Chapter 4: Kelley's journal- part three

Sammy

It was no accident that we met that night in August of 1991. My mother arranged for us to be seated next to the Oldham table. And while I complained about my parents pushing us together, I was secretly thrilled. The challenge of laying the groundwork, setting the trap and watching Sammy take the bait dominated my thoughts.

I liked what I saw. Yes, he needed work, but he was malleable and I decided I could mold him into the man I wanted him to be.

Sammy pursued me and I liked the way he tirelessly rejected the roadblocks I inserted in his path. He was relentless, accepting my insistence that we get to know each other, complying with my demands no matter how trivial. Sammy was a worthy foe; he played the game well.

I remember every date, every telephone conversation, every question, every answer and every look we exchanged. I remember every hello, every touch, every kiss and every goodbye.

We had different objectives; his was to get into my panties; mine was to recruit a husband. We also had our own strategy; his was to expedite his reaching his goal; mine was to extend his quest as long as possible. The longer it took him to find out my desire was for him to succeed, the better chance I had of achieving my objective.

He walked me to my car and I asked him to kiss me. From that first kiss my desire that he reach his objective became my obsession. Our kiss at the back door had my head spinning. My mind kept telling me to push him out the door, but the rest of my body wanted more. The first time we swam together, I had to keep moving from one end of the pool to the other because, when he was near me, we shared the same objective.

His school was three hundred miles away and that was a blessing. I was able to keep him from reaching his objective until March 1992 when we spent eight days and seven nights in Florida.

I was forthcoming with him about my sexual history. I told him straight-away about giving Danny my virginity. It had happened when I was a senior in high school. I also told him about my brief affair when I was a sophomore in college and the more lengthy one when I was a junior.

In return, I demanded that he divulge his partners and he did. His list of twenty-four names of girls and women he'd had sex with was a shock. Sammy is twenty-three months younger than me and his partners outnumbered mine by twenty-four to three. Okay, I didn't mention Phillip so it was really twenty-four to four.

Deciding that I hadn't been totally honest with him, not telling him about Phillip, I met with Sammy to talk about his list. I questioned him about the names and discovered that, with one or two exceptions, Sammy's conquests were brief and, as he maintained, mainly meaningless.

Learning that he had been to bed with two ladies on his list since we met was disconcerting. One was the married mother of his roommate and the other was a local girl who made regular visits to his apartment on Friday nights. She even did his laundry and cleaned the apartment. How could I compete with her? That's when I decided to break up with Danny one last time and offered to meet Sammy in Florida. He must have known that his objective would be achieved and accepted my invitation to spend spring break at my parents' house on the east coast.

Perhaps it was the pent-up desire, but our first time in the hammock was magical. It exceeded anything I had experienced before or ever expected to experience in the future. Sammy proved to be a skilled lover, patiently experimenting to discover what pleased me, what drove me wild and what made me happy.

It was never the same. Sammy varied the pace, changed from playing rough, to being tender, to teasing. He was demanding, too, making me want to give back.

I stopped trying to keep track of the times we made love after the second day. Not that it was non-stop fucking. We talked. He talked about his early life, his teenage years, his triumphs, his aspirations and his fears.

There were days when we didn't wear clothes, moving from the hammock to the bed and back to the hammock. Sammy didn't want to have sex in the hammock, saying it would make him seasick. I found out another of his fears; although he prided himself on the friends he had made, he feared being lonely. I admitted that I was lonely, too.

I questioned him constantly, wanting to know everything about him, how he viewed life, what he thought about various topics and basically, what made him tick. But it wasn't only about him. He questioned me, too. He made me feel special.

The few times we went out in public, to restaurants at night or to the beach, he gave me his full attention. When I caught him looking at other girls he said no, he was enjoying how guys were ogling me.

Once, when we were at the beach he said, "They're puzzled as to how a scar-face like me can be with a knockout. They either think you're my sister or that I have an enormous cock."

"The scar gives you a rugged look and your cock is the right size. I wouldn't want to change a thing about you."

This was the truth, almost. There were plenty of things I wanted to change, but for the moment, he was near perfect. What he lacked in sophistication was offset by the attention he gave me, the special way he made me feel.

That was the night he told me he loved me and I told him that I felt the same about him. It had taken seven months to bring us to this point and I wondered how much longer it would be before he proposed marriage. Should I say yes immediately or tell him I would give him an answer later? Well, it didn't matter because he didn't propose.

One day we were in the hammock and he made an exception. It surprised me when he eased his cock into me and begin to move, slowly. I was too shocked to react to what was happening. When I realized he wasn't wearing a condom I desperately wanted him to continue, but I couldn't let it happen. In a fit of panic, I pulled away and ran into the house.

He followed me to the fax machine where I was reading a memo from my office. He was angry, but when I calmed him down and explained that I was saving unprotected sex for my husband, he became apologetic, saying that he understood. We went shopping and purchased an outrageous amount of condoms.

The hammock incident was the nearest we came to having an argument. I confessed that if he ever did it again I might not be able to stop him. Sammy said it would never happen again, even if I begged him to fuck me without a rubber. He accepted my aversion to other forms of birth control that would permit unprotected sex. He even said that he respected my decision to save that experience for my husband.

I was careful never to admit that I was waiting for him to propose marriage. I did tell him my plan to buy a wedding band to wear when we traveled together. Sammy scoffed at me, saying hotel clerks didn't check to see if a couple was married, but he was amused when I told him I was keeping my maiden name for professional reasons. He even agreed to wear a wedding band on his ring finger too. I was overjoyed by the progress we were making.

We changed our plans to leave on Saturday and enjoyed another night together. Saying goodbye at the airport was heartbreaking. I confessed that I didn't know how I could get through the next twelve weeks without seeing him. He said he felt the same and that's when I offered to go to Pontiac for a weekend.

Sammy warned me that his apartment over the dress shop was early-rustic. He was right; the furniture was worn, the floors were rough and there was a closed-in feel to the place. The views, Main Street at the front and a parking lot at the rear, were depressing. A footlocker sat in the middle of the already cluttered living room and there was no place to walk in his bedroom. In addition to the bed, a dresser, his study desk, chair and computer stand; he had squeezed my gift, a hammock, into a corner next to a window that overlooked the parking lot.

I exclaimed, saying that it wasn't so bad. I was in love and determined to make the best of things.

I'll admit that I made it worse, taking over two dresser drawers, one third of his closet and adding my own computer and facsimile machine to the clutter.

"It reminds me of my own college days," I said. It didn't. My senior year, I had my own room in Danny's apartment. I had privacy to study and if I chose, I could sleep alone.

It was my idea to visit Pontiac every other weekend and he said he would make time for me by doing the bulk of his study on the alternate weekends. Telephone calls were fun, but two weeks apart was almost unbearable. We teased each other, promising not to masturbate between visits. I could see the delight in Sammy's eyes every time he met my plane.

I was the visitor and vowed not to upset his routine. Sammy liked to spend Friday nights with his rather strange collection of friends. I tried to fit in, really I did. They ate pizza, drank beer and talked about professors, classes and other students.

After the third week of observing my boyfriend interact with his friends, I felt comfortable, knowing that I was gleaning vital tidbits. There seemed to be genuine comradeship among them.

Later, when we were in bed, Sammy admitted that it was not as it appeared. While he treasured the friendships he shared with the rest of the group, something was missing, something he couldn't put his finger on. "I trust them, but not enough to talk about certain things. We're what I call top-layer friends. They wouldn't like knowing what's below the crust. I've got stuff buried so deep it even frightens me."

We hadn't made love yet and I was surprised that he wanted to talk.

"Have you ever known anyone you could trust with that ... stuff?"

He shifted his weight, pulled me closer, but didn't respond to my question.

"Would it help if the room were darker?" I prompted.

"Possibly," he said. I jumped out of bed and closed the bedroom door, extinguishing the light coming from the bathroom. There was still light coming through the windows overlooking the parking lot, but the bedroom was reasonably dark.

"Close your eyes and concentrate, honey" I said as I snuggled next to him. "Have you talked to anyone about this in the past?" I repeated my question.

He didn't respond. Instead, he moved his hand to the small of my back, making we wonder if he would loosen up if I fucked him. Just when I started to get out of bed to look for a condom, he began talking.

"Doctor Koskowski thought she was getting down to the ... stuff, but she only peeled the outer layer. Alice's questions were probing, Suzanne has always been supportive, Cindy never tried and Becky sympathized with my afflictions, but none of them helped me pull it out. Marcie knows me better than anyone. I believe that if we had enough face time she would be helpful."

There it was; the mention of Marcie always gave me an edgy feeling.

"What about Charlie? Have you discussed your inner feelings with him?"

"Charlie has his own issues."

I held my breath, afraid that the slightest movement would make him feel my pubic hair tickling his thigh and spoil the spell he was under. What could I say to insure my passport to the depths of his being? I wanted to be the trusted person who could help unlock the demons within him.

I knew his requirements: I had once told him, "In addition to being your best lover ever, I want to be your best friend and your advisor. I will be tolerant of your short-comings and demand that you're the best you can be." That was the person I wanted to be.

His hand moved on my back again and one of his fingers slipped between the cheeks of my ass. Oh well, so much for his sensitive side. I knew what he wanted; I wanted it too. I ground my pussy into his thigh to show him that I was already wet.

"Whoever gets the condom gets to be on top," I said, hoping he would go. I got my wish. I was on my back with my legs spread when he got back into bed. Just as he mounted me, I asked, "May I read your journal?"

My timing was perfect; what could he say? "You'll need a password," he said as he entered me.

I didn't push the matter then, preferring to push back each time he thrust forward. He told me he loved me and told him that I loved him too.

Lovemaking with Sammy was exhausting, both physically and mentally. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, it did. I never knew what to expect next, what to anticipate or how to respond. He supplied all the variety I needed. I was fulfilled, sexually and couldn't imagine ever going to bed with anyone else. I was consumed with my love for him and wanted to know everything about him. To me, his journal was the key to unlocking the dark place within him that he alluded to.

The next morning Sammy gave me the password to his journal and over the next few visits, I devoured his words. I read his journal every chance I got, while he was playing tennis and sometimes when he slept.

Getting to know Sammy Oldham through his journal was not easy. It was not organized. He wrote when the urge struck him, not on a regular schedule. It was clear that he never intended for anyone else to read it. Random thoughts were intermingled with events from his past. One paragraph would describe an afternoon with Cindy in one of the cottages and the next would be about a football game that took place the year before.

He began each entry with the date, what had happened that day and then he would lapse into something that happened long before.

There was no regularity to his entries. They could be two days apart or two weeks, depending upon his mood. I noticed that a letter from home often prompted him to record his concerns for his mother and half-sister. He would often recall something that occurred when he was ten years old, like hearing his mother come home with a man in tow. He seemed to agonize over the hard life his mother was leading compared to his own.