Chapter 9

I guess I slept pretty near all day Sunday. When I woke, the sun was streaming through my window, and the clock said it was half past four in the afternoon. So I had had pretty close to twelve hours' sleep, and I guess I must have needed it. My tongue felt like a big wad of cotton and my insides were a little jumpy. I remembered having had all sorts of stuff to drink, and then near the end of the evening trying to make it with a senior named Lois Reznik and failing miserably. Well, it hadn't been my fault. I had already made it three times in one evening, which was good enough in my book. But this Reznik girl, who had been one of my three female witnesses, was drunk and insisted that I make it with her too. She kept putting her breasts in my mouth-must have had a maternal complex or something-but I was absolutely no use to her, and after a while she gave up and went away, telling me she'd come back later when I felt better. Luckily she never did.

And then I staggered upstairs to look for my clothing, but I wandered into the wrong bedroom by mistake, and found Roy Burchard and Lome Byris on the same bed with Zelda Hughes, another stacked senior, and I can't even bring myself to face what the two of them were doing to her, but I can say it was pretty bad. And when they saw me they wanted me to come join them, but I told them no, I didn't think there was any room for me on the bed, and anyway I was pretty tired. And some time after that I got home and into bed.

So now it was half past four on a Sunday afternoon, and I felt weak and wobbly and senile, and when I looked into my warped mirror a stranger's face looked back at me, with bloodshot eyes and green skin.

Sunday was the day I usually wrote home to my parents. An unanswered letter from them, forwarded from the dorms, had arrived yesterday and was sitting on my desk. It was full of the usual chatter about the neighbors, and full of the usual half-baked questions like Are you brushing your teeth regularly? and Do you keep up with your class work? and Have you made some nice new friends?

Well, I just couldn't bring myself to answer that letter today. What the hell was I going to write them? Dear Mom and Dad, I've moved out of the dorms and into a cheap hotel room because you aren't allowed to make girls in the dorms, and I'm dating a nympho from Chesley, and last night I was initiated, into a sex fraternity and slept with three girls and learned half a dozen new things that I never thought existed-"

Hell, no. I couldn't write that sort of letter to my parents. And just now I didn't have the strength to make up a pack of lies. So I shelved the letter-writing project for the time being. I needed a couple of days to get back on an even keel.

I got dressed, had breakfast-the Czech physicist was in the kitchen, and looked at me peculiarly when I started pouring orange juice and frying bacon, but he didn't say anything-and went out for a walk around the block, by way of clearing the cobwebs out of my head. I revolved in my mind the idea that I was a full-fledged member of a coeducational fraternity. And that some of the biggest men on campus belonged. I wondered how Les Haberman or Roy Burchard kept straight faces when they attended faculty functions and heard the Dean asking for stricter adherence to moral standards.

I still had some doubts about joining. But I was told that it wasn't always quite as wild an orgy; the presence of new candidates had made things a little more hectic than usual, but the atmosphere was more relaxed once the full complement of members was filled. And it was a handy thing to belong. Any time I felt the need for a woman, all I had to do was phone up any of the fifteen girls, and she was oath-bound to provide entertainment unless she was currently busy with one of the other brothers. I could take my pick of redheads, blondes, brunettes; short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, fat ones. There were girls with perfect bosoms and there were girls with perfect buttocks, and girls with both. There were sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Clever girls and slowwitted ones. Serious ones and comic ones. And I had the run of the lot. No wonder, I thought, that Don Hammer and Chuck Gordon had such ferocious reputations on campus. With fifteen girls to choose from, and all of them honor-bound to obey orders, you could look like one hell of a casanova around campus. And it took neither looks nor money nor a glib line to get any of those girls. All it took was a phone call saying, "I want you right this minute. Can you make it?"

I got some homework done Sunday evening, tired as I was. Being secluded over in the hotel had its advantages. In the dorms there's always the temptation to wander down the hall and shoot the breeze with Tom, Dick, and Phil for a while, and a lot of evenings get wasted that way. But who was I supposed to go shoot the breeze with here? The Czech? Mr. Szu? Mrs. Berezhovskaya? Miss Rooksby?

I slept soundly again Sunday night, and was in good shape for classes Monday morning. As it happened, one of the first people I saw as I entered Michaels Hall was Don Hammer. Instead of sneering, as he normally would, he smiled in quite a friendly fashion, and with a subtle twist of his fingers gave me the secret high-sign. I returned it and went on into my classroom, fingering my ring and feeling inwardly important. All around me, I thought contemptuously, were men most of whom would never sleep with more than four or five women in their lives, at most, and that with great difficulty and much pursuit. And here I, at the mere age of nineteen, had fifteen women on my string, each to be had for the price of a phone call (plus the monthly dues of twenty smackers.)

But I wasn't in the mood to make use of my privileges just yet. It wasn't until Tuesday night that I felt the first twitch of yearning, and decided to see just how valid my privileges were. I took out the notebook in which I had carefully inscribed the phone numbers of the twelve female members (there were still three vacancies) and ran down the list. Marge? No, not for a while again. Claire Reynolds? She was a sophomore too, and a looker. I phoned her dorm room and discovered she was out on a date with Ted Felks. Evidently the new members were in hot demand at the beginning. I tried again-Paula Garson, a junior who lived off-campus on 207th Street. She had been one of my witnesses. I phoned her up and she answered.

"Jeff Burnside," I said, and paused.

"Oh-hello, Jeff. Feeling lonely?"

"I was-well-wondering if you were busy tonight," I stammered.

"I've got a load of homework," she said. "Tell you what-would it break up your evening if I said for you to come over around eleven and spend the night? My roommate is sleeping out tonight, so we d have the place to ourselves."

Her roommate was Sally Marshall, one of the other junior members. I said, "Fine. I'll be there at eleven." I spent the evening studying virtuously, and about quarter to eleven left for Paula's place. I remembered to pack my toothbrush, too.

It was the most amazing damn thing, the way this club worked. Paula answered the door in a filmy bathrobe. She was a big Scandinavian-looking blonde, with milky skin and big thick thighs and breasts, and I could see the red tips of her nipples through the gauzy fabric of her robe. She was from Minnesota, and I guess she was escaping from a pretty narrow family. We were all escaping from something in an organization like this.

We talked for a little while, and then we went to bed. She had taken a bath just before I arrived, and her skin was cool and moist, and she supported me better than a foam-rubber mattress. She was passionate as all get-out, too. I don't think she was faking it. But she must have had a dozen climaxes while we were going at it. Finally, exhausted, I fell asleep lying atop that magnificent bulk of womanflesh. When I woke, we were side by side, and I had one of her massive breasts cupped in my palm.

She gave me breakfast and I got back to my room in time to shave and grab my notebooks, and I was off to class with a bouncy spring in my walk. No doubt there were guys who looked at Paula Garson every day and ogled her and mentally undressed her and wished they could climb aboard her, the way they might wish to find a million dollars lying in the street. And they didn't know how easy it really was. You just had to know the right people, and then all you needed to do was phone her up and bring your toothbrush.

I was crossing the plaza in front of the Library that afternoon, wondering which girl I would try next, when I bumped into Fred Lambert. Or rather, he bumped into me, because it was obvious he'd been looking for me.

"Jeff, I've got to talk to you."

"What about?"

We sat down on a stone bench. He looked pale and sick. "About Carol," he said. His lip was trembling.

Frowning, I said, "Are you still chasing her? Listen, Fred, leave off the Galahad bit and go out and get yourself made. It'll do you a world of good. Build up your self-confidence. And-"

"Jeff, shut up and listen to me."

"Okay. I'm listening."

"I need help. I know, you don't want to be a go-between, but you've got to do this for me. Or else I'm likely to kill myself. Or join the Army or something."

I looked at him without saying anything for a moment. He seemed dead serious. "Go on."

"I-I love Carol, Jeff. I want to marry her. Not now, but as soon as we graduate."

"Have you told her this?"

He reddened. "No-I can't work up the nerve."

"And you want me to do your proposing for you?"

He shook his head miserably. "No, that's not what's worrying me."

"Chuck Gordon?"

Fred nodded. "He calls her pretty often. And she's got a date with him for Friday night. Jeff, I'm scared. They say Gordon has never failed to seduce a girl he sets out to seduce."

"And you think he's going to steal your fair one's maidenhead?"

"Don't joke, Jeff. He's liable to. Hell get her drunk and rape her while she doesn't know what's happening, while she's too drunk to resist-"

"It isn't rape if she doesn't resist."

"Jeff, please be serious!"

"Okay. What do you want out of me in this caper?"

He licked his lips. "I'm supposed to meet her at half past three in front of Prexy's, and talk things over with her. But I'm afraid I'm going to mess things up. So I want you to meet her instead."

"Me?" I yelped.

"Yes. You're a friend of Chuck's. You can tell her what sort of guy he is. And maybe you can put in a good word for me too. Sort of hint to her that I'll be all broken up if she lets herself get seduced by Gordon."

I was so disgusted I could have spit at him. Of all the mealy-mouthed stunts, getting a third person to put the smear on Gordon and play John Alden for Fred! Fred saw the anger in my eyes and grabbed my arm. "Please, Jeff, say you'll do it. For the sake of our friendship."

"Fred, you're a spineless slime."

"Maybe I am. But will you talk to her for me?"

I looked down at him from the heights of my new experience and said patronizingly, "Okay, Fred. I'll talk to her. I think you're a fool for not doing it yourself, but I'll help you out."

He Was stickily grateful. I separated myself from him and walked over to the place where Carol was supposed to be. I wondered why Chuck was so persistently pursuing Carol when he had a dozen other girls he could make at will. The moment I raised the question in my mind I knew the answer. The sex club was a good things for guys like me who otherwise would be going frustrated, but a guy like Chuck was skilled in the ways of seduction and looked for chances to practice his skill. There was no challenge in getting Paula Garson to give you a roll in the hay. All you had to do was phone her up. But there was real challenge in pursuing someone like Carol West. If I knew Chuck, he would keep after her until he got what he wanted-which would be a hell of a jolt for Fred and his ideas of marrying. What the hell, though-the least I could do was talk to her for him, anyway.

It was one of those fluky hot summery days that New York sometimes gets in the first week of October, and Carol looked like springtime personified as she stood waiting for Fred to come along. She was wearing Bermudas and a white blouse open at the collar, and she had some paperback books under her arm, and her golden hair trailed in the gentle breeze.

I walked up and said, "Hello. I'm Jeff Burnside. I think we've met before."

"You're Fred's friend, aren't you? I'm waiting for Fred right now."

"He just phoned me and said he couldn't make it," I lied glibly. "He has to see his faculty advisor and he probably won't be free till five. But he asked me to come over and meet you. There were some things he wanted me to tell you."

"Oh?"

We started to stroll. As it happened, we were strolling in the direction of my hotel. I said, "Fred's awfully stuck on you, Carol."

"He's a nice boy."

If I had repeated her words to Fred in just that tone, it would have left a mark on his soul for life.

"He's pretty serious about you," I said.

"I know. He can't seem to bring himself to tell me out loud, but I know he feels pretty strongly about me. It's too bad, too."

"You mean you don't feel the same way about him?"

"Well, it's hard to say. He's nice, and all that, but he's kind of young. So am I. It's too early for me to be tying myself up with just one boy."

"Is that why you made a date with Chuck Gordon?"

She shrugged. I could see she was displeased at the amount of personal poking I was doing. "Chuck's-well-interesting."

"You know why Chuck is dating you, don't you?"

"I suppose so. I suppose he wants to sleep with me.

"That's what Fred's afraid of."

"It isn't any of Fred's business what I do!" she shot back sharply. "Not that I intend to sleep with Chuck Gordon-or with anyone else."

Smiling, I said, "Chuck's a dangerous boy to fool around with. I happen to know him very well. He takes seduction as seriously as some guys take poker or baseball or politics."

"I'm not afraid of him," Carol said. We were practically in front of my hotel building. And I could see I was getting nowhere with this conversation. She knew her own mind, or thought she did, and was willing to take her chances on being able to fend Chuck off. I hated to tell Fred this, but he was nowhere with Carol West. She said, "It's been very nice talking to you, Jeff, and-"

And just then fate took a hand. At least the sky opened and the most godawful cloudburst cracked over our heads, and rain started coming down in sheets. In half a second we were both soaked through. Carol gave a little shriek. She wasn't wearing any jacket or anything, and her blouse was drenched, and she tried to protect her books against getting wet by huddling them against her chest and arms.

Lightning-like, I grabbed her by the wrist and said, "Come on. I live right in here."

I pulled her along, helter-skelter, and within seconds we were in the lobby of my hotel. But those few seconds had done the job. We were both drenched. I looked around at the courtyard. It wasn't raining cats and dogs outside, it was raining lions and wolves.

"You can't go back out into that," I said. "How about coming upstairs for a while until it lets up?"

I guess she wanted to prove that if she could resist Chuck Gordon she could also manage to survive entering a college man's hotel room without chaperone. "We might as well," she said.

The elevator was right there. We rode upstairs and I let her in. Her blonde hair was plastered to her forehead and her shirt was so soaking wet I could see right through it. She had a bra on underneath, of course, so there wasn't anything indecent involved, but it was pleasant to look at anyway.

"I guess these books are ruined," she said. "Damn-I just bought them." She shook her head, spraying water around. "And my blouse is going to be ruined too if I don't wring it out."

I gave her a towel. "Here. I'll turn my back. Let me know when you're decent."

I turned around. But as it happened, I had a perfectly good view of her in the mirror. I watched as she took her blouse off-looking carefully at me to make sure my back remained turned, but never thinking I could see her in the mirror-and wrung it out carefully on the windowsill. As she bent forward, the bra fell away from her breasts a little, showing me firm creamy globes. I had to admit she was a beautiful girl, almost too beautiful, in a china-doll sort of way. The sight of her breasts did something to me. My breath started to come hard. I saw flashes of light in front of my eyes. The caveman in me woke up.

I turned around.

She looked up, startled. "You said-"

"You're beautiful, Carol. Absolutely beautiful." I took a step toward her. My hands groped for her breasts. I put my mouth over hers. That was when she socked me.