Candace and the Frat Boys (Chapter 1)
Kathryn M. Burke
Candace Merrill was having a really bad day.
To be frank, she was having a bad couple of years. Her career was not so bad: she was head of the Development Office at Lorimer College in Brookline, Massachusettsâwhich basically meant that she spent all day begging alumni and anyone else she could think of to donate money so that the college wouldn't have to dip too much into its pitifully small endowment. It could have been worse, but it wasn't the most stimulating job one could imagine.
But her personal life was a shambles. Two years ago, her husband of twenty years had ditched her for a younger woman (naturally), leaving her, at the age of forty-two, to fend for herself in the utterly dispiriting world of middle-aged dating. It had been months before she had even attempted to find a replacement for her faithless ex, and when she did so she found that men in their late thirties or early forties were beset with so many "issues"âcustody battles with vengeful spouses; spoilt teenage children who gave their father's "girlfriend" no respect whatsoever; guys who either wanted her only for sex or only to sympathize with them because
their
wives had left them for more appealing husbandsâthat the whole business became a sorry joke. Every now and then she had shed her clothes with these jerks just for relief (vibrators and dildos only went so far, after all); but she always felt soiled afterwards, never returning the pathetically eager calls of her bedmates who wanted nothing more than an endless succession of repeat performances.
I mean, what guy turns down free sex?
Was she really getting too old to attract a decent manânot only one who was gainfully employed and who had a good relationship with his children (or, better yet, had
no
children), but who had something approximating charisma or charm or (dare she think of it?) sex appeal?
She
still had sex appeal, or so she liked to believe. At five foot eight, she was tall for a woman; and her firm but expansive breasts (38D, if you please) and succulent curves in the area of her posterior still caused more than one male gaze to focus on her as she walked the streets.
She had initially enjoyed being on this small but lively campus when she had first arrived seven years ago: the arrival of fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds every year had rejuvenated her, casting her mind back to her own (pretty wild) college days; but now these kids seemed exactly thatâlittle children who seemed to get younger and more naĂŻve with each passing semester, and who therefore emphasized in the most pungent possible way that
she
wasn't getting any younger.
Maybe that's why, on this Friday evening in early September, she found herself wandering around campus looking for some distraction.
She certainly didn't want to go home just yet: she had no plans for the evening (certainly no date) or, indeed, for the entire weekend; the idea of getting together with one of her numerous girl friendsâmiddle-aged like her, several of them divorced or in unhappy marriagesâwas not appealing at all. Female solidarity and bonding were all fine, but it could get awfully depressing at times. What she needed was noise and laughter and maybe some alcoholâanything to relieve herself of the burden of thinking.
And where else to go but to the frat houses?
Several of these houses had a pretty bad reputation on campusâeither as places where the liquor flowed to excess or where young women were first plied with that selfsame alcohol and then (if they hadn't passed out) pressured to "put out" for the rowdy men of the establishment. Candace smiled cynically to herself, recalling that she had been just such a sweet young thing twenty-five years ago, but was now a "mature" woman who could fend off predatory males with a withering look or cutting remark. In fact, as she made her way to one frat house that seemed to be particularly noisy and chaotic at the moment, she wondered whether she might find some amusement in witnessing the sexual downfall of some wide-eyed coed who hadn't any idea what she was getting into (or, more pertinently, what was getting into her). Okay, she really should take the girl's side in such a situationâor maybe she would just be a neutral observer of the shenanigans.
She didn't quite catch what the name of the fraternity wasâit might have been Delta Piâbut that didn't concern her. It was boisterous and full of people apparently having a good time, and that was enough for her.
As she drifted in, she was indeed just an observer at first. What else could she be, since she didn't know a single soul here? There was a long table in the back of the room she found herself in, and what seemed to be plastic cups, bowls of munchies, and bottles of beer for the taking. Beer wasn't exactly to her liking, but it would do in a pinchâbut then she saw a flowing bowl that could only be spiked punch, and she made a beeline for it.
Yes, it was definitely spiked! Probably with vodka, which was largely tasteless and therefore a perfect addition to the sickly-sweet fruit juice that made up the bulk of the contents. Just the thing to get unwary girls wobbly on their feet! (Of course, too much alcohol would have bad effects on a guy's performance as well: she'd encountered that all too often on some of her more dispiriting dates.)
As she poured out a generous helping into a plastic cup, she took the drink in her hand and sauntered over to where a bunch of studentsâmostly men, but also two womenâwere chatting in a circle.
She was pleased to see that the men gazed up at her with a certain appreciation. One of them even patted the empty seat next to him and said, "Hey, lady, welcome to the party! Come sit down here!"
She took her time doing so, not wishing to convey the impression that she wasn't in control of her own actions.
The two women in the group were nothing to write home about. She couldn't tell if they were actually girlfriends of any of the guys here or were unattached; probably the latter, if the nervous looks they gave to the men in the circle, and the hesitant sips they took from the cups of punch they had in their hands, were any indication. It was hard to tell what the conversation had been about before she had arrived, but her presence suddenly seemed to shift everyone's attention to her.
"Don't recognize you!" one guy said loudly after pointedly licking his lips with a thick tongue. "Are you from around here?"
That's a pretty dopey question,
she thought.
Where the hell else would I be from?
But she decided to be polite. "I work on campus, in administration."
Several men's eyes lit up at that response. Their thought processes were all too apparent:
Well, you're not a professor, so if I have a roll in the hay with you, I won't get into trouble, will I? If you do, that's your lookout.
No one, mercifully, seemed to care what she actually did "in administration." One guy tried to be gallant and said: "You're a fine-looking lady!"