Chapter 2: Study Dates

Andy found second quarter registration easy. The courses he had taken were year courses, even if he was taking X102 instead of X101. (Or Calculus 202.) They met at the same time in the same place, and nobody – or, at least few enough people —wanted to insert themselves into those sections that they filled up before he got to register. He even took weight-lifting at the same time.

He called on Thursday to ask Marilyn for another movie date the next Tuesday. She sounded pleased when she accepted. It was quite cold that day, however, and even colder in the evening when he picked her up. Marilyn was bundled into a parka and only opened it when they were sitting in the theater. He took her hand in his, and she only removed it to take off her gloves. When he was walking her home, he nodded at the trees, bare of leaves and looking frozen.

“No?” he said.

“I’m afraid not.”

He couldn’t blame her for not stopping for the last kiss on the porch. Then she said, “Come in,” and his whole perspective on the date changed. She took his coat and hung up her own. She looked awfully pretty in the dress he was seeing for the first time. Instead of heading for the stairway, she led him into the room. Others were there, but they were couples making out. Marilyn sat on a love seat or short couch, and he sat beside her. First, he pulled her into a kiss.

Their mouths opened, and their tongues tangled. She was the sexiest woman! And she was into this as much as he was. When he started to fear that his erection would become visible, he hid it by pulling her into his lap. These kisses were from a new angle, but just as sweet. He lifted Marilyn again while adjusting himself. He lowered her facing away. He had to abandon her mouth like this, but he kissed her sweet ears and neck. He couldn’t cup her breasts with the other eyes in the room, although the other guys felt no such restraint. He held Marilyn, however, so that the top of his left arm was against the softness of her breasts.

If no one could see him hardening, Marilyn moved back in his lap until she must have been able to feel it. He sure as hell felt her butt against his cock. Then, he knew that she had noticed it. She started to rub her butt against him. In another minute, he’d shoot off.

“Please don’t,” he said. She stopped wriggling. Then she moved an inch forward, and they were out of contact. As soon as one of the other girls got up, though, Marilyn got off his lap. She stood so no one saw him adjust himself when he stood up as well. They went to the closet, and she gave him his coat and got her own. The night was cold and dark while he walked back, but his spirit was bright and warm. He figured that Marilyn would dance with anybody; he doubted that she would tease another guy’s cock.

He called her later that week. He was getting into a rut about movies, but until there was an all-university dance, he didn’t see another date possibility. She, it turned out, did.

“I have an alternative,” she said when he had invited her. “We’re having a party-dance Friday night. Instead of your inviting me, why don’t I invite you?”

“Jeans, khakis, or suit?” he asked. “Let me back up. Thank you very much. I accept with gratitude. Should I wear jeans, khakis, or a suit?”

“Definitely a suit event. 7:30.”

The place was a mob scene. Still, he got to dance with Marilyn. And it was dancing with, too. There were two slow dances to every fast one. It was recorded music, which made for shorter breaks between songs.

She introduced him to her roommates. That seemed to be a hint, and he asked each of them for a dance. The punch was strong, and he limited himself to one glass. With Marilyn in his arms, he didn’t need ethanol to intoxicate him. As the evening went on, some of the other guys and one or two girls seemed to be not taking those precautions. He wondered what a girl thought of inviting a guy to a dance only to have him decide that you were more tolerable through a haze.

He and Marilyn were waiting for the music to begin again, when a girl tapped Marilyn’s shoulder. “Can we see the two of you in the kitchen?”

Marilyn followed her, and he followed Marilyn. There were five other girls in the kitchen, and he helped Marilyn into the last chair available.

“So,” the one who had led them there asked, “Marilyn seems to have chosen you. Who are you?

“I’m Andy Trainor. I’m a freshman like Marilyn. I knew her last year in Evanston, and I was impressed then. She, however, was unavailable. I asked this fall, and she agreed to come on a date with me. We’ve been on several dates since.” This didn’t seem to satisfy her.

“Let’s see, I’ll be an electrical-engineering major -- not yet; you know the rules -- but I will be.”

Another of them asked, “How did you do last quarter?”

“Not all that well,” he confessed.

“Andy, be precise.” Marilyn sounded tense, but she’d asked him.

“Well ... I got a C in Phys-Ed, an A in Physics, and Bs in English, American History, and Calculus. Well,” He took a breath. “Well, I took AP Calc in high school. It was enough to get me into second-year Calc, but it wasn’t quite enough to prepare me for that course. I started badly, but I worked hard and got my grades up in the end.”

“How badly?” Marilyn asked. Couldn’t she wait until they were alone to go into his academic problems. He’d had some triumphs, too.

“I got a C on my first test -- a low C.”

“You have to understand,” Marilyn said, “it might have been the first C he’d ever received on a math test.” Now, she sounded as though she were defending him.

“I blew a couple of pop quizzes in high school. But it was damn-well the first B I’d ever gotten as a final grade in math.”

“I remember,” said yet another girl, “the first B I ever got in a math course.”

“You do?” asked the grand inquisitor,

“It was also my last.”

“Well,” he said, “I want to make that my last, too.” This girl ought to at least tell them that you could recover from that sort of lapse.

The honcho took charge again. “Well, you want better grades. Are you on a scholarship?”

“Hah! Not unless you count my dad, like most of us.”

“And is he raising a ruckus? My dad would be thrilled with three B s and an A, but I’ve known parents to go off every deep end there is.”

She didn’t understand Dad. Well, he wasn’t sure that he did, and he had spent years with him. He said, “Nah! He did bribe me, though. If I pass Phys-ed and get more As than Bs for the year in academic subjects, he’ll give me a car. He’ll count by credit hours, and -- since Physics is a lab course -- it has four credit hours. But that means I’ll have to get an A in either English or History.”

“What does your father do, anyway?” asked the math whiz.

“He’s a VP -- one of the vice presidents -- of a small Chicago bank.”

“And what makes a bank small?”

“It’s not a small bank,” Andy said. “It’s a small Chicago bank. Put it down in Champaign, and Albany might be the largest bank in town. It’s just that Chicago has a couple of humongous banks that play on the national level. Albany isn’t one of them. It’s the bank for Albany Park, a Chicago neighborhood, just like any small town has its own bank.” And wouldn’t Dad be surprised that he had listened to some of those meal-time ramblings?

“Did you try to enter the Greek system,” the honcho asked.

“Nope. And, as I’ve said, I had to put some serious time into studying this last quarter. If I had pledged, I wouldn’t have had the time. Marilyn showed me that.”

“But that wasn’t your reason?”

“No” Andy felt like he had to tread on eggshells. “Really, I don’t want to ruffle any feathers, especially Marilyn’s, and I know how important this is to her. Still, I don’t go around asking, ‘what made you decide not to major in electrical engineering?’ From your perspective, sororities are the natural choice -- and, I suppose, fraternities for guys. For loads of us, we didn’t choose not to pledge a fraternity any more than you decided not to major in electrical engineering.

“As I’ve said, I came to school to learn electrical engineering. They say I have to take various distribution courses, too. So be it; I’m not fighting. They don’t say I have to join a fraternity, too. They don’t say I have to join the tiddley-wink team, either. So, I don’t.”

“Well!”

“Look, as I said, I don’t ask why you didn’t major in electrical engineering. People go to school for various purposes. It’s just that I have my purposes, which are different from yours. I’m here to learn something particular. After all, going to college to learn something isn’t an idea that would shock most of the people at this university.

“You seem to want to participate in student life when it comes to dating Marilyn,” another girl said.

“Well, I want to date Marilyn. Sure, I was glad to come to your dance with her, but I was glad to go to the movies with her, too. I don’t claim to be some studying machine. I take part in school life. I took part in high-school life, too. It’s just that I came to the university to learn electrical engineering. I’m here, and I live here, and I enjoy what’s going on. When I was in Evanston, I took part in Evanston life, most -- because I was in high school -- high-school life, but not all. It’s just, if you’ll pardon me, that what attracts me about Greek life is one particular Greek -- one particular Zeta Gamma Tau.”

“That’s nice,” said the honcho. “We’ll send your particular Zate out to you in a minute.” He looked at Marilyn and put his hand on her chair. She didn’t object, though, and he left her in the lion’s den.

His glass of punch had disappeared. He wandered back into the dining room and asked one of the drink dispensers, “You have any straight ginger ale?”

“You an alcoholic?” No, but he didn’t want to become one.

“I’ve just reached my limit.”

She took one of the cups for serving punch, hauled a large bottle of ginger ale out from under the tablecloth beside her, and filled the cup with it.

Marilyn came back before two more dances were done. She didn’t introduce him to anybody else, and they danced most dances. they sat two out two fast dances. For one of them, the stairs were crowded, and she sat one stair lower between his legs. For part of that period, he sort of hugged her with his knees. She relaxed against him when he did that.

“It’s breaking up,” she said when some of the guys had gone out the door. He got his coat, and they had a long goodnight kiss. They weren’t the only ones.

He called her the next night to invite her to a movie again the next Tuesday.

When he picked her up, it was chilly, but the wind wasn’t blowing and the snow which had been threatening all day wasn’t delivering yet.

“Look,” he said, “you know English, but you’re still taking 102, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Phillips.”

“I’ve got Barnstable, but we’ve been going through the text fairly straight.” As far as he could tell, a lit course could be taught odd chapters from high to low followed by even chapters from low to high. He supposed though, that the professors owed it to each other to cover the same content in each quarter.

It turned out that their two instructors had followed basically the text order, and they were in the same place.

“So,” he asked her, what to do. “I’ve talked to my History professor. He suggested that I could have got an A if I’d put more effort into my paper. Maybe so, but that quarter included the part of American history I really know about. I can’t be sure enough about my History grade to omit trying for an A in English, too. You’re the English expert. What should I do?”

“Well, I’m not going to compare our grades, expert or not,” she said, “but what got me through the pledge period with a B was that I’d read the literature stories early on. When I read them for assignments, I was dealing with familiar material.”

“I can do that.”

“Now,” she asked, “what help can you give me on History?”

He should have anticipated that question. The truth was that history wasn’t among his strengths; he was just not so weak as he was in literature – as opposed to fiction.

“Not much. If I’m going to write a better paper, I’m going to concentrate on an early period of what this quarter covers. I’m going to write about the guys who led us into the electrical era -- Edison, Tesla, Steinmetz. Maybe I’ll include Westinghouse, too; I don’t know anything about him. That’s playing off my strength, but it’s not your strength.”

“Well, that’s at least a suggestion,” Marilyn said. “Not the engineers, the strength. I know about writers. Maybe I’ll cover some literary movement.”

“Wasn’t the wild west invented during this period? I know it was after the Civil War.” And that was just what she’d said not to do. Fiction was his strength, not hers.

“Well, I’ll work on some authors who interest me.” Which showed that she was much more sensible than he was.

Now, during the movie, he sat with his arm all around her as an established custom. If he wasn’t groping her, they were out of high school, and she was a lady. Their coats and the weather both precluded any stopping before they got to her sorority, and she ushered him in. There were several other couples in the front room, and he sat on the piano bench with Marilyn in his lap. It wasn’t hell of a lot of privacy, but it was all they were going to get.

For the weather, Marilyn was wearing tights under her skirt. he could cuddle her bra-and-dress covered tit and stroke her tights-and-skirt covered leg. Well, he could kiss her ears and the sides of her neck, as well.

‘ The next night, Marilyn called him!

Her suggestion was even better news: “Look, our talk about the subjects we’re both taking gave me an idea. Why don’t you come over Friday after dinner and bring your History and English books. Maybe we could study together.”

The sorority, which expected you to make out in public, had a private room for studying. He would have to leave, however, if any girl but Marilyn wanted to study on a Friday night. (He got the impression that an asteroid collision with the sorority house was a more likely danger.)

She knew what she was talking about in English, and he had read the book in history. He was just as glad when her sisters started to come home. They were making the noise of people who don’t realize how loud they were, yelling to someone beside them as though they were across the street. They couldn’t study any more, and he – at least – was entirely studied out. On the other hand, nobody seemed likely to need the study room for the next few hours. They came together for a kiss. Then he lifted her to stand on one of the chairs. Like that, her tits were at face level He nuzzled between her breasts and cupped her sexy butt while she kissed the tops of his ears. He’d kissed her ears because they were so delightful; she taught him that ears are erogenous zones. Then they went out, and he got dressed for the weather.

Tuesday began dreary. By late afternoon, it was starting to call for an ark. Just in case, he changed his studying from his Wednesday classes to a week ahead in both English and history. An hour before time for his date with Marilyn, it was still coming down. He called her.

“Have you looked outside?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t want to go out in that, and I don’t want to take you out in that.”

“Well, no.” she said.

“It’s gauche of me to invite myself over, but do you want a study date tonight and a movie some other time?”

“Andy, that would still mean your walking all that way.” Hell, to get two hours with her, even the studying without the after-study goodbye, he’d swim the distance.

“Half as far, really,” he pointed out. “I’d have to walk over and back, anyway. I’d also walk with you. And, honestly, Marilyn, I can move faster than you can.”

“Well, if you’re willing.”

Telling him that the study room was in use, Marilyn led him into what she called the dining room. It looked like one, too, although the last time he’d seen it, it had functioned as a bar. She had a conflict for Friday, which was apparently one reason she had accepted studying together that night.

They were more balanced; she knew more of the history, and the English that they studied was verse. He knew verse, and fairly respectable literary verse. All he’d met before of their reading was The Highwayman, but much of it was a pleasure to read. Marilyn enjoyed hearing him read it aloud.

“I think that’s it.” Marilyn said when the sounds from the entryway announced returning girls.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think we’re done, anyway. I’ll call, and we’ll set up another time depending on your sorority’s schedule and the weather.”

Nobody was coming in, though, and Marilyn didn’t suggest going out. When he lifted her, she put her legs around his waist. They kissed like that with him cuddling her butt.

“Study? My ass!” some girl said.

“Thanks, but I’d rather study hers.”

“Really, Amy,” Marilyn said, “we did get a lot of studying done.”

“Yeah, I could tell. He’ll probably ace Anatomy, but did you study any course you’re taking?” He stood with Marilyn between him and that girl until his erection went down. Once his coat and overshoes were on, his walk home through the cold rain did a better job of reducing it.

The physics and calculus classes were beginning to sort themselves out. There were the students who were content with a B, those who were unhappy with anything less than an A, and the others. Not very many students were in both of these courses. Most of the calculus students were sophomores, and almost all the physics students were freshmen. Then, too, despite what Zeta might think, the U of I produced a huge number of engineers and another large number of science-degree graduates each year. There were many discussion sections and even several lectures in the basic courses.

His studying with Marilyn gave him more time with Marilyn and would ultimately help his grades in the two distribution courses. They, however, added to his reading time. He needed to read ahead in the lit book so the writing was familiar when he got to it, read the part he’d discuss with Marilyn, read the part the next lecture would be on, and read the part the last lecture and discussion had been on. He’d brought a couple of Analogs back with him from home, but he thought he was full up on fiction for a while.

After a bit, though, the current reading came to be stuff he had pre-read. It might not cut out that reading, but it made it much easier. He and Marilyn had a mostly-steady date for Tuesdays. They decided whether to go to the show or study together depending on the weather and – sometimes – on whether they wanted to see the movie. When they didn’t study on Tuesday, they sometimes found another time.

As the weather became warmer and the trees started to bud out, they stopped at their trees when it was dry. Marilyn wore pantyhose rather than tights and thinner dresses. He got much better feel of her butt. He got the feeling, though she never expressed it, that they were being restricted by their lack of privacy.

On the second all-university dance of the quarter, she suggested that he also dance with a few of her classmates from the house. He obliged, and they were nice to him. he and Marilyn were going to sit out a dance when she led him toward a table already occupied.

“Get four Cokes,” Marilyn said, “and join me at that table.” When he did, Marilyn introduced Natalie, her ‘big sister,’ and Caitlin, Natalie’s ‘big sister’ and thus Marilyn’s ‘great big sister.’

“Now, Caitlin,” she asked. “Do you really want to hear Andy’s take on the real history of the Civil War?”

“You can laugh at me,” Caitlin said, “but I’d be interested.”

“Here’s your chance. And, Natalie, let’s move on. Believe me, you don’t want to hear this.” They took their glasses and moved to another table.

He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be Marilyn’s performing bear, and he wasn’t happy about her assurances that Natalie had to be protected from his story. On the other hand, Caitlin had asked, and he had few takers for his interpretation.

“Okay,” he began. “Seven states seceded upon the election of Lincoln, and they formed a Confederacy. After the firing on Sumter, the border states sorted themselves out. It was both political and military sorting, and I’ll admit that there was military intervention in Maryland.”

“Butler,” Caitlin said. “I’m a history major, after all.” The last must have been an answer to his expression.

“Okay, then you know what came next. West Virginia was created by a political charade and enforced by military action. Missouri had governmental effort to secede thwarted by military action – mostly militia. Kentucky tried to stay neutral, which was called a farce even then. The Confederacy invaded, and they went with the Union. Still, the Union had to kick the Confederate troops out.

“When the sorting was over,” he continued, “Five formerly slave states remained in the Union, three of them in the west. The next thing was the capture of the largest city in the Confederacy, New Orleans. After that, there were Union victories in western Tennessee. The Confederacy made a real play for Missouri and ended up losing a swath of Arkansas instead. By early ‘63, Grant was running around Mississippi trying to get at Vicksburg. The Confederacy claimed 13 states, five on the Atlantic, of which it controlled four and had control of major portions of the fifth. They claimed eight states in the west; two of those were more-or-less happily in the Union; four more were contested with major Union forces controlling large chunks of space. Only Alabama and Texas were essentially under Confederate control.”

“After you finish,” Caitlin said, “I want to come back to this.”

“Fair.” He knew he’d been slighting some eastern victories. “Meanwhile, the Union tried to take Richmond, was defeated, retreated and regrouped, came back again. The Confederacy celebrated victories in the first battle of Bull Run and the second battle of Bull Run. They don’t seem to have noticed that they were in the same place, and the same place in Virginia. By the time the Union took Vicksburg, they had cut the Confederacy off from its westernmost section. By the time they finally took Richmond, there wasn’t much Confederacy left for it to be capital of.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said, “but that’s a little exaggerated. A great deal of the combat in the eastern theater centered on the space between Washington and Richmond, and even more of the attention did. But almost all of the Atlantic coast and the gulf coast of Florida was in Union hands before Vicksburg.”

“The Anaconda Plan,” he said.

“Yeah, everybody laughed at it, but the situation ended up mostly bringing it about. The North had tremendous manufacturing advantage, and that counted more at sea than on land. Then, too, and as an engineer you should appreciate this, sea travel was one hell of a lot cheaper than land travel. As long as Union forces were on the coast, they could be easily supplied. Anyway, your idea, if exaggerated, was well worth hearing. Let’s find Marilyn and tell her so.”

“He didn’t quite persuade me,” Caitlin told Marilyn when they had, “but it sounded reasonable. He should put it in a paper.”

“Did,” he explained, “Bombed.”