by David Stone
His recent passing was, in Maureen’s eyes, something that might break Tassie’s always frail grip on happiness. She had been susceptible to influences in the past that Tom and everyone in her family felt were imprudent and unhealthy for her. If Tassie could be drawn into the larger frame of Maureen and Wayne’s true relationship, she might be less inclined to wallow in her grief over losing their close neighbor Tom. Maureen instinctively knew there was more there than met the eye. Tom was their mother’s lover and a true friend to her daughters, but was he also something else for Tassie?
Though she and Wayne maintained a very ambitious erotic agenda, Maureen remained a virgin, which she considered a mere technicality. She wasn’t opposed to losing her maidenhood, but she had been opposed to losing it to the wrong man. Now that she had found the right one, Wayne, she had to negotiate in her consciousness the full implications of sleeping with the son of her mother’s lover. Her mother, with whom she was much closer than Tassie, had always been very vocal with her on the whys and wherefores of lovemaking. She viewed sex in a divine light, and often referred to her lovemaking with Tom as “going to church”. It was like a sacrament. She said they didn’t needed to be married to enjoy it.
Maureen, cognizant of her girlfriend’s lackadaisical views on sex and thus somewhat wanton ways, felt her mother’s views were the correct ones: Find the right lover first, then enjoy the hell out of having sex with him.
In short, her mother was very pro-sex and felt one should enjoy it as much as one could. This was Maureen’s agenda with Wayne. They did everything — almost. They were always “on call” to each other, ready at any time to offer reciprocal or receive unilateral relief. Maureen knew that would change over time as everything changed over time. It was what you were able to hold onto that was important.
Maureen didn’t mind Wayne’s continued fascination with catching Tassie naked. Their families were never shy about nudity. That morning, she had even told him Tassie was in the shower so he could execute one of his burstings in routines. She felt it was in her interest to keep Wayne sexually charged.
So, it was Maureen’s plan that morning to bring Tassie in on their secret, knowing she would be fixating on the sad facts surrounding her homecoming. She wasn’t sure if she should tell Tassie of her long-term plans to be with Wayne forever. She wasn’t sure of them herself, other than she knew she wanted to be with Wayne for ever after. Tassie would be her first sounding board. It wouldn’t be an issue if Wayne was just some boy she met at school. As they had almost literally grown up together, it could raise some eyebrows.
Maureen wasn’t looking for a serious, sit-down chat with Tassie, which would add a dimension of unnecessary drama. Her plan was to open the door to the conversation through a casual remark, upon which Tassie would pounce. It was a method she had perfected.
TASSIE
After leaving Maureen in the hall, Tassie closed the door to her room and stood in front of the mirror mounted over the dresser. She looked at her profile and then turned to examine her backside. The words, “such a gorgeous ass” echoed in her mind like they had just been spoken. The “ass” sounded especially naughty. A year before a man did speak those very words, just before taking her from behind as she leaned on the very dresser in front of her now. He had pounded into her ‘gorgeous ass’ with the enthusiasm of a raging bull. He had then turned her around and taken her to her bed where they continued to make violent and passionate love. Every time thereafter, when she entered her bedroom, she felt the presence of a physical memory that sometimes made her swoon.
This man, the one who had taken her with such passion, and to such levels of ecstasy she could never imagine on her own, was her mother’s lover Tom, now deceased.
Their affair was an awakening for Tassie. She hadn’t known the true depths nor fires of passion, having failed multiple times at finding any semblance of heat in prior couplings with men, men who couldn’t have cared less about her pleasure. Each encounter had felt like receiving a fresh wound as well as an attack on her dignity.
Until Tom.
As these memories swarmed into her mind, her eyes watered and her body went limp, and she slumped into a chair to have a good cry. Had she killed him? Was it because she let him make love to her he fell into a guilty funk and later killed himself? Could guilt do that to a man?
She pondered these points and much more until Wayne burst into her room and said, “Hey, Baldy, ready to go?”
Tassie tossed one of the hand towels she was still holding in his direction, leaving just the spare one to cover herself. It was a pointless exercise. She then decided she didn’t care, dropped the other hand towel from her private area, and stood up to get dress. Wayne observed but faked boredom. His brain was likely recording every frame of this dressing episode for later replay in his bedroom.
Tassie dressed for their errand and not the memorial service to follow, so she was quick. They headed downstairs and out to the car, now baking in the sun with the windows closed. They got in, leaving the doors open for a moment while the AC purred into life.
“You haven’t said anything about your Dad, Wayne. Aren’t you sad?”
“I was. I think I’ve gone from sad to numb. He seemed to check out a long time ago, like he knew the end was coming. Your mom noticed that too.”
“Checking out? How so?” asked Tassie, feeling some apprehension.
“It was like his happiness was leaving him bit by bit and then it was gone. It was like he wasn’t all there anymore.”
Tassie wondered again whether she, in a selfish act of passion, had stolen Wayne's dads happiness. But shouldn’t their fling have increased it? It was an act of love, wasn’t it, as well as lust? She was looking for any form of positive spin she could wrap her secrets in to make them bearable, but she was failing miserably. Right now she felt like a murderess.
They closed the car doors and headed into town.
“What will you do with the house, Wayne?” asked Tassie. “Will you stay there? I’m sure my mom would let you move into our house. It’s almost like you live there anyway.”
“I don’t know yet, Tassie. Your mom already invited me to live with you guys. I guess it depends…” Wayne didn’t finish his sentence.
“Depends on what, Wayne?”
“Oh, just some things, I guess. I don’t know.” Tassie sense he was really holding something back.
Behind the counter at Max’s Liquors was Johnny Price, a former high school football star, now a college dropout and store clerk, who greeted Tassie with her old nickname.
“Hey! Handy! How are you?” said Johnny.
“Johnny, don’t call me that,” said Tassie. Wayne smiled and gave Johnny an unenthusiastic high-five, though not in response to his comment. It was their usual greeting. Johnny, formerly a muscular hunk of cuteness, now possessed that sagging and bloated look former athletes achieve after they’ve peaked and all of their glories are behind them.
It was in that former glory period of Johnny’s life, while they were both freshmen at the local college, that Tassie decided to pursue him as part of her transition from willful wallflower to “it girl,” or at least put that veneer of status within her reach. She had set out to win his heart and, if not his heart, then at least some of his glory, or any of it that might fall upon herself as his girl. She felt it would be a good way to accelerate herself away from her woeful past with men. Her problem was, she was still a virgin, a fact none of her girlfriends or even mother could believe.
She knew the way to a boy’s heart was through his pants zipper, and she, with a girlfriend’s encouragements and instructions, decided Johnny would be her first candidate to receive sexual favors from her still virgin fingers. She was going to give him a hand job. From there she would progress to lose her maidenhood in stages, feeling baby-steps were the best way to prime herself.
It hadn’t gone well, at least not for Tassie. After making out on the college golf course one night and letting Johnny fondle her breas
ts, she found her courage and put her hand on his crotch. As she did so, she attempted in a womanly voice to say, “Oh, Johnny, I want you soo bad.”
Johnny mistook this information as an offer to have sex with him and, being in the mood for it, took charge of removing his pants, thus freeing what turned out to be a not very impressive penis that hooked to the right. He reached to undo Tassie’s jeans, which caused her to freeze and in an old movie starlet’s fashion, cover her eyes and shudder — at both the sight of his odd, slight penis and his attempt to remove her jeans.
“I thought you wanted to fuck me,” said Johnny. His tone betrayed impatience.
“No, Johnny. I meant I want to pleasure you. You know, give you a hand job.” With some of her courage restored she reached with both hands for his penis. Given his situation, even with her lack of experience, Tassie felt one hand was overkill for the job.
“You want to give me a handy? Are you kidding? Half the girls in school want to fuck me.”
“I can’t go all the way, Johnny. I’m just not ready for it.” To firm up this non-course of action, she thought a fib might give her argument weight. “Besides, I’m having my period.”
“Gross,” said Johnny. “And you’re still a virgin? Nobody’s a virgin in college. Well, give me a blow-job.” He reached for her head in a gesture meant to offer guidance.
Tassie pushed his hands away and took a step back. “No, Johnny. I won’t give you a blow-job. But I’ll give you a hand-job like I said.”
“Okay. Lie on the ground. I’ll sit on top of your belly and you can jerk me off.” Though this didn’t seem like a good idea or one she’d prepared for, she prostrated herself and Johnny straddled her. It didn’t take long before he began squirting cum, most of it to the right of her torso, thankfully, but not all. Some landed on her hands and there were a few drops on her sweater and single droplet on her cheek. She wiped her hands on the grass while Johnny got dressed.
“Okay. I gotta go. Thanks!” said Johnny, leaving her there in the grass. She was horrified at what had just happened, and now how she’d been treated afterward. Instead of singing her praises and offering his true love, he’d sauntered off, leaving her disheveled and stained.
The next day at school she discovered Johnny had informed the entire student body of the hand job he received from the Virgin Tassie. Her humiliation was complete.
And then it got worse. She found crude drawings stuck on her windshield, and graffiti soon appeared in both the women’s and men’s bathrooms, along with her phone number. She couldn’t walk the halls without seeing rude gestures or hearing malicious whispers. The problem with going after a big man on campus was, should you fail, you failed publicly.
By the standards of the day, she had proved she was actually a prude. Perhaps the ridicule was targeted more at her facile good looks. She wasn’t full of herself, but nor was she blind. She knew she was attractive, and not just a ‘pretty girl’ but one who drew stares. She began filling out early, and well before the other girls had boobs she was filling her sweaters. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hide the fact that she was naturally shapely, just like her mother. She was constantly teased for it.
This was in part why she found an alternative course so appealing, the one outlined by a Californian ‘guru’ who espoused chastity, a vegetarian diet, and meditation. But the meditations were not associated with any Eastern practices. They were largely made up. Followers were meant to focus on the guru’s image, a bald man bedecked with flowers wearing flowing robes. He chanted gibberish on sexual abstinence and the Virgin Path. The whole thing was meant to suppress natural human hormones and desires. It was never much fun, but it offered Tassie relief from the pressures she felt to be with boys. They had never treated her well in her opinion, always groping and pleading, and never concerned about her true feelings.
And Tassie had never gotten over her father’s departure. He was once the light of her life, and one day his brightness faded. He was no longer there.
Near the end of her devotions to her guru, and in their only private session, he indicated that was the way with men. They used you up and moved on. But the guru indicated he was different, and for a princely and nonrefundable sum, he would be able to prove it to her at his private retreat. That’s when she abandoned the Virgin Path.
The experience emboldened her suspicions about men and added to Tassie’s general feelings of loneliness. Johnny had been her first attempt to challenge those suspicions. He did nothing to change them.
***
“Hey, Handy, I’m sorry about your dad,” said Johnny. “And Wayne, you too. I guess he was your dad too, right?”
“It’s Tassie, Johnny, not Handy. And thanks,” said Tassie. “He was Wayne’s dad and my mother’s boyfriend and a good family friend.”
“Right. So what are you here for?” asked Johnny, as if he needed an explanation.
“It’s a liquor store, Johnny. We’re here to buy some liquor,” said Tassie.
“Right-ho. Help yourselves,” said Johnny. He made an expansive gesture with his arms to insinuate they should feel welcome to browse.
Tassie and Wayne went down the list and filled the cart, its contents soon reflecting the avid but responsible consumption of alcohol by her family, Tom and Wayne. Her mom was of Irish stock and Tom of recent Norwegian descent. While her mother and Tom weren’t exactly drinking buddies, they did drink a lot, and often, but always with a sense of control. One uncle, who Tassie regarded as proficiently lecherous, was the only one in the extended family who couldn’t control his liquor. Tassie and Maureen nicknamed him “Uncle Boner,” in response to discoveries made when he once encouraged them to sit on his lap at a family affair.
Once they were home with the booze put away, Tassie went to get dressed for the service. She had purchased an inexpensive and simple black dress and shoes for this occasion and this would be the only time she would wear them, her general style being more Bay Area unisex casual. The unisex style was not recognized or appreciated in the Midwest where she grew up.
She left the Midwest when she transferred to a different college out of state soon after her unfortunate experiences with Johnny. When she graduated, she immediately took a paid internship in Palo Alto. Since leaving her hometown, she had only returned three times. Once for a Christmas holiday, then last summer, and now for the memorial service for her Tom. She felt guilty for not visiting more often.
But she had a good reason for staying away. She had been in love with her mother’s lover since her first year in college. She discovered this when he showed her his compassion after the incident with Johnny. The compassion felt beyond neighborly. Tassie sensed Tom was beginning to love her as she was beginning to love him. His body language often revealed his enthusiasm despite his attempts to maintain a proper decorum.
As they both loved her mom, it was a problem. Seeing no alternative, Tassie knew the solution was to keep some distance between them, especially after hopelessly embarrassing herself during the Christmas visit.
As she reflected on the prudence of her decision to keep her visits few and far between, Wayne burst once again into her room. Of course, she was standing in her underwear. Wayne had a sixth sense about these things. She couldn’t remember the last time, if ever, he had popped in and found her fully dressed.
“Fuck, Wayne. Can’t you ever knock?” said Tassie.
“What good would that do?”
“It would let me tell you to fuck off before you were in the room.”
“Right. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that Johnny guy is a jerk. I shouldn’t have high-fived him when he called you Handy,” said Wayne. His sincerity was genuine. “I remember that was a hard time for you.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I was stupid to go after him. Anyway, if I’d fucked Johnny, he couldn’t have gone around calling me Handy, right? Do you see the irony? Going all the way doesn’t carry a stigma. But give a guy a handjob and you’re a joke and a slut.”
“
You really got to college a virgin? I thought you were banging all those guys you dated,” said Wayne.
“I only dated two guys before college. We did nothing but kiss. I guess I was dry-humped a couple times, but that’s it. You recall my ‘cult’ period and my whacked-out guru? My boyfriends were the same. We were followers of ‘the Path.’ My mom and your dad hated it.”
“Didn’t your guru go to jail?”
“More irony, right? The guy who preached I should keep my pants on couldn’t do the same,” said Tassie. She noticed Wayne’s stare. “You keep looking at my tits.”
“I’ve always liked them. We sort of grew up together, so I’m fond of them. I haven’t seen them in hours. Let’s have a look.”
“Don’t be a turd.”
“Who will it hurt? Not me. Not you.”
“You know, we’re attending your father’s memorial service today. Just a few weeks ago he stood your backyard and blew his brains out. This really isn’t the time to be looking at tits.”
“It’s exactly the time. One needs a boost when they’re down and out,” said Wayne. He screwed his face into a mournful appearance.
As Wayne demonstrated his mournful look, Maureen knocked once and entered carrying a thick black binder.
“Oh... Hey, Wayne, I didn’t know you were in here,” she said. She then did a double take on Tassie, who was still standing in her underwear. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Wayne wants me to show him my tits. That would make it the second time today,” said Tassie.
“Third time,” corrected Wayne.
“You can see mine,” said Maureen. She lifted up her blouse and pulled down her bra.
“See, Maureen’s a good sport... You have to understand how hard it is growing up so close together, no pun intended.” Wayne was now sitting on Tassie’s bed, man spreading.
Tassie pulled off her bra too and wiggled her breasts at him like a stripper. “Now are you happy, Wayne?”
“Oh, Lord yes. May I masturbate?”
