A Match Made in Marching Band

1999-2000

My crush on Jack was instantaneous.

It was the fall of my junior year of high school. I was a Color Guard for the marching band, and my friend Karrie played saxophone. We were walking together to our cars after practice, approaching him. 

He wore a white tank top and dark green shorts. I noticed his tanned, toned biceps as he loaded his tuba into the back of a sporty red sedan. His brown hair was gelled forward in that time’s trendy hairstyle. 

Karrie called out to him, then turned to me. “Do you guys know each other?” 

I blushed. No, but I want to. I shook my head.

She smirked at me. “Jack, this is Lizzie. Lizzie, Jack.”

He moved towards us. He removed dark sunglasses from his narrow face, revealing blue-gray eyes. He greeted me with a huge smile, his braces glistening in the light of the setting sun. 

He was really too hot to be in marching band, and he knew it. I was instantly struck by how attractive I found him. Surely he would be a jerk, I thought, but no.

He chatted effortlessly, and I had my first glimpse into his personality. Once I got to know him, I would compare his personality to that of a Golden Retriever: happy, friendly, loyal, protective, confident yet a touch cocky, respectful of rules but willing to break them for a good time. 

I was beyond intrigued, but Jack doesn’t remember any of this. 

Time went on.

I transformed over the course of that school year. My mother likes to say, “When we gave Lizzie the car keys, she drove away and never came back.” She laments that I didn’t wait at home for boys to come find me. Instead, I went out and found myself.

I found some degree of financial independence as I gave up hours at a part time job. I found body confidence as I ran down the dirt road behind their house and lost my baby fat. I found friends to open up to as I let go of friends I’d kept out of obligation and insecurity. 

And yes, I found boys as I started to shed the shame around sexuality that my Catholic upbringing had instilled.

I started dating that year, in my own way. I met up with boys at the mall or movies or, preferably, their parents’ house when parents weren’t home. We’d make out for hours, hands fumbling underneath shirts and down pants. My extreme wetness embarrassed me, but the boys didn’t stop touching me after discovering it. I’d grab their penis in response, mentally noting that each one felt slightly different. 

All of this was arousing, but never to the point of orgasm. There was never full-out nudity, nor was there ever love. If a boy started getting mushy, I got turned off. There was only one boy that I really liked, but that relationship was destined to fail — a summer romance between kids in neighboring towns. It ended with the start of senior year.

When I was despondent over that breakup, Karrie consoled me by saying, “Well, hey, you could go out with Jack Coleman now!” I remember laughing at her words, and then feeling hopeful.

By that point, Jack had noticed me. It happened weeks before Karrie’s consolation, at band camp. I’m told often that I look like Natalie Portman. I have the brown hair and eyes, the petite frame, the jaw, the smile. But my nose is more round, like ScarJo’s, and my eyebrows are bushier, like Brooke Sheilds’. Strangers tell me I look familiar; I attribute this to a neutral appearance, blending in with the crowd. 

But to Jack, I finally stood out. He distinctly remembers spotting me in front of my cabin as he walked to the practice field. I was twirling my flag while wearing a gray T-shirt embellished with a sparkly VW Beetle. He mentally coined his catchphrase for me in that moment — “fucking adorable.” 

Years later, as I gathered up old clothes to donate, Jack pulled the Beetle shirt out of the pile, exclaiming, “You can’t donate this!” He stashed it away in a box in his closet, but occasionally he’ll bring up that shirt in conversation. “We really should frame it,” he’ll muse. 

Our first two dates were swing dancing lessons. Weekly dates turned into twice-weekly. We started meeting up in the halls between classes. After school, we grabbed food, talked on the phone, and chatted online.

We didn’t have much in common at the superficial level. His family was quite well-off, very WASPy. Jack’s bedroom was a shrine to his favorite hockey team, whereas mine was filled with books. He enjoyed action movies and I appreciated period pieces. We found overlap in comedies and dramas. We talked about real things and often found ourselves in friendly debates. We opened up to each other easily, falling into each other’s lives with a strange combination of calm and ecstasy. 

There was a pleasant tension lurking in the air around us, but after a month of many dates he still hadn’t done anything more than hug me goodnight. This was quite different from the quick and casual exploration that had populated the past year of my life, but Jack was different from those other boys. I’d asked him out first, but there was no way I’d be the one to lead the acts of physical affection, so I waited.  Impatiently.  

It was early December when he walked me from his car up to my parents’ house. I typed in the code, then I turned to him as the garage door was opening. 

I opened my mouth to say “Well — good night,” but he cut me off at “well.” 

He kissed me, but with my mouth already open, it went straight to French. His mouth on mine, his tongue met mine, his inhalation stealing my breath away.

I momentarily froze before I melted. This was it. And it was so, so it.

We were bound together, tongues twisting. I felt his teeth, tasted his saliva. My heart pounded in my chest and I didn’t want it to stop, so I grabbed his shoulders and held him there, pressed up against me. 

It was a kiss worthy of a romance movie. A kiss that meant something. A kiss that meant everything.

When we finally pulled away, we stared at each other with huge, goofy grins. My body felt electric with energy. I didn’t have any thoughts that I could coherently verbalize, nor did Jack. His eyes and smile told me everything. It was an entire conversation without words, a preface to all the physical expressions of love that we would give each other time and again over the course of our lives spent together. We’d found each other, and it was all we could do to whisper “goodnight” before we pulled away from the overpowering force that was already beginning to bind us.

The next morning at school, Jack marched up to me and used his words. He asked me to officially be his girlfriend, using the vernacular of our time.  “Will you go out with me?” 

Our wedding vows would follow only five years later, but it was that moment in front of the locker bays that would solidify our status as lifelong companions. Jack was everything I’d ever wanted, and I remember feeling like I was at the beginning of a beautiful dream, with all of my dreams to come true in succession, one after another.

We established patterns for our relationship that would lay the foundation for a lifetime together. Jack was the romantic one. He gave me a Teddy bear and chocolates for Christmas, brought me soup and peppermints when I was sick, and left roses and love notes in my locker. I swooned at his gestures, then thanked him by initiating a makeout session at every conceivable opportunity. 

We spent all of our available time together. We phoned each other after our dates to continue our conversations until we drifted to sleep. We were instant best friends with an insatiable urge to touch each other, to know each other fully and completely. 

Our desire for each other felt big, but not suffocating. It was intoxicating yet calming, easy, safe, comfortable. I felt like myself, but better. I felt more conscious, more alive. For the first time ever, I felt completely at home in the world. And it was all because of Jack. I realized I would never want to go through this life without him, but I was only seventeen. I had a lot of life left to live.

Love is a big deal at any age, and perhaps the blessing of falling in love while still a dumb teenager is that you don’t know how drastically it will alter your entire course. We’d found each other, and that had seemed like the hardest part. Now we just had to not screw it up. And, at the same time, all we wanted to do was screw. The irony.

During our first month together, we did a lot of making out with roaming hands. By our second month, we were using the L-word, which seemed to give us the moral license to go further. That’s when things really started heating up in the bedroom. 

Actually, that’s just a saying; none of our parents would allow us to be in any bedroom, even with the door open, for more than a moment. They too sensed that something big was happening, and they quickly concocted new rules. We weren’t allowed home alone together for more than fifteen minutes. Jack had a strict curfew. My mother wouldn’t allow us to cuddle while watching TV.  

Their efforts to keep us contained were no match for our desire. At first, we spent a great deal of time in Jack’s parents’ finished basement, where the couch was extra deep, like a bed. His parents were less strict about cuddling. 

We “watched movies” several nights a week, with his hands making their way up my shirt, teasing my nipples. At first, I wondered if he would think it was “weird” that I got so aroused from the stimulation.  When his hand discovered my wetness, he quelled my fears. He moaned softly into my ear, whispering, “I love how wet you get.”  

I reciprocated with my own fumbling down his pants. I’d touched other penises, but that was it — grab, feel. Jack had masturbated to the point of extreme arousal, but he’d only orgasmed in the form of nocturnal emissions.

Late one evening on that big couch, Jack guided my hand inside his pants. He put his hand over mine, demonstrating how to stroke him from the shaft, firmly but gently. Then I played, my thumb occasionally twirling over the head, which was beginning to ooze clear fluid that I brought back down and used as lube. 

Jack’s head fell back against the cushions.  As his eyes rolled back, I felt his cock erupting. I’d never seen cum before, let alone made someone cum. I felt a jolt of elation as I studied the white goo and wondered what to do with my sticky hand. 

Jack had a similar reaction.  “Oh my God,” he gasped. “I love you so much more now.” 

I took this comment without offense. Indeed, it did seem like we’d unlocked a new level. We wanted more. Sure, we enjoyed going to the movies, eating out, taking hikes, shopping, playing tennis together — doing anything together, really — but pleasuring each other was our favorite. 

The problem was where. We desperately wanted to shed our clothes and our parents’ surveillance, and so we followed in the footsteps of millions of teenagers before us. We retreated to the car. 

Being with Jack wasn’t just an education in relationships and sex. I was also exposed to his parents’ posh lifestyle, beginning when they upgraded his wheels and unknowingly provided us with our first love shack.

His new SUV was surprisingly spacious, especially for two slight teens. The back windows were tinted. When we folded down the rear bench, we created a space equivalent to a full size mattress with the headroom of a small tent. Jack kept blankets and pillows in the back, “in case of an emergency.” 

Our foreplay consisted of driving around town, playing Padiddle, scoping out places to park. Some spots were better than others, as we quickly discovered. The cops caught us with our pants down, literally, at a local dog park. It was the tuba case we’d set outside that had tipped them off, they’d said, before they told us to head home. State parks proved better. The DNR officers didn’t mind our presence as long as we didn’t leave trash behind. 

But our favorite spots quickly became the developing neighborhoods, where the houses were still just shells without occupants and the trees were cleared away, providing us with a wide view of approaching headlights. We spent so much time in these neighborhoods, in the SUV, that Jack would even propose to me there, years later, as we sat in the front seats. 

But the magic always happened in the back. We stripped and took stock of each other’s bodies in the moonlight. We were really only children, but at seventeen, I was about as developed as I’d ever be. Jack loved my B-cup breasts and the butt I’d always thought “too big.” He was eager to explore my pussy, even as I worried that there was too much hair or that my labia were too big. His words and actions put an abrupt end to the voice in my head telling me that my body was gross; he made me feel beautiful.

His body was still developing, but already he had six-pack abs that carved a path down to a soft bush above a well-endowed package. He liked when I praised the size, but he liked even more when I touched him, first with only my hands and later, when I pushed away the idea that it was “dirty,” my mouth. His cock tasted like him, like the salty sweat I had encountered when kissing his neck. The precum that oozed out after just a few kisses was a touch sweet. 

We added new moves to our repertoire with each session. We’d been talking nonstop for months, but we didn’t stop once we climbed into the back of the car. We told each other what felt good and what didn’t. We talked about ideas that aroused us. We shared fantasies, and tips from our friends. We set aside judgements and felt safe learning alongside the other.

We learned that Jack loves it when I lick his penis like an ice cream cone to start. He loves his balls and taint played with, too, but gently. Once things get going, Jack likes to be the one in control. It worked best for him to climb on top of my face, my head propped up on a pillow. When we were unsupervised at home, or when we went hiking in the woods — it was best for me to get on my knees in front of him. 

I learned that I needed to relax into the dark of the car before I could fully open up my body and mind for playtime. As we drove to our destination for the night, I would play music to put my mind in the mood. Jack would blast the heat to entice me to strip, comfortably.  By the time we climbed into the back, I would be forming fantasies in my head that would guide my time in the dark. I would think of Jack as my captor, my commander, the power over me that guided my pleasure. 

We learned that Jack most loves making me orgasm, which took up the majority of our time. He learned to warm me up with kisses, nipple play, then a wet hand or tongue on my clit. We figured out that two fingers inside of me making the “come here” motion makes me writhe, shake, squirt, and scream. 

We learned that I can orgasm dozens of times in one session, but we both like it when Jack is the last to cum. He’d usually thrust into my mouth until he came and I swallowed it all. Then we’d clean up and cuddle until it was time to make curfew. 

We were “good kids” like that.