Message-ID: <25000asstr$962791802@assm.asstr-mirror.org> X-Original-Path: not-for-mail From: Apuleius of Madaura X-Original-Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Date: 5 Jul 2000 01:48:55 GMT Subject: {ASSM} RP: Kael's Diary by Kael Goodman 1/2 (mf MF rom story) Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 06:10:02 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: apuleius, IceAltar Reposter's note: This substantial (248K) story dates from 1994-6, and I previously reposted it in December 1998. This was done with the permission of the author. No site preserves this story complete, and several sections are only preserved on commercial, banner-supported sites (with all indications of authorship removed). These sections are also badly formatted, and I have corrected the spacing; this explains the differing appearance as the story proceeds. With the help of the author, who kindly sent two missing sections, I have been able to compile the complete text together in one place (here posted in two parts). The story itself is incomplete, halting at Part 1 of August 1994, but the individual chapters themselves can stand on their own. At the request of the author, the copyright and disclaimer appear at the start of each chapter. The author forbids the use of his work in any commercial venue (electronic or otherwise) without further permission. He may be contacted at at745@cleveland.freenet.edu A review of this story may be found at http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/BitBard/www/library/cr/cr313.htm#9 - Apuleius --------------------------------------------------------- "Kael's Diary" is copyright 1994 Millennium Productions and is reprinted here by permission. Author: Kael Goodman (at745@cleveland.freenet.edu) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Title: Kael's Diary: September, 1983 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Kael's Diary: September, 1983 "Save a Prayer" part one Do you remember the first time you ever listened through a pair of feather-weight earphones? Walkman phones? I do. It was two years earlier, for sure, but I had only just gotten my own pair for my birthday two months previous and that fresh sensation of having Simon LeBon actually in the center of my head, singing -- it gave reality a sense of heightened importance. The music, so rich and over-produced back then, it seemed to reach from horizon to horizon. It didn't hurt to be standing on a pier in Maine, overlooking a large body of dark, peaceful water on a bright warm day in September, either. My hair hung heavily over my eyes and ears. I wore a light, long sleeved dress shirt, yellow, lapels a bit too wide for the fashion, but I was ingnorant of this. If it was good enough for my brother Max when he was fifteen, then it was okay by me. The fact that Max was fifteen in 1976 didn't make any difference, I didn't know any better. Corduroy slacks (burgundy) a wide striped tie and a pair of Keds All-Stars and a pair of sunglasses completed the ensemble. The whole Goodman clan was gathered here at this odd time of year to see one of my cousins get married. I and my family had been here, in Promise, Maine, earlier in the summer, almost two months before. Late July. Boy, had a lot of things happened since then. I was feeling strangly taller, and as though I were viewing the same familiar sights of my youth through a completely new set of eyes. Compulsive masturbation. Late July, muggy and damp, two parents, one brother and a few of his friends, and a pair of foreign exchange students, all crammed into one rented bungalow. Any time they all jumped into the Volvo to go somewhere I would hide or just tell them I wasn't interested. I was being such a little prick the whole vacation they didn't put up much of an argument. Once I was sure they were gone, I would slip upstairs to my room and strip down to my underwear, bought for a thirteen year old and worn holey. I'd lie on my front and twiddle with my penis, gripping it firmly with my fingers and briskly padding the tender underside with my thumb. I'd think of my girlfriend, Glenda, waiting for me at home -- she'd let me play with her breasts before I'd left, and even suck on them. They were so soft and not very small at all -- not as large as Becky's, my very first girlfriend's breasts, but her's were an exception in any young man's book. Becky's boobs were so big, and her skin was so fair, her nipples were so wide and light pink you couldn't really make out where they stopped and the rest of her gigundous breasts began. But Glenda had long dark hair and dark, camel-like eyes. All my friends thought she was annoying as hell, but wow, did she know how to kiss. We had both taken Jesus into our hearts as our personal savior last winter and were both kinda scared at the things we let ourselves do with each other -- I pushed too hard sometimes, she was never very comfortable letting me touch her pussy, but neither was I. Jesus. Any thought of the Messiah during masturbation made me cold with guilt and fear, but I was too far along to stop and certain desires override fear anyway. Mom had constructed a make-shift sun shower out behind the cabin. It consisted of a long hose coiled up on the tar roof of the fishing shed with a shower nozzle at one end. The other end went into the shed to a sink, and if you stoppered up the nozzle and let the whole hose fill with water and let it just stay in the hose for an hour or so, there would be about three minutes of a steady trickle of hot water, forced out by cold water from the tap behind it. It was either that or a sponge bath out of the sink, and I was getting pretty concerned about some blackheads and tiny pimples developing on my chest and shoulders. Getting everything you wanted scrubbed in that three minutes could be quite an adventure, and particularly difficult when you were trying to wash your privates with your bathing suit on. That afternoon though, I looked around, each and every way, and felt a strange thrill run through my entire being. I was behind the house, everyone was in town, and I could hear anyone in the near distance. The way to other cabins was blocked by trees and a ramshackle garage. Before I could question it, I dropped my bathing suit to the grass and stood completely naked in the mid-summer sun. I grappled awkwardly with the hose and let it run all over me, splashing the sun heated water onto my smooth, hairless, adolescent chest and wet my longish greasy hair. Soap gathered in the nest of my pubic hair until I pushed it down over my soft, spongy, shriveled up penis. I kept glancing around nervously, the warm air, the sun on my behind and testicles and my exposed hips, it was so alien and I feared so much of getting caught. My penis began to stiffen a little at the thought. Then the cold water came and I made an all too brisk job of finishing. *** Still masturbating, I thought over my daring afternoon scrub. Barbara. Damn, I had loved her so much and she never felt that way about me. She had long dark hair and beautiful dark eyes. I had had a crush on her for three years, but we still just remained friends, although I wanted so much to be dating her. In my mind I stood outside, exposed and scared. Barbara walks around the corner, wearing that one piece bathing suit she always wears to the pool. She's seen me! She calls out in surprise and ridicule, I blush all over and reach down to hide myself. She just smiles and begins to pull down the straps of her suit (I begin to instinctively bounce my pelvis into the squeaky mattress) and my idea of what she looks like naked materializes in my head -- dark, bud-like nipples (I've seen them through her gym shirt) her tiny waist and broad, mature hips, a wispy puff of black pubic hair (it still frightened me) she walks over to hug me and kiss me under the trickling hose -- -- when someone else shows up! All of the other kids who stay here at the cove during the summer! They heard us and have stepped around the corner of the house! Everyone can see my penis, stiff in front of me, exposed and standing like some comical toy soldier -- oh, to be caught so aroused, it was mortifying -- -- and my hand jerks back and forth against my red and swollen cock, the other hand spontaneously massaging my thigh, as I feel the great tingle flash from deep within my balls, and great gooey spurts of cum shoot through its tender tube and splat against the inside of my underpants. My mouth is stuffed firmly into a pillow and I huff and chuff silently, withholding all external signs of pleasure from my face and head, just rocking up and back and panting, whimpering softly. My cheeks are flush, my left arm hand throbs. pulses in time with my heart. I roll over and stare up into the log-beamed ceiling. If no one comes back in ten minutes, I do it again. -- Kael's Diary: September, 1983 "Save a Prayer" part two September. Two weeks after labor day, the end of my MTV summer. We got our MTV back in May and I spent every waking moment with my eyes glued to the set. Coming here made for major withdrawl. Scuffling along the gravel road that winds through that sleepy seaside resort, which should at this point in the year have already been asleep if it weren't for this wedding and the special arrangements made by my uncle. It was nice and warm, but the slightest edge on the wind made it impossible to deny that summer was fading. What a long summer. Actually, it seemed to go by so fast, but it had been packed with activity -- strange for my life. Summer usually dragged on, there was nothing to do in my pathetic, suburban hometown and while a trip to Promise broke up the monotony, it too was a place where the main excitement was in watching the sailboats out in the cove or perhaps dropping a handline over the edge of the pier to see if you could catch a small fish. But this particular summer, when "Thriller" was the number one album for GEEZ it seemed like forever and I'll be damned if Ronald Reagan wasn't making me proud to be an American, not a small feat considering my first Presidential memory had to do with Nixon resigning. I got my first job this summer, washing dishes at this greasy spoon back home, and there were some other firsts as well. I had flown back from Maine, during the first few days of August. Everyone else drove, but there was no room for me in the car. Well, there could have been, but all the other kids (late teens, early twenties, Max was the oldest at twenty-one) wanted to sightsee New England on their way back and knew I would be a major asshole. So I flew home and spent a few days in the house, just me and Dad. Except of course that Dad worked for a living. Glenda and I spent two solid days, six hour sessions, lying on my bed, kissing and licking each other -- only one of us would be naked at one time, she had fears. We both knew it was wrong, her more than me, my worst fear was of getting caught but eternal damnation also lurked behind every thought. She had a great neck. A nice long, pale white neck and great shoulders, they had great form, not doughy or anything, she had a nice, trim, hard little fourteen year-old bod. I had just turned fifteen. Back in Promise. My parent's never understood why I would want to celebrate a birthday back at home with my friends. Glenda would be fifteen in September. That first morning I was back in town she came over just before noon and she was wearing shorts and this terry cloth shirt that just rode on top of her boobs and was held up with this thick, soft string that ran around her neck. I don't know when she first got it, but it was stunning to me, how she could wear it -- she had been so shy when we first started going together back in February, and letting me play with her breasts was a major hurdle. And now she was taking a certain noticeable pride in wearing, well, this terry cloth top for example, because she knew how I loved to see her shoulders, but it also gave everyone this breathtaking view of her adolescent, emerging cleavage. I didn't really care why, but it took a little getting used to. Small talk was minimal. We scurried up to my room and just started grappling at each other, I loved kissing her, she had such tabby, pouty lips, a little soft, blonde mustache forming there and we would mash our faces together and play silly tug of war games with our tongues, lots of chewing and panting and gnawing on earlobes and ramming of tongues into ears and we'd stop to stare at each other in the midst of our wild, animal passion, huge adoring brown eyes framed by her cascading, luxurious (shame on me) dark brown hair, looking past the shock of long blonde hair that fell into my face, into mine, a stupid little grin on my spotty little face. I tugged at that powder blue, terry cloth shirt. She got this strange, slightly questioning, kinda acuusatory look on her face, but she let me do it. Just kinda squinting at me, letting me do all the work, I pulled the shirt up, working it slowly, deliberately so, when she put her arms across her chest, stopping me. "You're sure you want to do this now?" she asked. "If not now, when?" I asked. It was good enough for the President. "You're sure?" She was just baiting me. "I must see your breasts," I said. "And besides, I love you." "Humph," she said, and grabbed the bottom of her shirt herself, and pulled it off, up and over her head, like they do in the movies. She set it carefully aside. She sat looking defiant and a little bored, her naked chest no longer a concern for her. "Okay?" she said. "So what?" I grabbed her and pulled her to me and she let out a surprised laugh. "You're really sexy, you know that?" I said. "Yeah?" she said. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah?" she said. "Yeah," I said. And I took my shirt off so I could feel her skin against mine. "Ew," she said, "what's that?" "Huh?" I said, looking down at my scrawny little self. "Oh, zits, I guess, small ones, that's kind of embarrassing, yeah, I don't know, I've been washing a lot, though." I peered up from under my hair. "Still love me?" "Oh, of course." *** Glenda drew a hand slowly across my naked, hairless belly. My head, propped on a pillow, staring up into her chocolate drop eyes. A finger traced an imaginary line down my left thigh and then another up my right. My penis, glowing red, stiff and neglected sat out exposed just below my belly button, gooey stuff dripping from its tip. "Please," I said. She kneeled to my right, facing me, her shorts still on, her pert n' perky breasts on display for this little horn-dog to enjoy, pale and perfect, and she raised her finger up to her lips and slowly sucked on it, like she learned on cable or something, one slim digit probing her own mouth, her puffy teenage lips, drawing on it to its end before she laid it gently on my burning prick, rubbing it around, inflaming me even more, that stunning tickle in my dick becoming more and more harsh and delicious. Her pants would stay on until I put mine on. She wouldn't suck on me or kiss my penis not matter how much I begged her. And we rubbed and teased each other all day until just before my father came home. The next day we did it again. -- "Kael's Diary" is copyright 1994 Millennium Productions and is reprinted here by permission. Author: Kael Goodman (at745@cleveland.freenet.edu) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Title: Kael's Diary: June, 1984 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Kael's Diary: June, 1984 "Let's Hear It For The Boy" I was fifteen, going on sixteen. Reagan was gearing up to win reelection, MTV was still considered a novelty and the second installment of the Indiana Jones movies had only just come out the previous weekend. I was only just beginning to develop any form of self-esteem -- I had recently changed my hair style from that long, stringy mop that used to conveniently hang in front of my eyes to that popular, short and neatly parted style all us young republicans were into those days. I had even risked all forms of abuse by tinting it a shocking blonde, the very first of my forays into alternative hair color. It's normal shade is a dirty kind of blonde, so one might think it wasn't such a radical alteration, but in that closed suburban community, in that high school, well, you would fare well never changing the kind of shoes you normally wore. God, were they cruel. Sophomore year was at an end. The deathly Cleveland winter was long past and summer was on its way. Soon we would all be hanging out at the lake or the swimming pool, enjoying the poppy sounds of Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis and the News, and of course, the hottest single out was the theme to "Ghostbusters". I started getting used to standing straight up, all six feet, taking a little pride in myself -- I was a teenager of the eighties, I was young, I was healthy, I was even going to Spain that summer for some of that "studying abroad" people talk about. And, of course, I was in love. Did she know it? Sure she did. At least, I thought she did. I did walk over to her house on her birthday to give her a long stemmed rose. I did (and I still don't believe this one) slip an anonymous (but not too anonymous) note into her locker telling her how cool I thought she was. And she must have loved the attention. But I wasn't for her. Just a little too geeky. Today we were part of a car wash for Youth League, this ridiculous high school Christian association we both loved going to every single Tuesday night to share our love for Jesus Christ. Well, that's why she was there. Michelle. A freshman, just about to turn fifteen, strong Nordic features, she had a round face, silky white (with a bright, rugged blush in the cheeks when horsing around or embarrassed) with longish, bright blonde (real) hair, and full, red, bubble gum lips. And though I had always considered myself above ogling anyone, it was difficult not to notice (as I did for the first time that day) how abnormally large her boobs were. Water gets all over during a good old fashioned car wash and her T-shirt was adhering itself to her in the most appealing way. I don't know what was up this particular day, I must have been acting far too nonchalant for it not to have been ridiculously obvious that I was in so much fear of saying something stupid that I chose to rather say nothing at all. "Hey, Kael!" she said as I rode up on my ten speed. God, she said Hey! like I was a friend or something. "I didn't know you wanted to waste your Saturday doing this thing." She walked towards me with her hands behind her back. "Oh yeah," I said, dismounting (the bike -- this isn't your father's porn), "I've always really liked...washing...cars." "Ah," she said, and swiftly whipped a juicy, soapy sponge at my face. I ducked rather awkwardly, and fell backwards in an attempt to retrieve her soggy missile. Already I had gotten very excited at the idea of some kind of playful water fight with her, to, you know, show her I was cool and all, but by the time I turned back she had already become reengaged in what was already a massive garden hose, mop bucket, wet rag bonanza which I had apparently just ridden into the outskirts of. Michelle didn't care about me. I was just another target. *** That night I found myself in the same old position. Sitting in a movie theater. We were watching "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and it wasn't as good as the original. I attended with my good old freshman buddy Don, and two completely unattractive girls named Margo and Fran. Okay, that wasn't fair, only Margo was unattractive, and luckily she was hitting on Don. Margo was just a bit too pudgy, her hair was frizzy and she had moles in the most unappetizing of places. Fran, while no prize winner, was at least quite intelligent and I had a great time talking with her. There was still absolutely NO excuse for bringing them all back to my house. True, my folks were out of town for a week. I had always been such a model son, never drinking (or getting caught), never taking drugs (or getting caught), never staying out late without permission (this is true), they felt I could be trusted. And so pudgy Don and his pudgy date Margo, and Fran and I ended up on the scratchy shag carpeting of the family room, frantically kissing, rolling around, wrestling, and basically letting all of our hormones do the talking. But if Don was going to start prizing Margo out of her parachute pants, I didn't want to be there. I scrabbled across the family room to the kitchen, skidded across the linoleum and collapsed in the living room on the other side of the house. Fran was close behind. Fran's hair was that kind I still hate, unless the woman (or man) knows how to wear it well. One word -- bangs. I hate them. Hair cut straight across just above the eyebrows, it's just so Frankenstein. And then it just fell straight down either side of her flat face. Her face though, now that was nice. High cheeks, a small but well defined chin, lots of exciting angles to her face and little exciting freckles and lots of them. No real lips to speak of, but I was dealing. "Hello, Kael," she said. She brought her face up to mine and began to nuzzle at my neck. Her thin lips pursed and kissed just under my chin. She let her fingers play about my chest and she drew a small line down to my navel. "Hiya, Fran," I said, and with trembling fingers I began undoing the buttons on her short sleeved, plaid patterned, cotton shirt. She kept kissing me as I freed all of the little buttons. Underneath she was wearing an adorable, soft cotton bra. I was amused at why someone with no chest to speak of wore one, but why be insulting? My lips (I am now very proud of my lips -- they are quite sensual, women love them, they are neither too thin nor are they too large and slobbery. I can pout -- if I want to) found one of the shallow ravines of her neck and I began drawing up toward her ear with my tongue, while also deftly undoing the latch waiting in the front of her bra. The one hand I wasn't using to support myself touched her chest just above where her rib cage started. I was surprised. Her flesh wasn't like any I had ever touched. It was so soft, it was like tightlypulled cloth. "Oh, I have waited a long time for this," she whispered. "Yeah?" I asked. My hand slid up and I carefully drew my thumb across her left nipple. "Yeah," she said. "I always knew the two of us would get together like this." She laid a hand across my thigh and began massaging my leg. "Oh yeah?" I said. I was honestly, overboardedly infatuated with another girl. Fran didn't need to know this. "Yeah," she said, and flipped around suddenly, turning to face me, crouched as though ready to pounce. Amazing. If you asked anyone about Fran, the first words might be nerd, brain, geek. She wrote for the school paper, she was an intellectual, she had no fashion sense or she didn't care. Here she sat, her hands on the floor, her knees just behind, the street lights of that hot June evening came through the windows throwing sexy shadows and light onto her body, that awful shirt just dangling from either naked shoulder, her pointed face glaring at me with excitement and hunger, her neck taught, her chest heaving, two small pale nipples erect and waiting. "Let's go upstairs," she said. I turned and ran, and Fran followed close behind. *** Whump, she tossed me, flat on my back, onto my parents queen size bed. I squirmed slightly, wriggling back over the polyester bed cover towards the headboard to sit up a little. Fran stood at the foot of the bed. It was real dark, no light in the room, only the stray beams of a suburban streetlight catching her skinny shoulders and arms as she removed the dangling, nasty shirt and flung her bitsy bra wherever. She dropped her face, peering at me in the gloom from under those bangs and began crawling up on top of me. She reached for my T-shirt and began to peel it off. I put out a hand to stop her. "What?" Fran asked. "Oh, uh," I said, "I just, uh, leave my shirt on, okay?" "Hmn," she said, looking down at herself, kneeling over me. I put out my hands, playing with the soft, soft, almost cotton-like flesh of her arms and leaned up a bit to touch my tongue to one of her nipples, the left one. It was soft and salty and she pressed her hands to either side of my head. I suckled for a few moments before she tried lifting my face up to hers to give me another one of those...this is way difficult. Her kisses were so wrong. She didn't know how to press her lips together or anything, she just didn't have the knack. And I was too immature to take control of the situation. She knew what she wanted, she wanted me, on my back, naked and hers and very, very badly. I wanted to fool around, sure, but it was all getting so confused. I'd never fucked anyone, let alone engaged in advanced sexual maneuvers with anyone I hadn't been dating for a few weeks first. I ducked and kissed her neck instead. She loved that and let me know it. Her fingers touched the drawstring of my shorts and began fiddling with the knot. Seconds was all it took, she had successfully loosened them and was pulling the shorts and my comically precummed underwear, down around my hips and right on off my legs. My terribly swollen (and also confused) penis snapped back as the undersized underwear it had been constrained in and stuck to pulled free leaving it to bob and pulse, its gummy tip resting against the bottom of my T-shirt. Fran carelessly tossed my pants aside, gave me a smirk and leaned over my groin. "What have we here?" she said. What have we here? Well, that was a cheesy thing to say. I peered awkwardly down at the top of her head. She was gently kissing (or at least pressing her lips against) my penis and using the tip of her tongue to lick all remnants of precum away. She took long strokes at it, licking and kissing, and I began to ache horribly. A pain that began deep within my balls and spread out to the tip of my dick and it just made me want to curl up and just be left alone for a while, except for that fact that every time she hammered her tongue against my fleshy underside it all went away, and the fraction of a second she detached, it slammed back with even more venomous force. I wanted to come, very badly, all over her face, only I didn't even know it. I had never orgasmed in anyone's presence before, I was horrified to try it. She threw her head back and looked up at me. "Please take your shirt off, Kael," Fran said. Please understand I had a scary case of acne that only affected my chest and back and virtually (but not completely) avoided my face. I was understandably sensitive about this, but it was dark, and maybe she wouldn't notice. I lifted my shirt up over my head and off and flicked it into a far corner. I was now naked on my parents' bed on hot summers' evening. "Should I take my pants off?" Fran asked. What she meant was, 'would you take my pants off?' and I knew it, so I sat up, reach forward, and undid her jeans. They came down and off rather simply and there we lay, side by side, naked and alone, the bedroom window open, letting a light, sticky breeze flow over our light, sticky bodies. She placed a hand to the side of my face, and leaned in to kiss me. "Please, Fran," I said, "Don't." "What?" "Look, just don't, uh, don't kiss me. I know it sounds horrible, but, uh, I'm not like really dating you and," her face began falling fast, "I mean, I really like you and I like being here," OH, was that a lie, "but I just find it difficult kissing someone I'm not in love with." What? What was wrong with me? I just opened my mouth and a turd came out. I blame it on guilt-ridden Christian upbringing, fear of ridicule, just being a dork, I dunno. I could have shown her how to kiss, maybe we could have made love right there, my first time with a girl who truly adored me...maybe I should just face facts and realize I didn't really like her that much, our situation was a matter of circumstance and if I weren't so pathetically horny and fucked up over Michelle I would never have taken advantage of this parents out of town thing to get someone, ANYONE to pay attention to me. "You're kidding," she said. "I feel very awkward." "You're being an asshole. " "I'm sorry," I said, "Here, just lie back, let me pay attention to you for a while." "Hmn," she said, and laid back against the slippery bedcover. Her head rested against the pillows, her hands fell to either side of her slim hips and she slowly slid her legs apart. I hadn't noticed before how strong a scent was beginning to come from her -- I was laughing ignorant of how aroused women can become, I was at that stage of development where it never dawned on me that girls could actually be more horny than boys could. They don't have penises, so they can't get erections, so there's no obvious physical evidence of arousal...unless you happen you have a vagina sitting right in front of you on your parents' bed, wide open and waiting. I stared for a moment, and then laid a tentative hand over the tuft of hair above her sex, and drew my finger down and through the hot, moist folds of skin. She shuddered slightly and let out a moan that was a little more than what that unskilled action should have provoked. My middle finger, back and forth now, I never, shit was Fran, there was just so MUCH liquid there. She was dripping with the stuff. "Inside me, Kael, yes, inside me," she breathed. I shoved my finger up and into her. "Yes!" she cried, "Yes, Kael!" I looked up at her face. Her eyes were closed and her head rocked backwards, arching her chest in the most appealing way, if only -- "Go exploring, Kael," she hummed, "explore, Kael, Just like Indiana Jones!" Oh, this was just wrong. I don't think I'd ever, nor would I ever, hear anyone say anything so lame during intimate relations in my life. "Explore," she uttered, humping my hand, "Explore, like Indiana Jones!" "Please," I thought, "don't speak." But I'd already told her not to kiss me, now I was going to demand she not speak? What was I doing there. What was she doing there? I finger fucked her for a few minutes. I'd had enough. I'd made a terrible mistake and needed to get out. My left hand was wet and smelly, I withdrew my finger and lay down next to her. "I'm sleepy," I said. "Wanna take a shower?" she asked. "Play some water sports?" "Really, Frannie," I said, "I'm not feeling very well now." This was true. I had a case of blue balls so criminal I just wanted to curl up and die. "No, Kael," she almost cried, "you can't. Don't do this." "I'm serious, Fran, I hurt." I pathetically crawled off the bed and started collecting my clothes. She sat up in bed and stared at me as I crept around, her whole, pale, shimmering body staring at me with greater intensity than her eyes could alone. Her young, teenage, lithe and naked body, a physical incrimination of what I was walking away from, sitting there, not saying anything. I put my T-shirt on first. "Fine," she said, finally, defiantly, not letting me know she was terribly hurt. "Where shall we sleep?" "Oh, I, uhh," terrible cramp, "I was gonna go downstairs and see how Don and Margo are getting on." "Better than we are, I'm sure," she said. I slithered out of the room and downstairs. Don and Margo were nowhere to be found, but the den door was closed. I drew my own conclusions (which were right) and flopped onto the couch. The discomfort in my crotch had grown to governmental proportions and I stayed there in a ball for an hour without getting to sleep. Don and Margo never emerged from the den, and Fran never came downstairs. What I thought as I tried to lose consciousness, apart from OH GOD WILL THIS PAIN AND/OR EMBARRASSMENT EVER STOP was, why couldn't it have been Michelle? I could have asked her out at the car wash, right? And then she would have come back here, oh sure, that would have happened, my life sucks. My erection had subsided and a I put one hand into my shorts and twitted around with my little, sticky penis. Blue balls. If only I jacked off or something this pain would go away, but I didn't know that yet. If I had only jacked off...or let her satisfy me. And then satisfied her. What was I, saving myself? Afraid of Hell? Afraid the other kids would find out I'd been messing around with dorky Fran? That was probably closest to the truth. I promised myself I would never, ever, ever get into a situation like this ever, ever again. At least, not without coming first. -- "Kael's Diary" is copyright 1994 Millennium Productions and is reprinted here by permission. Author: Kael Goodman (at745@cleveland.freenet.edu) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Title: Kael's Diary: February, 1987 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Kael's Diary: February, 1987 "She's Crafty" I was in a bad way, and it wasn't just how I was dressed. As evenings went for me during the first, bleak months of 1987 (those that followed that last, bleak month of 1986) this one was pretty good. Everyone in the freshman acting class, or everyone who mattered, was sitting around MacShaney's Pub, which was the sole domain of the University of Ohio School of Theatre, or at least it seemed so to us. There was a very good possibility that if I walked in MacShaney's I would find someone I knew, and with any luck someone I was on speaking terms with. The seriously cool people never went near the place of course, the juniors and seniors and those uppity grad students, but we weren't seriously cool, we were freshmen. The most important part of MacShaney's, apart from the dim lighting and the guy who came in on Fridays who actually played the piano, besides the rough-cut, worn smooth wooden beams and the interesting, strange and sometimes downright frightening photographs of Clemson that dated back to the turn of the century (two men standing with a cow, a bunch of nurses gathered around an old man in a wheelchair in front of the insane asylum, that bridge under which they say someone was found strangled last Halloween, you know, the year before we arrived) the real reason was because they served minors. I was there, with my hair cut short on top but running in twisting, greasy curls down my neck in that unpleasant white trash style, a U of O bandanna tied on my head (a do-rag, a Frisbee helmet) a T-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, and a pair of jeans I had just the day before splashed bleach on to give them that splotchy look that was so necessary at the time. We'd pushed several tables together and it was like a big Viking meeting hall with all of us drinking and yelling and laughing along this long brown, heavy wooden table. Wilson was there. We were becoming really good friends. And Satch, with his long gray trench coat and those crystal ice-blue eyes, he still weirded me out a little, but boy could he make me laugh. He was so strange and beautiful. His hair was darkest brown except for this little swoosh of blond he'd put in at the part. GOD he was cool. Alexis sat across from me and she, at long last, I was finding quite interesting. Alex was a striking girl with this vibrantly red, blood red hair, it stood on her head, curly and stunning, it fell about her face and shoulders and framed her orange face. She had beautiful eyes with the longest, blackest (mascara) eyelashes, a broad Polish nose and a shy little smile. When she let loose and laughed or really started showing off she reminded me a lot of Lucille Ball, and it wasn't just the hair, she could make the funniest faces or play real stupid as a gag. There was only thing that pissed me off about her. When people talked about sex, she would say, with a certain amount of pride that she was a virgin and that she wasn't ashamed of it. It just kind of made me mad, I had lost mine a few months earlier and it was a wonderful and perfect -- I resented the idea that I should be ashamed of that or something. And Martin was there and Sarah and just everybody, except, of course, for Barbara. Barbara, the love of my life. Barbara, the cigarette fiend, the soccer player, the woman I fell in love with at age twelve and who had recently taught me how to fuck. The only woman I had ever fucked. And still, now, almost three months after we broke up, after we had started school here together and I had spent the most wretched and painful time of my life -- adjusting to college life, taking way too many courses, missing all of my friends and working so desperately to save the most important relationship in my life -- still, she was the only woman I thought of or desired. Yes, I was looking around, I was on the rebound and struggling to not seem to pathetic, but if Barbara had said the word, just given me a call, and I would have forgiven everything. "Isn't our improv class exciting?" Alex said, smiling with huge teeth, "have you heard what the final exam is like?" "Yes, and who cares?" Satch said, slowly and mysteriously, the way he liked to, "has anyone given a thought to putting on an hour of club improv?" "Oh you mean funny stuff," I said, setting down my drink. A Sloe Gin Fizz. I'd just discovered it. It was really sweet and sticky. "I used to do some of that in high school. I started my own troupe." "Really, Kael?" Alex asked, visibly impressed. "We were awful," I said, "Comically unfunny." "That's great," Satch said, meaning it wasn't, "Teacher says if we want to we can get around all the usual bureaucratic nonsense of getting a space and signing up for time by staging an improv show as though it were an additional project, like an extra credit project for class." "Brilliant!" I said. Alex touched my hand and spoke lowly to me to draw my attention away from the conversation Satch continued with Martin, Wilson and Sarah. "You know, Kael," she said, "I wish I were as active in theater as you were in high school. I was just in the regular shows -- you seem to know so much already about doing outside projects. And there's so much we could do here at college, I just don't know if I can handle it all!" "Oh," I said, raising my eyebrows. Where did that come from? What do I say? "Well, uh, thanks, I guess. You know Alex...can I tell you something?" "Of course." "I really think you're the most talented girl in our class." It might not have been saying much, but at least it was true. "Well, thank you Kael." "I'm serious -- hey, you know what one of my other projects is?" "No, what?" "I'm a dee jay." "No way!" "Yes," I said, "I do a little show on the campus radio station, Saturdays from twelve till two. Me and a friend host it." Alex cocked her head slightly and gave me a curious smile. "You're pretty smart, Kael." "Oh," I said, "how's that?" "Well, everyone in our class is up in arms about how we're not allowed to do any shows until we're sophomores, and you went out and found a way to perform every week, on the radio!" "I never thought of it like that," I said. "Hey, you wanna do me a big favor?" "Anything." "Well, my co-host went home for the weekend, I was wondering if you wouldn't want to sit in for her." Alex sat back and gave me a big, open mouthed, you are incredible smile. "Oh, Kael! Really?" "Hey, it's no big deal, it'll be fun." "I'll be so nervous!" "Well, I don't want to cheapen it but nobody listens to the campus station, do you?" "Well, no," she said. "So it's really no big deal -- look, I'll meet you at the cafeteria tomorrow morning at ten, and we can walk from there." "It's a date," she said. "Hi, Kael," came a familiar stuffed up voice from over my shoulder. I turned in my heavy wooden chair to see Barbara? No, just her hair -- a short, black, boyish haircut on anyone's face made me see Barbara first. It was Carolyn. Her hair was dyed that color, she liked to wear army boots and funky cats-eye glasses, she was progressive as they say, she listened to all of those moody sounding Euro-groups I just couldn't get into. "What a coincidence," I said, "Alex, this is Carolyn, she's the programming director for WUOR." "A pleasure to meet you," Alex said sweetly. "Hi," Carolyn said, "is this seat taken?" and she gestured to the empty one to my right. "No," I said, "please, sit down." Carolyn looked odd tonight. Oh, it was because she was wearing a nice shirt, a button down shirt and a skinny tie. Her face was a bit mottled, like stucco -- she had a lot of acne scarring, but she was so mysterious it was attractive. A tomboy, and I had learned a long time ago that girls who dress like boys love to mess around more than girls who don't. "Carolyn's a senior," I informed Alex. "What are you majoring in?" Alex asked her. "Well, it was Inco but I switched over to the Communications department so I should be here for a fifth or maybe a sixth year." She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her big ugly bag. "Same old story, I guess," I said. I don't know anyone who graduated in four years. "Hmn," Alex said, "what do you call someone who is taking a fifth year?" "A fifth year student," Carolyn said a little brusquely. "Kael; have you given any thought to those promotional tapes you said you were interested in making for the station?" "Oh," I said, "uhm, yes, a little bit." "I'd like to assist you," Carolyn said, lighting up her cigarette, "seeing as it's your first time." "Well, sure," I said, "thanks." "Not at all," she said, "besides, I think you're cute." "Kael," Alex said, derailing the train of thought Carolyn's unexpected observation put me on, "ten o'clock is real early and it's very late now, would you mind walking me home?" "Oh," I said and looked at my watch. It was a cheap digital number my grandfather had given me for my eighteenth birthday. It read 1:15 AM "Yikes, it is late, sure I'd --" "Hey you live on the South Quad, right?" Carolyn asked, blowing out a long stream of smoke. "Uhm, yeah," I said. "Then you can walk me home, too." *** The three of us trudged across campus through snow and ice and bitter cold. South Quad was located the furthest from town of all the dormitory clusters and took about twenty minutes to get to. I huddled my army jacket close to my body. I was used to dressing warmly at home, but not for extended periods outdoors and I was always forgetting how cold it got at night. Alex had a long, beautiful black coat, she always dressed so snazzy before she went out, even for just a drink. Carolyn wore a long tweed trench coat, probably bought at a second hand store. We approached the first row of residence halls, the freshman row. Alex lived in the one next to mine. "Well," Alex said, "this is where I get off." "Heh," chuckled Carolyn. "See you tomorrow," I said, "for breakfast." "I can't wait," she said, walking over and giving me a big hug, "this is so exciting!" and then she kissed me on the mouth. It was the first time she'd ever done that. As we parted I gave her a big smile. "Yeah," I said, "it is exciting. I'll see you tomorrow." And with that she walked off to her dorm. Carolyn's place was further back, near the river. I stopped as we approached. "Here you are," I said. "Oh," she said, turning to face me, "would you like to come up?" "Uh," I said. I hadn't thought of it, and it struck me as kind of a strange thing to offer. I knew what it probably meant, but just couldn't believe it, that had never happened to me, and it didn't make sense to be happening now, I mean we barely knew each other. "Sure." She smiled at me from the corner of her mouth, a slight squint in her eyes. Strange mouth, her lips were rather fat and protruded a bit from her face. She swung open the great metal doors to the first floor of this college building and we rode the elevator to her place on the fourth floor. *** A single. A small room, cramped and small. A bed, a desk, built in drawers that overflowed with clothes, the space in front of the huge mirror the university provided was positively cluttered with make-up, appliances, personal items -- it was built just like mine, it was on the same quad after all, but this was a single. It was half the size of the room I and my stoner roommate, Rod shared, maybe even smaller. It was the most disorganized and messy room I'd ever seen a woman maintain. And she was a senior, I guess she was twenty-one then, and living on campus. I hoped I wasn't still living on campus when I was her age. The English progressive band "The Smiths" stood on one wall, leering at me, chastising me that meat was murder. Another huge poster, this one of their lead singer was pasted to the opposite wall, by the door, he was posing severely, his shirt off, he had a hand to his head and was pursing his lips at me. There were other posters, too, lots of them, mostly pertaining to music or social functions which featured music. The only chair in the room, the one at her desk, was heaped with dirty clothes and so the two of us were squatting on her bed, talking about things, smoking cigarettes (which still made me woozy) and it was getting very late. "I knew your brother, Max," Carolyn told me. She lit up her fourth cigarette. I hastily stubbed out my second into the University of Ohio ashtray sitting on the bed between us. "Oh yeah?" I asked. "Yeah," she said, "I used to do schlep work over at the tee vee station and I hung out with him a couple times. He's real cute." "He is?" I asked. I wasn't being disrespectful or anything, I'd grown increasingly close to my brother since he graduated from U of O almost two years earlier, but my image of him was pretty much like my image of me, just another guy, skinny and geeky, not the type women notice and bother to say 'he's cute' about. "You don't have to act so surprised, Kael," she said, "you're pretty cute, too." I couldn't believe this. I had only been working with Carolyn at the station for a little over a quarter now and we had never done much talking together, a little perhaps, but where was all of this coming from? It was all so sudden, it seemed obvious where it was going but I had never even kissed a girl I hadn't known already for a few months. And now this, and I couldn't help but feel a little more than insecure and a little less than aroused. The smoke, the speed, the heat -- it was the dead of winter and the university made sure all of its charges weren't being left in the cold. The air temperature was hovering around seventy degrees and I was still a little drunk. My armpits were damp and my forehead was slick and greasy. "You think so?" was all I could say. "Yeah," she said, and smiled warmly. "I've thought you were pretty cute for a wile now." "Hmn," I said, "I've been thinking the same thing about you." Well, this was true. I had. She was short with a boyish black haircut, like Barbara. But her hair wasn't really black, that was dye, and her natural pale skin didn't compliment it, and under the fluorescent light provided by the school, her flesh was even worse -- it wasn't smooth and velvety like Barbara's, it was scarred and pockmarked and her lips were puffy and red and looking not a little chapped, standing out brightly against her sallow face. Her eyes were narrow and dull, not round and bright like Barbara's. She wasn't what I wanted. No one was, but Barbara. "Really?" she asked. "Yeah." Hello, uncomfortable silence. "It's late," I observed. "Would you like to spend the night?" she asked. Help. "Would that be okay?" I asked. I knew she had a boyfriend, or at least I thought she did. "You don't mind, do you Kael?" she asked. Someone tell me what to do. "Uh, do you have anything I could sleep in?" She got up and found a pair of cut-off sweats for me, and excused herself to the communal bathroom to put on her nightgown. I took off my pants, my shoes, my watch, and slipped into the shorts she had provided, which were a little too snug and revealing, and so I just slid into her bed before she came back. In she came, wearing this incongruous floor length baby girl nightgown. It had a bow. At first I was shocked by the way it looked on this hard-core art-type I had come to be acquainted with, but the way she almost blushed as she saw me look her over, the way it fell about her shoulders and down her sides, the way I could see now how large and pendulous her boobs were... I got an erection. Bam. This is what I was here for. This is why I was here. This is why she invited me, and I had to face it, I had not had sex since November. Since long before Barbara and I had broken up. And I had never had sex with anyone else. Carolyn hit the light and got into bed next to me. The lights from the catwalks outside shone through the one window in her room and cast a golden glow on the two of us, faint though, no single light cast its beam directly into her window. I was propped up on a collection of pillows at the head of her bed. She snuggled into me and looked up into my face, her eyes round and wet now, reflecting up at me. "Could I kiss you?" I asked. I was miserable. She nodded slightly and I touched my mouth to hers. Her kiss was dry and lifeless and I struck my tongue into her, licking at hers, and she shoved her tongue into me and we mashed awkwardly, two people trying too soon to adapt to each other's rhythms. I held her to me and she grunted appreciatively, sniffling a little bit, I guess she had a cold and couldn't breathe properly. We kissed little kisses then, each one ending with an embarrassing "smack" from her, my lips are thin and full, hers were wide and fat, they didn't fit, they were just so wrong -- Barbara and I kissed perfectly. I fumbled at the fabric of her nightgown, fiddled with her large, misshapen breasts. This had to stop, I wasn't enjoying this, I didn't love this woman, I didn't even know her well enough to know if I liked her, foreplay and fondling had no joy in it, I just needed to fuck. I wanted to feel my penis inside of someone, to feel it sliding inside of something warm and smooth and comfortable, to take away the pain, if only for just a little while. To forget. "Can we do it?" I heard myself whisper into her ear. "You want to?" she asked. I couldn't tell if it was because she knew what was going on in my head or if she was just making coy bed talk. I helped myself away and looked her in her face, her not-Barbara face. "Yeah," I said with a little smile, "I want to." "Okay," she said, smiling, and pulled her nightgown out from under me. I pulled off my shirt, displaying my chest, covered with large acne boils and sticky bandages holding together the ones which were open festering sores. My acne was at its worst -- the pressure of school had caused a eruption and my fallout with Barbara busted me wide open. I leaned on one hand and worked off her sweatpants and exposed my swollen and bobbing penis. She lay back against the mattress, I could see her naked body below me, all white and glowing in the dim lamplight. She was skinny but her hips were broad and her pussy was an unshaven raggedy bush of dark and twisted hair. Not neatly trimmed like Barbara's. Her breasts were huge, so much so that they were flat against her, spilling out across her chest and over the sides. I put my mouth to the left one and kissed her wide, almost invisible nipple. It too was dry and chapped. Sucking on it seemed like a joke. I looked up at her. "Would you put me in?" I asked. She reached down between us and took hold of my dick, pressing it against the opening of her vagina as I slid forward. I held myself up on my arms as I pressed on in, her snatch was hot and wet and huge, I passed through easily, and in a moment fell against her and hugged her close, I was longing for comfort and this was it, I pumped myself into her hard and fast, my chest, my Band-Aids mashed into her breasts, my butt bucking up and back into her groin, my face was stuffed into the pillows and I groaned and whimpered, the stinging sensations in my dick rising swift and increasing relentlessly and she squeezed my ass and I felt the surge burning, swelling up in my balls, in the base of my penis and I cried and I whimpered and I came, shooting a pathetic dribble of white stuff into Carolyn. A minute and a half, tops. I frumbled myself up and off of her, breathing unevenly. Her face hid not a drop of disappointment. "Hmn," she said, sitting up, "impressive." I lowered my head in shame as she got back into her nightgown and excused herself back to the bathroom, presumably to wipe off my little present. I skulked about and located my sleeping outfit and had them on by the time she returned. "Do you still want to sleep over?" she asked. It's amazing the two different connotations 'spend the night' and 'sleep over' have. "Yes," I said, because I assumed things were bad enough without my running away like an animal with his limp dick between his legs. She got back in bed, we said good night, and she fell asleep. *** I looked at her bedside LED clock. 4:15. I had been lying awake in Carolyn's bed for over an hour and a half. The heat wouldn't let me sleep. My emotional distress wouldn't let me sleep. And the one time I had drifted into a light semi-conscious state, she began smacking her big fat lips, a kissing noise, accompanied by the word 'muh'. She did it often, she did it loud. She smooched the air. I gazed exhaustedly at the poster of Morrisey. I began to feel he was making kissy faces at me alone, and now I could hear him. "Muh, muh." My first one night stand, and it was wretched. This was much worse than anything, even worse than the time I had led Fran on, leaving her panting and unsatisfied on my parents' bed. At least then I had stopped before I had fucked her. At least then I wished I was with a girl I had a crush on but had never actually been with -- a longing for something I didn't know of or understand, not like this. Not humiliated by a woman three years older than me, wishing stupidly for a little satisfaction like that I had known in the arms and between the legs of a woman I loved, who loved me. "Muh, muh, muh." 4:16 *** "Carolyn." "Mm?" "Carolyn, I'm going to go, okay?" "Mm-hm." "I'll see you at the next station meeting." Pause. "Muh, muh." I crawled over her snoozing and noisy body and pulled my clothes back on, my pants and different layers of jackets and squinted to make out the legend on the clock. 5:23. Out of that building and not looking back, pulling my coat to me to keep out the bitter wind as I crossed the quad to Freshman Row. In my room I found my roommate in his bed, his mighty, dope-induced snoring not nearly as disturbing as Carolyn's disgusting sleepy time smacks which had tormented me for the past what seemed like million years. I shed my clothes, peeled my underwear from my still moist and sticky penis, the guilty reminder of night spent in the tenth circle of hell, the one meant for premature ejaculators. I flew like a wraith in the early unfamiliar, unknown and unusual morning silence of a boys dormitory into the showers to wash myself clean, to expurgate the stink of disappointed pussy from my crotch, to wipe the sweat from my brow, to open the puckering sores on my chest, clean and disinfect the accumulated puss and blood that flowed like tears from the open wounds before dressing them again, dry and shivering with a patchwork of fresh bandages in the safety of my own room. And then I slept. *** "Good morning, you're listening to WUOR, Clemson's only alternative. That was Crowded House with "Don't Dream It's Over". Before that we heard "I Wish I Had a Date" by Fishbone and started the whole set off with the Beastie Boys and "She's Crafty". You're listening to 'Saturday Afternoon with Kael and Cheryl' but it's not today, is it?" "No, not today." "That's right, because this morning I have my good friend Alex sitting in with me." "Hello Clemson." "And you know, forgive me for saying this, but I don't miss Cheryl at all right now." "Oh that's sweet," she said, and knowing her she meant it. Alex and I were seated side by side in front of the operations board in the small studio that was WUOR. We had our headsets on, a mic in front of each of us, and had been bantering like this, spinning records and gadding happily over the air for about an hour, half the length of the show. My nerves were shattered over breakfast and I tried desperately not to let her know it. Alex was too excited about being on the radio to notice, just my luck, and now I was beginning to settle in, calm down -- I was whipped, a little hung over and only three hours of sleep to recuperate, but Alex was such a doll and we were having such a good time, I felt the horrid memories of the night before beginning to subside. "Hey Alex." "Yeah Kael?" "I'm taking a big risk by asking this over the air." "Oh." "Yeah, but it's something I gotta do." "I understand." "Alex?" "Yeah, Kael?" "You know next Saturday is St. Valentine's Day." "Oh?" "Yeah, and I wanted to ask you, in front of all of Clemson, if you'd be my valentine." "Oh Kael, I'd love to be." "We'll be right back." And with that I started a PSA about how to escape from your dorm room in case of fire. I swiveled my chair towards the stacks and rummaged about for another album to play. "Kael?" "Yeah, Alex?" "Did you mean what you said just then?" I turned around in my seat to look at her. Such an innocent face, all bright green eyes and freckled. She was so kind and endearing. "Yeah," I said, smiling shyly, "did you?" "Sure," she said, "I'm flattered." With that the door opened and in walked Carolyn in her hulking overcoat and with a thick wool scarf wrapped around her neck, obscuring her chin. "Hiya Kael," she said, setting down an armful of station mail and new releases. "How are you this morning?" Her tone was empty, cold and businesslike. "Morning, Carolyn," I said, trying hard to stare at the albums in my hand, "I'm fine, how are you." "Fine," she said, brushing past me and placing certain pieces of mail into certain cubbyholes. "Hey, can you meet with me a half hour before the station meeting tomorrow to go over those promotional ideas?" "Sure," I said, "that would be fine." I set a new record on turntable one. "Cool," Carolyn said, and turned to head out the door. She stopped right next to me, and set something frighteningly familiar on the console. "And here," she said, "last night you forgot your watch." -- "Kael's Diary" is copyright 1994 Millennium Productions and is reprinted here by permission. Author: Kael Goodman (at745@cleveland.freenet.edu) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Title: Kael's Diary: June, 1989 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Kael's Diary: June, 1989 "One of the Millions" part one It was the strangest apartment. It was located on High Street in downtown Clemson, Ohio, home of the University of Ohio, and had been converted out of an old warehouse. Each apartment in the place was designed differently. This one opened into a cramped kitchen/lobby area whose walls did not come together at right angles, but the ceiling went up about twenty feet. There was a skeletal staircase which went up to the three separate, tiny bedrooms, none of which had doors. My two roommates and I had survived an entire school year together in that tiny place, and none of us would be friends ever again. My bedroom was at the far end of the tiny, balcony-like corridor which overlooked the kitchen below. By the time you walked around to it, oddly placed steps up and the intermittently arranged pipework just below the ceiling made a six foot tall guy like me need to hunch over. I couldn't stand up straight in my own bedroom. The room was tiny, tiny, tiny. A desk (which came with the place and I never sat at) at the far wall seemed to reach half-way to the ceiling. It's real job was to block out the horrendous amount of sunlight which would blaze through the industrial size window which began one inch below the ceiling and ended at the floor. This same window continued at the top of the ceiling of the "dining room" (ha ha) right below my room. Having already spent the previous summer in this place, the summer of 1988, a summer of extreme heat and drought in the midwest, and with another one approaching, you would think I would have, somewhere along the line, put up a sheet or something to keep out the light and give myself a little privacy. But the window overlooked a parking lot, I wasn't particularly modest and, hell, you know, the desk did a pretty good job. This night, though, the only light coming through that window was a stream of broken beams cast by the industrial lights of the parking lot. The light cast unusuals on me, on my naked chest, and on Vera. Vera. Vera was thin. Her face was thin. Her nose was very thin. Her arms were thin. We lay facing each other in bed. It was possibly three or four in the morning. I kept slipping in and out of sleep, as I always do when I'm in bed with someone new. But every time I opened my eyes, hers were already open. Her forearms were together, her ha, Vera her freshman. The way we got together is an interesting story in itself. On an ordinary weekend night (possibly Thursday -- the weekends start earlier at school) I was in the basement at MacShaney's, where all the theater students hang out, and Kristie invited me to sit down and join her. Kristie was a groovy young woman, also a freshman, she wore blocky glasses and had a huge toothy smile. Her hair was bobbed mushroom style, as was the fashion and had a thing for mustard colored sweaters. I was just getting over my "studious" phase where I wore nothing but ties, vests, slacks and penny loafers. Summer was pressing on and I returned to my old standard of T-shirts and shorts. "Kael," Kristie said, "this is Vera." "Hello, Vera," I said, shaking hands with her. She was dressed very sharply, like she had a meeting to get to or something. White turtleneck, plaid jacket, BIG shoulder pads, a skirt, sensible shoes. Her black, black hair was shaved in back and what was on top swept up and down over her forehead in a big wave. "Hello, Kael," she said. "You look very familiar." "Oh, well, have you seen and shows at the school of theater, I'm in most of them." "Ah," she said, visibly unimpressed, "no. Maybe we've just met before." "Uh-huh," I said, turning my attention to Kristie, "and how have you been?" The conversation turned from bad to worse as I started in on a few members of the faculty and my fellow students, grousing about one thing and another -- basically it was the end of a bad day and I was unloading on my new friend Kristie. Vera, however, got the distinct impression that I was a complete boner and not very interesting or amusing. "...and Thad was being a major weenie at strike yesterday, he just kept pissing and moaning about one damn thing after another," I was saying. "Hmn," Vera said, "don't get much of that around here." "What?" I asked. "Oh, ha. Yeah, nice, well excuse me, I've had a rotten week." "So glad you could share." I looked to Kristie, who just smiled and shrugged. "I like your friend," I said. "Wish I could say the same," Vera said, raising her glass of beer to her lips. "You don't know my friend," I snapped, and turned back to Kristie. "I'm sorry, Kristie. I should go." "I understand," Kristie said, "Catch you later." "It was a pleasure," Vera said, smiling sharply and offering her hand. I shook it, smiling just as bright. "Maybe someday we can start over," I said. "You know, for the children." "Uh-huh." The very next night I was again in MacShaney's. Bones and Rudy were playing out, and just my luck Rudy was at the bar, taking a break from his usual singing cum screaming bullshit and it was just Bones, who was a very decent guitar player and a modest singer. I was alone at my table, close to where Bones sat on a stool, playing an impassioned rendition of "All Along the Watchtower", which I had especially requested. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Vera. "Hi," she said brightly, shaking hands with me, "have we met? My name is Vera, and you are..?" "Uh, Kael?" "Yes, I think we're both friends with Kristie," she took a seat, "anyway, it's very nice meeting you like this." "You, too," I said, smiling in spite of myself, "you seem like a very nice person." "I am," she said, proudly, "and I think you are, too. What's that you're drinking?" And so it went. For some strange reason Vera gave me a second chance. Maybe I really had amused her or something, maybe she thought I was cute, I dunno. Kristie, who was also there, joined us and we three had a pleasant little chat over the barroom din. "Well," Vera said after a half hour or so, "it's late, I wanted to turn in." "Yeah," Kristie said, "I want to go, too." And with that Kristie stood up to leave. Vera just sat there and looked at me intently. "Well," I said, "It was very nice meeting you for the first time like this, we must do it again." "Yes," she said, "I think we will." She continued to sit there and stare at me as Kristie watched us both with interest. "And you live..?" I asked. "Thompson Hall." "Can I walk you both home?" Vera abruptly stood up and said, "Why yes, that would be nice." And I walked them both back through the balmy late-spring streets of Clemson, past puking frat boys, burrito stands and lots and lots of bricks. We came at last to their dorm. "So," I said, "here you are." "Yes," Vera said, turning her back to the large building and, again, looking unwavering at me. "Ookay," Kristie said, "good night, Kael." And with that she left Vera and I alone. "May I ask a presumptuous question?" I asked. "Of course." "Did you come looking for me tonight?" "Come looking for you?" she said, innocently, "I only just met you." "You know what I mean." "Yes, I did, and no, I was on a date." "You were what?" I asked. "Thad, you know, Thad who you were bad mouthing last night?" "Yeah?" "We just saw a movie and he brought me to MacShaney's afterwards." "What!" I gasped. "I saw him there -- you ditched Thad at MacShaney's?" "We ditched Thad at MacShaney's, yes." "Oh, but that's not right!" I almost laughed. "He's going to think I did it on purpose!" "Probably," she said. "Well," I said, "I should be going, you look tired." "I am," she said. "Thanks for walking me home." "No biggie." She stood there, not moving. "We should get together," I said. "Again." "Yes," she said, "we should." She stood there, not moving. "Can I take you to dinner?" I asked. "Tomorrow?" "Tomorrow, sure," she said. "Six?" "Great," I said. "Great," she said, "see you in the lobby, here, tomorrow, at six. Goodnight." And with that she suddenly spun around, and walked into her dorm. Stunned, I turned slowly to walk away, looking back only once. "Shit," I said under my breath. "I've been pegged." But she didn't trust me. Good for her, I guess. It was very difficult convincing her to spend the night. I laid on top of her on my bed, in my apartment, kissing little, sharp kisses. Lips touched, and touched again, small tongue flicker, but mostly lips, hers on top, mine on top. She had the darkest eyes, and they were so close to mine, her long, skinny pale arms wrapped around my neck. Her jacket was on top of the "sun desk" and her thin cotton turtleneck had no sleeves. I began pulling at the base of her shirt. "Oh, Kael," she said, putting a hand on mine, "I don't know." I looked at her with a little grin and kissed her again. "I'm very shy," she said. "Ha!" I said. "Oh please, you are not." "I don't know." "It will be," I kissed her pointy nose, "nice." "Okay," she said, sitting up a little. I sat back. "But I'll warn you." "Huh." "I'm scarred." "You mean, like, emotionally..?" "My body." I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, I just sat and smiled. I leaned forward and we kissed again. "I think you're very beautiful," I said. "You're a very attractive woman." She pulled her shirt from out of the waistband of her shorts. "This might change your mind." "Impossible." She pulled up her shirt and drew it over her head. The light was very dim, the lights from the parking lot making her milky white skin glow in the dark brighter than her white turtleneck had. Her waist was narrow, her rib cage, too, she had no breasts to speak of, her nipples small and round, dark little circles in a background of snow white. I couldn't see any scarring to speak of. I leaned forward, looking alternately at her face and at her chest. I kissed her face and kissed her neck, and kissed her shoulder. She rolled her head back and let me kiss right under her chin, and then I began to see. A v-shaped portion of her body, beginning an inch or so below her left nipple, and forming a triangle to the middle of her neck and over the her left shoulder and down, was a tortured span of flesh. It wasn't so horrible as she thought it was. Just a different texture, just not smooth. It wasn't even a different shade. "Is that a burn?" I asked. She nodded quickly. I looked up to her face. "You're still beautiful." I reached down and pulled my T-shirt up and off. "See?" I said. My chest was a mass of rubbery bumps and lumps, the scarring from adolescent acne gone horribly awry. "I'm in Braille." She peered at my chest and touched my scars gently. "That's nothing," she said. I drew my hand across her chest. "That's nothing. It depends on whose opinion you're asking. Now lie down." She slid back and I moved over her, and rested my lips gently on her left nipple, licking and sucking. She sighed appreciably, letting me lick and kiss every little bit of her frontside. I nuzzled her navel and drew my tongue in a straight line up her belly to where the skin began to turn from pale and clear to pale and damaged, and beyond. I was aroused at the texture on my tongue, and on my face, kissing, tasting, enjoying her rumpled epidermis. We did not have sex that night, she said she wasn't ready and I secretly wondered if Vera and I would ever be. I didn't think so. -- Kael's Diary: June, 1989 "One of the Millions" part two "Kael?" The sun was already blazing through the window, the temperature already starting to rise, very, very fast. "Kael, are you awake." My skin was sticky from sleep sweat and the heat coming from outside. I barely opened my eyes, wasn't even close to surfacing consciousness. I could just understand it was Vera next to me, dressed. "Kael, I have to go." "Whutimizzit?" "It's almost nine," she said, "I have a final in three hours I still need to study for." "Okay." I rolled over. "Kael," she said, "would you like to have breakfast? At that Mexican place or something?" I had already fallen asleep again. "Call me when you wake up?" "Mm-hm." "Kael?" *** I was twenty, going on twenty-one. We were just beginning to enjoy the effects of having a spineless twerp like Bush in the White House and the gargantuan and ridiculous pre-promotion for the first Batman movie had swept the nation. I was, at this last week of my junior year only just beginning to settle into my fresh outlook on life. The previous fall I suffered a near nervous breakdown and finally decided suicide wasn't just an option, but the only sensible option. My whole life I had allowed forces beyond my control to steer me into whatever situation seemed like the one I was supposed to follow. Having completely lost my faith in God, my friends, or the government, and sensing that life on Earth without Kael Goodman would in the long and the short of it be more or less like life with him, I realized I needed to start making reasons for myself to keep plodding away at existence. I quit smoking, dropped about twenty-five pounds, grew my hair VERY long, and started becoming "Kael, the boy every girl loves", or "the boy who loves every girl", that was more like it. One woman I had loved, and then almost punched in the face at the depth of my fall 1988 doldrums, was Alex. We had dated all through sophomore year (I was the first man she had ever had sex with) but I was far too immature to sustain the relationship, opting rather to flit about and kiss any girl who said "yes" if I asked them to. I'd like to think I broke Alex's heart. We didn't talk all winter, and we only just started settling into what I presumed to be the nature of our relationship for the rest of eternity, the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend who become just good friends thing. That would be okay. The idea of making enemies with someone so unconcerned and endearing as Alex would have definitely said something about me. *** I woke up a few hours later. The temperature inside had risen to about seventy-five degrees and I felt deathly and gross. My body was slick with sweat and my hair was pasted onto my head. Summer in Clemson, Ohio. I would be spending it here again, working on the summer theater program, listening to De La Soul's first album, the latest release by XTC ("Oranges and Lemons") and Peter Gabriel's soundtrack from "The Last Temptation of Christ" which had just come out. I slid out of bed and harrumphed into the shower. My two roommates were all through with finals and long gone, thank god, and so I could traipse around the place more or less at ease. Mine, all mine, for a few more days. I had already signed a lease on a single apartment around to corner, a cramped basement pad, just perfect for one single guy, and where I planned to spend the rest of my college education, alone, at peace, and with the occasional (well, no doubt more than occasional) nocturnal visitor. Where to go, what to do? I had already taken my last final, closed the last show, the next week was just playtime until the summer session began. I stepped out onto High Street, combed and cleaned, around noon, it was a bright shine, shiny bright day. Where to go, what to do. I walked up the street, saying "hi" to the people I knew, who were plentiful. Taking a left up Mentor Street I came to a huge early-twentieth century house, huge for student-rental shack-type houses, anyway. It was two-stories, symmetrical, and even had a front porch that wrapped around the front and went half the distance to the rear of the house. That porch, and the rest of the building was divided in two, however, and two separate sets of tenants lived on either side. I knew all of them. One side for the boys, one side for the girls. All eight of them were theater students. Some of them had been dating when the lease was signed, but now none of them were. We (the entire rest of the theater department) has christened it "Theatre Hell" way back in September. I wasn't the only one who had had a rough year. "Hallo?" I said, calling through the open wooden door. The front room of the right half, the girls' half of the building, formerly a memorial to the likes of James Dean, Jimmy Stewart and Charles Chaplin, was strewn with boxes and paper and trash. Two had already moved out. "Just a minute," a voice called from around an odd angled corner. A moment later Betts stepped out from the bathroom in a white, terry-cloth robe and toweling what was now her very, very short blonde hair. "Oh, hi Kael." "Hey Betts," I said, stepping further into the front room. "My god, your hair. It's gone!" "Yeah," she said, wincing a little and pulling down a strand and having it end before she expected it to. "It's a new thing." "I love it," I said. "I can't tell you, it just brings out your face." "Thanks," she said. She walked back towards the kitchen. A swing like my back porch. "Want some tea?" "Hmn? Oh, love some. You'll be here all summer?" "All summer, I'm moving into Sally's old place." She banged about with a kettle in the sink and I heard water running. "Hey, that's across the street from my new place." "Yeah, I guess we're going to be seeing a lot of each other." I paused for what I felt was the proper amount of time to insinuate something and said, "Yeah." And with that Alex bounded down the stairs. "I thought that was you, Kael, hi honey." She could have knocked me over with a breath. Her hair, which had been long and curly even since I met her three years before, and now it was a short cut reaching just below her chin, and straight and encircled her round, freckled face like a shocking red oval picture frame. She bounced over and gave me a big hug. I breathed in deeply. With Alex I could never tell whether I was going to receive the freshest intake of bathroom oils and powders or a good whiff of natural body odor, and either one was always a turn on. When we parted she leaned in and gave me a little kiss which lasted just a moment longer than either of us had expected. "Uh-huh," she said, her face just inches from mine, her long, wide nose moving in to touch mine. "Your tea's ready," Betts said, walking in from the kitchen. "Oh, thanks," I said, disengaging myself from Alex and receiving the steaming mug Betts was offering me. I turned back to face my old girlfriend. "So what, did you two go out together on this short hair thing or what?" "Oh," she said, grabbing a large handful of her fluorescent red hair, "no, well, maybe she inspired me. Whaddaya think?" "It's incredible," I sputtered, "it just takes some getting used to." I put a hand out and ran my fingers through her hair. Alex's hair was so red, red, red, red, redder than any redhead I've ever known, and I've known a lot of redheads. And thick. Thick red hair. And now short and straight. Way twenties. "Wanna come into my room and watch me pack?" Alex asked. "Yes," I said, "that's what I wanted to do today." *** I lay on Alex's bed on my back. My head was propped slightly by a pillow. She crouched next to me, kneeling on the floor, her prominent chin resting on her folded, freckled forearms. "Wanna know a secret?" Alex asked, poking me in the belly with one free finger. "Yes." "Betts told me she was looking forward to seeing a lot of you this summer." "What!" I couldn't believe it. That was just great! Now I knew it was going to be a good summer. "Oh, you're kidding." "It's true." "Well, I'm going to have to ask her over for dinner at my new swinging bachelor's pad." "Yeah?" "Yes," I said, "in fact, I'll ask her before I leave this building." "Yeah," she said, "probably the last time you see in the inside of Theater Hell." "You knew we called it that?" "Oh come on, Kael, everybody knew." "Hmn." "I'll miss it," she said. "I'll miss you," I said, taking her hand in mine. Alex's skin. Definite, distinctive texture, like soft leather. It was like that all over her body. Rough? No, soft but very textured. Soft leather. And firm. "Aw," she said, smiling brightly. Big thick eyelashes, normally sporting mascara, now light orange, almost colorless, big, thin smile, soft lips. She loved it when people said stuff like that. "Really?" "It's been a shitty year, Alex," I said. "Huh," she chuffed, "don't I know it." "Well," I said, "this is nice. I feel we've overcome some tremendous obstacle. And that we're, stronger now, because of it." "Hmn." She peered down along my outstretched body. "Kael!" she said, looking up at me sharply. "Do you have an erection?" "Alex, sweetheart, I have had a woodie since late last night that I have not been able to get rid of." "Oh my," she said, rather mock taken aback. "Alex." "Kael." "Are you my friend?" "I like to think that I am." "Would you do anything for me?" She paused. Rather matter of factly she asked, "Kael, do you want me to give you a blow job." "Alex, I want you to give me THE blow job," I said, "like no blow job I have ever received." "You're serious." "Toot me." "Well," she said, sitting up on the floor, "you're just going to have to take your pants off first." I undid the drawstring to my shorts, lifted up my hips, and drew my shorts and underpants right off. My penis, quite swollen and stiff wobbled against my belly. "Oh, Kael," she said, "that's big." "Eh," I said, non-committally. Alex crawled up onto the bed, and straddled my legs, facing me. With a knowing smile she laid her delicate fingers on my dick, pointed it up towards her face, and lowered her mouth onto it. My entire penis disappeared under her nose. "Holy fuck," I gasped, as Alex's tongue hammered against the spongy underside of my cock. The muscles in the back of her mouth and throat clenched against the dome of my dick and pushed it out and away as her lips closed tightly around every slippery inch of my loose penis-flesh. In and out she took me like some tasty dicksicle. "Wait, wait, wait," I poofed. She let my spit-soaked penis relax for a moment. I took a breath and said, "well, I can see you've learned a few things in the last year." "I had a great teacher," she said, and moved up onto top of me. "Ouch," I said, "you mean I wasn't?" "Oh, you taught me the basics." "I taught you how to love." "Ha!" she said, rolling off and next to me. "You did not teach me that." I scooted onto my side so we faced each other, her back against the wall next to the bed. We kissed. We kissed again. "Wanna do it?" I asked. "Kael!" she smiled. "Is that what you came over here for?" "That's why I go anywhere." "Hmn." "You're going today, right?" "Tonight." "It's been a long year," I said, "for us, I mean. It might be a nice way of saying 'see you next fall.'" She sat up and moved to get off the bed. "Wait here," she said. "What?" "And take your shirt off." Alex walked out of the room. Hmn. I took my T-shirt off and plopped it next to the bed. I rolled onto my back. Christ, it was so hot outside, and it was only June. The window on the far wall was wide open and a warm breeze blew through the room and over my naked body. One moment, then Alex stepped in, slowly, looking out from the side of her recently cut hair, peering at me. She smiled with a little anticipation, my gaze dropping down to her wildly freckled shoulders, great spots of orange on a light, light pink background. A dazzling pattern of speckled skin, the orange dots becoming smaller and smaller, giving way to just that imperceptible shade of pink as her chest began to swell into those two large breasts, all pink, no freckles, her shoulders back her breasts stood straight out, two deep pink nipples hard and excited. Down, a well-defined tummy, neither skinny nor chubby, her waist came in and her hips went out, her belly-button beginning a trail of wispy red hair which traveled down her belly to a stunning shock of red. That tuft of red hair, standing straight up like some fright wig. I could smell her from here, no perfume today, moving day, she smelled bad and it just made me harder. She giggled a little, standing there by the doorway. "Oh, Alex," I said, "sometimes I forget how beautiful you are." Alex smiled broadly and bit her lip. She strode over and flopped on top of me. "Oof," I said. "Oof you," she said, pressing her lips hard against mine, ramming her tongue innocently between my teeth. I'll never know how anyone could innocently ram anything, but she could. I slid my hands over her hips, worked one over a thigh, bucked and rolled swiftly, bringing her up on top of me, both broad, orange spangled legs straddling mine, her bright red vagina resting just where my balls become my penis. "Whoop!" she said. It looked really funny, like my dick was actually hers, only upside down. "We never did it with me on top." "We tried, remember? You couldn't get the hang of it." "I couldn't?" "Trust me." She slipped her right hand down between her legs, lifted her hips slightly, and tucked my penis neatly into her. Her cunt, warm, wet, smelly as hell, she lowered herself slowly, very, very, way, fucking slowly onto me. I let out an equally slow breath. Alex fixed me with those huge eyes, those long translucent lashes, and grinned wickedly. Her knees, bent under her, each hand placed firmly on the bed on either side of my head, she rocked her pelvis up and back, up and back, slowly, red vagina lips, sliding up and down me, catching at the odd moment, gripping suddenly and releasing. The muscles of my back tightened, my feet digging into the mattress, I lifted my butt, rolling my hips, I couldn't help it, my penis had never been THIS hard -- I always got a little softer whenever I went in, my cock got even harder, the feelings intensified, my penis HURT with sensation, my hands gripped her hips just below her sloping waist and I began forcing her to pick up speed, my penis was soaked, thrusting up and in, and out almost to the point of exiting and then slamming back in, thudding against the back of her snatch, we were rocking now, oh yeah, and I couldn't stop if the house caught fire. "Oh, Kael," she breathed, "I want you on top." "You sure?" I choked. "This isn't good?" "Oh, this is great," she laughed and sobbed. "But please." She leaned over and kissed me. I pulled out, ducked under her as she rolled onto her back, freckled legs lying wide open, her bright red vagina, moist and pungent, her own fluids already out and coating that crimson mound of hair. I kneeled between her legs and brought my mouth down over one of her breasts, biting and sucking while firmly kneading the other. "Oh," she sighed, "forget that Kael, just fuck me." Whoomp, my cock like some great, comic horn, I slished my penis in her fragrant gates. Wham, I began pronging her like I had never done for anyone ever before. Anyone. Ever. I was truly astonished at my own dick. It was stiff and painful and glorious, and it did't feel as though I would ever be soft again, or that I would even come for that matter. Who cared? Who'd want this to end? I was so in love at that moment. Propped up over Alex's beautiful face. I bent in and awkwardly kissed her, chewed on her little ears, she panted and gasped as I swung myself into to her, again, again. "Huhnn," I said, "hey, huh, Alex?" Her eyes rolled up into her head, her head rolled back into the pillow. Her mouth fell open. "Mmm, yeah, Kael?" "I love you, Alex." "Mmm, I love you, too, Kael." "No," I said, laughing, "you don't get it. Hm, hmn, hm. I am so in love with you right now." I lowered my body a bit and grabbed onto her shoulders. I kissed her cheek and buried my head in her neck. Wham, wham, wham. She groaned even louder. "I know what you mean," she guffed, "and I mean it, too. Now shut, huh, up, I'm just about to come all over you." I laughed out loud, leaned back up on my arms and kept fucking. I could see every tooth in her mouth, her head was so far back and her chin almost touched her chest -- and she exploded. She yelled and shuddered and bucked for a solid minute or more, and I didn't let up. "Stop, stop!" she yelled. "You must stop!" So I did. I stopped. I withdrew. I lay beside her and kissed her face and pulled her body to me. "Oh my god, Kael, that was wonderful." "Yeah," I said, kissing her eyelids. "I'm sorry, you didn't get to finish." "Funny," I said, "that's okay." "Really?" "Yeah, I don't need to. I just wanted to make you happy." Wow, but doesn't that sound like bullshit. But it was true, and she could tell, and she smiled and rubbed herself against me. Odd. I had spent the last few days hanging out with Vera, a woman I kind of liked but who wouldn't have sex with me. I was dying to spurt into something other than Kleenex, but I just couldn't. All I wanted to do was watch Alex go ballistic with ecstasy, and, of course, to love me. I think that was it. I just needed every god damn woman in the world to fucking adore me that spring. And I was well on my way. I put on my clothes, and Alex put on hers. She told me about the big end-of-the-year party that was going on in the other side, the "boys" side of the house that night and that I had better show up. I promised I would. Letting myself out I passed Betts in the front room. "Be seeing you, Kael," she said. "Yeah, hey Betts," I said, "all summer, right?" "Uh-huh," she said, "I'm designing costumes for the show." "You said. I'm designing props, You wanna get together for dinner sometime?" "Yeah," she said, showing me those huge teeth, "we should sometime." "Monday too soon?" "Ha, no, Monday's great." "Great," I said. "See you tonight. At the party." "See ya then," she said. And with that I stepped out into the blinding afternoon. A party. Tonight. And nothing to do until then. Where to go, what to do, who to see next? -- Kael's Diary: June, 1989 "One of the Millions" part three Successfully, I emerged on the other end of a long, oppressively hot Clemson day. Since that point in the afternoon when I had left Alex, sticky and satisfied, I spent most of my time darting in and out of ridiculously air-conditioned establishments. Later in the summer of 1989 the median temperature was around sixty, but this day in June suggested it was going to be as unbearable a season as the summer of 1988 had been, that summer of record temps and horrible drought. I recalled that past summer, before Quintel had moved in and it was just me and Nancy in that strange, strange, Escher painting of an apartment. Both Nancy and I had signed up for the same film criticism class (summer session is not a time for physics courses, thank you) and we would drag ourselves out of our beds at eight, the thermometer already pushing eighty, the friendly sun already painting my room and most of the rest of the place, and venture bravely into the early morning heat haze. And every day we would breathe a sigh of relief to dip into the cool surroundings of the film arts building. Into our chairs we would slide, all ready to enjoy "La Strada" or whatever classic in cozy, chilly surroundings. And every day, about twenty minutes into the flick, our skin, only a half hour previously slick and gross now goose pimply and shivering. We never learned. We earned, deserved pneumonia. But this day, the sun had gone down, and it was nice, nice, seventy degrees nice, and I was headed for Theatre Hell; Boys Side, for there was a party going on, and I would be, oh, a fool to miss it. If Theatre Hell; Girls Side was a testament to the stereotypical whims of college females; cleanliness, potpourri and shrines to dead or nearly dead film stars in their prime, then Boys Side was just as predicable, and even moreso. It was dank. It was moodily lit. It was woody. You stepped in the front door, and even in broad daylight, you could only see a few feet in front of you, in the front hall, the banister ran up to nowhere, walls ran up into total darkness, it felt cramped and claustrophobic, except the corners and where the floor met the wall seemed to go on forever. And once you reached the end of the hall and stumbled upon the sitting room -- pretension met utter slovenliness. Large, overstuffed chairs and couches, stuffed to the point of splitting, and some already had, a pipe in an ashtray, decanters of brandy and cognac (some actually half full) sitting up or falling over, half read, dog eared books and magazines, posters for George Romero films, and absolutely everything, everywhere one looked, was a uniform shade of brown. I passed safely through all of this, I knew my way around, I was a regular. "Hello! Hi! Tomorrow? I guess I'll see you next fall. Congratulations! Tell her I said hi. Damn you look good. Yeah, it is dark in here. What the hell is he doing? Great. Excuse me, I need to get to the fridge." I shook hands with everyone I knew, who was everyone, and the place was stuffed. Semi-tasteful classical music played and I shuffled my way to the kitchen and over to the refrigerator. In went a six of cheap beer, out came a sparkling wine cooler, that seemed like a fair trade. Half past ten, the horizon had cleared the sun almost forty-five minutes earlier. No lights came through the cracked window panes, not even from the neighboring houses. The crowd was thick in that tiny little place; practically everyone who was left before finals were over had been invited, and they weren't many, but they were all there. They were all friends and close acquaintances, and those I didn't like weren't important enough to leave the room over. I took a seat in one nasty Naugahyde chair (brown). "What's up, Kael?" someone asked. "Oh, nothing," I said. "When are you taking off?" "Tomorrow." "Me too," someone else said. "Hey, where's Vera?" someone else asked. I looked over and saw Thad coming into view. Oh, oh, Thaddeus. One year older than me, and a year behind in studies, he'd transferred in from somewhere. The first time I met him I loathed him. The first time I saw him was on stage, he was in one of the first one acts of the fall season and I had to admit he was funny. It was him and Laura in this piece, I can't remember what it was, some wedding slash comedy slash horror thing. We were in a make-up class (I mean, a class in the instruction of how to apply make-up for theatrical purposes, not, as you may have thought, a make-up class for something missed or failed) and we learned early on that we were each ridiculously fond of ourselves and prone to wit and insults. He proved an easier target of course, standing a few inches shorter than me (and a lot of people, for that matter) had a premature bald spot on top of his head, and, of course, just wasn't as clever as I was. Am. "Oh, God, Thad," I said, rising to meet him. "Give me a hug you great, black bastard." He strode over, laughing, and threw the arm not bearing a bag of presumable alcoholables around my neck. "Kael, you beautiful prick," he chuckled. "I had no idea," I said, as we parted. "She came up to me, if I had known..." "Oh, forget it," he said. "We weren't getting on very well, anyway. Have her." "I don't think she's one for being had, Thaddeus." I waggled my bottle at him. "Shame on you and your little sexist mouth." "Bless you and your little sexy mouth," he said, and backed towards the kitchen. I smooched his way, and he smooched back. I sat back down. Sitting on the floor, holding a beer, in front of the couch next to my naugathrone, was Marge. She was one of Kristie and Vera's quiet friends. She had also been the costume designer for a play I had written and directed that quarter. Her head was a mop of dirty orange hair and she had a round face with tiny little eyes and liked to wear huge round glasses. Would comparing her to Thelma from Scooby Doo be an insult? I don't mean it to be. Her posture was always a little droopy, and she had a thing for army fatigues. Tonight however, there she sat. Someone I had never even really talked to before. Tonight, she was wearing a black halter top, black stretchy-kind of sweat pants, and some leather slip-on shoes. "Hello, Marge," I said. "Hiya, Kael," she said. I was given the impression the beer in her hand wasn't the first on that had been there that evening. "How have you been?" "Great, Kael," she said, smiling up at me. "Making all gone with your finals?" "All gone." "Then you," I said, "deserve a horribly indulgent back rub." "Oh, yes I do," she said, and scooted over between my feet on the floor. My long, thin, lithe, white fingers came to life on Marge's neck and shoulders, working loose any last tensions of her freshman year at the University of Ohio. A small knot of flesh, a bundle of nerves, I would use the very tips of my fingers, working several of them in rhythm like I was writing on the world's smallest typewriter, and that knot, that bundle would gradually disappear, and Marge's little gasps or grumbles of pain would drift into sighs and coos of relief. And then I'd do it again somewhere else. Marge. Her eyes closed, her jaw slack. What went on inside that head? So quiet, such a cipher. We didn't speak much, as I rubbed and kneaded I was talking mostly to other people, the musical tastes of the tenants of the house (albums by Tangerine Dream) gave way to the auditory desires of the rest of us (Bob Mould's new solo album "Workbook") and we all drank and reminisced and my hands were getting kind of tired, I had already taken care of most of Marge's back and was ready to take a break -- -- when the lights went out. "Awwwwww," came the collective sigh of mock pity from practically every corner of the house. There shortly followed a series of whoops and giggles. "Ah, SHIT!" I heard Jack call from the kitchen. Jack was one of the fellahs who lived there, so it was his right to yell that. He and some others began scurrying in and out of the sitting room, looking for, finding, and then lighting and placing various candles. I, discovering some strange, newfound enthusiasm for my task, continued to massage Marge's back. I had decided to concentrate on the lower part, the "small" as they say of her back. My hands, next to each other, facing out, down between my calves, plunging those mighty fingertips into the flesh just above her behind, where the muscles get seriously tense. I pulled up her shirt a little and laid my naked fingers against her bare back, down there. As I continued to work my hands, the motion became less and less of a sincere attempt to loosen aching muscles and relieve tension, and more and more of a soothing rub meant to make the receiver feel...well, it's only to feel good, isn't it? The room was virtually light free. A few candles burned in various places, casting an odd, active glow on anything close to them, but not too much light on anything further away. All attempts to locate the problem or rectify the situation seemed to reach a standstill. The lights were out, who cared? Sparse conversation, people moving in and out of darkened doorways, no music just the soft, late-night sounds of a deserted college town street wafting through the opened, shattered window. I can't recall what anyone said. I don't really remember anyone speaking to me. I certainly can't think of anything I said to Marge, or she to me, all I know is we sat there in that crowded, balmy, cave-like room, and I put my hands all over her back, she leaned forwards for me, sat back as I worked up her neck, balancing her head, scritching through her scalp, her head came to rest, bent backward, into my lap, and I smoothed out her face, pulling back her hair, working out the greasy flesh of her (for the first time, to me) revealed forehead, and drew my thumbs across her eyebrows and across her cheeks, and then down her lips, carefully touching and stretching every square inch of her face, the line of her little chin, and then, bringing her slowly, so slowly, over minutes of time, she was sitting again, she was getting quite used to my touch, and trusting me more and more, (people were seated on a couch close by, but neither of us had said anything to them in almost fifteen minutes, and Alex had already been through and gone, I must have said hello, and Thad, like we give a shit, right kids?) and her head lolled forward again and my fingers dwelt on her shoulders pressing in and relaxing her even further (did I stop to drink some more? I must have) and down my hands went working free the unexplored muscles of her chest and both hands pressed onward, sliding both palms over her breasts and squeezed them lightly and cupped my hands around them and let my fingers lift them up, and index finger and thumb now gently discovering each small nipple beneath the black cotton cloth and there I played for a moment, just casually feeling up Marge in that room full of friends, in the dark. An hour gone past, the lights were still out, and word had come through that it was in fact a fuse in the house and not the whole street that was out. No one, however, could be bothered to fix it. My hands came to rest on Marge's shoulders. I leaned my face close to her ear, and could see her eyes were closed. "Marge?" I whispered. "Mm-hm," she said, in that marginally conscious manner. "I didn't lose you did I?" "Nope," she said, "Thank you, I am just very, very, very relaxed." "That was all right, then?" "Yes," she smiled, "thank you very much." "Marge," I said, "it's kinda late, you wanna go?" "Yes," she said, craning to look up at me with those little eyes. "You'll walk me to my dorm?" "I was going to ask if you didn't want to watch Christmas specials back at my place." "Oh, yes," she said, "I'd like that." Twelve-thirty in the A.M. Deep within the demented apartment, the architect's house of pain, was this "room". It had four walls, oh sure, but they didn't come together at right angles. One of them was so short it was practically triangular. And small. The 19 inch television sat on a wee table against one wall and Marge and I sat on a horrid green couch against the opposite wall. My feet rested on the tee vee table. Marge sat to my side, my arm around her, she leaned against me. We were glowing blue. "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" played out on the set before us. While "wanna come back to my place to watch Christmas specials" may be one of the more ridiculous pick-up lines of all time, I am nothing if not honest. "...it was Cindy-Lou Who who was no more than two..." I slipped my hand into her sweat pants. I was surprised. I lifted up the waistband slightly. I could see a tuft of dirty orange hair. "You don't wear underwear?" I asked. "No," she said matter-of-factly. It was kind of a stupid question, my hand in her pants and all. I turned my face to hers. "Are you going to want to spend the night?" I asked her. She looked up at me rather sleepily and gave me a big, thin smile. "I'd like that," she said. "Good," I said. I leaned in and brushed my lips against hers. She gave me a little kiss and I kissed her back. "You kind of like me, don't you?" I asked. Yes, it was as stupid as the question about her underwear. Darker still now. No candles, no blue tee vee glow, just the scattered beams cast from parking lot lights, broken up or blocked out completely by a conveniently placed desk. The accumulated heat of the day clung to every inch of that tiny little room. Condensation, warping the Robert Smith poster, dripping from the plaster bust of Elvis, the walls were slick and the mattress never completely dried from the night before. The whole nook smelled like Kael. Gray white skin in that darkness, head resting comfortably on a thin cotton pillow, shoulders back against the bed, soft curve of breasts, their orange nipples wide and soft and flaccid (oh yes, they always have to be "erect", don't they) one single stripe of sweat slowly sliding down her slender belly, curving in and down, her arms at her sides, her hands reaching up, and her fingers coming to rest on either side of my head, my tongue out and pointed, tasting the doughy skin between her legs, salty and moist, I used my fingers to open her a bit more, and using my thumb to rub against that swollen knot (a simile; unlike with the muscles of the back, massaging this knot relaxes no one) and she moaned and gasped and her legs, propped up on either side of me swayed back and forth. "Hmmmmmm..." My head bobbed up and down in an amusing fashion, I, propped up on my knees, my butt sticking way up in the air, one free hand gripped my erect penis which bobbled freely between my legs, and using my thumb and index finger I briskly pinched at its underside. She breathed softly, sudden, occasional gasps, it was slow love folks, no one was going anywhere, except perhaps to sleep. We were each very drunk. At least I know I was pretty drunk, and I thought that she was. She never said. She had never said much anyway. Little girl, only eighteen, moody and sullen, so many secrets, and how had she gotten here? What was she doing in my bed? How did I arrive at this place, here, jaws open, tongue out, slapping it and flicking it against her most private part. Always hiding under a mop of hair, always dressed in baggy, concealing clothes. Had I ever considered she had breasts, let alone those displayed there on my bed? Did I ever give a second glance at the shape of her hips? And there they were, rising suddenly and then resting, her small behind settling into the dunes on that floppy mattress. Why was she here? Simple. Because I had asked her to be. I rose up, standing on my knees (my head only a foot or so from the ceiling) and pushed my hair back out of my face. My face, glistening with sweat, my penis, turgid before me, its head so purple and shiny, precum slooshying from its tiny mouth and beginning to run down its length. Marge lowered and closed her legs slightly and I slithered beside her. "You're wildly attractive, Marge," I said. Her eyes, barely slits now, widened considerably. "You think so?" she said. "Yes," I said, smiling, all teeth and glowing gray eyes, "I will admit you make it hard to notice." "I do?" "Well, I would be the last person to encourage a woman to show off her body," I said, "and that's the last thing you ever do. 'Nuff said." "True." She smiled at me. "But I can see all of you now. And you are very beautiful. And I am overwhelmed." She beamed. "And I'm not just saying that to get you in bed with me." She laughed. I kissed her little pug nose and kissed her mouth. We kissed a while. "I think we should do it," I whispered. "Do you think we should do it?" She nodded. I leaned over the edge of the mattress and ran my hand through the narrow space in the skeletal spring set between the mattress and the floor in order to locate a box of rubbers. I used to be really, really good at putting on condoms. I took my position, kneeling again between her legs, peeled open the package, pulled out the party favor, and rolled it into place. Marge spread herself wide (but not too wide, I noted -- for a moment I feared virgin) and I placed my hands along her thighs, sliding down and placing my thumbs at the base of her vagina, sliding them up its length to test how wet she was (she was) and leaned over her. My hips adjusted, using my fingers I nudged my penishead against her and began to slide it in. I held myself up with one arm, my face hovered against hers, and she looked at me with awe and surprise. We kissed again, as I continued into her, coming to rest, my butt between her thighs, deep brown, curly hair nestling among dirty orange, the hairs becoming entangled and entwined, until I backed up and out, and then down and in again. Slow. I leaned on my elbows, I grabbed Marge's head in my hands and we kissed kindly and timidly. My behind arched up and down, her hips shifted slightly, sweat began to cascade down my back towards my shoulders. I worked her and kissed her. An entire day's worth of courted and suppressed orgasm began to build within me, I rocked a little harder and Marge's closed her eyes. My rhythm began to build and she just lay there, moaning so quietly, gasping for occasional surprise breaths. I began pounding my hips into hers, my bloated and splitting dick, its blood pulsing in my head, I gripped her shoulders tightly and held on as long as I could, the pain was horrific, and still she lay there, not giving any indication of pleasure, arrival, her world was far from mine. I shuddered. I slammed. Those eeny, clenched muscles inside my penis, tormented and tender finally gave way and sploot after sploot of molten me hammered into a wall of sheer latex. Marge rocked her head back and made no sound. I grunted and hunh-hunhed and squeezed my hands into her shoulders, a tight vise-like grip. My legs went see-saw and my feet were fists. And then it was over. I gasped for breath and lifted myself off of Marge, reaching for a Kleenex to remove our protection, throw it in the wicker waste basket. I lay back next to her, and put my arms around her. "Hmn," I said, already drifting away. "Hmn," she said. "Was that okay," I asked. "Mm-hm," she said. "That was okay." "Wanna go to sleep now?" I asked. "Yes," she said. So we did. "Kael?" Another morning in Clemson, Ohio. Another day. The sun was all over my room, stuck to every wall. "Kael, wake up." I was in an early morning stupor, the previous day's activities, not yet enough sack time, the heat...I could go on. Vera? Marge kneeled next to me. She was dressed. "Kael, I have to go." "Whutimizzit?" "It's almost eight-thirty," she said, "I have to pack. I'm leaving tomorrow. Will you call me when you get up?" "Okay." I rolled over. "Kael," she said, "would you like to have breakfast? At my dorm or something?" I had already fallen asleep again. "Call me when you wake up, okay?" "Mm-hm." "Kael?" I did not call. I meant to call, I did not call. That day I ran into Vera who chastised me for not having called the day before or telling her about the party. I wasn't in the mood. "You, Kael Goodman, are the single most conceited person I have ever met," she said. I stared at her blankly. "So?" I said. She threw up her hands in disgust and walked out of my life. When I finally remembered that Marge had told me she was leaving the next day, I called, but there was no answer. I called again the day she was supposed to leave, and there was again no answer. I called the next day, and when there was still no answer I went round to her dorm room and saw the check-out slip on her door. I felt sorry I had missed her, ever though I had done it so effectively. The following fall I learned she hadn't liked the University of Ohio very much, and transferred to a school on the coast. I also learned from mutual acquaintances that before she even came to school she had once attempted suicide. Casual badgering of her friends on campus for some reason never led to my actually procuring a phone number or an address where I could reach her. I kept asking and they kept saying they would give it to me, but it just never happened. I've heard she's doing well, but I've never seen or spoken to her since. -- Contact the author, Kael Goodman, at: at745@cleveland.freenet.edu End Part 1 of 2. -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Archive: Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository | |, an entity supported entirely by donations. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+