When you are 14 and all you know about sex lies between your palms and your whatchamacallit, a woman’s naked body can be a wondrous thing.
That Saturday afternoon is still as clear in my eyes as if it happened yesterday.
I was at my friend’s house, three of us actually, all of us home on holiday from boarding school. We had been playing table tennis in the abandoned garage and in trying to return a serve, I tripped, fell and bruised my elbow.
Ikenna’s mother was going to her car when I screamed and she rushed in, checked my elbow and asked me to go wash and dress it upstairs.
“The First Aid Kit is in Ikenna’s wardrobe,” she said.
Ikenna took my place as I bounded up the steps to his room.
I pushed the door open and saw a sight I have never forgotten.
Georgie, Ikenna’s sister was asleep in Ikenna’s bed, stark naked, her unravelled cover by her side.
She was 17 then and fully formed. Her full breasts with the dark tipped nipples rose and fell to the rhythm of her breathing.
My eyes travelled down past her flat belly and stalled at the rich, curly fluff of hair that formed a V between her legs.
I stood there for a bit, drinking her beautiful body in like heady wine, then I stepped back out, shut the door and knocked.
“Who is there,” she called.
“Oshoko,” I answered.
“Come in.”
When I stepped in, Georgie was sitting up in bed, the sheets drawn up to her chin.
“I hurt my elbow, Ikenna said the First Aid Box is in his wardrobe.”
“Yes, check there,” she said and as she lifted her hand to point, the sheet slipped and bared her left breast.
I looked away quickly, fetched the box and fled.
That was 20 something years ago, but last week, I got an email from Ikenna, who is now an Enugu-based medical doctor.
“Dude, Georgie is coming in from the UK. Can she stay at yours for two nights before she heads here?”
“Sure, let me know her ETA so I can pick her up.”
Georgie did not look a day older than 17.
“Wow, see you all buff,” she said as our embrace broke.
“You look lovely,” I said as I took her bags.
“You don’t look half bad yourself,” she told me.
When you are a teenager, three years can seem like a lot but when you are in your 30, three years becomes just a number.
As we drove to my place, Georgie and I talked, trying to bridge the years that had gone by since Ikenna and I finished secondary and went off to university.
She had gotten a scholarship for her masters and gone abroad, then the next thing she had landed this huge job, gotten married and never came home.
Time passed but that image of her naked in her brother’s bed never left me and that night as I turned and caught a glimpse of flesh from her cleavage, I was suddenly 14 again and in the grip of pure lust.
Continues next week
