Chronicle 5 - 1976: Transports of Delight

After my unexpected introduction to oral sex by A, under a tree in the middle of a summer rain storm, I was, not surprisingly, desperate to see her again. Next day, however I got a telephone call saying that her parents had booked a last minute holiday to Spain and she would be away for two weeks, leaving that Friday. I asked if we could meet up before she went but she said she couldn't, as she had to get things ready for her holiday. She would also be away for her birthday, she said.  I hadn't known her birthday was coming up.  However the more I thought about it the more I thought that maybe I had gone too far with her, sexually and that perhaps she regretted the whole episode. This was all despite the fact, of course, that she had always made the running in our increasingly physical relationship. But being an emotional sixteen year old I didn't employ logic when negative imagination could get me in a right old state. What if she decided she didn't like me when she was away for two weeks? What if she met another boy on holiday? What if she was seduced by a Spanish waiter?  

Instead, I threw myself into reading my first set book for my English A-Level course, DH Lawrence's The Rainbow. This seething whirlpool of disappointment, frustration and sexual longing was not the ideal complement to my emotional state at the time. What if A went off with another woman, I mused, thinking of Ursula Brangwen from the novel and the lovely entwined women from the Men Only pictorial in the magazine I had found under the train seat. I listened to Sibelius over and over again, as its emotionally cold and spare tones suited my mood precisely.

After a week of this I was quite convinced that A and my's budding relationship would be over on her return. 'Dumped' was the word used at school when someone's older brother had been unceremoniously let go by their heartless girlfriend. Girls held all the cards; what you could or couldn't do was entirely down to their capricious whim. I needed to talk to someone. But who? There was only one person I knew who had a girlfriend; Dobs. He only lived a mile away, in a house by the river, which I must have walked past many times with A. However, apart from a shared experience of snogging French girls at the age of twelve we didn't have much in common. He was very good at sports, liked amateur dramatics and didn't like science fiction or classical music. He was, however, doing A-level English like I was, Taking a chance and helped by the fact that he had an unusual surname I found his telephone number in the phone book.

"I'm having trouble with The Rainbow," I said, "Can I come around and talk about it?" We had been set a series of essay questions on the book and I was finding it hard going.

"Yes, of course but only if you tell me about that girl I saw you kissing on the river bank!"  Dobs was very helpful on the DH Lawrence and even more helpful on the girlfriend management front. He had been going out with S for six months; they had met in a volunteering club shared between our boys school and her girls' school. Girls, he maintained, liked being told how pretty they were, how nice their clothes were, liked receiving letters and needed to be given presents. Make sure there is a nice letter from you waiting for her when she gets back from holiday, he said. All excellent advice, I thought.  "So where have you got to with your girl?" he asked, eventually. I didn't know what to say but he said there was a sliding scale from one to ten. Ten, of course was 'doing It'. The Holy Grail. He told me about someone we both knew, vaguely, who was not at our current school but had been in the year above me at junior school. He was very tied up with a religious youth group run by the local church. The organisers saw it as a way to channel the misguided interests of potentially rebellious teenagers into something constructive. The teenagers who attended just wanted to meet people of the opposite sex. The volunteer group Dobs and his girlfriend were in at school had some common members with this local church group. He said that this one boy, M, had been found to have had sex with one of the girls in the group. They were both seventeen or eighteen but the boy had been taken to the local vicar and was caned. We both thought this was outrageous. Neither had done anything wrong but he had received ten strokes. But then this was the vicar who I had heard, one Christmas, giving a vitriolic sermon against the evils of Science Fiction and Fantasy, charm bracelets, horoscopes, Jews and, above all, Catholics.

I asked Dobs how the ranking worked and he admitted he didn't know either but he reckoned number one was holding hands and number two was kissing with number three being French kissing. We sat on the floor of his bedroom, which looked out on to the towpath, which explained how he had seen A and me kissing, and tried to come up with a definitive list. Eventually, we reckoned he had got to stage seven which we decided was kissing and caressing and rubbing "the naughty bits" through clothes. I asked what stage eight was and he said doing the same naked. I then asked what stage nine was and he answered 'she sucks you off'. There was no mention of any reciprocal attention for girls, probably because their pleasure wasn't contemplated. Eventually, I had to admit I had reached number nine. Dobs was incredulous.

"She sucked you off? Outside? In public?". I said it wasn't really in public as there wasn't anyone around. But he was obviously impressed. I made him promise not to tell anyone at school and, to give him his due, he never did. 

I went home and composed a long passionate letter to A, explaining how much I missed her and how I was looking forward to seeing her again. I put it in a separate envelope and tucked it inside her birthday card. Then, I realised that I didn't know her address but the phone book came to the rescue again. I spent some of the money I had received for doing well in my O levels (my mother never did believe my A grade for Maths and thought they must have marked someone else's paper) on an LP of Sibelius 5th symphony, to give A as a birthday present on her return from Spain.

The emotional boost I had received from talking to Dobs slowly ebbed away, however, and I was soon convinced, once more that A would dump me when she returned from Spain. Then, I came down to breakfast one morning and my mother told me that I had had a postcard from ‘your girlfriend’.  She handed it to me. A nice sunny picture from the Costa Brava. My sister picked at her bacon disconsolately with her fingers (she was not good in the mornings and needed an hour until she could use tools, like cutlery) and sneered at me. A had written a short note about the temperature, the horrible food and the boring journey (it was her first trip abroad). But right at the end she had written ‘Missing you. Wish you were here!’.

"That's nice," said my mother, reading it (again, no doubt) over my shoulder. "What a nice girl!"  Good job you don't now what we get up to, I thought. "Why doesn't she come over to dinner when she gets back from holiday?" said my mother. My sister tutted.

The postcard should have cheered me up but. of course, I realised she must have posted it as soon as she had arrived in Spain and she might have met a Spanish waiter by now. I also didn't know about this suggestion that she come over to dinner, especially given my mother's cooking.

I tried not to count the days until she returned. Actually, I couldn't anyway as I was not sure if she was coming back Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  The call came Friday night. She had just returned and could we meet the next day? That's it, she wants to dump me, I thought. My mother kept calling out that she should come to dinner the next day and she could stay over if she liked. I decided not to tell A this but she heard my mother calling out from the kitchen, She would have to ask her parents about staying but she would certainly come to dinner.

The next day I tried to persuade my mother to let me cook something like Coq au Vin but she said I didn't want to be fussed about cooking with my girlfriend there. I wished she would stop calling her ‘my girlfriend’, especially in front of my sister, who I was very close to. We never annoyed each other and always played happily together, when we were younger. I didn't want A to cause a rift between me and my sister.  My mother decided to do spaghetti Bolognese which she cooked by putting raw mince, raw onion and a tube of tomato puree into a casserole and baking it for two hours. No pre-cooking of any of the constituent ingredients; just bung it all in and hope for the best. It invariable ended up with a burnt ring around the edge where the sauce had fused to the casserole but was, usually, more or less, edible. She splashed out and got a tub of Parmesan cheese, which always smelled like sick to me (you couldn't buy fresh Parmesan in the shops then). My mother made up the bed in the spare room, just in case, although I thought the chances of her parents letting her stay were slim. Anyway, she was going to dump me.

A’s mother drove her over early the next evening,

"She has a Volvo," my mother said, approvingly. The two mothers chatted briefly, approving of each other's accents. "She does go to a private school, after all," my mother had observed. A had an overnight bag with her, I noticed. Surely not? A's mother left, without taking the offered cup of tea and said she would pick A up whenever she wanted. She gave me a hug, embarrassingly, and left. A, I was surprised to see, was wearing light make up. A touch of eye shadow and some pale pink lipstick. It made her look older. I thought that I preferred (as I still do) girls without makeup.

A and I sat on the sofa and watched the film version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. We both knew the series but hadn't seen the older film. We had just got a colour TV for the first time (for the Montreal Olympics) so it was much better than the black and white TV version I had seen before. As usual, dinner was late but we managed to watch the whole film before we went into the dining room, at which point my sister appeared, looking sullen. Dinner wasn't actually inedible, mother had bought some Chianti and it never occurred to her that A wouldn't have some. In fact she hadn't had wine before but I drank it at home from a young age. I had my first glass of wine, in France, when I was two and a half and from the age of about ten we had it every Sunday lunch time with the Sunday roast, Round the Horne or The Navy Lark on the radio. My sister thawed, somewhat, at dinner when she found out that A played the clarinet too.

My mother ensured that she and my sister went up to bed quite early (this was a first example of how my mother, from then on, always disappeared if I had a young lady round, for which I was very grateful). A and I stayed up, theoretically, to watch a late night double bill of old black and white horror films but in fact to reacquaint ourselves with each other's mouths. I had relaxed when it didn't appear that she was going to dump me after all. She sat on my lap, on the sofa, as I caressed her now quite brown legs. They seemed particularly smooth and silky, which she put down to after sun lotion every day. I was just wondering about getting more horizontal when she suggested we get ready for bed. I was disappointed as it seemed our amorous activities might be over for the weekend. I kissed her good night outside the door to the spare room and she disappeared inside with her Sibelius record, which she was delighted with.

I rushed to use the bathroom and got ready for bed as I knew how long girls took at things like that. I put on my pyjamas and got into bed, thinking about A and getting stiff. I could hear her come out of the bathroom and go into the spare bedroom. I waited for what seemed like ages but she did not appear. I was gently stroking myself, wondering whether to go the whole way when my bedroom door opened and a pale shape entered and closed the door. It was quite dark, although there was some light in the room from the road outside the house, filtering through my unlined curtains. I do not like completely dark rooms and when away always make sure that I open the curtain just a chink to let some light into the room.

"Did you think I wouldn't come?" she whispered. I had actually thought that she had gone to bed, so was surprised by her presence. She approached my bed and I sat up. She pulled her cotton nightie over her head, dropped it onto the carpet and slipped into bed next to me. Fortunately I had a 3' 6", not the standard 3', single bed but there was a lot of wriggling involved in her getting under the sheet and blankets (I didn't get a continental quilt for another four years). My heart was pounding. I was in bed with a completely naked girl! A naked girl who was unbuttoning my pyjama top. After being frozen, initially, like a rabbit in headlights, I reanimated myself and helped her get my top off which I threw onto the carpet next to her nightie. She started fumbling at the tie cord on my pyjama trousers. She started to push them down before she had undone it, catching my erection on the cord. I helped free myself and pushed them down to my thighs. She pulled them off the rest of the way but they remained at the foot of the bed. She was now lying on her side next to me. Her hand grasped my cock and she wriggled up for a kiss. 

We didn't speak, just kissed and caressed each other. She climbed on top of me, her thighs astride my hips her hot groin pressed on my cock. I could feel her pubic hair on my erection. I reached down and stroked her naked bottom for the first time. We were kissing all the time and she was starting to rub herself on my cock; backwards and forwards. She lifted herself up and supported herself on her forearms . I leant forward and licked her erect nipples. She was breathing hard. ‘Huh, huh, huh’ in time with her pelvic movements. I had my hands on her bottom feeling the muscles under her skin flex. I could feel myself getting close to coming and was worried about the proximity of my cock head to her pussy. I wondered about pushing her down a bit but she was lost now, gasping and grinding. I started to ejaculate onto my (and her) belly. She kept rubbing and then gasped and I felt a flood of wetness flowing onto my cock root and down my balls. This business of girls flowing like this was something I had not imagined before.

A rested her head on my shoulder, breathing hard. She kissed my neck, softly. I turned my head and we kissed again and gently stroked each other's sweaty skin. I could feel my spunk on my belly, drying. She flung the bedclothes back, as we were both sweating like pigs.

"Wow!" was all she said. We lay together until she rolled off me and stood up as she needed the loo. She pulled her nightie on and slipped out. I went after she had returned and when I got back into the room she had stripped off again and was back in bed. I climbed back in with her and she wriggled across the bed to the wall (my bed was in the corner of the room). Having not said much up until that point she now wanted to chat about what we had just done and how nice it had been and when we could do it again.

She was so excited I had to keep hushing her. I idly stroked her pubic hair with the back of my fingers until she opened her legs, took hold of my wrist and guided my hand between her thighs. I explored her slippery parts with my fingers, amazed by all the fleshy folds. I stroked her inner surfaces and wondered, again, at the amount of liquid they produced, I could sense her entrance with my finger but didn't want to penetrate it. I knew from school biology lessons that virgins had some sort of membrane there and if you broke it it bled. Instead, I concentrated on the rigid little fold at the top of her pussy and soon had her gasping away again. She clamped her thighs on my hand stopping me from tickling her any more. She was dribbling liquid again and I worried I had inadvertently broken her hymen.

"Stop! I've come again! I love it!"

"I love it too!" I replied giving her a kiss. I turned onto my side and my erection pressed against her hip.

"My turn!" she said. She pushed my legs apart and knelt between my thighs, taking me in hand before enveloping my knob in her soft mouth. I managed to hold off for some time, really enjoying it as she slurped wetly all over me. It was when she started to tickle my balls with her fingernails that I lost it again. I pulled out and came over her collarbones. She wriggled up me and lay on top of me. I stroked her bottom.

"You'd better go," I said. She said that she would really like to cuddle up in bed but she agreed that she had better go back to the spare room. Reluctantly, we both got dressed in our night clothes again and after a lot more kissing she slipped away. I hopped into bed hoping I would get another erection so I could masturbate over the memory but I fell asleep almost immediately,

After breakfast, the next morning, we went for a walk in the park and along the river bank, although heading downstream rather than the way we used to go when I walked her home. We were sitting on the bank near the bridge, our legs dangling over the brown waters as a couple of boats cycled through the lock. She said she had something to confess to me and my heart started to pound. She had another boyfriend? She had had a fling with a Spanish waiter? She was dumping me after all?  It was not that but nearly as shocking. 

She thanked me for her birthday present again and the card and letter I had sent.  Her birthday had been the previous week when she was on holiday. I knew it meant that she would be one of the youngest girls in her year, whereas I had a January birthday so was one of the older ones in mine. She then confessed that her recent birthday was her fifteenth. I would be seventeen on my next birthday. She had still (just) been fourteen when she sucked me off under the tree. I had assumed that the summer exams she had sat in June had been her O-levels like mine and she was now sixteen. But hers were her mock O-levels. She confessed to not being entirely honest when we had discussed these, when my results came out, earlier in the holidays. She thought I wouldn't want a younger girlfriend so she had pretended to be the same age as me. Certainly, at school your friends were almost exclusively in your own year. You didn't fraternise with older or younger people. A was eighteen months younger than me, which meant about ten percent of my age less than I was. She was actually closer in age to my younger sister. I gave her a hug and a kiss and said ‘so what?’ but I was still a bit shocked. She said it meant that we couldn't have proper sex for another year. I was surprised by the boldness of her statement. Sex was something you had to cajole girls into, I thought. I hadn't even contemplated ‘It’ with her, really, despite the fact that the previous night we had been very close. I realised that there was a big gap between number nine on Dobs table and number ten. Maybe we needed a number nine and a half.

I had already achieved far more with a girl than I had imagined and far more than most of my school friends except Dobs and now also, we knew, JM, who had got his girlfriend down to her knickers while romping in his bedroom. He was, however, half French so we expected him to be more capable with women. We knew this because another schoolmate, S, had witnessed this and had complained that his 'date' wouldn't strip off. Getting any sort of contact with girls was still such an unlikely and distant prospect that even though S perceived it as a failure to get his girl to disrobe it was still seen by the rest of the class as an achievement just to be romping around with her on the floor. At least he had a girl, they thought, jealously, even though they were rude to him to his face.

Later in the week A and I went to Kingston to go to the art shop.  She was doing Art O-level and needed a new art folder as hers had fallen to bits. She caught the 218 bus to where I lived and I waited at the stop until the bus she was on arrived. We sat in the back seats and I stroked her leg all the way there, even getting my fingers under her skirt to rub her damp, cotton clad crotch. We had a few kisses but the bus was quite full and sitting further towards the front was ‘the lady who sounds like a crowd’ as my sister called her and who knew my mother. The ‘lady who sounds like a crowd’ was so dubbed because you would be in the house and you would hear what sounded like four or five people walking past the front of the house chatting. However, when you looked out the window you would just see the one lady with her toddler in a pushchair. Maybe she was a ventriloquist.  At one point A started to unzip my jeans but I had to push her hand away. Far too much risk of discovery!

Shortly afterwards we made another trip together, this time up to London. This was a big trip for me as I don't think I had been to London on my own before. We took the train from the station I used to get to school and found ourselves in one of the closed compartments. As we sat waiting for the train to leave (it was at the end of the line) she kicked off her sandal and started to rub my crotch with her foot. Given that, in doing so, I could look up her skirt and see her knickers it wasn't long before she had me throbbing in my jeans.

As soon as the train pulled out she unzipped me, knelt next to me on the bench seat and started to suck away. The problem with that line was that as there was a stop every couple of minutes or so, we would have to desist at every station to make sure no one was going to get into our compartment. The first few miles were through fields but I was starting to get increasingly nervous as the area along the line got more built up, as we approached the usual stop I got out at for school. A was, however, by this point, really in to it and she didn't stop even when we pulled into the station. There was a man on the platform and I am sure he glanced into the compartment and moved on. Slightly more relaxed as we got on the move again, I told her that I was about to come but she kept her mouth firmly over my knob as I ejaculated into her soft mouth. I remember her pulling off me, looking at me and swallowing. Then she gave me a particularly wet, spermy, I realised, kiss.

"Mmm!" she said, just as we pulled into the next station.

In London our destination was a science fiction bookshop called Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. which was in a dingy part of Soho. Today Soho is full of film company HQ offices, trendy restaurants and shops. In those days it was full of seedy strip clubs and prostitutes. A thought it was fascinating. I felt totally responsible for her. I wanted to get out of the area as fast as possible, so after we had picked up a few US edition science fiction novels we headed out of the side streets. A chose Samuel R Delaney's Dhalgren, largely on the basis of an explicit sex scene at the beginning. I tried to read it once but found it a lot of overblown pretentious claptrap. We went to Foyles bookshop, where A wanted to buy a copy of the paperback Emmanuelle. Trying to find anything in a bookshop where books were arranged by publisher not author was impossible however! I think she eventually got a copy in WH Smiths at home. We thought about going to the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, where the film was running but didn't think we could pass for eighteen.

On the way home we got into another single compartment but, much to our annoyance, some other people got in too so we didn't have long together on our own until we reached the end of the line. Enough time for A to get me completely stiff again, however, but no time to do anything about it.

Shortly after our London trip it was back to school, after an unbelievably torrid summer holiday. My experiences with A had given me a new confidence, however, and this was reflected in my performance at school. Although it could have been something to do with giving up all the subjects I was rubbish at like Maths, sciences and French. Having been a bit average, I discovered in the autumn term that I was actually really good at English and History. I was getting A and A+ grades instead of my usual B's. (I even got an A for my DH Lawrence essay!).

"What's 'appened to you, boy, over the summer 'olidays?" said one of my History teachers, Spiny Norman, in his West County yokel's accent. "You look different too!" I said nothing. I enjoyed having a girlfriend but I enjoyed having a secret girlfriend even more.

In my last reminiscence involving A we head into 1977.