She looked directly into my eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re beautiful, you know? All dark and petite. And those black eyes of yours draw a person in. And I know that you find me attractive. I was just being weak, I guess. So, no hard feelings, right?”
I nodded. “Right. You seem to be calmer now, would you like to lie on the couch and get more comfortable?”
She smiled. “Yes, please.”
I motioned toward the couch and got up to dim the lights. She took off her shoes and lay back. She pulled her skirt down when it hiked up. I watched her close her eyes. I sat at the head of the couch and took up my pen. “Did you date boys in high school?”
“Not much. Just the big events, you know, Homecoming, Prom. The occasional hamburger before the movie date. Nothing serious.”
I observed, “Many women who lose their fathers in some way, through death or divorce or just plain neglect, you know, the father being a mere paycheck, a piece of furniture, well, that can lead to the girl feeling abandoned. Such women often compensate by having inappropriate relationships with men.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. No relationships at all, just the occasional date.”
I probed further. “When did you lose your virginity?”
“Not til I was in college. Freshman year I got drunk at a frat party and decided I wanted to know what I’d been missing.”
I said, “On average that’s a little late nowadays. How did you feel about the incident?”
She snorted. “‘Incident.’ That’s a good way to put it. It was just an incident. Sure as hell not an ‘event’. Boys paid attention to me, you can guess why,” she ran her hand over her breast, “but I mostly ignored them. I got a reputation for being emotionally cold, you know, not fun. Most of my dates before college seemed a little afraid of me. None of them were the really popular studs. I guess that bunch decided there were easier fields to hunt, and they were right. I might have been curious, but I wasn’t about to get that close with anybody.”
“What changed when you went to college?”
Vanessa shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was something about finally being an adult. Maybe it was just loneliness. Maybe it was the beer. Christ, you know, cheap mass-produced American swill spewing from a detachable spout inserted into a metal keg buried in ice in a garbage can? I was sick most of the next day and I hadn’t drunk that much of it.”
She paused for a few moments before resuming. “Maybe it was all of that combined. But it most definitely was NOT love. I don’t think that guy even told me his full name. Anyway, if he did, I don’t remember it.”
I digested that statement. “What did you find so distasteful about the experience?”
She chuckled. “‘Distasteful,’ eh? It wasn’t that it was distasteful. I mean it was normal, right? Put tab A into slot B, work back and forth for a while and WHAMO, bliss all around, right? Bullshit. No it wasn’t distasteful, it was worse. It was boring. I got nothing out of the experience. Just a little charged up, but it was all over before I could get going, much less finish, you know what I mean?”
I nodded. “Yes. Men, especially young and inexperienced men, can be utterly self-centered about such things.”
She snorted. “Yeah, like ‘I got mine, hope you got yours.’ Or not. They really don’t give a shit.”
I pounced on that. “You say ‘they.’ You had other experiences?”
She nodded. “Yeah, a few. Like, I couldn’t believe that was all there was to it. Everybody makes such a big deal out of it, you know?”
I nodded. “What you’ve described isn’t unusual. It takes a woman longer to achieve an orgasm than a man. And there’s other factors to consider, such as physical security and comfort, not to mention emotional attachment. It takes a while for a young man to acquire sufficient skills to really please a woman. Some of them never do.”
Vanessa shrugged and remained silent. It was clear that she thought those experiences of little import, so I decided to push on. “But there came a time when you changed your mind?”
She hesitated. I prompted her. “You’ve already indicated that you like girls so don’t be embarrassed. Did you develop a relationship with another woman?”
She shrugged, as if to say, “what the hell” and answered. “Yes. My roommate in the fall of my junior year. Karen.”
“Tell me about you and Karen.”
A wistful smile played upon her full lips. “She acted tough, but she was a creampuff on the inside. She was a lot thinner than me and her breasts were small. She had dark eyes and hair. She cut her hair short, wore jeans and t-shirts and athletic shoes and no makeup but she was still pretty, you know, good skin and full lips. And she was messy. But I liked her. She could always make me laugh, usually by telling funny stories about people around the campus, students and professors. You know how they say all good comedy is funny because it’s based on the truth? Well, Karen had a gift. Whenever she made fun of somebody she was spot on.”
“Was she a lesbian? Or bisexual, like you?”
Vanessa pondered the question. “I didn’t know what a ‘lesbian’ was then. I mean, I didn’t know anything about oral sex except sucking dicks and I didn’t do that. Why pleasure a guy if there’s nothing in it for me? I had no frame of reference for what women could do with each other sexually. I just knew that I liked Karen and she liked me and I got along better with her than anybody else in my life. I guess she sneaked peaks at me when I got dressed, but I never saw her doing it.”
“I suppose that Karen initiated the sex?”
Vanessa nodded.
“Tell me about that.”
Her eyes glazed as she collected her thoughts. “One night I came out of the shower wearing just my robe. That wasn’t unusual. We had talked before about my attitude toward dating, so she knew that no boy had ever, you know, ‘done it for me.’ That night I complained about how some new shoes I had worn hurt my feet. She surprised me by sitting on my bed and offering to check my feet for blisters and massage them so they’d stop hurting. I laid down and put my feet in her lap.”
***
The rest of her encounter will be more readable if I assume the role of an observer in that dorm room.
***
Karen raised each of Vanessa’s feet and examined them. “No blisters. That’s good.” She began massaging them, rubbing the outside of the big toe, then the ball of the foot, then the opposite side.
Vanessa purred. “Ooh, that feels sooo good.”
Karen’s voice got husky. “You mean nobody’s ever done this for you before? None of your men?”
Vanessa responded with a relaxed voice. “Hell no. If one of them had, I might have stuck with him.”
Karen gripped the foot with one hand and gently stretched the toes back with the other. Vanessa sighed.
Karen began on the other foot. “I’ll bet none of them ever noticed how lovely your feet are. They’re perfectly shaped and so dainty.”
Vanessa snorted. “You’re probably right. All any of them ever paid attention to was my tits.”
Karen continued rubbing. “Well, it’s hard to blame them. I mean you’ve got the best tits I’ve ever seen. They’re large and that attracts a lot of people. But it’s a lot more than that. They’re perfectly round and look firm. And it’s really sexy the way they bounce when you walk. And your nipples are so pink. Your breasts are perfect.”