Sensory Memory, YUM!

When I was a little kid, my Mother used to make the most wonderful treats for us. They were called Peanut Butter Honey Bits, and I LOVED THEM. Oh, My God, how good they were! They were refrigerated, kind of like a very solid cookie dough, and had this particular taste and texture (kind of grainy and chewy) that I grew up loving. One of the primary ingredients to Peanut Butter Honey Bits was powdered milk.

Around 20-25 years ago, the process for making powdered milk changed. Instead of the milk being powdered, it was now a crystallized dehydrated milk. This crystallized milk just didnt mix right into the PBH bits, and sadly, my Mother stopped making them.

I had all but forgotten them, just remembering them fondly as a piece of my youth gone by…… until now.

My Mom found an Amish store around an hour south of us purely by accident, and they had (you guessed it) the old-fashioned style of powdered milk! It is horribly expensive ($17.00 for a 3 pound bag), but she picked some up and surprised the hell out of me by calling me to come down to her house for a surprise.

Yup, Peanut Butter Honey Bits. Oh, man, I was stoked like you wouldn’t believe. When she pulled that log of doughy goodness out of the fridge and cut me off a piece, the anticipation was enormous. When I took my first bite of this candy in 25 years, it practically melted in my mouth and flooded my brain with good feelings, and memories.

It’s funny to me how much a simple piece of candy can do, how much a TASTE can bring back to you. For me, it felt for a moment like I was a kid again, with all the innocence and love that comes along with that. I promptly gave my Mom $10 for a partial share in another bag of the powdered milk next time she makes it to the Amish Store, and am expecting more peanut-buttery goodness to come soon.

YUM!

The Neighbors Wife

SEVEN YEARS AGO:

It’s one of my frequent days off since the big layoff (goddamn dot-com bust anyhow) and I am just enjoying the western Washington sunshine, infrequent as it is, and hanging around the house drinking homemade Long Islands, cleaning, and listening to the radio. I am considering moving back east, because there are no jobs out here! Damn near everyone I know got laid off or is in real fear of being laid off, I can’t even get a job at the fucking gas station… great fun to be a techie in the middle of the worst tech job slump in history.

A knock comes on my garage door, scaring the crap out of me – who comes into the garage instead of to the front door? I am surprised to see it is my neighbor’s wife, whose kids play with my 7 year old daughter all the time. Her husband is a former co-worker and friend of mine, one who luckily got to keep his job. My daughter and I have lived near them for 2 years and have enjoyed Christmas, New Year’s, movie & pizza nights…. a good, healthy, friendly relationship.

As she comes in I can tell she has already been drinking (kind of like me) and that she is just revved up, excitable. She asks me if I have anything to drink, of course I do! I pull the near-frozen bottle of goldschlager from the freezer and pour us each a good full double-shot, and we stand around the kitchen hitting the bottle, laughing and joking. We are getting nicely lit, the sun is tremendous shining through the three pane kitchen windows… when she pulls the front of my sweat pants out and pours frozen goldschlager down my pants!

WHAT THE FUCK! That’s cold! Oh shit – it’s also BURNING! She backs me up to the kitchen bar and says she will take care of it for me… and promptly drops to her knees and takes me into her mouth. It’s an odd feeling, the cold, the burning, and the blowjob.

She brings me to full erection and stands to kiss me, as she backs me into the garage and hits the button to close the doors. As the light fades into complete darkness, I see her stripping her clothes off. She leans over the washing machine and I move forward, into her. We fuck like beasts, loud and hard, one of the most frantic fucks in my life. I come fast, it’s been a long time. She has arrived before me, though, and turns to face me, kissing and biting my neck as she strokes me.

I break away – not sure what the hell just happened, beginning to see the ramifications of everything. This is the wife of my friend! My neighbor! I turn from her, tell her I have to go to the bathroom.  As I stand in the bathroom splashing water on my face and looking at myself in the mirror, she comes into the bathroom, naked. I am hard again.

This time I take her, again from behind, while she leans over the bathroom sink and we watch ourselves in the mirror. It lasts longer this second time, but is no less animalistic in it’s desperation. We finish a while later, and get dressed in silence. I start to say something to her, to figure out what is going on… when we hear our children, both hers and mine, getting off the bus out front.

With a last look, she leaves by the front door. I stand there dazed and confused, until my daughter comes in to show me the finger painting she did in school today. It is somehow surreal, this parental thing so closely following the other.

—
That evening, my doorbell rings. I look out the peephole, and see her husband, my friend & neighbor. Oh shit. I resolve to take whatever he does, I deserve it. If he punches me, I will not defend. Instead, he tells me that his wife has a drinking problem, and asks politely that I not let her have alcohol in the future. I agree, but can tell by the look on his face that he knows. I want him to hit me. He doesn’t.

My Memories of Sarah

I just recently re-connected with an old friend, Sarah, that I have not talked to in probably a dozen years.

I first met Sarah in Kotzebue, Alaska, during the winter of 1988/89. We were part of the same large circle of friends, and shared a lot of time together for around 2 to 2 and a half years. I was 20 years old, and I believe she was 18.

We lost track of each other for many years, but I still have some vivid memories of her that I’d like to share.

Sarah was a BEAUTIFUL young lady, and during the entire time I knew her, I harbored a crush on her. She was energetic and vivacious, tall and lanky, with long curly brown hair and what seemed like a permanent smile on her face. She was bouncy and happy and made me smile more times than I can remember. For the record – I have seen recent pictures of her – she’s still beautiful, and in every picture she still has that smile.

MEMORY #1: 
I was miserable when we first moved to Alaska from Denver. I was 19, and used to living in the big city. After hating Kotzebue for around six months, I took a vacation back to Denver for a month. That trip was eventful, but I was surprised to find myself really missing Kotzebue, and looking forward to going back. The day before I left sunny, hot Denver in July, my friends and I hung out at a pool and drank large amounts of beer. I am very light skinned, and sitting drunk in the pool for five hours in 90° weather was not very bright. I BURNED. Bad. There were sunburn blisters all over my shoulders, my upper back, my neck, and I could barely move from the pain I was in. This made the plane trip uncomfortable.

I arrived back at the Kotzebue airport, and who did I see coming to greet me? Sarah, of course! She came running across the airport lobby at me, and before I could protest, leaped full force into me, jumping up into my arms and wrapping her arms and legs around me. In the process… you guessed it… she tore open nearly every damn blister on my shoulders and back and sent me straight to the ground in a fit of incredible pain! It’s a difficult thing to have a beautiful girl wrapped around you (HUGE PLUS) and be nearly crying from the pain (HUGE MINUS).

But it still stands out as the most memorable welcome home greeting of my life.

MEMORY #2:
Shorter one this time. Forty degrees below zero, ambient. House full of partying young adults. Lots of beer. Sarah running around the house three times topless. Someone dared her.

MEMORY #3:
Probably the most vivid of my memories of Sarah. I don’t remember what time of year it was, but I think it was like Christmas Day or something. I was sleeping flat on my back on a mattress on the basement floor, when I got woke up by Sarah jumping on me. She straddled me and sat on me and bugged me until I woke up, smiling the whole time. When she knew she had my attention, she promptly grabbed the bottom of her shirt, pulled it up to her neck and said “Check out my new bra! Isn’t it cool?” It was all flowery and yes, it was very cool. I think I would have tried to kiss her or something right there, if I wasn’t such a coward. Oh, and I was pretty convinced that this was all a very nice dream, since things like that just don’t happen to me when I’m awake.

So that’s it for the My Memories of Sarah post… hope I didn’t embarass you too much! (If I did, I will accept any form of punishment you deem necessary, up to and including giving you my opinion of ALL of your bras, as you model them. I am so self-sacrificing.)