The Tabatha Diaries – Ch 1

I have a very strong memory of my first proper wet dream. I’m not sure whether all men remember their first wet dream, but I certainly do. It was significant at the time and it became even more significant as time went on.

I say “proper” wet dream because for many months before that I was having sexual dreams and waking up with wet shorts. It was very confusing at the time. My mum had avoided the “birds and bees” conversation by giving me a sex education text book. It was in the days before Google and Wikipedia. I read the book from cover to cover a few times. It said that semen was white. Mine seemed to be clear. The book didn’t mention precum. I didn’t realise that my body was producing precum in volumes that wet my pants like a load of semen. I thought I was having orgasms in my sleep when I wasn’t.

It was my Art teacher, Jenny Christie, who taught me the difference. Ms Christie had dark brown curly hair — almost black — and it always looked wet. She would have been very good looking if it weren’t for an almost permanent sneer distorting her features. I couldn’t understand why a woman who was so pretty could be so angry and unhappy. I realise now that teaching teenage boys is enough to make anyone permanently frustrated and angry. But Ms Christie had an even bigger problem. Two of them, in fact. She was blessed with two of the biggest, roundest, most beautiful breasts I had ever seen. She also had a generous hour-glass figure, with a narrow waist and a big bum, but in those days I only had eyes for those gorgeous jugs, with the yawning brown cleavage between them and the big nipples showing through the thin fabric of her stretchy tops. From the beginning, I’ve been a sucker for big nipples.

No wonder she sneered at us as we ogled and giggled. No doubt she was irritated by the older boys wolf whistling behind her back. It must have been hard to be the only woman with any sex appeal at a Catholic boys’ school. Most of the other teachers were men and the few women were older and much less attractive.

No wonder Jenny Christie featured in my dreams.

The sex ed book that Mum gave me said that masturbating was normal. But in Religion class, Father Shane told us that “touching yourself” is a sin. I asked Mum about it one night and she got all embarrassed and mumbled something about never having any problem adhering to Church doctrine in that regard.

“But I know it’s more difficult for teenage boys. If your father was here . . .” her voice trailed off as it often did when she talked about my father. He was an alcoholic who we ran away from when I was two years old. He died a few years later and I never got to know him. It was news to me now that he was an expert on masturbation.

Then she caught me off guard. “Do you have wet dreams, Andy?” I admitted, sheepishly, that I did (not knowing that I actually hadn’t had one yet). “Good!” she said, and I was a bit surprised at her reaction. “It’s okay, Andy,” she added quickly, seeing my confusion. “It’s not a sin to have a wet dream. In fact, wet dreams are God’s way of relieving boys from the temptation of masturbation.”

It all seems like Irish Catholic mumbo jumbo now. But at the time it put the fear of God in me. I’d never had a problem with any of the ten Commandments before. But this masturbation thing was really tempting. The Devil would do his dirty work in my idle hands.

Luckily, Jenny Christie was my Art teacher and not my neighbour’s wife, so I could covet her all I liked. Especially before bed time. And if I could just keep my mind focused and my hands idle until I fell asleep, I could have one of these wet dreams that God and my Mum wanted me to have.

Before the conversation with my mum, I was vaguely aware that these dreams were enjoyable, but none were particularly memorable. Then I drifted off to sleep one night and everything changed.

I was at school. I was walking along the corridor between classes with my friends. I was angry about something. My friend Russell was shouting at me and I was shouting back.

“She’s not a slut!” I yelled at him.

“He didn’t say she was a slut. He just said she looks like a slut.”

Suddenly we were at the door to the Art room and Jenny Christie was standing in the doorway. She was wearing a stretchy red top with a deep scoop neck. She had her arms folded under her magnificent boobs. Her collection of tits and cleavage and nipples spilled out of her arms as she leaned down, sneering, and said to Russell: “Who looks like a slut, Mr Lane?” My anger vanished as I gawped at her yawning cleavage. My sleeping, dreaming self became vaguely aware of a spreading warmth in my pants as if I had wet myself.

“Sorry, Ms Christie,” Russell was saying. “I know I shouldn’t use bad language. But it wasn’t me who said it. I was just telling Andy that my brother thinks Britney Spears looks like a slut. Andy’s got a poster of Britney Spears on his bedroom wall and she’s wearing this red, er, dress and . . .”

I began to feel anxious that we were going to get in a lot of trouble, because I could see now that Ms Christie’s tight fitting red top was, in fact, a slinky red cocktail dress almost exactly like the one worn by Britney in the poster over my bed. I had studied that poster and I knew every detail. I knew that the faintest shadow of a nipple protruded through the sheer fabric over her right breast, but the left nipple was not visible. I knew that the front panel of the dress didn’t completely cover the pale white side of her right breast, but where it did the dress was a lighter shade of red. In short, I knew that Britney was not wearing a bra and the details of her right breast were deliciously obvious to the male gaze.

As I now studied Jenny Christie’s right breast the same details emerged. In my dream, I felt my erection straining in my school shorts.