Bronx Park East Ch. 09

I wrote this series five years ago, but I had an idea for a new chapter that covers more details about the brief affair of students Lenore Rojet and Paul D'Amato. Much of this is about Lenore's Aunt Julia, who dramatically intervenes after Paul's first summer break from college. See the entire series starting at Bronx Park East Chapter 01.

A version of Paul D'Amato also appears on a different timeline in the various series about Nora Meara. See, for example, the stories that start with My Summer with Nora Ch. 01.

*****

When I finally landed my first girlfriend in the early summer of 1974, I soon learned something surprising about the nature of male-female relations. She was one of my neighbors named Lenore Rojet.

After a frustratingly dateless freshman year at the City College of New York, the proverbial girl-next-door was actually downstairs. I had tried everything to meet someone during my freshman year, including joining one of the five student newspapers at CCNY, but nothing worked.

Then, in late May, Lenore had moved into my apartment house, a 1920s-vintage building on Bronx Park East. She lived in apartment 4F while I lived two floors up in 6E. It was a bit awkward at first, but inevitably, I often rode up and down in the elevator with her as we came and went from the building.

I wasn't used to chatting up girls, but she would talk to me in the elevator and spend more time at that in the lobby. I was inexperienced, but I knew it wasn't important for me to know what she saw in the likes of me. She saw something, which was enough.

In the first week of July, I got the courage to ask her for a date, a very simple one at a pizza shop nearby, and she accepted it. Within a few days, our affair was moving faster than I had ever expected. After that, I always associated my first romance with the smell of warm lubricating oil from the electric motor on top of the elevator cab.

*****

It only lasted a few months, but being my first, it was memorable. Yet we were both a bit cagey initially about revealing too many details about our personal lives. Maybe that fit in well with my naturally reticent personality.

Lenore was a year younger than I was, and she would start attending Lehman College, another branch of the City University system, in September. Her parents were divorced, and I never met them. Instead, she lived in a two-bedroom apartment rented by her thirty-nine-year-old Aunt Julia.

It took a couple of months, but I found out something to my surprise about getting a girlfriend. Sometimes it results in a sort of "pre-approval" among the various other women known to the first one, including various friends and relatives. I'd heard one woman once say, "They'll never say it out loud, but women know how picky women are. So if they see a guy with a woman on his arm, they'll know he must have something about him that attracted her."

I can't say for sure how often that is true, or what exactly it was that "I had." It was true that Auntie Julia made her move on me in September and quickly seduced me in a single afternoon. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but after my previous lifetime dry spell, I was easy pickings and I offered no resistance. I suppose most nineteen-year-old guys would have done the same thing. It was the 1970s, and it seemed like everybody else was doing whatever they pleased sexually.

*****

During that summer, Julia worked during the day downtown as a buyer in a department store. I had a desultory part-time job as a foot messenger, also downtown, which I often skipped if I had something else to do. Lenore, while anticipating her first college semester, had no paid job or, in fact, anything else to do except hang around with me. Thus, we had all day to spend in the apartment and then have time to go out in the evening after Julia came home.

What we did in the apartment during the day was teach each other about sex. Or rather, Lenore taught me, usually in her bedroom. I had little idea of what I was doing, but Lenore had a step-by-step agenda to deal with me over the course of a couple of weeks.

She never revealed where she got her information and techniques from, although she usually had some pornographic publication to demonstrate whatever she wanted to teach me. Her claim was that her aunt owned them and did little to hide them in the house.

Thus, instead of the more common awkward late-adolescent fumbling around, we had a very pleasant but relaxed time in her narrow bedroom. We'd sit in there on her bed, have a beer or smoke some pot, and peruse whatever magazine she wanted to show me.

The very first time, she had an old copy of the defunct East Village Other that had an explicit multi-panel R. Crumb cartoon in it. Somehow, the erotic misadventures of Crumb's alter-ego Phonus Balonus had given Lenore the plot for our first sexual experience. She wound up giving me a handjob on her bed, which I followed up with a finger-fucking of her.

When we were done pleasuring each other, we raised the blinds and had another round of beers while looking at the view outside her window. The apartment was at the back of the building, facing east, and we idly gazed over a set of one-story storefronts at the elevated trains passing on White Plains Road.

In the next steps, we performed our first oral sex on each other, and then she finally took my virginity by giving me a cowgirl on the living room couch.

During those episodes, she had those very explicit magazines to inspire me. Whether she was truly as proficient as she appeared or whether she was just making it up as she went along was irrelevant to me. It was all going great, and I felt, somewhat arrogantly perhaps, that I was getting the happiness I finally deserved.

****

Lenore's last name, which people usually mispronounced as Roe-Jet, was from her French-Canadian father, who had brought his wife and only daughter to New York in the mid-1960s. Even in the diverse city, French-Canadians were hardly a major ethnic group in The Bronx.

By the time I had met her, she was living with her aunt, her mother's half-sister. I got the impression that Lenore was not comfortable talking about her tangled family situations, so I didn't press the issue.

I was lucky that Julia, who wanted to be referred to by her first name, took a liking to me from the very beginning. She obviously knew what was going on between her niece and me, and she proclaimed me as a "good choice for Lenore." Maybe it had something to do with me having attended a specialized high school, although I never asked why.

I got invited to dinner at the apartment a couple of times. That was all better than the kind of unnerving family opposition stories I'd heard from other people starting new relationships with boyfriends or girlfriends.

Lenore and I were basically left to do as we pleased, and we spent a lot of time going out together on the weekends or in the evenings. I didn't have a car or much money, but she seemed pleased to roam around the city with me on foot or by public transit.

In August, I took her to a party held by the members of my student newspaper. It was in an apartment in a ramshackle wooden house in the West Bronx. I hadn't seen most of the other staffers since June, but I had mentioned that I had a new neighbor whom I was going to bring to this function.

Everyone I knew must have assumed it had to be some guy because they had never seen me in the previous ten months with any female prospects, nor had I even talked about one. Thus, I liked the surprise of bringing this nice-looking girl and catching everybody off guard.

Lenore knew I had done it that way deliberately to show her off, especially to the various male staffers who had thought I was a hopeless case. She didn't mind getting some of that attention for herself. I remember thinking, hey guys, see I can land a cute chick if I just put my mind to it. I originally found this lady in my building's elevator.

I miscalculated once by taking her by bus on Labor Day weekend to Orchard Beach, a city-owned park and swimming area a couple of miles from where we lived. I had decided not to go swimming. There was no pool, and the water of Long Island Sound had no surf and didn't seem that clean to me.

It was an extremely hot day, and the entire place was crowded with many of the 1.5 million people of the borough. Some women would have seen how badly I had botched my date plan and then perhaps just left me there and gone home.

But Lenore and I made the best of it, and we found some privacy in an abandoned rail station next to the Amtrak Northeast corridor. We were able to have sex in there as she bent over, leaning on a wall, as I took her from behind. Under those difficult conditions, it wasn't the best time we ever had together. It did show that she could take a setback in stride and make the best of it.

Later, as we wandered along the boardwalk, she brought out a pint of Jim Beam bourbon from her purse, and we enjoyed that. I'm sure we weren't the only people imbibing alcohol or other substances out there on that day, but we were among the few who got drunk enough to sit on a bench and sing. I remember that Cream's "White Room" was on our playlist, probably because it mentioned a railroad station like the one we had recently left. I still haven't figured out what "tired starlings" referred to.

*****

In September, I started my second semester at CCNY and Lenore began her first at Lehman. Perhaps somewhat foolishly, I did not attempt to keep my part-time job or get another one. My lack of ambition was almost invisible to me. In any case, we both had more to do during the day.

In that month, some notable things happened. The first involved Aunt Julia. Since she had two decades on me, I had rarely noticed much about her. She had been divorced for a while, and I had never met her departed husband. Nor did I ever notice her dating guys around her age or any guys at all in fact. I detected her loneliness, but she was not the kind of person to indulge in self-pity. She obviously liked me, and she was warm and friendly when dealing with me.

She was attractive in a somewhat unconventional way. She had a prominent nose and wore steel-rimmed glasses. Her nearly black hair was cut in a tight bob cut style, I guess it's called, and she often had a hairband to keep it in place.

At about five-six, her body was still trim with some nice curves to it. A notable thing about her was that she often preferred to wear a dress or skirt even if she was not going to work. She had a sense of style about her clothes, and she knew what looked flattering on her.

I had noticed a few quirks about her, like the porn magazines that Lenore borrowed from her. I hadn't yet found out where she had gotten them. Perhaps she was also a bit old to be an R. Crumb fan, but she liked his work and had obtained various copies of it.

Late one weekday morning, she called me at my house. "Hey Paul, Lenore is at Lehman today. I'd like you to come up here and have a drink with me."

That was unusual because I had never spent any time alone with her before. Yet something about the situation intrigued me anyway. I think I knew from the beginning that it was a bad idea to go there, but I also convinced myself that it would be rude to turn her down.

When she opened the door, Julia was dressed in a short-sleeved light-colored dress and dark nylon stockings. She also had bright red lipstick, which was common for her.

She smiled at me, and for the first time as I stood there, I noticed her not merely as Lenore's aunt. At that point, I could finally see the totality of her as a woman, and she looked pretty good indeed. "Would you like a glass of wine? I have red, white, and rosé."

"Ah, sure." I choose red for myself. "Don't you have to go to work today?"

She seemed to be in a good, even playful mood. "Don't worry about it. I'm playing hooky today!"

While she was in the kitchen, I assumed -- or hoped -- that it was merely a social call. We'd sit at the dining room table, perhaps, and chat about things, maybe Lenore's new college career. I knew Julia was fond of me, and I found it easy to talk to her.

She came back with wine in water tumblers for both of us. "Let's have these in my room."

That's when I realized that I wasn't such a gentleman after all. I knew it was wrong to fool around with one's girlfriend's older relatives, but I went with her anyway. And it wasn't simply a matter of appearing rude or not. I felt a mixture of both dismay and excitement. What exactly does this lady have in mind? I already knew, even if I tried to imagine that I didn't.

Julia's room was larger than Lenore's, which was right next to it, and it also had a window facing east from the back of the building. She sat on the edge of her bed with her wine glass while I sat in a nearby chair. And she didn't waste much time talking. She mentioned that she had been divorced for several years, and I got the impression that she hadn't found any guys worth dating.

She then said, "I wonder, do you ever think of me when you're alone?" The meaning of that was obvious. She giggled and winked at me. "Of course not. You don't know me that well yet, but you certainly will soon!"

Arguably, we were both in the wrong. Maybe she shouldn't have been going after her niece's young lover, but I could have finessed my way out of the situation if I had wanted to. But I really didn't want to do that.

Like Lenore, Julia moved fast when she wanted to close an erotic scenario. Without any warning, she unzipped the back of her summery dress and lifted it over her head. That's when I found out that she had a taste for retro-style lingerie. Underneath, she had a black garter and straps for her stockings and red panties that seemed to match the color of her lipstick.

Referring to her underthings, she said, "Do you like the way these look? I know you do, and I like wearing sexy stuff under my clothes that no one else can see." They certainly worked well when revealed during a seduction scene like the one we were then entering.

She crooked a finger at me to come over to the bed, and perhaps I did hesitate for a moment. As I sat there somewhat confused, she put one of her hands on mine and pulled me over to sit next to her on the edge of her bed. She kissed me, not for very long, but it was a real kiss, not a peck on the cheek. I held her and I kissed back for a few moments.

"You haven't told me yet that you like what I'm wearing." Of course I did, but I didn't want to say it. This Aunt Julia is one hot number. She was potentially a lot of trouble, too. No, I was already in a lot of trouble.

She then pulled down the front of her rather skimpy bra to reveal her breasts. Her red panties got lowered next, but she managed to leave them dangling on one of her ankles.

I couldn't control myself; I felt up every part of her body I could reach, which was most of it. Then she pulled away a foot or so and said, "What we'll do today -- we'll pleasure each other orally. You can get it first." That reminded me of Lenore too, who also liked to take control of a sexual situation and issue instructions, or maybe I should call them preferences.

With her underwear removed, I stood in front of her and she lowered my pants for a blowjob. She was very good at it too, very subtle in fact. But a line had been crossed that we couldn't go back over. I gripped her tight hairdo and moaned as she licked, kissed, and sucked on me. She had moved her glasses to the top of her head so that they'd be out of the way. At one point, she stopped and said, "I just love getting my lipstick all over a man's stiff cock."

I wondered if she would swallow when I came in her mouth, and she indeed tried. Some of it dribbled down her chin, but she was amused by that. I gave her my handkerchief to blot up the excess. When she got her voice back, she said, "Hey, sex is a very messy business!"

Afterwards, I sat on the bed next to her and we indulged in more kissing and hugging. But that didn't last long. She grinned at me and said, "You do know what time it is, right?"

"I do?"

"Sure, it's eating out Aunt Julia time."

I figured that if this nice lady was kind enough to blow me so well, I owed her something in return. A good bout of cunnilingus would be appropriate.

For that, she sat on the edge of the bed again while I knelt between her legs. From my practice with Lenore, I knew what to do. In fact, soon after I started, she was moaning and said, "You know what you are doing. Have you had lessons?

I was startled, and then I understood that it wasn't a reference to Lenore. She continued, "You'd be surprised at how many men are completely clueless about pussy-licking. They couldn't find a clitoris if there was a chart on the wall." She seemed to have strong opinions about other men's cunt-licking abilities, and I was making the grade on that point.

I thought she tasted exactly like Lenore did. Maybe all women are the same? When her orgasm arrived, that reminded me of Lenore as well. She was very noisy, and she moved her legs around a lot; her body came off the bed as I grasped her hips.

After that, she fell back on the bed and relaxed. My pants were still down; I looked at myself and saw that I had an erection again. I could have gotten my clothes back together, but I thought Julia might help me out if she noticed my condition. She did sit up and look at me.

"I can take care of that boner for you." Her side table had a jar of Vaseline, which she retrieved. Before she opened it, she put her hands in the air and waved them around.

She said, " 'Let your fingers do the walking.' " That was a reference to the TV commercials of the time for the yellow pages phone book. Julia indeed let her fingers, with some help from her palms, walk all over my stiff cock.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, but now she was kneeling in front of me. She said, "It's going to be so nice when you come. This time, I get to see it all!"

I was saying the usual dumb things like, "Oh, please, that feels so good." Well, of course it did; she was holding me by the base as her other hand stroked me. At times, she brought her second hand up to assist the first one.

"Believe me, Julie here knows how to stroke a cock, especially the one on a nice young guy such as yourself. I'm sure your second shot is going to outdo your first one, and that was pretty impressive in itself. I couldn't even swallow it all!"

A thought came to me. I had met several mature women in my life -- including a lot of my teachers -- but I had never gotten the slightest hint of sexual interest from them. I couldn't imagine them considering me as a "hot young guy." I wondered that maybe they had thought about it, but had kept it hidden from me.

Well, I was nineteen now, and Julia seemed to be uninhibited in her lust for me. Her next words during the handjob were, "You don't mind me talking about all this, do you?"

"Of course not, say whatever you wish."

"Well, I know young men can put out splooge all day long; they have the stamina for it." It wasn't clear if that was something she knew from first-hand experience, or maybe she had merely heard about it. I wondered what she had been like when she was younger, perhaps before she had been married.

She had more to say, "I can feel the cum building up inside you. I just know I'm going to be impressed when it spurts out."

When it happened, I was impressed myself. The stream went up and out. Julia moved left to evade it, but a bit of it landed on her right shoulder. She wasn't annoyed, however. Instead, she giggled and said, "God, that is just beautiful. A man's ejaculation is one of the most amazing things in the world."

Then, she hugged and kissed me again. I rewarded her by feeling her all over her crotch, her ass, and her tits.

"Paul, you naughty boy, now you're making me horny again. I'd really like it if you finger-fucked me. You do know how to do that, I assume? I'll put my own fingers down there to help you out."

"Yes, Julia, I know how to do it." Then I set out to prove it.

*****

For a while, we lay lengthwise on the bed and held each other. I knew the rest of the world was coming back into focus when I heard an elevated train passing a half-block away. Like in my sessions with Lenore, I hadn't noticed the noise in a while.

After a few minutes, Julia got up. She put her red panties back on, but not the rest of her clothes. I thought for a moment that she might dismiss me from the apartment. After all, wasn't this just a brief and casual encounter which was now ending?

But I was wrong; it wasn't ending but just starting. "Let's sit on the sofa for a while." When we entered the living room, she asked me, "Would you like more wine? I'm going to have a rum and Coke for myself. You want one of those?"

Now that the afterglow of sex was fading, I was starting to realize what we had done and I was feeling somewhat agitated. For one thing, I had no idea when Lenore would return, and I was reluctant to ask. "Thank you, but no. Just a glass of seltzer would be fine."

Maybe I was paralyzed with guilt, but I made no attempt to leave. Julia came back with our glasses and put them on the coffee table, then she sat down and cuddled up to me on the sofa. I noted that she was still down to her lingerie.

Man, shouldn't this lady get some clothes on? If Lenore walked in at that time, we'd have absolutely no plausible deniability. I was very fidgety, yet Julia looked very relaxed as if she had no worries at all. She said, "As I mentioned, I want you to know that I think you've been a very good match for Lenore."

Then why did you insert yourself into this situation? I had already assumed that she must know that I was having sex with Lenore. In yet another similarity to her niece, Julia liked to have a post-coital drink or two while listening to music. For the next forty minutes, we listened to an entire album on the stereo. During that time, she talked to me about various aspects of our lives.

Then she said, "I want to hear The Mamas and The Papas now. But first, I'm getting dressed." Thank you, Lord. Now it might not look so bad if Lenore came home.

Julia put on the same dress as before. When she sashayed back from her room, she said, "Oh, let me refresh my drink." Yeah, like you need another one of those.

She put "If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears" on the turntable. Just before that, sje looked at the album cover and asked me my opinions about Michelle Phillips and the late Cass Elliot.

"First of all, I don't know these people personally. But Phillips looks like she'd be high maintenance. My impression of Elliot is that she'd be a lot of fun to be with." I added, "She didn't have a happy life, but apparently she had a lot of boyfriends."

"So, you like big girls?"

"Well, some of them."

Julia was interested in the topic. "Tell me a bit about a big girl you liked."

By that point, the record had started. I was a bit reluctant to answer her question, but I could detect her curiosity. "All right, on my college paper last year, there was this redhead named Carole. She would wear tight jeans, and she just had the biggest, most spectacular ass I've ever seen."

"You should have asked her out."

"She was a lot taller than I am." And a lot heavier too. "Also, I didn't know how to approach her."

"You should have tried anyway. You might have had some good times with her, I think."

"Julia, I think I would like that drink now, I mean a rum and Coke."

"Sure, sweetie, I'll get you one."

When listening to the album, I thought "Straight Shooter" was an underrated song. It reminded me of what was going on with Julia. Baby, baby, treat me right, or I won't come around your door -- no more! Yeah, I was not a straight-shooter when it came to Lenore.

When the album was done, I fumbled around for an excuse to leave. Julia finally caught my intention and said, "That's okay, I know you've got a life to live."

When we kissed goodbye, I said, "Julia, Jesus loves you more than you will know."

That seemed like a risky joke, to compare her to Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, but she found it funny. "Come on, I'm a lot nicer to you than she was to him. Paul, would you like me to seduce you?"

"You already have."

"Not all the way yet, I'm just getting started! So, I'll call you and you'll let me know when you're available? How does that sound?"

I didn't have to commit myself right then, but I already knew I would do it. And Mrs. Robinson would be a topic we'd mention again.

On the way down in the elevator, I thought, so clearly this is not going to be a one-afternoon stand.

*****

As soon as I went through the lobby door downstairs, I met Lenore coming in. Man, that was a close call. She kissed me and said, "Have you been drinking?"

"Just one glass of rum." I hoped it covered the taste of Aunt Julia's pussy juice on my face. I had been sloppy enough not to clean up afterwards.

"You look a bit rattled. Where are you going?"

"Just for a walk." Then I had an inspiration. "I'd like you to go with me." That way, she wouldn't go up and see Julia when the latter herself was still getting her emotional bearings.

I tried for the most bucolic route I could think of, which was north along the eastern edge of Bronx Park. We didn't say much along the way. About ten blocks north at Allerton Avenue, we found a bench to sit on just inside the park.

Lenore was sensitive to my feelings even when I tried to put on a Stoic front. "You still seem a bit off to me."

I couldn't think of a pretext, so I just said, "Really? I'm fine."

In truth, I wasn't fine. The implications of what I had done were hitting me by then. I had cheated on Lenore, and with one of her own family members, no less. I knew that oral sex and handjobs did count. Baby, are you holding anything but me? I was not a straight-shooter, that was for sure. Now I had a significant secret to hide.

I wondered if I could stay away from Julia from that point on, but I knew I wouldn't. I was too young, horny, and careless to do anything differently.

######

There will be further chapters that cover more events, especially about Julia and Lenore's best friend Bernice.