I didn’t have a ready answer for his unexpected question. No boy had ever asked me to make out before. Skip wasn’t bad looking, I decided, but I wasn’t ready to have sex. Getting pregnant would have been a disaster and I had only a basic idea of the mechanics involved. I knew it would hurt, I knew I would bleed, and it seemed like some sort of preparation might be appropriate, apart from the fact that I’d never even been kissed.
“I guess we can a little,” I told him, “but no fucking or anything like that.” I wasn’t sure what I meant by “anything like that” but if boundary setting became necessary, I decided I would set them as the need arose.
Skip frowned -- fucking was obviously what he had in mind -- but he didn’t object. Instead, he put his hand behind my head and pulled my face next to his. His lips pressed against mine and his tongue pushed between them, knocking on my teeth as if he expected a door to open. Was this how people kissed? Movie kisses didn’t seem to involve probing tongues, but you can’t really see what’s going on inside two sets of lips that are sealed together. Experimentally, I opened my mouth a bit. Skip’s tongue slithered inside. It felt weird. I resisted the urge to bite down. I wanted to tell him that he was being gross, but I didn’t want to seem unsophisticated. Maybe everyone kissed like this. Maybe I would get used to it.
After Skip’s tongue explored my molars for a minute or two, I felt his hand pushing on my breasts. I was wearing a lightly padded bra under my t-shirt. Could he feel the padding? Would he think I was cheating? Even padded, my breasts were hardly noticeable. Skip’s hand moved from one to the other, as if searching for something to squeeze, then darted down to my jeans. As he tried to wiggle his fingers inside my waistband, I grabbed his wrist and pushed his hand away.
“Off limits,” I said. This had gone too far, too fast. It was fun in a dangerous sort of way, but I needed to catch my breath and think.
“Oh man, not fair,” Skip whined. “Look, you got me so hard.” I wasn’t sure what he meant until he took my hand and moved it to his crotch. There was a definite bulge in his jeans. I squeezed it and he moaned. That was fun. I squeezed it again, rubbed it through the denim. He moaned again. Really fun. It was like playing a musical instrument.
“Give me a blowjob,” he said in a hoarse pleading voice. I liked his tone of begging. I gave his cock another little squeeze, but I wasn’t about to give him a blowjob. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t know how, and the thought of putting his dick in my mouth was a little repulsive. I’d watched my brother pee when we were both little kids. Sucking on that little worm, fearing that urine might fill my mouth at any second, wasn’t my idea of erotic pleasure. I still had much to learn.
“No, Skip.” Like his dick, my voice was firm. “I can’t do that.”
He looked at me with the eyes of a puppy dog begging for table scraps. “A hand job, then. Just let me take it out. It hurts so much, trapped inside my jeans. It’s your fault. You have to help me.”
I didn’t know what exactly could have been my fault, but I didn’t ask. Without waiting for my permission, Skip unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, and worked his stiff cock free of his underwear. I’d never seen an erection before. It was fascinating: pink with a blue vein, a touch of purple at the swollen head. I held it gingerly in my fingers, moving it from side to side so I could inspect it. The mushroom cap was uneven and the shaft disappeared into a swirl of hair. I didn’t know what to do with it until Skip covered my hand with his and started to move my hand up and down. He was groaning again so it must have felt good. Then his tongue was back in my mouth and his hands were groping my t-shirt. I kept moving my hand in the same rhythm, thinking this would be more pleasant if I could just watch his cock without having to battle his tongue. Before I could say anything, Skip was going “ahh, ahh, ahh” like he was about to sneeze, and my hand was covered with something warm and sticky. He pulled his face away and I saw a final jet of semen squirting out of his dick. Fascinating. Messy but fascinating.
I saw Skip a few more times that summer, always on Saturdays, but he had the attention span of a frisky puppy. He would give me a sly grin and deliberately steer his conversation with Galen to the topic of girls so he could boast about his latest conquest. Whether he wanted to make me jealous or punish me for not going all the way, I didn’t know. Nor did I care. Skip’s stories were nothing more than fantasies: boning Greta Hayden in the library stacks (as if Skip could even find the library); getting sucked by Sharon Underwood under the bleachers at Settler’s Park (her braces would have shredded his tool); fingering Maria Rodriguez in the back seat of his father’s Mustang (on a weekend when, I knew for a fact, Maria was with her family at her grandmother’s funeral).
I was only alone with Skip one other time. The players on the Little League team had played the last game of the season and, having worked their way through all the different age divisions, the last game of their Little League careers. Galen hosted a team party in the back yard. I wasn’t invited and wasn’t interested so I stayed in my room, paging through Seventeen magazine in between telephone chat sessions with my friends. The night was hot. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail. I was braless in a tank top and my favorite silky pajama shorts.
I was surprised, but not disturbed, when the door opened. There was Skip, sweaty and a little drunk. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Looking for the bathroom.”
Skip had been in the house plenty of times. He knew where to find the bathrooms, just like he knew where to find my room.
“Down the hall, Skip. Second door on your right.”
He nodded, then took another step into my room before closing the door behind him. “Ah, ah,” he said, searching for my name before deciding it wasn’t important. “You remember that thing we did that night?”
Of course, I knew what he was talking about. “I remember.”
“Um, you wanna do that again.”
“Okay.” His glazed eyes opened wider. He seemed surprised at my lack of hesitation. This time I had confidence. This time I was in control.
“Here are the rules, Skip. No kissing, no fucking, no sucking. You take it out and I’ll rub it. That’s it. Got it?”
Befuddled, Skip responded with a prolonged “ahhhh,” like a doctor was examining his tonsils.
I was losing my patience. “Got it, Skip?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” He took another uncertain step into the room, looking around as if he’d gotten himself lost in a cave. I sat down on the bed, patting the mattress next to me. “Over here, Skip.”
Wordlessly, Skip blundered over to the bed and sat next to me. He leaned back, elbows behind him to support his weight. I sighed. Skip wasn’t much of a Romeo, but I’d spent weeks trying to remember what his penis felt like in my hand. The memory was nothing but a blur. Still, it was an exciting blur and I wanted to repeat the experience with a clear head. This was my chance.
I unbuckled Skip’s belt, opened and unzipped his jeans. His white briefs, frayed and laundered to a pale gray, were bulging. I put my hand on the bulge and he moaned.
“Lift your ass,” I commanded. He did and I grabbed the sides of his jeans and yanked. They dropped below his knees, followed by his briefs. Freed from confinement, his cock hardened instantly, pointing up like a telescope focused on the moon.
I took my time examining this anatomical protrusion that, with the onset of puberty, turned sweet boys into whiny jerks.