Note: The descriptions and accounts in these stories are fictional and do not portray any actual people or events. The delay in posting this chapter and perhaps the next few may be ascribed to some unexpected turbulence and travel in the author's schedule.
As I made my way downstairs from my dorm room for my hastily improvised evening Suzie snooping expedition, I passed the floor lounge and encountered our resident lounge lizard and TV troll, Joisey Al. He was so named because during the first few days of the fall semester, he greeted everyone with the same phrase, "I'm Al from Joisey. You from Joisey? What exit?" To be specific, he was from Bergen County, and his full name was Alphonse Luigi Ludovico Capozzi.
His father was one of the larger plumbing contractors in Bergen County, and his goal for young Al had been for him to graduate from Rutgers and become a registered professional engineer, so that when he joined the family plumbing business he could 'wet stamp' drawings before submission for permits, giving the senior Capozzi a leg up on his competitors. His father had also arranged a future marriage to the surprisingly attractive (judging from her picture, and despite her nickname of "Moosie") daughter of the chief building inspector of Bergen County, hopefully creating a family relationship greased pipeline for quick approvals and issuance of building permits and subsequent rapid fire inspections and approvals on job sites.
Alphonse perhaps felt a little trapped by all these detailed plans, and with the supporting rationalization that out of state tuition at ESU was still less than the in state resident tuition in New Jersey, he applied to go to school at ESU. He must have had some pretty good grades and SAT scores to be admitted from out of state, and he seemed pretty bright, but it turned out he actually wanted no part of engineering school. Thanks to his two highly verbal grandmothers, he was native speaker fluent in Italian and German in addition to his strange native dialect of New Jersey English, and had taken advanced placement tests that yielded him credit for dozens of semester hours before he ever attended a single class at ESU.
Which was fortuitous, because so far he never had. Attended a class, that is. He racked up zero total grade points while attempting 12 credit hours in his first semester at school, but owing to the formula by which grade point averages were calculated, he was still in good academic standing. In fact he could probably skip class for three semesters and still be okay. He was willing to go back to New Jersey and take 'vocational ed' plumbing classes at junior college before he eventually joined the family plumbing business, but he was getting an approximately eighteen month 'paid vacation' at ESU before he flunked out, arithmetically and officially . Apparently his idea of a great vacation was watching TV in the dorm lounge, and as far as I could tell, he did nothing but that, save trips to the food lines downstairs, and journeys to his room for bathroom breaks and phone sex with his betrothed (Thank God that didn't happen in the lounge).
I had never passed by the lounge without seeing him - he even seemed to sleep there. He could recite the dialog to every episode of Law and Order (and all its variants) ever aired, and did very well at Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and all of the other TV game shows. He drew the line, though, just above soap operas, Oprah, and Dr. Phil; perhaps that was what drove his choice of early afternoon sleep periods. He was the first to wear that soon to be very familiar bewildered expression upon realizing that Suzanne was actually dating a lug like me, compounded when he later also saw Lara and Millie. He was still a little suspicious of me, perhaps because his residual Catholic education made him suspect that I had made a pact with the devil in order to get women like that.
What he was wearing now made me highly suspicious, though. His family must have made peace with his choice of attending ESU, because one of his Christmas presents was a giant XXXL sized ESU logo 'hoodie footie', in authentic burnt orange with white trim and highlights. This huge fuzzy fleece pajama suit came complete with a special pocket for his smart phone, and several others for snacks, including a fully insulated pocket for a 12 ounce beverage can. Sitting in the corner of the broken down couch, he looked for all the world like a hibernating polar bear that had been accidentally spray painted burnt orange.
"Hey, Al!"
"Hi Robbie. Pick up any supermodels over Christmas break?"
"No, but I did meet a couple of spectacular ones, up close and personal, on a big yacht, even!"
"Right, sure you did."
I made my way down the stairs and surveyed the crowd in the lobby. The storm that had delayed Suzanne, Lara, and Gunter's return trips to Austin had also delayed many other returning students, and thus the concentration of 'new talent' that had arrived for this semester was enriched, greatly to my benefit, I hoped. I tuned up my Suzie receiver and went into search mode.
There were lots of attractive new coeds, and a small but non-zero set of them begin sending as soon as they laid eyes on me. The greater portion did not, of course, as was my usual experience. There were even a few that tickled my fancy, but unfortunately none of those were sending for me! The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I supposed. But my Suzie sensitivity certainly seemed to be improving with experience, and I was very interested to find that there were two new and distinct Suzie 'notes' that I was only able to identify after some study and consideration.
The first such note issued from a striking dark haired and blue eyed young woman named Jean Nancy Percer, who somehow managed to affect a bit of a French accent through her San Antonio drawl, introducing herself fairly loudly as "John Nan See Per Se" to the fellow standing next to me. She had clearly looked him over before making the first move, and when he didn't, she did. He looked like a Phi Iota Gamma pledge, but I knew he wasn't, since I had recently met them all. But he had all the trappings: an outfit right out of the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, a very expensive looking haircut, and a wristwatch that probably cost more than my tricked out new car, cool as I thought it was. He was complaining to her about being forced to play golf with his father and grandfather almost every day of Christmas break, with the compensating virtue that lunches at the country club were very good, plus it left his nights free for clubbing. It made me think of the movie "Caddy Shack", but it made young miss "John Nan See" send a restrained sort of lilting and conditional Suzie signal for him.
While he was noticing her towering frame and massive breasts (just as big as Peggy's and on an even taller chassis) she was skillfully conducting an interview that quickly yielded a demographic sketch of the young man and his family. As the resulting profile moved from upper middle class to rich and trended toward truly wealthy, the intensity of her Suzie sending multiplied several fold. I had just encountered my first 'Pecuniary Suzie'. It would not be the last, and recognizing them as such would later save me and some of my buddies from certain doom and or intense unhappiness more than once. I made a note to spend a little more time learning about Jean Nancy, and studying her unusual Suzie.
As I was observing the two of them, I noticed two girls observing me! They leaned their heads together and spoke in whispers and giggles, cutting sidelong glances at me, and one of them who at first sent nothing suddenly launched a pretty loud and raspy Suzie for me, which grew louder as they talked more and more. I thought I recognized the other girl from last semester as having been seated at dinner with Orinda and Lizzy Faye a few times, but the one sending was definitely new this semester, so I inferred she was just learning of my reputation as 'The Master', and that her curiosity about sexual submission had captured her imagination, and sparked her signals. I had just encountered what I would learn to call a 'Curiosity Suzie"- the first of many.
