I had gone over to a friend's apartment and Elaine was seated on the couch. I was introduced to her and we all were having a pleasant conversation when the subject got around to Elaine.

My friend casually mentioned that "Elaine had both her legs amputated because of diabetes." I was sitting right next to her and was stunned! My heart was pounding as I tried to be nonchalant about it. Of course, I looked at her legs, and now I could see that the ankles were rigid and her shoes did not wrinkle the way shoes usually do. Somehow, I managed to talk to her about it without too much quiver in my voice. She was totally open and talked easily about how both her legs had been amputated below the knees and she had some new prostheses that didn't quite work as well as she had hoped. I asked her about how her legs fastened on etc and she explained it all to me.

By now I was calmed down a bit and enjoying the conversation immensley. Then she was explaining about how the muslces in her stump worked to help hold her limbs on and she casually said "Would you like to see my stump?" I have no idea what I replied, but she pulled her skirt above her knees and slipped off her right leg as easily as taking off a shoe. Then she flexed her short, fleshy BK stump. My heart was pounding again as I watched the little limb quiver as she moved it. She slipped off the silky stump sock she was wearing and said something about how you could feel the severed bone in the flesh of her limb.

"Here." she said, and took my hand in hers and pressed it against the soft, rounded end of her amputated calf. "Can you feel it?" she asked. I answered something at least partially coherent, because she moved the stub of her bone, and I could feel the hardness buried in the warmth of her fleshy stump as it moved against my palm! She must have known what she was doing to me because she smiled and then guided my finger along the scar across the end of her limb as she explained it. She kept calmly talking to me, but I was beyond hearing. It was the most incredible sensation since my first serious kiss.

Way too soon, she put her leg back on and the conversation drifted to other subjects, but my mind and heart belonged to Elaine for a long time after that evening.