Innocence

by Lucy St. John

Chapter 21

  You could divide that fall, our first at Old State, into two parts. There were the idyllic, innocent days of September and early October. These were carefree times: Sunbathing in bikinis in the quad under the Indian Summer sun, knowing that the guys high up in the dorms were looking down, some with telescopes or binoculars. Sonya, unstrapping her top to give them a show. The rest of the Five laughing, but wishing they could be so bold.

  It was football games on Saturday afternoon, when the bowl that was the stadium would roar with the collective voices of one-hundred-thousand strong. And we, the heirs to a tradition, would attempt to pick up the pieces – and our school pride – following the humiliating, debilitating child sex abuse scandals involving one of our ex-coaches.

  But when the game was on and our football players were laying it all on the line for us and our school, there was nothing to do but cheer. So we did. And we didn’t apologize for it. This was college. This was State. And we were here for only four years, a flash of time really. But the time of our lives. And no one was going to steal that from us.

  Classes opened us to myriad possibilities that lay ahead for each of our career paths. Sure, we complained about the homework, stressed over the exams and slaved over term papers, sometimes under bright desk lamps all night long. But we loved that, too. There was much to learn, and we were receiving the key to the kingdom of knowledge. It was all there for the taking. We were a band of happy thieves.

  Of course, there were the guys. So many guys. But perhaps that term is too casual. These were men. Unlike high school, they were fully developed with muscles, beard stubble, or actual beards. Their voices, deep and rich. And their minds, while pre-occupied with sex, still found time to soak up the knowledge and learning we were all there for. In other words, there’s a serious side to college men. We didn’t always see it, but it was there. It’s something a girl never glimpses in a high school boy. And damn, it’s attractive. So sexy.

  My man was among the most serious. Maybe, too serious.

  I found Alec Keegan increasingly confounding. Sure, he was interesting to talk with, but that was all we did: Talk. Walk. Hold hands. Wander around campus. Share tables at the library or the student union. Get a bite at the pizzeria downtown.

  I loved listening to his counter-culture take on nearly every issue. Alec could be counted upon for seeing another side to issues that most people wouldn’t even think of, much less clearly consider and cogently analyze. It was heady, being in Alec’s orbit. But it was also exhausting. And ultimately, it was unsatisfying.

  Because after our talks and walks and hand-holding seemed to bring us closer than ever before, there was no follow up. We’d walk back to the dorms, and he would drop my hand, bidding an awkward goodbye.

  Or when I would corner him, pressing myself against his body, wrapping my arms around his waist, he would freeze up. And even if I managed to push my face close to his, there was no heat, no chemistry, no desire.

  It made me feel like shit, especially when the Five of us would gather and swap stories of our various encounters with the male species. Sonya would lead off, of course. She was painting a couple of the football players – at night in one of the art studios. The players knew they couldn’t bare it all for the art, lest the university, already suffering a sex scandal with its football program, deal with another bout of bad publicity. But they could give Sonya a private show, for her private collection, to be kept under wraps until their college playing days were over.

  And what artist wouldn’t want to touch, to experience, her thickly muscled subjects. Her well-hung subjects, to be sure. I sometimes imaged the scene in the darkened studio. Just Sonya and a man. His shirt off. His shorts bulging in front. His muscles rippling. Her eyes crawling over every inch of his body. The two unable to resist the pull of the physical. And the passion when they finally gave in to desire and let their hands and mouths and body parts roam free and run wild.

  These thoughts would set me to tingling down there. And when I was alone or in the dark of deep night, my hand would wander down there, and I would give in to these fantasies. My orgasm would shatter me into a million pieces of exquisite pleasure. Yet I would always feel the burden of guilt, along with the loneliness and embarrassment over how pathetic I really was.

  Amanda Livingston remained far more circumspect about her deepening relationship with her handsome professor, Vic Connelly. Of course, having carnal relations with a student could get the teacher in trouble. There was a new era of sexual strictures at State in light of the football sex scandal. But this wasn’t it. Within the cocoon of the Five, there was total trust and utmost secrecy. None of us would talk out of school, so to speak. It was just Amanda. She had that British stiff upper lip. She really didn’t like talking about herself. And the prospect of revealing the details of her passions with a man were just not in her nature. But we knew anyway. We all knew. It was on her face. It was in the way she held herself. The newfound confidence and sense of sexuality she commanded and exuded. The two were having sex. There was no doubting this. And all I could think was, good for her. So what if he was older? So what if I could never imagine myself with such an older man? So what if I didn’t see the attraction?

  Amanda did, and she acted upon it. She saw what she wanted, and she reached out and took it. That was the lesson. My lesson.

  Would I heed it? Would I have the courage to do so when the moment presented itself?

  Even socially out of step Chelsea Daniels and her ever-present roommate/protector, Lauren Marks, were making the dating rounds. Mostly double dates, so Lauren could keep an eye on the innocent, small town girl. But their love interests (or, should I say, their like interests because things hadn’t progressed all that far) were polar opposites. Chelsea had managed to find another just like her. A freshman from some obscure, small town in Pennsylvania (the state was full of them) who still wore the wide eyes of a fish wholly out of water. He was a preacher’s son, no less. And that is the precise term he used – preacher. Not priest, not minister, not clergy. Preacher. It sounded as if he had spawned from some tent revival in the 1930s. But the rest of the Five teased Chelsea, anyway.

  “You know that they say about them preacher’s sons?” Sonya put in. It didn’t matter that Sonya hailed from a devoutly religious family in Johnstown. Her uncle was an ordained priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. But this church wore its strictures loosely. Priests married. They served beer and liquor at all church functions, everything except the Sunday liturgy. And both marriage and funeral repasts were some of the most raucous, hard-drinking affairs this side of a Dublin pub.

  “No,” Chelsea said, her deer-in-the-headlight eyes as big as saucers. “What?”

  “They’re the wildest,” Sonya said. “I mean, they grow up with the whole town thinking they are good as gold and nice as pie. But they can’t wait to rebel. I mean they rock out on Metal. They get into booze at an early age. Usually, the altar wine first. But they are most twisted when it comes to sex. Most have addictions to porn, along with some weird hang-ups that involve wearing woman’s underwear. And they want do it all the time. Always doggy-style. And sometimes, in the behind.”

  Chelsea went white as a ghost, as the rest of us tried to stifle laughter.

  “Has he asked for anal, yet?” Sonya inquired, deadpan.

  Chelsea’s widened eyes rolled in her sockets, as if in search of an answer.

  “Anal?” she squeaked in a choked, stricken voice, as if she didn’t know a thing about it, yet the mere word cast terror in her tender heart.

  “He starts talkin’ like that, you tell me,” Lauren offered. “We’ll straighten his ass out, all right.”

  “Bet you would, too,” Amanda observed, wryly.

  “Damn straight,” Lauren answered with pride.

  “Oh, no,” Chelsea exhaled, blushing. “He’s not like that. Not Gordon.”

  “She’s right,” Lauren added, always sticking up for her roommate. “I mean the guy still goe
s home every weekend. With his pepperoni face, it looks like he’s still going through puberty, too.”

  “Oh no,” Chelsea dismissed this. “Gordon is much more mature than the guys from my high school. Much.”

  “That’s not the benchmark you should be judging him by,” Sonya said. “This is college. Old State. There are literally tens of thousands of guys within a mile radius. Men. College men. No way a virginal girl as cute as you should be settling for some pizza-faced preacher’s son from the sticks.”

  “Easy there,” Lauren said. “It’s not like this is some big romance. We hang out. No biggie.”

  “How about your rocker dude?” Sonya pressed. “Someone said he has Kiss posters in his dorm room. Really? Kiss?” Sonya scrunched her nose, the one imperfect feature on her beguiling face.

  Now Lauren was in the sexual gossip spotlight, and she didn’t like it.

  “Among others,” she allowed. “Razar appreciates the group’s irony.”

  “Razar?” Sonya sang. “Razar? This wanna-be hairband dude goes by Razar? Who the hell does he think he is to have just one name? Bono? Sting? Cher?”

  Lauren shrugged, then rolled her eyes. “It’s his thing, all right,” she said. “I try to support him. His band’s actually pretty good.”

  “Can’t wait to hear ‘em,” Sonya said with sarcasm. “I do have to say, this is one weird group of women. We got the blonde Brit with her senior citizen prof. We have our small town girl with her equally small town perverted preacher’s kid. We have our Philly chick with her wanna-be rocker. Then we have Monica, here. With who?”

  All eyes turned to me.

  “What’s the rush?” I protested. “We’ve been here, what, a couple months?”

  “According to that schedule, your geeky guy should get to first base by the time you’re a senior,” Sonya sassed.

  “He’s not my guy,” I protested, heat rising to my face, along with my defensiveness.

  “You spend enough time with the dude,” she retorted. “And I’m sorry, he does not look like John Lennon.”

  “Before the beard and the hippie hair,” I corrected. “You have to use your imagination.”

  “Apparently, so do you,” Sonya snapped back. “If you want any kind of action, that is. You sure this guy isn’t gay?”

  I shook my head as I shook off the thought.

  “No,” I said. “He just…”

  The silence was deafening. I really didn’t know what the complicated Alec Keegan was, and I was growing increasingly frustrated and impatient.

  “Thoughtful,” I finally put in.

  “Boring is more like it,” Sonya said.

  “We can’t all have the eye of Josh Elliot,” I spat back, knowing this remained a sensitive subject for Sonya.

  Ever since that drunken first night when I found them behind the thin sheet draped over her dorm loft, their passions playing out like a pantomime projected by the dim light, she had tried to play it cool. But there was something there. And she would sneak off and disappear, sometimes for the entire night. She claimed to be working overtime in the studio. But I sensed it was something more. Something that neither Sonya nor Josh would admit, even to each other. No doubt there was a deep physical attraction between the two of them. The question remained, was there something more?

  “Yeah, right,” Sonya answered back in a voice now dripping with sarcasm. “I really have his eye. That’s why he’s pledging Phi Beta. So we can spend more quality time together. Sure. Tell me another one.”

  “Elliot is pledging a frat?” Lauren blurted. “It seems so beneath him, somehow.”

  “Fish is a legacy,” Sonya said of one of Josh’s best friends, the hard-drinking, all-night partying Zach “Fish” Jankowski, aptly nicknamed for his legendary drinking prowess. “And they’re both sophomores. They want to get out of the dorms.”

  “And live in some second-rate frat where they treat women like shit and consider academics an afterthought,” Lauren pounced. “Great move. I thought he was smarter than that. Heck, I thought with you around, he’d want more.”

  “Turns out, he does want more,” Sonya sneered. “More partying. More women. More of his dumb, drunken buddies.”

  Lauren shook her head in disappointment.

  “Don’t shit on it too much,” Sonya said. “We’re all invited to the House’s Homecoming party. It’s supposed to be the best bash of the year, bar none.”

  The room was silent. No one met Sonya’s eyes.

  “And you’re all going,” she insisted, her eyes sharpening with her tone. “I need back-up here, so you are all going. Clear?”

  “I-I don’t know,” Amanda began.

  “What? You’re too mature for a frat party, Livingston?” Sonya snapped. “Now that you’re doing someone old enough for an AARP card?”

  “It’s just not my scene,” Amanda answered.

  “You’re nineteen,” Sonya shot back. “Yes it is. It’s a lot more your scene than Professor Pussy Hunter’s fuck pad.”

  Amanda’s face bloomed red but she kept any anger out of her tone.

  “All right,” she said. “We back your play. We all back your play.”

  Now Sonya’s face ran crimson. Despite all of her outward efforts to dispel any notion of her harboring feelings for Josh, she had revealed herself. She would not miss his first party as a full-fledged member of a frat for anything. But she wouldn’t – couldn’t -- go it alone, either. She needed the support of the Five. It’s what friends were for, after all.

  But had we known. Had any of us known, we would have stopped it. I like to think we would have stopped it, avoiding so much pain and sorrow.