Roseann Discovers Dominance

RoseAnn Discovers Dominance

Wgaius

Chapter 30

Until January 1970, I'd been able to ignore the war, even as its collateral effects surrounded me. During my first semester, I'd seen regular anti-war demonstrations on campus, but I ignored them and detoured around in my hurry to classes.

Back home in Bitumen, military service was accepted without question as a sacred patriotic duty. It never occurred to anyone there to question the justness of the war in Viet Nam. Many of my schoolmates from Bitumen High had been taken by the draft. Some had already returned home, their service completed and their places of honor in the community assured. I'd heard names like Tet, Hue, and My Lai, but knew nothing about them. A year ago, in our corner of the trailer park, some of the women had worried and waited for their men to come home. They read each new letter aloud when we gathered for coffee or beer. But Mike was protected by an occupational deferment, so my concern was only second-hand.

The engineering students in general had shared my detachment. We took ourselves seriously, to the point of snobbery, and assumed that the anti-war protesters were political science majors and other navel-gazers with nothing better to do.

But when we reconvened in the drafting room on the first day of the new semester, a somber mood hung over the classroom like a heavy oil. The tight knots of students that usually laughed and joked now whispered ominously among themselves. Had someone died? I counted heads, and five people were missing. But no one had expected those five to pass their first semester. They'd probably flunked out or changed classes.

"How was your holiday?" said Paul, sliding onto his stool beside me.

"The best," I said, "but what's wrong with everyone today? They don't look like they had a very good Christmas."

He screwed up his face. "The draft lottery. No more student deferments. Don't you watch the news?"

"Not really."

"It's all done by lottery now. If you were born on the wrong days, off to the meat grinder you go. No excuses if you're in school or have a family or your father's a Congressman. No special treatment for anybody."

"I guess it's fairer."

"Yeah, but put yourself in their shoes. Up to now, they could ignore all the TV news about kids just like themselves coming home in coffins or in wheelchairs. Now they can't help imagining themselves in one of those boxes. Hard to be a good patriot when you start thinking that way. Some kids are starting to talk about Canada or Europe."

"You don't seem very upset."

"I lucked out. My birthday's March 9. I'm in the 317th group. I'll die of old age before I'm called up."

"Lucky man. Next thing, you'll find yourself a new girlfriend, too. Unless you got lucky over the holidays in more ways than one."

He smiled weakly. "No, nothing new on the girlfriend front. Not yet. I had a date over Christmas, an old high school girlfriend, but it didn't come to anything."

"Don't fret. Good luck has a way of feeding on itself. Win the draft lottery, win the make-out lottery. Why not?"

He suddenly became serious. "Ever since the party at the Greek's, I've wanted to talk to you about that."

"Paul, you know I'm involved. That hasn't changed."

"That's not what I meant. I just need to talk to you in private sometime."

"My boyfriend's got a meeting at lunchtime today, so I'm available. Why don't we find a place down Taylor somewhere?"

* * *

As we walked down Taylor Street in the cold winter sunshine, Paul was nearly silent, which was not like him at all. He was so distracted I had to tug on his jacket sleeve at one corner so he wouldn't step in front of a car. I steered us away from the Italian restaurant where Craig had taken me, and we found a place that seemed a smaller, less tidy version of Bernie's Grill.

When a waitress reached our table, we ordered coffee and sandwiches. I looked around to make sure none of our classmates were here, and leaned toward Paul. "Okay, you've been acting like a man under sentence of death. What in God's name has gotten into you? What do you want?"

He looked down at the table, and whispered something. I told him to speak up, and he said, "I need your help finding a girl like you."

"Like me? Why me? You're a handsome, likeable guy with a great future. You can choose from all those women at the college. Most of them are only there to find husbands anyway. There's blondes and brunettes; there's short and tall, smart and, um, not so smart..."

"That's not what I meant."

Now I understood. "Well, spit it out. I'm your friend and you can trust me. You should know that by now."

"At the Greek's, you hinted about how you controlled your boyfriend. It's stuck in my mind ever since, and it made me say out loud what I've wanted all along, a woman who'd take charge of me an and make me..." He paused. His face was beet red.

"Her slave?" I suggested, maintaining the stage whisper.

He looked down again, nodding his head ever so slightly.

"Why do you think I can help you?"

"I thought maybe you know other women who are strong and dominant like you," he said.

I shook my head. "That was something that developed naturally between my boyfriend and me. He helped me discover what was inside me. There's no club or secret handshake. I shouldn't even have mentioned it to you, but I was drunk, remember? I vomited all over your bathroom to prove it"

"I guess I can't help myself--oh, God, it's hard talking about this--but I've developed an obsession about it. It keeps me awake at night. I think what set it off was discovering that women that I'd only imagined actually exist in real life." His face was blushing bright red.

"I guess I'm flattered."

An image of Rachel appeared in my mind at that moment. "But there is a woman I met, quite by accident, who has a relationship like mine. She might know someone. I'm supposed to get together with her next week."

"I'd be grateful," he said, just as the waitress arrived with our meals.