Old theme, new treatment, I hope. You need the first chapter or you'll get confused. Please remember to vote. I answer non-anonymous feedback. Satyricon
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'Uh, Mr. Taylor?' He was standing at the door, looking nervous. The new guy, third floor front. I was feeling pretty good. I'd put in an hour at the gym, first time for a while, and my body didn't like that much, but the first beer of the day had hit the spot and Stevie Ray Vaughan was doing incredible things with a guitar.
'Doug. No mistering in this house. Whaddya need, Nick? No need to stand in the doorway: you've been here a while, you'll discover I'm easy as long as the rent's on time.' He flushed scarlet.
'Uh, that was it, actually. I wanted to show you this, and I don't really want to ask my folks; this is costing them a bunch of money already.' He meant college. He handed me an official-looking letter. I looked at him suspiciously, then scanned the half-page of jargon-filled crap. Long and short of it was that his State funding was gonna be ten days late because a bunch of pissants had decided to go on strike. Sorry for the inconvenience, etcetera. People nowadays plain won't work. I glanced up at him.
He was one of the ones who'd had his parents with him when he viewed the room. Shy boy, looked like a good gust of wind would knock him over. His Mom and Dad ordinary folk, proud as hell that their son had made it to a good school; if he qualified for funding then they were definitely not rolling in the long green. I checked the letter again closely. Seal looked right, raised letterhead at the top. I did sums in my head. He was definitely going to be late with the money. OK, just this once.
The house is big enough for five renters, and five renters is a nice piece of monthly change when you collect it, but big old houses have big old yards and big old maintenance costs, and hired help isn't for the simple chores.
'Yard work this weekend, Nick, and you lemme see the check when it arrives. Good enough?' Save me having to do it, I thought, feeling pleased. 'You know how to rake leaves?' He nodded anxiously, then realized I'd made a joke, and smiled in a relieved way.
'Yessir, Mr. Taylor.' Polite kid.
'Call me Doug or I throw your ass out now. Say it.' He gulped.
'Uh, yes... Doug.' Good enough for a first try. He fled and I settled back down on the couch. First week in college, bewildered, feeling like an ignorant jerk, trying to act like an adult. I been there too, and I almost felt sorry for the kid. After a while I got up and looked out of my big bay window. When I bought the house I remodeled the first floor to make a nice apartment for myself, closed the hallway, except for my door and the stairway; upstairs was the original six bed floorplan, plus I put in an extra full bath and a utility kitchen where the sixth bed used to be. Way too much effort, but it works pretty good, and I got an income, privacy, the nicest rooms, and a big bay window to stand in and think and watch the world go by. I thought back to my first year here, in this very town. Shit, don't time fly?
Julie Anderson had howled and cried and carried on like an unmilked cow when the time came for me to leave for college. Turned out she was dreaming of engagement and marriage and babies and a lot of stuff that plain didn't interest me, so the last week was kinda stressful. More stressful, because I'd spent the summer goofing off and doing as little as possible, and my body was slack and my mind was pure putty. No way my gift was going to work until I straightened out. But hell, Julie was happy to blow me regularly, as long as I returned the favor, and I plain wasn't willing to get off my ass just to give her a soft landing.
Being a slacker has a downside though, and I felt kinda bad as the Valiant rolled along the Interstate. Mom was pretty pissed at me: Julie had gone so far as to catch her one weekend and sob and whimper and tell her what a cruel jerk I was and how I'd ruined her rep and a lot of stuff that plain wasn't true; what the hell: she wasn't pregnant, but Mom had told Dad and... you know how it goes. So I left home unescorted, and, tell the truth, a little nervous.
And the first month was pure hell. New schedules, new guys to impress, new girls to check out and be too shy to approach, new economic problems, way too much schoolwork: Julie and babies almost began to seem like an attractive option. Finally, reluctantly, I realized that I wasn't going to cut it unless I made an effort. Bummer.
'Gotta do something,' I said out loud. My roommate looked up from his book.
'You say something, dude?'
'Gotta do something, or I'm gonna be overwhelmed by all this shit. Is there a gym round here?' He looked at me strangely.
'Dude, this is a college. Of course there's a fuckin' gym. In fact there's two. There's a library as well: you found that yet?' I heaved myself off my bed and looked for my shoes. Smart-ass, but a good guy: a little too serious for my taste, but hell, so what? What I needed now was to think what I wanted. Some pussy, of course. That was a given: I was getting a sore wrist already. I needed to keep my grades up too, at least till I figured out how to live easy without too much work
'Which one's closest?' He looked at me strangely again.
'Dude, you are a piece of fuckin' work.'
The second month was miserable too. I made myself work out, and I hated it; I found the library and started hitting the books again, and I hated it. The only good part was deciding which particular pussy to dream about. Hell, I thought: it worked with Patty, it'll work again. Plan for success.
By Christmas my body had firmed up a little and I was getting B's and the occasional A. I was also going outa my skull. I'd fixed on a sophomore girl I saw in the library occasionally. Outa my league really, but the cutest little thing you ever did see. Short red hair, long slim legs, handy-sized set upstairs, big smile, pair of green eyes that looked like she could get physical if she wanted to. She didn't seem to date regularly. I managed to find out that her name was Judy Olsen. I thought about her a lot, but it never got quite vivid enough, so I took a deep breath and stopped masturbating. Bummer.
Like I said: outa my skull. On the other hand, the first three lines on my secret activity graph were moving upwards in synch. The fourth one, quality time with Judy, didn't exist yet, but I left a hopeful space for it. If things hadn't improved I mighta given up, but it seemed like the formula was beginning to work. I did my best to up the gym time and the library time, and mostly I managed. Three days outa seven anyway. Hated it though.
College is pretty cool once you find your rhythm. I wasn't gonna make the dean's list, but I was up where I wanted to be, and I was discovering how to read other stuff for pleasure as well as information. I wasn't totally buff either, but my extra twenty pounds had moved up to my chest and arms and I looked a helluva lot better for it. I'd plotted Judy's library schedule and was trying to match it, sitting in her line of sight and keeping my head down, running through the conversations we might have.
You wanna be an ace slacker, you gotta be realistic. Most of me that hated all the shit I was putting myself through, but there was one small part that reminded me that this was a means to an end, not a lifestyle choice. A little patience and some short term pain was going to pay off if I did it right. That kept my bitching down to a private minimum.
Social life. Well, yeah: the fact of the matter is that the third week of January I managed to get laid. Not Judy, hell, that woulda been too corny, but a lot better than nothing. A sign that the effort was beginning to pay back. 'Bout fuckin' time too.
She worked in the head shop that all college towns have, and she fitted the ambience like a hand in a glove. Old-fashioned hippy look, though she couldnta been a real hippy, ever; twenty-something, ash blonde and way skinny, looked as if she needed a month of feeding up, but she had something. I didn't stop imagining Judy's eyes fixed lovingly on mine as she removed her clothes, but I took to browsing the shop occasionally, flicking through the Freak Brothers back issues while I checked blondie out.
Third week of January. I'd done the gym and the books and was on my way for a pizza when I stopped in there. Nearly closing time, and she was alone. Usually there was a genuine old hippy there as well, wanting to impress with his tales of Woodstock or some such shit, but today he wasn't about. I moved to the racks of comics and picked one at random. Fat Freddy's fucking cat had crapped in his shoe again, and I pretended to read and snicker while I watched her. She looked kinda impatient.
'You gonna buy anything or what?' I looked up and for the first time in months I felt a soft click in my head. Way to go.