Chapter 1: Beginnings

Andy Trainor knew that lots of his fellow freshmen at the University of Illinois thought of “The College Experience” as something that happened outside classrooms; he thought that those guys were assholes. Some of the professors in his distribution classes were planning to open out the wide world of learning to him; he considered them pretentious assholes, though he’d never say so to even a fellow student. Those guys, after all, had PhDs; they had concentrated hard on a very narrow sliver of what you could learn; their students were supposed to go wide (and shallow). You could learn things in class, or you could learn things from books. Books were cheaper, and they were usually easier and faster. What you came to class for was certification – certainty that you knew the stuff. Some of what he’d learned from books, not even he was certain he knew. He wanted to be an EE, and that required a knowledge set and a skill set. Before anyone hired him to do that work, they had to believe he had the two sets. Therefore, he had to both learn and pass the tests.

He would pass the tests in the other courses, too; Andy regarded tests as a challenge. He would read what the Lit professors assigned, He didn’t plan to change his opinion that Coleridge wasn’t fit to tie Kipling’s shoes and Dickens wasn’t fit to lick Heinlein’s.

What he really wanted to learn had prerequisites, and he registered to learn the prerequisites. He got the books and read a little while his roommates went out to a party.

In anticipation of college needs, he’d changed his Evanston bank account from savings to checking and withdrawn a couple of hundred. The college bookstore took his personal check. This left him cash heavy. Since he was on a meal plan, he didn’t see where he would spend it.

He sent the bookstore receipt to his father in perfect confidence that he would get a check for that amount in the mail. The old man was fair in his own way. Andy had to earn his own money, but – when he did – it was his own. Dad would explode, though, if he’d known about the sheaf of twenties under the shirts in Andy’s dorm bureau. They were totally accessible to his roommates. But Dad didn’t know about the envelope, and neither did the roommates.

He was prepared for the first days of classes. This was college, and the classes didn’t meet every day. By the end of the week, though, he discovered something shocking. He was having trouble in calculus. Now, Andy seldom had trouble in any class – unless you counted gym, which Andy didn’t. He never had problems in math. But the instructor gave a pop quiz on Friday and handed it back on Monday. Andy’s grade was C, his first C on a math test that he could remember. His memory ran back to grade school arithmetic, but it didn’t include any Cs.

The grader, or “teaching assistant,” said, “If you have any questions about the grading, see me after class.” Andy did.

“This is my first C in math,” he told the grader.

“Let me see the paper.” Andy handed it over. “You earned it. Who did you have last year?”

“Mr. Egan. You wouldn’t know him. Evanston Township High School.”

“AP? And you never got a C?”

“Only one B on a test that year.”

“Oh! Low grade. Look, don’t worry. Well, don’t beat yourself over the head. AP Calc is supposed to be first-year calc. It’s supposed to be first-year U of I calc, first year MIT calc, first year Bumfuck Junior college calc. But those aren’t quite the same. I did my undergraduate work at the U of C. They put all us AP students in the same class of first-year calculus. ‘This is how you really do it.’ What it is, you’re a bit behind. Still, you got a C. Work like hell, but don’t despair. You’ll catch up.”

Andy had last been behind in a math class when he’d been sick in bed for three weeks while the class was introduced to factoring, He’d caught up then, and he both felt stronger now and wasn’t behind in anything else. He’d catch up.

Though Andy hadn’t gone to college for the social life, he wasn’t opposed to having a social life. All through his worrying about calculus, he’d kept remembering that Marilyn Grant, the prettiest girl in Evanston, was now on the same campus. The last time he had asked her for a date, she’d said she was taken. That was hardly, “You? Never!” On the other hand, she was being polite to a member of the MYF group she led. This year, he wasn’t in any of her classes; he had never been in her class.

Well, in the first place, Dad would laugh at him if he answered no for her; “let the other party make their own refusals,” he always said. “Every once in a while, they’ll surprise you.” In the second place, he had gone from being the new kid in the MYF to being –probably – the guy she knew best in Champaign. He was almost certain that the guy she had been dating hadn’t come here. Then, too, Dad had claimed that an academic would have more prestige in college than they did in high school; he hadn’t noticed that, yet, but Marilyn might share the opinion.

While he dithered, his advantages, whether they were enough, were clearly getting smaller. He called the administration to locate Marilyn; after another day and a half of dithering, he called the number they had given him. It rang, was answered; the girl who answered called for Marilyn.

“Marilyn Grant speaking.”

“Marilyn, this is Andy Trainor. I used to be in your MYF in Evanston. Nashville is playing in the Danielson theater this week.” He’d done his homework; Andy always did his homework. “ I wondered if you’d want to go with me?”

“Why, Andy! Of course, I remember you. I’d be pleased.” He found that her Tuesday-Thursday schedule was easier than her MWF schedule and suggested Wednesday night. She agreed, and he arranged to pick her up at her dorm.

Judging by Marilyn’s reaction, it was an enjoyable movie. Andy was too engrossed in his companion to follow it. He was sitting beside a girl in a movie theater; that sort of called for putting his arm around her, but he was fairly certain that this wasn’t proper on a first date. The truth was that he was a fraction more frightened of Marilyn than he was attracted to her. She went with him for a sundae afterward, and that gave him a view of her in the light and the sound of her voice. They talked a little of their shared past and a lot of their new experience on campus. Marilyn was planning on pledging a sorority. He figured that she was certain to get in – not as certain as she would be if the voters were boys, but there wasn’t much doubt.

He walked her back to her dorm. Now, a kiss at the end of a date – even a first date – was absolutely standard. When they got to the door, she looked like she expected one. He bent slowly, and she looked up instead of dodging. Their lips met. An electric shock surged through him. He held her shoulders to keep his hands from straying to sweeter, but forbidden, territory. When she moved back, he let her go and straightened.

“Oh, Marilyn,” he said. He watched her in the door and then walked home reliving the kiss.

The difference between PE and gym was that you got to choose what you learned in PE. Andy was bad at any team sport, so those were out. The school taught weightlifting, and he’d signed up for that. His classmates all looked like they’d been lifting weights for years. Still, he’d been at the bottom of gym classes for years, and this time he wouldn’t be blamed for losing a game because he’d dropped a ball.

He invited Marilyn to another movie for the next Wednesday. The date went like the first one until they were walking to her dorm from the ice-cream shop. She told him that rush week was about to start and that she might not be available then. Short-term, this was bad news. Long-term, her telling him meant that she considered that they were some sort of couple.

When a girl accepted a movie date with you, it meant that you met some minimum standard of acceptability. Maybe she wanted to see the movie, and a goodnight kiss was a cheap price to pay for the ticket. Maybe girls like Marilyn felt slighted if they went to a movie alone. Brittany had been overjoyed to go to a dance with him not because she wanted him, but because she wanted a date. Marilyn could never be that desperate; no guy in his right mind would dump Marilyn. Still, her steady was somewhere else, and Andy was an acquaintance. It could be that simple. Maybe sororities had arrangements with fraternities, and she would accept dates from him until she and the freshmen who would be in that fraternity were sorted out.

Telling him her schedule, however, seemed to signal some assumption that their dates would continue and some desire on her part that they would. At the dorm, he cupped her face while he kissed her. His palms, as well as his lips, felt as if they were burning.

Back in his room, he wrote down “Zeta.” That, she had told him under a vow of strict secrecy, was her preference for sororities. “If I pledge another house, though, I’ll be loyal to it. That will be the best house on campus and the best sorority in the world.” He could believe, if not understand, that. He’d lived his life surrounded by fans of the Chicago Cubs, and they hadn’t chosen their team on the basis of World Series performance. If the student register didn’t keep track of her, he’d call any sorority that could be called ‘zeta.’

The calc professor pulled another surprise quiz on Monday. When he got it back on Wednesday, it was still a C. Physics 101 required concurrent registration in Math 101. Since those guys were just meeting the derivative, the course wasn’t getting much deeper than high-school physics, yet. He took the first test in the course, and none of the questions gave him any problems. The 100 on the sheet he got back wasn’t the good news it would have been later in the year, but it confirmed that his feelings during the test hadn’t been delusions.

Dad sent a check to cover his book bill. The only reasonable thing to do with a check was to deposit in a bank. He had always intended to have an account in Champaign, and he opened a savings account with that check.

One of the guys in calc class sometimes wore what looked like a fraternity jacket to class. Jerry looked like an OK guy, and he had to know more than Andy did.

Andy approached him as class was letting out. He didn’t have a class next hour, and he’d walk wherever Jerry would.

“I’m Andy,” he said. “Jerry, you’re in a fraternity, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” He sounded leery.

“Do Frats and sororities follow the same schedule? I’m dating a girl who’s pledging, and I don’t know when she’ll be reachable on the phone or available for a date.”

“A pledge? Robbing the cradle, a little, aren’t you?”

“I knew her in high school.” Then Andy saw Jerry’s issue. “I’m a freshman myself. Took AP calc.”

Jerry thought a sorority woman would end up dating Frat men. Still, he was willing to answer Andy’s questions. Sororities and fraternities were on the same sort of schedule. “Have to be, sometimes.” He advised when Andy’s phone call would probably go through.

He had to wait, and he spent a little of the waiting time preparing. He got a campus map which showed the sororities and fraternities. They all seemed to be close together. Anyway, there was a theater closer to the sorority. He’d take her there. A coffee shop nearby served pie.

Andy called Sunday night.

“Zeta Gamma Tau.”

“May I speak to Marilyn Grant, please. This is Andy Trainor.”

“Hello.”

“Marilyn? This is Andy.”

“How did you find my new number?”

“I haff my sorrssess. Notably, I have the number of the campus student register. The question is getting repetitive, and I hope I’m not boring you, but would you like to go to a movie Wednesday?”

“I don’t know what pledges are allowed. Let me check.”

“I can date,” Marilyn said when she came back on, “but Wednesday night conflicts with a house activity.”

“Well, how about Tuesday?” Tuesday, would be even better, getting to see her a day earlier. She repeated the question, got approval, and they agreed upon Tuesday. He checked the time, and Marilyn was able to agree without consulting anyone else.

It was a third date, after all. Then, too, the Oak Street theater seemed to keep the air conditioning turned up one notch too high. He could put his arm around her and watch to see if she objected. It turned out that he had his arm on the seat back, and not the girl. Still, he had her warm shoulder in his hand throughout the entire movie.

“There’s a coffee shop around the corner which serves pie,” he said as they walked out.

“Thanks, but they feed us too well in Zeta. I’m afraid that I’ll bloat. Could you please just walk me home?” She didn’t seem to want to walk fast, though, and she allowed him to hold her hand all the way. When they got to her sorority, she walked up the steps to the porch. Suddenly, she was his height. He followed enough behind her that she stayed his height.

“Marilyn,” he said when she was standing on the porch. She turned, and he held her steady for his kiss by her shoulders. He arched his back so that his stiff prick didn’t touch her. When their mouths touched, though, her tits burned into his chest. Somehow, his mouth opened and so did hers. A spark leapt from her tongue to his as they touched. He was lost in paradise until he had to let her go. “Oh, Marilyn,” he said

As soon as she was in the door, he adjusted his pants over his stiff cock. Back at the dorm, he hid in a stall and released the tension that the kiss – the entire date – had brought him to

The next morning, he was in an English discussion section. They were just beginning on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the TA mentioned the mariner’s stopping a man in a hurry to go to a wedding feast to tell his long tale to.

“Yeah,” Andy said, “I call it the ear. Most poetry is sort of addressed, ‘To whom it may concern,’ but some is supposedly to a quite specific audience. ‘You may talk of gin and beer
while you’re quartered safe out here
and sent to penny fights and Aldershot it.’ I’d guess that few of the people who’ve read Gunga Din in the years since were actually British soldiers assigned to Britain.” He pronounced Gunga Din with the vowels sounding like those in ‘foot’ and ‘feet.’

“Well, I’m going to keep us on Coleridge, but you ought to remember that for a paper some time. If not in this course, in a more advanced one.”

Andy wasn’t sure that he’d take a more advanced literature course. He was still only dealing with distribution requirements as they came up.

He had some sort of a steady date – with Marilyn Grant! – for Tuesday nights at the movies. He had to ask her for each one, but that meant that he had a perfect excuse to call her later in the week. Thursday night, he called her, and she agreed. Tuesday night, he called for her, walked to the theater with her hand in his, and sat through the film with his hand on her as though he had every right.

Afterward, he asked, “You still off desserts?”

“Lead me not into temptation.” He took that to mean that she didn’t want him to mention pies again. She took his hand and tugged him towards the route to the sorority. He followed and they walked along holding hands but not talking.

They were nearly to her sorority and he was already anticipating the kiss at the end when she stopped. He stopped, too, and she moved off the sidewalk into a dark patch of trees. He followed her. He would follow her anywhere, but most willingly into darkness and more privacy.

“Oh Marilyn!” he said. He clasped her face in his hands and sank into the kiss. Their mouths opened; their tongues met one another. Even though she had refused dessert, hers tasted almost unbearably sweet. When he finally broke for air, he straightened and stroked down her back. She was so sexy and so small, He got his hands under her sexy rump and lifted her, enjoying the brush of her tits along his torso as he did.

“Oh Andy,” she said. He backed her against a tree and kissed her again. She wrapped herself around him and kissed him back almost frantically. They broke for a moment to breathe, and he could feel her softness move against his chest and her firm butt cheeks flex on his hands. Then, by a mutual motion, their lips locked again. He re-entered paradise.

When they broke from that, she said, “Maybe you better put me down now.” She straightened her legs, and he kissed the top of her head while her body stroked down across his hard cock and her soft tits stroked down his chest.

With all that she permitted, he should obey her call to end it. They walked hand-in-hand to her porch where they kissed gently, and she left him.

Thursday, he called and arranged another date. Marilyn seemed to enjoy the calls as much as he did. Well, if not as much, she didn’t question why he hadn’t asked her at the end of their previous date.

Friday, there was a previously-scheduled test in calc. Unlike the previous pop quizzes, it lasted the entire hour. He left the room feeling fairly gloomy. He hadn’t been certain about all the problems. Monday, the test came back with a B. From the marks on some of the problems, it looked like a low B, and he was quite conscious that the difference between a low B and a high C was the luck of the draw. If the professor had tested them on a different set of problems, he’d have received a lower grade. Still, he was catching up. He’d work to be prepared for the next section.

Tuesday, Marilyn wasn’t waiting when he got to her sorority. “Marilyn Grant, please,” he said to the girl who answered the door.

“The pledges aren’t here. They’re on a scavenger hunt. It was sprung on them.”

“Do you know where she might be?”

“Well, she might be anywhere. That’s what ‘scavenger hunt’ means. I don’t think the pledge committee would appreciate your trying to help, and Marilyn would appreciate their displeasure a lot less. Are you in a frat?”

“No.”

“You’d know those things.”

He already knew about scavenger hunts. “Well, I understand why she couldn’t be here.” Not having anything else to say, he left.

Not knowing when she would finish the task, he waited for the next evening to call. They had to let their pledges go to class, though he’d heard enough to know that pledges didn’t always do required reading and homework. For that matter, some other students didn’t either.

“So,” he asked when she came to the phone, “did you manage to bag a scavenger?”

She chuckled. then she said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t go with you.”

“I’m sorry, too, but I understand. Your sister explained that they sprang the scavenger hunt on you. She said it would be cheating if I helped.”

“Look,” she said, “I wouldn’t have been able to call you yesterday. They hardly gave us time to change our clothes. But, if I want to call you, what’s your number?” He told her. Now, Marilyn might initiate these calls. If she did, it would be bad news, but she would be calling him.

“You didn’t pledge?” was her next question. He wasn’t about to tell her of his opinion of the frat system.

“That’s your thing. You didn’t take Calculus, either. Anyway, subject to some other surprise, could you come to a movie next Tuesday?”

She did. Throughout the show, he cuddled her as much as he could cuddle such a small person sitting in such a large, hard seat. He didn’t mention the pie, and neither did she. They walked towards her sorority hand in hand. When he got to the trees, he didn’t lead her in, but he did stop. He looked her a question. This was her decision to make.

She made it by leading him into the dimness. He lifted her again, glorying in the feel of her softness sliding over his hardness. She wrapped herself around him, and he felt her nearly everywhere. They kissed, and her mouth accepted his tongue. When he withdrew it, she put her tongue into his mouth. When they broke for air, she stared into his eyes for what seemed forever. He clutched her sexy butt and then let her slide down his length.

She turned at the suggestion of his hands. He bent over and kissed the top of her head. He stroked down to her marvelous breasts slowly enough that she could have said no had she wanted. The firm softness of her breasts, which had felt so delightful against his chest, each filled a hand. That feeling was a hundred times as delightful.

“Oh, Marilyn,” he said. It couldn’t express how he felt, but that was all the words he could find. It must have been enough, because she backed slowly into him until his arms were cradling her and her back was pressing his hard cock. When the choice was stroking against her until he came in his pants or abandoning that hug, he left her. He kissed her hair and each ear. then he turned her around again.

He lifted her for a last kiss. Their tongues hugged while he squeezed her butt cheeks. Back at the sorority, though, it turned out that this hadn’t been their last kiss. When she was on the porch and he was below her, their parting kiss turned hot. She opened her mouth, and their tongues met again. He wasn’t aware of anything else until steps scraped on the path behind him. Marilyn must have heard the same sound, because they stepped back simultaneously. Marilyn went in the house, and he turned to try to hide his erection from the oncoming couple. Both of them went into the sorority house. He went back to the dorm.

The last movie had made him break the last twenty in his wallet. He took the last three from his stash and totaled up his withdrawals. They balanced, and none of his roommates had gotten to his stash. From then on, though, he’d have to use his local bank. Dad had warned him about unexpected expenses at college, and he’d prepared for them. He hadn’t anticipated taking Marilyn on dates, let alone making out with her. That was more pleasure than he’d ever got from his money, and he didn’t regret spending a bit of it.

There had been several mixers, though the one his dorm had thrown was when he’d still been too scared to call Marilyn. He’d heard, sometimes from Marilyn, about frats holding dances. When the university finally announced an all-university dance, he called Marilyn that night. She accepted.

The dance was being held a decent distance away, and Andy checked that Marilyn was okay with the walk. She pointed out that she planned to dance most of the night. “The walk will be the least of the exercise,” she pointed out.

From several sources in calc class, Andy learned that most upperclassmen would be wearing suits or, at least, sports coats and ties. That sort of information was one advantage of taking a sophomore course that he hadn’t imagined when he registered. He figured that his church suit would be fine.

Maybe it wasn’t. He got a few funny looks from the older sorority girls when he picked Marilyn up. Marilyn seemed happy, though. The others would be leaving a little later and going by car. The air was brisk, and it would be colder walking back. He must have paused when they passed the trees, because she commented.