Remembrance

Autumn Writer

On a warm, humid, Midwest, summer night a little breeze stirred just enough air to allow the elderly couple to spend the final hours of the day on the veranda. They shuffled out, sinking into opposite ends of the chaise. It was so hot this summer. The heat slowed them, melted their rations of energy. No words passed between them; none were needed. The woman surveyed the sunset, marking day’s end. Alone in her thoughts, she thought to herself, “The sun is setting on our days, too.” She accepted it; their life had been a full one. Sixty years together, children, grandchildren, a successful business passed on to their sons.

“Life is so short,” she mused, “but we made the most of it.”

Her introspection was broken by a low rhythmic sound contrasting with the crickets’ chirping a few yards away in the grass. She knew, without looking, that it was George sleeping. She looked anyway and gazed upon him.

“Poor George,” she sighed, “he was always so fit and strong. Look at him now.”

Recent years had taken their toll on him. The prostate cancer had been the worst of it. She couldn’t know, but sensed, that his days were numbered in the scores, not hundreds. Then, her turn couldn’t be far off.

“Oh, stop!” She chided herself. Self-pity had never been their refuge. “When one takes a partner for life, there is a beginning, middle, and an end.”

She wiped a trickle of perspiration from her brow, reminded of the warmth of the season. She resumed her thoughts, traveling back in time to another hot summer night. A calendar would mark it a past tense memory of long ago. In her mind’s eye, she was in the present. It was a story that she pulled often from the secret shelves of her memory. It always stirred her.

*************

It was 1946 in a small city in Iowa. Helen and George had just been married that afternoon. The wedding had been long-postponed. They planned to wed in June 1942 after their graduation. A romance had blossomed in their senior year at the University. He would graduate in Civil Engineering; she in Library Science. He would probably work for the State Highway Department, she in the local schools. They would have a family and be happy.

Everyone who knew them considered Helen and George a good match. Both were children of farmers, used to hard work and hard times. They had been teenagers in the dustbowl—not much chance for fun. Their parents saw to it that their hard life did not embitter them. They looked forward to better times, with their training at the University punching their tickets.

George was a lanky young man, reserved and steady. His math skills and hard work made him excel in his courses. He might have appeared bookish, but his lean frame betrayed a wiry musculature that surprised many. He never smoked, only took an occasional drink with friends. In every way, he was a straight arrow. George was a quiet young man but whenever he did speak, he meant each well considered word. Those who didn’t know him thought he was gruff. His close circle knew better.

Helen grew up on a farm in the same county as the one that George’s family owned. Even as a girl, she pitched in with the farm chores. She developed a strong frame in her growing years, but one would never know it. It lay beneath a trim figure and a feminine smoothness. She stood about five-six; topped by wavy honey blonde hair she kept shoulder-length. Many college boys’ neck craned to ogle her cute behind as she passed by them, but whatever they might have seen was created in their imaginations.

Helen did not tease, nor flaunt. Her femininity needed none of the weak reinforcement that flirting could bring her. Teasing was good only good for prompting action, and she desired none from those that ogled her. If ever a time came when provocation was in order, she would tease well-enough at her choosing. She kept her figure neatly covered in the practical a-line skirts that she usually wore that were popular in that day. Helen’s chosen field of Library Science belied her personality. She was precocious and friendly, filled with energy. But, she did not suffer fools easily. She had a pretty face. Her smile was infectious; everyone liked her. She was like George in one respect; she was the female equivalent of the straight arrow. That was the norm in the days before the war.

When Helen and George met, they soon knew they had found their future mate. Her vivaciousness balanced his quiet demeanor. She helped him to put aside his shyness. Helen craved George’s steadiness, reliability and the respect and trust that he earned from others. She was always proud to be with him. She found that he was kind and gentle. It was easy for George to be kind to Helen, he loved her.

A phone call on December 8 thrust a new, unwelcome chapter into their storybook. His Navy ROTC unit was to report in a week’s time for duty in San Diego. He would complete his engineering degree there, then duty in the Pacific in the Seabees.

“Let’s just elope now, while we have the chance,” Helen pleaded. She loved him, and her body ached for him. They had delayed the act of consummation until after the wedding. They had not actually gone much further than passion-filled kissing. In the 1940’s the shame of unmarried pregnancy, single-sex dorms with vigilant house mothers, the difficulty of finding a private place—sex before marriage was just not common in Midwest America in 1941. On December 6, they contemplated only six short months to wait to hold one another. They were a conventional couple and waiting the right thing to do. The following day, their expectations turned upside-down.

“You know that I love you, but it wouldn’t be right,” he replied. “Who knows what will happen to me? A widow with a baby would have a tough life”.

George was always the wise one, the planner. Helen sadly agreed. George had steadied them, but he took comfort in her impulsive suggestion because it reassured him that she would wait for his return. He went to San Diego with his unit. Helen finished her degree and returned home. She got a job at the Public Library; she waited.

Through those long war years Helen longed for George. She waited for his letters, faded and out of date, little holes carved into them by military censors. Each day that the Western Union man did not deliver that dreaded telegram brought her a sigh of relief. She knew that they were right to wait, but the aching in her heart and body wouldn’t fade. She never doubted that George would be as faithful as she, and so he was. The end of the war did not bring the end to George’s military service. Finally, he was mustered out in June 1946.

For Helen, those final months of waiting were some of the loneliest. Other soldiers and sailors were returning home. It added a nasty sting to their separation. It was unfair. George had been one of the first to go off to war, but his skills were needed in reconstruction. She was grateful that he was out of danger. Her woman’s body kept reminding her that she was now twenty-six years old and longed for that ultimate physical connection.

She dreamt of him holding her, shameless and naked. He would enter her, taking his pleasure inside her, emptying his essence deep within. At first, her sexual thoughts shamed her, but she came to revel in them, taking solace in her imagined satiation. Her mind’s eye pictured his lean body, his square and resolute jaw line set on wide shoulders. She hoped that she would find the desire in him that she felt throbbing deep within herself.

As Helen’s friends married, they whispered their sexual secrets in their coffee groups. They spoke of passion and pain. They recounted the breaking of their inner bodies to please their men, the later pleasures. All this inflamed Helen. She struggled to stop listening to them, but she could not. She didn’t know how much of the stories were factual, or embellishments. She kept her silence. She only determined to experience it for herself when George returned.

Despite the carnage George witnessed, he remained kind, decent, and a little self-conscious. He earned two purple hearts. He never told Helen; he didn’t want to worry her. His experiences had changed him. Still tall and lean, he added muscle to his frame. Any softness that he might have taken with him to the Pacific had long been worn away by jungle deprivations. Command experience added maturity beyond his years. He started the war as an Ensign, finished as Lt. Commander. His years of building landing strips on Pacific Islands had endowed him with confidence and abilities that a classroom could never teach.

Again a civilian, he craved a relaxation of the hardness and discipline that were necessary in his wartime service, but the ability to fully release would never quite come to him. Still, when he thought of his beloved Helen, he melted like butter in a skillet. She was so good; she had been so patient, so pure. He molded his image of her to a model of perfection, and it buoyed him through his years at war. True, he had placed her on a pedestal. It was a vision that suited him.

*************

So, on a hot June night in 1946, two young people trod the stairs at the Downtown Hotel in a small Iowa city, to the Honeymoon Suite. He could afford it with his mustering-out pay. The wedding had been hastily arranged—a big affair seemed so anticlimactic after the long war separation and the endless stream of returnees who had preceded George. Helen wore a simple mid-calf white dress with a veil. There was no time to buy a gown. He wore his dress Navy Whites. He had no civilian clothes that would fit him. Helen recruited her brother as Best Man. George had been overseas for a long time and only arrived home the day before. Not many of his friends would ever return from the war. The reception was a dinner in the hotel dining room with their parents, best man and maid of honor.

There was no bellman. They each carried their own suitcase up the two flights of stairs. George unlocked the door and they entered the suite. They set down their luggage and he closed the door. Since the time that their wedding dinner had ended until this moment, no word had passed between them. They embraced, shared a kiss. It was gentle and loving, at first. Then more demanding, searching for the other’s passion. Helen cautiously pushed her tongue from between her lips and into his. It startled him. He had not anticipated her initiative, but finally decided that he liked it. She felt him recoil slightly, but when he did not release his embrace, she relaxed further in his arms, kissing him again.

Finally, they stopped, and he said, “We’ve waited a long time”. It was a statement of the obvious. Yet, true to his manner, George’s words were measured and full of meaning. It was an acknowledgment of their mutual ordeal. It was necessary to say it. His referral to it in the past tense signaled a turning of the page.

“Yes,” she murmured, and then kissed him again.

Stepping slightly apart, they looked about the room. On the left was a patio, its door open, with a pleasant breeze wafting in to break the stillness of the hot summer air. Through the open door, they could see the city lights below. An ice bucket stood sweating alongside two matching patio chairs and a small metal table.

“They brought the champagne that I ordered,” he said.

A few yards on the right sat the double bed, already turned down by the maid. George glanced at it, their final destination on this night. It beckoned him, provocative, its white folded down sheets against the dark colored blankets, grinning like big teeth. He looked away, wondering why he had done so. A nervous chill coursed through him. It was their beginning. Finality of their ordeal was the price of commencement. Part of him wanted to cling to their sweet endurance. It had been painful, but shared. It brought constancy and assurance along with agony. It had been such a sweet pain. It had become part of themselves; the tie that bound them together. How to begin, without breaking the bond?

He knew that the page must turn. Must it, however, be riffled over as though in a cheap magazine? His instincts drove him to gently lift the corner, slowly turning the page over, gradually revealing the new text. He groped for time to straighten his thoughts as he searched for the answer.

He found refuge in the chilling champagne. Pointing to it, he asked, “Would you like to drink some?”

“Yes…well…later maybe”, she replied. He sensed a polite “no”.

“Well, what, then?”

Helen thought fast. She was eager to make love, but anxious to preserve her role as the quarry.

Her lips feigned a pout. “I don’t know,” she coyly replied. “Didn’t you become a Commander in the Navy?”

“Yes”, he said, puzzling over the meaning.

She leaned into him, pressing him with her body. Her soft lips brushing his earlobe, “then command me,” she whispered.

Her answer raised the hair on the back of George’s neck. Her passion pleased him, but his loss of control triggered alarms. It was premature. They must pause and savor. Searching for a graceful recovery he caressed her cheek, and then kissed gently. Her pulse quickened. Finally, she believed that the moment had arrived.

As he finished his kiss she prepared to kiss back, but he broke away and said, “I command you to change into something more comfortable”

She contained an exhale of frustration. “Always the engineer,” she thought. “He’s got a blueprint for everything”

Still, it was progress. The ship would dock at the appointed ‘destination’, headwinds were slowing the tack. She took solace in the meted out advance and reached for her small suitcase.

“Good idea,” she said, recovering. “You have some champagne while I freshen up.” With that, she disappeared with her suitcase into the bathroom and locked the door.

George watched her close the door. He was relieved that the process had slowed a bit. He wanted her, sure enough. He was just afraid to rush things. This would be their one and only wedding night, he reasoned. No part of it would be glossed over or unappreciated.

After all, he also was a virgin, just as Helen. He hoped that he could do his man’s duty. Would she expect too much from him? Would he disappoint her? Would he hurt her in breaking her maidenhead? Would she understand the importance of this night to him? As he thought of these things he was barely aware that he had begun to remove his dress-white uniform. He hung it in the closet and removed the rest of his clothes. He jumped into a pair of pajama pants from his suitcase and put them on, tying the drawstring at the waist. He thought about his robe, but it was too hot. He would forgo the pajama tops, too.

The coldness of the tiled floor on the patio felt good on his bare feet. His manhood was hardening. He was determined to stave off the urgency that nature had visited upon him so soon. He poured himself a glass of champagne and quickly downed it. He poured another and started drinking it more slowly. The bracing alcohol felt good. When Helen emerged things would go faster, he told himself. A quick toast of champagne then let nature take its course. He was grown man—up to the challenge. Helen needed him. He would come through for her.

“What was she doing in there, anyway?” His mood suddenly became insistent.

***************

In the bathroom Helen found the long ivory gown that she had bought and saved for her honeymoon. She removed her clothes and reached for the negligee, but stopped. Standing nude in front of the mirror she inspected her form, shaped firm and slender by years of hard work on her family farm. The firmness was underneath; the outside covered in a feminine softness.

Her eyes drifted lower. Her breasts lay naturally on her chest. They were round, average in size, fitting her medium frame. The tips were crowned with small nipples that now were hardening and enlarging with her excitement. She glanced lower. Her belly and navel narrowed and formed a path to the center of her. A soft triangle of honey-colored down broke the skin’s creamy smoothness. It was only a little darker than her wavy tresses. It pointed to her womanhood, now glistening with the moisture that betrayed her eagerness.

She paused for a long pause look at herself. She wished to remember these final virgin moments. It would be the last time that her eyes, alone, would know this sight. In the morning, her new husband would know it, too. In her desire, she had never considered this finality. Her virginity had been her preparation. Soon, all would be opened, no pretexts needed. She wondered how she might be changed and how George would respond after crossing the final barrier.

She halted her musings and slipped the gown over her head. It was a shiny satin material. The thin shoulder straps held up a lace bodice that cradled her firm virgin’s breasts. The lace formed in a deep vee that started at the end of the tiny strap just above the top of each breast and ended at a point several inches below them, halfway to her navel. The cleavage revealed was ample, but demure. It was enough to announce and entice, a treat for the eye, while protecting the essence from exposure. The lacey fabric allowed a hint of the brown circle of areolas. The pointed nipples pushed at the fabric, leaving no doubt as to their hiding place.

The long gown slid down her body and hugged her form, punctuating her firm lines, her hips, and well-formed cheeks. It was slit from the floor to mid-thigh on her left side. The slit did not show as she stood. Each step revealed an enticing flash of creamy thigh that would too quickly disappear. It riveted a man’s eye to it, creating an expectation of the next step and ensuing flash of forbidden flesh. At least that was Helen’s thinking when she bought the gown. She spent many hours selecting it. The search served to provide her with small doses of excitement as she envisioned the first time that she would “be with” George.

Preparation for the night had served to temporarily quench her thirst, but it deepened it in the long run, and driven her aggressive prodding earlier. It was good that George had delayed her ardor a few minutes before, or the prized negligee would have remained forgotten in her suitcase.

“What had she forgotten?” She spied the matching furry high-heeled slippers that a friend had urged on her, insisting that they were sexy. She decided that they were not, and would go without them. She stood in her bare feet and the coldness of the tile floor felt sensual and good. She liked the naturalness of it. She desired no contrivances.

She realized her preparations were at an end. The time had come for her to emerge from the bathroom-refuge to present herself to her new husband and soon-to-be lover. Suddenly, she froze in nervous trepidation. After such a long time in waiting, the planning and dreaming, the prodding of her recalcitrant groom, she was at once trembling and short of breath. She knew that she should bolt out the door to commence that which she so long had yearned for. She could not. She stared at the door handle. It dared her to seize it and run to her desires. How could she refuse the call? She thought frantically for a few moments’ reprieve.

“Her hair-- it was a mess.” She grabbed her brush and assaulted her wavy tresses. Her breathing quickened more. It aggravated her that her locks fell so quickly into place. She must not rush this! As she continued to brush, she realized her grooming was only a play for time. She felt the inner surge of her racing pulse. Her nipples now engorged to capacity, ached from their stiffness. She raised a hand to relieve them. She stopped herself, saving that pleasant task for him. She clenched her buttocks cheeks, squeezing her thighs together. Her woman’s essence bathed her inner self. She had never felt it so moist and slippery. It issued a musky scent. She knew the purpose of this wetness. She set down the hairbrush and exhaled loudly.

“Get a hold of yourself! It’s time to go,” she said to herself. She dotted a small dab of perfume behind each ear. She thrust out her hand, taking hold of the door handle.

************

On the patio, George was becoming more and more restless. He thought that he had gained control of events. His play for time only served to banish his quarry behind the locked bathroom door. All possible initiative had now vanished. Only the turning of the handle of the bathroom door, unseen, from the other side, would signal the restart of the evening’s events.

He regretted his Pyrrhic victory; he craved action. Her coyness in prolonging the waiting in the bathroom was merciless. He had yet to learn the lesson of the bathroom as the female bastion. He drained the last of the champagne in his glass. He poured himself another, but decided he didn’t want it. He stood up to pace, but sat back down, lest Helen suddenly emerge to the betrayal of his anxiety.

He pictured her beyond that bathroom door. She would be disrobing. He pictured her nakedness. He had never seen her without clothes. His mind’s eye painted a picture of her. She would be beautiful; he knew it. He would not deserve her. He started to shake. His inner vision of her pure nakedness made him harden under his pajama bottoms. A droplet of slippery liquid emerged from the tip of his penis. He worried that his fantasy might spur a premature response. He must calm himself.

“Was she nervous, too?” She hadn’t seemed very nervous a few moments before. How could a woman so innocent and inexperienced so deftly ploy the feminine wiles as she had done? Probably, her already-married friends had schooled her. He worried that her knowledge overreached his. Perhaps she was trying to deal with her anxiety through aggressiveness. That would be typical of Helen. He glanced around the room in search of a task to absorb his nervous energy.

“The lights!” They were too bright. He stood and hopped about the room dimming it to a romantic dusk. He had to hurry ahead of her reentrance from her bathroom lair. It wasn’t easy to move quickly with his hardened manhood pointing the way through his pajamas. He dodged chairs, beds and footstools, groping for switches. His task completed, he returned to his chair on the patio, but Helen remained in place beyond the bathroom door.

George’s anxiousness returned. He convinced himself to remain seated on the patio until Helen decided to emerge and sit alongside him. He made a plan. He would sit calmly there, waiting for her to take her place alongside him. He turned her chair slightly, so as to leave no ambiguity about his wishes. He would casually offer her a glass of champagne. He would not be over-eager. She would be impressed by his savoir-faire. He remembered her insistence that he assume command. He was determined to do so. It was a good plan, but he wondered why his nervousness would not abate. The raging hardness in his groin intruded on his consciousness, maintaining the telltale tent in the front of his pajamas. He became more impatient. “What was she doing in there?”

**************

A loud click-click from the bathroom door froze him. For a second, his heart ceased beating. George cast aside his well-made plan of suavity. He jumped out of his chair and took two quick strides toward the bathroom door and then stopped himself. He stood silently waiting for the door to open. His pulse raced. He felt his breathing quicken. All day and night he had fought to control his ardor. He could do so no longer. George needed a new plan. In the pregnant moments that turn seconds to hours, he made one. He would shed all pretenses. The cloak wrapped around his emotions would be sundered.

Here, at last, was the culmination of his most cherished dream. It had sustained him, his secret companion. It had distracted him during his long trips at sea; nourished him on steamy Pacific islands; comforted him at the sight of dead and wounded comrades. The dream had been Helen. In it, she was sometimes a wife, or mother. Mostly it was Helen as his lover, waiting for him, desiring him, dreaming of him as he dreamt of her. Sometimes he saw her face, eyes glistening with joy at the sight of him safely home. At times he would see her distant form, waving excitedly to him as he returned to her. Once in a while, he pictured her nude, lying on a bed, her arms reaching for him.

The dream spoke to him. “Release me. I must go now; you don’t need me. Seize reality as it stands before.”

At that instant, the dream left him and George realized that he was no longer alone in life. He wondered how much life would mirror the dream. What unimagined circumstances would color their lives? He cast doubts aside. His life with Helen was meant to be. It was real and good. It was time to start. He had jumped over the barrier between hope and action, dream and reality. In the most important way he was no longer a virgin.

*************

The bathroom door slowly opened. Its light pierced the semi-darkness. The shaft of illumination isolated their space from the universe. Helen, with tiny steps, emerged into the open. The brightness framed her as she stood silently and motionless on display. George beheld the sight.

Her hair, which she left undone, cascaded around her shoulders. Her countenance was serene, and her eyes looked straight into his. They glistened a little bit, perhaps with passion, or maybe emotion.

Her shoulders and arms were bare except for the tiny straps that held up the lace bodice of her gown. Her delicate features were displayed; they were perfect, as if carved in white marble. Below, the lace bodice cradled her breasts as they hung naturally beneath her shoulders. As the line of the bodice plunged to her middle, it revealed the upper portion of them. They were round, but not pushed up. Her slender waist trailed down from the bodice and ended with the flare of her hips. The gown hugged them and outlined their feminine details. It draped from them like a waterfall to the floor. The flowing of it accentuated her virginal slenderness. Her bare feet, just visible under the hem, added a tone of earthiness to the otherwise classic scene. It was a lovely vision.

George’s eyes feasted on the sight before him. At first, they devoured the picture in its entirety. They found a young woman, eager for her lover. She had a nubile quality, coupled strangely with a virginal innocence. Then his eyes moved to each perfect part which he savored in its turn. His eyes lingered at the outlines of hardened nipples that announced her excitement. She watched George’s eyes engulf them. It did not shame her.

He would have liked to continue his grateful inspection, but it occurred to George that he must respond to the presentation. He searched for eloquence, but found no words adequate for his purpose. He struggled and groped for them. Finally, he exhaled a muffled “Oh, my!”

Helen’s brow furled with concern. She whispered at him, puzzled and insistent, “What?”

“Helen, you can’t know how beautiful you are right now! I don’t know whether I want you to stand there as you are, or to peel that gown away.” Helen smiled, and he knew that his words had pleased her.

Without speaking she stepped forward and leaned into him. Standing on her toes, she cast up her face, her lips brushing his. He congratulated himself. He had selected the right words. They had reassured her. George softened himself for her kiss that he expected in gratitude for his compliment.

“I think that I know the answer,” she whispered.

With that, she tugged the drawstring of the pajamas to untie them. There was no kiss, but a pulling of the waist band over his erection. George stood without moving and allowed the loosened pajamas to fall in a heap at his feet. She moved backward half-dozen tiny steps.

He felt a coolness on his lower body as the pajama trousers fell off him. He started to shiver slightly, but not from the cold. Her aggression stirred him. He had passed control to her yet again, but this time his instincts drove him to revel rather than resist. He opened his senses. He wanted to feel all of it, to be swept into her current, riding all the way from the source, through the rapids, over waterfalls, finishing in the delta mouth.

Helen watched the pajamas fall down George’s lower body. She gazed for a moment at him, hard and aiming straight at her. She spied a drip of clear fluid oozing from the tip, reminding her of her own moistness. Before George could speak, she slowly lifted her right hand to the tiny strap on the left shoulder of her negligee. Slipping her thumb under it, she pushed the string just slightly so that it tripped down her shoulder onto her bare arm. A little more roundness of her breast emerged, but the strap on the right kept the gown from falling.

George stood, naked, staring, and frozen in place. He could only watch and wait. Two more drips emerged from his hardened penis. The breeze drifting through the open patio door cooled the liquid. He did not care. He bathed in the sensation of it.

Helen gave him a few seconds to appreciate the small, yet provocative, revelation. She saw his dripping erection and listened to his hurried breath. She formed a faint smile and hooked her thumb under the remaining strap and pushed it over her shoulder to match the first.

George gasped with anticipation, expecting the negligee to fall for a sudden revelation of the treasures beneath it. The gown, however, remained in place, held by her crossed arms. He puzzled, yearned for more, naked. His pajamas lay crumpled at his feet. His penis was dripping again on them.

Helen looked directly into George’s gaze, crossed arms holding up the bodice of her gown. The mysterious smile remained. It was playful, challenging, passionate, insistent, knowing. She watched him pant with growing desire.

Slowly Helen relaxed her arms loosely to her sides. The gown, which had been so nobly served her beauty, clung for the moment, the lace temporarily impaled on her hardened nipples. She flexed her shoulders slightly, initiating the gown’s cascade. It fell to her waist, revealing her breasts. It paused at her hips. She stood for a second like the Venus, bare to the waist. George remained transfixed. She drew in her belly and her round cheeks. The gown fell away to the floor. She remained motionless, unveiled to him.

His eyes traveled to her rounded breasts, tipped with the hardened rosebuds, downward to the flare of her hips, and finally to the moistened triangle pointing to her woman’s interior. He saw the glistening moisture that told him of her body’s response that mirrored his in the donation of their slippery ointments.

At last their eyes met and locked together. He groped for words. He would not flatter or cliché. Only truth would suffice. How to capture his surging emotions? He pushed out the words, “Helen, you are beautiful. I love you. I want you.”

The giving up of virginity is the crossing of many barriers. In her unveiling she stepped across the most important of all, revealing that which only her eyes had beheld. Now, the hymen was unneeded, a superfluous dam, serving only to block their physical union. They had already surmounted the higher peak. She had neither fear nor reluctance of the hymen’s piercing.

As she stood silently exalting in her nakedness, looking into the eyes of her naked husband, she said calmly, in a clear voice, “George, if you desire what you see, then come and take it. It is mine to give. I give it to you. It is yours.”

************

They strode to each other, arms extended, melding into an embrace. He kissed her lips tenderly; she responded in kind. He kissed her again. She slipped her tongue between his lips, probing. He gave back, and then bent lower. He stroked his lips over her neck and throat. Her senses thrilled. He caressed her bare back, around her shoulders, at first, then drifting lower to the small of her back. She relaxed every muscle, letting every new stimulus reach into her totally. She let her senses fill, holding back no reserve. She opened her legs slightly, feeling the air refresh it. Her sweetness oozed more fluid.

George reached down further from the small of her back and stretched his powerful hand around her perfect cheek. He felt her involuntary clench, continued to hold it, then appreciated the firmness underneath its smooth covering. He pulled her center against him. She spread her legs a little more. Instinctively, she rested her mound against his muscular thigh. She leaned against it, discovering the first traces of a new pleasure as she gently rubbed it against him.

She felt his hardness pressing against her belly. She leaned her body back a little and her small hand circled the shaft. He gasped in the sudden warm pleasure. A slippery fluid leaked from him onto her hand. She wanted it on her and wiped it on her flank. She tilted her head upward for another kiss. Her arms wrapped around his neck. George reached down and caressed the soft down of her mound. Then he probed lower. His fingers found her slit, filled with her wetness. He gently probed deeper.

Under her breath, Helen murmured a quiet “hmmm” as she responded to yet another new pleasure. She leaned into him, drawing his finger in further. “Ohhh”, she breathed, as she learned how her actions could deepen her pleasure. She rocked slightly and sighed again as her body responded even more intensely.

She reached again for George’s penis, determined to make his pleasure match hers. Helen’s rocking continued as she stroked and caressed his member until his low-pitched groans let her know that his gratification, too, was mounting. He reached with his free hand to gently hold her breast. He bent his head lower and kissed it, then rubbed his thumb against the hardened nipple. A tiny squeal of delight escaped as she absorbed yet another new sensation.

They lost awareness of all except their bodies responding to newly-welcomed pleasures. They could continue for hours. It was so new, so exquisite, how could one stop? George felt urgency emerging inside him. He knew the meaning and he thought of the double bed with the turned down covers across the room.

He glanced down at his bride, lost in her throes, rocking herself against his thigh, holding his erection. He kissed her once more. He released her breast and her buttock. He swept her up, cradling her effortlessly. He felt her wetness on his thigh and relished it. They gazed at one another with a knowing look of agreement as he carried her to the bed and laid her gently on it.

Her head rested on the pillow, her hair forming a halo about her face. She smiled serenely at him. He looked down at her, taking pleasure in her beauty. She bent her legs at the knees, and then spread her thighs open in preparation for him. Her eyes widened in anticipation. He felt a surge of lust sweep though him in response to the invitation. She stretched out her arms reaching to him. Her tongue grazed over her lips waiting to taste him. Her welcome re-stirred his love for her. Feeling beauty, lust and love altogether, he climbed onto the bed and between her legs. His manhood pointed to her opening, not yet upon it. He knelt over her, his arms supporting them. He bent down, planting kisses around her breasts, then her nipples. Feeling the hardness, he suckled; she moaned in delight.

The perfume that she had dabbed behind each ear now fumed with the heat of her body. The scent aroused him further as it mixed with the musk she emitted below. He shifted forward, face to face with her. He hovered above her, his weight supported on his locked arms, hands planted on either side of her. She threaded her arms underneath his outstretched ones, placing her hands on each shoulder blade, embracing him. They kissed, long and slow, all eyes open. She thrilled to his powerful physique. Inching forward, he touched her essence with his own. The contact point was wet and warm.

He eased ahead slightly more, feeling the mushroom head slip just inside her labia. It was warm, full of a pleasure that he had never known. He steeled himself to stave off an eruption. She felt him inside her lips, so close to her barrier. It was a new sense of fullness. A trace of pleasure whispered to her as his gentle pressing caressed her clitoris.

George eased forward a little more, now engaging her hymen. She drew a breath at the pressure; he backed off. He pressed ahead gently again, then repeated his retreat. With each movement, Helen’s new-found pleasure intensified. Each tiny trip to and from the barrier engendered a yen for its repeat. Desire accumulated. She felt a building sensation that she sensed would eventually overfill her vessel.

George sensed her pleasure, and delighted in it. Thus distracted, his urge to pour forth abated. His gentle in and out rocking had more purpose than the bestowal of sensual gifts. As he bumped against her maidenhead, he searched for a way to gently bypass it, so that he could explore beyond. It puzzled him. He refused to crudely surge ahead, to roughly puncture her to sate his carnal appetite. He wouldn’t allow her to be broken; rather she would be opened. To do otherwise would have violated the tenderness with which he regarded her.

Through the haze of intensifying pleasure, Helen sensed his reluctance. The pleasure of him, softly caressing her clitoris, in and out, was easing her into a rapture that she was hesitant to surrender. But this sweetness delayed the completion of their union, now nearly accomplished. How to embolden him without hurting his feelings? As she searched for a solution his partial penetration continued to work on her. She gladly accepted a slight delay, savoring the sensations continuing to inundate her.

Helen moaned in pleasure, hooking her feet behind George’s knees. It reassured him that he was pleasing her. The new feeling of her feet on the backs of his legs was a welcome new contact point. Her tender thighs brushed his flanks. As George started a new mini-push into her opening, Helen resummoned her boldness. With an equally gentle upward thrust she met his advance. George moaned his approval as he perceived her endeavor to share back her pleasure. He started a new push ahead, and she re-responded (“one”)-her senses bulged with pleasure; another push, a gentle push back (“two”); she found that each quenching surge spawned a thirst for the next. Her anticipation peaked every nerve ending. George started anew expecting his bride’s tender reply; but (“three”) Helen overtook him in one motion. Locking her ankles more tightly around him, she thrust her pelvis sharply upward. She felt the rupture, his manhood sliding through her.

******************

She held him tightly, halting any immediate movements. Since the tiny steps forward from the bathroom door, much had now transpired. She drank in all that her senses spilled into her cup. Helen felt the soft skin of George’s sack resting against her bottom. She formed a satisfied smile at the completed journey. She assessed the fullness inside that stretched her vagina, more than she would have imagined. It throbbed. She accepted the endurable pain. It was good pain, like an athlete’s soreness at the start of a season’s training. Her mind’s eye formed an image of George’s rigid shaft waiting within her, pointing at her womb. She imagined that she felt its pulse, tapping its feet like an impatient suitor. She wanted to hold it, squeeze it, cradle it, rock it, bathe it in her woman’s ointments. She required no hands do so. She now possessed her new-found means, better suited to the task, opened for her by her new husband. At each future coupling, she determined, would be a chance to learn to do so more perfectly.

She cast her eyes up and found George looking down softly at her. “Just hold still for a minute, George, so that I can get used to you.” Lying there, she borrowed more time to savor her new condition. She felt her breasts crushed under his chest as her arms grasped him to her. Her hands wandered over his strong masculine frame resting atop her. It all served as a reminder, along with the fullness now stretching her, of the differences between their bodies.

As the throbbing subsided, she cautiously pressed her pelvis upward, then released back down. Feeling little pain she softly thrust up again, George sensed the signal to resume. He raised himself up again on his locked arms. Her breasts, uncrushed, regained their form, rosebuds re-stiffened. He withdrew nearly completely, then re-thrust slowly, strongly, deliberately the complete distance into her until his scrotum once again kissed her. She relished the power with which he stroked her. Helen spread more to widen herself. He sensed the invitation and repeated his slow near withdrawal and powerful forward thrust. As he did so his chest smoothed against the softness of her breasts, grazing her re-hardened nipples. She breathed harder, saying nothing, responding to him with thrusts of her own. His alerted senses pushed energy into him. The loving was completed, he was freed to lust. Helen reveled in the primal drive that her body awakened in him.

The scene repeated, gathering rhythm and tempo that fed itself. Finally, George thrust forward and held his position for a long second. Crying out in exaltation, his fountain poured into her.

*************

Helen lay still as George’s breathing slowed. She basked in awareness of his seed pooling inside her. Silently, she wished for impregnation. She knew better, for she had timed her cycle, but enjoyed the thought of it.

George softened and dismounted her, and they lay on their sides embracing. His semen began to leak from her, and his now flaccid penis rested on her thigh spreading a slippery mixture of their fluids. She made no effort to clean herself, nor did she desire to. It was the product of their successful joining. She would preserve it as long as she could.

“I love you, Helen,” he said aloud and unashamed.

She kissed him lightly. “George, you make me so happy.”

Further words were unnecessary. They lay embraced together with their thoughts, sated, cementing what had just transpired between them irrevocably in their memories. Nothing more broke the silence, except for their breathing as they slept naked and uncovered in the arms of the other.

**************

Thus, two people united themselves on a hot summer’s night in 1946. There would be many more sessions of lovemaking in their future, some more artful and sensuous than this initiation. Yet, when they turned to their memories for comfort, this first time would always come forward.

There would be many joys and some sorrows waiting for them. The birth of four children brought happiness. The oldest died in infancy, and they buttressed one another in their anguish.

Helen and George were life partners. She would challenge and prod him to success, just as she had on that first night. He loved her for it. George found a job in the State Highway Department. After a few years he tired of working under lesser men. With her encouragement, he started his own road construction company. Helen worked as bookkeeper in the beginning. His new company was born just in time to help push the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System through the Midwest. When he turned sixty-five, in 1985 he retired, turning the keys over to his two sons. They grew the business even more. Helen and George were proud of them, and of their daughter who became the Head Librarian at the University.

Their children formed happy marriages, surprising no one. The acorn falls not far from the oak.

*************

On the veranda Helen emerged from her evening reverie, distracted by the sleeping George on the opposite end of the chaise. She carefully refolded her precious memories and replaced them in the safe corner of her mind where she guarded them. She was opening this scrapbook book more often in recent days. It pleased her, but could not understand how recent and fresh it all seemed, though it had all taken place sixty years before.

Perhaps the answer is that when two people create a couple their lives merge into a totality and the experiences imparted one to the other. Life flourishes simultaneously in the past, and future. The present is the ephemeral link between the two life tenses. Hopes of yesteryear lead to the exaltations of tomorrow, yet yesteryear remains a reality. Vitality of the past is not erased by today’s infirmities. In the universe, energy can be neither created nor consumed.

Helen turned her glance to her dozing groom. Through the wrinkles she detected the resolute line of his jaw. She pushed her tongue out over her dry lips to wet them. Her eyes glistened. She liked what she saw.

THE END