There were only three things I enjoyed at university. The drama club, Mister David Deekin and Stephanie Gordon's tits; actually that's four isn't it, if you include both of her tits, which I most certainly did?
So I didn't last. I made it through the first year and a little way into the second, but that was it. I left. Mum and dad went absofuckinglutely ballistic. They tried to persuade me to go back, threatened to ground me, cut off my allowance, send me to Coventry and also, probably, looked into the possibility of having me flogged or hung drawn and quartered, fortunately that sort of sport has declined in London in recent years. I didn't care, well I did care for I badly needed the allowance, but there was no way I could go back.
It was the childishness of my fellow students and the way we were still really treated as kids that mainly got to me. I felt so much older than them all, other than Steph. I related much easier to the lecturers and even their wives in social situation than I did my fellow students, I hated having to continue studying and the typical night out, pints of beer in a grotty pub did little for me. So I was miserable, demotivated and unhappy.
I tried to suffer it for a while but during the holidays at the end of the first year I tested the water with my parents.
"Thinking of leaving, what the hell you talking about," my dad almost screamed looking angrier than I'd ever seen him. Angrier that is other than during the first week of my hols when they came home early and found me in, shall we call it, a compromising position? Well I guess lying on a hammock in the garden, topless with the zip of my shorts undone in the arms of a naked aroused boy is compromising isn't it? So when I made my announcement I was already in everybody's bad books, especially mum's for I think she quite fancied the guy. After all the way she leered at him as he pulled his shorts and tee on was far from the disapproving look of a parent!
"You can't just bloodywell leave. It's bloody university not a tennis club, you know."
Mum joined in along the same lines but with more emphasis on what her golf and bridge club friends would think. I tried with her alone knowing that if she wanted to she could persuade dad to do anything; probably by rationing her favours with him, I always thought.
She was, well is, an amazingly attractive woman. She's only nineteen years older than me, so now and then we're taken for sisters, although as that's usually by waiters or men such as golf or tennis coaches or pool attendants when we're on holiday, I have my suspicions that they're may be a degree of flattery involved. And I'm by no means certain that the flattery doesn't sometimes work on my mum!
Anyway, whether their flattery works on them getting into her knickers or not, mine didn't work on persuading her to try to get at dad.
"I'm afraid he's totally made his mind up. You know how he so much wants you to have the education he didn't, there's no way he'll agree."
So that effectively ended that little plan. So, in late September there was I bowling down the M4 in my new MINI Cooper, going back to studying English, attending my sanity check, the drama club, seeing what would happen with Mr Deekins and learning more about Stephanie's tits.
*
I couldn't understand it. I had no comprehension. I just couldn't see why the other girls I hung out with during that first awful year thought a man of just over forty was ancient.
"Far too old," one said "makes my skin crawl," said another, "can't see how any girl of our age could want a man old enough to be their dad," chimed in yet another. They all seemed to agree that older men that went with girls of our age must be some sort of perv and that the younger girls that went with them were, at the least, odd.
Sitting sprawled around in the flat I was renting with six or seven other female students I said nothing. I said nothing for even as they all talked about David Deekins I was almost wetting my pants for him.
He was a lecturer, in History actually, and one of the four or five who gave their time and services to the university drama club. That had become the only place in the entire uni where I felt comfortable and where I enjoyed myself; I hadn't got to know Steph very well at that time so the other place where I felt the same, in her arms, hadn't yet been experienced.
As we lay around drinking beer and smoking, Marlboros not dope, well mainly, so I'd said completely innocently.
"That David Deekin's really dreamy isn't he?"
To say the least no one agreed so I kept quiet. See the juvenile attitudes I had to contend with?
I'd somehow, probably because I had more time than anyone else for I hadn't bothered to start studying yet, given that I thought I wouldn't be returning, been elected the 2nd Year's Drama Club Representative, a bit like being a school prefect I suppose, but without the silly blazer I had to wear at school. All that meant was that I represented the 2nd year on the uni's Drama Club Council for university wide projects and acted as the gofer on events put on by the 2nd year. Largely that meant getting agreement on the plays we would produce at Christmas and end of the year and then liaising with the lecturer who would vet what we proposed and then help us produce it. And would you believe who I had to liaise with? You got it.
"You really want to do What the Butler Saw?" He asked offering me a cigarette.
"Yes we do?"
"Hmmm," David mused as I sat across his kitchen table from him almost quivering with excitement at being alone with him. "You're aware of its reputation?" he asked referring to the furore that greeted its staging in the late sixties when it was booed by some audiences and condemned by many critics as being obscene.
"Of course," I beamed, looking as coquettish as I could before adding softly in what I thought was a you can have me voice. "That's why we want to do it."
"What to shock?" He asked not seeming to realise my availability.
I explained that it was a lot more than to shock and with the seriousness that university applies to such topics we had an hour so discussion on the merits of Joe Orton's rather risqué play.
"Well I'll put it to the council, as I have to, but I can't see they'll turn it down so I guess you can carry on with the casting and all the other arrangements."
"Great, thank you er," I paused before saying. "David," as I stared rather intently at him.
He held my gaze. He held it for just that second or two longer than was necessary. That very brief time that tells a girl so much; those moments when a woman feels that she knows what's going through the man's mind.
Although, I'd only got one more notch on my gun handle of sexual conquests during that first year at uni I felt so much more a woman than I had when I arrived. Why? I'll tell you that soon, but I've given some clues already. Anyway with my new-found worldlywise womanliness I could tell. I knew now what men were after and how they went about getting it and so often that began with holding a girl's gaze for just that few seconds longer. And that's exactly what DD was doing right now. He was undressing me and thinking, 'would she?' He was imagining having me in his bed and considering, 'should I try?' He was fantasising about us having sex and contemplating. 'What if I try and she turns me down?'
As he was doing that and I was clearing up my papers I was trying to silently say. 'Yes.' Trying to convey to him that my answer to whatever he wanted from me was affirmative. Yes to can I see you, yes to can we go out and yes to can I kiss you, caress you, undress you and take you to bed. And of course yes to can I fuck you?
But somehow, ten minutes later I was outside his house rather than in his bed with the door shut behind me and with none of those questions asked or answers given.
Most of the girls I was friendly with, and some of the guys come to that, were amazed at how close to us the lecturers and even the professors were. We'd all heard stories of affairs, quickies and one-night stands between students and the teaching staff, mainly female students but some men with female lecturers. Come to that there were stories of male students with male lecturers and girls with women who were on the uni staff. But then so what? That's life and in fact it was one of the few parts of college life that actually appealed to me, for that aspect did treat us as adults.
So that gave me some assurance that my fancying of Mister Deekins wouldn't necessarily end up as a finger job, alone in my bed.
He was married, but as his wife had some high-powered job in the Civil Service she lived in London and he went there most weekends, not all, though, I noticed, encouragingly.
"So you're not playing the female lead then, Geraldine something isn't it?" he asked as I leaned forward in the button up white blouse that hadn't really got enough buttons done up. I wasn't wearing a bra.
"Yes Barclay, the doctor's wife, I'm playing the secretary, Lisa Emery."
"Why's that?"
I looked at him and noted that as I did he turned his head away from where he'd obviously been staring at my chest. I smiled.
"Well you've read Joe's notes to the script haven't you?" I asked again leaning forward a little.
