The Sexual Revolution? I guess it had been around for a while by the early 1970s, but it didn’t seem to offer much to a working-class, rather ordinary-looking girl like me. By the time I was sixteen and approaching the end of my sophomore year, my sexuality was blooming, Yes, I did find outlets for expressing that side of myself. However, it didn’t involve having a boyfriend, at least not that year.

I’m Chloe Mangano, and my family thought I was destined for a public high school in New York. If one was just looking at district boundaries, then Evander Childs near my home would have been the place to go. Yet I was ambitious, even if I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

Thus I hoped to get into one of the specialized public schools that the Board of Ed maintained, like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science; I thought I had a good chance of entering one of those. And I knew that they would help me in my quest for future success.

At the same time, I applied for a scholarship at a private school, the Dexter Academy in Manhattan, and to my surprise, I was accepted. I weighed my options, and Dexter seemed like an even better opportunity. After a couple of weeks of thinking about it, I decided to take that route. Thus, I started as a freshman there in the fall of 1971.

Although I had committed myself to Dexter, I did not have an easy time there. There were only about fifteen scholarship students out of my class of about 150.

It wasn’t that we were overtly disdained by the other students; it was more subtle than that. It was a matter of almost unspoken attitudes about social class. And it was also difficult for me to deal with the few other scholarship students I knew. Maybe that was because I didn’t want to reveal my insecurities to them. I had never been a very assertive person and for the first time in my life, I felt lonely.

******

There was one guy that I felt passionate about, a fellow scholarship student my age named Chris Sorvino.  He also happened to live in my Bronx neighborhood. It sounds like everything had aligned perfectly, doesn’t it?

And yet, somehow, it hadn’t aligned. The chance for some romance and, yes, some sex eluded me. I was waiting for Chris to make the first move, and he never did that. We often shared the subway ride to and from school. Yet he never made the slightest overture, or hint, that he was interested in me. I, in turn, had no concept of how to approach a guy or even suggest that I was interested.

Maybe it was wrong to think this way, but I knew I wasn’t the hottest, most head-turning girl around. And yes, that did bother me somewhat. I wasn’t homely, but I suppose I was a bit plain. I’m only five-foot-one, and I knew I looked younger than my sixteen years. I couldn’t deal with the hassles of applying makeup, although that undoubtedly would have made a difference.

I also lacked significant curves to my breasts and behind, and thus my body was very slender, almost flat. My brown hair was down to my shoulders when I didn’t have it pinned up, and that seemed to be my best feature. A few people said that I had intense dark eyes, although I wondered if they were simply flattering me.

So while Chris liked talking to me, the aspects of myself that made me female, that made me a woman, seemed invisible to him. And I didn’t know what to do about it.

********

Clothing is not simply about appearances. What one is wearing profoundly reveals a lot about one’s personality. That was something I discovered while at Dexter, and the details of that are important.

The Academy had a fairly strict dress code that public schools did not have at that time. The boys had to wear a jacket and tie, while the girls always had to be in a dress or skirt. Trousers for female students were forbidden.

At first, I was unhappy about not being able to wear the jeans and trousers I was used to having on almost every day. But oddly enough, that dress code was one aspect of the place that I grew to appreciate. I was surprised but found I liked looking feminine at school every day. Frankly, I didn’t care about whatever the prevailing ideology about women’s clothing was. It seemed to be my right to enjoy whatever way I chose to present myself within the school’s guidelines. I felt that I was choosing to wear a skirt; I didn’t see it as the school imposing it on me.

In cold weather, I’d wear tights, for more temperate days I had pantyhose, and when it was warmer, I’d wear knee socks or thigh-high stockings.

We could wear any color socks we wished, and I soon collected them in various hues. Red was one of my favorites, but I also had blue, gray, black, and yellow pairs too. White was good when I wanted to present an innocent look. Well, let’s face it, I looked innocent no matter what I had on.

One thing I became aware of for the first time was what kind of panties I was wearing. I got a sexy thrill from knowing I had something provocative on underneath my modest school clothes. Bright pink was good with pantyhose because the color would vividly show through the nylon even though I was the only one who would know about it

I purchased two sets of underwear that I had to hide from my mother. I had obtained matching bras and panties with lacy, see-through cloth. One set was black, the other white. Rather than putting those in with the regular laundry, I’d wash them out myself and hang them to dry in my closet.

It always pleasing to be in my low-key clothes while my body underneath was covered with those beautiful panties. I admit, I got aroused merely by having those items hugging my hips and behind.

Of course, Chris was the guy I wanted to flash with my naughty underwear. And that would just be for starters! I often had fantasies about what would be like. But they remained only that, just fantasies.

********

By the way, don’t think for a moment that girls don’t masturbate. I did it as often as I could get away with it. There were times when I feared I was turning into a sex maniac; at other times I rationalized it by believing it was a part of normal adolescent horniness.

I often inserted various objects into myself, although of course, I didn’t own a dildo – at least not then! The handle of my wooden hairbrush was one of my favorite such tools. It was also notable how nicely a big cucumber would tightly fill my pussy while I ran my fingers around the opening.

There was another unusual technique I taught myself. Sometimes, when I came home from school and if no one else was there – well, I’d indulge in a torrid “affair” with the living room sofa. I’d take my panties off, mount one of the arms of the coach, and grip the back of the furniture.

Then I’d rub my bare underside against the rough gray cloth. The effect was wonderful. I could easily come three or more times as I passionately humped my sturdy and dependable “love seat.” It wasn't until later that I found out about the sensitive but hidden parts of the female anatomy under our flesh down there. Girls weren’t taught how to have orgasms, but I discovered a lot through experimenting on myself.

*******

At one point in the spring of 1973, when I was sixteen, my self-pleasuring fantasies got a boost. I needed mental images during my sessions, and those came from my unofficial sexual education. That’s another thing that girls will do that you might not know about, namely looking at graphic sexual photos in magazines.

My partners in that activity were two of my neighborhood friends who did go to Evander. They were about the only friends I had at the time. Maybe I was worried about being called “stuck-up” because of my attendance at Dexter. But we three sixteen-year-olds became close that season and we taught each other about sex as best we could.  

One of those girls was Regina Pucci, or just Gina, another short Italian chick like me. She also looked young, especially with her braided pigtails, but her intense personality contrasted with my more restrained – at least on the surface – behavior.

My other companion was Jennifer Weinstein, a tall, slender, but very quiet Jewish girl. Usually, her medium-brown hair was tied up in a ponytail. Despite her shyness, I think she understood something about her own sexual potential. She had a small, tight behind, and she seemed to like showing it off by wearing tight blue jeans or cloth pants.

However, it was Gina who was the ringleader in our increasingly bold hijinks. One Saturday, as we walked back from a pizzeria towards my building, she said, “Hey guys, let me show you some things I’ve got in here.” She was referring to whatever was in a shopping bag she was holding. “But, believe me, we need a bit of privacy when we look through this stuff.”

Rather naively, I asked, “Why would we need privacy for that?”

Gina flashed her devilish smile at me. “Chloe, take my word for it, we are going to be very bad girls today. You’ll see it all, soon enough.” She pondered something. “Let’s find a bench down by the river; I think that will do fine for our purposes.”

She meant the Bronx River, a narrow waterway that went through a park a couple of blocks from my building. We found a bench that was screened by some nearby bushes. It was a mild day in May 1973, and I was about to gain new insights into a key aspect of human behavior.  

What Gina had in her bag were several sexually explicit magazines. Two of the publications were issues of Penthouse and Hustler. But Gina got to one of the others first, and that one was from Europe – Denmark, I think.

She sat between us and opened one of those issues. Then she tapped the pages and said, “Behold; this is what we’ve often thought about but have never seen, much less experienced. Call it poontang, coupling, balling, screwing, whatever – this is the real deal.”

Yes, Gina could be very blunt at times.

Jenny and I looked. And a shock went through my body. Gina had indicated a photospread showing a college-aged couple, and it had a plotline for them to engage in. And the plot was that they undressed on a bed, aroused each other, and quite simply, had sex together on the pink bed cover.

It was difficult for me to grasp it all. Gina had seen it before, so she had no problem pointing out key details. “Now, this is foreplay.”

I wasn’t trying to be a smartass, but I answered, “Isn’t that just oral sex?”

Gina laughed. “Of course, but there is a lot to be learned here. Ladies, notice the tender way she holds his cock and then gently sucks on the glans – the tip of it, in other words. She doesn’t just shove him into her mouth. Chloe, what do they call this in more direct terms?”

“A blow-job?” I sounded so tentative that Gina laughed at me again. I knew the general idea of how it was done, but that was the first time I saw a specific technique being used.

“Yeah, honey, you got it. But I would accept the phrase cock-sucking as well. But he’s not going to come in her mouth, not this time.”

She pointed to other pictures on the next two pages. “And with these photos, now you know where the expression ‘getting nailed’ comes from.” The most dramatic shots showed the couple from behind, with him on top, and the guy’s cock and balls were very visible as he pushed himself down into her vagina.

Gina said, “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail! Hey, Jenny, sweetie, are you okay? You look a bit uneasy.”

Jenny said something barely relevant. “I noticed that she kept her knee socks on through the whole, ah, episode.” Those were blue with white and black rings around the cloth.

“And such very nice socks they are, indeed.”

Jenny then added, “But she’s so much prettier than we are.” The magazine girl had shiny reddish-blonde hair and a ripe, curvy body.

“Honey, don’t sell yourself, or us, short. We have the potential to be quite a trio of femme fatales.” Gina then went into a philosophical mode. “It occurred to me, he must have jerked off quite a bit in his life. Well, he doesn’t have to do that so much now, not with this hot chick to fire his load into. His balls, which are right there for us to see, must be filling up with his cum.”

Oh, my dear Gina, you’re so, so crude. Then I thought, maybe we shouldn’t be looking at this kind of thing. Yet I decided to be bold with my next comment. “Well, she must have beat off a lot too in her life.”

“Yeah, baby, you got that right! It’s not only the guys who have fun with these activities.”

I glanced across the river, and everything seemed very normal over there. Just beyond the park, I saw streams of cars going up and down the Bronx River Parkway. It was just another spring afternoon in the city.

Gina noticed me. “So Chloe, how are you doing with this? I know you think you’re such a good little lady. Are you shocked perhaps? Too hard-core for you?”

I was rankled by her presumptions about me. Some of my resentment might have been apparent in my voice. “No, I’m fine with it, really.” Yet I also noticed my first physical manifestation; a tightness in my throat.

Jenny asked, “Why did they pose for these photos? Do you suppose they already knew each other?”

“You mean were they boyfriend and girlfriend? It’s possible; they certainly look like they are enjoying it. And I mean, look at the expressions on her face. She’s loving every bit of it. ”

Jenny asked, “You haven’t told us yet why she kept her socks on through everything.”

“Jenny, you really crack me up. I don’t know, maybe it’s more exciting than being completely naked.  Yeah, she’s got them on in every possible position, getting it from the rear and on top of him. That’s a cowgirl and a reverse cowgirl if you didn’t already know.” She then noticed something else in the photos. “He certainly has a cute ass. But he’s been a very bad boy, and he needs a good spanking.”

I was genuinely curious when I asked, “And who would do that?”

“Why Chloe, I would volunteer for that, of course. I mean, our heroine here probably isn’t going to do it. Naughty boys like him need to get over a lady’s lap and get their bare behinds smacked.” She put on a stern voice, the voice of an older woman perhaps. “ ‘Young man, you need to be corrected. I’ll teach you to keep your dick in your pants and out of the snatches of innocent young girls.’ ”

I dared say, “She doesn’t look so innocent to me.”

“Hah, yes, she’s probably going, ‘Oh Sven’ – is that even a name in Denmark? – ‘You are so good for me.’ Meanwhile, the night before, she may have banged some other guy on that pink comforter.”

Then Jenny surprised both of us. “I’ve heard that some guys like getting their backsides whacked by women.”

Gina faked a double-take. “Jenny, it’s always you quiet ones that you’ve got to watch out for. But, yes, some of them will even pay a gal to beat them and really hard too. Then they will get hard, I mean have erections. You’ve heard of dominatrices?”

Jenny gave one of her enigmatic little smiles. “Oh yes, I know about them.”

That fit in with my intuition that Jenny had stronger desires and more sexual knowledge than she would reveal through her usual mild persona. I bet that girl is capable of some things I had never imagined about her before.

I said, “Maybe if she’s been such a bad girl, she needs a spanking as well.” How did I come up with that?

“Chloe, you’re just like Jenny; another one hiding her true self. Yes, a very good observation. So, are you two in the mood to see more naughty pictures?”

I said, “Maybe I need a bit more time to process all this.” I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed and a bit dizzy too. I looked over at Jenny, and she subtly nodded in agreement.

Gina closed the magazine and leaned back. “That’s okay, I get it, this is a lot to deal with on the first day.” Then in a very casual way, she said, “Well, I for one have a very damp pair of panties now. How about you two?”

For the first time, I was aware of more changes in my body. There was a tingling, I’d call it, in my pussy and an overall warmth through my pelvis. And yes, a wetness was seeping out of me and going into my underpants. I looked down at the crotch of my dark blue pants, but I didn’t notice any leakage there.

If I had known this was going to happen, I would have put a tampon in earlier.

Gina was watching me carefully. “I suspect that our Chloe has been getting into the right vibe with this.” Then she glanced to her left. “And Jenny, how are doing?”

Our tall friend simply said, “I don’t know; I guess I’m doing okay.” Jenny reverted to her shy side and she blushed.

Gina made things very clear. “It’s too bad we don’t have real privacy down here so that we could do what we’d really like to do. And don’t either of you ask what I mean, because you already know what I’m referring to.” 

An idea struck me. “I know where we could go. There’s a room in the basement of my building that we could use.” I added, “It locks from the inside, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah, really? Let’s take a look at it right now if you don’t mind.”

It felt good to get up and start walking along the path. I was very conscious of my body in a whole new way. It was hard to describe, but I felt that I had potential, I’d call it.

My building was about three blocks away, and Gina was loud and bubbly as we walked along. Jenny and I on either side of her were quiet, almost solemn. I’m not sure why that was so. Maybe we had been aware that we were virgins, and we had accepted that as normal for the next couple of years or so. And suddenly Gina had shown us a vivid, very dramatic alternative.

I led them into the basement through an areaway from the street. After a few turns, I opened a door and flipped on a switch. Two bare light bulbs lit up a room full of stored – and maybe I should say mostly discarded – household items that the tenants had dropped off in there for the past forty years.

Gina went in first and looked around, and we followed. Within a couple of moments, she found something of interest.

“Chloe, this is just perfect. Look at this stuff.” In the middle of all that junk, was a set of two chairs and a sofa. That furniture sat on an old carpet, and there was a small cleared space between those items.

Gina continued her leadership role. She said to herself, “And the door locks from the inside.” Then she winked at Jenny and me and addressed both of us. “Not today, but tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to come back here. Now, it would be best if we all wore skirts or dresses. And, of course, bring along your favorite implements.”

I could see that Jenny was blushing again, and I could feel my own face warming up. Even though we knew what Gina was talking about, Jenny needed hear the specifics. “And why do we have to wear skirts?”

“Because, dear Jennifer, that will give us better access to our own bodies.”

I asked, “For what, exactly?” Yet I already knew, and Gina called me out on that.

“You already know that, Chloe. We’re going to have our own three-girl circle jerk, right here. We couldn’t do that down by the river, but we certainly can do it in this room. And I’ll bring something along to look at so we can be motivated.”

Jenny pretended to sound outraged, but she didn’t do a very good job of it. “That’s ridiculous. Guys can have circle jerks, not girls.”

“You pretend to be so innocent, my dear Jenny, and yet you do know what a circle jerk even is. Of course we can do it. You’ll be a part of it tomorrow if you have the nerve.”

It was time for Gina to, I’d say, rally our enthusiasm. She took hold of Jenny’s hand with one of her own and took one of my hands in her other one. Then she pulled us so together so that we were in a tight circle facing each other. I looked into my friend’s black eyes, and at that moment I couldn’t grasp how her mind worked. 

She said, “We’re best friends; I trust you two more than anyone else in the world. I’d even say that I love both of you. But, there’s more than that. We’re not girls any longer, we are women, and we will satisfy our own needs as we see fit.” Gina smiled as she thought of something else. “I mean, we can’t depend on the mooks in this raggedy part of New York. Boyfriend material is a bit thin around here.”

That’s not true. There is Chris. But I then thought, but he hasn’t come through for me yet, has he?

Gina dropped our hands and said, “So what time would be good for this?”

I answered, “Two o’clock seems good.”

“That seems right; I know you have to go to Mass and then have lunch with your family.”

I protested, “I only do that, I mean go to church, to placate them.” My Catholic beliefs hadn’t merely lapsed; they had completely disappeared. Blame that on sexual desires, I suppose.

Gina said, “I get it, I did the same thing with my family until last year.” She snickered. “Catholic girls like us who go bad are the worst.”

I felt vaguely insulted. Are you implying that I’m some kind of slut? Back then, that was about the worst kind of slander one could say to a girl.

Gina didn’t seem to notice. “Okay, we’ve seen enough. Let’s go back outside.”

We gathered out in the street, in front of my lobby door. I knew I’d be going back upstairs to my apartment, and Jenny and Gina would be going home too. The latter had one last thing to say. “We’ll meet right here tomorrow, in front of this door. I assume that you two are not going to chicken out, are you?”

There was something very male, I’d call it, in the way she was daring us to follow through on the plan she had created. I thought, I’ll show her, I’m brave enough to beat off in front of her while she does it to herself. It’s going to be so natural, so easy.

*******

For the rest of the day, I felt agitated, yet I was still anticipating the upcoming events. Before I went to bed that evening, I filled our bathtub with warm water. Then I took my clothes off, sat down to bathe, and pulled the shower curtains closed even though I had latched the bathroom door.

I had intended just to relax in the soothing water, but the tension within my body required more than that. I soon picked up a shower brush and interested the big plastic handle into my vagina even though my crotch was under the surface. As I moved that brush in and out, I used my other hand to rub the sensitive areas around my vulva.

Within a few minutes, I propped my feet on the edges of the tub and lifted my body out of the water. I then experienced one of the most intense orgasms of my life, and I had to use all of my willpower not to cry out in pleasure. Afterwards, I was gasping for breath.

In my room, when I was in my nightgown, I looked at myself in the mirror. Hey, I’m on the math team at my school. What nerdy thing that is! Yet I was proud of it anyway; not everybody could do such a thing.

But I admit that sometimes I wanted to be a big blonde, like Marilyn Monroe perhaps. I didn’t mean for a lifetime, but just for one day to know how it felt to be a sex goddess. I would have pink gloves and a bright pink dress, and I’d swing my ass around with that pink bustle or whatever it was back there. But square-cut or pear-shaped, those rocks don't lose their shape. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!

But there was no goddess in the mirror, just me, a short, pale, dark-haired chick from an obscure neighborhood in a big city. Then I remembered what Gina had said. We’re not girls any longer; we are women. I felt more confident then. Gina isn’t a goddess either, but she has faith in herself. And I think she has faith in me too, and she seems to have some intuitive understanding about life

Well, maybe tomorrow we’ll all find out something new about ourselves.

#####

The Dexter Academy is fictitious, but the other three high schools mentioned are real places.