Honing The Talent
B Pascal
Chapter 15
I must have slept soundly because when I woke Larry was snoring loudly in his bed. I hadn’t heard him come in. I stretched and got up and went to shower. Then I found clean clothes and went for breakfast. By the time I was done I was feeling almost human again.
I had work to do. I’d been putting it off, but there were papers due, and I had a chem quiz coming up, plus I needed to check over my other homework. The idea of going to the library and continuing my own research seemed laughably distant now.
Back in the dorm room I turned on my PC and brought up the draft of my first paper. I found where I’d stopped and started typing, expanding the central argument of my paper.
From his bed, Larry groaned. “Do you have to type so loud, Carter? Have some sympathy.”
“I can hold a pillow over your head if you think that’ll help. No? Maybe ease up on the drinking next time.”
I couldn’t hear his response from under the blankets, but it didn’t sound particularly friendly.
A few minutes later he finally gave up and crawled out of bed. He looked dreadful, miserable. He wandered off to the shower.
I was on a roll now, typing quickly, knowing how I was going to end it, bringing together the elements into a strong conclusion. Larry came back, looking cleaner but not much happier.
“I looked for you last night, Carter, but you must have left early. Cops came, but the guy whose party it was told ’em we were just breaking up anyway, and they left. The party went on for another three hours.”
“Larry, that kind of competitive drinking does nothing for me. It’s not fun. I left when I saw what it was turning into. Did you actually have fun there?”
“I think so. I remember laughing a lot, but I don’t remember what we were laughing at. Anyway, I think I need some coffee. Where’d you go, anyway?”
He didn’t need to know the details. “I came back here and read for awhile, wrote to Karen, then went to bed.”
“Oh. Well, your loss, great party.” And he was gone.
I suppose he wasn’t my problem, but I was a little worried about him. Perhaps he was taking his joking remark about intending to make lots of mistakes that he’d regret when older a bit too seriously. He couldn’t maintain this party pace and still do his work.
I returned to my work and in another hour I thought I had it pretty well formed. There were a couple of tweaks I wanted to do, but I’d let it sit for awhile and see how it read later. I opened up the draft of my history paper and started fleshing that out.
When I looked up again it was after one and I realized that my back ached. I surprised myself with how wrapped up in a task I could get, but now I was paying the price. It was lunchtime, so a good reason to take a break. I backed up both papers to diskette, a habit I’d gotten into when I lost an essay that was due the next day in high school and had no backup. I’d had to stay up all night to recreate it. I always backed up after that.
I got lunch and more coffee, then took a walk around campus to get some exercise before I dived back into the paper. Across the quad I saw Katrina walking with friends. She shouted hi and waved, but didn’t stop. I wasn’t offended.
One of my high school buddies had said to me, just before graduation, “It’s gonna be completely different in college, man, just random hookups, then they’re gone, and afterwards you don’t need to call ’em or take ’em out to eat or anything. It’s gonna be awesome!“
Me, I kinda liked the process of getting to know women better, so part of me would miss that.
But when in Rome...
Anyway, I’m rambling again. Long story short, papers done with decent marks, good grade on the chem quiz, and now midterms were looming, so the pressure continued. Part of it was me wanting to do well, to make the most of this. And I was discovering that I actually liked being challenged like this, being thrown a barrage of sophisticated ideas and told to juggle them until I made sense of them. I got some satisfaction from it.
It was quite unlike high school where we were presented a list of facts, names, dates, formulae, and told to memorize them and repeat them on the exams. Then we could discard them. No one checked to make sure that we retained them.
We had to retain it here, because a lot of what we learned we were expected to know for advanced classes. That did occur to a lesser extent in high school, but they always reviewed the earlier stuff before moving on.
It was a little like being thrown into the pool, and the guy on the edge is shouting instructions on how to swim at you, and you’d better make sure you assimilated everything, or you’d drown. I liked showing that I could do it.
By the end of the week I was feeling a temporary sense of relief, papers done, problem sets submitted, quizzes taken, and I let out my breath. I had skipped martial arts club on Wednesday, but by the next day I was sufficiently relaxed that I decided to go to Psych Club, just to do something different.
It was a decent turnout, considering we never knew what the talk du jour was going to be. I got the sense the organizers put each session together at the last minute. I got settled in a chair, and the undergrad president of the club got up to introduce today’s speaker.
“Good afternoon, everyone, thanks for being here. Today we have an interesting presentation I think you’ll all enjoy. Our speaker this afternoon is Prof. Andrew Willing of the Psychology Department, who is going to talk about some of the dark corners of psychological research.” He smiled smugly at his little in-joke, then turned and said, “Please welcome Professor Willing.”
There was some polite applause and an intelligent-looking middle-aged man stepped up to the lectern. “Thank you, Mr. Evans, for that evasive introduction.”
Hmmm. A little academic backbiting there. Why is that?
Willing went on. “What I’m going to talk about this afternoon is one of the areas that sets establishment researchers all a-tremble for fear that they might be tainted by ideas that are out of the mainstream. Much like Mr. Evans. And to be fair, there is reason enough to avoid these research backwaters for fear that one will be labeled as a zealot or wacko, and your legitimate research brought into question.
“Yet, if you go back and look at the history of psychology and psychiatry, there are theories and treatments that are commonplace today that were once ridiculed, derided. That’s true of all science, in fact. We learn new things, new facts, and it sheds a different light on what we thought we understood. The germ theory of disease. Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection.
The idea that the earth revolves around the sun.
“You don’t have to go back too far in history to find people literally laughing at Sigmund Freud’s new ideas. So don’t be put off by an idea that looks odd. You’re studying to be scientists.
You evaluate an idea, a hypothesis, by examining it, testing it, seeing if there are better ways to explain a phenomenon.
“And yet there are still ideas, even in psychology, that are verboten. Even when the evidence for it is strong. Why? Perhaps it conflicts with people’s other strongly held convictions, perhaps accepting it might force them to reject or revise some other firm belief.
“So. What is it that strikes such terror into the hearts of psychologists?” A few people chuckled.
“Here’s one. ESP, extra-sensory perception, what people usually say when they mean telepathy.
Precognition. Actually, any of the science-fiction-y concepts that writers and movie producers love to beat to death, like telekinesis—moving objects with your mind—or perhaps the ability to “read people’s minds”, not the same thing as telepathy.
“You bring that subject up in a group of psychologists today, and they’ll all start to edge away, lest they be discovered listening to ideas that are not acceptable.
“The various facets of ESP have been studied for a hundred and fifty years, by trained scientists and amateurs alike. Almost all of the claims have been debunked. You’d think we would have moved on by now.
“Most have, except for a few disquieting research results. The mainstream, establishment areas of research are quick to say, ’Oh, probably a flawed study, nothing to worry about.’ Except that the studies have been reproduced and similar results obtained. That’s hard to dismiss, if you’re trying to keep an open mind.
“So, it might not be good for my career, but I retain an interest in the various areas of ESP
research and spend perhaps a little too much time trying to understand the psychological, biological and physical phenomena that might help to explain the results.”
Willing went on to summarize a few long-term studies that presented tantalizing results, such as the study at Maimonedes Medical Center by Montague Ullman published in 1985 and summarized several decades of data collected on ESP in dreams. Another was an ongoing study by Daryl Bem at Cornell University, who had shown reproducible results unexplainable by other means over a period of years.
Willing even pointed out that the U.S. government had spent millions of dollars funding psychic spies during the Cold War.
He went on to speculate about some of the mechanisms that might explain such results and why this kind of research was so difficult to conduct and the results so tentative.
He talked for about forty-five minutes. I’d made a few notes about his references, things I could look up in the library. He reached the end of his talk and thanked everyone. Evans, the club president, invited questions, and there were a few puzzled queries from a few students. I chose not to participate because I was still thinking about this.
He was right, insofar as the mechanisms that would explain ESP were as much of a puzzle to me as they were to him. Still, nice to know that there were a few people with open minds. I’d look up those studies and see what they suggested.
The crowd began to break up, and I moved out, too. It was close enough to dinnertime that I just went to the cafeteria and got dinner. I planned out my weekend and the following week in my head, as I would have to cram for midterms. I still had better than a week to do this, but I was still a bit intimidated by the school’s academic reputation and didn’t want to fall too far behind.
Back at the dorm, there was a note taped to my door: “Carter, call Gail.”
I dropped my books on the desk and went back to the pay phone. She answered on the third ring.
“Carter. I was wondering if the doofus who answered actually knew how to write when he said he’d take a message. He had a hard time putting an English sentence together.”
“He might have just been terrified at having to talk to a real, live girl. I think it’s rather a new concept to some of these guys, and the reality of it paralyzes them.”
“Your problem to deal with, thank goodness. Anyway, my art project’s done—got a B+ in it, too—and I wondered if you wanted to try session two of Art For Dummies. You got Fridays off, right?”
“I do. And I’m delighted that you’ve promoted me to the dummies section. I’m always trying to improve myself.”
“Well, I’m taking a chance on you, Carter, so don’t disappoint me. So, whaddya think, same time, same place to meet up?”
“Sure. That was two o’clock, right?”
“See? I knew I was right to kick you up to the dummies class. Yes, two. Look, gotta run, see you then.” And the line clicked.
Okay, so that was Friday covered. I actually was looking forward to having her explain whatever came after Renaissance art. She was good at it, and her enthusiasm was contagious. Plus she was gorgeous, which didn’t hurt the learning process at all. Plus, there were all the possibilities for what might happen after the museum tour. I was beginning to love art.
Back in the room, there was a short email from Karen, who expressed relief when the results from the last CS test came back. She’d complained about the test being so difficult, but had not done as badly as she’d thought. She got a A- on it. She was not being ironic. She was so used to getting A’s and A+’s on everything that it was a sobering reality when she got an A—. I was a little annoyed with her pursuit of perfection and tempted to poke her about it, but instead I told her I shared her relief.
I read Gail’s Art History book till bedtime, trying to guess what she’d cover tomorrow. I occasionally looked at Larry freaking out about a Calculus quiz he was prepping for. But, I noted, he was forcing himself to work through it and didn’t call for help from me. I took that as a positive sign.
The next morning I had breakfast, then reviewed everything we’d read so far in English and history, pausing every few minutes to quiz myself to make sure I remembered it. I got most of it, I think.
Around one I closed my books, grabbed a jacket, and went to get lunch. From there I walked to the museum entrance and found a spot out of the wind. It was starting to get colder now, and soon I’d have to start wearing the winter jacket my mother had insisted I bring along.
I put my hands in my jacket pockets and stamped my feet until I saw her walking up the steps.
She smiled when she saw me. “You ready, Carter? Got your notepad and pencils? There’ll be a quiz, you know.”
“I’m ready, drill sergeant. Lead on.”
She stepped through the doors, saying “Hup, two, three, four.” I was pretty sure she was joking.
I paid the admission and she led me through the halls. She could probably do it in her sleep.
She turned in at one gallery and pulled up short. “Okay,” she said. “The Renaissance continued for quite a long time. By the time of the Late Renaissance, which ended around 1600, styles began to evolve. The first one was something called Mannerism. This took the central features of Renaissance art, proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, and exaggerated them to make them more pronounced.
“Look here. These are copies of two paintings by Parmagianino and Giulio Romano. If you remember, for example, Raphael, you can see how some of the elements are over-emphasized.”
I could see that it was different, but couldn’t yet explain how, but I nodded.
It was like she was reading my mind. She pointed out what I hadn’t seen.
“You see how the body has been elongated, how the proportions are exaggerated and distorted?
See all the dark colors? They used that to force the eye to focus on the figure. You see the objects in the background, how they’re intentionally made fuzzy or blurred, so they don’t draw attention away from the subject.”
She went on, leading me through the gallery, reciting from memory the important artists and what their contributions were. I recognized Cellini and El Greco, but only by name until she showed me their works.
I was enjoying listening to her talk, she was so enthusiastic about it, and she wanted me to love it, too. At some point she grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the gallery at a half-run.
In another gallery she stopped again and told me, confidentially, “This is where art starts to get really interesting because it exploded outside Italy. So even while Mannerism was still being produced, art was changing yet again, into the Baroque period. This spread through art and sculpture, and later through music. The first example of Baroque in art is probably the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, here.”
She showed me a photograph on display.
“The dome was one of the new things in Baroque architecture, and it allowed the space underneath to take new forms, and it allowed light in in a different way, so the architects could show off the intricate details below to inspire the faithful.”
As she went on, I could see her getting wrapped up in the majesty of the evolution of artistic ideas, seeing the beauty of each period. And I was caught up in it, too.
“If you wander around and look at these examples, they have some common elements. There’s a real or implied movement, sometimes you might catch an artist trying to represent infinity. There’s an emphasis on light and its effects, and quite often a focus on the theatrical.
“Some of the things we take for granted today came out of the Baroque movement. For example, quadrature or ceiling painting, like in the Sistine Chapel. Or quadro riportato, which are frescos that incorporate the illusion of being composed of a series of framed paintings. Or my favorite, trompe l’oeil, which is a technique to create visual illusions in art, like using it to trick the eye into seeing a painted detail as a three-dimensional object.
“That stuff is so common today, but it all started during the Baroque era.” She stopped and took a breath, overwhelmed by the idea.
“Am I talking too fast?” she asked.
“There’s a lot to absorb, but I think I’m getting the high points. You seem really fascinated by this period. Did I read that correctly?”
“Yeah, you did. There’s other really fun stuff later, but this period was always a rush for me, because there was so much happening.”
“I really like watching you get excited about it. It’s catching.”
“Thanks, Carter. Anyway, we should at least get an overview of this period before we call it quits, so let’s finish as much as we can, okay?”
“Right behind you.”
And for the next hour she lectured almost non-stop. I wondered if she was going to get hoarse like last time, but she seemed to be pacing herself.
At the end of the hour, she paused in front of a large painting where she extolled its glory with an arm raised, trying to lead my eye to what was important.
And with her arm still raised, she stopped and was silent for a few moments.
“I sometimes get so caught up in this that I don’t know when to stop, but I just realized that this is probably a good place, because it marks a turning point. So maybe we’ll pick up here for session three, okay?”
“I’ve got a lot of studying to do. Is this going to be on the exam, professor?”
She punched me on the arm. “There are no unimportant details, Mr. Carter, I’ll say no more.”
“They told me this’d be a tough course.”
“They don’t know the half of it. If you knew it was tough, why’d you take the class?”
“Well, the instructor’s a babe. So I’m told.”
She smirked at me. “If you think that’s going to improve your grade, mister, you’re probably right.”
I laughed. “You want to grab a bite, or do you have someplace to be?”
“I’m free for the rest of the day. Got a preference?”
“Not really. You?”
“I found a coupon in the student paper earlier, 25% off at this Italian place. Wanna try there?”
“Can hardly ever go wrong with Italian. Maybe they’ll have pasta barocca.“
“Now you’re just making fun of me. Let’s go.”
We found that, alas, there was no such thing as pasta barocca, but we found some very good alternatives. We were legal to have wine, so we shared half a bottle, and she got a little giggly because she had more than her share.
I had a nice post-pasta mellow feeling when we left. She took my arm and said, “Y’know what’s really good after pasta? A joint.”
“Gail, if I get any more mellow, I’ll fall asleep.”
“Oh, c’mon, a little won’t hurt you.”
“I think you have a higher tolerance than me. But all right, just a little.”
She talked about her classes as we walked, then asked me how mine were going. And in no time, it seemed, we were at her building.
As we trudged up the inside stairs, she said, “Tim’s out again, not sure about Carol. We both came down on her pretty hard when she got drunk again last weekend. I wish I knew what was going on in her life that makes her try to escape like that, but she says everything’s fine.”
“I guess she’ll open up when she’s ready. Self-medication is always the first remedy when something’s bothering you.”
She called out when she let herself in but there was no answer, so it seemed everyone else was out.
“Park yourself there on the couch, Tom. I’ll fetch the self-medication.”
At least she wasn’t fooling herself about the weed. I lay back against the cushion and in moments she was back clutching the baggie.
She sat down next to me, flicked the lighter to get the joint burning, and took a hit, closing her eyes. She passed it to me. I wasn’t really in the mood but I took a hit anyway and passed it back.
She was quiet today. Normally she was a bit more talkative with a joint in her hand, but today she seemed more introspective.
Finally, she said, “Maybe it’s the combination of the carbohydrate overdose and the joint, but I feel really mellow right now, relaxed.”
“Me, too. This is nice, just sitting here.”
“Uh-huh. Do you get self-analytical when you’re doing pot? I do.”
“Not so much. I mostly get mellow and sleepy. I used to say that it didn’t give me the giggles, but I find that it does when I’m with you.”
“You’re welcome. Me, I sometimes start thinking about problems, or even just big questions, when I’m smoking. It makes me walk around my mind and ask myself questions. Sometimes I find answers. Sometimes I just find further questions to ask. And sometimes I come up against some things about myself that I’d been avoiding working on.”
“Who needs a shrink when you’ve got weed,” I said.
“Right. Someday maybe that’s what psychiatrists will prescribe. ’Smoke two joints and call me in the morning.’”
I laughed at that. “I hope that happens sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah. So in the absence of qualified psychiatric assistance I did more weed than I usually do this past week. Partly it was to rid myself of some of the stress of preparing the last project. Did I mention I got a B+ on it? Anyway, I spent some time working on some of my issues.
“I bring it up because you were the one who brought them out. Not intentionally, of course. It just happened in the normal course of events and I had to deal with it. I’d pushed them away in the past, but I finally told myself that I had to think about them or they’d keep bothering me.”
“Oops. Did I do something that caused you some distress? I’m sorry, Gail, I wasn’t aware.”
“No, not like that. It wasn’t you so much as stuff I’ve been carrying around inside me for too long. You were wonderful, I told you that, very sweet in fact.
“This stuff really comes more from back in high school, earlier even. Geez, I hadn’t realized how difficult it is to talk about this out loud.” She took another hit from the almost-gone joint. She was quiet for a few moments, then started again.
“This came up when you started playing with my butt last time. You remember how scared I got? I think I told you how I hated to have things in my ass, even when I was a kid and my mother had to use a rectal thermometer. I used to get so fearful, sure it was going to be really painful.
“And the other thing was—I think I told you about this, too—sucking dick. I could get a dick partway in, but I’d always be afraid I was going to gag or that I couldn’t breathe. Then my throat would close up and I would panic and pull out.
“I think that may have come from one of my first sexual encounters at a high school party and some guy got me off in a corner and eventually talked me into taking his dick in my mouth. As soon as I did, he tried to force it down my throat and I gagged and nearly threw up. I ran off and tried to put it out of my mind. I think it’s still there.
“So here’s the thing that I’ve been wrestling with. It didn’t happen that way with you. You stuck your tongue in my ass and I didn’t pull away in horror. It felt good, and it surprised the hell out of me. You stuck your finger in my butt and I didn’t scream in agony. I had a fucking orgasm.
“You pushed your dick in my mouth and it felt good, and when it went back further than I would have thought possible, I came. I got off, Carter. No one’s made me feel like that before. In fact, I never would have let anyone come close to doing that in the past. So why now?“
She reached down to take another hit and found only a burning ember, so she dug out a fresh one from the baggie and lit it, took a deep hit and held it in. She blew it out slowly.
“So I decided I couldn’t avoid thinking about it anymore, I had to examine the sex things that scare me. I was surprised how difficult it was. I kept trying to push the problem away, deal with it later, but I made myself do it.
“I don’t know why I reacted differently with you, maybe I trust you more, maybe you just spent more time than anyone else making me loose and giving me a couple dozen orgasms, and it made me less fearful.” She nudged me with an elbow in acknowledgment.
“It took a surprisingly long time, Carter, working through this shit, and I’m not sure I have it entirely right, but what I decided was that you were probably right, that I was reacting to a perceived fear that I had constructed in my mind till it was way more awful than the reality.
“I don’t watch a lot of porn, but I’ve seen my share and all those girls who take dicks up their ass, sometimes more than one, they don’t look like they’re in terrible pain. They’re not good actresses, most of them, and they wouldn’t be able to hide it if they were in pain.
“And it seems like all of them give head just fine, even swallowing big dicks. I know they’ve had lots of practice and it probably gets easier the more you do it, but, geez, if they can do it...”
She sighed.
“So what I finally decided was that I was being a wuss, that I was reacting to a childish fear which was nowhere as awful as I had made it out to be. I ought to be an adult and learn to deal with it.”
She looked at me, as if awaiting my opinion.
“That’s a pretty profound step, Gail. I don’t want to make light of this, but if you had been discussing this with a shrink, it probably would have taken months of weekly sessions to get to that point. I admire your courage and perseverance in working through this. I don’t think I would have been able to do it.”
“Well, what I decided sorta feels right to me, but I’m not sure if the analysis is correct. I’ve gotta feel my way through this, see how it fits, y’know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
She got quiet again and took another hit off the joint. I think I’d had only one hit in all, maybe two. She’d gone through the better part of two joints.
“So, Carter, I find myself in an awkward position. I’ve made these decisions about myself and how I’m going to respond in these situations, but now I need to know if I made the right decisions.
I have to... test them and see how I react. It’s one thing to work this stuff out in your mind, it’s another to put it into practice and see if I was right.”
“Are you asking what I think you are, Gail?”
She put an arm around me and laid her head onto my chest. “I’m afraid to try this with other guys, Tom. Because most of them get really aggressive, thinking about shooting their load. They pay no attention to how I’m responding. They wouldn’t notice if I were uncomfortable or starting to panic. I don’t know why, but I feel safe with you.
“I’ve got to know, Carter. Can I do this, learn how to suck dick the right way, maybe even learn to like getting my ass fucked? Do you think you could be patient with me while I’m seeing if I can do this?”
She’s asking me if I’ll let her take my cock down her throat, if I’ll do her ass. I know she’s worried, but why would she think I wouldn’t do that for her?
“Gail, of course I will. Look, I know how scary this can be. I won’t go any faster or further than you want, okay? We’ll come up with a safe word, you say it and I stop what I’m doing.”
“I’m surprised how nervous I am. I don’t have a problem with screwing, hell, I like it. But this still scares me some.”
“We’ll take it slow. So slow you may get bored. You want to bring along a deck of cards, play some solitaire while we’re working through this?”
She snorted and punched me on the leg, then hugged me.
“Okay, Carter, let’s see where this goes.” She sat up and took a last hit off the joint, which was almost gone anyway.
She took my hand and pulled me up. “You should know the way by now, come with me.”
In her bedroom, she nudged the door closed and looked at me.
“And now I’m as nervous as I was my first time. I don’t know what to do, Tom.”
“I think I remember most of it. Let’s just spend some time exploring each other. Why don’t you start by undressing me?”
I was surprised by how shy she seemed now. I hadn’t seen this at all the first couple of times we were together. I thought that maybe some of her nerves would disappear if she started feeling good. I linkcast her the Foundation image which would sensitize and relax her.
She was fiddling with my shirt buttons now and soon had them open and tugged it out of my jeans. She nuzzled my chest, feeling my skin against hers while I shrugged the shirt off and onto the floor.
Her hands were at my belt, loosening it and undoing the waistband button. She found the zipper and I could feel my dick twitching and she fumbled to pull it open. My pants slipped over my hips and down my legs. She’d forgotten the shoes and had to backtrack, pulling up the pant legs so she could unlace them.
But that done, she pulled off my shoes and tugged the jeans down the rest of the way. On her knees, she looked up and all I had left on were my shorts and one sock. She grasped the hem of the shorts and pulled them straight down and my dick popped out and pointed at her accusingly.
She leaned in and licked the tip of it and I moaned. I realized that I still hadn’t set my ejaculation filter, so I did that. You’d think I would have learned by trial and error that that needed to be done early on, but each time I forgot until it was almost too late.
“Stand up, Gail. My turn.”
She had on a sweater today, as the weather had been getting cooler. I took the hem and pulled it up. She raised her arms automatically and I tugged it over her head and tossed it on a chair. I thought her breathing had gotten a little faster, a bit more shallow, as I started at the top button of her blouse and worked my way methodically down.
When the last button was freed, I pulled the hem out of her pants and slipped it off her shoulders.
Honestly, every time I see that it’s like someone had poked me in the solar plexus. The only thing better than seeing her in her bra was seeing her without it.
I looked in her eyes as I reached behind and found the hooks, then unsnapped them, and pulled her bra off her shoulders.
“Gail, every time I see that, it’s like someone had tapped me on the head with a baseball bat.
You just take my breath away.”
A tiny little smile peeking out from behind the nerves. I dropped my hands just so I could squeeze her butt, which was just as good as I remembered. Enough, she needs to be naked now. I unbuttoned her jeans and unzipped them and pushed them over her hips.
“Turn around, Gail, and sit on the edge of the bed.”
I knelt down and unlaced her shoes, pulling them off, then tugged the jeans down her ankles and off. I tossed them on the chair with the sweater.
She was leaning back on her arms, watching me, still breathing fast, her feet on the floor.
“Lift your butt, Gail.”
She pushed herself up on her arms and her butt rose and I slipped her panties all the way down her legs and onto the rug. I stood up and looked at her lying on the bed.
“I would have thought somehow I’d get used to seeing you naked, but I don’t. It’s just as powerful each time, it’s like I’ve forgotten how gorgeous and sexy you are. Is this an artist thing, you learn how to show the same subject in a thousand different ways?”
She just smiled.
I said, “You know what I’d like? I’d like to just lie next to you and hold you, feel my body next to yours. Can we do that?”
We worked our way into the middle of the bed and wrapped our arms around each other. I nibbled and nuzzled various places, and she did the same. I loved the feel of her skin, it was so smooth and firm. I moved down a little so I could reach her lips and got her into a long kiss with some tongue. Naked bodies notwithstanding, this was almost not sexual, just two people enjoying being with each other.
“We never came up with a safe word, Gail.”
“Oh, right. How about ’van Gogh’?”
“Van Gogh, got it.”
We recommenced kissing. But there was a purpose here. I had to work up to it slowly. She had to want these things that scared her, need it so that she could commit to it fully. I linkcast her the Silk image, which would make every touch to her skin feel like a piece of fine silk being drawn across her body, very subtle and sensual.
I kissed her shoulder, her arm, I ran my hand gently over her butt cheek, I kissed the edge of her breast. After a few minutes, I could feel her falling into it, letting the sensations wash over her with little catches of her breath.
I looked into her epicenter and found her thoroughly immersed in the sensuality of the touches, and just a little fear of what this might turn into. She’d said she knew it was an imagined fear, but that makes it no less terrifying and she was trying to push her way through it, talking to herself, telling herself to stop being afraid of the boogeyman.
Maybe I should replace the fear with something more pleasant to think about. I got a nipple into my mouth and started running my tongue around it, then let my hand drop idly between her legs, just brushing it.
What I was doing was so pleasant and required so little thought that I let my mind wander.
While I was trying to get her body sensitized and responsive, I was also thinking about ways to override her fears. I had decided that long-held fears were deeply rooted and difficult to eradicate.
Sure, psychiatrists were able to do it, but it often took years. Was there a way to convince her—
well, anyone, really, it was a generalized problem—that her fears, however scary they might be, could be overlooked this time with no consequences?
I wasn’t sure. How about if facing the fear gave you a reward that was much greater than that which you feared? That might work, though I didn’t think it would be universally applicable. It would depend on the severity of the thing you feared, I suppose.
But let’s say, to give an example, if, like Gail, you were afraid of gagging or choking or vomiting when a dick was in your throat. I’d already suppressed the gag reflex, converting it into a burst of pleasure just this side of an orgasm. That was a strong inducement, to be sure, but apparently still not enough to overcome her anxiety about it.
What if the inducement got better the longer she held it in her throat, or perhaps the deeper she took it? Some part of me thought the reward should be different from a standard orgasm, to make it unique and thus more desirable.
That might be worth trying, if only as an experiment. I didn’t think there was a danger in inducing her to hold a cock in the throat for a few seconds. Humans can hold their breath for quite a long time. Nor did I believe that it would cause any organic damage to the tissue, since people had been doing this for millennia with no damaging side effects.
Okay, then. What’s the reward? What would feel so good, other than an orgasm which lasts only a finite time, that she’d be willing to push down her anxieties to experience it?
Perhaps something like what she might experience with the Rowboat image, that overwhelming sense of contentment and bliss, maybe accompanied by happiness at doing something that made your partner feel joyful. That’s the kind of feeling that could last for quite a long time without losing its power. Especially if it also rewired the gag reflex and substituted this new sensation instead!
Could work. It’s a start, and I could always tweak it if it wasn’t right, it’d still feel great. But if it were too strong...? Hmmm. I could see the feeling being so addictive that a person might hold a dick in their throat for so long that they passed out.
There was a famous psychology experiment from the 1950s where a researcher hooked wires directly into the pleasure centers of rats’ brains, then placed them in a box where they could press one of several levers which would give food, water, or an electrical pulse through the wires that caused a flash of pleasure akin to an orgasm. The rats invariably chose the pleasure lever, even when starving or thirsty, so this was not just idle speculation on my part.
Animals, including humans, have a very strong drive for things that make us feel good. It’s one of the things that turns some of us into drunks or addicts.
So if I were to do this, it would be better to err on the side of too little rather than too much. I wasn’t sure where that cutoff was, so I’d have to monitor this closely.
I should give it a name, I suppose, it’s probably something I’d use again if it works. I thought some more while I kissed her butt cheek. How about Throat Lover’s? Nah, I wasn’t that fond of Buttlover’s. It was too late to change that one, but no sense making a bad idea worse by imitating it.
I discarded a couple of others that just made me grimace when I came up with them. How about Spitshine? Well, not great, but at least it wouldn’t make me wince when I thought of it.
Okay, Spitshine. She already had the rush just this side of an orgasm when a dick pushed at her throat. When it went into her throat, she’d get that sense of bliss and contentment and the joy of pleasing her partner.
One problem solved, at least temporarily. But she has a quite similar issue with things in her butt, here specifically a fear of pain, perhaps loss of control. She had convinced herself that it was going to hurt. A lot. And that might be true, with no lube and no stretching first. On the plus side, she’d been surprised to find that a finger or two in her ass not only didn’t hurt, but she’d gotten off on it and it amazed her! So the fear may have been reduced, but it was still there.
So when something larger went into her ass, she was going to panic, I was pretty sure, and would clench her butt and fight it. Once it was in, then, it had better produce a feeling strong enough to convince her that she’d been an idiot to overlook this for so long. I already had one named image, Buttlover’s, that made her feel that she is filled fully, with a spreading warmth, and a sense of excitement. It in itself would not cause an orgasm, just prepare her for one.
So whatever this new thing was going to be, it needed to complement Buttlover’s. And, I thought, just like Spitshine, it should not cause an orgasm, but give her some other unique feeling that would make her want a dick in her ass.
It should be pleasurable, should grow in intensity, making her feel better and better, until she was begging for release. I thought about what orgasms and the sensations leading up to it felt like to me, and, I presume, for her.
An orgasm was a rising sense of intense, focused, pleasure, a continuum of sensation building to a point of no return where all the pent-up tension was suddenly released. It left you exhilarated but drained, exhausted. I didn’t want that here.
This needed to have the same sense of increasing pleasure, but perhaps slower, and never reaching an apex. And perhaps not a continuum but rather pulses or slow waves that came then went, but slowly growing stronger.
I’d wrestled with this kind of question in high school when I was trying to figure out what women really wanted from sex. What made it satisfying for them? I still hadn’t gotten it right yet, but it was better, small orgasms building to yet larger ones, each one leaving them feeling warm and joyful, until the finale.
Now I had to guess what might make anal appealing to women who were scared of it. The idea of pulses or small waves of increasing pleasure, leaving a residue of light euphoria sounded like a starting point. That was different enough from a continuum of rising tension that it might make it unique and appealing. Maybe.
This was research in its most primitive form, more like guesswork, trial and error. But it was what I had to work with.
Okay. A name? I couldn’t think of something clever having to do with asses, so I thought about its effect and decided on Pulser. Not great, but it would help me remember it.
So I sketched out a plan for tonight, what I wanted to cover, the order in which it should occur.
I decided the oral should go first, because that might be less frightening. And she should be relaxed going into it, so maybe a couple of orgasms beforehand.
I was in the area, so I put some pressure on her hip and rolled her onto her back. She was nicely loose now, enjoying lying here with me, touching each other, so her legs fell open when she rolled over, her eyes closed.
I linkcast her the Foundation image, kissed my way from her hip to her thigh, then up to her pussy. I felt her tense up just a bit, anticipating what might be coming. I placed gentle kisses and nibbles all up and down her pussy, and I could hear her breathing change.
Preparing for later, I rubbed one finger gently back and forth on her perineum and changed the nibbles to a tongue moving up her slit.
“Oh, damn, Tom, that feels really good.”
The tongue was still on her labia, so I pushed a bit more and they opened up enough to allow the tongue onto all the sensitive places within. She moaned.
I hadn’t tried this with her, and I wondered if it would work. With some—not all—of the women I shared a bed with I was able to hook into a kind of internal ’pleasure meter’ in her mind.
When I did that I was able to gauge what was arousing her more, and how far she was from the ’red line’ where she might initiate her own orgasm.
As with all these odd interfaces that I had stumbled across this, of course, wasn’t a literal meter that you might see on some piece of electronic equipment, but it served the same kind of function, whence the name. I was able to ’read’ it, and tell how aroused she was, from zero where she might be playing pinochle and sex the furthest thing from her mind, to a hundred percent, where she was just waiting for the orgasm to start.
But not every woman seemed to have one, or else some of them were hidden in places I didn’t know how to find yet. Couldn’t hurt to look around.
So into her epicenter I went for a look-see. Her epicenter was a reflection of what she was doing, thinking, feeling. If she were talking about art, you might see ideas from various books pulled from elsewhere so she could recall them and use them in her discourse. If she were laughing, you would get a sense of happiness and fun, as the humor overtook her. When she was in the midst of feelings, sensations that might not have a good English word to describe them, you would get a combination of colors, patterns, smells and sounds that reflected what she was feeling.
Hers right now was a bit cluttered, the ’walls’ covered with paintings and bright fabrics, a mild breeze coming through an open window, some pleasant odor I couldn’t quite place, and overall a sense of relaxation and sensuality.
In the past, when I had been trying to find a particular thing, it was often not visible until I focused on the thing I was looking for. That seemed to be how the interface worked, it responded to ideation, some channel that I didn’t yet understand that allowed one mind to interface with another.
I had postulated that this interface mechanism was how we controlled our own minds and the regulation of sensation, but it was still just a hypothesis. But it’s all I had at the moment, so that was what I tried.
I focused on the thing I had called a pleasure meter, which would monitor her state of arousal. I had found in the past that if I had a clear idea of what I was looking for, it would manifest itself by glowing brighter. But there were so many things that could be controlled that a single thing could literally be lost among all the other things. It took intense focus to allow the one I was looking for to stand out, and the other things to be pushed to the background.
I looked around. The ’walls’ of the epicenter were rather like holograms that you could walk through to get to another area. They became translucent when something of interest was on the other side. But I wasn’t seeing anything. Perhaps it was more than just a pleasure meter and by focusing on that aspect alone I was unable to identify it for the interface.
Okay, a step back. Let’s focus on sensation and pleasure in general and its interface, see where that leads me. I did that, trying to force other things out of my mind and still keep my tongue working on her pussy.
Sensation and pleasure, where are you? I concentrated on my feeling of a tongue in her pussy and how she would perceive that. I flicked my tongue on her clit, very lightly, and heard her gasp.
There, off in the distance, something flared. I moved in that direction and flicked my tongue again.
Yes, that was it.
I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking at, but various things were moving and changing color on this ’screen’ that seemed to represent sensation and pleasure. So if there were a ’pleasure meter’, it would likely be here somewhere.
Once again, I flicked my tongue and heard her moan, and a corner of the screen momentarily flashed brighter. I had figured out by trial and error that I could look at and modify a particular thing by focusing on it, willing it to move to the center, and imagining myself zooming in, so that’s what I did.
The thing grew larger and I saw that it was similar to the thing I’d encountered before, but instead of a needle and markings to show the amount of arousal, it used colors. Black was zero, no arousal. It seemed to get brighter and more red as the state of arousal grew. As I looked I found I was unconsciously reading the ’meter’ as a percentage!
So my own mind knew how to interpret this representation of arousal because, I assumed, my mind operated the same way. That’s really interesting. I’ll have to think about that more when I’m alone.
Okay, so now I’ve found it, and I can read it, so I watched to see what happens when I start teasing her.
She was a little below fifty percent, by my estimation. I moved my tongue in slow circles around her clit, trying to avoid touching it directly. On the outside I could feel her tensing, trying to will me to move onto her clit, I could hear her talking to herself, and the motion of her body. In her epicenter I could hear what she wasn’t saying out loud. It was, “Stop teasing me, do it!”
But I wanted to bring her up slowly. I wonder what would happen if I add a new sensation to this mixture? I took my right thumb and pressed it slowly onto her perineum and heard her gasp.
She was still coming to terms with this. She found it very arousing but was frightened of where it might lead. I rubbed it slowly back and forth.
But for now I watched the ’needle’ move up into the seventy percent area. I could feel her body vibrating under me now, almost like she was trying to fuck an imaginary dildo, grinding her hips into me.
I brought my tongue slowly onto her clit as lightly and slowly as I could. The needle edged upward, pushing to eighty. Above me, in a tight voice, she said, “Oh, please, Carter, do it, I need it, don’t tease me!”
I reached in and grabbed her clit with my lips, pulled it and let it snap back. “Ohmigod, Tom, do that, do that!”
I did it again, and the meter pushed toward ninety. I kept repeating it, making her thrash, until the meter approached the red line and she cried out, “Fuck, you bastard, don’t make me wait, do it!”
I’d made her wait long enough. I stabbed her clit with my tongue, pummeling it, and took two fingers of the hand that had been at her perineum and pushed them into her cunt, finger-fucking her.
She arched her body, perfectly quiet except for a high, thin sound, as the meter crossed the red line, and she wailed. “Oh, FUCK, YES! Yesyes, baby, that’s it, don’t stop!”
She had her fingers wrapped in my hair, pushing me into her pussy until I could hardly move my tongue at all. And as quickly as she had started, she wound down, her body relaxed into the bed, and she pushed me away with both hands.
I hadn’t directed this orgasm, it was hers alone, but by being able to monitor her state of arousal I could adjust what I was doing to optimize her experience. I could cheat, of course, and just linkcast her a visual metaphor that would cause her to cum, but I liked this way, too.
She was going to be unconscious for awhile, so I crawled up next to her and watched her sleep.
She looked completely at peace and I envied her. I gotta figure out how to do that to myself. In the meantime, I closed my eyes for a few minutes.
Something woke me up, I don’t know what, and when I opened my eyes I found her watching me. She looked at me intently for a minute, then leaned over me and gave me a deep kiss.
“That was really nice,” I said, “but what was it for?”
“I don’t know exactly, it just seemed like the right thing for right now. Tom, that was... intense, powerful, it just knocked me flat. It’s the same thing again, I react differently with you, things are stronger, and my boundaries aren’t as firmly established, maybe I’m more adventurous, maybe all of those things.”
“This isn’t something that worries you, is it?”
“No. No, I didn’t mean to imply that. I’m still trying to understand why this is so, ’cause it didn’t happen with other guys.”
“Okay. I guess you’ll figure it out sooner or later.”
She draped herself over me, her head on my chest so she could look up at me.
“Yeah, sooner or later. So. How’re you gonna top that one, college boy? What could you possibly do for an encore?”
“Gail, this isn’t a contest. At least I didn’t think it was. I’m really glad that one was nice for you, and the next one will probably be, too, in its own way.”
“I’m just goofing on you, Carter, a little giddy maybe. That was really nice. What’s on the agenda?“
She poked at my stiff dick.
“This is what I like about you, Tom. You, like other guys, get a stiffy as soon as we’re naked.
The difference is that other guys do the absolute minimum amount of foreplay that they think they can get away with before they jump on top of me and stick their dick in me.
“You, you always spend a lot of time working on me, till I cum like a cannon going off. Then you do it again. Careful, a girl could get used to this.”
“We talked about this, right? About how I get a rush watching you cum?”
She nodded. “Yeah, we did. So, what’s the plan here, Tom? Are we going to get to those things that I talked about, the things that frighten me?”
“Baby, I promise you, we are. I’m a little selfish, I’ll admit, because I love watching you get off. And I’d like to fuck you a little too, before we get to those other things. Are you okay with that?”
“Carter, anything you do to me is okay with me. Oops, wait, I don’t know you that well, you might have a kinky side I haven’t seen yet.”
“I think we talked about that, too, kinks, I mean, the different fantasies that everyone has. I told you some of mine, and I don’t think I have any stranger ones than those hidden away.
“We’ll have to brainstorm, then, come up with something kinky we haven’t considered before.”
“Something for a later time perhaps. We have a couple of things we were going to try today.
Gail, I’d love to fuck you for a while before we get to that. Can we do that?”
“Best idea I’ve heard since Italian food for dinner.”
I pulled us apart, grabbed my pants from the floor, and found a condom. I rolled it on while putting my ejaculation filter in place. Hah! Bet you thought I was going to forget again! While I was at it, I linkcast her the Glow image to prepare her.
“Why don’t you get on top, Gail? I love watching you.”
She pushed me back on the bed and climbed on top of me. Watching her position herself over me and slide my dick inside her was far better than any porn I’d ever seen. When she settled down onto my cock, she closed her eyes and her mouth slowly opened as she tried to make sure that my dick would fit inside her.
That’s the nice thing about Glow. Even us guys with average pricks get to pretend we’ve got donkey dicks.
She started the tiniest of movements, up and down, and side to side. It felt wonderful, and the best part was watching how she responded to the feelings.
I stepped back into her epicenter and rummaged around for her pleasure meter again, trying to understand it better, to correlate what I was doing with how she responded. Right now she was at about thirty percent. It felt nice, pleasant, not yet urgent, compelling.
I leaned up to where her tits were swaying slowly above me and caught one of her nipples in my mouth and sucked. I heard her make an appreciative sound and the meter twitched upward. I lay back, reached up and kneaded both tits in my hands. She went, “Mmmm,” so I thought I might be on the right track and I pinched both nipples and rolled them under my fingers. The meter approached forty percent.
I wondered, all of a sudden, what happened when she felt certain things, how she responded to them internally, for example a small orgasm. I could see the exterior indications, but I wondered how she processed those internally. So I linkcast her an image of a very small wave approaching the beach, about to break. She watched it come in to shore.
“Ooo, so nice, baby.” She gave a little smile, her eyes still closed. But I watched the meter inside and saw the needle flick briefly into the red zone and then immediately drop back to its former level. In the past when I watched the big orgasms on the meter, they seemed to pin in the red zone, holding there for several seconds. This was a little different.
But now, as I looked at it, I second-guessed myself and decided that it wasn’t the previous level after all, it was slightly higher when it dropped back. I took a close look so I’d remember it, then increased the depth and speed of my dick sliding into her.
I heard her catch her breath, and she adjusted her body to accommodate my new rhythm, working with me. She put her arms on my chest to better balance herself.
“Ohhh, that’s nice, baby, that feels so good,” she told me, eyes still closed. Her meter was better than fifty percent now. I sent her another wave, this one a tad larger but approaching from far offshore. She watched it approach, and I could see her anticipation make the needle rise.
When it broke, she moaned and said, “Fuck, another one, oh, yeah!” The needle pinned momentarily, then fell back. I was right, it returned to a slightly higher reading. Each of these brief orgasms arouses her even more. This left her a little over sixty percent.
I wondered whether this arousal was due to her processing her sensations only, a physical thing.
We’re told that sex, good sex, is as much a mental exercise as a physical one, and I speculated whether that included things like smells and sounds and words.
So I talked to her, told her how good she felt and how she made me feel, I told her how beautiful and sexy she was. And it was all sincere, too, I was just wondering how it would affect her responses.
Damn, it was true. When they said that words and touch are the major component of making women feel good, they were absolutely correct. I watched the meter creep upward as she listened to me talk. I was doing nothing else differently, I just told her how hot she was. The meter was over seventy percent now, and she was pushing into me, trying to find an orgasm.
Last time, when I’d slapped her ass, she’d told me it hurt, but it made her feel more sensitive and responsive. Let’s see what that does to the meter. A slap on each cheek of her ass, then a third.
Her eyes flew open and for a moment she looked angry, then the feelings caught up with her.
She said, “You bastard, I’ll fix you,” but she closed her eyes and ground into me. The meter was almost at eighty. I leaned up and got my lips onto hers and sucked her tongue while I continued to fuck her. Whatever she said, it came out as “Mmmmpphhh.” But the meter crept up again.
I let my upper torso fall back on the bed because I couldn’t hold that position for long, then reached up and kneaded those gorgeous tits. She said, “Ah, fuck, they’re so sensitive now.” The meter went over ninety and she was pounding her pussy into me now, desperately looking for the release she knew was hiding just around the corner.
She’s about ready, and I think I’d answered my questions about what affects arousal. I couldn’t decide whether to give her Geyser or Aftershock. Both of them were less dramatic than, say, the avalanche or the volcano, slower and maybe lasting a little longer. I chose Aftershock at random and linkcast it to her while I pounded my dick into her.
Curious, I watched the meter while I did this, and saw it swoop decisively into the red zone and
“pin the meter”, meaning it couldn’t go any further. As soon as it did, she shouted, “Oh, my God, baby, here it is, I’m cumming, oh, YESSS!”
God damn, look at her, she’s glorious when she cums, just angelic. I was hearing fragments of words only, because she kept swallowing them as she tried to draw enough breath into her lungs. I thought to myself, I’m really lucky to get to see this, she’s beautiful.
It took, it seemed, a long time for her to come down and when she did she lowered herself onto my chest and went completely limp. I had to put my arms around her to keep her from sliding off me and onto the floor.
Her breathing eventually returned to normal but she lay where she had collapsed. I realized that my dick was still inside her, and still fairly stiff. Kudos to me for coming up with that ejaculation filter idea.
She lay there for about ten minutes in all, then I felt her start to move, trying to remember where she was. She looked at me for a moment, then rolled off of me onto her side.
“Carter, I’m still buzzing. Vibrating. Wow, that one just grabbed hold and shook me every which-way. It’s gonna take me a bit to recover.”
“We’ve got time. You are just such a joy to watch, Gail. You get so wrapped up in what you’re feeling, it’s like watching a movie, I can see everything that’s happening to you written on your face. Get your breath back, then maybe let’s try one of those challenges you posed for yourself.”
I could sense a little nervousness as I said it, but she still felt so good that it didn’t worry her right now.