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When I was sixteen years old I had never had
a girlfriend or even asked a girl out. My two best friends didn't
have girlfriends either. One of them was chubby, but I wasn't.
Then, one time in the summer, when I was working
in my father's grocery store, this girl I liked came in. She
lived right around the corner. Her name was Frankie.
She was a grade behind me. She asked me if
I could help her with her math homework. She was in summer school.
I blushed and said sure expecting her to put
her book on the counter, or I don't know what, but she said,
"Can you come over after supper?"
I was disappointed at how easy the homework
was. We got it done pretty quick and then I didn't know what
to say. I didn't want to go home. I heard her mother call her
"Francesca" - Like Fran, then Chess, then Ka. So I
asked her if she liked that and she said yes. Then I asked if
I could call her that. You'd think because she liked it she'd
say yes, but she said, "Okay, Tommy, if you want to, but
only when we're alone."
It wasn't till I was home that night lying
in bed and remembering that it hit me: her saying "when
we're alone" meant she thought we would be alone. It might
even mean that she wanted us to be alone. For a couple of seconds
I couldn't see the ceiling just ten feet above my head, My vision
flared. My hands vibrated. I couldn't breathe. I was liked! By
a girl! Probably.
After that, things went quicker than I would
ever have imagined. We started going out to the movies on Saturdays.
We'd go up in the balcony and make out. Even though I'd never
done it before, it was easy to get the idea. And it was terrific.
The third time we did that, Frankie took my hand and put it over
her breast on her sweater!
That night I thought about that a lot and
wondered if that meant we were going to get married and have
kids and did I want to marry Frankie and have kids. Don't get
the wrong idea. I didn't think it was like getting her pregnant.
It just seemed so much more than I'd imagined me ever doing and
I couldn't imagine doing it with anybody but Frankie, so it felt
like a freight train on a downhill run. Not that I didn't like
it.
The Sunday after that, Frankie asked me over
to her house after church to tan. I never tanned before on purpose,
but I knew you had to lie down in the sun in a bathing suit,
so I wore my suit under my shorts.
She told me that her family was around the
corner at her aunt's house and she had to go there in an hour.
She pulled me out to her back yard laughing like we had to hurry
because of that.
We lay down on a couple of towels on our stomachs.
She had a transistor radio tuned to 1010 WINS, but not very loud.
She asked me to put suntan lotion on her back. I guess that was
a pretty intimate thing, but to me it was kind of boring, even
when she told me to untie her top. But when I was done she turned
and looked up at me so she could ask me to get her magazine on
the stoop a few feet away. This raised her chest so I could see
her breast, not just the side but the darker part and even her
nipple. I looked at that, then I looked at her face, Her smile
and the way she squinched one eye said, it's okay, you can look.
I know what I'm showing you. So I looked again and then she lay
back down and I got her magazine.
But I hardly knew what I was doing because
looking at her breast and her nipple and knowing that she wanted
me to had given me an incredible feeling - like I could see the
future. I handed her the magazine and told her I had to go into
the bathroom, even though I didn't, because I had started crying,
not because I was scared like before, but because it was so beautiful,
the future, getting married to Frankie, having kids with Frankie.
So beautiful.
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