Spilt Sounds

I graduated from the local university over three years ago, but I still live in the same apartment just east of main campus. While the building I am in is filled with university students, they are primarily grad students, so it is relatively quiet, even on the weekends. Someone may occasionally have a party, but even then it is typically done by 11PM, and the guests headed home.

When I was a student, I would occasionally attend parties on campus. The ones hosted by the fraternities and the sororities were certainly the best. It was not necessarily the alcohol which made them "the best," or the theme parties (pirate night, beach night, casino night, and plenty of other nights) which made them "the best," or even the people who attended the various parties which made them "the best."

What made them "the best" for me was the plethora of "extracurricular studies of human anatomy," as a friend of mine would call them. On a typical Friday or Saturday night, even during the summer, one could walk down Sorority Row or Fraternity Row and hear plenty of sounds of college students engaging in various sexual activities. Even if the music pouring forth from a particular fraternity or sorority house was loud, one could still usually hear a loud primal cry wedged between the pounding thumps of the overamplified bass lines. The later into the Friday or Saturday night, the more of these loud primal cries one would hear, and those cries – at least at the fraternity houses – would very often be followed almost instantly by a chorus of (usually male) cheers.

The other five nights of the week, it was possible that one could walk down Fraternity Row or Sorority Row and hear such similar cries piercing the night, but with significantly less frequency. On Sunday nights in particular, it was extremely rare to hear such sweet sounds. Whether the sky was full of stars or full of rain clouds, whether the temperature was summer hot or winter cold, many students would walk up and down Sorority Row and Fraternity Row at night, especially on a Friday night or a Saturday night, listening to the sexual sounds spilling past the windows and onto the sidewalks.

On a recent Wednesday night, after a particularly long and stressful day and evening at the office, I needed to walk after dinner, primarily to help relieve the tension of the day, so I walked around the outer edge of main campus to a local independent coffee shop and ordered the usual mocha with a double shot of mint.

Between the coffee and the long walk, my tension was indeed melting away. I simply meandered, no real destination in mind, no schedule to follow other than needing to return to my apartment by 10PM. The final rays of daylight disappeared beyond the western mountain range, and the nearly-full moon masked the stars in the eastern portion of the sky. I passed a number of university students – some returning from their evening classes, some sitting on the many benches chatting or (in a few cases) publicly displaying their affection for each other, some jogging in the cool evening temperature, some walking their dogs, and student one walking her cat. As I walked past the dorms, I could hear various types of music at a relatively quiet volume, and idly wondered about the students living in each tiny room.

Without realizing it, I eventually ended up on Sorority Row. I did not realize it initially until my mind consciously noted that the students on the sidewalks were almost exclusively female.

As I approached the north end of Sorority Row, I decided to sit on a stone bench for a few moments, to give my feet a rest as I finished my coffee. It was just after I had sat down that I heard the first feminine sound of lust.

I closed my eyes, sipping my drink slowly to provide an excuse for why I was sitting there in case someone came along to interrupt my listening pleasure. One feminine voice was soon joined by another, and then by a third. I tried not to smile as I listened to the soft, silky sounds of Sapphic seduction, tried to imagine the events taking place in the sorority house behind me.

I sat and listened for a long time, even after I had finished the coffee and could not realistically fake sipping it. My eyes remained closed as I imagined various scenarios, various trios of young women being continually constructed and reconstructed in my mind as I tried to match my imaginings to the three seductive voices.

A hand upon my knee startled me, my eyes snapping open to find a small, long-fingernailed hand caressing me just below the hem of my skirt. I followed the hand up the bare arm to the bare shoulder, over the spaghetti strap of the little black dress, up the satin-collared neck, past the dainty smiling lips, up the small nose to the sparkling eyes.

Never had I seen her before, but I sensed what she wanted. I wrapped an arm around her and she leaned into me, her head upon my shoulder, and we listened together.

Saturday night, as the candlelight flickered, I was one of the young women on Sorority Row, crying out in primal delight as she pleasured me. And in the back of my mind, I could imagine another pair of young women sitting on the same bench outside the same sorority house, listening to my sexual sounds spilling past the window and onto the sidewalk.