Almost three decades later, I still don't think it was
all that bad, really.
A little mechanical, perhaps, but that was all I knew, having been tutored
almost exclusively in the Alfa-Laval school of lovemaking.
Pushing buttons to turn a woman on to begin sex was a little foreign to
someone used to switching machines off to end it.
Besides, it was the first sex I’d ever had with a female that had no
hope at all of winning grand champion Jersey heifer at Gatton Show.
I remember fondly standing over her after the deed, drying myself off with
a number of beach towels and waiting for her to come to.
As those beautiful, creamy breasts lolled slowly and her ragged breathing
returned to normal, I stood there in awe, wondering momentarily what their
solids non fat percentage and butterfat yield might be.
Annabelle Meadow Maiden 3 - let’s just call her Annabelle Meadow Maiden
3 for the sake of this essay to protect the woman’s identity - finally
opened her eyes and gave me a long, passionate look from head to toe in
what I could only assume was foreplay to another bout of frenzied lustmaking.
An aloof Mister Willie stared indifferently at the plaster ceiling high
above me. Experience and nonchalance obviously went hand in hand.
Her lust-filled bluies wandered over my hardened body, then she propped
up on the pillow and finally spoke in that soft, husky voice of hers.
“Most men have triangular shaped torsos that begin wide at the shoulders
and end up wedge-shaped at the waistline,” Anna observed drily, as
if seeing me in a new light.
“Your body goes the other way.” As if in an ABC promo, she drew
in thin air an inverted triangle with the index finger of her left hand
to ram the point home a little more cruelly.
Mister Willie suddenly noticed that the room sorely needed recarpetting.
To this day, I’m buggered why she made such a cutting observation –
cruel but true – so soon after I’d send her to sexual nirvana
and back again.
Was it an angry yet somehow understandable backlash to the pain I’d
caused her?
Was it the realisation on her part that she’d probably need costly
stitches, what with Whitlam and Medibank, after all, still two years whence.
Regardless of the reason, I never ever realised that those hurtful comments
would return to deliver such a psychological kick in the balls more than
27 years later.
More than 27 years later.
Returning to the Lockyer Valley for a reunion with all your old Gatton agriculture
college chums is draining enough financially without being bankrupt emotionally
as well.
It's important when mixing with the snotty-nosed khaki-clad teenagers who
have gone on to make millions as exporters or who now have a PhD to hang
on the end of all their other letters they've acquired after you left college
in disgrace is to be able to show that you've been successful too.
And so it was with a forced smile of confidence that I drove over to pick
up an old school chum, Phillip Scrymgeour Bate, for our meeting with destiny.
A forced smile because the special super-strength corset was itching to
blazes and a good old fashioned scratch was nigh on impossible through the
rented designer casual clothes from the House of Jumanji.
Even the Swedish triplets in the back seat looked decidedly glum.
"With the amount I'm paying your agency, you could at least look as
if you're enjoying yourself," I admonished them through the rear-vision
mirror.
I couldn't wait to get to college and introduce them to my old pals as my
current girlfriends.
"There's an extra hundred bucks each if you really make an effort to
look as if you like being with me," I offered.
Heidi and Helga's faces lit up like a cactus bush but Maude stayed stoney-faced.
Maude I wasn't sure about but the woman at the agency assured me the girls
were the only 16-year-old Scandinavian triplets she had on her books.
I drove into Bate's driveway and chatted briefly with the tall elegant gentleman
with the full head of hair standing at the gate. He spoke using Bate's voice
and I said: "Phillip?"
"I've got a surprise for you," Phillip replied, as I poked my
head out the car window and admired his platform shoes, the fancy expensive
suit and matching rug.
Phillip used to be short, fat and bald and writes speeches for Rob Borbidge.
He's short, fat and bald again now that the reunion's over and still writes
speeches for Rob Borbidge. For a few more months anyway.
So what was the surprise? From around the corner of the house came an old
college flame of mine, Annie Chamberlain – one of the first five female
students on campus when Gatton went co-ed in 1969.
Annie doesn't know she's on old flame of mine. She was my first puppy love
– the first positive sign that my herd mentality was dimming –
but I never told her because there were some 400 other college puppies in
love with her too. And a few older dogs as well.
We made introductions and Annie settled in with the triplets in the back.
Phillip took off the platforms so he'd fit in the front and we began the
hour's trip up to the Lockyer.
Another important aspect to putting on a good appearance when meeting all
your old friends is to find out what everyone else has done with their lives.
There's nothing more embarrassing as you enjoy fellowship on the campus
lawns to drop the line that you're now a well-to-do movie producer before
you find out that one of the women ex-students standing beside you changed
her name to Jane Campion some years.
So we spent the short trip up running through as many names as possible
to get their stories - and our own - right.
And so it came, finally, to the ball-crusher, delivered unintentionally
just west of Ipswich by Annie.
"No, Annabelle Meadow Maiden 3 won't be coming," Annie said. "College
has too many bad memories for her."
Well, the Range Rover Deluxe VI Turbo Trailmaster almost left the road!
Luckily, I managed to get it back under control.
Did I mention the RangeRover Deluxe VI Turbo Trailmaster before? As I said,
this weekend was costing a packet, and the last thing I wanted was to return
the RangeRover Deluxe VI Turbo Trailmaster to Austral Motors with a dint
in it.
"Bad memories?" I asked as calmly as possible.
Annie expanded on the story. I soon wished she hadn't.
"Yes, it seems that for many years after she left college, Annabelle
needed therapy for apparently some very unpleasant things that happened
to her up there.
"She's okay now but she even had to change her name to get it all out
of her system.
"She now goes by the name of Queen Lucielle Lactating Lady Five (not
her real name) and she's about as happy as she can be.
My knuckles were white on the steering wheel.
"Under the circumstances." Whiter still.
This revelation is going to haunt me for many months later, I thought.
Many months later. The financial scars from that reunion
weekend are healing slowly and even the emotional injuries are a little
better.
Basically, I'm fighting back.
And as for you, Annabelle Meadow Maiden 3 or Queen Lucielle Lactating Lady
Five or whatever you call yourself nowadays, I still have fond memories
of that night when I started out on my career as a teenage sex god.
I've even accepted now that when you lay on that bed post coitus and your
entire body shook and your tummy trembled uncontrollably, well, okay, that
probably wasn't a delayed orgasm after all.
And when you opened your eyes and look at me and said: "Sorry",
those tears may not have been tears of joy either.
And I'm starting to realise why you made such a fuss about making the night
"our own little secret".
I kept that vow and I never told any of my mates what happened. I was just
happy that you never saw the half-page advertisement I put in that week's
Gatton Star.
But you're not going to spoil that special moment when a boy becomes a man.
No way!
I know now that I had a lot to learn and if we could turn back time and
do it over all again, I'd last twice as long and there's a hundred special
little tricks I've mastered and could use in those extra seven seconds.
I couldn't promise not to call out my own name on the vinegar stroke. That's
just a Leo thing that I've learned to live with.
And no. I don't need therapy to repress the memory of standing there that
night and watching your naked beauty.
It was a very, very special moment, especially when I noticed the alarm
clock had just clicked over to midnight.
It was August 1, 1970, I had just turned 20, and I had been a teenage sex god for the best part of 10 minutes.
