Chapter 2

It was a strange weekend for me. The fact that the gas station where I worked was closed for repairs and I wasn’t in Burling Heights was something I was unaccustomed to. It seemed different for me to be at the KSU library instead of pumping gas. I met my roommate Lenny for dinner at the Rathskeller. He peppered me about what went on at the fraternity house last night. We—fifteen brothers and myself, a pledge—had left Lenny at Corner Bar when we left with one girl—Marcia Zillich. I could only hold him off for so long without pissing him off.

“It was more hype than excitement Lenny. Jerry Willis told us that that his girl was an exotic dancer and she was gonna put on a show for us. Everbody thought “exotic” meant something like she was a burlesque dancer and we’d at least be seeing this hot girl in a sexy outfit twirling tassels on her otherwise bare tits. At the house she changed into these diaphanous pantaloons and a colorful bra-like kind of top. Jerry put on some Arabian sounding music and she danced for us. She had these finger cymbals that she played as she moved her arms around and worked her belly like she was fucking somebody. She danced for about forty five minutes until the record finished. The sexiest thing she did was to get on her knees and shimmy her tits. And that was it. After we saw her dance for the first couple tunes I think everybody was getting pretty bored. She’s a great looking girl but when everybody realized that we wouldn’t be getting any kind of sexual benefits the life petered out of the party.” Lenny looked at me askance as if to say, ‘Common Toby I haven’t just fallen off the turnip truck.’”

“Get real Lenny,” I countered, “There wasn’t one of us who was hopin we’d be getting into her pants. But this is Kent State University not NYU. You’ve gotta admit it would be kind of far-fetched in the first place. She’s Jerry’s fiancée and we all figured that he was just trying to provide her with a way to perform. We had a few beers and talked for a while. She was out of there by midnight.

Lenny shook his head and laughed like he was expecting to hear something really scandalous. “Geez,” he said, “I thought there might have been something like a gangbang.”

I laughed and said, “From your mouth to God’s ears Lenny.” He was Jewish and always used that phrase instead of ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’” I gave him a confidential smirk and asked, “And what do you know about gangbangs anyway?”

He blushed and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothin, but you know what kind of shit goes in a guy’s mind.”

“Not really Lenny. Maybe I’m more naïve than most guys but I thought the burlesque kind of dance might be what we would see.” I laughed. “Most of us were kind of embarrassed that we were even thinking that way. Jerry’s proud that she’s involved in this weird kind of art. Go figure.’” I shook my head, said, “A GANGBANG Lenny, you’d better never let Jerry know you were thinking about Marcia that way. He’s really ape shit over her.” Then I laughed out loud.

After dinner we walked back to the Corner Bar. As we walked in I thought about the lie I used to cover up Marcia Zillich thing. Scenes of the evening flashed through my brain. It was so bizarre ... like some kind of weird dream. But it still, guilt-ridden as I was, it was giving me a hard-on. On the way we had passed the Erie Café. Images of Marcia popped up: devouring her huge breakfast, the sad look of a girl that had done such a disgusting thing and would repeat it over and over was written on her face, the kind and grateful looks she gave me. I remember her getting out of the car like any other girl her age when I took her home and I remember hoping that I could see her again, alone, not with fifteen other guys. I thought about Jerry and once again felt disloyal about my lustful feelings for his fiancée, but...

The Corner Bar was the haunt for all the fraternities and sororities on campus. When we went in I could see the same brothers at the table who were there last night. There were five girls interspersed—all Chi-O’s, our sister sorority. I saw one of the brothers’ turn and say something to the one next to him. Suddenly all of the guys’ faces were looking at me, with either stares of disgust, hatred, threat or whatever. Art Franklin excused himself as if he was going to the bathroom. He quickly caught my arm at the end of the bar and said to Lenny, “I have to check out something with Toby.” When we were far enough away, which didn’t have to be too far because of the ambient noise in the room, he asked, “What did you tell your roommate?”

I told him exactly what I said about Marcia being a belly dancer, almost verbatim. Art looked me up and down and glanced over at Lenny who was trying to be inconspicuous. “Jesus,” Art said, “I apologize for not thinking you were that smart. We’ve all been trying to come up with a cover story, just in case we have to. I’ll spread the word so we’re all on the same page. We’ve all got to keep our fucking mouths shut Toby. If the true story ever gets out Delta Xi could be history on this campus.” He kept going toward the restroom.

“What was that about?” Lenny asked.

“I told Art that I told you about Marcia belly dancing for us. He’s pissed at me for saying anything to you, we’re not supposed to have any women in the house unchaperoned.”

“How’d you get to be involved in it in the first place, you’re a pledge.”

“Tell me about it, and those guys are still pissed; look at the way they’re all lookin at me.” I shrugged. “It turns out that Marcia took a liking to me. She knows my brother—he’s Jerry’s best friend. So Jerry invited me ... he was in charge of the party. They’re pissed at him too but he’s not going to suffer the consequences. I will.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s an active brother, not to mention that he’s bigger than everybody else. But when I show up at the house next week my life is going to be a bitch.”

“That’s one good reason I’m glad I’m not involved in this fraternity bullshit,” Lenny said.

We had a couple beers, listened to the dueling fraternities trying to out sing each other. And we watched the chugging contests. When Art got back to table he turned to Todd Wheatley and told him what I said. Todd turned to the brother beside him and the story went around the chain. Art did the same thing to the brother on his left. Within eight minutes Marcia became a belly dancer for all the players involved. Before the story had made its rounds the hateful stares stopped as the new chain formed and smirking nods came my way. They all knew I was Chance Wakefield’s brother. But I knew they were still going to beat the shit out of me on Monday. Great rewards never come without great pain.

All week I couldn’t stop the images of Marcia writhing on those beds but they were becoming foggier. I expect that most of the guys couldn’t even conceive of Marcia Zillich as a love interest. We still lived in the day when most men expected to marry a virgin. Any number of guys could participate in group sex with a girl and be considered one of the boys. But one girl fucking a bunch of guys could only be a slut. I never heard anybody talk trash about Marcia—not even when Jerry was absent. But I think everybody but me, at least secretly, didn’t have respect for Jerry for being involved with her. And nobody but me knew she was engaged to him—guys can be clueless that way.

So it was as I expected when I went to the house on Monday. I was given the task of mopping the floor in the “Dorm.” The floor in the middle was a mess. The interesting thing to me was that nobody took it upon themselves to touch anything ... guys can be animals that way. As I was scrubbing the floor it just brought to mind how seedy the place was. I was ashamed that Marcia had to do what she did in this dingy, trashy place. It reminded me of Preservation Hall in New Orleans and smelled just as musty. Throughout my life I would go to a number of bachelor parties where some degree of group sex would take place. In almost all cases it was in the same scruffy kind of kind of environment. Just as I was finishing up, cleaning my mop in the main bathroom, Jerry Willis came in. “Hi Tobe,” he said, “Why don’t you and I go down to the Brady for a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks for askin Jere.” With all that had gone down since Friday night I wondered if there might be some kind of shoe that was going to drop that I wouldn’t like, like maybe the brothers had come to Jerry and told them that they didn’t want to blackball a pledge who was the brother of an active member in good standing ... that he was there to talk me into turning in my pledge pin voluntarily and saving them the trouble. And as we both came down the stairs and walked through the living room I had the feeling that those sitting around were rolling their eyes thinking, ‘good riddance to bad rubbish.’

The Brady: a place where people had breakfast, lunch and coffee, sometimes dinner, was a place that mostly fraternities and sororities went. It’s out of business now. It was on the corner just across from the main gate of the campus. The waitress served our coffees. Jerry hadn’t said much to me on the way down nor before the coffee was served. “I want to thank you Tobe for taking care of Marcia,” he said, “making sure she was alright and taking her to breakfast and home.”

I was waiting for him to talk me out of my pledge pin. He reached out his hand and I shook it as if I was going to be saying goodbye soon. “Marcia raved about you Toby. She couldn’t say enough good things. Her father even wants to meet you.” He smiled like he was expecting me to say something. Giving a little shrug he went on, “You know what good friends Chance and I are. I’ve only seen you around your house at home a couple times, haven’t spent any time talking with you at the house. I always thought you were a shy kind of kid.” I didn’t know how to respond and didn’t. I was still waiting for that shoe to drop.

“I don’t know what it is about you Toby but I have to think that girls really like you ... that you’re a real stud.” He gave me a knowing grin. “But the moment Marcia met you I knew she really felt comfortable with you. When we got to the door at the Corner Bar and started to leave she talked me in to coming back to get you.”

I saw the exchange at the door and it didn’t look like there had been much talking. “What did she say Jerry?” I was very curious.

“She said, ‘I really feel comfortable with that kid Jerry. I don’t feel at all comfortable with these other guys. They feel like they are on a short fuse that could go off and do damage. I want that kid to be there with me.’” I felt badly that she had referred to me as a “kid.”

“When she told me how you made sure she didn’t have to get out of bed and show her dirty, nasty body ... that you covered her with the robe in such a way that it was on her in an instant ... and how your carried her clothes and scrounged towels and soap and even a hair dryer. You were her hero Toby. She told me about breakfast and, though you had a thousand questions you never asked one of them ... that you treated her like a gentleman who was trying to woo her.”

I knew I was a good guy, it was a characteristic of our family but I never felt too comfortable with ‘atta boys’. The way that Jerry was heaping them on had me close to panic. I needed to do something fast so I shot out, “Did she tell you that she asked me for a date?”

He grinned and said, “Jesus Toby you’re so goddamned much like your brother Chance that it’s almost scary.” He was referring to my candor. “She told me exactly what she told you ... that she is going to pick you up at the gas station at six o’clock on Friday.”

“And you don’t have problem with that? She’s your fiancée for Christ’s sake Jerry.”

He smiled, scrunched his shoulders and answered, “I just don’t know how to explain the relationship between Marcia and me Toby.” He thought for a second and asked, “Has Chance ever mentioned that I’m a twin?”

I nodded my head. “He told me that you lost your twin sister. I’m sorry.”

“Right ... If you’re not a twin you can’t understand how losing your twin can affect you. If you’re an identical twin it’s worse. Lareen and I were what is referred to a mirror twins. So it can’t get any closer than that. We literally felt every ache and pain and often many thoughts that our twin experienced. So for me, when Lareen was killed I thought I was going to die too. Then Marcia and her dad moved in next door. It was like the second coming, she was the same size as Lareen, same shape, had the same deep brown eyes, a face that was plain yet incredibly pretty. She became Lareen to me Toby.”

Still feeling in a corner I couldn’t help asking, “Was Marcia a virgin?”

“What difference does that make?”

With an expression of remorse I shrugged my shoulders and replied, “Just curious.”

“I thought she was at the time ... found out later that she wasn’t. But I was still a virgin ... for maybe a month.” He blushed and grinned. Jerry had become more animated talking about Marcia than I expected.

Surprised that I was angry I asked, “So how do you explain pimping Marcia for a gangbang?”

At the moment Jerry either had to be the most caring person, the most clueless guy in the world or the most calculating person in the universe. “Sometimes Toby—his face hardened a bit—people have problems and they need people who care about them to understand. Marcia’s dad knows, and he hasn’t had an easy way of it, the way his wife left him. He understands Marcia’s situation and is doing everything as a loving father to find a way to make it better.” He scrunched his shoulders, held his arms open wide and said, “As for me, I’ve transferred my love for Lareen to Marcia ... she’s not my twin so I can be in love with her. But whatever it takes for me to support her I’m gonna be there for her.”

I felt that I needed to challenge what he was saying. “But... ?”

He cut me off. “Hold on Toby,” His eyes stabbed me like daggers. “I know what you’re going to say. I’m not the only guy who fought in Korea that made my life one hell of a lot more serious for me. I’m not complaining. But like so many of the guys that came back from there and came home from World War II the same way he left. After you see things that you never would have even considered: people blown apart, holding your buddy in your arms as he dies, seeing whole families wiped out by some kind of mistake or unexpected circumstances, paying to fuck girls who are just trying to keep form starving ... you get kind of jaded. When you go away knowing someone as marvelous as Marcia and come back to learn what happened before you left you recognize the, like me and thousands of other guys, that girl became a casualty of war herself. “I keep helping and always hope that there is a way that I can fix her...” He looked out the window but much further away than just across the street.

Sipping his coffee his eyes seemed to be searching for a seam of gold in a played out mine. “All I can say Toby is that, for whatever reason, Marcia has glammed onto you like a hungry clam. You might not go along with it—I hope you do—but she senses that you have an understanding of women that few young men have. She needs the kind of understanding that she thinks she sees in you. She’s going to pick you up at that gas station, tell you her life story and fuck your brains out. And she’s gonna hope that you’ll hang around long enough to help come up with an answer to her dilemma.”

He held out his hands—palms up—like he was trying to hold up something heavy. “If you come in with us Tobe there’ll be good times and times that are so ugly that you might think you’ll go nuts. As good a friend as your brother Chance is I wouldn’t have ever asked him, nor would Marcia. But for whatever reason, she’s asking for you. You’re different from your brother. I’m not saying that in mean way, you just seem to have a gift of understanding that few people have.”

I was no longer concerned about giving up my pledge pin and now could care less as I asked, “So, can you tell me what this is all about?”

He smirked and snorted. “One of the things it’s about is the gangbangs.” He looked at me, scrunched his shoulders, smirked and grimaced. “The other is about such a loving girl that few can imagine. And another is trying to come up with the answer of how to find a way that Marcia can be a loving girl that can be normal as well. But she needs to tell you her story. “ He scootched on the bench all the way to the wall below the window, flopped his right leg on the bench and bent it to relax. “I’m hungry Toby. How about a sandwich? I’m buying...”

All day Saturday I felt like a high school freshman anticipating a date. It was strange though when Marcia pulled up to the main pump in her 1957 Silver Gull Wing Mercedes with black leather interior. This was a big station where three guys including myself worked the pumps. I did lubes and oil changes so I was a bit dirtier than the others. But each guy including me realized that this was a girl who came from money. I gave my hands a cursory going over, I clocked out and came back to Marcia’s car. When I opened the gull wing door on the passenger side and got in Marcia said with a disapproving grimace, “We’re gonna have to give those hands a thorough going over.”

It was an eighteen minute drive to the Hotel Cleveland in the Terminal Tower Building. We pulled into the underground garage. Dressed in my Sohio dark blue pants my grease stained, light blue shirt with my name “Toby” on a white badge with red letters I took my gym bag with my socks, DOP kit, shoes and underwear. My pants and shirt was on a hanger. Marcia with her elegant leather “train case,” laughed and said, “I have to hand it to you Toby you certainly know how to travel.” Dressed the way I was, travelling like a school kid running away from home to my friend’s house, I colored with embarrassment.

We took the elevator and emerged into an elegant lobby. “Stay right here Toby, I’ll check in and get the key.”

Though I had never gone to a hotel to stay with a girl before I didn’t feel out of place, just uncomfortable with the way I was dressed in this elegant spot. I watched as Marcia flowed her three inch heels toward the check-in desk. She was wearing white capris and an elegant tan leather jacket. People got in and out of the elevator looking me probably wondering why I was standing there dressed that way and carrying my change of dress. If it wasn’t for my Sohio badge and holding my hobo’s luggage they might have thought I was an elevator repairman, dirty from working on the greased cables of the elevator.

When we got to the room I emphatically took the key out of Marcia’s hand and opened the door for her. “Now we’ll have to wipe the grease off the key,” she chuckled, “but thanks for being such a gentleman.” The lingering look in her eyes told me how much she appreciated my act of respect.

“Let’s get you into the shower Tobe; we’ve got to get that grease out from under your fingernails.” I didn’t think “we” was the true meaning.

I was naked in the shower under the hot water soaping up when I heard the glass door snap open behind me and felt the cooler air hitting my body. I turned my soaped up eyes up to the water and rinsed them before seeing the nude Marcia standing next to me. Her body was so elegant, familiar to me as I remembered standing right next to her as she got undressed in the attic of the fraternity house last Saturday night. She was holding a bar of soap in one hand and small scrub brush in her other. She got the brush soapy, rubbing the brush on the bar of soap then took my right hand and started brushing across my nails, digging the soapy bristles into the blackness underneath. Feeling a little silly standing there as my cock was extending itself to my nearly eight inches. When she finished with my other hand she pushed on my shoulders to turn my back to her and scrubbed my back with the brush. She then handed me the brush to return the favor on her back. Handing me the soap and washcloth I soaped her back, between the cheeks of her butt then down her legs. She pushed her back against my front, my erect cock sliding just beneath her pussy. I washed her front, between her legs and breasts. The water was too loud so we didn’t talk. As she returned the favor she washed me down, spending time on my anus, my balls and sensuously cleaning my erect cock, stroking me in the soapy wash cloth.

When the soap had been rinsed Marcia took a step forward, bent down and spread her cheeks. She didn’t have to tell me what to do. Grabbing her hips with one hand I held my cock with the other and seated it in her threshold and thrust home. She stood up, put my hands on her breasts and we humped for about five minutes. As it got pretty heated both of us should have been ready to cum. She grasped the middle finger of my right hand and placed the tip on her clitoris and we pimped and rubbed to a very satisfying climax.

I stepped out of the shower first, grabbed two of the fluffy, beach-sized plush towels. As we kissed we dried each other. Both of us were clingy, me because it was innate, Marcia because she needed the confirmation of caring from one she had just fucked. I wasn’t prepared at the moment to term it making love, I needed some kind of indication from here in that regard. But the way she was moaning and sighing at least gave me an indication that she was enjoying it. Helping her on with her plush terry robe with its Hotel Cleveland monogram, I figured that she would want to either sit down in a chair or on the bed. But when I started to move she leaned into me and said, “Just hold me Toby, I need that more than anything at the moment. We must have rocked together for over ten minutes when she said, “My legs are getting tired Hun.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, reached out her arms, grabbed my butt and pulled us tightly together, her head against the region of my stomach and sex,. As I was thinking how she was a totally different girl than the one with whom we were involved last Saturday she asked, “Knowing what you know of Marcia Zillich Toby, what you think of me. Do you think I could ever be lovable?”

I started to answer but she held up her hand. “I don’t want you to answer me right this minute Toby, I don’t want it to be your dick that is talking. I want you to think about it and come up with an answer that will hurt my feelings as little as possible. Just chew on that for a while.” Her eyes drilled mine. “In the meantime I’m starved.” She looked at me out of the corners of her eyes like she was afraid to say what was really on her mind. But I was to start learning that Marcia Zillich rarely held things back. “My guess Tobe is that you have never had room service.”

I shrugged and said, “Your guess is absolutely right. I’ve never stayed in this kind of classy hotel before for cryin out loud.”

“Since the hotel was my suggestion it’s my treat. So room service is my treat too.”

I’ve always been a proud guy who had never done things beyond his means. Because of the car she drove I figured she came from wealthy family. Though I wasn’t comfortable with it I wasn’t happy that we were in this fancy hotel. I figured we would be staying in a motel the way she set up by picking me up from work. But this was way beyond what I could possible afford. I said to her, “This hotel is too much Marcia, but you kind of kidnapped me. But I’m not going to let you buy room service too.” I got a little pissy. “If can’t buy room service, I’m getting dressed and going home.”

By the look on her face I could see that she couldn’t believe I was serious. With a smirk on her face she said, “How will you get home?”

I shot back, “I’ll take the bus. It goes right past the gas station.”

She stared at me with a kind of grimace/smile, snorted air out of her nose and tossed the menu at me. I looked hard at it and realized that the only thing I could afford was hamburgers and fries, soft drinks or tea or coffee. Without missing a beat I said, “I can only afford hamburgers and fries, sodas, coffee or tea.”

She smiled and asked, “All I can say Toby is that it’s a good thing I am a hamburger kind of a girl. Can I have onions on it?”

Since we would be so close I said, “Looks like we’ll both have onions.”

With a broad grin but questions in her eyes she said, “I love you Toby Wakefield.” I knew she didn’t mean it literally but gathered that she respected me. For me that was all I really wanted at this stage in our relationship. I think she knew what a proud guy I was—and think she respected that. She was wiser than me though and wasn’t going to screw up the evening because I was a hardheaded asshole. As I found out later she had undergone so enough crap in her life that she didn’t want to fight battles. S

She maintained a playful attitude while we were eating our hamburgers and fries. But while we were drinking out coffee she gazed at me like she was drilling holes in my eyes and asked, “So what’s the verdict Toby, am I lovable or not?”

It sounded to me like a flip question but I knew it was far from that. From my conversation with Jerry and my limited powers of observation I had come to the conclusion that Marcia Zillich was a powder keg with a burning fuse that was snaking toward it on the floor. In my stint in the army I had learned that demolition could explode outward or inward. Also, having had a rather unusual adolescence I had the opportunity to deal with women who lived by making inhuman sacrifices—the nuns—and was given the luxury of observing a kind of human nature that few men of my age could boast (See Penguin’s Preference). The drawback of such knowledge though was that I couldn’t boast. I would love to have been a typical male who could tell the world. But the stakes were too high. I desperately wanted to give her the answer she would have like to have heard. But above all else I knew that Marcia wanted the truth. I hoped I my answer would not do too much damage.

“If I merely said to you at this point Marcia that you are ‘lovable, ‘ you would know that I was giving you bullshit and you wouldn’t respect me.” Her eyes became gimlets and I could see her Adam’s apple trying to swallow something too big for her throat. “Before last Saturday night Marcia Zillich was a myth in my mind. Then I found out that you were not a myth at all. You are in fact at least as big as life in the minds of seventeen young men ... larger than life in some.” Her eyes opened wide and I saw her lips purse in a kind of tense resolve. “I know that when I first saw you I thought you were both beautiful and mysterious. And when we were introduced it was as if we had some kind of strange connection. The fact that you wanted me included in the um ... proceedings made me feel squirrelly yet special. In the heat of the night I was overwhelmed that you were doing all those guys ... that they were doing you and I was doing it with them. I was titillated by the raw sex. But I resented that I was um ... reveling in sharing you with those other guys. Frankly I was disappointed in myself. In the morning, though I was acting on Jerry’s behalf, I saw you as an incredibly vulnerable human being. I wanted to protect you.”

She was listening in rapt attention. “At breakfast I was honored to be in your presence, honored that you asked for me to do it. At the same time I was disgusted.” She lowered her eyes. “Driving home in silence with you made me feel good. It seemed to tell me that you were comfortable enough travel with me that you didn’t have to talk to fill silence that could have been a danger to you. All week long I have been on tenterhooks in anticipation of being with you, and now... ?”

She raised her eyes at my nebulous question. “You have brought me here and I feel comfortable with you Marcia. In the shower you proved to me that you are caring, exciting and a hot girl to be with. I like you Marcia ... LOVABLE? I can see no reason that you wouldn’t be. But to give you an accurate assessment I need to know you much better. I have to be able to understand how a beautiful girl like you can enjoy or be involved in such a bizarre sexual um ... many would say ‘disgusting’ um ... for lack of a better word... ‘obsession.’”

Her eyes got teary. Lowering her head she reached for my left hand and held it lovingly to her face. She breathed what seemed to be a sigh of relief and said barely above a whisper, “to tell you the truth Toby I was afraid that you would BS me and tell me what I wanted to hear.” She cleared her throat and the words came through a little less ragged. “And I want to hear it so badly.” Then in a lament that made my heart ache she went on, “I need other males besides Daddy and Jerry who can treat me as a legitimate human being. That’s what I hoped for when I asked you to be with me tonight. I get so little support from males who have no idea how lonely I am, who think I just happen to be—and I am using a cleaned up term—a wayward girl. As much as it kills me to say it Toby I’m like a garbage dump covered by swarms of flies. How can a girl who loves sex so much hate it? I need it so badly but I hate it. And then, when it is right it is pure heaven.”

I crawled onto the bed, stretched out on my left side and pulled Marcia down and over to me. Putting my arm between her arm and body I tenderly clutched her left breast, scrunched up against her back and spooned my knees into hers. As I nestled my cheek against her neck it seemed that she released twice as much air as her lungs could hold. Her body felt like it had become totally relaxed. “So,” I murmured in her ear, “why don’t you start telling me where this Marcia Zillich that you talk about has come from?”