Ode to the Ones That Got Away

I'm from Oklahoma, originally, just in case I haven't mentioned that before. Oklahoma City, to be specific, so this week was a little sobering for me. Tuesday was the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Luckily, no one I knew (family or friend) was hurt. But it got me thinking about my earlier years, and some of the people that I so desperately wanted to shag, but with whom it was not meant to be.

So sit back and relax, my readers, as I reflect fondly on some of the ones I just didn't quite connect with...

I'll start in high school. I had crushes before then, but it was then that I really started looking at girls with fornication on my mind. My freshman year, there was the first of a few anonymous entries, because I don't remember her name (I still have my yearbooks, but the pictures are not good enough to pick her out using my fading memory). She was the first non-white person I can recall having a crush on. A light-skinned black girl, I never had the nerve to try to get closer because of a somewhat racist household.

My sophmore year, and another name I can't remember. She was actually flirting with me on the first day of school. I had inadvertently been the butt of a suggestive joke in my English class. But I was too shy and introverted to realize at the time that I was being flirted with. It may have been that there was no substance to it, that had I pressed the point she would have brushed me off. Then again, I might have lost my virginity a good 33 months sooner. She was textbook white trash, from her peroxide-blonde-with-dark-roots hair, to the form-fitting Harley Davidson tank top hugging some very impressive C-cups. At this point, I hadn't even kissed a girl. I think she was a smoker. I wonder if I'd be as put off by kissing smokers, if the first person I kissed had been one? I might have thought it was the normal experience.

It wasn't until my senior year, though, that things were actually heated-enough with girlfriends to truly qualify as missed opportunities. There was Margo, the first girl to go down on me, the first person to bring me to orgasm. But I don't count her; she turned into a head case in college. I consider that one a bullet dodged, not an opportunity missed. A little later that year was Joan, a college freshman. It really rocked to be going to a college campus and making out in a dorm room with a college chick. But that was as far as it went.

College should have brought more opportunity than it did, but I can't complain. (I actually had my first relationship with a black woman, whom I wish I had been nicer to at the time.) The only real "miss" was Mary, the stunning 6'1" amazon I dated several times. That was literally a dream come true: five years earlier, she'd been a counselor at a week-long band camp. I'd seriously lusted after her at the time, without a hope for success. Well, until five years later. That short romance yielded but a single fucking incredible blowjob. To this day, she is one of the ones I think of the most often. Even if her pet beagle pissed all over me that evening when I picked her up.

There was a missed threesome opportunity right after my senior year, when I was taking some graduate classes. Someone I had already slept with was at my place, along with a friend. We started out doing back-rubs, which turned into just slow caresses. But the one I was already sleeping with wasn't in a sharing mood, even if her friend clearly was. So the one stayed and the other went home. No complaints-- I still scored, after all.

Denver was pretty uneventful. I was in a long-term open relationship most of the time, so I was getting plenty and I was allowed to have things on the side. And threesomes (and moresomes). Most of what I wanted, I got. There were crushes, and admiration from afar, but nothing I'd call a missed chance.

Oh, but California. Besides discovering commercial sex, I've had plenty of missed chances. Some were lack of chemistry, some were bad timing for one or the other of us. But most were just me being too busy to call people back. There was Holly, who punctuated her days as a tech writer with nights as a dominatrix. We kept saying we'd get together, but then she moved elsewhere. There's M, the petite little brunette friend of a friend. She isn't necessarily out of reach, so I'll leave her as an initial. She's bi, but more into women. One can hope. I met Terri at a pool party, and lost her number when my PDA died suddenly. Maybe I'll see her again, but I'm not as optimistic.

Of course, California is the land of opportunity, and some of my missed connections are not yet lost causes. So I'll refrain from naming anymore names, for fear of jinxing myself.

Dausa