Maggie– Oh, and the beauty she had shone like a light. Her big brown eyes and matching dark hair danced in my dreams by night and in my dreams by day; her visage entreated my piqued adolescent hormones throughout my formative years.
Once, at a youth retreat in Illinois the girl almost kissed me.
We’d flirted around the issue for some time. In my mind we were already there – we just needed a little bit of seclusion. While walking from one event to the next, that seclusion dropped in around us. Our friends had gone ahead, leaving Maggie and me, moving slowly, (a term that described our entire relationship) on a hot Illinois afternoon. We came upon a French drain with an elevated spillway—upon which Maggie stood. With the added height she looked me straight in the eyes and asked me if I’d like a “light and fluffy.” I ran through the lexicon of dirty vocabulary describing ‘acts’ that my teen-aged self hoped to have enacted upon my person, and came up empty. But it didn’t matter, I didn’t care what she called it, I wanted it.
She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me closer. Her smiling lips were tempting and gleaming, as she had just licked them. I leaned forward slightly, but she checked me and said, “ready?” I nodded my agreement. She squared her forehead with mine and her eyes became predatory slits (all the while my brain is saying I don’t think….I’m not sure…? But, never fear, I didn’t start listening to my brain for many years after this event. My libido was entirely in control) and she lunged her head forward with huge force, striking me directly and devastatingly upon my own forehead. The explosion of light blinded me, I doubled over trying to retain consciousness. Maggie doubled over too; in laughter.
Later I discovered that she had entreated me to a “light and fluffy” because she didn’t think I’d say yes if she asked to head-butt me. She had created the euphemism on the spot–clever girl.
In my Junior year of college Maggie gave me the opportunity to make good on some real “light and fluffy” but after 10 minutes of sitting at the foot of her bed failing to make my move and drowning that fact with small talk, something happened–it wasn’t a boner.
I think a seed of thought lodged itself within the fleshy bits of my shell-shocked frontal lobes–way back on that hot afternoon in Illinois. That thought grew to fruition and bloomed as I was sitting in her room contemplating eating her mouth, with my mouth–it told me: “Maggie is not what you think she is, ya buddy, she’s a looker–but she’s craaaaaazy.” At that moment everything shifted, Maggie was no longer the sought after, babe-raham Lincoln that I had coveted as a teenager. She was a super hot, manic weirdo who head-butted me for fun once, knowing that she could take advantage of my affections. I couldn’t bring myself to kiss the girl only to satisfy a curiosity. I left.
And always (and pleasantly) wondered what I missed out on—Maggie is now married to a wonderful man with a name reminiscent of an apple computer, and has a baby on the way. I never did ask him–if he too, had received a light and fluffy.
