"Every year, over a weekend in March, the Student Union runs a 24-hour movie marathon in the main hall in the center of North Campus. They run mostly comedies, like
Kentucky Fried Movie
or
Airplane
or
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
, which, honestly, wasn't half as bad as I was led to believe it would be.
"Its biggest problem was having such a low budget. The fact that they operated on such an obvious shoe-string didn't prevent them from managing to be moderately entertaining.
"I wouldn't be surprised if a quarter of their budget vanished with the helicopter crash. I suspect that was a legitimate accident, not something scripted.
"Then again, no one seemed to react to it like it was an on-set accident, so I may be wrong.
"Anyway, it was nowhere near as bad as
Santa Clause Conquers the Martians
. I physically had to leave the room every few minutes to recover, the first time I tried to watch
Clause
.
"I never tried
that
again.
"They'd mix the comedies with some thrillers, as well, like
Deliverance
or
A Clockwork Orange
or
Southern Comfort
.
"Since it's a 24-hour straight-through marathon, people show up early and stake out a claim to part of the hall floor. Picnic-style. We had an oversized padded blanket to lay on, several sleeping bags and pillows, and I added my beanbag chair. And snacks. That's always an important ingredient in these sorts of things. We were early enough to claim a chunk of floor just left of center. A good spot to watch from.
"If I was gonna spend an entire day in there, I at least wanted to be comfy.
"I went with a couple of my friends and
my
" - I stressed the pronoun - "PJ turned up with one of them. I'd never met her before then.
"We spent the first couple of movies like pretty much everyone else there, quietly chatting and socializing. Things quieted down by about midnight, or so."
Lisa's hands slid up to my waist to massage me there for a while.
"I guess it was some time after midnight, maybe 1 or 2 AM, probably after a trip to the sandbox, when, after carefully threading my way back through the darkened sea of blankets, I found someone already sitting in my beanbag chair. I was a bit affronted that this girl I didn't even know had confiscated
my
chair."
Lisa snorted at my complaint.
"I started to lay down on an open spot on the blanket when I thought 'Screw it! That's mine!' and dropped down on the chair beside her. She didn't complain, or try to claim squatters' rights, she just moved aside a bit to re-arrange the stuffing to make more room for me.
"I guess she didn't think I could be all that bad since the girlfriend she came with knew me and spent time with me."
The "Uh huh," from Lisa came out with more than a trace of skepticism, which I proceeded to ignore.
"I suppose," I continued without responding to her minimalist editorializing, "it's always possible her lack of freakout implied that she was actually hoping that I'd react along those lines as a way to break the ice. It never occurred to me to ask, then or since. She didn't squawk when I dropped into the chair with her. She didn't squawk when I eventually wrapped my arm around her, either.
"The seating arrangement was rather awkward. It was dark, with a constant low murmur of a dozen or more conversations going on just below the threshold of audibility. We also had a blanket thrown over us and were pressed up against each other most pleasantly."
"Such convenience! So, you started groping her in the dark, then? Under cover of that convenient blanket?" Lisa put out.
"I am shocked! Shocked, I say! That you'd think such a thing of me!"
"No doubt," she said back. "Did you?"
"No, I did not!" I said. "I'd just met the girl! By, the way,
Casablanca
was one of the movies in the marathon last year.
"I didn't know PJ from a hole in the wall. Granted, she was one of my friend's friends, and that was a recommendation, in and of itself. And, while we were most definitely within each other's personal space, I did nothing to make her think badly of me."
"You were afraid to, then, weren't you?" Lisa slipped in.
"I..." I began quickly, then gave in, "I wouldn't put it that way. 'Terrified' would probably be more accurate. I'm fairly shy around women..."
Lisa snorted loudly, ran her hands down my back to my ass, and started pressing her thumbs between my cheeks again. "Yes. You're shy. I've noticed that," she said with a smile and disbelief in her voice.
"Mmmmmm... nice," I said in a rather pleased tone. "But, as I was saying before I was so pleasantly interrupted, I'm fairly shy around women before I get to know them a bit.
"We've been friends almost since I moved in, Lise. I've now known you almost three years before we even considered moving to the bra-on-the-floor stage, let alone panties-on-the-floor. Our first awkward kiss was only two days ago."
Lisa laughed quietly. "OK, I can see that. Perhaps I was a bit too hasty with my comment."
"Yes. 'Perhaps,'" I said with a touch of disapproval.
After another moment, I went on. "There's also that legacy of distrust that got low-key ground into me over the years from Rob and his girlfriend-stealing paranoia. That makes me rather reluctant to ask girls out when I don't yet know their current relationship status - if any.
"Anyway, despite being mashed together up close and personal with a tall, good-looking girl, I was terrified that I might get an erection and she'd go screaming off into the night."
"Well, did you?"
"Did I what?" I asked innocently.
"Did you get a woody?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that any such thing happened," I replied with a surprisingly straight face.
Lisa snorted. "Did she go 'screaming off into the night' when she realized you had one? Remember, I've met The Little Guy in insufferably-horny mode."
I would have frowned at her if I was facing her, but I didn't.
"I did my best to hide any evidence of any...
excitement
," I said, "and keep her from feeling such unwel... unanticipated attention, but thinking back on the night, now, it's fairly obvious that she did notice it. Pretty quickly, I'm afraid.
"I almost said 'unwelcome' attention, but the fact that she didn't go screaming off into the night once she realized suggests that it probably wasn't as unwelcome or unexpected as I thought it would be, at the time."
"At least it wasn't an
immediate
deal-breaker," Lisa said.
"No. Not as immediate as whipping it out under the cover of the blanket."
"You didn't!" Lisa said, a bit shocked.
"Didn't what?"
"Whip it out!"
This time I mostly succeeded in twisting around to face her. Sort of. "Good God, Lise! Is that what you think of me? Did I ever do that to you?" I shot back a bit hotly. She'd kind of flicked a raw nerve with that. "Besides, I just said I was too terrified to grope her. She was awfully gropable, I might add. And no, I didn't reach out and place her hand on it either! Nor did she let her hands wander, much as I'd have enjoyed it, if she had."
"Sorry, didn't mean to get you mad. The thought of you whipping it out like that was a bit of a shock and I blurted that out." She leaned forward to kiss my back in apology. "You're usually not
that
tacky."
I snorted in reply, as her last sentence still carried an accusation of tackiness, then started to relax a bit as I turned back to lay on the pillow, to go on.
"Where was I? Oh... we sat together like that through at least two movies. Might even have been three. I liked how the arrangement was and wanted it to last as long as I could stretch it out. I wasn't paying all that much attention to the movies while I desperately tried to hide my excitement from her. She was a nice, warm presence in the slightly chilly hall. We were seated beside each other on the beanbag, not really snuggled. If we
were
snuggled, she'd have felt it immediately. As it was, it still probably didn't take her long to notice."
"Poor baby!" Lisa said with a small laugh.
"Eventually, one, or both of us needed to get up and move about a bit, get the circulation going..."
"It sounds to me," Lisa said with another laugh, "that
your
circulation was doing fine!"
I frowned at that.
"At that point," I continued, "when I rolled off the beanbag and tried to rise up on my knees, I discovered that my lower back was killing me. It wasn't bothering me while I was sitting next to her, but I cried out quietly when it felt like I was stabbed in the ass.
"That was the first time anything like that had happened to me. I reached out and grabbed at PJ to steady myself and she heard my yelp.
"After lowering myself to lay on the blanket - which, while it
was
padded, was also on a hardwood floor - and explaining what seemed to have happened - she offered to give me a back rub.
"I was in pain,
much
more than tonight's tweak, and in need of relief..."
"In more ways than one, it seems," Lisa got out around a giggle.
I had to laugh at that, too.
"Hush, you!" I finally said. "I told her it was my lower back, so she suggested that I lay on my belly and she'd straddle me, pretty much as you are now."
"She was straddling you
naked
?" Lisa asked, mock incredulously. "No wonder you started going out with her!"
"You
are
in rare form, aren't you?" I asked in an aggrieved tone. "No, regrettably, there was no nudity involved. We were, after all, near the center of a really big room full of plenty of other students.
"Sure, it
was
kinda dark, but not dark enough for
that
! Given how dark some of the corners were, it wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that some gropage - or more - was going on elsewhere in the hall. I didn't know if she was into such exhibitionism. At least not
then
. She rubbed from my shoulders - fully dressed - to the small of my back and kept asking if she was rubbing me low enough. Eventually I just lied when she got that far down my back and said that she was.