She ain’t ashamed to be a woman or afraid to be a friend
I don’t know the answer to the easy way she opened every door in my mind…
But…lovin’ her was easier than anything I’ll ever do again
— Kris Kristofferson
Chapter 29: Double Date
A personnel sergeant set me up for a double date with his girlfriend’s friend the week before I was due to get out of the Army. His ulterior motive was the friend’s Seattle apartment. His girlfriend still lived home with her folks and she refused to countenance a motel as too tacky. He was insistent I had to score with her friend so we could all go to her place and make whoopee. Given my track record I thought his chances slim and none. Right off the bat the tall curvy redhead challenged me: “I understand you’ve written a few books?” Skeptical head-tilt. He’d been overselling me in his anxiety.
“One,” I said. “One book.”
“See?” Tom said “A real author. Told you.”
So we talked a little about writing as Tom drove us to the main fort Top Five Club. A big swing band like something from the forties was playing. Senior NCOs liked that music. So did I. The place was packed with people partying after the annual inter-service boxing championships, just concluded. Lots of light-moving, well-muscled men breaking training along with their cadres and camp followers, including plenty of women. Boxers stopped by our table to say hello; I had managed the ringside press table and written dispatches for the worldwide military teletype, my last Army chore.
A black Fort Campbell middleweight who liked my description of his knockout punch as a “lethal left hook” looked the redhead over and decided to hit on her. “Gots what you need baby,” he said.
She did the head-cock thing, studying a new insect. “You have no idea what I need. And I’m with Ish.”
“Ish won’t mind.”
“Yes, Ish will,” I said. “Go away.”
It was the Army. Boxer or not, he was far from home base and I was local. And I still wore MP brass. He patted my shoulder and went away. I was glad he knew the rules. And absurdly grateful to her. We danced. We talked. Something she said inspired my ultimate accolade: “You would have loved Paris.”
That head-tilt I would come to know so well: “As a matter of fact, I did.”
So the City of Light came into our conversation, and her pre-college European tour, including an ocean liner to France. A ship-board romance with a depressed older man, a Greek, that survived until Paris but not beyond. He left her there to go home. Her bittersweet story resonated with my own Paris goodbye. “Little moments of happiness,” I said and explained my matriarch’s theory. It chimed surprisingly well with her hip sixties thinking:flapper to flower child in three generations.
The part of my brain that never shut up noted she was not the first girl to tell me about her affairs. Not even the first one to tell me about her Greek lover. Irish in Portland had one of those. Damn modern Greeks really got around. I hadn’t heard of Zorba. But I had a gripe with ancient Greeks and their outer logic that only permitted one Paris moment of happiness with my Israeli before taking her away. What I told the redhead was I too loved and lost in Paris. Our affinity deepened. We danced with my engorged cock snug against her belly as if it was the most natural thing in the world. No embarrassment for me; no feigned cuteness from her.
Back at the table, Tom’s girl signaled a restroom break and led her away. Tom gave a sly wink. “You’re selling it, Dude. She likes you. This is conference-time, plan our night for us.”
Looked like he was right when they came back. His girl announced time to go. They led to the parking lot, arms around each other. “That looks like fun,” I said. “Shall we?” The redhead slipped naturally under my arm and slid hers around my waist. We were in the back seat maybe thirty seconds before she was in my arms and we kissed. Calming and exciting all in one. The universe shrank to that back seat.
Far away, the couple in front was talking; I heard not a word. All my blood had migrated to my throbbing erection. As the car rolled I nuzzled her neck, her nipples through her top, hard as the tips of my thumbs. Her hands were in my lap.
A sudden wash of coolness. My god, she had me out, in her hands, caressing. Peripherally I saw her friend crane her neck to see, then jerk face-forward as if disapproving. Didn’t care. Had my hand under her skirt now, seeking.
A God-damned girdle.
My fingernails scrabbled futilely against nylon armor. Heard that throaty groan of need. Never could I recall such total frustration. My father’s admonition against car-sex floated in my brain. I was too addled to figure how to divest that damn girdle. She concentrated on my cock, slick with pre-orgasmic liquid, firm slow strokes…bending lower to gaze at it in the flicker of passing street lights…
I was twenty-three. Never crossed my mind she not only was willing to take me in her mouth, she wanted to. I was still very young toward women. A poetic phrase for abysmally ignorant.
All I could think of was getting her to her Seattle apartment. I sat up and removed myself from her grip. She blinked out of her trance. “You are too important to me for us to do this here,” I said softly. “When I make love to you it’s going to be whole-heart. Not groping in a back seat.” Writer-speak for I can’t figure out the damn girdle. I kissed her some more. She kissed me back.
“Soon,” she said. “Make it soon.”
“Soon,” I promised.
But it was not to be. When we turned our attention to Tom and his girl, they were quarreling. I never learned about what. We never made it to Seattle. Tom pulled off at a Tacoma motel and we sat in the coffee shop and drank coffee and listened to him try to placate her and her not be placated.
The car was Tom’s girlfriend’s; the redhead sold her Fury convertible for college money. Quietly the redhead and I discussed options. I had enough for a motel room. But not enough for a taxi back to the fort. The redhead was visiting her folks in the small town where Tom’s girl lived, thirty miles away. No bus service. A taxi out of the question. The redhead and I could take a bus to Seattle — but I would wind up AWOL. Impasse.
Somewhere in there the redhead told me the subject of their powder-room conference at the fort had been her friend trying to trade Tom for me! She gave me one of those Mona Lisa smiles: “Told her I wasn’t interested.” I wondered if that was why her friend got in a snit when she saw my cock in the redhead’s hand. I was never going to understand women.
Tom’s girl wasn’t mad enough to strand us. She drove us back to the fort — mostly, she said, for my benefit, not his. Just to get the dig in. Her bad humor hung over us like a fog, dousing further amorous exploration. I was so constricted I jacked off in an unoccupied latrine in the midnight barracks. Tom and his big plans for Seattle! Fate had found one more way to gyp me out of getting laid. But I reckoned without redheaded determination.
Chapter 30: Murphy bed
The first Murphy bed I ever slept in scared me. It folded down out of an apartment closet in St. Petersburg. At ten years old, I lay awake waiting for the damn thing to snap up into the wall and imprison me upside down.
The second Murphy bed I slept in was in a girl’s apartment in Seattle. I was 23. We tortured it unmercifully but it never once tried to fold up on us. I never would have seen the second bed but for a redhead’s determination to consummate our mutual lust.
The personnel sergeant and his girlfriend hooked us up for a double date. Things were good until Tom and his girl quarreled. She dumped us at our barracks and drove away in a huff. The next morning I was having breakfast in a post cafeteria. Here came Tom, grinning like an idiot. “Get an overnight pass,” he said. “Right now. They’ll be here in two hours!”
They who? The girls of course. He couldn’t stop grinning. His girlfriend had called and said the redhead ordered her to make peace and drive back here to get us. “You made a big hit, boy! We’re all going to Seattle for sure.”
I still didn’t believe Fate was giving me another shot. But I stuffed cash in my wallet from my wall locker and packed underwear and shaving gear in my briefcase instead of AWOL bag, with some notion of concealing intent. Found out later how amused the redhead was by my transparent subterfuge.
This was deep in the sexy sixties, the Pill and free love and flower children, an era I mostly missed. The redhead did not, which eventually led to ambiguous feelings on my part. But that was for later.
It was one of those pellucid spring days people outside the rainy Northwest don’t believe really happen. The redhead wanted to show me Seattle Center. I had seen it but wasn’t about to argue. I missed signals by which she and Tom’s girl communicated it was time to split up. They left with the car. No problem; I had bus fare covered this time.
I liked Seattle Center and its large fountain since I first saw it, usually surrounded by couples lazily making out on benches, or on the grass in dry weather. Reminded me of Paris lovers. Now it was me on a bench with the redhead, fountain spray drifting across us. Unknown to me, we captured the telephoto lens of a news photographer — who happened do be doing his National Guard service as one of my staff in the information office.
The afternoon was one of those timeless happy moments the redhead and I already had talked about. I was strangely unhurried. She mentioned she was supposed to babysit that night, which I took to mean no consummation today. Since I knew up-front, it didn’t even bother me. We kissed and told our lives to each other, making out in the spring sun. We took the aerial tram that crossed the whole grounds and held each other quietly.
When we disembarked she needed a pay telephone. We found one. She was looking right at me when she told them she could not babysit tonight. Something had come up. Quirky little smile when she said it.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
We took the monorail downtown. She led me to a bus stop that took us to the university district. Home to her apartment. And that Murphy bed. My emotions were cycling. Excitement, amazement, doubt — realization I left my briefcase in the car — we sat on the edge of the bed and kissed and fondled and whispered and shed clothing. My cock had been up and down so many times that long afternoon. Suddenly it was limp in her hand.
“I…need some help,” I said. Gasped when she simply leaned over and took me in her mouth. John Thomas responded with alacrity. All turmoil ceased, all doubt banished. I took her shoulders and lifted her. Her lips reluctantly relinquished their suction. Our gazes locked as she lay back under me in that Murphy bed. I entered her simply as coming home from a long absence.
My miraculous Israeli awoke me in Paris to the full wonder of the mystery that obsessed me since I was a child. Later I told my log in innocent arrogance that I required a woman who would measure up. A woman whose sensuality and appetite were prodigious enough to match mine. Consoled myself about missed opportunities by thinking they missed more than I did. Even before we got that Murphy bed into full cry the first time, such ideas blew out of my brain forever. I’d found her.
We spent hours making that poor old bed groan and complain. Resting and whispering. Going again. We did not leave the apartment to eat for twenty-four hours, so light-headed we had to hold each other up. The waitress asked what we thought about some major news event. We were blank. She was surprised — where could we have been not to hear? We found that very funny. “On a very long trip,” I said. Could have said off on a comet.
Refueled, we went back to it. I was long since AWOL. Didn’t care. I wasn’t repeating my Paris mistake and leaving my lover. There was no top-secret installation to panic about compromised secrets. With only a week to go, what could they do?
We slept. I awoke confused, already on her and in her, moving slow and dreamy. My body sought hers while my brain slept. She was wide-awake, eyes glowing like stars in the dim light, delighted by my sleep-fucking. It felt like the most perfect joining two people could achieve.
Later an apartment resident, maybe kept awake all night by the Murphy bed, banged on the door yelling obscenities about the racket and calling her names. I went from somnolent satiety to instant cold rage. Would have killed him if I caught him. But she held me and gentled me and laughed it off.
“You are sooo fine,” she would say in the afterglow, drawing the word out in an indefinable way exotic to my Southern ears. We made love under a shaded lamp. Her sparkling eyes were the center of my universe. Alabaster had only been a word in dictionaries until I saw her nude body in lamp glow on that Murphy bed.
It was very difficult to return to the Army. But I knew I was coming right back to her. The official Army didn’t even notice my absence. But my smart-Alec photographer said we know where you were; you might even feature in a photo spread. “Young love at Seattle Center,” he said with a sarcastic twist. Envious as fellow MPs in Germany when I returned from Paris.
Never saw his pictures. Didn’t need them. I cleared post the last time and rode a Greyhound forty miles to Seattle. The longest bus ride of my life. Sat in the coffee shop and waited for the redhead to get off work and come get me. The slant of April light through dusty windows is sealed in memory with the indescribable emotion when she walked through the door. We had a week to do it all again, and we did. Tirelessly, constantly. We were perfectly matched. She skipped most classes but kept her job. I slept then. I loved unpinning her hair when she got home, bobby pins flying, as it fanned like autumn leaf fires.
But I had a job waiting in Florida. Packing before my last night in that Murphy bed, I was nervous and irritable. She sat quietly watching me with wide dark eyes — she’d never seen me like that. I had the awful feeling I was about to lose this girl too, and no confidence I would ever find her again. But I didn’t know how to take control of my life and just decide to stay.
That was the last night I slept in a Murphy bed. She accepted my dark mood, loved me out of it and promised I wouldn’t lose her. I looked at my packed bags cluttering the room and wished I could understand about choices. I still do.
