Memories of Alane

With both of them (sequentially) we fooled around a bit and screwed around a lot. But I never even thought of sticking my face down there; I was pre-programmed by my first girlfriend to expect a revolting smell. I don't know if either of them ever thought it might be a thing to try. Neither ever suggested it. But wait, didn't they give me blow jobs? One did. Occasionally. Maybe two, possibly three, times. She didn't like the idea very much. The other one wouldn't even consider it. I'm not sure either of them would have been comfortable with the idea of my face between their legs.

My, but that was a long digression. This story is supposed to be about Alane, and all of that backstory is not about Alane. At least not directly. But I think it is a necessary backstory for how I hurt Alane the second time. Are you feeling shadows of foreboding? I am.

The mistake I made with Alane? Simple enough to tell. It took less than a minute, but I'm pretty sure it changed her opinion of me and our relationship forever. We were in bed one time (when weren't we in bed?) lying on the top of the blankets so we had full access to each other. She brought up the idea of pussy eating. How she had waited as long as she did before bringing it up, I have no idea. It was something I'd never done. It was something I had no idea how to do. It was something that involved me sticking my face where I knew (believed) things smelled really bad. But I loved Alane, and for her I was willing to try. Or thought I was. I was willing to try, but not able to succeed.

Alane told me to just get down there and try licking her for a while. So I did. It didn't occur to me that she did not smell bad. I was just programmed to expect it, and bracing myself. Now, years later, I can't recall any smell at all. Not good, not bad. Just none. I crawled down and examined the situation. It was before everyone shaved, before anyone expected their partner to be shaved. She had a beautiful nest of wispy golden-blonde tangles down there. I rubbed my nose around in them a while, trying to tickle her. I kissed down the inside of one thigh and up the inside of the other. I gave her a lick or two, not going all the way down to the gooey mess we had made earlier.

I nuzzled and tentatively licked a few times more, then looked up at her face to see if she liked the results. We were both disappointed in that. "You haven't done anything yet," she said. I was, what, stunned? Flabbergasted? Worried? At sea about how to rectify the situation? Yes. All of those. So I got back to work, right? I asked for some direction on what I could do better, right?

No. I was an idiot. I was uncomfortable with what I was (not) doing. I froze for a few moments, my mind running in panic and completely blank, a rictus of a grin or grimace on my face, the remains of the smile I'd had when I looked up. After a few moments of blind panic, my mind came up with a solution. Yes, the wrong one. I scuttled back up her body, wrapped her in my arms, and gave her a big kiss. She reciprocated, though I'm sure now that she must have been stunned and probably angry.

I wish that she had grabbed me and told me to get back down there and try again. But she didn't. I wish that she had given me some explicit directions. But she didn't. She just accepted that I didn't seem to want to eat her, and we carried on as though nothing had happened. But she must have been fuming inside, maybe even angry at herself that she had ever agreed to go out with me.

I didn't see any sign of what was going through her mind. She was, after all, an actress.

Her grandparents had gone on vacation for a week or two, and Alane was house-sitting for them. I came home to her every night, and for a short glorious time, we pretended we were a married couple, with all night together every night, and waking up with a smile in each other's arms, and being able to contemplate the joys of togetherness when we would reunite that evening. That only lasted a short time, but it was wonderful.

Another time, a few months or maybe half a year later, she again mentioned to me that she would be house sitting for her grandparents. I quite naturally suggested that this could give us some "quality time" together. Instead of beaming at me and agreeing, this time she said something like "I'm sorry, they don't let me bring visitors over, and the street parking is for residents only." I could have protested that we had done exactly that before, and seemed to both enjoy it quite a lot. I was stupid, but I wasn't that stupid. I smiled and nodded like it was a perfectly obvious but regrettable thing, and the conversation turned to something else. But at that moment I knew that it was truly over between us, though our relationship wouldn't actually end for months. From then on, the sadness was there, and I tried to savor every moment with her even more than I had. Because I knew it was going to end, and all I would have is the memories.

You might be thinking that there was a problem between us, and if we just sat down together and talked about it, we could work things out. You are probably right. If we had talked, and I had known how to explain my thinking, we might have been able to work things out. Might. Or maybe not. Maybe if she knew more of how I thought, she might just have been even more sure that I wasn't the right one for her.

In any case, the talk never happened. I'd long ago learned from experience that I only got so many chances to screw up, and when the screwup counter reached that limit, that was the end of it. It didn't matter if the screwups were from ignorance, stupidity, or active malfeasance. Get to the limit of wrong things to say or do, and that is the end. It was irredeemable and irreversible, and any attempt to the contrary would only make it worse for me, possibly much worse. So I didn't even try to change her decision; I believed there was no possible chance of that happening, and all I'd be able to do is make her actively dislike or hate me, rather than just being unhappy with me. I didn't want that, I wanted her to have at least a few happy memories of me.

Alane finally decided I needed to learn more (or maybe just something) about sex. She brought over her favorite sex ed book from a course she had had the previous year, and gave me some reading assignments. I really should have read the material, and studied it well. But I didn't. Why didn't I? Was I really that stupid? Yes. But in this case I can rationalize an excuse. I was thinking that the next time she came over we could read through it together, with extra advice from her about what she really liked, and then we could act out the lessons. But she never came over again after lending me the book, she always had some reason that she couldn't make it.

A couple weeks later, at school, she sat down and talked to me. She said that she had been mad at me for weeks, and finally realized that a few days before. This startled her, and she had to think about it for a while. The result of her thinking was the talk we were having. I can't recall the words now, nor even the emotions, but somehow she told me that our relationship was over. This did not come as a total surprise to me. I'd had three girlfriends before her (all virgins, sigh, they knew even less about sex and relationships than I did) and I recognized the symptoms when the girl decided she was tired of me. I'd been seeing the signs in Alane for weeks.

She asked me to return her sex ed book, and I asked for my coat back that she had been using for the last six months. Both were duly returned a few days later in the parking lot by our cars.

Alane gave me two final presents as we exchanged her book and my coat. She told me that she had planned to give me one of them as a birthday present (which was several months in the future). She explained that she had gone to a costume photographer - one of those people that let you dress up in Wild West clothes, or clothes of a century past, and then take your picture in front of a set piece or drop, or with some simple props.

She had arranged to get a couple of basically bordello pictures of herself, lying down, in an 1890's version of skimpy clothing. In one picture she was lying on her side with her breasts spilling out of her bustier. I think in the other one she was lying on her back, with her head toward the camera. Her head was tilted back off the end of the bed. She was looking at the camera with her head upside down, her beautiful blond hair fanned out below her, and the camera looking straight down her dress.

They were beautiful pictures of her; I still have them, I think, somewhere. But as I looked at both of them, the first thought that popped into my head was "they could have been so much better, if only she was smiling". I would happily have arranged with her to get another set with a smile on her face. But by then it was too late, and the two pictures and my memories were all I was ever going to have to remember her.

Just because we were no longer a thing didn't mean that I didn't run into her now and then. She was still a theater student, I still hung out with Pat and Gary. So we ran into each other. We were still civil when we did; there was no hate there, at least on my part. But it hurt when I'd walk into the green room and find her there with her arms around some guy's neck, body pressed into him and moving, and her tongue giving him a tonsil inspection.

The college was doing a haunted house as their fall theater production. They had done one a few years before, and it had been fantastically successful. The ticket sales had been more than enough to completely reequip the shop, and buy a complete new lighting rig for the stage. And that was just from what was left over after the school administration got its 30% cut of the ticket sales.

As usual I was working around the shop. At the moment I was decorating a very bloody decayed head that would soon be popping out of a grave as guests walked past. I had blood-red paint all over my hands up to my wrists.

Alane and I had been separated for several months, but she was still taking classes at the school. She'd moved on to a series of boyfriends, most of whom I never saw. She walked into the shop, just passing through, and saw me working near where she entered. She came over to me and we talked for a while. I wanted to grab her, wrap her in my arms, and kiss her, but there was no way I could do that with "blood" all over my hands. I wasn't going to ruin her clothing, she would not have appreciated that.

We talked for a few minutes, catching up on what I'd been doing for the last few months. She was a bit distant, seeming to have some trouble remembering all that much of the time we spent together. Any gleam in her eye was certainly for different things. When I asked her how she was getting on she only gave some vague generalities, which was probably as much as I wanted to know anyway. We talked, we smiled. And then she left, going wherever she had been going when she saw me and stopped to chat.

I can no longer remember how her voice sounded. I really wish I could, but that is lost to the ages. There was one exception, I recall exactly one statement she made. Not to me, we had broken up months before. But both of us were still friends of Pat and Gary, and both of us, and her current boyfriend, were over at their house for a dinner party. Perhaps it was Thanksgiving; I forget.

She was sitting across the table from me, and dinner was all but over. For some reason I was far enough back from the table that I could see their feet. I think she was running her toe slowly up and down his shin. He looked at her, grinned, and said "Wanna play footsie?" She looked at him, widened her eyes, and in an incredibly sexy, low, breathy voice that would get a rise out of a statue, replied "Ooooh yesss, pleease!"

It had been over between us for about six months, but Pat still knew and talked to both of us, and she still thought we made a good couple. Somehow she talked Alane around to the idea of agreeing if I asked her out again. Pat made sure I knew this, and cajoled me into asking Alane out. To my amazement, when I did talk to her a while later, Alane readily agreed.

I think we went to dinner and a movie. I'm sure about the dinner, but I can't recall if there was a movie. There must have been something to give us a few more hours together. Sometime during dinner I dropped something off my fork, and narrowly missed getting it on my shirt. Alane smiled, and described how she and her boyfriend of a few weeks before had gone out to a bar, and he'd spilled a drink on himself, completely ruining his silk shirt. I grinned at this, to hide what I was thinking. All that was going through my head was "I don't even own a silk shirt!" I also didn't like bars, since my experience had been that that was where the shit-kickers went to get drunk and have a nice fight over the girl with a couple of broken beer bottles. Winner takes the girl home.

Between those thoughts I realized that I was completely inadequate to treat this woman the way she should be treated, and the way she wanted to be treated. That hurt. A lot. I don't think she knew what was going on in my head. Or maybe she did and I just didn't know. After all she was an actress, and a good one.

Pat had gone out of town for a few days, and Alane was house sitting for her. When, after the night out, I drove Alane home (to Pat's house), we stood at the entrance and somewhat tentatively hugged. She was again wearing heels, so was an inch or so taller than I was. I asked her if I could come in for a while. She looked at me, and I looked at her. Did I mention that I was terminally stupid? I should have wrapped her in my arms, grabbed the back of her head, and claimed her mouth as mine. But no, I was too worried about what she thought of me. So we stood there for maybe twenty seconds, holding hands, with me looking at her like a lost puppy dog. At the end of the twenty seconds, to completely no surprise, she sighed and said no, I couldn't. I glued on my "Oh. Well. Quite naturally" face, smiled at her, and left. I think that was the last time I ever saw her.

Somehow, and now I am not sure how, I lost track of her. Perhaps she graduated, perhaps she dropped out; I just don't remember. I still ran into Lynn for another year or so until she moved to San Francisco with her girlfriend. I recall her saying "Alane really settled down after she broke up with you." I think she also said that Alane now had a fairly permanent boyfriend, something she had never had before we met. Lynn seemed to think I'd been good for Alane, even though Alane had left my life. I think Lynn said that Alane and the boyfriend had moved to Saugus or thereabouts. I suppose they got married not long after that, and probably had four or five kids. Those kids would have long ago had kids. If she is still alive she must be a grandmother, maybe even a great grandmother.

A lifetime ago, half a century ago. And yet I still remember scenes from one year of her life, of my life, when she turned 21. I wonder if she ever thought of me again after moving away? I'd like to think so. But I have my doubts.