No man could be nicer or more gentle than Mr. Harlow, but I was still afraid of his cock. He took his time with me. Months of quiet and sincere conversation. Weeks of playful banter. Days of modest affection. Then hours of kissing. Oh, the kissing took my breath away.

“You know I want you,” he told me. “I want you everyway and all and forever.”

“I know,” I replied, my voice braver than I felt. “I want you too.”

“You know what the word want makes me think of?”

I thought he might say something—I don’t want to say crude, but certainly sexual.

“Baby food jars. The kind that are vacuum packed, and there’s this pop when you pry off the cap.”

I had no experience with baby food jars, not in my memory, but I could sort of picture it.

“What kind of baby food?” I asked.

“Custard,” he said. “Vanilla pudding.”

His eyes twinkled. His grin was wide.

It was something sexual after all, and not at all crude.

In his attic bedroom were bookcases and trunks and old pictures and a hobby horse, which he said belonged to his daughter. He ran a finger across the seat. Dust. “She called him Horsie-Boy,” he said. “She sang songs while she rode him. The springs sang along with her.”

“Do you remember any of her songs?”

He sang one for me. Not the words. More a humming. Long-short, long-short, long, long, repeated again and again. Maybe: Bay-bee, Bay-bee, Baaaay Bee. Bay-bee, Bay-bee, Baaaay Bee. He pressed the horse’s head, moving it so the springs sang. I sang with him. Ah ha, Ah ha, Aaaah, ha. Ah ha, Ah ha, Aaaah, ha. We smiled at each other. We kissed.

And the attic bed. The blanket seemed to be of dark fur. The pillows too. Golden afternoon light streamed through the window and fell upon the bed. It looked soft, the bed. He led me to it. He lifted my arms. “Skin the old rabbit,” he said, as he lifted my dress over my head. Then he hugged me, a hard hug, and he kissed me, a soft kiss, and I could feel him, his hardness, his hardness against my softness.

“Your breasts are like little bunnies,” he said. He bent and kissed one. The nipple. His lips. His tongue. The thrill almost made a sound. Zing. Straight to my center.

He sat me on the bed and gently pushed me back and the fur was soft, so soft, and he slipped off my shoes and lifted my hips and pulled off my panties and stared at me and said, “You are completely adorable.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“I am not in the least adorable,” he said.

“No, I mean—your clothing.”

He nodded. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

He lifted my legs, eased them back until my feet were past my head.

“So beautiful,” he said.

He bent low. He licked. He licked and licked. I shivered and shook. When he looked up his face glistened with my wet.

“Now to feed you,” he said.

“Baby food?” I asked.

“Yes, baby food,” he said.

He fed me baby food. It was so good!