Chapter 20C

I spent a month getting myself into shape physically. My routines were parceled out over the day. To my mother's dismay I filled an entire shelf of her kitchen cabinets with vitamins and supplements. At first she complained that I was stocking dangerous and illegal drugs. My father and younger half-brothers would eye me suspiciously in the kitchen when they saw me swallowing handfuls of the stuff or making my super protein drink. But the effects were soon forthcoming; I slept better, I worked better, I looked better.

And work! I threw myself into it more than ever. School and the businesses had money coming in steadily. Getting some practice in diplomacy between my cousin Michael and the Ricci's was also paying off with better relations at school. Brother Edmund gave me a spot on the staff of the school paper, which was widely read by their considerably large alumni.

At the end of the school year I was nominated for election as a junior class officer for the coming year. I turned the nomination down; there simply was no time for it. And there was a social aspect to my refusal to get more involved: I got on well, but I still didn't fit in with my classmates. They were good students, but most were sons of privileged families in town. Their major concern was scheduling their next weekend party. Most displayed the gentlemanly dress and manner expected of students at Christian Brothers; under that facade lay typical 1950's attitudes. They were too young for me. Girls were generally referred to as bitches or cunts, more studious kids were admired but were labeled as eggheads. Everyone had a boys' school camaraderie by day, but otherwise the usual cliquish attitudes prevailed among wealthier students. I was more popular with the upperclassmen and the Brothers themselves. And I was one of only a handful of students who actually worked outside of class.

Work wasn't enough to keep my mind off Martha. I wanted entertainment. Love. More immediately, I wanted intimacy. Sex.

In May I started looking for girls to date. In one way or another I met many of them through my huge family's cousins. There was some filtering to do; I wanted passion, and I wanted it quickly, and I didn't have much time for innocent fooling around, teasers, or the usual tarts. This was 1958, and it was the Bible Belt, and the thing to do was to make out in a parked car. The favored seduction technique appeared to be to get a girl drunk. The level of intimacy I was accustomed to and desired required a partner beyond the usual. And I had been with Martha, Ronnie, and Anita and Karen. I had no patience for a case of blue balls.

After several faltering attempts and catastrophic dates, sex came in the form of JoAnn Delmonico. A cousin introduced her to me as "another cousin" -- but she was so distantly related to me through the Lobianco clan that calling her a cousin, as some did, was a considerable stretch.

JoAnn and I had an instant if superficial rapport. When I was introduced to her at a dinner at my Uncle Vic's she stared at me across the table as if she were ready for me to rip her clothes off for dessert. After dinner, while everyone socialized, she managed to keep "finding" me with a bright smile and her mild West Tennessee twang and a cheery, "Oh, Hi! There you are again! I keep bumpin' into you. Seems like we just cain't avoid each other, don't it?

Before the gathering broke up, I made a date with her for the coming weekend. The date was a Sunday afternoon steamboat party on the Mississippi River sponsored by a high school fraternity that some of my classmates belonged to. I seldom attended such functions and wouldn't join a fraternity, but the party was open to anyone at the Brothers. And I wanted to get a sex life going any way I could.

The steamboat ride lasted three hours. During the course of it JoAnn and I broke from the party and spent most of our time strolling around the glass-enclosed second deck. She was flirty, but in an oblique way. On one hand she had an amiable, poised, tolerant manner that made others feel she had known them for years. On the one-to-one level, there was a definite, more adult, experienced way of sending intimate signals with her eyes and expressions and posture: yes, I'd prefer to stand closer to you; Yes, it's okay if you come closer, too. Yes, my shoulder is touching yours, but that's as it should be among friends; Yes, you're the main object of my attention here; Yes, there's a lull in the conversation, but all conversations have lulls. She had a talent for transmitting subliminal messages.

She was impressed that I seemed to be so popular with my classmates, especially with the older movers and shakers. She was impressed that I had a hand in the family business. She was impressed that I had my own car. She herself often worked in her dad's chain of hardware stores and in her mother's charities. The most amazing thing was that she seemed to come out of nowhere, and she seemed to be, somehow, inevitable.

JoAnn was a very attractive young lady who looked a little older than almost seventeen, and acted it. She was a brown-eyed, wavyhaired blonde whose wide mouth and slender, delicate lips looked particularly erotic to me. Some girls had eyes, JoAnn had her alluring mouth. At five-foot-four she had an effortless, breathy laugh and a sophisticated manner -- sophisticated, anyway, for Memphis. She handled herself with an easy, outgoing manner and a dry wit that told me she was no dumb blonde. She had a fit, trim body with small, girlish shoulders, and she knew how to wear clothes that made her look older. She had a graceful physical manner, a gently sloping bosom without the overdone, busty look popular in those days, and supple, well-toned limbs with creamy skin, and a lazy, sexy lilt to her Southern accent. She could easily have made herself look like a Sandra Dee sex doll, for there was something soft and luscious about her. But as with everything she did, like wearing just enough makeup to appear to be wearing hardly any, it was all understated.

Near the party's end, as the steamboat headed back toward its moorings, we were both leaning on the boat railing beside each other on the lower deck, looking out at the wide river and talking with an intimate affability. There was nothing about cultural movements, psychology, philosophy, art. It was all family, school, friends. But there was no awful teenage shyness, no struggle to mince words, no nervous foot shuffling or finger twiddling. Everything between us seemed to fall right into place.

It was as if I'd met another Anita. I tried sizing her up as another version of her. But JoAnn was earthier, more domesticated (JoAnn's self-description was "housebroken", in her words), but just wistful enough to make one suspect there was more to her. I was attracted. I was comfortable. I wanted to fuck her brains out. And, thank goodness, I was not swept away.

I asked her to go out Friday night, my one weekend night off.

She said amiably, "Fine. Friday's fine with me."

"Where would you like to go?"

She shrugged. "Wherever. You pick." She leaned on her forearms on the railing and looked slightly up at me, her shoulders slumped a little, looking fragile, feminine, and utterly available.

I tried for the big one: a date at a drive-in movie. In Memphis, only a gal with ulterior motives and some "experience" with drive-ins would go for it on a second date. I said, "How about the Lamar Drivein? I haven't been there in a while."

She said, unflinching, her eyes steady, and a little curl at one corner of her red mouth, "Sure. Fine with me."

Has JoAnn been around, I asked myself, or has she been nowhere?

On Friday night, I found out.

Friday I took her to dinner at an Italian restaurant operated by another Lobianco uncle of mine, from a part of my stepdad's huge clan unknown to JoAnn's connections. Being hailed and addressed by name during dinner by everyone in the place seemed to work some kind of magic on JoAnn. My Uncle Silvio Vinetti, a big, chesty, older man who always wore a tuxedo on the job and who still had remnants of his accent from the old country, made a special trip to our table to say hello. I introduced him to JoAnn, and he appeared obviously taken with her. He talked briefly to me about my Uncle Vic and the plans for expansion of the other restaurants, and offered me some special training if I were thinking about the restaurant business after college. While Silvio spoke to me, I glanced at JoAnn from the corner of my eye. As she lifted her water glass to her lips her eyes shifted constantly between me and Uncle Silvio, and she seemed to be soaking in every word, sizing up everything. She set her glass down and sat with her elbows propped on the table, her hands loosely folded before her face. And I thought: nice hands; supple neck; graceful movements; something very shrewd going on with her eyes.

After only a few words to me, Uncle Silvio rose to leave, saying, "Don't gotta make up your mind now, y'know? Vic says you doin' a nice job with the folks at the Tremont. You gotta finish the job for Vic first, know what I mean? But think about it. You got half a dozen years to look it over, huh?" He stood up, pat me on the back, and had a special smile for JoAnn. "You two enjoy your meal, uh?"

He left, and for the rest of our short dinner JoAnn sat across from me doing subtle things with her eyes and facial expressions -not exactly staring, not exactly focusing on my mouth, not exactly flirting. She could pull off a sexy lowering of her eyelids which, as soon as I noticed it, she would immediately modify into something more casual and aloof. She remained illusive, fleeting, indirect, always vaguely tempting.

Later, at the drive-in, she displayed no reaction when I parked near the sparsely populated rear of the lot. We had been sitting in my car in the drive-in for not more than half an hour, watching the movie, when I noticed she was sitting close to me, with plenty of unused room on her side of the car. That led to my leaning against the door in a big show of nonchalance and putting my arm around the back of the seat. Which led to her smiling at me and leaning her head casually near my shoulder. Which, within five minutes, led to her head resting on my shoulder, her thighs pressing against mine, and then to loose hand holding. Which, ten minutes later, led to a kiss. And JoAnn could kiss. She could manage the soft lip-nips very well, and the gentle lip-writhing even better. Almost immediately, she looked feverish. This led to my shifting forward in my seat and holding her in a warm embrace. There was no skittish, adolescent blushing. She fit perfectly into my arms, limp and clinging. That led to my straightening up against the steering wheel and holding her by her shoulders and lowering her to the seat with her head toward the driver's side, and she pulled me down with her. Which led to my lying half on top of her, both our heads toward the driver's side. I kissed her longingly and she was already breathing soft, pleasurable sighs. That led to my undoing a couple of buttons on her blouse while we kissed. No resistance. No word. My hand slipped inside the blouse and cupped a breast over her bra. She calmly reached inside her blouse and undid her bra, whose clasp was conveniently located in front instead of at her back. She lay waiting, eyes closed. My hands and mouth found breasts like yielding, down-filled apples, maddeningly soft, puffy, with brownish, swollen aureoles, and dark, small, round nipples. My hand roamed to the hem of her ruffled skirt and slipped inside. No resistance. No words. My palm moved up her smooth, softskinned thighs. Her legs parted. When my palm advanced above her knees, she reached down without breaking our embrace and pulled her panties off; I was amazed that she could do it so quickly. I ran my hand up her warm thigh, higher, and her legs parted farther. Sticky heat met my fingers. Her mouth fed on mine. I couldn't believe how ready she was. I opened my zipper and she pulled up her skirt, our mouths locked together, and I tasted lipstick, and I smelled face powder and pussy. I couldn't believe it.

I kissed her neck, struggling with one hand behind my back with a rubber, finally slipping the damn thing down near my legs, out of view, and ripping the wrapper off and then slipping it on me. Eyes closed, she gasped and kissed my face and neck. I still couldn't believe it. She was like Anita, simmering quickly and moving to a boil posthaste. I moved onto her, my pants still on, my zipper opened wide, my cock jutting with the rubber on, and her calves went around my ankles and her head was thrown back and she was breathing hard and fast. I pushed forward, and her hand quickly went down to guide me, hastily, almost frantically, and I pushed ahead. Her cunt was hot, tight, even through the rubber. And JoAnn was even hotter. She winced and her mouth fell open and she breathed a quick, "Oh. Ah," and her head arched father back as I slid in and she gave a soft, sweet, pleased moan, her pelvis writhing to settled me all the way into her. Then her hips began a frenzied churning, and she was so damn tight and pretty and breathless.

Perhaps it had been such a long time since I'd held passion in my arms, held a girl as pretty and alluring as JoAnn. I was completely taken aback; within a dozen strokes I came inside the rubber. It was a sudden, somewhat anesthetized climax, but I filled the rubber with hot stuff before I knew it. Perhaps it was just JoAnn; just her. I relaxed, and as quickly as she had reached the steaming stage she fell into a restful, closed-eyed, smiling repose. My head was swimming -- from first kiss to climax, the whole thing had taken less than five minutes!

Within a few moments we were both sitting up, wiping sweat from our brows and opening the car windows for ventilation in the mid-June heat. During the short span of our coupling, which somehow seemed implicit all along, the car windows were completely fogged.

I straightened my clothes. And casually, wordlessly, with a composed, contented smile, JoAnn took makeup from her purse and used my rear-view mirror to replace her lipstick, put a little powder on, straightened her hair, and put her panties back on and straightened her clothes, and she put her head on my shoulder. She gave me an intimate little smile when I looked down at her and she pursed her lips for a kiss.

We watched the first movie. Then I went for refreshments and came back for the second movie. Halfway through the second movie I was still horny; cumming inside a rubber was not my idea of ultimate fulfillment. JoAnn and I got into a slow, affectionate makeout session after a while, and I was hard as a rock. I had to pause several times to adjust my stiffening cock inside my clothes.

She asked, smiling, "Weren't you satisfied?"

I said, "Well... it's been a while. And that one was a little sudden.""

"Mm. Good, though."

I kissed her. "Yes."

Her hand crept toward my erection over my clothes. "Well?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any more protection."

That didn't phase her either. She gave me the same easy smile, her eyes on my mouth. "Any other, uh, options? Maybe I could try Old Reliable."

I smiled, questioning. "Old reliable?"

"Mm-hm."

"What's old reliable.

Her head against my shoulder, she smiled with gentle incredulity. "You never heard anybody use that expression, old reliable?"

I shook my head no.

"Oh, you know. What they do when they don't have protection."

"They do lots of things when they don't have protection."

"Well..." She looked down at my lap, and her hand crept toward my zipper. She prompted gently, "You know..."

I started pulling my zipper down, and she took the tab and pulled farther. It stuck. I reached down and helped her. She gave me a heavy-lidded look, and she fumbled inside my jocks. With an almost practiced twist of her hand, she had my hard cock poking into the air. Her fingers went around it. Her hands were cotton soft. She pulled up and down with a languid rhythm. She glanced up and smiled, her eyes on my mouth. "You have quite an appetite. Think this'll be enough?"