Field Notes from Seventeen
Erotic memoir | 90s Nostalgia | Oral sex | Sexual firsts
Meghan and I were walking back to our respective locker rooms after a rollicking round of racquetball. Gen-Xers might be the last generation still pretending this sport matters. To everyone younger, those courts probably look like an aquarium for the middle-aged — khaki-shorted, knee-braced, chasing tiny blue balls with the grim determination of people who peaked athletically in 1994.
At the corridor between locker rooms, Meghan grabbed my coconut water, took a swig, made the most horrendous expression, and spat it into the water fountain.
She always forgets.
“My god! How do you drink that shit?” She grimaced, wiping her chin. “Whoever drinks coconut water definitely swallows!”
I was mid-gulp. The laugh that exploded out of me was disastrous. While I tried to wipe off my shirt in front of strangers, Meghan disappeared into the women’s locker room still cursing the alkaline aftertaste.
I grabbed my bag and headed for the private showers. We all know why I don’t disrobe in public.
Water pressure easing the muscles one by one.
As I soaped up — the lather warm and slick across everything — with the taste of alkaline still on my tongue, I thought of Zora.
Zora gave me several firsts.
She was a high school hook-up on repeat. Always too much. I could only handle her in small, dangerous doses — like a 45rpm single I couldn’t stop playing even when it scratched. Every encounter a banger. She always left me reeling when she disappeared.
She was a dark-skinned diva. Intimidating. Always horny. Always down for whatever. She taught me about bodies. Mostly mine.
Track 1: The Snowball
Usually we’d drive out into the sticks. Some rural off-road, park in a field, open the moonroof. I’d slip from the driver’s to the passenger’s seat. Recline all the way. She’d prairie-dog out of the open moonroof to gain leverage — her cunt on my face, grinding while I licked and sucked. Then she’d maneuver to kneel in the driver’s seat and return the favor.
She always demanded I service her first.
This one particular night was one of her many surprises. Not her first way of shocking me. Not her last.
She gave me an especially filthy, perfect blowjob. When I came hard in her mouth, she didn’t swallow. She crawled up my body, pressed her lips to mine, and fed it all back to me in a long, sloppy snowball kiss.
Shocked.
Surprised.
Fair.
I moaned. I swallowed. She laughed into my mouth. Kept one hand behind my head. The other cupped around my balls. Her tongue dancing deep, making sure I received her gift of myself.
“You should know what you taste like.”
She wasn’t wrong. About anything. Ever.
Track 2: Dean’s Bottom Bunk
I purchased my first box of condoms because of Zora. Three Trojans. Red-faced. Nervous. A pathetic little rite of passage.
We’d been at a party that night at Simone’s house. Zora and I making out on the staircase — her above me, arms around my neck, the whole architecture of that arrangement telling me everything I needed to know about how this dynamic worked. I was completely owned. Shivering with lust. I knew I was going to lose my virginity to her that night. She wanted to take it from me too.
There was pot. There was Led Zeppelin, AC/DC — hard classic rock rattling the windows. Eventually Dean and Simone were ready to head back to his place. We tagged along.
Dean’s room. Lava lamp the only glow. He and Simone climbed directly onto the top bunk of his own bed without ceremony or discussion, the way people do when the evening’s logistics are already understood by everyone except the nervous virgin.
Zora and I slid into the bottom bunk.
Prince played on the tape deck. Lovesexy had just come out. I couldn’t tell you which track. I was grateful for the noise. Zora didn’t need it. Dean and Simone didn’t need it. The bunk bed was already making its own music — four sets of springs in conversation, the whole structure creaking.
I was the only one counting the beats.
I whispered to Zora, under the already creaking frame, that I’d picked up condoms. She grinned and bit my ear.
“I can’t wait,” she whispered.
Our hands undid each other’s jeans, snaked them down our legs. I went down on her — she was my first for that too, though not that night technically. She came under the lava lamp. Muffled in the pillow.
I crawled up her body. She’d already opened and unwrapped the condom. She rolled it on me in the most tender foreplay. Eased me into her heat.
I’ll always remember how it felt — the warmth through the latex, the encasement of condom and cunt, her squeezing me inside while she held me outside. We kissed as she undulated her hips, grinding against my slow gentle thrusts. I groaned into her hungry mouth. She moaned back into mine.
I picked up the pace. We both held the creaking bedframe above her head. I felt her body shudder all around me. She came.
I never did.
Too nervous. Too overwhelmed. Too in love with the idea of her.
She never knew.
Track 3: Alphabet Street
Zora loved giving head. She’d unzip me anywhere — driving, on the couch, in bathrooms at parties. She said I was “good practice.”
Good practice.
I had heavy petting before Zora. Late nights on bus rides home after track meets. Movie theaters. Under blankets on the couch. But I’d never tried oral. She was my first for that too.
I’d shown Zora my favorite pictorials from Penthouse and Variations. Confessed I’d always wanted to try 69. It looked amazing in the photographs.
She pushed me down. Swiveled around. Placed her blue-jeaned crotch over my face.
“Well, it goes like this...”
She ground her denim-entrapped pussy on my nose while she unbuttoned my shorts. I attempted to navigate her Calvins from an awkward angle. She laughed, arched up, shimmied out of them, and planted her cotton panties directly on my mouth.
She freed me in seconds.
I had smelled pussy on my fingers before. On swimsuits on the bathroom counter. But never directly from the source. The ripeness. The muskiness of her sex. I didn’t know what to do. She already had my cock in her mouth. She pulled off long enough to instruct:
“Just lick.”
So I reached around her thighs, spread her open the way I’d seen in the magazines, and started licking. Up and down. Enthusiastically. Possibly aggressively.
“Slow down. You need to savor me. Slowly. C’mon — you’re a passionate romantic poet who seduces me with words. Now just use your tongue.”
I thought about Prince’s “Alphabet Street.”
“No. Not like that. You’re moving around too much.” A pause. “Are you doing the Prince thing?”
She laughed. I died. She continued.
“Just establish a slow up and down rhythm. Don’t worry, I’ll get there.”
I followed her instruction. She taught me how to eat her — slow, deliberate, worshipful. I was so focused on not fucking it up that I barely registered the incredible blowjob she was giving me at the same time.
Yeah. 69s were too complex for me at seventeen.
She forced my mouth into a rhythm she rode out. She came on my face, thighs shuddering, moans and sighs abounding. Sat up. Smothered me. Stroked me off.
Track 4: The Rorschach
“I’m on the rag,” she smirked, stopping me from going down.
“Oh...” I pouted. I really wanted a taste. “Can I finger you? Or—”
“No.”
I pouted harder.
“Can I at least get a handjob?”
“No.” She got up. “Give me a minute.”
She went to my bathroom. Came back without her jeans. Held them in one hand, her panties in the other. Threw them at me.
“I want to fuck. But it might get messy.”
She looked around my room. Spotted the large pad of watercolor paper on my easel. Flipped to a blank canvas, ripped it out, let it fall to the floor. Positioned herself on top of it.
“Here, poet. Let’s make some art.”
She stopped me from reaching for a condom. “No need. You get to come inside me, baby.”
Period sex felt different. Not as slick. She was wet but wet in a different way. More friction. I had no frame of reference. I had no frame of reference for anything. That was rather the theme of our entire arrangement.
We fucked on the blank canvas. Sunny summer afternoon. Heat of the sun striping our backs through the blinds. I came inside her. Unprotected. Another first delivered without ceremony.
I pulled out. Red and slick.
She was anxious to see the canvas.
A small red Rorschach butterflied beneath her.
She soaped and toweled off my spent cock. Studied the canvas with genuine artistic interest.
I still think about that painting sometimes.
Track 5: Palm
Her handjobs arrived without announcement.
Driving her car — she’d just reach over. I’d unzip. She’d palm my face, wait for me to lick or spit, then wrap her hand around me and stroke while she steered with the other. My spit was always thick. She used it accordingly.
VHS movies. Fuzzy blankets on the couch. Same move. Same efficiency. Same palm presented to my mouth first.
When we made out, she noticed that my mouth went ice cold when I was close. She’d start kissing me forcefully when I was right at the edge — wanting to feel the contrast. The heat of my cock’s pulse in juxtaposition to the cold flooding my mouth.
“It’s the wildest sensation,” she said.
She was conducting experiments. I was the willing subject. The lab and the laboratory assistant simultaneously.
I didn’t know what I was participating in. I just knew I never wanted it to stop.
The water had gone lukewarm. I’d edged myself with soap without entirely meaning to — the lather warm and slick, the old muscle memory finding its way home. Like the old days with Zora, I didn’t finish. Held off. The slight sting of soap in my urethra brought me back to the present.
Besides. It seemed rude.
I sorted out. Rinsed. Toweled. Dressed.
Meghan was waiting in the foyer. Phone. Impatience.
“What the fuck took you so long?”
“I just lost track of time,” I said.
In more ways than one.
“Well, take me to dinner.” She rose from her seat. “That’s the least you can do for losing our match.”
“Hey, I held my own,” I countered.
“I’m sure you did,” she cooed.
She always does.
great stuff to read
Your writing is so immersive.