A Woman Like Maxine

Curious, I looked out of the window and my heart leapt to my throat when I saw the smiling face of Maxine…my early teen puppy love. My Dad opened the front door and called to me, saying that an old friend had dropped by. Early on, Dad, as well, had taken a shine to the succulent brunette. I sprinted down the stairs and walked toward her, in all my six feet of glory. I’d also put on about forty pounds of solid flesh since we’d last seen one another.

“Sweetie!” she gushed. “God, you’ve gotten so…so big!” she murmured as she looked up at me. Dad soon realized that their conversation was over, and excused himself, inviting her to drop by anytime. “Or should I call you Philip?” she asked, absorbing me with those limpid blue eyes.

“Uh, Phil’s okay,” I corrected.

“Phil…Phil,” she repeated. “Phillll…,” she said once again, her eyes taking on a distant look as she exaggerated the “L” sexily by curling the tip of her pink tongue out to tease the center of her upper lip. “Let’s take a walk, Phil. We’ve got tons to talk about,” she said, once again in command of me. “Let’s go to our woods!” she said, gleefully, exhilarating me with her use of the word “our.”

She was dressed in a tight, gray wool flannel skirt that hugged her delicious hips and thighs, extending below the knee as the style then dictated, and a tight, purple pullover sweater. My groin pulsed as I looked at her, and she observed my eyes resting momentarily on her breasts. Out of sight of the house, she took my hand, slung her bag over her opposite shoulder, and said, “Mmmm, I remember your hands.” She pressed the soft pads of her fingers into my palm, between the fingers, and along the prominent veins…all the way up to my forearm. “You’re a young man now, Phil. And it’syou who look nice all over!” she exclaimed. “Do you remember saying that? You devil!”

“Aww, I was just a kid,” I said. “Still am, compared to you!”

“That’s not so!” she said. “You were probably mature when you were five!”

“Do you still bruise easily?” I asked, dying to make some reference to her body.

Her face clouded, and she said, “You know, Ken and I got a divorce. He used to beat me.” I was shocked, disbelieving that such a nice guy could ever have raised a hand against this exquisite woman.

I expressed my sincere sorrow, then asked, “Was it because of Pierce?” prying by this time.

“That asshole!” she flared, suddenly facing me. “He promised he’d make me a producer of one of his shows!” Then, she narrowed her eyes, “How do you know about Pierce?”

Refusing to admit the first-hand experience I’d had in witnessing her adultery, I said, “Mmm, just put a few things together. You were gone a lot…at the end…before you and Ken stopped coming over.”

“Well, that was years ago,” she said. “Pierce divorced too, and kind of dropped out of sight. He was an incorrigible drunk!” she spat, indicating to me that the relationship had been far less than satisfactory.

We sat for a while as the late afternoon light shone through the leafy canopy, and I told her of my idealistic plans: an apartment; maybe grad school; saving the world by becoming a diplomat. She told me about her TV show, a half-hour special interest series on Sunday morning that she was producing. “Then it’s New York for me…and a big network job!” she exclaimed, as naively hopeful as I, with blue eyes shining.

“I really wish you luck, Maxine,” I said, looking into those eyes. She saw my look and her face changed from its dreamy expression to a plaintive, searching one. And as she’d done several years before, she leaned into me, stopping with her face an inch away from mine as her eyes panned up and down…back and forth, and kissed me tenderly. I was an old hand at French kissing by this time, so my lips parted to invite her tongue into my mouth, which was soon reciprocated by mine in hers. Her scent and sweet taste overwhelmed me and I stood, bringing her up with me – remembering my adolescent hunger – to press my erection into her upper tummy. Our breathing quickened and our hands flew to every part of one another’s body within reach in just a few moments. Her succulent breasts and soft bottom seemed to quiver at my touch. Our tongues dueled as we tried to consume each other with our mouths, until, finally, we were at a physical crossroad.

“Ohhh, sweetie…Phil, I could…so easily,” she gasped, leaning her face against my chest. “But here…and now…just isn’t right. Please come and see me,” she plead, looking up at me.

I agreed, silently nodding my head as I tried to even my breathing.

Hand-in-hand, we walked back to the house. “Oh, I almost forgot!” she said, pulling some papers from her bag. “When I was going through some boxes, I came across your stories!” she beamed, handing them to me. “They’re excellent! Especially since you were so young then!”

Extremely flattered that she’d kept them all those years, I took them and noticed her business card under the paper clip, on which she’d written her apartment address and phone number in the city. At her car she gave me a peck on the lips, grabbed my hand in both of hers, and said, “Please watch my show…and call me, okay?”

I never did. The following two years flew by. Studying full-time and working left little opportunity for such a friendship. And there were local girls, much closer than San Francisco. Then I took an extended backpacking trip to Europe, as I was disenchanted with school and yearned for a broader education. On my return, I got my degree and was promptly drafted into the Army. As I remember our next meeting, it’s so vivid that I’m compelled to treat it as if it were the present.

Part 3

In January, 1966, I return to California, recently shipped out of Viet Nam. Two months prior to my separation, my unit in the First Air Cav Division has been involved in an altercation with North Vietnamese regulars in the Ia Drang Valley, a picturesque little spot south of Pleiku that has claimed many lives on both sides. I’ve become a Sergeant, having refused on principle to go to OCS, and serve as a Crew Chief on an HU-21 reconnaissance helicopter. I’m profoundly shaken by the Ia Drang experience, as well as the loss of several friends during my tour, and my combined feelings of shame and horror render my self-image somewhat lacking in esteem.

In San Francisco, I stay for a few nights with the sister of a G.I. buddy, whom I’d met in Georgia before shipping out and who’s moved to the West Coast to see me when I get back to the States, which is called, “The World.” And though it’s interesting to be with a Caucasian woman for a change, I find myself unable to kindle the slightest romantic desire for her. We hump away, she climaxes any number of times, yet any feeling for her is lodged only in my sex organs, light-years distant from my emotional center. Leaving her after a few days spawns few repercussions, since she’s developed a network of friends anyway.

And I don’t want to see my folks for a while, since nightmares and daily depressions make me a pain to be around. Besides, I’ve saved a good bit of money from my hitch, and want to reconnoiter with my buddies as they trickle back from Saigon. After seeing them, perhaps to test whether my Army friendships are real or manufactured, I plan to sever all ties with the military – even social ones – and try to eradicate memories of it. Strangely enough, though I’ve always loved the city, I find San Francisco to be less than welcoming. Nevertheless, I move into a fleabag hotel just so I can come and go, and drink Jack Daniels when I wish.

Forsaking the uniform, since I’ve been spat upon by a disapproving citizen my first day back, I put on my freshly pressed, custom-tailored suit and go out to what I hear is a nice bar. It’s called a “café,” populated chiefly by what twenty years later will be called “Yuppies.” I want to meet some nice, intelligent girls; that is, young women. I start sipping my fourth drink after pounding back the first three for a buzz, and about eight seats down the bar sit two attractive women, talking animatedly. I know immediately that one is Maxine, since she’s turned halfway toward me in beauteous profile. She looks a bit older, but not more than her actual age of slightly over 30, and I nearly choke on the growing lump in my throat. As I look at her back, I see that she’s developed a fuller body, though it is not at all fat. Her figure has blossomed and she’s never looked lovelier. She’s reached that point of sublime flowering that blesses a small woman whose hormones are screaming for her to conceive…to reproduce at a most desirable age – before her sexual peak arrives – well in advance of the sands in the hourglass adding the telltale bulges of middle age.

I know that I want to speak with her…that I have to, yet my hands shake as I lift my glass to hatch some innocuous subterfuge to do it casually…accidentally. Just at the right moment, my bladder stimulates me to go to the latrine – rather, the restroom – which requires me to pass by her twice, thus making it impossible to avoid one another. Covering my glass with a napkin to save my seat at the bar, I walk past her back, which faces me. While urinating, I nearly puke from excitement. I almost cut the stream short, but finish and wash up. Combing my hair, I stray into the hallway, walking slowly toward her. She’s talking with her friend, glances at me and away, then stares back as her brain signals recognition. She stops talking, rivets me with her gaze, and begins a slow, dimpled smile. As I reach her, she inhales, her blue eyes flash, and in a tone coming from deep in her throat she says, “Hi, sweetie!” Her female companion looks at me, probably wondering who in the hell I am. Grabbing me hard by the upper arm, almost so that I can’t walk away it seems, Maxine says, “Jen, this is Philip…Phil. Phil, Jen. You still call yourself Phil, don’t you?” she asks, probing my eyes with hers.

“Yeah. And you’re still Maxine, I trust,” I respond, wanting to appear cool and blasé, regardless of my nervousness. “S’cuse me a moment, ladies, gotta get my drink,” I say, touching her arm, which she raises and stretches toward me as I step away, letting my fingers trace its entire length until our hands part. Grabbing my glass, I look back and see her speaking heatedly with her friend, who’s nodding and – it appears – is preparing to depart. I return to them and lean against the bar, remembering every contrived Cary Grant pose and line that I can, intent on charming their pants off. Well, at least I want to see if I still remember how to converse with an American woman.

Maxine immediately grasps my forearm and says, “Jen was just leaving, so you can have her seat, okay?”

“Sure,” I say, extending my good byes to her friend and sliding onto the stool to face Maxine, whose legs are crossed to reveal smiling knees under nylons.

“You look awfully good. And you never called,” she pouts, teasing me pointedly.

“Sorry,” I apologize. “Had to finish school, went to Europe, then the Army got me. Just got back.”

Her eyes get big and she asks, “From Viet Nam?”

“Yeah, for a little while,” I say, not really wanting to talk about it.

There’s a pause as she scans my eyes, and says, “I’ve gotta make a call, Phil. Will you come with me?”

“Sure,” I say. We do the napkin thing with our glasses and I follow Maxine as she walks rapidly down the restroom hallway to a pay phone booth. She wears a white, pleated wool skirt and navy blazer, and my palms tingle as I remember the brief feel of her bottom at my folks’ house several years before. She opens the door to the booth and I stand there, dumbly, until she pulls me in with her. There’s no seat, yet it’s still tough to close the bi-fold door behind me.

At that moment I’m hers. She throws both arms around my neck and leans her head up, pulling mine down to her sweet, hungry, martini-tinged lips. I smell the perfume she’s always worn, inhaling its bouquet like an emphysemic starved for oxygen. She moans as her tongue clings to the roof of my mouth and I lift her, planting a leg between hers, so with our combined efforts she remains off her feet, squishing against me while straddling my thigh. I feel her heat through her undergarments and skirt. Army food and conditioning has grown me to 6’2” and I weigh in at about 190, so the fit in the booth is very tight.

We go at one another like ravenous wolves, sucking, licking, nipping, groping, grunting, moaning, whimpering, bruising our lips against teeth, both finally ready to consummate a relationship that began nearly a dozen years before. One of her hands strays to my groin and palms my cock as I release a loud moan and she pulls her mouth an inch away from mine to exclaim, “Ohhhhh… Gawwwd…Philll-lllip!”

“It’s been a while,” I gasp, lying, as she moves her hand up and down the bulge. Well, it has been six or seven years since our last kiss.

“Where are you staying?” she murmurs, her honeyed breath feeding my soul.

“Hotel,” I rasp, as I go back for another kiss.

“Not anymore!” she scoffs, as she eases down slowly from my arms. “You’re coming home with me, soldier! Are you hungry?”

“Not right now,” I chuckle, as I elbow the door open.

She looks down at my crotch, which is very prominent, and grins slyly, saying, “You’re not, huh?!”

It’s a very short cab ride to Maxine‘s apartment…or seems so, since we’re locked in a breathless, grappling, searching embrace the entire time. She trembles as she unlocks the front door to her building, saying, “I’ll get the mail tomorrow.” She trots up the stairs, dragging me behind her and saying, “I’ve missed your great hands!” as she grips my fingers. Her stunning ass beckons to me, twitching its remarkable flesh under the white pleated wool of her skirt. Her extraordinary calves flex at my hungry eyes as she hops from step to step in her black heels.

Then we’re inside her apartment. As her door slams shut, I finally feel safe from the critical, prying eyes of a judgmental citizenry. I also escape – for a while – the flopping noise of chopper blades, the razor’s edge of elephant grass, the flatthuh-wapp…thuh-wapp…thuh-wapp of small arms fire piercing the skin of my ship, and the dull ache I’ve carried in my gut for so long.

Our clothing isn’t much of an impediment. She wears a garter belt and stockings, since pantyhose aren’t yet the thing. But who cares? We’re soon naked and pawing at one another like beasts as our seething flesh burns for that of the other. There’s no gentleness as our mouths drool and cover every part of one another’s torso until our knees weaken and we start to drift to the floor. I’m groaning…Maxine is sobbing…then mewling…and I lift her just enough for us to collapse on her sofa with me on top of her. Her legs wrap around my hips immediately as her tongue whips in my mouth, alternating with her whimpers of, “Ohhh, sweetie…baby, yessss. Lemme feel you! Gawwd…come inside me…pleeeze!”

I know that if I do I’ll cum in thirty seconds. I have to take refuge behind my mind. If I don’t, I’ll erupt into a savagery that is boundless and known to – but not yet understood by – only me. That dullness in my frontal lobe stops me – the physical reaction that has prevented panic, and kept me alive in life-threatening situations for over a year – and I shake my head quickly to cover her face, neck and chest with nipping kisses. She’s thrashing under me, whining and grabbing my engorged cock to try to stuff it into her pussy, so I move down to capture a breast in my mouth. Her luscious tits have grown since I first saw them years ago, now perhaps into a C cup. She tilts back her head, closing her eyes tightly, and breathes little sounds: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” as her splayed wet crotch bumps into my taut stomach. I suck hard on her tit, teasing its nipple inside my mouth with my tongue, and switch suddenly to the other breast, causing a scream of delight and a crescendo of passionate affirmations from deep in her throat. Her fingers grab my head, and mine go immediately to her hair, weaving themselves through the dusky thickness remembered from adolescence.

Maxine’s eyes open to slits as my nails softly touch her scalp, and her frantic gasps change in timbre to a low, gentle moan, accompanied by a slowing of her pelvic thrusts at my belly. I smell her richness wafting up from her soaked pubis as I continue to comb through the black locks that I so longed to touch as a lad, and my attention once again turns to laving her hard, red nipples.

“Baby…baby…baby…baby,” she murmurs as her hips continue their languorous upward pushes.

We’re now very gentle, and I’m pleased that we’ve waited. She appears to be, too, yet soon her stomach muscles tighten and there’s a hint of willful urgency to her movements. And soon she’s muttering my name, “Oh, Phil…Phil…Phil…uhh, Phil…baby…I’m…I’m…I’m…uhh…uhh…Phil,” as her eyes clamp shut again and her head twists to the side. I notice that her lips are dry, so I withdraw one caressing hand from her hair, lick my thumb and forefinger, and paint her lips with my saliva. She jumps at the contact and her pelvis freezes into immobility, hard against me, and she lifts her head to glide through an orgasm, her strong neck muscles knotted. Her eyes look through me, glazed as they are, and she trembles as she peaks. The sound she makes is an unearthly, muted wail that empties her lungs as my hands move to her breasts to caress her nipples softly. As she relaxes, her head falls back to the sofa and a single tear courses down to disappear in a wisp of hair. “Ohh, Philip…you’re a genius,” she mutters.

Embarrassed by her praise – so typical of me when I’ve been with Maxine – I try to appear cool and accommodating, but succeed only in sounding stupid: “The pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

“That’s exactly what I have in mind,” she says playfully, twisting out from under me so I’m lying on my side with my cock bobbing in front of me. “C’mon, lie on your back. I wanna have a good look...and taste...of you! Mmmnn," she utters, as her small, soft hand strokes my ample prick from balls to tip, causing a sharp inhalation from me. Still stroking, she kneels on the floor in front of the sofa and, licking her lips, opens her small, bow-like mouth enough to cover the crown of my member.

“Nnnn-gaaahh!” I grunt, as her wicked tongue flicks around the corona.

“You’re just as I imagined you’d be, sweetie!” she says glowingly. “Now, gimme!” she demands, as her mouth stretches open to engulf half of me with one slow descending movement of her head. “Yummmm!” she says, her eyes flashing as she pulls off, then once again she takes me, deeper now, to the top of her throat. Her eyes close and I feel the muscles working above her esophagus, familiarizing themselves with my thickness. She pulls back a ways, breathing deeply while she gives my cock quick little gobbles, then pushes her lips all the way to my scrotum, announcing the arrival of my glans in her throat with a deep moan. Her pink lips stretch obscenely around my girth, and I’m fascinated by the elasticity of her entire oral cavity. It’s several years later before Linda Lovelace becomes famous by demonstrating such skill on film.

The blinding pleasure I’m feeling is enhanced by a fantasy of a dozen years as I see the idyllic beauty of this raven-haired woman throat me. The blue-to-purple makeup on her eyelids – and the midnight hue of her lashes – feeds the prurient fires lain dormant in me for so long. The simmering coals of her memory are igniting as her sweet mouth coaxes my barely smoldering libidinous fuel into what I want to be a flame…then a raging conflagration. I ask myself, why has it taken so long to get here? and in so doing, I deny myself the immediate pleasure of an explosive orgasm.

As has happened so many times before, I fear letting go…to inadvertently bare my dissembling soul to the lethal aims of another human being. Yet that behavior has kept me alive. I’ve kept my own personal beast under wraps, except perhaps once, as two score of my buddies who didn’t are lying dead. So, ambivalently, I retreat to being a technician – even with a woman as desirable as Maxine.