During this time we made several pacts, the first and foremost of which was that, no matter how embarrassing it might be, we would always be completely honest with each other and would answer each other’s questions without holding anything back. Thus it was that Barbara, with her head turned away, and in a voice so soft I sometimes had to strain to hear, told me about her relationship with Brad. It was late one Saturday evening. We had just dried off from a swim, when I finally got up the nerve to ask her the Big Question. “How far did you go?” I asked in a guarded whisper as we sat hip-to-hip in a wicker lounge chair at the side of the pool. Her grip on my arm tightened at this question, and I started to backtrack. “Hey, listen, you don’t have to tell. Really. I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“No,” she said quietly, “we have a deal, don’t we?” And, after a long period of nervous silence, she began.

“We met over here,” she said. “You remember, it was that party at the end of the school year. He was so cool, you know, older and all and good looking. I sort of got swept away and before I knew it we were kissing and making out every chance we got. At first I tried to stop him going too far, but he was so strong and insistent, and he finally tried to touch me...up here.” She brushed her bathing suit top lightly with her fingers. “It seemed kind of silly to me at the time, because I didn’t have much there, but apparently he wanted to anyway.”

“Did you...?”

“Well, yeah, sort of, but I was so scared I couldn’t concentrate on it very well. And I don’t think I was quite ready, if you know what I mean.”

Thinking of my first encounter with Barbara Wilson’s huge hairy wrinkled canyon, I nodded my understanding of not being quite ready.

“The problem was, he didn’t want to stop there.” Barbara paused and looked up at me. “You’re going to hate me if I tell, I know it. You’ll think I’m some kind of slut or something and never speak to me again.”

I was hurt that she would say such a thing, but I understood. In our cruel world back then, a teenage girl could become a “slut” simply through unsubstantiated rumors, often spread falsely by a spurned boy. This was long before losing one’s virginity became a badge of honor for some girls, or at least a respected passage into some form of adulthood.

“Listen,” I said, “I won’t... I mean I could never feel that way about you. What we have is so special, I don’t think it could ever be destroyed, least of all by being honest with each other. If you don’t want to tell me, please don’t, but I really do want you to. Not so I can see or think of you in any different way, but so we can have some kind of spiritual bond or something, which I think we already do. And I would die before I would ever tell another soul anything you say to me in confidence. I mean it!”

She shifted in the seat next to me so our faces were close, then slowly, she kissed me, only on the nose this time, but I thought I knew what she was saying; it seemed like a kind of thank-you kiss. “Okay,” she said. “I believe you. Just give me a sec to work up my nerve.”

I put my arm around her shoulder and she laid her head on my bare chest. We stayed like that for a long time, until finally she began to speak again.

“It was the next time I saw him. We were at the Y and he had his car. He talked me into sneaking away with him and we ended up in the back seat, parked on one of those dark side streets a couple of blocks from the bay. It all started the same: making out, him touching my...chest, you know. And then things started getting kind of hot and heavy. He reached down and pushed his hand inside the front of my shorts. I tried to stop him, but he was on top of me and there wasn’t much I could do. Anyway, by then I had become kind of curious to see what it was going to feel like.”

She looked up at me as if expecting some kind of recrimination, but I just held her tighter and said, “It’s okay, you can stop if you want to.” We lay quietly for a while, her snuggling up under my neck and fiddling with what little hair had sprouted on my 15-year-old chest. Finally, I said, “So, what did it feel like?”

After a short hesitation, she answered. “Good, I think. I mean I was excited and nervous, but it wasn’t bad. When he undid the back of my shorts, I started getting scared, but he kept saying everything would be all right, to relax and trust him, that he would never hurt me. And then, before I knew what was happening, I felt his finger inside me, and whoa, that was really strange.”

I felt her shudder as if chilled, but since it was 85 degrees and humid, I knew she couldn’t be cold. “What to you mean, strange?” I asked.

“Well, it was a whole bunch of feelings all wrapped up in one big ball. First, I was scared to death, but then at the same time it was like when the Wild Mouse hits the top of that first incline and starts going down like a rocket ship. You know, you’re scared as heck, but you’re also excited and it’s exhilarating.

“Anyway, he kept whispering in my ear all kinds of reassuring things while he started to move his finger in and out of me, and then I think he put in another finger in too, because it started to hurt and I got to thinking how much more it would hurt if we, well, uh, went, you know, all the way. So I asked him to stop. I was really scared he would think I was too young for him, that I wasn’t mature enough to do what he wanted or was just chicken. Most of all, at that moment, I was worried I would lose him if I didn’t let him do what he wanted.”

I shuddered at this, thinking back to Barbara Wilson’s story about her rape, and how it seemed to have messed up her head so badly she couldn’t seem to feel anything anymore. And when I thought of that happening to this Barbara, to My Barbara, I started to get angry. Cautiously, almost not wanting to know the answer, I said, “So what happened?”

Looking a little sheepish, she slowly lifted her head from my chest, looked me in the eyes and said, “Not much more. He didn’t stop right away, but after I started to cry a little, he pulled his fingers out and started kind of massaging me down there. Funny thing is, that felt better than the other, but then he stopped and took his hand away completely. I asked him if he was mad, but he shook his head. “Just frustrated,” he said, then he went behind the car for a few minutes. I straightened my clothes, and when he came back he drove me to the Y and let me out and that was it.”

“Why do you think you stopped him?” I asked.

She smiled at me and said, “You know, I think it was for two reasons. One was that I don’t think I was ready yet, and the other was that I kind of realized when I did finally feel ready, I wouldn’t want my first time to be with him. I know it’s going to happen someday, and it scares and excites me, not to mention worrying about what the church and my mom might think, and who it should be and how they would treat me afterward. It’s pretty complicated, you know, for a girl, I mean.”

“Well, to be honest with you, I never thought about it like that,” I said. “I mean from a girl’s point of view.” And I hadn’t. Up until then, I’d never even considered what it might be like for a girl. In fact, since my first experience was with someone who seemed to have no feelings about it at all, I had come to believe girls were only there to satisfy guys. If they got something out of it, too, that was fine with me, but it wasn’t important as long as I got off.

“You know,” I said, “we need to talk some more about this, and maybe see if we can find some information or something to explain what goes on when people, uh, do it.” Then I got really brave and asked, “Do you know what a climax is? Sometimes they call it an orgasm. At least I’ve heard it called that. But, really, do you know what it is, or if girls can have it?”

“No,” she said softly. “I’ve never heard either of those words before. What is it?”

“Wow!” I said involuntarily, wondering what I had gotten myself into. My dad was a doctor who kept an office/library of medical books at home, so I had been privy to lots of technical information about anatomy and the clinical aspects of reproduction, but none of the books ever included feelings or emotions when they talked about orgasms or climaxes. This was years before the so-called sexual revolution, so my chances of finding anything written on the subject were slim, especially in the dry, technical medical journals my dad kept in his home library.

Finally, I said, “I could try to explain, I guess, but it’s going to be pretty embarrassing.”

“Oh, like what I just told you wasn’t?”

“Uh, right,” I murmured, wondering how a boy who doesn’t know shit could explain an orgasm to a girl who might not even be able to have one? In fact, when I thought about it, there weren’t a lot of words to describe what an orgasm felt like. It didn’t feel like anything else I knew, so there was no way to describe it. “It’s going to be tough,” I said finally. “And I don’t mean just the embarrassment. The feeling is so different from anything else I’ve felt that there’s nothing to use for comparison.”

“Well,” she said, “I may not have had one, but I did find something to compare what I was feeling with. Remember the roller coaster?’

“Yeah, yeah,” I said quietly, working things around in my mind to find some way to at least get started with an explanation. “Okay, let’s say you try to think of the best feeling you’ve ever had in your life. What would that be?”

“Gosh, that’s a tough one.” She was quiet for a few moments, then her eyes lit up. “How about when I won the figure skating title in the regionals last year? That was probably the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“Okay, good. Now let’s try to put that into some kind of, uh, more intimate context. Tell you what, go back to the night with Brad and the excitement you mentioned, along with the part where what he was doing started to feel good. I guess when he took his fingers out and was massaging you. Remember?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, try to blend the two experiences. You remember the build up to the finals, how each time you won a program you went a little bit higher and it got a little bit scarier because you might not win the next one?”

“Uh, huh,” she said, looking a little skeptical.

“Okay, that worry about the next program, compare it to the way you felt about going each step further with Brad. The fear that was really the cause of your excitement, like the Wild Mouse when it was about to start down. Then imagine Brad never actually hurt you, but that each step was like the massaging, only it got better and better and better, and at the same time kind of scarier, but not so much that the fear would make you want him to stop. Can you imagine that, like in a dream? Close your eyes. Try.”

She slowly closed her eyes and I could tell she was trying to imagine it. Then, as I watched her, I noticed her legs had started to rub together in a slow rhythmic way. “I, uh, think I can imagine it,” she said. “The feeling, I mean.”

I fished around for words or ideas to get to the next level, and finally I hit on something. “Okay, now lets put all those higher levels, those more exciting programs, on the side of an imaginary mountain, and what you’re trying to do by reaching each new level of happiness and pleasure is get to the top of the mountain, because that’s where all the good feelings are going to come together into one huge wonderful sensation, something like you’ve never ever experienced before. Like an explosion, a volcano of happiness, the greatest, most fantastic feeling in the world.”

Suddenly, she opened her eyes and stared at me. Her legs had stopped moving, and she looked curious. “I think I get it,” she said slowly.“ Or at least I sort of understand what it might be like. The big question is, how do I get to the top of the mountain?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” I said reluctantly. “Like I said, I don’t even know if girls can do it.”

“Well, you can, can’t you?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Okay, how do you do it?”

“Ohmigod, now we’re really getting into it.” My throat started to close and a huge flock of butterflies began dancing in my chest. How could I explain it to her? I mean without actually showing her, the thought of which turned the butterflies into thousands of tiny military combat helicopters.

“Come on, Tommy, you started this, and you can’t leave me hanging now. Listen, if nature wants us to reproduce, she wouldn’t make the process pleasurable only for the man. Frankly, if there weren’t something in it for the woman, and if what I hear about having babies is true, women wouldn’t even consider it unless there was some kind of powerful urge. From what you describe, I’ll bet it’s this climax thing. If I’m right, that means girls can have them too. All we need to do is find out how. And what better way than from someone who already knows?”

“Wow! That’s a hell of an argument. Did you just come up with it or did you read it somewhere?” I was stalling and she knew it.

“It makes sense, if you think about it.”

“Okay, okay, give me some time to figure out how to say this.” And right then, I was saved by the bell.

“Tommy, Barbara,” came the sweet sound of Mom’s voice from inside the house. “Time to call it a night.”

In trying to jump up from our somewhat compromising position in the wicker lounge, we got tangled in each others legs and arms, eventually turning the thing over and spilling out onto the rough surface of the patio, skinning elbows and knees and laughing until we couldn’t breathe.

“Okay, kiddo,” Barbara gasped between heaves of laughter, “you get off this time, but this isn’t over. Promise me you’ll think about it and the next time we can get away, you’ll try to explain.”

Head hung low in an over-dramatic imitation of chagrin, I nodded ever so slightly. And then, she made another one of those rip-my-heart-out moves. Glancing back toward the glass doors to make sure no one was watching, she pulled on my chin until we were eye to eye and kissed me. Not so soft this time, and definitely not one of those sympathy kisses. This one was the real thing, the kind with electricity and an afterbuzz. When we parted, our eyes seemed unable to come unlocked for the longest time. Finally, Barbara whispered, “My God, Tommy, what was that?”

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