Traffic flow studies prove that one car flashing brake lights will cause a bottleneck lingering hours, sometimes days.
--You're kidding.
James blurted this, causing titters to ripple through the classroom.
Professor Ang smiled. --It's bizarre but true.
He continued the lecture.
In Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, everywhere Tryrone Slothrop gets an erection is later inevitably ground zero for a V2 strike, causing a half-mad CIA agent to plot Tyrone's trysts in an effort to predict where the silent missiles, that traveled faster than the speed of sound, would hit next. After something exploded would come the sound of the V2 descending, a whining drone like the ghost of a surprise attack.
Every action, no matter how small, radiates effects outward in a sphere of subtle influence.
Tracing such lines of affect remains too complex for even the most complex models in the fastest computers.
This touches on people, too.
Do depressed thoughts darken the world? Do ugly words coarsen society? Does every sexist glance prompt later rape?
Professor Ang had a lot to say. Too much, really.
James zoned out, wondering along his own line of interest, mainly daydreaming about sex. Did every stiffened nipple or clit cause distant stolen babies, wild affairs, broken marriages?
What about splooge?
Orgasm, ejaculation? Whimpers and shouts of ecstasy? Was every dollop of spurted sperm a seed of endless special effects?
Every time someone comes the intense feelings of pleasure and gratification must explode outward into the world. Private jacking and jilling off could spread everywhere, causing all kinds of fucking.
What about exhibitionists, splashing their momentary tingle onto unsuspecting targets in crowded buses, subways, or other public places?
Even at that instant James would inevitably be catching radiating come signals, had to be. That thought excited him. All the people fucking and coming at any given instant, sending out pulses of breathless joy.
James touched his erection as he gathered his books at the end of class. He ran his fingertips down the length of his shaft through the denim.
Some of the other students saw the quick stroke, a few smiling, one girl fascinated, following him with her gaze locked on his crotch.
When Professor Ang gestured for James to join him for a moment beside the lectern, James ignored him and dived into a cluster of students draining through the door like ...
... semen down a drain.
James savored each bump he got from a coed, imagining soft curves, complaisant hollows into which he could spurt. She'd scream for Mama, demand more, tell him to fuck her hard, deep, and long. She'd command him to give her a baby, to go so far it came out her throat.
He tended to imagine garish extremes.
One of the girls, Eva Toscher, a curvy girl with dark blonde hair to her shoulders, fist-sized breasts, flat belly, and long legs, gave James a look as they rubbed together in the doorway jam. She'd sought him out. She'd pressed her mons pubis against his cock.
She was the one who'd noticed him touching himself as he stood after class was dismissed. Her eyes sparkled as her free hand gave him a quick stroke, lingering to tap, then circle his glans.
--Wanna?
That's all she had to ask.
#
--Mine? Well, my dorm room's closer but my room-mate's there, has the plague again.
She leaned to kiss his ear. --We can go to my place. I have an apartment at Gamma Tau Omega.
They walked across the quad, past couples, trios, and quartets sprawled on the grass, some laughing, chatting, and eating or drinking, others engaged in necking, even dry humping. James imagined the inside of their underwear, male and female both, coated with what popular usage referred to as cum and quim, according to Professor Ang.
As they walked, the campus bell tower chimed once, marking half hour.
At the bell's chime James tingled, gasped a little, and smiled when he saw Eva watching him. --Just thinking about how they must feel. He gestured toward some of the more involved couples lying on the grass.
He thought, too, how their sex organs would swell, tingle, and unload, only to quiver at further stimulation toward another muscle-weakening release. Over and over until their belly muscles got sore.
The fountain of youth seemed never to go dry for long.
#
Midnight, he and a friend prowling the perimeter of boredom, had climbed the carillon tower for no particular reason. While up there gazing over campus and town, his friend had reached over to tag James on the crotch. --You're it.
--I'm what?
Despite himself his cock swelled, stiffened. He glanced at his friend's bulge, wondered how weird it would be if they ...
--Anoint the bells.
They both ended up masturbating as they arched their backs to reach their cocks out over the hollow center, where the bells hung. Both came hard, spewing white goo into the darkness. A faint sound rose to prove they'd baptized the bells with their dribbled spunk.
--Now we'll get hard every time we hear the bells.
James thought his friend was nuts but later admitted it worked reasonably well. Bells reminded him of ejaculating into cold darkness.
He put it down to the thrill of having a secret.
#
Eva led him by the hand up a dark stairwell. It creaked. An older house of brick and bay windows, it houses the sorority with a slumbering dignity. No house mother, no challenge at the door.
Her room had a mullioned window that opened like a door. Too small to squeeze through, perfect for tossing things onto passers-by, except it overlooked the back garden, surrounded by a high brick wall. No one to water-balloon would casually stroll by.
--Room's nice.
--Private, too. She turned a skeleton key in the lock, left it there, and crossed the uneven floorboards to hug and kiss him.
#
In high school he hit age 18, having been held back, which meant he was shaving, a grown man, and he'd had a crush on a younger teacher whose husband had been killed in a car crash. Kids called her the Black Widow but James, smitten, wanted only to be inside her somehow.
He took a blank paper from her desk one day. At home, he jacked off all over it, several splashes, each one sweeter as he imagined her body, her responses, her enthusiasm for his throbbing cock.
He let that soaked page dry overnight, folded the wrinkly, parchments-stiff paper, and slipped it into an envelope. On the envelope he block printed in tiny letters: WHEN?
As he entered her class he slipped that envelope partly under her green blotter. When class commenced, he kept an eye on the desktop, her movements. He regretted leaving it. He feared reprisal. He daydreamed of a thousand good responses.
He quivered when he saw her frown and pluck the envelope free from the blotter. She held the letter closer to read the tiny writing.
James wondered if his heard would squeeze itself into failing.
Bolting from the room sounded good but he couldn't move, could't breath. His sweat trickled down his ribs.
She opened the envelope, unfolded the oddly-stiff paper, and looked at it. An instant's expression crossed her face.
James couldn't read it.
