Why I Make Sure You're Satisfied -- FIRST

In tenth grade in high school I had hair down to my ass, played electric guitar in two rock bands (The Rosenberry Blues Band, and Jimmy Durango and the Polka Pirates -- a total goof name: we played covers and originals at Catholic school dances and sang "Wild Thing" while the nuns patroled the floor like mongooses in a chicken coop).

I met Lauren, a senior who just turned 18, in my Creative Writing class in September. I was 15 years old. I'd never even been to second base with any girl and had no idea what girls wanted. I was nervous with women -- even though many seeked my company after my band played dances or "hung out" on the school grounds sereptitiously smoking weed and drinking beer. Imagine that.

Yeah, I rolled mega spliffs stuffed with low grade Mexican -- the kind that made your eyes red and gave you the munchies, drank Boone's Farm and cheap red wine with a slew of young ladies in the back seat of Lincolns, Datsuns, and GTO's; got as far as French-kissing (very awkwardly) a few compromised cuties who reeked of their mom's cheap perfume and bubble gum, who I groped in the shadows and who maybe flashed me some nipple (Okay. Accidentally. It was dark), but, believe me: I was no Casanova -- not by a long shot. I was just another wannabee trying to be what I oughta be, but mostly ending up being nowhere at all. Just a regular Joe Blow.

Lauren was not only taller than me but smarter and way better looking. Honestly. She was gorgeous: long straight honey blonde hair, blue doe eyes, who wore tight blue jeans long before they were fashion de rigueur, long beautiful (shaved) legs (and pits), an amazing butt (I've always admired curvy women with nice derrieres), (admittedly) average bust (but mesmerizing nonetheless to me), big lips that formed the warmest, most inviting smile I'd ever seen on anyone (at least in this solar system), and a hearty, throaty, soul-piercing laugh that could summon the angel Gabriel himself.

She was, to be blunt, a 15 year old's wet dream date. Or at least this 15 year old.

In our Creative Writing class, we were forced by Mr. Keller, an octagenarian Thoreau-type who retired from teaching at the end of the year, to read our work aloud. When Lauren enthusiastically read her stuff it was as clear to me as an azure dawn o'er the Rockies she was a great writer whose work reflected her inner self from a place of truth. Her prose spoke to me -- and every other guy in the class but, interestingly enough, this being an elective, there were 12 girls and 6 guys, which were the best odds I'd ever seen at 15 (later, I would join a NYC group called The Forum which had similar ratios).

To compete with Lauren and others who were trying to impress the teach (yes, even back in the day, apples were square), I poured my little heart into my assignments with fervor and teen angst. I wrote on topics ranging from Jimi Hendrix riffing on "Voodoo Chile" at Woodstock to a short story about a woman (she was described, curiously enough, like a Lauren clone -- nod nod wink wink) who dies in an auto crash and who's reincarnated as a chicken hatching from an egg.

It was pretty intense stuff for a bunch of teens who only dreamed alternately of lust in Camaro's or attending the Senior Prom wearing Barbie and Ken outfits.

Being an intellectual, Lauren must have been impressed by my stuff. When I joined the school newspaper as an artist, she was the ad editor, and she immediately cajoled me into working with her on ads that literally paid for the paper's printing. How could I refuse? I would have jumped to my knees and licked her pointy black boots if she hinted that's what she wanted.

Lauren drove me in her red (natch) Mustang convertible (definitely Daddy's Little Girl) around town to commercial establishments where she would -- smiling like Daisy in The Great Gatsby -- ask middle-age shopkeepers to place an ad to please help support the local high school rag.

Amazingly, just about every male store owner would say yes and I wound up doing lots of black and white pen and ink drawings to accompany the ads: shoes, handbags, macho dudes and supermodel babes with attitudes holding watches and stuff, logos -- whatever Lauren beckoned. And my artwork would get published every month -- kind of an awesome experience for me. I did it to put on my college resume (so did Lauren).

Anyway, when winter break came The Rosenberry Blues Band played a gig in the high school gym and everyone danced to Allman Brothers, Zep, and Grateful Dead tunes. Afterwards, Lauren appeared out of the blue (I had no idea she was there; I was mostly sweating through my T-shirt pits, trying to remember all the chords and changes) and asked me if I wanted to get ice cream at the local teen hang.

My fellow band members were jealous when I hastily split ("Later, dudes. Like, Lauren asked me out, yo."), leaving them to haul my heavy Marshall twin stack amp into one of their dad's station wagons and afterwards hang out in Billy's basement swilling Buds, poppin' luudes, and smoking cheap dope.

Lauren drove me over to the 24 hour diner and we had banana splits and talked for 5 hours until we were hardly conscious, laughing, making fun of other awkward teen couples in nearby booths who were as nervous as the freshmen and women who came to the dance and stood on the sidelines staring at members of the opposite sex while juniors and seniors danced with wild, uninhibited abandon, clinging to each other like drunken sailors with rented dates on leave in port Singapore while drinking countless Slings.

Yeah, things are pretty much still this way in high school today. It's pathetic. Some kind of teen rite of passage, I suppose.

Being a clueless 15 year old dope, I didn't even notice Lauren picking up her fudge-sauced banana and tonguing and swallowing it whole while I shoveled scoops of chocolate drowned vanilla and strawberry ice cream down my hungry hole. I did, however, notice some of the senior jocks (football and homo wrestlers) eyeing Lauren's tight halter top and hand-knitted pale pink sweater lustfully. I thought she was goofing on them. It didn't matter. I was with a goddess and she seemed to dig me, a little, even though I must have smelled pretty atrocious from the sweat and excitement of the crazy rock'n'roll evening.

She drove me home to my parent's house and turned off the lights and ignition curbside. A gentle snowfall began, a dusting of bejeweled water crystals coated the windshield. We stared at the little symmetrical crystals in awe: we couldn't find any two that were the same, although we looked real hard (while trying not to notice how close our bods were). Nature's so freaking awesome.

Lauren and I then had a few awkward silent moments staring and smiling at each other, our eyes drooping closed occasionally as we nodded off and quickly recovered. Then I reached for the door handle and she suddenly grabbed my face with two sweaty hands, pulling my lips to hers to give me an endless wet kiss, her tongue darting into my mouth and swirling around my molars, our saliva intermingling like DNA.

It seemed to last thirty minutes but was probably more like 5 seconds. Our lips unlocked with a loud pop. We both wiped our mouths with our cuffs.

I was stunned and had no idea what to do next.

She got the sudden full-on realization she maybe had been a little too forward, and I swiftly de-planed, popping the fuselage door in mid-air, and walked backwards to my parents' red brick burb house front door, nearly tripping over the front steps.

We waved and she was gone with an 8 cylinder roar that definitely woke up the entire block. My old man snored right through it.

Oh well. I hit myself squarely in the forehead with my fist about a thousand times, leaving a red bruise (I had to explain to my narcoleptic Dad the next morning I had tripped and fallen -- he totally bought it). I had blown it yet again. Score: zero to fourteen. Home team would return with their heads down, hands in their pockets groping their you-know-whats.

The following Monday in class it was like I was a leper. No eye contact. Lauren looked flustered and her cheeks flushed beet red when I said, "Lauren? You okay?" When the bell rang she bolted from her desk and raced into the hallway faster than Bambi scampering from a raging forest fire.

But being as clueless and as big a dope as most 15 year old guys with jet black butt-length straight and shiny hair, I just ran like a bat outta a petrified cavern after her, down 2 corridors, zipped around the principal's office, past two hall monitors, bursting through a side door -- almost chest-butting a ginormous Afro-American hoopster, complete with NBA Knicks autographed b-ball in his monstrous mitts, huffing and puffing -- till I grabbed her by the arm, her books sputtering to the asphalt like firecrackers on Chinese New Year, and whipped her around to face me.

She was crying. Tears stained her cheeks and she started balling as I implored, "What the hell's going on? Look, I'm sorry about Saturday night. You're like the most awesome girl I've ever been with and I'm a total loser--"

Then she did it again. In mid-sentence, she suddenly grabbed me, pulled my lips to hers, and we French kissed for ten minutes in front of the entire freaking school who walked by hurriedly whispering, desperately trying not to stare at us like we were Mr. and Mrs. Elephant Man. Go figure.

When I came to in a sort of ecstatic drunken stupor, she smiled at me with those huge doe aqualine eyes that could stop a Mack truck doing 98 down Route 66 in an ice storm, wiping her face with my track and field Varsity jacket cuff, and blurted out, "You busy Christmas eve?"

I did a double take, "Huh?"

"Christmas eve. Doing anything that night?"

I returned her smile, "Well, The Polka Pirates have a booking at the Palladium for the Midnight Mass show, but, you know, guitar players are like a penny a gazillion. I can ditch 'em and they wouldn't even notice."

She laughed for like 5 straight minutes and I asked, "You wanna do somethin'? I gotta be straight, I don't have a lot of cas--"

She put her finger to my lips and stopped my blathering.

"Our family has a sort of tradition," she explained. "Every Christmas eve we decorate our tree in the living room. But this year I have my own tree up in my room. Wanna help me spruce it up?"

"Sure. Sounds gnarly."

"Don't come by until 10PM. We don't get started until 11. That leaves time for refreshments and cookies and small talk."

"You want me to bring anything?"

"Just your cute butt."

"Your parents gonna freak over my hair?"

"Don't worry. I already warned them." The bell rang and we darted back into the building just as the school hall pass Gestapo started goose-stepping towards us.

As I walked away from Lauren (whose friends rushed up to her whispering excitedly and giggling), this last statement struck me as being a little off. Like my ears should be burning because Lauren was talking about me behind my back -- to everyone it seemed.

Being no fashionista, Christmas Eve I dressed down in jeans, boots, a warm flannel double pocket shirt, and tied my hair in a neat pony behind my head. I had my lucky guitar pick in my pocket.

Lauren's mother, a worn fifty something midwestern babushka with silver streaks in her brunette curls, answered the door and I immediately realized she was wasted. Her breath could ignite a brush fire in the Nevada scrub hills.

"You must be Br-r-ruce."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I though you'd be taller."

"Sorry, ma'am. In the rush to turbo charge over, I totally forget my five inch Rick James platform heels, the ones with the red sequins."

Lauren's mother didn't even hear what I said as I entered a modest kitchen with an entire table aghast with liquor, egg nog, beers, soda, pretzels, a Catholic kid's yuletide feast (not like the rice and broiled fish my Japanese family gravitated toward).

Through the door I noticed Lauren's moustachioed father snoozing in the living room stretched out on a reclined Lazy Boy, feet popping out a red and green plaid blanket, a video of a burning fireplace log on the color 19" RCA Victor boob tube that commanded the room, sucking all the light and energy of the surroundings into a vortex of sound and light.

Lauren's mom tapped my shoulder, "Want a drink?"

Before I could answer she poured 8 ounces of Seagrams into a pint beer mug along with 8 ounces of Seven-Up and a few cubes, swirling it around with her index finger, then handed it to me, eyeballs woozing in their sockets.

I grabbed that sucker and asked, "Where's Lauren?

"Upstairs," her father interjected as one video log crackled loudly. "Never leaves her room except to hog the toilet."

I turned as Lauren glided down the steps in her pink sweater and jeans - a sight that woke awaken Jesus from the cave.

"Princess Pete finally makes an appearance," her father muttered. Lauren gave him the finger out of eye-shot and I nearly spewed soy sauce through my nostrils.

Lauren glided past me, giving me a quick wink, then marched into the kitchen and poured herself a tall glass of eggnog along with a heaping helping of Peurto Rican Rum. Her mother sat at the table in a semi-stupor, munching pretzels.

Lauren did an about face and glided by me, grabbing my hand and leading me upstairs.

Her father didn't even look up from his chair, "Have fun, kids."

"We will," Lauren replied.

Her mother chimed in, "Where's Pete these days?"

"I have no idea. He never bothered to call," Lauren said as she opened her second floor bedroom door and quickly pulled me inside.

"Who's Pete?" I asked as she locked the door and turned to face me.

"It doesn't matter. I haven't seen him since last summer." Then, for the third time in less than a week, she grabbed me and kissed me, sucking out all my oxygen. We fell backwards onto her bed, covered with plush animals (lions, snakes, bats, weird sh-t), and spent about ten minutes making out non-stop. I nudged her to come up for air.

Lauren proceeded to sit on top of me and pull off her sweater.

In the full glow of her nightlamp I nearly had a coronary. She was bra-less and her breasts were incredibly beautiful, with erect little light brown nipples.

"Holy sh--" was all I could muster as she leapt upon me and again devoured my mouth while fumbling with my belt buckle.

I knew right then and there this evening would have a happy ending.

Sorry. I'm not going to get pornographic here. Adult FF has enough losers and morons writing sh-t about their private lives that is way beyond what anyone on earth needs to know. Even after they croak. Suffice to say, Lauren, in her sexual aggression and heated passion, had her way with me and became my teacher.

She shouted things (muted, of course) like, "Suck my titties." (She was way into Marvin Gaye and has "Sexual Healing" playing in loop mode in the background).

At one point while she rode me like an Arabian stallion she whispered, "Am I the first?"

My eyes rolled, "Like, what do you think?"

"Good. Then you'll never forget me."

I can't believe I said this: "Duh."

The only interval I really needed her guidance, move by move, was when she sweetly asked me to, "Go down on me, baby."

I had never ventured to that territory hither. Luckily, Lauren was super smart, patient, and willing to give a complete off the cuff lesson.

Of course, being 15 and not-too-bright, I tried to get off first but Lauren was insistent, "Me first. Then it's your turn, baby. You won't be disappointed. I promise."

This is the way I was trained and the instructions I have followed ever since. Ladies first. Always.

The rules of the game (at least the way I play it).

Lauren was accepted to Brown the following April. We had many get-togethers before her parents drove her and a carload of her stuff away to school.

I never saw her again. I was lonely and upset at first, but a year later I got over it and started going with a college freshman at Rutgers. The year after that I went to college.

And the rest, they say, is history.