But as yet I haven't met 'em,
That's why I'm in the shape I'm in.
I walked with Liv as the group made its way back to campus, and made a comment about how awesome her performance was, especially since her blindness denied her the crutch of having the lyrics on screen.
She said "Thanks, Tara. Mom and Dad were huge Motown fans. So while I knew Jimmy did the cover, I was really channeling Sam Cooke."
"Are there karaoke systems for the blind?"
"Yes, they basically use a computer to translate the screen to a braille pad. I really don't like to karaoke though. I'm too much of a perfectionist in my performing to enjoy crashing into a song I don't know appropriately. I'd rather just perform."
Mia chimed in, "Well, thanks for performing for my birthday today. I suspect once Broadway has gotten its taste of you, you will be charging 'personal appearance' fees."
Liv replied sweetly, "I will always have a special 'Mia Rate' just for you. It will only be double what I charge anyone else."
Mia laughed. I looked at her solemnly. "Can I borrow the 'Mia Rate' sometime? It is still better than the triple the 'Mulan Rate' gets me," I said in reference to the Chinese princess of yore. This time, all three of us broke up laughing.
Mia, Liv, and I had gotten to be really close. Mia was a riot to hang around. She was adventurous, telling us about the times she had gone rock climbing and bungee-jumping. She also had the tattoo best matched to its owner I had ever seen. Just under her collar-line on the back of her neck, there was the organic chemistry notation for adrenaline. For an adventurous chemistry major, it was a perfect choice. The three of us just got along well. We could each outrageously poke fun at each other, and no one took any of it as anything more than the fun it was intended as.
As we approached Lincoln House, Toby addressed the group. "Hey, I had a great time tonight. When are we going to head out again?"
Mia, Debbie, Baz, and I all had the same idea, and pointed at Laura. Recognizing her cue, she belted out a strong acapella "I. Don't. Know."
Laughing, everyone dispersed for the night.
****
Laura and I had settled in as roommates. Since both of us were only children, I think we were both extra conscientious about trying to be a good roommate to the other. Not that it was always easy. Respecting her religious conviction, I kept my room decorations a bit tamer than I might have. I passed on the hunks, and went more artistic with prints of paintings. She respected my agnosticism after a single evangelical episode. I drew that boundary clear. There were plenty of other heathens around to convert, so I did not need to bothered until she had converted the rest.
There was only one thing that bugged me about Laura, and I couldn't decide if it was something I could bitch about or not. Laura was a homebody. She was just someone who never needed to leave her nest. She could be reliably found in our room, writing at her desk or reading on the couch. The problem was that there was never an opportunity for me to score some alone time. With Roxbury's Newman-Clarke system, Laura and I were in all the same classes but one. And my 'Intro to Psychology' class met at the same times as her 'American Romantic Writers' class. Under normal circumstances, if I hit a 'too much Laura' limit, I would just go down to the common room for a few hours, because that didn't bother me at all. Problem was, I couldn't go down to the common room to masturbate. After the summer of plentiful sex I had experienced, even ample opportunity for self-release would be a comparative dry spell. To be going cold turkey was absolutely maddening. Out of respect for Laura, I held my tongue, but my sexual frustration was reaching epic levels.
I even thought about dropping in to talk with Keily my RA about the situation. Keily and I had this sort of awkward relationship. We had met at a sexy dinner club the summer before she improbably became my Residence Assistant. There was no denying she was a dream girl to me. Getting to live with her, and get to know her as a real person was a dream that I still couldn't believe was real. But it was this reality that never existed in our relationship before that kept us apart. As much as I think we would both have liked to ignore the fact, her being my RA perversely put each of us out of bounds for the other. She would certainly lose her job, and likely be dismissed from the school if we crossed the wrong lines. In my fantasy world, or even in the semi-reality of the club where we met, we could have danced, cuddled, or fucked each other silly without consequence.
In the end, that is what stopped me from checking in with her, the possible consequences. I was willing to wager she would have let me hang out for a bit in her room to get myself off, but I could also see her wanting to watch, wanting to help, wanting to go way too far. Perhaps I was influenced by my personal fantasy avatar of Keily, Red, who's personal motif was 'way too far', but let's face it. The first time I met Keily, I ended up eating caramelized desert off her chest in public while sitting in her lap clad only in my panties. The second time we met, by the end of the day we were mutually masturbating while I told her beyond X-rated fantasies I had been having about her. It didn't take a genius to see where a conversation between us would go that started 'Hello, I am super sexually frustrated, can you help?' It was a wonderful dream to have, but paradoxically, living the dream would cause it to end.
While I fruitlessly looked for loopholes to my Keily fantasy, my other sexual fantasy was equally exasperating. I had been majorly crushing Zach, the campus football hero who lived across the hall from me, since I first laid eyes on him. He was incredibly hot. Like, romance novel cover hot. But I just could not attract his attention for any sustained period. He was unusual in Lincoln house in that his fame from his on-field exploits gave him a wider social exposure than most of us. It was not unusual for him to be hanging out with the team instead of with us here in Lincoln. So he never got much chance to know me well. But I was always paying attention to him. In class, I would pick my seat so I could discretely swoon over him. No one seemed to have noticed my jogs down at the athletic complex track always seemed to coincide with Zach's practices. Heck, just hearing his voice in the hall was enough for me to do a reflexive self-check to see if my attire was put together properly.
Finally, one Wednesday, all my frustration became too much. I woke up from a dream where I was being edged for hours. I was right in the zone between being too excited to come down, and erupting in glorious orgasm. Even though it was only a dream, it felt frustratingly real. Laura and I got up and got ready for the day. First stop was the dining hall for breakfast. Wandering over to the fruit table, all I saw were banana cocks, citrus teats of differing sizes, and peaches with cleavage. Taking some cornflakes, I sat down with Laura, Debbie, and Toby. I was so fucking horny. Even watching my friends eat caused pornographic flashes in my mind. Poor religious, sheltered Laura appeared to be a wanton slut swallowing cocks for simply eating her sausage links. Trying to avoid this image, I moved my focus over to nerdy Toby. He promptly inadvertently provoked my imagination. The cream doughnut he was eating was slightly overfilled, and biting into it squeezed the filling back onto his lips and chin. For him, licking his lips was just reflexive act of cleanliness. To my sex-crazed mind, it invoked images of him licking his lips of creamy goodness after a long session of eating a girl out. Debbie didn't help in the least, mindlessly poking at a berry among the folds of her whip cream covered crêpe. I swear, I would not have survived someone eating a cannoli.
After breakfast, we joined the rest of Lincoln House for our World History class. I was a designated note-taker for this class. One of the aspects Newman-Clarke system was since the Houses stayed together for all their classes, it was encouraged that the students share out typical class tasks such note taking. In a typical class, we had four or five note-takers and a couple of people who recorded each of the lectures with their phones. Then after class, we had other people who would compile the notes online, people who would do research likely testing topics, a couple of the people majoring in the subject would serve as tutors for anyone struggling, and someone would serve as a class manager, making sure everything got done. The advantages to this team based approach was it allowed people to focus on their strengths. It also allowed people to be more present for the lectures. Since everyone was not focused on grabbing the same duplicated sets of notes, they could be experiencing the lecture and interacting with the professor. Thus the professor could react more to the interests and needs of each individual class, keeping the class fresh even for the most seasoned tenured professors. The catch was each year, each student was expected to give a presentation on how they led and contributed to the successes of their House.
