So, it is the season for tights now. It really is fall. I bought two pairs to start off with, grey and black. I plan to rock the short skirt and tights look for the winter – well the part of the winter that is amenable to that. And by short skirt, I mean three inches above the knee. As you can tell, the Montreal whoredom has not gotten to me…yet. When it is ridiculously cold, I’ll put the pants on.

In high school I wore tights daily, as is the lot of girls in the Catholic board in winter. Being a late bloomer, I didn’t have, what you’d call, admirers. In fact I am not so sure I actually existed as a girl between the ages of 14 and 18. The incident that defines my high school sexual experience was a strange occurrence on a sunny afternoon in late March in 1992.

For some reason we were all sent back to our homerooms during last period, there was probably an assembly or mass or something. We all went back to our respective homeroom classrooms. I was the first back to the portable that served as my homeroom. Wanting to stand in the sun I stepped outside on the small porch that sat outside the portable door. The field and parking lot was littered with puddles formed by melting snow. The first clear day in weeks, I was looking at the sky. Then I noticed that at the bottom of the four steps in front of me stood Warren Archer.

Now, I don’t care what anyone says, Warren Archer and I had chemistry. He was so nice looking. He was also a little bit bad, skipping school a lot and ignoring what teachers told him. Hmm he was so cute. Perhaps the ‘chemistry’ was the way my heart jumped a little when he made his rare appearance in school. Or the way I’d cling to any word from him that floated in my direction. Or the way I would want to bring my knees to my chin, curling up into a tight ball if he looked in my direction (the clock was on the wall a few feet behind me). He’d sit, aloof and silent clearly disinterested in everything in the aisle beside me, just one desk up. I was the girl who would spin around in my seat whenever the portable door opened to see if Warren would come walking through the threshold. We didn’t have one class together. Homeroom was my only chance.

Anyway, that sexually charged afternoon I stood at the top of the steps looking down at him. And he looked up at me. In one of those teenage spastic moments (I was 16) for some reason, instead of saying “Hey Warren” I swung my right leg out toward him. He stepped up one step and grabbed my ankle. Then he climbed up the last three while sliding his hand along the navy blue tights that covered my calf. When he stopped in front of me he had a firm grasp of my leg, his thumb pointing up my thigh, his fingers on three spots at the back of my bent knee. My whole body heated up as I looked in his face for an eternity in 30 seconds.

He dropped my leg and hopped into the portable. He said nothing to me. I froze there waiting for the room to fill up with more students. I sat at my desk my head stuck on the portable’s porch for the remainder of the afternoon, Warren didn’t look at me once. He just leaned back in his seat, cleared his throat and waited patiently for the bell to signal the end of the day. And with my every breath, I waited with him.
- posted by Debbie @ 3:04 PM