Christmas Love

An invitation… to a private make-out party… for two.

It was my senior year in high school, during the Christmas break. Bonnie and I weren’t exactly an item, but love is grand when love is new and, it being Christmas time and all, it made our date only more special. I was hardly chaste in high school, but a sordid incident in my junior year caused me to rethink my behavior while with the other sex. Since that shameful incident I had been, for all practical purposes, celibate.

It has been said that, subconsciously, a man wants to marry his mother. Bonnie was nothing like my Ma. Vivacious, petite and irreverent, and definitely not celibate. I was a skinny, nervous 17-year-old with an excess of hormones. Duly arriving at the trysting place (her living room, parents not home) with a copy of Cream’s recently released Disraeli Gears record album. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice for make-out music, but it did set a mood. Bonnie was not shy and she began to bathe me in the sunshine of her love.

A discreet pause ensues.

Use your imagination!)

While that evening was arousing a rousing success, I was not yet ready to be a proper boyfriend. Or, for that matter, an improper one. We never repeated our tête-à-tête, but we have stayed in touch over the last 50+ years, and are still friends. I’m no longer a skinny, nervous kid and Bonnie, while not quite as petite, is still vivacious and irreverent. Our love never came to full fruition but it did bloom, once, on a snowy night in December of 1967.