Chapter 5: Sharing

In August of ‘77, Marilyn Trainor had all her classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The two English classes were in the morning and the two education classes in the afternoon. That allowed her to come home to fix lunch in between. Andy still had two classes TTS, and that allowed her some time to herself at home. Sharing was all very well, but she found that she needed time by herself, too.

She fulfilled her duties as a member of Zeta Tau Gamma but shared in fewer of the pleasures that the sorority had provided her the first three years. That meant that she spent evenings of rush week in the house, but her schedule allowed her to both cook and study on the days she didn’t have class.

Finally, the rush was over, and they were choosing whom to invite to join -- their bids. They’d seen more girls than they had on either of the previous two years, and it seemed to Marilyn that more of them were desirable. Not everyone agreed, at least on details.

“This Jessica looks like a Zate,” Patricia said, “and her personality is all right, but she says she plans to major in civil engineering. Seems to me we saw a lot of girls wanting to be engineers this year. I’m afraid that will turn boys off.”

“I don’t think so,” Christine said. “I was Vickie’s roommate last year, and she talked -- maybe more than she should have. Anyway, some of us were problems when she was scheduling house dates, but Kathy never was. Look, maybe when he gets to know her the guy discovers she has a brain and that scares him off, but all the frat social chair sees is her looks. Brains are hidden; boobs push out your blouse. House dates are no problem; where engineering majors will have problems is in interesting guys personally.”

“And,” Kathy said, “if a woman takes courses in the hard sciences, she has no problems meeting guys. I thought some classes last year showed an imbalance, but you should see my Chem 201 class. If I ever get tired of Ron, I’ll just hang a sign on the back of my seat in the lecture hall: ‘I’m unattached, and I know what a valence is.”

“Too bad you can’t pass your rejects along.” Robin was between boyfriends and was always saying that she’d been that way far too long.

“Back,” Gail said, “to Jessica.” They bid on Jessica and on two other girls planning on going into engineering. They ended up bidding on 41 rushees, one more than the previous year. Still, Marilyn thought that they’d been more selective than they had the previous year. She’d thought that the previous year, however.

They had, Gail reported at a later chapter meeting, 18 acceptances.

“It looks to me,” Peggy said, “like both Marilyn and Janet were right back when we discussed giving more rooms to freshmen. We’ll just scrape by with 6 freshmen per room, but we -- you guys -- will be cramped the next few years. The next rush will have to be more exacting. You’ll have to raise the standards much higher than the ones which let me in.” Peggy was being self-deprecating, but there was a grain of truth in her statement. Every one of the rushees on which they’d bid this year was prettier than Peggy was. But they’d have lost so much if they hadn’t pledged her!

With her duties to Zeta less onerous, Marilyn looked around. She was living in married student housing, now, and that was a community, too. At least it should be. It wasn’t her and Andy’s community, yet. More than half of the families were grad students. Many of those were men with wives working instead of couples in school. They had small social groups among themselves, based on fields of study or the age of kids. She met some other married undergraduate women, with a bit of effort.

When one of them looked like good company, she invited her and her husband to dinner. She fixed chili. Mrs. Bryant’s chili recipe made a lot, and it didn’t divide very well; she’d tried that. Mark and Nancy were both in physics, and they got along fine with Andy. Considering the size of their kitchen table, one couple was all the company they could handle.

She had Andy figure out how many weeks they had left before graduation and then divide that into what remained of their food budget after the few groceries and the vacuum cleaner they’d bought. The vacuum was one hell of a grocery, but they had needed it, and it didn’t go in the budget anywhere else. The answer to the division was their weekly food allowance. They were spending well less than that on grocery shopping. She thought, but wasn’t sure, that they were consuming less than that. The generous care package that Mrs. Bryant had sent off with Andy had to be factored in. Then, too, their -- okay, her -- original food budget had covered the summer, too. They were far from wealthy, but they were less straitened than she had expected.

They became associate members of First UMC Urbana. They’d been attending for close to two years, but the formal action fitted being a married couple. When the church had a potluck, they contributed. She heard praise for her spaghetti. More than that, she saw it disappear from the serving table as seconds. She’d cooked more than they ate, even counting Andy’s appetite. She was afraid she would need to scrimp the rest of the week, but the acceptance of her as a cook and housewife by the congregation’s community of housewives compensated.

That Sunday was an exception to their pattern, though. Usually, she and Andy returned to their apartment to eat lunch rather than Sunday dinner. Then she drove to Zeta House for the chapter meeting. They had a larger meal after she got home.

One Sunday was another exception. She dropped Andy off at the apartment and went to Zeta House for dinner as a guest of the chapter.

“Nobody needs to be introduced to Marilyn,” Peggy began. Then she spent several minutes in telling them what she’d said they already knew. If they hadn’t known her, Marilyn mused, it would have sounded impressive. “Now, Marilyn,” she finished, “everybody is dying to know. What is married life like?”

Marilyn projected her voice like her chorus teacher had taught her. There were more than 50 women in the room. “Are you interested in how we divide the household chores?” She paused. “Our budget?” She paused again. “Oh, that’s the part of married life you’re interested in.” They laughed. “Bar the door?” She looked at Margot, the new chaplain.

“For the new pledges, when I say, ‘bar the door,’ it means that what you hear is subject to the same secrecy rules as a chapter meeting. Bar the door!”

“Sleeping together,” Marilyn began again. “You’ll hear rumors that one couple or another is sleeping together. Well, they may be having sex, but most of them aren’t actually sleeping together, and that means that they’re missing something. The act lasts only so long. You can prolong it, he can, and it’s great when you both do. Still, it lasts only a tiny fraction of the day. The cuddling afterwards, however, can last the whole night through. And it’s great. Living with a guy, spending the night with a guy -- at least my guy -- is like eating a cake with icing as opposed to eating a couple of spoonfuls of icing.

“Surprises on my honeymoon. Until I lived with Andy, I’d never seen him with a five-o’clock shadow.” Of course, she’d actually spent two different weeks with him before the wedding, but the women who were aware of that weren’t going to be picky in public. “It turns out that he’d always showered and shaved just before coming to pick me up. Now, Andy’s good, but you can’t expect a guy to shave again and again just because you’re both in the same house all the time.

“Insatiable. Back when we were only seeing each other occasionally, Andy wanted sex all the time. He accepted that we couldn’t have it sometimes, that we were going to a dance or something. I still knew that he wanted it. Now, understand me, I wasn’t exactly resisting him. Still, without anything else really on the schedule, I was a little apprehensive about what the typical honeymoon day was going to be like. Well, the typical day ended in lovemaking, but it wasn’t filled with it. It turns out that my guy was quite satiable. He only seemed insatiable when he hadn’t had the opportunities.

“Dullness. There is this picture out there that lovers do it swinging from the chandelier and married couples only use one position. Well, that’s not my experience. First of all, I’ve not only never swung from a chandelier, even by myself, I’ve never even made love in a room which included a chandelier. But that’s off the topic. When you’re on a date, the sex has to be perfect, or -- at least -- so good that you both want to come back. That means that you -- and he -- instinctively avoid anything that looks chancy or hard to bring off.

“In marriage, you’re going to make love the next night, too. Try something new, and it may go great; it may not. If it doesn’t, do you think you need practice, or do you think it’s a bad idea for you? If it was a bad idea for you, you go back to something which has worked for you the next night. The occasional experiment which leads to failure is no big deal. On another topic, when you experiment with a new recipe and it doesn’t come off, your husband shrugs. If it’s the first meal you serve your date, he might decide you can’t cook.

“So married love involves experiment. Not every night, not most nights -- truth to tell, the oldest position is still loads of fun. But when you get the urge for something new, and when you get the time, then you can try something new. If it doesn’t please, you have the next night. For that matter, if it really fails, you have the same night. Y’know, the sex books are full of positions where both of you are standing on the floor. Somehow, I don’t have anywhere for him to put it here.” She tapped her stomach right under her breasts. Many of them laughed. “Anyhow, the problem with some positions they list in the books is that you can’t do anything while you’re laughing that hard.

“Getting back to sleeping together. Undressing used to be such a big deal. How do you get pantyhose off in the back seat of a car? Well, now, I just undress for bed like I used to do in the house. I’ll admit that I don’t put on as much before getting into bed as I did last year. I lie down on my side of the bed; he lies down on the other side. Then, we might come together. But there is no having the elastic on your good panties stretched out of shape, no bra strap chafing your armpit.

“And, of course, there’s the privacy. If there’s a knock on your door, you might check that you’re both dressed to be seen. If you aren’t, you just don’t answer the door. It’s that simple. In married student housing, they have rules against playing music too loudly. They don’t have rules against making too much noise in bed. I can no longer remember how I managed to soap my own back in the shower when I lived here.

“Being married has its problems, being a married student especially. Hamburger is no longer something you eat in a bun and -- if you’re still hungry -- eat another one in another bun. Hamburger is now a garnish I add to the main meal to pretend that it isn’t meatless. Being married has its problems, but all the problems get trivialized when the lights go out.

“I’ll warn you, though, that my report on married life is a report on being married to Andy, and no. you can’t have him. Thank you.”

They all applauded.

Despite her responsibilities, she got lots of studying done. Andy’s life, besides sex and making out with her, was studying. She limited him, and the limit he would accept most readily was that she had to study. One type of school event that they still attended was the all-university dances which were held occasionally.

Late at one of these, they were sitting at a table taking a rest. The last dance was always a slow one, and they wanted to feel romantic on that dance instead of tired. While they were talking, Trish came up.

“Marilyn, can I beg a ride home?” Her eyes were red, and her mascara was beginning to run again from her tears. Andy got up immediately.

“Three Cokes?” he asked.

“Yeah, and don’t hurry.” She turned to Trish. “Something wrong with Ted?”

“You know he was working on a novel?” She nodded. He’d been working on it for more than a year, and nobody could see it, not even Trish. “Well, he’s finished it. We were sitting with Murph, his best friend in the frat, and Lyssa -- two esses and a wye -- Murph’s girl.

“Anyway, I was begging to be allowed to read his book. He was saying that it was only a first draft. Well, I knew that; I didn’t want to read it to correct his grammar. I got the feeling Murph had read the thing. I don’t know why; it was just a feeling. Then Lyssa got up to go to the ladies’ and gave me the signal. We went in together.

“Seems Murph has read the book. It’s the story of a guy named Ed who is having a long affair with a girl named Patty.” Since Trish was Patricia on her school records, this might have been too revealing to be comfortable.

“No wonder he doesn’t want you to read it.” Still, couldn’t he change the name?

“That’s nothing. Ed cheats on Patty -- has other affairs. One of them is with a girl named Alyss -- two esses and a wye. Murph challenged Lyssa, which is how she learned all this, but she persuaded him that although Ted had come on to her, she’d turned him down. Anyway, the book ends with Ed graduating and riding off into the sunset, leaving Patty sobbing behind. This was Lyssa’s report of Murph’s report of the book. So the book must include some fiction, since Ted hasn’t graduated yet.

“I went back to the table, and asked Murph if he’d read the book. He can’t lie worth shit. Then I demanded that Ted let me read it. He gave the same lame excuses, and I asked if he was planning to dump me. Anyway, I ended up dumping him. But he dreamed of dumping me. If he didn’t cheat on me, and I’m not sure about Lyssa and don’t even know the other girls’ pseudonyms, let alone their real names, he damn-well dreamed of having sex with them. More than that, he used me. I thought we had a romance. I was his research subject!” At this she cried harder. Marilyn patted her hand.

Trish had nearly stopped crying when Robin came up to the table and sat down.

“Marilyn, could Andy give me a ride home?” That Andy would when a sister had an emergency had been pretty well established. So had the rule that they asked Marilyn and she asked Andy. He was perfectly happy to do something that simple for her; he didn’t think he owed Zeta anything. “Trish, what’s wrong?” Robin had been slow to notice.

“She had a fight with Ted.” After all, this was a years-long relationship. It might get patched up. Even if it wouldn’t be, the story was Trish’s. If she wanted to tell Robin, let her decide to do so.

“Oh, Trish, I’m so sorry. My problem is nothing to compare with that. My date messed up, but it wasn’t a romance.”

“Neither, it turns out, was mine. I was being used. He was screwing me while he screwed me.” Andy was standing well out of hearing range holding three Cokes and looking a question at her. The last dance was about to begin. Marilyn gestured him forward. He passed a Coke each to her and to Trish before sitting down. Then he gave Robin the last one.

“Thanks, Andy. You’re the nicest guy.”

“That’s for damn sure,” said Trish. “Marilyn, that was the most selfish thing you could have said.”

“What?” She’d just offered Trish a shoulder to cry on and a ride home. She was missing the last dance of the night -- something special for her and Andy -- rather than leave Trish with Robin. This was selfish?

“That we couldn’t have him.” Oh, yes, back in her report on marriage.

“Are we ready to go?” she asked.

“I’ll get the car.” Andy said. As the last dance was still playing, few people were leaving. He could get the car close to the door. Robin and Trish, knowing his reputation, waited in the doorway until he walked the three of them to the car.

“Well,” Robin said from the back seat, “Dick lived up to his name. I’m back looking again. Kathy has been setting up some girls with her classmates, but I don’t want to date a sophomore. Andy, do you have more males than females in your classes, too?”

“And how! One section has all of two girls in it. But I don’t socialize much outside of class. Getting up in class and passing around your picture might make the teacher unhappy.” Well, for Andy, that observation counted as sensitivity.

“Andy!” she said, “Robin isn’t that desperate, and she certainly doesn’t want to look that desperate. You have to find a way for her to choose and then to meet the boy naturally.”

“Okay.” When they got to the house, he walked the two from the back seat to the door. Then he came back to her.

“Sorry about the last dance,” she said.

“Well, you have to take care of your friends.”

“They’re your friends, too. Trish and Robin like you.”

“I suppose.” He was silent while they drove home and climbed the stairs. “Do you have any space in the food budget?”

“Yeah. We’ve been below it every week.” And some of that had been difficult. But she was damned proud. Like Andy as a hardware clerk, she wasn’t a housewife, but -- when she had to be -- she was a good one.

“Even with guests?”

“We haven’t had that many guests.”

“Well, if you and Robin met me at the end of class on a particular day ... It would have to be a Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, wouldn’t it? I really want you there.”

“Probably. I don’t know her schedule.”

“Then she could check out my classmates and choose one. If she liked one, I could invite him to have dinner with us. You could invite her to have dinner with us the same night. They’d at least meet. I’d want you there when she made her choice, ‘cause I’d have problems with some girl meeting me. On the other hand, my wife can bring along anyone she wants when she’s meeting me. But it does mean feeding more people.” And it meant feeding them better. Well, no it didn’t. If her recipes from Mrs. Bryant were good enough for her family, they were good enough for her guests. If the couple clicked, they’d have no reason to complain about the menu. If they didn’t, the extra quantity of food was enough investment in a failed experiment; she didn’t have to invest in a higher quality, too.

Because of Robin’s class schedule, Andy’s 10:00 a. m. class made the most sense, though Robin expressed cheerful willingness to cut classes to see the guys. Marilyn decided not to tell Andy that. He would have been horrified. Andy took a seat in class so he could get out first on Tuesday. She and Robin were standing with him as the others came out. She and Andy were side by side while Robin held both their arms in her hands. When she squeezed, Andy noted the guy. Afterwards, they tried to get clear which of the ones coming out when she squeezed was her actual choice.

She’d been impressed with three, which made Marilyn think she was getting desperate. There hadn’t been more than 20 boys in the class apart from Andy.

Robin’s first choice had been Dave, and Andy invited him to dinner the next Tuesday. Andy introduced Dave to her, and she introduced Robin to Dave and Andy. Andy, of course, knew Robin, but she wasn’t going to explain all that. They had chili-mac. She’d got into the habit of making all of Mrs. Bryant’s recipe when she made chili, then she reused the left-over chili over macaroni. Even so, they had a lot of chili-mac left in the pot when the four of them had done eating. Dessert was ice cream, one concession to having guests.

Dave and Robin got along well until Dave mentioned his girlfriend. Even so, they parted civilly. Dave thanked her for a great home-cooked meal, and he offered Robin a ride home.

Bill, the next Tuesday, paid more attention to her than to Robin. She served Spanish rice and greens. Greens was another recipe that didn’t work well in half quantities. Andy would eat them as left-overs; when he’d eat something, he’d eat it three days running -- maybe seven days running. However, her own tolerance ended at the second meal, and her conscience wouldn’t let her feed Andy left-overs while she ate something newly cooked. That made it perfect for guests. It would be eaten faster. Robin picked politely at her first serving of greens, but left half of it on her plate. Bill, on the contrary, went back for seconds.

“You didn’t learn to cook like this in Chicago,” he drawled.

“Evanston.”

“That’s even further north,” Andy added.

“Have some more,” she said, “please.”

“I shouldn’t.” Yes, he should. And, in fact, he did. He offered to walk Robin home, which sealed her decision to go no further with him. Robin wanted a guy with a car.

When Robin had heard the name Warren, she dropped him to the bottom of the list, but after a guy whom she’d met on a house date had taken her to a rock concert and then tried to remove her panties on what was the second date at best, she wanted to try him. The pause had left Marilyn with a couple of weeks without guests.

Warren thought that Robin was a charming name. He thought that she was a charming woman, for that matter. He not only drove her home but asked if he could see her again.

“Marilyn, you are wonderful!” Robin said over the phone.

Trish had heard about this process and was ready to get back into the game.

“Anything is better than another English major.” And since Trish was a senior English major, her own classes didn’t offer any other prospects. She tried the same scheme Robin had, but with Andy’s 1:00 o’clock class. She saw two guys she thought likely, but one of them was Warren.

“No can do,” Andy said. “My excuse is that Marilyn wants to do some entertaining. I can’t invite the same guy twice with two different women.” He was right, although she suspected that the guys he’d invited had already seen through their ploy. What were they going to do, walk out because they’d been invited there to meet a pretty woman? Anyway, Warren was Robin’s until they broke up.

Trish’s other choice, which she insisted was really her first choice, was Barry. Barry and Trish were their guests for dinner the last Tuesday before Hell Week. Barry drove Trish home and asked for her phone number.

The next day’s mail brought a letter from Jim Trainor. He included two round-trip tickets to Chicago.

“Please come home for Christmas,” he wrote. They’d wanted to, and his tickets made it cheaper to do so than to stay on campus and feed themselves.

She negotiated with Gail the times she could give for Hell Week. She did her homework and cooking during the off days. She ate supper at Zeta house, and Andy ate the same food for two suppers running and for lunch in between. He didn’t complain about that so long as she was back by 10:30 p. m. Let the other actives take turns waking the pledges in the middle of the night; Marilyn had promised to spend every night in Andy’s arms. She came out of Hell Week nearly caught up on her class work and not that far behind on her sleep.

She even made church on the last day. She dropped Andy at the apartment and went to dinner at the house. After dinner came the chapter meeting when they initiated the new pledges. She crept into the apartment at 11:15. Andy was still at the table studying.

“Long day?” he asked.

“It’s over. Hell Week is over, my last Hell Week.”

“You sure that it’s harder on the pledges?”

“Believe me. It’s much harder on the pledges, but some of us actives have to be present at any time to keep being hard on the pledges. Ready for bed?”

“Yeah.”

“Not as ready as I am.” She stripped and got into her side. Andy turned on his lamp, got out of his clothes, turned off the overhead light, and got into bed beside her. After he turned off his lamp, he took her in his arms. He kissed the back of her head but didn’t make any sexy moves. “Andy?”

“Hush. You’re tired. Sleep in my arms.” Which meant that he didn’t expect any sex that night. She really didn’t feel able, but she didn’t feel she had the strength to refuse him, either.

“You are the nicest guy, ever.”

“I love you.” And she knew he did. Her thoughts had been churning an hour ago, and she’d doubted that she could fall asleep. In his arms she found peace and -- quite soon -- deep sleep.

That sleep had been needed not only because of the past but because of the next day. Four classes on the same day could be a little rough when you were barely prepared for any of them. She survived, though, and bought buns and hamburger meat on the way home. They had hamburgers for supper, but she’d be able to spend little enough in the rest of the week to make up for it.

That night, he stroked and licked her to three climaxes before he entered her. Then he was driving in and out until she was pushed to the top of the bed. He groaned when he pulsed deep inside her, and that pulsing brought a climax from her. He collapsed over her and took a long time to move off.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was a little out of control.”

“You’ve been wonderful. I love you, Andy.” He’d been so thoughtful while she was busy and later while she was exhausted. He’d lost control tonight, but he hadn’t hurt her. Okay, she’d ended up in a position which wasn’t too comfortable, but she had been too busy enjoying herself to notice. Why should she expect him to notice? And, as she’d said years back, making Andy lose control was an accomplishment.

“And I love you.”

The next morning, he wanted to make love again. She didn’t have any classes, and his first was at 10:00.

“Okay, if you come in me soon. No making me climax again and again.”

“But you’re so lovely when you writhe ... Okay.” And he did come into her before her climax -- right before. It was one of the few times that he was in her during one of her climaxes that he didn’t participate. Then he brought her another in which he joined her.

After she sent him off to class, she boiled rice for that day and cooked the beans in preparation for making baked beans for Wednesday. She got her homework done, but much of it was while the meals were cooking. She made toasted-cheese sandwiches for lunch.

“You know,” he said, “I love these sandwiches. They remind me of you, all crisp on the outside but warm and gooey and tasty on the inside.” She’d heard that before.

“Can’t you think of anything but sex?”

“Sure, but not when you’re around. You’re the sexiest woman alive.” That wasn’t true. She wasn’t anywhere near as sexy as Robin was, for example. On the other hand, it was nice that Andy thought so -- except when it was annoying when he thought so. Well, until they invented a switch, she’d take a turned-on husband over a turned-off one.

He went off to his afternoon class, walking although the weather was nasty. Andy seemed to feel that the car was necessary to shield her from the weather but not to shield him.

She finished up her Wednesday assignments and caught up on her reading before finishing preparing the Spanish rice just before he got home. She had papers to write, and she drove to the library after supper. She left the library at closing. When she got home, he closed his books and cleaned them off the table.

“Exhausted?” he asked.

“Exhilarated.” And she was. She might just get an A in English Pedagogy with this paper -- providing, of course, that she wrote it as well as it felt in her head. Andy, always glad to cooperate in that way, had her exhilarated again before she fell asleep in his arms.

They had learned to share a fast shower, harder and less fun than sharing a slow one, and he dropped her at her first class before heading over to his.

This was crunch time, but a little less bad than previous years. She had caught up much faster, and Andy kept study discipline better than any previous roommate had. He took to vacuuming while she was at chapter meeting. She did have to limit the number of climaxes he brought her. After one night when he’d gone way out, she’d felt like she had only half a mind the entire next day. Two climaxes a night was the limit she set.

“But after finals, we’ll have an orgy?” She laughed at his question.

“An orgy requires more than two people.”

“A mini-orgy then?” And they’d scheduled a mini-orgy for after finals. Actually, two climaxes a night and sleeping in his arms was great for her mental health. She could cook and study all day knowing that she’d have a brief period of ecstasy that evening followed by eight hours of contentment. And if she was asleep most of the time he was holding her, she was still contented.

Scheduled sex was something she knew she could never explain to her sisters. Sex was something which was supposed to catch you by surprise; you would get carried away. Still and all, they knew that they would park after a dance, same as she’d known the same thing. The truth was that she and Andy could have passion any time they were free; the schedule was a schedule for all the other claims on their lives.

She cooked a pot of greens for the next church potluck. A meal had to have veggies, too, and most women brought main dishes or desserts. The customers for greens were a selective group, but those were enthusiastic. And greens were, really, cheap to cook. The pork bits weighed a quarter of a pound -- less than the meat they’d use for any meal.