Pete breezed into the apartment around seven. His tan and smile told me all I needed to know about how his spring break had gone. As he unloaded his backpack he gave me a rundown of his two weeks.
“Everything they say about spring break in Florida is true!” he gushed. “There are endless parties, food, swimming, and wall-to-wall willing girls. And there are bins of condoms, all sizes, all colors, all flavors. The pressure is to use them, every time.”
“So you met a lot of girls?”
“Weeeeeeeeeell, not reeeeeeeeeally,” he stretched it out.
“Oh?”
“Actually, I met two girls. There was Marcia, who introduced me to Suzi. After the second day Suzi and I were inseparable.
“She’s fabulous! We like the same music, the same politics, even the same sports teams. And we don’t like the wild parties, the drinking, and the drugs. Here,” he said, whipping out his cell and flipping to the photos.
She had brown hair to her shoulders, a t-shirt tight in all the right places, big black-framed glasses, a wide wonderful smile, and a twinkle that suggested she was posing for the camera and liked it. Pete flipped to the second photo, which showed her in an apron in a kitchen; to the third, which showed her in a bikini which did not leave a lot to the imagination; and to a fourth, which showed her stark naked, full frontal, with a huge grin.
“Ooops! Went too far,” he blushed and flipped back to number three.
“So we just, well, lived together. For eleven days. And I’m in love.”
“Congratulations!”
“You know I don’t like to cook, right? Well, she and her roommate had rented a place with a small kitchen. After the second day, when Suzi and I decided we wanted to stay together, her roommate offered to take my room and I moved in with Suzi. We ate out but that got expensive. So we bought some groceries and said we’d share the cooking. Secretly I figured I was so bad that she’d take over. Turned out, she was worse than me! We wouldn’t have starved, but cold scrambled eggs for breakfast and overdone scrambled eggs for dinner was no good, either.
“We went to one of the hotels that offered a free wine-and-cheese tasting. Afterward we heard about a four-day cooking class they were starting the next day, and we signed up.
“There were ten of us, two couples and six singles. Three of the singles were older guys, in their mid-twenties, probably reliving their youth.
“The class was in the morning, for three hours. We learned to make all kinds of omelets, grill fish and meat, make sauces and salads from scratch, and pair wines with the meals. We got to the point we thought we were good enough to have a party and invited Marcia and her boyfriend, Suzi’s roommate and her boyfriend, and another couple we met.
“We made dinner for eight in a small motel room with a lame kitchen. And it was a blast! We spent the rest of our time fucking, swimming, and pestering restaurant owners about all sorts of foody things. Since they were usually the chefs as well, we learned a lot.”
“AND you’re in love?” I asked, returning to the original subject.
“Oh yeah. After a while, frankly, the club gets, well, repetitive. That’s why I went to Florida, for some variety. Fucking is in the air there! And so is pressure to use condoms. God how I hate condoms! We used them, of course, but then we saw an ad for 3-day results on an STD test. By Monday our results were back, both negative, so we went bareback the rest of the time.”
“So you’re in love?” I prompted, again.
“She is soooo loving! I don’t just mean the sex, which was great. But we just care about each other and what we can do together, outside bed.
“Carl, she’s going to transfer here next year. We’re going to get an apartment and live together.”
“You don’t waste any time, do you?” I teased.
“My parents met in Florida on spring break in 1983. Dad transferred to mom’s school and they got married the year after they graduated. This may not work out, but I’m gonna take the chance.”
Pete was finished unpacking so we popped a couple of Sprites and sat at the kitchen table.
“Don’t you want to keep this apartment?” I asked.
“We won’t need this much space. If I start looking now, I’ll find something that we can take for the fall. There is always turnover as people graduate and the graduate students move on.”
My head was whirling. “I like this place. Can I take it over?”
“Sure. My advice is, starting advertizing soon, that way you’ll get it over with and have the best chance for a good roommate.”
Is the university listing service the way to go?”
“Yes, it really got responses. I interviewed four guys. You were the best fit for my style and the club.”
“The club? Why worry about the club?”
“Because there is always turnover and the club keeps going only if we have new members. We lose between fifteen and twenty members every year. Didn’t you notice? Well, probably not, you were too busy settling in, but there have been eight new members since New Year’s, besides yourself. Cindy is one of them, but there are also three female graduate students; a female sophomore; and three guys, a freshman, a sophomore, and a graduate student. The mix keeps changing, but we have to fill the vacancies. Otherwise, the club will collapse and fifty people won’t be getting laid.”
Pete sat up in his chair. “Hey, I’m sorry, this has been pretty one-sided. Tell me how
your
spring vacation was.”
I gave Pete a rundown on Cindy, our working together, and what I took to be our breakup.
“The girls don’t usually get into the club for long-term relationships,” Pete mused. “No one really does, but especially with the girls, they’re usually focused on something else: careers, interests — like Karen, she’s a classic! — but not the white picket fence and two-point-five kids. It’s our biggest selling point for women, that they can have an active sex life without the pressure to get committed to anyone.
“For the guys, it’s easier in a way. You and I, we were virgins, we wanted to get laid and the club made it happen. I probably would have been a virgin till I was forty, the way I was going. Once I understood that I was attractive, I was on my way. But, as I’ve gotten bolder, I find I like the chase.”
“You take this seriously,” I said.
“Well, yes. Ruth — Mrs. McGowen — encourages everyone to look for possible members. I’ve brought in three this year, not counting you: my freshman-year roommate, his roommate, and a guy one of the girls was dating before she joined the club. Margery’s good at it too, but most of the members can’t be bothered. It’s a struggle, frankly.”
We sat in silence for few minutes, then Pete brightened. “Did you sign up for any dates this week?” I told him Wednesday and Friday.
“Any more available?”
“There were when I left,” I said, then realized where he was going. “Hey, wait! You’re in love! You can’t —”
“I’m in love but she’s not here. We agreed that we would pick up where we left off when she arrives here in the fall. How else can we live? I’ll call Ruth and see if we can come over. C’mon, you haven’t seen her outside her role as den mother.”
*
Over chicken francese, Ruth McGowen explained how the club came about.
“I graduated from here sixteen years ago and married my sweetheart that summer. He was two years older, already an assistant lecturer in his department, and within three years he was on track for a tenured position. So we bought this house. At the time it was a wreck. Several undergraduate and graduate students worked for us for almost two years to restore and update the place. It was a magical time for us! We became very close to them and took several in as boarders.
“At my job in the library’s reserve desk, I’d see a lot of kids. So many of them just burrowed into their books, all they did was study. They’d chat with me, the boys and the girls, but they didn’t seem to have any social life. It made me sad.
“So I thought, ‘why not do a little matchmaking?’ We started with Saturday night pot-luck dinners, then added springtime picnics. The matchmaking worked pretty well, but there were still kids who weren’t dating. I was surprised at how many of them would unburden themselves to me about being shy, feeling unlovable or dorky, irredeemably nerdy, what have you. It just broke my heart.
“Stuart was killed eight years ago in an automobile wreck. I was destroyed, but the kids were so supportive. There must have been forty of them, those who had graduated and those who were still here. They became my family. They got me through it.
“Financially I am more than comfortable. The legal settlement plus the university life insurance paid off the mortgage and construction loans and left me with enough that I make almost what an associate professor does. I still work at the library but do legal research for appellate lawyers in all sorts of civil litigation on a part-time basis.
“The pot-lucks were my anchor. They became bigger and bigger. Gradually I realized that the matchmaking should get more organized. At first I was afraid I would scare girls away if I was too up-front about it, but the ones I confided in convinced me that they would be very receptive, so I set up the board on the kitchen wall.
“It’s evolved now to a membership of fifty, give or take. Roughly 28 girls and 21 guys. I’ve gotten firmer in the rules, particularly about STD tests and dating only within the membership.”
“I was one of those reading-room trolls,” Pete said quietly. “You were so kind to me. You listened and listened. Then you invited me to one of the pot-lucks. At first I resisted, but you were persistent. ‘Just bring a six-pack of Sprite,’ you said.
“You had me pass stuff around and put me on the clean-up crew. And you would talk to me for hours about my hopes and my fears.”
Ruth smiled. “That’s the way it works. My job is to bring you out of your shell, help you see that you have value to others and that you can take something from the group for yourself.”