Just one whiff of it - always takes me back... Back to 1984. To being 16. To spending the summer in Nova Scotia at my grandparents' house. To falling head over heels in love with a small town mechanic. Rodney. (sigh) He worked at the garage in Bridgetown. He wore grease-monkey overalls and at the end of the day had to scrub his hands clean from all the motor oil. He rode a Honda 750 motorcycle. Late at night, I would lie on my bed listening for that motorcycle. He rode that bike without a helmet, wearing a pair of jeans nothing else. Just a glimpse of him on the bike made my heart pound. I was infatuated. He had green eyes. GREEN! He had a rockin' stache (think young Tom Selleck) and drank stubby beer, cause that's how they made them then. Rodney was 21.
Only now, as the mother of my own teenaged daughter, do I realize why my mother, when she found out about this tryst, freaked the fuck out. But at the time, I couldn't see what was wrong with the picture.
"MOM! I am grown up now! He knows that I am mature."
"He knows that you're built like brick outhouse is what he knows..."
I was so mature, so old-beyond-my-years, so.... infatuated. God was I dumb. Sure he liked me. Oh yeah he did. Today, my nearly 45 year old breasts, still have a great deal of tone and lift to them - at 16 they would have been spectacular!! I had a helluva personality, even back then, but a smokin' hot body is like catnip to young men. I was 16, with a kick-ass auburn perm, blue eyes and braces. But he really liked me. He really respected me.
Except, you know what's funny? I think he kinda did. 'Cause when I was determined to offer myself to Rodney (in the backseat of his Duster - there's class for you), we got to the part where I should have lost my virginity and I was willing to grit my teeth against the pain... he stopped. In my extremely limited experience with men I thought that stopping wasn't possible. I, as many girls my age, thought that once they got to a certain point, men couldn't stop. Or maybe that's just what young swains tell the girls they're trying to climb on top of. But here was Rodney - stopping. Because he discovered I was a virgin.
"We should stop."
"No, no, I'm okay... I'm okay..."
"We should stop."
And we did. That night. I guess when you have a nubile girl desperate to lose her virginity, you can only remain stoic for so long. I mean, he wasn't a saint.
