Dating Without Novocaine

by Lisa Cach

  “Muuu-ther!” Bethany said, rolling off the bed. “You know I don’t let you smoke in my room.”

  “Hannah has to take your measurements,” Ms. Hoag said. She purposefully took another drag on her cigarette, stared at her daughter, then left.

  Bethany watched her go, then turned to me with a smirk. “I don’t really smoke, you know. I just pretend, to piss her off. Maybe make her think about what she’s doing to her own lungs and skin. Have you seen those wrinkles around her mouth?” Bethany asked, and gave a shudder. “God, this is all such a waste of time.” She lifted her arms slightly to the side and stood still, in the pose of one waiting to be measured.

  “Why do you still do it, then?” I asked, wrapping the tape measure around her and writing down the numbers in my notebook.

  “Gives her something to do. She has no life.”

  Ah, an altruist. “You don’t enjoy it at all?”

  She shrugged. “It would be fun if I could choose my own outfits, or make up my own routines. Have you seen those tapes, have you seen the dumb-ass stuff they make us do? They should let us dance like on MTV.”

  She had a point of a sort, only I thought it would be even more disturbing to see pre-pubescent girls gyrating their hips than going through those stiff marionette motions on the tape.

  “Your father…?” I asked.

  “I’m going to see him in August. He’s in Montana. They have horses up there—I wish I could live with him.”

  I finished with the measurements, but didn’t want to stop talking to Bethany quite yet. She was kind of interesting. “Who’s that Tyler guy you were talking about?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, assessing. “You know, I was expecting you to be another of those middle-aged losers Mom hangs around with. You know the type, they all have Jesus sayings on their walls, and collect Beanie Babies, as if that was not so over. You’re not like them, though.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “So can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What is it with guys?”

  “Hey, I’m still trying to figure that one out myself.”

  “I mean, why is it the only way they can show they like you, is by being mean to you?” she asked, hand on hip.

  “They grow out of that. At least, most of them do.”

  She didn’t look satisfied with that answer. I sat on the edge of her bed, and tried to remember when I had been twelve years old. Had I known anything back then? No, and I doubted, for all her airs, that Bethany knew anything, either.

  “Listen,” I said. “You want to know what I wish someone had told me about boys when I was twelve?”

  “Sure.”

  Of course she did. And whatever I said, I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. As with most things, you had to learn it on your own.

  “Okay. Most boys only start acting like adults when they reach their late twenties. If then. So, you’ve got at least fifteen years ahead of you during which to build your own life, without fussing over any idiot boys.”

  “What, not date?” she asked in disbelief.

  “No, you’ve got to date, to practice dealing with them. And it can be fun. I just mean, put yourself first. Don’t put aside what you want to do for the sake of a boy.”

  “Not even for love?”

  “Why love a guy who doesn’t want you to pursue your own goals and interests? What type of jerk is that?”

  She shrugged, obviously not satisfied with my words of wisdom. “Any other advice?”

  I smiled, and stood. “Just the usual, that you’ve heard before. There are always more fish in the sea. Keep your friends. They’ll be there after the boy is gone. Wait until you’re older to have sex, and then always use a condom. Wait to get married.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But I meant what I said. The boys will come and go. You’re the only one who will be with you your whole life, so treat yourself well. Treat yourself…with all the devotion you’d give a boy you were in love with.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Hey, I’m still learning this stuff. I’m just trying to give you the benefit of my suffering.”

  “Huh.” She looked doubtful.

  I looked at my watch, seeking an excuse to end this conversation before I gave myself away as a hypocrite. “Jeez, I gotta go,” I said.

  I went and found Ms. Hoag, and collected the tapes. I promised to call her with an estimate on price and time, and left. I had just gotten in my car when my cell phone rang.

  “Hannah’s Custom Sewing.”

  “Hannah? Pete, here. You ready for that hike?”

  Twenty

  Latex

  He had a truly beautiful butt.

  They say that women hit their sexual peak in their late thirties. I was still a couple months from even being in my thirties, and already I was turning into a guy, the way I was salivating over a beautiful butt. What would happen at thirty-five? Thirty-nine? Would they have to take a fire hose to me? Would I be attacking college guys? Would I be the type of older woman that mothers never thought to warn their boys about?

  “You doing okay?” Pete asked, turning around to check on me. We were an hour into a hike up a trail in the Mt. Hood National Wilderness, and the whole time had been climbing switchbacks under the deep shade of conifers. I was ready for a break, and could happily spend it kneading his butt.

  “I think I need some water.” Then, baby, let’s hit the bushes. Rrrar! I considered how much more enjoyable this exercise business would be if he would take off his shirt.

  “I could do with some, too,” he said, stopping.

  I took off my small backpack and retrieved my water bottle. Pete had his slung on an athletic-looking contraption of neoprene and netting, that had been nestling atop his spine.

  A middle-aged couple went by, going the opposite direction, smiling and saying hello, swinging their hiking sticks. We smiled and greeted back.

  It was Tuesday, so we had been hoping to have the trail largely to ourselves, but it was also a lovely day and Portland is filled with outdoors enthusiasts. Still, the fellow hikers were nothing compared to what they would be on the weekend.

  I didn’t know if it had been horniness, lack of self-respect, or curiosity that had impelled me to accept Pete’s invitation. On the phone he had seemed completely unaware that I might have taken it wrong that he hadn’t called for two weeks. He’d explained his long silence as “work” and “I had to help a buddy move on my days off.”

  With Scott’s admonishments burning in my brain, I’d gone ahead and accepted. Maybe I was doing it to prove I made my own decisions, and that I could be a wild thing if I wanted.

  Besides, I had to get my money’s worth out of those hiking boots. And when was I ever again going to get so close to such a gorgeous piece of meat?

  Yeah, all right, a five-year-old had better powers of concentration and more interesting things to say than Pete the Big-Talking Cop, but…

  Once in her life a girl just had to be naughty.

  And maybe he really did like me, and maybe there was a tiny chance that the backyard barbecue future was possible.

  And maybe I just wanted to see him naked. It had to have been the newness of being with him, that had kept me from reacting with more excitement when we’d been making out in his apartment. Today, with a couple more hours together, the old hormones should be firing up like the engines on the space shuttle.

  One would think.

  The water in my bottle was warm and tasted plasticky, but still my heat-sensitive tooth cringed. I grimaced and put the bottle back in my pack, and we resumed our trudge through the splendors of the wilderness, Pete starting in on a story about pulling over a drunk driver who’d been swerving all over the road, his equally wasted girlfriend in the passenger seat.

  “So I asked him where he was going, and you know what the idiot said? ‘I’m going to get lucky!’ The girlfriend kept trying to
get him to shut up, but he was too interested in being a smart-ass.”

  The stories were starting to blend together, and I’d already realized that each had the same ending: Pete, through his cleverness and bravery, catching the dirt bag and making the world a better place. He had a sort of jumpy, tense energy to him while he talked, as if remembering the confrontations brought on a surge of adrenaline. It was wearying to listen to.

  I made the appropriate sounds of interest while he displayed his macho worthiness, and focused on making it another hundred yards without stopping. I was concerned just how musky my panties were going to be by the end of this hike. It is a worry, when one has hopes of oral sex.

  The trail wound through both meadow and forest, and across small, swift rivers. After another hour and a half we finally reached our goal: a waterfall.

  It didn’t have the height of the falls in the Columbia Gorge, or the power of those at Silver Falls State Park, but I was so glad to know we were done climbing I didn’t care. The falling water created a cool, misty breeze, and I stood at the edge of the rocky pool and soaked it in.

  “Awesome, isn’t it?” Pete asked.

  I murmured a positive sound, and opened my eyes, looking around the small clearing. There was a man with a camera and a tripod, and two older women who were leaving. “Shall we eat here?” There were energy bars in my pack. The hiking had killed my hunger, but I’d take any excuse to prolong our rest before beginning the descent back through the forest.

  “I know a place upstream a bit, it’s quiet, it’s a nice spot. We could put our feet in the water.”

  “How far upstream?” I asked, and wondered how many women he’d taken up here. I wasn’t afraid I’d end up a corpse buried under a rotting log, but neither was I too fond of the idea of being another proverbial notch on the old standard-issue gunbelt. I was here to take advantage of his lovely body, not the other way around.

  “Not far, five or ten minutes,” he said.

  “Okay.” Why not?

  We had to go around the falls, climbing again, and this time not on a real trail. I suspected the Park Service would disapprove of the destruction our boots were wreaking on tender plant life, but was too wimpy to point it out to Mr. Upholder of the Law.

  Another fifteen minutes, and I was glad enough I’d been quiet: we came out at a stretch of gurgling stream dappled in sunlight, the banks shaded, rocks and boulders covered in green moss, and not another soul in sight. I dropped down onto the sandy-dirt bank and went to work on my boots.

  Pete dropped down beside me and did the same. “I dare you to skinny-dip,” he said.

  I peeled off my socks, my feet imprinted in pink with their texture. “I dare you,” I said, ever so wittily.

  “I will, if you do,” he said, with what he probably thought was a rakish grin.

  There wasn’t much question about where this would lead, if I accepted, and I had the necessary supplies for such a conclusion in my backpack. A scout should always be prepared.

  But I hesitated. Did I really want to do it? Maybe I was only tempted because I wanted to prove I wasn’t bound by outdated morals.

  On the other hand, it might truly be fun.

  And there wasn’t any real reason not to.

  I grinned at him, a what-the-hell smile, and took off my shirt, then with a quick turn of the arm reached back and unhooked my bra.

  “Hot damn!” he said, and then tore off his own shirt.

  I stripped and stood, and realized I was buck naked in the middle of the forest. I kind of liked it. Buck naked in a shopping mall, no, but out here…it was almost like being a beast of the wild.

  Pete threw off his underpants and stood, and after a quick glance at the goods—too quick to get a sense of what he had to offer—I trotted the few steps to the stream and pranced into the water.

  And pranced right back out again.

  “Good Lord! It’s freezing!”

  “What did you expect? It’s coming off the mountain,” he said, all manly knowledge. I’d bet Wade stood a better chance of surviving out here for a week than Pete.

  He splashed into the stream, and as he passed my eye strayed to the bit of darker flesh that bounced and bobbed on its bed of hairy balls. I wasn’t sure, but he might not be circumcised. That would be a first for me, and had the potential of fun, if he’d let me play with the foreskin.

  He made his way to the middle of the stream, arms out for balance as he found his footing on the smooth stones, legs and buttocks flexing like an exhibit at an anatomy lecture. The water was only shin-deep.

  “How are we supposed to swim in that?” I asked, arms crossed over my breasts. I wished I had a video camera. This was better than a Sasquatch sighting. It was better, I suspected, than those movies at The Purple Palace.

  “You weren’t intending on doing the crawl, were you?” he asked, turning so that he faced downstream, the water pushing up the backs of his calves. And then he sat, all at once. “Wooo-hoo!” he cried. “Christ! Wooo-oo-oo!”

  Any hiker within a half mile could hear him.

  “Wooooo! Damn, it’s cold!” With his hands he splashed water up onto his face and chest, and under his arms. He quickly lay back, dunking his head under, then came up howling and shouting.

  “Pete! For God’s sake, you’re going to draw someone right to us.”

  “Nah, they won’t want anything to do with us. Come on! Get in! Wooo!”

  I had started to cool down from the hike, and the water was even less inviting now than it had been a couple minutes ago. I bit my lip, and looked at Pete, and then he held his arms open to me.

  Well, hell, that would keep me warm.

  I clenched my fists and forced myself into the water, making my slow way to Pete, my eyes on the muscled, sunlight-dappled prize. My foot slipped on a stone and I lost my balance, catching it just before a facer in the water, but now I was bent over, one hand on the creek bottom.

  Fabulous. So flattering, to have one’s rump in the air, and breasts hanging free of support like a pair of mangoes ready to drop.

  Pete didn’t seem to mind, though, and behaved like a typical boy: he splashed me.

  “Hey!”

  “Come on, you wuss! Get over here!”

  I thought of Bethany, and the years of such behavior she had yet to endure. Wasn’t I too old for this?

  He splashed me again, and I thought, The hell with it, and lunged the last several feet, falling onto him, knocking us both full length into the water.

  “Yai!” I cried, coming up, wiping water and hair off my face. Pete had me in his arms, sprawled cross-wise across his lap as the water beat against us like jets in a spa.

  “It’s great!” he said.

  His body was a little warmer than the water, the broadness of his back shielding me from much of the force of the stream. I liked the feel of our naked skin together, the contact sometimes smooth, sometimes juddering like a windshield wiper with too little rain.

  I wrapped my arm around his neck, and he got the hint and kissed me, one of his hands going down to play with my cold, shriveled breast.

  And like the day in his apartment, I felt nothing.

  Physically he was doing well enough, his tongue playing with mine without being sloppy, his hand a little rough but not utterly without skill, and his toned body was everything I could wish for.

  And yet…

  Inside, there was no excitement. I was going through the motions.

  His hand slipped down between my legs, and I spread them. Maybe it would help get my fires burning. His fingers played and stroked, and I held him close, moving my mouth to his neck, sucking there and acting as if he was getting me going.

  Maybe the cold water had numbed my crotch.

  “Shall we take this to dry ground?” I asked in a fake sultry whisper.

  He shifted position, and then stood, lifting me in his arms and carrying me back to the bank, water dripping off us. Now this was nice. I felt so wonderfully small and feminine being
carried by a guy, as long as he was strong enough to do so without grunting, and his muscles betrayed no quiver of effort. It’s not flattering to have a guy straining under your weight.

  Wild man of the forest, I am yours!

  Back on the bank we arranged our discarded clothes into a ground cover, and I lay back and let Pete kiss his way down my breasts and belly. He was approaching Pleasure Central when I stopped him by digging my fingers into his hair.

  “There’s, uh…nothing I need to know about, is there?” I asked, before he could lay his mucous membranes against my own.

  “Huh?”

  I widened my eyes at him, urging him to understand. “You know. Health-wise. Any problems?”

  “Oh. No. Got tested for HIV, I’m clean.”

  “So am I,” I said, although what I really wanted to do was ask, “No papilloma virus? No herpes? Been with anyone with chlamydia lately?” But it didn’t seem polite to prolong the questioning. He surely would have told me then if there was something else. Wouldn’t he?

  I wondered if he would have asked me the same question, if I had not brought it up first?

  Had he asked any of the women he’d been with? Maybe he didn’t know what he’d picked up from them. Maybe he was a swarming mass of viruses, all waiting to leap into my pristine body and multiply, guaranteeing that for the rest of my life I would have to have “the talk” with every guy I wanted to sleep with.

  Then he went down, and I decided I’d done the minimum required of a responsible young woman.

  His tongue was warm against my chilled flesh, and I waited for the magic to take me over. I’d never known oral sex to not eventually get me where I wanted to go.

  He settled down between my legs, his arms going under my thighs and his hands coming round to rest on my hip bones. I bent my knees up and let my legs fall to the side, opening myself like a butterfly.

  I stared up at the dark boughs of the firs, and the scatterings of blue sky. A crow cawed. The river burbled. It was all very lovely, and why wasn’t Pete hitting the right spot? What was he doing over in that dull valley, instead of in the gold rush ravine?