Meeting Marlene

It was the first half the 1980's. Disco was dead, urban country had failed and the British punk music invasion was still finding its way. President Ronald Regan was busy enacting his version of hope and change and I had just turned twenty-four. Out of luck, money and common sense, I signed up for a two year stint with Uncle Sam to earn the money I needed to go back to college. The military was so desperate for recruits they lowered the ASVAB scores to the lowest rates in history. With my two-year college degree and slightly higher than average intelligence the recruiters stumbled over themselves to place me.

Basic training last for eight grueling weeks made more challenging for me because I was surrounded by idiots and assholes. The military back then was easy. Dress however they tell to dress, go where they tell you to go and do what they tell you to do until they tell you to stop doing it. They're not interested in an argument or a suggestion. Best pre-Army advice I ever received? "There are three ways to do every job: the right way, the wrong way and the Army way. Shut-up and do it the Army way."

At twenty-four, I was one of the oldest recruits in my basic training cycle. It's odd sensation to be twenty-four and feel worldly. Worse, the rest of the recruits were straight off the farm (or the street), straight off momma's tit and more often than not, straight off their high school football or basketball team. The closest I had come to exercise in my six years after high school were twelve ounce curves of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I'm still not sure how I survived the physical conditioning of those first eight weeks without becoming a restart, but I did it.

After eight weeks of being living, working and sweating with young men who felt barely past puberty, I was sent off to do my medical training at Fort Sam Houston and the world changed. While women were allowed in the military back then, their training was kept separate from the men. Like the men, they had just finished eight weeks of physical conditioning and living with their own gender. The swell of estrogen and testosterone that filled the bus of mixed genders to the airport was a heady mix. All of us wanted some.

I was in my second day at Fort Sam when she came up behind me and began rubbing my shoulders. I was sitting in a smoking area, talking to one of my dorm room buddies and I saw the look on his face as he glanced over my head at her. I didn't know yet who it was that was giving me a backrub and I didn't care. By the way Jimbo's face lit up, she had to be attractive. I played it cool. I never turned around. Instead, I told her, "I don't know who you are or why you're doing that, but I'm going to give you exactly three days, six hours and twelve minutes to stop doing it."

"Why twelve minutes?" she asked.

"Because thirteen is an unlucky number," I said. I didn't have anything else.

The lore is the military puts salt peter in the food at basic training to prevent soldiers from getting distracted during training. I don't know if that's true, but I know I had just completed eight weeks of training and I don't remember once getting hard or excited. Of course, training for nineteen out of every twenty-fours and being exhausted might have had something to do with it, too.

The stranger behind me with the petite hands asked, "Aren't you even going to turn around to see what I look like?"

"Why ruin the fantasy?" I asked. I was running on instinct by playing it cool and instinct told me I was doing it right. "But I can guess you're probably blonde, aren't you?"

"How can you tell?"

"Tell me if I'm right or wrong first."

"You're right," she said with a giggle. "Now how do you know?"

"I'm psychic," I lied. It had been a wild assed guess.

"More like psycho," Jimbo corrected.

"Yeah, that too," I allowed.

"Okay, psycho psychic," she said. "What color are my eyes?" She didn't see me mouth the word "blue" to my buddy sitting across from me and she didn't pick up on the slight nod he gave me. I made my announcement. "How the fuck are you doing that?" she cried.

"Psychic," I repeated.

"Psycho," Jimbo repeated.

"Same diff," I said. "Now here's the one thing I don't know. Why are you making me fall so deeply in lust with you?" I was still looking forward when I said it, facing Jim.

"Dude, you damn well better be asking her," Jimbo said.

"You guys are funny," she laughed.

"And well hung," I tossed out. That earned another laugh before her backrub ended and she chose to sit down next to me at the table. She put her hand on my knee and that's when I realized something was happening that hadn't happened in eight weeks. I was getting hard.

"I'm Marlene," said the pretty blonde with big, doe-like blue eyes that appeared one size too big for her cute face. She had a pretty smile to match her eyes, a cute, perky nose and her BDU uniform did a wonderful job at camouflaging whatever curves there were to her body. There were introductions between Jim and I and Jim was smart enough to remember he had to do a thing somewhere else.

As soon as he stepped away, I turned to face Marlene. I gave her my best smile, which was easy to do under the circumstances. "Okay, so what gives? Something tells me you don't normally walk around passing out backrubs to strangers."

"I saw you on the bus from South Carolina, on the plane to Texas, the bus to here and I watched you yesterday."

"Okay, that's creepy."

"Maybe. I don't know," Marlene said with a faint display of pink on her cheeks. "What I mean is, you seem like a nice guy. I saw you helping people with their bags and answering questions for them. Then I saw you sitting out here with your buddy and cracking jokes. Did you go through basic with him?"

"Jimbo? Nah, we just met yesterday and hit it off."

"Wow," she said, looking intently at me. It was an odd look to receive. Her eyes never left mine as if she could see something more than just pupils and working irises and brownish-green pigment to my corneas. It felt like a staring contest, so I stared back at her pretty blue eyes that still looked one size too big for her pretty face. "Why are your eyes turning greener?"

"You don't want to know."

"Tell me," she insisted.

I told her the truth. "Apparently, my eyes turn greener when I'm horny. I don't really know because I can't see them."

Marlene smiled. "Good. Want to know why I was rubbing your back?" I nodded. "Because I want you to be my first."

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped open and my eyes went wide. I don't really know. The only sensation I can remember feeling was the sudden swelling and throbbing inside my BDU pants. I fought against the loss of blood to my brain. "Here and now or can we at least get a room?" I asked. Marlene giggled and moved her hand from knee to my thigh.

"I'm serious."

"Me too," I joked.

"No you're not," she said, still laughing. "Is that okay?"

"Why me?"

"Because you're not eighteen like everyone else around here. You seem nice. I don't know. I just think you would take your time with me and do it right."

I was speechless for a moment. I didn't have a joke or a quick quip to make. Instead, I accepted her prediction. "Okay, you're probably right."

"If I didn't think we'd get in trouble for doing it, I would kiss you right now."

"If you were to kiss me right now, I would probably have to go back to the barracks and change my underwear."

Marlene glanced between my legs. I don't know if my hard-on showed or not. It didn't matter. "Are you really, you know..."

"Hard?" I asked, filling in the blank for her. She nodded. "Find out," I said. She glanced around the smoking area to see who else might see. Deciding no one would notice, she slid her hand up my thigh and grabbed the front of my pants. I hadn't been lying about my condition. After feeling my bulge, her hand slipped back down my leg.

"That's the first time I've done anything like that."

"Damn, really? What have you done?"

"I've had boyfriends. We kissed and stuff, but that's all."

"Why nothing more?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think I trusted them." That made me laugh.

"But you're willing to trust a stranger?"

"No. I'm willing to trust you."

"Yeah, well I'm pretty strange," I joked.

"Good," she said and squeezed my knee.

"We should do something tonight," I suggested.

"We can't. We're restricted to base for this week."

"I didn't mean that," I corrected. "Let's get a drink or something. Do you drink?" She nodded and we made a date for that evening.

At eighteen, Marlene wasn't old enough to drink alcohol at the enlisted club on base, but she was allowed to sit with me while I did. We sat in a quiet corner and visited. She sat across from me sipping from her Coke through a long straw and looking as sweet and innocent as she proclaimed to be. In her civilian clothes her body was revealed to me. She was shapely with breasts that looked bigger than they really were on her petite frame, a narrow waistline and a tight, tiny ass that begged to be grabbed (though I was careful to keep my hands to myself). "Your eyes are green again," she told me with a half-smile on her pretty, full lips covered in ruby red lipstick.

"Imagine that," I said. The rest of our conversation felt as surreal as our earlier conversation.

"Did you tell your friend about things?"

"If you mean, did I tell him you want me to be your first, no. None of his business," I said. Marlene's smile grew into a full blown, high beam smile.

"See? You are a nice guy."

"Whatever," I dismissed. "Can we talk about that?" She nodded. "You really haven't done anything? Why not?"

"I don't know. I just haven't. Like I said, I never trusted my boyfriends to take their time."

"Do you masturbate?" I asked. She blushed deep red.

"No."

"So you've never had an orgasm?"

"I think I did. Once. In the shower."

"Let me guess, you started rubbing down there, it felt really good and you didn't stop until felt really good," I said. She gave me a wide eyed look as she nodded with her face as red and embarrassed as I ever saw it. "And then you felt really guilty and a bit scared about what just happened and you didn't trust yourself to do it again, right?" More red faced nods from her.

"How do you know that?"

"Psycho," I reminded her, purposely saying "psycho" instead of "psychic." She picked up on it and laughed. "I want you to have an orgasm."

"When we do it?"

"Well, I don't know if it will happen when we do it. A lot of women don't have orgasms when that happens. I mean, in general. I like seeing a woman having an orgasm."

"Really? Why?"

"Because it's fun. It's fun for her, fun for me..." I said, my voice trailing off as I tried to imagine how virginal this blonde haired angel could possibly be. It felt crazy. Did I really want this? "Make me a promise," I insisted. "Promise me you won't fall in love with me. I don't want to be in love. Let's just be friends who fuck, okay?"

"Okay," she said. "Why?"

"Because I've been here before. You're not my first virgin and I think every woman falls at least a little bit in love with their first man."

"So a little in love is okay, just not a lot?" she asked. She was smiling and as I tried to find an answer, she started laughing. "It's okay. I'm not looking to fall in love, I'm looking to get laid by a nice guy who will take his time."

It's not fun living in an open barracks bay with a bunch of other guys and fighting off the effects of spending an evening with a pretty young girl who wants to jump your bones. Still in training, we had a curfew of eleven o'clock. The bathrooms in the barracks were expansive with a row of urinals along one wall and a row of toilet stalls on the other. Unlike the toilet stalls back in basic training, these stalls had doors. I did something I hadn't done since joining the military. Inside one of those spotless clean stalls, I sat on the toilet and jerked off. It was one of the most humiliating, unsexy and needful orgasms of my life.

The weekend couldn't arrive fast enough. Done with military training until 5 a.m. on Monday morning, I met Marlene at the taxi stand outside the post walls an hour after our last formation. We climbed into the back of a taxi and went straight to a hotel. She wanted to help pay for the room and I wouldn't let her. I paid cash and we went to our room without any baggage. Behind a door with a placard on the back of it, we had our first kiss. I still don't know why we waited that long to kiss, we just had. It was a very good kiss.

"Are we going to do it?" she asked, looking up at me and looking a bit scared.

My answer surprised me. "I don't know," I said. It was a fair question. It was easy to assume that we would, but her lack of experience had been gnawing at me. We kissed again.

"Why don't you know?" she asked after our second kiss.

"Because I don't think you're ready," I said. I was making it up as I went along. Don't get me wrong. Of course I wanted to fuck. I wanted to fuck her, her mom, the barely passable woman working the front desk of the hotel and maybe even the desk clerk's ugly best friend. It had been nine weeks since my dick had last enjoyed the warm of a welcoming pussy. I was ready to fuck anything that moved and owned a pussy. But it felt wrong to tug off her tight jeans and jump onboard for a thirty-second thrill ride that would accomplish deflowering her at the expense of turning into any other guy in the world. "Let's sit for a minute," I said, moving the foot of the queen size bed that looked lumpy. On a soldier's pay, I couldn't afford a four star hotel.

Marlene sat next to me. Her eyes flickered over my face as she tried to read my thoughts. It would have been a good trick, since I wasn't sure what I was going to say or do until it happened. "Kiss me again," I told her. I leaned into her and we kissed deeply. Our tongues found one another as they had twice already. She might be a virgin, but she knew how to kiss and it was good, even if I set aside how long it had been since I had last kissed a woman. While we kissed, I ran my hand across her chest. As I cupped one of her breasts and then the other, I felt her growing stiff. I broke our kiss, pulling away my lips while I kept my hand on her chest. "There. That's why," I said.

"What?" she asked, her too big eyes searching mine for answers.

"You're scared."

"I'm nervous."

"No, you're scared," I insisted. "You've never had a man do this to you before, have you?"

"Other guys have tried to touch me there," she said.

"Yeah, but you always pushed their hands away, didn't you?" I asked. She nodded. My hand was still on her tits. She had great tits. Inside my big hands, her breasts felt as small as they really were. Marlene was petite which created an optical illusion that she was bustier than she really was. Each of her tits was a single handful and nothing more. It was okay. I like smaller breasted women. At least she had breasts, unlike some of the flat chested women I had dated before joining the Army. "Take off your top," I told her. She pulled her t-shirt over her head. Her bra was white and utilitarian. Without yet knowing, I guessed her panties would be the same way. "Do you like to take baths?" I asked. She nodded. "Good. Why don't you go take one?"

"Now?"

I nodded.

"Okay," she said. Marlene stood up and held her t-shirt against her half naked chest. I tugged on the corner of her shirt and pulled it away.

"No, you're not allowed to hide from me," I said. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I was nearly on eye level with her. I pulled her closer to me. I undid the front of her jeans. "Go ahead. Take them off," I said. She nodded and blushed as she wiggled out of the tight cotton fabric and revealed that my guess about her panties had been correct. She wore plain white panties in a bikini cut. I reached behind her back and deftly unsnapped her bra with an ease that had been earned through years of practice with other women. She caught her bra before it fell off her chest. I gave her a polite smile as I pulled it from her arms. I didn't correct her as she held her arm over her chest. I tugged on her panties and heard her suck in a sudden gasp of air. "Turn around," I told her. "That way I won't see." I don't know if she realized how much I appreciated seeing her tight, tiny buttocks as I stripped away her panties. Nor do I know if she realized that I could see her sparsely furred bush in the mirror across from her. Holding one arm protectively across her chest and with her hand covering her pussy, she danced on tip-toes towards the bathroom. I gave her one last instruction. "Leave the door open unless you're using the toilet."

I heard the water being turned on. She shut the bathroom door for a few moments. When she opened it again, I could hear the toilet refilling with water. I picked up her clothes, folded them and stacked them neatly on the dresser. I waited until I heard her turn off the water. I wasn't thinking; I was waiting. I walked into the bathroom. Marlene jumped a bit. I smiled. "Sooner or later I'm going to have to see you naked."

"I know," she said and it looked as if it took a force of will for her to move her hands to the sides and allow me to see her naked. Her body was as fine as I expected. Like me, she had just completed eight intense weeks of physical training. It was very likely her body was in better shape than at any other point in her life. I know that was true of me.

"I want to show you something," I said. I was sitting on the lid to the toilet. Before we all wore Polo shirts, the preppiest look of the early 80's was to wear an Izod shirt; same style, except for the tiny alligator on the left breast instead of a polo rider. I had left my Sperry Topsider loafers in the other room. I wasn't wearing socks, but I was wearing acid washed jeans and bright red, panty style underwear. I pulled off my shirt and tossed it on the floor in the general direction of the bedroom. As she watched with wide, inquisitive eyes, I took off my jeans. I was hard. My hard-on showed stretched the front of my underwear. I didn't do a striptease. I was getting naked for her. I pulled off my underwear and tossed them in the same direction as my shirt and jeans. I sat back down and saw her eyes were locked between my legs.

"It's big," she said.

"It's hard, that's for sure," I said.

"Are you big?" she asked, her eyes flickering up to my face for the briefest of moments before falling back to the sight of what I guessed was the first hard-on she had ever seen.

"I don't know. I think I'm average. I know some guys are bigger than me and some are smaller."

Marlene nodded. Her cheeks were pink again. I moved and sat on the edge of the bathtub. "I don't think there's room for both of us."

"It's okay. Hand me the soap," I said. She did and I rubbed it across her arm, her shoulders and then her back before allowing my hand to rub her breasts again.

"That feels good," she told my hard cock. Her eyes seldom strayed from it.

"You can touch it," I said.

"My hands are wet."

"I think it's waterproof."

She giggled and touched my hard prick as if it were a strange pet that might bite. "Does it hurt when it gets hard like that?"

"No, it feels good," I said. I throbbed, well, my prick did. She jumped a bit. I laughed. "Pull your hand away." She did and I made it jump a couple a times.

"You're making it do that?"

"Yeah, but it happens on its own, too," I explained. "You really haven't seen one before, have you?"

"Not like this. Not in real life." It was a function of the time period. The internet didn't exist. Owning a personal computer was an exotic thought. Instant photographs came from a camera called a Polaroid and while VCRs were widespread, not everyone had one. If Marlene hadn't seen a hard prick in real life, it left her few choices. Without asking, I could guess she hadn't seen a porno movie or the kind of adult magazine that would should men hard and excited.