Pam and My Virgin Plan

"The bastard! The lying bastard! He told me he loved me, now he's fucking somebody else! The bastard!"

Pam was standing in the doorway of my cabin. Since I knew her only by sight, I was mystified why she was sharing this confidence with me.

"Hi, Pam. What happened?"

"Mark's a bastard, a real bastard! He told me he loved me and I believed him!" She started to cry.

"I'm so sorry, Pam. Please, sit down." I stood up and guided her to the only place to sit in the cabin, my bunk. I brushed the hair off her face.

"He's a bastard, a real bastard. He played me for a fool. Now everybody knows. I hate him! I hate him!"

I ran my washcloth under cold water, wrung it out, and gently cooled her flushed face. Suddenly she grabbed it and flung completely across the room and started raging.

"He fucked me and dumped me! He had no right! The bastard! The goddamned bastard!"

Pam pulled me down on top of her, pulled my face to hers, and nearly sucked my lungs out. She ripped my shirt and pulled at my pants. I was stunned, but, since she was obviously in no mood to be stopped, I stood her up and we tore into each other.

She couldn't have gotten much out of the sex except for revenging herself on her absent boyfriend. It was "bastard! goddamn fucking bastard!" and more of the same as I came.

There was cum all over. I still had my socks on and somehow her bra was entangled between us. As we lay beside each other I had to say something to break the tension.

"We haven't been formally introduced. I know you're Pam. Well, I'm Peter."

"Pleased to meet you, Peter," and she started to cry, in long wracking sobs that shook her body.

I held her against me. Her nipples were being stroked by the hair on my chest even as I breathed as shallowly as I could. Slowly, gradually, her sobs slowed and she snuggled against me.

"I owe you an apology, Peter. My behavior was totally inappropriate."

Every male on board had noticed Pam and had speculated about why she was here. The student handbook said she attended the

Ecole des Beaux-Arts

in Paris, an education far different from the state colleges that dominated the resumes of the rest of the students. With her long blond hair, patrician nose, 5-foot-9 frame, and absolute openness, she charmed everyone she met. She was always well-dressed, even when she wore cutoffs and a sweatshirt. She was everyone's idea of worldliness and sophistication.

Pam was nineteenth-century robber baron rich. She graduated from a refined French finishing school in Switzerland was a second-year student at the

Ecole

. Her family had brought her back to Pittsburgh last summer to break up her relationship with Mark, a stringer for several American newspapers who was based in Paris.

She pretended that she was over him and said that she wanted to see the world, so her parents booked her on the student cruise where I was a junior faculty member. She planned to go to Paris when we reached Amsterdam, the voyage's second stop, and not return to the ship.

"We agreed to meet at the Hilton. I waited all day for him, but he didn't show up. I called every one of our friends but they didn't know where he was. Finally one of them admitted that Mark had met another girl at the Ecole and that they were probably in the country at her parents' summer place.

"I was so angry! I went to his apartment and used the key he had given me, but it didn't work. The bastard had changed the locks! I was so humiliated I broke my key off in the lock.

"You are a dead ringer for him, Peter. The black beard, the black hornrims, even the way you talk and walk. I was going to say something to you once, but then I thought, 'no, he'll think I'm coming on to him.'

"After I admitted to myself that he'd dumped me, I caught the train back here. I took a chance that you would be in your cabin. I'm glad you were."

"I am too, Pam. That was wonderful, you have a real knack for fucking."

"Thanks Peter. Mark said that, too. He's so sweet. He — damn! God damn! Why am I talking like this? I'm never going to see him again. Damn him! Damn damn damn! Fucking goddamn bastard!" and she started crying again.

Our second round was not as wanton as our first. Pam worked at dominating me. She had this way of grabbing my cock with her vaginal muscles and holding it absolutely still, making it almost painful to cum. She liked pushing her breasts up with her hands to be kissed and rubbed with my beard.

We started out slowly but she had no real interest in foreplay, just wanted to get my cock in her. Her hips seemed like mirror images of mine and we meshed quickly and confidently. What pushed her over the edge to a small orgasm was a little bad language whispered in her ear and my holding her ass and pounding her really hard.

"I don't know what I'm going to do now," she said, a little plaintively, after we cleaned up with the only towel I had.

"Well, what was your plan with Mark?" I asked.

"Even if my parents disapproved, my grandmother would send me enough to rent an apartment and live with Mark. We did that for four months before mother came to Paris and found out about us."

"Well, you still have friends in Paris. Why not go back to your studies at the Ecole?"

"I've lived in France since I was 14, first at boarding school and then at the Ecole. I've travelled all over, skied everywhere you can. I had a Eurail Pass the summer after I graduated from boarding school and went to 23 cities. Europe is lovely and has recovered so well from the War. But it's not the entire world, no matter what my parents think."

"So-o-o-o?" I coaxed.

"So I think I'll stay with this cruise. You and I will fuck our way around the world."

In the 1960s there were not the hard rules in colleges about fraternizing with students that exist today. So in our first faculty meeting after we left New York it was not even discussed. I did learn, though, that of the 600 students on board, 375 were females and only 225 were males.

The "dean for student personnel" (that's what she was called) told us that previous voyages had had some difficulties because of the male-female imbalance. It had gotten to the point that on the last voyage more than two dozen girls had quit and gone home before the first half of the voyage was over.

Confidentially, she informed us, the situation was so difficult that the college had been decided that this voyage was going to be split into two separate voyages, with a midpoint in Los Angeles in late January. The program had become sufficiently popular that the school could replenish dropouts with new students at that point, thus keeping enrollment up. Faculty contracts would be "adjusted accordingly," which meant that if enrollment in a course for the second-half of the voyage was not high enough, that class and the faculty who taught it would be replaced. Our class plans would, of course, have to be revised for the shortened voyage.

In addition, the Dean said that the college wanted more faculty involvement on a daily basis with the students.

"Become part of their world, not only in class but in their free time," she said. Since the senior faculty had no interest in this (and the college had no hold on them as they were all visiting faculty), it was clear that we junior faculty were expected to fraternize with our students.

I was just over draft age and armed with a Masters from Yale. At each port I would take two to four students a full-day tour of the city's infrastructure: the sewers, waterways, dumps, food markets, and the like that make this particular urban community work. In two class meetings after the ship left for the next port, the students would lead the discussion of what they had learned, prompted by a series of planted questions I had prepared. Of the 17 ports we would be visiting on the revised schedule, 13 were suitable for this program. I was thrilled to finally be a full-fledged instructor with my own class as well as continuing as a section of a larger class.

So, while Pam was amazingly attractive and had a sexuality I'd only read about, getting "married" to her was not something I wanted to do.

"Pam, if I ever want to die of sex, I'll be at your door. But the way I teach makes me need to spend time with these kids, plus the administration wants us to hang out in the student lounge."

"Crap," she snorted.

"Well, look at it from their point of view. This voyage makes the school a lot of money, if they can sell all the spots they have. And the kids aren't here just for the education, they want a social life. With the imbalance between the number of boys and girls, there are morale problems."

"So I'm supposed to sacrifice you to the greater good, so that you can reluctantly fuck 30 girls in eight months to keep the Dean happy?"

"That's not quite how I'd put it. And 30 is almost three times the number of girls I've had in my entire life."

"Can we at least sleep together from time to time? I feel so comfortable with you."

"Yes, of course, I want that very much."

The boat was scheduled for a 2359 departure, nine hours from now. Pam and I found a small café on the docks and she taught me about moules marinieres. She claimed that they had aphrodisiac powers. Whether or not that was true, our lovemaking was far more sweet, even romantic, than it had been.

As we cuddled afterward, I could see that Pam was mulling something. As long as it did not involve bashing the absent Mark with my body, that was okay with me.

"Peter, not having you to myself is tough for me. But I see the situation you're in and I'm willing to accept it.

"I told you what my plans were. Now I want to know: what is your plan for the voyage?"

"Will you promise not to be offended at what I'm about to tell you? Or think I'm a pig?"

"That's a tall order, Peter. If I do I won't tell you. So what is it?"

"This will be my 'Virgins Cruise.' I will have two objectives: successfully conduct my infrastructure tour of the port city and teach a different virgin what love-making is all about."

"Didn't have that limitation on the top of your head when I burst into your cabin, did you?" Pam leered.

I blushed. "I'd met a girl in New York before we left. We agreed to meet in Brussels and I hadn't been back two hours when you appeared. Between the two of you, my mind was lost in the blaze of lust."

"What's this thing about virgins?"

"I like teaching because of the thrill of opening minds to ideas I understand and believe it. Scholarship, original inquiry, discovery, synthesizing it into knowledge and using it or going in a new direction with it. For me there's pleasure in seeing it happen and in making it happen. And it starts over every semester. It seems like this is what happens when you introduce virgins to sex."

"And how do you plan to select these girls?"

"Well, that is a problem. I can't tell who's a virgin and who's not just by just looking at a girl. And that makes it difficult to carry out my plan with any efficiency. I love the courtship part of having a new lover, but it's a waste if I invest it all in pursuit of someone who turns out to already have had sex. I need a way to know for sure that a girl is a virgin and that she's interested in me. I need a spotter."

"You want — you want someone to pimp for you?"

"That's putting it a little crassly. But, yes."

"Any candidates?"

"Yes. You."

"I think I'm not flattered. What makes you think I'd do this? For that matter, what makes you think I'd be good at it?"

"I see in you someone who likes a challenge. You understand manipulation. And you have charisma. Everyone wants your approval and wants to tell you their secrets."

"I'm surprised at how true that is, Peter. You wouldn't believe how many girls want to talk with me. I guess I seem exotic, sophisticated even. So I could find out their status. And since I think you're a kind and gentle lover, a sensitive soul, I wouldn't be afraid to be responsible for putting them in your hands. In fact, if I had it to do over again, I might even want this to be the way I lost my virginity — a shipboard romance."

She paused. I trembled in hope.

"Alright Peter, you've got yourself a pimp. God, how I hate that word! Let's say I'm your social advisor. Okay?"

We were to sail after midnight for Athens, but there were to be eight days at sea in order to get classroom time in. I had to prepare and teach my classes tomorrow, so I would focus on that. We decided that Pam would develop a list of candidates and we would meet in my cabin after 10 to discuss our next move. We made love and fell asleep in my bunk.

Our meeting was all business. "Peter, first of all I want to declare a slight change in our deal. I am not going to sit and wait for you to be available. I am going to have my own sex life. Now this may not come as a complete surprise to you, but I want to put it out on the table.

"I've gone through the student handbook, looking at the photos and connecting names to faces. For both of us. For me there are six students and four faculty members. And I like three officers. I think I will have a good time."

I was jolted. "The faculty — are they married?" That could be really dangerous for me if I were connected to anything bad that happened.

"One of them is," she said levelly. "But that will be his problem.

"Anyway, I am amazed at the number of kids I know so far. I'm not even ruling out the nurses, though how any woman could go through four years of nursing school without getting fucked is beyond me.

"There are 26 girls on first review who I think are likely virgins." She handed me a legal-pad sheet of names, in alphabetical order.

I was stunned. I ran down the list to see if any of them were in my classes, finding only two, both of whom I found attractive.

"It might be smart not to get involved with girls in your classes, because they might feel pressured for grades."

"You're right. So that leaves 24."

"You should go over the list and eliminate any you don't feel like, uh, dating. I'll let you know the girls I have a pretty good idea who like you enough to be responsive. There are small dots next to three already, who I know think you're 'sweet.' You could work on one of them for a day and see whether I'm a good judge of character.

"Remember, Peter, there's a boy shortage here. Some of the girls are already getting the idea that it's going to be hard to find someone if they aren't aggressive." We made love but she returned to her cabin.

My seduction plan was to be myself. That is, I like to talk to students in an informal setting, usually over coffee or food. I want to see what they are like, ask them to reveal themselves a little bit, even reveal a small intimacy of my own. As a graduate student, it was a cheap date and a great way to revel in the college scene. I'd met all but one of my graduate-school lovers that way.

Sparking a shipboard romance wouldn't be that different. There was the problem that the ship had no place for privacy outside of individual cabins, so courting would have to be done in the open. I would have to take more chances than I usually did, inviting someone to my room quicker. And the gossip mill would be virtually instantaneous.

Still, I was already spending two hours a day in the student lounge in a marathon game of cutthroat Hearts. The play-for-points game attracted onlookers with nothing else to do. There were a couple of pretty regular players but for the most part we drifted in and out. I played with energy but alas no real skill.

I recognized one of the "dotted" girls as an occasional onlooker at the game. Her name was Stacy.