Chapter 1: A room of his own

The “furnished apartment” that Andy Trainor rented in Champaign for the ‘76-’77 school year was an apartment only by courtesy. The main room was no larger than the single bedroom he’d had in the dorm. The bathroom was a triangle cut out of what was once a larger bathroom; another apartment had the other half. So small was the kitchen that the refrigerator wouldn’t fit. It was outside in the bedroom. That was all there was.

The furnishings looked as if previous tenants had moved them in and not found them worthwhile to move out: a kitchen table, also in the bedroom, two unmatched chairs for that table, a twin bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and a floor lamp.

With no off-street parking, this was near the bottom of the market for off-campus living at the U of I. That, however, was reflected in the rent. Both the refrigerator and the stove worked, after all, and the kitchen had more cabinets than Andy ever expected to use.

Andy’s eating habits required the refrigerator. He’d have cereal for breakfast with milk and sugar. The milk was refrigerated; the ‘fridge also protected the bag of sugar from ants. For lunch or dinner, Andy opened a can of food, baked beans, beef stew, some pasta variation from Chef Boyardee. He ate only part of the can and put the rest in the ‘fridge until his next meal. For salad, he ate lettuce and ketchup or plain cabbage, and he kept the salad and the ketchup in the refrigerator. He’d been told that veggies were a necessary part of a healthy diet, and he kept bags of peas in the freezer. He’d heat up a good chunk and eat them out of the pan on alternate days from the salad.

The first time Marilyn came to the room, he’d skipped the peas. She probably got enough veggies in her sorority, and he needed the saucepan. He put a little water in and heated it up. He opened the can of spaghetti and placed the can in the boiling water. When he figured it was warm enough to serve, he dished it onto plates for the two of them with slabs of lettuce. He got the salad dressings he’d bought out of the refrigerator. Suspecting that Marilyn wouldn’t think his use of ketchup wasn’t classy enough, he took French dressing for himself. Just as he’d hung up all his clothes and made the bed in honor of her visit, they sat at the table for the meal.

While she didn’t actually say anything, he could tell she didn’t think his dinner was worthy of her. In bed later, although the bed creaked and didn’t feel all that solid, she’d been enthusiastic. So, the dining experience hadn’t put her off.

Still, he didn’t want the bed collapsing under them. He had spent three summers in a hardware store, after all. While he didn’t know what the regular clerks, even the usual customers, did about carpentry, he’d learned some things. He bought a few tools and some corner brackets. He attached the parts of the frame more tightly. The next project was the floor lamp, but that would wait until Marilyn was locked away from him for rush week.

Even with the extra work of a householder -- a quite minor householder, but one whose household was falling apart -- Andy found that the beginning of his junior year had plenty of time to meet demands. He’d gone through the first half of the Partial Differential Equations book over the summer. He still read the chapter before the lecture, but the ideas were old friends, not incomprehensible surprises. He wasn’t taking Phys Ed, which would seem to save only a few hours a week but was one more push removed from his time. He was taking his last distribution course, Anthropology. It took a fair amount of reading, but Andy was quite willing to read.

In the EE courses, he had to work as hard as ever. He’d received A s in the prerequisites, but so had the students with whom he was really competing. By this time, they’d sorted themselves out, and the competition -- while unspoken -- was fierce. The students who were happy with B s, and the others who just wanted to pass, occupied chairs. They didn’t, however, count.

He was a guest at Marilyn’s sorority for Sunday dinner. He’d tutored three of the sisters in College Algebra, and they were happy about the results. The dinner was to thank him. They even applauded when he came into the room with Marilyn and the chapter president. The current academic chair made a speech exaggerating what he had done. He had his own speech prepared, but Barbara, Marilyn’s past roommate and one of the ones he’d tutored, got up to speak first.

“You’ve heard that Nancy went up a grade, and figure that Andy probably helped her. You’ve heard that Hailey went from a D to a B; Andy is certain to have been a big help. I had a C both quarters. You might figure that he wasn’t much help to me. Well, that’s not how it went. I’d taken the course before. The first semester, I got a D. Worse, through that semester, my grades kept falling. My professor warned me to take the course over instead of going on. But I’d been a pledge, and I’d work harder.

“By the time I got to the final the second semester,” she continued, “ I don’t think 100 on the final would have passed me for the course, and I didn’t come anywhere near to finding out. I left a third of the questions blank. Well, when I transferred, the D didn’t. I retook the course, and I did better. I wasn’t pledging, after all. Even so, I was in over my head towards the end of the course. I was totally lost in the second quarter when Andy came along. So, my C is as much to Andy’s credit as the others’ B s.” Luckily, that fit into the opening of his planned response.

“Well, I’m complimented,” he said. “But, really, I didn’t take the tests. These three did. And I didn’t learn the stuff that year. These three did. You’ll hear that you have to work to learn math, and that’s 100% true. On the other hand, when people say to me that they’ll work harder, I ask myself whether they shouldn’t be working smarter, instead. I hope I helped Barbara, Nancy, and Hailey to work smarter. You have to read the book before the lecture; you have to listen to the lecture; you have to read the book after the lecture. If there’s a discussion section, you have to go to that section with concrete questions. You have to solve the homework problems for yourself. That’s the work you have to do to learn any math course.

“And math is a series of stair-steps,” he continued. “If you did really poorly on section 11, it doesn’t do any good to say you’ll study section 12 better, because you usually can’t learn section 12 until you’ve learned section 11. Sometimes, section 12 doesn’t depend on section 11, but section 15 will. Anyway, you’re going to have to learn section 11, or fail the course. It only makes sense to learn it when the professor is teaching it. It is really easier then; you’ll get tested on it then; and the rest of the course will be less confusing if you do.

“Now, I’m really grateful for this good food, great company, and kind words,” and now for the stinger. “But I’ve sent word to Laura, and I’m stating publicly now: if there is a group who want tutoring in College Algebra this quarter, I’ll make some time free. I can’t guarantee being free next quarter. You see, I took my book on partial differential equations home with me over the summer, and I got sort of on top of the first half of the book. I don’t know it well enough, but I have a head start on most of the rest of my class. I’ll have some time to spare.

“On the other hand, I can’t guarantee to have any time free next quarter. And I will guarantee that I won’t be willing to tutor anyone spring quarter that I haven’t tutored fall quarter. Basically, falling behind makes both the student’s job harder and the teacher’s job harder. And I won’t have time to help someone who makes my job harder. Now, Marilyn assures me that you have something more important than studying to do fall quarter, but that’s your choice.”

The president replied to the warning in a quite friendly manner. As he and Marilyn were going out, his three ex-students blocked anyone from following them. They stopped on the porch.

“You have a fan club,” Marilyn said.

“Who expect us to smooch,” he said. “Be a shame to disappoint them.” And, so, they had a great kiss. His hands swept down from her shoulders to her rump. He kneaded that while he pressed her length against him. Then, though, she had to go back inside while he went home.

With Marilyn shut up in the sorority house doing “rush,” he bent his attention to the lamp as well as to homework.

Back in Evanston, Mr. Schmidt, the manager of the hardware store in which he worked summers, had known that he was going into electrical engineering. He had him substitute for Jeff or Will, the electrical guys, when one of them was on vacation. The other one would fill him in on what they knew. There is absolutely no relationship between house wiring and electrical engineering: “Going into ophthalmology? Let me tell you what I know about using mascara on eyelashes. That’s eye care, after all.” On the other hand, Andy associated the resistance to “useless knowledge” with high-school football players, whom he associated with the worst bullying he’d ever received. He wouldn’t resist any knowledge.

And, now, he was using the two lectures he’d received on rewiring a lamp. The plug was on the side of the bed he habitually faced when reading in bed, and the cord was too short to put the lamp on the other side. So, the light tended to shine into his eyes rather than on the page. The light was turned off and on by an old pull chain, which was none too reliable and would tilt the lamp over if pulled too enthusiastically.

He removed the cord and installed a much longer one with a plug he considered more reliable. He taped the cord to the top of the headboard when he put the lamp on the side where he wanted it. Then he installed a small rotary switch in the cord where it was next to the middle of the headboard. Now, the pull chain was always on. Rather than stretch and risk pulling the lamp over on himself when he was done reading in bed, he merely needed to reach up to the headboard and push the rotary switch with his thumb.

He’d never considered himself a craftsman, but, with the changes to the bed and the lamp, his room was much more comfortable.

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Andy had a course in electrical motor design. Friday, right after the discussion, they had lab. Andy’s lab partner was Tom, another guy who wouldn’t be happy with a B in the course. Neither of them was particularly dexterous in wrapping motors, but they persevered.

This Friday, he went immediately from the lab to pick up Marilyn. She was going to cook dinner for him in his room. What else she’d do in the room was nothing they could discuss while she was on the phone where anyone from her sorority could overhear, but he was looking forward to that much more than to the meal.

After they left the sorority house with a shopping bag, they stopped at a grocery store to fill another. She could say what she wanted about the wastefulness of living out of cans, but the bill he paid was much more than the cost of the meal he’d cooked. When he opened the car door for her at the apartment house, he presented her with her own set of keys.

“That one’s to my room. The other is for the front door, but it won’t be locked this time of day.”

“Why thank you, Andy. I don’t expect to be here when you aren’t.” Well, no, but she was welcome at any time, and he wanted her to know that. After a kiss, Marilyn put the food away and then put her things in her space. She wasn’t moving in; she’d made that clear. But, with some of her things moved in, he could look in the closet or towards her dresser drawer when he felt lonely.

When she’d finished, she came to him for a kiss. That continued while he helped her off with her clothes. She pulled back the covers while he stripped and dropped his clothes on the floor. Daylight was fading outside; the room wasn’t the best lit place; the bed was in a corner away from windows. With all those limitations, he could still see her beauty when he lay beside her. She was tan almost everywhere, and the white breasts and white strip around her pubic hair seemed to emphasize those places. He even saw her beauty plainly when she writhed under his mouth.

After she recovered, she demanded him, and he feared he was entering her too soon. He needn’t have worried. Their pleasure was, although brief, intense and mutual. When she recovered this time, he wanted to lie hugging her.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to feed my man.” And she proceeded to cook the spaghetti. He had spent hours, after all, watching Mrs. Bryant cook. But Mrs. Bryant was a professional who needed to justify a salary for 40 hours a week. Marilyn followed many of the same complicated procedures: boiling water and tossing in dry spaghetti, frying hamburger, chopping an onion and a green pepper and adding them, then pouring the jar of sauce into the pan, cooking frozen broccoli for the meal, putting the lettuce -- torn apart rather than a solid chunk -- onto smaller plates.

In shirt -- once his shirt, but Marilyn’s robe for wearing in the apartment -- and apron, she was a luscious sight bustling around the tiny kitchen -- tiny even for her. Still, was all this necessary? They both had fine teeth; they could bite off a mouthful of lettuce. Why tear it up beforehand? Still, it was the way Marilyn wanted to eat, and he had to admit that the result was delicious.

“Leave the dishes,” he said when she started to clear. “I’ve lots of time to wash them.”

“Do you have the dish soap?”

“Sure. I got it after the first time you were here.” She’d eaten in her apron, and that might be why she was in the housework mode instead of the sex mode. He took it from her, and, when she didn’t object to that, took the shirt, too. He picked her up for a quick kiss on her breasts -- however limited in its other dimensions, the apartment had a high ceiling -- before laying her on the bed. They were both in underpants, but taking hers off was worthy of ceremony. He kissed her mound in a pause in lowering her panties. He turned on the lamp and turned off the overhead light before shucking his underpants and lying down beside her.

“Oh, love.” She was a love, and she was his love. Her nipples responded to his lips, and her whole body responded to his finger in her vulva. “Oh, love.” She writhed in his bed and in his sight. She was the sexiest woman on earth. “Sweet, sweet, sweet,” he said as she relaxed sweetly from that climax. After watching that relaxation and her sweet smile of completion, he kissed her lovely form again. She held his head to her breast with one hand. When she reached for his cock with the other, he moved back. He had another plan.

“Want to be on top?” He was lying down with his cock sticking up. She rolled over a bit to look at him while she thought about that. She wasn’t his puppet to do what he suggested without thought. She was a sexy woman, and he could see the sexiness of her thoughts in the changing expression on her face. She finally grinned.

“Yeah.”

“Well, come on, then.” But she was already moving over him. They’d never done this before, and where she should begin so as to end up at just the right point wasn’t obvious. But they figured it all out, and there was a delightful moment when she was tight along his whole length and sitting straight up above him with her beauty glowing in the lamplight.

Then she dropped down and clasped his shoulders. The angle cast all her curves into light and shadow. Maybe half her breasts were in lamplight and especially white leading to red tips. He reached his left hand to a breast and his right to her vulva. As she lifted her hips slowly, dragging herself along his length, he began to stroke her clitoris with one finger.

Her face hardly moved at her arm’s length from his while her hips rose and fell changing the angle of her body. She had a quizzical expression at first, and her strokes were slightly different each time. Then she looked satisfied, and her sweet warmth caressed his whole length each time up and each time down. Soon her look of satisfaction turned to worry, and he felt her gripping him more firmly along the shaft on her upstrokes.

Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp, and her body plunged down around him. Seeing her writhe before his eyes was arousing but not as arousing as to feel her clasp around his cock once and then again.

“Marilyn!” He thrust into that clasping warmth and poured himself into her. She dropped toward him, and he caught her. His cock was pulsing its last into the air. He held her as she shook and then as she quieted. Soon, she made no motion except for the breaths that matched his own.

“Should I move?” she asked. He hugged her tighter.

“Never.” She relaxed for a minute at his reply. Too soon, though, she sat up. “I love you,” he said. He truly loved her, and he truly wished she would stay in his arms.

“Love you, too, but I should get cleaned up.” She got up and headed for the john. When he heard the shower running, he followed her. He was a little messy, and he needed to get dressed to drive her back. He slipped into the tub beside her. She was already too far along in her shower for him to soap her, so he merely rinsed off his sticky middle. He did get to dry her off, though -- patting every inch of her skin.

Then he had to drive her back to the damn sorority. He used to think of individual men as rivals; now all he worried about was a group of fifty women, but those kept winning.

He felt in the next weeks that Marilyn had less time for him than she’d ever had. They had a few dates, and those dates were spent in the apartment. The time, though, seemed so limited that they had full intercourse only once per date, and he had the distinct feeling that he wanted her so much that he was too quick the first time in an evening. He was careful that she always had a climax beforehand, though, and he usually got her far enough along before entering her that she had a second. She never complained, but he didn’t think his performances were his best. If truth were told, he enjoyed the extended periods of approaching climax that second times provided most of all.

Mostly, but not always, Marilyn was available to accompany him to church. Sometimes, he cut services, too; sometimes, he went alone.

When Marilyn wasn’t available in the evening, and she usually wasn’t, he studied. He carefully read what would be covered in the next day’s lecture and what had been covered in that day’s lecture. He did the assigned problems and at least read over any problems not assigned in his engineering books. When he’d got to that point in the dorm, he had been of the habit of joining his roommates if they were watching TV, and they usually had been. He didn’t think of himself as a TV watcher, and he hadn’t bought a set for his room.

He took to lying in bed and reading ahead in his Anthro book. He made no notes and didn’t try to remember anything, but the description of other cultures was as entertaining as some of the SF he’d read -- reminding him of the background before the author got to the action.

He invited Marilyn to the first university dance of the season. She accepted, and a little more discussion extended their plans to the night as well. He really wanted to spend the night with her. It seemed almost a rehearsal of marriage.

He got to her sorority house while the pledges were still being picked up by their dates and the drivers. She seemed to be serving a chaperon, and he stood aside in case she needed a bouncer, but she didn’t. At the dance they mostly kept to themselves. Beverly greeted them and introduced her date, but she looked no more eager to talk than he felt. The dances seemed an extended form of foreplay, and Marilyn acknowledged an occasional erection during the slow dances by pressing her belly against it. They were taking a break when a younger girl came up to Marilyn. He figured her for a pledge; she looked unfamiliar, and he’d at least seen all the sophomores. She obviously wanted to talk with Marilyn alone.

“Three Cokes?” he asked. Marilyn nodded. He got them and waited out of earshot until Marilyn looked like she wanted him there. He walked over and set down the Cokes.

“Judy needs to get back to the house now,” Marilyn said. “Think we could take her?”

“Sure.” He could have been sipping his Coke while he waited if he hadn’t thought that would look selfish. Now, he gulped it. He might hate her sorority, but it was important to Marilyn. That made it important to him.