This is my first posting of a non-erotic story. Hopefully there's something to make it a short, worthwhile read. As always, comments and constructive feedback is welcome.
I still remember my wife getting after me to clean out the garage. She and the kids were visiting her parents at their beach house for the week. Much as I liked my in-laws, I couldn't get time off to go with them. I'd recently completed overseeing a major expansion project at one of my employer's plants. The new equipment was installed, tested, and in production; the plant was now responsible for it. But I had a ton of reports to complete. And post-project review meetings with the teams, to capture what we'd done right and where there was room for improvement. Though the project had gone well, and led to good things in my career, there was always room for improvement.
Jeannie had been after me for several months to clean up my mess in the garage. I agreed it needed to be addressed but my attitude about it was, "Why do today what I can put off until tomorrow?" Jeannie didn't subscribe to my philosophy. But then, she hadn't made any effort at addressing the stuff she accumulated and stacked up in the garage. I knew better than to mess with her stuff. If I got started on my mess, which was at least semi-organized, I could turn the tables and needle her about her mess. Her pile was smaller than mine, but it was a disaster. Not to mention a safety hazard. It always looked like it was just one item short of an avalanche.
I decided I should spend at least some time on it before the family returned and I turned my attention to my wife and kids. Jeannie was due back with the kids in time for dinner on Sunday.
I stood looking at the accumulated detritus of twelve years of marriage, four years of college, two of which Jeannie and I lived together, two apartments, and our first house. We had a major oops during senior year. Our daughter arrived in July, just after we graduated. The first few years had been tight. My job paid the bills and kept up with our college loans. But we still accumulated debt while Jeannie attended medical school. I remember spending many a weekend those years trying to keep our dilapidated Toyota functional.
After wheeling the recycling and trash bins to a convenient location for loading, I began making quick work of the various piles. Old tax records got shredded and recycled with a ton of other paper. I moved a chest of drawers, a hassock, an old rocking chair, and my first set of golf clubs to the end of the driveway next to a "Free" sign where passersby would hopefully stop and take them away.
At the back of the garage was my favorite old chair. I bought it used and practically lived in it the last two years in college. It made the trip to our next apartment and our first house and served me well for another half-dozen years. It was the most amazing chair I ever sat in. When I needed to study, I could park my butt in it and read for hours without fear of falling asleep. I watched countless hours of football in it.
It was in a sad state. The fabric worn and torn. The cushion batting was matted flat on one side. There were a couple of broken springs. I always meant to have it reupholstered but never did. With a heavy heart, I took it to the end of the driveway. Then went inside to make lunch and have a beer. When I came back out, the chair and nearly everything else was already gone.
By late afternoon, I'd made a lot of room and had disposed of nearly everything I had a mind to part with. There were only a few more items that needed attention. I picked up a box I'd long forgotten about. The yellow and blue tapes and the labels on it told me it had made trips from my parent's house to our college apartment, to our med-school apartment, to our first house, and then to its current location. The labels, in my handwriting said, "Attic" but didn't list the contents. The original tape used to seal it was still intact but had twice been supplemented. I took out my pocketknife and cut the tape so I could look inside.
I laughed and said, "Holy shit," aloud when I saw the contents. On top was my high school yearbook. I tossed it aside. I hadn't seen anyone from high school since, well, high school. I left that out where my kids could find it. If nothing else, they'd find my photo and giggle when they decided Dad was the biggest nerd in his high school. I wasn't but wouldn't argue with them about it. I'd just point out that nuts never fell far from the tree.
As I dug through the box, memories flooded back. My third and second place medals from the class and open cross-country state championships during my junior and senior years. I never could catch Beekman or Quells. I ran against both junior year and Quells twice senior year. Beekman was in college when I was a senior so only Quells outran me that year, though just barely. I found some concert stubs from my first two years of college and an assortment of other souvenirs, mostly junk. I couldn't imagine why I'd kept any of it. At the bottom of the box was a Playboy magazine that gave me a chill. I'd forgotten about it. I knew immediately it was the reason I kept all that other junk. I needed something to bury it under.
I picked it up. The cover was still mostly intact. I took a deep breath and opened it to page sixty-three. Yup, she was still there. Not that I doubted she would be. Aurora Stillman occupied the bottom half of page sixty-three. I felt a brief twinge of guilt about having the magazine. Not because I could once again look upon the naked form of Aurora Stillman. But because of how I obtained it. I filched it from my cousin, and friend.
Jimmie Cummings was my second cousin. Our families weren't close; I only remembered seeing Jimmie and his family at family gatherings a handful of times. But we bonded at a cross country meet and grew close through our high school years. He lived two towns away and was a year ahead of me in school. He wasn't much of a distance runner. He ran to get in shape for basketball. He was the point guard on his school's basketball team. He had the fastest hands I ever saw. And his first two steps were so quick he left anyone assigned to guard him flat-footed and feeling foolish if he made a move to the hoop. His high school made deep runs in the state tournament four years in a row, winning it all during his junior year. But his first love was photography. Jimmie was recruited by a dozen second-tier Division I basketball schools. But he harbored no illusions of playing in the NBA. Instead, he accepted a photography scholarship and abandoned organized competitive basketball.
During my sophomore year in college, about a month before I met Jeannie, I took a long weekend trip to Boston University to visit with Jimmie for a few days. I stayed in his dorm with him, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag. To maintain his scholarship, Jimmie had to take photos of BU sports teams in action. The women's field hockey team had an away game against UMass. He had to go photograph the game. I opted to stay behind to do some reading.
I completed the reading I had to do a couple hours before Jimmie was due back. He had a stack of Playboy magazines on his desk. I went through the stack and took a couple to look through while I waited. I paged through the first one, reading the joke page first, then checked out the centerfold photo spread. I checked the table of contents for other photos and checked them out. Then went back to the table of contents to see if any of the articles held interest. None did. I tossed it aside and picked up the second magazine.
I intended to go through the same process, but the magazine slipped from my hand and fell open at a photo spread entitled "Girls of the Pac Ten". I started there. On the third page my heart stopped. Auburn hair. Blue eyes that eventually made me speechless when I was in her presence. The same lop-sided smile that was somehow both goofy and suggestive at once.
She was lying on her stomach on what looked like a college dorm room bed. Butt naked. Legs bent at the knee with her feet crossed above her bottom. Arms strategically folded in front of her, positioned to hide all but her cleavage, the curve of her left breast, and the spray of freckles across her upper chest. The angle of the photo exposed most of her amazing buttocks, though a sheet covered the split between her cheeks. Though the photo exposed far more skin than I'd ever seen, it was still modest. Especially compared to the other girls in the photo spread.
At first, I thought it was just my imagination. The rebirth of a long-forgotten fantasy, caused by a girl that looked like my old girlfriend. But when I read the caption, I knew it was her. "Aurora Stillman is an Oregon State freshman majoring in Art. In our humble opinion, no painting or sculpture will ever capture a more perfect form." As far as I was concerned, the caption was spot on. Aurora had always been a great beauty in my eyes, and she was always interested in art.
