by Rick Boling
“Yeah, right,” she said. “In the first place, I would never have even considered going to bed with you. In the second place, I’m … oh, stupid me. I almost fell for that one. Sneaky.”
“Almost was close enough,” I said. “I think you let the cat out of the bag there.”
“Riiickeee,” she said when I nibbled on her earlobe. “I haven’t made up my—” but by then my mouth had found hers, and her feeble attempts to resist didn’t last for long. When we finally came up for air, her face was flushed and she was breathing heavily. “My god,” she whispered, touching my lips with shaky finger. “Oh, my dear god.”
I’m still not sure about this,” she murmured as I laid her on the bed and stretched out beside her. “I mean, I want to and all, but it’s just so … strange.”
“What’s strange about it? Two people who are attracted to each other making love? Seems pretty natural to me.” I reached down and caressed her thigh, determined not to go any further until she let me know it was okay.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “Besides, I’m not all that experienced, regardless of what I almost said earlier.”
“So, you are a virgin?”
“No. Well, not exactly. I mean, maybe.”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as maybe when it comes to virginity. Either you are or you aren’t.” I could feel heat rising in her skin, and the way she was moving seemed encouraging, so I inched my fingers a little farther up.”
“What I mean is,” she said, tightening her leg muscles. “What I mean is, I’m not really sure. I know that sounds stupid, but—hey, hold on a minute will you. I want to talk about this first.”
“As long as there’s a second after the first,” I said, removing my hand and laying it on the starched cotton of her sundress. “Okay, let’s talk.”
She played with the hair on the back of my arm for a moment, then said, “I guess it won’t come as a surprise if I tell you I’ve had a few boyfriends. But, except for some innocent necking, only a couple of those relationships were what you might call serious. One was in high school, the other in college. The high-school thing was a little juvenile, a constant silent battle, if you know what I mean.”
“I know precisely what you mean,” I said. “Went through it many times in my former youth. And the college one?”
“That was a little more intense: lots of intimate, you know, contact, and … Oh, this is embarrassing.”
“Look,” I said, leaning up on an elbow, “I know things are different here, and you’re not used to talking to a guy about sexual matters. But nobody’s ever going to know what goes on between us except you and me, and that includes anything we say. If you can somehow manage to think of me as, I don’t know, your diary or maybe a close girlfriend, and forget all the societal taboos, I guarantee you will eventually find the freedom refreshing. Where I come from, lovers—even potential lovers—tell each other all kinds of personal things about their past sex lives and their feelings and fears and desires. And believe me, it turns out better in the long run for both partners, a lot better than the old Victorian crap that often led to unspoken problems and years of silent frustration for the woman.”
She looked at me like I’d asked her to run naked in the streets. Her face turned lobster red, and what I saw in her eyes was a combination of anxiety and the thrill of anticipation, as if she were on a rollercoaster, hovering at the apex of the first drop and staring down at what might be her last view of the world. Finally, just when it looked like her ears might burst into flames, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Okay,” she said, reaching for my hand. She pressed it against her cheek, then sighed. “The thing is, I was drunk, and I don’t remember what happened. He swore nothing did, so I let it drop. Shortly after that he left for law school and we lost touch.”
“Was this guy honest? Do you believe what he told you?”
“I think so. He was a little insistent at times, but never physically forceful. I doubt he would take advantage of a situation like that, at least not without my permission. And I couldn’t give him permission because I passed out before we’d gone very far. I should tell you that, in a way, I wanted it to happen, but that must have been the alcohol. Ever since then I’ve been scared to take more than one drink, and I’ve never let my guard down again.”
“Your guard?” I said. “How long do you plan to wait? Until some Prince Charming rides in on a white horse and sweeps you off your feet? Sorry to break the news, but that only happens in fairy tales. Look, I’m not going to try and talk you into anything, least of all giving up your possible virginity. But I’m also not going to lie to you. You are a mature woman, a beautiful, funny, sexy adult female. Even if it isn’t with me, you need to climb down off that pedestal of perceived virtue and get yourself laid before you miss out on the most vibrant and erogenous time of your young life.”
“I know that, idiot! Why do you think I’m lying here beside you in this bed? If anyone’s going to be my Prince Charming, who better than a handsome time traveler with all the experience in the world and a knack for deflowering young virgins? Maybe you weren’t a superstar in your first life, but to me you’re the closest thing to it. So, Sir Lancelot, let’s stop all the chatter and get on with it.”
Suddenly, she hopped off the bed and stood with her legs spread. Then, closing her eyes, she slowly lifted the dress over her head. I watched in fascination as she unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor, then slipped out of her panties and straightened up, resisting an instinctive effort to cover herself with her hands. I was stunned into silence as I examined her body; a body even more exquisite than I’d imagined when I first saw her in a bathing suit.
“Well?” she said, opening her eyes and giving me an indignant look. “You’re the one who wanted me to let loose of my inhibitions.”
That evening would prove to be one of the scariest and most worrisome of my new life. Not only had I been charged with the responsibility of deflowering a twenty-four-year-old virgin, but I had none of the excuses I’d always had to fall back on should I screw up: I wasn’t drunk or stoned or trying to satisfy an overzealous ego; I was with a lovely, inexperienced woman, whose fascination with a mature time traveler encased in a handsome young body was tantamount to being hypnotized.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, after she’d climbed back in beside me. Still fully clothed, I wondered how to handle getting undressed without dampening the mood.
“I’m sure.” She said. “I’m a little nervous, but I’m a big girl and I know what I want.” When I didn’t move, she started to unbutton my shirt. “What’s the matter, Rich? Your body is stiff as a board.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that this is a major responsibility, and I’m worried about fu—messing things up for you.”
She giggled. “Who’s being the prude now? Is this okay?” she said, unsnapped my jeans and lowering my zipper. “I’m not being too forward am I?”
“Uh, no. Not at all,” I said, trying not to shudder when her fingers slid inside my underwear.
The process took a while, and things didn’t go very well in the beginning. I did my best to prepare her, but her anxiety kept her from becoming fully aroused. When I refused to continue for fear of hurting her, she begged me not to stop, and after some initial trauma, she managed to relax. From there on out, we talked and adjusted until she seemed comfortable. I took it slow, encouraging her to tell me exactly how she wanted to proceed, and in the end, though it wasn’t perfect, I thought it worked out pretty good considering it was her first time. Afterward, I waited for her to say something, and when she remained silent I started to get up.
“Don’t you dare,” she said. Her eyes were still closed, but I could tell by her grimace that my seeming indifference had upset her. “Just hold me for a minute, will you? Please?
I slid back in beside her and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry,” I whispered. “I thought you might want a little time a
lone to, you know …”
“No, I don’t know!” she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. When I reached across her chest and turned her toward me, she hesitated for a moment, then melted into my embrace.
“You’re mad at me,” I said. “Was it that bad?”
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t all that bad either. I am not mad at you because of how it was. I’m mad because you didn’t want to stay with me.”
“But that’s not true, I only …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid of me. I shouldn’t have—”
“You’re damned right, you shouldn’t have. But I forgive you. Now, if you don’t mind, could we please try it again? We’ve apparently gotten past the hard part, so I’d like to see if it’s going to get any better.”
And it did. So much better she could hardly breathe by the time we finished. And this time when I rolled off, she didn’t protest. I did not, however, make any attempt to leave. Instead I pulled her on top of me and rubbed her back, waiting while her body shivered in receding waves like an ebbing tide against my chest. When I felt her eyelashes flutter on my neck, I drew back and watched while she blinked and tried to focus on my face. Finally, she smacked her lips a couple of times, smiled sleepily, and said, “That was, how shall I say, otherworldly? Ethereal? Ungodly?”
“Stupendous? Sensational? Extraordinary?” I added.
“Okay, if you need an ego boost, all of those things. You may kiss me now.”
It was a long, languorous kiss made even more sensual by her tear-softened lips. When we finally parted, I touched the smeared makeup on her cheek and asked, “Did I hurt you?”
She looked confused for a moment, then said, “Oh, you mean the tears. Those are, you know, the other kind. The good kind. And to answer your question: no, it didn’t hurt at all. Or, I don’t know, maybe it did. Either way, it doesn’t matter because I obviously didn’t care.”
I watched as her composure slowly returned, and when she finally seemed to have shaken off the languid afterglow, she said, “I know you’re probably worn out, but do you think we could maybe try it just one more time? I’d like to find out if what just happened was some kind of fluke.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m probably going to need your help.”
She obliged.
When we awoke about an hour later, cuddled together like two nesting spoons, I whispered in her ear, “Had enough?”
“Don’t ask me that right now,” she said, reaching back to pinch my leg. “My body feels like someone poured hot tar into it, and my brain is so muddled I can’t think.”
We lay like that for a long time, and I was about to fall asleep again when she turned on her back and looked at the ceiling. “You know,” she said, “this is still pretty scary.”
“What?” I said. “Having sex? By now you should be well over your fears.”
“I’m not talking about the sex itself. What I’m talking about is keeping it a secret. I assume you didn’t want this to be our first and last time. I sure don’t.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said. “Any suggestions?”
“Nothing specific, only that we need to be extremely selective about when and where. As much as I’d like to do it every day, if you keep showing up here, someone is bound to see you sooner or later, and then there will be rumors and questions and all kinds of speculation to deal with.”
“Just Saturdays, then?”
“I guess,” she said. “But not every Saturday. Any repetitive pattern will increase the chances of our being caught.”
“We could do the typical teenage thing and go parking out at Weedon Island, or maybe get a motel room occasionally. And in between we can have phone sex.”
“I don’t think I’m up for parking in the woods or risking being seen checking in and out of motel rooms. And what do you mean, ‘phone sex?’”
“Hard to explain,” I said. “It wouldn’t work anyway. I forgot about the primitive phone technology here, the party lines. We shouldn’t even talk about any of this on the phone. What about at the office? You could stay late to work in the lab, and we could use the cot in the exam room.”
“Maybe,” she said. “God, this is so weird. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be sneaking around having sex with a teenager. It makes me feel slutty.”
“Nothing wrong with feeling a little slutty now and then,” I said, climbing on top of her. “As for being with a teenager, there are benefits.”
“Don’t tell me you … Oh, I guess you can.”
Doris and I were careful, alternating Saturdays at her place with an occasional after-hours meeting at the office. The long intervals were frustrating, but the sneaking around and constant worry about being caught actually made our sporadic encounters more exciting.
Over the next few months our luck held out, but even though we managed to avoid being caught, fate always seemed to be lurking just outside the karmic door, ready to step in and shake things up. It would be some time, however, before the yang would once again catch up with the yin, and while the probability shit storm made its way steadily toward the whirling blades of that legendary fan, we would be lulled into complacency by a series of positive developments.
Blue Note Records
By the time I decided to take Doris into my confidence, I’d become somewhat of a star in the Voniossi family. I was making excellent grades, about to graduate with honors, and Dad had even hinted at sending me to medical school. I had no intention of following in his footsteps, however, and I knew it was going to be a hard sell to convince him that a career in medicine was not for me. Fortunately, he had one soft spot I felt I could exploit.
Having grown up poor, once he’d established his medical practice and the money began rolling in, Dad started spending like he’d won the Reader's Digest sweepstakes. He was always picking up tabs, and he usually carried hundreds of dollars in cash, often flashing his overstuffed wallet in public. He also became the epitome of a keep-up-with-the-Joneses kind of guy, wanting to be the first to have the most modern versions of everything, including whatever new technology was coming down the pike. His friendship with Mike Alcorn led to our owning the latest and best in electronic equipment; not only were we first in our neighborhood to own a TV, when Stereophonic sound came out, he and Mike put together a state-of-the-art stereo set up and had it built into the wall on our back porch. This included a three-way speaker system with a tuner and amplifier, plus a two-track tape deck and turntable that slid out from behind panels at the touch of a button.
Playing on his personality quirk, I’d kept Dad abreast of our innovations in recording technology, and when I invited him and Mike out to the studio we’d built in the storage room, Mike turned out to be an important ally in my quest to expand the operation. Fascinated by our multi-track capabilities, the two of them listened to some of our early recordings of the trio, then paid close attention while I explained what we wanted to do. I concluded with a demonstration of our latest endeavor, which was to try and duplicate in analog some of the digital aspects of recording that were still decades down the road.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, Mike,” I said, pointing at a small unit Sam had recently put together, “but there’s a new technique called tape looping. It’s still in the early stages of development and has only been used in a few isolated experiments, but we have some ideas that I think will prove to be the basis for a revolutionary new recording platform.” I hit a switch and the sound of a single violin note rang out from the speakers. “This is what we’re calling a sample. It’s a note Sam played on the violin, recorded on a continuous loop of tape so we can play it over and over again anytime we want. But the really unique thing is this.” I nodded at Sam, who turned a knob, raising the pitch of the note a half step. He continued to turn, raising it several additional semitones, then reversed the process, lowering the pitch until it was an octave below the original. “What Sam’s co
me up with is a way to electronically alter the frequency of the note without changing its clarity or the authenticity of its sound.”
“Interesting,” Mike said. “But what use would it be?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” I said, again nodding at Sam. “First, let me show you something else.” Sam hit another switch and Sarah’s voice joined the violin, singing a note in harmony. “The point is we can do this with any sound, from horns, to strings, to the human voice. And we can stack them, meaning we can record multiple frequencies by overdubbing them on top of each other. Consequently, we’ll be able to create any group of sounds we want, from guitar chords and keyboard accompaniment, to strings, horn sections, and even vocal background harmonies. We’ve got a long way to go yet, but the potential is virtually limitless.
“Once we’ve cataloged a library of samples, we can put them together in any number of configurations to emulate anything from a small combo to an entire orchestra or choir. What this means is that, right here in this room, we can build complex musical productions without having to hire musicians to play together or pay for studio time at one of the big recording facilities in New York or Nashville.”
“Won’t that come off sounding artificial?” Mike said. “I mean, the idea is good, and what you’ve done here is impressive, but I can’t imagine it being of high enough quality to compete with the real thing.”
“For now, you’re right, it won’t be good enough to replace the real thing altogether. At first I want to use it mainly to develop and perfect full-scale arrangements without having to hire an orchestra or a choir. Then after we have everything in place, we can spend minimal time recording live versions. However, for things like strings and other background elements, it already works quite well as a stand-alone substitute. Sam?”
Sam shut off the two loops, then cranked up the main tape system, playing our first complete experiment, which featured Sarah singing Summertime, accompanied by me on the piano, Sam on the bass, and Jimmy on drums. It started out simple, with only the three instruments and Sarah on vocals, but in the middle of the first verse, the strings came in, then a little later, the horns. By the time Sarah hit the last note, these had been joined by a choral background, and the sound was so full I could see it was having a powerful effect on Dad and Mike.