Chapter 3
After that I started dating Lisa, among others. Her father owned a Bartlett orchard next to ours and we had known each other all our lives. She had been a year behind me all the way through school. We had attended the same parties and worked in the same harvests, sometimes side by side, and I had never noticed her. But the summer I got out of high school, just before I went away for my first year at the university, I did notice her, and just in time.
WhatTeally surprised me was that she had had her legs all her life and I had never seen them before. Her feet were trim little things that became thin ankles rising to smooth round calves and nice knees to sensuous thighs. I was hopping onto the flat-bed truck after unloading some picking bins and several people were already on deck and I saw the pair of legs and followed them up and for God's sake they belonged to my neighbor. She had blossomed all at once.
Her breasts bloomed that summer as if the nipples had been kissed by bees. Her face was solid California, smiling lips and white teeth, laughing eyes, the sunshine in her face framed by long brown hair.
On our first date we had cheeseburgers and root beer and French fries. It was almost as if we had just met. She was a lot of fun right from the beginning, and she also seemed to like me a great deal and she indicated that she had liked me for a long time. It was a case of the ugly duckling, though she never was that, turning into a beautiful, kissable swan.
We drove along the valley highway after we left the drive-in. The summer evening was warm, soft moonlight shimmered over the mountains surrounding the orchards. I drove up to my favorite place, where I had never taken any girl. I had discovered it one day while I was driving around trying to get over Bess. I was sure that any girl I took up there would think I was crazy, but in the back of my mind I thought Lisa might like it.
Most of the trees were the stubby, bushy variety we all grew down in the valley. These, however, were overgrown with suckers and brush and looked as despondent as deserted trees could look. Fortunately, there were only about five acres of them.
As I had thought she might, Lisa liked the place.
I said, "It's different in the daylight. It's worse."
"I don't care," she said, spinning around on the edge of the hill. "The valley is beautiful from up here. And look at the stars. You can see them all."
Farm houses below us had turned their lights on and occasional car headlights passed along the highway. I kissed her on the mouth, fully, innocently, warmly, because I was discovering that I liked her a lot. She kissed me back the same way.
I told her a lot that night, about my life and her own. It seemed we couldn't shut up. I told her about the scholarship the California Exchange Company had offered me. That was the canning company that bought almost every pear grown in the valley and a lot of other places too. I had a summer job with them inspecting pears as they came from the orchards to the warehouses and I had worked out well with the company so they had offered me a scholarship to the university in return for a promise that I would work for them at least five years after I graduated.
Lisa urged me to take it "I already have," I said.
I told her how I wanted this little piece of worn-out property on the hill. I wanted to build a cabin on the slope overlooking the valley and come out in the early morning when the sun was kissing the hilltop and change the sprinklers in my pear orchard, then drive down into the valley to work for the Exchange and come back when I was finished for the day, change the sprinklers again or do some pruning or thinning or spraying, then after supper sit in front of my cabin and watch the sunset.
I had not realized before how damned domestic my plan sounded. I got nervous about half-way through, but since I had started it I finished.
She kissed me again. T like that idea," she said, then jumped up to spin around again as if she had discovered something she had been looking for. "Hey, Giff, will you take me home?"
"Sure."
I think she sensed the disappointment in my voice. "Want to go to the movies this weekend?" she asked.
No girl had ever asked me out before. The only ones who had ever invited me so brazenly before were Bess and the transient girl, but even Bess had sort of snuck up on me to get me to come in my pants that first time.
I shrugged my shoulders, but I could not keep the joy from my mouth. "Yeah, Lisa. How about Saturday?"
We were like lads. "Okay," she said.
We drove down the grade that night with Lisa snuggled against my side. Her hand rested on my thigh. I wanted to move it into my crotch, but I also wanted to bring her hand up to my lips so I could kiss it. I did neither.
Saturday night I unbuttoned her blouse.
She lay back against her side of my Ford while the movie played on the large screen somewhere down in front of us. I spread her shirt and my hands slid around the full, rich, ripe mounds on her chest.
The nipples rose to my palms. I touched them with my fingers, rolled them. They came up firm. They were nice nipples, eighteen years old, and sweet. I sucked them between my lips and slid my hands around her smooth ribs to her back and traced down her backbone toward her ass.
She brought my hands back to the front, kissed them, and lay them back on her breasts.
I slid them down her stomach, across her rib cage again, but before I could get my fingers under her belt she caught them and brought them back up again.
She didn't mind if I loved her breasts, but she told me she was not ready for us to get into each other's pants. That's the way she put it. "I'm not ready for us to get into each other's pants."
When she said that, my cock got so stiff and hard it must have wanted to leap out and strike her on her cheek. I was horny and Wanted to slide my cock into her in the worst way, but I liked her too much to keep trying to seduce her, to play those goddam hand games at the drive-in movies. So I lay back in the seat with her in my arms, and every so often kissed her nipples. My hard-on went away after awhile and we got a kick out of the movie.
We dated that way until the last week before I was to leave for the university. She would be in the valley one more year, finishing high school.
That last week we went on a picnic into the Sierras. Hidden in a brush-filled glen beside a small stream that gurgled its way out of the mountains toward the Pacific, I lay her back on my old fake Indian blanket from Sears. I opened her shirt again. She had stopped wearing a brassiere sometime during the summer and her breasts stood firmly up even when she lay on her back.
My hand automatically traveled down her stomach line into her belly button. Her jeans came up about half-way between her crotch and her navel and that place down between her legs was very inviting and the bare path toward it and the buckle of her belt was inches away.
She did not stop my fingers as they passed below her belly button. Her legs lay straight. They parted slightly as my hand approached.
I passed over her belt buckle, down the zipper line in front, and then with no resistance into her crotch. Her legs opened further and my hand slid into the warm place and her thighs came together and rose to hold my hand where it was.
I caressed her through her jeans like Bess had done to me. I squeezed her mound and worked my fingers like electricity and her bottom responded by curling around my hand, became electric itself. Her little ass came up off the blanket and her legs kept my hand captured. My free arm was around her neck and I went down on her mouth with mine and pressed hard against her cunt with my left hand. She came. Her whole body gave involuntary little shudders and she held onto me very tight, very closely.
As she finished I slid my tongue into her mouth for the first time. She curled under me like a cat, and almost purred.
She unwound soon, raised her breasts up to touch my own bare skin where she had unbuttoned my shirt. I felt her nipples against mine.
Both her hands walked down my backbone, across my hips and down my ass. Her right hand kept going over my Levi's, as far down on my thigh as she could reach Then, leaving her other hand on my ass, she brought her right around to my front.
I raised off her just a little, so she could slide her palm across my stomach. She hesitated at my belly button, touched the fine hairs that grew below it.
With her palm turned up against my skin, she worked her hand calmly and quickly inside my pants, tracing down that faint line of hair to what she knew must be there. The side of her hand brushed my erection that was throbbing with anxiety. She cupped my balls gently, briefly, felt them in their tight sack, then let them go and passed back along the length of my cock with her palm, her fingers trailing and testing its hardness, stopping at the head to circle it. Then her hand was out of my pants and she was sliding her tongue into my mouth in the best kiss I ever had in my life.
That was it for the picnic, and for the rest of the summer.
At the university that winter I paid three visits to the local prostitute. Three visits doesn't make a profligate out of anybody and I certainly didn't neglect my studies because of it. I was a horny bastard, but I didn't have much money so I paid for straight fucking and that was what I got. Each time I finished so soon that I may as well have fucked my own sock. I figured I just waited too long between visits. The prostitute told me that all I needed was more practice. I couldn't afford that though, so I quit going. She did not offer to give me free lessons; I suppose she had a lot of pride. I continued to think about Bess and the good times we could have had if she had let me keep seeing her, and I remembered the transient girl and I regretted that I hadn't found out her name, talked to her at least so that she would have invited me back instead of old Bumside. I kept thinking also of the possibilities of Lisa, and I remembered how my cock had felt when she slid her hand around my balls. I tried to imagine Lisa naked, and my cock sliding into her, and I decided I would like it very much.
And then came the next summer and my job with the Exchange started again. Lisa and I started dating, and I discovered that while we were parked somewhere she was willing now to take my cock out of my pants and hold it, caress it, and a few times she actually leaned down and kissed it. And she let me hold her crotch, but only with her pants on.
And, about the beginning of pear harvest, the local Exchange agent gave me what at the time I considered to be great news. They wanted me to go up to Tongue River for the harvest, buy and receive pears, and live on an expense account. I couldn't wait to tell Lisa that night, and I wanted to tell her at our private picnic place at the old orchard. It meant that the company really trusted me and thought I was doing a good job.
Lisa had a surprise or me, too. We drove up the hill after dark and when we got out of the car she suggested that I bring my ratty old Indian blanket. We considered the place our private property by now, and no one had ever come up there except us, as far as we knew. We were as alone as if we were on the moon, before Sputnik.
I brought it, and spread it out on the brow of the hill under one of the trees but overlooking the valley. The lights down below looked like fallen stars, beacons for their compatriots still in the sky to come down to their disaster like decoys in a duck pond.
I lay down on the blanket and lit a cigarette. Lisa stood over me. She looked down at the valley, then back at me, then she kneeled beside me.
I was feeling pretty cocky, having gotten the news about my Tongue River trip that afternoon and having it to tell Lisa later, like an ace in the hole. But her actions baffled me. She had never acted like this before.
She said, "Giff, I'm in love with you."
I forgot everything. I felt like somebody had hit me in the chest. I had considered the possibility a lot but I never expected us to get around to saying anything like that, at least for awhile. She looked so damned adult, child-like at the same time, kneeling there in the dark. She spoke softly and seriously, half-smiling.
"I think I love you, too," I said, surprised at myself for saying such a thing. But she was such a lovely girl that she made it easy to say and I was glad that I said it. T guess I do love you," I added, as if to make sure.
She grinned broadly in the dark, her face bright in the starlight.
She unbuttoned her shirt and pulled the tails out of her jeans. With the flaps hanging loose around her hips, she unbuttoned the sleeves with her naked breasts showing, her nipples like dark eyes in their waiting for me. She took her shirt off, and stood up to take off her sandals.
I only kept smiling. I took a last draw on my cigarette and threw it away. I did not want to say anything that might change her mind from what she evidently planned to do. I did not even want to slow her down.
She unbuckled her belt, opened the button, and pushed down the zipper. Her body promised everything. Hooking her thumbs in the sides of her pants, catching her small panties at the same time, she began to push everything down at once. She stopped just as her pubic hair came into view, looked down at herself, and pushed it all down around her ankles.
I could see her clearly. The moon was about half full and the stars were millions of tiny flashlights. I'd had a hard-on since she opened her shirt and now, lying there looking up at her naked body for the first time, it seemed to grow even more.
My eyes reluctantly left the handful of hair between her legs to travel up across her flat stomach and across the soft curves of her rib cage to where the moon and stars caught her breasts, the nipples waiting in brown fire, and up her lovely throat to her smiling mouth. She stepped out of the pile of jeans and panties around her ankles.
I got to my feet and held her close to me. My hands closed on her ass and I pulled her crotch against mine. My tongue slid past her warm, willing lips and fucked into her mouth.
Stepping away, taking my hands off her reluctantly, I stripped off my own shirt, kicked off my sandals, and without any hesitation at all pushed my pants down and stood in front of her as naked as she was, my rod rising to her stomach, my black hair thick and curly around it like a nest, my flat stomach touching her own.
She took me in her hand, slid her cool fingers along the entire length of the shaft, circled it and dove down through the hair to hold my balls. Her other hand went around my waist to rest on the small of my back, just where my ass began to swell.
She said, "I don't want to be a virgin anymore."
"Why not? Why now?"
"I love you."
I held her body tight, as if she might slip away. My hand caressed her back, rubbed gently against the firm round ripeness of her ass. I kissed her eyes, twice, quickly.
"Will you ... will you fu..." She suddenly became shy, nearly curled in my arms. The air was warm against our skin, the moon hanging motionless among the stars, the earth standing still to wait for Lisa and me. "Will you make love to me?" she finally managed to ask.
"Yes. I want to." I petted her soft brown hair. "I want you to know something, though. I'm not a lot more experienced than you are."
She said into my chest, "You're not a virgin too, are you?" She laughed, squeezing my waist.
"Not really." I didn't want to tell her how many girls I had had, nor did I want her to know how few I had had. I did not know how many represented what she wanted to hear so I said nothing about numbers. "Not really," I repeated, hoping that would cover any embarrassment that might come up between our love-making.
She laughed again. Our hands became more accustomed to resting on each other's naked skin. "Giff, you nitwit, you're either a virgin or you're not. You can't be 'not really' a virgin."
The conversation was terrible and I was clearly getting the worst of it. I wanted to stop talking. "I fu..." I had never said the word to her before, but I decided that now was no time to quibble. "I fucked a few. Lisa, I fucked before. I have fucked, I will fuck, and am going to fuck," I said, trying to make a joke and messing up the tenses.
She held onto my waist very tight as my words came down to her. She buried her face in my chest.
I whispered in her ear, "But not very many."
Her shoulders shook as she laughed. She rested her head on my chest and looked down at my cock. She pulled on it and slid it between her legs, caught it with her crotch. "Will you do that to me?"
"I want to fuck you, Lisa."
"I want you to."
We lay down on the blanket. I was glad I had kept it, that I had not gotten discouraged and thrown it away.
I was very excited, with Lisa lying down with my cock in her hand. She held my balls as they hung down between my legs as I moved over her. I was afraid I would come before I could even get into her. I didn't think about her jacking me off first, so I could have given her a good fuck the first time.
I asked, "Do you want me to use anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you want me to use a rubber?"
"Do you have one?"
"No."
We both laughed again, but I was nervous because I could feel my come building up.
"I don't want anything in me," she said, "except your naked cock, just like it is."
I kissed her.
She spread her legs and I lay over her, supported on my knees and elbows. My stomach and chest barely brushed her. I traced my fingers once through her cunt, my middle finger sliding easily in as far as the second joint before meeting an obstruction. It was her maidenhead. She was my first virgin.
My finger slid in and out, just that far in. My palm cupped her mound, rubbed it through her hair.
She took my cock, raised her hips a little, and rubbed the head against her cunt where my finger had been. She was wet there, and the head slipped in. She said, "Giff, I want you to fuck me so much."
She brought her knees up higher, spreading her cunt.
I felt an exquisite, warm sensation shuddering through my body, transfer itself to her and she opened everything to me except that which I would have to open myself. My toes felt warm, my fingers, and the head of my prick slipped all the way inside her.
I felt the obstruction and it seemed to stretch. I pushed in with my hips and felt it stretch more. I covered her neck with kisses. She grabbed the cheeks of my ass and pulled as if to push me further and faster into her.
I was almost afraid to move, but I could not help it. I came back out of her, being careful not to come out all the way, and went back in. I imagined my entire shaft sinking slowly into her hairy mound, her cunt gripping it as it slid inside.
Her heels raked my ass, her legs completely in the air.
I pulled out again and came back, her cunt gripping the head of my cock and then the tender sides just behind the cap and she stretched more, seemed almost to part, and my come rose up in waves. I couldn't stop it, nor did I want to once it began. I poured out in spurts against her cherry that was stretched but not penetrated.
When I finished she kissed my face.
I lay beside her and held her body against mine, touching from head to toe.
"I love you, Giff," she said. T love you."
I kissed her lips. "We haven't finished," I said.
"I know." She kissed me. "I love your penis."
"It wanted you too much." I had failed her, but I could not apologize. There was plenty of time tonight, and we had the rest of the summer.
"You came, didn't you. Isn't that what it's called?"
Laughing, I said, T love your innocence. Yes, I came. like a fountain. A little early, too." Kidding, I added, "How could you tell, a virgin like you."
"It was obvious. I felt it down there. Your penis seemed to get bigger and I felt your come. It really shot out. And you got so tense, your body."
"You got it out of me."
T want to be with you every time you come. It's wonderful to feel you when you do. You must have had a lot in you, I'm awful wet down there."
"I stored up for you."
"I haven't been fair to you. I've kept you waiting for a long time." I kissed her breasts. "Did you say you love me."
"Yes."
"That's nice."
I was relieved. What could have been a terrible time for both of us seemed to have passed. We seemed to have gotten past the awfulness of my impatience. I thought of the rest of the summer and how we could spend it all, up here at the old orchard and at the drive-in and on picnics in the mountains, fucking every night that we could get together and my prick started to come up again and I imagined it wouldn't get soft again until long after I had gone back to the university and suddenly I remembered about Tongue River.
I was leaving tomorrow. There would not be any summer for Lisa and me.
"Oh Jesus," I said.
"What's the matter?" Her hand was on my wet prick and she felt it diminishing under her fingers. "I'm leaving tomorrow."
"What?"
I told her about my good fortune that no longer seemed so good.
Two hundred miles north, in an Oregon wilderness where some idiots had planted acres and acres of goddam Bartlett pear trees.
Suddenly living on an expense account and being fair-haired boy at the California Exchange Company no longer sounded like fun. It sounded like an exile.
Lisa held my prick but it would not get hard again. Another first. There was a cunt asking to be fucked, it was only inches from my cock, and my cock independently decided to become a penis again and refused to get up. I told Lisa, T don't know what's the matter."
She kissed it, but it did not get hard. Lisa seemed to enjoy holding it when it was small like that. "It's the first time," she said, "that I can get it all in my hand at the same time."
"You're not supposed to be able to get it all in your hand at the same time, don't you know anything?"
"What do I know," she said, licking my lips with her tongue. "I'm just a silly virgin."
She was that, all right, and it was my fault. "When will you get back?" she asked.
"In about three weeks. The end of harvest."
"That's all right," she said. I'll still be eighteen."
"What's that mean?"
T don't want to be a virgin when I'm nineteen. I want you to-well, I want you to fuck me before I'm nineteen."
Tf I could I'd do it before tomorrow. This has never happened to me before, you know. It won't again."
T know it. It's because of everything. It's because you're going away tomorrow and you wanted to but now you don't." She sat beside me, petted my stomach. My prick hung over to the side like a useless appendix. "It's all right, Giff. I think it's lovely it happened this way. I'll be here when you get back, and we'll do it better than we would have tonight."
"I love you, Lisa. I do love you. I'll be back for you and so will my cock. It's going to be the fastest harvest they ever saw up at Tongue River, believe me. They're not going to believe how fast those pears go into cold storage."
Take your time, you nitwit, and come back for me. I won't be nineteen until September."
In the morning, bright and early, I gassed up, climbed behind the wheel of my Ford, with my falce Indian blanket folded neatly in the trunk, and took off for Tongue River.
Within a few miles, thinking about Lisa and her body and the warm lips between her legs that had sucked the head of my cock into her, I got an erection. Naturally.
I saw her push her pants off her hips, hesitate for a second like a calendar girl with her pants half on and half off, then down they came and she stood over me naked. I imagined her waiting for me, and what we would do when I got home. My cock stayed hard for about fifty miles. I ignored it as best I could, just drove.
You son of a bitch, I thought. Where were you when I needed you?