Part 4

Journal: 12-18-03

Alivia

For the next few weeks I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store, and I believe my two cousins were as well. We didn't have daily sex or anything like that. Even considering our rather unique situation and the wonderful opportunities one would believe it to provide, there were realities to the situation which made such an idea downright dangerous - if not completely impossible.

The first consideration, of course, was the girls themselves. First, they wanted and needed their eight hours of sleep a night - as a minimum. They both really preferred ten hours. Second, although we were essentially unsupervised in our odd sleeping arrangements, it was not a soundproofed or insulated basement. The adults in the house were only a floor thickness away. It was true that my 'bedroom' (the curtained space my bed occupied next to the furnace fuel tank) was at the far end of the house from my parents and their mother's room. There was also a wall and door between where I slept, the 'girls' room, and our parent's room above. Yet any noises in the basement seemed to magnify and echo in the large space - in the quiet of the night-time house dropping something on the concrete floor sounded like a gunshot upstairs. Then there was the fact that mama was a light sleeper.

There was Alivia to consider as well. Alivia is a blabber-mouth. If there was anything you wanted kept a secret, the last person you should mention it to is Alivia. If she knew a secret, it was no longer secret; everybody in town would know it in days - according to Raquel. During those following few days she told me about her first time having sex with a boy. She had been thirteen at the time and had sneaked out of the house to meet a high school senior she was madly in love with. Their rendezvous had been on a small hill in a local park and had been so romantic; stretched out on a blanket above the park's small pond, gazing at the stars above, kissing the man she loved. She had allowed him to take her that night - there had been a lot of blood and it had hurt her terribly she said. Then she smiled at me and said, "I didn't mind though, because I was in love with him." The next day, she had told Alivia about it. She was so excited and happy that she just had to tell someone and Alivia had been the only person handy at the time. Two days later, in confession, Alivia told the priest... the priest told her mother. That ended her first real relationship.

Mother nature also had a hand in interfering. Two days after our first real play session both girls went into their menstrual cycle. That was when I learned that sisters. or almost any women living together (if they are together long enough) tend to have the same cycle timing. Raquel and Pat invariably began theirs within hours of one another while Alivia normally began hers the following day. Pat and Alivia had five to seven day cycles. A day of 'spotting', then a day of steadily increasing flow before they had two or three days of heavy flow. A couple of days of diminishment and it was over. Although they usually began on the same day, Raquel was the only one who always experienced things in a completely clockwork fashion. She was telling me about it the day hers started. We were eating burgers and sharing an order of French Fries at the Boat Dock.

"I always start twenty-seven days after my last one ended - always. It lasts three days and it is done. Pat and Alivia both vary a little in their timing. Sometimes a day earlier or later, though Pat normally starts hers the same day as mine. Odd as it may sound, usually Pat and Alivia's 'time' lasts the same - no matter who starts first, they always seem to end on the same day. Once though, Pat stayed on the rag for nine days. Mama was getting ready to call the doctor that time, then it finally ended. I'm like Auntie Anne though. Regular. It's always the same - you could almost use me to set your watch."

"Speaking of your Auntie Anne, I have a question. Something I've thought about a few times but have been afraid to ask - afraid I'd get in trouble or make everyone mad at me. It's really puzzling to me though."

"I promise I won't be angry with you, no matter what."

"Well... Why are you guys all staying at our house?"

"What?"

"That didn't sound right. Let me try this: I've seen your Aunt Kristy's and Uncle Mike's house. It's huge. They have four or five bedrooms, three bathrooms and no kids. Your mom once told me that your Auntie Anne's home is even bigger, and she's not even married. Our place is so small by comparison and we have only the one tiny bathroom - Since you have arrived, everyone is always tripping over one another and getting in each other's way. Plus, Mom is your dad's sister, not your mom's. I love you, I mean you are family and all that, but why are you here? Why are you living at our house and not with one of your mom's sisters? Not that you aren't welcome, of course... " I was talking in a rush at the end and simply trailed off. I think I even blushed.

"Our aunts are both Catholic. We all are." was her simple reply.

"So?"

"Bill, They are 'Catholic'. They, and mom, were raised in the Catholic Church and beliefs."

"What does 'that' have to do with anything? It's just a church."

"You are so dense sometimes, do you know that?"

"Okay, so I'm dense. You still haven't answered my question."

"Let me see if I can explain this better, so even my dumb cousin can understand. Okay, almost all religions place a high value on marriage. The joining of a man and woman as husband and wife is seen as something meant to last forever, especially if the ceremony is done in a church."

"I understand that. They talked about that in Sunday School last year."

"Okay, good. Well, things don't always last, I guess. Mom and dad aren't the first people I've seen getting divorces. Though most churches don't seem to have a problem with divorce, the Catholic Church does. In the Catholic Church, getting a divorce, or 'putting asunder what God has joined together' is considered a mortal sin. Because of that, at least until after the divorce is final, our aunties will have nothing to do with my mom. They are afraid that mom's sin will somehow tarnish their own immortal souls if they help her."

"That's stupid."

"Not really. Any Catholic Priest can show you verses in the bible to support their teachings about this. We went to church, 'once', after mom and dad announced they were getting a divorce - about a week before we moved into your place. I was taken aside alone by one of the church Deacons and he read all of those passages to me."

"That is weird."

"It was also very embarrassing and degrading. I left having the feeling that the church is somehow blaming 'me' because my parents are divorcing."

Things were kind of on-hold for me during most of the following week, in one way... not in others. Raquel wanted to spend as much of the time as she could necking and kissing - every moment we were alone together she seemed to be wrapping her arms around me and locking lips. Her breasts also seemed more sensitive during that time, in a good way, as she was always moving my hands to them or asking me to fondle them through her clothing. Anything below the waist though was forbidden territory and she would fly into a rage if my hands strayed there.

We were caught kissing once by my mom and thankfully my hands were not on her breasts at the time. We were at the side of the house, leaning up against a tree where we thought no one would see us. Mom came around the corner of the house and found us like that, leaning into one another, holding hands, lips locked and tongues exploring. I was sure that life as I knew it was about to end when Mom asked, "Just what do you two think you are doing?"

It was Raquel who saved the day when she told mom that she was teaching me how to kiss a girl; giving mom some story about a girl in my school whom I hoped to impress the following year. Mom said she understood - which I didn't understand. Still, she left saying only that Raquel was to be sure that nothing other than kissing occurred. Raquel promised - until mom was out of sight, then she added, "At least not until I'm off the rag."

Pat became freaky during 'her' cycle. One minute she was all lovey dovey and touchy-feelie when we were alone together, then the next I seemed to be some kind of pariah. Like I was some slimy something that would give her a disease or something.

Alivia, during this time, seemed to withdraw from everything. Alivia's preferred companions, during their early weeks in our house, were Pat and Carl. She always seemed to be attaching herself to one or the other of them. Until she made friends with Liz Macklin that is. Elizabeth and her family lived three doors down. The whole family seemed to think they were better than anyone else in the neighborhood and acted like it. Liz never joined any of the neighborhood kids in the games we played, never accepted any invitations to this party or that gathering, and never invited any of us to hers. She wouldn't even come swimming at the beach if any of the neighborhood kids were there, preferring to stay home until we moved on to other activities. Yet, somehow, Alivia was accepted by her and became her friend - often spending entire days in Liz's company.

That Saturday night mom and dad loaded all of us kids in the family station wagon and took us to the drive-in theater. All of us except Alivia... she went for a sleep-over with Liz while the rest of us saw "Lady and The Tramp". Part of the reason for the night out had been Aunt Connie. She had apparently had a bad couple of days with her lawyer and had been drowning her sorrows in wine since about noon. She and dad and she and mom had been exchanging words for hours until she finally stormed out of the house. She was 'going to the bar' where she could drink in peace!

I don't think Raquel saw much of the movie though. She spent so much of her time that night crying softly into my shoulder in the back of the family wagon.

It was the following Monday afternoon when Raquel asked if I would go for a walk in the woods with her. My brothers and Pat were working on a Dutch Windmill jigsaw puzzle in the living room, while Alivia was down visiting Liz again. Aunt Connie and mom were spending their first day of many in court - mom was Aunt Connie's moral support. Dad, of course, was working. Raquel and I had been sitting at opposite ends of the living room, trying to read, when Pat decided she needed to 'improve the atmosphere'. She turned on the family phonograph and began playing albums - very loudly.

Raquel finally gave up trying to read and said she was going for a walk, for some quiet. She asked if I would keep her company, then said she needed to get something from her room. I waited for her outside.

When she finally came outside I found she had changed her clothing. She was wearing sweats and had been bare-footed while reading in the living room. Now she was in a pair of loose-fitting cargo shorts, a T-shirt that was cut-off just below her ribs and a pair of sandals. She was also carrying a small rucksack. It was then that she announced she wanted to walk in the woods - wanted to look at the flowers and squirrels and such...

The 'woods' was a portion of a farmer's property just downand across the road from us. The farmer's home was a couple of miles away, and this piece of property had actually been donated to the church we attended. The church used a small portion of it as a baseball diamond and as a picnic area for special events. The rest of 'the field', as we called it, the farmer continued to farm... it was planted in sweet corn that summer. On the far side of the field was the woods... an area of land that was too irregular to farm, it had been allowed to remain over-grown and wooded. A natural depression at one end of it was the farmer's 'dump', becoming the final resting place for a few junked cars, old washers and dryers, broken bottles and discarded farm equipment. The neighborhood kids avoided that area because we ran barefoot most of the time. The woods, on their far side, butted up against a small bay at one end of Base Lake... across this bay was the cove with it's entrance path to the little hidden lake. Much of the ground near the bay was usually swampy, rising above and below water level in a haphazard way. There were a few areas along the shore where there were narrow strips of sandy beach, but we didn't swim there - the bottom of the bay was very muddy. At the far end of the woods from the junk pile was a large man made depression. It was an area of deep sand rather than soil and nothing grew there. It was 'man made' because the farmer's grandfather had dredged a few tons of sand from the area when he built the family home. He'd used it to level the property around their house, creating a large yard.

This was where Raquel announced she wished to go... The 'sand pits', as we called them, were difficult to get to. The entire area surrounding them was completely overgrown and mostly blocked off by tangles of blackberry and raspberry bushes. There was a way through though - one my brothers and I, and a very few other kids, knew. We guarded that knowledge, from parents, as if it were a sacred 'kids only' secret of some kind. We'd taken Raquel and her sister's there for an afternoon picnic a while back. Alivia hadn't liked it there - the sand got into places she didn't like sand. Raquel and Pat, on the other hand, thought it was 'cool' that we had a secret little hideaway.

I led Raquel to the twisty little path through the brambles and into the sand pits beyond. Once there she made me a bonafide man.

Once into the pits, Raquel led the way to the smallest 'pit' a smaller sand area separated from the main section by a ridge of stone. This one was more private, surrounded as it was on two sides by steep vertical walls of earth, the ridge of stone providing privacy on the third side and the fourth so densely choked and overgrown, with brambles and bushes. that butterflies had problems getting through. It was a mostly cloudless day, near noon, and the sand was hot under my feet from the direct sunlight.

Raquel decided where she wanted to be and removed two large beach towels from the rucksack she had carried with us. She laid them very carefully, side by side in the sand, allowing a few inches of overlap so they formed one large ground sheet for the two of us. I immediately sat at one corner of what I thought was to be a picnic spread. Raquel gave me a disapproving look, yet said nothing, and continued to remove things from the rucksack. Two cans of pop were next, a Coke and a Sprite because they were all that was in the refrigerator that morning, followed by a pocket radio, a small bag of gumdrops, a tiny bottle of tanning lotion and the romance novel she had been trying to read at the house. Finally, she pulled one last towel from the bag, a standard bath towel, which she tightly rolled into a kind of pillow, placing it on the towel closest to her.

I had come anticipating the two of us strolling through the woods; hand in hand, chatting about this and that, kissing and necking a little while I pointed out a squirrel, or chipmunk, or rabbit to her when I saw them. She admiring and examining the bluebells or sunflowers near the edges of the woods, or checking to see if the different berries were in season yet. When she'd asked to go to the sand pits; I thought of the rucksack she'd brought and the possibility of a picnic. The sight of the tanning lotion had turned my thoughts to her nude sunbathing again and to thoughts of necking with and kissing her while she was naked - maybe feeling her up. In the end though, she had continuously been complaining about her sister's rudeness and her inability to read her book - just when it was getting to the most exciting and suspenseful part. She spoke of how much she wanted to read it and see how things turned out for 'Amy-Jo' as she spread the tanning lotion on herself. She tossed me the small radio, asked me to find a good station, then stretched out on her back, placed the towel-pillow under her head and buried her nose in the book. Why was I even there? She could have done this in the yard.

I soon had the rocking sounds of CKLW's top twenty playing softly on the radio and opened the two bottles of pop with my Boy Scout knife (which I always carried). The sun was hiding behind one of the day's rare clouds when I took a long pull on my Sprite and began looking around. I was suddenly feeling all the enthusiasm, for the situation, of any normal fifteen year old who had expected some 'action' and suddenly found himself ignored. I was trying to decide what to do with myself, without abandoning Raquel, when the sun came out from behind the clouds and my shadow fell across her face and book.

"You are blocking my sun," she said without looking up. I stared at her. I couldn't believe it. First, she gets me out of the house under what I was beginning to feel were false pretenses. Then she consigns me to a long afternoon of boredom - I didn't even have 'my' book with me!... she could have mentioned that she planned to read. Now, she has the balls to tell me that my 'shadow' is invading her space. I thought about simply getting up and leaving - right then. Why I didn't I still don't know for sure. Maybe it was the ever hinted at promises from she and her sister of things becoming more interesting for me; of going beyond the kissing and touchy-feelie stage. Maybe it was just that I didn't want to leave her alone and abandoned here - didn't want to disappoint her. Whatever it was, rather than leaving in a huff I quietly stretched out next to her, closed my eyes, and began munching gum drops from the bag between us.

I think about twenty minutes had passed, the gumdrops were all gone, before either of us spoke again. In that time I had looked at the few odd clouds passing overhead, trying to see shapes in their mostly whispy forms. I had watched the leaves on the small Sumac trees at the ridge tops blowing in the occasional breeze. I had listened to, and mentally sang along with, a couple of the currently popular songs playing on the radio. I had heard four airplanes flying high overhead and sought out their lengthening contrails, watching as one trail crossed another in the blue of the noonday sky. There were the sounds of speed boats from the lake and the bay beyond the woods - 'Probably pulling skiers, ' I thought. There were the occasional sounds of insects, the beatings of birds wings, and the rustlings of tiny branches in the trees overhead as the wind moved them against one another, or possibly it was the weight of squirrels, leaping from tree to tree in their daily travels. There were the sounds of the occasional car or truck on the road beyond the corn field and twice the sounds of kids laughing drifting in on a gentle wind. Three times I heard Raquel beside me turning the pages of her book as she read. I had closed my eyes and was about to doze off when the sounds I was hearing were interrupted by Raquel softly speaking beside me.

"You are supposed to be taking advantage of the situation. You know that don't you?" She spoke so softly, so serenely and I was so close to dozing that I almost didn't hear her.

"Hmm?" was my intelligent reply.

"I said, you are supposed to be taking advantage of the situation. Here we are in the woods, 'alone'. The woman with you is reading a romantic book, the day is warm, the music is soothing. The clothing I'm wearing is loose and barely concealing, allowing easy access for your hands and fingers. You should be taking advantage of the opportunity... or trying to." I turned my head and looked at her face. She was smiling into her book. "Remember to keep things gentle though, go slow. Don't reach right for a boob or the loose openings of my shorts. Rest one hand on my leg and let your thumb and fingers trace little lines and circles - that's a good start. Let your imagination take you from there, but don't hurry - we have time - be slow and gentle and romantic."

I finally figured out why she wanted to come to the woods. We were going to really, finally, have sex. But it wasn't going to be easy. No simple 'jump and bang' or getting naked and rolling in the sand together like the guys at school said... not yet at least. I was going to have to earn her favors - get her 'in the mood' as they say.

I began as she suggested, taking my left hand and resting it on her bare thigh below her shorts. My fingers and thumb tracing little lines in her skin while I lay there otherwise quiet, watching her read, trying to read her expressions. I decided to use the radio to help me, thinking I would use the music as a timer so I wouldn't rush things and spoil the day - lose the opportunity. Three songs I thought and I would move a little, do something else for a few songs. Moving again and again to something different as the time passed, trying to become a little bolder without overstepping myself and ruining the moment for both of us.

I did have one thing going for me though... something Raquel knew nothing about... something that as a boy I was too ashamed to mention. 'Guys' didn't do that - or so I believed then... My mom was an avid reader of romance novels. She had shopping bags full of ones she'd already read stored in the basement. Once I'd moved my room downstairs I'd begun reading some of them, late at night. Between the stories they told and my rather active imagination, I had found them to be excellent masturbation material. They were a little gushier than things I actually enjoyed reading, but as something to relieve the pressures when my boners appeared at bedtime, they were more than adequate. I had even recognized the book she was reading as one of my mother's old ones - one I had already read myself. I used the memory of that reading now to good advantage.

I glanced over during the second song and found her left hand, on her far side, resting lightly against the side of her stomach, idly tracing small circles of it's own in her tanned skin. I thought I recognized those movements from my memory of the story. She raised that hand as the third song began and turned the page. When the hand returned to her body she placed it further down, the palm resting atop her thigh, the tips of her fingers and her nails, tracing arcs and circles in the skin of her inner thigh. I guessed where she was in the story and moved my own hand to the arm nearest me, the one holding the book.

I was soon tracing patterns in the flesh of her upper arm, allowing my fingers to roam from just below her shoulder to just above the elbow. Dragging the nails in straight gentle furrows downwards and then rubbing the skin in figure-eights and soft curlicues as I worked my way back to her shoulder. I watched her eyes as she read, trying to gauge how quickly she was reading, how quickly she was advancing in the action the story described. Her off hand shifted, rising up along her body and coming to rest against her far side, just below her breast, the thumb and forefinger actually hidden by the material of her top. Leaning forward I added my own actions, mimicking what I believed was occurring in the story itself. My hand traveled the length of her forearm, across the inside of her wrist and I tried to insinuated my fingers between the book and her palm. Leaning my head forward I gently kissed the point of her shoulder, one, twice, and a third time before I used my teeth and gently nipped at her just below where I had been kissing. (I think I guessed correctly because she transferred the book to her other hand and slid her right lower - into mine - until we were holding one another's hand.

I shifted my position then. When I'd rolled up onto my side to face her I had allowed my left arm to remain between us, resting against her hip and thigh. It was able to do little in that position, save for the back of a knuckle rubbing gently against her leg while I concentrated more of my attention elsewhere. Now though, I wanted that hand again. Raising up beside her I shifted that arm until I was supported on its elbow. The forearm lying along her shoulder as I slid my hand behind her neck, into a slight open space between her shoulders and that towel she was using as a pillow - the fingers and thumb gently curled around the back of her neck. I began in more earnest then, in more anticipation - remembering how things had gone in the book she was reading.

I began kissing my way down her arm. Beginning at that point where I had nibbled at her, I worked my way in a bit of a zigzag towards her elbow. Kissing first to the right, then to the left and finally in the center before once again giving a gentle nibble, clenching her flesh lightly between my teeth and pulling softly away until the flesh slipped free. My thumb at her neck began rubbing the skin there in small circles. I worked fairly swiftly at these moves, traveling her arm and rubbing at her neck in kind of a haste - knowing that the time spent on this in the story was rather brief. I concluded my travels down her arm at the inside of her wrist. There, following the third kiss, rather than nipping with my teeth and trying for a grip I used my tongue and did my best to tickle the flesh there, on the pulse point - just as it had been done in the story.

Transferring my lips to the back of her hand I kissed her there, firmly as I shifted my body forward and up, my left hand gripping lightly at the back of her neck began twisting slightly to turn her face towards mine. Her head turned, the back of my right hand came to rest against her breast, my hip came forward against hers and my lips left her hand, seeking and finding her lips as they searched for mine. Quite outside of my remembrance of the story I noticed two things during that soft, close mouthed kiss of passion. The first was the feeling of her nipple beneath the back of my hand, rigid and erect and being forced to lean over under the pressure my hand applied. The second was the feeling of my boner as it was forced flat against my stomach by our joined hips. I hadn't even noticed my cock rising, let alone felt the pressure of my clothing as it came fully rigid. I wondered at Raquel's thoughts as it pressed into the side of her hip and upper thigh.

Beyond that point I abandoned all pretense of trying to follow what was written in the book. Mostly because the story then fell into those phrases in romances which allude to the actual coupling of a man and woman, but don't really tell the reader what is happening. This story, for example, I remember talking of a rain of passionate kisses, and exploration of things and places unseen, unknown, never before explored. Of a filling and fulfillment - a satisfaction of passions desires. So briefly told after the teasing and tantalizing of the previous few pages, it summed up the heroine's burning passions in a very few lines. Something not yet possible for Raquel and I, since, for one thing, we were both yet fully clothed. It was time to do something else... but what? I opened my lips and she opened hers. Our tongues did a tango together while I searched my memory for a story I'd read which could help me now.

I remembered one and drew upon the passages of another of the romances I'd read - a beach story. Inspired in me by the small bottle of tanning lotion lying on the blanket with Raquel.

Sitting up beside her, taking up the small bottle and releasing her hand where I yet gripped it, I squeezed a portion of it's contents into a palm as Raquel watched. The book was now on the sand beside her blanket, discarded during our kiss when she had placed her hands on my neck, pulling me closer. Spreading the liquid over my palms and fingers I reached forward and placed them both onto her stomach, raising myself onto one knee and moving to sit astride her legs as I did. I began a gentle massaging action then, rubbing my greasy hands and fingers in tight circles across the firm muscles of her stomach. Feeling them shifting beneath hands.

I worked my hands to the sides, until I was sliding them up and down the sides of her body, from the tops of her hips to the sides of her ribs. At the upper end of my hands forward pressures, the furthest reach of their forward slide along her body, my thumbs touched the bottoms of her breasts and pushed them upwards beneath her half-top. The top itself was also pushed upwards by my wrists and finally rested just at the bottom edges of that darkened flesh which surrounded her nipples. Baring the minutest bit of the swollen cap that surmounted each breast. The nipples themselves, lodged in a crease of the fabric, held the shirt in position as it rode up and down with the movement of her breasts. Five times I made the same move and with each I thought the pinpoint pressures inside that shirt seemed to increase in length and girth. I leaned down to kiss her again and her head came up to meet mine, her hands going to the back of my neck, my shoulders as our tongues became snakes in a battle for ascendency.

I changed my moves then, sliding both hands straight up the middle in that barest of air gaps we maintained between our bodies. Up and over those risen mounds on her chest, pushing that covering shirt from my path and baring her breasts completely. I raised my head momentarily and looked between us. I remembered the nubbins I had earlier seen riding those little caps of darkened flesh and did not recognize them before me now. These were fully three times the thickness and length of those I remembered and I could not help myself. I reached to each breast and took the distended nipples in my fingers as my lips returned to hers. Gently (remembering Raquels admonition as we started) I squeezed at them, pressing with my thumbs to bend them over the sides of my fingers and see if they would lengthen further. Raquel growled in her throat, the first sound to escape her lips since her suggestion that I should 'take advantage of the situation'.