Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  This is how it went, I knew now. His breath up close, his arm around me, his hand on the back of my neck holding me to him, me tasting him, his mouth, his skin, invading him, letting him invade me, mixing everything, wanting everything while I smelled him, the places he'd been, who he was, it was new and a little familiar, and completely strange and so exciting.

  This was private bedroom type kissing and moving and I was in a garage and I could hear car doors off in the distance closing and cars passing now and then, people calling to each other, but nothing close, just Danny Boyd so close I was trying to crawl into him and he was trying to get into me and he was succeeding. I felt shocked when his hand was on my private place and I was letting myself go and crazy and moaning and rubbing myself on him, his hand and his willy like that time in my room only worse. I knew the truck was moving and I was like Sooner for all the control. And he was slowing me down and saying my name, the "H" sound so beautiful the way he said it, and I pulled back panting and looking in his face. He was stroking over my hair. "You're so…you're even prettier…you’re beautiful," he said and he was breathless like me.

  I started to come to myself and I climbed off him and he let me. We were looking at each other and his uniform was rumpled.

  "I'll drive," he said and I nodded and straightened my skirt and stayed in the middle of the seat and he came around and when he got in, his uniform shirt was off and even though it was winter and chilly he threw that shirt behind the seat and in that white t-shirt with the v-neck he got in and started it up and I had one arm behind him and the other across his stomach and I held him and he looked at me as he drove through that garage.

  "Miss me?" he asked and he had to laugh some and he was even cuter, cute in the beauty, when he laughed, and I didn't even answer I was just looking at him.

  Once we got out of there, out of that garage and on the highway he worked his arm around me and I kissed on his jaw and rubbed on the front of his pants until he'd make me stop because he could barely drive and he said I was killing him, and so I'd leave off rubbing but I'd never take my arms away from him.

  We drove straight to my house, and I was in a haze the whole time and I had him park in front, I didn't care and when we got out he picked me up and I whooped and he carried me up the stairs and in and I slammed the door and I told him to go up and he carried me all the way up and into my room and he kicked the door closed and we fell on the bed and he kissed me for such a long time, then he pulled back and tore at his shirt and he undid that buckle on his pants and that hair line going into his pants he opened his clothes and I saw it, where it went and he was bare and glorious and I wanted him, I wanted him. He got his boots off and everything off.

  Then he knelt over me and worked on my blouse and got it off with my help, and I unbuttoned my skirt and I was in the slip, laying on my back and he did run his hands all over it, over me. My legs opened up, so hospitable, come on in, and he looked at me, then looked there and he stood and pulled my underwear off me and he looked there as he knelt back on the bed, one knee between mine and he gently but firmly parted my legs enough he could see me.

  "You're so…." It just died cause whatever I was to him, the silence was what said it and it was something he didn't have yet, those words, but he had me and I was so willing, and I opened more for him and it felt so free to give myself to let someone know me like this and his thing was so ready and he lined it up and we got to kissing and squirming around and he pushed in and I yelped because it hurt so much, but it was like I was dying for him, right there in the act, letting him in when he knew it hurt and he was conflicted, wanting in, not wanting to hurt me, and I had to keep telling him it was okay, try again, oh no, get out, go in, slower, it's okay, don't stop, no stop, no….

  He laughed a little, “Don't worry I won't stop,” he said, “unless you need me to.” But he choked out those words and he was so confident I kept going. When he was in me it was relief and misery. He tried to move a little but that hurt so he was slow, then the movement helped and didn't, and all of a sudden he was grunting and sweat was on his forehead and he shuddered and his face had this expression of receiving…like a commission…I don't know how to describe it, but he pulled out and I felt the liquid follow and my blood was on him, and it was sacred blood, just for him, I gave him all I had, me, such as I am.

  And he gathered me to him. "I," and he broke and swallowed. "Thank you. I'll take care of you, too."

  "It's okay," I whispered, his salty skin all over me, wrapping me in itself.

  Finding My Thunder 42

  Danny rose in the morning to go home. He started to gather up his greens. He said he wanted to get them right because Dickens would care so much.

  While he did that he sang me some of their marching songs, words so nasty I couldn't believe it, but they were funny too. It was the best music my room had ever experienced.

  Well he kept forgetting to get dressed and revisiting me in the bed where we kept kissing and hugging and rubbing and making noise.

  "Do you want me to drive you?" I said.

  No he didn't. He did not want to explain to his mother that he'd been lying up with me. He figured his mother knew, even though he'd smoothed it all out with lies, saying his flight got in this morning and a buddy was dropping him off in Ludicrous.

  But she would never condone what he was doing, he said. She wouldn't comment if he didn't rub it in her face. It wasn't me, it was the whole thing of him compromising a woman he wasn't married too, but claimed to love. That's just the way it was for his Catholic self.

  Secretly, she would be glad he had me, he said. Unlike Paul, his mother knew he'd felt alone.

  His clothes abandoned once again we lay in the gray light and he'd held me and

  told how his mother had written him in the first weeks he'd been gone. She mentioned she'd met me and found me to be a beautiful girl with a compassionate heart.

  That was what she'd said. Beautiful and compassionate. Naomi would remind me of Abigail in Scripture if she could hear this. Abigail was one of three people in the whole of the bible noted for her intelligence. The other two were men, but Abigail was the only woman given credit for having something beyond good looks. Good looks were top soil, Naomi liked to say, but underneath, Abigail had rich earth.

  Things could take root.

  Danny's mother had seen more in me than some top soil then. Compassion was the underneath. I had not thought of myself that way. I wondered if it was true or she'd just given me too much credit.

  So before he left my bed again, Danny told me he'd thought about it all those months away and he would marry me. I saw no other future either. I had never been a girl given to those kinds of fantasies…wedding, bride and all. I did not have a Barbie Doll or ever feel the need for the endless acting out of those things.

  When I saw myself down the road I was Nina Simone, standing before crowds and telling them the truth. There was greatness in me, I knew it, but only in terms of a small life. That was the great thing…a life where there was love. That would be my great work.

  In real I was cotton and denim, not sequined dresses. Not microphones please. But kindness in my hand, a poem under my pen, safety in my space and joy breaking open like fragrant good bread. Feeling and thinking and listening…those things were my ambitions.

  Then sharing everything with Danny…with my world because nothing mattered if you held it, but it grew if you had the guts to let it out.

  "I would marry you," he said again.

  "If I was pregnant?" I tried to understand.

  He laughed a little. "If you would let me," he corrected.

  "I don't really believe in marriage," I said.

  Well, I did, it stood there like a giant, refusing to budge, but I was scared of it was more to the truth. "Doesn't marriage scare you?" I said.

  "No," he answered right away. And I knew why. Right off I knew. He was facing war. Marriage was nothing. Actually he'd pondered it for hours and it seemed like a good thing
, something he could count on. He wanted something he could count on. I saw it more then, him, this time together, what it meant. He was looking to join us, be close in every way.

  Lord he swung out the whole path of the pendulum. He broke with me and then went the whole other way. Now he was talking marriage. This was him inside. It was like seeing him naked twice, in the flesh if I wanted to look under the sheet, but inside too.

  But here's the thing, I couldn't have given myself if I felt anything less than full on to the grave love. Marriage was the usual destination for this kind of singing in the rain. "I don't love you any less if I say we should wait," I said.

  "Why? Why wait?"

  I got up on my elbow and looked at him good. "Cause…marriage…they say you don't need it anymore."

  "I don't believe that," he said angry, even though he was touching my hair like a

  butterfly.

  "Why do we need it? It doesn't keep people loving each other."

  "That's because it's just a thing…like a contract."

  "So we don't need it," I said.

  "You been raised in church all your life. You're supposed to be telling me why we

  need it."

  "You're the one brought it up," I said.

  "Well, it's the deepest thing," he said. "It means you're saying, 'for life.' It takes some guts. You got to put your ass on the line and figure stuff out. Maybe you want someone else?"

  "Do I?" I said knowing my one eyebrow was up. I couldn't pull it down for nothing.

  "You know what I mean."

  "What if you don't always feel this way?" I said.

  "I will. Will you?"

  "I told you it's always just you. But marriage…."

  "Just forget it. You're just a junior."

  "I don't care about that," but I did. Girls got married out of high school, but during school was a little quick. But I'd always been off-sides in my life. There were no time tables where I lived. "You were promised to Tahlila," I said.

  I felt his arm stiffen some, felt the ease tighten up. "Don't always bring her up."

  "I mean…is this what you think you have to do or something?"

  "I'm only going to tell you this stupid story one more time. About three of them got those kinds of rings about the same time. Then that's all I heard. It was a promise ring, a promise that we were serious and on that road. I can't say it in a way that's not going to get me in trouble, but I kept waiting to like her. She was like a room.

  “You could go in there and you were in that thing. It was like “The Jetsons,” you get on that moving belt and it moves you. That ring was totally her idea. I thought it was harmless and it would make her happy and get her off me so I could think of how to get out of it. I knew I was going to get out of it. It was…a way to hide almost. Tahlila filled the bill pretty much, I always had a date, she kept the others away. So many people got connected to it, it got to be complicated so I didn't fight it I just played sports and made sure it ran smooth at home for Mom and that bunch of monkeys and it pretty much did."

  "You were passive," I said.

  "Not really. Passive is like…effort. I didn't care. But my sympathy for her only goes so far. Every time she let my indifference be enough I lost respect a little more and I knew a little more. Yeah, that ring was all guilt. She could never ever be someone I wanted a life with. I was never looking for that with her."

  "Okay…no more about it," I said, still not understanding. He liked to go to extremes. I was the other extreme from her. That worried me some, but I did have a suspicious nature.

  "I don't want a promise ring," I said.

  That's when he remembered my birthday present and got up in his birthday suit to wrestle through his bag and find it. He told me, "Don't look." Then he laughed and he said, "You can stare at my ass, just don't look at what I'm doing."

  "Thanks, I'll just keep my eyes closed," I said, staring at his perfect ass.

  I heard the rattle of something ceramic. When he stood straight and turned he held a china box he obviously had buried in the center of his bag. He carried this to me in all his natural tan beauty, his black hair, his long arms and hands and legs, his willy just right there. I called him a hunk in my mind. That's what girls said about boys who were beautiful-hunks. He was that, and more.

  I sat up like Lady Godiva, the sheet around my waist. I took that pretty box so carefully, a pink rose on it.

  "Look inside," he said.

  I set it on my lap, him standing beside the bed. I lifted the lid and inside was a bed of cotton and on it lay two silver earrings with dark gray pearls on the ends. They were so pretty. I looked at him. "Thank you," I said, so damn glad it was not a promise ring.

  He knelt next to the bed and took my hand. I could not look away from the expression as naked as the rest of him. He was not going to let this rest.

  "I love you. And I want to marry you. Will you…marry me, Hilly?"

  "Eventually," I said sounding so stupid. Then, "Do you…really? Why?"

  "It's what you do when you feel like this and when you have intercourse and want to keep on having it with someone like…forever. And maybe make a baby…or a bunch of monkeys," he laughed. "So, why wait? I mean…I do want you to be a normal girl…but…me and you…."

  "In ancient times," I said because it sounded less like Naomi, "an earring meant ownership."

  "Yeah?" he said liking this too much.

  "So…you own my heart," I said taking out the gold hoops I'd been wearing and putting the black pearls on silver chains into the self-inflicted holes in my ears. I turned my head side to side so he could look at each with a certain gravity. I watched him up close, until my hands went to his face and he stopped looking at the earrings and stared at me. I had a revelation, another look inside of him. Danny wanted a future. I was his future. He wanted to think of it when he left…that it waited for him, that the war was just a break in it, not an end in itself.

  "I'll wait for you," I said. "I always have…I always will. I'll marry you when you get back…but for me? It's already settled."

  He grasped my hand in both of his and kissed my knuckles. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed. We'd just exchanged vows and we both knew it.

  Finding My Thunder 43

  It felt different between Danny and me, like something had opened up, gotten settled. As that first morning progressed…or didn't due to us unable to part long enough to dress and move forward…it became more and more clear that we would be pretty well joined at the hip until he left.

  We were in the shower together, him kissing me, me wrapped around him like a life vest, and laughing and squealing and both of us soapy from pouring a whole bottle of Johnson's Baby Shampoo over one another, when a knock on the bathroom door sounded and brought our glee to a slam on the brakes stillness.

  He looked at me, soap bubbles on his head and meeting in a point under his chin, and I can't imagine what I looked like. My legs slid down his soapy hips really quick and the water was the only thing keeping me from fainting.

  "I will be downstairs," Naomi said through the door.

  "Alright," I called, my hands gripping his brawny arms.

  "Shit," he whispered. “I thought you said she was spending the night with someone….”

  I had said that. I thought that.

  I rinsed off quick and ignored his beautiful naked self as best I could with his hands still on me, holding me from behind around the ribs.

  "I'll talk to her," was one of the things he was saying, mostly to himself it seemed.

  With most of the soap off I stumbled out of the tub, no longer this big wanton free loving hippie whore but just a kid who didn't know squat-shit about anything, but I knew now why I couldn't even conceive of marrying Danny at sixteen. If I were to sneak off and do that she would lay on the ground and foam at the mouth. She did not know much about going off to college, but she revered it. And not finishing high school? Might as well as not accept Jesus while you were at it. She believed
in me.

  There were certain things she did not bend on. She was working hard to be like a parent. And now she knew what she was up against and I hated disappointing her.

  So I wasn't so grown-up after all cause I wanted to run fast and far rather than facing her wounded face. I had brought her pain and nothing was worth that. But Danny.

  "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways," she would tell me, and as I peeked in the hall to make sure she wasn't out there waiting, the stone tablets in her hands ready to whack me across the head, I ran my unstable wrapped only in a towel self across the hall into my room. I was looking frantically for some clothes.

  Danny was behind me. "We'll face her," he said, hoping to calm me, I guess, but he couldn't. Nothing could. This was between her and me. I couldn't hide behind him much as I wanted to.

  I didn't say anything, but hurried to dress as modestly as possible, Mama's long skirt, and a blouse buttoned to my neck. Feet in boots. A sweater.

  He grabbed me before I made it out the door. "Hey," he said, also nearly dressed finally, the greens not so neat, him not so calm and both of us reeking of shampoo.

  "Go on home," I said. "I'll see you later."

  "I want to go with you. She warned me about this. I need to speak to her."

  "Not now. I have to first," I said.

  He looked at me for a minute. "Give me a kiss," he said softly.

  I did kiss him then, and he put his arms around me. "It will be alright," he said. “Tell her it's real. Tell her we want to get married."

  I pulled back. "You have no idea," I said. Then I broke away from him and went downstairs. But she wasn't there. The back door was open.

  I walked outside. She stood at the Canna garden despite the cold. She was looking down at the earth there, and I felt a rush of love for her so strong. I walked beside her and tried not to let myself morph into a ten year old girl.

  I heard her release a breath, but she did not speak. I looked where she did…top soil. She saw deeper in me. I didn't want to lose that.