Honing The Talent
B Pascal
Chapter 12
I woke slowly, with morning light peeking through the curtains, and Gail nuzzling into my chest. I squeezed her hand and I yawned. Underneath me she mumbled something. I said, “Huh?”
She moved her head a little and repeated, “I don’t want to move.”
“No one is forcing you. You can stay here till Tuesday, if you want.”
“I feel good, Tom, so relaxed.”
“Why am I not surprised? How many times did you cum last night? That was really impressive.
I’m envious.”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
She was quiet for a while, then said, “I was surprised at how many boundaries I stepped over yesterday. I don’t normally do that, I think I told you.”
“Regrets?” I asked.
“No... not really. Which in itself is surprising. I don’t think I can talk about this right now,
’cause I’ve got to think about the why of this.”
“You mean why you crossed your boundaries?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, you’re right, you should sort out your feelings, figure things out.”
“Let’s just lie here for awhile, then maybe a shower.”
So we spent twenty minutes or so, just enjoying the feeling of each other’s bodies, until she finally turned onto her back and stretched. I immediately felt my dick twitching. Did she do that on purpose, I wondered.
She rolled off the bed and grabbed her robe. “C’mon, Carter, let’s hit the showers. Don’t know about you, but I sure need it.”
I got up and pulled on my pants and shirt, leaving it unbuttoned. She took my hand and led me to the bathroom. I saw no sign of Carol, so probably still unconscious.
In the bathroom, she was out of her robe and into the shower in a second, allowing the water to warm up. I stripped and joined her. God damn. I was reproving myself for having missed this opportunity the last time. Gail in the shower was like something out of one of those Penthouse photo spreads.
But she was all business, rubbing herself down with soap and scrubbing, while I could just watch in awe. She passed the soap to me and I washed quickly, then rubbed the soap on her back in the hard-to-reach places and rubbed my hands over it.
“Thanks, Tom.”
“My pleasure. And I mean that, literally.”
I got some more soap on my hands and made sure that her butt was properly polished. When I cleaned in the crack she moaned and had to lean against the wall. “You’d better stop, Carter. This could get slippery and dangerous. Someone might get hurt.”
“I guess. Just want to make sure we get all the places you can’t reach.”
My hands were still sliding over her ass, and I slid one soapy finger in and out of her asshole a couple of times. She moaned and said, “Oh, you bastard, Carter.”
“All done.”
She glared at me, half angry and half aroused. I stepped under the shower-head to rinse off and her hand grabbed my ass and she pushed one finger into my butt. I jumped several inches.
“Oh, you little bitch. Just you wait.”
“Just wanted to make sure I got to all the places you couldn’t reach. I think I’m done.”
She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She grabbed a towel and dried herself off. I had a full-fledged boner on, but she ignored it. She pulled another towel off the rack and tossed it to me. “Dry yourself off and meet me in the kitchen. I’m going to get dressed.” And she was out the door.
Well, nothing to do now, so I dried off and got dressed, having to force my stiffy into my pants.
My shoes were still in her room, so I walked into the kitchen in my socks.
“Oh, good, you figured out how to use the towel.”
“Sarcasm’s really not a good fit for you, Gail.”
“I’ll work on it. I promise you I’ll get better. You want tea?”
I nodded, and she pulled two slices of bread out of the toaster, and put one on a plate for me.
“There’s strawberry jam on the table if you want.”
The kettle boiled and she poured it into a teapot and let it sit.
“You look a little worn around the edges, Tom. Why might that be?”
“Are you being ironic here?”
“Just making conversation.”
“I am a bit worn around the edges. I blame it all on you.”
“I think we both share the blame. And the aftereffects. Here’s your tea.”
We were quiet for awhile, sipping tea, eating toast. She had a kind of energy in the morning that I hadn’t noticed before, plus a glow about her, which I had.
“Before I forget to say it, Gail, I really do appreciate the art tour and lecture yesterday. It helped a lot. Sometime I’d like to go back and find out what comes after the Renaissance.”
“We’ll work something out, Tom. And I’m happy to play lecturer every so often. It’s fun.”
“You’re good at it, if you didn’t know that already.”
“I had a good student.”
We talked for a few minutes more, then I said I’d leave her so she could resume her normal routine. With my shoes tied, she gave me a long kiss at the door and shooed me on my way.
I walked back to the dorm, half in a daze, thinking about yesterday, all the things we did, and especially all the things we didn’t do.
Larry wasn’t in the room when I got there, so I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. When the door opened I heard, “So, not abducted and probed by aliens after all. Should I ask?”
I smiled. He said, “Oh, you think you’re keeping secrets. I have spies everywhere, Carter, I’ll find out everything.”
“Larry, I think I’d like to nap for an hour.”
“Or a day. Anyway, I’m off on a shopping mission. Later.”
When I woke it was close enough to lunchtime that I just went, because the sparse breakfast had left my stomach growling. I had lunch and I felt a lot better afterwards. I realized that I hadn’t checked my campus mailbox for a couple of days. I might have won the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes and been completely unaware of it, so I went to check.
Even better than a sweepstakes, there was a letter from Karen! I took it back to the dorm to read it.
I lay on my bed and it was like she was talking to me in person, the same tone of voice, the same excitement about certain things that happened. She talked about her Computer Science classes and how challenging they were, and where her roommates were from and what they were like.
And at the very end, she mentioned that she’d gotten an email account, available to all students there, and that most of the big universities were part of the UUCP mail network and I should look into getting an account of my own. She printed out her email address for me.
I didn’t know a lot about email, other than AOL messages, but anything that would allow me to communicate with her more quickly was worth looking into. I looked over at my PC and wondered if I could do it through that.
The door flew open, and Larry came in staggering under the load of several large boxes. I jumped up and helped him unload them.
“Thanks, Tom, that was just a little too much to handle gracefully.”
“Is this from your shopping trip?”
“Yup. I bought a new laptop, and a laser printer, too. I have a desktop, but it’s a couple of years old and big, so I thought I’d get something newer and smaller.”
I looked at the pile. I was no computer expert, but I estimated that that was several thousand dollars worth of boxes sitting there.
“I’ve got a guy in one of my classes who lives for this stuff, he’ll help me set it up.”
I wondered about the email, so I asked and Larry just shrugged shoulders. “Beats me. But Kenny knows this shit, lives and breathes it, so he’ll talk to you about it till you’re about ready to hit him with a chair. I’ll call him for my stuff, and ask him when he comes by.”
So that’s what I did. Kenny—and he did have a pocket protector—came by the next day and had Larry up and running in minutes. Larry told me to ask Kenny my question, and I stated it as succinctly as I could, and Kenny nodded.
“There’s a LAN here in the dorm—see that plug in the wall?—and you just plug your LAN
adapter into it and you’re on the network. I can set up the email account for you in no time, and yes, you can send and receive right here, even print them if you want.”
He looked at the back of my PC. “No LAN card, you’ll have to buy one for this to work.”
He told me where to go, what to buy, and said to call him when I got it.
So later that day I went off to buy one at the place he recommended. It was way more than I was comfortable with, but I had a little money in my checking account, so I bought it. And the next day, after five minutes of instruction from Kenny, I was composing my first email to Karen.
I kept it short, because I just wanted to know that it worked. She didn’t respond immediately—
she’d have to have been sitting there at her computer when it arrived—but an hour later I heard my PC ping, and when I got up to check, I saw a message in my Inbox.
I’m embarrassed to tell you just how giddy that made me feel. Finally, no more waiting endless days for an answer to my letters. It could be almost real time! She didn’t say much in that email, just that she’d gotten my note and now we could chat whenever we wanted. It felt liberating. It was a weight off my shoulders. I’d write her again later.
But I had work to do first. I sketched an outline for the two research papers that were due, and I started on my math problem set.
After I did that and had dinner, I wrote Karen a long email. I found it was much easier to type than to write longhand. I somehow was able to formulate my thoughts better. And I could revise and edit them if I wanted to, before sending it! I sent it off and wondered what she’d have to say in reply.
I don’t know what triggered my ruminations, but I started thinking about learned behavior and how difficult it was to modify it. A pattern that one learns by dint of repetition is reinforcement.
And long repetition makes for a really strong belief.
Imagine that you were from a religious family, had gone to church every week, done the Sunday school thing, read the Bible at home, and then someone comes along and asserts “There is no God.”
You would be horrified to hear it, to begin with, because it contradicted everything you had believed from the time you were a child.
But your challenger is adamant, insisting that there is no God, and that all evidence for His existence is man-made. You have your beliefs, but the evidence for non-existence is strong. I suppose it comes down to a question of faith. Those of weak faith might be convinced to become atheists or agnostics. However, the battle of those competing ideas in one’s head would be powerful and traumatic. I thought it would be very difficult to convince a believer otherwise.
It does happen, rarely. So it’s possible, but does it leave some lasting effect on one’s mind? My gut said that the struggle would leave a field of intellectual rubble behind that would a problem for years. That’s one of the things I’m going to have to figure out.
Now suppose I have a statement or belief that’s equally strong in a subject. It might be as simple as a learned aversion, perhaps “I hate Brussels sprouts, they’re repulsive with an unpleasant taste.” How do I convince a subject that they’re tasty, and that what they’re perceiving is just a different and unexpected taste?
Or how about “Anal sex is disgusting and painful, and I’m never going to try it.” Learned behaviors are like certain weeds, persistent and quite difficult to eradicate. Clearly, some people enjoy anal and find it arousing and satisfying. How do those people convince the anal-haters to forsake their learned beliefs and take on a new set of beliefs?
I was finding many people who were afraid of oral or anal, either from some religious or social stigma, or perhaps because they had convinced themselves early on that it was unpleasant, without ever trying it to see what the reality of it was.
Was there a shortcut that could erase the learned behavior without leaving some residue of guilt and self-reproach? I didn’t know, but I thought it might be worth thinking about.
It was Gail and, to a lesser extent, Katrina who had raised the issue again. I thought it was possible over the long run to replace one set of expectations with a different set, but that would require an investment of time and effort.
Could I find a quicker back way around the obstruction? I put that in the back of my mind and let it simmer over a slow fire.
At the end of the day I was dead tired. I blamed Gail, but wished I could do it again. Still, a sense of self-preservation suggested I needed some down time. Larry tried to convince me to join him on the party circuit, but the thought of bed and sleep seemed pretty attractive right now.
Sunday was more of class prep, reading, and some research in the library, this time for the two papers that were due. But there was also an email from Karen that I spent some time answering. I missed her and I told her so. I also called home, feeling a bit guilty about having been neglectful.
My mother wanted to know everything, and I thought it was more of her trying to relive her younger days vicariously through her kids. I’d gotten a lot of that while dating in high school. She wanted to know all the details. I would have to ask Mindy if my mother was on her about her relationships.
I’ll skip forward a bit here, since much of the class stuff gets repetitive. On the following Wednesday, during the morning recitation section for Chem I, I found that the TA’s mind was useful in a different way from that of the prof giving the lectures. The latter had a more profound knowledge of chemistry as a whole, including unrelated things like organic and nuclear chemistry, and her own research. It just didn’t apply to what we were trying to absorb in Chem I.
The TA, however, had a detailed knowledge of the more fundamental aspects of chemistry because they were more recent in his education. He’d had to brush up on the subject in order to teach the section, so it was fresher in his mind and I got a sense of the totality of the subject covered in the text. That would be useful for the quizzes and tests. I also got a strong sense of framework for beginning chemistry, and now felt confident about learning the subject. I would remember that for later technical subjects.
I called Gail midweek and asked if she had time on Friday for Lesson 2 of the Art Tour, but she said she had a big project due next Monday and would have to take a pass. It may have been my imagination, but she sounded a little disappointed at having to decline.
So the class week ended. I did a little more of my own research in the library on Friday, then concentrated on the two papers that were due next week. I felt I had a good handle on them, having gotten a sense from the profs what they were looking for in terms of assessing our knowledge of and insights into the topics.
By the time Saturday night rolled around, I was pretty numb from study, reading and research.
I took a break for dinner, and Larry started in with “Let’s find a party!” It seemed that he had, in short order, developed a network which cataloged all available parties within a one-mile radius. He had some sort of rating system that told him which ones were “hot” and most desirable. Everyone needs a hobby.
I was burned out with school work for once, so I didn’t resist as fully as I normally might, and allowed myself to be talked into going with him and a few of his friends.
And, by the way, whatever failings Larry might have had as a student or a ladies man, he had developed a pretty wide circle of friends in very short order. He was friendly, easy-going, and had some money to buy drinks, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising.
So after we ate, the two of us met up with a couple of his buddies and headed off-campus.
Tonight’s party of choice was at someone’s off-campus apartment a few blocks away, within easy walking distance. Even drunk.
We could hear it before we got there. This was a student housing area, otherwise the neighbors probably would have been up in arms. And it was entirely likely that the police might show up once or twice anyway to put a damper on things.
It was a second floor apartment, and the party had already spilled into the hallway. This was my problem with Larry’s rating system. Part of the point system for the party was heavily weighted towards the availability and quantity of alcohol.
It was evident as soon as we walked in the door that they hadn’t skimped. There were bottles everywhere, and kegs of beer at strategic points around the place, plus bowls of potato chips, pretzels and nacho chips. No one was more than a few steps from some form of alcohol. And those present had been stress-testing the supply systems pretty heavily, and it seemed to be stable.
Which is more than I could say for the people doing the testing.
So there were loud conversations competing with the recorded music. It seemed to be evenly split between male and female party goers, maybe a few more of the former.
I could see right away that it probably wasn’t going to hold my interest for long, but it was just what Larry and his pals were looking for. They headed for the drinks and did their best to catch up. I had to have something, so I found a clean plastic cup and got a beer. There was a place open in a corner where I could lean, so I drank my beer and people-watched.
Some guy across the room was putting the moves on a young woman pretty aggressively, probably fueled by the drink he held in his hand. And just as aggressively she pushed him off and walked away.
I was always amused by the number of guys who, in their own minds, became irresistible when they had too much to drink. It was likely the drinks that gave them the courage to try but also turned them into jerks, but they never seemed to learn. Because the alcohol made them forget that it had happened.
Beside me, a voice said, “So what does the smart money think? Is the rejection going to slow him down? Will he lose his confidence?”
I glanced to my right, and a brunette young woman with glasses was looking at me expectantly.
“Hell, no. He’ll have another drink and double down. He’s the catch of the evening, in his mind. This was just a fluke, an aberration.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think. They’re at every party. God’s gift to women, if we only knew what was good for us.”
“Doesn’t it get old? Why do you come to these things if you know it’s going to be like this?”
“I dunno. Mostly because there’s nothing else going on tonight, I guess. I need someplace to wind down, and this is cheap. As in ’free’.”
“Well, there’s that to recommend it. I’m looking for the second reason, but haven’t found it yet.”
“The stimulating conversation?”
“Perhaps, though my money would be on the snappy repartee and bon mots.“
She giggled. “I’m here because of the networking opportunities.”
“The catered repast is worth noting.”
“Well, there you have it. I wondered why I keep coming to these events, and you’ve summarized it pretty succinctly. Here’s to you.” She raised her cup in my direction and saluted me.
“I’m Tom, Tom Carter. Who’re you?”
“Mandy O’Neill,” she said. “Two L’s. And what brings you to our part of town?”
“In the spirit of full disclosure, I normally hate these things, but I was looking for something to do as far away as possible from reading, writing and pursuit of higher knowledge. I’m burned out for the week. My roommate likes these things and dragged me along. That’s him in the yellow shirt with his buddies over in the corner, having a great time.”
She glanced and nodded. “There’s a lot like him here tonight, and more arriving all the time.
It’ll get pretty raucous very soon.”
“Not sure I’m going to last the evening. Drunk and raucous isn’t really my thing.”
“Well, you’ll just have to start wangling invitations to the higher class parties, you know, the ones with the string quartets and the poets.”
“Oooo, can you get me in? I promise to wear my best tee-shirt.”
“They fill up pretty fast, Tom, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“If I bring my kazoo, d’you think they’ll let me sit in with the string quartet?”
“You might have to slip the concertmaster a few bucks to look the other way.”
And that made me chuckle. I raised my cup in acknowledgement.
We did the ’what do you do” dance for a while. She was a junior at ———, and had finally decided on biology as her major. I admired her choice and admitted that I had toyed with the idea of doing biology before psychology and math had caught my interest.
It took her a few minutes before it hit her. “You’re first year? You said you’d done two years of calculus, plus differential equations, so I thought... Well, I thought you were further along in the process.”
“No, I did those in high school. Well, the differential equations were self-study, but I passed the test and got the credits.”
“Sorry. I’m a little embarrassed. You speak so confidently that... I shouldn’t have assumed.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s fine.”
I haven’t mentioned it before now, because I don’t think about it, but it’s worth a comment.
Most of the women I’ve hooked up with, ever since I started having sex regularly, are older than me. That, in itself, is worth noting, especially among high school age people. The age barriers there are pretty well established and rigid, and there’s little mixing among the various grades.
Sometimes an older guy will go out with a younger girl, but it almost never works in the opposite direction. Younger guys do not ask out older girls, particularly those in a higher grade, nor do older girls normally interact with younger guys. Just not done.
Except for me. This puzzled the hell out of me the first time I found it happening. Part of it I’ve alluded to before, my ability to talk to people, to express interest in their ideas, to appear like I really want to get their opinions because I respect their insights. And that’s not just an act, I really am interested in people, I like to make an intellectual connection with them. People pick up on it and more often than not I become accepted into their group.
But the other part is the way I look. It took me a while to realize it when I was growing up, because we’re not often good judges of our own appearance. The fact of the matter is that I look older than I am, by a couple of years, anyway. I always have. Probably just an accident of genes, and I can blame my parents for that. In grade school some kids assumed that I had been held back a couple of years because I wasn’t smart enough, but in fact we were all the same age. I just looked a little older than I actually was.
This explained why a lot of the women I wound up talking to were older than I was. They look at me and just assume I’m closer to their age. As Mandy had.
“So, Mandy,” I asked. Short for Amanda?”
“Yeah. Named after my grandmother,” she told me.
“It’s kind of an old-fashioned name, but I’ve always liked it. Same with Martha, and Rachel, and Amelia.”
“Sounds like an episode from Little House On The Prairie.“
I said, “’Mandy, you and Martha go feed the livestock. Young Tom, you come he’p me set them fence posts in the north forty.’ ’Yes, paw.’“
She laughed out loud, caught up in the image. “Ohmigod, I can just see myself dressed in some calico gown down to my ankles. Feeding the chickens.”
“See how far women have come? Instead you’re here exchanging witty banter in a sophisticated urban salon.“
“Paw’d be so proud. If he hadn’t have been dead for a hundred years.”
I finished my beer and contemplated a second one. I was having trouble convincing myself that it was worth it.
“You getting a refill?” she asked.
“No, I’m thinking I might be done. Your observation was probably spot on, the party is just going to get rowdier and drunker as time goes on, and I’m really not in the mood.”
“That’s too bad. You’re probably the only one still capable of intelligent conversation here tonight.”
“Don’t mean to leave you in the lurch, but I’ve got a low tolerance for mindless excess.”
“Suppose I were to offer an alternative. What if I thought that we might be able to find a joint or two with only a short walk? We might be able to do that and continue the conversation in a quieter setting.”
“The offer has a certain attraction. Maybe we could steal a bowl of chips on the way out in case the munchies come knocking at the door.”
“I could probably find some better quality snacks, something more fitting for the kazoo player in a string quartet.”
That got a laugh from me, so I said, “Okay, you’re on.”
I picked up my jacket from where I’d hung it on the corner of a chair and followed her to the hallway. Larry was wrapped up in a discussion with his buddies and I think didn’t see me leave.
Outside, I zipped my jacket and Mandy said, “It’s just a couple of blocks, won’t take long,”
and led the way. On the way I asked about where she was from, what she was interested in, beside biology.
And in a short time she interrupted herself and said, “Here we are.”
It was student housing, like all the other student houses, run down but fairly solid. She unlocked the front door and let us in. “One flight up,” she said.
She opened her apartment door and I was impressed. She had decorated the place quite nicely.
Looking closely you could see that the furniture was used and a bit scratched, the rug a little worn, the lamps cheap, probably from some second-hand store. But it all fit together harmoniously, and I told her.
“Thanks. It’s kind of a game. We don’t have much money, my roommate and I, so we’re always on the lookout for something we need that’s in good condition and cheap or free. Like that chair there? Somebody put it out on the sidewalk for trash pickup, but we got it first.”
“That’s a skill that’ll come in handy once you graduate.”
“Yeah, we know. Rebecca—that’s my roommate—is a senior, and she’s already looking at the job market, and the salaries for entry level employment in her field is barely a living wage. She’s at her boyfriend’s tonight, probably having the same ’do I work for awhile or do I apply to grad school’ discussion that she has with me several times a week.”
“I’ll probably be having the same discussion myself before too long,” I said.
“Right. So the point of this trip was so we didn’t have to worry about mundane matters like that for a few hours. I thought that I might be able to find an aid to forgetting. Be right back. Grab a seat. You want something to drink?
I said I was probably good for awhile and she went off in search of a small baggie. I sat on the couch and stretched. It was good not to have to think about school for a few hours, so I relaxed.
She came back, hand raised, dangling a little plastic bag containing a few joints and a Bic lighter. “See? Told you I’d find it.”
“I never doubted you for a moment, Mandy.”
“There’s more. Hang on.” She dropped the bag on the little coffee table and went back into the kitchen. In a few moments she returned with a tray loaded with crackers, a block of cheese and grapes.
Setting it down on the table, she pulled out a smoke and lit it, took a hit and passed it to me. I hardly did this at all in high school, but it seemed to be almost a social nicety here, much as you’d offer someone coffee or tea if they came to visit.
After a few back-and-forths I could feel the mellow descending on me. Too much of this and I’d quietly fall asleep. She was talking about the first time she’d tried it and how daring and grown-up she had felt. Now she did it because she found it relaxing, that it pushed the worries away for awhile and did it without a subsequent hangover.
“Alcohol never did much for me,” I said, “and, to be honest, weed doesn’t either, except for the relaxation aspect. I still expect that I could overdo this if I wasn’t careful. Have you ever had too much, in your opinion?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I think I have. At least once, maybe more. There was a lot of it available at one particular party and I got really trippy, wandering around inside my mind, enjoying the scenery, and not aware of what was going on around me. When I forced myself back to the real world I found some guy trying to get my clothes off.”
“That’s the thing with intoxicants that I don’t like. People don’t know their limits and when they go beyond them, they start doing things they might never do when straight. I see that mostly with alcohol, but it applies to other drugs as well.”
“Exactly. So fortunately I got back in time to stop anything from happening. The guy was genuinely puzzled as to why I was upset. It seemed entirely natural and normal to him, and I’m sure he felt that I had given my assent.
“Anyway, I was careful after that to set limits for myself. Now I can usually fine-tune it so I take just enough to have fun, reduce my inhibitions, but not enough that it impairs my judgment.”
“That’s a fine line to walk. Not many people would be able to maintain their balance.”
“Yeah, you’re right, but it seems to work for me.”
We each took a couple more hits and stared at the ceiling, perfectly at ease.
“Apropos of nothing, you have a girlfriend?”
I told her about Karen and California.
“She sounds really smart and together. It must be tough to be that far apart. I had a boyfriend in high school and I thought we could make it work when we went away to college, but it didn’t take him long to find a new girlfriend. I was pissed, but then I thought, who needs him, and found a new guy pretty quick. I hope things work out for the two of you.”
I told her about her parting comments, about experiencing new things and new people without worrying about whether she would approve or not.
“That’s actually good advice. I didn’t believe it at the time, but I’ve come to understand that if a relationship is to last, people need to grow in their own way, and as long as their growth paths don’t diverge too much, the relationship will be stronger than ever at the end.”
“I hope that’s the case, Mandy. I really do. And how ’bout you? You seeing anyone now?”
“Not at the moment. I just broke up with a guy I’d been seeing for awhile. He started to get a little judgmental towards the end and I didn’t like where it was heading, so I ended it. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Is there such a thing as a friendly breakup? I don’t think I’ve ever heard about one.”
She took a last hit off the joint, holding it between two fingernails to keep from getting burned, then lit another.
She passed it to me, saying, “Now I’m hungry. Good thing there are snacks.”
While I smoked, she cut a piece of cheese and placed it on a cracker and popped it into her mouth. She made another and held it in front of my mouth.
I swallowed it and passed her the joint, and pulled a few grapes from the bowl. She took a hit and I held a grape in front of her mouth. She made a surprisingly good imitation of the sound of a trained seal, so I tossed it to her and she caught it in her mouth. I applauded.
“That would have been more impressive if it had been a live fish, but applause-worthy nonetheless,” I said.
“I’m trying to develop skills that’ll make me stand out in the job market.”
“You may need to rethink your approach, unless you’re going to work in a zoo. Then, on your résumé, under ’Skills’ you could write, ’Speak fluent seal’.”
“I like animals better than some people.”
“That’s pretty much always been true.”
“Now I’m starting to get a really nice buzz. Sometimes it makes my skin really sensitive, like now. I like the way it makes me feel.”
“If I have too much more I’ll probably fall asleep, that’s the way it hits me. I’ll never be the life of the party at this rate.”
“I’m sure you have many other admirable talents. Help me finish this.”
But I declined and had some more cheese instead.
She took another hit and then became ruminative, letting the joint smolder in her hand, staring across the room. Then, to no one in particular, she said, “Eddy was such a jerk.”
I said, “Eddy?”
She looked at me like, “Weren’t you paying attention?", then caught herself. “Sorry, I got thinking about my ex again, Eddy. He really was a jerk, in retrospect, so sure that his way was the right way and everyone else’s was wrong.”
I must have still looked puzzled, because she said, “You sure you want to hear this? We were supposed to be having a pleasant, intelligent conversation. I’m not sure that’ll happen if Eddy’s involved, even as a topic of discussion.”
I told her, “Who knows where conversations might lead? I’ve got nowhere I have to be for awhile. If you want to talk about Eddy, hit me with it.”
“This might get a little embarrassing, just so you know. For me and for you. Stop me if it gets to be too much, okay?”
I nodded, and she went on. “I mean, there were little things that led up to it that should have been a warning sign. Maybe criticism of something I’d chosen to wear. Or my taste in light reading, stuff like that. I brushed them off, figuring it’s people getting used to each other’s foibles.
“Then... Geez, now I’m having second thoughts about this. Oh, well, into the deep end of the pool. So, everybody’s got things that turn them on, y’know. Some guys like their girlfriends to dress up in a certain way, maybe a nurse or a schoolteacher, just fantasies. Or some women like to pretend they’re doing it with some movie star, putting his face on top of their boyfriend’s in their minds.
“Well, mine are different, and Eddy didn’t approve. He thought it was cheap and abnormal, and not only didn’t he want to participate, but criticized me for even entertaining those fantasies.
And the last time, the more I tried to talk it out with him, the more adamant he became. I finally got dressed and left him there.
“I called him up a couple of days later. He thought I was calling to apologize and to promise to change my ways. Hah! I told him we were done and hung up the phone with him still sputtering on the other end.”
She looked a bit smug and satisfied at the memory.
“I hear you,” I said. “The things that turn us on are so... personal, and who knows where they come from or why we need them to get off. I’m of the opinion that there are no off-limits fantasies as long as—and these are my boundaries here—as long as both partners are adults and agreed on the fantasy, and that no one gets hurt, physically or emotionally. I think partners should try to work with each other, compromise on things, so each can get a fulfilling experience.”
“That sounds reasonable. I wish Eddy had felt like that. So, is there stuff you won’t do? You mentioned compromise, but what are the limits? What sends you running out the door?”
“Hmmm. I may need another of those funny cigarettes if we go too much further with this.
Okay, people who get their jollies from piss and shit are just beyond what I can tolerate. Yet I know there are folks who really enjoy that. I wish them well and hope I’m never invited to dinner at their house.
“Another one is that I don’t like inflicting pain, and I really don’t like verbal abuse and degradation. There’s been a couple of women I’ve been with who seemed to need that to get their engines running. We had to talk it out and were able to agree on a level of... punishment that was acceptable to both of us, and it worked out well in the end.
“The truth is that most people’s fantasies are not that far off the beaten track, probably much more common than they realize. They might not be the kind of thing that they want the neighbors to know about, but the neighbors probably have their own set of kinks that they’re just as embarrassed about.”
She was looking at me now, some questions in her eyes, thinking about how far down this path she wanted to travel.
“How do we know what’s normal, or almost normal?” she asked.
“We don’t. Everybody’s fantasies, kinks, have an element of shame to them, some unease that what we’re doing, and what we’re asking our partners to do, carries a stigma. People like Masters and Johnson, Kinsey and other sex researchers tried to catalog these practices and found that they were far more common in the real world than most individuals knew. The idea of ’normal’ is more flexible than society would have us believe.
“So, unless your particular fantasy involves cannibalism or mutilation, I think you’re pretty safe that it’s not too far from the norm, if there is a norm.”
“Cannibalism, huh? I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose someone, somewhere, probably gets a stiffy thinking about that, like Hannibal Lecter. Not me, I hasten to point out.”
“I’m so relieved.”
“So you’ve thought a lot about this, it sounds like.”
“Well, not a lot, but like I said, I encountered several women with some surprising proclivities.
Surprising, because you wouldn’t think it to look at them. That whole thing about domination and pain, based on my limited experience, was way more common than I would have thought. I get no rush at all from inflicting pain. In fact, it’s really the opposite, it’s kind of a turn-off. But in all those cases, we talked it out and came to a compromise that we both could live with as to what we could do.”
She was quiet for quite a long time. I thought it was the weed making her sleepy, but finally she said, not looking at me, “That’s what Eddy was so furious about. He thought it was abnormal, called me a cheap slut.”
She was looking down now, couldn’t meet my eye.
I thought about how to phrase this. “Do you mean pain, being abused?”
“No, not so much that. I think it’s being submissive, being ordered about. Sometimes there’s some punishment involved, but it’s more symbolic than painful. I don’t know why this is such a rush for me, it just gets me really aroused thinking about it, and when it happens it’s like I’m teetering on the edge of a constant orgasm. Saying that out loud makes it sound really kinky, and now I’m embarrassed. Sorry, Tom.”
“Mandy, don’t be embarrassed by who you are. It’s not that far out of the normal range of sexual behavior. If I remember correctly, most women, and a lot of men, sometimes entertain fantasies of being ordered about as part of the sexual experience. All of us are the product of our experiences and it sometimes gives us unexpected drives. In a general sense, that’s one of the things that got me interested in psychology. You’re not weird.”
“I sometimes feel weird. I can’t talk to people about this. I couldn’t even talk to you about it if I hadn’t had the better part of two joints.”
“People who have a rigid belief in something make us think we’re weird. My friend’s grandmother is religious and is horrified at the way young women flaunt themselves—her words—and by that she means wearing skirts above the knee, low cut tops, or two-piece bathing suits. Because that’s the way she was brought up. “Nice” women didn’t do that sort of thing, and if you did you were telling men that you were sexually available.
“It’s a very old-fashioned view of behavior, but it’s the way she was brought up, it was drilled into her, and now she can’t accept any other way, so she lectures every girl she meets. It’s become a little uncomfortable for her family.
“Anyway, I’m just trying to make the point that you’re not inherently weird, it’s that other people question your standards because they don’t align neatly with their own.”
She smiled at me. “I thought doctors didn’t make house calls anymore.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone, or the phone will be ringing off the hook.”
She laughed, and jumped up. “I’m in the mood for some wine. I’ll bring some more crackers, too.”
She ran off before I could say I didn’t really want any more. Maybe she needed some time by herself.