Chapter 5

I was quivering as I pushed the hood of the VR chair up. I'd been turned on by the after-P.E. shower at Claiborne, and when I'd gone to my locker to dress a boy named Chuck intercepted me. He pulled down my jeans and panties, and gave it to me good. When he was finally done I was in such a post-orgasmic daze that I barely had the wit to pull up my clothes and stagger out to the bus. My whole body felt liquid, and every touch sent a jolt through me.

I took a surreptitious look at myself as I got out of the chair. I was aware of how tight my nips were—every move made my bra chafe them—and I could feel the wetness between my legs. I definitely needed some real life male attention, but first I needed to clean up.

I stopped in the Girls Room to do some quick rinsing; I didn't want to go to my next class smelling like an aroused woman. Every girl in class would smell me, and word would get around faster than a prairie fire that something was going on. All of those snippy little minds would dig at it until they had an answer that they liked, whether it was true or not.

I'd learned, we'd all learned, to wear a sanitary pad (and maybe even a tampon) before attending Claiborne for the day. That stood me in good stead. I breezed into Diversity class with my nips still trying to poke holes in the front of my shirt. But since it was a cold day outside—that Portland specialty: cold rain—I wasn't the only one with that problem.

The teacher ranted for an hour while I fantasized about her attending Claiborne. What would she say if she could get laid several times a day? And not just by the other teachers, either. Every teacher in the school got it on with the Claiborne's students, and she would have soon been a puddle of satisfied female flesh.

I figured part of her problem, part of the problem every woman my mother associated with or whose political tract I'd been handed to read, was sexually related. They weren't getting enough attention to keep them satisfied. That happy way you felt after a climax (or two or three) certainly precluded anything as mundane as bitterness at our society's political climate. Your whole body felt charged up, but relaxed, and you wanted to snuggle with a male (horrors!), or worse: impale yourself on his hardness over and over again (even more horrors!). That was far more fun than complaining at the top of your voice that you couldn't speak above a whisper.

(Another aside): I'd read about this in accounts of the protests in the 60s. People would spend the day making speeches and organizing protests. And then, in the evening, the men would grab the girls and screw them silly. That's why a lot of the women lost their dedication: they were used for sexual relief, not bettering the world. A few, those who kept their legs together, formed the militant core of women's protests. And they got so seduced by power, or the prospect of it, that they sacrificed everything to it. Look at female genital mutilation as an example. It was more important to protest President George Bush than to condemn the barbaric way women were treated in certain cultures. One way led to the potential for political power; the other was staying true to one's principles.

At one point, back before Woodrow Wilson and FDR attempted to remake America, women had a lot of power. It was just not overt. Every volunteer organization (usually done through churches) had a band of dedicated women running things. They might have a few men around for cosmetic appearances (the Sanitary Commission in the American Civil War comes to mind), but women were a major force in society. This was ameliorated by the great socialist movements in the first third of the 20th Century. The socialists did their best to destroy anything other than governmental intervention in private lives, and their best was pretty damned effective.

With one outlet gone, all of that involvement and volunteerism had to go somewhere else. It was cunningly directed into remaking society through the government. It was held possible to legislate good behavior and morality into existence. Hence Prohibition and the War on Drugs, and the War on Anything Fun like gambling and prostitution. The latter ran into a problem: people are going to do it even if Society frowns on it. Look at the 'free love' movement in the 60s. Even AIDS didn't put an end to it. Swingers are a lot more careful with their health than straight people. But Society, or at least the self-appointed arbiters of morality, would be 'shocked and horrified' by casual sex. After all, it would spread disease. And this was done in such tones that you wondered how the human race had managed to survive and reproduce through all of the centuries.

My mother's friends were consistent in one thing: their hypocrisy. It was why, when I was 12, I had so much fun secretly reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Lenin in Zurich. Vladimir Illych had such an inspired way of twisting things to his advantage, and narrowing and reshaping things to get what he wanted. And unlike the people I'd met, he succeeded. He'd become the ruler of the Soviet Union, and there was a snarky note on his birthday left on a website dedicated to historical matters: Vladimir Illych Lenin — teacher, writer, mass murderer.

Mother's friend's ideas led directly to the Gulag and the Killing Fields. They either realized it (some did) and thought the world would be the better for it, or they didn't (most didn't) and turned a blind eye to the subject. If it isn't apparent by now, the whole concept of willing mass murder done for political and/or social reasons turned my stomach. It was to the point that when we entertained some 'friends' from back in the Midwest, I found homework to do. If anyone needed 'eliminating', it was those proponents of political murder. The human race should have moved beyond that idea; to quote a Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle book that I'd secretly read, think of it as evolution in action.

I'm not as willfully stupid as some of those who hung around the house, or even lived in the Annex that you got to through the basement, what was probably a bomb shelter years before, people who needed to vanish for a while, and I was to never mention, even when one of them took me to her bed. I never mentioned that to Mother. I learned that that was the one line that she would not cross.

None of this showed up in my Diversity class. Instead I struggled through that and the rest of my day. I had plenty of time to kill, and I spent it in the library doing my Claiborne homework. By the time I left for home I was nice and relaxed. I was just in time to help prepare flyers and signs for a planned demonstration the next day. I didn't bother reading what the protest was about. The Army had done something the professors didn't approve of (probably exist), and they were going to demand the State of Oregon do something about it (as if they could).

Ever since I'd taken a history course I thought the people who hung around home were about as unrealistic as it was possible to get. The State of Oregon couldn't do a thing about the US Army. The whole issue of States Rights had been decided in 1865 by the case of R.E. Lee vs. The Army of the Potomac. The little wants of Mother's friends wouldn't overturn that precedent.

That was just normal for my home life. I made the signs, I organized the flyers in bundles of 50, and I tried to get out of going by pleading homework. That didn't fly; they wanted everyone on the picket line, and Mother knew my grades. I made a note to dress warmly, and on Saturday morning I was ready to mouth all of the right things.

What I didn't count on was running into Cynthia.

I was following Erika as we circled in front of the Courthouse for the TV cameras—I knew my Diversity teacher would see my face and I'd probably get extra credit for protesting—when I caught her face in the crowd. She recognized me and looked surprised.

The TV crew finished taping, and we took a break; you never protest when the media isn't there, it's a waste of energy. I put my sign down and went over to where Cynthia was standing.

"What are you doing here?" she asked after we'd hugged.

"What the parental unit requires of me for my room-and-board," I said.

"You mean you don't really believe this stuff?"

I looked around to make sure we weren't going to be overheard, and then drew her off to one side. "Most of the people in the demonstration are dupes who haven't had an original thought in years," I said. "And the two or three others, and Mother is one of them, are hardcore believers."

Cynthia looked at me, frowning slightly. "You sound awfully cynical."

"When you grow up like I did, you either become a true believer, or you reject the whole thing as so much stupidity." I shrugged. "Reality eventually catches up to the people who truly believe. As for the rest of us, you go along to get along. You should see me in Diversity class. I'm the teacher's star pupil."

"But you'll change when you can move out."

"Not openly, but yes. What brings you here?"

"Shopping, mostly. Thanksgiving's coming up, and all of our relatives are coming out for a big family get-together. Mom wanted to get some things we couldn't find in the local stores."

"Never had a big family get-together," I said. "If we did, it'd probably be at some Federal penitentiary, or some protest."

"You're kidding."

I shrugged. "Not really. Some members of the family, the extended one, not just the ones related by blood, are wanted for things they did a number of years ago. Sometimes I think Mother is, too. She certainly acts that way. I haven't looked into it. I think it's better to let sleeping dogs lie."

"You don't like her very much, do you."

"I love her because she's my mother, but yeah, there are days I'm not terribly fond of her. I haven't had the kind of upbringing a girl should have. Nuts, I didn't even have any dolls. They were symbols of the Dominant Patriarchal Culture, you know, and that had to be drilled out of me."

Cynthia was silent for several seconds. "I won't ask," she said at last. "No wonder you like Claiborne so much. It's the one place you can be you, and not your mother's perfect little girl."

"I've gotten so good at acting that I don't always know where the real me leaves off," I said. I looked behind me. The camera crew was getting ready to do a live broadcast for another station. "Got to go."

"I'll see you in school," Cynthia said. "Maybe we can organize a chat or something."

"Maybe," I replied. I picked up my sign and joined the circle. Another day, another protest. I lifted my head proudly. We were boldly 'speaking truth to power', something nobody'd ever try in a real totalitarian state. Activity like that would get us a bullet in the back of the head, something Mother and her friends never seemed to realize. Or maybe they did, but thought they'd be pulling the trigger.

On Monday I stayed longer in the Construct than the Girls Counselor expected. "What happened?" she asked when I pushed the hood up.

"Student-teacher assessment," I said. I glanced at the clock. I'd only run five minutes over, which still left me plenty of time before my next class. "The school has these from time to time to help you understand where you are with your education."

"Oh. I thought there was something wrong with the equipment."

I shook my head. "No, it's fairly foolproof that way."

"So how do you think you're doing?"

"Neither teacher had any objections. They do a Team Teacher type of thing."

"Oh. Okay, if they didn't, I guess that's all right. You'd better get to your next class."

I smiled and headed for the Girls Room. It'd been a very in-depth review of my body. I'd sucked one teacher halfway down my throat while the other tried to hit my cervix with his dick (I'm glad he didn't, it hurts when a guy does that). We all came at the same time, and then, after a brief rest, I switched ends. Thank goodness nobody at Claiborne minded 'sloppy seconds', because that's all they'd get some days. By the time we were done I'd been reduced to a quivering mass of satisfied girl-flesh. Whatever sexual tension I'd been feeling was gone. I gave thanks that I could have multiple orgasms. And the teachers? They looked happy and exhausted. Their poor dicks were wrinkled and red, and stared at the floor as if too tired to get up.

Ten minutes later I had to listen to the Diversity teacher praise me for my protests on Saturday. She pontificated about the culture and political climate, and how I'd been so brave to speak out. I didn't really care. Every time I moved something sensitive got rubbed, and I did a lot of moving. Try paying attention when little spasms of pleasure sweep through you every couple of minutes.

I was of no use in P.E., but fortunately all we had to do was run around the indoor track a few times. I needed that shower. I'd have preferred it to be ice cold to cool me off, but some of the girls like it as hot as they can get it. That made for a lot of steam, which was good because my fingers spent a lot of time 'cleaning' between my legs. I don't think anyone heard my moans and gasps because there was a lot of talking and shower noises. But a bit of the tension I'd had since my Claiborne session was certainly wiped away.

I'm not sure how I lasted the rest of the day, but when I got home I hunkered down in front of the mirror and spent a few precious minutes reliving that 'conference'. I didn't realize until then that I could actually see that bit of skin between my asshole and my sex flex when I came, not that I was watching too closely.

I was a much more sedate Shannon when I came down for dinner. I was having a hard time paying attention to a lot of things around me, but after all of these years I'd built up some automatic responses to the dinner table conversations. I think I carried my end of the conversation, but I didn't care, I just wanted to go back to my bed, lie there, and drift.

I had to do my homework, of course, including writing an essay about whatever it was we'd been protesting. I had to read the signs in the garage to remember what it was. So I did a thousand words about the Evil-Nasty-US Army, Militant Oppressors of the People's Right to Justice^© (I think that's what I wrote, I was on autopilot at the time) and went to bed, where I had some really interesting dreams, but nothing out of the ordinary for a horny girl of my age.