Blood-Red Orchids

May 9, 1962

It is my eighteenth birthday and I have just arrived at my cousin's place. There is an arrangement of blood-red orchids within a black ceramic vase on the glass topped coffee table in the living room. A very Oriental looking arrangement.

I am babysitting for my cousin Dottie, in her apartment in Sacramento, California. Dottie is a twenty-two year old single mother and has a five year old little boy named Robbie. Babysitting is an easy gig as my cousin usually leaves around seven-thirty in the evening and doesn't come back until past two or sometimes not until early the next morning as the sun is rising.

Robbie is usually asleep for the night by nine, no later than ten. Besides easy money, Dottie often loans me her car as part of the payment for babysitting services.

It is very relaxing, reading a book and playing record albums through the night on Dottie's stereo. Dottie has an extensive collection of records from 30's Swing, 40's Big Bands, 50's Rhythm 'n' Blues, the beginning of 50's Rock up until the latest of the 60's Rock 'n' Roll hits.

If it is recorded music, Dottie seems to have every long playing vinyl record album ever made. She has an extensive collection of 45 rpm single records, as well.

As a bonus, my cousin has some very nice, very hot looking, girlfriends.

The night of my birthday, Kim, my cousin's 'hottest' of all her friends, who I have met on at least a dozen prior occasions is already in Dottie's apartment. Sometimes the three of us will chat, when they get home from their 'dates,' into the wee hours of the morning.

Kim is fixing herself up, getting ready to go out with Dottie on another one of their many double dates. Kim is only nineteen, looks sixteen, but has a perfectly faked driver's license I.D. that identifies her as a twenty-two year old U.S. citizen. She looks African-American but she is actually an immigrant from Cuba and still has a Spanish, or Cuban accent.

She is as beautiful as Dorothy Dandridge, but Kim's skin tone is a deeper, a richer, black than Dorothy's mocha-like skin hue. I love talking to Kim almost as much as I love looking at her.

She is gorgeous, funny, I think maybe even sensitive, and teases me incessantly. If she ever stops teasing me I think she will hurt my feelings. I am enamored with Dorothy Dandridge having seen her in the movie 'Carmen Jones.' A movie that I have seen a half dozen times by the time I was ten.

Kim also looks and sounds like a black Latina, maybe a combination of Dorothy Dandridge - with a hint of Rita Moreno and Natalie Wood as they appeared in the roles they played in 'West Side Story.' I had first been captivated by Natalie in 'Rebel Without a Cause' when I was twelve My ardor for Natalie has not waned over the years.

My current movie loves are in a five-way tie for my love and affection: Audrey, Dorothy, Natalie, Rita, and Nancy Kwan, an actress I had seen in 'The World of Suzie Wong' and, most recently, in Roger and Hammerstein's 'Flower Drum Song.'

I want to travel to New York, Puerto Rico, Hollywood, and Hong Kong, when I get older to seek out women such as these. I always was a horny little boy with a vivid imagination. I am growing into a horny young man with an even more vivid imagination.

But there is one actress that stands above the rest in my mind and heart: Ava.

I love musicals. The first movie I ever saw, that I remember, was Kearn and Hammerstein's musical, 'Showboat.' I was seven years old and Ava Gardner made me cry in every one of her scenes. At seven I was in love with Ava Gardner. When I saw her in 'The Barefoot Contessa', I found out she had been staying at the 'Raffles Hotel' in Singapore.

I had dreams about meeting Ava at the Raffles, having a drink with her at the bar, saving her by beating up Frank Sinatra, and taking Ava away to make passionate love to her in her hotel room. It is a very vivid dream that I play over in my mind even when awake.

After I see Ava in Ernest Hemingway's, 'The Sun Also Rises' I read every Hemingway novel I can get my hands on.

After I meet Kim, I decide I want to go to Havana and liberate Cuba from Castro and the Communists. I want to meet women like Kim while fighting for their freedom. Hopefully, Kim, my nation, and the Cuban women will be grateful for my efforts.

Kim is wearing a long sleeved white blouse, the shirttails of which she has tied together at her midriff. She is wearing a tartan red mini-skirt that accentuates her legs. Kim's legs seem to go on forever. She is just over 6'tall when she is in high-heels and pretty close to my height when she is in her bare feet.

I am 5'10" tall with, I hope another another inch or two of growth to go, in my dreams. I mean growth not in height but in length, if you get my drift. Thinking of Kim in her bare feet, or bare anything starts to get me aroused and I start wishing I was bigger 'down there' in length.

Kim is putting on, a soft, deep red lipstick when I walk into the apartment and see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She has a blood-red orchid in her hair. No doubt taken from the arrangement of red orchids on the table. She has highly polished red nails that match the color of the orchid. Underneath her blouse I can see that her under-bra is also this deep, kind of, blood red.

I can see Kim's image from her hair, her face to her torso and hips. Her bare stomach muscles, belly-button, and the top of her hips between her tied blouse and belted skirt reflect in the mirror. I am almost desperate with my desire to see what cannot be seen below the belt-line of her skirt.

Quite a vision.

As Kim comes out of the bathroom, she greets me with a smile that makes my heart skip a beat and my knees go weak.

'Belafonte's Calypso' album is playing on the stereo and Kim is humming, dancing, swaying her hips, to the beat, to the rhythm of 'Brown Skinned Girl.' The lyrics of the song, about 'sailing away' refers to a Jamaican girl in the song having an American blue-eyed baby with an American sailor as the absentee father.

My imagination is running wild thinking about Kim having my baby. I decide I am going to join the Navy. Having a baby with Kim would be great. I can imagine us out, hand-in-hand, shopping for baby clothes, a crib, a stroller, Gerber's baby food, and stuff like that. I didn't want to buy formula, I want to watch Kim breast feed.

I am now eighteen, happy birthday to me, and very easily, sexually, excited by my imagination. With thoughts like that running rampant through my brain, to say that Kim makes me horny is an understatement. I can imagine that under her white blouse and red bra, Kim would have the most perfect breasts I can even imagine. Much nicer than Marilyn Monroe's or Bettie Paige's even.

Imagining what it would be like making a baby with her is . . . I really like Kim and just looking at her, hearing her voice, smelling her perfume is very intoxicating to my senses.

I often ask Kim for a sip of her drink so I can taste her lipstick on the rim of her glass or just brush against her hand . . . touch her hand when she shares her drink with me. This behavior of mine is pathetic, but I don't care.

The effect of the words, the melody, and Calypso beat, Kim's beauty, the movement of her skirt caught between the 'no man's land' of her swaying hips and the hem of her short skirt where her thighs are moving and her legs begin or end, depending on your point of view, is mesmerizing.

I see a brief vision of her sexy bikini-like blood red thong under-panties beneath her skirt as her hips sway to the music. Her long legs and beautiful feet keeping beat to the music, her hips swaying seductively lift up her short skirt.

Seeing her dance makes my heart pound faster and my knees so weak they start to tremble. I can imagine that under her panties would be the most perfect . . . Well, the most perfect 'whatever' I can possibly imagine.

My knees are literally shaking. I start to tremble, exactly like the Elvis Presley lyrics describe . . . I am 'All Shook Up.'

I almost fall to the floor with a 'fit' of desire. "Oh my God!" I whisper, to myself, to her, "Kim you are the most sensuous woman on the planet."

Kim stops humming, and asks me what I have just said. I lie with the truth and say, "You look nice tonight Kim."

She says thank-you and asks me if I would like to dance. I am blatantly staring at her, practically drooling, body shaking, noticeably gawking at her movement, being partially aroused by the reality of her dancing and by the vividness of my imagination.

I avert my gaze, gulp, and stammer a falsehood contrary to what I really want to say and blurt out, "No thanks Kim, I can't dance, thanks anyway. But, go ahead, you can keep dancing if you want. " A very lame response to her generous offer.

Kim smiles and keeps dancing. I am very close to ejaculating when Dottie comes into the living room and says hello to me. She wishes me a happy birthday, gives me a couple of babysitting instructions, and says to Kim, "Let's go, it's already past eight." Evidently they are already late for their double date.

Kim says, "Ron honey, I didn't know it's your birthday today. Your eighteenth birthday, I would have given you a special present if I had known sweetie, bye. Happy birthday, Ronnie. Love, ya!"

They are out the door before I can change my mind and tell Kim, I would love to dance with her, just to touch her, shake hands, anything would be alright with me concerning her.

Being able to just look at her for another moment would have been fantastic. I honestly think, I almost had an orgasm just watching her dance. Just like, 'Pow!' A spontaneous orgasm. Instead, I had mumbled, a ridiculous, "No thanks."

I am kicking myself, missing the opportunity to at least touch her, just touch her. I am kicking myself for my being such a dummy. Then again, I think that if I had touched her I probably would have ejaculated. How dumb and embarrassing that would have been. Talk about a kick-ass moment.

I give Robbie a snack, play a couple of games with him and put him to bed by nine-thirty. I go over to the record player and replay the Calypso album again, not being able to get Kim out of my feeble-lame-brain.

How can she be so desirous? Kim makes the women in 'Playboy Magazine' seem plain. Well, maybe I am exaggerating. God, Kim is so beautiful, so lovely ... she makes me ... hot.

I flip open May's 'Playboy' magazine and start looking at the centerfold. I am thinking about jerking off, but feel guilty about doing so in my cousin's apartment.

I'm babysitting for 'Christ's sake.' I decide to suffer the pangs of just looking at the picture of a beautiful nude woman and leave my genitals alone.

The song 'Man Smart, Woman Smarter,' is playing and Bellefonte is singing about 'woman' teaching 'man' a thing or two, when Kim comes back shortly before ten p.m. Evidently her date not working out. She tells me she has a headache, wants to take a couple of 'Bayer' aspirins and then is going to lay down on the couch and 'just crash.'

She hands me twenty dollars, wishes me a happy birthday, hugs me, gives me a peck on the cheek and says she loves me. She says I can go home, she will watch Robbie.

I say, "I love you too, Kim."

Kim gives me a puzzled or 'funny' look and says, "You love me, do you." More like a sardonic statement than a question.

I am flustered. Embarrassed a little.

I inquire, "Go?" Kim says I can go or stay, whatever I want to do is alright with her. I am not that dumb. I tell her I want to stay.

I am thinking to myself that I am the one that sleeps on that couch. Maybe tonight, Kim and I can sleep together.

Seriously, I have already forgotten about making a baby with her. I am not thinking about sex. My adrenalin rush is about how exciting it will be laying next to her.

Very stupid and very lame but, I swear, that is my thought process. I want to lay next to her and hold her in my arms. I want to touch her skin, her hair. I want to hear her tell me she loves me, and mean it.

I want to take her on dates, go to the movies with her, walk hand-in-hand in the park, take her to dinner, then tell her I love her and I want her to marry me someday. Maybe I am that dumb.

First, I am trying to figure out how I can approach this 'laying down on the couch' subject with her.

Maybe if she were to lay down on the couch first I can pretend I am tired, just yawn, and ask her if she minds if I lay down next to her because I am exhausted and need to 'catch some shut-eye.' Maybe, just maybe, she will agree.

The truth is I not only want to lay next to her and hold her in my arms, I need to hold her in my arms. I need someone to love me. I think maybe she needs someone to love her.

A foolish thought. Everybody loves Kim. She is beautiful, smart, and desirable.

I am just a semi-skinny, semi-smart, undesirable kid from the neighbor-hood. I am without a future. Dottie's stupid cousin, that flunked out of high school.

Comparing Kim's possible need to my own need is idiotic. Maybe, just maybe, I am that dumb. A hopeless dreamer.

Kim flips off her shoes, goes into the kitchen, takes an ice cold 'Pabst Blue Ribbon' beer out of the refrigerator, walks into the bathroom, where I see her reflection once again in the mirror as I had earlier in the evening. She is 'downing' some aspirin or some other kind of pills with the beer.

I know she sometimes takes drugs. I admonished her once, telling her she shouldn't take drugs.

She just smiled at me and said, "You are cute, usted es dulce como miel, Ron . . . don't worry about me, you should quit smoking, mi amor."

As I am looking at Kim's reflection she pulls off her extra-long fake black eyelashes and her afro-wig. She takes some 'Ponds' cold cream and wipes all her make-up off.

Then she vigorously washes her face. For some reason, she takes the orchid from her wig and pins it to her own natural hair. Then she reapplies her red lipstick. She is looking right back at me, in the reflection of the mirror, as she applies her lipstick.

She is looking at me with her deep penetrating dark-brown eyes, those unreadable, imponderable penetrating eyes of hers. I am mesmerized, once again, for a moment, for the rest of my life.

I avert my eyes, as before, ashamed of my thoughts, feeling I have been caught like a 'Peeping Tom.'

I go over and quickly sit down on the couch and pretend to read an article in 'Playboy' with information on 'What Makes an Executive,' by J. P. Getty. This is to show Kim I am a sophisticated man of the world type. I am not interested in tawdry naked girly pictures. Or even 'Centerfolds.'

Kim comes back in to the living room and plops down beside me. She sits very close to me. She brushes up against me and my burning desire to reach out and just touch her skin, or better yet grab her, hold her body next to mine.

I am in, aching, physical pain sitting next to her like that. My 'adrenalin rush' is just that, I can feel my blood rushing hotly through my body.

I tell her she looks better now than when she first came back into the apartment.

"A left handed complement," she replies. "How nice of you."

I respond, "No. That's not what I mean. I mean you are more natural, more beautiful without make-up."

I say to her, "Kim, you have beautiful eyes."

She jokingly asks, "You find just my eyes, are beautiful, Ron?"

I stammer, my heart beating at the sound of her saying my name, and say, "No, no, no. You are the most beautiful girl, the prettiest woman, I have ever seen. Prettier than any movie star, even ... but, I really like your ... your eyes Kim. I mean I like, well ... everything." So much for my sophisticated man of the world ploy.

She says, "Ron, you are too funny for words. Please, stop with the compliments, already."

Kim hands me the bottle of beer so I can take a sip. I keep the 'Playboy' magazine in one hand and take the 'Pabst Blue Ribbon' in the other. I taste her lipstick on the spout of the bottle imagining what it would be like to kiss her.

I take a swig of the beer and hand her back the bottle. I am actually smacking my lips like a complete dork. To hide my embarrassment at smacking my lips, I burp, and say, "That's some great beer."

She responds, "That cheap crap?" She looks at me and says, "You're not very discerning about people or things, are you? You have very low expectations, sweetie."

I protest. "I didn't say it was the best beer ever ... Kim. Give me a break."

She smiles at my foolishness, closes her lovely brown eyes, lays back against the cushion of the couch, places the cold bottle of beer against one of her temples and rolls the bottle across her forehead to her other temple.

She informs me that she is feeling somewhat better and asks me to take the bottle of beer and finish it. I take it from her hands, feel her warmth, as she keeps her eyes closed.

I chug-a-lug down what is left of the beer and set the empty bottle down next to the display of orchids.

With her eyes still closed, she asks me if I will put down that stupid magazine, stand up in front of her and massage her temples, neck, and shoulders to relieve her headache and the tension that has led to her headache in the first place.

How did she know I am still holding the magazine if her eyes were closed? I she peeking?

I yelp, "Sure." I put down the magazine trying to make sure that Kim sees I am reading J. Paul's article and not looking at Miss May's Centerfold, twenty year old Marya Carter.

I had been staring at Marya's picture previously, for at least ten minutes, before Kim had arrived. This may be a fruitless endeavor, as it turns out, since Kim's eyes remain closed and my ploy of only reading 'Playboy' for the articles seemingly fails. Maybe Kim peeked.

I quickly forget about the picture of Marya's two-dimensional body, my brain is now concentrating on Kim's three-dimensional one and what it is going to feel like to massage such a body. My hands start to tremble, matching my already trembling knees. I am really nervous.

I want to sleep with Kim. The couch is so narrow we will be close to each other. Maybe we can hold each other all through the night. I did not want to ruin my chances by being real obvious getting on my knees and just beg and plead with her to sleep next to me. I have my pride.

Kim, still with her eyes closed leans forward, unbuttons the top button on her blouse and pushes her blouse slightly off her shoulders. I stand up in front of Kim, standing between her legs. I place my hands on her shoulders. She sits up straighter and puts her hands on my hips causing me to stagger a wee-bit.

It is like déjà vu, an older woman's touch having done this to me on two previous occasions.

Then I remember that Kim is only one year older than I am. How could she be so Worldly and how could I be such a dork?

Then I have a series of strange thoughts. I imagine I am kissing Kim's stomach. I imagine I am licking her feet. I imagine I am massaging her butt.

Weird, I know, but that is what I am thinking. I really like Kim's stomach, feet, and what I can imagine her butt looks like. I like all her parts. But for some unknown reason I want to kiss her stomach, lick her feet, actually suck on her toes, and massage her butt. Then I want to taste ...I mean kiss, her lips. The same lips that left the lipstick on the spout of the beer bottle.

Then I remember I am forgetting about her breasts. I want to hug her so I can feel her breast against my chest and feel her heart beating. Well, it wouldn't hurt if she allowed me to lick her breasts, maybe suck on her nipples a wee-bit. My tangled thoughts are sometimes just weird.

I am feeling her tension, her muscles, her skin, as she lifts up her shoulders in a shrug and rotates her neck. I massage her shoulders for a minute before I put my hands up to her temples and with my fingers.