Rachel's Secret

I really flushed then, my ears went bright red. My eye twitched, it caught me completely off guard. Testing me. She had managed to do it. It touched on some things sexually I was not prepared for. I was almost thrown back.

She read me immediately. "It takes the boy right out of commission, well most of them anyway. So sign me up for poor girls birth control? That what you want?"

I simply said, then, taking the paper, "OK. here, I'll sign it."

"Why are you so flustered about this. I thought this would be, like a normal adult conversation."

"I'm not..." I slid the paper to her across the table. She left it there.

"You are, look at you, you're glowing!"

"It's just not something I think about, or say. Or..."

"What? Contraception. Or ... Blow job. It's like no big deal. For my age it is like totally no big deal. It's less than a kiss."

"Oh, you know that is not true." The words fairly burst out of me.

"A kiss is intimacy."

"A ... blow job... IS sex."

"Not to President Clinton it's not," she laughed.

"It is..." I was wavering. I sounded foreign in my ears. "It's not...I...mean"

"Not to young people. No way. You ever have a blow job?"

"What?" This conversation had to end.

"It's sure not sex, that's for sure. Have you? Ever. I mean its not like it was just invented."

"Give me the slip, here I can sign this."

"You already signed it!" She was smiling at my discomfort, and pausing she said in a whisper, "I won't tell."

Truth. I never had. Never. It was something that was simply so unacceptable, said to even be dangerous. Even masturbation was frowned on. I hadn't even heard of such a thing until I was a teenager. My sister and I raised in a religious family. My wife, my only sexual partner, she never did. I had thought about it and now I was remembering actually asking and being rebuffed. It never came up again.

"You haven't. Seriously?" She was genuinely surprised. I did not answer. "Serious. Wow." She fell back in her chair.

I looked down, somehow feeling deficient and more embarrassed than ever. I looked over letting my eyes wander up her legs, wondering at the things she had done. This girl so much younger than I. Seeing her bare feet. Wondering at the sexual freedom of young people. At all the things I had never done. I had never gone down on my wife, never had a blowjob. Cunnilingus. We spooned. I sucked her breasts, her nipples in my mouth....thinking of what we had and had not done with each other. I had intercourse with her doggy style, something we had done.

Suddenly feeling so deficient. I tried to recover myself, and proceeded to move into lecture mode: "Lets talk about YOUR situation. The teenage mind is not wired to make good decisions in matters like... this, especially in YOUR situation. A new environment, your need to establish yourself arouses a desire to experiment."

She took the sheet I signed and began folding it up. "Thanks, but that is precisely why this is a GOOD idea. I might not make good decisions, right? I agree."

"Let me finish....Teenagers underestimate risk and overestimate reward. So the behaviors, and you have shared with me plenty that exhibits this very thing, get skewed to highly risky behaviors for an overestimated reward. There is a survival benefit to all this, but for the group not the individual. Today it is mostly detrimental because the risks have been societally reduced. The pill gives you a sense of security, and will allow an even higher underplay of risk relative to reward."

"I get it." She wanted to smile, patronize me, but did not. She got what she wanted and wished to leave. I wondered at what she could possibly be thinking. All my talk now was for nothing, I signed the thing, I could not go back now. She was right, and I had acquiesced but now she knew things about me, personal things that embarrassed me.

"It is like tattoos. No assessment of risk."

Her eyes brightened. "I have a tat."

"Exactly. It can have long term consequence."

"No one ever going to see it where I got mine." She said under her breath. I felt myself grow warmer, let it pass.

I continued, "In contrast, you have to understand, over time the ability to assess risk improves. You make better choices. Risk and reward comes into balance, but time. It takes time. Age experience."

And then, she leaned in and kissed me on the lips.

And for the briefest instant I let her. Her lips molding around my lower lip, a soft and delicate kiss.

Intimate.

"What?!"

She leaned back, tossed her hair back, a sweet smile on her face. Her head tipped to the side looking at me. She said innocently, "I'm underestimating risk to reward James. It's just my little teenage brain, I guess. OK."

I was sputtering, "You...."

She just continued, talking over me, "I get it. I agree. I do not fully trust myself around men. I have been here over a month and have had no acceptable release, at all. I am a sexual being who is young, at the prime of my life and I am self aware enough to know if I make a bad choice I do not want it to be a catastrophic choice. I am also aware of my different means of release with boys, and because of certain events in my history, know that I should keep protection. I also know I do not generally like condoms, though I should. As for the dildo - next subject by the way - this also can provide me with the needed release that will keep me in a state of mind that keeps me to not be, how do you say, over risky." She put her chin on her hand and met my eyes again, warm and sweet. "We are on the same page here, James, I know myself. And, yes, I am over sharing, but you get it, and I have always felt I can talk to you."

I was still thinking about the kiss, looking at her lips, the white of her teeth, her tongue. Feeling my face flush all over again. Her neck was narrow, her top dipping down across her collar bone.

She was leaning toward me, eyes still on me.

"Ahhh, James. If you...." she paused, stopping herself before continuing. "I know risk and I'm not really who ANYONE thinks I am." (The tough front of a person hurting I remember thinking) "Lots of changes." She leaned back into her chair and began straightening her top, let out a breath. "I'm going to tell you something." She took a breath and continued, "It cannot leave this room."

She paused waiting for my consent.

Not again, but I agreed.

"Last year, I became infatuated with this boy who I saw one day out of the blue. He stopped me in my tracks, looked up and saw me staring, gave me a sweet smile and kept on walking. After that, it was all over. I'd never had such a crush. This little girl was smitten. But I was so shy, and lived under the shadow of my mothers endless behavior restrictions. I was her good girl after all. So what to do? He knew I liked him cause my friends made sure of that and he was a tease. A player. Whenever he talked to me I blushed. Whenever I tried to talk to him, my tongue became thick, my mind blank. I said a lot of stupid things. He toyed with me, he'd stand too close, touch my arm, kiss my cheek for my birthday. He always had girlfriends, it didn't matter to me. I just felt all these things, and could not imagine him liking me, I couldn't be myself WITH him. I was just a gangly little tomboy, not a woman, not capable of feeling desire, or being desirable."

"Anyways he ended up being part of my group, and I got to knowing him. I started to talk more easily. We became better acquainted, his interests weren't the same - at all. And, the more I got to know him the less I liked him, romantically anyway. Unfortunately, the more he got to know me, the more he liked me. Isn't it always the way. He invited me to his house one time, and I truly thought - OK - we are friends. I said yes. When I arrived I immediately realized his parents were gone, and we would be alone. Girls have this radar that is always on. I was aware but It didn't bother me, we were friends. You would say minimizing RISK."

Anticipating my thoughts.

"But I wasn't uncomfortable. Never had cause to be. I was just aware. I didn't know that an hour into the movie I would be fighting him off of me, or that he'd tear my shirt, or I'd be yelling for him to stop, holding my torn top to my chest as I left. And that wasn't the worst of it."

She paused, it seemed, collecting herself. Her voice had become this even low tone.

"The next day at school I was ridiculed. His guy friends would mutter under their breaths to me as I walked by, "No! Stop!" in a whiny little girl voice. He had told everyone how I wouldn't put out. And my friends saying, 'you liked him didn't you?' I did my best to ignore it all, but still ended up spending most of the day cutting class in the bathroom, crying and trying to hold it together. And in that bathroom I saw myself for the very first time. Really saw. My hair was long, wavy, the rich color of honey reflecting back at me in the mirror. My eyes were blue. My skin was tan and clear, my lips have a nice shape." I was looking at her eyes, her face, her lips as she spoke, and even looking down at her chest as she said, "My breasts were nice, developed, I had curves in all the right places, my legs were long. And I realized I was NOT a tom boy. And how I had spent my adolescence in this shell, arrested development, mentally isolated from WHO I AM. And my mom is divorced now, and all her men and the way SHE is, and what it all did to me. Her projections of her wishes for herself ALL pushed on ME, but not even what she really wants for herself. Adults are hypocrites. And she did this to me until her fears became mine, my fear of intimacy. How love had become this mechanism that hurts you, and I was angry and something broke that day."

"You became you." I intoned.

"How she had poisoned me with fear and hate for my body, for sex, for boys, for men. I saw for the first time how I really appeared, the desire, the power I could have. Confidence. I don't know. But not fear. That my body could be enjoyed, I could feel, be touched. It's not risk vs. reward that teenagers don't understand James. It is that the intensity of EVERYTHING is so incredible to a teenage brain, intense, the wiring is brand new, it's like our circuitry is wet and it has not dried yet. Our skin is this wet, living membrane, wet all the time. How everything feels, looks, the memory of everything. Intense, new, beautiful, alive, all the time. A minute is an hour for me, burning inside me. I can so feel everything. Want, desire, anger, sadness. And I want these things because I fucking KNOW THE RISK. Life is different when you have time, all the time in the world. Risk is just this box that never lets you live. Fear. Hatred."

She was just about whispering now, "So everything was different now. Everything. And I was with these friends of mine. Boys. Boys who really have no interest in girls. And I am joking around with them, sort of, in a way trying to somehow share what I was feeling, but its impossible, and the words aren't there, and its not coming out the same. They are laughing at me, and I get this idea to, what the hell, do something with this brand new body of mine. And I tell them out of the blue that I really really want to go dogging."

"Dogging?"

"Dogging. Yeah. You never heard of it?" She is exasperated, like I don't know anything. "It's a thing in England. Women, women will go out, usually with a couple guys in tow, and make themselves available. Sexually."

She waited for a light to sort of go on in my eyes, which this time it did. I wanted to lecture, but refrained. This was all so irresponsible. I did not want to hear.

"You decide what you will allow, what you are willing to make available. Like..." she laughed, "You know, poor girls birth control, maybe." She was still smiling as I grew embarrassed all over again. Fuck, I hated she knew that about me. "And my friends were like why the hell not. And as a joke they put a collar on me, and a leash and we went to one of the places where dogging happens. I was out and had this collar and leash, and they are sending out the message and I am waiting by the car. It's getting dark. I wanted to give pleasure, be desired, feel desire, FEEL my body, feel, feel my power."

"And truth I'd never done it before, nothing like it. I had barely held hands. So, a great way to practice. HA." She winked. "And the first guy is there and ready and its like open your pants, and my god - he does it! His penis is right there, hard and I put my mouth on it. And its like, I don't know how to do this. Am I doing it right? But it doesn't matter at all. He's standing with his eyes closed, and I am sitting down, he doesn't care."

And now I am sitting there listening to her actually describe a blow job. I do not know what to do with my hands. I can actually feel myself stiffening a bit. I simply listen impassively. I cannot recall ever feeling so uncomfortable, and I just want it all to end.

"And I am like this goddess, he just wants it. Wants. Wants me to. And he cums like right away and I do not know what to do and it makes this mess, and he is like all into that. I have it on my face, and he's like 'yeah, best blowjob ever. Thanks.' Polite. And I think, this is like so funny. There is absolutely nothing you can do wrong. I am a goddess, you know. His hand was in my hair and I had not even noticed, and then someone else waiting. I sucked off three guys, and I was tired. Ready to stop."

"And this other guy comes up and I'm like no no no, and he says no he doesn't want a blowjob. He just wants to sit down and have me stand in front of him and touch me over my clothes a little bit. I was in this skirt and nice little top, still had the collar on, and I had not expected this and I said OK. And Oh, when I felt his hands, soft and slow, on my body. Feeling, touch, really feeling me. It was like I was feeling myself for the first time, which is fucked up I know. But that's how it felt. I had never felt anything like it, it had such devotion, so soft, his eyes were closed and he rubbed up my body. Slow, every touch and I swayed there and let him rub me, my hips and breasts, my neck, under my chin. He found my legs and I let him rub me up under my dress, up my thighs, inside my legs, and he cupped me between my legs and this may be weird but I was in touch with my body, like it was the first time. I felt beautiful and in that moment it was exactly what I wanted."

"When he sort of slowed down, I asked - enough - in this sweet little girl voice. Like I was helping him find something. Like I was his nanny or guru. He nodded, all glassy eyed, grateful, and I left."

She looked exhausted after this story.

I was confused, dizzy, it was overwhelming. I was feeling things I had not felt in years. Had nothing to say.

There was some kind of a seed being planted, and it would not be going away.

Call it life. My brain going a million miles a minute, a part of me trying to understand, but not. And this other part of me feeling, and still another desiring. Desire. This was the seed, and I felt it sinking into my skin.

And suddenly I felt myself coming alive. The desire. I could feel it, and I wanted to be one of those men on that nondescript night. I wanted to feel like that. With these thoughts, when she met my eyes again and lay her hand on the side of my cheek and brushed her fingers through my beard as we shared that moment. As we somehow sensed a feeling that was shared. Not words, and I cannot even say what it was. But it WAS shared. And then I felt shame with my desire, as I looked down and away.

Speechless.

There were simply no words.

Somehow my walls, my pond, my defenses - had all been broken.

She simply brushed her fingers along my beard and said, "We have to give your beard a little trim."

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Complicity and Guilt

So that's a hell of a lot of context.

Here is my question:

How much am I obliged to tell my sister when my niece confides in me? On one hand, I want my niece to have a non-parent adult to whom she can talk about things. On the other, I can imagine her telling me something eventually that I would have to tell my sister. Where is the line? And if it was not all I had heard, then what is??

In this case, I did not tell my sister any of it. She would absolutely want to know, and I think would be disappointed or even hurt if she found out I had withheld this from her. But my niece has a right to the same respect my sister gets, and there are definitely secrets I keep for my sister. I don't think this topic is going to hurt my niece, so I think I'm pretty safe not telling my sister. But we've entered some fraught territory already.

And even worse, my sister was not willing to believe me. As a result I had to outright lie.

"She really is a good kid Kate."

"You are keeping things from me."

"No, really, I am not."

"Has she asked you for anything?"

"No."

"Birth Control?"

"Kate!"

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First (and Second) Touch

After that evening, a tension emerged between us.

Nothing obvious, and hard to put a finger on really. On the surface nothing changed. She was still talkative, we had our routines, I gave all my opinions and thoughts, we played cards, shopped, watched TV, ordinary life. But there were pauses, openings, an added feeling between us, a warmth and pleasure that covered me when I looked at her. It was this pleasurable tension, attraction and arousal. Like the feeling of melting chocolate. Like a shell was there one day and gone the next, leaving this extra sensitive layer beneath our skins. It didn't help it was spring with the weather noticeably warming, adding sunlight, injecting libido and desire into everything. Maybe she did not feel it, but it seemed she did. She certainly played it, and from that day forward I was 'Jimmy.'

That name, my new name, one I had never been called before, changed us.

One other thing. She liked to come down for coffee in the morning, just before I was ready to leave for work. The coffee was already made, I had long since been making extra in the pot for her, and I had already had breakfast. Whenever Rachel came down, she wore tight sweatpants and T-shirt. They had High School names and slogans printed on the front. She had one pair of sweats that said pink right over her butt. A little suggestive. There had been mornings she wore only a long tee, with bare legs, her top just covering her behind - but on warmer days. She was always barefoot, and her hair a nice dark tangle fallen over her eyes, sometimes pulled back and clipped. She always wore a little make up, lip gloss, but not in the morning when she met me to say goodbye and have her first cup of coffee. She had such a fresh look in the morning, large eyes, and kind of a groggy demeanor.

But the new thing, the thing that was completely different, was when I would get my bags and say my good days, she would walk up to me and say "See you Jimmy!" and kiss me. A peck really, a short kiss, on the lips. At first it surprised me, and I started a bit, thought about putting a stop to it all. The feeling that ran through me, a warm happiness. She, balancing herself against my chest with her hand, "Bye. Bye. Jimmy. See you tonight!" I never sought a longer kiss or anything like it. Utterly innocent. I remained passive, though in my heart of hearts it sent a shiver through me. Not lust exactly, but a wonderful morning shiver. Joy. Human connection. I had determined many mornings to put a stop to it, but at the relevant moment never did. Some mornings she would wrinkle her nose after the kiss.

It became habit, automatic.

The nose wrinkle was when her lips slipped slightly higher onto my upper lip from my lower lip, which resulted in my mustache scraping her upper lip. She would wrinkle her nose. It tickled. It was a very similar reaction to when I had kissed Lisa. I had had a mustache and beard for many many years.