REMEMBERING THE SUMMER OF 1964 pt.2

REMEMBERING THE SUMMER OF 1964 pt.2

"Listen," I said, "it's still early and this warm June evening cries out for a drive in the country. What say you?"

"I say, drive on, captain."

With the top down, I headed north out of the city, past suburban subdivisions, and into a rural part of the county that in twenty years would look something like Belmont Estates. But in the summer of '64, it was sparsely populated, a place of farms, patches of woodland, and open fields that stretched for miles. We drove around for a while before I pulled off in a wooded area by a gravel road that ran by a small lake. Zoning laws would keep this area undeveloped into the twenty-first century. After I cut the ignition, she said, "You move fast,

Barry, taking me parking on a first date."

"Well, believe it or not, this is the first time I've parked with anyone on a first date."

"Right, huh, huh."

"No, honest. I just thought we could resume our conversations out here. It's more relaxing."

And it was, too, with nothing to distract us but chirping birds and buzzing cicadas. It was cooler out here, prompting Franny to drape a white jacket over her sleeveless dress. Since leaving her house, she had not said one word about her polio. Curious as I was about when and how she got it, I could not bring myself to ask. She left me an opening when she mentioned Barbara, her high school-age sister.

"Lucky for her, she started summer camp after the Salk vaccine came out," she said.

"So, is that where you got it, at summer camp?"

"Yes, when I was nine. It was nineteen-fifty-four, a couple of years before Salk's vaccine became widely available. Prior to that, I was like any other normal active kid, running and jumping, playing volleyball and softball, and capturing the flag. And I was good, too. Quite the athlete, my counselor told my parents. And then, in August of that fateful year..." She looked away and rubbed her eyes.

I reached for her hand. "Franny, if this is too painful for you, we can drop it."

She turned to face me, laughed through her tears. "Don't be silly. I can talk about it, sometimes even without crying." She laughed again and reached inside her purse for a hankie and blew her nose. "So that's what happened. Fever, pain, and chills, followed by partial paralysis and this hunk of steel I lug around every day. But I'm lucky compared with those iron lung cases."

"Did you return to camp?"

"I did, the following summer. Played sports, too. I did not like the girls making special allowances for me, but I did not have any choice. In dodge ball, they just lobbed the ball at me, afraid I would fall if they threw it too hard. Same thing in volleyball. In softball, I got the extra slow pitch. Swimming was the only sport I could do as well as I did before polio struck. Like President Roosevelt did in Warm Springs, Georgia, I can walk close to normal in the water."

Her spunk and courage impressed me. She looked even prettier in the twilight, and I got the urge to do more than just talk. "Okay, so you can walk unaided in water. How about kissing? Do you do that in cars on the first date?"

"Depends on the guy. If I like him enough, sure."

"And do you?'

"What do you think?"

"I think you're beautiful."

"Well, I think you're beautiful, too." She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around me. She tasted good and she smelled good, like fresh linen. I touched her face, ran my fingers along her baby-soft skin and through her silky hair while absorbing the softness of her lips and her sweet, gentle kisses. My solar plexus tingled—I really liked this girl.

We smoothed for minutes before she said, "I like you, Barry. But if we are to continue to see each other, you can't even feel sorry for me, okay? I have had too many guys interested in me for that reason, guys who feel compelled, if not obligated to take care of me, protect me. I can take care of myself. Understood?"

"Feel sorry for you? A super-smart, super cute Mount Holyoke babe who uses words like pedantic? Never." She doubled over in laughter.

Then I said, "What the hell does that mean, anyway?"

"Narrow, stodgy. A pedant is somebody who goes strictly by the book.

A stuffed shirt, in other words. You're not one of those, are you?"

"Not me. But it fits one of my lacrosse coaches. He is by the book to the point of absurdity. Anyway, you'll get no pity from me."

"Good. Then we will get along fine. Now, can we resume what we were doing? You're an awfully good kisser."

Franny was a good kisser herself, warm, affectionate, enthusiastic. It was obvious that she had had a fair amount of experience, at least in that area, and I could not help but wonder how far she had gone beyond that. At age twenty, I was not exactly a young Hugh Heffner.

In fact, my tally as far as getting laid came exactly to one, and that was a year ago. Girls were not as permissive back then, even college girls. And the ones that were had "reputations." The image of the "good girl" was still a girl that "saved" herself for marriage. By 1964, things had loosened up a little from the conformist Eisenhower years.

But the so-called sexual revolution was still close to a decade away.

I was as horny as the next guy, not above cruising the streets of the poorer sections of town with like-minded friends, on the prowl for easy pussy. Betsy, my tally of one, was one such easy, a "downtown chick" who did not flinch when it came to putting out. She was a cute little blond, an eighteen-year-old high school dropout who lived with her divorced aunt and worked in a factory. We were from quite different socio-economic and cultural worlds.

Yet I liked Betsy, liked her for her body, yes, but also for her sweetness and honesty, her lack of pretension. But this was a girl with limited education, who lacked both the ambition and smarts to get ahead. Predictably, I got bored and broke things off. I felt like a cad because she was very hurt. The experience convinced me that what I needed was the whole package, this girl who could fulfill me on all levels.

Franny Otten stein seemed like a good prospect as I held and kissed her on that balmy June night. In succeeding weeks, I became more convinced of it. Her "handicap" became less of an issue with me. I could not completely overlook it. But her spunk and energy, not to mention her beauty, inside and out, more than compensated for it.

She did not shy away from activities that could bring attention to her condition. One night we went dancing (her idea), and I figured we would slow dance and sit the fast ones out. Not! She did a mean twist, as well as a modified frug. We also used to run together. Aware that running was part of my training regimen, she insisted on joining me.

She did not run, she hobbled as she had told me, and it was the fastest hobble I had ever seen. People on the track looked on admiringly, watching this hot babe, with her cane and leg brace, burn up the cinders.

Our sex life was confined to heavy make-outs in the car and on living room sofas, hers, and mine. By July, I was swinging for the fences but coming up short. Third base was as far as she would go. Liberal in other ways, she was the "good Jewish girl" when it came to pre-marital sex.

Foreplay for others was endplay for us. But boy was she good at it!

After a bit of experimentation, she developed a deep sense of timing, fine-tuning her mouth and hands to my rhythms, not averse to licking my cum. The girl knew what turned me on, and she was not shy about telling me how I could return the favor. Of course, I was all too willing to oblige. She had the nicest tits, firm B-cups that perked right up the second my tongue contacted them.

It drove her wild. Her tummy was just as sensitive. She loved it when I touched her there when I ran my tongue along her stomach. Given the circumstances, I could not tell her I was a leg man. At first, I cringed at the sight of her atrophied right leg. To be blunt, it turned me off, the sight of it encased in that hideous steel brace attached to that equally hideous heavy brown shoe, at times a saddle-style shoe.

But then a strange thing happened.

For some reason, I started to find it sexy in a fetish-like way. Being a psychology major, I attempted to analyze myself, to plumb the depths of my subconscious for an answer. Other than producing a vague notion of attaching her infirmity to feminine vulnerability, I did not get far. I figured I was one for the books, including those authored by "experts" William Masters and Virginia Johnson. But it was a good thing because it allowed me to drop my former inhibitions about pleasing her below the waist. On dates, she would usually wear a dress. Cane in hand, she would stand there in her living room or den, lift her dress, and demand that I eat her pussy. "I'll whack you with my cane if you don't," she would say in a mock threat. So, I would get on my knees, take her panties down, and go to work.

She would go nuts, writhing and moaning, gripping her cane and a chair for support. More than once, she lost her balance and toppled into my arms.

Then she would lie on the floor, legs akimbo, and I would resume where I left off. I would rub my hard cock over her clit getting her off without fully entering her sacred chamber. She climaxed like a guy in that she came fast. I had heard friends' stories about their girlfriends who either could not climax or could but only after their partners expended an exhausting effort to get them there. With Franny it was easy.