Chapter 4: So Long as The Mood is Right – No Static at All

Next time was Leslie’s place again, the following Friday. I had driven down in the afternoon with some snapper I had caught that morning, rowing out in the predawn darkness to cast softbaits into the shallow waters of my bay as the sun came up over the headland. Leslie had undertaken to come straight home from work and prepare salad and desert so we could have an early meal and “spend some time together” – a euphemism we both remembered from the seventies.

As usual, we were easy and warm with each other, sharing more and more intimately without worrying too much about how our particular revelations would be received. Leslie talked about what she described as her “crazy time”, a two year binge with a hallucinogenic amphetamine every weekend, about the mixed effect that that had had on her second marriage and on her kids, and about how easy it had been to stop completely, once she had decided to. I shared some regrets about my time at an experimental therapeutic community that had ended badly for many of the participants, and my subsequent “spiritual celibacy”.

We talked more about our respective families and the challenges our kids had faced growing up in the world and the mistakes and triumphs of parenting, then we moved to cuddle on her sofa again

“Are you ready to tell me about your grandad?” I figured that that was as good a place as any to start our exploration and I wanted to separate the story and the telling from the sex that I was pretty sure would follow. I knew we both had very powerful and exciting feelings associated with this territory, but I also knew that there was lots of guilt and fear involved for Leslie, and that it probably wouldn’t be safe for her to open that particular can of worms with me while my lust for young teenagers and my guilty excitement about that was driving me. So my plan was to get the straight story on the sofa, and hope for fireworks in the bedroom later.

We cuddled close enough to have most parts of our bodies in contact, but with our heads far enough apart to see each other’s faces without glasses. Presbyopia Rules!

“My grandad was a wonderful man. He was my hero when I was little. I was an only child. My father was in the army and he was very strict and distant. He had volunteered to go to the Korean War when I was still a toddler, and he got wounded and came home. His leg healed, but Mum said he was never the same after that. He drank a lot, and he crashed his car and died in hospital when I was nine.” Leslie had a catch in her voice, and I reached out to stroke her face gently.

“So your Mum’s dad stepped up?”

“Yes. Grandma had died three years before and Mum and me moved in. I think Grandad was pleased to have some family in the house. We were both really pleased to be living with him in the place where Mum grew up. It was good to know we had settled down permanently after moving from camp to camp for Dad’s postings.”

“That was on the North Shore?” I had no idea how I knew that - perhaps a half remembered reference from an earlier conversation.

“Yes, Grandad was a semi-retired lawyer, and we had a house in Devonport, across the harbour from the city. He used to catch the seven thirty ferry to his office in the morning, and come home for tea on the five thirty boat. Except when he went to the pub. Then he would catch the six thirty, and come home a wee bit loose and smelling of beer.”

I didn’t care about the bloody ferry, or about the effects of New Zealand’s strange licensing laws and drinking culture. I wanted to hear about Grandad’s cock! Leslie seemed to read my mind again

“I saw his genitals by accident a few times, but never hard. The only time I saw his erection was on Rangitoto.

“On the island? How did you come to be there?”

“He leased a bach on the west side facing the city, just a two room place on the shoreline. It was fairly primitive, no road, no electricity, a five hundred gallon tank for rainwater, cooking on a primus under a lean-to, and a long drop up the back in the trees. A short drop really. The ground was pretty much solid lava, so they used gelignite to blow a hole and we had to put lime down it every day. It still smelled a bit. We spent three weeks there every Xmas. Grandad had a mate with a launch, and he would take us and all our supplies from the Devonport wharf over to the island. We would row ashore in our dinghy, and he would come back for us three weeks later.”

I listened with a moderate degree of interest. The summer holiday arrangements of middle class Aucklanders in the sixties were undoubtedly fascinating, but a story about a young teenager getting turned on by an old man’s cock was the bit I was hanging out for. Well not hanging out actually – more standing up. Once again, Leslie seemed to read my mind.

“It happened in the summer of 62. I had gone out to the long drop just as it got light, and had finished my business and walked a few steps off the little path between the outhouse and the door of the bach. I was looking across the harbour at the city, when Grandad came out. He was half asleep, and he just had a towel round him. He was hard, and I could see the shape of him under the towel. I was interested, I had never seen an erect penis, but I had no particular feelings about this one. I had never thought of grandad in any sexual way at all. Then he stopped and scratched himself through the towel. I stayed still, waiting to see what would happen next and very slightly embarrassed, since I had never seen him do that before.”

“All men do.” I interrupted, and Leslie seemed slightly impatient that I was interrupting the story I had waited so long to hear.

“I know that now, but up to then I had only seen boys at school do it, and a few men make a discreet readjustment when they thought no one was looking.”

“How did you get to see him?”

“He must have enjoyed the scratching – or felt horny or something. He put the towel over his shoulder, and scratched again with both hands. Then he started to play with himself, picking up his cock and balls and cupping his sac. He jacked himself a few times then took his hand away and I saw his whole cock in the flesh – the purplish head, the veins, the shaft, his grey pubes, the lot!”

“He had no idea you were there?”

“Nah, not at that stage. He pleasured himself for a few seconds more before it hit me”

“What?”

“I had a jolt like a fucking lightning bolt inside me. Right at the bottom of my belly. I ached! I finally understood sex! I juiced up straight away, and within seconds I could feel it starting to run down my thigh under my sundress, and I wanted him inside me! I wanted him to shoot sperm inside me and make me pregnant.”

“Wow! Did you know much about sex before that?”

“I knew about the birds and bees, and about the mechanics, and I had been enjoying jilling myself off occasionally for a couple of years before that, just using my fingers on my clit, but that was nothing like this experience. I had had little orgasms, but had never been turned on anything remotely like this. I had let a couple of boys feel my tits and try kissing during socials at intermediate school and that was naughty and exciting, but I suddenly knew what sex really meant. It wasn’t about penises and vaginas in general terms. SEX was about his big hard veiny cock in my sopping wet cunt! It was about him pushing into me and filling my belly with sperm, making a baby.”

“What happened then?”

“I grabbed at myself through my sundress and made some sort of noise. Granddad turned his head and saw me. We both turned scarlet. He looked really upset, and I just wanted to die. He started to cover himself with the towel and say something, but I turned and ran off up the hill. From the city, Rangitoto doesn’t look very steep except at the top, but even down by the baches on the shore it is all scoria boulders under the Pohutukawa trees. I had tennis shoes on but Grandad was barefoot so there was no way he could follow me off the path. He stopped at the longdrop, stammering apologies.”

“He thought he had frightened you, and he certainly felt very guilty and upset about what he knew you had seen”. I have a well-developed attentive and caring role. Leslie was in my arms on her sofa, but from the tension in her voice and body, I knew that there was a part of her that was still picking her way uphill through the Pohutukawa forest on Rangitoto. The memories from fifty years before were obviously still vivid and powerful in more than a sexual way.

“Frightened is right. I was terrified he would come after me and smell me or see my juices. I could smell myself and I was so guilty and ashamed. But on another level I wanted him to come after me and fuck me. My feelings were completely overwhelming and SO wrong!” Leslie’s body stayed tense

“What did your Grandad do?”

“He went into the outhouse and stayed there a long time. I went down to the sea and washed myself, then I went back to bed in the room I shared with Mum. Grandad came back to the bach and got dressed, then he took the dinghy and went fishing.”

“Was anything ever said? In the sixties – probably not”

“He must have said something to Mum. Next day, she talked to me about “pisshards” and said most men wake with an erection, and it isn’t about sex. But Grandad never said anything to me, and he treated me exactly the same as before.”

“How was that?”

“Wonderfully. He was warm and loving and funny and caring. There was never any trace of anything yucky in what he said to me or the way he looked at me. He had already backed off a bit in the rough and tumble play and wrestling we used to do before I started to get tits and curves.” I took another risk, thinking I should lighten the tone a bit and return at least some focus on the sexual connection between Leslie and me before I tried to open up the important piece of the story.

“Tits and curves?” More like nipples and bumps!” I was careful to keep a teasing laugh in my voice as I reached for one of them. Leslie dropped into flirt mode immediately.

“My nipples started to grow long before anything else, and they’re still bigger than my breasts! Mum brought me a bra long before I had anything but nipples to put in it. But Grandad never seemed to notice – either before or after Rangitoto.”