A good high school friend asked me to room with him before starting our freshman year at CU, but I thought college was where you looked under more than one new leaf so I hadn't accepted. It was just luck that my random roommate assignment clicked, and Richard Rodgers and I were best friends before Christmas. He was from Leeds, England and I was from Pueblo, Colorado.
At the time in 1975, CU didn't permit freshmen to have cars, so finding spots for naked romance was difficult, especially when the ground outside got cold. At first, Richard and I agreed to disappear if the other one found a coed to share his dorm room bed for a couple of hours. It was just into November when we both agreed that our disappearing act had to change. It had soured for both of us due to frequency, and we agreed that if either of us couldn't talk the girl, or in his Britspeak, the bird, into sharing his dorm room bed while the other one of us was in the room, then we'd have to find another place.
Richard could have easily checked into a nice hotel each time and his parents wouldn't have minded the cost, and he did a few times; but I think he liked making his latest beautiful bird expose herself to me and he usually stayed in our dorm room. Needless to say, I appreciated his generosity and more than a few of his beautiful birds didn't seem to mind preening in front of me. I, on the other hand, didn't have any choice due to my financial situation, so our dorm room was my only practical option in the winter.
As a consequence, privacy in romance was a luxury that was rare during spring semester. Sometimes I'd be at my dorm room desk studying when they arrived, sometimes I'd be in bed, and sometimes they'd already be in bed when I arrived. There were also many times when I was with a girl in my bed when he was there, and more than a few times when we both had one. The girls I was with and I stayed under the covers for our romance when he was there, but Richard didn't bother, and my presence, whether I was with a girl or not, didn't stop my roommate from performing with his bird atop the covers.
The result was that I was treated to the sight of many naked, beautiful birds while he fucked them. It wasn't that I stared. I'm good at tuning out distractions, so if I was studying, I studied. If I was in bed, I either slept or romanced with my own girl. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice that he had great staying power, that he liked all the positions, and that he liked to talk to his bird while they did it.
What I did pay attention to was his birds when they weren't in his nest. Richard knew that, and when they got up to use the bathroom or get dressed, he always flipped the light switch on to improve my view.
Aside from his male model looks and the deep pockets of his parents that enabled him to take taxis to upscale restaurants with his date, there was another physical attraction on him that made his birds so willing to let me see them. His beguiling bird caller was at least three inches longer than mine, much thicker, lasted longer, and came more. He used it as a goad as well as an instrument of pleasure, and when his bird was on the verge of an epic soar, he would threaten withdrawal and demand concessions before he would let her fly. One of the demands was always for his bird to remain naked in our dorm room, a demand I appreciated.
When I had a girl in my bed, regardless of whether he had a bird in his or not, he was fond of exposing his bird call, or his tallywhacker in Britspeak, to the girl in my bed. It swung and flopped around when he walked, and he liked to exaggerate its motion for effect. He was a real peacock, and I just let him strut. He had the plumage to justify it, and during that spring semester I nicknamed him Peacock.
At the start of that first fall semester, I was probably better at getting a girl into my bed than he was at getting a girl into his, but that was where and when it ended. I'm six inches taller than Richard's 5'9", I was on scholarship on CU's baseball team, I studied harder and got better grades, and initially more girls flirted with me. My M.O. was to chat after class, then coffee, then a date, which then led to my dorm room bed, which then was followed by my strutting-peacock best friend.
My M.O. never quit working, but toward the end of that first semester, I wasn't better than he was at getting girls into bed. His M.O. didn't require much effort on his part because his looks, his money, his accent, and his bird call were enough. Birds were seemingly aligned on a wire awaiting a chance to be auditioned in his nest.
Apparently, girls talk as much as guys, and the APB went out: the Peacock was really good in bed and would be a great catch for the long term. The message was not on the bulletin board at the UMC, but word-of-mouth meant that the parade through his bed went dorm by dorm first and then sorority by sorority. Since I am an inveterate voyeur of naked beautiful women, his prowess was a benefit to both of us.
Neither Peacock nor I restricted ourselves to freshman girls, and we both found coeds with a couple of college years under their short skirts to be less concerned about exposure and more adept at recreational sex. I think it was late February when I saw Molly, a junior who'd been in my bed during fall semester, end up in Peacock's bed. She was much more vocal and responsive with him than she'd been with me, and I had to officially concede what I'd known for a long time: my roommate's fuckability was superior to mine.
Not long after than night, Molly was his date again and I was with Shannon, a girl I'd been dating for a couple weeks. We were in the room listening to Derek and the Dominoes, smoking some good, and drinking tequila. I don't know who started it or why the subject came up, but we started talking about what made sex good for us. It wasn't long before Molly was looking at me when she confessed that size did matter to her.
The more we drank and smoked, the looser our confessions became. I confessed to wishing I had a tallywhacker as big as Richard's. Shannon, my date, confessed to wishing the same thing. Molly, his bird, mocked me for being so much bigger than Richard in everything except my 'tinywhacker', and they all had a laugh at that. Mine was nearly six inches long, so really only 'tiny' in comparison, but there was a meanness in Molly's words. I thought, 'she's a mockingbird.'
I let my mind traipse a little further down that path as I refilled my glass of tequila. That unification produced a fleeting but dark neural connection, and I light-bulbed, 'I'd like tequila mockingbird.'
My synapses kept firing and different neurons connected. No death penalty for the mockingbird, but perhaps some emotional pain.
"I wish you had been good in bed too, Molly. I might have asked you out again."
She responded, "I wouldn't have gone."
I looked at the Peacock, "Shannon's prettier, more giving, and much more responsive than Molly. Perhaps you'd like to provide a second opinion. I can walk Molly home."
Shannon smiled at Richard and winked. It was on, and Molly was shut out. I grabbed two wrists to put their hands together before I started unbuttoning Shannon's blouse. The Peacock quickly took over and Molly stood. I believe she would have slapped me, but I stood too and didn't get close enough.
There was a definite snarl as she looked at me, "I can get home by myself."
The dorm room door was tested for durability when she slammed it on the way out.
****************
Peacock and I only stayed in the dorms that one year, but the apartment we shared for the last three years of college was well out of the price range for most students. That was because my roommate, Richard Charles Rodgers, had extremely wealthy and generous parents. Naturally, one of the benefits of that ritzy apartment was that we each had our own bedroom, and each of them was often filled with a pretty college girl who liked sex as much as we did.
Unexpectedly, the walls between our bedrooms were not soundproofed at all, and what I had seen in our freshman year, I heard in the last three. I considered those uninsulated walls to be a benefit rather than a defect. They were an aphrodisiac. Hearing his latest bird's passionate warble was always a great kick-start to passion for the girl in my bed.
The strutting peacock never stopped flaunting his proud feather to the girls I brought home, and he was still fond of getting his beautiful bird to strut her plumage in front of me. While I didn't see him in action any more, I still got to see his beautiful birds strut and hear them moan, whimper, squeal, and concede whatever he demanded.
In late September of our senior year, I met a beautiful freshman bird, Lacey Taggart, and we clicked right off. She was a 5'8", 125 lb., 36-23-35, firm C-cup, blonde, green-eyed, shy, giving, friendly, and very passionate vision of perfection who had just turned 18. By Christmas, we were an item and inseparable.
I checked with Richard to make sure it was okay first, and when he agreed, we moved her stuff into our apartment during that first week of spring semester. Peacock was still his usual flirting and mating-dance strutting self and he still 'requested' his birds to strut in front of me, but now Lacey was my equally-appreciative voyeur. I don't think she appreciated the birds like I did, but she sure liked to look at the tail feather that tickled the tail of so many birds.
The noises and struts were an aphrodisiac for Lacey as well, and her responsiveness escalated in proportion to what her senses were detecting. Her chirps and tweets of rapture started rivaling those she heard from Peacock's bedmates, and I was pretty sure they were intentional and intended for my roommate, especially when he was making his bird in the other bedroom warble and trill at the same time.
In late March, I accepted an offer to attend graduate school in physics at CU. I had applied at six other prestigious programs but then sent out disregard notices to each of them. It wasn't only because CU had a great program with a professor who professed to be anxious to work with me, it was also because Lacey was going to be there.
It had taken awhile for the new normal to settle in for Lacey, but as it did, her shyness receded and she became less concerned about her own exposure around the apartment. She started to respond to Richard's accent by flirting back in her own attempt at Britspeak. It wasn't long after she started trying to copy his accent that he started calling her Lassie instead of Lacey, and that activated my jealousy flag as much as her flirting. Despite my request to tone it down, neither of them did.
Her dress code kept easing and it started when she went from shower to bedroom with just a skimpy towel around her. That never stopped, but then she started going braless and then her short and lacey robe and panties became commonplace. They hugged and sat close to each other when all three of us were on the couch.
Those last couple of months together in the apartment really sent my jealousy flag fluttering, but there were also times when that flutter induced a reaction that I didn't understand. That flutter sometimes caused a stiffness in my down-south control center that I was at a loss to explain.
And then, on April 26th, we discovered that she was pregnant. We thought we'd been careful, but condoms don't always work. I wasn't unhappy that she was pregnant and neither was she because we were both anxious to give parenting a shot.
Peacock and I arranged an elaborate proposal ritual and he loaned me enough for me to get a ring I would be proud to have her show off. She was both tearful and gleeful when she accepted, and we agreed the date should be soon.
In early May, Richard accepted a position with Bank of Scotland, but he would be working out of their New York Branch. That bit of news put an even more urgent need to move the wedding date closer, and we were married less than two weeks after the semester ended. Rings were exchanged on June 9, 1979, partly because everybody wanted her to be married when her baby bump became evident, but partly so Richard could be the best man before he had to start his job.
Our wedding was not the big church wedding Lacey's mom had envisioned, but it was in Walsenburg, Lacey's hometown, so family and a few close friends could attend in the small church they could find. There was a small reception at Lacey's house, and three hours into it, I couldn't find my bride. The bottle of tequila was empty, so I went looking.
