PUSH IT

I spent Christmas Eve across Five Mile Creek with a girl I’d met in Drama class my Junior year of high school.  Lynn Oxley had invited me over after class.  I didn’t know what to expect, but when I got there I realized she had a two-year old, right there in the front room of her parents’ house.  Lynn dimmed the lights and told me she’d be back after she put her kid to bed, then proceeded to flick on a few blinking Christmas lights around the room.  I sat there, unsure of the purpose of my visit, while a local station played the typical, late 80’s schlock from a nearby stereo.  In no time flat, Lynn was back, dressed down in a long, pajama shirt and socks.  We exchanged pleasantries and she talked about how she thought I was cool.  I thanked her as she moved closer and Salt ‘N’ Peppa’s “Push It” came on the radio.  She leapt up, squealed and turned it up just enough for us to hear it, but just low enough not to wake her kid.  She knew all the lyrics and she sang (or rapped when appropriate) them seductively close to my face.  At the time, I didn’t know how to take this.  It was a bit embarrassing, simply because no girl had ever flirted this blatantly with me before.  I was still a virgin at this point and although incredibly intrigued by tits and ass (which Lynn had in abundance), venturing into that unknown jungle was not something I was quite ready for.

 

Throughout the night, Lynn managed to find “Push It” on the radio at least seven times on different stations, even calling one that had held out for a while.  And each time, Lynn would scoot closer to me in her thin, drooping Betty Boop night shirt and whisper, “Aaah, Push it” during the chorus.  It was as if she was opening herself up, but never taking the first true step.  Like I was supposed to be the one reading the signals and making the first move.  But I was chickenshit.  By midnight, I told her I had to go and it was all I could do to even kiss her goodnight on the porch.  It felt incredible, that kiss.

 

School was back in session a week later and Lynn and I still saw each other in Drama, but the girl I was about to lose my virginity to would not be her.  It’d be a more exotic girl, one who didn’t already have a kid.  And that relationship would last a full four years, well into my college days. 

 

Now, standing here in this warehouse where I work, a good 20 years later, after a marriage and at least six steady girlfriends later, I am transfixed as a co-worker’s iPod blares “Push It.”  I can barely move, frozen to the spot.  I’m suddenly there, back in Lynn Oxley’s front room, the blue, tinkling Christmas lights in the window and the first girl who ever had a crush on me – ME – is whispering “Boy, you really got me goin’ / You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’.”  And for a moment, I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time.




-SLL