Passion At Penn State

I love Friday nights!

The school week was over, and the work week was, too. I'm a chemical engineering major at Penn State, an unfortunately kind of poor one, and that means I have to work while I'm in school. A lot of hours in classes and labs, followed by four hours in the afternoon working at the Giant supermarket, mostly in stocking or pushing carts around from the parking lot. I ought to try to pick up a few hours on the weekend as well, but Hell, weekends are for relaxing.

Anyway, I had gotten invited to this off-campus party, in the student slums section of College Avenue, an area of old houses cut up into apartments to rent to students for ridiculous amounts of money. My place was a studio apartment - don't let the description fool you; it was just one step up from being a dump - with my bed in the living room, a tiny bathroom, and a kind of large kitchen, but one that was mostly dead space. The fire escape was right outside my bedroom/living room window.

I sure wasn't going to turn down the party invitation, 'cause normally, my social life sucks. I'd like to tell you that I was a hot stud the girls all drooled over, but, truth is, I look just about how you'd expect a chemical engineering major to look: unstylish hair, middling height and too skinny. I at least dress normally, so I don't get laughed at for my dorky clothes, but, truth be told, I'm pretty much like Bilbo Baggins when he wore The Ring: visible only in full sunlight, and then only by my shadow, which would be shaky and faint.

Well, that's not completely true: I was always completely visible to other guys like me, the other nerds and nebbishes, the guys who spent their weekends the same way I spent most of mine, either alone or with the other nerds, dreaming about girls with whom we'd never have a chance.

There was exactly one female chemical engineering major in my year, a fairly cute Japanese girl, but while I could at least talk to her, she was already taken: at like 4'11" tall and 95 lb, she was dating an offensive tackle for the Nittany Lions, a guy who must've been 6'4" and pushing 300 lb. Life just isn't fair!

This weekend, we were lucky. A couple of other CE majors who had money, both Chinese students - it seemed like half of the science and technology majors at Penn State were Asian - had decided that they'd host a party, and gotten a full keg and the typical red plastic cups, and invited people over. I figured that it'd be mostly guys, but you never know.

So, I took a shower before getting ready, fresh deod, brushed my teeth and Listerined, and grabbed clean clothes. My clothes weren't anything special, just jeans and a t-shirt, but at least they were clean and fairly new.

"Was this supposed to be a costume party?" I asked when I got there. I walked in, got handed a beer right away, and saw that everyone else had hammed up the nerd look, with high water slacks, short-sleeved white shirts buttoned up to the collar, and a couple of guys even had pocket protectors. It was pretty funny, but kind of wistfully so, 'cause the guys there really would want to be cool. There was a banner on the wall:

That's alright, that's OK

You'll be working for us some day!

Kind of crazy that I was the guy out of place at a nerd party, but no one had told me to nerd it up for this.

There were even a couple of nerd girls there, and they were real nerd girls, not just regular girls dressed up. Then I spotted Denise, a girl I sort of knew, mostly from a distance. She was a math major, again, one of the too few women majoring in the STEM fields, and I guess she was in the same boat I was, that no one had told her this was a nerd-it-up party. She was dressed like I was, jeans and a t-shirt, but I guess that this was her party t-shirt, 'cause it was a little bit short, showing a bit of skin between the hem of the shirt and the top of her jeans.

Oh, wait, it wasn't that the shirt was too short, but that her jeans were low rise, as in hip bone baring low rise. I thought that those had gone out of style about ten years ago, but they looked really good on her. Maybe they're coming back in style; I sure hope so. Heck,

every

guy hopes so!

At any rate, this was the kind of opening I needed, a conversation-starter. I'm not exactly the most confident guy around girls, but having an opening gave me just enough nerve, so I walked up to her. "Hi, Denise, I guess no one told you either that this was a dress up party."

"Oh, hi. Actually, I did know, but I didn't have any real nerd-it-up clothes, and I'm not sure I'd have worn them even if I did. It's Dennis, right?"

"Yup, I'm Dennis, Dennis Wright." Well, at least she thought she remembered my name, and got it right, even though she wasn't sure. "Chemical engineering, and I'm a junior."

"Yo, how about this?"

Somebody yelled it, I'm not even sure who.

"I guess that we've got our hot couple of the evening, the only two who didn't come as nerdsicles!"

The beer was slopping out of his plastic cup, and it was obvious that it hadn't been his first beer of the evening.

"C'mon, dude, give her a kiss!"

With that, everybody was cheering, and I was just mortified; I figured that Denise was, too.

"Hey, that'd be Dennis and Denise, how lame is that?"

and

"Kiss her, dude!"

They just weren't letting go of this one, and it'd ruin any chance I ever had with this girl.

"Think if we did, they'd shut up?" I whispered to her.

"No," she said, and then hesitated a second before adding, "but kiss me anyway."

OMG, I was stunned for a second, but then I stepped close enough and gave her a light kiss on the lips. I was scared shitless, but it was still awesome, or at least I thought it was awesome. It must not have been good enough, though, because Denise whispered to me, "If you're going to kiss me, kiss me like you mean it."

That was as much permission as I needed, and even though I was stunned, again, I didn't hesitate quite as long, put my arms around her waist, pulled her in to me and kissed her again, not as light a kiss. Denise put her arms around my neck, holding me in, while we kissed. She opened her mouth, and I could feel her tongue touching my lips.

Truth is, I had only kissed a couple of girls before, and I'd been pretty clumsy about it. Technically, I wasn't a virgin, 'cause the first girl I kissed, Vanessa Hudgens - no, not

the

Vanessa Hudgens - who was as clumsy as I was, was determined - fueled by copious amounts of alcohol - to lose her virginity that evening. I was kind of lucky, 'cause I'd beaten off that afternoon, and I was able to last a little while longer than if I hadn't, but while I was proud enough about being devirginized, I knew that it hadn't been very good, for either of us. As a guy, yeah, my orgasm was pretty much guaranteed, but I'm sure she didn't have one. We were rushed and clumsy and messy, and Vanessa didn't want anything to do with me afterward.

But Denise? Oh, Lord, this girl could kiss, or at least it seemed to me that she could, little as I knew about it. We broke apart, and she was smiling, to the raucous cheers of the nerdsicles. Someone pressed a couple of cups of beer into our hands, half-slopping Denise's down her arm and onto her jeans. I grabbed up some paper towels, to dry off her arms and pat down what I could off the hip of her jeans, before I realized that I was just handling a girl without her permission.

I guess that it was OK, though, 'cause she thanked me.

That sort of broke up the cheers, as the other guys realized that they were making fun of the only nerd there who actually had a girl, at least a girl for the evening. At any rate, Denise and I wound up talking together, pretty much by ourselves, as the party went on. We were sitting on this not-very-clean red loveseat in the corner, continuing to sip away at the beer. I was simply enthralled, and maybe part of that was because I've had so few chances with girls before, but Denise was just amazing to me. She was petite, not much over five feet tall, and thin, with midnight black hair and liquid brown eyes. It turned out that her mother was Korean, and her father a serviceman, but her accent was pure American; if she wasn't born in the US, she must've been here from a very early age.

The beer was helping to loosen her tongue, and she was both seeking information and teasing me at the same time. "Am I the first girl you've kissed?" she asked me, which let me know that she didn't think I'd done a particularly good job of it.

"No, not really, but you might as well have been." She smiled, obviously understanding just what I meant, but hesitated to say explicitly.

"Does that mean you're a virgin?" She was grinning hugely, and I wasn't sure if she was pleased by the thought, or making fun of me.

"Same thing, no, not really, but I might as well be." Denise was having fun with this. I wasn't, because I didn't want to admit the truth, but it was so great just being with her that I could take this part not being fun.

"So, how not really, but might as well be? Like, just once or something?"

"Yes, just once."

"Why just once? You shoot off in fifteen seconds or something?" Denise was ragging me

hard!

"No, not quite that bad, but it was the first time for both of us, and we were really pretty clumsy about it."

"So, it wasn't very good for her?" This girl knew how to stick a knife in deep, and then give it a twist. I blamed the beer.

"I guess not." Denise had stomped on my ego pretty hard, and as much as I liked her, I was also starting to hate her.

Then, damn it! She made it impossible for me to hate her. Denise slid closer, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me again. "Don't worry," she whispered, "you just need a better teacher."

OMG, her arms around my neck, and her kisses, Lord, not the hard ones she'd forced a bit ago, but soft kisses, her mouth open, but just barely, slightly pulling my lower lip into her mouth, soft, easy, but so passionate. I was in heaven, I could barely think, and my whole world was just the few feet Denise and I occupied.

"Listen, I'm starving, you want to get out of here?" she asked me.

"Su-sure," I managed to get out. Man, she was going to head out, and wanted me to go with her!

Denise stood up first, then took my hands and pulled me to my feet, despite how tiny she was. This girl was taking charge, and we headed out the door.

"What would you like?" I asked. "Don't know if you're in the mood for it, but if you like Creole, Spats is really good. There's Tadashi's, if you'd prefer Japanese, or just whatever." Good thing I had my wallet, and my debit card, on me, 'cause those places aren't cheap.

"I've never tried Creole, so let's do that." Denise seemed genuinely pleased, and had a bounce in her step. I took a chance, and took her hand as we were walking, and it was just plain fun. Even better, when we got to the busy intersection of College and South Atherton, she put her arm around my waist. This was going wonderfully!

One thing about leaving the party and walking toward the restaurant, it was sobering me up. I assumed that Denise was getting closer to sober, too, even though she's really tiny, and I think she'd had a bit more to drink than I had. Really, by the time we got to Spats, I was stone-cold sober.

The food is really good there! Denise got a 'demi' (small) order of Creole Jambalaya, and I took the Pasta with Louisiana Crab and Crawfish; we wound up sharing them, so Denise could get a taste of both. They serve beer at Spats, but Denise is only 20, so that was out, and we both had iced tea.

"Listen," she said, smiling at me, "I guess that I was kind of mean to you back there. Can I blame it on the beer talking?"

"Well, you pretty much peeled me like an orange, but that's OK. I was enjoying just being with you." That was true enough, and I kept my mouth shut about disliking it.

"Really? I mean, I was so mean to you, and, I don't know, maybe it was a defense mechanism or something. I'm not usually like that. But I did like that you were being so honest."

For just a second, I contemplated saying, "Can I ask you the same questions you asked me?" but I thought better of it. It was obvious that she was more experienced than me, and I was still amazed that she was spending time with me.

We found out a little more about each other. I told her that I was from Delaware, where my father worked for DuPont. He made good money, but Delaware is an expensive place to live, what with three sisters in Padua Academy - a parochial high school for girls; I'd gone to Salesianum, the Catholic boys' school - so that's why I had to pinch pennies at Penn State. I had some scholarships, which helped, but Penn State is damned expensive for an out-of-state student. Still, its reputation is a lot better than the University of Delaware, which is why dad was willing to (help) pay for it.

Denise was at least an in-state student, her parents living in the Philly 'burbs, but I knew that Gladwyne, where her folks lived, was hugely expensive. My dad made good money, but not only could he not afford a house in Gladwyne, I don't think he could have afforded even a driveway!

We took our time eating, and when the check came, Denise grabbed it. "Hey, I asked you out for dinner," was all she said. She pulled her debit card out of her wallet and handed it to the waitress, without looking at the total, before the waitress had a chance to leave the table. I was trying to figure out whether I liked this modern, liberated woman, or my masculinity was somehow stomped on. Thing is, I kind of lucked out, 'cause Spats isn't cheap, and I'm not exactly rolling in dough.

We headed back down College Avenue, and then turned right up South Atherton; Denise lived better than I did, in a small but still modern apartment building. Her apartment was neat and clean, and her folks having money sure was nice. The apartment wasn't fancy, but it would do.

Or, at least what I could see of it was like that. Denise unlocked her door, but then stood outside of it; I knew in an instant that I wasn't being invited inside. "Listen," she began, "I had a great time with you tonight, and I'd like to see you again, but I don't want to be stupid and rush things. That OK with you?"

Well, I'd had my hopes up a bit higher for tonight, but I responded the only way I could. "Yeah, it's OK. You want to do something tomorrow, or is that rushing things?"

"I don't know if it's rushing things, but I've got like a ton of homework I have to get done, and I really need to stay home and get caught up tomorrow."

"I understand that! I'm kind of snowed under myself, and I need to catch up, too. Maybe lunch on Monday, if we've got the same break between classes?" I can't believe that I was smooth enough to come up with that one!

"OK, that could work. Give me your cell." I handed her my cell, and she plugged in her number. Then she called her own cell, just to get my number into it. I appreciated that, a lot. I got a nice kiss from her, and then she went inside and closed her door.

I was pretty happy with things. Oh, sure, I'm like any guy, and I'd have loved to get laid that night, but this was still looking like a good thing. I wondered: did I have an actual

girlfriend?

How the Hell would I even know, 'cause I've never had a girlfriend before.

My student slums apartment was only half a block away from the party, and I suppose that I could have gone back, but there was really no good reason to do that. Besides, I thought cynically, the guys knew that I'd left with Denise, and as long as I didn't return, they'd assume that I was getting lucky.

And I had, I really had. Oh, it might not have been getting lucky the way they'd think I was getting lucky, but I really had gotten very lucky tonight.

Dennis and Denise. Damn, that did sound lame, although I did know a guy named Sam who dated a girl named Samantha. He wasn't a close enough friend of mine that I could give him grief about that, but I'm sure that his buddies did.

It was only 10:30 when I got home. I didn't have anything to do, and I was in a really good mood, so I just got undressed, brushed my teeth and peed, and climbed into bed. I grabbed my Kindle, and picked up where I had left off in Shelby Foote's first volume on the Civil War,

Fort Sumpter to Perryville.

I was asleep in three pages.

I just know that I had dreamed about Denise, because I woke up after a great night's sleep, happy and relaxed. I laid in bed for a while, until my bladder told me that yes, it was time to get up. I showered, and rather than just slouching around in sweatpants, I got dressed in decent clothes. I had no idea why, I just did. Instead of some Wavy Lays and a Mountain Dew for breakfast - yes, I've had that for breakfast many times before, especially if I had some dip in the place - I made myself a couple of fried egg sandwiches, on rye toast with mayo and a dill pickle slice. I even had a glass of OJ instead of a soda. But my mind? It was all on Denise!

She'd been amazing, sexy and soft and sweet, all at the same time. She was clearly a smart girl, and I liked that: she was a nerd girl without being nerdy, and as far as I could see - and I stretched that vision with my imagination - she was just perfect. She was petite, she was neat and clean, and if not exactly drop-dead gorgeous, she was just plain cute.

I'll admit it: I was horny, as though there's a 21-year-old college student somewhere who ever isn't horny. I wanted to take care of my horns by myself, as I'd always had to do, so I grabbed some TP and laid down in my bed to do just that.

And couldn't. Somehow, whenever Denise's face floated into my imagination, I got eaten up more with romantic thoughts than sexy ones. I wasn't seeing her in bed, I was seeing her walking in the sunlight, in a gossamer white dress, I was seeing her tossing a frisbee in the park in those awesome low rider jeans and a tank top, I was seeing her at the dinner table in Spats. It was like some stupid Hallmark Channel movie. And I realized: I had it bad!

Finally, I got back up, and figured that yeah, I had better knock out that homework I said I had. I'd just gotten out my stuff, when my cell vibrated:

D:

Can you bring your stuff over here, and we can get our homework done together?

D!

Oh, my God, she texted, and she wants to see me again!

Of course, my answer was yes, and I texted her right back, and asked her when.

How about now?

Oh, Lord, I was ecstatic!

Sure! Let me get my stuff packed up, and it'll take me about 15 minutes to walk there.

Really, it'd take less than that, but I gave myself a couple extra minutes to make sure I was date ready.

See you then!

I checked the jeans and shirt I was wearing, to make sure I hadn't slopped something on them, stuffed my school stuff into my backpack, brushed my teeth and Listerined - can't have bad breath, you know! - and headed out the door. I made a quick stop at the corner shop, to get what I dearly hoped I'd need: I bought a pack of condoms.

Well,

crap!

The selection was larger than I had expected, and I had only a few seconds to choose what I needed. I saw a ribbed offering, which is supposed to offer the woman more pleasure, so I grabbed those. I saw both regular and large sizes - nice of them not to have a size 'small,' but who'd ever admit to it and buy those - and, let's face facts, I'm not a big guy, so I chose the regular.

Gulp!

I'd never even had one of those stupid things on; I hadn't been prepared when Vanessa wanted to fuck, but she didn't care. Maybe she was on the pill or something. I knew that you were supposed to roll them on, and I hoped that would be an easy thing to do, but I had exactly zero experience trying that. If I'd have been smart, I'd have tried that years ago, even with no prospect of using one, just so I'd know how to do it.