Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League

by Cleo Birdwell

  I couldn’t unclench my hands, so there was no problem knocking on Sanders’s door, except it hurt. I heard a loud sneeze and then he let me in.

  “I was beginning to worry,” he said. “I called your room. What happened? You’re wet. You’ve got so much color. Let me feel.”

  He was wearing a tremendously wide-sleeved kimono with a broad, monogrammed sash. I hobbled past him to the bathroom.

  “Give me water,” I said.

  He grabbed a toothbrush glass and started filling it from the tap.

  “No, no, big water, hot water, for bath.”

  “Cleo, let me feel you, you’re so cold and wet.”

  He started blowing on my face.

  “Big water,” I said. “Hot, for bath.”

  He started filling the tub and together we got my clothes off. Sanders was terrifically earnest and conscientious about wrapping me in a large, white towel and rubbing me down. He hugged me with great, life-saving, manly bear-warmth, scrupulous about keeping his pelvic area sort of recessed to avoid intimate contact. He got his nose into my hair a few times, but that may have been unavoidable.

  The water was just right. Sanders called room service for something bracing to drink and then sat at the edge of the tub, his face showing anxiety, concern, desire, lust, and the interplay between them.

  I told him the story and he leaned over the tub and kissed me tenderly. I felt like such a lummox to have wandered out like that, but Sanders whispered and cooed and soothed. He asked me if he should run some more hot water and I said no. He asked me if he could soap my breasts and I said only if he took that silly robe off.

  We sat facing each other in the tub. He’d turned off the bathroom light and there was just a dim glow from the bedside lamp. We got a little closer to each other by raising our knees and bumping along the enamel on our bottoms. He soaped my breasts.

  “I feel we’re getting to know each other, Cleo.”

  His voice was husky with Scotch-base liqueur.

  I put my legs over his and we got still closer. His hands reached down under my buttocks and he scooped me sort of onto his lap. We kissed slowly. The wind was howling. His nose was in my hair.

  After a while I sensed he was getting restless.

  “It’s going to be one of those nights,” he said.

  “What nights?”

  “It was those damn guys on the elevator.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Torkle. It got me intimidated.”

  “You mean the kidding?”

  “That Torkle remark. Just mention of it. I was so ready, Cleo. It would have been memorable. If only Eric and those guys hadn’t gotten on the elevator with us.”

  “Sanders, are you saying that just hearing the word Torkle got you so intimidated that you are unable, as they say, to perform? You’re going to let somebody else’s sex organ dictate the course of the rest of this night?”

  “Torkle, Torkle, you hear it all the time. It gets to you after a while. I’ve never even seen Eric’s penis and I don’t want to, but just hearing about it, and knowing it’s there, and being aware of the size of the thing—well, it gets to you.”

  I moved back toward my end of the tub and spoke to him in the softest of voices.

  “Sanders, I know it’s my role in a situation like this to be understanding, sensitive, supportive, and protective, but you can’t expect me to be those things if you tell me that we’re in this tub together to get clean and that it’s all because of Torkle.”

  “But wasn’t it great, the urgency we felt, Cleo, down in the subcorridors? It was only when Eric got on the elevator that I began getting edgy.”

  “That kind of raging, grinding, teenage lust never lasts very long anyway,” I said. “If you’ll just relax and forget this Torkle business, we’ll have something much sweeter and dearer.”

  A knock at the door. Room service.

  “I wish I could believe you,” he said. “But I know how my mind and body operate, and this is just one of those hellish nights we have to put behind us, and the sooner, frankly, the better.”

  He got out of the tub, put on his robe, and went to open the door. Over the next ten or fifteen minutes, I could hear him dressing, drinking, and pacing.

  I got out of the tub and wrapped the towel around me. I turned on the light. I didn’t have to touch my mock tux to know it was still wet. Not only wet but battered. I walked inside. Sanders was fully dressed—shirt, jacket, pants, shoes, socks. I walked over to him, unzipped his pants, put my hand in, and yanked once on his cock, just for fun.

  “Cleo, that’s not the kind of thing that’ll help.”

  “Just fooling around. Trying to find the humor in the situation.”

  “There is none. Not for me.”

  I sat on the bed watching him drink and pace.

  “Do you want me to see you to your room?” he said.

  “My clothes are wet.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you walked right out.”

  “Sanders, my clothes are wet.”

  “Aside from that, you have every right to just get up and walk out.”

  “I agree.”

  “I don’t deserve your company. I wanted this to be a perfect evening. First I foul up by taking you out in the snow. Now this.”

  “Your fly is open.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Cleo. Who cares about the fly of someone like me? I was a fool to think I could take over the Garden presidency. I’ll crack under pressure in a matter of hours.”

  He poured another drink.

  “It just hurts so much, especially with you sitting there looking incredibly desirable with the towel pulled up on one thigh and the tops of your breasts exposed. So fresh faced and warm and terrific to touch, and I can’t do a thing.”

  “Try, you creep.”

  “How does one try?”

  “There must be muscles you can move. Contract some muscles.”

  “A doctor once told me about the squeeze technique, but I don’t think you’ll want to do it. There’s also yoga and aspirin.”

  “What’s the squeeze technique?” I said.

  “You have to know all the different parts of the penis to do it right. You have to put certain fingers on certain parts. It involves a lot of fondling, but it has to be scientifically exact.”

  “Where does the squeezing come in?”

  “You use your thumb and pinky, but I’m not sure where exactly. You have to know ventral, dorsal, and at least one other part.”

  “Does it have a Latin name?”

  “I think so.”

  “Frenulum,” I said. “And that technique isn’t for impotence, it’s for premature ejaculation.”

  “I get that, too.”

  “I used to do it with Georgie Schlagel back in Badger. His father was a therapist and Georgie knew all the techniques.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Georgie didn’t suffer from premature ejaculation. We just liked doing it.”

  “I thought it hurt.”

  “It didn’t hurt me.”

  “But you both liked doing it.”

  “Georgie was one of those boys who’s totally, everlastingly in love with his own penis. He never got over his first erection. He just loved flaunting himself. He was always playing with it. When he wasn’t playing with it, he was looking at it. Looking isn’t the word. He would study it. We’d be in the back room of his house when his parents were out and he’d be sitting there with his pants open and with the most absorbed, studious, dumb-kid look on his face, examining himself—wondering about it, marveling at it, softly blowing on it, dusting it. His penis was a never-ending discovery, I guess.”

  “I’d like to forget mine.”

  “We were fifteen. I used to get tired of sitting there watching him examine himself. So we started using techniques out of the book. The squeeze technique may have involved some pain, but this was all part of the learning
process as far as Georgie was concerned. Even pain was fascinating as long as it involved his penis. ‘Look at what it’s doing,’ he’d say. ‘Look at the color change—quick, look.’ ‘Now here’s where it springs straight up—see, see?’”

  “I never did anything like that. We rode bikes.”

  “We rode bikes, too.”

  “I couldn’t do it even now. I’m too self-conscious.”

  “Come here and sit next to me, Sanders.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here. Come on.”

  “That would only make it worse, Cleo.”

  “It’s this towel,” I said. “It’s too provocative. It’s tearing you apart inside, isn’t it?”

  I took off the towel. He barely noticed.

  “We used to ride bikes to the reservoir,” he said. “Then we’d skip rocks.”

  I had an idea. I hopped off the bed, went into the bathroom and got all my clothes down off the shower-curtain rod. I went back inside and dropped the clothes at the end of the bed. Then I sat back down.

  “Come sit next to me, Sanders. Come on. Come sit.”

  I patted the empty side of the bed.

  “You mustn’t feel any pressure,” I said. “This is a no-pressure event. You won’t be asked to do anything you can’t do. Now that’s a promise.”

  I patted the bed again. He took another swallow of his drink and came straggling over and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me.

  “Put your legs up, Sanders. Put your legs up on the bed.”

  He pivoted on his ass and swung up and around until we were seated next to each other, legs extended, our heads resting against the headboard. He kept looking straight ahead.

  “Now breathe deeply. Breathe evenly and deeply. No pressure. Just sit and breathe.”

  He began to breathe deeply, looking straight ahead.

  “This is meaningless breathing. I don’t want you to think this breathing will cure anything or solve anything. It is meaningless. Its only meaning is to get both of us breathing together so that you won’t feel uncomfortable and under pressure being fully dressed on a bed with a totally naked woman.”

  We sat there breathing deeply.

  “All right,” I said, “now you just keep on breathing and pay no attention to what I am going to be doing at the other end of the bed. Breathe evenly, Sanders. You’re still a little spastic in your rhythm.”

  I crawled to the foot of the bed, unlaced one of his shoes and took it off.

  “This is a cruel experiment,” he said.

  I dropped the shoe on the floor.

  “It is better not to talk,” I said. “It is talk that creates pressure and strain. Now while I go back to my original seated position, I want you to lean forward and reach over and lift my teddy pants off that pile of clothes and feel the silky, intimate texture in your fingers and hands, right through to your wrists and beyond”—I was whispering—”and then just raise my feet off the bed slightly and slip them into the pants and then glide the smooth, delicate fabric up, up, slowly up along my legs until it is snugly in place over my mound, belly, waist etcetera.”

  He kept looking straight ahead.

  “Do you know what this is called, Sanders?”

  “What?”

  “Painting a word-picture. We are painting a word-picture.”

  He looked at me, but did as he was told, continuing to breathe deeply. First he held the pants up and studied them. They were almost knee length and a tight fit, unlike the teddy pants of old, but Sanders got them over my calves and knees and thighs, and when I lifted and wriggled a little, he was able to complete the snug fit. Then, with my left breast more or less in one of his ears, he backed off slightly and looked at me with such a deep, sad, questioning apprehension that I began to wonder if this was such a good idea.

  We sat back and breathed evenly.

  I crawled to the foot of the bed, unlaced and took off his other shoe, and then removed both of his one-size-fits-all fluted black socks.

  “I think we ought to stop,” he said. “I am so torn.”

  “You don’t want me naked, you don’t want me dressed.”

  “I want you dressed, Cleo, but I don’t think this is the way to go about it.”

  “This is the way,” I said.

  I nudged him sharply with my elbow and then pointed to my Badger Beagles T-shirt. I leaned way over with my arms outstretched like a Moslem in prayer, and Sanders went about fitting the T-shirt along my arms and then over my head and my breasts.

  I noticed him looking at the nipple bulges out of the corner of his eye. He seemed very near tears.

  “You’re forgetting to breathe, Sanders. Now sit back and we’ll both breathe a while.”

  After some breathing, I had him lean toward me at an angle while I lifted first one arm and then the other free of his jacket, and tossed the jacket on the floor.

  “Now, Sanders, slowly and deliberately, because this is a very pricey outfit, I want you to put my trousers on, and remember there is no pressure, no intimidation, no threat, no strain. You are simply dressing me.”

  I lifted my legs straight out and well up, and by the time Sanders maneuvered the trousers past my ass, he was on his knees between my knees and I think his hands were quivering.

  “How you doin’ ?” I said. “How’s it goin’, cowboy?”

  “Cleo, it must be three in the morning.”

  “Don’t you see the humor in the situation?”

  “People think they have to find humor. A situation is plain rotten, it is hopeless, and people feel obliged to look for humor. It’s a compulsion. Something is obviously not humorous and could never be humorous, and still there are people going around on all fours, Cleo, no offense, looking for the humor.”

  “Don’t you like being between my legs?”

  “I like it and don’t like it.”

  “Stay there while I get your belt unbuckled. I am going to unbuckle your belt. Stay right there.”

  Without moving from my supine position, and using one hand, I undid his belt and pulled the front of his shirt out of his pants. Then I sat up, unbuttoned his shirt, and took it off, making him wince when my hands accidentally touched his bare chest. I threw the shirt across the room.

  “I need to breathe,” he said.

  We went back to our original positions and sat breathing.

  “I took off your shirt. You put on mine.”

  Slowly, even more slowly than the devastating price of my ruffled shirt might call for, he slipped the soft, wet garment over my shoulders, and then ever so carefully began buttoning, buttoning.

  “I love this,” I whispered. “I love being dressed by you.”

  He was looking at me with immensely earnest eyes. He was breathing evenly. He was not hurrying at all. I thought these were probably good signs.

  “I wonder if I want you vertical or horizontal for the pants, Sanders. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There is no pressure. Take your time. If you don’t want to make the decision, I’ll be happy to take care of it for you. You make decisions all day in the office. This is your time to relax.”

  “It might be easier for you if I stood.”

  “What would be easier for you, Sanders?”

  “If I stood.”

  “Stand, please.”

  “I don’t know what we expect to accomplish.”

  “Push up with your hands,” I whispered, “and rise to your full adult height.”

  He stood in the middle of the bed. His belt and zipper were already undone and his pants were more or less hanging from his hips. I knelt in front of him and slowly moved the pants down his flanks. I kept the cloth between my hands and his legs. We didn’t touch, in other words, skin to skin. He stepped out of the pants and I wadded them up and tossed them toward the bathroom door. A lot of small change came flying out.

  Neither one of us changed pos
itions. We were not in any way in physical contact. I listened to him breathe.

  “Those are pretty shorts,” I said.

  They were the same colors as the wide-sleeved kimono—gray and green, an ensemble—and they were cut well below the navel. I leaned forward just a bit and blew lightly on his belly hair.

  “This is the first time I’ve worn them,” he said. “I’ve had them for months, but I never wanted to wear them until tonight.”

  I blew lightly on and around his belly.

  “Time, Newsweek, Hotchkiss, Yale,” he said.

  I felt a short pause was crucial here. I moved back to my original position on the bed, legs extended, head against the headboard. I did some breathing.

  “You owe me a jacket,” I said.

  I think he liked standing over me. It is sort of the warrior’s view. The sacker and plunderer.

  Fairly gracefully, he leaned back behind him and without taking his eyes off me, he plucked my jacket off the bed and held it ready at his hip with a certain deftness, I thought.

  I duck-walked over on my knees and put one arm in, and turned, and put the other arm in. Then I stood up and faced him. I blew softly on his lips. He closed his eyes. I blew on his closed lids, softly, very lightly, barely a breath of air.

  I put my hands on his shoulders and he trembled slightly, he quaked. Dipping my knees, I moved my hands down along his arms, and he got the idea and held my elbows, helping me keep my balance as I dipped slowly down, blowing on his neck, his chest, his navel. His hands came up along my forearms and held my wrists as my knees touched the bed. I blew on the curly little hairs above the elastic band on his shorts.

  With two fingers, delicately, I pulled the band away from his body and then blew softly into his shorts.