Tekla's Story

[Tekla]

I was in second grade and there is a large gymnasium in a dark neighborhood where the red brick Midwestern style houses closed in on each other, looking so different from my bright and open postwar subdivision all ranch houses, bi-levels with white siding and large open fields between the houses. This place was different, old and dark, particularly now, with the stage set up on one end, and filled with people awaiting a play. I am going to be an ant. The costume was, in part, black tights. They felt good to wear and a few times I wore them home under my pants. I told no one. I didn't know why, but somehow I knew that it was not right. Tights were for girls, though I did not know how or why such ideas came about.

After the show was over I kept my black tights, and an other pair of green ones discarded by one of the grasshoppers. Well I was the ant, and the ant did save for a rainy day. I hid them in the back of the closet and when my parents were out of the house I would put them on and walk around. When I was really feeling brave I would wear them to bed. There, under the crisp, cool sheets, I would slide my legs down and feel warm and safe.

At some point my mom found them, because that is what moms do. At least I think so, they just evaporated from my hiding place. No one said anything, they were just gone. Somehow I got a hold of an other pair, presumably by stealing them from the W.T. Grant's near our house, but I really don't remember. I would go out to an abandoned barn near my house and put on the tights and walk around, maybe even dance a little bit.

Somewhere around that time, or a little after, I got a hold of two long crinoline petticoats, one white and the other pink. Maybe they were my sisters, or my mom's, I really don't remember. But I do recall dressing up in them in basement furnace room, with all the lights off using only the little windows for light and the water softener as a hamper. I guess I felt that it was risky behavior, somehow wrong, though again I didn't know why - all sorts of other dress-up activities were tolerated, if not actively encouraged in children. Maybe the adults though of it as sex play, but I know none of this could have been sexually arousing, I was much too young for that. I am quite sure of that too because I wouldn't even learn how to masturbate until seventh grade. (Somethings you don't forget.) Despite my best efforts to avoid detection, I was caught. The first time by my sister, and later by my mom who took the tights and petticoats away again and began to consider therapy for me.

The next year I was caught trying on my cousins Elizabeth's clothes when we were visiting her in Wisconsin. There was no one my age to play with. Elizabeth, their perfect only child, which was rare in the mid-sixties, was three or more years older than I was, and phenomenally graceless. On this particular visit she was not even there, out living up to her role as the poster child for Eskimo Pie addiction most likely. I was sent by the adults to play in her room, and I guess one thing led to another. I was in the bathroom trying on a white slip, a pink and white poofy pinafore party dress and a nice pair of shoes when my mom opened the door. She was not impressed with my behavior or my fashion sense, but heck, I thought I looked pretty - certainly better than Elizabeth would have.

Though I do have clear and vivid memories of looking at (reading does not seem to be the perfect term) Playboys - good as gold to pre-high school boys in the late 60s. We all would ohh and ahh and ogle, but I knew that I was different. I focused more on the wonderful lingerie and negligees that the models were wearing and not, as my friends would, her actual state of undress. But as long as I kept my comments vague enough no one caught on.

In seventh and eighth grade I began drifting on a more steady course to the feminine direction, moreover my concept of sex was now very real and growing fast. My family stayed up at Lake Lawn in Wisconsin during the summer. It was a large resort complex - a huge hotel and tons of little tourist cabins, where we stayed. The grounds were full of pools, restaurants and little boutiques. The first summer there, the Summer of '68, I shoplifted a bathing suit. It was a pink and white gingham check two-piece suit, with white eyelet lace strung through with pink ribbon around the waist and along the décolletage of the cups. It was very pretty and extremely feminine, or so I thought at the time. I liked it very much, and in truth, was my second favorite possession that summer, after the mini-bike.

I would go down to Lake Delevan after dark, put on the bathing suit and go swimming in the moonlight. There was a place far down on a sandbar where no one ever went except for me on my mini-bike rides and a few fishermen who had long since gone back to drink at the bar. I would slowly do long breast strokes and approach the main swimming beach from the undeveloped side. I was almost caught once, but it was not a member of my family, so who cared? (I've always been very bad about caring what other people think, sometimes it's a curse, but mostly it's a great blessing.) Before returning home at the end of that summer I hid the suit in an old storage shed not far from the cabin since I couldn't chance having it around the house and getting caught, again.

Wonder of wonders, when I returned after my eighth grade graduation the next year the suit was still hidden in my little spot. I grew a little bolder that summer venturing closer in to the resort. I almost getting caught a few times, but the green water and dim light provided excellent cover. Once I wrapped a towel around my head and went into the women's bathhouse for a few minutes while some other girls, about three-four years older than me, took their showers. I showered too, but I did not remove the suit. As it turned out, women's showers, unlike men's showers, were all private stalls, and not a big public room, so I didn't see anything, but I was scared of being caught (I think one of the girls suspected me) and thrilled to be getting away with something, or just to be in this different world. “A spy in the house of love” as Anis Nin would put it.

I moved to California, starting high school in Santa Rosa in the summer of 1969 as the rest of the nation came apart at the seams. In Sonoma County I began to have a life quite different, and quite apart, from the one I had known in the small Midwestern town where I grew up. The house we moved into was a large rambling U-shaped French provincial painted in a washed out pastel watercolor hue that naturally led to it being dubbed "Big Pink" by my friends after The Band record, one of our favorites at the time, and for me, still to this day. The house faced into a center courtyard off of a huge porch with two wings flanking the open area . It was set back on a hill, up a secluded winding driveway that was about 1/10 of a mile long. I had a huge private bedroom with floor to ceiling bookcases, a fireplace, (marble even) with full length French windows and double French doors leading to a private patio. Among other things, a separate entrance, was the perfect way to avoid questions like, "what's in the bag?" whether the answer was lingerie, beer, drugs, or other contraband.

I spent most of my time the first year in California wandering the hills behind my house, both on foot and on the 125cc that replaced my grade school minibike which had not made the trip West. Unlike Illinois, I started to make lots of friends, or at least people to party with, both at school and in my neighborhood.

I even began to date several girls in my freshman year. Each date was a total washout, having your parents chaperone doesn't help, but my taste was not exactly in synch with the girls I asked out. I did find that I could make and keep female friends as friends (opposed to girlfriends) and began developing close and intimate (but not sexually) relations with Ann and Kathy, who would frequently pick me up to go shopping with them, never knowing exactly why my taste and knowledge of female fashion was so dead on. I was building my own wardrobe up at the same time, though the girls didn't know it. It was a very gradual process, putting together a very small private collection of tights, nylons, panties and slips from the local department stores where no one knew me, and no one seemed to mind very much either. Oh yeah, I still had the bathing suit too. I had brought it home after the second summer in Lake Lawn and then very carefully smuggled it into a box for the move West.

I would also hang with the two of them when they were getting ready for dates or just going out. They let me help them with make-up, clothes, and on occasion, assisting with their hair. But my real specialty was doing nails. Most nail polish is the same base as model paints, so I had a lot of practice with it, and fine detailed work was a specialty of mine. A little later in the school year I would up in the same situation with Marie Pedronchelli. Though it was a little frustrating at times, but I quickly realized that I was spending more time with these girls than their boyfriends were, and to top it off they probably spent more time, in a greater state of undress, with me than with who ever they were dating. So I learned to enter that world that few boys ever knew filled with lacy slips tossed casually over a bed and panties laying in a crumpled heap in a coroner as the room smelled of perfume, makeup, hairspray, and nail polish. I was a spy in the house of love again, and this time.

The real plunge into the deep end of the pool happened when I met Jill who would be my best friend, lover and girlfriend - in more ways then I could ever imagine. Jill was also my teacher in love, sex and games until I left to go to college (one year after HS grad). She was tall, very tall, and exceedingly rounded. Blond hair, highlighted by the bleaching effects of the California sun, framed her face which formed a perfect moon that shone like the sun when she smiled, which was almost constantly. We started going out together early in the second year of high school after becoming friends during the freshman year. On our first date she asked me out to a Homecoming deal at another high school, one of those Sadie Hawkins dances.

We, like every other couple that year, slow danced to "A Whiter Shade of Pale." Unlike our Catholic school, there were no roving patrols of nuns bent on enforcing the no-fun zones. So outside the gym, hidden under the yellowish covered porticos so typical for schools in that time and place, we kissed. It was my first real kiss outside of spin the bottle or little kid games, and lets face it, those were not real the way this was. Since she was taller than I was - towered would be more like it - I had to lift myself up on tiptoes to reach her lips. Our glasses crunched together as our lips brushed, bruising the bridge of our noses and upsetting my timing. I lost my balance. She held me tight. I fell in love.

We spend a lot of time on the phone together, we were teenagers after all. One night as we were talking on about the endless possibilities that we so perfectly envisioned, I concocted a crazy story about a costume party, or a prank, I forget the precise line of bullshit, where I needed to borrow some of her clothes. So I talked her into loaning me a skirt, blouse and a bra - the things I couldn't get through any other means. I remember these clothes very well, being my first ensemble as it were. The skirt was a wrap around tartan buttoned at the waist and held together in the front with one of those big safety pins that were all the rage then. It was black on a yellow background with red highlights, and fringe all around. The blouse was a yellow ribbed turtleneck with long sleeves that perfectly matched the skirt, 'nach. I would wear the skirt and blouse with black tights, and no shoes. I was fond of warping my head with a black and red silk scarf that I frequently wore, as much about Jimi Hendrix as it was about drag - a word that I was unaware of at any rate, at least in any sense that didn't involve funny cars or aerodynamics.

When I was alone at Big Pink, I would dress up in Jill's clothing and lounge about inside the house. At first, I would never even consider going outside, not even at night, despite the fact that our house was surrounded by a thick sylvan swath of foliage that left the lawn and patio areas extremely secluded. I spent most of the time in my room and the living room, reading, drawing and writing the bad poetry that I at that age envisioned as at least on a par with Rod McKuan. I began to feel particularly daring, wearing panties and nylons under my regular street clothes on the weekends and sunning on my patio in the suit bottoms when everyone was gone from the house.

Maybe it was the heady atmosphere in California at that time, the raging spirit of nonconformity, or the fact that there were so many really weird people, that I no longer felt that I stood out very much. Moreover in the full flowering of the hippie counterculture -and I was practically in the center of that vortex - there was a general blurring of sexual distinctions. What ever I was pursuing, and I certainty didn't have a clue at the time as to what it was, began to develop as more of a part of my life that only an occasional incident. Such as, discovering tights and nylons made superior layering for ski trips. Which I did every weekend the slopes were open in Tahoe.

Jill failed to ask me for her clothing back, and I was in no hurry to return it. It seemed to be forgotten. She knew nothing about my dressing up, no one outside of my family did. They weren't exactly boasting or broadcasting the news.

Ours was a very private, and extremely safe relationship. Not that it was secret, I was not ashamed to be with her or anything, its just that we had no mutual friends. I did not really care for her friends, particularly Patty, who seem to instinctively dislike me. Neither did Jill care for my friends, a feeling that was reciprocated. We were neither dependent on, or in contact with, the others' friends. I did not even know her other friends very well, and she was sorry to know mine as well as she did. My family was an exception to this, as Jill and my mom got along perfectly and truly loved each other deeply and profoundly. This created between us a very special relationship. One virtually self-contained in a deeply private space, a place where the two of us were free to do anything and pursue any course we could imagine. When we were together it would just be the two of us. There were no worries of other peoples' talk or intervention.

Jill lived in one of those late sixties apartment drifting toward condo complexes out behind the ice rink off of Steele Lane. The house was furnished in a white wicker and green glass decor, complete with one of those hanging – basket chairs, making the interior seem like an enclosed patio. Very 70's California. Her bedroom centered on a huge white double bed, with a large wicker head and footboards and matching satin quilt. Her room was accented with large, tastefully framed pastel pictures and Georgia O'Keef instead of the rock and roll and blacklight posters ubiquitous to every other teenagers room at that time. Happily, her good taste extended to rest of her decor and their was little or no "little girl" stuff like stuffed animals, hearts or angels.

Her bed ran down along the east side of the room about two feet away from the closet whose doors were full mirrors, which made the room seem both bigger and brighter. The mirrors would eventually provided other possibilities besides enhanced lighting. The west wall had floor to ceiling sliding glass doors looking out on a small enclosed deck. These doors were covered with white rattan roll-up blinds that left shifting stripes of light and shade everywhere in the room, an effect redoubled by the mirrors. I describe the room because I want to place special emphasis how clear and bright the setting was, particularly in the late afternoon with the sun setting into the fog that poured over the hills off to the west of us. We did not play these games in some dim recess - forced to seek out a lightless oubliette in which to place our iniquities. We were not (and are not) ashamed or embarrassed - children of the sun, we exercised our wanton erotica in the bright white light of day.

Jill's theory was (and this largely proved true throughout my life) that sexually, a man always gets off, but a woman rarely does. So to rectify this grievous error of nature Jill assumed the man should to do anything the woman wanted. It was a fair rule, and throughout the rest of my life has proved to be one of the most productive pieces of knowledge I have ever acquired. I would do for her what ever she wanted done - total compliance. l would let her do anything to me she wanted - total surrender. Total destruction, the only solution.

Yet as in most thing in life, the joy is in the journey, and this was the trip you never wanted to end anyway. She taught me how to love. We would lay together in bed with her tenderly supporting my head and shoulders as if I was a baby, stroking my face and hair, the room turning pink and dusty rose as dusk approached, and I lost myself in the most beautiful sensation in the world. Jill constantly strove to reassure me that I was incorrect in that regard, that in fact her bliss and nirvana far outweighed mine.

Jill knew just how to turn up the heat, holding the simmer just under a slow boil for the longest time until turning up the heat way past the point of explosion - not a giving into animal carnality and overwhelming lust, but tempering passion with desire, honing a razor sharp edge that could slice through the barrier that separates heaven from earth. She made sex TRANSCENDENT. I've had lot's of sex since then, most of it has been fantastic, but at its best its only equaled those first few times with Jill. I will forever be in her debt. You never forget your first rush, but wow, all these years later I still deeply love her, and thinking of this turns me weak in the knees and I would still do anything for her to this day.

One day I happened to mention that my mom had found the skirt, blouse and other stuff in a bag in the back of my closet when she was cleaning. In a moment of blind panic I told my mom a half truth. They were Jill's clothes, which was true. She had left them at the house a few weeks before when we had gone out hiking, a lie. If my mom ever raised the subject, and she was sure to, could she please go along with it? Jill, who had probably long forgotten about the clothes till just then, suddenly showed a keen interest in the whole topic. The bag was in the car, (where I took it to get it away from my mom telling her I would get it back to Jill the next day at school - I figured out I was safe enough with the skirt and blouse on top, but if mom started digging and found lingerie, well that might be harder to explain away) but I had not separated out what was Jill's from what I had acquired from other sources. When Jill dug through the bag she began asking me all sorts of questions that I did my best to B.S out of. Feeling at the time like I had really pulled on over, even on Jill. Cool, she didn't know and she would then keep liking me.

The next time I came over a few days later at three o'clock for our usual hour and a half of sex, tea, sympathy and music she had string quartets on the stereo and incense smoldering away in an other room, presumably hers. Though she did not like rock, we both could agree on the virtues of classical music, both favoring Mozart and Bach and most tightly bound in our mutual affection for Chopin's piano works.

I went into the bedroom and saw a long skirt made of a gauze underskirt and an overskirt of crepe de Chine. It had a matching crepe blouse, V-neck with long sleeves. The fabrics were swirls of light blue and teals on a dark blue background. The skirt came down to my ankles, terminating in various points in a two tiered effect, like a long peplum over a gauze petticoat.

I was immediately filled with alarm and trepidation. I knew she KNEW! If she didn't yet, she sure would as soon as she saw how excited and aroused I would get wearing such a beautiful outfit. It was a dream come true inside of my worst nightmare. I began to hysterically protest that I didn't understand what she wanted, there were only women's clothes in the room, and I couldn't wear a dress. Jill gently reassured me, coaxing me to put the clothes on with wonderfully subtle plea that she just wanted me to dress up so that I could be her girlfriend for the afternoon. "Please? I thought it would be fun. We could have tea together. Besides I really wanted to see you dressed up. I never got to see you in those clothes I loaned you." I hemmed and hawed, objecting that what she laid out on the bed was in no way the clothing I borrowed from her. All she said was that yellow was not my color, adding, "I never liked that stuff anyway. Why do you think I gave it to you." "I only borrowed it for a goof," I intoned. But she softly pleaded with me, "Please, Please, Please, would you just do it for me?" I pretty much did any thing she wanted when she asked for it like that, and the clothes were really beautiful, moreover, they fit perfectly.

We shopped for several matching pairs of panties and other complementary lingerie that we would wear together in order to be girlfriends. There is actually a technical name activity, homeovestism, which is defined as the dressing of ones self as a sexual object, a behavior chiefly attributed to women. We just made it a team sport.

The other outfit was my first real dress. A floor-length, flowing India cotton hippie dress. It seemed only right, being hippies and all. It had a scoop neckline, long flaring sleeves, and was purple, black and deep blue batik. A thigh length off-white open knit fringe vest and a solid teal silk scarf went with it. I would wear it with tights and Jill's knee high black leather boots.

For this outfit Jill and me went shopping in San Francisco and bought the nicest lingerie we could find; nylon and lace panties, fancy slips and camisoles and, eventually, real bras. Because after a while she began to take me out for car rides.

First at night, and then in broad daylight. I would always wear the hippie dress, since my hair was long, past my shoulders, and I hadn't started shaving, it only took a little work, some hair decorations and a splash of perfume (Jean Nate, always). I passed pretty well, if for no other reason than hippie chicks all looked alike and in 1972 no one was suspecting that anything else was going on. That was good. I didn't want to get away with being a woman, but I did fear getting caught by my friends , or my parents, or by my parents' friends, which actually happened. I walked past them, and they never noticed, bit of luck, or skill, or? Hard to say.

We would go out to the Redwoods, or the Ocean or to Annandale Park and walk around and find nice places for sex. (Jill LOVED to have sex in public / open / outdoor places, both as ) and as always have long and involved discussions about politics and the way the new society would be shaped. What we were practicing was a form of androphillia, but I didn't have the words at the time to describe it.

Over the years she bought me several other outfits besides the blue gauze and batik dress. These outfits coincided with our increasing sexual understanding One was a pseudo-schoolgirl uniform, a black skirt, knee-length and fully pleated. This accompanied her old Ursline white cotton Middy blouse with the dark blue tie. White knee-hi's and white and pink cotton panties and a soft cotton and stretch lace bra completed the outfit. I would wear her shoes, because we were the same size.

Jill also bought me a white lacy, frilly peignoir set, frothy would be the best adjective, about the time she moved out of her house in May of 73. It was my first nightgown and since I regularly spent the night with her I could wear it often. I was living at home, working and applying to colleges (which I had not done my senior year, and hence did not get accepted anywhere in the fall) and she was at Sonoma State, a scant 15 miles south of my house. She lived with three other women, all of whom were much older (if we were 18, they were 24, it seemed like a big deal at the time) and all of whom were in the first wave of very militant feminists in college in the fall of 73. fit in.

The nightgown seemed a bit much, "too girl" for that sitution, so Jill bought me a caftan / housedress / robe that I wore when I was there. Her roommates never did like me much, but at least they actively stopped hating me, perhaps because I was trying so hard. Jill never did give me any of those outfits except her old high school uniform, nor did she ever give me back any of the stuff I had bought. I went to college in the fall of 1974, setting out into the great unknown.

When I got to college I kept my little stash of lingerie in the trunk of my car, and I do not think I dressed up at all that first semester. Dorm life is not conducive to such activities. Second semester, January of 1975 I met Steph. After a month or so, maybe less, I knew that I wanted forever to be with Steph and I got up the nerve to tell her about my dressing. I tried to think of some roundabout way of introducing the topic that would provide me with lots of wiggle room and many ways to back out. As luck would have it in a moment of passion and play Steph asked me if I had a deep dark secret, and at that moment it just sailed forth from my mouth. Curiosity, she asked to see the stuff in the trunk, and had little to say except for how ugly the nylons were and how hideous the rest of my taste was too. But at least it (the BIG SECRET) was out, and Steph did not seem to care, and being with Jill all those years gave me a confidence that I still carry with me.

Starting in the fall of 75 I began to buy Steph all kinds of sexy underwear hoping that dressing her in what I liked would lessen my own desire to wear it, and in some ways because buying it for a real woman was not nearly as embarrassing as buying it for myself, which is in fact what I was really doing. In the fall of 1976 Steph and I moved in together. By this time I had amassed a large selection of underwear and nightgowns for Steph and almost immediately upon having my own place I got rid of the boxers and began wearing panties all the time and nightgowns every night, which I continue to do to the present day. It never seemed to bother Steph in the sense of what I wore, just whose it was, and she told me flat out that if I wanted to wear panties and or nightgowns, then I should go out and buy some of my own, because the others were hers, even though I bought them.

Steph majored in Theatre so I hung around with lots of theatre and arts types even though I was a hard science type, well what the heck, physics may have been more exciting to me, but wow, they threw dull parties, really dull, like dull on a cosmic scale. Theatre people on the other hand, then, as for centuries before, and to the present day, hold the best parties, so why not hang with them. But that is a pretty open crowd. Some were gay, others bi, and it just seemed to me to be OK to come out to them, which I did. Far from hurting me it tended to help, cause at least I had one thing weird enough to qualify me to be part of their group, which was not all that easy, because I was a physics dude and not an Artist. But crossdressing at parties and letting the occasional lace hem show, made me cool enough to be one of them.

I've been out and about ever since them. By the time we moved to San Francisco and had a kid I was dressing more, makeup and all, and my wife said, "if your are going to do that, you might as well go out and do it right." Which in SF in the late 70's early 80s was no big deal. Being open was the greatest gift I could ever give myself, and though I'm not sure if it ever cost me any friends (people who did not like it kept well enough away) but I know it has gained me a lot more. There is no doubt the that way to be happy at 40, is just to tell the truth at 20.

Understand, even these obviously peculiar penchants and inclinations are intended to be playful, rather than perverted. They might seem juvenile perhaps, but not too dysfunctional. I just searched for something beyond the arid, hollow and vacuous kind sexual experiences everyone else contentedly settled for. Maybe my notions of sex were arrested too early in development. Maybe everyone else missed the real point and just skipped to the end. Or maybe it's just my overactive imagination and hyperactive libido, honed to precision and dynamically guided by practiced lovers over the years.

At any rate sex, as I learned it, required luxury, extravagance and indulgence, combining equal parts silliness and supplication. An act of seduction and surrender into the sheer intoxication of mutual delight. A private universe where two people could decadently pamper and softly ravish each other, both physically and psychology, in a delectable quest for ultimate gratification. My sexual activities and proclivities constantly cultivated these playfully sensuous experiences and filled them with exquisite sensual expressions. Though few people ever understood these pleasures, there were more than enough to keep me busy. One at a time finding, or being found by, women who understood that such activities were rarely dark and wicked, but like the clothes, frilly and fun.

And so, here I am.

[DonnaT]

Quite a post, Tekla.

Seems, we are about the same age.

Welcome to the forum.

[Tekla]

Well as one of my teacher said, you have to write a lot to get to a little. Given that, it was not a short journey, not an easy walk.

However, the truth - as I re-read it - is: "that sexually, a man always gets off, but a woman rarely does. So to rectify this grievous error of nature Jill assumed the man should to do anything the woman wanted."


Best advice I've ever got.

[Amelie-Laveau]

Your story is too freakin' long.

[Virginia]

Well, hon, I have to admit that one part of your post kinda caught me off-guard! A totally unique approach if I do say so myself. Buying things for your SO in hopes that the fact that you bought them for her would some how make your desire for buying and wearing them yourself either diminish or go away! Definitely a unique approach - Of course I see that it did not work
Thanks for sharing - ain't it a trip?
Love ya,
Virginia

[Tekla]

OK, the cartoon version

Panel one - I found out I like to dress in women's clothes

Panel two - Though it took effort, I told my first GF and was rewarded

Panel three - I told other women too, with even better results

Panel four - I'm pretty happy about all of that

Now, I'm not much of a art guy - at least in drawing. So someone will have to do the art work.

P.S. I really want to see panel three.

My story is not too long, its just that most people's lives are far too short.

[SilverLady(SO)]

My story is not too long, its just that most people's lives are far too short. - - {Emphasis added by SL}

Tekla, I disagree with this statement.

It's more fair, and accurate, to say that most everyone else just wrote their story as a "Cliff Notes" . . . as opposed to a 3-book series novel (written by any famous author).

That being said, your story was still interesting to read, and I thank you for sharing it with us!

- SL

[Amelie-Laveau]

Thanks for the cartoon version but i am confused, was that the Scooby-Doo version or the Bullwinkle version?

So, tekla, this is where you have been hiding. Hi

[Absaroka]

Tekla you write beautifully with wonderful descriptions. As for the length, we always have the option of skimming through parts, which I admit I did. Still I like your writing.

What really got me was the line about the separate entrance though which you could smuggle beer, drugs, lingerie.......it caught the secrecy of adolescence so well.

I also enjoyed the obviously very fond memories of some of the women in your life. It made me think of the first real big love affair I had. It was not meant to last forever although we remained good friends up to her death. I've always felt that that particular relationship was a gift from God to both of us but one that was meant to last only a certain time.

Thanks for the story

Absaroka