Chapter 42: The Calculus Of Sex

By the end of our junior year, Karen and I had an interesting competition going on. We hadn’t planned it, and once we understood what was happening, neither of us brought it up because it might have caused some friction in our relationship.

To wit, we found that we were both in the running for the highest grade point average in the junior class. Karen, as I mentioned, was very competitive academically, mentally flogging herself if she missed a question on a test, feeling a constant need to be the best. It was a little compulsive, to be honest. If I didn’t love her, I’d be a little critical of her.

She, at least, came to her success honestly, through hard work and innate intelligence. I just had the intelligence, plus the ability to peek into teachers’ minds which helped me assimilate the information. But she didn’t know that. No one knew that.

And I really didn’t care if I was number one. If I was number two or number three, that was fine with me. Seeing me so close behind her, however, made her work even harder, though she wouldn’t admit it.

In the end, when grades came out, she was number one and I was number two in the class. I thought she needn’t have looked quite so smug about it when I congratulated her.

My parents were again thrilled. Part of it was because they still had a nagging feeling that there would be long-term side effects from the accident and this proved them wrong, spectacularly. They took me out to dinner to celebrate, and even allowed me to invite Karen. I held out for a better restaurant this time.

Karen, as close as we had been, and despite having shared that profound out-of-body experience when we had last made love at my aunt’s place, still insisted on continuing her “going out with others” deal she had agreed to with her parents.

She knew that I loved her, and I had told her and showed her many times, but she would still not say that she loved me. She only said that she cared for me deeply and was trying to understand what was love and what was infatuation.

She wanted me to continue going out with others, as she planned to do. On some level that I couldn’t really confront I was afraid that she was trying to ease me out by having me find another girl that I liked.

I still loved being near her and batting ideas around with her. She still made me smile when she walked into a room. I thought that, sooner or later, she was going to break my heart.

This summer she was again working at her uncle’s bookstore, this time as a cashier, and was also taking a computer class at a small local college. I was still teaching a couple of evenings at Kim’s hapkido school, and I had again been offered a part-time job at Marco’s.

I was going to take it, as I hadn’t been very good about looking for a summer job, but Karen actually provided a solution for me.

When she had been registering for her summer class, she glanced at the bulletin board that listed student employment opportunities. A sociology professor was looking for research and coding clerks who were familiar with one or more of the following languages: German, Spanish, Russian or French. It would involve reading and translating written responses to a detailed questionnaire and coding the responses numerically for later tabulation. Well, I had a couple of those languages. So I inquired and talked briefly with the professor and proved I could speak and read French and Spanish.

The position didn’t pay a lot, as it was part-time, but it paid at least as much as Marco’s, and I could set my own schedule. I would also get a chance to use and solidify my grasp of the languages, plus I’d have access to the college library. And it would look good on my college apps. So I took it.

Jeff and Kate had become an item, and Jeff couldn’t believe his good fortune. She was funny and good looking and sexy, and she had some smarts and a strong sense of self. She liked sex and Jeff was her lucky partner.

She was introducing him to ideas and techniques that I doubt he’d thought of before. He was starting to look a little run down.

I ran into Katy LaMonica once on the street downtown, and we got coffee. She told me about college and she sounded like she had decided she liked it. At least she had done pretty well in her classes. She’d found that she enjoyed creative writing and photography and was thinking about how she might work those into a career, but she was in no rush.

Mindy, my sister, would be a high school freshman in the fall and to her it felt like she had won the lottery. So many boys, so many parties, so much fun. She hadn’t yet wrapped her mind around the classes and studying and tests parts of it.

And now, I learned by overhearing her whisper about it on the phone to every friend she had, she had a boy who was interested in her.

There was a protocol to these things, I was told, and she couldn’t just say to him, “I like you, let’s hang out.” Nor could he say anything directly to her. The etiquette of this apparently was more convoluted than anything practiced by the upper classes in the Victorian era.

He had to mention something to a friend, who would tell his sister who would pass on the message to one of Mindy’s friends who would pass it to her.

She would think about it and respond in the same way. Perhaps sometime by November one of them would deign to say “Hi” to the other, while passing in the hall.

Diplomacy among nations was beginning to look easy by comparison.

So until my project at the college started, I spent my time reading and studying calculus. I had finished multi-variable calculus, differentiation and integration, and now I was working on power series and convergence, and line integrals and surface integrals. I would try to test out of it and get credit for it in the fall, then perhaps I could do a self-study course. Colleges love that stuff.

I was starting to get some questions from my parents about where I might be interested in applying. Part of their interest, I think, was trying to figure out how they were going to pay for it.

If I had my sights set on some expensive place, they might have to get a second mortgage on the house. I said I hadn’t really thought about it, which I hadn’t, but I would need to do so soon. If for no other reason than to figure out which schools merited a visit.

My high school studies advisor, Mr. Fremont, had been pleased, almost gleeful, at my grade record and the improvement in my performance since starting high school.

He said to me just before school ended, “Tom, if you can keep this up, this will look very good at application time. Very good indeed. This is the kind of transcript that schools are looking for, and there could very well be some heavy scholarship action in play.”

Well, that’d be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

The following week on Friday I got the call to come in for orientation to begin the project. I was to meet with the sociology professor, Aldo Grigio, for an overview. He had been educated in Italy before taking a position here, and seemed like an intelligent guy, if perhaps a little intense, in his early forties I’d guess.

On the highest level, his survey examined attitudes on immigration from both sides, those immigrating and those who already were residents of the country in which the immigrants were trying to assimilate.

He asked how I’d learned both languages and was surprised I’d picked up both so quickly. He showed me the survey and talked about how to assign codes to the responses after translating them. He had pre-printed coding forms for this.

There was a work area which he showed me that had been set aside for the translators. I could set my own schedule, he said, but the work had to be completed before the end of the summer so the results could be tabulated and published.

After filling out some forms so I could get paid, he shook hands and said to come to him with any questions. He’d check in with me periodically to see how things were going.

I left feeling pretty good about the work. As long as I was here I thought I’d stop by the student union and get a donut and coffee, just to fortify me for the bike ride home. I’d hate to be caught with low blood sugar.

So I sat at a table in the student union with my coffee and a book, kind of idly thinking about what it would feel like when I headed off to college myself. Summer classes didn’t start here for another few days, so there weren’t a lot of students around. Some cute girls, but not Karen-level cute.

As long as I was here I went to the library on campus and did some reading about human sexuality. Much easier to do here than in the high school library. I could wander the stacks and pick out anything I wanted.

Trouble was, I wasn’t finding much on the aspect I was trying to learn about, namely, what is it that women want to feel when they orgasm. I found lots of stuff about the mechanics and the techniques and the biology, but damned little about the, what? the philosophy? Maybe I need a better library, something like a research library.

Discouraged, I went home and fell asleep on a lawn chair in the back yard. I woke in time for dinner, then went to bed early but lay awake for a long time thinking about Karen and college and psychology.

On Monday I had breakfast and prepared to start work on my translation project. I biked to the campus and locked up my bike, then went inside.

Getting organized, I started in on the first batch of surveys, picking out the ones answered in Spanish or French. The first few were slow going until I got a sense of how to quantify the responses after translation, after which it seemed to go a little faster.

Eventually I sat back and stretched, feeling a little stiff. As I did, I looked at the clock.

No wonder I was stiff! I had been sitting in that one position for almost four hours! It was after one o’clock and as soon as I said it to myself, I realized I was famished.

I finished the current survey, then put things back in order and headed off to get something to eat.

It was a little more crowded in the student union now as students were beginning the summer session. I grabbed a sandwich and a soda and some pie and found a table.

I took out my calculus book to have something to read while I ate. I was still trying to wrap my mind around line integrals.

“Do you have to repeat the class, too?”

I looked up. “Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I see you studying a calculus book. Do you have to repeat the class like me? That’s the only reason I’m here this summer, ‘cause I flunked it last semester and it’s a required course for computer science majors. I don’t know what use calculus is in CS, but it’s certainly required.”

She was carrying several books and a bottle of fruit juice. Blond-ish, with long hair, glasses, quite good looking, nice legs.

“No, I’m not actually taking the class, I’m just trying to learn something new.”

“And you spend your free time with a calculus book? Because you want to? Can I have some of what you’re drinking?”

“You probably don’t want to hear this, but calculus -- at least beginning calculus -- isn’t that hard. You probably just had a bad teacher.”

“I hope the one they assign this summer is better, then, because I didn’t understand hardly anything last semester. I’m Nancy Remsen, by the way.”

“Hi, Nancy. Tom Carter. Listen, I think a lot of people get frightened by the thought of calculus. It has the aura of magic incantations that only brainy scientists in white lab coats carrying slide rules can understand and use.

“And it’s not true. It’s really very logical. Don’t get intimidated by its reputation and say it’s too hard before you even start. Just follow it step by step, like in the book.

“If you run into trouble and you see me around, ask me and maybe I can help.”

“Okay, Tom Carter, perhaps I will. Nice meeting you.” And off she went.

And since I had finished my food, off I went, too. I went back and did another couple of hours of translating and coding, then went home.

There I found a message from Jeff who was asking if I wanted to go to the movies with him and Frankie. I called back and said sure. The movie looked much better in the previews.

The next day I again did a couple of hours of translation, but started later. I took a break around twelve-thirty to get something to eat, and went to the student union for a drink and a sandwich.

As I finished my sandwich, I saw Nancy Remsen and a friend coming in, looking positively miserable. They sat down a little ways off before she noticed me. She held up an imaginary pistol to her head and pulled the trigger.

I dropped my trash in the recycling bin, then walked over. “Nancy, you look like your goldfish died.”

“I could deal with the goldfish. I’m thinking I should drop calculus before I humiliate myself. Again. I understood nothing. Oh, this is my friend Greta, who has no more understanding about it than I do.”

Greta was a little shorter than Nancy, with brunette hair cut fairly short, and bright blue eyes. She was dressed in baggy clothes that looked expensive, so I couldn’t tell much about her body.

“Hi, Greta, I’m Tom. Nancy, it seems you’ve given up before you’ve really begun. Don’t let calc’s rep intimidate you. It’s not that hard, but it requires some logic and some thought.”

Nancy said, “I was ten minutes into the class and realized I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I’m not illogical, I do programming and that demands logic, but it’s like she was using a different language.”

“She probably was. CS has its own shorthand and buzz words, and so does math. I’ll bet I could explain it to you so you can understand it.”

They looked at each other, then she said, “If you can do that, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“I already ate lunch, but I’ll settle for coffee and a donut.”

Nancy ran off to get those for me, while I asked Greta what they had covered in class. She had to look at her notes to remember even the first thing, which showed the impact the lecture had had on them.

It was, as I guessed, a discussion of limits and how to estimate them graphically and analytically.

When Nancy came back I had them each take out some paper and we went through graphing some simple functions.

I found they were able to graph them acceptably, and showed them how to estimate a value as x approached some limit, or determine if it was unbounded.

I made them go through the exercise several times until they gained some confidence.

“So it seems to me that you both do have at least an intuitive understanding of limits. That’s what you showed me. If I can make a recommendation, I think it would be a big help if you formed a study group that meets at a regular time, like right after class. The two of you working together to start, perhaps add some others in your class who are looking a little lost.

“If you get a bunch of minds working on this, someone in the group may have an insight that will help the others get closer to knowing this. Give that a shot. If you run into a wall, see if I’m around.”

They agreed that was a good idea and said they’d try that, and thanked me for the help.

I walked back to the project area thinking about math education. I could sympathize with the girls. I remembered one elementary school teacher who confused me thoroughly with her explanation of fractions, and compounded the issue by criticizing my awkward attempts at finding least common denominators and reprimanding me in front of the class.

My mother was able to help me understand it until I learned it, but if she hadn’t been able to I probably would have wound up fearing and disliking math all through school.

I didn’t come in the following day because I didn’t feel like it and I’d already made a significant dent on the surveys, but the following day I did.

When I went to grab a quick lunch, I saw Nancy and Greta with a couple of others sitting at a table conversing intently. Nancy saw me, and smiled and waved. They seemed to be doing okay by themselves, so I left them to their own devices.

On Friday I went in in the late morning and did a couple of hours on the surveys. At lunchtime I again went to the student union.

Today, in the spirit of diversity, I got two tacos instead of a sandwich. And to be different, cake instead of pie. It’s good to expand our culinary horizons lest we become culturally myopic. Well, that was my excuse du jour anyway. I don’t need much of an excuse to eat cake or tacos.

As I finished, I looked over in the corner and again saw Nancy and Greta and a few others sitting around a table. She spied me and gave me a “come here” hand motion. I dumped my trash and walked over.

“Nancy, Greta, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good. We had our first quiz today and I think we did okay. Thanks for the suggestion about the study group, it really helped.

“But we’ve got a few questions if you have time. We started on limits of trig functions and I’m -- we’re -- starting to get that lost feeling again. Do you have a few minutes to explain this?”

My time was pretty flexible, so I said yes. I spent some time reviewing what the trig functions meant in terms of circles and triangles, then how they were represented graphically, and what happened when their values went to zero or approached infinity.

I drew these on paper and made everyone else do it, too. I started asking simple Socratic questions, very easy, about values at specific points, then where were the functions undefined, until they started to get a handle on them.

We worked through a couple of limits, mostly me letting them argue their way toward a solution with an occasional hint.

When it seemed they had gotten over their confusion I said I thought they had it under control now and could figure out the rest, and told them I had to get back to work.

Nancy jumped up as I picked up my things and said, “Wait up a sec, Tom. Listen, I wanted to thank you for getting me, us, over that speed bump at the beginning.

“If you hadn’t I probably would have dropped the class and that would have screwed up my major. So thanks from me, and from them. You should be teaching that class.”

That made me smile, and I thought that would go over well at the college, having a high school junior teach the college calculus class, but none of these students knew that.

She went on, “We’re going to blow off some steam this weekend. Greta’s having a party at her apartment. We’d love it if you’d come, ‘cause we kinda owe you. Free beer, some laughs and some music. Whaddya say?”

I said maybe. I didn’t yet know what I was going to do this weekend, but I took down Greta’s address and the time it started and said no promises, but I’d try to make it.

“Well, I hope you do,” she said.

I did a little more work on the surveys, then went home. I’d get my first paycheck next week, the first time I’d be in the payment cycle. At home I did some chores, then had dinner with my parents.

My mother asked how the job was going, how was the guy I was working for, what was the college like, did I like being around college students.

I had to smile to myself. She thought she was being so subtle while making her polite inquiries. She was inoculating me to the college experience, trying to get me to take it more seriously so I would think about it and start making decisions about where I wanted to go.

I had been thinking about it and, though I hadn’t told her or anyone else, I had been making a list of possibilities.

I had some “safety” schools, including State, and some “good bets”, and a few “dream” schools, meaning the chances of both getting admitted and paying for it were just a dream.

I made some phone calls after dinner. Mindy was staying over with one of her friends, otherwise the chance of me getting close to the phone would have been nil.

I knew Karen had some family obligation this weekend, and Jeff was going out with Kate, but Frankie said to come over and play video games together, so I did.

Saturday I slept late, then got up and made some breakfast and read the paper. Thus reassured that the same things were going on in the country and the world as the last time I had looked at the news, I read a book instead.

In the afternoon I practiced doing some surface integrals until I felt that I had a reasonable grasp of it.

I still had to do power series and cover the Green, Gauss and Stokes Theorems, but I had the rest of the summer to complete it. I should be in good shape come the start of school.

In the late afternoon I came back downstairs to get a snack and my mother said that she and my dad were going over to the Casey’s for dinner and cards, and would I be okay fending for myself. There were plenty of leftovers, so I was fine and said so.

The Casey’s lived just on the next block, so I asked if they were going to walk or drive, and if they were walking could I borrow the car?

She said it was nice weather, so they’d be fine walking, and gave me the keys. Being able to drive certainly widened your options.

In the end, with the only other options being going to a movie by myself, I decided to drop in on Greta’s party and see what was happening there.

I wasn’t much of a drinker, so the free beer wasn’t a particular draw, but it might be nice to hang out with a slightly older crowd.

Perhaps, unlike most of my high school friends, they had learned how to think and read.

I liked my friends, but the topics of conversation were really limited and it sometimes got frustrating.

I made myself some dinner and around nine drove over to the address Nancy had given me. It was close to the college and surprisingly in a fairly nice neighborhood.

Greta’s place was the second floor of a two-family house, and I could hear the music as I approached the house. There was a handwritten sign near the doorbell: “Don’t bother ringing, it doesn’t work, just come up and knock.”

When I knocked, Greta opened the door and smiled, already a little tipsy.

“Tom, you made it! I’m glad. Hey, everybody, look who’s here!” I only knew a few of them by sight, but they all raised their beers in greeting.

Now that I saw Greta close up, she was much more attractive than my first impression. Her bulky clothes had hidden her figure the first time I’d met her, but now I could see she had a very nice shape, tight jeans showing an excellent ass, and a tee shirt that was covering a shapely, full pair of tits.

And the last time I’d seen her, her face wore the mask of advanced calculus depression. Tonight she had on a very nice smile.

“How about a beer?” she asked. I said I thought I’d start with a soda and maybe a beer later. In a moment I had a cup of Coke in my hand.

Nancy came up behind me and said, “Carter The Calculus God, come to mingle with his grateful disciples. Glad you made it, Carter!”

She had apparently also gotten an early start on the liquid refreshments. She looked happy and loose.

“Come and meet some of the others, Tom.” She took me around and introduced me, and I almost immediately forgot everyone’s name. Gotta work on that. But they seemed pleasant enough, and also seemed to be talking about real things, like books and the world and life and careers. A nice change, that.

And so I spent an agreeable couple of hours. People had opinions and were able to defend them, sometimes even with facts to support them. No one convinced anybody else to switch sides, but we learned something by listening to other people reason.

It was a nice change of pace. And even Nancy and Greta, in spite of the alcohol, were able to contribute.

But before too long the conversation fell prey to jokes and banter. A few people took their leave.

One couple was sucking face in a corner, and Greta, who had somehow wound up sitting next to me on a very tightly packed couch full of people, grabbed my arm and pointed them out to me.

“Maybe we should sell tickets,” she said. “It would help pay for the beer.”

“Nah, people are too jaded these days. You’d need something more edgy to stimulate sales. Have you considered jello wrestling?”

That caught her fancy. “Nancy!” she called across the room. “Tom thinks we should host jello wrestling and sell tickets!”

“A great idea,” she shouted back. “Volunteers for jello wrestling? I’m in. Who wants to go out and buy two hundred boxes of jello?”

Fortunately, that idea fell apart pretty quickly when they thought about the logistics, but everyone agreed that it sounded like fun.

I said to Greta, “I’m really impressed that you’ve got such a nice place. Do you share it?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve got a roommate who happens to be visiting her boyfriend this weekend and missing a great party. But I wouldn’t be able to afford it if my folks hadn’t decided they didn’t want me to live in one of the typical student slums, so they kicked in for this place. It’s supposed to be so I won’t have to travel too far to classes. They’re worriers.”

“I see. Well, it doesn’t look like they have too much to worry about. You seem pretty comfortable here. Plus you throw great parties. But don’t tell them that.”

Nancy called from across the room, “What are you two plotting there?”

And as Greta and Nancy shouted at each other across the room, I realized that Greta had placed her hand firmly on the inside of my thigh. I hadn’t gotten any buzz from her before this, and in fact she had seemed pretty quiet and shy before tonight. Maybe it was the alcohol loosening her up.

I glanced into her epicenter, which I was able to do since at least some part of her was focused on me. It was a little foggy and indistinct there, as I had found to be the case when people drank. But there was definitely some arousal there. She was horny, no doubt.

There was something else, too, that I couldn’t quite place, like a voice saying, “No, you shouldn’t do this, what will people think?” Ah, she was embarrassed. Some part of her was telling her this behavior was improper, and the alcohol had masked that.

And now I was having an ethical debate with myself. I was in love with Karen and wanted to be with her and make love to her, but she wasn’t always available and I was still horny. Should I just go home and take a cold shower? I felt both guilty and horny at the same time.

In the end, horny won out. I channeled a feather brushing Greta’s clit.

I excused myself, saying I had to hit the head. It was down the hall, past a couple of bedrooms. I peed and washed my hands, then stepped out into the hall, running straight into Greta.

I said, “Sorry, I didn’t know you were waiting. I would have hurried up.”

“I wasn’t,” she replied. “I just wanted to ask you something. It looks like the party’s winding down. Do you mind hanging around a while afterwards, so we can talk?”

I peeked again into her epicenter and none of the things I saw there involved talking, but I answered, “Sure, I can stay awhile.”

I went back to the front of the house, where I saw that several people had already left, including the face-sucking couple. I reclaimed my place on the couch, and Greta wiggled in next to me.

We all talked, current events, movies. With many of the people gone, the noise level had dropped, making it easier.

I was out of soda and was hoping that there were some chips left. I said to Greta that I was going to get a refill and asked if she wanted anything, but she shook her head. In the kitchen I poured some more Coke, and found a few chips left in the bottom of the bowl.

I got ready to go back out into the front room, but just then Greta came into the kitchen.

“Find what you wanted?” she asked. I nodded.

She came up to me and put one arm around me. “Listen, Tom, this is a little embarrassing, and if I hadn’t had a couple of drinks I probably wouldn’t be able to do this. I’ve been a little horny the past few days and I’m kinda attracted to you.”

Her other hand started brushing my leg, very gently, and up into my crotch. “I’d like to fool around some after everyone leaves? Would that be okay?”

“Greta, I think that would be better than okay, but I have to ask you, are you sure this is you and not the alcohol talking? I have this rule about not being with somebody who’s not fully aware of what they’re doing. I don’t want you to regret anything tomorrow that you might do tonight.”

“I’ve been toying with this idea for a couple of days, since we were in the student union. You’re nice, and you’re smart and good looking, and I was fantasizing about being alone with you. It’s the alcohol that allows me to act on it, but it’s a decision I already made.”

“Then count me in. Now, how do we get these other stiffs out of your apartment?”

She laughed. “They’ll probably all be gone in ten minutes. Oh, one other thing, I told Nancy she could stay over in my roommate’s bed. She didn’t want to drive after all that beer. Would that bother you if she’s in the next room?”