Interesting Weekend

George Chitwood had the habit, if you can call it that, of eating dinner on Friday nights after work at the D.C. bus station, on Fridays when he wasn't going out with anyone, and picking out a movie to go to alone. A fair number of movies these days are ones that his dates might not like but he did, so this way he got to see them.

He was walking by the Greyhound station on a particular Friday in the middle of June, after work, when he heard a timid voice saying, "Mister, could you spare a dollar? I just got in and I'm hungry." He stopped and looked over. She looked sixteen or seventeen, with shoulder-length black hair and a heart-shaped face. She also looked like a runaway.

"No," he said. "Not that way. But if you're willing to sit and talk with me, I'll buy you a meal, either at one of the fast-food places right around here or at a Chinese place a couple blocks east. And if you need it, I can offer a couch for tonight, but I don't like to give away money."

"Fast-food's what I been eating, so I guess I'll go for the Chinese," she said. "I could do with the vegetables." She hesitated. "But I think I'll pass on the couch."

They walked from 11th Street over to 9th and up the steps to a restaurant. Once they had settled in and ordered, he said to her: "So what's your name, whereabouts are you from, and what are you doing here?"

"Name's Mary Nelson, I lived all my life in a little nothing place near Cleveland, `cept for a couple trips, and... Well, my family's gotten to be too much for me to take, and nothing goes on in the town, and I just wanted to get out on my own in the city. I really wanted to make a break with all my past."

Mary told him that she was eighteen, about what he had guessed. She had finished high school about two weeks before (though the actual graduation ceremony was still to come). College, the usual full-time sort at least, wasn't in the picture for her, but it wasn't for a lot of girls. She figured to get a job down here and skip the graduation foofaraw, just starting out on her own.

George thought about all this. He was twenty-two then, five years older than she was, but he knew well enough what it would have been like for her. He thought he probably could have made it on his own at her age, though he hadn't really tried until a bit later. It wasn't clear whether she could make it, but some people never do. Women especially often go straight from parents to a husband and never really know a life of their own. Only time would tell how things would go for Mary, or even if she would really try.

George told her some about himself and his government job, about his interests and what he did in his spare time. They talked for maybe an hour and a half from the time they came in, talking while they ate. He could see toward the end that she was struggling with a decision. When George paid the bill and they were ready to leave, she said, "Uh, George, I think I will take that offer of a couch, if it's still open, after all."

He told her that the couch was still available, and he put her backpack on his shoulders. Since the night was nice, and since the apartment he had in those days was only a little over a mile from there, they walked over.

They went up the white marble steps of his apartment building and then up in the elevator. Once they were in his apartment, he set down the backpack on the floor and he said to her: "Here's the couch you can sleep on. The television doesn't work very well, but the radio does, and I have a lot of different kinds of books. I want to reassure you that there are no strings attached, that you can sleep in peace when you get down to it. I'm not going to demand any physical payment for this, although," he added, smiling, "I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that any interest in that direction would be mutual."

He glanced at her nicely rounded body, trying not to linger too long at the hips or breasts before coming up to her large eyes, trying not to scare her off.

She looked up at him a little timidly and said, "The interest is there. I think maybe I'll pass on the couch in a different way this time. I know we only met a couple hours back, but... Like I said, I want to make a real break with my past." And she came toward him.

Now this made him hesitate, at least mentally. He had only half been joking about the interest, but she was coming on pretty strong. He had to assume, though, that she knew what she was doing.

They kissed softly at first, then she settled against him and there was a long and hungry kiss with their tongues wrestling and his hands pulling up on her behind as they stood there. He took off her denim jacket and hung it up, then led her over to his bed. They lay down on top of the blanket and George went back to kissing her deeply. After a bit, he unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, then another one, until he could get his hand under and move it to her warm soft breast. He felt her heart beating faster. He cupped the breast and caressed it gently, and in time he pulled back the blouse to expose both her mounds and began to use his lips and tongue on them. Her breasts were small, but the nerve-endings on the nipples were very sensitive, to judge by her reactions.

She pulled him to her then, impossibly close, until he drew away to take off his shirt and to put her blouse aside. She took off her shoes then and reached for him again with a half-eager, half-embarrassed look in her eyes. They lay then and pressed and kissed with his chest hair rubbing slightly against her nipples. He reached down to unbutton the top of her skirt and draw the zipper down. He lifted the cloth back, leaving her wearing only panties. He drew his left hand up and down her legs, especially her soft inner thighs, and then he took off his loafers and slacks and -- since he could see where they were going -- briefs.

George returned to her, grinding their lower bodies together. She stroked her hand along the length of his erection, less tentatively with a little time. When he crept a hand under her elastic and reached down, he found her very wet. She gasped when he touched her down there and spread her legs wide open, then closed them again when his hand went further down. He ran his fingers over the labia and up to the clitoris with his tongue back in her mouth again.

He peeled off her panties as she lifted her hips. His now unconfined hand ran over the outside of that wonderfully wet region and brought her quickly to a climax. George pressed their now-naked bodies together and shifted position to bring his member up to her labia. She gave a little cry at the contact. He penetrated a tiny fraction of a inch, and began slowly, barely, to work his way in and out. It was not very long before George discovered how much of a break with the past she intended and what else remained unbroken.

Halfway into her and a bare fraction of an inch from ending her virginity was a hard time to decide whether to go on, but that was where he was.

"Go ahead," she whispered, and he did.

She gave a soft cry as the membrane parted; there was little or no blood. George felt the edges of the torn tissue around him as he drove into her sweet depths.

Once the barrier was gone, her passion grew quickly. Her young legs wrapped around him with a surprising strength. He gradually lengthened his stroke, opening her up a bit at a time and savoring her reactions. Every fraction of an inch more penetration seemed to increase her pleasure, and to increase his because she seemed to grow ever tighter. They went slowly until the end when they both moved furiously and exploded together. Then they both lay wrapped in exhaustion and satisfaction until they woke during the night and got under the covers.

They sat in the kitchen the next morning and ate cornflakes and milk for breakfast. George mentioned to her that he was about due for a trip to the laundromat across the street, and she could throw in anything she had that needed washing. She didn't have much to wash -- actually, she didn't have much in the pack, he saw when she unpacked it -- but she included the blouse she had worn last night, and she put on one of his shirts for the time being. She looked a little absurd in it, but kind of cute at the same time.

They were delayed in crossing the street by two fire engines roaring off. One drawback of that place was that it was two doors from the firehouse, which made for short awakenings at night at times.

As they sat in the laundromat, George asked Mary just what sort of work she had planned to do in Washington. Since she wasn't eighteen yet, she couldn't get a civil service job, and as he told her, that took months of waiting anyhow. She had had a vague idea of finding a job as a sales clerk or a factory worker, and was surprised when he told her that a place as big as Washington (which was smaller than she thought, also) did not have many factories.

She had planned to stay in a hotel until she found an apartment, but he told her what hotel prices were like in DC, even at the cheaper places. With luck and working at it, she might manage to find an apartment two weeks from now, at the start of July, but not before that. As it worked out, she didn't have to go that route.

George suggested to her that he could have a set of keys made for her and she could stay with him for a while, at least until she could set up on her own with a steady job. Or until she gave up and went back home, but he didn't tell Mary that.

"Having you stay with me won't cost me anything but food, and that's very little if we cook," he said to her. Besides, he thought, the fringe benefits were hard to beat. He didn't tell her that either.

When the laundry was done, and they were putting the clothes away, he suggested to Mary that she might want to go to a charity thrift shop a few blocks north of them to look for a suit to wear on job interviews, and he could have the keys made for her at the same time. Also, they might spend the rest of this Saturday going through the Smithsonian buildings or sitting on the grass near there. It was free and an obvious thing for someone new to Washington to do. She liked both ideas.

George took her to the thrift shop and then he walked down the street to a hardware store to get the keys made. She lucked into a nice-looking grey outfit for a couple of dollars. That the thrift shop supported a home for unwed mothers caused George to reflect a bit. When Mary moved toward him in his apartment last night he had assumed that she was on the pill; what he encountered a bit later made it seem much less likely. There were other possibilities, but... The thought that he should talk to her about this came back to him a couple times later, always at the wrong moment to do so.

They dropped off the suit at the apartment, then took the bus down toward the Smithsonian, and he could see that she was thinking about something. When they got off the bus, Mary suddenly asked, "Don't you have a girlfriend or something you want to be with?"

George grinned a little lopsidedly and said: "Well, not really now. I've been going with the same woman off and on for a while now and she gets mad at me at times and won't talk to me for a while. This time it's been more than a month, all over a woman I was involved with -- though not sleeping with or anything -- for a little while about the time that Judith and I first met. Neither I nor that woman thought it was worth mentioning, and Judith just found out now. I like her, but I'm not sure I'll ever understand her. Did you have a steady boyfriend back in your town?"

"Yes." Mary looked down at the ground as she walked. "I didn't have one for a long time, but my parents kind of pushed me into it. That's in a way one of the things that made me want to leave. I didn't really like the boys I knew, didn't really want to go out much on dates. I liked to talk about things, and they mostly just wanted to race around in cars, and when I started going steady with a boy I could talk to a little, he wanted to... Well, to do what we did last night, but he would never take it easy."

George started to talk to her then about what he had been thinking in the thrift shop, but they came up to a bunch of little kids, and moreover their parents, and he put it off and forgot about it.

The two of them walked through the museums, talking about what they saw and ten thousand other things, and they ate a little lunch early in the afternoon. It was getting dark, close to seven in the evening, when they walked back toward the bus line to go back to the apartment.

The night people were starting to come out. A bent-over man whose face was red where it was not black with dirt stood in their way and demanded money, and screamed abuse at them when they walked to the next bus stop to get around him and his smell. He shouted out what he was going to do to Mary in particular.

Mary hung tight to George's arm as they walked. "I've never heard of people like that!," she said.

"This city has a lot of them," he told her. "And it's getting more of them all the time, it seems. I think it's because we get a lot of tourists, who feel sort of guilty about having a good time here and having extra money. So they are more likely than other people to give it to anybody who asks. I don't think they stop to consider that charity may not be a virtue unless somebody really benefits from it.

"You hear it said that the beggars beg and sleep in the park because they are poor. I'll agree with that, I think, but some of these are poor in themselves, not by lack of money."

"I'm scared to just stand on the bus stop and wait," Mary said. "George, could we just walk back to your place? It didn't seem that far."

"If you want. It's only a few blocks more than we walked last night. We'll just turn at 14th and walk north."

After a half-dozen blocks, a slim black man with a thin mustache came from a doorway and sidled toward them. "Got some reefer, lotta good horse, some fuss-rate Colombian cocaine," he said to them. George just shook his head and kept walking, while Mary looked shocked when she caught on to what he meant. "Okay, she probly be back when she through wif you," he called after them.

"That man thought I was a, a prostitute and you were my customer?" Mary asked puzzledly.

"Well, we are a little south of where they cluster, but many of the women in this area after dark are prostitutes, and a lot of them are drug addicts. In fact," he said, glancing over at her, "the pimps like to get fresh meat by picking up runaways at the bus station."

She was quiet for a while.

They continued on until just a few blocks south of his apartment building. There they saw two men come out of an alley, grab and knock down a middle-aged woman, and run down the street with her purse.

Run, as it happened, past Mary and George. Mary grabbed the purse from the thief who had it, leaving him with a broken strap. The other man ran a little behind the first and swerved toward Mary, and into the fist George put into his stomach. The two men went on down the street, the second one more staggering than running. The woman looked sullenly at Mary as she got her purse back.

"That's another thing you have to watch out for around this city," George commented.

Back in the apartment, Mary looked around at the books and records while he cooked a batch of macaroni and cheese and some green beans. She was subdued and didn't eat much or talk much for a while.

"This city is going to take more getting used to than I thought," she said after dinner. "I wonder if I have done the right thing in coming here. But -- George, would you hold me?"

And he did, as they sat on the couch.

After a while, she said to him, "There are things about this weekend I could have done without, but there are other things that I've really liked." She put her hand on the front of his pants and grinned up at him.

He leaned forward to kiss her, and her mouth opened to welcome his invasion. Her hand started to massage his penis through the cloth. After a minute or so of this, Mary took him by the hand and led him to the bed and then had him lie on his back. She took off his shirt button by button and ran her hands over his chest-hair, bending down to nibble at his nipples. She was a little disappointed by his relative lack of response.

Then she took off his shoes and socks, then discarded her blouse and reached for his belt. She pulled down his zipper and smiled when she felt the bulge in his briefs. She tugged off his slacks and ran her hands over his body and explored it thoroughly, enjoying herself by seeing what reactions she could get.

She stood and dropped her skirt and panties, then got back onto the bed, beautifully nude. She pulled off his briefs and applied her tongue to the contents, at least the parts that interested her. She kneeled over him on the bed, and finally took into her mouth more than he would ever have thought would fit.

When she had done this for several minutes and he bulged almost painfully, Mary got onto her toes, positioned herself carefully, and sat down with a sharply indrawn breath. She tried to hold still with his erection fully in her, but she found the pleasure from motion too great to resist and soon slid along his piston, slowly and then more quickly. She had a wild look of ecstasy she on her face as she bounced up and down. After a while, they turned onto their sides and he pushed one of her legs up to give a different angle. Still later they separated so that he could enter her from behind and fondle her breasts as she lay on her hands and knees. But it was with Mary under him, as on the night before, that they achieved their last and greatest orgasm, and slept the night in each other's arms.

In the morning, she said to him: "Do you know where there is a Catholic church around here?"

"Yes," he said, "Three blocks south. We walked by it last night." He was not surprised but a bit amused that the ex-virgin Mary was a Roman Catholic.

"I'm not sure it matters, anyway," she thought aloud. "I couldn't take communion until I went to confession, and I couldn't do that unless I regretted what I've done, what we've done," she said, patting the bed. "And I certainly don't."

This prompted him to bring up the possibility of her getting pregnant, but a fire engine roared off then and he forgot about it.

They dressed and went to get the Sunday papers, and went through them looking for jobs that she could apply for. Mary glanced at him from time to time as they did this, plainly thinking about something again.

At about four in the afternoon Mary suddenly dug into the bottom of her backpack, brought out a box, and headed for the bathroom. This cleared up George's doubts; what Mary brought out were tampons. This meant that they didn't have sex that night, but three days in a row of that enthusiasm and frenzy might have been a bit much for him anyway -- at least it might take some getting used to.

She stayed with George for two more weeks. On Monday she found a temporary job as a typist and that night George introduced her to a woman he knew who was looking for someone to share an apartment with in the beginning of July.

They went to the Independence Day fireworks on the Mall, and followed it with a shorter but more intense private display in her new bedroom. Concluding with a bomb bursting in hair...

Mary went through (one might say used up) several young men in the next year or so and she never looked back on that town near Cleveland. Her appetite for sex was considerable once she had started feeding it. George heard second-hand that she got married about five years later, so she must have found someone who could keep up with her.

- The End -