Heaven is a place

I’m not sure how I dealt with my seven minutes in heaven. I remember that it was indeed divine, more exciting than anything I had ever experienced with a boy. I even remember going at some point to a store at the mall where they printed designs on tshirts. I don’t know how or why, but the smell of the heated plastic and cotton when they pressed the decals on the shirts somehow added up in my mind to the smell that only a woman makes. I was immediately reminded of Marissa. That was all I could think about. I couldn’t wait to wear the tshirt, and was forlorn when my mom washed it.

I don’t know what I told myself to explain all of this. I just can’t remember. But I do remember that I turned my attention back to boys. I went out with them, but I didn’t make out with them. At least, not like my friends Tali and Karen, who were already having sex with their boyfriends starting in 9th grade. In contrast, I had one boyfriend who never really tried to even kiss me. I guess I was fine with it; we went out for a year, until I dumped him. Other boys did try. I even let one boy play with my boobs over my bra. It was always interesting, trying to figure out how they would try and get me to agree. Sometimes, it was even arousing. But I often didn’t like how they tasted and smelled.

I thought it was my fault, picking the wrong ones, or that I was doing something wrong. I had this friend, Natalie, and I would go over to her house a lot and we’d have pillow fights on her parent’s couch and were generally very physical with each other. One night, after a fun session of climbing around on the couch, everything seemed perfect, and I told her about my worries. She just shrugged her shoulders and told me to ditch them. She said I was perfect, and because that was so, I’d find the perfect person. At one dance, where most of the boys clung to the walls, Natalie became my dance partner, even during the slow dances. I remember her hips and thighs pressing against me. I was embarrassed at one point when I realized I was grinding myself into her with the music. I’m sure Natalie was a missed opportunity. If so, I had no idea.

Around this time, the band Talking Heads came out with this song, “Heaven is a Place.” In the song, heaven is not exactly heavenly. It’s a repetition of the most meaningless experiences you can imagine. It’s a party you think you want to go to, since everyone is there. But it turns out to be entirely predictable, an endless string of sameness without variation. There was a line that captured how I felt about the boys who tried to kiss me: “When this kiss is over/It will start again/It will not be any different/It will be exactly the same/It's hard to imagine/That nothing at all/Could be so exciting/Could be this much fun.” I couldn’t understand why people thought it was that much fun. I put it down to my weirdness, that there was something wrong with me, that I’d never be invited to the right party, that my idea of heaven was somehow wrong. Don’t get me wrong: Boys weren’t nothing to me. But they were exactly the same, not any different.

And yet the same thing that had happened with Natalie happened later on with a girl who was a year older than me. Only I thought it was different. Back then, of course, a year seemed such a big deal. Kathleen was in my French class. I thought she was so sophisticated. I loved how she dressed, (still remember how she wore heels with jeans when we were all wearing sundresses and sandals), how she flipped her hair, and her no-nonsense attitude. She once told me to stop wiggling my butt so much when I walked. It wasn’t natural, she said, and I should stop trying to be sexy and just be me, which she said was plenty sexy.

A few weeks before Kathleen graduated high school, she took me into the auditorium. No one was there. She held my hands and told me she’d miss me. I think she also gave me some kind of advice, but all I remember is staring into her eyes and admiring her high cheekbones. She kissed me goodbye, first on the cheek, then lightly on the lips. Then more, and suddenly her tongue was inside my mouth. I remember my heart fluttering, and I had this feeling like I was falling, even though I was sitting. Then she hugged me, with her face in my neck. And just like that, she was gone. I felt so deserted in that empty auditorium. It had hardly been seven minutes, and it was much more than nothing. But I just told myself I was sad because I missed having her around and didn’t have an older girl to look up to. I even remember being angry with myself that I still had girl-crushes like that, which I thought I was too old to have.

Invitations to this particular party kept coming, of course. I couldn’t stay away forever, and eventually stuck around for much longer than seven minutes. It happened at the end of my senior year in high school. At that point, I was spending most of my time with a small circle of friends, mainly getting drunk and high. When we weren’t all together, I was with my best friend, Tali. I didn’t have a boyfriend, but she did. It was mainly about sex with him, I think. I thought he was a dope, and she did, too. Sometimes, when he opened his mouth and spoke, she’d just kiss him to get him to shut up. She would share a lot of their sex life with me. She wanted to see how many different places she could go down on him without getting caught (she told me she even did it when her parents invited him over to dinner – she pulled him into their coat closet and did him there). I guess the fact that we were all going to different colleges made things seem less infused with meaning and it relaxed us.

Anyhow, her parents had gone away for a weekend together, and her brothers were also gone, so we smoked some pot and then decided to watch a movie together – one of the Friday the 13th movies, I don’t remember which. Because it was a scary movie, and because it was a cool night, we both pulled her mom’s big old gray blanket over us.

We were always physical with each other, holding hands and hugging each other, so it kind of made sense for her to hold me tight in her arms. It was very reassuring lying with her. Being high also made me hyper aware of her touch. At some point, she laid her head on my shoulder. I objected that her breath on my neck was tickling me. She laughed and she kissed me there lightly, claiming it would make the tickling sensation go away. Sure enough, it did. I mean, it really did. I started moaning, and soon she was kissing my neck in earnest, slowly, sensually. I thought I was burning up. Then her tongue came out and starting licking my skin. I was really getting turned on, but I also thought the pot was clouding my judgment. I couldn’t really mess around with my best friend, after all. I moved away from her and said something like, “This isn’t right, you’re my best friend, this will ruin that.” She looked at me for a second and just said, with a firmness I didn’t understand, “No, it won’t.”

And then Tali kissed me on the lips. She lingered, then kissed me again. It was so soft. And she had such nice lips and it felt so wonderful. I felt dizzy. I wanted to speak but couldn’t. Then she took my face in her hands, looked at me, and really kissed me. When her tongue entered my mouth, it was as if I’d never been kissed. I remember that I was almost instantly wet, which surprised me. Before I could really react, I felt her boobs on mine. They were so soft and felt so good on mine. And they made my nipples hard, harder than they’d ever been.

Tali lay me down on the couch and we kissed each other deeply, slowly, and with great feeling. It was heavenly, the kind where you lose track of time. At some point, she stopped and said that her arms were getting tired. It should have woken me out of my trance-like state. But it didn’t. We got on the floor together, with the blanket. My world had narrowed to just one thought: All I really want is to kiss Tali. I was ready to trade everything in the entire world for this time in heaven. I knew I loved her. But I put it down to the kind of love best friends have for each other. After all, I’d do anything for her, including this. And she definitely wanted it. All of those thoughts made it easier for me to give in and return to this place of wonder.

We lay down on our sides, facing each other, tracing each other’s lips with our fingers. It was very beautiful. And then all of a sudden, we were looking at each other and were overcome with lust. We kissed each other hungrily, with a kind of feline longing. She started cupping and squeezing my boobs, which was wonderful and so exciting. I traced the sides of hers, then got up the courage to hold them. They were so much bigger than mine, so exciting because so different. When she started tracing my nipples through my shirt and bra, then lightly pinching them, I thought I’d really died and gone to heaven. I came. A small beautiful orgasm, the kind that you know will be followed by one much more intense.

We resumed kissing and touching each other. It was slow and languorous, and then somehow we became passionate again. Our legs were intertwined and we started grinding against each other. We were still clothed, but I was ravenous, unashamed, hellbent. I don’t know how long it lasted, only that she stopped kissing me and pushed her face onto my neck and cried out, shuddering. That’s all I needed. I came so hard that I convulsed. I may even have blacked out. When I came to, I thought I had wet myself. We lay there for a while, caressing each other, until I realized I needed to check to see if I had peed my pants. Once in the bathroom, I realized I really was absolutely soaked, but not from pee. My panties were too wet to wear and I smelled strongly of pussy, which was really embarrassing. But it made Tali laugh, both how wet I got and how embarrassed. She lent me a pair of her panties, which were too big for me, but I didn’t care. When I gave them back to her a few days later, she told me she wasn’t going to wash them, but wear them instead. I remember blushing but also feeling warm between my legs.

Tali and I stayed together for the rest of the summer, in that place where time seems suspended, until it was time to leave for college. We had sex whenever we could. But we had to find odd places to be together. It was the South years ago, and two girls together was not exactly ok. I think that made it more exciting, but strange as well, like a dream. The fact that we also never went down on each other made it seem less like we were two girls fucking each other. She said she was straight, just curious, and I thought I was definitely straight. I guess we just couldn’t bring ourselves to cross that line. Instead, we fingered each other to a lot of wonderful, furtive orgasms. And humped each other into heaven, a few times without clothes.

The night before I left for college, we decided to end it. But we went out with a bang, not a whimper. We had dinner at a nice restaurant and talked about what would happen. We agreed this was just an expression of our friendship, because we loved each other deeply. It was very beautiful – and completely foolish. It was late at night when she parked her car in front of my house. We tried to say goodbye. We cried a lot, and then all of sudden Tali had her hand in my jeans, playing with my crinkly hairs. We made out in the car until dawn. Exhausted, I finally got out of the car. She walked me to my door. But the goodbye kiss once again turned into more, and then we were at it again. I remember the moon was still out, and the dawn was really beautiful. I remember how I pushed her up against the side of the house, put my face between her boobs and my hand up her dress, determined to make her come one last time so she would never forget me.

But that’s a story for another time. If people are interested, I’m happy to tell it.