"You should know by now, I'm not most guys."
She ran her hands across her breasts, shivering, and said breathily, "I figured that out already. I thought I was going to be teaching you, but boy did I have that wrong! Who taught you?"
"A friend."
"Who was she? I didn't know you had been dating anyone."
I just shook my head. "I don't kiss and tell, or do anything and tell. I have had friends."
"Friends? Multiple friends?"
"I'm a friendly guy."
She looked at me and then reached out to try and tickle me. "I bet I can force you to tell me."
I didn't tell her, but the only places on my entire body that are ticklish are the soles of my feet. I let her try to tickle me, but just held out, stalwart to the end. "Us tough guys can't be broken!"
"Then I'm going to start asking around school!"
I shrugged. "Ask away, but you'll never hear it from me."
"And if one of your friends asks about us?"
"We're just friends. Good friends. Unquote. Like I said, I don't tell." Then I grinned. "But don't let me stop you. You ask your friends in school, and the next time we're together, you can try tickling me again, too, but don't be surprised if I tickle back." I goosed her side and she squealed and jumped away. "Payback's a bitch, baby!"
Her mother walked in just then, to find her daughter trying to tickle me, and me valiantly resisting. I was polite enough to look embarrassed, and then I grabbed my coat and took off. As I left the house, I could hear Shelley saying, "Mom! Nothing happened!" I grinned like a fool the entire walk home.
That evening, after demolishing what little homework I was behind in, I gave a lot of thought to my newfound sexual liberation. In many ways, the Sixties and Seventies were the golden age of the sexual revolution. With the introduction of the Pill in the late Fifties/early Sixties pregnancy was effectively eliminated as a reason for abstinence. Even if a girl got pregnant, it was no longer the end of the world. By 1973 Roe v. Wade legalized abortion throughout the country. By the Seventies the social stigma of abortion was at the lowest it would be for a generation or two.
The other major problem with promiscuous sexual freedom was disease, but AIDS didn't exist until the early Eighties. In the Sixties and Seventies the worst you could get was gonorrhea or syphilis, both of which were susceptible to standard antibiotics. (Okay, herpes was around too, but that was never that big a deal.) Once, in the mid Seventies when I was in college, I got an abscessed tooth, and needed to be treated with penicillin. My frat brothers immediately suspected I had the clap and my reputation soared!
So I was in the midst of a sexual smorgasbord that on the first go-around I had been both oblivious to (at first) and then unable to do much with. Sexual liberation was something that really wasn't seen until college. While statistics on the subject have always been notoriously unreliable, the average age when virginity was lost was 18 or 19. It would continue to drop as time went on, but when I graduated high school in 1973, well over half my class, despite the bragging and brave talk, were virgins, myself included. I also have to be fair about it, when I say that in 1969, it was very unusual for a junior high student to be sexually active. There were always rumors and stories, but were generally just rank bullshit.
I saw no need to repeat that history! If two-thirds of my graduating class were virgins, then one-third wasn't, and it was my duty to find the females in this group. It looked to me like I already had found my first serious girlfriend, and I intended for us to become very serious.
Certainly nothing was going to happen on Thursday. Mom picked me and Shelley up after school and drove us the five minutes into Towson to the college. It took us longer to park the car and walk across campus than it did to drive there. Once inside the chemistry building, I led the way to Professor Mihaus' office. He was waiting there for us and I introduced everyone. Before we went into the lab, however, I asked, "Professor, do you have a blank lab notebook? I completely forgot to pick one up."
He shook his head and wagged a finger at me. "You need to remember the importance of proper observations." He opened a desk drawer and pulled out two notebooks. "Now, record today's work in one of them. How many days have you been working on this?"
"About a week or so."
"Why, Professor?", asked Shelley. She had gotten over her initial awe and was curious.
"I messed up.", I replied. "I forgot to record our daily work and progress each day. You need accurate observations and recordings to document your lab work.
Professor Milhaus nodded in agreement. "Quite correct. Still, it's early on and no harm, no foul. I want you to take the second notebook and start on page one and record the work you've done to this point. When you get to today's work, copy from the one notebook into the other, and then only use the second from that point."
I nodded my understanding. My mother, on the other hand, didn't. While proud of me (and barely acknowledging Shelley) she felt this was an awful lot of work for a little junior high project, and she told him so. "Is all that really needed, Doctor?"
"Oh, very much so. I would never accept less from one of my students.", he replied. She looked quite skeptical, and he noticed. "Mrs. Buckman, I think you are working under a misapprehension about this project. You are thinking this is just a school project. This is a most ambitious undertaking. I would normally accept this caliber of work at the undergraduate level. I plan on using the sample that these two provide me as a basis of lab work for a senior and graduate organic chemistry course. Proper documentation is essential!"
"I apologize, Professor, it won't happen again.", I assured him.
"I know it won't.", he said with a smile. To my mother, he said, "Talk to your son. He would have a future in chemistry."
From there we went into the lab. Today's work was simple. We weighed the filter without the cotton, then Shelley and I fluffed up some cotton and put that in place, and then reweighed the loaded filter. After we had smoked a bunch of cigarettes through it, in a couple of week's time we would reweigh things. The filter system should be demonstrably heavier. Afterwards we would isolate the tar and measure that. Throughout the experiment, we could calculate the amounts of tar we could obtain and the overall efficiency of our system.
Shelley followed along well enough, once it was explained. Mom was totally lost, but ridiculously proud. Mom drove us back over to Shelley's house, and Shelley took the filter inside. Mom also noticed that on the ride over to Towson State, and the ride back, I rode in the back with Shelley, and that when I walked Shelley to her door, Shelley gave me a very enjoyable kiss before going inside.
I got back into the car, although in the front seat this time. Mom immediately asked, "So is Shelley your girlfriend, too?"
"Yes, I think we could say that.", I admitted.
"Why haven't you told us anything about her?"
I just stared at her briefly and started laughing. Mom wasn't amused but she bit her tongue. "Carl, I'm serious."
"Okay, Mom, I'll tell you about all my current girlfriends the same day you tell me about all your current boyfriends." I started laughing some more.
"Carl! How dare you?! I don't have any boyfriends!"