You Never Forget

Edited by blackrandl1958

*****

You never forget the first time. They stay milestones in your mind, and no matter how much time and distance has passed by, they're still as bright in your memory as the day it happened.

I got my very first real boy/girl kiss on the back of a church bus, late at night. I was sure I was going to burn in hell for doing it, but at the time I considered it worth it. I think that's when I realized the power the opposite sex had on each other. If I was going to hell, at least half a dozen more were going with me. I saw two other young couples locked in a tight embrace, him with his hand under her shirt, hers down the front of his pants.

I also got my first puppy love broken heart when my girlfriend threw me over for a boy with a car. I think it may have shaped my attitude towards promise breakers in my adult life.

Later, the first time I had sex, it was the same. It was a wonder and a miracle, and I had a hard time processing it, but I knew one thing for sure: I really, really liked it. My buddy, not so much. We'd done it in his mothers' brand new Mercury Marquis, the weekend after high school graduation. My buddy was allowed to drive it because he had graduated with honors, and it took us four hours of frenzied scrubbing to get it smelling "new" again.

We banged like bunnies for the rest of the summer, pretending we were adults and knew what we were doing, until she went off to college. I never dated her again; she had found a rich boyfriend at school and I was something in the rearview mirror.

Forty years later, every time we met, even if she was with her(third)husband, we'd end up locking eyes and grinning. You never forget.

Then I fell in love. Naturally, I never saw it coming; it started out just fooling around and having a good time, them "BAM," she was all I could think about. In retrospect, we were way too young, I was nineteen and she was twenty, but the attraction burned like the fires of hell: hot, bright, and all consuming.

I was a tall, lanky guy with wild hair and glasses. She was tall, as well, but rounded and lush, with long blond hair and bright blue eyes that seemed to look right through you. On the experience meter when it came to sex, I was a 1 while she was an 11.

She'd just smile and teach me something I had no idea how to do, but was damn happy to try. We fucked in every imaginable place in every imaginable position, as well as some that defied reason, as often as we could.

Suddenly it came to be more than the sex. We enjoyed each other's company, and were together so much she suggested we move in together. Forty years ago, that wasn't as common as it was now, but it happened often enough no one thought much about it.

We found a tiny little three-room apartment we could afford, and the owner cut us a break on the rent. She was a townie and didn't know much of anything, but I'd been raised on a farm and that forces you to be a jack of all trades. One thing, though, if I was patient enough with her, once she understood something, she usually became pretty good at it. I proposed one night as she was trying her best to get me up for the third time. Her hands tightened on my equipment before she let out a giggle.

"You're really a romantic, aren't you? Try it again when we're not horizontal and I'm not leaking like a broken faucet."

Then she put me in her mouth and all conversation ceased. I asked her again, three days later, while we were at her parents' house. Her dad wasn't home, but her mom almost fainted from happiness. The ring was tiny, but that didn't seem to bother her, and plans were made.

We married in a simple ceremony because her parents had almost no money. Then it was off for three days at Myrtle Beach, where she modeled a bikini so tiny I wondered if it was allowed on the beach. It seems it was, and most were damn happy with her choice. She got hit on right in front of me, and I almost blew a gasket because she didn't shut him down fast enough. Eventually, she saw the look on my face, waved her ring at him and told him he was a year too late. I think she realized pretty quickly I was not happy, so we cut our beach time short and she was all over me when we hit the room.

"Just you, honey. Always."

*****

We got home and started life as a couple. We had pretty decent jobs, but I got an opportunity to work for one of the top three employers in the county, at about a third more than I was making then. The catch was they operated rotational shifts, first one week, second the next, third the week after. It was a little disconcerting for the first couple of months, because I'd wake up at random times and wonder if I was supposed to be at work, but I adapted.

Things were fine for about nine months, but then I got an uneasy feeling. I'd call home when I was on second and no one answered the phone. Then there was a power outage and we all went home early, and she wasn't there. She came rolling in thirty minutes before my shift was supposed to end and almost fainted when she saw me.

"Where the hell you been?" She always told me she loved my eyes, but at that particular moment I don't think she liked what she saw in them. She stuttered around for a second before saying she was with her best friend Holly, just cruising. Believe it or not, back then, cruising was a thing. Gas cost like a quarter a gallon and the kids had a circuit. You started out at the court square, idled down main street for about two miles before you came to the hottest drive-in grill in town, made a loop, and cruised back. Kids would stop in parking lots to talk and hook up, and the cops were pretty cool, as long as there was no drinking and nothing got vandalized.

"You're a married woman now, Bets. You don't need to cruise."

Her temper flared. "I got bored. "There's only so much television you can watch, and I never was much for long conversations on the phone. For fucks sake, I'm on Main Street in front of hundreds of people. You don't think that if I hooked up ten people wouldn't tell you about it?"

We ranted at each other for another hour before we calmed down. I had to admit I was jealous, and she had to admit she enjoyed the attention when guys talked to them at the drive-in or at a parking lot while guys talked Holly up.

"They don't try to talk you up?"

She had a fleeting grin before she put her bland face back on. "Of course they do, honey. Just because I married you didn't suddenly make me ugly, but I make sure they don't do anything."

It was an uneasy weekend, but by the time it was over we had reached an understanding. She could go with Holly but the first whiff I got anything was not what it should be, we were over. I think that shook her up because she never in her wildest dreams thought I'd ever leave her.

Things went well until summertime hit. Then the lake parties started. I left for work at two thirty on the weeks I worked second, and she'd be in her bikini waiting for Holly to pick her up by three. If you mix hormones, weed, and booze in the correct ratio, shit happens, and it started rumors, rumors that got back to me. Instead of confronting her, I switched shifts with a guy, and Friday afternoon I was sitting at the quick stop in a borrowed car and waited until Holly's van went past. I followed them right to the party spot on the lake, parked at a boat landing half a mile past, and walked back.

I sat in the bushes and watched as she flirted and drank. In an hour, everyone was buzzed and Holly stood up. "Skinny dippin' time!"

Her top flew right by where I was hiding and soon the bottoms followed. Bets was right behind her. There were five women and six guys and soon they were all naked. It was just after dark, so I gathered up as many bathing suits and clothes as I could and walked to the other side of the bay. bundling everything with rocks and wading out until I was chest deep before slinging them as far as I could. I watched them sinking for a minute before swimming back to where they were. I found Bets wrapped up with a guy, one hand on a boob and the other under the water and she was moaning.

I grabbed him by his long hair and sank down, dragging him with me. Bets stood there stunned as my face appeared above the surface. The water was roiling around me as the panicked guy tried to breathe. "Don't come home, bitch! I'm sure fuck buddy will let you stay with him, until he gets bored, then you'll be on the street like just another whore. Maybe I'll cruise by sometime. You always gave good head, and I bet you've improved now that you've had extra practice."

It didn't come out as smoothly as that, but she got the sentiment. The next thing I knew Holly was on my back, digging grooves with her long nails. I let go of dickhead and he rose up, spitting water and gasping. I pulled the bitch off me and slammed a fist into her stomach. The air went out of her like a punctured balloon and she sank like a rock.

"One of you dickheads better pull her up or you'll be short one whore."

Bets was trying to talk, but I just dove under again, halfway across the small bay before I resurfaced.

*****

She stayed gone three weeks, living with her parents. She went straight to work, and straight home. I got a few indirect threats over chunking their clothes, and I'd bet it was a pretty interesting ride home for some. Nobody got in my face about it because I was known to be a pretty good scrapper, but more importantly, I didn't know how to quit. If I fought someone all I could think about was killing them. It led to some pretty interesting situations and I almost went to jail a couple of times, but word got out. If you fought against me, you'd better be sure you won. If you didn't...

She begged, she cried, she apologized. I stopped her cold one day when I asked her a question.

"How many?"

"How many what?"

"How many dudes did you fuck while I was at work busting my ass to give us a better life?"

She went really quiet and I grinned. "Too many to remember?"

"NO! Three, all right? Three."

"There you go then. You fucked three guys not me, and that tells me you'll never quit. Why stick to the menu when you can have the buffet? Look, we don't own shit, we ain't been together long enough for alimony, you take your shit, I'll take mine and we'll call it quits."

She fainted. Her mother, who I was always fond of, came to the apartment to beg me to take her back. "She's learned her lesson, son. Give her another chance, you won't regret it." Her father was old school, and he told me to beat the hell out of her and get over it.

It took three months before we got back together, after a lot of promises and a few threats. By then, my company had expanded their building to twice the size it was before, doubling their capacity to produce. A side effect was that they didn't need three shifts to get everything done any longer, so they cut out third.

I also got a promotion, becoming a lead/set up man in the finishing department. We were on production, and when my group started earning more, they investigated to see why.

It was mostly women on my crew, and I had to set up the various machines for the orders, so I always did a box or two to make sure everything was to spec and in good working order. My counterpart would set a machine up, run two or three products through it, and go back to the office, if he was doing the second shift. I stayed on the floor, helping the packaging man seal and set the boxes on the correct pallet, and as we got better, I taught him a couple of the simpler changeovers. Sometimes we'd have two or more machines set up and running so the ladies just moved from one to another with no downtime.

The packaging guy and I got paid on an average of what the line produced, and we were making a dollar more an hour than our counterparts. It got so bad that if an opening came up the women on the other shift would put in for a transfer.

It came to a head when the other guy confronted me. "You're making me look bad!"

I grinned. "Nope. You're doing that all on your own. You and Jesse need to keep your asses out on the floor, help the girls out a little. Then you'd be making money."

It got so bad management got involved, asking me to take his packaging guy for a couple of weeks to learn my system. I figured it would be a fight, but Jesse was more than willing to learn and really didn't want to go back to his shift when training was over.

John all but kissed me when he got back. "Eric is a jerk and a joke. The women despise him, but they loved me. Their pay went up by fifty cents an hour and they begged me to stay with them."

Fifty cents and a dollar doesn't sound like much now, but forty-five years ago, that was a lot.

*****

Then Eric did something monumentally stupid: he hit on a married woman with a jealous husband, to the point of threatening her job if she didn't do what he wanted. For some reason, she came to me and I sent her to our manager, who promised to fix it.

He didn't. He and Eric were drinking buddies from way back, so he hid the situation from upper management. It all came apart when the husband came to the plant, threatening to kick ass if something wasn't done about it. It was right at shift change, and I sent John to get the production manager while I tried to talk him down.

Then his wife showed up, looking scared to death. She'd held it in, but when Eric grabbed her so hard she had bruises on one breast, she left in the middle of her shift and told her husband everything.

Eric came in, saw us talking to the production manager, and went pale. Then he tried to bluff it out. "What's she doing here? I fired her last night for being insubordinate and poor job performance."

The production manager was a guy in his forties, and he'd seen this type of things before. "Eric, you're a lead man. You don't have the authority to fire anyone, all you can do is document a situation and take it to your manager. I think we all need to go into the conference room and talk this over."

He got our manager, the plant manager, and they all left. Her husband was still standing there. They had promised him they would get to the bottom opf the situation and he could take his wife home for the night, with no impact on her job. I went on to my job.

The next day Eric was no longer with us and the finishing manager was on probation. The production manager called me into his office. "Sabrina said she told you about the situation and you went through channels, referring her to the finishing manager. This true?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "All right. I want to ask for your help. You've got John trained pretty well, so we're going to offer him Eric's job. You've also worked with Jesse, but he doesn't have the experience we need. We need you to work with both of them and train someone for John's old job. Will you help? I'm thinking maybe a split shift to start, for at least two months. We'll make it worth your while."

What does Bill think about this?"

Bill was the finishing manager. The production manager smiled. "Oh, he's on board with it. Will you do it?"

It was two more dollars an hour. I couldn't wait to tell Bets.

*****

Bets seemed impressed. "So, you're getting a raise and working a split shift. Is this some kind of promotion?"

"Sort of. It'll make me look good to management. Who knows?"

"Well, all right, then. It'll be nice to have you home every evening."

For two weeks I worked twelve hours or more a day. Things were coming together when another incident occurred. The finishing manager was not happy about being on probation and tried taking it out on me. It came to a head when I was underneath a machine, working on a breakdown. I'd already shifted the crew to another job I had set up, but this order was time sensitive. I had it taken apart when he called me to the office. Our office was little more than an eight-by-eight cubicle with glass looking out over the floor. He could literally see me from where he was.

I kept working. He called me again, then did something incredibly stupid. He whistled into the PA and said, "My office, now!"

I had finished the repair and motioned for the new guy to get the ladies back to the machine and stormed into the office. He was all ready with a rant and I stopped him cold, getting right in his face. "Let me tell you something. If you want something that comes when you whistle, you need to get a damn dog. We clear here? Now, what did you need?"

"You can't disrespect me like that! I'll fire your ass!"

"You want respect, you need to earn it. Let's keep this professional here. Again, what did you need?"

He ranted for five minutes, forgetting the PA was on. The whole plant heard it, not just my group. "You're fired! Get the fuck outta here!"

He was about to go into another rant when the door opened and the production manager came in, followed by the plant manager. The plant manager reached over and switched the PA off. Then he turned to face the finishing manager.

"You should really make sure things like this are off before you go into a rant. Want to tell me what went on here?"

"I called him on the PA to come to my office. I gave him a direct order and he disobeyed it, then came in and gave me attitude."

He looked at me. "Did he call you?"

"Yes, he did?"

"Did you come?"

"I was under Number 1, realigning the shaft. I was right in front of him and he could see me from the office. I only had about five minutes before it was fixed, so I stayed on it. It's a Mira order, sir, and they need it by in the morning. As soon as I was done, I came in to see him, and I did tell him I didn't like being called like a dog. You most likely heard what I said and I'm not retracting it."

Mira was by far our biggest customer and incredibly fussy, but we made a ton of money off them and we weren't about to upset them. He looked at the manager. "Did you know why he was working on it so hard?"

"It doesn't matter. He disrespected me and I want something done about it!"

"You don't think whistling for him like a pet wasn't disrespectful? Grow up, Bill. This is the real world."

He turned to me. "You, get back to work. Come by my office in the morning."

Then he looked at the manager. "And you, leave him alone so he can do his job. Another confrontation and one or both of you will have to go. Understand?"

He didn't like it, not at all, but he shook his head.

"I need to hear you say it out loud."

"No more confrontations."

He looked between us. "Good enough. Now, it's time for us to go home. Jeff, make sure that Mira order is completed before you leave, all right?"

"Yes sir."

If looks could kill I'd have been dead before I'd taken six steps out of the office. I got with my packager, and we helped the women finish the order, running it slightly faster than normal because we had the manpower to do it.

*****

I went in a little early the next day and waited outside the plant managers' office for a few minutes before he called me in. He sat back in the chair for a minute, just looking at me, before he broke into a grin.

"I had an interesting morning. I talked to the ladies on duty and they all told the same story, that Eric propositioned all of them and Bill did nothing, he even propositioned a couple himself. When I confronted him, he went into a rage, threatened to resign, so I let him. He tried to take it back but I told him we'd launch a formal investigation, maybe get the cops involved, so he left. That puts me in a bit of a bind. For the foreseeable future, you're the temporary finishing manager. I still want you to work the split shift and get everybody trained, but from now on you have to attend the staff meetings every afternoon. Do a good job, Jeff, and you may have the job permanently. Interested?"

Well, hell yeah, I was interested. My pay got bumped up another three dollars, putting me way above average for the time.