Fond Remembrance

I had a visitor the other day; hadn’t seen her in twenty years. Last time I saw her, she was eighteen; must be about forty now.

I was sitting on the patio shooting the breeze with some of the other residents here, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw the patio door open. As soon as she stepped out, I knew her. I would have recognized her from a mile away, she had the same charisma, the same force of character, she had as a little girl.

Conversation ceased, as it always did when she came into a room; that happened even when she was little. I remember a Saturday afternoon gabfest, with a bunch of neighborhood adults jabbering away under the glow of a few drinks.

Ann was ten. She’d been playing out in the woods with my granddaughter, Cindy, and she came in, all sweaty and grimy, to use the bathroom. The talking stopped while the grimy urchin sailed through the room like a little queen. It started up again, then stopped when she came out of the bathroom. Somehow, no one else seemed to notice the effect she had.

Anyway, the other day she came out the door, and glanced around. She saw me, and strode across the patio like she owned the place. Smiling softly, she took my hand, and her throaty voice said, “Hello, Norman.”

I smiled, glad to see her after all those years. I said, “Hello, Ann.”

We asked each other how we had been, and we were right back where we were twenty years ago. She told me she wanted me to meet her family, and brought out a good-looking man and two strapping teenage sons. The man was a fit consort for her, and consort is the right word. No man was ever going to take charge of this woman.

She said they were on the way to a computer exposition in New York, in the company jet. They stopped for fuel, and had to wait for some minor maintenance, so she decided to bring the family out to meet me. She owned a multi-million dollar software company; no Bill Gates, perhaps, but rich enough to flit around the country in a private jet. I wasn’t surprised. From the time she was a little girl, I thought she was going to grow up to rule the world.

They didn’t have much time, and in a few minutes she said, “You boys get the car ready, I’m going to talk to Norman for a minute longer.” Her voice was soft, and pleasant, but there was no mistaking the command in it.

I stood up to walk her to the door. She looked up, taking my face in her hands, saying, “You were a very special man to me growing up, Norman.” She planted a lingering kiss full on my mouth, and a twinkle came into her eye as, smiling, she said, “That’s just to be sure you never forget.”

Well, I’m pushing eighty, and for a minute there, I thought I was a younger man, in a different time and a different place, but then she was gone.

Of the two old broads sitting there with me, Marge looked like she was choking on a pickle, but Molly had a big grin, and a wicked gleam in her eye. She laughed raucously. “Ho ho ho. You old dog, you better tell us the story behind that.”

I had a warm recollection of something I hadn’t thought about in years, but I just put on my best Cheshire cat grin, and shook my head. I wasn’t going to spill the beans about it to anyone; at least not right now.

Ann came into my life when she was ten. She and my granddaughter Cindy were best friends. From the time Ann moved into the neighborhood, until she left for college, the two girls were joined at the hip.

I’d been divorced about ten years already, then. I’d lived every young man’s fantasy; married a beautiful woman who needed sex three times a day. Trouble was, I couldn’t keep up, and one man wasn’t enough for her. I loved her well enough, that’s part of why I never remarried, and she stayed until our kids finished high school, but then we went our separate ways. I never did find out what she did after she left; didn’t really want to, it already hurt too much. Oh, I never had trouble getting my needs taken care of afterwards, but I didn’t want any more commitments.

Cindy’s parents both worked, and I worked out of my home, so I was there most of the time. Cindy started spending a lot of time with me, and we became close. When Ann moved in, now I had two sweet little girls in my house almost every day.

Ann’s mother was a single mom with a roving eye, and a bad marriage under her belt. She had serial boyfriends, which disgusted Ann.

Cindy had her dad, but Ann had no decent male role models, so she latched onto me. I didn’t mind, I felt sorry for both little kids, and I enjoyed it. They were the lights of my life, and both of them spent a lot of time with me.

I took them on picnics, to amusement parks, to the movies, we went fishing, the whole nine yards of stuff a doting grandfather is supposed to do, and I loved every minute of it. They gave me a reason for living. Often, we’d sit on the couch watching television, one little girl on either side of me, just having a grand time being together.

Now don’t get me wrong, this was all straight, kindly old grandpa stuff. I loved those two little girls, and I would never do anything to hurt them. I never had anything like a Lolita complex anyway, I always liked older women. I must have been around fifty before even women my age began to be as attractive as the older gals.

I already told you about Ann’s charisma. On top of that, she was a serious child, bright as a new penny, and smart like you wouldn’t believe. She knew where she was going, and she was going to get there, so you better go along, or get out of the way. If we didn’t already have the word determination, we’d have to invent it to describe her.

The girls were growing up, as little girls do, and were turning into young women. Cindy was still a kid, but Ann was precocious. Her familiarity took on a very mature, seductive air that made me uncomfortable. On her part, it was innocent and unconscious, and there was never anything untoward on the part of either of us, but I found it troubling. I’m sure she was aware of what went on in her mother’s amorous liaisons, and that might have triggered sexual precociousness too, or maybe it was just part of her nature, I don’t know. A shrink could probably explain it, I can’t.

I said she was smart, and indeed she started school early, and skipped a grade along the way. She graduated from high school just after her sixteenth birthday, and the scholarships came looking for her, not the other way around. She accepted a full ride at a prestigious Eastern university, and was to start in the fall.

I thought she was level-headed enough to handle it alone, and her mother was happy to see her out of the house, though her presence there hadn’t done much to cramp Mom’s style.

That last summer, we were all rocking along in the manner that had been our habit for years. It was a Friday afternoon, a few weeks after school was out. The weather was hot, we were all dressed in shorts. I’d been working in the yard, and was bare-chested. The three of us were sitting on the couch drinking iced tea, watching television.

Ann was preoccupied about something that day, and it bothered me; she was usually so much in control, that nothing seemed to faze her. I thought of asking her what was troubling her, but Cindy jumped up and said, “Grandpa, we need some ice cream. I’m going to the store.”

She pranced out, leaving Ann, and me alone. I had been sitting with my arms on the back of the couch, with the girls close on either side, and now I was very uncomfortable. Ann had been chewing her lip, and suddenly, I heard her take a deep breath, the special kind of breath she took when she made up her mind to do something. She whipped around to straddle my lap, put her arms around my neck, and said, “Norman, I want you to take my cherry.”

Well, let me tell you, that took my breath away. I sat there stunned, open-mouthed, raw emotion boiling through me that I can’t describe even today; this lovely young woman, her hot little crotch grinding into mine, a wet spot in her shorts, her beautiful little tits pressing on my bare chest, and the scent of her arousal filling my nostrils.

There’s an old expression that goes, “I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.” Well, I thought about doing both, or maybe disappearing into thin air, or diving into a hole in the floor. How in the world do you deal with something like this when you’re not that kind of a guy? So I prayed; not something I do very often, but I sure needed help that day. I guess my prayer was answered because I took a deep breath, and I spoke very carefully.

“Ann, I’m not going to reject you. I could never reject you, I love you too much. I love you as a grandfather would. I love you as a father would.” Here, I said something dumb that just popped into my mind, “And I love you as a man would.”

“But I’m going to ask you to wait. In the eyes of the law, if I do what you ask now, I’ll be branded a rapist, and that I am not, and never will be. I want you as badly as you want me, but if we do this, and it becomes known, I will be ruined, and your bright future will be smashed. I can’t. I won’t. But if you still feel this way when you’re eighteen, I will.”

I said that, more as a way to give her an opportunity to postpone things, than any kind of real promise

I held my breath, as she mulled this over. Then she looked me in the eye, and said, “Promise?”

I said, “Promise.”

Now she kissed me; hot and passionate, and I almost lost it. “That’s just so you don’t forget,” she said archly, this sixteen year old going on thirty, and she jumped off my lap.

“Cindy’s not coming back,” she said, “I’m goin’ home.” She skipped out grinning, “See ya’.” So it was a setup. If I’d gone along, Cindy would have known, and the cat would be out of the bag. I sighed at how close I had come, and I had to go jack-off.

The rest of the summer went as always, though I was wary of getting too close to Ann. She went off to college in the fall, and Cindy went back to high school. I thought Ann would be over what she said to me, by end of her first week in college.

The school year passed, and Ann was back, the most mature, sophisticated seventeen-year old I had ever known. Cindy was your typical seventeen-year old, but Ann was wise beyond her years. The girls were developing at different rates, and they were growing apart.

I was sure that Ann, by now, was sexually active. I was wrong, but I still believed that nature would take its course, and she’d find a young man to do what she had asked of me. Wrong again.

The following spring, she called me from school. I was delighted to hear from her, we were close, and I loved her dearly. We had a few moments of chit-chat, then she cut to the heart of the matter.

“Norman,” she said, “I’ve met the man I’m going to marry. He wants me to move in with him, but I’ve told him no, and I’ve kept my virginity. You once told me you loved me as a man would, and you made me a promise. I can’t wait any longer. I need to know if you’re going to keep that promise.”

Well, there it was, the perfect out for me. All I had to say was no. Did I? I did not, and to this day, I don’t understand why. But in the end, I never regretted it.

Ann came home after the term was finished, and a few days later she walked into my house. I’d been in an agony of anticipation, I truly didn’t know how I was going to deal with this. It wasn’t a mutual agreement between two consenting adults, I was being given an honor like nothing I had ever received. This incredibly beautiful, incredibly talented, incredibly able young goddess, was asking me to be her first lover. Me, a gray-haired old man, forty years her senior, on the downhill slope of life; and she’d waited two years for me. I was humbled.

She said, “Well?”

My heart was in my throat, and I nodded. “Ann, we have to talk. Do you really know what you’re getting into?”

“Norman, I’ve been in love with you since I was a little girl. You’re the only really decent man I ever knew. I saw the creeps my mother came home with. Some of them came after me, and I had to run to escape. I hated them. I used to see and hear them fucking, and I thought it was ugly. I couldn’t believe that was really something a woman could like.

“Then I started to grow up, and the strange feelings started. I couldn’t avoid what was going on at home, and how it was making me feel, and I began to fix my feelings on you. You were sweet, and kind, and loving in a way I hadn’t seen with my mother’s friends. I had fantasies of you doing to me, the things men did to my mother, but you were always kind, and gentle, and never rough, or mean. You don’t know how hard it was, and how it seemed to go on without end.

“I talked about this to the psychiatrist at school. He laughed and called it an immature neurotic fixation; told me I’d get over it. You know me Norman, and you know there’s only one way I’ll ever get over it, and you better do it now.”

Tears flooded her eyes, and her chin quivered. I’d never seen her cry, but now my little iron-willed friend was about to come unglued, and so was I. Waves of wild emotion surged through me. I wanted to protect her, and comfort her, and fuck her all at the same time. My fatherly instinct was all mixed up with feelings of lust and desire, and humility about what she was offering me. I felt like I was on a runaway train speeding down the tracks with no brakes, and it wasn’t right.

She was breathing hard, but that look of determination came over her face, as her will regained control. She came to me and melted into my arms, and suddenly everything was all right .

I held her close as we both fought for self-control. Then she looked up, and said, “Norman, I know you’re too old, and I’m too young, and we could never make it together for long, but you have to do this for me now. I’ve wanted you, and needed you, and waited for you, and I’m not going to wait any longer.”

She broke our embrace, took my hand, and led me to the bedroom, then turned to me and quietly said, “Norman, I want you to undress me.”

With trembling hands, I began. She only wore a tank top and shorts, so there wasn’t much to take off. She quivered as I touched her, and gently caught the hem of her tank top. I pulled it up slowly, and gasped, as it popped over her breasts. I don’t have words to describe them, but I was looking at perfection. Her nipples were engorged and standing proud, and I had to worship them. I bent down and suckled gently for a moment, first one, then the other. She gasped at the touch of my mouth, and sighed.

I continued to draw her tank top up and over her head, to drop it on the floor. She locked her arms over the top of her head, and twisted side-to-side, to display her breasts to me. There was a look in her eyes of love, and infinite feminine wisdom. I was mesmerized.

I ran my hands slowly down the sides of her body, and caressed the swell of her breasts, then searched her waistband for the fastening. I got the button on the first try, and pulled the zipper down, to start pulling her shorts down over her hips. She was impatient, and with a sudden move, she pushed the shorts down, and kicked them off.

She wore a thong, and I knelt to work it down over her hips. She kicked that off too, and stood there, her pelvis thrust toward my face. She was shaved, she was wet, and the scent of her arousal filled my nostrils. I had another view of perfection, and I had an overpowering urge to kiss her. I put my hands behind her buttocks and drew her gently toward me. I kissed her lovely mound, and slipped my tongue into the top of her crack. Her little clit was right there, hard as a rock, and drawing me on. She jerked as I touched it, and pushed my head away with her hands. “Not yet, Norman.”

She drew me up to stand in front of her, and I realized my hard-on was stuck in my shorts, and it hurt. I solved that problem, and stood in front of her naked. She looked down at me, and stepped close, lifting one leg enough to trap my cock in her crotch. We kissed, deeply, passionately, as she moved her hips slowly back and forth, stroking my cock with her wetness. Now her loving look had an element of demand.

She said, “Fuck me, Norman.” It was not a request, it was a command. I could not have disobeyed if I wanted to.

We moved to the bed, and she lay down, legs spread wide for me. Again, I caught my breath at her beauty. I slid up between her knees, and we kissed again. I was supporting myself on my elbows, my chest grazing her nipples, and I felt her squirm at the sensation. I left her mouth, and moved down to nurse on her nipples, first one then the other. I was in awe, she was so young, so firm, so perfect. I moved down to taste her, but when I got to her navel, she took my head in her hands, and drew me up. Her command was urgent. “Later, Norman, I want you inside me now.”

I had worried about this. She never had a man, and I’d never had a virgin. I didn’t know what to expect . As it turned out, there was no problem. Her hymen was gone. She was tense; after all, this was totally new to her. We were both wet, and I stroked her sopping pussy with my knob, from top to bottom and back again. She sighed, and squirmed. It was incredibly difficult to hold back, but slowly, gently, I penetrated her,watching her reaction.

Her eyes were closed, she was breathing hard, and her pelvis began thrusting unconsciously. I felt some resistance now, perhaps from her tension, but I continued to press, then she relaxed, and I slid in further, still pushing gently. Suddenly, she thrust hard, to take all of me inside. Her eyes opened wide with a fierce light in them. She wrapped her legs around me, and said, “Fuck me Norman, hard!”

There was no thought of self-control now, we were both consumed by the lust of the moment. She squirmed, and moaned, and thrust, and I feared I didn’t have what she needed to fulfill her, but I felt her orgasm build, and she came again, and again, and again, in a series of shuddering orgasms, and then I was done too. My own spasms seemed to go on and on, like never before.

We lay there quietly, savoring our closeness, as we slowly slid down from the mountain top. She opened her eyes with an incredible expression of warmth and love, and sighed. “Oh Norman, that was everything I ever dreamed. I’m so glad I waited for you.” Tears flooded her eyes, now. “Norman, Norman, how I wish this could go on.”

I sighed, holding her close. “I do too, babe, but we both know it can’t, we only have this summer.”

She shook her head sadly. “Two weeks Norman, I have a conference and a seminar at Stanford, and they’ll keep me until it’s time to go back East in the Fall.” Disturbing news, but there it was, we had to deal with it, and nothing was going to swerve this powerful young woman from her chosen goals.

We stayed together all afternoon, sleeping and making love by turns. I introduced her to the joys of cunnilingus, and taught her something about fellatio. The former sent her through the ceiling; with the latter she was tentative at first, but when she got into it, it was plain she would be as competent in that as she was in everything else she did. I cannot count her orgasms, but I got off three times; a lifetime record for one afternoon, and quite remarkable for a man as old as I was . This young woman, though inexperienced, was already an extraordinary lover, but extraordinary competence in everything, would be the pattern of her whole life.

By evening we were sated. She had an expression of immense satisfaction, and. I suspect I did too. It had been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us both. Reluctantly, we got up, showered, and cleaned up. I took her out to dinner, and we ate like pigs, we’d burned up a lot of energy.

After I took her home, I mused on the episode. I was disappointed that it couldn’t last, but the whole affair was remarkable because of the difference in our ages, and the way our love had developed over the years. Strangely, I could compartmentalize my feelings. The sex and lust were somehow superficial, and separate from the fatherly feelings of love and protectiveness, and that was just as well. If we had truly been in love with one another in a mature sense, the thought of separation would have devastated us.