Megan pushed back her glasses, squinched her big blue eyes tight shut for a moment, and rubbed them. They'd only been working on this project for an hour or two, but she looked as tired as Tyrone felt. This was the hardest project in class yet, and both of them probably wished they could be paired up with someone else. The professor didn't cotton to switching out of the assigned teams, though, so unless one of them suddenly dropped out of the class, they were stuck together. Which caused problems. One problem was that she was a history major, he was a psych major, and neither one of them did very well with computers. Or each other, which was the bigger problem. They'd agreed to meet in her dorm for a long session of hitting the books, but Megan looked and acted like she was afraid of being raped the whole time they'd been studying. Tyrone decided to go ahead and confront the situation.
"Why don't you like me?" he asked.
Megan practically flinched. "I...where did you get that idea?"
Tyrone raised an eyebrow and gave her a look, and said, "Come on, be honest. I can tell you don't like me, I just want to know why, is all."
Megan shifted in her chair, and Tyrone could tell she was thinking about trying to bluff her way through it, but instead she took a deep breath and said, "It's not that I don't like you. I just...don't feel comfortable around you, is all."
"Is it because I'm black?"
"No!" Megan blushed. "It's...oh, come on. You have to know. Everyone's heard about...you know."
Tyrone smiled. "You'd be surprised at how hard it is to find out what everyone knows about you. Go on, tell me. We've got a lot of programming to get through, and it's not going to help if you and I can't even talk to each other."
Megan straightened up in her chair a little. Nervously, she twiddled a ringlet of blonde hair through her fingertips. "It's...the girls." Her blush deepened and spread. "Everyone's seen you on campus with these trampy girls, college drop-outs and townies, and there's all sorts of rumors-they say you live off-campus in a whole house full of them, like a harem, and that they all work as strippers to put you through college..." She broke off and shook her head, realizing how stupid it all sounded. "I mean, I know, it's probably just crazy stuff that people spread around, but, well...I don't know you. It's all I ever heard about you." She looked down at her outfit. "It's kind of why I dressed all frumpy, sweats and a T-shirt. I didn't want to give you any ideas."
Tyrone chuckled. "You look fine, believe me." He took a deep breath, and the smile went away, to be replaced by a deeply serious, almost uncomfortable look. "But those stories...OK. There's some truth to them. I do live off-campus, and yes, it's with six girls who all work in a strip joint. And yes, they do give me all their money, and just kind of trust me to take care of them. But it's really not my fault."
Megan inched her chair back just a bit. "Not your fault? You've got a bunch of...of sex-slaves, and it's not your fault? Whose fault is it?"
Tyrone looked down at his shoes, clearly more uncomfortable. "Nobody's, really. It's just...look, I've probably said too much already. I don't want to get you in over your head."
Megan stood up. "Now hang on! You can't just drop, 'Oh, I run a stripper harem off-campus but it's not my fault' into the conversation and then try to move on. Tell me what the deal is, or I'm kicking you out of this dorm room and we'll both flunk!"
Tyrone sighed. "Alright, but...don't say I didn't warn you, is all. The truth is..." He took a deep breath, and finally blurted out, "I have a magic penis."
Megan blinked. Opened her mouth. Blinked again. "A what?"
