Dana was sitting cross legged, on dark emerald colored shag carpet that covered the entire floor of her best friend's large basement level den and was keeping her thighs warm now that it was getting cold, wearing dark blue denim short shorts with white stars all over them and a white with floral accent cotton drawstring blouse she borrowed (though she knew it would be considered stealing if and when her older sister found out) from Missy's closet.
Her best friend, Lucy McCutcheon, was laying on her back with her legs stretched out, toes wiggling against the arm of the old brown leather couch opposite from the spot she was sitting.
The lights were dimmed, a lava lamp on the coffee table the only real source of light to see by and caused everything to have a purple hue. Janis Joplin's song 'Kozmic Blues' was playing on the 50s style record player in the corner of the den, and it was bouncing melodically off of the four wood panel walls that made the room feel like a giant cardboard box.
She was downing more of her mother's - almost empty - bottle of vintage sparkling prosecco that they had swiped from the antique drinks trolley near the built in bar on the wall just behind Dana.
Lucy turned her head, slowly, placing the prosecco bottle on the ground and watched as Dana flipped through a bunch of vinyl records (the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, The Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Santana and Crosby, Stills and Nash, Bob Dylan and the like) stored in a plastic milk crate. It was all free love, flowers in your hair and 60s era 'Say No To The Vietnam War' hippie bands.
It was so different from the classical music that was played on special occasions in the Scully household... or even the current 'Girl Power' female led pop music that Missy would blast from her bright pink mini boombox in their shared bedroom.
Dana had seen pictures of Lucy, her younger sister Clara (who had been famously concieved during the Summer of Love in 1967) and their parents living in a San Francisco Bay area hippie commune in the late sixties and early seventies before they moved back east (to Maryland) for both of their daughters educations. So, the stack of Woodstock and Monterey Pop Festival music actually made sense.
The seventies was dying, a slow and agonizing death in the McCutcheon household.
It was 1981 for goodness sake. Times they were a-changing! Who knows, maybe they would remodel before the end of this decade,Dana thought,and then mentally scolded herself for the terribly rude thoughts - which were definitely the prosecco talking or so she hoped - about her friend's parents interior design style.
"Dana? What's the craziest thing you've ever done?" Lucy asked, after breathing out a smoke ring towards the popcorn ceiling (having found her father's stash of weed in a metal lockbox on a shelf behind the bar).
Lucy had offered it to her when she first lit it up,but Dana had declined and was now slowly but surely getting a contact high from being in the room with her. Maybe they should have opened the back door or a window.
"Huh? Umm, does sneaking out of the house and smoking my mother's cigarettes count?" Dana answered, looking up from the extensive Vinyl collection with a thoughtful quirk of her right eyebrow.
She had always been a rule follower, the by-product of being raised by a renowned Captain in US Navy and a very serious Catholic upbringing until quite recently -apart from the stolen ciggarettes, of course.
"Hmm. I'm going to go with... NO! Have you had sex yet?"
Lucy swung her long pale legs over the side of the couch (she was about half a foot taller than Dana and because of that she was on the track team at their high school), sitting up and shimmied her mustard yellow corduroy mini-skirt (she was wearing a brown Creedence Clearwater Revival tee from their '76 tour) back down her thighs.
"LUCY!" Dana squealed, burying her face in her hands (her long, wavy red hair cascading around her face and shoulders) to cover up the intense blush on her cheeks and let out an awkward giggle.
"What?"
"I love you, but that is NOT a conversation I want to have... even with you!"
"Why? Are you embarrassed about it? Did it suck? Oh, Danes, it always sucks the first time. You should do it again though... and soon!" Lucy questioned, as she scooted towards Dana on her knees (risking some serious carpet burn), imploring her to give it another shot because it really did get better.
"I haven't had sex... yet. Will you, please, stop talking about it now?" Dana groaned audibly, hoping now she had given the honest answer to that particular question that that would be the end of the whole embarrassing conversation... but it wasn't.
Lucy was nothing if not incredibly perssistant and continued on her quest to figure out what the craziest thing her best friend had ever done was.
"Oh, yeah..." Lucy rolled her eyes, rather dramatically, not at all convinced by the answer Dana had offered her "Sure, if you say so! But you've given a guy a blow job, right?" she finished with a knowing smirk.
"NOPE!"
"Really, you've done nothing? Have you ever even seen a penis?"
Lucy was grasping Dana's hands in hers between their laps, staring intently and waiting for an answer to her last probing question.
"Okay, swear you won't tell Missy... or anyone else for that matter?" Dana sighed, accepting that on this point she would have to break, tell her best friend the truth and share the biggest secret she had kept hidden from even her older sister.
"Cross my heart..." Lucy said, miming an X over her heart with her index finger "I promise I won't tell a soul"
"I've touched one" Dana whispered, even though there was no one else in the room or the house for that matter, the smallest of grins playing on the corners of her mouth.
It suddenly sounded somewhat ridiculous to her that she had kept it secret for so long, when it wasn't really that big of a deal though she supposed it really helped to have free spirited and completely trusting parents, like Lucy had, to be so open and honest about stuff like boys... and sex. It was so different from the structered ship shape way her house was run, with the no sex before marriage rule being a hammered in from a very early age (a rule which Melissa broke, devastating their parents and recieving the harshest of consequences).
"You little minx!" Lucy exclaimed, throwing her arms around Dana in a joyful hug, as their girlish laughter filled the quietness of the den (the last song on the record having just come to an end).
"Happy now?"
"Yes... but when? And why didn't you tell me immediately?"
"Well, it happened last year... after junior prom, in the backseat of Dylan's Impala. We were making out and I could feel how hard he was through his nice dress slacks. Oh, and because I'm not absolutely crazy, that's why I didn't tell you" Dana replied, leaning forward and grabbing the Prosecco bottle and taking another quick sip.
"Wow! That's so intense! Did you enjoy... touching him?"
"I mean, kinda. It was a little bit weird but I also felt powerful. Until he started to unzip his pants and ask me to give him a hand job" Dana lamented, scrunching up her face at the uncomfortable memory because she had liked Dylan, really liked him and had been comfortable with everything else they had been doing... up to that point.
"Ugh. What an arsehole!"
"It's OK. When I stopped him from going further, and told him it wasn't going to happen... at least not in the parking lot behind the school gym, he was a perfect gentleman" Dana quickly interrupted, trying to reassure her outraged (on her behalf, of course) friend.
"Well, you already know the two guys I've slept with. So, what should we do now?"
"I haven't a clue, but I do know that I'm pretty tipsy right now"
"Come on..."
Lucy suddenly stood up, grabbing Dana's hands and pulling her up from the floor too.