Hot summer day and I was looking forward to going to Chad’s house. Even though it was a short bike ride, I’d be sweaty by the time I got there and couldn’t wait to get into his pool. We didn’t have one; dad was too cheap to buy a house with a pool and cost-prohibitive to have one put in. No matter, Chad and I were best friends and his house was like a second home to me as mine was to him. And since he had a pool, we always hung out at his house in the summer and mine in the winter.
I was disappointed to see a car in the driveway I didn’t expect to see; we were supposed to have the house to ourselves, our parents had just begun leaving us alone without a sitter. I let myself in through the gate following the sounds of voices and laughter. Chad’s mother was lying out on a chaise in the sun drinking daiquiris with another mom. She greeted me warmly as always, saying Chad would be out soon.
Chad’s mom was really pretty, and it felt good that she was always so welcoming. Everybody likes their friend’s parents better than their own. Mr. and Mrs. Garrison just seemed cooler than my mom and dad. They were fun people and always had a party going. Mrs. Garrison introduced me to Mrs. White, who was just as pretty as she was; both were smoking cigarettes. Mrs. Garrison was always smoking.
Chad came out and we immediately went into the pool throwing a nerf football and splashing around like kids do. Once in the pool, I had a ground level view of the two moms. Both were already well-tanned and soaking up even more rays, the unmistakable Hawaiian Tropic coconut smell filling the air.
The wind changed direction causing a powerful and fresh scent of menthol smoke to wash over the pool. At that point Chad and I had taken a break from throwing the football and were just idly sitting beneath the water up to our chins. I couldn’t stop staring at the moms, especially Mrs. Garrison, nervously wondering if she could see me through the dark lens of her white-framed wayfarers. I cut my eyes back over at Chad as we talked about summer plans and baseball but make no mistake, my attention was focused on his mom. She had fully embraced the Jane Fonda/Richard Simmons aerobics craze and had not an ounce of fat on her body,
looking perfectly natural in a bikini more age appropriate for a teenager. It was a beautiful sight and did something to me.
I’d been coming to Chad’s house as long as I could remember but something was different that day. I didn’t realize it at the time but my early stages of puberty were quickly descending on me at that very moment. There was a tingly feeling throughout my body, making what little hair I had stand up and the stiffening that sometimes made its appearance some mornings lately had returned. It was as if for the first time, I was realizing just how hot my best friend’s mom was. I’ve always held a boyhood fascination with her but was now seeing it for what it was. The incessant entry and exit of the cigarettes from their mouths followed by smoke streaming out into the breeze combined with the view of full breasts busting out of skimpy bikinis, even the red toes and soles of their feet facing me at eye level were ravaging my budding libido. It was full sensory overload. Chad and I had just seen Ghostbusters and the scene where they crossed streams to create one powerful force entered my mind. In a weird analogy only I might get, that’s what I was feeling. The combination of two beautifully made up faces, the breasts, legs, bodies, even their toes – but especially the cigarettes were combining into one single overpowering force of arousal that flowed through my entire body. My heart pounded and I was actually dizzy. The two separate sets of lips puckered around their individual white tubes, the small thick clouds of milky white smoke disappearing into their mouths and coming out in streams filling the air were what captivated me; especially as the process caused their barely covered breasts to rise and fall. I was hypnotized; mesmerized; everything-ized.
Mrs. Garrison called over to us, asking if we wanted anything from inside. Chad accepted his mother’s offer for snacks, striking fear into me; no way I could get out right then. I was at least old enough to know that. I watched as the statue that was Mrs. Garrison saunter inside like she was gliding. While she was gone, Mrs. White flipped over onto her stomach, pulling her bikini bottoms into her crack to minimize the tan line. Add beautifully tanned round asses to the list.
This moment in time was the first time in my life I was turned on. The show continued with the two gorgeous women lying in the sun smoking incessantly on a perfect summer day as the music of that era played from the boombox – Prince, Springsteen, Madonna, Huey Lewis and the like.
The moms eventually went inside with Mrs. White going back to her house and Mrs. Garrison going in to do whatever. Chad went inside to go to the bathroom leaving me on my own for a few minutes. With nobody around I surveyed the
overstuffed shared ashtray, counting the butts that displayed shades of pink and red lipstick on white and orange filters lying on their sides and sticking up vertically. Why was I so fascinated? And why was I finding it so arousing? It was supposedly a dirty, gross, nasty habit that smelled bad. Not to me though, I was growing to love the smell of fresh smoke – but only from women. I realized now I had done the same thing when my mom had friends over. I’d just never had the physical manifestation of my arousal to connect it with until that day.
My own parents didn’t smoke; never had. Aside from Chad’s mom the only exposure I ever had to seeing women smoke were times my mom had friends over. Several of them smoked and I was remembering how curious I was at how some did and some didn’t. I was a good kid, quick to help mom clean up after her parties. Mom would go into the kitchen to do dishes and the first thing I’d do was clean out the ashtrays, trying to match brands with moms by where they were sitting and the shade of lipstick. I can’t explain it, it was just weirdly interesting to me; I keep going back to the word ‘fascinated’ in my mind. It was the only word that seemed to fit. That day in the pool a few years later, that fascination was being pulled into parity with my attraction to girls as my sexual awakening began. They had become one-and-the-same.
Nobody in my grade smoked yet; not that I was aware of anyway but I began to wonder. Once I was old enough to have a girlfriend, would she smoke? Maybe; hopefully. Anyone I would be attracted to would have to smoke; it was part of the equation now and would be for the rest of my life.