Wednesday Evenings with Babs Pt. 06

And so it was over. At least for me it was. But do not think for one second that good ol' Babs had resolved to change her ways. By the end of that month, after weeks of it being vacant of unfamiliar vehicles, Boy Tuesdays' car was once again parked there on Tuesday night. Somehow he must have weathered the storm. There was a different car from the one that had squalled its tires away on that fateful Thursday night. And of course, another adolescent auto had replaced mine on Wednesday night.

'Enjoy the pussy supply while it lasts then masturbate to the memories when it's gone'. Now I was there, and it wasn't such a bad place after all. It now became a challenge to avoid her around the office to prevent any uncomfortable situations for us both. This turned out to be fairly easy to do.

The need to distance myself from Babs did not diminish the memories of our encounters and the permanent changes they made to my psyche. I was still a very human, not quite twenty years old man-child who had been a slave to raging hormones even before my cock first plunged into that magical opening between her legs. My adolescent curiosity about sex was an appetite that had been whetted and had become an overwhelming need driven by the experiences I had with her. There is no doubt these things would have developed with someone else or maybe a number of 'someone else's. The process might have been more haphazard with mixed outcomes. I would have learned fucking about doggie style through an experience with this woman and eating pussy with that one.

But it was Babs who put the process into overdrive and on a very compressed timeline. She took me to school, organized my sexual thinking and awareness, and introduced me to erotic pleasures my youthful imagination could not have conjured on its own. To this day I cannot conclude whether she had no idea of the journey she had taken me on, or she knew exactly what she was doing. I could only conclude that for her it was all about the conquest. Adding another notch to her bedpost. More initials on a calendar. But when her interest in a particular boy toy had been depleted he was discarded, and a replacement was found, seduced, and ensnared.

I still had the last pair of panties she had given me, and unless she demanded them back I was not about to return them to her voluntarily. Anything to let the dog continue to slumber. However, at one point I chuckled to myself thinking about the ruckus that might erupt were I to knock on her door of those nights when one of her boy toys was there, and hand them to her saying 'I thought you might want these back'.

============================

The Great Escape

ON Saturday, April 15 1969 those memories and masturbation fantasies were completely disrupted by a dose of harsh reality. My pre-induction notice barged its way into my mailbox. Uncle Sam wants you. April 15th, how ironic. Now I had my out, but now it was a race to find a way to lessen my chances of being sent to Vietnam. Short of being rejected for service by the 'induction' or draft process, I knew there was little chance of avoiding what was called by some 'compulsory' military service, which meant the Army and almost certainly ending up in the jungles of 'Nam. The only thing I figured I could do to exercise any control whatsoever over my fate was to join either the Navy or the Air Force. Members of those branches could still wake up to find themselves in Southeast Asia. Many did and many died. But I figured that joining either one would stack the deck in favor of still being alive and in one piece when I was handed my discharge papers. Both required a four year commitment, which was a real 'ouch!'. My final choice is something I will only refer to as 'Classified Information - Top Secret'.

I decided to withhold the news of my draft notice and joining the service from my employer until I had to let them know. It ended up being a case of 'giving two weeks notice'. The process of enlisting... the physical then waiting for the opening at the basic training facility dragged out for another month.

Despite my conflicted feelings, there was something I wanted from Babs. I wanted a picture of her. What I sought and what I would get blew my mind. I had a little Kodak Instamatic camera and I knew it would be a tricky maneuver to get her to stand in front of it. So I came up with a little plan to get it with the gentle application of social pressure. On my last day of work, I went from co-worker to co-worker, taking a picture of each on the premise of something to remember them by.

Now it was Bab's turn. I made sure she had seen me taking pictures of others, and when I walked into her office there were a couple of other co-workers there whose picture I had already taken. I figured it would be hard for her to refuse me in front of them. To my surprise, not only did she cheerfully go along with the idea, but she stepped out from behind her desk and struck this saucy pose, the kind you might expect from a shapely woman in a bikini instead of an all-business middle manager.

She turned to one of those other co-workers and said "Hey Elaine... Take his camera and get a picture of me and the cutie pie soldier-to-be. No matter where he goes, I don't want him to forget all of us beautiful middle-aged women he is going to have the job of protecting!"

She draped her left arm over my shoulder and tilted her head towards my cheek, and Elaine captured an image, along with the one I had taken, that I still have to this day in the form of scanned tif files.

As I left her office I looked back to see her and Elaine standing there, watching as I walked away and smiling. I figured it was the last time I'd ever see her. But I was wrong.

Finally, it was time to go. I picked up my little box filled with my personal items and had not quite made it to the elevator when I heard a now familiar voice call out my name. "Hey James... wait!" was all she said. I turned around to see Babs walking towards me at a brisk pace. In her hand was a manila envelope.

She offers up the envelope to me and in a hushed voice says "I'm counting on you to protect this. To keep it safe so that only you and I know of it. I know I can trust you to take care of it. But... Do NOT open it until you are completely alone and miles away from this building! Preferably alone in your bedroom, okay?"

Flummoxed, I replied "Well... sure... you can always count on me for that."

"Goodbye James. No matter where the service sends you, no matter what you are called on to do, I pray that you will be safe."

"Thank you Babs. I'll never forget you, and I hope you are always happy...and safe."

I turned away and walked the final thirty steps or so to the elevator and pushed the down button. I looked back expecting to see her still standing there, but she was gone. Just like that... poof!

I never saw her again.

As soon as I found a place to pull over, I grabbed the envelope and all but tore it open. Inside was another, smaller manila envelope with the tabs bent to keep it closed. Inside that second envelope was one final surprise from Babs. At first, it just looked like a personal message from her, perhaps a final goodbye. As I slid it out of the envelope there were words that read "I am sorry for the way things ended for us. I will always cherish the times we had. Love, Barbara K".

Under the message were two lipstick blots in her pink lipstick. One had the shape of a tightly puckered kiss, the in the other, her lips formed a sort of letter 'O'. I smiled and thought 'She wants me to think of all those superb acts of oral stimulation that talented mouth had treated my cock to'.

But the message and the lipstick blots were nothing compared to what I saw when I turned the paper over. It was not a piece of paper in the strict sense at all. It was the back side of a beautifully composed, wonderfully lit, and crisply focused 5 x 7 black and white photograph of her, NAKED from head to toe and standing on another pair of 'fuck me' shoes! I wondered who it was that had the privilege of taking it and developing it. One of her boy toys who happened to be a shutterbug, perhaps?

As the day I was to leave for basic training approached I realized I had to figure out what to do about the picture. Same for the panties. I had heard enough about basic training to understand that one should be very careful about what personal items you had brought with you. In the case of these two particular items, it was pretty obvious that it would be a dangerous risk to try to smuggle them in. At the very least they would probably be seized, and at the very worst... well... I didn't want to find out. So it came down to a choice between tossing them, or keeping them and trying to find some place to hide them at home. Some place so clever that in the event I croaked my parents would not find them by casually going through my 'personal effects'. In the end, I decided to contribute the panties to the local landfill, putting them in a small brown paper bag, crumpling the bag up, then discreetly stuffing it in the garbage can the night before it was picked up. The picture was an item I wanted to keep, and decided if it came right down to it I'd rent a safety deposit box in a bank and pay for a full year. I then hit on an idea that involved a bit of risk-taking. Late one night I pulled out the two drawers from the nightstand next to my bed so I could turn the stand over. With the picture still in the manila envelope that Babs had placed it in, I used duct tape to tape it to the underside of the nightstand's bottom. When I came home on leave after training and just before going to my first actual duty station assignment, I retrieved it.

What happened to Lizzie and I, you might ask? Well, upon my departure for basic training, it didn't take long and didn't take much for us to drift apart and then fall apart. It wasn't a case of me getting a 'Dear John' letter, but quite the opposite. Sad to say, but after my experience with Babs I simply lost interest in Lizzie. And so once I figured out a way to express it, and after I left for basic, I sent her a gently worded letter suggesting that she might consider moving on from me.

============================

The Military Years May 1969 thru May 1973

My military years were pretty lean as far as bedroom action was concerned. After the unique experience I had with Babs, I was thrust back into the 'real world' where a twenty-year-old was 'supposed to be'. At least that was what the 'world' told me. You know, trying to find female companionship and intimacy with girls more in my age range? Note the use of the term 'girls'.

I dated a few, bedded a few, and even shacked up with one for about four months. It ended when I came 'home' to our little love nest to find her and all her personal belongings gone and a terse note. As a fellow member of the military, she claimed to have been abruptly 'reassigned' somewhere else and could not reveal where it was or what it was about. How in the world did she think I was going to buy that crap? What a laughable cloak and dagger! What a dingbat! Things in the military didn't happen that fast, and her particular service specialty would not ever put her in a situation that required urgency.

Despite its bizarre beginning and even more bizarre ending, my 'affair' with Babs had set a high bar that these kiddos could not ever hope to measure up to. It wasn't some hard and fast yardstick that I used to weed out choices in female companionship. It was more of a subtle influence that worked to steer my preferences, one that was admittedly self limiting. When with many of these younger girls, there were moments when I felt I had regressed into the role of a teenage babysitter.

As it turned out, joining the military became not just a way to fulfill my military service obligation. It also represented a cutting of the apron strings with the town I had lived in since birth. The place where I had gone to school from the first grade through high school graduation. The place where I had that first real 'grown up' job that led to my fateful crossing of paths with Babs. My military years opened my eyes to wonders and opportunities in places that existed beyond the horizon of its city limits. When I would return there on leave, I began to look upon my 'hometown' as tired and decaying, with a populace full of people set in their ways. I found myself thinking that the best view of it was in my rearview mirror.

Once discharged I built a new life in another city some fifteen hundred miles away. After settling in there I went on a six-year tear flirting with, wooing and seducing a long line of 'older women'. They consisted primarily of divorcees or women who had 'shacked up' with someone for an extended period. My new 'hometown' was a happy hunting ground full of both.

These women ranged between five and eleven years older than me. I naively thought I could find 'true love' with one of them, but the reality was that talk of 'romance' and concepts like 'commitment' would send them all but fleeing the scene. All they seemed to want was a little company and a lot of sex. After a few such experiences you might say I had an attitude adjustment. I decided to give them what they wanted. 'If you can't romance them then fuck them. As often as they want it and for as long as we both remained 'interested'. Whenever I was the one who lost interest ending it was easy and efficient. Just roll out the romance talk.

You might say I became Babs in reverse. These hookups ranged from one-night stands to situations that might limp along for a month or two. Many of the women were quite attractive, and those 'wear and tear' blemishes they sported only made them more so, at least to me. Surprisingly only a handful had any kids. In the case of the divorcees, it was fun to see what some other guy had hauled home on wedding day.

I know that to some people how I have described the above will come across as cocky. As if I fancied myself to have become a real stud. Far from it. This was the environment that prevailed from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s before concerns about things like HIV began to spoil the fun for everybody. Sex between singles and the unattached was as casual and no strings attached as it could be. Once I had set aside the notion of anything real developing with any of these women and it became obvious what most of them were looking for, you might say I cashed in. I was a 'beneficiary' of the social climate of those times. As for any personal success I had, I think it was mostly a case of these women being flattered at getting attention from some young buck. I doubt that I would have had as many notches in my bedpost had I invested the same amount of time, energy and human capital chasing women who were my age or younger. I didn't have much aptitude for or patience with that process.

In the final accounting, twenty eight women had received at least one dose of my sperm. I am grateful for the memories these experiences provided, and even more grateful that I didn't catch anything from any of them, or worse, knock any of them up.

My adventure in this 'lifestyle' came to an end when I bedded one MILF too many. When I least expected it, romance broke out between her and I. Love blossomed and bachelorhood ended for me at the tender age of thirty when I married my then thirty-four-year-old wife Sandy. That is a tale that would require another multi-chapter story on Literotica, but I digress. I'll leave it by saying that as our relationship and communication evolved I was able to open up to her about my experience with Babs and the effect it had on the way I saw 'older women'. It helped her to understand why I would be attracted to her, a woman four years older than I. I was also able to indulge in 'full disclosure' about the life I was leading up to the point where I met her. And even though all of this occurred before I 'popped the question', when I did she leaped into my arms and said 'YES! YES! YES!.

============================

An Influence That Shaped My Life

Babs passed away on August 20, 2003, at the age of seventy-seven. In an ultimate irony, the date fell on a Wednesday that year. One thousand, eight hundred and nine other Wednesday evenings had been sandwiched in between that date and December 4th, 1968, the last Wednesday evening we had been together, the one before that fateful Friday night two days later. As I am not a person who does a very proactive job of 'keeping in touch with the folks back home', I didn't find out about her passing until two months later. In October, the month when it had all begun thirty-five years before.

I tracked down her obituary online and it filled in a few details that allowed me to come to reasonable conclusions about her life since we parted. The only surviving child mentioned in it was her boy. There was no reference to her being survived by or preceded in death by a husband, so I assumed she remained single by her own choice. She stayed at that same company for another twenty years after I had left it.

From what I could figure based on available information, she lived in that same house until the end. I wonder how many other young guys like me found their way to it. How many other Boy Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays had their initials on how many calendars for how many years? Surely she finally reached the point where she had to hang it up, but when? I wonder about these details, but frankly I don't care.

I was furious when I realized the ride she had taken me on, and for a time fearful of the consequences that might have come my way because of it. Despite all of that, it is impossible to deny the influence she had on my life and in the way I saw 'mature' women. The way I saw them physically, psychologically and emotionally. It was much more than her mattress top talents and how she became my defacto personal sex mentor. Just as important was how I felt when we were alone together. For a few precious hours on a few priceless Wednesday nights it was as if I had become a full fledged member of the adult world.

As the years have passed, many of the names, faces and naked bodies of that roster of women I bedded have faded from memory. But not Babs. She was always 'there', and in many ways she still is. Though I could not have loved her, I did not hate her either. How could I hate a person whose lifestyle I had emulated and enjoyed, even if the gender and age factors were reversed?

=================================

Alone Again, Naturally

My beloved Sandy is also gone, having passed away six years ago. Due to a medical issue, she was unable to bear children. Being a childless widower might sound like a recipe for profound loneliness, but our life together was so sweet and our happiness so genuine that just the memories of it have had a way of sustaining me. I tell people that I am still married, it's just that my wife is no longer here physically. I suppose had our union been less than what it was that I might not be able to see it that way.

Before I retired she and I acquired and renovated an old fashioned frame farmhouse in a rural setting a couple of hours away from the bustle of the city. Situated on ten acres, it has a couple of groves of trees, but most of it is pasture land that in Summer takes on a mantle of green that is so bright one might think it would glow at night by the light of a full moon.

The house has one of those nice, wide, old-fashioned wrap-around porches down two sides. One of the lasting, living memories of Sandy are well cared for potted plants that hang from chains above the railing. After her passing I made a promise to myself to give them the same TLC they received from her. A porch swing and two rocking chairs provide places to sit. Whenever conditions are right and the mood strikes me, I'll sit in one of the rocking chairs, watch the sunset, and reflect on the past.