Chapter 2

The conversation had been tabled, so I didn’t bring it up again. I wasn’t the president of this confab, or whatever you wanted to call it. Uncle Bob tabled it, so he had to be the one to bring it up for further consideration. That was the way I felt.

On the other hand, after two days went by and it didn’t come up again, I decided I might be able to encourage him to bring it back up.

This is when, that summer, it got too hot in the house to wear the pajamas my mother had packed for me. I should explain, here, that modesty reigned supreme at our house. Bare skin was not welcome at the table, or in the living room, or anywhere outside the bathroom, for that matter. My parents had apparently “gotten it out of their systems” as kids, because they didn’t engage in lots of hugs and kisses and little interchanges of public displays of affection. My brother and I both wore pajamas to bed. That’s all I’d ever known.

But Uncle Bob had seen me in my panties.

So I decided a T shirt and panties could become my “summertime” pajamas.

We fixed the fence on a Tuesday. I wore my new PJs on the following Thursday night.

I had no reason to show them to him. We normally just went to bed when it got late. We didn’t engage in the “Good night [so and so]” thing, or do good night hugs, or any of that. Usually, both of us were tired and after supper we just took a shower and went to bed. Both of us read in bed, but I never made it more than a few pages before I dozed off. I suspect it was the same for him.

It was for this reason that I decided I needed to go get a good night hug. It was an excuse to appear before him in my new jammies. I admit it. I wanted to see what his eyes did. It did not occur to me that Uncle Bob might be one of the millions of people in America who sleep in the raw. I didn’t know about them, back then. I thought everybody owned and wore pajamas.

When I breezed into his bedroom he was bent over, facing away from me. He was in the process of raising his right foot out of his boxers. His cock and balls were hanging down like some odd, stumpy middle leg. His ass was so white it looked like paper.

“Oh!” I yipped, completely flabbergasted by what I was seeing.

He whirled and that stumpy, middle leg swung out from his body and, for a brief instant, pointed at me before it kept going, drunken and unable to stay upright. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I thought “sausage” and “worm” and “hot dog” but none of those fit. Worm was the closest, because the skin looked like the skin of a worm, but it was too short and fat to be a worm. My dad had taken me fishing with him one time, and the night crawlers we used for bait were long and skinny.

“You wanted something?” he asked. I could tell he was trying to act normal, but was flustered. That actually made me feel a little better.

“Um ... I ... ah ... came to get a ... um ... good night hug,” I stammered.

“Dressed like that?” Now I heard something closer to his normal voice. “This is new,” he commented, further.

“It’s too hot to wear regular pajamas,” I said, weakly.

“Do you still want the hug?” he asked.

I finally lifted my eyes from his penis. He was smiling at me! Laughing at me!

“Should I put my pajamas on first?” he asked. “Or is this good enough?”

“This isn’t fair!” I blurted.

“Fair? What does fair have to do with anything?” he asked.

“You’ve done all this kind of thing before,” I complained. “You know how to act, what to do. And you shouldn’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” he said. “Uh oh.”

I heard something in his voice when he said “Uh oh” that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“What?” I asked, looking around. I expected my parents to jump out of the bathroom, yelling, “Surprise!” and then seeing us like this and having two whole litters of kittens.

“You may recall how I said you were ... ah ... cute?”

“You never said I was cute,” I argued. “You said I had a great rack.”

“I was telling the truth,” he said.

If his eyes hadn’t flickered downwards, I might have stood there for a long time, clueless. But when they went down, they didn’t go to my breasts. They sort of just jerked down and then right back up. So I looked down, too.

We had a section on human reproduction in health class. I’d never seen one, but I knew in theory what an erection was. Suddenly, I was looking at my very first one. I only got a glimpse of it, though, before he turned his back to me.

“It would be inappropriate for me to hug you like this,” he said. “Good night.”

I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to stay there. I wanted him to turn around and face me again. I wanted ... more ... except I couldn’t articulate what “more” meant, even in my own mind. And I knew he was embarrassed, and that if I stayed, he might get mad. I didn’t want Uncle Bob to be mad at me.

“Night,” I said, and I turned and literally ran back to my bedroom, like some scared little girl.

I plopped down on my bed, trying to be disgusted with how badly everything seemed to have gone. I couldn’t be disappointed, though. I had seen my first penis. And it had gone from soft and short and floppy, to an erection. I knew what that meant, in a cloudy, misty kind of way. Guys got erections when they were turned on. Guys got erections when they wanted to have sex. Except I also knew that boys at school got them all the time. Girls - at least some girls - looked for them, like people on boats go whale watching. There were little signs that a boy might be stiff in his pants. Guys thought they were being clever by carrying books in a way that covered their groins, but who does that naturally? Your arms hang at the sides, not in the front. You’d see a guy grab his crotch and move things around. Or you could just see a bulge that had definition, in terms of length. One of those girls I mentioned might nudge a friend and dart her eyes towards a guy, and whisper, “Thar she blows.” Then they’d giggle.

But with the number of “whale sightings” that routinely went on at school, it couldn’t mean all those guys were in the middle of an “I want sex!” episode. So I wasn’t sure exactly how to interpret Uncle Bob’s boner. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking about it. Slowly, I came to the conclusion that it had been because of me. I didn’t know if it was my new PJs, or because he was naked and I was there. I had a hard time believing that me just being there could result in that. I was “there” a lot during the day and I’d never seen any indication that he had a whale in his pants. Of course I hadn’t looked for a whale, either.

Thinking of whales made me suddenly think of “Moby Dick.” I’d read that the previous summer. The “dick” comparison made me giggle, and then laugh, until I turned over and buried my face in my pillow so he wouldn’t hear me.

Eventually I turned off the light, but I was too excited to go to sleep. I had masturbated before, but only rarely. Once in a while I’d get fired up, usually after seeing a romantic comedy at the movies.

I did that now, and thought about Uncle Bob’s whale. I grinned, but didn’t giggle.

It felt wonderful. I could feel warmth flooding my body and I kicked off the covers, spreading my legs. My panties felt confining, so I pulled my knees up and tugged them off. I felt lewd, with my legs spread wide, even though it was dark. Usually I just rubbed my clit until I felt enough delicious tingles that I was happy. I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d ever had an actual orgasm. That’s like answering the question, “Have you ever been in love?” How can you tell? I mean there’s no sign that pops up in the sky that says, “Congratulations, Cassie! You’re officially in love!” There’s no sign for the other, either.