I washed around in a pool of snotty nosed brats when I was a kid. It was fun. You always had someone to dig a hole with, or throw rocks, ride bikes, or play catch. We hung out because we lived on the same block. There was never any “reaching out.” All of us were just “there.”

That comfortable reality ended sometime in my thirteenth year. It was called adolescence. Suddenly I was on one side of the room and the objects of my desire were on the other. There was nothing but games and one-upmanship in between.

My target would be in a herd of giggling girls and I would have to go over and lay it on the line. I wasn’t bad looking. I normally got what I wanted. But once-in-a-while a little bitch would decide to score points with her gaggle. The walk back to the dugout after THAT strike-out was excruciating, especially if I heard tittering behind me.

Some of my pals would step right back up to the plate. But most of us weren’t that secure. Rejection wounded our manly pride. So, we’d sit in a pack and sulk. If it was a tradeoff between feeling shitty because we might get shot down, versus feeling shitty because the only sex you got was from your hand; the hand always won.

A guy’s ego is fragile at that age. School is full of apex predators. You know the type, big, rich macho men, whose worldview is confined to building up their alpha male cred. Average guys couldn’t compete and we all knew it.

Women have status issues too. But no female above-the-age-of-consent has to worry about getting dick. It’s basic biology. All they have to do is say, “yes.” The bubbling hormones take over from there.

In general, I was a together guy. I did well in college, and I was a scholarship lacrosse athlete. But I never pushed things past the point where the girl said “no.”

I’ll admit that was an anomaly in guy-land. Since, most of my friends thought that “no” wasn’t a declarative statement. The rest thought that “no,” actually meant “yes.”

Regrettably, at least for my horniness problem, my parents insisted that I respect women. So, I took “no” at face value.

Of course, all my friends called me a wimp and not surprisingly my over-civilized approach to sex limited my carnal romps to a few frantic fumbles with low hanging fruit. Even those didn’t happen very often; since that type of girl had her OWN fan-club.

I eventually accepted the fact that none of the women my age would recognize my true awesomeness. So, I did what any sensible fellow would do. I went fishing in younger waters. That’s where I found Karen. Or more accurately, that was where she found me.

I was walking between buildings when a sweet voice said, “Do you know where Reno Hall is?” I looked at the source. She was “girl-next-door” cute, long blond hair, beautiful round face, five-two and a hundred and ten pounds of tight little body; hugging a book to her succulent round tits.

It happened so fast that, I didn’t have time to hesitate, or say something stupid. Instead I smiled and said, “I’m headed that way. I’ll show you.”

That simple decision changed my life. I’d made the commitment to walk with The girl. Hence, it was natural to converse. In fact, it would have been a little creepy to shuffle along in silence. So, I asked my new companion the obvious question, “What’s your name?”

I discovered that her name was Karen and she was a freshman. She was nineteen years old and she’d come to the Big U to get a law degree. Karen’s parents were lawyers. Thus, she had a lot of interest in the “big-picture.” I’m a nerd. We’re interested in Dungeons and Dragons, not humanity in general.

Still, Karen was serious about her schooling. I was too. We had the same values and we cared about the same things. So, we were just naturally sympatico.

I turned to face her when we got to our destination. She was looking at me longingly. I had to take the next step, no matter how much it threatened my delicate macho. I said, with a casualness that I didn’t feel, “This has been interesting. Would you like to study together some day?”

Her face lit up like she had FINALLY gotten definitive proof that there WAS a God. She said, “I was hoping you’d ask me. I spend the night at the same table in the library. I’m there, any time you want to see me.”

I was there that night and every other night. It was my first experience with grown-up love. We just bonded. I finally mustered the courage to ask my little pal out on a real date. She gave me a secret smile and said, “Pick me up at seven.”

It was like she was five jumps ahead, which was a little disquieting. Up to that point I had viewed Karen as being even less experienced than I was. Perhaps she was more mature than I thought. Or maybe girls are just a little smarter.

I picked her up at her dorm. She was wearing an adorable short linen dress with a spaghetti strap top. Her round little mounds peeked out of the top and a superb pair of legs stuck out the bottom. They were attached to a cute bubble butt. Her blond hair was worn long and shiny and she was so happy to see me that she was almost prancing with eagerness.

I planned a classic college date, meaning I took her to a frat party. I was never into fraternities, chiefly because fraternities were never into me. But I DID have friends who were frat-rats. So, I cashed in my chips to try to impress Karen.

I ended up impressing my friends. None of whom ever imagined I could find a babe like her.

As you might expect, bringing a girl with Karen’s looks to a frat party was like dropping a beautiful little wooly lamb into a wolf pack. As soon as I went off to get us a beer, the brothers descended on her in droves. I had to fight my way through five guys when I got back.

I was holding two Solo cups full of the good stuff and it kept sloshing on the floor. Karen looked a bit overwhelmed as she took her beer. We talked to her admirers for a while. Actually, they were only talking to Karen. She, in turn, kept cutting me pleading looks.

Of course, I missed the significance of the look. But I missed a lot back then. I just thought she was shy. So, instead of snatching her away from her slavering mob of admirers, I stood there like a geek, watching the sweltering mob dance.

That was when Montana Brooks strolled in. He played quarterback and everybody on campus knew who he was. A guy like Montana thought that frat parties were the candy store, and he was the kid.

They were most certainly the happy-hunting-ground for a stud like him; six-two, two-fifteen of speed and elusiveness with a cannon for an arm. That isn’t to mention the shock of blond hair, the arrogant WASP face and the brash attitude.

Montana was my worst nightmare, a narcissistic bully, with an over-inflated sense-of-self, unequivocally convinced that he was god’s gift to women. He did a gander around the room, spotted Karen, and his eyes locked in on her like an air-to-air missile. She really was the hottest girl at the party.

He sauntered over to my date, radiating cool, and said, “Let’s dance babe.”

Karen looked at him with undisguised interest. He really was a hunka-hunka-burnin’ love. The rest of her admirers just melted away. I would have joined them, but I was rooted to the spot.

It was a matter of pride. I knew that I was going to look like a cuck if she disappeared upstairs to fuck him. But I also knew that I wasn’t going to win a pissing contest if I made a federal case out of him asking her to dance. So, I was trapped. My only hope was that Karen would make the right decision.

Brooks was one of those apex predators and I still had a lot to learn. That night I learned about the role that choice plays in sexual politics. It was also my first real insight into the labyrinth that is the female mind. Strong women like to be pursued. But they don’t like to be seen as prey.

Men traditionally have the advantage because we are the aggressor. Our role lets us choose the female we want to cut out of the herd. All the woman has to do is let herself be culled. And therein lies the real power, the ability to make that choice.

Karen took an appraising look at the arrogant son-of-a-bitch and said in her most gracious voice, “I’m sorry but I’m with Christian.”

Brooks reacted like she’d just told him that the earth was flat. Then it dawned on him that she had actually shot him down!! He looked at Karen, radiating contempt and said, “You’re with him NOW, but you COULD be with me, what do you say?”

That visibly pissed Karen off. She said with steam coming out of her ears, “I’d prefer to be with somebody who saw me as a person, not a conquest.”

Then she grabbed my arm and said emphatically, “Please take me someplace else!”

We went to the local campus restaurant. At least I could buy her a burger, if not provide her with the status that Brooks could’ve. I said curiously, “I thought I’d lost you. Montana always gets what he wants.”

She looked like she’d bitten into something sour. She said, “I was tonight’s sacrifice on the altar of his ego. He didn’t care about me. All he wanted to do was fuck me.”

She added, eyes glistening, “We have a genuine respectful relationship, you and me, and I don’t want to lose that. So, I made my choice and it’s you.”

That was another thing I learned that night. Unlike me, this nineteen-year-old girl already had a well-developed sense of values and a lot of wisdom packed into her delectable little body. I wondered how she got so insightful.

The ensuing night was an eye opener. I prefer distance and objectivity. I guess you might call me “intellectual.” But intellectual is not the same word as “smart.”

My standoffish personality was a lot of my problem with women. In fact, it was a lot of my problem with people in general.

Cool-headed, big-picture analysis is a real advantage if you are coordinating defensive swaps in lacrosse. But I think you can see how intellectual detachment becomes a roadblock if you are trying to get laid. I could never just lose myself in the experience; let it all hang out so-to-speak.

That’s a nerd thing. All of us “intellectuals” are uncomfortable with loss of control. We feel off-balance if we react to things with unbridled passion rather than logic, almost guilty.

I had a few partners prior to Karen’s time. I mean, I was a senior and a varsity athlete for Christ’s sake. Lacrosse is a minor sport. But it’s gear has the macho helmets and padding of hockey and unlike hockey you get to showcase your legs. Plus, there is no cooler weapon than a six-foot-long defenseman’s stick.

The problem was that it’s hard to fuck somebody senseless if your mind’s still engaged. So, I just didn’t “do it” for my partners. Karen turned that situation around and in doing so turned around my life.

I had my own apartment. I was the worldly Senior, remember? I’d planned to take Karen back there, if she was willing. I looked at her gorgeous face and said tentatively, “Should we go back to my place?”

She said excitedly, “I thought you’d never ask.”

As usual, I’d underestimated her. It was understandable. I was naïve back then which, I guess, is another word for “dense.”

Karen was from a small town in northern California and she was four months removed from her high-school graduation. So, I just assumed that she was a poor little lost sheep alone on a big university campus; and I was the big bad worldly senior. At least that’s what I’d supposed.

You can blunder into things in the dark and I was consistently in the dark when it came to my little friend. She proved it by dropping to her knees as soon as she got in the door. I was just processing that fact, when she unzipped me and proceeded to rummage around in my boxers until she found what she was looking for.

She pulled it out, eyed it critically, got a look of approval on her beautiful face and proceeded to swallow it whole. Like I said, I’m self-conscious. I’d never been blown in my life. And here it was happening three feet inside my apartment door.

The sensation of Karen’s hot wet mouth knocked me off balance. I stumbled backward a few steps, waving my arms like one of the Stooges and plopped onto the couch. I had a tiny living room.

Meantime, Karen never lost touch with the item that she was eagerly fellating. I felt like I was going to erupt like Old Faithful.

Just as things were reaching their thrilling climax - so to speak – Karen grabbed my throbbing member and squeezed. She held it in a death-grip gazing hungrily into my eyes. She said, “Can’t have it going off too soon. It still has work to do.”

I was looking at the thing like it was something brand new, which indeed it was. I had never seen it that big and hard. Meanwhile, Karen stood, slid down her panties, threw one of her beautiful, shining legs over me and proceeded to fish around between us.

I felt her dainty hand seize my unit and then it was engulfed in a silky furnace of carnal pleasure. She let out a groan that might have been heard all over campus. Then she said informatively, like I’d even thought about it, “Don’t worry. I’m on the pill.”

I might have over-analyzed the situation. That is, if I’d been in my right mind. But fortunately, my entire blood supply was concentrated in a place other than my brain. Karen started to circle and grind my pole while making loud ugh-ugh-ugh effort noises. It was like she was on a mission. Thirty seconds later it was “mission accomplished”.

I normally don’t last long. So, I was certain I would be a huge disappointment; especially after what she’d just done to me. But before that thought even crossed my mind, Karen’s mouth dropped open, her eyes rolled into her head, and she produced a monstrous gasp. She hyper-ventilated and went completely rigid, every muscle straining. It was literally like the calm before the storm.

Then she started yelling, “YESSSSSSS!!!” There was intense frantic quivering and a lot of moaning. Her passage felt like I was being licked by a thousand eager puppy dogs. Then she hit me with a snapping turtle. Something down there clutched me with the grip of a gorilla, and I came so hard that I probably changed the atmospheric pressure in her womb.

I grabbed her and plastered her hard, little body against mine. That was mainly to keep her from falling off my lap. Her orgasmic gyrations were getting out of control. We shook and groaned together. Finally, she collapsed bonelessly against me and I fell back on the couch totally drained.

We both slowly came back to some semblance of sanity. I opened my eyes to see her staring solemnly at me. I said, “I have no words,” and I didn’t. I had just been destroyed by a nineteen-year-old girl who clearly knew a lot more about sex than I did.

I wasn’t a total idiot. At least I had enough sense to NOT ask her how she learned to fuck like that. I knew that would imply things that would put me on very thin ice. So instead I said, “You’re amazing.”

Still, there were disturbing nooks-and-crannies in Karen’s personal history that I needed to explore. That is, if our relationship was going any further.

The one thing that we DID accomplish, was to change our status from study-buddies to friends-with-benefits. I didn’t miss the irony that we’d just turned around our relationship to worldly freshman and innocent senior.

I would have thought about making us exclusive. But there was this remarkable new disparity between the two of us. At least when it came to sex.

I know that girls get sexual experience earlier than boys; even the younger ones. That’s because there’s always a well-practiced fellow out there waiting to school them. On the other hand, back when I was sixteen I had very few twenty-one-year-old hotties offering to advance my education.

And let’s face it. Girls in their teens are a lot more mature than guys anyhow. Karen had obviously had a cutting-edge course in sex from a knowledgeable teacher and our relationship wasn’t going to go any farther until I knew the whole story.

That story turned out to be even more disturbing and involved than I’d thought. But at least it answered all of my questions.

We had been fucking on a daily basis; just to relax and clear our minds before an honest-to-god study session. But the time was never right to ask. That opportunity finally presented itself on our next formal date night.

I’d taken Karen to a party at the same fraternity and gotten the same reaction from the brothers. They descended on her in droves. But this time was different. Karen made it clear that she was only there to be with me.

We were in one of those embraces that pass for dancing among the kids, her arms around my neck, my hands on her narrow waist. Her perfume was driving me into a rutting frenzy. So, I ran my hand up her flat stomach to fondle her full round left tit. It is always important to pay proper respect to magnificent things like that.

Karen responded with a slight moan and firm pressure of her pussy against my now bulging crotch. We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. I ran a finger of my other hand down her back. She shivered and moaned a lot louder. There was heat emanating from the place where we were pressed closely together.

I looked into her big, fathomless blue eyes and I could see hunger there. I began to lower my face to her lips, and she opened her mouth to receive me. Our tongues slid back and forth for a few seconds and she groaned loudly. This was getting very hot indeed!

The little devil that sits on my left shoulder was muttering, “Fuck-her, fuck-her, fuck-her!”, while the angel on my right shoulder reminded me that we were standing in the middle of a bunch of sweating frat-rats and that fucking her in a coat closet simply lacked class. So, I said with lust dripping off every syllable, “Let’s go.”

Karen knew what that meant, and she was pumped. She looked me meaningfully in the eye, grabbed the front of my shirt, wordlessly yanked me off the dance floor and marched me out the door of the fraternity house. I wasn’t protesting.

As soon as we got to my little bedroom, Karen pushed me backward onto the bed. I was fully dressed as was she. But she was in no mood to wait. She jumped up on the bed straddling me, pushed her thong aside, rummaged a bit, and sank down. Suddenly I felt the familiar heat and silkiness.

She groaned loudly. Normally she sheds all of her upper clothing, so we can feel her beautiful boobs smashed in between us. But in this case, her big round tits were still fully hoisted in her bra and they literally hung over me like a mountain ledge.

I reached up and massaged one of them. She let out a sharp cry. She was panting loudly and moaning in a constant rhythm. Then she began to growl, deep in her chest. What was that?

She moaned and growled and wildly gyrated for several minutes working herself up to some kind of earth-shaking orgasm. In the meantime, I was trying to lift her off the bed with each thrust of my hips. I couldn’t take it any longer and I came first pumping into her in torrents.

That set HER off. She shrieked and bucked wildly several times. Her hands, which at that point were spread out above me on the bed, turned to claws as she grabbed the covers and pulled them up to get more leverage. She began to yell, “OHHHH MYYYYY GOOODDDD”. She plastered herself on me and started full body shaking yelling, “Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Then she went limp on my chest with her insides still churning like the ocean in a force five hurricane. My own consciousness was lying in about a thousand pieces on the bed. I started the task of picking it up and putting it back together.

The time was right. I thought, “It’s now or never.”

Karen came back to me almost immediately. She sighed deeply and rolled off onto the bed, making a sucking sound as she did. She lay next to me panting, one arm over her eyes.

I thought I’d wrap my curiosity in flattery. So, I said idly, “How did you get to be such a fabulous lover? I’ve never met a woman so totally satisfying.” Of course, that was a lie. My only sex up to that point had been short drunken gropes.

I was hoping that Karen’s outstanding skillset didn’t involve the crew of an aircraft carrier. But I was willing to live with whatever she told me. I was that smitten.

That’s when I heard about Jacques.

I already knew that Karen was from California and I knew that she was one year older than your average freshman. What I DIDN’T know, was that she had spent a year abroad.

It seems that her parents, had grown concerned that their precocious little eighteen-year-old darling was a bit over-interested in the wrong kind of guy. They also wanted to teach her how a rich young lady ought to behave. They were THAT upper crust.

So, they took the steps to get Karen as far away from her unsavory “friend” as possible. Specifically, they packed her off to Villars-sur-Ollon for a little bit of “finishing.” Villars has very expensive boarding schools and it’s situated on top of a Swiss alp. What could possibly go wrong in THAT scenario?

Well, there might not be boys within miles, either vertically, or horizontally. But there WERE male teachers and Karen was a rare prize.

Karen’s tutor was named Jacques. He was forty-five years old and French. I think you can see where this is heading. Jacques took one look at Karen and seduced her.

It was the hoary old “come over to my place for some tutoring” gambit. They split a bottle of red and one thing led to a carefully choreographed other.

The two of them spent every night for the rest of the school year fucking. Jacques’s culture and sophistication made Karen starry eyed. He, in turn, taught her about sensual pleasure.

All in all, Karen’s trip to that Swiss prep school was an extremely educational experience. In that, a forty-five-year-old French master of the art gave her an intensive one-year lesson in everything that she would EVER need to know about sex.

Karen slowly turned her head to study my face. She needed to see my reactions. She knew that telling me her story would blow my mind. So, she wanted to be as careful as possible, hoping that I would understand the stakes for us.

She added simply, “Jacques didn’t love me. There was far too much difference in age for that. But he DID teach me HOW to love.”

She continued, looking me directly in the eye, “Like anybody else I had to learn how to be a lover. The act itself can involve many different, sometimes conflicting things for a woman; from self-loathing, to ignorance, lust, dominance, and manipulation.”

She said brightly, “It can also be a true act of giving. That depends on your attitudes and how you channel them. But it mainly depends on the man you are with. Jacques knew how to make love to me not just fuck me.”

That explained why she saw through Montana so fast.

Karen added frankly, “We would meet in his chalet, and he would gently and knowledgably lead me to feelings that I had never had before. I have to admit that I couldn’t get enough of it. As a result, I was totally devoted to him.”

Her voice turned nostalgic as she said, “It was almost like coming off a narcotic drug when I returned home. He had a wife of course. So, my departure was a given. But it was Jacques who gave me the ability to understand and accept my sexuality.”

Seriously??!! The little voice in my head thought that maybe I should send the guy a card, perhaps candy, or flowers.

My sweet little girlfriend ended with, “For a woman; closeness, the ability to feel a connection with the other person is the essential part of making love. It is one of the reasons why I am devoted to you now.”

Devoted??!! You know how you can sometimes intuit that something is true. Well - I was utterly certain that Karen believed what she had just said. Whether that feeling was reciprocated remained to be seen.

My dilemma was that the woman I had fallen in love with was a full-fledged Jedi Master of sex, honed to absolute perfection by a cheese eating version of Yoda - “Come, or come not, there is no TRY.”

In my mind, Karen’s enhanced capabilities weren’t a sign of a moral defect. In fact, it reinforced the belief that she was trustworthy. She had conducted a committed adult relationship, as doomed as that connection was from the start. She was with just one man and she gave her heart to him.

In fact, there had only been three men in Karen’s life TOTAL, the aforementioned “wrong sort” of guy, the inimitable Jacques, and me. Whereas, I had been with more than twice that number of no doubt unsatisfied females. Of course, the quality of the sex with Karen was light years apart and there was no comparing the degree of connection during the actual act itself.

More importantly, the U might be a big campus. But the grapevine is decidedly small-town. So, we residents of the treehouse always hear about any exceptional performances.

What?!! Do you really think that horney twenty-something guys attend college because of their devotion to the liberal arts??! But I digress...

Anyhow – an exhibition of my sweet girlfriend’s particular-set-of-skills would have generated more headlines than the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And I hadn’t heard a peep.

Still, I think you can see my problem. Chronologically, I was two years older than Karen. But on the sexual maturity scale I was at least a couple of decades less experienced. Even worse, short of hiring myself out as a boy-toy for Madonna I was never going to close that gap.

The obvious question was, “Why would it matter?” I was the lucky beneficiary of Karen’s year of intensive training.

Well ... The obvious first concern was that I wasn’t Jacques. I was just me and the girl I loved was light-years out of my league in one critical part of our relationship.

I propped myself up on an elbow and looked down at her naked little body. It was the striking contradiction, that is the female form, hard and soft, wide and narrow, flat and round, solid and flexible.

I said cautiously, “If you had such an intense physical relationship with your tutor, wouldn’t you be constantly comparing me to him? I love you. But I’m never going to be able to give you the sexual experiences you had in Switzerland. How can we build a life together if you are always comparing us?”

Karen laughed out loud. That hurt.

She said still laughing, “Jacques was a man of great wisdom. He knew exactly what a woman wanted and how to give it to her. But he was no more-or-less well-endowed than you. He had a giant French honker and male pattern baldness. He was forty-five years old, five foot seven and perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet.”

She rolled over, hoisted herself up, threw a leg over me and straddled my hips. Then, she placed her still hot mound against my totally drained unit and braced her hands above my shoulders. She tented her hair around both of us and positioned her face six inches from mine.

My girlfriend was going to make a robust point.

She said, “You are six-one, and two-hundred pounds of rock-hard muscle. You have a noble Anglo-Saxon beak and no hair. But that’s because it’s a buzz cut. So yes, I compare you two all the time and you always win.”

Then she added, fiercely, “The difference between Jacques and you is that you and I have a future. We are similar people with the same values. You can learn the things that he taught me. All you have to do is give us time.”

Okay!! That made a whole lot of sense. Still, there was one part of me that wanted to congratulate myself on my maturity and there was another that wanted to slap myself silly. Only time would tell. But at that point in our relationship, I was not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I said, “I have felt a close connection to you from the moment we met. We think alike we enjoy each other’s company and we both have the same tastes and interests.” Then I hesitated. This was the point where I was going to go all-in.

I said, “I could spend the rest of my life looking for somebody as well-matched as you, and I’d never find her. We just ‘get’ each other. I understand that. So, we belong with each other.”

Karen nodded her head eagerly. I could tell that was what she was alluding to when she used the terms “similar” and “future” to describe the conditions for us being together.

Trust requires faith and there was something in our subliminal connection that gave me a nascent belief in our long-term prospects. Karen was right of course. Sex is part of it. But relationships that are built strictly on sex don’t last. Ours was one of mutual respect and shared interest.

Hence, as they say in golf and other sports, “Never up – never in.” And so, the lessons began.

We were married the month after I graduated. Karen still had six years to get her law degree. I was stuck on campus anyhow. So, I decided to go all the way for a doctorate. In a lot of respects, those were the best years of our lives.

We had the normal existence in a married housing ghetto. Everybody in that over-educated assemblage of tiny apartments subsisted on Ramen noodles and cheap red wine. It was a point of pride. We worked hard and made love every night. Karen was a demanding teacher.