The Last Time
A retiring colleague asks for a favor.
All characters are at least 18. The characters in this story are flawed, just like you and me. Sometimes they make bad decisions as they struggle to live their lives, or in this case to end their lives. All characters and situations are complete fiction, a product of my fertile imagination. Any similarity to actual people and situations is purely a coincidence. All constructive criticism is welcome.
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As chair of the search committee, Brenda was the driving force in getting me hired at the college a dozen years ago. Since then she had been my mentor, advocate, and friend. Back in September, she submitted her retirement paperwork, effective July 1st. She had been a professor for 42 years. As the department chair, I had to sign off on it. Brenda, now 73, had earned her retirement.
My friend is a petite woman. She has pictures of her children and grandchildren all over her office. Brenda is also a devout woman and observant Jew. She always took the High Holy days off and observed other Jewish traditions. She is extremely modest and I have never heard her use profanity, a vulgarity, or an obscenity.
It was the first Wednesday in May, the end of the school year. Finals started on the following Monday with Commencement a mere two weeks away.
I sat at my desk grading papers, when Brenda knocked on my door frame, "Got a minute?"
"For you my friend, I have hours not minutes."
She closed the door and sat down across from me, "You have always been so kind to me."
"That's because you have been so nice to me. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you."
"I was just following my intuition and I was right. You're the best hire this college has made in forty years."
"Now, you're being kind. Are you ready to become a professor emerita?"
"Yes and no. It will be a change, but I'm prepared. That's why I'm here. I have a favor to ask of you."
"Anything for you Brenda."
"Before you say 'yes', you need to hear my proposal."
I nodded, "Fair enough, but I'm still going to say 'yes'."
She crossed her legs, modestly pulling her skirt over her knees. She leaned back, "As you know, my husband died 19 years ago. I finished raising my sons myself and now I help with my grandchildren."
"You have eleven?"
"Yes. Eleven grandchildren." Brenda averted her eyes, then looked back up at me, "This is hard. I need to start at the beginning. How much time do you have?"
I looked up at the clock, 2:06, "I'm free until 4:30. You may have every minute."
"Thank you. As you know I grew up out on the plains of Nebraska. My family were farmers. You didn't know this, but I grew up Lutheran."
"I didn't."
"Bradley was Jewish and I converted when I married him. I digress.
"There was no way I was ever going to college. My family couldn't afford it. This was 1968 and a poor farm girl didn't have many prospects. Most likely I'd get married to one of the boys from a neighboring farm and pop out a bunch of kids. I'd live and die all within a hundred miles of the place I was born, living a hardscrabble life.
"Since I was going to graduate valedictorian, my high school guidance counselor convinced me to apply to several scholarships. Well, I applied to several prestigious programs and I won one of them! It was a full ride to any Christian college in the country. My guidance counselor helped me look for a college. When I saw the catalogue for Pepperdine, I knew that was the place for me. Back then, it wasn't in Malibu. It was in South Los Angeles. It looked perfect. Palm trees, warm weather, no snow. That September I packed two suitcases and got on a Greyhound bus bound for California.
"California was quite the shock for me. This was 1968 and hippy culture was everywhere. Lil' ole Nebraska girl didn't even know there was such a thing. That fall I had my first drink. I smoked pot for the first time. And most importantly, I had sex for the first time. That was a life changing experience for me. Right now, you see me as this modest grandmother. Back then I became a fucking machine."
My face must have registered a shock at Brenda's use of the f-word because she laughed out loud.
"Let me tell you, back then I was a different person. I rushed for a sorority. At first, I'd only have sex on the weekends, but then it became a daily thing. I didn't care who I had sex with, I just needed sex. No, my body craved orgasms. I fucked every guy I met.
"I developed a reputation on campus as a slut and I tried hard to live up to that reputation. My sorority sisters and I would go to a frat party just for the sex. We'd strip naked as soon as we got there. On a whim I'd drop down and blow a guy. Maybe fuck them. I'd have some kind of sex a dozen times at a party. Freshman year I probably had sex with half of the guys on campus.
"This was also Los Angeles. My sisters and I would catch the bus up to Hollywood and we got to see some of the movie stars. We wanted to have sex with them, but we weren't sure how to go about setting that up.
"We learned that one of the guys in a frat worked security at Paramount Pictures. He got one of my sorority sisters a date with a famous actor. Afterwards she fucked his brains out all night and suddenly we had an in. That actor talked up our sorority and we all started having dates with movie stars. By dates I mean fuck fests. All night orgies."
"Any names I would know?"
"Oh, yes, but it wouldn't be right for me to say. From there we branched out into rock and roll. Back then they called us groupies. Hanging out with rock musicians introduced me to group sex."
I raised my eyebrows and Brenda laughed again, "At first I would have sex with one guy after another, but soon I learned how to handle more than one guy at a time."
I couldn't believe she was telling me this.
Brenda kept her head lowered, "That summer, before a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, one band made me airtight for the first time. It was amazing having three cocks in me at the same time. Anal was my new thing. I wanted multiple men all the time after that.
"In the fall, I volunteered to do an entire frat. Sixty guys. Most of the time with all holes filled. I was in heaven being a cum dump. I'm sure it was a lot more than sixty, because I had a cock in one of my holes for over five hours. One of my sorority sisters said they were bringing in guys off the street to fuck me.
"I moved into harder drugs and it started getting bad. For example, many years later I was reading
No One Here Gets Out