Chapter 01: The Wrestling Match
1967 may have been the Summer of Love, but you would have known it in our East Texas town, where the Bible ruled and life was still stuck in the mid-1950s.
A month away from college, I still would have been a virgin if not for one really hot night, just after my cousin Kit and I had just turned 18, when we had to sleep over at our grandmother's house. My parents, her parents, and another aunt and uncle had all gone away together for a week (it wasn't until years later that I found out what those weekends were really about; mid-1950's Bible Belt my ass!). Several younger cousins were left in the care of another relative, who was younger and more suited to their wildness.
There was no air conditioning. Long after Gran went to sleep, Kit and I were in the basement (where it was marginally cooler, being underground), trying to watch television (consisting of two of the three networks and one UHS station we could almost sort of see if we fooled with the antenna).
"I wish I could sleep down here," Kit finally said.
"So sleep down here," I said offhandedly.
"I don't think so. My clothes are soaked through with sweat."
"That's charming," I said. "So go upstairs, change, grab your pillow, and come down here and sleep. What's stopping you?"
"Um... I didn't pack anything."
"What do you mean?"
"Are you dense, or are you just trying to embarrass me?" she asked. I'm glad she gave me another option, but yeah, I was that dense. "When it's this hot," she said, "I don't wear anything to bed."
And then as hot as it was, I flushed even warmer as I turned beet red. And maybe a little aroused. Red because it was embarrassing to hear my cousin tell me this, and aroused because... well, for the first time I was picturing my cousin naked.
My discomfort seemed to cure her of her own embarrassment. She leaned toward me and said, as if telling me a secret, "Just my panties. But they don't cover very much." And saying that she pulled down the waistband of her shorts just an inch or so, just enough to let me see the very top of her red panties.
And yes, that half inch of panties was the most underwear I'd ever seen on a girl. Well, 1950's East Texas, right?
Seeing I was flustered, she said "I'd better get to bed" and walked off.
Just like her, I thought: always wants to leave feeling she's "won."
Kit and I were inseparable when we were younger -- we all lived down the block from Gran then, in this town even smaller than the one-horse town her family and mine had later moved to -- and there were really no other kids around.
Even after the move, though, we were really close: she was what we called a tomboy back then, and very competitive. This went on until one day when we were both 11 and we were wrestling on her back lawn, and I had my first-ever boner. I was embarrassed as hell, and I knew she'd felt it too. I ran back to my house without saying a word, and of course that was the end of our wrestling matches. In fact, things were kind of awkward between us for the next few months, and by the time we felt okay with one another again, she was pure "girl," if you know what I mean.
I went up to my room, took off my shirt, and grabbed the pajamas from my backpack. Then I decided I'd sleep in just my briefs as well. I'd never done that before, but that's how weirdly competitive Kit and I could be: even though she'd never see me, if she was going to sleep like that,
I
was going to sleep like that.
Of course, she also could have just been messing with me. So shirtless, but still wearing my pants, I walked across the hall and knocked on her door.
"Steve?" she called out to me.
"Yeah. You were just kidding about sleeping that way, right?"
"What? Why would I do that?"
"Showing off, like usual."
"That's stupid. Goodnight."
Then I had what I thought was a stoke of genius: "Prove it," I said. I'd win either way: if she was wearing her nightgown, as I'd suspected, I'd catch her in a lie. If she wasn't, maybe I'd get to see something.
"Are you crazy? I'm not going to let you see me like this."
"I knew it," I said. "Goodnight."
"Wait," she called out. "What are
you
wearing to bed?"
"Just my underwear," I said. "Like
you said
you were."
"You're standing out there in your underwear?"
"No, but that's what I'll be sleeping in."
"Okay, you come in here in your underwear, and I'll prove it to you."
She'd turned the tables on me: I walk in my underwear, she's sitting on the bed in her nightgown, and she'll be laughing at me for days. "Nice try," I said.
"Okay," she said, "you come in here the way you are, but once I prove to you I'm telling the truth, you have to strip down. No excuses."