She occupied Seat 11A on the long, red-eye flight from San Diego to Pittsburgh, while I was in 11C and the seat between us was vacant. Twenty-five years later she still occupies my mind from time to time.

The last words she spoke to me were, “I’ll never forget you.”

Whether she has, I’ll not ever know but she remains burned into my memories like a brand into a hide. If someday Alzheimer’s eats my brain, I sincerely hope that those precious cells where she is stored remain intact until my last breath.

Throughout this story, I’m calling her Eleven because we never exchanged names and so my only frame of reference for one of the great, if brief, passions of my life is her, in Seat 11A on the big Boeing jetliner.

The young woman appeared in her mid-twenties. She was petite – a little under five feet – waifishly thin, probably well-proportioned size O. Eleven was attractive – not a knockout – but girl-next-door pretty. She wore a white cable-knit sweater and a blue stonewashed denim skirt that rode about halfway up her eye-catching thighs.

Eleven had good legs peeking out from that skirt and Penny Loafers on her tiny feet. She had a nice smile, mostly-even teeth, a pert little nose, soft brown eyes, and blonde hair nicely framing her face in a pixie cut. “Cute” is probably as good a one-word description of Eleven as any.

The only flaws evident were one slightly crooked tooth and a crescent-shaped scar on one knee. Her jewelry was minimalist, smallish post earrings, a plain gold cross on a wisp of chain, an old-fashioned ring that I’m guessing was her mother’s and an ankle bracelet. She held a paperback novel with her boarding pass stub serving as a bookmark. I found myself hoping that 11A wouldn’t read.

Like most air passengers, we began a conversation with travel talk. Eleven said she was glad that she’d recently quit smoking because ours was a long, non-smoking flight back when that first became the rule of the sky. I had recently quit a two-plus pack a day habit myself and so we discussed the difficulties of breaking a cigarette addiction.

Our conversation was interrupted by the FAA-required takeoff safety instructions as we taxied out and eleven turned on her reading light and buried her face in her book during takeoff. Once we reached cruise altitude, the flight attendants began a beverage service and I ended up passing Eleven’s beverage over to her. Whereupon, she closed her book, loosened her seatbelt enough to turn towards me and pull one knee up onto the empty seat between us and crossed her leg over the knee.

It’s an odd fact of life that people will confide the intimacies of their life’s story with a total stranger. Also, for reasons that I’ve never really understood, my personality is such that women tend to confide in me.

Eleven said that she was on her way home to attend a funeral for an aunt and she began telling me a little about the woman. Something about her aunt must’ve triggered a memory because Eleven abruptly changed the subject and told me that she ran away from home at seventeen because of incestuous advances by her father.

I’m a better problem solver than a listener and so I began telling Eleven about resources for incest survivors such as the twelve-step Incest Survivors Anonymous program and some social service agencies. These might offer counseling services to her on a sliding-scale cost structure. Soon though, it was apparent that she just needed to be heard and so I stopped giving advice and shut up and listened.

She had one older brother and her parents were alcoholics. I related to her because although I had six younger siblings, I come from an alcoholic home too. We discussed the effects of alcoholism on children for a while and then Eleven got back into the gory details of her young life. God help me, I was drawn to this kid and by now we were sitting very close together, baring our souls in hushed voices.

Eleven’s escape from a sexually abusive and dominant father came in the form of a small circus traveling through their town and she lied about her age and landed a job as a roustabout – essentially a laborer. She received room and board in one of the crew trailers and a small salary.

Still, though, she was away from her miserable excuse of a father. She had wondered if she’d miss her mother but the fact was that the woman was so drunk most of the time that there was no one there to miss.

“The lights were on but nobody was home,” Eleven said of her mother, a situation that made leaving bearable.

Her brother was away in Vietnam and so there really was no one at home whom she’d miss.

Once Eleven had been with the circus for about a week and a half, she fell victim to the randy attentions of a cigar-chomping midget who managed the circus. It was made very clear to her that she was expected to service the manager sexually or be dumped off wherever the trailers were camped for the night.

As she hadn’t been paid yet, the only money that Eleven had was what she’d brought from home – something less than thirty dollars. So she resigned herself that just for tonight, she’d have to bear this guy and once she was paid and had some money she’d bolt.

As life’s path took her, she didn’t bolt. It was easier to quietly let this guy fuck her once a month or so and keep her job. When he wasn’t with her, he was fucking some of the other women in the little troupe. Sex with him was no big deal – wham bam, see you next-time ma’am. At least the man wasn’t cruel as her father had been.

Eleven shivered as she told me how her father used to twist her nipples harshly and pull her hair as he fucked her doggie-style from behind in the few months before she left home. I found myself confiding in Eleven that my own background had been different but not much better. To say that Eleven and I bonded is a gross understatement. Shared pain drew us together like the fields of a cobalt magnet.

Eleven went on and said that circus life got better after several months when she and one of the clowns took an interest in each other. This backed off the circus manager who was content to bang the other women and not piss-off his best acrobatic clown.

Her guy was a kind and gentle lover, and for the next two years, she stayed in Clown's trailer. Clown had had a rough life too and essentially, they helped to heal each other somewhat.

Clown taught Eleven some basic clown acts and she worked the crowds during the “Come-in” times. This was Carney slang for the hour before people enter the main tent when they are milling around and clowns entertain them with tricks and sight gags. Mostly though, Eleven liked caring for the exotic animals which ultimately led to her present career as a caretaker at the San Diego Zoo.

She was surprised to learn that I knew the Carney workers' form of pig-Latin that they use to speak among themselves around customers. Essentially, one takes a simple word like “help” and inserts ‘eze’ into the word making it ‘heze-elp.’ Money or ‘bucks’ was “beezucks”.

Calling another circus worker for help or ‘Hey Rube’ in their lingo was “Heezay Reezube!” I have family in show business and they had taught me the slang dialect when I was a kid.

By now, Eleven and I were sitting with our heads so close together that we almost were kissing. I used the lav and noticed the woman sitting in 12B glaring at us in disdain and so I suppose she heard some of our dialogue and disapproved. 'Who cares?' I thought.

I felt an overwhelming sense of protectiveness towards Eleven and at the same time I felt more sexually turned on than I could remember for a long, long time. At that time in my life, my marriage was in a petty bad place and to be honest, the most satisfying part of my sex life was going away on a business trip and masturbating in peace to stories and letters in sex magazines.

At some point, Eleven took my hand and then both hands as we shared increasingly intimate details of our lives with each other. I couldn’t believe that she, a total stranger was so connected to me and me to her. It felt like some powerful electric current was flowing between us through our hands and arms.

As the plane prepared to land, I hated it being over. I asked Eleven her name and how to contact her but she said it was better if we didn’t. I knew that she had a connecting flight in two hours and mine was in ninety minutes so maybe we could share a coffee somewhere in the airport.

I never asked her though because she said, “It’s been really great talking with you; enjoy the rest of your trip.”

I took that as an ending and sadly, got off the plane and watched her walk down the concourse. Waiting at the gate for my next flight, I felt as though my life was ending and that I had to go and find her so I hurried to her gate and the second she saw me her sad face beamed and she came almost running towards me.

We fell together in one of those huge teary hugs that you see in airport movies when two people have been apart for a long time. We had been apart less than fifteen minutes but it sure felt like an eternity.

“Come with me,” she said and together we walked back towards my gate. “Wait two minutes and come in,” she said turning from me and entering a family bathroom.

Anxiously I waited and then with a quick look around, entered the bathroom and locked the door. Fewer than two seconds later we were locked in a kiss that probably lit the room. I got out maybe the sentence, “I want you,” when I helped her hop up onto a counter next to a wash basin.

She kicked off her Penny Loafers as I reached below her jean skirt and pulled the panties from her body. Idly, I noticed that the panties said “Wednesday” on the front and today was Friday but I didn’t give a damn what the panties said they were tossed onto the counter and I was pushing my own pants and underwear down in one push.

In a flash, Eleven’s legs were on either side of me and I was balls-deep inside her. Did you ever see a movie called “Little Children” with Kate Winslet? Her character has an affair with a neighbor and their first time together is in Kate’s basement laundry and he is plowing into her as she sat on a laundry tub.

That’s my memory of Eleven in that family restroom – me plowing into her, hips pumping like the hammers of hell and her beautiful brown eyes widening as we fucked. I was losing my balance and kicked my right leg out of my pants and my shoe came off with it but that didn’t slow me down one bit.

The only times our lips parted was to gasp for breath occasionally. My orgasm came quickly and ferociously. I felt it start in my prostate and then my back and legs, literally shooting a cold fire from my calves to my shoulders as I fired off round after round of ropey cum into her.

Midway through my orgasm, hers hit and I felt her stiffen and her legs tighten around me pulling me in deeper as her vagina began to gush. She bit her lip to stifle a scream and I lifted her skirt higher to keep the wetness now flooding the countertop from soaking it, as I mashed my lips into hers for yet another mad kiss.

I felt my cock growing soft and slipping out of her when Eleven hopped off the counter and began stroking it madly and kissing me. Somehow, despite my massive orgasm, she had me hard again in something like two minutes. Eleven broke the kiss and reached between her legs grabbing up a handful of our combined juices and smeared them on her ass.

She turned her back to me, hopped back up so that she was bent over. 'Did she want it doggie style,' I wondered? Eleven reached back and grabbed my turgid cock and placed it against her puckered rosebud and said, “push into me.” I looked into the mirror to read her face and she said it again a little louder and gave my cock a squeeze.

Not wanting to hurt her, I pushed slowly until the head plopped inside her warm bottom. Her face in the mirror registered pleasure with no hint of pain and so I began a long slow pumping.

“Harder, faster,” she commanded.

Harder it was as I placed my hands on her hips and began pumping her ass harder. Eleven reached back and took my hands and guided them around her and under her sweater to her breasts. I pulled her demi-bra up out of the way and began cupping her perfect little pert globes as I continued pumping her bowels.

“Pinch my nipples,” she said, “Be rough with them.”

There on this bathroom counter-top, the altar of our lovemaking, I did not want to hurt this woman but the rougher I played with her breasts, the more pleasure I could see in her reflection in the mirror. When the roughness seemed to reach a plateau, I played a hunch and pulled my arms back.

With my left hand, I began pulling her hair and she clearly loved it, gasping, “Yes,” over and over. With my right hand I started slapping the cheek of that lovely ass I was fucking so mercilessly.

The rougher I got, the more pleasure I saw in her and Eleven soon reached down and began playing none too gently with her clitoris. The feeling in my penis was incredible. The tight muscles around her anus were gripping my shaft almost like a thumb and index finger forming a tight ring that seemed to slide back and forth on me as in reality I pumped back and forth into her.

Inside her the heat was amazing. Our approaching orgasm was palpable in both of us.

This time she came first and I was a few seconds behind her and shot a steady stream into her bottom as I collapsed over her on the counter and she turned her head and we kissed lovingly. Through this whole experience hardly a word was speaking between us. Our bodies did all the communicating. We both grabbed some paper towels, soap, and water and helped each other clean up and got dressed while laughing and kissing.

I said to her, “Really! I want to see you again what’s your name and how do I contact you?"

I offered her one of my business cards and she pushed it back at me and said, “No, it’s better if we don’t. We have this and I will never forget you.”

With that, she gave me a quick kiss and left me standing in the room.

As I stood there collecting my thoughts, my heart raced when the door began to open moments later only to find that it was a woman with two children. She startled with fear and began closing the door. 

“It’s OK I’m done,” I told the woman and left the bathroom.

Returning to Eleven’s gate was primo in my mind but her wishes were clear and so I went to my own gate mixed with ecstatic happiness and morose sadness. On the plane, and for weeks after, I relived that time with her over and over. Was she reliving her abuse with a chosen partner and this time the sex was under her control? The nipple roughness and hair pulling seemed to dovetail with her descriptions of her father's actions.

Finally, it occurred to me that whatever her motivations, I was grateful that Eleven had shared herself with me; and that she needed me that night. For years later, I wanted to fly out and hang around the employee entrance of the San Diego zoo and find her somehow but it seemed the wrong thing to do.

I have a wife and family who needed me and for whatever her reasons Eleven wanted to keep our wham-bam moment a solitary event. So, I put the memory tucked-in safe and it remains one of the fondest memories of my life, all these years later.

I will never forget her.