On Saturday, as promised, Margery did call me around one o’clock. As on the day before, she asked me to meet her in the park in front of her building. I figured that since it was a weekend, we’d probably do something together for those two days. Then, when the school week started again, perhaps we should both concentrate on our homework.

At that time, I had no idea about how to deal with a girlfriend. I had initiated the first date, but she had proposed the next two. It was sunny and warm as I walked down the paved mall that ran on the east side of the park next to Bronx Boulevard. But I was wondering: what is she going to come up with today? I had an uncomfortable feeling that in less than forty-eight hours she had already taken over the direction of the relationship.

She was standing this time, resting a hand on the back of a bench. On that day, she was wearing a white, short-sleeved blouse that buttoned up the front, a skirt with a flowered design, and, for some reason, tennis shoes with ankle socks. She didn’t say anything, but she indicated that we should sit down.

We chatted for about two minutes about our respective schools. Then I said, “Have you had lunch yet? Because we could go down to Pelham Parkway and get something.”

“No, let’s not go right now. I have something else in mind.” She seemed tense and nervous on that day as compared to her light-hearted mood on Friday. “In fact, I want to talk to you about it now.”

My insecurities got to me although I tried not to show it. Oh, here it comes, she’s changed her mind about me – she’s going to dump me right now. Either that or, maybe more likely, she was going to give me the “let’s just be friends for the moment” speech. I didn’t know much about life, but I did know about that gambit.

“Hey go ahead, tell me whatever you want.”

She seemed to be getting her courage up about whatever it was. She put her arm around my shoulder and said very quietly, “Hank, do you trust me?”

It seemed best to make a joke out of it. “Yeah, I trust you about as much as I would trust anybody I’ve known for two days.”

She did smile at that, so it must have gone over well. Then I saw her lick her lips. Man, she is edgy today. Margery sighed, closed her eyes for a moment, and then asked me, “Did you think about me last night and maybe the night before?”

I didn’t quite understand what she meant. “I guess so – I mean, I remembered you.”

“The thing is, I definitely thought about you on both nights.”

 I was still keeping it light and casual. “Sure that’s . . .” That’s what, nice? Instead, I said, “That’s okay.”

“Do you really know what I’m talking about?”

I shrugged, “Why don’t you spell it out for me?”

She put her mouth up against my ear and whispered, “I masturbated thinking of you. You must have done it too, I know what young guys are like.” Then she was struck with a fit of giggling. She continued, a bit louder, “You must know that girls do it too.”

I hadn’t even reached a state of surprise yet. “I assumed that was true, but I never had anyone confirm it for me.” In 1972, it was long before every kid in America had seen online porn, no matter how hard their parents tried to prevent it. Then I felt my face getting warm.

“You’re blushing, you know.”

 I said, “So are you.”

“I can feel it in my face, so I’m aware of that. So you did do it, didn’t you?”

 She had confessed first, so I was honest with her, “All right, I did. So what?”

Then I tried to calculate what her game was. Perhaps she felt guilty about it and wanted to get it off her chest. By getting me to admit to it too, I sort of cleared her of any wrongdoing on her part.

Back then, I had little knowledge of what women thought. I had hardly ever seriously talked to a girl before, so I had nothing to go on. Maybe that was just what they did in these situations. Anyway, now we could get back to our nice little teenaged whatever it was.

I was wrong. She started talking in a very calm, matter-of-fact way. I could picture her as an adult, giving a presentation at a business meeting. “Over in my building, in the basement, there is a little room. I’ve stowed a sleeping bag in there. I propose that we go down there and do to each other what we did to ourselves. And, oh, the door locks from the inside.”

I wasn’t thinking of locks at that point. But I had to be sure of something. “You said do to each other?”

Now that she had gotten that far, she seemed more in control of herself. She lowered her voice again, and I caught a note of impatience. “Yes, I’ll rub your cock until you come, and then you’ll fondle my pussy until I come. Is that clear enough?”   

“You mean today, right now?”

“Yes today, right now.”

One would think that as a horny seventeen-year-old, I would be jumping at the chance like that. I sometimes imagined what it would be like if some girl threw herself at me. Now one was doing just that, and I was hesitant and confused. But as I would find out later more than once, Margery could be quite crafty. She tilted her head and said, “I mean, you don’t have to do if you aren’t comfortable with it.”

Then she was quiet for a moment while I looked her over. She certainly didn’t know it, but that was the tactic salesmen used after making a pitch. Don’t say anything; let the prospect make the next move. She gave me the time I needed. As she had said two days before in the pizzeria, I’m not a girl anymore, I’m a woman. The girl who I had thought was fifteen and who was actually nearly seventeen, that girl wasn’t there any longer. A woman was sitting there, one with intense dark eyes and a serious expression on her face. And she knew she had me.

I’d be a fool to throw this opportunity away. But I knew not to say that. Instead, I said, “Okay, Margery, let’s go.”

She smiled and we both stood up. Her hand grabbed mine, and she said, “We’ll go in through the side entrance.” We went around to the 211th Street side of the building, and into an alley next to the adjacent one. There was an unlocked door that led into the basement. In those days, apartment house security was much more lax than it is nowadays.

I was led through a large room that contained a number of cast-off items that various tenants had left there over the years. Almost every old building had a room like that. On the far side was a wooden door, and Margery and I went over there. She opened the door and turned on a light; we stepped inside and she locked the door behind us.

I looked around at our new boudoir as she went to the stowed sleeping bag and unrolled it. The room was about the size of a standard apartment living room. It was windowless, and the walls were the typical basement brick ones covered with aging white paint. A single incandescent bulb in the ceiling lit the place.

Margery got the bag open so that it was on the floor with the interior side facing up, and it formed a sort of mat for us to sit on. Then she stood there and gestured to the walls around us. “Well, it isn’t much, but this is what we’ve got for the moment.” Then she waved at the unrolled bag and said, “It’s okay, sit down and relax for a bit. I mean, there’s no rush.”

I wondered if I should take my shoes off, but she didn’t take off hers, so I didn’t bother. As I sat there, she sat next to me, half-facing me. After a moment, she put a hand on my arm and said, “Look, Hank, I don’t know exactly how to do this either, but if we go on our instincts, it should work fine.”

“Yeah, sure, I get that.” Actually, I got more than that. It struck me that she, not I, was going to run whatever we were going to. Maybe that was surprising because I had always expected that as the male, I would be the one who initiated and pushed such an event to its conclusion.

Instead, from the moment we had met upstairs, she had been the one seducing me. It was also surprising how premeditated it all was. I had always thought that one fine day I would be the one spontaneously leading the girl along. All right, if she’s got a plan, then I might as well go along with it. As I had predicted to myself two days earlier, I would yield to her if she wanted me to.

She raised a finger like she was about to make a point. “We should just have a make-out session to start with. I know how well the one last night went.” Without waiting for my assent, she put an arm around me and started kissing me. As before, I kissed back.

In a few moments, I was lost again in the sweetness of our smooching. The shabbiness of the room no longer seemed important. Much later, I read that there are twenty types of kisses – if one believes what sex therapists say – but we just improvised whatever seemed best. Our arms were around each other’s shoulders.

I could have kissed her all day, but Margery had a different scheme for me. She started to unbutton my short-sleeved shirt; then she pulled my undershirt up. Her warm hands rubbed the flesh of my sides and back. It was the first time a girl had touched me like that, and it was very pleasing.

“I’m not tickling you, am I?”

“No, not at all.”

“I think this will go better if you get up on your knees; kneel in front of me.”

Once I had done that, Margery was quietly bold. She undid my pants and pulled them down and then my underpants too. I found myself with my erect cock sticking out and this girl I barely knew was assessing it. Then she looked into my face.

“Are you okay? You’re blushing again.”

 I tried to keep it light, “Yeah, but I’m not used to chicks looking at my stiff dick.”

She liked that. “I knew it would be stiff because that’s what happens to guys during make-out sessions. Believe me, I’m going to be doing more than just looking at it.”

She retrieved a plastic tube of Vaseline from her purse. “Do you know what this is for?”

“I think I do.”

“Let me make it clear then. Giving a handjob goes a whole lot better if there is something for lubrication.”

Her knowledge of that was amazing. Either she has done it before or somebody with some experience had told her. 

“Hank, relax. You don’t mind me running this part of the show, do you?”

Somebody had to do it, so it might as be her. In an instant, her hand was rubbing the ointment on me. “I think I’m going to kneel too, facing you.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

She didn’t inform me of what she would do next. Her left hand gripped the base of my cock, and her right hand gently stroked the shaft from top to bottom and back again.

It was so abrupt that it didn’t immediately register that someone else’s hands were doing what I usually did to myself. But when I did think about it, I noticed a qualitative difference. It was definitely better to have Margery do that instead of doing it myself. Maybe it was a trick of perception but whatever, it was working.

She was talking to me through all of this. There was a strange mixture of playfulness and seriousness in her voice. “There, I know that must feel very good. Oh, it’s so nice and big; I really like it.”

Without really thinking about it, I dropped my right hand down to guide her and to also do some rubbing of my own. My left hand went up on her shoulder. She said, “Now this is what they used to call very heavy petting.” I had heard the term petting before, but I wasn’t sure how to define it. I knew the term “coping a feel.” Did girls do that too? Whatever, what she was doing seemed far beyond that.

I was moaning a bit with each stroke, and we said little endearments to each other. It would be difficult to recall what all those were. I remember saying, “Your hands are so good on me.”

She said, “You’re coming along just fine, I can feel it.”

Yes, I was coming along. Inevitably, I felt an orgasm approaching. “Margery, I’m going to come soon.”

“Of course, that is the whole point of this.”

At the peak, my right hand was on top of hers, frantically jerking me to a climax. The last thing she said was, “Come on, show your girl what you can do for her.”

“Oh, I will, I will.”

At the last moment, she pushed my cock to the left so that I wouldn’t come on her. I yelped something, and I saw myself ejaculating. The main spurt went out a fair distance. Margery must have been impressed, because she said, “Man, that is really cool.” Then she kept working on me until the last spasm was done.

At that, I lowered myself back until I was lying face-up on the sleeping bag. My pants were open and I was staring at the light bulb. How did I get into this position?

After a bit, she could see that I was recovering, and she said, “You’re probably wondering how I knew how to do that.”

“Now that you mention it, I am indeed wondering.”

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ve talked about it with my older sister. She’s twenty-one and goes to Lehman College.”

I had never known what sisters said to each other in private, but now I was getting some solid information. “Obviously, she’s done this herself. Where is this person, anyway?”

“She lives upstairs with me and my mom.” There was no info about a man in the house, but I assumed I’d find out what happened to him soon enough.

“So when am I going to meet these people?”

“Ah, probably next week would be good.”

“And what are you going to tell them about me?”

“That you’re my boyfriend, of course. And what’s going on in your place?”

“I have two younger sisters and my parents there.

“Are you going to tell them where you met me?”

“I guess so.”

“Come on, it’s almost old-fashioned. A local girl, almost the girl next door. You know, 5135 Kensington Avenue versus 5133 Kensington. Well, not quite that close.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I guess you don’t know Judy Garland’s song in Meet Me in St. Louis.”

“No, I’ve never seen that movie.” That was a little before you could just rent a videotape of such a film.

“Anyway, my boy next door, it’s my turn now.”

“I’m not sure how to do it.”

“No worries; I’ll tell you exactly how it should go.” Yeah, that’s was hardly a surprise. “First let’s kneel together again.”

I decided to complain a bit, “This is so spontaneous.”

 “It’s better than just fumbling around. Didn’t the first half go really well?”

 I had to concede that point. I got up on my knees, but I also pulled my pants up without buckling them. Margery knelt in front of me and started kissing me again, and she pressed her body up against mine. Not only was this girl talented at petting, but she was really good at necking too. That term I knew.

After a couple of minutes, she pulled back and unbuttoned her blouse. Then she unbuckled her bra and revealed her small breasts to me. I noticed the red nipples on each one.

“Ever see bare tits before?”

“Sure I have.”

“Right, I bet in Penthouse or something like that. You see how stiff my nipples are?”

I had no idea that nipples could change in appearance. I faked it, “Yeah, I see that.”

“That’s what happens when a lady is as turned on as I am right now.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of all the kissing we’ve done, plus jerking you off. It’s all very arousing.” She leaned forward and whispered to me. “That’s why girls also play with their breasts when they masturbate. It just feels so pleasurable.”

That was all news to me, but again I tried to hide my ignorance. “Of course, I get that.”

She gestured for me to come closer. “And that’s exactly what you’re going to do now.” I must have looked doubtful, because she continued, “Just run on your instincts. Lick and suck on me. If you’re gentle with it, I’m sure it will be fine.” 

“All right, if you say so.”

I put my head down to her chest and she held my hair. The start was very tentative, but then I began to get into it. My mouth was around her nipples a lot, and I would put my tongue out to lick them at the same time.

I must have been doing well because soon she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Little moans, more like yips, come out of her mouth.

I couldn’t help but ask, “So you really like this?”

“Of course, Hank, it’s delightful.” The next step should have been obvious to me, but I was in a kind of haze from all of that activity. When she was ready, she grabbed her purse and took out a big wooden hairbrush.

“Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but this is pretty good too.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Silly, I’m going to put it into myself – I’ve certainly done that often enough – and you are going to help me with it.” We were still kneeling, facing each other. “Now, you are going to undress me; that should be fun, right? Undo my skirt and then pull my panties down.”

I must have been gaping at her, because she said, “Go ahead, I’m completely serious, I’m not joshing with you.”

It was like a fantasy come true. I opened the button on her skirt, and it fell to her knees. I noticed they her panties were pink with white dots. Real cute underwear. It was a simple matter to grab them and lower those too. She put her hands down and wriggled out of both garments, tossing them on our sleeping bag.

I almost had trouble looking at her, but then I did. She looked quite relaxed, shameless even, as she knelt there naked below her waist except for her shoes and socks.

What seemed like the dumbest possible sentence possible came out of my mouth, “Why are you wearing sneakers?”

That question was quite amusing to her, “I guess I didn’t want to walk around this grungy basement in sandals.” Our eyes met, and she said, “Are you all right? You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

Well, not quite, but I surely was in some kind of shock from witnessing her uncovered form. It seemed that I would wake up and come out of a dream, but this was more vivid than any dream I had ever known.

Since I didn’t have a reply, she kept talking. “It’s okay, relax a bit. Look at my body, I want you to do that.”

I looked. As I expected, she was slender and her skin was pale. Yet there was a nice little curve to her hips. Her brown public bush, which was on the small side, caught my attention. Then I looked into her face and she had that sly look I had seen earlier.

“If you find this all too much, we could just get dressed and go have lunch or something.”

Fortunately, I had recovered enough to say something semi-funny, “Oh no, you’re not going to pull that gimmick on me again.”

She laughed, “I see, I knew you are a very naughty boy after all.”

“And you, Margery, are a very naughty girl.”

“Ain’t that the truth? I’ve already told you that.” She crooked a finger at me. “Come on, touch me. Run your hands over me, whatever you want.”

I started on her back, under her blouse, and moved both hands along her behind and down the back of her thighs. Then I brought them up on the front of her thighs.

“That’s very nice, you know. Please keep doing that.” Soon she moved her body against me, put her arms around me, and kissed me some more. Kissing seemed to be a good fallback for any situation. One of her hands dropped to my pants, which were up but still unbuckled.

“Somebody is getting stiff again. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that again in due time.”

A couple of minutes later she lay back and spread her legs a bit. “Now I know you’ve never seen a pussy before, not even in Penthouse, because they don’t really show the details. You have to see one of those European mags for that.”

“So what do they show?”

“Literally everything! I’m sorry, I don’t actually have one in my possession, I mean upstairs.” I briefly wondered who had shown it to her. I hoped that it was another girl

She picked up her hairbrush. “Now with your fingers and this brush, we are going to do something very impressive.”

I seemed to have a knack for saying ridiculous things. “On girls, would this be called a handjob?”

She was patient with me. “No, I believe the term is ‘finger fucking.’ ” She saw the expression on my face. “I keep surprising you! Here, it’s easy – just touch me along the outside to start with.”

Is she really going to let me touch her between her legs? I got down on her left side so I could use my right hand. Then I touched her. I simply ran a finger up and down along the outside of her pussy. She felt warm and quite damp.

“Notice that I’m wet? That’s because I got very aroused by all that fooling around we’ve been doing.” I recalled the old term for a girl like that: a hot number. Now I understood what it meant.

She asked me, “Do you know what a clitoris is?”

I sort of did, so I said, “Sure I do.”

Her look indicated that she knew I was fibbing. She didn’t say that, however; instead, she put her hands down there and spread her lips. “You see that little knob of flesh? That is the most sensitive place on a woman’s body. Be very subtle when you are near there.”

I grew bolder with my fingers, and I pushed a couple of them deeper into her. She approved, “That’s very good, please do that.”

Eventually, she brought her brush up and slid the handle into herself. “While I do this, just rub me all around it.” I must have been doing it right, because she said, “Oh, yes, that feels so much better than using my own hands.” I knew exactly what she was talking about.

I knew that the last time she had done this, she was imagining me inside her instead of the wooden handle. But it was indeed fascinating to watch her as her arousal intensified. At one point, she put her right hand down and put it on top of mine to guide it as she pleased. I didn’t mind getting some direction for that.

“Hank, please make me come.” Actually, it was it was as much her doing as mine.

“I’m going to do that for you Margery, you’ll see.” I was learning that, if the sex was done right, people sort of forgot about making any sense as they talked.

Her moaning intensified, and then her hairbrush motions become frantic; she sort of swished it around inside of herself. At the peak moments, her hips came off the sleeping bag at least twice, and she yelled something I couldn’t understand.

Maybe I was as drained as much as she was because I fell back on the mat again and just lay there. In a few moments, she scooted over to my right side and placed herself sideways against my body. She put her right arm over my chest and held me.

A strange thought came to me: man, this is an ugly room, but for the moment it’s ours. I was still trying to grasp that a mostly naked girl was next to me. It had only been about forty-eight hours since I had met her on the street outside the building.

When she did say something, I could tell she was kidding me. “You don’t think any less of me now, do you?”

“Absolutely not.” But I was aware that she had orchestrated this entire event from the moment I had walked up to her in the park. I had never imagined something quite like what we had just done. It was much more been specific – I might call it clinical now – than I had previously guessed.

And I had expected that maybe I would have to use – what would I call it? Persuasion perhaps. Instead, we had simply yielded to each other as I had intuited in that first hour in with her two days earlier. But maybe I was the one who yielded to her. But if didn’t seem to bother her, then maybe it shouldn’t bother me either. Yet I was tied to her now, in a very real and very sudden way. Is that what she had expected, is that what she had planned? Apparently, it was.

We stayed there for a while and chatted about trivial matters, mostly school again. I didn’t want to talk about us as a couple. Then she said, “I think we should do it all over again.”

“Do what all over again.”

“You know what I mean; everything we just did to each other.”

She saw me frowning, and commented, “Look, you’re seventeen; I know you have plenty more where that came from. I know I have it.”

It turned out that she was right about both of us.

***********

After being in there for more than two hours, it was time for us to pull our clothes together and leave.

Outside, we blinked in the sunlight. We held hands and started walking to a luncheonette on White Plains Road. At that time The Bronx portion of the Third Avenue el was still running above Gun Hill Road. Just to have something to say, I pointed to a train that had just left the terminal station. “I read that this line is closing next year.”

“I know, I think I’m going to miss it. It’s just always been there.”

“How long have you lived here, anyway?”

“In this building, since I was five – twelve years ago. How long have you been living up the block?”

“It’s been almost a year now.”

“Well, welcome to the neighborhood!” She laughed, “That was supposed to be a joke.”

“I got it, I think.”

After we had gotten our food, we both seemed subdued for a moment. I considered that some girls would have teased me for a while, strung me along for a while to keep me interested. Margery had taken the opposite tactic, getting me involved with sexual activities in the first forty-eight hours as her way to get a hold on me. Yet some part of me was worried that she hadn’t even made a pretense of letting me take the lead.

She got me out of my reverie. “Hey, Hank, come back to reality. What are you thinking about?”

“Ah, nothing in particular.”

“I know what it is. You’re thinking about me and what we just did.”

It was uncanny that she wasn’t merely guessing, she just seemed to know my thoughts. She immediately started to walk it back. “That was a bit much. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.” My left hand was on the table, and she reached to hold it with both of her hands.

I wanted to change the topic, and I went back to the Liesl and Rolfe analogy I had brought up on the first day. “You know what’s weird about The Sound of Music? They really filmed it in Salzburg.”

“Which is a long way from the Swiss border if you notice.” It struck me that she would know about that.

I replied, “Well, that whole thing about the Nazis was made up. I think they actually left by train.”

“That would have been somewhat anticlimactic. I did love that bit about the nuns disabling the cars. How would they even know what to look for?”

“Maybe they had shop classes at the abbey.” Margery laughed at that. I went on, “My family went to see it when it first came out. We went to this theater on Mount Eden Avenue, I think it was called the Kent.”

“We saw it at the UA Valentine.”

“So who did you want to be? Liesl or Maria?”

“I was only eight years old, so I couldn’t quite identify with either one.” She smiled at me. “So Rolfe, I was a blank page, and now you’ve gone and written on it.” She wagged a finger at me. “I told you how naughty I could be if given the chance, and now I’ve had that chance and I’ve done it.”

I truly had a girlfriend now, a serious one. Except I almost regretted how rapidly she had pushed it along. As I mentioned before, I didn’t know how to have a girlfriend; she hadn’t given me the time to let it develop naturally. A couple of weeks, at least, would have been good. But we couldn’t go back now, so we had move forward from that point.

“So, Rolfe, are you going to take care of me?”

I blurted out, “You seem to be taking care of me pretty well.”

"Hah, that reminds me; that Liesl girl wasn’t so innocent. She had that guy in her back pocket.”

“Well, Margery, that sounds like you too."

She did find that funny, and she laughed. It seemed to confirm what I had thought on the first day: this thing with her is really going to work out.