On the day in question, one of the women from the congregation came to visit my family and she was obviously distressed. There was a new member of the church who had just moved into town and while the men-folk had done some good for her by moving her things to her house, they left her sitting in a mess of unassembled furniture and unpacked boxes of clothes, dishes, linens, and other such things with no help in sight. I felt badly for my Christian sister and ashamed of my brethren who left her so high and dry. I wanted to help.
It’s important you keep in mind that my desire to be of assistance to her had nothing to do with the fact that the new member of the congregation was single or female. Nothing. Really.
Later that day I appeared at her house and volunteered my services. She was glad to see me and glad of the help. She put me right to work assembling dining room tables, beds, and whatever other furniture needing the application of a screwdriver and a crescent wrench. I helped unpack boxes and stowed their contents where she specified. I did not have to work very long before even my thick-headed self finally began to notice what a fine looking lady she was who had the most dazzling smile I had ever seen. She was short, four-feet eleven, and weighed every ounce of 97 pounds. Her name was Alma, was 34 years old and was a recent grass widow who had been moved into my little town by her former husband to be watched over by her ex-in-laws.
While I worked Alma kept the lemonade coming and prepared a supper of lasagna that couldn’t be beat. She was uncommonly friendly to me. Because I worked on a ranch I was well-muscled and tanned. I was pleased to be helpful and, judging from her smile and the way she hovered over me, she was pleased as well. I was in the process of putting her sewing machine together when she announced I had done more than enough work for the day and that we should take a drive while the day was still warm. It sounded like a wonderful idea to me.
She drove a white Oldsmobile that was three or four years old. It had a Wonderbar radio. I had never seen a Wonderbar before. While I played with the radio, she drove and made small talk about where she grew up (Michigan: we had that in common, we both were from Michigan) and the different places she lived, most recently Kansas. The warm spring air flowed in through the open windows and dried away hours of sweat. As the day was ending at last she drove the Olds to a nearby state park where she found a place to park. We continued our conversation as the night darkened. Time had no meaning as our conversation melted the hours into minutes and became fully dark. It came as a surprise to neither of us when we leaned into each other and shared our first kiss, the first of many. It was a surprise to me as she began to respond to our kisses with passion and she held me with a sense of urgency that I found almost frightening. Where this interlude was going doesn’t really matter because we were interrupted by a park ranger with a flash light who told us the park was close ng and that we should take our “business” elsewhere.
I was 19 years old then and not a virgin. My first affair was with a 24-year-old English teacher who had returned to college to earn her master’s degree. I can’t say we lived together; it was far too short a time for that, but we stayed cloistered for nearly a month during one of the coldest and snowiest Januaries in Arkansas history. We fucked on almost a daily basis and sometimes, my being 18 years old, more than once, for those were my salad days when my engorged cock could discharge 400 million eager and happy sperm fighting for the head of the line while my cock stayed ready for a second go. Then a day came I wanted to leave and I did. The snow hadn’t even finished melting.
My second affair was with an old girlfriend I looked up and, now that I was wise regarding sex, kissed her hungry lips until I was able to get her pants off and left her with a spunk-covered belly.
But Alma was something else, more hungry, more intense, more take-control. As we drove back to her house through the dark I said something incredibly clever like, “You know, the church says we shouldn’t date unless marriage is our goal.” She responded as though I had answered the $64,000 question’ She squeezed my hand tightly, smiled, and said, “I know.”
Let it be understood that our dating was perfectly chaste. Or almost perfect. A typical evening with Alma involved her showing off her culinary skills followed by our watching a little TV, or trying to as we were wrapped in each other arms and kissing while sexual steam fairly blew from Alma’s ears. I don’t believe we ever got touchy-feely with each other. At least I don’t remember it. As our emotions got too high, I took my blue balls and went home. The nearest brush with sex I had with Alma in the few weeks that followed our meeting was on an evening she was busy in the kitchen. She wasn’t paying attention to me, being engrossed in her cooking. The dress she wore was one she had made herself. Each time she bent over her bodice flared open and I could get a brief glimpse down the top of her dress. At one point she bent over and stayed that way for a moment. I could see she was not wearing a bra. Her breasts were smallish but very firm. Her areolae were of perfect size and of a dark pink hue. Her nipples were in a permanent state of erection. I received a four year degree in the construction and appreciation of tits in the few seconds I had to see hers.
Our relationship was not exactly head line news. We knew the nature of our relationship would subject us to all sorts of unpleasant scrutiny and unkind if not scurrilous comments. I didn’t tell my parents where I went in the evening and we never made our association known to members of the church. But despite our attempts at secrecy the word got out. If my parents were agog the church elders fairly ricocheted off the church walls. In an attempt to squelch our foolishness they came to speak with us with concerned but smiling faces and spoke in even calm voices. They wanted to know if we were having sex. They wanted to know if she was serving me alcohol. They asked a lot of questions, made some requests, and made a few implied threats. Alma proved to be the tougher of the two of us. No matter what anybody said, whether it was my parents, the elders, or the local yokel on the street (for our relationship did acquire and hold a place it the town’s top ten gossip items), Alma was determined to hold on to me and I, for once, did not do what I was told and stayed with her. Most of the women in the church took her side and with arms wrapped across her shoulders encouraged her pursue her dreams, never mind what others said.
One evening in spring when Arkansas is a riot of flowers, Alma told me she had a gift for me. She presented me with a box about the size and shape as would hold a framed portrait and that is what I thought it was until I opened it. Inside were a sheer pick negligee and a key to a room at a motel in a small town about 15 miles away. For about the first ten milliseconds the significance of the girt escaped me. Then there was that long slow motion minute of realization, that actually takes a fraction of a second, while I decided if I was going to be a good Christian boy or give myself over to lust and depravity. Lust and depravity won by a huge landslide.
And so it came to pass, as they say in the Good Book, that in the early evening hours of that fine April evening I took her key and her negligee and her car and her and drove to the motel. She took her negligee into the bathroom to dress. I flopped back on the bed and examined my conscience. Conscience-wise everything was a go with two big thumbs up. Alma emerged from the bathroom. Even dressed in a sweatshirt and dirty jeans, she was a beauty. Now dressed in a sheer negligee that teasingly reveled her nipples on bush, she looked as though she could seduce the most confirmed woman hater or convert the most ardent gay. If I didn’t love her before I was now out of my head, dyed in the wool, around the bend, head over heels.
