Sue

When I started college, I decided that I would bunk with my best friend from high school, Jeff Wilson. We thought it would be a good idea to share a dorm room since we were friends. I will skip the specifics, but after one semester, we both opted for different roommates. We remained in the same dorm and were still close friends, but I believe our bond lasted because we both quickly realized that close friends should not share quarters.

Anyway, during my sophomore year, Fred and I were at a party. There was alcohol involved (but don’t tell the dean!), and Jeff had too much to drink (of course!). He decided to reveal something about me that he had promised never to tell anybody. He stood at the front of the room and made an announcement. “My friend Jamie Connors has a neat talent,” he said, slurring his words.

I stared at him. As I mentioned, he promised me he would never tell anybody, and now I knew he was going to tell everybody at the dorm. “Jeff, you’ve had a little too much to drink,” I said, hoping to keep him from going any further.

Conversations stopped. Everybody was either looking at me or at Jeff.

“Jamie knows hypnosis! He’s great at it. I bet he could make anybody here cluck like a chicken!”

Now, I was the center of attention. I had to think quickly.

I knew Jeff and his tendencies when he was drinking enough that if I denied my knowledge, he’d insist and insist until either he, I, or both of us were told to leave. Getting thrown out of your own dorm’s party can get you shunned by the entire building. I had to be careful. I replied, “Jeff, that was years ago. I did it for shits and giggles. I’ve probably forgotten most of it, or am extremely rusty at it.” Those were both lies, but gave me an out.

I glanced around the area and saw a couple of girls that I dated that might still have “back doors” for me to hypnotize them easier if I were forced to perform a show, but I didn’t want to take advantage of them. After all, they had been bed partners. Why piss them off or have them suspect you did something to them?

It was my good fortune that nobody really wanted to follow up on the “Hey! Let’s hypnotize and embarrass somebody!” idea.

It’s a bad idea to tell people about being able to hypnotize them. People mostly have the wrong ideas about the subject. Some get scared of you because they think that if you can hypnotize people, then you can do it simply by passing them in the hallway and telling people to stare at your eyes. Others think that I could use this talent to get into a girl’s pants. Others dare you to try to hypnotize them to prove you’re full of bullshit. A lot of people have all sorts of ideas they got from television or the movies, and most of those shows don’t agree on how it works (“Look into my eyes!” or “Follow at the swinging watch!” ).

One thing you hear in the movies is “you can’t get people to do things they wouldn’t normally do.” That’s mostly true, in a way. However, after insisting this is true, the movies then go on “prove” that it isn’t true. They come along and show how you can get around it to have a person, say, murder somebody, or become a person’s sex slave. The ideas are interesting, but if you know clinical hypnotism, these ideas would never work the way they portray them. Well, maybe not ever, but not as easily as the shows make it seem.

There was a reason I looked into hypnotism when I was in my mid-teens. My aunt divorced my uncle. He had been a favorite uncle of mine, as nice as anybody could ever be. His only flaw was that he was a heavy smoker. He went to a therapist, and quickly afterward, he quit. That’s all great, huh? However, he soon became a changed man. I remember him as a warm, loving father to his children and relatives when he was younger, but he became brutal and hateful by the time my aunt left him. My mother always thought it was the hypnotherapy he underwent. She said something about side effects.

I took it upon myself to check into the subject using science texts about hypnotism and hypnotherapy. They made it clear that you cannot cure a smoker in one session. You may keep them from smoking, but there are multiple factors involved with addiction. If you don’t address the cause of the addiction, it just manifests itself in other ways. Apparently, that may be what happened to him. Maybe his “brain” got angry about not getting his nicotine fix and he took it out on others.

Still, the subject fascinated me. My research came up with lots of real info, and I studiously avoided self-described “experts” on the Internet. I practiced with Jeff, my best friend in high school. I was able to put him under, but it didn’t happen in thirty seconds as in the movies. I added a post-hypnotic suggestion to make it easier to put him under than it took that first time, but even then, it took some time to reinforce a trance to keep it stable. You can’t just say, “Sleep, Jeff, Sleep!” and have him instantly become a monotonic zombie. I became adept at putting him under, but I didn’t have him do much except, maybe, kiss his hand. They were things he normally would not do and were harmless. I avoided playing around with his mind. I just used him to learn the technique.

I found one interesting use of this talent; and it was in college during my freshman year. I was never “girl material” when I was in high school. However, by the time I entered college, more than one girl developed an interest in me, and I think it was mostly due to my body finally maturing enough. I was soon surprised by how many freshmen girls are actually interested in one-night stands. A lot would spend the night with me, and some allowed me to spend the night with them. That usually gave me additional time to spend with them; time for me to get them under before they actually fall asleep. (That’s the best time to do it, by the way.) I’d give a couple of suggestions to them that they willingly accepted: they had a wonderful time with me, and they had fond memories of my sexual talents. These were simple thoughts. I didn’t tell them they would do anything I told them to do. As I said, hypnotism doesn’t work that way.

My suggestions usually, although not always, got me a second invitation, and often more than just a second one. After a week or so, I knew that reality would eventually settle in--hypnotism isn’t perfect--so I got them to lose interest in me before that happened. They’d break up with me, but I made sure they had fond memories of me.

Yeah. I wasn’t Doctor Evil. I just used a tool to make my partners enjoy things more.

Call me a wimp. I know better, so you don’t bother me.

Eventually, those freshmen girls realized that being easy wasn’t all that it was cut out to be. They’d figure out that it was better to be respected. Good for them, but I was thankful I had an actual use for my talent.

The next day, Jeff woke up late, missed his morning classes, and had a massive headache.

When he saw me that day, he said, “How many drinks did I have last night?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d say plenty. You shot off your big mouth about hypnotism and me, you know.”

“Oh, fuck!” he said. He slapped his forehead and winced. “I’m so sorry about that, man. I don’t remember it, but I can tell from the look on your face that you’re pissed.”

“Well, I convinced people that it was years ago and I don’t do it much anymore. Nobody pressed me to give them a show. However, if you tell anybody else, I will put you under and make sure you cannot go a day without an orgasm, and the only way you can orgasm is for a guy--or a girl with a strap-on--to ream your ass.” That was an idle threat. As I said, hypnotism doesn’t work that way, but Jeff didn’t really know that and didn’t want to chance my getting pissed, so the threat was effective.

“Oh, god. I’ll never tell a soul,” he promised.

“You’ve already promised that,” I said. “Just think what will happen if you ever piss me off that way again.”

“Sorry.”

What I didn’t know was there would be fallout from that party.

Two days later, I was sitting in the atrium at my dorm, enjoying the last rays of the sun on a beautiful autumn day. I was reading one of my books for comparative literature (as if I would ever be an accomplished writer!), when I was interrupted by a very pleasant female voice. “Are you Jamie Corner? From this dorm?”

I looked up. It was Sue Bodger, a junior at college and, to put it lightly, a real knockout. She was completely out of my league. She had brown eyes and straight brown hair down to the middle of her back. She wasn’t a cherubic, blond-haired, blue-eyed California girl type. However, even with her standard-sounding features, she put those girls to shame. There was something about her that screamed innocence and sexuality at the same time. Her eyes came off as warm and flirty.

“Hey, Sue,” I said. “Yeah. If you’re looking for Jamie Connors, that’s me. I don’t know anybody named ‘Corner.’”

“You know my name!” she said, as if it surprised her.

“Nearly everybody with a Y chromosome on this campus knows who you are!”

She laughed. Boy, I loved that laugh. “You’re so funny!”

“So, what’s up?”

“I heard...” She looked around, trying to gauge the privacy of where we were. She lowered her voice to a whisper and added, “I heard you might be able to help me with a problem.”

Hearing those words from her made me wish she needed help in discarding her virginity. Of course, girls never came on to me that way. Maybe freshmen at the start of the school year, but they learned that there are no shortages of males on campus that would line up for such a chance with them. And, I had to face it, Sue wasn’t that kind of girl, and I was hardly the kind of guy that would attract her.

“What problem is that?” I asked, also in a whisper.

“I want to quit smoking.”

What did that have to do with me, I wondered. “And you came to me because...?”

“I heard you know hypnosis.”

Fuck you, Jeff. Thanks for shooting off your mouth the other day. Then I remembered who I was talking to. Sue, of all people! That wasn’t so bad, but I was once again mad at his drunken antics. I knew people tended to have predisposed opinions about hypnotism.

“I might know a few things, but I also know that hypnosis alone won’t cure a dependence such as that. There is a reason you smoke. One of the reasons is called nicotine. It has already set up a carrot-and-stick in your mind. If I made it so you hate the taste of cigarettes, it will not cure whatever it is that nicotine has done to your brain. The addiction is still going to be there and not being able to satisfy it will lead to problems.”

“I have a therapist,” she said. “I’ve been seeing her for weeks. She’s helping me work with the addiction, but it’s getting harder to deny the urges. One cigarette, and I’m back at square one. I’m still getting those urges. She’s working on the addiction with me, and we know it will take some time. I’m willing to spend the money on her and the time to get cured, if it is possible. However, she doesn’t have any way to lessen my cravings. She isn’t a doctor, so she cannot prescribe anything. I’ve tried all the stuff you can get in drugstores, the patches, gums, and other things. It’s not that they don’t do a thing for me. The problem is that they contain nicotine, the very thing that is causing the urges. That would not get rid of the urges! She told me I’d need to see a psychiatrist for that, and they are much more expensive and out of my budget.”

“I see. If what you’re telling me is that you’re currently working on the addiction part and want to get rid of the urges that would be making you run in a circle. Now, I admit hypnotism can be a useful tool to help, but it doesn’t work alone. So, I want you to do me a favor.”

Sue sighed. She’s been given requests for favors in the past and knew what guys wanted. “No. I won’t go to bed with you. I want to quit, but I want to make this clear: No. Fucking. Way.”

“That wasn’t the favor,” I said, chuckling. “When is your next appointment with your therapist?”

“Tuesday evening. Why?”

“Take me with you to your next appointment,” I said. “I want to hear what a professional says about your condition. I want to be there for the entire session. Only if I know it is safe to help you will I try. Otherwise, I run the risk of having you switch to another addiction, such as cocaine, heroin, or fentanyl.”

“I’m not into drugs,” she said indignantly.

“Not yet,” I said.

From the way she reacted with her eyes, she knew I was serious. “Do you really think that could happen?”

“It can if you aren’t being treated to deal with what underlies your current addiction.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Let me think about that.”

“Do me one other favor in the meantime,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody about me and hypnotism. It’s not what I want to do with my life.”

“So ... you don’t do it anymore, huh?” Sue asked. From the way she asked that question, I knew she had suspicions otherwise.

That realization made me want to be cagey. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been checking up on you,” Sue said. “I discovered a few of your ex-girlfriends. Do you know what they say about you?”

“Good things, I hope.”

“They all said that you were a great lover, but after a week or two, they got disinterested in you and broke it off. They said they still consider you a friend.”

“Wow,” I said. “I guess that’s good to hear from exes. I still consider most of the girls I dated to be friends. I mean, they were casual relationships; we weren’t married or anything.”

“Each one said that they broke it off with you, and for the same reason. They still consider you a friend. That’s quite nice to hear about a guy. However, I noticed something weird. They all said the same thing, almost word for word.”

Oops.

Sue gave me a superior smile. “So, don’t tell me you haven’t been practicing. Like they say in the movie, you have a very particular set of skills, skills you have acquired over a lifetime.”

I knew the movie, and it wasn’t a direct quote, but I got her point. “Well, you talked to them,” he said. “I guess that makes me somebody that abuses people. I wouldn’t be surprised if you just avoided me.”

“No, I need help, and I think you can supply it,” she said. “All those girls I talked to insisted that you were a nice guy, in different words. They weren’t programmed to like you. They seemed programmed not to make you stand out.”

“Don’t use the word ‘programmed,’” I said. “That’s not what I do. I suggest, and if they go along with it, it’s nice. If they don’t go along with it, then I can’t do anything. That would end up as a one-night stand, and they are history. So, what do you want?” I asked.