Chapter 3: Progress

By Monday morning Marilyn’s itchiness had almost disappeared, and by Tuesday night she felt fine for her date with Andy. Afterwards, he scratched quite a different itch.

“I love you,” he said as they got into the front seat again.

“Yeah, but only on Saturdays,” She was in a silly mood.

“I love you all the time. I want you all the time. I get you on Saturdays.” Clearly, Andy wasn’t feeling silly.

“Do you really want me all the time?” Now, she sounded like she was fishing for compliments.

“Every waking moment. You really interfere with my concentration in class. I dream of you, for that matter. Still, since I get enough sleep, those dreams can’t take up all my sleeping time.” Andy was sometimes painfully honest. It was being intellectually honest, not saying something which didn’t make sense to him. Still, he might be wrong about dreams. She remembered something about REM sleep being the deepest sleep and when dreams came.

The next afternoon, she had a Developmental Psych class. Well, the question might be off topic, but the prof must know more than she did about it. At worst, he could tell her the department’s expert. After class she went up to him.

“Professor Bernstein, I have a question. It isn’t really developmental Psych, but...”

“Sure. I’m going up to my office, why don’t you ask me up there?” So, she trailed along. When they got to the stairs, he gestured her ahead.

“It’s like this,” she said when she started climbing. “I remember that REM sleep is the deepest sleep, and it’s also when you dream. Anyway, my boyfriend said he dreamed about me. Then he said he couldn’t be dreaming about me all night because he got enough sleep.

“This must sound silly to you, Professor.”

“Not at all. He does sound a little unromantic. In that situation, I would tell my girl that I dreamed of her night and day.”

“Yeah, he’s sort of honest. He likes me, but I think he likes ideas more.

“Anyway,” she continued, “doesn’t getting enough sleep mean lots of dreaming? REM sleep and all that?”

“You’re both right, and you’ve both missed out on some later research. Apparently, REM sleep is all we need, or -- at least -- all the sleep that our minds need. Our peasant and hunter-gatherer ancestors needed rest to keep their bodies from wearing out. Today, we keep reminding ourselves to get more exercise. Okay...” They’d reached his office, and he opened the door and ushered her inside. He neither shut the door nor sat down at his desk.

“Dreams start in REM sleep,” he continued, “but they are not really constructed there. What I learned, and I haven’t been following more recent research, is that REM only produces a pile of unconnected sensations -- images, scents, colors, sounds. When you remember this after you wake, your memory organizes them into something consistent. And that consistency is the dream. Your boyfriend isn’t haunted by you in his REM sleep, but in his memory.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I couldn’t think of anyone else.”

“Thank you. I’d much rather hear a question about psychology which isn’t in the course material than hear: ‘Professor Bernstein, is this going to be on the exam?’ Talk about developmental, all babies are curious -- it’s a standard trait of humanity. When you see a roomful of 20 year olds who feel imposed upon because they have to learn something, you start to wonder whether they are truly human.”

“Well, really, I’ll admit that learning your course is often work. It’s more fun when the idea comes out of left field.”

“There is that. If we took kids starting at age six and made them eat ice cream every night for dessert, I wonder how many would like ice cream at age twenty.”

“Yeah, I had an English professor who said that about poetry. Before it was taught in the schools, everybody loved poetry ... Well, thanks and goodbye.”

So, Saturday driving to their picnic, she told Andy that he didn’t really dream of her at all. Then she laid out what the professor had said.

“That’s not fair. I do dream of you, same as anyone else dreams. It’s just that it happens at a different time.” He was laughing, though. He could tell she was teasing, something she had to be careful about with Andy. “So, dreams are much more complicated than I’d thought.” The professor would have loved Andy. Raise an idea, and he ran with it.

“Professor Bernstein would love you.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t swing that way.”

“Silly!” She laughed. He chuckled with her. They got to the field and lay out the stuff. Andy was carrying a pop bottle, but it seemed to hold only water. Food eaten, garbage packed away, they lay down facing each other. This time, Andy took out the strip of condoms right at the beginning. Still, there was no hurry. They were going to make love, but they were going to enjoy the whole journey.

Naked except for their watches, they had one more long, lovely kiss. She could feel his bare cock against her thigh just an inch below where it would enter her. Then he kissed down her throat, over her tits, still lower. When he got to her right thigh, he raised that knee. Having kissed down to that knee, he raised her left knee, and started kissing up its inside. He didn’t stop.

“Andy?” That was too intimate.

“Let me!” He hadn’t said that about anything else, even sex. As she dropped her knees to the sides, his mouth covered her center. She felt him suck on her outer lips, then lick them. Her shock turned to arousal. He spread the lips.

“Oh, Marilyn!” Then he was licking her inner lips. Warmth spread from there to her tits, to her whole body. When his tongue touched her clit, sparks shot through her. Her every muscle was tight and drawing tighter. Lightning struck, and she arched upwards in a spasm. When she began to relax, there was a sensation almost like pain in her clit. She arched again. Her hands and legs were drumming against the ground, but her hips were anchored to the blanket by his hands and head.

When she finally relaxed, it was a complete collapse. She could feel his breath on her most sensitive flesh. His first renewal of the licking was annoying. She couldn’t respond, there wasn’t any Marilyn left to respond. Before she could summon the energy to stop him, though, her arousal began to return. Warmth spread through her body from his lips. Sparks began to arc from his tongue on her clit. Aching muscles tensed again. She was close. Then, suddenly, she was alone. He rose above her and moved towards her head. Then, he was at her entrance again. His hand spread her, and his cock entered her.

“Ohhhh, Marilyn!” While his voice sounded, his cock spread her lips, stroked down her tunnel, filled her completely. He paused to say her name and then kissed her hairline. He lifted himself above her on his arms and stroked out and then in. The motion within her was arousing, and she felt herself respond to him, pushing upward to get more of him on his return.

He was stroking more rapidly and more firmly, and she was meeting his every stroke. They crashed together before his weight pressed her back to the blanket. Then he withdrew almost out of her, and they crashed together again. Even when she was lying quietly, she could feel every muscle tighten.

“Oh,” she said as he drove into her once more. Lightning flashed though her again. She convulsed under him, but he drove her down relentlessly. She thrashed under him and throbbed around him.

“Gah!” he said as he throbbed within her throbbing. He held himself above her for one more second. When he fell to his side, she was clinging to him so hard that he turned her, too. They lay gasping for a moment or an hour. Then she felt him reach around her hip to feel himself. He came out, and the last little bit that slipped out was too thin to be Andy.

“You get it?” she asked.

“Yeah! Really the open end is pointed the right direction; so, it’s safe even if I don’t. Safe, but maybe messier.”

“Well, I’m glad. I didn’t really check before ... I mean, I trust you and all, but I still should check.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Andy said. “I just thought it was my responsibility.”

“And, if anyone in the whole damn world is responsible, it’s Andy.” She appreciated that. He could take her ‘round the moon, but when she was riding there with Andy, her seatbelt was fastened.

“But I’m not being responsible if you’re worried, even if you don’t have reason to be. I don’t want to make you pregnant, but I don’t want to make you worried, either.”

“You’re a great guy.” And he was. She thought of Andrea’s Carl, who figured Andrea should get lower grades so he could think himself smarter than she was. When his dad told Andy that she was too smart for him, ridiculous as that was, he told her -- told her proudly. Okay, girls, I don’t want to compare boyfriends, but that’s just because it’s not polite to gloat.

“Well, a guy who loves you greatly.”

“I thought we were going to learn things together.” She’d had a new thought.

“We couldn’t have been much more together than that.”

“But where did you learn that kiss?”

“Cunnilingus?” He had the formal word for everything, but yes. “Darling, I’m your Andy, remember? And where does your Andy learn things?” Well, in class. But she didn’t think that he was taking -- hell! that the U of I was teaching -- a class about that. Well, there was another possibility.

“You read a book?” she asked.

“I got out a couple of books. Actually, I’d read some books like that before. I’ve been interested in sex for a long time.” Yeah, boys were. Really, though, it wasn’t as if girls weren’t.

“So, you’re going to take me through a library of marriage manuals?” It sounded both exciting and repulsive. She wasn’t a lab experiment. On the other hand, that last experiment had been extremely arousing.

“Maybe sometime. It’s more that I’m using my strength to make up for another of my weaknesses. I’m a lot less experienced than you deserve.”

“You’re my Andy,” she said. “I’m your Marilyn. You are exactly as experienced as I want.” Okay, reading marriage manuals wasn’t the most romantic-sounding thing. On the other hand, she was his first -- his one and only. They were a couple. And, as he’d said, reading to find out things like that was so Andy.

He extricated himself from the tangle of their legs. She watched as he removed the condom, tied the end, and put it in the garbage bag. Then he got up and grabbed the bottle he’d brought. He walked off the blanket with his back to her and poured some water in front of him. He must be washing his cock.

He came back to her for a kiss. For a second, she thought that she could taste herself, but then it was only Andy slightly flavored with strawberry. When they’d had a long kiss, he kissed a trail over her face -- her cheeks, her forehead, her temple. He sucked the lobe of her ear, licked along the rim in back, blew gently across it, thrust his tongue into the hole. Then he went to her left temple and left ear. He kissed her neck from just below the ear to the place it met her shoulder. She was naked, but he was kissing only what clothes never covered.

He went on, though. He kissed her arms and hands, her tits and belly. When he asked her to turn over, she did. As he kissed up her spine, he stroked down to her butt, then between her legs. She spread her legs. He was tickling her outer lips and then parting them. He stroked down her inner lips to her clit. His finger took long, slow strokes, passing over her clit only briefly at the very end of the stroke. Despite that -- because of that? -- her arousal spiraled upwards. When his mouth reached her neck, it opened wide around her neck. It barely fit, but he had her neck in his mouth. He licked the skin at the back, and she felt like the victim of a lion’s attack -- maybe like a lioness being taken by a lion.

He started scratching her right shoulder blade somehow. It felt good. He was stroking her clit almost continually now. She could feel that she was close. She tried to turn over, but even her newly tense muscles couldn’t lift him. Then she lost all consciousness of being held down. There was only the stroking finger and the fire it lit. Lightning struck within her. She lifted up, but his weight bore her down. Her legs lifted as her loins drove forward, but her mound met only the unyielding earth. Lightning struck again, and she couldn’t breathe.

Then his finger left her, his arm relaxed, and he even let go of her neck.

“I love you,” he said. She loved him, too, but she didn’t have breath to express it. Slowly, he began to scratch lightly over her back. She felt so contented, that she almost purred. She may have slept for a minute, because his voice seemed to wake her.

“You are so beautiful. Do you think they designed violins to look like a woman?” She wouldn’t be surprised. Why should violin makers be different from other males? Guys were all sex crazy, although she was in no condition to make judgments right then. She marshaled the energy to turn over.

“Although, I will admit that I like these even more.” He kissed each of her tits lightly, and then settled on one nipple to lick. She rolled to give him easier access, but still had to comment.

“A-cup.”

“Well, not just now. I prefer them out.”

“Pfft. You know what I mean.”

“Y’know, our first conversation ... well, not the first but back when the MYF set up tables for the rummage sale, way back then, you made some negative comment about your shape. Well, even back then, when I had only a suspicion, I liked your shape.”

“Yeah.” And he’d said so. She’d been embarrassed, but also pleased.

“Well, now that we’re a couple, don’t you think you should give some value to my opinion?”

“Andy, you’re wonderful.” When he demanded something from her, something on the basis of their relationship, it was that she think well of herself. She turned over on her side and kissed him. The kiss began as simple gratitude, but soon his tongue was in her mouth and his hand was stroking over her body.

Well, two could play that game. At first, she just cupped the side of his face. When he broke the kiss, she let her hand wander. His arm, stroking her, was always moving. His chest was smooth on the side and hairy towards the middle. There was a hairless portion around the nipple, and that nipple responded to her touch. Okay, hers responded to his touch, too, which he immediately proved by moving his hand there when she first touched his nipple. But she didn’t have a mat of hair in the center of her chest like he did, and she didn’t think any of her hair was as bristly and stiff as his chest hair was.

Lower down, the mat narrowed into a thin trail, and these hairs weren’t as stiff. And, for some reason, Andy seemed to have stopped breathing. His stomach muscles felt as hard under her fingers as his ribs had. His hand moved from her tit to her pussy without pause. Well he’d already explored her. She lifted her leg to give him access. He began stroking her immediately. Was he trying to distract her? This was Andy -- didn’t he want her to know?

The thin trail of hair disappeared at his belly button but widened out below into a triangle that was as bristly as the chest hairs, even when damp. His cock was warmer than the hairs around it, and smooth. Yeah, it had felt smooth when she’d touched it before -- to every part of her which had touched it. It wasn’t sticky at all, if rather wet. And it was soft but becoming less soft. This was fascinating, but she’d felt it before. She stroked further down, only to find his legs locked together. When she scratched the backs of her fingernails along the tops of his thighs, he trembled but didn’t open his legs.

“C’mon,” she said, “I let you.” At this, he opened his legs. The bottom of the sack was as hairy as his delta had been, but the hair felt less wiry. It felt as if he had two eggs in there, small eggs, but definitely egg shaped. When he lowered his leg on her hand, she could do nothing but cup them in her palm. Only the ends of her fingers were free to stroke the eggs and the back of the sack.

By this time, his efforts to distract her were beginning to work. Despite the cool breeze, she was growing warm. Most of the warmth was flowing from her center, although some seemed to be coming from her left hand. Every stroke of his finger on her clit thrilled her, and she felt her muscles tightening.

“Wanna put it on?” he asked. Well, one of them should, really. She was getting to the point she would stop caring. He took his hand away to get her the packet, and this time he hadn’t opened it. That job took both hands and her full attention. She rolled on her back and he got between her legs, kneeling straight up again. He began to stroke her again, slowly this time, dotted half notes to his earlier eighth notes. She finally got the packet open and the messy side turned towards her, she took him in the fingers of her left hand. It jumped at her touch but settled down so she could put the condom on the end. After that, she rolled it down slowly. When she dropped her hands, Andy fell on his hands over her. It felt like an attack, though he didn’t actually touch her above the waist. He wasn’t all that close when he stopped, but he’d moved awfully fast.