A Lesson Learned

"I'm sorry about your weekend." He said and left.

**

Its strange how things work out. Jenny and I returned home together but we barely spoke and I resolutely avoided her gaze. For the first time in our relationship it felt like she was the one chasing me. She repeatedly asked me what was wrong, tried to make me laugh, tried to divert me by making plans for when we got home, at the airport she even tried to get me to sneak her into the men's toilets and fuck her. All this gave me a certain perverse pleasure but I remained, I am proud to say, polite but noncommittal. Just like I had learned from her.

Given Jenny's proven academic intelligence I believe she must have been aware that I had discovered at least part of what was going on. But to this day I have no idea how much she thought I knew or indeed how much her Father knew about her particular proclivities. I think its fair to say that Saturday night wasn't the first time she'd had a gangbang. In the end I resolved not to think about it. Intelligent she may have been, in full control of herself, I believe, she was not.

When we got back to Aberdeen we parted ways. She hung off me, searched my eyes for some kind of cue, telling me she hoped the trip hadn't been too boring, still protesting that she would see me tomorrow. But by then I wasn't paying much attention to what she was saying. I just smiled, thanked her and walked away.

On Monday morning I called my course tutor and told him I was going to take a week at my parents house to consolidate my thesis and with that I left for home.

When I returned to Aberdeen Jenny had called me a couple of times and left messages on my machine. It was hard but I never responded to them and she never called back or visited. I was never to encounter her again on the street or in any of my regular haunts.

As my course came to an end early that summer I received my honours degree, although with it came a strange feeling of emptiness and uncertainty about the future. My pursuit of Jenny had caused my to lose touch with many of my friends and I felt strangely alone. Loitering by the class boards in my last weeks on campus I couldn't stop myself from scanning the lists for her name under a class I knew she'd been taking. There it was, in the top band of course. It was almost a surprise to receive confirmation that she actually existed after the amount of emotional suppression I'd been through in the months since Devon. I glanced around, fearful that I might catch sight of her and open up the wound. But I saw no one I recognised among the faces.

Time passes and you get your wings back. You remember that maybe, just maybe, you are cock of the walk after all. You forget that some people play by a different set of rules. Forget that some people have got a meaner streak than you'll ever have. Except in my weakest moments I never hated Jenny for the lesson she taught me, but that night showed me that she liked to play in a world that for me exists only in pulp fiction and porno. It was a world that I thought I could never belong in.

Early last year I put out a tender to various architecture firms to design the house that I now live in. As I scanned an Internet directory of potential firms a family run partnership at the higher end of the market caught my eye: A, T and J Martin Ltd, Architects. Needless to say I did not contact them. Perhaps it was a different family, who knows? Other than that I never heard of Jenny Martin again. I have no idea where she is. But I bet she's doing okay.