Chapter 2

Webster Groves - Missouri - August 1984

I met Skyler a few days after I rented the tiny little house between the two big houses in the middle of the block in the classy hundred-year-old suburb of Saint Louis. Sky was babysitting the children of my next door neighbor and I was out in my backyard doing some work.

My neighbor was a nurse, and Sky was over there every morning watching her kids who would often be outside playing when I would go out to jog. Sky lived in the next neighborhood over and was a runner too. So we talked about running and the places to run nearby. It was fun talking to a beautiful woman. I missed Laura and Paulette. Sky was interesting and we had something in common.

There was a bit of stuff to clean up in the yard, but I parsed it so that I had a reason to be outside. Skyler was obviously bored, I mean she was half my age, and beautiful, and talking to me. So when the kids went back to school in mid-August I asked her if she wanted to come jogging with me. We had a few nice runs, but then one day my leg was acting up and I couldn’t run.

She was a good sport about it. I made us some coffee, and she saw what little stuff passed for decor in my house. Pictures of family, friends, and guys had I served with. Since it was the cause of canceling our jog, the nature of my injury came up. She didn’t react in horror, but then again I am not certain she really understood everything I had said.

A few days later we were out on a jog and she asked me a couple questions she had been too shy to ask before.

“So you can’t...” she said.

“I can still enjoy the feel and taste of a woman,” I said, “I can make her happy, that makes me happy.”

“Taste,” she said.

“Yeah you know,” I said.

“Oh, black guys don’t do that,” she said.

“Wow, look who is engaging in cultural stereotyping,” I said.

“OK,” she said breaking a smile, “I don’t know any guys who are gonna put their ‘face in the place.’”

“Sure, ya do,” I said, “your kickin’ the ass of one right now.”

I don’t think that I really expected to get the response that I received from Sky that day, but it was a welcome surprise.

“You are just teasing me,” she said as we reached my street.

“Come inside,” I said, “I’ll show you.”

“I’m all sweaty and icky,” she said.

“I have a shower,” I said “and clean towels.”

She didn’t accept my offer to lather her up that day. But she has many times subsequently. She went first; then I went. She was naked sitting on my bed when I walked out of the bathroom. What a beautiful sight, she looked at me and saw with her heart what wasn’t there. Through a series of orgasms, increasing in intensity, I showed her that she was highly desirable, at least to me.

I took her to the moon and back on my bed. I fed her lunch, then I took her to New Jersey and back. Seriously, I had an six-thirty pm departure. It was quite a day for Sky, a nice jog, her first ever receipt of oral, a tasty BLT, her first white dude, and then her first flight, sitting in the jump seat in the cockpit of a Lockheed L-188 flying literal tons of car parts to the Ford Assembly Plant in Edison, New Jersey.

Her first experience at cohabitation followed soon thereafter.

Laura

Jalapeno - Texas - August 1964

God has a sense of humor, the best sexual relationship in my life began and ended with the same physiological phenomenon. Those events separated by six months from one another. A doctor might say that my big sister Laura’s menstrual cycle was erratic, but it wasn’t, it was nice and steady before and after those two events. A psychologist might say that the events were stress induced. Maybe, but I am going to stick with divine sense of humor.

Laura is a few weeks more than two years older than I am. Back in February of 1964 I had just started my final semester of high school; Laura had just acquired her two-year accounting degree in December. She had moved back to Jalapeno to try and modernize the ranch’s finances.

In the process she had reconnected with Merle, her old high school beau. But a mere two days ago his reaction to her being “a little late” tore her apart. The next day she wasn’t late anymore, but she was really glad she hadn’t put off the discussion.

Uncle Carl, mom’s older brother, did not have any children. Mom had four. It was the kind of math even a high school dropout could comprehend. Laura stood to inherit a quarter of the spread. Throughout high school she had been pursued by those selfish little pricks that just wanted her for the money she had, and the money she stood to have one day.

Merle, the only one who was different had just reacted to the possibility of her being pregnant. And ... Well, his suggestion was not one she had contemplated him making. Growing up we had always talked about ‘important to us’ stuff with each other, so I owned the shoulder that she came to cry upon.

I skipped school and we drove the pickup out to the dilapidated old cabin by the fishing pond. There was a little bit of ole Cletus’ homemade liquor hidden out there. We took a couple of blankets with us in deference to the temperature outside.

We sat and talked in the cabin; lighting a fire in the fireplace to warm us on that fifty degree day. We had a few drinks of Cletus’ finest and we realized that we had far more than a little bit of coincidental self interest. We genuinely cared about each other. We said it would just be a temporary thing. Nobody could ever find out. Other people would not understand.

We loved each other, truly loved each other; so it should not be surprising ... That afternoon we actually made love with each other, on the cabin’s wooden floor in front of the fireplace. We were comfortable and happy atop of, and covered by those blankets that we had the foresight to bring.

We didn’t have to think about it on that day, but we were very, very careful. Laura had actually considered her old boyfriend to be a potential husband and father. I was going to A&M in September. We said it would not be forever; but after a while I thought forever would be really nice. I broached the subject a couple of times during the next six months and we seriously discussed the pros and cons.

People idealize their first, or in my case second romance. But it was real and it was sweet and we had sorta worked out a fantasy land way to keep it going after I went off to College Station. Then after four perfectly normal months Laura was late again. It couldn’t be, we had been so careful. My reaction was the opposite of Merle’s, but the situation was different; she had sorta wanted to be pregnant once she got over the surprise six months ago.

We remained close, but the magic spell had been broken. She wouldn’t, couldn’t risk it. I wanted to, but I loved her too much to put her through that kind of stress. Later she felt guilty for us having broken up as lovers, because I might not have gone into the Corps of Cadets if we hadn’t. But like I told her, my being there was my choice. That round got me on my second tour, a tour I did not have to be on.

Taylor’s Craft

Uncle Carl owned one of the twenty-thousand or so copies of William Piper’s Cub. I loved flying that little Loch Haven Yellow airplane around the high dry desert plain of western Texas. Uncle Carl was a cattle rancher, so he had several jobs that the Cub was quite useful for, and in me an eager volunteer to do those jobs.

With no electrical system, to start it you first set the brakes. Then you stood next to Walter Jamouneau’s improvement of Gilbert Taylor’s design, the wide track, forward raked, fat tire main gear. You pulled the laminated wooden propeller through a couple of times: in order to clear potentially damaging liquid residue from the four cylinders of its lille sixty-five horse power air cooled engine.