A Precious Slice of August

She looked surprised when I revealed my part in picketing Oak Grove, a segregated amusement park. Both of us had gone there as kids, too innocent and too busy having fun to notice or care that blacks (called negros then) were barred from entering. "Boy, that's really sticking your neck out," she said. "Look, I believe in equal rights too. But Oak Grove is privately owned and they should have the right to let in or not let in whom they choose."

"Looks like we're on different sides when it comes to civil rights," I said. "Barring people from places simply because of the color of their skin is morally wrong. Private ownership or not."

I still hadn't started my Impala. We were sitting there, locked in debate over something I hadn't anticipated even coming up. The top was down, the air was warm and the stars were out—a night perfect for romance. If only the present mood were as perfect. "So, any ideas of where you'd like to go?" I asked, desperate to change the subject.

Just then, a black woman walking her dog passed in front of the car. She said good evening, a greeting we returned. Then, once she was out of earshot, Doreen made a sour face and said, "One of our new neighbors. Like I said, it's getting dark around here."

I couldn't believe this. "Doreen, no offense, but that sounded like a racist comment to my ears."

Her eyes widened in outrage. "You're calling me a racist?!"

"No, that's not what—″

"Of all the nerve! Listen, I'm no racist. Maybe if YOUR neighborhood was changing, you'd know where I'm coming from."

I began to laugh, partly because of the tension and partly because of this dark, absurdly comical situation. We had hit it off so well at Champs. A hero, she had called me. And here we were embroiled in a heated argument over civil rights, of all things. Meanwhile, I had yet to even turn the ignition.

Doreen wasn't feeling the humor. "What the hell's so funny?"

"This isn't what I expected," I said, my hand over my mouth, struggling to get serious. "I was your hero, remember? The guy who put his body on the line, who stood up to that obnoxious, pompous bully. I expected us to groove together, to get cozy, to neck in the back seat of this car. But instead..." Doreen looked away and rubbed her eyes. "You're crying."

"No kidding." She took out a hanky and blew her nose.

"I didn't mean to upset you."

She flinched when I reached for her hand, blew her nose again and looked back toward her house, away from me. Moments later, she turned to me and said, "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but your expectations were in sync with mine. We never even kissed that night, although I'm sure we would have had we been alone, had Sally not been there. So I thought we'd make up for lost time. Now this." She wiped the remaining tears from her face.

"It's not too late, you know." I glanced at my watch. "It's not even nine o'clock yet. We can head over to Carvel, grab a few scoops of their delicious ice cream, and then park somewhere. Why let a difference of opinion over what I consider a political issue come between us?"

She gave this a few moments thought. Then, nodding, she said, "Okay, Carvel it is. Only I'm not sure about the parking part. Let's see how things go."

I started my engine—finally—and off we went to Carvel, only a few miles away. Little was said on the way there. I mulled over Doreen's 'it's getting dark around here' comment. No, I didn't think that she was racist in the mold of the Ku Klux Klan. Like many white Americans, she believed in equal rights with a caveat: but not in my neighborhood. I could live with that; she had a right to her opinion. Plus, she was so damn cute, a brunette Gidget sans surfboard. She had reset her hair, dropped the pigtails in favor of a style typical of the era, with the ends flipped in back and bangs that swept across her forehead at an angle just above her eyelashes. She wore a white blouse, sandals and jeans rolled up to the middle of her lovely thighs.

She told me what she wanted when I pulled into Carvel's parking lot. The place was a glorified snowball-ice cream stand, all glass and chrome and easy to spot from the road, with those two tall statues of ice cream cones that sat atop the building. I went in and got two cups of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.

We faced each other on the bench seat of my Impala, our backs to the door. The goodies tempered some of the tension between us. I was determined to stay away from anything related to civil rights, least the bad feeling return. So imagine my surprise when Doreen brought it up. She apologized for being so defensive, then supported me for standing up for my beliefs. "I side with the owners of Oak Grove," she said, "but I respect your right to protest. You're a courageous guy, putting yourself out there. But then you had already given me that impression when you stood up to Larry Smith." She smiled, then licked a hunk of ice cream off her flat wood spoon.

"So, you like me again?"

"I'm getting there." She giggled, then scooped up some more.

The sensuous way she licked her meal gave me ideas, got me thinking about things totally unrelated to picket lines and equal accommodations. We ate in silence for a few moments, grinning and flirting. Then she said, "This is more like it."

"Not to get pushy, but does that mean you'll park with me?"

She hesitated, flashing me a pensive, closed-mouth grin. "Don't you think we should kiss first? I mean, we still haven't done that."

"You don't mind cold kisses?"

"Not as long as you do it with a warm heart."

It might have been a corny line, but I loved it. "You're warming my heart by the minute, Doreen." We put our cups aside and drifted closer. Our lips met, not for long, but long enough to turn our cold tongues and lips toasty-warm.

It wasn't long before we were headed for Byler's Avenue, one of the lesser known lover's lanes in our region. I had discovered it by accident one stormy night during an equally stormy romance. Doreen had never heard of it. "Oh, I like this, Troy," she said after I cut the engine. "Dark and virtually deserted. No street lights and no hordes of people."

Dark and virtually deserted it was. No street lights, no crowds and plenty of thick, old trees, alive with the sounds of the tenants that lived here, chirping and buzzing away in the warm August night.

Doreen slid closer and said, "Believe it or not, Troy, I've never parked with a guy on a first date."

"You must really trust me."

She nodded. "More than that. I feel safe and secure with you. Plus, the dreamboat Troy Donahue image doesn't hurt. Now kiss me."

Our front-seat smooch went on for a few minutes. No hands wandering into private places, just hugs and kisses and then, when we broke, in a voice just above a whisper, she sang a few bars from a '62 Top-40 hit by The Majors:

Last night I had a wonderful dream

I dreamed I held you in my arms

And you thrilled me with your charms

In a wonderful dream

I had last night

Your lips were oh so soft and warm

And a wonderful love was born...

She sang it not in the fast tempo, rock style of the group, but cabaret style—soft, slow, sensual. She had a pleasant speaking voice, so the honey-smooth quality of her singing voice didn't surprise me. She had sung glee club in junior high, then lost interest in high school, she revealed. "I feel the song kind of fits what we're doing here," she said. "Your lips ARE so soft and warm. Plus, I like guys with strong chests, and I can see through your shirt that you have one." She began to unbutton my blue button-down cotton shirt. "Nice tan. You must have got that working your summer construction job."

"Right. The foreman let us work shirtless. Speaking of nice tans, I love those beautiful tan legs of yours. You camp counselors must have worn shorts all the time."

"We did." She opened my shirt and began dancing her fingers across my bench-developed pectorals. "Mind if I do this?"

"Mind? Help yourself."

This girl knows what she's was doing, I thought, as my cock began to stir. She had found an erogenous zone I didn't know existed—and she sensed it, too.

Grinning impishly, she said, "This is turning you on, isn't it?"

With my breathing picking up, I could hardly deny it. "Slightly."

When her "probe" trailed off, we got back into it, even heavier this time. With my lips locked with hers, I reached under her blouse. She pulled away and grinned. "Tit for tat?"

"More like tit for THAT," I said, which got her laughing so hard she doubled over.

Upon recovering, she reached behind, tucked her hands under her blouse and unsnapped her bra. "Fair enough," she said. "But you might be disappointed. I don't have a whole lot."

Stacked she wasn't, but I was hardly disappointed. Her boobs were perky and firm and sensitive to the touch of my fingers and then my tongue, which got her moaning for more. Had my roof been up, steam would have formed on the glass. When I told her how good she smelled, she said, "A touch of Arpege, a touch of Doreen. And if I'm not mistaken, you're a Jade East guy. I know cause my dad wears the same thing."

By this time, I thought my boner would burst out of my chinos. So far, our touching had been above the waist; well, with the exception of my hands running along her sexy thighs and calves. The backseat beckoned. I wasn't sure she was ready to go there, nor did I dare ask for fear she'd think I was being too pushy for a first date. But I didn't have to ask; she suggested it after the steering wheel got in the way of her climbing on my lap. "But before we do," she said, "you should know that I'm a virgin. So go easy on me, okay?"

Go easy? Did she mean don't bother trying to change her current status or did she mean go ahead but be gentle? I had lost my virginity to a forty-year old prostitute, an innervating experience arranged by a friend of a relative. It was my first time, my only time. "Look, I'm not real experienced either," I told Doreen.

She didn't ask for details, though her 'yeah, right' expression told me she thought I was just feeding her a line. Nevertheless, we climbed in back. "Now I can climb aboard," she said, and then proceeded to do so. Off came her bra and blouse and on came my tongue to partake of what she said was not a 'whole lot.' It was more than enough for me, watching her react under my deft touch, grinding her crotch into mine and saying things like "you must have a slab of granite under there." The slab was chomping at my zipper to emerge and then enter someplace warm and wet and dark. And it might have, too, had Doreen not hopped off and cried, "Ohmygod, Troy! If I don't stop now, we could be parents in nine months!"

The girl had great discipline, I had to give her that, while slapping a few kudos on myself for exercising incredible self-restraint. Doreen backed me up on that score, calling me a "real gentleman" for not "forcing the issue" as other guys had done, for "respecting" her. Besides, she was right. Neither of us was ready for parenthood, nor had we prepared to prevent the possibility. I didn't bring condoms and Doreen, "good girl" that she was, had never gone on the pill, then a relatively new, FTA-approved form of birth control. This was 1963, still the dark ages so far as a woman's right to choose (it would be another decade before abortion became legal in the United States).

Conservative on civil rights, Doreen took a liberal stance when it came to abortion, mainly because someone she knew almost bled to death after seeing some back-alley quack. "It's about time that women have a say in what they do with their bodies," she said on the way back. "My friend's horrible experience convinced me of that."

"We're in agreement there," I said. Then I asked her if she'd ever consider going on the pill.

"Maybe," she said giggling. "I might have to after what we just did. A few more make-outs like that and my brakes would fail." She snuggled her head against my shoulder. "You made me feel wonderful, Troy."

"I'm feeling pretty wonderful myself," I said. "We were headed for a first date disaster a couple hours ago. Now look at us."

"Yes, now look at us." She stretched the waistband of her rolled up jeans and peeked inside. "And look at ME. My panties are soaking wet." She quickly closed up when I tried to sneak a peek. "All in good time," she said, grinning.

*****

Time wasn't something we had a whole lot of, at least with each other. We said goodbye in the car in front of her house, kissing and hugging like mad. We were going off to different schools, and therefore knew that winter break would probably be the soonest we'd see each other again. We'd keep in touch mainly by letter, that now antediluvian form of communication.

Right before we left for school, she called to—get this—congratulate me on Oak Grove's decision to integrate, a decision made on the day that Martin Luther King gave his iconic I Have A Dream speech. "Maybe that's the right thing to do," she said. "Don't get me wrong. I still support the right of privately owned places to discriminate. On the other hand, people shouldn't be judged simply by the color of their skin. So, Troy Donaldson, you won a moral victory over me."

"I could hug you for that," I said. "Not because I feel I've won anything, but because of your willingness to see both sides, to respect my position even though it might not agree with yours. Damn, I'm going to miss you." A few moments of silence passed. Then I heard sniffling. "Doreen, you okay?"

"Yes, it's just that I'm going to miss you, too. The only thing I regret is not meeting you sooner. If only we could have met at Champs in June instead of late August. You know, Troy..." She paused to collect herself. "You know, years from now, I can see myself looking back on this August, longing to relive those exciting few moments we spent together."

I told a friend, the one who was supposed to ride shotgun with me at Champs that night what happened. "You hit the jackpot," he said. "All my first dates should go as well."

I'd like to report that we lived happily ever after into the following summer. Alas, that didn't happen. We both met someone else during our first semester. No surprise, our letters became less frequent. We did see each other over winter break, sharing college stories over hot chocolate at the long-gone Toddle House. That's about it.

And that would have been it forever had not a countless chain of events led us back to each other in the summer of 2019. Both our spouses were deceased. We were parents and grandparents. That June, I got a private message through Facebook from Doreen, now Doreen King:

"Hi Troy - Remember me? I hope you can. Lol. I'm now an old lady (but you knew that) who misses her youth and that precious slice of August we spent together all those summers ago. Would love to meet up. Champs is history, but we can meet at McDonald's over coffee." She included her cell number.

That precious slice of August...well put. It touched a nostalgic nerve. So we met and the rest is history, a short history filled with day trips, romantic dinners and making love the only way many people up in their seventies can do it. Let's hear it for K-Y and Viagra! But it's been a few weeks since we've seen each other. Covid-19, the great distancer, has kept up apart. We're hoping things will improve by this summer to the point where we can be together once again. For people our age, as we've discussed, there isn't much time left.