Debby Lee
September 1987

Sometime about the end of the second week, our small group at the grill was joined by Wanda and Debby Lee, our tennis class partners, as invited by Cody and me during a casual conversation on the court during class break earlier that morning.  Wanda really seemed to have a growing interest in Cody that went far beyond just being tennis partners and Debby Lee seemed to have an equally growing interest in me … the obvious beginnings of affections which were potential problems considering the wedding rings that these two women wore in plain sight on the fingers of their left hands … Wanda’s much larger than Debby Lee’s and, in my opinion, a lot more gaudy.

Wanda smelled of cigarettes and the kind of Avon perfume I remember my mother wearing when I was a lot younger only Wanda wore a lot more of it.  Sometimes I think she bathed in it maybe to try to mask the smell of cigarettes that she usually reeked of.  From the start Wanda struck me as a rich married woman who was bored with the security that she had whored her way into at this stage of life and she was looking for a toy, a much younger toy who could give her the kind of attention that she had given up to have what she now had.  Cody struck me as a toy that was looking for a rich married woman who was bored.

Life was funny strange like that.

The two things about Wanda that I could always take for granted were her set of keys (complete with one of those leather fold over snap holsters holding a small canister of mace spray in it) and the way that she used to constantly play with her keys, especially that little leather holster of mace spray, twisting it this way and that way, winding the leather loop up on the key ring.  The loop was getting pretty worn and I figured it was only a matter of time before it wore through and she lost her mace spray somewhere.  If she wasn’t twisting the mace holster on her key ring she was tapping the holster / mace canister on the table top.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

It was like a weird involuntary habit; Wanda could not keep from playing with her keys on her key ring or twisting and turning that leather holster of mace spray.  I figured since there was no smoking in the grill that Wanda was just letting her smoker’s energy and nervousness out in between cigarettes by playing with her key ring and mace holster.  It used to drive me crazy and I used to kid her that she was going to accidentally fire it off one day, spraying us all and causing the grill to have to be evacuated and decontaminated.

“This stuff is pretty bad.  I’ve sprayed it in the air before testing it.  You don't have to spray it on someone for it to work, just get it close to their face.” She told us.

She then explained that her husband had gotten the mace spray for her after a series of violent rapes had taken place in Jackson a few years ago; he wanted her to be safe from would-be rapists and other bad types when he was on the road all the time.  From other things that Wanda told us about her husband, it sounded like he had married his career and that Wanda was little more than a decorative ornament in his life … something to be cherished but handled carefully if it was handled at all.

“Well, if that stuff that you’re playing with there is meant for keeping creeps from having their way with you then it obviously doesn’t work.” I told her.

“Why do you say that?” Wanda asked, looking concerned.

“Because Cody’s still following you around.”

Cody flipped me off slyly by sliding his bird finger up the right side of his nose and pretending to rub his eyebrow there.  Debby Lee busted out laughing but caught herself.  Wanda just sneered at me and went back to playing with her key ring and her mace.

Casual conversation with Debby Lee soon included a fair amount of good natured flirting.

The distance between us grew shorter and shorter day by day as we sat side by side on the bench in the booth.  Sometime during the second week we were joined by another member of our growing group, a classmate of Cody’s who took a seat next to Debby Lee, causing her to move over even closer to me and like that we were shoulder to shoulder, literally shoulder to shoulder … touching.  I didn’t mind and it was obvious that she didn’t either.  After that, Debby Lee would often scoot all the way over to me, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip and it stayed like that every time that we were together after that, even if it was only the two of us in the booth.

I really liked sitting close to Debby Lee.

She smelled of lilac.  She always smelled of lilac and for some reason it reminded me of handmade candy stores that I had visited when I was a young child on vacation in the mountains of Tennessee.  I don’t know why but it did in some weird way.  I also didn’t know it was lilac, I had to ask her what the scent was that but once she told me I could recognize her perfume in a crowded room because she was the only one that wore that particular fragrance.

Her perfume and the smell of her hair was intoxicating. 

When I asked her if she was tired, she would just smile and nod her head then slide her arm through mine and hug it tightly to her, pulling herself in closer.  When I looked at her questioningly she just smiled, an innocent little smile.

“I’m cold.  You’re warm.” She told me one time when she snuggled close to me there in the booth but it sounded more like an excuse than a statement of basic personal need.

Part of me wanted to believe that it was because it was fall and the huge glass windows seemed to soak the heat from us as we sat there next to them.  Part of me wanted to believe that it was because the campus grill saw so much foot traffic that the doors were always being opened and shut and that act alone really taxed the heating system to its limits to keep the cold out of the inside of the building.  Part of me wanted to believe that Debby Lee was getting closer for reasons other than the ones I could think of and reasons that, at that time, still remained all her own.  At that point in time I didn’t mind because whenever she got close to me she fulfilled a need that I didn’t know I was having.  She filled a spot in my life that had been vacant for a few months now.  

Debby Lee was like a kitten and I felt like I had been chosen by her.  It was a really comfortable kind of closeness that we enjoyed and I can’t say that I minded it much.  It reminded me of my time with Marie … of someone needing something and finding that something in someone she could be close to.  In fact, I was kind of hoping that it would go farther and I even spent some time thinking about how far I wanted it to go.

I can say that my thoughts of Debby Lee were hardly the kind of thoughts that I should be having, especially for a woman who was wearing another man’s ring on her finger but those were the kind of thoughts that I was having for her nonetheless.  In fact, the more time I spent with Debby Lee the more I thought about her when she wasn’t with me and the more I thought about Debby Lee the more I wanted her.

I wanted to be greedy.

I wanted to be selfish.

Debby Lee was twenty-six years old (eight full years older than me), had an average figure that put her four inches shy of being almost six feet tall and she had been married since she was seventeen years old … having dropped out of high school in order to get married and she would be the first to admit that she had been stupid for doing that.  She had recently gotten her GED and now she wanted to go to college to get a two year degree since she was tired of working in the service industry with the kind of long hours required and the limited kind of money and opportunity for advancement that line of employment offered.   When she was younger Debby Lee had given up on high school and college to get married all the while thinking that marriage would be an escape from the pressures of her teenage life but marriage was a temporary reprieve at best and now she realized that she needed and wanted a higher education … and she felt that she finally had the personal discipline to get it this time.

Her husband, Robby, was four years older than her (which meant he was twelve years older than me).  Robby was an auto mechanic by hobby and trade and he was employed full time as a senior tech in the service department of one of the larger, longer standing prestige based car dealerships there in Jackson.  He had a high school diploma and a trade school education but that was about it.  From the way that she frequently talked about him he apparently was a really good mechanic, something of a mechanical savant, a steady bread winner and a real plow horse when it came to working but he wasn’t a mental giant by any stretch of the definition nor was he very funny or creative. 

He was just … Robby ... and the way she talked about him he was more a fixture in her life than a husband, more a piece of furniture that she went home to at the end of the day.

Robby liked hunting and fishing and every sport known to man (except golf, she was adamant that he hated golf) and now with hunting season in full swing if he wasn’t at work then he was out with his buddies hunting in the woods usually out of town and sometimes out of state … and she was alone far more often than not.  I don’t think that she liked being alone, or that she didn’t like being alone as much as she found herself alone most of the time.  There was just this obvious loneliness in Debby Lee, like she was empty.

Since she had registered for junior college, Debby Lee had been forced to scale back her work schedule, going from full time to part-time and having to work nights and weekends almost exclusively since her days were now taken up with her classes.  She worked as a waitress at a family steak house in Clinton just a few miles away off campus.  Their schedules between multiple jobs and Robby’s time spent with his buddies didn’t give them much time together but it gave her a lot of time to be alone by herself and being alone was something she told me that she really hated.

All of this added up to one thing; Debby Lee was an extramarital opportunity waiting for a chance like me to happen.

When I asked her why she had married Robby she said that he was good to her and that he was nice; that was about all she would ever say about her husband and I took it from how she described her life that her marriage, especially her love life, was pretty dull if not comatose or even non-existent.  Robby gave Debby Lee security but he didn’t give her the love or the affection that she wanted and in that regard I realized why Debby Lee and Wanda seemed to get along … they were both looking for the same thing …  they were both looking for what was missing in their lives … they were both looking for what their husbands couldn’t or wouldn’t provide for them, something that they had willingly given up in their quest for security and in that respect the two women were kindred souls of a kind.

Maybe Robby didn’t know how to give her all of that … or maybe he just couldn’t.  Maybe he wasn’t a really affectionate man or he didn’t have a soft side.  Robby didn’t sound like he was the kind of person who showed very much of his feelings.  Whatever the reason, I found that every little thing that I did for Debby Lee, every little stolen touch, every soft compliment, every quick sideways glance, every appreciative look, every mischievous smile, every whispered nicety that I offered to her Debby Lee ate up with a ravenous appetite that only yearned for more and more often.

After the first few days together, Debby Lee started to flirt more with me on the tennis court.  I don’t know if she had taken a cue from Wanda or not but she began to give me small signs of her increased interest in me.  When we sat next to each other in the booth at the grille, she would lay her head on my shoulder and nuzzle me softly, leaning up against me. 

Even Cody noticed this behavior in her.

“Small signs.” Cody told me one day after we’d left the grill.  “You gotta watch for the small signs, Ray-Bans.  You just keep watching.  She’ll be putting on a show for you before you know it.”

Robby may have at one time sparked a fire in the woman that he had married but that fire had long since died down to glowing coals at best and here I was, apparently rapidly fanning those simmering coals back into a roaring flame but it was a flame that was moving in my direction, not Robby’s.  I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to deal with that because from the way that things were going I felt certain that I would have to deal with that roaring flame sooner rather than later.  My mother had always told me not to play with matches and the match that I had inadvertently struck with Debby Lee was rapidly turning into a wildfire.  A tiny little rational part of me kept whispering that I was going to get burned if I wasn’t careful but I found that the reckless part of me could out shout the rational part and it could do so with amazingly little effort.  I realized that the rational part of me, at this point in my life, cowed down all too easily.

Being with Debby Lee was like being with Marie all over again, those first few times with Marie, when everything was so new and so exciting, when it was such a big mystery.  I missed Marie, I really missed her in my life and I wondered if I was trying to replace her absence in my life with Debby Lee … or was there something else there that was drawing me closer to Debby Lee?

The truth was that I missed Marie, I missed what we had shared for all that time and in doing so I guess I let Debby Lee slide in and take Marie’s place in that empty spot I had in my life because right then anything was better than the nothing that I had.  The more I remembered my time with Marie the more I wanted to be with Debby Lee.  I was hemorrhaging Marie and Debby Lee looked like the closest, best thing to use as a tourniquet to stop the flow of melancholy from that emotional wound.  I began to want what I had before, even if it was someone else and even if it rightfully belonged to someone else; it was a primitive want, a selfish want and in doing so I guess I was just as lonely as Debby Lee was.

… And I realized right then and there that I, too, was looking for something that was missing in my life, something that I needed, something that I wanted and something that I no longer had.

              Wednesday, September 16, 1987

That was the first time that Debby Lee and I went off campus and actually spent time together, just the two of us.  It was innocent enough, I guess; we had been about to have lunch at the campus grill as was our usual routine when she remembered that she had to run an errand in Clinton which would mean that she would miss out on our time at the campus grill together.  Not wanting to miss my company and the fun we had when we were together she asked me to ride with her to the convenience store at the edge of campus to get some gas in her car and then to go run a quick errand with her to pick up her paycheck and her schedule for next week at the steakhouse that she worked at.  She further enticed me with the offer of catching lunch at McDonald’s or Wendy’s, either of which beat the food at the campus grill.  That way, she explained, we could get her errand run and we wouldn’t have to miss lunch or the time that we spent each day together.  She promised to have me back by the start of my next afternoon class so I agreed.

The truth was that she wanted to spend time with me and I wanted to spend time with her.  On the way to the commuter student parking lot we stopped by my dorm room so that I could drop off my backpack; that was the first time that she had seen where I stayed.  It wasn’t much and I can’t say that I expected her to be impressed with the Spartan furnishings.  It was a dorm room; two desks, a two door clothes locker, and a steel frame bunk bed … the world’s most uncomfortable bed and it probably had its own entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as such.

In any case, we didn’t stay long.

Her car was parked in the middle of the parking lot.  Debby Lee drove a 1984 Buick Regal, white, with a burgundy cloth interior, front bench seat, five spoke factory alloy wheels, three speed automatic and a two barrel carburetor fed 3.8 liter, 231 cubic inch Buick V6 under the hood.  All in all it was a pretty car if a bit plain right down to the original factory AM / FM cassette radio and it was the kind of car that I expected a girl to drive.  If a guy had driven something like this I’d have immediately questioned his sexual orientation which, in hindsight, made it the perfect kind of car for someone like Robert Edwards to drive. 

I impressed her when I opened the driver’s side door for her and she commented on this act, saying that she wasn’t used to someone opening the door for her.  I smiled as I let her slide in on the bench seat behind the steering wheel.  I guess it wasn’t a real bench seat, more like a 55/45 split seat.  I waited until she was all in before shutting the driver’s side door.  Debby Lee hit the power door lock button, unlocking the passenger side with a hollow thunking sound and letting me in.

I buckled up as Debby Lee pumped the accelerator several times, turned the key in the ignition and the 231 cubic inch V6 under the hood fired itself up with all the charisma that a 231 cubic inch Buick V6 could muster.  While they were both carburetor fed, the little 231 cubic inch V6 wasn’t the monster that the 403 cubic inch V8 under the hood of the Pontiac was … no, the little V6 was more docile, civilized … domesticated, neutered, spayed, potty trained, house broken and probably a lot more miserly in how it sipped gas.  Compared to the 403 in the Pontiac, the 231 V6 in the Buick was a kitten and it sipped its ration of gas through half the carburetor that the 403 had and drank from two less cylinders as well.

The Regal made a low, sedate purr as we drove smoothly out of the commuter parking lot and over to the convenience store at the edge of the main campus intersection.  I offered to pump the gas for her while she went in to pay.  She stuck her head out the front door, shouting across the parking lot her offer to buy me a drink while she was in the store and I told her to pick me up a Pepsi, regular Pepsi, not that crappy diet stuff.  The bottle of Pepsi was shared between us on our eight mile ride over to Clinton from the Raymond campus, I could taste her lipstick on the glass of the bottle each time that we swapped and drank.

I knew then that another boundary had been crossed … willingly, by both of us.

We stopped by the steak house that she worked at and she introduced me around as a fellow college student to a few of the staff.  She picked up her schedule, got her paycheck and we left.  We ran by a bank, she deposited her check and kept a twenty out for spending money.  Lunch was her treat, as she had offered, and we took it at the McDonald’s in Clinton.  It was a pretty fall day, the air was cool and crisp, the leaves and colors were changing and we found ourselves skipping our afternoon classes to spend the rest of the day just slowly driving around the back roads of Hinds County in her Buick.  Neither of us were local to the area so it was easy to just meander down county two lanes, exploring and getting lost.

We talked.

Talking was really easy with Debby Lee even though she seemed to do most of it but then I’d always been a better listener than a talker myself.  About an hour and a half into our ride we started holding hands while we were talking and it wasn’t something that was just casual … there was a desire there, a real desire, simple and strong. 

Her hand was warm.

I squeezed it, gently.

She squeezed my hand back, stronger and like that another boundary had been crossed … willingly, by both of us.

And there we were, in her car, her driving and me riding in the passenger seat.  Us, holding hands.  I thought back to what Cody had said to me about Wanda ...

“See her?”

 I looked at Wanda who wasn’t that hard on the eyes for what Cody referred to as prime aged real estate.

 “Yeah?  What about her?”

 “I’m going to fuck her.” Cody said very matter of factly.  “Yep.  I’m going to fuck that woman.  Hard.”

 I snorted.

 “Seriously, Ray-Bans.  I’m going to.”

 “You are?” I asked.

 “I am.” Cody said.

 “And … does she know this?” I asked.

 “No.  Well, I mean, she doesn’t know it yet ...”

"Cody?"

"Yeah?"

"Now, I don’t know about Texas but here in Mississippi if you fuck a woman and she doesn’t know that you’re going to fuck her then we have a name for that kind of behavior.”

 “Yeah?  What do you call it?” Cody asked.

 “Rape.”

 Cody laughed out loud and smiled.

 “It’s not rape if she wants it, and trust me … that woman over there wants this bod.  Yeah, that woman is definitely looking for some Miller time.”

 I rolled my eyes.

 “What I say is true, Ray-Bans.  I shit you not.  I'm going to be up in that like Tampax.”

 Narcissism was one of Cody’s strong points.

 “Okay … suppose you’re right.  How do you know that she wants you to fuck her?” I asked.

 “Oh, that’s easy.  It’s the little things.  Signs.  How she looks at me.  That smile.”

 I shook my head.

"This you can bank on, Ray-Bans.  This you can most certainly bank on.”

Whatever it was that Debby Lee was looking for right then and there I felt like I was it.

“It’s the little things.  Signs.  How she looks at me.  That smile.”

Her hand clenched mine tighter as she drove.  I looked over at her and she smiled at me, the same kind of smile that Wanda had given to Cody that day there on the tennis court.  The smile that told me that Debby Lee had already made up her mind about a lot of things and that one of those things that she had made her mind up about was us.

“Another life lesson, Ray-Bans.”

 “What’s that?” I asked.

 “If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.” Cody said.

 “Can I bank on that, too?” I asked.

 “Like it was gospel truth.” Cody said flatly.

 “I’ll keep it in mind.” I muttered out loud before I realized that I’d actually muttered out loud.

 “Keep what in mind?” Debby Lee asked, looking over at me, smiling.

 “Nothing.  Sorry.  Got lost in thought for a second.”

 Yeah, I’d keep Cody’s advice in mind.

 “Do that, Ray-Bans.  You do that.” I heard Cody say in my mind.

          Thursday, September 17, 1987

The next day, Thursday, after my last class I went back to my dorm room and thought I might get a quick nap before I tried to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my afternoon.  I hadn’t put my head to my pillow and gotten comfortable for more than a minute when there came a knock on my dorm room door.  Damn it!  I got up and opened the door to find Debby Lee standing there, smiling.  She asked me if I wanted to go riding in her Buick again and suddenly I wasn’t tired any longer so I jumped at the chance.  I splashed some Stetson cologne on and met her outside the dorm hallway.  This time she let me drive and we started holding hands before we’d even left the parking lot.  I stopped at a Chevron in Clinton to put five dollars’ worth of unleaded in her Buick and to get something to drink, sharing another bottle of Pepsi between us.

Neither one of us had another class today so we had all the time in the world to go riding and to spend with each other.

The Buick was a lot smoother than I was used to and the suspension was a lot softer as well, nowhere near as tight or as unforgiving as the Pontiac’s WS6 harsher, high performance oriented underpinnings.  Bumps and irregularities in the pavement that would have vibrated your fillings right out of your skull in the Pontiac were merely glossed over in the wush-mush ride of the Buick.  It had adequate power, for a girl car, but you weren’t going to go up against anything serious with the stock V6 under the hood.  Still, for what it was built and designed for, the Buick impressed me.  Hell, I might even grow to like a car like the Buick, as a second car, as a commuter car or a beater.

Debby Lee sat in the passenger side of the front bench seat.  Her lilac perfume was strong and we rode that way for almost half an hour, holding hands until she let go, unbuckled her seatbelt and snuggled up next to me there on the bench seat of the Buick, her head on my right shoulder, her left arm wrapped around my right arm and her left hand holding my right hand, fingers interlaced.  She held me tight.

“I like that cologne you’re wearing.” She whispered her head on my shoulder.

“It’s Stetson.” I said, turning to nuzzle her, to smell her perfume.

Lilac.

“It’s a good smell for you.” She whispered, nuzzling back.  “It fits you.”

We didn’t do a whole lot more talking on that ride but then I guess that we didn’t really need to.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words but maybe a simple act is as well and on that day I guess her snuggling up quietly next to me with her head on my shoulder said everything that ever needed to be said.   There was a shared need that was being met.

There was just us.

If our ride ended with anything learned it was that I really liked holding hands with Debby Lee and I wanted to do it a lot more, as soon as I could and as often as I could.  In fact I wanted to sweep her up in my arms and just spend a really long time holding her close, kissing her, running my hands up and down her body.  It wasn’t hard to tell that the feeling was mutual, if not from the grip that she kept on my hand and the way that she interlaced her fingers through mine then from the looks that she was giving me all that afternoon, the coy smiles, the demure looks, the quick glances that caused her hair to dance across her cheek and neck.  I wanted Debby Lee but until that afternoon I still hadn’t made up my mind that I was going to take that final step.  After the ride, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I did take that final step and that’s when I knew that I was in trouble.

“If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.” Cody said.

Why hadn’t I just pulled off somewhere and done the obvious thing? 

Damn.

I should have kissed her ... just pulled her to me and kissed her; good, hard, long and deep.  Why hadn’t I just pulled her to me and held her and kissed her?  I thought about that for a long time and no matter how I looked at it I really didn’t have a good answer to that question and for the rest of the day it felt like I'd really fucked something up ... like I'd had an opportunity ... a golden opportunity ... and I'd let it go.  Wasted it on thinking too hard about something that really didn't require a whole lot of thought.  It wasn't a good feeling, no it wasn't a good feeling at all and it was the kind of feeling that stayed with you, haunted you on some level that you couldn't exercise or dispel no matter how hard you tried.

It was the kind of feeling that reminded you that you were an idiot.

          Friday, September 18, 1987

That afternoon Debby Lee and I met after her last class near the commuter parking lot with the intention to say goodbye for the weekend.  We stopped by my dorm room to let me put my class work and text books up and then I walked her to her car, carrying her backpack for her.  As we walked, Debby Lee mentioned that she had to work that night at the steak house in Clinton and asked me to stop by and see her if I went out or got hungry.  I asked her about Robby and she said he was leaving after work with two of his friends for their deer camp in Louisiana and that he wouldn’t be back until late Sunday night.  I told her that I would think about it and a little look of disappointment seemed to cloud her expression.

“So … is there a chance that I’ll see you tonight?” she asked, cutting her eyes at me.

“Yeah, maybe.” I said.  “Call it half a chance.”

Debby Lee pretended to pout.

“I guess that half a chance of seeing you later tonight is better than no chance at all.” She told me, her look sullen.

Debby Lee had really pretty blue eyes and I had a thing for women with pretty eyes.

I walked her out to her ‘84 Buick Regal, held the door open for her to get in then with a long held, fingers laced touch of hands and a feelings charged goodbye, I watched her slowly drive off campus.  There had been a moment there … a moment lost, an opportunity not taken, another chance missed and I thought that maybe she realized that as well.  She had held on there for longer than I thought she would.

Was she waiting on me?

Her head looked up and back in the rear view mirror more than a few times and I didn’t move from where I had stood until a few minutes after she had finally vanished from sight.  Even after that I stood there in place for a while, just listening to the wind and the rustle of leaves across the mostly vacant parking lot, trying to get a heading for where I was going and trying to figure out how fast I was going to get there.

On my way back to my dorm, I thought about Debby Lee’s offer.  I thought about her offer a lot because more than anything right then and there I really wanted to see Debby Lee again.  I wanted to hold her hand, I wanted her head on my shoulder and I wanted to smell her lilac perfume.

I had the night off from my part time job, my paycheck cashed and nothing better to do than be good to myself so … yeah, what the hell.  I could take Debby Lee up on her offer and even enjoy a night out on the town, maybe catch a movie at the dollar cinema behind Sack and Save on Ellis Avenue, that is, if anything good was playing.

My stomach rumbled and I realized that I was hungrier than I thought I was. 

A big juicy ribeye steak done medium well, shake on some Worcestershire sauce, some Texas toast, a big baked potato with butter dripping down the sides of it and a real tall glass of sweet tea sounded just about right after a long week of short order grill food and classroom based scholastic nonsense. 

Suddenly the campus seemed really empty and at the same time confining.  I really needed to get out tonight, to escape from Hinds, to get off of this campus if only for a little while.  I felt the beginning symptoms of going dorm crazy and with those thoughts kicking around my head I turned and walked back to my dorm room.

I didn’t see another soul along the way.

Everyone had jumped ship.

The parking lot was empty.

There was no traffic … only the wind and the leaves rustling in the trees and across the asphalt.

When I got back to my dorm room I discovered that my roommate Doug had left me a note on my night stand explaining that he was going hunting that weekend and wouldn’t be back until late Sunday night.  While part of me appreciated Doug leaving me notes another part of me just really didn’t care what Doug did with his life.  So, with Doug gone for the weekend and Debby Lee’s offer pending my Friday night was really starting to look up.

And then I realized that I was tired, tired from my soul inside out.  I’d been running hard in every aspect of my life this week and suddenly here was this pause that I could enjoy and I wasn’t about to let it go.  The prospects of the weekend were exciting so I banked them in the back of my mind, set the alarm on my clock radio beside my bed and took an hour long nap. 

5:30 PM.

When the alarm went off, I snoozed for an extra thirty minutes (three taps) and woke up at to a completely quiet dorm building with the last light of the day filtering through the slats in the blinds of my dorm room … it was Friday night and it seemed like everyone else had already abandoned ship for better places and better times.  The dorm room was lit like an asylum having a budget crisis.  Stray light filtered in at that fall / autumn spectrum and wavelength.  It was a warm, fuzzy, end of the day kind of light.

6:07 PM.

I got a long hot shower and shaved for the second time that day.  I quick polished my harness boots, got some fresh jeans and a long sleeve black button up shirt out of the closet, splashed some Stetson cologne on, and grabbed my black leather jacket.

6:48 PM.

Outside the dorm the temperature had dropped considerably.  It was cold and it had gotten a lot colder since Debby Lee and I had said goodbye.  Even so I felt like I wanted to take the tops off the TA, take the long way to Clinton through the back roads and just blow the soot out of the old girl.  I rolled the windows down, stored the glass T-tops in their protective bags in the trunk of my ’79 TA, hopped up and over into the driver’s seat without even bothering to open the door and cruised the long winding stretch over to Clinton.

Why was I taking Debby Lee up on her offer?

Was I hungry for food … or for Debby Lee?

“If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.” Cody said.

What was I really doing?

Was I just delaying the inevitable?

Part of me knew the answer and part of me just didn’t want to acknowledge that fact.

Did I want Debby Lee or did I need Debby Lee?

Both.

That was the answer that I’d been looking for these past few days, hell, the past week and a half.  I wanted Debby Lee and I needed Debby Lee.

The sky was painted in orange, pink and purple, the dying light of the day.

I took the long way, driving through the myriad of two lane twisty county back roads rather than the main road because it gave me extra time to think while driving hard and fast relaxed me.  The air was cold through the rolled down windows and the open top but the Pontiac’s heater was a really good one and at high speed with my leather jacket on, the ride was nothing if not enjoyable.

Brisk but enjoyable.

Judas Priest was belting out “Reckless” from their 1986 “Turbo” album on the Kenwood and the sun was just starting to set.  If Hinds County, Mississippi had an abundance of anything it was old, curvy roads with little or no traffic and some really beautiful sunsets.  I didn’t drive as fast as I wanted to … or could … but then again I hardly ever touched the brakes in the curves when I came to them. 

You could do that with a WS6 optioned TA, just sling it around corners.

By the time I got to the outskirts of Clinton at around 7:30PM the horizon was painted in the dim glow of last light and the night air had started to drop rapidly, bringing with it not only the cool but the crisp as well.  It wasn’t hard to find the family steak house that Debby Lee worked at, after all she had taken me there just a couple of days ago when she had taken me with her to pick up her schedule and her paycheck.  The steak house was a quaint little place, done up in the usual clichéd Old West cowboy, wagon wheel, cactus and cow skull décor and apparently family owned rather than some franchise or chain outlet.  That made it unique, if I had to choose a word to describe it.  It also felt … old.  I felt like this was a dance that I’d done before, way too often and that now I was just going through the moves.  Everything right then felt predestined, like my life was on a set of tracks and I was only along for the ride.

I managed to find a parking spot near the sidewalk at the front entrance of the restaurant and since there was nothing of any real value in the TA other than my old case of cassette tapes, I threw the tape case in the trunk, left the tops off and the windows down and called it at that.  Besides, there weren’t that many customers at this time of the night so I felt sure that I could have my pick of a table that would let me keep my eye on my Pontiac directly, if I asked nicely.

And sure enough, the elderly hostess seated me, by request, in a window booth right in front of where I had parked, a seat where I could keep a watch on my open topped TA.  When I asked if Debby Lee was working tonight the hostess told me that she was.  I was then asked if I had a preference for Debby Lee to be my waitress tonight and I told her that we went to Hinds and had a few classes together so, yeah, I’d like that … sort of a surprise for Debby Lee, dropping in to have dinner on my way home.  Besides, I explained, Debby Lee had invited me to try the place out earlier in the week and because my other plans for the night had fallen through here I was. 

As thick as I was layering it out, the elderly hostess was eating it up. 

I also asked her if she wouldn’t tell Debby Lee that I was here and just let it be a pleasant surprise when Debby Lee waited on me.  That obviously made the hostess happy to set up something fun like that and she walked away vanishing into the kitchen to set the surprise in motion. 

A few minutes later, a somewhat tired looking Debby Lee appeared beside my booth, walking up from behind where I sat.  She wore brown pull on cowboy boots, a tan western style skirt that hung down to her mid-shin, a red Polo style work shirt with her name tag pinned over her left breast and a simple dark brown pocketed work apron tied at the waist.  She put some cloth rolled silverware and a paper wrapped straw on the table in front of me and introduced herself by name as my waitress with all the enthusiasm of someone who had done that same routine for a very long time.

When I told her that I was hoping for a waitress that was blonde, had bigger tits and had more job experience she did a double take and that’s when she realized that I had decided to take her up on her offer to see her again tonight at her work place.  Debby Lee’s expression was worth the trip to Clinton alone, going from flabbergasted shock at what I'd just said to her to overt surprise at me being there.  Her smile was not only genuine but it erased the tired look from her face and I was suddenly very glad that I had decided to come see her tonight because she had obviously needed this and I realized that maybe I had needed this as well, maybe as much as she had.

“I guess that half of a chance turned out to be a whole chance after all …” Debby Lee said happily.

“I guess it did.  Life’s funny strange like that sometimes.” I said as I smiled and nodded.

We made small talk over the menu then I got serious and made my choice.  You can tell how good a steak is going to be at a place like this by how long they take to cook it and I must have waited about fifteen minutes for my steak to get prepared.  During this time, Debby Lee kept walking by to check on me, to refill my tea glass and to cut eyes at me or touch me in some quick, playful way.  Lilac perfume in her wake.  Showing up and having dinner here while she worked had made her night and I could tell that she was really, really happy now that I had taken her up on her offer.  That and I liked the way her skirt swished when she walked, boots pounding the floor and the glance or two she threw over her shoulder at me as she walked away.

The steak and baked potato were excellent, the tea was every bit as good as the tea that I made in my dorm room and Debby Lee doted on me throughout my meal making sure that I had everything that I needed and that my tea glass never got anywhere near empty.  I think she used the tea pitcher she served from as an excuse just to get a chance to stop by my table as often as she could.  When business slacked off for a while Debby Lee took one of her breaks by sitting at my table and eating a slice of ice box chocolate pie which she shared with me, spoon feeding me by reaching across the table to offer me bites, sometimes teasing me by almost letting me get a taste and then feeding herself instead.  Her cowboy boots rubbed on my legs under the table and at least twice during our conversation she reached across the table and took my hands in hers, squeezing and holding.  If her coworkers noticed … or cared, they didn’t make it evident and Debby Lee and I seemed to have that booth all to our selves, the rest of the world be damned.

When I thought that I had stayed long enough I settled up my bill and left a ten dollar tip for Debby Lee.  I hadn’t made it five steps out the front door when Debby Lee hurriedly came out and shouted for me to wait up.  I turned as she grabbed her western skirt and fast walked over to me, her cowboy boots clomping on the sidewalk with all the grace that a bunched up skirt and cowboy boots could allow her to have.

“A ten buck tip?  Wow!  You must think that you’re going to get lucky tonight …” she said, laughing and holding up the ten dollar bill.

“Get lucky for ten bucks?  I doubt you’re that cheap … or easy … and if you are then I’m not sure that I want what it is that you have to offer.” I mocked.

Debby Lee stuck her tongue out at me playfully, looked at the ten dollar bill then folded it in half and stuck it in the pocket of her apron, turning to look at me and smiling one of those mischievous smiles. 

“Thank you for coming to see me.  I wanted to see you.  Again.  Tonight.” she said, trailing off into silence, smiling.

“I kind of thought that you did …” I said, remembering how she had been that afternoon.

“I’m glad you stopped by.” She said.

“Well, you asked me to.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you would.” She cooed.

"I had to." I said, simple as that.

"You had to?" she asked.

"I wanted to see you ... again.  Tonight." I said.

“I was really hoping you'd stop by tonight.” she said, taking a step closer and stopping.

And like that we stood there for what seemed like a week, just staring at each other, into each other's eyes.  There was that awkward pause, like two actors on stage when one of them misses their cue or forgets what they were supposed to say and the other is trying to give them hints as to what is going on without the audience seeing them give the hints.  Yeah, I was starting to feel like the actor who had forgotten their line.  I realized this was the time to take a chance and cross a line, if I ever was going to take that chance and cross that line.

"If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.  Don't waste their time.” Cody said.

I looked around the parking lot, back at the front entrance of the restaurant and saw that we were all alone.  I took Debby Lee's hand and quickly pulled her around the side of the restaurant into the shadows there where no one could see us.   Debby Lee went along, half willingly, half stumbling at my sudden antic, laughing softly at not really knowing what I was doing.  We had no sooner cleared the side of the building and gotten out of sight than I pulled her to me and brought her lips to mine.

Sure and confident; it was so sudden that she had no time to react.  

Her lilac perfume teased me as my arms snaked around her, pulling her tight to me like she was my own.  I felt her warmth, her body against mine.Our lips touched once, brushed against each other as our cheeks rubbed, my beard against her bare skin, touched again and parted as I drove my tongue into her mouth.  There was little, if any, resistance on her part and what resistance there was came more from her surprise at what I had done than anything else.  Her lips parted and her tongue found mine.  I kissed her just like I'd wanted to kiss her the other day, just like I should have kissed her the other day; good, hard, long, and deep.  We kissed deeply, urgently, her breath coming short and fast as my lips raked, brushed and crushed against hers.  Time stood still for us then ... there was only Debby Lee and me.  She moaned softly as I held her tight, my arms holding her to me at her waist and back.  We kissed for what seemed a long time and then it was over as quick as it had started. 

I could taste her lipstick.

Debby Lee withdrew and stepped back, ran a finger over her lips and took on a deep, pensive look, as if she were wrestling with something deep inside herself.  Her fingers moved across her lips ... an expression on her face of ... confusion?  This was it then ... either I'd just started something or I'd just finished something.  I'd made up my mind and finally crossed the line that I'd been holding back from crossing.   I stood there, looking at her, never breaking eye contact but I wasn't going to be the first to say something because all that I had to say to her I'd just said with what I'd just done.

"Uh ... Okay.  Wow." Debby Lee muttered, looking down then back up at me.

Uncertainty in her expression?  She stopped, bit her lip then looked at me and nodded slowly.

"Yeah.  Look ... you ... don't ..."

Disbelief?  

Anger?  

She shook her head then looked at me, eye to eye.  

My heart skipped a beat thinking that I had just really ... and I mean really really really just fucked up.

"Yeah.  You don't know ... how much I’ve wanted you to do that  ... " she said in a half whisper.

And that's when I knew that I'd started something instead of finished it.

"These past few days being alone with you … God.  You really just don’t know.” she said, still somewhat pensive but now looking up at me.

"Really ... just really wanted to do that with you." she whispered.

I stepped forward and put my arms around her and her arms came up around me, sliding, hands roaming.  This time our lips drew closer quicker and we were about to kiss again when a harsh wind came up, whipping around the corner with a howl and we leaned against the side wall of the restaurant to get out of the cutting cold.  She wrapped her arms around me even tighter and pulled herself in close next to me to protect her against the chill night air.  The side of her head against the side of mine, her shivering, me holding her tight.

“Sheesh.” She whispered.  “That wind is sharp.”

“It’s getting colder.” I commented, holding her tight as she shivered.

“Yeah?  Tell me about it.” she said, shivering in my arms.

I leaned back slightly and looked at her, at how she was dressed.  She was dressed like a victim for winter.

“Hey!  Where’s your jacket?” I asked, realizing she wasn't wearing anything other than her work shirt.

Debby Lee huffed.

“At home.” She admittedly whined.

“At home?  Why the hell is your jacket at home?” I asked.

“Well, like a dummy I went off and left it this morning.” She mused.  “I didn’t have a chance to run home and get it after class and still get to work on time so ...” She shrugged and gave an unhappy look like she knew that suffering was coming and there was nothing she could do about it.

Suddenly I felt sorry for her.  Cold weather was something that I could tolerate with no problem, in fact, for the past three years I’d pretty much gone through winter wearing nothing but a T-shirt and my leather jacket.  Cold weather was something that I could handle.

“Here.” I said, taking my leather jacket off and putting it around her shoulders like a cape to keep her warm.

“Wait.  You’re serious?” she asked, looking at my offered jacket.

“Yeah.  Take it.  You’re going to need it.”

A strange feeling of déjà vu came over me as she leaned in close, her arms up flat against my chest, nuzzling me, rubbing her hair against my cheek and neck as she shivered a little in my arms.  I held her tight, wrapped in my jacket, and slowly rocked in place next to the building.  It was the best feeling in the world, holding her like that, being with her.  A minute later she looked at her watch.

“Crud ...  I’ve got to get back inside.” She said in a sad voice, starting to take my jacket back off to hand it to me.

“No.  You keep it.  I’ll get it from you later.” I said, stopping her from finishing taking off my jacket.

“You’ll get it back?  Your jacket?"

I nodded.

"When?”

“Later.  When I come back to see you after you get off from work.  Speaking of that … When do you get off work?” I asked.

I guess what I told her and what I asked her threw her for a loop because she actually had to think about it for a second or two.

“Wow.  You mean I get to see you twice tonight."

"If you want." I said.

She nuzzled up close to me.

Yeah, that was a stupid question to ask her.

"The restuarant closes at ten o’clock tonight.  I’ll probably be able to leave about half past that if business stays slack like this.  You know, help clean up and close up and all and maybe I can get some of it done before actual closing.”

She looked at me then, studying my face and my expression like I was a mystery to her, like she was trying to read something she’d never read before.

"You're serious?  You're really going to come back and see me later?” she asked, smiling coyly.

“It's winter.  You’ve got my jacket.  Kind of going to need that.” I said.

Her eyes lit up and that smile came back as she playfully punched me in the shoulder.

“I'm being serious!  You’ll be here?  Really?  Later?” she asked as she flashed her blue eyes at me.

She had really pretty blue eyes.

Damn, she had really pretty blue eyes.

"Waiting for me?" she asked.

“Waiting for my jacket.” I said.

Debby Lee mock sneered at me.

“Waiting for me?” she asked again, softer.

I smiled.

“Yeah.  I’ll be here.  Waiting for you.”

Debby Lee smiled then.

Just like that.  I thought of what to say and found that I didn’t really need to think very hard about it at all.

“When you get off work ... I want my jacket back ..."

"You want your jacket back?  Are you sure that's all you want?" she asked, cutting her eyes at me.

She had really pretty eyes.

Fuck me eyes.

"... and I want a goodnight kiss from you.” I said. 

"A goodnight kiss?"

"Yeah.  A good goodnight kiss."

I really wanted another kiss from Debby Lee.   Debby Lee shuffled her feet and looked at me coyly; I could tell that she was blushing.

"A good goodnight kiss?" she asked.

"A really good goodnight kiss." I said as I nodded.

“I think I’ve got one of those.” She said.

“You're sure?”

“Yeah.  I’ve got one left.  Just one."

"Just one?" I asked playfully.

"Just one.  Just for you.”

We held hands, silence, lost in each other’s stare with only the sounds of late night traffic and the wind to disturb our thoughts.  We held hands as we pulled apart, tugged on each other, fingers laced.  I finally let go of her hands, regretting it but knowing that she had to get back to work.

“Ten thirty?” I asked.

Debby Lee nodded, smiling ... smiling like a little girl who had just gotten what she wanted.

“Okay.  Ten thirty it is.  I’ll probably be parked across the street over there in that shopping center parking lot but I’ll be here.  When you get off work, just drive on over there and meet me.”

She smiled then turned and walked away ... I admired the swish of her bottom as she walked.  She had a really nice swish.  I watched her go back into the restaurant, holding my black leather jacket around her shoulders like a cape then I went over to my TA, popped the trunk, took out the T-tops and put them on.  It had gotten colder, especially since I’d just given Debby Lee my black leather jacket.  Looking at my watch I saw that I had about two and a half hours left until Debby Lee got off work so I spent that time just cruising around Jackson, losing myself in my thoughts, alternating listening to heavy metal cassettes and Z106.7 FM and biding my time.  My thoughts were on Debby Lee and I must have burned half a tank of gas in that time just cruising and thinking.  My thoughts wandered, the way they always do, but they always came back to that kiss that we had shared … our first kiss and the way that she had looked at me when I pulled her around the corner of the restaurant and drew her close to me.

I drove back to Clinton and waited in the parking lot of the shopping center across from the family steak house.  Clinton was shutting down for the night as a city and certainly as a group of businesses.  All the stores in the shopping center had closed around nine and the last of the employees had left long before I got there leaving me with a mostly empty parking lot.  It was 10:08 PM and I was early so I sat there, TA idling, heater blowing on the second fan speed setting, listening to my heavy metal cassettes on the Kenwood stereo.

I shut my eyes and thought of Debby Lee ... the past few days with her, that first time holding her hand, how I had pulled her to me tonight and kissed her there on the side of the restaurant, the feel of her tongue wrapped around mine.  How she had pulled herself to me instead of away from me and how she had met my kiss with equal effort of her own.  I had taken a chance but I knew it was there for the taking.  In fact, I probably could have kissed her yesterday when we’d been out riding.  I know that’s what I had wanted to do, just pull off somewhere, put the Buick in park, lean over and kiss her ...  make out with her ...  maybe even see where it went from there.

I played our time together over and over again in my mind.

The way that Debby Lee had been acting the past few days when we were out together.

Little things.

Signs.

I had just followed the signs that Debby Lee had been giving me ... maybe a lot slower than she would have liked me to, but I guess I finally figured things out and ... finally made up my mind that what she wanted was what I wanted as well and now here I was.  Sitting in my '79 TA, across the street from a steak house in Clinton, waiting on a married woman to get off work so I could ... 

I took a deep breath and cleared my thoughts.  What I was thinking about happening between me and Debby Lee really didn't take a whole lot of thinking.

The steak house was closed but I could see that the employees were cleaning up after the day’s business, wiping down tables, one was running a push vacuum cleaner, another swept out the foyer and the front sidewalk taking the time to smoke a cigarette while doing so.

I wondered if Debby Lee was looking for me.  I wondered if she was taking peeks out the closed blinds to see if the black Pontiac Trans Am was parked across the street.  So far I hadn’t seen her.

Whitesnake’s popular “Still of the Night” was playing and I shut my eyes again, thoughts of Debby Lee returning during the part of the song where guitarist John Sykes used a violin bow on the electric guitar.

Sure enough, around ten thirty most of the lights in the restaurant went out in quick sequence on the inside as did the main parking lot business sign a minute later.  A few minutes later cars and trucks began to leave from the employee parking area behind the restaurant so I assumed that they had a back entrance to the restaurant that the employees used.  The last to leave was Debby Lee and I saw her white Buick Regal drive slowly around the corner of the restaurant.  Debby Lee waited on some traffic to pass then slowly drove across the road, pulling up beside me in the parking lot, driver’s side to driver’s side, Regal hood to Pontiac tail, Pontiac hood to Regal tail, a General Motors version of 69.  We rolled our windows down and she crossed her arms on the window sill, resting her chin and laying her head on her arms.  She shivered and chattered her teeth at the cold, smiling when she could.  She was wearing my jacket, not just draped around her shoulders like a cape, but actually wearing it like a jacket should be worn.

“Your jacket smells like you.” She said, sniffing the leather on the arm of the jacket.

“In a good way or a bad way?” I asked.

“In a good way.  It’s a good smell.  I like the way that you smell.” She said.

She blinked her eyes at me and smiled.

“Did it ever get any busier after I left?” I asked.

Debby Lee sighed again, louder this time and more for emphasis.

“Oh, God!  After you left we had a rush that wasn’t over until about forty-five minutes ago.  Some church group from out of town came by and let me tell you what … that was a madhouse.”

“Was it a big group?” I asked.

“It was a charter bus.  They parked over here, across the street, and they all just walked over to the restaurant in one … big … group.  It was all cranky old men and their little old church lady wives!”

She growled angrily out of obvious frustration and I laughed.

“You look tired.” I said and she did.

“I am tired.  My shoulders hurt and my feet are killing me.” She said.

I turned the TA off then stepped out and stood by her passenger side door.  Debby Lee hit the power door locks and I got in her Regal on the passenger side.  The motor still hadn’t warmed up so the heater wasn’t blowing hot yet.  She rolled her window back up and leaned up in the corner of the driver’s seat, across from me, pulling her legs up to her chest, crossing her arms around her legs, shivering and trying to stay warm.

“Don’t even think about getting this jacket of yours back until that damn heater starts working.”

“I’m good.” I said, shivering.  “You keep it as long as you need it but I’m not going back to my dorm without it.”

“Want to bet, buster?” Debby Lee asked and there was some playful seriousness to her voice.

It was then that I was glad that I had worn a long sleeve shirt tonight.  I reached over and turned the Delco stereo on, setting the volume low and finding Z106.7 FM on the dial.  Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” was playing softly through the speaker in the dash and the two speakers in the back.

“So?  What now?” she asked, shivering.

“You put your feet in my lap here.”

“Why would I do that when I’m comfortable like I am?” she asked.

“Trust me.”

She did, somewhat hesitantly and then I pulled her western style boots off and put them on the floor.  She wore ankle height sports socks, white ones with a little pink band.  There above her right ankle was a small tattoo of a pair of blue dolphins circling a red heart.  I looked at it closely, holding her ankle up slightly so I could get a better look in better light.

“Spring Break, 1979, Fort Walton Beach.” She said.  “I was 17 and drunk.  It hurt like hell but there it is.”

Debby Lee was the first girl I’d ever been with that had a tattoo.

I put that in my Book of Firsts as well.

“It still looks good.” I said.

“I’ve got another tattoo.” She said slyly.

“Where?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know …” she said, smiling mischievously.

I didn't know if that was a taunt or an invite.  I smiled, thinking about where her other tattoo might be, the obvious places, and I took her sport sock off.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.  “Don’t take that off!  My feet get cold!”

Debby Lee started to pull her legs back towards her but I grabbed her by the ankles and held tight.

“Relax.  Your feet aren’t going to be cold for long.” I said as I began to feel the Buick’s heater start to blow warm air into the interior.

I pulled off her other ankle sock, dropped the pair of socks on the floor and then started to massage and rub her foot which, apparently, was pretty sensitive to being touched.

“Sheesh.  Careful!  I’m ticklish.” She said, tensing up and giggling.

“Ticklish?” I asked.

“Yes.  I’m.  Ticklish.” She said with emphasis on each word.

There was an instant where our eyes met.  She saw the look on my face and I saw the look on her face.  We each recognized exactly what the other was about to do and we both went for it at the same time.  She tried to pull her foot back defensively as I suddenly grabbed her feet and tickled her and she almost came unglued, twisting and turning in the driver’s side of the bench seat, squealing, screaming and slapping at me.  I jerked her legs almost straight where she couldn’t get at me and really tickled her feet.  I really had her screaming and crying, flailing and kicking there in the driver’s side of the bench seat.  I let her go because I was laughing too hard.  She jerked her feet back from me and I reached for them again.

“Oh, no you don't!” she said, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Relax.”

“No!  You’re going to tickle me again and I’ll probably wet myself this time.” She huffed.

“No, I’m not.  Trust me.” I said, pulling her leg back down straight and starting to massage her foot again.

“I did trust you.” She whined.

“Trust me.”

Debby Lee cautiously let me take one of her feet and I was really gentle with it.  She did relax, after a few minutes, and then she actually started moaning and sighing, whispering how good my rubbing her feet felt.  I rubbed each foot for about five minutes, kneading her arch and heel with the flat of my hand and my thumbs.  Once she was relaxed I had her turn around and put her back to my chest there on the bench seat, leaning up against me.  The heater had by now filled the interior with a lot of heat so I reached up and slid the fan speed back down to low and knocked the temperature down a bit so it wasn’t blast furnace hot enough to dry out our eyeballs and make breathing uncomfortable.

I helped her take my leather jacket off and she put the jacket over her lap and legs.  As she lay there with her back against me I could smell her lilac perfume again and I began to rub her shoulders and neck, stroking her behind her ears and rubbing her ears, neck, and using my finger tips to trace her neckline around the front of her chest and my thumbs to press in, hard, where I knew it felt good.

“Unbutton your shirt about three buttons down.” I told her.

Debby Lee did so without question which gave me enough slack in the folds of cloth to work my hands down under her collar and really knead the muscles in her shoulders and neck.  This immediately started her to moaning softly and whispering both encouragement and gratitude on what I was doing.   I felt her skin with the tips of my fingers ... it was the first time that I'd ever touched her in a way other than holding her hand.  She was tense and it took about ten minutes of hard rubbing and gentle petting to get her to loosen up and relax.  I traced the lines of her ears, rubbed behind her ears, pulled and squeezed her ear lobes, pinch-rubbed them between my fingertips, massaged her temples, traced her cheeks and jaw line, petted her under her chin, stroked her neck, and traced the “v” of her neck line stopping my fingers just short of the edge of her bra all the way around the front, up and down, slowly, lightly, sometimes barely touching the tips of my fingers to her skin.

Debby Lee pushed her head back and nuzzled me, sighing and whispering soft gratitude and instructions to me as I massaged her.  Finally I stopped, reached around and gently pulled her open shirt back closed where she had been partially exposed.  Her hand and arm came up, took mine, and held it close to her across her chest.  I looked at my watch; 11:28 PM.  I’d been massaging her in the front seat of her Buick for nearly forty-five minutes now and I think that I had enjoyed it almost as much as she had.

“Thank you.  That felt … wonderful.” She whispered, nuzzling he head back against my shoulder and chest.

“You’re welcome.” I said flatly, leaning my head back against the cold glass of the passenger side door, feeling a sharp draft from where the rubber weather stripping was starting to not seal as tightly as it should.

“So … what now?” she asked, eyes closed, nuzzled up in my arms there, stretched out across the front bench seat of her Buick.

“Now …?  Now you go home, you go to bed and you sleep late tomorrow.” I said, taking a finger and stroking her hair line, moving some of her hair back from her temple.

“And what are you going to do?” she asked, yawning and dragging out her question.

“Pretty much the same.  I’ve got to clean up the TA and get the oil changed then I’ve got some homework that I need to do for Monday.”

“Robby’s gone off again with his buddies hunting all weekend ...” She said softly, whispering then trailing off into silence.

“Yeah, my roommate went off hunting as well.  Can’t say that I’ll really miss him, though.  I enjoy the quiet, I like being alone.” I whispered, running my fingers through her hair slowly.

Debby Lee made a soft little noise, then, almost like a snore and I listened.  A second later, her breath came back in a soft snore again.  It was a dainty little snore, not some window rattling snore.  Maybe it was a purr.  Whatever it was, she was definitely asleep in my arms, either softly snoring or purring … at the level of noise that she was making, it could have been either one. 

Great.

I leaned my head back against the cold glass of the window and held her there, the Buick idling, the heater blowing, and the two of us stretched out there on the front bench seat late at night in an empty parking lot of a closed shopping center.

ZZ Top’s “Rough Boy” started playing on the radio and I smiled as I softly mouthed the words.  I swear that song was following me through my life.  How many times had that song played on the radio when I'd been with Marie?  Memories of another time and another woman and I smiled.  I looked down at Debby Lee asleep there in my arms, totally trusting, totally secure, totally believing that I would do her no harm, cause her no pain and that right where she was happened to be the safest, most comfortable place in her entire life.  It was an idea that I still found hard to fully comprehend … the kind of trust that she was showing to me.  It wasn’t that her trust wasn’t well founded it was that it was so easily given, to me, that I kept trying to wrap my mind around.  What she found so easy to do with me I doubted that I could ever do with her ... or anyone else for that matter.  The idea of falling asleep in someone else's arms, someone I barely knew ...  I just couldn't do that ... not like this, not like she was doing here and now.

I was lost in my thoughts for what seemed a long time when I looked down at my watch; 11:58PM. 

Twenty minutes.

Debby Lee had been asleep in my arms for about twenty minutes.  I figured if she was this tired that a small nap there in her Buick would be safer for her than to just let her try to drive home while she was this tired.  I shook her gently.

“Hey.  Wake up, doll.  It’s late.  You’ve got to get going.” I whispered.

She moaned softly and then quickly rose up off of me, coming almost instantly awake, not realizing where she was then getting a confused look on her face.

“Huh?  Wuh?  Where am I?” she asked, startled.

“You fell asleep.” I told her.

“I fell asleep?  Oh, crud!  What time is it?” she asked, looking around, obviously still confused.

“Almost midnight.  I let you sleep about twenty minutes.  I thought you needed a little cat-nap before you hit the road.”

And like that she arched her back just like a cat, turned her head to look at me and cut her sultry eyes … a move that was supposed to be sensuous but abruptly ended with a mouth wide yawn, a moan and her covering her mouth with the backside of her fist for the duration of the extended yawn.  She laughed a little then blinked her eyes and looked around indecisively.  I had the feeling that something had been lost, like an opportunity, but I wasn’t sure which of us had lost it.

“Come on.  You’ve got to get home.” I said, watching her slide back down into the driver’s side of the bench seat and rotating around so that her feet were once again in my lap.  She wiggled her toes at me, snapped her big toe against her second toe authoritatively a lot louder than anyone I’d ever heard before could do.

"You can snap your toes?" I asked.

She looked at me, smiled, then held her right foot out and snapped her toe again as loud as someone could snap their fingers.

Snap.

Snap.

Her look was one of amused impatience.  It was sexy as hell, her look and her holding her foot out, snapping her toes like that at me for attention.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m going to need my boots back on if I’m going to drive.  These pedals are going to be awful cold on my toodies on the way home.”

Toodies.

Her nickname for her feet and her toes.

I laughed, reached down, got her socks and boots from the passenger side floor board and put them back on her feet at which point she spun on the bench seat, unbunched her skirt and handed me my leather jacket back.

Debby Lee leaned on the steering wheel, sleepy eyed, like a doe, looking at me through half closed eyelids and smiling.

“Thank you for coming to see me tonight.” She said softly.  “For coming back to see me tonight.  This was … nice.  Really nice.”

“I enjoyed it.  The food was good and the company afterward was good too.”

She nodded, put both hands on the steering wheel at the twelve o’clock position, leaned her head forward to rest them on her hands and looked at me.  She broke into another long yawn then turned her head slowly to each side.

“You have wonderful hands.” She said, coming out of her yawn. 

“And strong fingers.” she added in a sultry whisper.

“Go home.  Get some sleep, doll.” I said, starting to get out of the Buick.

"Doll?  I like that!"

"Go home." I said again.

“I’m going home.  I’m going to get some sleep.” She replied.

“Good night.” I said.

“Good night.” She said sleepily, giving me dreamy blue doe eyes.

“I'll see you Monday for class."

"That you will."

"Have a good weekend.” I said, opening the passenger side door, stepping out, locking it and shutting the door to the Regal behind me.

Debby Lee clicked her tongue as she nonchalantly gave me a pistol finger for emphasis.

There was this almost tangible air of regret about our saying goodbye.

It had gotten much colder and I put my leather jacket on, zipping it at the bottom.  I heard her put her Buick into gear, I waved goodbye and watched her drive off, again waiting until she had vanished from sight.  Once again, for the second time today, I was standing alone in a parking lot.  The cold wind whipped at me and all I had to keep me company were the sounds of the late night traffic and the electrical hum of the various business signs around me.

And I kept thinking that again something was supposed to have happened ... that something should have happened ... but somehow that it just ... didn't, that whatever was supposed to have happened just hadn't.

It was just this gut feeling and I couldn't shake it.

I drove back to Greaves Hall on campus, listening to my Whitesnake cassette, particularly to the “Still of the Night” song … for some reason I kept rewinding and listening to the part where John Sykes bowed the hell out of his electric guitar.  Turning into the campus I easily found a parking spot right in front of my dorm and walked into my dorm room at about a quarter after midnight.  Out of four double occupancy rooms with a shared bathroom at the end of the hall I was the only student still staying on campus in our dorm section. 

"Damn it!" I said out loud.  "What the hell did I just do?"

I stretched and ran my hands through my hair, grabbing my scalp then stroking my beard, lost in pensive thought for a minute or two as I played out all that had happened again in my mind.

I threw my leather jacket on my bed, cranked the heater up high, brushed my teeth in the communal bathroom at the end of the hall, stripped down to nothing but my jeans and hit the lower bunk that was my bed.  Something had to be said about my dorm bed because it was perhaps the most uncomfortable bed I’d ever slept in.  The old rusty metal cots in the elevated A-frame tents down at Camp Tiak had been more comfortable than this ancient torture instrument.

My dorm bed consisted of a metal bunk array frame with a half inch thick piece of plywood and a two inch rubber coated foam pad on top of that.  The foam pad did nothing for comfort.  It was cold in the winter and, I was willing to bet, it was going to be hot and sweaty in the warmer months to come … definitely not something I was going to look forward to.

I’d probably either replace the foam pad with something better or stack something on top of it to give me more padding underneath; a project for a later time … if I didn’t find an apartment near campus and just move out on my own which was looking like a better and better idea all the time.  Hell, I might even just borrow my roommate’s foam pad and double stack it with mine to see if that made a difference.  I doubted that my roommate would return next semester because he just didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would last more than one semester of college and who knew what I would wind up with for a roommate the next time around?  No, it was just better to move out and be on my own rather than throw dice with the local gene pool and hope I got lucky on what decided move in and live with me here on campus.

And that’s when I realized that it was quiet.

It was so damn quiet there in the dorm.

So … damn … quiet.

Normally I liked quiet but sometimes it was too quiet so I reached over and turned on the radio function of my digital clock.  Z106.7 FM.  Heart’s “Who will you run to now?” from their “Bad Animals” album was playing followed quickly by Van Halen’s “Atomic Punk”, both of which were getting heavy air play on the radio locally.  "Atomic Punk" was an older song ... and I mused on why it would be getting so much airplay now.   I lay there in the dark, staring at the blue digital numbers on my radio alarm clock.

12:28

12:29

12:30

Stiff’s “My Number” started playing and I turned the volume up probably louder than I should have but that song rocked and it wasn’t like I was going to wake anybody else up in this area of the building. I lay there, arms behind my head, listening to the song and mouthing the words that I could remember.  After that, Bruce Springsteen’s haunting “I’m on Fire” started playing and I listened to the entire song, thinking how relevant the lyrics were to my life right then.

I couldn't get Debby Lee out of my mind and it was then that I started to feel like I wasn’t going to be going to sleep any time soon.

I was wired, on the edge ... or maybe I was just horny; the kind of horny that keeps you up like you've popped a White Cross or two No-Doze and chased it with a can of Jolt Cola.

Everyone in my four room dorm hallway had gone home or gone hunting or gone where ever for whatever for the weekend but the end result was that I had the hallway all to myself and it was still dead quiet despite the addition of Z106.7 FM to the overall ambience.  Hell, even Cody was spending the weekend with Wanda, at her place in Clinton since her husband was out of town for two weeks on some extended business trip up along the north end of the east coast.

Cody was one lucky bastard.

There I was, sleeping in the world’s most uncomfortable bunk bed, sleeping in something that would make a Spartan general cry, and Cody was probably in a well-padded king size bed at some big house in Clinton rolling around in the sheets with Wanda.  They were probably liquored up and howling at the moon and he’d show me more of her scratch marks down his back, the hickeys that she would put on his chest and neck like they were tribal scars from some group hunt and he’d tell me all the details of their sexual trysts come Monday, whether I wanted to hear them or not.

Wanda, apparently, was the girl that Rick James had in mind when he wrote his hit “Super Freak” and that meant that Cody had his work cut out for him.  Back when things looked like they were about to go over the edge and get serious with Wanda, Cody had told me that he thought that sex with Wanda was going to be incredible.  I had told Cody that sex with Wanda would more than likely bring tears to his eyes and when he asked me why I thought that I pantomimed a small canister of mace spraying and made a “pfffffft” sound with my mouth as I did so. 

Cody had frog punched me in the arm, hard.

And now they were out there, somewhere on the other side of Clinton, he’ing and she’ing all night and here I was alone in a dark, quiet dorm on a double bunk bed that quite possibly could have once served Torquemada in the Spanish Inquisition as an instrument of torture to be used on heretics.

Such was my lot in life.

I smelled lilac.

Debby Lee smelled like lilac.

She wore lilac perfume.

Why did I smell lilac?

Why was the smell of lilac so strong here in my dorm room?

I turned my head and the scent grew stronger.

It was coming from my jacket!

My jacket smelled like lilac!  She must have misted herself with her perfume while she was wearing my jacket tonight and now I was smelling her perfume even when she wasn’t here.  I reached for my jacket and pulled it to me, sniffed it and it smelled of lilac, it smelled of leather and of Debby Lee.  I breathed deep and put the jacket next to my face and head then thought of our first kiss, tonight, there on the side of the steakhouse.  I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep but I just couldn’t get to sleep; something was bothering me.  It was like I was tired as hell but as soon as I came anywhere near that layer of sleep where you mercifully go under into oblivious dreamland I would bounce off of it, hard, with a whole body jerk and I would come wide awake only to have to grudgingly start the process all over again. 

No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get to sleep.

Lilac and Debby Lee.

"If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.  Don't waste their time.” Cody said.

Thinking of how I had pulled her around the corner of the building and kissed her ... thinking of how wet her lips were ... the taste of her lipstick, remembering what it felt like to wrap my tongue around her tongue, no resistance, and to hold her close to me, to hold her that close to me.

12:48 AM.

It was going to be a long night if I couldn’t get to sleep … a really long night and that meant it would be an equally long day.

The September night was bitter cold, the kind you see your breath in every time you breathe but it felt good, crisp.  Clear sky, bright heavens, bright moon … I liked this time of year … The air itself felt pure, like it had been bottled and served on ice.  Maybe I’d take a walk around campus … go sit on a bench somewhere until the cold of the night drove the heat of my thoughts from my body and mind.  A long walk might settle my thoughts and it would be cheaper than cruising around wasting gas. 

Yeah, a long walk to clear my head was what I needed right then.

I walked down the stairway to the ground level, around the corner of the building, through the shadow filled main breezeway and towards the parking lot out front where I had left the TA not less than an hour ago … but my TA wasn’t alone … not like I had left it when I got back to campus.  No, parked right next to it was an all too familiar white ‘84 Buick Regal and standing on the sidewalk between the Buick and the Pontiac was Debby Lee.  She was still in her red work shirt, long western skirt and brown cowboy boots.  She was looking down, fumbling around in her purse for something and she didn’t see me appear from out of the breezeway.  My heart skipped into fast idle as I leaned up against the wall, standing there just in the shadows, watching her ... wondering what she was doing here … wondering why she wasn’t at home in bed asleep …

Debby Lee pulled out a piece of paper, opened it, folded it back up then put it back in her purse and went to rummaging again.  I was concerned that she might be in some kind of trouble but when I saw her pull out a small bottle of perfume, mist her neck and shoulders then mist her bare wrist and rub it against her other bare wrist before returning the perfume bottle to her purse I knew exactly why she was here.

This was happening.

Another line was about to be crossed ... by her ... by me.

"If they’re older be bolder.  They like it when you’re bolder.  Don't waste their time.” Cody said.

I stepped out of the shadows and slowly started walking towards her.  She must have heard my boots thudding on the sidewalk because she looked up with a concerned look for her safety that quickly broke into a smile when she realized who it was that was walking towards her. 

“Crud!  You scared me!” she said, stomping her right boot for emphasis, smiling, and laughing softly.

I quickened my pace and she closed the distance until we stood in front of each other halfway between our parked vehicles and the dorm building.

“What are you doing here!?” I asked, not really believing that she was here.

“You forgot something.”

“Where?”

“Back there.  At the restaurant.” She said, taking another step closer, nervously holding her purse by its straps in both hands in front of her.

I thought back to earlier.  I couldn’t remember having left or forgotten anything at the restaurant or anything that I might have left in her Regal ... 

“I got my jacket from you ... What did I forget?” I asked, my mind drawing a blank.

I could smell her lilac perfume, strong, freshly applied.  She stepped right up to me, almost touching.

“You forgot to get your goodnight kiss.” She whispered, dropping her purse loudly in a lump at her feet, taking me in her arms and quickly bringing her mouth to mine.

It was the second time tonight that we had kissed, not that I was complaining because Debby Lee was a great kisser.  I mean, Debby Lee was a really great kisser.  I wrapped my arms around her, our lips parted and we kissed deep and long, lost in each other, lost in the moment, lost in the act itself.   There was just us.  We kissed hard and deep, like our lives depended on it.  The second time was better, a lot better because we had all the time in the world to throw ourselves into it.  The cold night air a stark contrast to the warmth of her tongue and mouth on mine, the whisper of the wind to her moaning and her hot breath coming shallow and fast.

Our kiss ended, much slower than it had started, and we stood there, forehead to forehead, tip of nose to tip of nose, catching our breath and staring at each other.

“You were supposed to go home.” I whispered.

“I did go home.” She explained.  “I got all the way to Ridgeland, drove up in my driveway and that’s when I realized that I just really didn’t want to go home tonight so I turned around and came back here.”

My expression asked her an unspoken question.

“I don’t want to be alone.  Not tonight.  I want to be with you.”  Debby Lee put a finger to my mouth before I could say anything else.  

I took that at face value as she slid her other hand up my chest, moved in close and conformed to me as we stood there.  I put my arms around her and she nuzzled in close like that was what she had wanted all along.

My first thought was “what the hell are you doing, Shields?”

My second thought pretty much told that first thought what it could go do with itself and how fast it could go do it.

“You’re supposed to be in bed.” I said in a whisper, kissing the top of her head, feeling her hair against my lips, my cheek, and slowly rubbing my face against the top and side of her head.

“I still can be.” She said, looking up, putting a hand out to touch the side of my cheek and staring into my eyes.

I leaned into her hand, let her pet my face, and closed my eyes at her warm touch on my cold cheek.  She brought her other hand up, pulled me down into her and we kissed, deep and long again.  My hands went around her, up her back and down to her bottom, pulling her in even tighter to me.

“It doesn’t have to be my bed, though … does it?  Not tonight?” she asked in a whisper, moving her mouth from my mouth to my ear.

I shook my head, knowing that I’d already crossed a line earlier tonight and that what we were doing now was just going through the nuances of a decision that we had both already made.  Debby Lee had already made up her mind as to how this evening was going to end, she might have even have made up her mind how this evening was going to end way back when we first started going out riding together.  What was done was done and all we had to do now was just finish what we had started.

“If they’re older they like you to be bolder.  Life lesson there, Ray-Bans.”

“I want you, Deb.” I told her, pulling her to me tight, my right hand going to her upper back and my left hand sliding down, over the back of her skirt, over her bottom, cupping her, grabbing her high and low and pulling her into me.

She didn't resist.

There. 

I'd finally crossed the last line there was to cross ... everything after that was just going through the motions but I had the feeling that when I had finally crossed that line that I was in second place because Debby Lee had already crossed that line before me and she was just waiting on me to catch up.  Her eyes flashed at me, fuck me eyes.  I reached out, took hold of her, and pulled her close to me.  My arms went around her, her arms went around me and I kissed her again, deeply, long, then I moved down to her bare neck and began to kiss her between her neck and her shoulder, moving up towards her ear.  She held me tight, writhing against me, making deep sighs as my lips played over the soft skin of the side of her neck.

"I want you." I said again, in a whisper in her left ear.

She sucked her breath in then, holding me tight in her arms.

"I want ... this." she said in a loud whisper.  "I really want this."

I could smell her lilac perfume ... strong.

I could smell her hair.

Smell the scent of her skin.

She was trembling.  I ran my hand across the side of her cheek.  She was trembling and I don’t think it was just from the cold.  Her eyes were giving me all the permission that I ever needed.  Debby Lee looked up at me and stared into my eyes.  I’d never seen her more serious than the look that she was giving me.  Debby Lee had the look of a woman who had already made up her mind.  She reached down, picked up her purse from the pavement, moved in close, ran her hand up beside my cheek and I reached up, took her hand, and led her back to my dorm room.

       Saturday, September 19, 1987
Hinds Junior College
Greaves Hall
Raymond, MS
Morning

I opened my eyes, stretched and yawned.  It was daylight outside.  The heat was still turned up so the room was hot even if the floor under us was cold through all the blankets and foam mattresses.

The floor.

Under us.

Us?

Us.

Debby Lee.

Me.

Floor?

Floor.

I looked up at the bare metal frame of the bunk bed in the corner and for a few seconds I had to replay last night over again to remember what all had happened.  At some point early on Debby Lee and I had tired of trying to get comfortable while having sex on my single bed so I had yanked the foam mattresses, pillows, blankets and sheets off both of the bunk beds, thrown them on the floor, set them side by side to make up a double size sleeping area where we had a lot more room.  Afterwards, I covered us in blankets and then bedded down for the night more or less uninterrupted. 

Now it was morning.

I knew that because the sun was out, light streaming through the blinds.

Early light.

I didn’t know what time it was because I had no idea where my watch was.  Hell, I didn’t know where anything that I'd been wearing last night was right then.

Debby Lee was asleep on the mattress next to me, naked, under all the blankets.  I raised a sheet up and peeked …  naked as the day she was born.  I raised the sheet again and looked past her back side, down her legs … she was still wearing her little white ankle socks with the pink bands and that was all she was wearing.  I guess her feet really did get cold.

Wow.

I added that sight and the memory of last night to my growing list of cherished life experiences that I wouldn’t soon forget.  Oh, and I’d found her other tattoo … it was a much larger, much more detailed blue, yellow and black butterfly and a red heart, about four square inches worth of ink all told, right above her panty line on her right hip, almost at the right most point that the dark curls of her pubic triangle made.

The room was a mess, our clothes were everywhere … fallen where ever we could pull them off and drop them, as fast as we could pull them off and drop them once we'd gotten back to my dorm room.  Both mattresses on the floor, every piece of bedding used to make us comfortable and one very bare, stripped metal frame that used to be the most uncomfortable bunk bed in the world but had become a sexual jungle gym before all was said and done.  For what it was worth it had served its purpose, I suppose, though I seem to remember that once the plywood sheet had come off the top bunk and I could stand up on my own bunk that things had gotten a lot better … and a lot more interesting.

I turned until I could see the blue numbers of my digital clock radio … blinked. 

Squinted. 

Blinked again.

7:15AM. 

A whole lot earlier than I thought it would be or would have liked it to have been.

I woke Debby Lee with an urge that needed to be shared and she was just as willing as she had been last night, maybe even more so.  Afterwards we curled up against each other and slept again, waking again at sometime before ten.  We piled our clothes on the desk area near the window then cleaned up the room, rebuilt the bunk bed, showered together and got dressed.  We took the Trans Am and I drove us to lunch at a truck stop on the outskirts of Clinton.  Lunch itself was spent in casual contemplation of what we had done.  Regrets were nowhere to be found though I’m not sure who was more introspective, me or her.  We sat together on the same side of the table, on the bench, holding hands under the table.  She put her head to my shoulder and stayed like that until the waitress brought our food.

Debby Lee and I spent the rest of the day driving around the back roads of Raymond, Mississippi, having sex twice more in my dorm room with a good nap separating that and generally just not letting go of each other if we didn’t have to.  Our Saturday existence was Bohemian to a fault but we had our own little private world that we shared and we loved every minute of it.  If this was the first and only time that I would ever have Debby Lee like this then I was determined to have her as many times as I could.

That night, I made a fresh pitcher of sweet tea, we got a Pan!Pan! square cut pepperoni pizza and an order of Crazy Bread with pizza sauce from Little Caesar’s Pizza on Raymond Road, rented the comedy “Porky’s” on VHS from Videophile in Clinton and had a pizza / movie party back in my dorm.  After the movie a slowly evolving make out session in front of the VCR and TV turned into something far more intimate that required not only the transformation of the bunk bed back into the side by side sleeping nest on the floor but the complete loss of all clothing and inhibitions during the process.

It was so hedonistic, so typical of pressured college and dorm life, so … unruly that it was utterly fantastic.  Pizza packaging with uneaten pizza slices, empty drink cups, VHS movies, our clothes spread all over the place, her panties draped over my Apple IIC computer there on my work desk, destruction of furniture (temporary state of being), a cobbled together bed on the floor, blankets and pillows wrapped where they would do the best good and a naked woman beside me under the covers, happy, exhausted, sleeping … her warm body next to mine, running full length as I spooned her and held her tight in my arms.  My fingertips slowly exploring the curves and valleys of her body, playing her like some living instrument as she sighed and moaned at my touch.

We were both freshmen; college students in our first semester.

She was married to some dumb redneck who would rather hunt than fuck and right now he was out in the woods with his buddies, cleaning his gun, drinking his beer and thinking that his life was great while I was here, in my dorm room, fucking his wife every way that she would let me and some ways that she’d never let him or so she told me.  Debby Lee wasn't afraid to give and she wasn't afraid to ask for what she wanted.

I was eighteen.

She was twenty-six.

I was her second, she told me.

She was my third, I told her.

And what we did after that didn’t require a whole lot of math, a whole lot of thinking or a whole lot of talking.

Debby Lee left shortly before noon Sunday, after taking the time to help me to straighten up the dorm room for the second time that weekend.  I walked her to her car, kissed her goodbye, told her I would see her the next day and watched her leave with not a little bit of regret that she actually did have to leave.

I took a really long shower, shaved, threw away the trash in the room, drove the TA back to Clinton to return the movie at Videophile, drove by the steakhouse just to stir up my pleasant memories of how the weekend had started and then drove back to my dorm room.  I was tired but it was a good kind of tired.

No, it was a great kind of tired.

I took a long, long nap, nearly four hours, it was a deep sleep, dreamless, and I woke up near sunset. I took a long walk around campus to clear my thoughts then went back to my dorm room, put some Oz “Fire in the Brain” on the turntable and started on my homework that was due the next morning.  During the course of the next few hours my hall-mates wandered in one by one and went back to their rooms, none the wiser of how I had spent my weekend in their absence.

I slept well that night with few dreams that I could remember.

My roommate was a no show that night and I can’t really say that I cared where he was or what he was doing.

Debby Lee was very clingy that Monday.  It was like we shared a secret that only we could share and I guess that we did.  She acted like a high school girl in love all that Monday, not able to keep her hands off of me.  After she petted my groin a few times under the table and nuzzled my neck I didn’t have to be told what she wanted.  We made our excuses from our little group and we almost ran back to my dorm room.  I snuck her into my dorm room and we spent the afternoon making out, doing a lot of heavy petting and finally having sex then sleeping in my single bunk bed.  Sometime around four thirty Debby Lee got up, got dressed and left, leaving me there in my bed thinking about her and what we had come to share.

My roommate didn’t get back until late Monday night having chosen to miss a day’s worth of classes in lieu of another day spent hunting with his friends out in the woods. 

I wondered if Robby had done the same.

           After that first time

Afternoons after classes spent with Debby Lee were easy … even if she had to work she usually had some free time after class and before work, free time that we could spend together.   There was no awkward phase in what we shared after that first time ... there were no second guesses, not questions asked, there was just the two of us.  Weekdays between classes we spent in my dorm room, sometimes just snuggling and sometimes having sex ... it all depended on how much time we had and what kind of traffic was going in and out of my dorm hall.

When we didn’t have a lot of time Debby Lee liked to have quick sex, as she called it, which generally meant that one or the other of us got to be selfish.  Sometimes we both got what we wanted out of it, if there was time, but when you’ve got twenty minutes before your next class your options are limited in regards to getting anything grand going on in a dorm room.  Debby Lee’s hands often found my crotch when we were sitting together and when we were sitting together close enough that she could hide what she was doing from everyone else at the booth at the grill.  I guess she liked how I reacted to her touch or how I sometimes got uncomfortable because it looked painfully obvious what she was doing even though everyone else seemed oblivious. 

And I let my hands roam too, under the table.  

Debby Lee didn’t need a lot of foreplay, she didn’t need a twelve step program to get her motor running or kick it into high gear … no, her motor was pretty much running all the time and it ran hot even at idle, at least when she was with me it did and that was one of the first things that I noticed about being with Debby Lee ... she was almost always perpetually wet, at least around me she was.

Usually when our hands roamed under the table it wasn’t long before we had to make an excuse to leave the group and then it was a race back to my dorm room, sometimes a playful race with one of us chasing the other.  We'd get back to my dorm room out of breath then get out of breath again with each other.

Memories.

Getting Debby Lee into my dorm room was always a chore but I guess that’s what made it all the more fun.  Girls weren’t really allowed in the men’s dorms and I could get into trouble for having Debby Lee in my room, if any of my dorm mates complained ... a little trouble but trouble all the same.  If someone caught us having sex in my dorm room, well, that was a lot more trouble on top of the already little trouble of having her in my dorm room in the first place so I had to be careful sneaking Debby Lee in and out and that just added a kind of excitement to what was already brewing down below for both of us.

Debby Lee had a really dirty mouth.  She wasn’t afraid to tell me what she wanted and she usually did so with a mouthful of four letter words and profane adjectives and the coarsest slang possible used to describe various parts of the male and female body.  When we weren’t having sex, Debby Lee was sweet and demure, even a little bit reserved but when you got her motor running and her clothes came off, she was a foul mouthed harlot that would have made Bourbon Street prostitutes blush and porn stars cringe uncomfortably in the jet wash of her sexually laced vocabulary.  I’d never had anyone as foul mouthed when they were naked as Debby Lee was but then since Debby Lee was my third I can't really say I had a lot of experience in that matter, either.  Out of the three women that I’d had sex with so far in my life, Debby Lee had the foulest mouth of all three and that, I found out early in our relationship, was a really huge turn on for me. 

I mean a really huge turn on.

It was as simple as that, she just liked sex … she really liked sex especially oral sex, especially giving and that was something else that I learned early in our affair, like the second time that she came back to my dorm room between classes.  I'd opened my door and let her in, locking it behind me and when I'd turned around again she was pulling me towards my bunk bed.  I stumbled and laughed, asking her what she was doing since I had just planned on making out with her, maybe some light necking and petting.

Debby Lee had other ideas.

“I don’t mind doing this for you ... I want to do this." she said, tugging me towards my bunk bed.

I didn't know what she was talking about but I let her pull me over to my bunk bed, push me down on it then she crawled in on top of me, squatting over me and starting to hurriedly undo my belt, button and zipper.  Debby Lee wasn't gentle either and the only thing that kept my jeans from being torn from my body was the fact that Debby Lee lacked the physical strength to tear denim with her bare hands.  She was that rough in undoing my jeans.

"Deb ..." I started to say, still not sure of my role in what was going on, but she put a finger on my lips and slowly shook her head.

She leaned over me then, bending at the waist, hovering, her hands still working to get my pants down.

"I like doing this ... for you.  It's something I enjoy ... if you'll let me.  You don't even have to ask ... just ... let me ... when I want to.” She whispered, her cheek against mine, her lips next to my ear.

That simple statement that she had whispered in my ear all the while her hands had played over my groin and crotch.  Her hand slid back in front of her, down my stomach, to my groin, found me and petted me, rubbed me, cupped me.  Her fingers spread wide. 

"... Just ... let me." she whispered.

And I did.

And she did.

I put that into my Book of Firsts and I used a whole page to dedicate to that entry and memory because not only did Debby Lee like doing that ... she was damn good at it as well.

          The Sex Ninja

I always had to be careful when we were having sex because Debby Lee not only had a dirty mouth but she also wasn't the quietest girl in the world when it came to sex.  No, I had to work hard and try to keep Debby Lee quiet or as quiet as I could with the rest of my dorm dwellers all within a pillow’s throw of where we were sharing our naked bodies.  Music helped, especially if I turned it up kind of loud.  Usually the other guys across the hall were already blasting their music so when I added my music to the mix it went far in providing some aural camouflage for helping to keep Debby Lee's cries and moans unheard.  If you’re having sex with a noisy girl, heavy metal just seemed the way to go.  One good memory we made was while Hinds was having its homecoming celebration that night and even though everyone was at the game she and I were in my dorm room with no one in that part of the building.  When we finished, almost together, we could hear the crowd cheer loudly at some play or touchdown and we both fell into each other and laughed at that because it was almost like the crowd was cheering at us for what we had just done.

Sometimes, when I had Debby Lee in my room, my fellow dorm dwellers would knock on the door and ask if I was in or they would say that they needed to borrow something like one of my computer games, one of my metal albums or one of my VHS movies.  I pretended I wasn’t there, all the while slowly taking Debby Lee, never stopping, just slowing down enough to let her get a little quieter, all the while keeping a hand over her mouth to keep her from letting the others know that not only was I in my dorm room but that I was busy.

Maybe it was the thought of getting caught that made our time together so enjoyable … and memorable.  Debby Lee was forbidden fruit in so many ways.

What she and I shared had no refinement, it was just sex.  It was sex for sex's sake and it was like a drug for us, a drug that we shared, a drug that we abused and overdosed on as much as we could as often as we could and like any other illicit drug we had to be careful not to get caught doing it.  We made no promises and the word “love” never once crossed our lips.  What we shared was a shared need, a shared desperation, something that we both lacked in our lives, something that I think we both really, really needed right then in our lives, something we were both willing to give to each other and something that both of us were good at giving and something that we both enjoyed giving.

Debby Lee liked to tease me.  

One day while we were sitting in the Grill waiting on Cody and the others to join us she nuzzled up against me and started to whisper in my ear.  She told me that when she thought about me in her classes that she got really wet, really, really wet and that sometimes she would have to leave class and go to the bathroom to finish her thoughts and fantasies off.  She told me that usually happened two or three times a week, sometimes during class, sometimes after class, sometimes with the bathroom full of other girls all around her while she sat in a stall taking care of her need and desire.  She told me that just that morning she had been thinking about me in class, slowly sliding her thighs together in her seat while the teacher lectured and that she had actually orgasmed in class.  No one around her knew what had happened and she said that she really had to work to keep it all in.  That surprised her, that thinking about me like that had caused her to come, probably not as much as her telling me that surprised me when she told me that.  Yeah, for the rest of the day that was all I could think about, what she had done to herself in class while thinking about me and I had the biggest smile on my face because I can't say that I'd ever had any girl do that, not in class and certainly not while thinking about me.

Damn!

I put that in my Book of Firsts as well.

"What?" Cody asked as he slid into the booth across from me.

"Nothing." I said.

"Can't be nothing with a smile like that on your face.  Tell me!"

"It's nothing." I said as I shook my head.

Cody harumphed and accepted the fact that he wasn't going to get anything else from me.

Debby Lee nuzzled her head in the crook of my neck but the smile wouldn't go away.

After Debby Lee told me that I caught myself looking at other girls in my classes, to see if they were moving their legs and thighs together slowly ... not that they would be thinking about me but rather because I was curious if there were any other girls like Debby Lee out there.  I'd never known a girl like Debby Lee, never met such a sex starved abominable fuck beast before ... and I loved it.  Debby Lee even told me that she had played with herself in the bathroom at work at the steak house, thinking about me during one of her nightly breaks and not being able to wait until the end of her shift to calm her want or cool her desire.  Her words there and that did nothing but turn me on when she told me that story.

Like I said, she liked to tease me.

Debby Lee liked to tell me these things ... she liked to tell me what she did when she wasn't with me ... usually in a hushed whisper while her fingertips were sliding softly along the crotch of my jeans, teasing, all the while she was nibbling on my ear or my neck or grabbing a handful of what God had hung between my legs.  Debby Lee liked to tease me.  She liked my reaction.  She liked making me nervous or slightly embarassed at a table or booth full of friends and classmates.  She liked to see how far she could go without getting noticed ... or caught.

She was very good at teasing ... and very good at not getting caught.

Debby Lee was the sex ninja.

Debby Lee had a dirty mind, a really dirty mind and she wasn't afraid to tell me what she did, how she did it or when and how often she did it.  Sometimes she would pass me dirty little handwritten notes under the table when we were at the Student Grill.  She must have written them in class because I never saw her write them at the table.  She’d hand me a note under the table, I’d unfold a slip of paper to read something naughty and I’d know exactly what she was thinking and exactly what she wanted to do.  I think I got about a note or two a week during the last week of September all the way through the first week of November.   The one note I remember the most was the third note she ever gave me; a folded up slip of paper that said:

“FREE BLOWJOB IN YOUR DORM ROOM!   HURRY!  THIS OFFER EXPIRES IN FIVE MINUTES.  OPERATOR IS STANDING BY.”

She handed me this note then started petting my crotch with her hand and fingers while I read the note; just lightly touching me, teasing me while nuzzling my neck and whispering "Tic-toc.  Tic-toc" slowly, softly in my ear.

Needless to say, I took her up on her offer and before the time limit had expired.

Sex.

No commitments other than a shared commitment to having sex with each other and that pretty much filled out the rest of the month of September … except for that last Saturday because that was something altogether different.

          Bowing her like a violin
Saturday, September 26, 1987

The fourth week of September a big, long established home and car stereo electronics super store in south Jackson had closed its doors forever and they were having a two day only everything must go liquidation sale that I had heard about completely by chance on the local radio station ... Z106.7 FM, including a live broadcast from the roving station crew.  During the last day, a Saturday, they had a massive sale on everything in the store … right down to the fixtures and display racks.  I’d missed the Friday rush so I felt that there would probably be nothing of real interest left but I wanted to take a look anyway for two very good reasons; I usually had good luck in finding stuff that other people had missed and I was bored.

Debby Lee was at home today, Robby had a big football game he and his friends were watching and so she was kind of trapped into doing the sports thing with her husband and his friends.  I never much cared for sports ... playing sports wasn't that fun to me.  I liked hitting a baseball and running the bases but I hated being in the field.  If I could just bat all the time, that would be great but that's not how the game is played so I didn't play the game much.  Two years of high school basketball under my belt, one year of first grade pee-wee football and ... yeah, I was pretty much done with sports for the rest of my life.

I took the '79 Trans Am out cruising, listening to Sammy Hagar blare on the Kewnwood and heading way across Jackson to where the electronics super store was going out of business.  I made it there late in the morning and the place was a madhouse.  Empty cartons, torn wrappers, and pieces and parts of damaged items all littered the floor.  I didn’t like crowds but I waited my turn, got in the front doors and started looking around, more out of curiosity than actually expecting to find anything worth buying.  I wasn’t a big electronics components expert so a lot of what they had left was lost on me for what it could do and for what it might be worth.  Most of it seemed to be the pieces that no one wanted ... car stereo dash adapters and wiring kits.  Adapter kits for components that had gone out the door yesterday and stuff like opened packs of guitar strings and record cleaning kits.

What I did find of interest was a violin bow (sitting on a metal display rack all by itself) with the bow hairs really loose on it and a Yamaha poster of a shot of Earth orbit with a set of piano keys circling through space along with other instruments that the company made.  It was a really neat promotional poster for the company, nicely, professionally framed in lightweight aluminum, and it reminded me of the genre of science fiction posters that had graced the likes of Electric Light Orchestra’s “Out of the Blue” album and Boston’s first self-titled album where the city of Boston, protected in a clear dome, was set upon the back of a giant guitar shaped spaceship leaving an exploding Mother Earth behind.  I stood there, violin bow in hand, and stared at that sci-fi inspired Yamaha promotional poster on the wall as people pushed past me with their meager pickings and somehow I thought that I was staring at the neatest thing left in the entire store.

I grabbed the poster off the wall, violin bow still in hand, and went towards the door.  When I got to the guy taking money at the door, I showed him the framed poster and the violin bow.  He frowned, looked both of the items over, laughed at their eclectic nature then told me ten dollars and I could have them both.  I gave him two fives, walked out to the TA, stowed the poster in the trunk (amazed that it fit since this poster, framed, was like four feet tall by three feet wide) and drove off with the violin bow on the front seat.

There was something in the air ... anticipation.  I had plans for the violin bow because at the time I had an Ibanez Roadstar II electric guitar and a Peavey amp, both of which I’d brought up from Hattiesburg with me the last time I’d gone home.  I dabbled with the guitar but I was far from ever being good enough to play in a band like Cody had been part of … still, the violin bow and John Syke’s example of bowing an electric guitar had me intrigued so I went back to my dorm room, plugged up my electric guitar and amp, and started experimenting with the violin bow on the electric guitar.

The first few attempts sounded awful but through trial and error I got better at it to the point that after about thirty minutes of playing around with the violin bow it made a passably cool sound rather than a sound like an alley cat getting ass raped by a Great Dane.  The sound it made wasn’t near as good as what the song sounded like but it made a neat sound and I kept playing with it, trying different techniques, different chords, holding the guitar like it was a bass.  As I sat there, electric guitar on the floor, slowly strumming the violin bow across the strings, trying to reproduce the sound I heard in the song I saw motion at my door and looked up.

Debby Lee!

She was standing there in blue jeans, sneakers, a red T-shirt and a blue denim jacket the color of which matched her jeans almost perfectly. I stood up and used the violin bow to reach over and hit the pause button on my stereo system.  The dorm room suddenly became quiet with only the Peavey amp hissing in the background.

Debby Lee!

“Hey, you.” She said, leaning on the door seductively, groin to the door frame, back arched like a cat, and looking at me with her fuck me eyes.

“Hey, you.” I said back, smiling.

I was surprised to see her, really surprised to see her since I thought she had been trapped at her place all weekend long with Robby and his friends.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Like you really have to ask?” She huffed, laughing softly, leaning back from the door frame, smiling, then pulling herself back to the door frame and rubbing her crotch up and down the door frame seductively all the while looking at me, using the threshold of the door like a dancer used a pole.

The sound of denim stretching, denim rubbing up and down against metal.

I shook my head.

This was happening; I was having a really convenient affair with a sex starved fuck monster.

“No.  I mean, I thought I wasn’t going to get to see you this weekend.  I thought Robby was having some friends over to watch a football game …”

“He is.  They are.” She said.

Oh.

“So … how did you get out of all that?” I asked.

“Robby knows I don’t like football.  When he and his friends come over to watch the game I usually leave for a few hours, visit some friends or go shopping.  I told him I was going to run to the mall to look at some clothes and … here I am.”

“You’re a bit away from the mall.” I said, smiling.

“Maybe clothes aren’t what I’m shopping for today.” She said, letting her head hang back as she arched her back and leaned back from the door frame.

The things that she was doing with her body to the frame of that door would probably have gotten her arrested in several states but all it was doing for me was making me want her more.

“And what if you go back home and don’t have anything to show that you bought at the mall?” I asked.

She smiled.

“Oh, I’ll just tell him that I didn’t find what I was looking for.  He likes it when I go to the mall and don’t spend any money.” she said as she leaned back from the door frame and hung there, her head back, hair down, looking at me.

Teasing me.

I smiled because today was turning out to be a pretty good day. I reached over to the stereo, used the violin bow to hit the rewind button and stopped it at the beginning of Whitesnake’s “In the Heat of the Night”.

“So ... What are you doing?” she asked, watching me.

“Just playing around, having fun.” I said.

Debby Lee walked up to the metal framed Yamaha poster that I’d hung on the wall.

“This is new!  Kinda ... weird.  Kinda ... neat.” she said, not sure exactly what to make of it.

“Yeah.  I picked that up this morning … it kind of reminds me of the old Boston album cover."

"Oh!  The one with the guitar spaceship leaving the exploding Earth?" she asked, turning to look at me and smiling.

I nodded.

"Yeah.  I can see that ... kind of." she said, turning back to study the poster.

"Oh, and I got this, too.”

I held up the violin bow, waving it back and forth like a magic wand.

“So that’s what I heard when I walked up … you’re doing that bow thing on … wow!  Geez!  You’ve got an electric guitar!” she said, noticing the guitar I guess for the first time and putting it all together.

Man!  Her mind must really have been elsewhere ...

“Yeah.  That's kind of the same reaction that Cody had when he saw it.”

“Can you play?” she asked, biting her lip and cutting her eyes at me.

It was right then that I realized two things.  One; being able to play an electric guitar is like having a magic wand that makes women's clothes just fall right off of their body leaving them naked and ...  Two; I didn't know how to play the electric guitar, or at least not well enough to make women's clothes just fall right off their body leaving them naked.  I cocked my jaw in thought at my misfortune.

“I ... sort of play.  It’s just something I fool around with, I’m no good at it.” I said, laughing.

A look of slight disappointment on her face.

"Getting better at it ... but I'm no Cody.  Not yet." I added, thinking I needed to throw that in as some kind of saving grace.

"Still ... wow." she muttered, laughing softly.

"I heard that having an electric guitar makes women take their clothes off ..." I said, picking up the guitar and pointing it at her, pretending to play a power chord or two.

"You don't need a guitar to get me to do that for you." she chided, smiling and finally letting go of the door frame, standing there, looking at me.

"Yeah, guess not.  Anyway ... I'm no good ... I just play with it when I get the chance."

I leaned on my electric guitar, looked at the guitar between my legs and the violin bow in my hand and I had an idea then; a wicked idea but one that I had to act on.

“You know ... I can think of better things for you to play with than your guitar.” She said.

“So can I.  Come here.” I told her, motioning with the violin bow.

“Why?” she asked playfully, pretending to be suddenly shy and doing an exaggerated shuffle slowly towards me. 

“If I come over there you might try to do something to me.”

“That’s a given.  Come here."

She playfully shuffled a few steps closer and stopped, still out of arms reach.

"Are you going to try something?" she asked, smiling.

That little girl smile but with fuck me eyes.

"Yeah.  I want to try something.  Something that I’ve been thinking about for the past few hours ...”

"Something ... naughty?" she asked.

I nodded my head and Debby Lee shuffle-walked slowly over to me and stood in front of me, her posture slightly slumped to one side, her head cocked and her thumbs in the front pockets of her jeans.

Demure.

“Turn around.” I told her and when she didn't do it as quickly as I wanted to I popped her on her bottom with the violin bow, making her jump, rub her bottom and cuss me.

"Turn around." I said, again, and, with the threat of getting popped with the violin bow again she did, slowly, but turning her head so that she never took her eyes off of me.

"That hurt, you know." she said, rubbing her hand over her bottom where I'd popped her with the violin bow.

"Want me to kiss it and make it better?" I asked.

"Oh, you're going to kiss it, buster ..." she said in a voice that was mock in its threat.

I laughed as I put the electric guitar in its stand on the floor next to my chair and I put the violin bow beside my chair.  I slowly ran my hands up the side of her thighs, across her full, round bottom and around the front of her jeans; slowly, feeling the denim under my fingertips.  I reached around to the front of her waist, found her belt, slowly undid it, unbuttoned her jeans then undid her zipper, pulling it down slowly.

Slowly.

Teasingly.

Suddenly the sound of her zipper being unzipped was the loudest sound in the room.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a whisper.

“I’m going to play you.” I said.

“You’re going to ... lay me?” she asked with a mischievous smile.

“No.  Play you.  I’m going to play you.”

“Play me?” she asked, not understanding.

“Yeah.  I’m going to bow you like a violin.  I’m going to play you like that White Snake song.”

I began to pull her jeans down slowly, exposing her tiny white panties.  She never took her eyes off of me while I was doing it.  Once her jeans were down around her ankles she tried to step out of them but her sneakers were still on and I wouldn't let her do anything about her bunched up jeans.  It might be better if her jeans kept her legs from being spread too far apart.  I gently pulled her back into my lap to where she was sitting saddle on my legs, her legs slightly spread.  I pulled her back into me and picked up the violin bow, using it to reach up to my stereo to hit the play button on the cassette player.  Whitesnake’s “In the Heat of the Night” started to play.

“I like this song.” She whispered.

“I do, too.” I whispered, taking the violin bow and loosening up the hairs just a little.

The door to my dorm room was wide open and right then I didn’t care because no one else was in this part of the dorm.  Everyone was gone for the weekend except me and even if someone came in and saw us it would be worth the jaw dropping expression that they'd have seeing Debby Lee sitting like that on my lap.  Debby Lee ... forbidden fruit in so many ways.  Seeing me doing what I was about to do to Debby Lee.

Me and Debby Lee.

Debby Lee was sitting on my lap, denim jacket and red t-shirt on, white bikini type panties exposed, her jeans pulled down and bunched up around her ankles and sneakers and my left arm around her, holding her there in my lap.  As Whitesnake began to play I gently took the violin bow and softly drew it across the bare skin of her right leg, the top of her thigh, moved it down in between her legs and started to slowly draw the violin bow across the inside of her thigh, near her knee, lightly dragging the now loosened hair strands of the bow across her bare skin.

She sucked in her breath, trembled a little.

In and out, up and down, at angles and straight across.

Slowly.

Teasing.

Just enough pressure to tease, to excite.  A few goose bumps rose on the bare skin of her thighs.

“That feels …” she sighed.

“Feels good?” I asked.

“Mmmmm.” She said, closing her eyes and leaning back into me.

“Do you like this?” I asked.

“I’ve never been played before …”

“Well, I’ve never played anyone before.  Do you like it?” I said.

“It’s different.  I like it ... "

"Do you want me to keep going?"

"Yeah ... for now.  It's starting to feel good so ...  Let’s see where this goes."

"You want me to keep going?"

"Yeah.  Play me.” She said, leaning back slightly and relaxing.

"Play you?" 

“Mmmmmm.  Just … play me.” she said, spreading her legs wider but being limited by her jeans bunched up at her ankles.

I did play her but only after I tightened up the strings of the bow.  As the song picked up in intensity, I moved the violin bow across the bare skin of her thighs, down near her knees, up towards her groin, slowly bowing her, playing her like I told her that I would.  As the song grew in intensity, so did my bowing, across the padded bulge of her now swollen nature, the tell-tale upside down "m" shape in her panties.  I drew the violin bow gently across her, slowly, angled this way and that and each time that I did so she would gasp or sigh.

My left hand went up, her denim jacket moved aside and I cupped her left breast, through her t-shirt, squeezing gently but firmly, using my thumb to rub her nipple through her bra.  I kept whispering what I wanted to do to her, I kept bowing her nature softly but firmly, playing her and talking dirty to her.  Her left hand found my left hand and pressed my left hand down hard into her left breast then she reached down and pulled her shirt up, grabbed my hand and guided me under her T-shirt.  I felt her breast now through her bra, all the while I kept whispering to her what I was going to do to her, what I expected her to do to me, and never once did I stop bowing her.  She leaned back into me, her breath taken in short gasps mixed with low, drawn out moans.  I drew the bow across the damp mark that had appeared in her panties, across her obviously swollen nature.  I played her like John Sykes played his electric guitar.

“Don’t … stop.  Play me.” She moaned.

I moved in close to her.  She rolled her head to the left, exposing her neck to me on the right.  Her eyes were closed and her mouth open, her lips sometimes pursed, sometimes bitten.  

"God!  Just ... play me!" she whispered loudly.

I nibbled on her ear and told her what I wanted to do to her.  Of course this only turned her on even more.  The dirtier I talked to her, the more she started to come unglued and I kept upping the tempo of what I was doing to her.  I could tell it was having an effect on her  ... a noticeable effect.

“I’m close!  Christopher!  God!  I’m really … close!” she half moaned, half whispered.

Her breath came in quicker gasps.

She made troubled little noises.

"So ... close." the last part had been a whimpering whine from her.

I could tell that she was straining not to make a lot of noise and that was probably keeping her from going full release.

“It’s okay.” I whispered.  “There’s no one around.  You don’t have to hold it in like we usually do.”

And like that her troubled little noises became troubled big noises and she really began to get into the act there on my lap.  Her legs spread, wide at the knees, narrow where her jeans were bunched up around her ankles and she braced herself against me.   Her legs moved up and down, restrained at the ankles.  I moved the violin bow up between her legs, across her swollen nature, and began to draw the violin bow across the outline of her nature pressed against her panties. I found the center of her womanhood and used the violin bow to pay particular attention to that, running the violin bow up and down across her at an angle that really escalated her build up to release.  Debby Lee began to lose it there in my arms.   Her breath was like one of those asthma commercials where the person can't breathe.  She reached behind her, brought her arm around my head and pulled me into her from behind.  She was making sounds now, reduced to just sounds.  Her eyes were closed, her mouth open wide and she started to shake there in my arms, a tremor.   I played her harder and faster as the song reached a crescendo and so did Debby Lee.  She rose up in my lap, arched her back, gave a long deep huff, then slapped her legs together trapping the violin bow mid-draw.  She started shaking there on my lap, trembling, making little rising and falling moaning sounds, her mouth open and her breath coming short and fast.  I let go of the violin bow, watching with some amusement as it wobbled there held between her suddenly slammed together thighs.  

A deep breath.

"Oh!" she whispered.

A grunt. 

"Oh ... God!" she whispered.

Another tremor.

"Uhhhhmmmm."

Another grunt, a hard grunt and then she seemed to collapse into herself, jerked hard once more then just trembled while she made a pitiful little sound like she was biting down on an electric toothbrush.

Goosebumps flashed across the bare skin of her thighs, up and down the bare skin of her arms.  The violin bow fell down into her bunched up jeans around her ankles, bounced once then clattered to the floor.  I held her tight, left hand up under her shirt holding her right breast, my lips to her right ear and right side of her neck and my right hand now sliding along the bare skin of her right thigh, moving down and cupping her nature.  Her panties were damp, almost soaking damp and hot.  I held her to me by her breast and groin, just letting my fingers slowly glide back and forth over her private parts.

"God ... damn.  Oh ... God damn." she whispered, tremoring again.

I held her until she had mostly stopped ... mostly.  I held her tight and let her be selfish, running my beard up against the soft skin of her neck as she trembled and shook and moaned.  The song faded out and she slowly spread her legs.  Her head hung back and she was spent.

“Did you like being played like that?” I asked her in a whisper, my lips to her right ear.

She moaned something but she didn’t open her eyes.  

Another small shudder ran through her body.  

I held her close, held her tight, for a few minutes then helped her stand up.  I motioned towards my bed and she started doing this ridiculous almost robot-like shuffle walk with her jeans and panties down around her ankles, limiting how far she could move her legs.  She had this little girl pout to her face.  I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder and carried her to the bed caveman style, my hand spread across her bottom, feeling her slick dampness.  Her legs dangled with her jeans, socks and sneakers still around her ankles.  She was still wearing her denim jacket, her T-shirt and her bra under that, spread there on my bed, one arm over her head, her other arm near her with a fingernail bitten in her mouth.  She looked so … seductive.  I lay there next to her, running my hand over the bare skin of her hip, over her side, up and along her cheek. 

“I want you.” She said.

"Oh ... you're going to get me." I said.  "No doubt about that."

I reached down and pulled her sneakers off, pulled her jeans off then started to take her socks off.

"Nuh-uh.  Gotta leave my socks on ..." she told me, wagging her finger in a mock stern manner.

Heh.  Forgot about that.

"Right.  Your toodies get cold." I said, remembering that little quirk of hers.

"Yeah.  Don't like cold toodies." she said as she raised up in my bed and took charge then, her hands quickly undoing my belt, unbuttoning my jeans, pulling my zipper down as she bit her lower lip in anticipation.

She leaned back on the bed, extended a finger and beckoned me with it, slowly.

Fuck me eyes.

Right then I was in no position to argue and I gave her what she wanted and even managed to work in swapping out positions.  Debby Lee had two favorite positions ... her on top and me behind.  When she was on top she liked to either face me or face away and I hadn't really found a pattern in that yet.  Sometimes she liked to lead, sometimes she liked to be led.  I liked it when she was on top and facing away but her favorite position of all was 69, especially for quick sex.  Top or bottom, it didn't matter ... Debby Lee was good at it, she really got into that and it wasn't like she had to twist my arm or anything to get what she wanted.  I was really happy to get to see her, to get to be with her today and I put all of my effort into showing her just that.  In fact, I treated her like I owned her and she more than willingly let me.

It was then that I started to see that maybe it wasn't just about the sex.  

There was something else there, something more than just the sex and I think we both started to feel it because when we were together it wasn't just physical ... not any more.  Now it was physical and something else ... something that had started between us but I don't think that either of us really wanted to admit it.  I don't know how long whatever it was had been there but it had been there for a while now and the more I thought about it the more I realized that I might just be falling for Debby Lee and that could be a bad thing.  Yeah, that could be a seriously bad thing.

 I watched her sleeping next to me, moved a lock of her hair out of her face and saw a tiny smile appear on her lips even though she never opened her eyes.  I watched her sleep, listened to her breathe and thought about what we shared, what we had and where it might be going and I wondered if Debby Lee felt the same way and I wondered if she was just better at hiding it than I was.

Debby Lee left four hours later and I lay there naked under the covers of my bed in my dorm room, sore, spent, exhausted ... just thinking about how today had really, really turned out great.  I looked up at my new Yamaha music instruments poster on the wall and at the violin bow sitting on the chair across the room.  For the money spent, that old violin bow had been one of the best things that I’d ever bought at a going out of business sale.

I visited Debby Lee at work twice more, once in mid-October and again in early November (as my part time work schedule allowed me) and she visited me at Sack and Save on Ellis Avenue three times during that first semester of college, following all those times up with trips back to my dorm where she would spend Friday and Saturday night with me, leaving late that Sunday morning or late that Sunday afternoon.

By the middle of October I had moved off campus to a small one bedroom apartment there in Raymond.  It was my first apartment.  It wasn’t much, but it was my first apartment and I lived there by myself.

No roommate.

Alone.

Just me and my crap and I liked to spread my crap out.

I showed Debby Lee where I lived during a lunch break.  We had about an hour to drive from the college campus two miles away to my apartment, look around, get something to eat and get back in time for our next classes.  The apartment was small … living room, kitchen / dining room, bathroom, and bedroom.  That was it and by the time I’d reached the bedroom she had kicked her sneakers off and pulled her sweater off over her head.  Before I could ask her what she was doing she pushed me back onto the bed and began rapidly undoing my belt, unbuttoning my jeans, unzipping my fly and yanking my pants down below my knees with enough force that I thought she was going to almost yank me off the bed as well.

12:23 PM.

As I watched she stood beside the bed and hurriedly took her pants and panties off, leaving only her white button up shirt (and her little ankle socks) on as she walked over, mounted me like a cowgirl riding a horse backwards, and rode me.  It was almost brutal, mostly mechanical ... like she was using me to remedy some personal need.  There had been no foreplay and she had been more than ready for me when she climbed on top.  Maybe it was because we were all alone, finally alone, in my apartment, with no roommates, no dorm dwellers, and she could really relax and let go.  Maybe it was the fact that we were finally on a real bed, a bed she didn’t have to worry about crouching down or bending over at the waist just in order to get on top of me.

Debby Lee really got into that then, her fingers clawing into the tops of my thighs, hard enough to hurt as she threw herself into me and I threw myself into her.  The sounds she made were troubled, hard pressed and almost tortured ... like she was trying to do two things at once and not really sure how to integrate them then she rose up, came down quickly, rose up again, hovered, started to shake, then collapsed on me and shuddered.  I felt tremors flash through her body.  I felt her release around me, her quivering nature and the warmth of her womanhood.  She clenched her fists, again digging her fingers into my thighs hard enough to hurt as she groaned loudly and threw her head all the way back, her mouth open and her body trembling there on top of me.  Her whispers were filled with nothing but four letter words and the adjectives needed to link them together in short barked commands telling me what she wanted me to do and then her voice trailed off into a hoarse whisper. 

Her body trembled.

She jerked, hard, once, and made a sound like "guhh" and was then silent, her breath coming fast and hard.  She leaned forward, putting all of her weight on her arms, her hands pressing down into my legs just above my knees.  It wasn't comfortable to be sure but I didn't dare complain.  I waited until she dropped her head and had regained some of her composure.

"I liked that." she said softly, turning to look at me over her right shoulder, her arms crossed over her bare breasts.

Yeah, that had been so good that it had actually kind of hurt.  

When we finally caught our breath we got up to get a quick shower.  It was probably the fastest shower I'd ever taken, especially with a woman.  We dressed in a rush, almost a marathon, laughing and playing with each other.  I pulled my bikini briefs on while Debby Lee went looking for her socks and shoes, finding them just outside the bedroom where she had taken them off.

I pulled my jeans on and slid my harness boots on.

I don't know how long it had taken us to do all of that but the words "record time" seemed to apply.

“Hey!  What time is it?” she asked.

“12:53” I said, looking at my watch.

“12:53!  Crud!  We’ve got to hurry.” She said, heading for the front door of the apartment.

I shook the Pontiac’s keys in the air in front of her.

“You forget who’s driving … and what I'm driving.”

“Show me!” she said, opening the front door and stepping out.

And right then I had an idea ... a wild thought.  I reached out, took her by the hand and pulled her right back into the apartment.  Debby Lee laughed like a little school girl as I closed the door behind me, locked it and slid the chain back on.  And then it was just us ... again.  Me with my back to the locked front door and her standing there in the middle of my living room.

Fuck me eyes.

Biting her lower lip.

Lowering her head and turning to look at me.

Demure.

"So ...  just fuck all the afternoon classes?" she asked, smiling and backing slowly away from me as I took a step towards her.

"Something like that ... more like just fuck all the afternoon." I said dropping to my knees in front of her and starting to undo her belt, her jeans ...

She kicked her shoes off as her hands went to my head, her fingers in my hair as I slid her unbuttoned, unzipped jeans down her legs and helped her step out of her pants.

We spent our spare time that afternoon taking our time having sex in a real bed, for the second time that semester, for the second and third time that day.  A real bed with a mattress and box springs and sheets and comforter and a headboard and …  Even though it was only a twin, it sure beat the hell out of the metal framed bunk bed single that I’d had back in the dorm room and lying there with Debby Lee, under the covers, snuggled close, her head on my chest, bare skin to bare skin … that was one of the best feelings in the world.  Those hours spent that afternoon were worth cutting class for.

I could make up for class but time with Debby Lee was special.

The next day at the student grill I gave Debby Lee a spare key to my apartment … I’d had it made at the local hardware shop there in Raymond.  It was the first time that I’d ever given a woman a key to the apartment where I lived.  Hell, it was the first time that I’d ever had an apartment to give anyone a key to let alone a woman I was involved with like I was involved with Debby Lee.

I put that down in my Book of Firsts as well.

Once I moved out of the dorm a roommate ceased to be part of the equation and Debby Lee’s husband’s frequent out of town trips and weekend getaways with his buddies made it all the easier to spend long nights, lazy afternoons and even entire Saturdays and Sundays with Debby Lee beside me in my bed at my apartment.  When we couldn’t share a weekend together we shared time between classes and after classes together and we’d be heathens for ten or fifteen minutes.  We’d lose ourselves in each other in the little time that we had.

Memories. 

There was one time that we slept late on a Saturday morning then got up and sat naked on the living room carpet, the heat turned up so high our eyeballs were drying out and condensation was forming on the apartment window but we were feeling no chill.  We were drinking Borden’s chocolate milk right out of the half gallon jug, eating Captain Crunch cereal right out of the box with our hands, and snuggling together with our butts on the carpeted floor and our backs to the sofa.   Al Lewis was reprising his role as “Granpa Munster”, doing the hosting for the "Super Scary Saturday" show on Atlanta’s very own WTBS Super Station and we were watching an old ‘60’s sci-fi movie “The Green Slime” with its catchy theme song.

I'd seen "The Blob" before but I'd never seen "The Green Slime" other than as black and white pictures in some pretty cheap sci-fi magazines.

Memories.

The night I cooked dinner for her … it was only spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and it was all store bought stuff from Sack & Save, all thrown together, but we sat there at my little two seat dinner table late that afternoon, with candles burning, in what passed for a combination kitchen / dining room and I realized just how much candlelight really brought out the color of her eyes.  I had cleaned up while she showered and got dressed for work then we said goodbye and she went off to work in Clinton.  I did my homework for two of my classes, got a long hot shower then got on my Apple IIC computer, playing “Ultima IV” and “Bards Tale II”, biding my time while listening to “Tank”, “Oz” and “TKO” and then at a quarter to eleven that night she was back.  With a knock on my door, a key turning in the deadbolt and her in my arms we spent the night together again.

Skin to skin.

Like animals.

Memories.

Seeing her walk naked around my apartment, taking showers by flickering candlelight with her there in my really, really cramped bathroom, the shower closet barely big enough for me let alone the two of us … a bathroom so small that we had to move past the sink one at a time just to fit.

So close together.

Water spraying off bare skin.

Hard water.

Oily to the touch.

You never felt like you ever really got all of the soap or shampoo off of you.

It made you feel slick when you were done.

Tasted nasty.

I hated the water system at Raymond.

Never drank any of it, either.

I learned to brush my teeth using bottled water.

The people who lived in Raymond said you got used to it after a while.  These were also the people who had been living there all their lives, drinking that water all their lives.  These were the people who set the trash dumpsters on fire and threw beer bottles at passing cars.  No, I wasn't going to chance it.  If what I wanted to drink didn't come out of a bottle or a can, I didn't drink it while I lived in Raymond.

The water was so bad you couldn't even make decent tea out of it, not even by boiling it.  It was pretty much one step above non-potable in quality.  The fact that the local populace actually drank this stuff gave me a good idea of how a lot of the local idiosyncracies had come to be.

Memories.

The music playing in the background when we were having sex ... Guns-N-Roses, White Snake, Stiff, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Lillian Axe ...

Records.  

Cassettes.  

Radio.

Z106.7 FM ... Jackson, Mississippi.

Her bare skin illuminated in the blue glow of the display of the digital clock radio.

My fingertips tracing her bare skin as she slept ... her soft moans, never really waking all the way up.

Memories.

Coming back to my apartment between classes to find her Buick parked in back and walking into my apartment to find her already there, naked, in my bed, waiting on me, that mischievous grin on her face, a beckoning finger telling me what was expected of me, and those fuck me eyes.

No time wasted.

Memories.

Debby Lee sitting naked in my recliner, her feet in her white tennis socks so her toodies wouldn't get cold (couldn't have cold toodies), legs crossed under her, holding my long haired gray cat "Smokey", petting him and him purring away contentedly in her bare lap all the while looking like he had died and gone to heaven under her stroking him.  Watching her, sitting there, naked, her hair spilling around her shoulders, seeing her petting my cat, looking up to see me watching her, smiling at me before going back to petting my cat in her lap ... and thinking to myself that I would remember that image for a very long time to come.

Memories.

Low burned candles set around the bedroom, flames flickering in the dark casting moving shadows.  Listening to WASP's "Sleeping in the Fire" playing softly on the component stereo, Debby Lee on top riding me to her finish, her hands flat to my chest, her nails digging in sharply, her breath coming short and fast ... the sounds she was making ...  

My hands gripping her waist. 

Memories.

Seeing a flickering shadow of her cast on the wall as she found her release.

Memories.

Watching her sleep next to me, so at peace ... so secure, the corner of her lip curled up in a slight contented smile, like there was no where else she rather be, like there was no one else she rather be with than me.

Memories.

Seeing her sitting there, naked, on the carpet in the living room, doing her homework for one of her classes.  Legs crossed under her, the thick grouping of dark curls that made up the upside down triangle of pubic hair that marked her womanhood just visible from my viewing angle.  My gray cat, Smokey, crawling into the space between her legs and curling up there to sleep, her taking time to pet him then going back to her homework and me wondering what it would be like if she was mine ... really mine ... like mine forever.

Memories.

Her naked body illuminated in the soft blue glow of the digital alarm clock radio and the contrasting orange splash of the night light set into the wall out in the hall.  Watching her breathe, the rise and fall of her chest, sometimes bare ... sometimes with just a sheet pulled over her.  Her breathing matching almost the rise and fall of the status bars on the digital EQ on the stereo.  The sounds she made every now and then, little sounds, like a kitten dreaming.  My head supported on my arm, watching her, wondering how we ever got this far ... wondering how long it would last and where it was going if in fact it was going anywehre.  

Wondering how long we had.

Wondering what we had.

Falling asleep next to her and waking up next to her the next morning.

Bare skin to bare skin.

Wrapping my arms around her and having her snuggle back against me, spooning, her bottom to my groin.

She was so warm.

She was comfort from being lonely.

My hands over the curves of her body ... gliding.  

My fingertips tracing her shape.

Petting her.

Getting a reaction.

Her head in the crook of my neck, telling me that if I didn't stop I was going to have to take care of the problem I was starting for her.

I didn't stop and I took care of the problem that I'd started for her.

Time stood still.

There was just us.

There was just Debby Lee.

Memories.

All of it ... It was all memories in the making.  

Really good memories ... really, really good memories of being with someone who wanted to be with me when I had no one, even when she belonged to someone else.

          A ghost from my past

Friday, October 30, 1987

I remember one Friday night that Debby Lee and I spent together, the last Friday in October, it was almost Halloween and I had the strangest thing happen to me. 

I woke up next to her or I thought I woke up. 

The apartment was dark and quiet. 

The ceiling fan above the bed was rotating on its lowest speed setting, shaking slightly on its mount, making a noise that I swore to myself that I'd stand up on the bed, adjust the fan and see if I could make the noise go away.. 

Debby Lee was naked, asleep next to me, her head on my left shoulder, her left leg across my left leg, her left hand spread flat across my chest.  I looked over at her and then she slowly raised up on her arms in bed beside me, opened her eyes and her eyes were glowing the same pale blue glow that my digital clock had and that’s when Motley Crue’s “In the Beginning” suddenly started to play loudly in the background, straight off of their 1983 “Shout at the Devil” album.  The roar of the wind, the sound of lost souls chanting in the background and then the static of a lost radio transmission began with a loud, rising hum.  She stared at me and in a perfect imitation of Jeanne’s voice Debby Lee asked me …

“Are you wrecking another happy home, Christopher?”

Jeanne!

I woke with a start, jerked hard in the bed and it must have been a pretty good start because Debby Lee woke instantly, too.  She looked around, wide eyed, looked at me concerned and asked me if anything was wrong, confusion in her voice mixed with surprise and fear.

Not Jeanne.

Not Jeanne ...

Debby Lee.

It was Debby Lee’s voice that I was hearing now, not Jeanne’s.  Jeanne’s voice was fading in my head, along with Motley Crue’s music.  My heart was fluttering.  It had all been some kind of strange dream because I hadn’t seen Jeanne in over a year and a half now. Hell, I didn’t even know where Jeanne was now and that just made it all the more strange that Jeanne would come into my thoughts and dreams now ... a real ghost from my past.  Someone else who had passed in and out of my life leaving nothing but memories.

“What’s wrong?  Is everything okay?” Debby Lee whispered, touching me, concerned, not understanding.

“Yeah.  Everything’s okay.” I reassured her as I got up out of bed and left her there.

"Everything's ... just ... great." I muttered.

My mind was full of thoughts of Debby Lee, of Jeanne, of Marie.  What was I doing with my life?  Where was I going?  I went to the fridge and got a can of Pepsi out, popped the top and took a long, cold drink. 

What a strange dream … weird dream ... what a damn weird fucking strange dream.  I don’t know why but that dream had shaken me and I couldn’t get rid of that feeling.  I poured a shot glass of Jack Daniels, tossed it back and the dread I was feeling started to retreat in front of the trail of fire that the whiskey burned down my throat.   I drank again, long, from the cold can of Pepsi then I walked into the living room and just stood there, naked, in the dark, trying to shake the strange feeling that I had. 

The clock on the wall said it was 1:38 AM.

1:39 AM.

1:40 AM.

Still I had that violated feeling.

Cold.

Deep down in my soul.

Like something had reached down into the deepest depths of me and taken something from me ... taken something without permission, taken something that I couldn't stop from being taken.  Debby Lee, still naked, got up out of my bed, went to the bathroom, then walked into the living room and stood behind me there in the dark.  Her arms wrapped around me and she held me, silent, her head against my right shoulder, just holding me.

“Bad dream?” she whispered.

“Yeah.  Something like that.” I said.

“Talk about it?”

I shrugged my shoulders and took another drink of Pepsi.

“Just a … ghost … from the past.  Someone I used to know ... few years ago.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Someone I cared about ... or thought I could care about. Just didn’t work out that way, you know.  We never had anything between us ... nothing serious between us.  We were just friends for a while.  Probably for the best that way.” I said, putting a hand on her hand across my chest.

I offered her some of my Pepsi but she shook her head.  Debby Lee let go of me then, gently tugging on my hand. 

"Regrets?" she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Can't regret what never was going to be anyway." I whispered and she nodded.

“Come back to bed and I’ll chase that bad dream away.  Deal?” She said.

I nodded.

“Yeah.  Deal.  Let me finish this.”

Debby Lee slowly withdrew her hand from me, let it slowly slide down my back, across my ass, slapped my ass playfully, then she walked back to my bedroom.

Yeah.

I finished the Pepsi, put the empty can in the trash, went back to bed and sat on the edge of the bed as she scooted up behind me, wrapped her legs around me and held me.  She started rubbing my neck, ears and cheek … kissing me softly every now and then.

“You can’t have any bad dreams ... not while you’re with me.  I won’t let you.” She whispered. 

That had to be one of the best things that anyone had ever said to me.  Her words and her touching me put to rest the last vestiges of the ghost that had visited me a few minutes ago.  Gone, like so many others before Debby Lee.  Just another memory, brought forth from the layers of dust in my past, come to pay its respect at the most inopportune time.

Debby Lee used her fingertips and palms to massage the ghost of Jeanne away.  Neck, shoulders, ears, temples ... I shut my eyes, relaxed and let her tend to me.  After ten minutes she stopped massaging me and lay back on the bed, patting the bed in front of her.  I moved close to her, turned her around and spooned her from behind.  I pulled the cover up around us, kissed her shoulders, kissed her neck and ran my fingers through her hair, along her cheek, giving her back some of what she had just given me.  Debby Lee reached back, both hands, found me and began to pet me.

My need for her grew under her fingertips and petting. 

After a few minutes of this Debby Lee reached up and pushed the cover off of her, off of me, off of us.  

She slowly climbed on top of me, cowgirl, facing me, and took lead as we lost ourselves in each other, totally and completely.   Debby Lee took complete control, guiding every part of what we shared, taking what she wanted and giving me what I needed.  It was a slow ride, sensual, with a really intense buildup that seemed to take forever before it spent itself in a pair of releases separated only by a a few short breaths.  After that it didn’t take long for Debby Lee to fall back asleep there next to me, me spooning her, her in my arms.  I kissed her bare shoulder one last time and she snuggled backwards into me then her breathing grew steady again.  

I breathed her in, her hair, her perfume, her natural scent.  

Shampoo, lilac and musk.   

I saw her shape, her lines and curves, illuminated in the dim blue glow from the clock radio ... and that weird violated feeling that I had began to fade to nothing.  

Maybe it was the shot of whiskey.

Maybe it was the shot of Debby Lee.

2:23 AM.

There, beside her, I knew it couldn’t last forever but while I had Debby Lee to myself my life was great.  

I cherished every moment I spent with Debby Lee.  I looked forward to our quick flings between classes, to our long weekends when we could have them.  When we were finally spent and she was curled up beside me, asleep there in the dark with the radio softly playing classic rock music on Z106.7 FM I would still be awake, holding her and thinking about what we shared.  Sleep eventually overtook me and I’d fade off, spooning her, holding her, as comfortable with her in my arms as she was to be in my arms.

Debby Lee wasn’t mine but while she was with me she was kind of mine, at least for a while, at least while we were together and for what we shared together while we shared it I guess that was all that mattered to two people who were only really together for just one thing.

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