We are Them

I met Rags in elementary school. We were in the same class. Neither one of us was an outstanding student. If anything we were the social outcasts.

While being a good athlete was highly prized by the boys in our class, I was not much of an athlete. When we chose up sides for a game at recess, I was usually one of the last ones picked - and for good reason. I could not throw accurately or very far, I could not run very fast, in baseball I was likely to strike out, I was very unlikely to catch a fly ball that was hit in my direction. You get the picture. I just was not athletic.

When it came to schoolwork, I understood the concepts, but I would make careless mistakes in math, and write short answers to questions that demanded more detail than what I gave. I suppose my teachers might have considered me to be smart but lazy. Hence, I was not considered to be a scholar, either.

It could very well be that I was a candidate to be bullied. But fortunately for me there was at least one other student who had all my shortcomings and in addition had somewhat of a learning disability and a speech impediment. So he was the one who became the target of the bullies. I knew enough to try not to challenge them and to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. That is pretty much how I made it through grade school and high school as far as my social relationships were concerned. I think it's called, "Flying under the radar."

Rags was not quite as fortunate as I. She was an average student, but her mother dressed her in old ladies' dresses and her relatively long blonde hair seemed to be totally unkempt. That unkempt hair was the source of her nickname, Rags. If she was not bullied, she was the brunt of jokes.

No girl in our class would be seen befriending her. This followed her up right into high school where her mother still bought all her clothes (from the women's department of a second hand store, by appearances) and her hair continued to lack any style at all. Rags, too, in her own way, tried her best to avoid any confrontation with her classmates and kept to herself.

I suppose our relationship began one day towards the end of seventh grade when I was standing by myself on the playground and she came up to me and asked me, "Hey, Phil, would you buy me a pair of Levi's?" At that time and at that school, the girls had to wear dresses or skirts and blouses in the classroom although they could change to jeans for the longer lunch recess. The girls always changed into Levi's.

When she asked me I'm sure I gave a short answer. I did not wear Levi's, myself. My mother bought all my clothes and bought me men's work pants. So I'm sure I told her that I did not know where to buy Levi's. And that would have been the end of the conversation.

I did not ask her why she would ask me. I kind of knew. We were in a small class, so we knew a lot of things about one another. I knew that Rag's mother bought all her clothes and that she had no choice in what she wore. She probably knew that a businessman in my neighborhood had befriended me by offering me after-school work.

He had done this with boys before me and would do it with other boys after I graduated from High School. He enjoyed mentoring young men, and I highly value the skills and work ethic he instilled in me. It is that job that gave me some income. Most of it I saved, but I did set aside some to spend as I saw fit.

So I would have had the money to buy Rags a pair of Levi's, but not knowing where to buy them seemed to bring us to a dead end because Rags did not know where to buy them either. On the other hand, I had not put her down or made fun of her for asking me, which is the type of reaction she would have come to expect form most of our classmates. I had treated her with respect when she asked me and I think she recognized and appreciated it.

When we went to High School, most students came to school either by their own private car or on a school bus. Rags and I happened to live on a city bus route that ran in front of our school and dropped us off close to our homes. We did not have to transfer to any other bus or rapid transit line. Therefore, unlike most students, we were given bus passes for the city bus to ride to and from school.

After school it was often just Rags and I sitting in the bus shelter waiting twenty minutes to a half hour for the bus to arrive. Then we sat together on the bus until Rags got off. In the morning, going to school, I would be on the bus already when Rags got on and she would sit next to me until we arrived at school. Between the wait and the ride, we probably spent an hour or more together each day. That's a lot of time to get to know each other over the course of four years of high school.

During those rides Rags came to know, for instance, that my dad was an alcoholic, and that my mom was enough to drive John the Baptizer to drink. I learned that Rags' parents tried to exert close to total control over her life.

We would not socialize in school. We did not know which would be worse. Either Rags would be ridiculed for giving people the impression that she liked me, or I would be ridiculed for giving the impression that I liked Rags, or worst of all, we would be both ridiculed as two losers or misfits who could only relate to one another.

In our Senior year we both turned eighteen. By then we had begun to talk about deeply personal things. In spite of the fact that neither one of us had dated - at all - we both knew that we were highly interested in sex. Each of us masturbated to climax several times daily. Each of us fantasized about other people - the beautiful and popular people at school. (We used the term: "beautiful people," for the most handsome guys and most attractive girls in our class.) We came to the realization that even though neither one of us was beautiful or popular, our sexual equipment seemed to work just fine. We started to talk about eloping.

Looking back on it, our reasons were pretty flimsy. We mostly wanted to get out of a bad home environment and wanted to have sex - lots of sex. I had more freedom than Rags, so I started to go to bookstores and bought books on sex. There were How To books and Fantasy books. Eventually I found instructional videos and porn videos. I shared these with Rags.

She would have to be very careful about the videos, only watching them when her parents were gone from home for a few hours and hiding them carefully. She would always put school book covers on the books and keep them in her backpack with her school books.

In the spring of my senior year I would drop hints at home that I thought it would be cool to go to Alaska and work on the pipeline or in the oil fields to make a bunch of money before going to college. My parents would always tell me that was a ridiculuous idea, but when I was able to show them some statistics of what some of the people were making up there they had to concede that I might be setting myself up for living the dream if I could earn that type of money for a number of years while I was still a young man. Actually I had no desire to go to Alaska. It would have been way too cold in the winter and winter would have lasted way too long.

We lived in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area. After graduation I looked for an apartment in a totally different part of the metropolis from where we lived or went to school. I also looked for a job that was within walking distance of the apartment (or an apartment within walking distance of the job - I was looking simultaneously). I was easily able to put down a deposit on the apartment from the money I had saved.

I found a job working for the cleaning crew at a large discount department store. They locked us in at 10 PM at night and let us out at 6 AM in the morning. It was a good paying job for a beginner, and hard to land, but the letter of recommendation that I got from my mentor carried a lot of weight. And I was not afraid to work.

One night when my parents were gone I put my essentials in two suitcases, called a cab and had the cab take me to a rapid transit station. There I got on a train and rode it to a stop where I could catch a bus that would take me to my apartment. I left a note for my parents: "I'm off to seek my fortune." Hopefully they thought I was on my way to Alaska.

After a week of working my job, I found I had way too much time on my hands, so got a second job at a fast food restaurant right next to the department store where I cleaned. The boss allowed me to start at 7 AM. Depending on the number of workers he had available to work on a given day I sometimes only worked through the breakfast rush. At other times I would work until the noon rush had slowed down - about two in the afternoon.

Rags' parents insisted that she get a job and she did - at a fast food place near her home. It was owned by the same person who owned the franchise of the place where I worked. I asked if Rags might be able to transfer to the store where I was working and the store manager indicated that that would be no problem. All he wanted was one week's notice.

About a month after I had left home, Rags followed my pattern. Her parents and my parents barely knew one another and they would not have connected the dots. Her note simply said: "I have eloped."

I had purchased a bed and a couch. That first night Rags slept on the bed. I slept on the couch. Rags did not go to work until the next day. As soon as I got off of work at the fast food place we went to the county courthouse and got the marriage license. We had to wait a couple of days before getting married, but while we were there scheduled a time so that we could get married by a judge.

Rags had taken the time when she first started working after graduation to visit Planned Parenthood and get set up with birth control. The gynecologist asked her whether her hymen was still intact, and when she said she thought it was, the gynecologist asked whether Rags wanted her to take care of that to reduce the possibility of pain when she lost her virginity. It seemed like a sensible thing to do so she had it done.

A couple of days after moving in with me, Rags and I were married. There was one little hitch to our marriage. Both of us had such poor self images, we did not want the other one to see us naked. So during the early years of our marriage, much of our coupling was under the covers. Rags would keep a T shirt on when we were together and I would fondle her over the shirt or by reaching under it, but would not get a good view of her breasts. She would allow me to use my mouth and tongue on her breasts, but that would start when I was already up close to her. She never stood before me fully naked, nor did I ever stand before her fully naked.

Instead, when we wanted to picture fully naked people, we would look at porn and fantasize about the porn stars, or would think back to the beautiful and popular people in our high school class, and fantasize about fucking them. Rags' favorite fantasy guy was Glen, captain of the football and basketball teams and my favorite fantasy girl was Melanie, captain of the cheer leading squad.

We had a rich fantasy life, supplemented by a number of toys and vibrators. In spite of our shortcoming, we enjoyed sex with one another, and it was not unusual for me to go to work somewhat sleep deprived because I had been fucking when I should have been sleeping.

In the middle of August, Rags took a short course that qualified her to be hired at a hospital as a nurse's aid. She started working the night shift in September.

In our talks with one another long before we ever got married we had also shared many other ideas. We did not want to have children. We did not want to bring children into the world that would go through the rejection and ostracism that we had experienced.

We also did not want to remain living in poverty. Rags enrolled in the local community college in a program that would eventually allow her to transfer into a four year institution that would give her a BSN. I began a curriculum that would grant me a Masters Degree in Accounting so that I would be able, after a year's time serving as an accountant, to sit for my CPA exam.

So beginning in September Rags worked as a Nurse's Aid at the hospital, and I continued cleaning at the department store. The manager at the fast food restaurant reduced our hours somewhat so that we could keep working part-time and go to school.

The money we earned went to pay the rent, pay for public transportation, pay for our food and pay for tuition and books. We pinched our pennies but did not go into debt. Our life was limited to work, school, study and sex.

Eventually we had to buy a car for Rags so she could drive to the hospital where she would be taking her practical (hands on) courses. We paid for this out of money I had saved while I was working during my teenage years. We both went to school year-round, not taking a summer break. So it took us about three and a half years, calendar time, to graduate with our respective degrees.

Up to this time, we had little discretionary money to spend on clothes. We had our fast food uniforms and Rags had the scrubs she wore as a nurse's aid. I continued to wear the work clothes I had worn through high school and only replaced what wore out. We wore our old clothes at home on the weekends.

But our clothing was getting thread-bare and was not fitting either one of us very well because both Rags and I also decided that we would try to keep ourselves healthy and would try to increase our physical fitness. At the school, we were allowed to use an exercise room that was open to all the students. I used that room and also got plenty of exercise on the cleaning crew. While I did not notice it, my arms had grown strong, and my pectorals bulged over my washboard abs.

Rags opted to use the equipment in the physical therapy room at the hospital where she worked as a nurse's aid. There was a physical therapist on staff who was there when she worked out and who gave her guidance as though she was Rags' personal trainer.

When I was about to graduate I used up the rest of my savings to purchase a nice suit that I could use when interviewing for a job. I graduated near the top of my class and actually wound up having to choose between three good job offers.

Rags also got a job as soon as she passed her RN licensing exam. She worked at the same hospital where she had been a nurse's aid and so did not start at the bottom of the pay scale but was given credit for having worked at the hospital for a number of years. The hospital also reimbursed her for some of her educational costs since what she had done was upgrade her skills.

By now we both were in need of some clothing. Rags needed some new scrubs, wanted a few things to wear around the house and something nice for going to church on Sunday. She went to a store that specialized in uniforms for health care workers.

She remembered that when she went shopping with her mother, that the dresses she bought were size 14, so she started looking there. A clerk in the store came over to help her. Rags explained that she was just hired as a full time nurse and needed new scrubs as the stuff that she wore as a nurse's aid were pretty worn out. The clerk looked her up and down and said, "I think you are looking in the wrong size range. If you don't mind, would you please step into one of the fitting rooms and I will take a few measurements of you so we can find something that is in your size?"

After the measurements were taken, the clerk announced, "You measure out to be a size seven, maybe a size nine in a few things. Now let me know what you want and I will bring them here so you can try them on. But, before I do that, I am positive that you have lost some weight recently and if you would allow me to look at your breasts, I might be able to make a very helpful suggestion or two to you."

Rags was very hesitant about baring her breasts to a stranger, but decided to go for it. She did not have to drop her bra off her breasts very far before the clerk said, "Just as I thought, the weight loss shows up in your breasts. I would suggest in the short term that you go to a good foundations store and buy yourself push-up bras. But long-term I think you should give serious consideration to talking to a surgeon about getting some fullness restored to your breasts. You're really too young to have sagging breasts."

Rags came out of the shop with five different uniforms, all of them size seven, all of them fitting her well. She paid for them with a credit card that she applied for right there in the store. She and I had decided that with both of us working we could apply for a credit card and use it to buy necessary clothing because we would be receiving a good income, allowing us to pay off the credit cards quickly.

She went to a Victoria's Secret store and bought several good push-up bras and then went home. She came home all excited. She could not wait to tell me that she was a size seven - a size seven! I was not well versed in sizes of women's clothing, but when she told me that she had been wearing size fourteen, and seeing her so happy at being a size seven, I deduced that size seven was a good thing.

When she tried on the uniforms that she had bought I saw that this young woman I had married indeed had a very womanly figure - a figure I had never seen before. I was even more pleased and let her know how happy I was with her and for her.

Two weeks before I was to start working as an accountant, I turned in my notice to the boss of the cleaning crew I had been working with. My boss practically cried. He said that I had been an excellent worker and he would miss me.

Rags and I both also quit our jobs at the fast food restaurant. I went to a men's shop, and also, using a credit card, bought myself five pair of dress pants, five dress shirts, ten ties and five sport coats or blazers to wear to work.

After we had both received our first paychecks from our new jobs, we went shopping together. Rags got herself a pair of Levi's that fit so tight they looked like they had been painted on. She bought a pair of high heels and a couple of blouses, but indicated that she was not that interested in tops at the present time. I just let that remark slide. I also bought myself a pair of Levi's and a couple of casual shirts. She bought a dress she could wear to church or for other special occasions, but while the dress was a size seven, it did not do that much to show off her figure.

We had to buy a car for me to drive to work - a modest, dependable used car, and started saving to put a down payment on a house. That was our next priority. Between the two of us, our income was substantial and after I passed a three month probation it became even better.

We both had started working our new jobs in January. We were saving up to make a down payment on a house, but Rags told me that she needed to withhold a little of her income for the next few months. She asked me to be patient and understanding for a little while and I would be pleasantly surprised. I trusted her.

Ever since she had found out that she was a size seven, Rags had been more open about revealing the bottom half of her body, but she still kept her breasts largely hidden. Then in June she had a breast augmentation done. It was nothing outrageous. The surgeon had guessed that before she had lost weight she had been a nice C cup and that restoring that would give Rags the most pleasing result.

Once she healed from the surgery, we both made a determined effort to not be ashamed of our bodies. Indeed, we did not have to. I was well developed from my work and from working out on campus.

One of the perks of my job was a gym membership if I wanted it. But instead, now that I could no longer work out at the college, I chose to either meet Rags after her work at the hospital or go with her when she went to work early so that we could work out together in the physical therapy room, sometimes under the supervision of the physical therapist.