It’s such a sad old feeling
The fields are soft and green
It’s memories that I’m stealing
But you’re innocent when you dream
—— Tom Waits
———————————————-
I think it was the other way round for me. My adult self feels like my innocence those days was more a waking state than the one Mr. Waits seems to be talking about. I suppose my dreams were a bit innocent as well.
I was quite innocent indeed. Ignorant actually. Ignorant of most of the ways of the world. Sure I had a situation that on the surface would look to most eighteen-year-olds as not at all conducive to innocence. I had a cool party pad, I was friends with the coolest guy from school (the year before) and I finally had a really cool car.
I’d gotten my cool 1971 Fiat 124 Spider just in time to look very cool indeed once the school year rolled around again in the fall of 1977. Yup, I was that guy. The guy who… having not gone on to college like the graduates with a “future”, started showing up at my old high school in my car to impress the girls who would have never given the time of day to guys like me just one year before.
They were the kind of girls who weren’t into guys still in school.
Sure enough, my Fiat did it’s job and got me some girl’s attention. Three of em actually. Babs, Trixy and Carol. And in no time at all I found myself alone in my cool party pad with all three of them at the same time, in a tickle fight.
Yea, a tickle fight.
It’s almost impossible for me now, to imagine my innocence of that time. When I think of what might have happened that afternoon… Heh!
Several years later I ran into a former classmate who had been in a similar situation with those same three girls, but with a completely different outcome. He spoke of doing things with them that I couldn’t see myself doing now. Still… if I’d been even a little bit less innocent regarding sex at the time, it’s not impossible to imagine… (and as you see by my tone here, I still do) to imagine that our tickle fight could have ended up being something much more… something. But I was so innocent, I had no idea.
I had no idea that they were scoping me out. Checking out how they might enjoy me, for some really fun sex.
Yup, I was innocent and ignorant. These three girls were maybe two years younger than me, but they were far, far more experienced when it came to sex. I still had had sex only once before. With Sally back when I was still in school at JM. There had been no opportunities since then (that I was aware of) and I was far too into having fun in my new party pad and with my friends, to be putting much energy into looking for girls.
Besides, girls/women and sex for me was (and still is) about the relationship first. I guess I’ve always seen it that way. (I even wrote a song about that) Of course I very much wanted to have sex, but I was looking for a girlfriend. I would never have thought to try and have sex with a girl without getting to know her first.
And I’d never dreamed anything like what these three girls were looking for.
I remember it so very clearly. All four of us were in the living room, on our big white vinal couch. My feet were up on the ottoman. Trixy and Babs were on either side of me when they suddenly grabbed and held my arms. Carol then jump up on top of me and straddled my waist. Laughing along with the other two, she quickly started unbuckling my belt. I can still remember the excited look on her face as she licked her lips in anticipation. But Carol was only able to get my top button undone and was just starting on getting the zipper down before I freed my hands and reflexively blocked her from going any further. I closed my pants as she slid off me.
Knowing looks were quickly flashed between the three friends and without missing a beat, they all laughed and gave me one more quick tickle as they got off the couch and ran into the next room.
That was the only time I ever had all three of those girls alone together. There were a few other times when just Babs and Trixy rode in my car after school, but never with Carol. And we never went back to my place together again.
Of course I kept trying to be with them. I was most interested in Trixy but it was Babs who first went out on a “date” with me. I can’t remember how that even happened, or where we went but she let me take her back to my place and we got sexual. She stopped me when I made a move to take off her pants though. She said she was on her period.
After that, Trixy finally agreed to go out with me on a date. She was the one I really liked, and had from the start. She was so cute and sweet looking, I wanted very much for her to be my girlfriend. So, of course, I thought the best thing to do was to take her out to dinner and a cool show of some kind. Living right across the river from the Mayo Civic Auditorium, made that very easy indeed.
I took Trixy to dinner and then to see Steve Martin and John Sebastian. It was a great show but I don’t remember Tixy being all that talkative about it. She wasn’t talkative about much of anything with me. We went right back to my place after the show and had sex.
——
Several years later, around the time I ran into the guy who told me about what he’d done with Trixy, Babs and Carol, I also ran into Trixy at a bar. It was one of the larger clubs in town and was known for having cool live music. I was just getting started as a singer in a band (that I will of course be writing about here at some point) and I was there to check out the club.
Trixy approached me and was all smiles. She was very friendly and asked me if I’d like to come back round to her place to smoke some weed. She lived in a four-plex apartment right behind the club. I said very little as now Trixy was doing all the talking. She said her boyfriend was the manager of the club and she seemed to be suggesting that perhaps she could help with the possibility of getting my band a gig there.
But as we smoked, Trixy then began sharing things about her life. Not a lot of details, but it was clear that she was not happy. It was in her eyes. This young woman was beginning to look older than her years in that way which is so very unfair. Unfair that she felt it was naturally a bad thing to begin to look older. Unfair that she felt she had to desperately hold onto the cute, little girl look that had been working so well for her till now.
Now that it was beginning to slip.
I looked around the apartment. It was not the apartment of a woman, any woman. It was a man’s apartment. A man who ran a rock n roll night club. With posters of bands, cool cars and hot chicks. Neon beer signs and a few framed prints of famous album covers… it was not Trixy’s place.
The phone rang and Trixy suddenly became very nervous.
“Hi baby” her voice broke a bit as she tried to clear it of the emotion that I had been seeing… the sadness that had been welling up. She wiped her eyes a bit and straightened her back.
“Yea, just back at the house with an old friend… you don’t know him.”
Trixy hesitated a moment. A look of fear came across her face.
“No… no baby no. Yes of course I’ll be right over. We were just catching up about old times. No big deal.”
She hung up the phone.
“I gotta go Brian. It was great catching up.”
We parted at the door of the apartment. No mention of my band or the club, or her boyfriend. Just a quick goodby and I went straight back to my car.
I can’t remember what I was driving. Not that it mattered.
——
After Trixy and I had sex that night back in 1977. That night after our first and only date. Those three young happy friends quickly moved on and I rarely even saw them. They moved on to have fun with other men and boys, and no doubt they had lots of fun sex and… whatever. I had no idea. I was still an innocent young “good boy” who had had a brief encounter with something I still didn’t understand.
But I had learned something about sex that I hadn’t known before. Not something I can (or even want to) explain here. Just the inevitable knowledge that comes from a bit more experience. It was my second time, and it was very nice. Trixy had been very nice to me.
——
After that afternoon with Trixy (behind the nightclub run by her “boyfriend”) I never saw her again. I never heard anything about her either. But my older self now had a bit more insight as to what had happened before. Back when I was so very innocent. Back when I had impossible dreams. Back when I was so ignorant that a “bad girl” I was attracted to had taken me for a ride and had a bit of fun with me… but still did it in a way that didn’t hurt me.
She was nice to me and my adult self tells me that was because she saw the goodness in me. And that may have touched the goodness in her.
Thanks Trixy.
