My First Date

A friend asked for a juicy story, so I decided to relate one about my first date.  The event was not nearly as romantic as the one shown.  It was pretty far from being romantic at all, but it is juicy in its own way.  

The year was  1959 and I'm a skinny 15-year-old boy getting ready for a blind date, a double date with a worldly neighbor of 16 who has a drivers license and a '51 Ford. He's been going steady with his girl for six months, which in that Happy Days era qualified them as an Old Married Couple. Me, I'm full of hormones and smelling of too much Old Spice cologne with an underlying scent of Clearasil acne paste I've dabbed on the zit that always blossomed just prior to a crucial time.  My neighbor was not encouraging. "Oh man! Your face is breaking out! That looks terrible! he said. "And hey, I told your date you're 16, so try to act like it, dig?"

How? Suck in the remaining baby fat in my cheeks? Wear a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes rolled up in a t-shirt sleeve? Make awkward physical moves like James Dean and mumble like Marlon Brando? I'll do my best.

His date is a slightly chubby good natured blonde girl with a loud musical laugh. My date is a thin Mexican girl with beehive hair and great big hoop earrings who, upon seeing me, got a very laughless frown on her exotic dark face. She got in the back seat of the Ford with me with all the enthusiasm of a juvenile delinquent on her way to an appointment with a probation officer.

The date was at the El Monte Drive-in just off the San Bernardino Freeway where there was a double bill of B-grade horror films which allowed girls to fake clingy fear and be closely comforted by their boyfriends' hands, lips, and who, if they were an Old Married Couple among their peers, by a comforting index finger slipping under the elastic band of her Capri pants or working the buttons on the back of her blouse. Maybe. 

My scene in the back seat proceeded in the accustomed manner of the time. Arm on the back of the seat over her shoulder. Arm drooping to the shoulder. A little scoot closer to her. No resistance so far. Up front the Old Married Couple are lip locked in what appears to be a desperate attempt at mouth-to-mouth first aid.

As for us in the back, so far so good. Then I reached over to turn her face toward mine for a little of the same first aid on that hot airless night -- and snagged a hoop earring. Needless to say she had pierced ears. Also needless to say her reaction was not one of unbridled delight. "Shit!" she yelled.

The up front couple separated. "Something wrong?" my neighbor's date asked. "This jerk almost tore my ear off!" my date said. 

After several awkward moments while I contemplated life in the French Foreign Legion, my neighbor's date rescued me and -- and my date. "Let's swap!" she cheerfully suggested. My date didn't even get out of the car. She hurled herself over the front seat like a paratrooper out of a burning plane.  The neighbor's date used the door to get in back and snuggle close to me in a sympathetic manner. Oh, we did wind up kissing for little while, but the only juicy part of this story is that she was chewing Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum.

--oOo--

E-mail any comments, critiques and hate mail to tomatomike@aol.com.

At least you got something, that's a lot more than most guys get on a first date - even if was juicy fruit gummy. - Beaty

A "gum job" does not seem vary appealing. MB

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Aha! So that's where you got the name Mike the Mauler. And now we know the REST of the story.  Page 2.  -- Linda

Oh no. Not at all. I was a reformed mauler by that time. I'd gotten beaten up fighting for a girl's honor. She wanted to keep it. And I see you're of an age, like me, to have a Paul Harvey radio moment. MB

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My first "date.”I was twelve.  He was eighteen, and worked  for my father.  My older brother orchestrated this event.  "Dad, Sis and I are going to the movies."  Uh huh.  So,  Farm Boy Billy met my brother and I at the local drive-in, and he quickly made his way to the outside seating to meet his friends.  Billy and I were in the back seat of my brother's car.  I knew as much about anything that might happen that night as my grandfather knew about Maybelline eyeliner. 

Billy and I kissed.  What it really was, I remember vividly, was him showing me what kissing was, and I'll swear to this day it was the best kiss I ever had.  And then there were more of them amid a lot of awkward conversation that I can't remember at all.  I was wearing a white button-up, Peter Pan collared blouse, and he found a couple of buttons and touched me under a white lacy Junior High bra, and commented that he liked what he was touching, though in retrospect I figure he hadn't a whole lot to compare it to.  Then we kissed some more.

My brother came back to the car with his buddies.  Billy's hand moved away from my girl parts faster than a rocket, and we drove home, the three of us figuring out what the movie was about since none of us had watched it.  This was tradition, you realize, for teenagers - and those not quite there yet - to go to the movies and never watch them, so we had to make up a story detailed enough to be convincing with room for elaboration if need be under Dad's watchful interrogation.

Oh, youth, Mike.  Those were the days – Zoey