Chapter 1: A little mind-altering action ensues when Paul decides to use a mysterious powder on new girlfriend Kim.
When Kim just dropped by out of the blue, I knew something was up.
Kim and I had only known each other a few weeks, gone out a few times. She was a freshman theatre major, smart and cute as all get out. It was her demonstration of Scottish folk dancing for her more inebriated friends that caught my attention from across the room at a mid-term party in O'Fallon House, where most of the upper-classman theatre types lived. She finished a series of steps that impressed the hell out of me and gave a little curtsy to the applause of her friends while managing not to spill a drop of her beer. Then she glanced up to see me watching. She looked me dead in the eye and executed a very dancer-like spin move that flared her skirt up and ended with a flourish, beer still unsloshed. I was in.
I worked my way over, struck up a conversation and we quickly discovered we had a lot of common interests, though not many common acquaintances. Unusual for a small college, but it explained why we'd gone half a semester without ever running into each other.
After a few dates, I could tell she liked me, but I didn't know it was serious enough on her part to drop by on a rainy Sunday afternoon. This twist meant things definitely looked promising for a deepening of our relationship. She was standing at the sliding glass door to my bedroom on that not-quite-as-warm as usual Florida December day, drenched to the bone and shivering. Those big eyes had a language all their own and they were speaking right to my hardening dick.
"Can I come in?"
Nothing against Kim. She was very bright....but, excuse me, what a STUPID question! When you're a nineteen year old heterosexual male and there's a five foot two inch, ninety pound, extremely feminine female with big brown eyes and roiling brown curls to match standing in soaking wet clothes at your door, looking at you with a plaintive and ever-so-slightly wanton look in her eye, what are you going to say?
As it turns out, not a damn thing. I just opened the door and Kim walked in. We kissed warmly. I was glad to see her, although I did have my heart set on watching the playoffs. My team was in for the first time in while. Quite a while. Seemed like a big deal...but not nearly as big as what was about to start.
She explained that she'd been driving in the neighborhood, doing some errands, when the storm hit. It was one of those Florida frog-stranglers that usually come only in the summer time, but all the lightning and the hard and heavy rain--so heavy, she couldn't even see the road--had frightened her. She knew I lived nearby, so. . . .
"I hope you don't mind?"
Can you believe a girl who could recite Shakespeare like a Ph.D. and had the scholarships to prove it could ask so many stupid questions?
The thunderstorm was passing by quickly, as they are prone to do in Florida, but Kim was still shivering in my arms as the pre-game show droned on in the background.
"I'm cold. Do you have something I could change into?"
"Sure . . . ummm . . .I don't think any of my pants will fit you." She was tiny. Maybe a 22 inch waist. I'd never seen her nude, but knew she had great legs - one of the first things I'd noticed about her, while she was doing her Bonnie Lass routine at the party. Plus, she favored sun dresses and short-shorts in the summer, which is nine months of the year in Florida.
"I've got some t-shirts and an old robe." I secretly hoped she go for the robe. I'd had it since junior high--a blue velour thing with gold trim. Tacky, but the thought of seeing Kim in it....
"The robe sounds good."
A quick trip into my closet and she was trotting off to the bathroom to change. I must admit, I was nervous. I wasn't a virgin, but I was never completely sure of myself around girls. Women. It wasn't until I felt like I was in control somehow that I relaxed at all. There's something deep, dark and Freudian behind that, I suppose. Not enough attention from mom, too much conflict with dad - whatever. Maybe it was a mild thing that could have gone another way if I'd been more successful with women in high school. If that's the case, then it was really kicked into overdrive when my heart was broken by Susan, this stone-cold bitch who'd dumped me the hard way just before school started, not even four months ago. In any case, it was still just a mild psychosexual kink that, at age nineteen, wasn't all that big a thing. Nothing permanent or irreversible or anything. I was just going to make sure I knew for sure a girl was really interested before I made a move. Avoiding possible humiliation seemed to make good sense at the time.
Of course, I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was thinking about the game I'd been planning to watch, alone, and Kim's sudden arrival and her seeming willingness and the fact that she was going to walk out of that bathroom in a few minutes with a robe I hadn't worn since 9th grade clinging wetly to her petite frame.
I think that's when the thought of the Q'injo powder came to mind. It had been sitting in my kitchen cabinet for a couple of months, ever since Jim Choi, a Korean-American guy I hung out with all last year gave it to me as a "thank you" for getting him a date with my ex-girlfriend Susan's best friend, Elaine.
So, there was Kim, in my bathroom. Changing clothes. Putting on a little blue robe I knew would catch her about mid-thigh. And it suddenly dawned on me that Jim had given me eight doses of Q'injo powder, which he claimed, "will make any woman yours."
I remember I'd laughed at him when he said it. "Yeah, right!"
"No, really, Paul. It's true. This is an old family recipe handed down from generation to generation for who knows how long--and it really works. You remember my fiancee, Xian?"
I remembered. You don't forget a woman that beautiful, especially when she is plastered to a friend, attentive, adoring and utterly devoted, as she had been the last time I saw Jim, six months before. I knew she was in town with him this time, too, but off spending time with his family today while we got together.
Jim was lying on my sofa drinking a beer and dangling this little grey cloth packet in my face. Since it was the four or fifth brew of the evening and all I was staring blearily at was a little grey cloth packet sealed at the top with a bit of black ribbon, it was hard to take him seriously.
"Xian is mine because of Q'injo. My dad saw I was in love with her when we were eighteen and gave me a sample of the powder. He said he thought her genes would be a good addition to the family pool."
I can't remember what I said, but it wasn't dismissive enough to get him to stop conning me, because he continued.
"First off, Q'injo's the only true aphrodisiac in the world. Women get very hot once they've taken a dose and I've never met a woman who wouldn't fuck the first guy they laid eyes on after they got some--but there's more. It's a hypnotic drug too and no woman can resist the power of the man who has given them the powder - if he knows how to influence her."
