Did It Really Happen? Three old friends & the night we’ve never talked about since.
Enjoy reading..
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As I get older, I find my thoughts drifting back, more and more often, to that one night, 20 years ago. Though it consumes my thoughts, sometimes I still find myself questioning whether it ever really happened. Was it just some adolescent fantasy that I’ve managed to fool myself into believing actually happened to me? But then I close my eyes and it’s like I’m right there again, in that tiny one room apartment. I can remember every minute detail: the precise placement of the beads of sweat on the small of Heather’s back, the texture of the ribbed cotton on Carlie’s tank top, the sounds of the x-rated movie playing in the background. And just like that, I’m rock hard. Twenty years later and it still does the trick instantly.
It was mid-July. I was a year out of college and working in Japan. I had a small, one room apartment on the outskirts of Osaka. Two of my best friends from college, Heather and Carlie, had flown all the way out to Japan to visit. We’d been through a lot together, backpacking through South America the summer before, staying in hostels and sharing dodgy hotel rooms. Once upon a time, there may have been some sexual tension between us – Carlie and I had even kissed a few times early in college – but we’d long since moved past that and settled into a very comfortable, very honest friendship.
Both Heather and Carlie had very similar personalities, which is why they were such good friends with each other. Neither had any real filter and would say whatever was on their mind. Carlie in particular had a habit of talking very candidly, and descriptively, about her sex life, which was quite active. Heather too was candid to a fault, and could cuss like sailor. Being around them had been an educational experience to say the least. I’d learned more about sex from listening to them talk than from any actual first-hand experience, and I don’t mean to suggest that I was some sheltered virgin. But being with them always made me feel like I was sitting in on some private conversation that I was never meant to hear. It was almost voyeuristic. And as a bit of an introvert, being around them was healthy for me. It drew out a more honest, less inhibited side of myself.
Although I rarely noticed her appearance, I can still picture what Heather was wearing that night. She had on tight blue jeans and a baby blue tank top with a tiny white flower pattern. The jeans accentuated her hips, which were easily her best feature. She was pretty but in a plain sort of way. Long, straight brown hair. A small chest. Always a bit of a tan.
It was a typical sweltering summer night in central Japan, the last night of their trip, and we’d been out drinking and singing karaoke at a place down the street from my apartment. As we walked back to my place, I caught myself staring at Heather’s hips as she walked in front of me. I’d seen her naked several times during our South American travels. She’d gotten to a point where she was so comfortable around me that she didn’t even bother trying to find another room to change in. I could tell this immodesty bothered Matt, her long time boyfriend, who had also been on the trip. But Heather was either oblivious or just didn’t care.
Carlie was very different physically. She was short, with curly brown hair. Her glasses gave her a bit of a bookish quality. She was attractive in a sexy librarian sort of way. But the thing you couldn’t help but notice about her was the enormous size of her breasts. For a petite girl like that, they were really something else. And she couldn’t help but show them off. There was no way to hide them. On that night, she too was wearing a tank top, a ribbed white one, with an unbuttoned blue shortsleeve shirt on over it. She had on short khaki shorts that showed off her skinny legs. Heather joked that she looked like a shorter, slightly more Jewish Lara Croft (Lara Croftberg, she’d cracked).
I had always been attracted to Carlie and was very up front about it when we first met. She had a boyfriend at the time (she always did) but she strung me along for a bit anyway, making me think we had a chance. We even kissed a few times. But I eventually realized that this was her M. O. I wasn’t her type; she just liked being wanted. She liked that I liked her. Once I came to peace with that, I just moved on, and we transitioned into a very comfortable friendship.
At the time of the Japan visit, all three of us were in relationships. Heather and Matt were going strong. Carlie was dating some older lawyer back home. And I was in a pretty exciting new relationship with a fellow ex-pat in Japan. So there really wasn’t any noticeable sexual tension between us and there hadn’t been for years. There was no reason to expect anything but another night of talking and laughter among old friends.
When we got back to my apartment, I cranked up the wall-mounted AC unit, but it was still very hot and muggy. We cracked open a few 22 ounce Sapporos we’d picked up from the vending machine outside and drank them as we reminisced about Argentina and various other shared adventures we’d had of over the years. I sat on my twin bed while Heather and Carlie sat on their respective sleeping bags with their backs against the wall, each of us in a different corner of the small room.
As it inevitably did, the conversation soon turned to sex. Repeating something she’d said in my presence many times over the years, Carlie complained that she was only capable of having an orgasm when she was on top (at least without manual stimulation). This was a constant source of frustration for her, as she considered herself to be far more sexually sophisticated than most girls her age. She’d been sexually active since she was 15 and had amassed an impressively long list of partners. As she usually did when this topic arose, Heather chimed in that she too found it easier to come on top, but that she could come in the missionary position too. In her words, “it just hits the right parts for me.” But she added – which was news to me – that recently she’d be able to come pretty regularly while doing it doggie-style (a term she hated). She said that it was just a matter of angling her butt in the right way and that when she’d finally figured it out, it was a “eureka” moment. Upon hearing that, Carlie actually made Heather get onto all fours and demonstrate the right angle. My only real contribution to the discussion was to note that I’d rarely made a girl come in any position other than her on top, at least without using my hand to help. That seemed to make Carlie feel better.
Next the conversation turned to porn. Both Heather and Carlie were curious what I thought of Japanese porn. They’d noticed the two VHS porn tapes sitting near my TV, loaners from one of my neighbors, which I hadn’t bothered to hide because I knew these two would be the last two people on earth to be offended by them. I told them it was very hit or miss. Some of it was pretty sexy, but a lot of it was very weird and almost clinical. The Japanese practice of blurring out the genatalia was also very strange.
You would think that watching pretty girls in tank tops graphically discussing sex, and even demonstrating various sexual positions, would get a bit of a rise out of me, get me a little hot under the collar. But it didn’t. This was just par for the course with these two and I’d gotten used to it over the years.
From there the subject somehow turned to our own bodies, and Heather mentioned that she and I had seen each other naked on several occasions during the South America trip. Carlie was a bit taken aback by that news. She had been with us only for the first half of that trip, when we were staying in hostels. She missed all of the time we’d spent on the tail end of the trip staying in cheap hotels where we’d often all crashed in the same room.
Carlie liked nothing better than mentally undressing guys and speculating what they’d be like in bed. She did it all the time, in front of me, and given that we’d almost hooked up several times early in our friendship, I’m sure she’d gone through the same mental exercise with me on many an occasion. I think that’s why it bugged her that Heather had seen the real thing. Carlie joked – semi-seriously – that it wasn’t fair that Heather had gotten to see me naked and she hadn’t. I responded that it was fair because Heather, unlike Carlie, had undressed in front of me several times.
Without any hesitation, Carlie fired back: “So if I show you mine, you’ll show me yours?”
Though she had a smile on her face, I could tell she was serious. I had no doubt that if I was willing to whip out my cock, she’d show me her breasts – which I’d always wanted to see. At the same time, I was suddenly very self-conscious. This was a girl who often talked about the cock size of her ex-lovers and had clearly seen enough naked men in her day to be able to grade me along a pretty wide continuum. And I had no doubt that’s exactly what she’d do if I showed her. As much as I wanted to see those breasts, part of me wanted to preserve the mystery and not just become another datapoint on her scale.
So I stalled. “This isn’t really a fair exchange,” I said, “your parts don’t change. They’re always the same size, always ready to be displayed. But if I show my flaccid penis, you’re not really seeing me at my best. And that’ll be the image you’ll always have in your head when you see me. It’s bad enough that Heather’s burdened with that.” I grinned as I said it but I was dead serious.
They both laughed at that, but Carlie wasn’t so easily deterred. She raised her eyebrow: “So who said it had to be flaccid?”
There was an uncomfortable pause as I struggled to catch up with her implication. “So what are you saying? That I should whip it out and start jerking off?”
“I’m not saying you should do anything. I’m just saying I understand why you’d want to look your best.” She looked over at the TV stand, “what if we put on one those pornos for a few minutes? That might do the trick, right?”
Heather spoke up, grinning, “I’d like to watch one of those anyway, even if you don’t want to show Carlie your dick.”