Chapter 25

I woke late, with just a bit of a headache from more beers than I usually had. I looked at the other side of the room where there was an absence of Larry. It didn’t look like his bed had been slept in.

It was after ten, but I still had some difficulty getting out of bed. I took a shower and brushed my teeth, then went off to find a late breakfast. After a couple of cups of coffee I started to feel a little better.

I thought about last night. I hadn’t changed my opinion about frat parties, though the sex show had been entertaining. Especially when I got to participate. I recalled that I’d made a mental note about things I wanted to think about, but I couldn’t remember what they were. I should have made a mental note to remind me what was on the mental note.

Finally it came to me. One was that I’d wanted to give some more thought to how to induce orgasms that had more variation to them. I had names for the big ones, the epic, towering orgasms that leave you drained and breathless. But for the small or medium-sized ones, all I had was the breaking wave on the beach.

Nothing wrong with those, they were entertaining and, even better, adjustable, intensity-wise. But they had no subtlety, no finesse. I’m not sure that the recipients cared, but I thought they were slapdash, cheap. I wondered what I might change about them to make them more flexible, or if I could find a better replacement.

And I remembered that I had intended to look into whether I could linkcast myself baseline images the way I could with named images attached to an orgasm. And how about things like Mineral Spring which were not-quite-orgasms but gave a feeling of pleasure and contentment? Could I send those to myself?

And I had also promised myself to look into coming up with other large but more subtle orgasms that didn’t leave the recipient drained and comatose. I felt I was overusing things like Avalanche and Aftershock. I ought to have things in my tool-belt that were powerful but allowed people to recover quickly. There’s a lot to think about here.

I was pulled out of my contemplation when the door opened and Larry stumbled in. He looked, well, not so much hungover as exhausted. Somehow I knew not to say anything to him, but I raised an eyebrow. Apparently that was too much, too.

“Not a word, Carter. I don’t have the energy to explain myself.”

But he couldn’t stop himself, I knew he couldn’t. He wanted to brag, as tired as he was. It took him a couple of minutes while he got his coat and shoes off and settled himself on the bed.

“Why is it,” he asked, “that women sometimes are indifferent about sex, and other times they’re almost insatiable? I don’t understand her.”

“Are you talking about Marina?”

“Yeah, who else?” he said with some impatience. “Other times it’s been like planning a military campaign to convince her to get into bed with me. Last night she was all over me, and even after we’d done it, she wanted more. To be honest, I was having a little difficulty getting it up the last time. And even when I finally left, she was making noises like she might want to try again. Women are so weird.”

“I think it has something to do with hormones, plus the mood that they’re in. They’re more inclined at certain times of the month. I think science has failed us here, Larry, and it will remain one of the great, unsolved mysteries.”

“I’m not complaining, mind you, I just don’t understand it. I’ve gotta nap. You can explain it to me later.” He turned on his side and closed his eyes.

I wasn’t sure that I could explain it to him. I didn’t understand it myself, even though I had the ability to peek inside their heads and get a glimpse of their motivations and desires. It didn’t explain why they were more motivated at certain times. Maybe it did have something to do with hormones and reproductive urges. Now there’s a senior thesis topic of lasting interest.

Since Larry was temporarily incommunicado, I got my coat and went to the chuck wagon for a late lunch. They had minestrone soup and I got a ham sandwich, which seemed like just the right thing. It was late for the lunch crowd, so no trouble finding a table.

I brought the soup spoon to my mouth and even before I could open my lips, Con Doherty was plopping his tray down, saying, “I heard the stories, Carter, and I’m sorry I missed it. Everybody said it was epic.”

“Meaning...?”

“The threesome on the couch! I wish someone had gotten pictures. I was upstairs trying to talk some girl into going up to the second floor. I heard you had a cheering squad, even backup singers!”

“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. She was on a mission. Wait, didn’t you have a game today?”

“Yeah, it’s later, I’m getting some food before I head over to warm up. Listen, I’ll let you know when the next Kappa party’s scheduled, okay? You’re a legend now, a regular, I don’t think you even need an invitation!”

“If there are any more like her, I don’t think I can keep up. I may need a month to recuperate.”

“You’ll be fine. Listen, I gotta run. Awesome party, wasn’t it?”

He ran off to prep for his game. In retrospect, I had had fun with Alicia, but unlike Con the rest of the party hadn’t done much for me. Too loud, too drunk, and the fun seemed rather forced. I probably wouldn’t do it again, unless I were facing terminal boredom.

I finished my soup and sandwich and thought about the rest of my day. I was caught up on everything I was supposed to do, plus I had tomorrow as well, so what should I do with my Saturday? There was the library, and I could continue my research on psi. I could give some thought to those items on my to-do list, more variation on named images and whether I could apply a baseline to myself. I’d need some solitude to do that, but maybe.

In the end I took the easy way out and went to a movie, a sci-fi epic that wasn’t too bad. I came back, had dinner, and read till I was too sleepy to do any more. I knew I wouldn’t get too many weekends like this, so I was willing to indulge myself.

Sunday I got the guilts and caught up on all the reading for the upcoming week. Somehow I had gotten it in my head that I should be more methodical about the reading assignments, and I resolved to test myself after each reading session, to make sure that I remembered what I’d read and that I had really understood it.

Doherty was right. I really was becoming a bit of a tool, but I felt like I had somehow faked my way into this place and that I’d be found out eventually. So I worked a little harder at it.

And when classes started again on Monday, I did have a sense that I was keeping up, maybe even a little ahead. Where I could, I peeked into the lecturer’s epicenter to grab what knowledge I could. I was still keeping the ‘bites’ small, as I tried to understand what the limits to this memory acquisition trick were.

Interestingly, I found that as I absorbed this knowledge — and it was necessarily incomplete because of the limits I’d set in borrowing it — it often piqued my curiosity about one thing or another, and I would sometimes ask the instructor what the implications were of a certain event, experiment, theorem, because it wasn’t yet explained in the text.

That, I think, got me the reputation as a ‘thinker’, somebody who wonders about the ramifications of what we’d just learned, rather than just memorizing the facts. I noticed this in particular in the European History class, with the elderly Professor D, who responded thoughtfully when I had asked about an historical incident and its subsequent economic effects.

It didn’t happen immediately, but I found that he would call on me with slightly greater frequency when he asked a question of the class. I would occasionally catch him glancing at me as he lectured, as one might look at a particularly interesting laboratory specimen. Weird. Maybe he had a thing for college guys.

Tuesday evening I went back to Math Club again for their weekly talk. This time it was a visiting lecturer from Forbes University — Allie’s voice shouting ‘eff you’ echoed in my head — who talked about fractional calculus, something I’d never heard of before.

Instead of doing differentiation or integration with integer powers of a variable, like d³u/dx³, they might investigate d^2.945u/dx^2.945. It turns out that you can specify dⁿu/dⁿ for any real value of n, not just integers! Who knew?

It turns out to be useful in some esoteric applications, such as fluid flow equations, electrochemical analysis, some kinds of diffusion, even in quantum mechanics. First I’d heard of it. I’d have to read a little more about it.

And so the week went. Classes were proving challenging, lots of new information, and looming in the distance was the first of several research papers due. This semester I also had one assigned for Psychology. Our choice of topic, and that was going to require some thought.

Thursday after dinner, the phone in the hallway rang and someone close by answered it. I heard him say, “Hold on, I’ll check.” Then a fist pounded on the door and the same voice hollered, ““Carter, are you alive? Phone!”

At least he checked instead of just saying, “Not here,” and hanging up. I nodded to him as I took the phone handset.

“I wasn’t sure if you were going to be there or at dinner.”

“Oh, hi, Gail. No, I ate earlier. I was reading.”

“Listen, do you think you could meet me tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon? You remember that Middle Eastern place we had lunch? How ‘bout there, say 3:00?”

“Uh, yeah, I think so. I don’t remember anything that would conflict. Okay, 3:00.”

“Good, see you then. Sorry, I’ve got to run. Tomorrow.” Then she hung up.

She must have been in a rush, she usually wasn’t that abrupt on the phone. I made a mental note for tomorrow at three.

I went back and finished my reading. I was trying to keep a few days ahead of what was going to be covered in class, and so far it was working. I spent forty minutes or so working on a math problem set and called it a night. I was pretty tired. Larry was spending so much time hanging out with his buddies or with Marina that it was almost like having a private room.

In the morning I had English Lit. After, I went to the library and started researching the topic we’d been assigned for the paper in that class. It wasn’t due for another couple of weeks, but I had a bad habit of putting these things off till the last minute that I was trying to correct.

I worked until it was time to go meet Gail. I had to stop at a phone booth and look in the Yellow Pages for the address, because I’d forgotten the name of the street it was on.

I got there right at three, and stepped inside. The contrast between the bitter cold outside and the moist, over-warm air inside was like a slap in the face and made me a little dizzy. I looked around and spotted Gail in a far corner at a table by herself. At this time of day there was hardly anyone else here, but it would get busier as we got closer to dinner.

She looked up and saw me as I unwrapped myself from my heavy coat and scarf. She smiled and raised a hand to make sure I saw her.

“You’re always punctual. I got here a few minutes early.”

“You look good. How were your exams? I haven’t talked to you since before Christmas.”

“They went okay. I’m passing everything, and doing better than that in a couple of subjects. You?”

I told her about mine, and she gave me a wry smile.

“You say that so matter-of-factly, you got A’s and B’s in everything. The rest of us have to struggle just to pass.”

“I have to work at it like everyone else, maybe even a little harder. I’m no genius. It takes some effort. It may have just been luck. I’m not sure I can keep that up.”

“We’ll see.”

“So what’s up? Why didn’t we meet at the museum?”

Her face changed completely. She looked confused, worried now, the smile gone. I could see that she was struggling with something, trying to find her opening.

“I thought I had this worked out. I didn’t realize it was going to be so hard.”

She took another sip from her teacup.

“I don’t know how to do this gracefully, so I’ll just tell you, Tom. Here’s the thing. I met someone, just after I came back to school. Completely unexpected. And we hit it off. I felt a real connection, and it kind of shook me. It was lousy timing, ‘cause it was right before exams, y’know, but I couldn’t shake it.

“It was harder because I was kinda falling for you, and I thought there might be something there, between us, but what I felt with this new guy — his name’s Bryce — was something so dramatic it was almost a stereotype. You know, light-headed, heart racing, sweaty palms, tongue-tied, that sort of thing. It was like the things we girls used to fantasize about in high school.

“Anyway, after exams — and my head was messed up all during exams because of that — I ran into him again, and we got to talking and he told me he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me. You know me, I’m always suspicious of guys who say things like that, because it sounds too much like a pickup line, but he looked so serious and a bit embarrassed for saying it, too, so I was pretty sure he was sincere.

“So here’s where I am with this. I think I want to see how it works out with Bryce, and I don’t think I can be seeing you while I’m doing that because it will just confuse me. I need to focus on one thing, or one person, at a time. And right now it’s got to be him.

“Tom, you’re really sweet and I like you a lot, and maybe you and I could be an item, develop it into something more. But for now I want to see what happens with Bryce. So that’s why no more art history tutorials.”

She stopped and concentrated on her teacup, which was almost empty. I was still reeling from what she’d said, almost like a punch in the stomach, which surprised me. I really liked Gail, thought she was smart, passionate about her work, funny and drop-dead gorgeous. I hadn’t thought I was in love with her, but I loved spending time with her. Maybe there was more there than I’d admitted to myself, perhaps that’s why I was having such trouble with this.

“Gail, I’ll tell you that this hits me hard. I really like you, and I thought this might develop into something bigger, too. I was looking forward to what might happen between us.

“But one of the things I admired about you was your focus on figuring things out, with your career, with your life. You’re self-analytical, maybe more than anyone else I know. It hurts me to say it, but if you feel this connection to this person and you feel like you’ve got to explore it, you should follow your instincts.

“I can’t believe I just said that. I’m going to walk out of here feeling like there’s a hole in my life, but I really want you to be happy, and to discover the things and the people that’ll get you there. If he lets you down, if you find that he wasn’t the one you were looking for, would you like to try again with me?”

She nodded, then leaned over the table and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“You’re a nice guy, Carter, that’s why this is so hard for me. Thanks for understanding.”

Before she could take her leave, I gathered my things and buttoned up while walking out the door. I didn’t want her to see me looking so miserable. I was going to have to think about this. Did she mean more to me than I’d been willing to let on? Or was this just me feeling sorry for myself for being dumped? And how did I reconcile what I was feeling with how I felt about Karen? My head is really fucked up.

I took the long way back to the dorm so I could regain some composure before I had to face everyone.

Back in my room, Larry was still in classes, so I lay back on the bed and let my mind wander. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I had fallen into a trap, thinking that Gail was going to be there when we felt like getting together, that we were just taking it slow. And now that was gone.

Of course, the sex was spectacular and I felt like it was a privilege to share that with her. But more than that, I really did like the way her mind worked, and the dedication she had to her chosen area of study. Not many people our age had that figured out like she did, and I admired that in her.

I thought she had the right idea, of finding the thing she loved, art history, and pursuing it, as difficult as it was to break into the field. She’d thought a lot about it and took that road, aware of all the obstructions.

I couldn’t fault her for recognizing something else that might change her life in a different way. This guy Bryce. I resented him, but I had to give him credit for seeing that something special was coming his way, and reaching out to take hold of it. At some point I fell asleep.

I was awakened by Larry banging into the room with his books and some bags.

“Oh, sorry, man, I didn’t know you were asleep. I would have been quieter.”

“I should probably get up anyway. I’ve been here too long.”

I looked at my watch. It was close to dinner time.

“I bought some new shirts,” said Larry. “I was getting tired of the things that my mother mostly picked out. Whaddya think of these?”

He opened one of the bags and pulled out several Hawaiian shirts, lots of bright colors, pictures of tropical fruits.

“Umm, I’m not sure I’d have the fashion sense to pull that off, but they probably look better on you.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. You gotta stand out if you want to attract women, and maybe this’ll do the trick.”

“An interesting approach. Could work.”

It might work with color-blind women. Well, maybe he knows something I don’t. I doubt it would make his chances any worse.

“Wait a minute, Larry. What about Marina? Aren’t you paired up with her?”

“Well, we’re not actually a couple, we just like hanging out. We’re not exclusive. At least, I don’t think so. So if I hook up with someone else, well...”

“Ohhhh-kay, I see. You seem to have thought this out. Maybe I’ll go get something to eat so I don’t have to see you wearing one of those.”

“You’re just jealous, Carter. You haven’t got the balls to wear a fashion statement like this.”

“You’re right, I don’t. Later.”

It was pot roast on special tonight, labeled on the whiteboard as “Comfort Food”, and I got that with mashed potatoes and peas. And strawberry shortcake. Comfort food. Because that’s what I needed right now.

After I finished I felt only slightly comforted. So much for truth in advertising.

I left the mess hall and wandered aimlessly around the campus. It was really too cold to do that, but I felt that if I was sitting alone too much I’d start getting morose again. The wind and the snow made me focus on how chilly I was, and that prevented me from thinking too much about Gail.

But in the end the threat of frostbite convinced me to find someplace warm. I stopped on the walkway under a streetlight to look around to see where I was. I got my bearings, and found that once again I was outside Collins Hall, one of the dorms. Okay, now I knew where I was and could find my way back. I turned eastward.

“Hey, Carter, is that you?” I looked around in confusion, trying to find the source of the voice.

“Here!” I looked to my right and saw someone waving their arm at me to get my attention. The lighting was poor from the scattered lights on the walkways, so I moved closer. Oh, it was Katrina’s roommate, what was her name? Right, Mindy, same as my sister.

She came a little closer. “What’s up? Evening constitutional?”

“More or less. I didn’t feel like sitting in my room alone reading, so I’m walking. Maybe it’ll make me tired enough to go to sleep.”

“Sleep? It’s the weekend! What are you talking about? You should relax, blow off some steam.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for something loud and alcohol-driven, Mindy.”

“That’s the nice thing about --------, the variety of options available.”

“I’m not sure the rest of the student body shares our opinions about entertainment options. Like that last party I attended, right here, in fact. Pretty loud, lots of booze.”

“Well, don’t judge us by the one party you chanced upon. So, lemme see if I can narrow this down. No big parties, nothing too loud. Are you opposed to alcohol?”

“No, not at all, just not as an end in itself.”

“Okay. Dancing?”

“Take it or leave it. I’m not much of a dancer, but I’ll watch. I like conversation, bouncing ideas around, things that make me laugh.”

“Geez, talk about a fussy customer. Okay, maybe I’ve got something that might appeal to you. I’m headed there, in fact, if you want to tag along. If it’s not your speed, you can leave, find someplace else, no hard feelings. You in?”

“The other options are looking pretty sparse right now, so yeah.”

“Good. Follow me. Oh, and heads up, there might be a guy I’m interested in there, and if he is, you’re on your own as far as introductions go.”

She headed to one of the Collins entrances. We had to show our student IDs, of course, to get in. ------ was pretty lax about who visited whom in the dorms, but you did have to be a student there.

“Katrina’s off for the weekend, visiting one of her cousins who lives not far from here. Otherwise she’d be on the party hunt, too.”

“I don’t know her well enough to know that she was a party animal.”

“She works hard during the week, but she likes to relax hard on the weekends. As do a lot of the others.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that in my dorm.”

“There’s different ways of relaxing, different options, like we talked about. They don’t all have to involve ... What was that Coneheads phrase on SNL? Oh. ‘Consuming mass quantities.’ Of alcohol.”

She led me to the second floor via the stairway and walked a couple of doors down the hall, stopping in front of one and knocking.

The door was flung open and a voice shouted, “We already gave at the office! Oh, hi, Mindy, c’mon in.” Mindy may have misjudged the alcohol effect.

Voices were raised in greeting, and she nodded. “Some of you may know Carter. If you don’t, this’s Carter.”

There were maybe eight or nine packed into the room, about evenly split between male and female. There were several six packs on various surfaces, one bottle of vodka, and the smell of several joints. Everyone was looking pretty mellow by now.

Someone — I hadn’t learned names yet — passed me a can of beer, mostly cold, so I drank some to be sociable. Mindy started up a conversation with one of the girls, squirming in next to her. I noticed that she kept glancing at the guy sitting on a chair across from her.

I saw a place on the end of one of the bunk beds and asked the person next to it if it was free. She brushed it off for me, then laughed at having thought of it.

“What’d she say your name was? I was talking to someone else at the moment.”

“It’s Tom Carter, but most people just call me Carter.”

“Okay. Carter it is. I’m Amy.”

We exchanged basic information, where ya from, what’s your major, what bands ya like, that sort of thing.

Okay, not loud, not too much inebriation, people talking, I wasn’t alone and feeling sorry for myself, so maybe not as bad as it could be. I settled in and watched the dynamics around the room.

They seemed to know each other, mostly, and were comfortable with each other. They seemed like a friendly group. Mindy and her friend were laughing at something the guy across the room had said. It was nice to watch people having fun.

I talked with a couple of people, discovering things we might have in common, like classes or favorite teachers. After a half hour or so, and another joint being passed around, someone started a trivia contest. There didn’t seem to be any rules, but the person who answered the most questions got bragging rights.

That fell apart pretty quickly when a couple of people seemed to be much better at it, so someone decided there should be teams. That evened things up a bit more, but it started to lose its charm when no one could think of good questions that would be tough but fair.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence when a quiet voice, I couldn’t tell whose, said, “Truth or dare.”

Someone asked, “Which version of this are we playing? The middle school version, the high school version that pushed the boundaries, or the no-holds-barred version?”

One of the girls took a healthy swig of her beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and sneered, “What are you, children? All in. Wusses.”

Heads looked up, considering the possibilities of amusement or embarrassment, then folks shrugged.

One of the girls whose room we were occupying grabbed a notepad from the desk along with a bunch of pencils. “Right. Everybody write down two truth questions and two dare challenges. Keep ‘em separate, then put ‘em into these two piles.” She wrote ‘Truth’ and ‘Dare’ on two pieces of paper and placed them on the floor to mark the piles.

In five minutes everybody had deposited their contributions into the two piles.

One of the guys said, “Okay, I’ll go first. Somebody ask me.”

One of the girls asked, “Truth or dare?”

“Um, truth, I guess,” he responded. He reached down and picked one from the Truth pile.

He opened it and grimaced, then read out loud, “Have you ever masturbated in front of someone?”

“Right into the deep end, huh? Okay. No, as it happens, I haven’t.”

The slip was placed face down at the bottom of the appropriate pile.

The girl who thought we were wusses said, “Okay, you choose the next participant, Andy.”

He looked around. “I think it’s Amy. Truth or dare?”

Amy, beside me, hesitated, then said, “Truth.”

Someone passed her a slip from the top of the pile, which she read aloud. “What’s the shortest length of time you’ve known someone before you’ve had sex with them?”

“Well?” said one of the other girls.

“Um, I think about twenty minutes. But I was drunk.”

“What else is new?” cried a female voice from the back. Amy stuck out her tongue.

“Who’s next?” said another voice.

Amy said, “How ‘bout the new guy? Carter.”

Mindy, leaning against the wall with her girlfriend, started a chant. “Car-ter. Car-ter.”

“Truth or dare?” asked Amy.

“This will not end well,” I said to no one in particular. “Okay, dare.”

Mindy reached over and passed me a folded slip of paper. “Choose a person. If they agree, French-kiss them for thirty seconds and see how hot you can get them. If they don’t agree, choose another person, same rules.”

A couple of the guys applauded and made encouraging comments. I think I blushed a bit. I said, “I don’t really know any of you that well, so I’m okay if you want to say no. How about ... you?” I pointed.

“Fran, you little minx!” someone shouted. “Are you game?”

Fran said, “Sure, why not? Let’s see what you’ve got, Carter.” She wormed her way off the floor at the other end of the room, hopped up and walked over to me. She was cute, not beautiful, but she had a presence, someone who was comfortable with who she was.

I stood up and looked her in the eye. “Okay, but you have to be honest in your assessment. Let’s say on a scale of one to ten, ten being you’re ready to rip your clothes off right here and now.”

That got a laugh from everyone except Fran, who looked at me with a challenge in her eye.

Fran, I thought, had a point to prove. She liked to be in control. I decided to mess with her just a little. I linkcast her Silk, which would make every touch pleasurable. That would set her up for what might follow.

I took her face gently in both my hands and got my lips wrapped around hers, probing her mouth with my tongue. I made a tweak to Mineral Spring that would start it slowly, increasing with time over roughly thirty seconds, leaving her bathing in a warm pool of contentment. I sent that to her.

I could feel her body respond as she felt it hit her, slowly leaning into me, looking to get closer. By the time somebody called “Time!” she was breathing heavily.

There was scattered applause. I think the girls saw that something was happening, but the guys saw only two people sucking face. We pulled apart and she looked just a bit unsteady.

Amy called out, “What’s the score, Fran? How’d he do?”

“I think I’d call that a nine. Definitely a nine.”

“You passed, Carter. Who’s next?”

“Um, Amy already played, so ... Mindy! How about Mindy? Truth or dare?”

Mindy thought about it, then said, “Dare.”

Someone closer to her pulled a slip off the top of the pile and passed it over. She opened it and snorted. “Remove one article of clothing and place it on the floor in the middle of the room.”

I thought most women would be a little shy about this, but then I realized that she was presenting herself to the guy she was interested in, letting him see what he might be missing.

She stood up, pulled her shirt out of the waistband of her pants and unbuttoned it from the top down. She was not wearing a bra. The girls chanted, “Take it off, take it off.” The guys just smiled. She shrugged out of her shirt, held it out by the collar with one hand for a few moments, then dropped it on the floor.