Chapter 9: Carny Girl

Six months passed. It was late Spring when things started to get complicated.

The complication's name was Betsy.

The only relative my mother had who lived within a hundred miles was her younger sister Betsy. They were the first two of a string of four sisters widely seperated by age. Betsy was almost nine years younger than mom. After Betsy, more than twenty years had passed before the twins had come along. Roberta and Brianna were now just turning thirteen and of course still living at home.

Betsy had been the wild one in the family, although I understood the twins were headstrong too. Betsy had run away and married a carnival hustler when she was seventeen. Her parents, in a classic act of stupidity, if I can venture an opinion, had disowned her and at the moment the only one in the family who would talk to her was mom.

Betsy had come to visit a few times when her carnival was somewhere nearby. She was open, friendly, and relaxed in my presence but I, normally outgoing with women was totally tongue-tied when she was around. Did I forget to mention that she was absolutely knock-you-down, drop dead gorgeous?

Anyway, Betsy, who was then thirty-three, eight years older than I, seemed to really like me for some reason. Mom said Betsy had been over to visit us more times since I got home than she had in the past five years put together. She thought it was probably because Betsy was trying to build up the nerve to get get free of her charming but unfortunately worthless husband.

The times she came to visit she'd usually be there before I got home from work and we'd all have dinner together. Then she'd stay until ten or eleven, depending on how long her drive home was. The three of us got along really well. There was something about the women in that family, I reflected years later, that I really liked. As it turned out, there was something about me that the women in that family really liked too, but that story's for a later chapter.

The only luxury in my life at the time was my car. I'd saved like a Chinaman during my two year stint as an Army draftee, living like a slave on room and board alone. The first thing I'd done after I got home was pore through the classifieds until I found the car I wanted out in Michigan. It was a mint condition 1966 Corvette convertible. In 1986, it was twenty years old but had been fully and lovingly restored. I paid $10,000 cash and borrowed $5,000 more to swing the deal.

It was British racing green. An understated, deep dark green with highlights of brilliance, typical of the word 'British'. It had both tops, so in the winter there would be a hard roof overhead, not that I planned on driving it much during wintertime. It was hot, with what they called the 427/390. That is 427 Cubic Inch Piston displacement, developing 390 horsepower, for anyone who has never owned one of those babies. It wasn't going to win at LeMans, but for the street at that time it was the sexiest thing moving that wasn't alive.

The moment she saw it, Betsy fell in love with it and begged me to take her for a ride. We decided to go to a Carvel for ice cream. The car was a two-seater, so mom stayed home. She was happy to because the raw power of the 'Vette scared her.

The Carvel wasn't far, a mile or so. After we had almost finished our ice cream, she said. "I wish we could just drive for a while and enjoy the wind and the night."

"That's exactly what I love to do." I exclaimed, surprised. "Let's go!"

I tossed my nearly-finished ice cream toward the nearest trash bin, twenty feet away. It went in perfectly, without touching either rim. "Wow!" Betsy gasped, amazed. I held up two fingers, symbolizing the two points you score when you make a basket in a basketball game, and lifting my eyebrows and shrugging my shoulders, gave a cocksure smile which said 'Piece of cake'. If it had happened today, of course, I'd have been holding up three fingers.

Firing it up, I revved the engine a few times to enjoy the mufflers as the sound reverberated out of them. Slipping smoothly out onto the main drag, I punched the gas and laid a hundred fifty feet of rubber. "YaaaaHOOOO!" I howled into the wind as we acelerated. My voice was joined by hers.

We cruised the dark back roads, headlights lancing out, lighting the curves and potential dangers. Wind rushed, the radio blared. We didn't talk much. There was too much noise and too much to concentrate on. We flowed through the warm darkness, a small dot of light in the dark void of the night. Finally, at quarter of eleven, an hour and a half later, we idled quietly into mom's driveway, the lakers mumbling softly. Drifting to a stop, lights off, I turned the key and we were surrounded by silence.

For a few seconds, neither of us moved. Savoring the sudden quiet of the night.

"I could have kept going, right around the world." Betsy whispered, reaching across and touching my arm. Walking to the house she slid her arm through mine and hugged it to her side. "Promise me we'll do this again!"

"We could do it tomorrow if you stay overnight." I offered. I was rewarded with an even tighter hug. I was conscious of the softness of her breast as she pressed my arm against it. Then we were inside, laughing as we saw each other's hair. Mine was standing out sideways and wildly confused, but Betsy's looked like she had been electrocuted, twisted wildly in every direction.

Mom seemed a little miffed at first but calmed down after she realized our late arrival had been innocent fun. But there was nothing innocent about the look in Betsy's eyes when they met mine while we were making our goodbyes. After we'd pecked each other's cheeks, our eyes met and hers swallowed mine. "Soon." She promised.

That particular evening took place just as mom and I were in the midst of discovering our feelings about each other. In fact, on Saturday night, three nights after Betsy's visit, mom asked for a backrub for the first time. At the time I wondered why she seemed so upset when we took longer than expected to get home. Now, of course, I understand. She had been jealous. She was right to be, because Betsy had everything I had ever dreamed a woman could have. I was physically attracted to her in a big way, but what happened that Saturday night in mom's bedroom made me forget my budding feelings for Betsy and every atom of my being became focused on mom instead.

Betsy didn't visit again for several months but when she did, we drove to the Carvel again. This night she seemed to be more highly charged with energy for some reason. Her smiles were bigger, and her laughs louder. Everything seemed enhanced somehow. She'd ordered Chocolate Custard and I Maple Walnut ice cream. We were sitting in the car, slurping and licking, trying to keep anything from dripping on the seats. How sexual that sounds now, 'slurping and licking', trying to keep anything from dripping on the seats.

"Let me have a lick of your Maple Walnut." She leaned over to me, her head a few inches lower than mine, hand planted on my thigh for support, her face turned up to me. I offered my cone, moving it toward her so she could have a taste. Instead of licking, she closed her mouth around the whole cone and sucked some into her mouth, gazing directly into my eyes, telling me... what?

I was penetrated, burned by their impenetrable calmness. Nothing else existed except her eyes. I gazed at her, filled with her aura.

"You take my breath away." The words had come directly through the new opening she'd made to my soul. Her eyes glowed, accepting my gift.

"Would mouth to mouth resuscitation help?" She asked, moving closer, her eyes widening

Words can't describe how much I wished there was a way to accept the kiss she was so coyly offering but by then, my semen was being ejaculated ten times a week into my mother's orfices and I knew it was not the right time for Betsy and I. Looking away, I lifted my cone and took another lick. I shrugged. "I don't think so."

Now, more months later, after my relationship with mom had developed and become mature, my mother was telling me Betsy had left her husband and was coming to live with us for a few months. I had just arrived home from work. I was tired. I'd been thinking about getting a little when I got home. I was not at all thrilled about this development

"How can we be together now?" I asked, a little louder than necessary.

"Shhh! She's right in the other room." She said. "Don't worry, we'll find ways and anyway it's only for a few months." Looking around toward the kitchen, where Betsy was encamped, she quickly stepped into my arms and pressed herself tightly against me, grinding her hips just a bit into my groin. "Please be nice to her."

A minute later I walked into the kitchen, a little too close behind mom.

"Hey, what's goin' on Bets?" I walked over to the table and sat at the opposite end, as far from those eyes of hers as possible. "I hear you're gonna be around awhile. That's cool!"

"I finally got up enough courage to dump that miserable bastard." She smiled.

"Good for you."

"Hey." She inquired, "Do you think there are any openings over at BC?" Referring to the place where I worked. I was then near to finishing my probationary year and would soon be on the regular staff. I'd then also be able to afford a place of my own but I had no intention of leaving what up to this moment had been a perfect arrangement.