Copyright© 2002 by Carlos Malenkov

The urge never goes away.

Lying here in bed, in my room at the nursing home, I think back on all the women I've had. Sweet as maple syrup, every one of them. The warm smell of the soft nipple of my high school sweetheart, back before the War that was. It would stand right up, that nipple, when I popped it into my mouth, but, no, she wouldn't let me go much farther than that. Nope. Virginity still meant something in those days.

My first real woman was Polynesian. We were based on Maluka Nui, in the Solomons, 'bout the middle of '43, I guess. Had the Nips on the run by then, and we were building airstrips like mad on every shitty little lump of coral in the South Pacific. I'd gotten a touch of malaria on the Canal, and now here I was playing guard dog to the damned Seabees, watching to see that no sniper took a potshot at those hotshot 'dozer jockeys.

Kathleen her name was, the name the missionaries gave her. I couldn't get my mouth around her native name. Damned if she didn't initiate me into the mysteries, and with none of the nonsense the girls stateside used to insist on. Got right to the point. And whatever else the missionaries taught her, it didn't include the missionary position. From behind I took her that first time, with my right hand across her breast, rubbing her nipple, and my left grabbing on to her hip, so her bucking ass didn't knock me out of her. I still remember her cheeks pounding back against my groin. That was even sweeter than the feel of me inside her. Kathleen. Hell of a name. Hell of a woman.

Memories. They fill out the nights and make the long days pass.

Last week one of the young nurses took an interest in me. Must have liked the stories I told. Felt sorry for the old geezer, did she? She gave me some relief, a "bee-jay," she called it. Felt all right at first, but mostly it just tickled. I patted her on top of the head as she was working hard at it. Nice girl. Meant well. But I don't think I'll ask for an encore.

I remember the first time I took a woman in the back passage. That has more class, somehow, than "fucked her in the ass," as the kids say nowadays. Nothing against realism and honesty in language, but somehow earthiness loses its bite if overdone. Try telling that to some of those hotshot millionaire writers, though.

Anyhow, I had already been married and divorced. It was early in Ike's second term, as I recall, that I met Margaret, or Meg, as she insisted on being called. We were all over each other like minks in heat almost from the start, no matter that we were introduced at a church social. Good dancer. She knew the moves. All the moves. We were already in bed that first night, and I was sleeping over regularly after that. Then she got her period, but that wouldn't stop her, no sir. "Hey, big fellow, I've got another place where you can stick that," sez she. Turns out she liked it even better that way. Got to prefer it, even when not on the rag. Wiggled her butt real nice, she did. It's a shame we never really found anything to talk about. The only thing we had in common was lust, and that's a pretty damn weak glue for binding two people together. Try telling that to some of these hotshot young lovers nowadays.