Lucien Versus The Sedan

In high school I fell in lust with Lucien, a fellow eleventh-grader who was extremely sexy but destined for nothing very good. He was one of five brothers—those that had gone before him had already left a string of broken hearts and those behind were gearing up to do the same.

I spent the last three years of my high school career on Cape Cod (a strange story on its own). There was a predominance of Portuguese and Italian families on the Cape at that time, most based on generations of the fishing business—scallops were the big money then.

(When I first got dragged biting and scratching to Cape Cod I mistakenly found the profession of scallop fishing to be romantic. I have no idea why—possibly that the season was in the deep of winter and I projected valor onto a story of poverty. This was later cleared up for me when a boyfriend needed me to drive him to the dock at 4 a.m. every winter morning, where I stood in the dark watching his brothers and father silently load their ice-crusted scallop boat. Grim wouldn’t even begin to describe the scene.)

So the halls of my high school were filled with dark, sullen teenage boys who had a social axe to grind—I suppose that basically defines almost any high school now that I think on it. But I had just been moved from a progressive school filled with blond-haired tentative WASP boys, and these swaggering badly educated creatures seemed dangerous and exciting.

And there was Lucien, who looked back at me from across the classroom with clearly predatory intent, and I was immediately severed from all reason. Later, at a bonfire party on the beach (proximity to the beach is the only benefit to living on Cape Cod) Lucien walked up to me without saying anything and kissed me, providing me with what was at that point the best kiss of my life. I’ve thought back on that kiss and the physical relationship that followed far more often than I should admit—but there’s a reason.

Lucien had a sexual attitude that not every guy has. I had no idea that this was as rare as it would turn out to be, since I had very little to compare him to. (If I had known I would have begged him more convincingly to stay with me.) For years I thought it was WHAT he did that made the difference: he liked to gather up my hair in one of his hands and hold it while he kissed me, for instance. But another man could do that same thing and it felt, while nice, not even remotely the same. Lucien’s touch had in it gentle but firm sexual confidence that put unrelenting pressure on the perfect nerve (you know the one) in a very good way.

Of course by the time I was out of college I realized Luciens were going to be few and far between, and it had mostly stopped mattering to me; I was looking for emotional connection, after all, right? Sex was important, but that (I thought) could be taught (well, it can, but not the Lucien factor; trust me, that cannot be taught). One simplistic analogy: the difference between driving a sports car and a perfectly nice sedan. The sedan is fine—it’s serviceable, reliable, can be made to go fast if need be. But the sports car, that’s a different story. You get into the sedan and you’re just driving. You and the car don’t have much of a conversation, or at least, the sedan has very little to say back to you regardless of what you say to it—you go right, you go left, you park it. The sports car has a great deal to say to you—even implying it may have the upper hand in the conversation. To me, driving a sports car feels like…like Lucien.

So Lucien walked back out of my past recently but fortunately in the body of another man who is, in contrast to the original Lucien, incredibly smart and funny and even better at kissing—all the years he’s been elsewhere giving him, obviously, lots of practice. And now it occurs to me I have been driving a sedan for a very, very long time.

Comments

[Wildmom]

OH MY GOD - this story touched my 'nerve'!!! Wow - enjoy that sportscar! Let him rev you up.

[Tiny Eyes]

From what I have read about P. you weren't driving a sedan - you were driving a garbage truck and thankfully you are dumping it!

[Kitkat]

I think after all you have been though you definitly deserve another Lucien. Enjoy. And when you are done - send him my way.

[clickmom]

I am dumping my truck and getting a Lucien, errr,, a sports car.

The hair manuever, now I am going to have hot hot dreams about the hair manuever. 6 hours til bed time!!

[Redrover]

That hair thing did it for me, too!