An Invitation…

… to a private make-out party for two.

It was my senior year, during the Christmas break. ‘Ann’ and I weren’t exactly an item, in fact Ann was more akin to an indefinite article. But love is grand when love is new and, it being Christmastime and all, our ‘date’ was 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. Ann 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, Ann 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, still friends. I’m no longer a skinny, nervous kid and Ann, while not quite as petite, is still vivacious and irreverent. Our love never came to full fruition but it did bloom once upon a snowy night in December, in our own Christmas in Eden.