You mean Lenny Jones?"
"Yes," I answered. "He's over by the back wall."
"That him with his arm round that blonde?" He asked, staring out over the heads of the crowd round the bar." "Haven't seen him with her before."
"That's him," I croaked, wondering whether I should rush back and tell him where to stuff his bloody drinks.
"Right mate," the barman came back, a few moments later. "One double gin and lemon and one pint. What do you want?"
"A pint," I replied in confusion. "I ordered two pints."
"Sorry, no can do," he came back, offering me a sympathetic smile. "Boss says no."
"Half a pint then," I attempted, but he just shook his head.
"A bloody coke then," I backed down, not being able to stomach yet another damn Orangina.
He poured it for me, and I paid him, leaving him a ridiculously high tip for the hell of it. It wasn't my money.
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