My older-lady-in-distress, first time with Elisa m/f, m/m

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calebtras
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My older-lady-in-distress, first time with Elisa m/f, m/m

Post by calebtras »

My older-lady-in-distress, first time with Elisa

“Bang, bang, bang! Your dead!” Sean yelled.

“You hit my left arm! I can still shoot,” I shouted. “Pshew, pshew!”

I was on the mountain, while Sean was firing from behind the rocks. Sean had a black water pistol, but I had a real six shooter cap gun. No caps, but my “pshew” was much closer to the real sound than “bang.”

“Bang! I got you this time, right in the heart!” Sean said.

I clutched my chest and reeled my upper body in a circle three times. Then I rolled down the mountain. I hit my ear on the corner of a box but stopped myself from saying “ow” and rolled to the bottom, sprawling on my back, arms and legs out.

Sean stood over me, blew the smoke from the barrel of his gun, and shoved his foot into my ribs. “Take that, Mean Dirty Johnson. I just saved you from being hanged by the neck until you was deader than a doornail.”

I sat up and said, “That was the coolest roll down the mountain ever.”

“Yeah, it was cool,” he agreed.

At nine years old, style could be even better than winning. When we were eight, we'd argue about who had killed whom, but now we competed in who did the best dive behind the rocks as you shot or roll down the mountain when you were killed.

The mountain was a stack of crates and boxes that reached almost to the ceiling of the basement in my building, and the rocks were the boiler and furnace.

“Okay, this time you're on the mountain, you get wounded and fall down, and I hang you,” I said.

We did the shoot-out, and Sean grabbed his arm and shouted, “Mean Dirty Johnson, ya got me in the arm.” He rolled down the mountain to the floor, but cautiously, holding onto boxes with his hands.

“Blue Dog Jones, I got you good” I said. “I'm going to get the twenty dollar reward for you dead or alive and I'm going to buy a ranch and fifty horses with it. I'm going to hang you for all your crimes of robbing and kicking people in the ribs.”

I rolled Sean over on his stomach and took my lasso off my belt. I sat on his butt and pulled his hands behind him. I looped my rope around his wrists tight and tied a knot, repeating a bunch of times.

I stood back. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . ."

Sean began struggling to free himself. He rolled on the concrete floor, yanked on his arms, stood up and rubbed the rope against a water pipe. He complained, “Hey, you're counting too fast.”

I slowed down. “Forty three Mississippi, forty four Mississippi . . .” I was getting good with knots and liked watching him struggle. If he got free he didn't get hanged and won. “Fifty eight Mississippi, fifty nine Mississippi, sixty! Well, Blue Dog Jones. Looks like you're going to hang.”

“Ten more Mississippis and I would'a busted free,” Sean said. He was tied up just as tight as at the start, but I didn't argue with him.

I pulled Sean's lasso off his belt and led him under the water pipe. I dragged a box over, stood on it, and ran the lasso over the water pipe. I looped the rope around Sean's neck and tied a square knot.

At first, we had both often made granny knots and counted to sixty Mississippis. The rope would tighten around the neck, and we'd have to dig our fingers into the other guy' neck while he was choking and turning red. We didn't want to hurt each other; we wanted our games to be realistic and a challenge. I figured out how to tie a square knot that didn't slip, taught Sean, and we cut the time.

Sean took a deep breath, then said through clenched teeth, “Okay.”

I pulled on my end of the rope until Sean was on tiptoes. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, . . . ten Mississippi.” I let the rope loosen and Sean could breathe again.

I had discovered I really liked tie ups on TV and in the comics, and liked tying Sean up, experimenting with new ways. Westerns on TV were being replaced by spy shows and space adventures, but I got Sean to play cowboys because of the tie ups. We sometimes did cops and robbers. I liked being tied up as well, but mainly for the challenge to get free. Sean just liked competing.

I really wanted to tie up a girl. I had tied up a friend, Robin, playing cops and robbers, but she'd quickly outgrown the game. The problem was, girls didn't play boy games or play much with boys at all.

The basement phone the landlord had installed for the “super,” the building superintendent, rang. I picked it up. “Hello, Elisa's phone, this is Terry speaking.”

“Terry, this is Mrs. Murray. Tell Elisa the toilet's blocked up and overflowing again. It's an emergency.”

“Okay, Mrs. Murray.” I wrote a note for Elisa on the pad she left by the phone.

Sean and I played a couple more rounds of cowboy games. My hands were tied behind me and I was diligently working on the knots when Elisa walked in.

“Time out,” I called out to Sean. “Elisa you got a phone call.”

She read my note then scoffed. “Emergency. Ha! This is the second time. Tampax blocking the toilet. Her daughter get her first regla, but that woman don' teach her nothing, nothing. I tell the girl, put the tampax in the garbage. Go to the store, get your size, small. Don' be ashamed. All girls get the bleeding.”

She sat on the milk crate she kept in the corner of the basement she used as her office. She asked, “You know tampax for the bleeding, Terry?”
I didn't, but said, “Yes.”

“For no red stain on your dress at school. All girls must know. Terry, when you grow up, don't marry estupid woman so escared of sex she don't talk to her daughter.”

She opened her lunch pail. “Boys, you want some tostones y chicharones, how you say, fried bananas, but green, and pig skin?”

“Yeah!” We both loved Elisa's home made Puerto Rican snacks.

Sean was filling his palm with food from her bag when Elisa noticed my hands behind me.

“Terry, you tied up again?” She pulled me over and untied my hands.

Sean complained, “Hey, Elisa, he's supposed to get himself out.”

“While you eat like a pig, Sean?”

When Sean and I first learned the super would have an office in the basement, we were resentful. We were nerds, before the word was invented, playing in the stairways and basement of my building, even on nice days. We were both latchkey kids, rare in those days in our working class Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn. My ma was divorced and worked, and Sean's father was a loser drunk so his step-mother worked. We didn't have much besides our playspace, and didn't want to share.

But when she first came down the stairs to the basement, she introduced herself to us, as if we were adults. She joked around, never put us down or ignored us. She listened to our kid talk and enjoyed our company, in a neighborhood and time when adults didn't notice boys until you got in trouble with the cops or got married and went to work. With her brown skin and accent, she was an outsider in the neighborhood, the way we felt. When she figured out Sean and I were unsupervised, doing whatever we wanted for as long as we wanted, she'd taken to mothering us, telling us what not to do, praising us when we got good grades. She hand-sewed denim holsters for our guns. And we helped her, handing her tools when she was under a sink, picking up parts at the hardware store.

I'd begun thinking of asking her if she'd join our games. Elisa wore baggy olive green work pants, shirts and boots, and was older than my mother, but she was very pretty. She was warm and genuine to everyone, but, as a kid, I felt it shined specially on me.

I decided to go for it. “Elisa, we need a cowgirl for our game. Will you play?”

“Sure. Mrs. Murray and her bloody toilet can just wait. What I got to do?”

I was surprised and ecstatic, and now had to wing it. “You're Sean's, Blue Dog Jones', ma. He's the good guy. I capture you and put a bomb next to you. Blue Dog has to kill me and set you free before the bomb goes off.”

“A half hour. Okay?”

“Cool.” I turned to Sean. “We have a fist fight, and I knock you out.”

Sean and I wrestled and punched. Sometimes one of us accidentally hit too hard, escalating the fight, and I wanted everything to go right. So I quickly got Sean in a headlock and noogied him. “I've knocked Blue Dog Jones out.”

Sean slumped to the floor. I pointed my gun at Elisa. “Stick 'em up, Ma Dog Jones.”

Elisa opened her eyes wide and held up her hands. In a tiny voice she said, “Don't shoot, Mr. Bad Man.”

“I'm not gonna shoot you,” I said. “You're worth twenty dollars to me.”

“Why you make me cheap? A thousand dollars.”

“Okay, ten thousand,” I said. “Put your hands behind your back.”

She put her hands behind her—no hesitation, no discussion of limits. I looped my rope around her wrists sideways and up and down, tying it loosely. Then I thought, Elisa's always been nice to me, never gotten upset. I tied the last two loops tighter.

I stuck my gun in Elisa's back, reached up and grabbed her shoulder, and said, “Ma Dog Jones, march.”

I walked her around the basement.

“Mr. Bad Man, you don't know how to treat the ladies,” Elisa said.

“'Cause I'm bad all the way down to my bones,” I said in my gruff voice.

I sat her down on her milk crate. I tied her feet together with Sean's lasso, and put her gray metal toolbox by her seat. “This bomb is set to blow up.”

I took off my scarf and was about to gag her, when she asked, “When you wash that?”

I thought back. I might never have put it in the laundry. Elisa saw my expression and said, “No, no. I stop talking.”

“Okay, Sean,” I said.

Sean jumped out from behind the furnace, shooting, “Bang, bang!”

I ran behind Elisa and wrapped my arm around her neck. “Blue Dog Jones, give me ten thousand dollars for your Ma, or this bomb will blow her up.” Elisa had a musky perfume that surprised and distracted me. Her hair was soft against my cheek. She kept it in a bun when she was working, but on her way to the subway, she let it hang past her shoulders, black and wavy. I felt confused— Elisa was like a mother to me, a good friend, but also very pretty, with a down-to-earth, sweet disposition, and an enticing smell.

I had never felt so close to a woman, physically and emotionally. My mother was too caught up in her own problems to pay much attention to me. Women teachers were strict back then, and the nuns in their black habits and hoods barely looked like women. If a woman on the block called your name, you were probably in trouble. Tying Elisa up and then holding her so close—it felt magical.

I wasn't paying attention to Sean, and he snuck up on me and grabbed me around the waist. We wrestled and mock punched. I pulled him down to the floor and rolled against Elisa's legs.

“Ay, Dios mio!”

I kept trying to bump into Elisa, making her twist around on her seat. She said, “Crazy boys!”

As Sean and I scuffled on the floor, the phone rang. I picked it up and held it to Elisa's ear.

She said, “Yes . . . yes . . . okay, Mrs. Murray. Ten minutes.” I hung up the phone.

“Okay, boys, time to make the deal and finish,” Elisa said.

I wrapped my arm around Elisa's neck again, pressing my cheek to hers. “Ten thousand dollars for your Ma, Blue Dog.”

Sean reached into his pocket and took out three bottle caps we used for chips when we did a poker shoot-out scene. “Here.”

“That's only five thousand,” I said. “I want ten.”

Elisa said, “Mr. Bad Man, take the deal.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll take the five thousand on layaway.”

Elisa laughed.“Layaway! You think I'm a pair of shoes?”

Before credit cards, layaway was a department store monthly payment plan where you didn't get your purchase until you made the last payment. I said to her, “I'll let you go if you promise, tomorrow you'll finish the game with us.”

“Los hombres y sus demandas,” Elisa said with an exaggerated sigh. “Ohh-kay.”

I untied her hands. She stood and put a hand on each of our cheeks. “This is my destino. To be a big star for little boys.” Her broad smile told me she wasn't being sarcastic—she liked hanging out with us. When Sean and I played our story-games, we threw ourselves into it completely. Elisa was the same way, always right in the moment. I handed her tool box to her, and she went out to fix a toilet.
harveygasson
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Post by harveygasson »

Only just spotted this, really fun little story!
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TheOfficeOrc
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Post by TheOfficeOrc »

Great little story! The section where you talk about what Elisa means to you is particularly touching.
MaxRoper
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Post by MaxRoper »

I'm always a big fan of tales about early experiences. This one rings true and brings back memories.
Thanks for sharing!
AlexUSA3
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Post by AlexUSA3 »

I laughed as I read your explanations of different concepts that are so familiar to me from watching old shows and talking to older people. The fun you had in this adventure really shines in your writing style.
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