Chapter 4

Oscar had settled into the routine of the school before the end of the first week. His roommates had come to a very strange settlement concerning sexual relief. He couldn’t complain since his need for release was satisfied as frequently as he wanted. The problem was that he missed Georgia and could hardly wait for the weekend to arrive.

Looking down at her sleeping form, Oscar considered Sharon’s sexuality. She enjoyed exchanging oral pleasures with Mark in the morning and enjoyed having intercourse with Oscar immediately afterwards. During the day, she made sure to experience a different man with each tryst. In the evening, she was usually too tired for sex. She was searching for something, but Oscar didn’t know what it was she wanted.

Across the room, Lisa was sleeping without her covers. She was basically exclusive with Mark. It seemed to Oscar that she lived to suck Mark’s cock and to have him eat her out. She claimed to enjoy oral sex the most, but she came the loudest when Mark and her had intercourse. The most puzzling thing about Lisa was that she had a tremendous voyeuristic streak in her. If anyone was doing anything in public, Lisa was sure to be watching.

Despite his small cock, the happiest of the four roommates was Mark. The word quickly spread among the female students that he had a very talented tongue. He was very popular among the ladies and was having a more active sex life than he could have ever imagined. Any woman that asked him was immediately serviced. It was getting to the point where his studies were suffering.

Oscar slipped out of the room and wandered down the hall to the bathroom. He stopped in front of the mirror and examined his reflection. His skin was already losing the ruddy color that months in the desert have given it. He needed a haircut and realized that he hadn’t asked about that aspect of life on campus. Looking at the reflection, he decided that it might be time to grow his hair out a little to look more like a scholar than a soldier might. He laughed and said, “Private Foo, time for you to disappear.”

He turned to find that Gabby was watching him. She asked, “Private Foo?”

“That was my nickname in the army. I’m afraid that it was well deserved at the time,” answered Oscar.

“You make it seem so easy fitting in here. I’m not doing that well,” said Gabby with a frown. She turned so that he couldn’t see her face.

That the woman was in pain was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was the reason for her pain. Oscar felt the tug of the medallion even though it wasn’t around his neck. Taking his time, he washed his face trying to figure out what to say. He dried his face before he asked, “Would you mind taking a little walk with me?”

“Where to?”

“How about the library? We can sit and talk there for a bit,” answered Oscar.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“About fitting in,” answered Oscar.

He walked over to her and took her by the arm. With slow steps, he led her away towards the library. As they walked, Oscar talked. “I was a soldier stationed in Afghanistan back when the fighting was really heavy there. My unit was chasing the bad guys around in the mountain areas. At the time, I wasn’t the best of soldiers. Most of the fellows in my unit didn’t really want to be around me.”

Gabby said, “I find that hard to believe. You’re so confident.”

“Believe it. Anyway, one day I found myself alone and facing a bunch of terrorists in the middle of nowhere. Bullets were flying everywhere and I was convinced that I was going to die. I have to admit that I was pretty scared. So scared that I ran away. It was the smartest thing I could have done. I got away.”

Oscar walked along continuing to guide her towards the library. She was listening to him and thinking about what he said. She couldn’t imagine being in his place. After surviving that, life here must be pretty easy. She asked, “How did you get away?”

“I ran as fast as I could,” replied Oscar.

He wasn’t going to tell her that the God intervened on his behalf. Oliver had told him not to reveal that to the students and he wanted to honor that request. His days avoiding capture and then spent hunting down terrorists weren’t important elements of the story. The key point that he wanted to make was about the loneliness.

“Must have run pretty fast.”

“Yes,” he said, “I did run pretty fast. The point is that during that time I came to know who and what I was. A few days alone and on your own in a hostile environment requires that you come to admit your limitations.”

Gabby walked beside Oscar and at a gesture from him, sat in a chair. She looked around and only then realized that they were in the library. She said, “I’m going to quit.”

“Quit? Why would you quit?” asked Oscar surprised at the news. With only a few exceptions, most of the students had gotten used to their nudity.

She sniffed and rubbed her eyes as emotions started to take control. She said, “I want to be a good girl and I think this is a very tough place to be good.”

“Ah, you want to be a good girl,” echoed Oscar.

He sat back in his chair and contemplated what that might mean. For the first time, he actually thought about what people meant by good and bad when it came to judging a person’s character. He had fought terrorists and clearly they were bad people. Most people that he encountered were good. There weren’t many saints or demons among the general population.

“Yes, I want to be a good girl,” stated Gabby as if it was obvious what that meant.

It was easy to see that she was upset and that being a good girl meant something specific to her. The problem was that Oscar had no clue what she meant by it. He asked, “What does it mean to be a good girl?”

“A good girl does not walk around naked all day long. She does not think about sex all day long. She does not...”

Oscar held up a hand interrupting her and said, “You are defining a good girl in terms of what she doesn’t do. I see what you are getting at and I agree that according to such a view it is impossible to be a good girl here.”

“So you think I’m doing the right thing by leaving?”

Oscar emitted a bark of laughter at the question. He shook his head in dismay at her need to get permission to do what she wanted. He wondered if somewhere in her set of rules there was one that said, ‘Good girls don’t make decisions for themselves.’

He answered, “I don’t know. I will tell you a few things that I do know.”

“What?”

“There are two ways to live your life. One is to accept a lot of ‘thou shalt nots’ and live life trying to figure out if what you want to do violates one of them. The alternative is to accept a couple of ‘thou shalts’ and live your life trying to figure out if what you want to do is one of them. Even though the basic results are the same, I prefer the latter approach to life. That is probably why I find it so easy to get along here.”

His comment was met with silence while Gabby tried to understand the distinctions. She had wanted him to say go ahead and leave or stay. She asked, “Everyone does that to me. I ask a question and then nobody gives me an answer. Why don’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to do?”

Holding his hands, palm side up, Oscar stared at them as though in wonder. In a voice of awe, he said, “What power she gives me over her life. On one hand, I can intentionally give her bad advice and ruin her life forever. I can crush her future so that she ends up a hooker standing under a street lamp flagging down cars to earn a living by giving fifty-dollar blowjobs.”

Gabby stared open mouthed at Oscar as he continued, “On the other hand, I can give her what I think is good advice. Will that assure that she will end up being happy? No, it does not. She could end up deliriously happy with her life and that would be the best that could happen. She could end up dying in some gutter from a drug overdose.”

He paused to give his next statements a dramatic quality. “The responsibility that comes with that power is frightening, but the question is, ‘Am I up to it?’ I fear the answer is no, I am not.”

To hear him describe what she had requested in that fashion was shocking. She asserted, “I didn’t give you that kind of power over me.”

“Alas, you did. You wanted me to tell you what to do. If that isn’t giving me power over your life, I don’t know what it is,” countered Oscar.

“So how am I to decide?”

“May I ask you a few questions first?”

Biting her lip, Gabby nodded. She feared what he would ask, believing that he would want to know too much about her. She just wished he would tell her to quit so that she could withdraw from the school with a clear conscience.

“You said that a good girl does not walk around naked all day. Are there any exceptions to that rule?”

Frowning at the idea that a good girl would ever walk around in public naked, she answered, “No. Of course not.”

“So if you have a horrible full body rash and the doctor requires that you allow it to breath, you would be a bad girl if you followed the doctors instructions?” Even as he asked, he knew it was a weak situation. It was the best that he could come up with at the moment.

Snorting, Gabby replied, “Like that is ever going to happen.”

“How about in the girls changing room in the gym?” asked Oscar.

“Well, that’s okay. You just can’t act too proud of your body or look at the others too intensely.”

“Why is that okay?”

“Because there are no men there.”

Oscar nodded at the logic. Then he asked, “What about on your honeymoon? Can you walk around naked in front of your husband?”

“Sure, I guess.”

Oscar said, “I think that we can come up with example after example where nudity to some degree is okay. My point is that the simple prohibitive rule has lots of exceptions.”

She nodded her agreement and said, “Sure, I’ll buy that.”

“Are you sure that you know all of the exceptions?” asked Oscar holding a single finger in the air to let her know that he was making a serious point.

The question came out of the blue. If there were exceptions to the rules, then what were they? She knew a few of them, but did she know all of them? To claim that she did would be a lie. After struggling for a minute, she finally said, “No, I’m not sure. There may be exceptions that I don’t know about.”

“You mean, it might be an exception that if everyone else is naked then a good girl could be naked as well.”

“I guess.”

“See, there you go. You can walk around naked and still be a good girl,” declared Oscar. After a moment, he said, “Of course, it is a lot easier to ask if anyone is actually harmed by it. Since no one is harmed by what I wear or don’t wear, then I know the answer a lot quicker.”

Oscar sat back in his chair and watched as Gabby processed what he had said. The expressions flashing across her face ranged from despair to hope and back again. He knew that a colossal interior argument was waging beneath the surface of her fair face.

It was all so confusing to her. How could one know how to act without someone else telling you all the rules? If she did what he was suggesting, that would make her responsible for determining what was right and wrong. The fact was that she had never had to shoulder real responsibility of that magnitude. Her whole life had been spent following the rules. If school started at eight, you showed up at eight. That was just what you did. There wasn’t any need to think about right and wrong.

She sighed and then said, “You are saying that I am responsible for deciding what is right and wrong.”

“Not really.”

“Huh?” asked Gabby surprised by his answer.

“Right and wrong is pretty well decided for you. Two rules define right. If it harms none, then do it. Protect the weak from the strong. No, you are responsible for making sure that your actions are right. There’s a big difference.”

The present would have been a good time to introduce a pregnant pause by taking a sip of coffee. Unfortunately, they were in the library and there wasn’t any coffee around. Oscar would just have to wait for her to come to a conclusion.

From the other seat, a timid voice asked, “What about the sex stuff?”

It was very tempting to give a flippant answer, but that would be wrong. He asked, “What about it?”

“I was always told that good girls don’t think about sex.”

“What a horrible thing to tell someone,” replied Oscar with real outrage in his voice. The idea that someone should impose a rule on another to try to limit his or her thoughts was disgusting. Such an act constituted the worst crime that one could commit.

“Huh?”

“Everyone thinks about sex. It is a biological function that is an integral part of being human. Being a good girl requires that you first be a good human. You can deny that you think about sex, that you have strong sexual urges, and that you give into those urges, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are denying an essential part of being human. What a horrible thing to do to a person; telling them to live a lie. Talk about harming someone,” answered Oscar shaking his head in disgust.

“I don’t get it. You’re telling me that everything that I believe in is wrong,” charged Gabby.

“One way of controlling people around you is to place prohibitions on them. It gives you leverage over them when they violate one of those prohibitions. When you adopt the two rules, those prohibitions vanish. The good prohibitions are preserved only because they obey those two rules. People can’t control you for their own purposes,” replied Oscar.

The idea that people were telling her rules so that they could control her bothered Gabby. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. She remembered when her mother caught her pleasuring herself as a young girl. Her mother had punished her, saying that she would turn into one of those bad girls. She had pleaded that she wanted to be a good girl.