I Remember Judy

I remember lying next to Judy in the long grass of the sandunes of Bridgehampton. I remember her beautiful red maillot and her long, lithe body, her gleaming brown hair. She's a classic any way you slice it. I was only inches, an inch, a casual brush away from a casual touch, from cupping her breast in my hand, from a passionate tryst in the sand. That is what it would have been back then. I loved her and she felt something for me, something I did not want to test. When she went to California for a month or two, she sent me postcards from LA almost daily. I posted them with their "Love, Judy's" naively above my desk and I'm sure there was talk in the office, but in truth, there was nothing more than a very close relationship between us. However, the idea bedding my married boss was just out of the question, though it should not have been. I was too hesitant to take the risk; I did not want to blow it. She was married and ten years older. In my ignorance at the time, I wasn't quite sure whether she would seem "old" to the touch. And her husband had a terminal illness, so how selfish could I be, taking adavantage of his infirmity, not to mention his hospitality. I thought poor Ronald, rather than, probably more accurately, poor Judy. It was she who needed warmth and physicality to free her from her desperate, dark despair. I ought to have touched her on the beach that day. I should have kissed her there in the sand, and slid my hand down her neck onto her breast. I saw her nipples pressed tightly upwards under her suit, waiting for a caress that never came, hoping. Had I but touched her then, the rest would have all been so quick and easy. I would have pushed her suit bottom over to the side and stroked her wetness, her smooth skin everywhere. and I would have entered her and felt her thighs tighten around me, the clutch of her encircling arms and I would have felt her push and make whatever sound of love she makes and come as if for the first and last time she'd never come before, an emotional explosion that neither of us had previously known. And we would have had to run down and swim in the Atlantic to wash all evidence of our lovemaking away. And we would have felt a little sheepish about having consumated what we so often thought about, imaginging. But I never brushed my fingers across her forehead or her lips. I never touched her breasts, I never stroked her gently between her parted legs. I never actually felt what she was like this way, filled with desire, aroused, and I never learned if she moaned or screamed or trembled, or whether she would scratch my back or bite when making love. I only wish and wonder. I wish we had. Love's a mystery, especially unrequited.