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And she responded beautifully. She clung to me, her arms around my back, returning the kiss — eyes closed, in the manner of young girls everywhere — and when I parted my lips and probed hesitantly with a quivering tongue, she opened her mouth at once to accept it.

That was all, for a while. We splashed and chased and occasionally kissed, and finally I got my courage up — I was only nineteen, after all — and hidden beneath the water I slid my arm around her side, beneath her arm, and clutched her tender breast.

There was a difference. Why was there a difference? Even now, I don’t know. All I know is that there was that difference, and that the difference always holds true. In the balcony of the movie theater Jodi’s breasts had been soft and pliant, in feeling they were whipped cream mountains topped by wrinkled cherries. To touch those cherries was to make dear Jodi moan and writhe in delight. Underwater, encased in a bathing suit rather than blouse and bra, the breasts were firm and strong, the cherries as hard as anything one would want, and the whole thing, if possible, even more exciting than before.

The second time my hand fondled those wonderful breasts as we kissed, my other hand encircled her and cupped a rounded buttock, and she closed her eyes and moved against me, the water cool and invigorating, the vibrant girl in my arms too exciting to be stood, and I confess a wild oat was lost in the depths of the sea.

It was a long and — now I look back on it — horribly frustrating afternoon. We stayed in the water awhile, and then we stretched out on a blanket onshore, a bit away from the others, ostensibly to get some sun, but actually to get some fondling done. I caressed that precious body, leaned down to kiss the breasts with lips that grew stronger and harsher until at last her moans of pleasure were muffled by a stifled scream of pain, and my hand roamed the front of her body, building courage, stroking the coarse front of that bathing suit, moving ever closer, until finally she sighed and gripped me tighter and kissed me so furiously I thought she would break my neck.

But farther than that we could not go. Her bathing suit, top and bottom, was too snug-fitting. And there were, after all, ten other youngsters right nearby.

And so the afternoon was played away, with mutual frustration. Around seven, one of the more organizational-minded males of our group took up a collection for food and drink — I donated two dollars, I remember — and went away, to shortly return with pizza and beer, the pizzas cold and the beer warm. But we were all young, and hardships didn’t bother us, so we ate the cold pizza and drank the warm beer, and at every opportunity I caressed Jodi’s fantastic body.

It must have been around eight o’clock when one of our group mentioned the baseball game. Now, here’s the situation: Every college worthy of the name has the three intercollegiate sports, football and basketball and baseball. And our college was, in that respect, worthy of the name. Now, everyone attends the football games, of course, particularly when one’s own team is an odds-on favorite to win, which ours inevitably was, and about half the normal student body jumps at the chance to watch a basketball game. But no one in college goes to look at a collegiate baseball game, absolutely no one. Why this is I don’t know, but it is. We twelve had, therefore, neither the knowledge that a baseball game was to be played by our jolly team tonight, nor much interest in what the hell our baseball team was doing any night.

And so it was that the announcement that our baseball team was playing an away game that very night was met, at first, with an overwhelming display of public apathy. At first. But then someone else — or it might have been the same person, I no longer remember — suggested that it might be a great odd-ball idea to go watch this here baseball game, cheer our team extravagantly, and get happily mashed.

The concept of going to a college baseball game was so radical, so unexpected, so completely absurd, that we all, naturally, agreed at once, and immediately began to pack the remaining beer into auto backseats, while two of the drivers huddled together over a roadmap, trying to find out (1) where the hell Ylicaw, where the game was to take place, might be, and (2) how the hell to get there.

Then someone came up with a disgusting thought. “Hey!” cried this someone. “What kind of baseball team do we have, anyway? Are they good or are they lousy?”

A quick headcount demonstrated that no one present knew what kind of baseball team we had.

“I don’t want,” said this someone, “to watch our lousy baseball team get beat.”

True enough. But the problem was solved by someone else, who said, “Hell, we won’t know which team is ours, anyway. What difference does it make?”

None at all, obviously. We piled into cars — Jodi curled beautifully upon my lap — and tore away in the general direction of Ylicaw.

We got lost, of course — several times — which didn’t bother me in the least. I was scrunched into a corner of the back seat, Jodi on my lap, and my hands and lips were kept very busy indeed. By the time we finally did straggle into Ylicaw, I was as eager as a Cape Canaveral launching pad and as frustrated as a soap opera heroine. You could have fried an egg on me.

Ylicaw, by the by, was the other side of a state line or two, so I suppose I should have spent the next twenty years in jail. My purposes, concerning Jodi, were about as basic as it is possible to get.

At any rate, what with leaving the lake so late and getting lost now and again, we arrived at the greenwood stadium in Ylicaw just in time to watch our school bus pull away, toting the ball team back home again. We had managed to miss the game.

So there we were in the thriving metropolis of Ylicaw at ten-thirty of a weekday evening. None of us had ever been in that town before — what possible reason would anyone have for going to Ylicaw? — and from the look of the place we had arrived too late to watch them roll up the sidewalks.

We clambered out of our two-car caravan and conferenced around a lonely streetlight. There were no other pedestrians in sight. The stadium — barely large enough to deserve the name — lay shrouded in darkness, a condition shared by all the buildings we could see up and down the street. The only bit of neon in sight belonged, believe it or not, to a feed store.

And so we talked it over. We had come all this way, with great difficulty, and none of us wanted to simply turn around again and drive all the way back. We had to do something first, doggone it!

Unfortunately, Ylicaw was about the most unlikely spot for doing something that any of us had ever seen. At least that portion of it in view was pretty unlikely.

We finally decided to split into scouting groups, each heading off in a different direction, and we would all reassemble here at the cars in half an hour. If there was any life to be found anywhere in Ylicaw, one of our scouting parties would find it.

Jodi and I were a complete scouting party. We started walking, turned two corners, walked and additional block, and discovered a park. It was a small and dark and empty little park, about the size of a desktop, sporting grass and trees and assorted shrubbery and a couple of footpaths.

We looked at one another, and we looked at the park, and we looked at one another again. Jodi squeezed my hand, and her eyes were brighter than the streetlight across the way.

Without a word being spoken between us, we both turned as one and strolled into the park. We had half an hour before we were to return to the others. Half an hour would surely be sufficient. In fact, the condition I was in, an hour would be more than sufficient.

We strolled along the footpath, passing a bench to our right, two trees to our left, shrubbery to our right—

We turned right.

It was pitch black in there. Twigs crackled underfoot, bushes tugged at our knees and entrapped our ankles, a low-hanging tree branch brushed my face with coarse leaves. Jodi held my hand clenched tight in hers, and in all that blackness the only thing I could see was the bright gleam of her eyes, and above the thunder of our passage I could hear her breathing, as loud and irregular as my own.