This memory came back to me with a sudden clarity this afternoon, and I wanted to write it dow for keeping.

In high school, in Memphis, in the 1980s.

I’d brought Paula home after a date that neither of us wanted to end. She peeked in her house and determined that her parents were sufficiently asleep, and so decided we could risk lying out on a blanket in her backyard. If her parents awoke, at least she was really home by curfew, even if she wasn’t exactly inside and tucked into bed.

Lying side by side on the blanket, staring up at the sky and the clouds sliding past. Holding hands turned to snuggling, turned to cuddling, turned to petting, turned to fucking.

Paula had mastered riding me with a slow pelvic rock that ground her clit against my pubic bone, slowly, leisurely, quietly.

When a warm, Summer rain started, Paula spread her arms, arched her back, and lifted her face to the dark, wet skies. She held herself in that ecstatic pose while I pushed and surged under her until I came hard and hot inside her, panting, dripping.

Years later Paula found out her sister (2 years younger) had been watching the entire time, most avidly, masturbating furiously the entire time.