When you're young, life seems to bunch milestones together. It's like a never-ending parade of firsts and lasts. Losing your first tooth and having your last kiddie haircut. Kissing your first girl and losing your virginity. For some people, graduating high school is a seminal event--even the cardinal event of their lives.
For me, it was a "last day" milestone. A last day of childhood, with a door opening on the other side. I know people who only look back at that day, wistfully thinking it end of something great. I slammed it closed behind me.
It wasn't that I had a terrible childhood. But to me it was like getting the training wheels off my bike when I was five.
I graduated in early June and my eighteenth birthday was two weeks later. When that milestone arrived, I was on a hiking trip in the Trinity National Forest. It was my last camping trip with my Boy Scout troop. On the peaks, the sun was hot. In the valleys, among the redwoods, it was cool, even chilly.
I was one of just a few older boys. Our scoutmaster's son, Vin Sampson, and I were good friends. He was some months older than I was and we'd done most of the planning--choosing the route, marking the maps, organizing the means. The rest of the troop was made up of middle schoolers, freshmen, and sophomores. I knew them all, of course, from previous trips and our weekly meetings. Most kids give up the Boy Scouts early in high school though: it's not cool. I'd stuck with it, earning my Eagle. I loved the outdoors and the activities.
When we came down into the last parking lot at the end of the trip a few parents' cars were there to pick us up. We were hot and dusty, sunburned, and footsore--and happy both with our accomplishments and to be headed for civilization. We'd trekked seventy-five miles in two weeks, and it was unforgettable.
We expected the drive home to take most of a day, so we loaded up into the various cars, shook hands, and took off. I went in an Audi wagon with three of the youngest scouts, the twins David and Cliff Scoresby, and Bobby O'Neill. It was Bobby's mom, Eileen O'Neill, driving. The car was cramped, but, since I was taller and bigger, I got the passenger seat up front. Besides the legroom, I was glad for the arrangement because after two weeks, I was done with fart jokes.
We hit an A&W on the way south. Let me tell you, no five-star gourmet meal tastes as good as a root beer float when you're just off the trail. When we hit the road again, I struck up a conversation with Bobby's mom.
"You missed your birthday," she said.
"No, I was there," I laughed. "It was everyone else who bailed. These guys made it fun, though and it's not like turning twenty-one or something. I didn't really need a party or something."
"What about a special someone?"
"Nah, there isn't anyone, you know, like that." In fact, I was still a virgin. I hadn't had as much success dating in high school. I wasn't unpopular or anything, but I'd focused on school. I'd had a job and a car. And girls were still kind of a mystery to me.
"That's too bad. You must have to beat, uh, dodge lots of gals," she replied. I laughed at her avoiding beating anything off, given the backseat audience--not that they were listening.
"Not as such." Our conversation turned to post-high school plans. I was headed for Berkeley, and we talked about what I expected it to be like.
Eileen was a big woman with long dark hair, pulled back in a loose French braid. She'd always seemed friendly but didn't really stand out in my mind from the general category "parents" in my young mind. Just over the threshold of adulthood, I wasn't prepared to look at her in a different light yet.
In retrospect, she was a hair over thirty, which is still a significant age gap, but not old in any real sense of the word. And it dawned on me incredibly slowly (since I was completely unaware of the
possibility
of any such thing) that she was subtly flirting with me. Like many big women, she had capacious boobs, which she seemed to flaunt in my direction. At the A&W, she'd been behind me in line, and brushed one of them up against my arm. It could have been a casual thing, an accident. But it felt deliberate. Here in the car, she spread her knees somewhat so that her skirt rode up some. That way I could look at her naked lower legs and the inside of her knees. In our chatting, driving with her left hand, she'd touch my hand or arm sometimes. And there was a definite double-entendre moving through what would otherwise seem to be innocuous topics.
I was an innocent: I
got
the flirty dirty stuff, but my pea brain didn't connect that with any
actual
interest on her part. I was a Boy Scout, for Christ's sake. Older married mothers didn't do that sort of thing, so it must be harmless fun.
About halfway home, we stopped for gas. The three boys ran into the Jiffy Mart to buy candy or such. Eileen asked me if I could fill the car with gas.
"I need to use the restroom. I'm weaning our daughter and all the conversation with you is making me leak," she announced. Indeed, the front of her blouse was soaked on one side. I recalled her being pregnant maybe a year or two ago, when Bobby had first joined the troop. Now she rustled around for a sweatshirt to cover her embarrassment.
"What about our conversation brought that on?" I asked, honestly innocent. But she took it as a deeper flirtation.
"I don't get to talk to many big handsome lads. When I do, sometimes things get... wet."
That's when the pump went 'clunk' and shut off, distracting me. The boys came running back and I finished up with the fueling. We hit the road again.
When we finally arrived home, we dropped off Dave and Cliff first. Then, surprisingly, we dropped Bobby off. He dragged his pack into the house, where his father was waiting to help. I could hear the wailing cries of their young daughter. It was bit before ten p.m.
Eileen came back out to drive me the final miles to my house. My parents were divorced. I lived with my dad, and I knew he'd probably be up, waiting. Instead of going directly to the house, though, Eileen drove to a nearby overlook. Not really a "lover's lane" kind of place, but it was private and quiet.
She turned off the car.
"So, you're going away in a few weeks. Will you be back at all?"
"Maybe in the summers. I need to make money then to cover my expenses and stuff."
"I hope you'll check in any time you're home," she said. "You know, I've never set up here with a man and not had him touch them." She put her hand on my knee, while turning to face me.
"Touch what, Eileen?" She'd asked me to 'stop with the Mrs. O'Neill' hours ago.
"My boobs. Don't you want to touch them?"
"Um..." I really hadn't thought about it. But I reached out to tentatively prod one. It was warm and firm. In addition to the sweatshirt, she was wearing a blouse and a capacious nursing bra. Thus, I didn't really have a sense of "touching her boob". It wasn't the first time I'd touched one, but certainly the first time I'd be brazenly invited to do so.
I moved my fingers and thumb around, until I located a nipple longing for attention. As I did so, she leaned in towards me. I couldn't mistake this. I kissed her.
