Finding Myself at USF Ch. 7

I woke up refreshed, but not totally oblivious to the fact that I was lying in one of the biggest wet spots I had ever found myself in... and it was all me, from my dreams. I could feel the wetness that coated my thighs and had found its way down my ass; I even had some on my tummy from where I must have rolled over in the night. Smiling, I looked at the clock and realized I had gotten up before it went off. I wanted to fall back asleep, but the incredible amount of wet stickiness was beginning to annoy me. I sat up and shut off the alarm and radio, then rose and headed for the shower instead of permitting myself more sleep. "Such a naughty little slut you were!" said my inner-voice, and small flashbacks of the dream came to mind, but faded just as quickly.

As I walked into the bathroom, I noticed the banana peal sitting on the counter from yesterday and threw it in the trash can. I congratulated myself for not having even a single trace of a hang-over, and then corrected that statement in my mind, thanking Yvette instead for feeding me the banana. Although I had almost always drank in moderation in the past, I knew that I was prone to hangovers and misery the next day if I did imbibe too much. My inner-voice chimed up "if our wanton performance in the parking lot of the Greenery were any indication, we had had too much. Or perhaps just the right amount?"

I giggled and blushed at the same time...

I took my time in the shower, feeling elated and happy without any solid reason, just happy to be alive. The hot water under pressure felt great on my skin, my scalp, and this time I took care to avoid my clit with the direct stream, as it was a tad overly-sensitive (and frankly, a bit raw) from the night's activities. I stretched my muscles, worked my calves and butt a few toe-ups, luxuriating in the fact that I didn't have to share the hot water with anyone else for a change (so nice to finally be away from home!). Finally, I set about washing myself thoroughly.

I dressed casually, simply, figuring that comfort would outweigh any fashion concerns at orientation, especially since I expected to be surrounded primarily by inbound freshmen who would be unlike to share a class with me.

Looking repeatedly at the clock, I realized I had another hour before I should have woke. I sighed and did what had to be done -- I stripped the bed and took down-comforter's cover off, and started them washing in the washing machine. Fortunately, Yvette had insisted on two sets, and I fetched the other set from the closet and set about recovering the bed. When it came time to recover the comforter, I blanked on what Yvette had shown me the night before, and took matters in my own hands. I stood inside the cover and pulled down comforter up into the cover with me, getting the cover matched to the corners of the comforter... then I realized I couldn't get out without releasing the comforter again. I felt frustrated for a minute, before I solved my mini-dilemma -- I decided to just flop forward onto the bed, still trapped inside. I laughed as I bounced off the mattress, then slinked back out of the covers and matched the corners at the other end, and buttoned it all up. Pleased with myself for having managed, I smiled, and laid it in its' position.

From inside my panties came that tell-tale feeling of gushing warm wetness, and I rushed back to the bathroom to check if I had started my period unexpectedly. I felt both relieved and bothered by the fact that it was just my panties being soaked by more of my juices -- was my subconscious still frolicking with the naughty thoughts just beyond the scope of my attentions? Or was it just residual juices left over from those (shiver) intense dreams that ravaged me through the night?

I changed my panties and put in a pad in case it happened again -- it wouldn't do to walk around all day with a huge wet spot on my shorts, looking for all the world as if I had pee'd myself. Rechecking the clock, I realized I still had forty minutes before I should expect Yve to come bouncing in. Feeling both naughty and devious, I gave into my urges... I pulled out my laptop from its' case in the closet and set it up on the desk, replete with the power cord. Then I dug out my lease packet and quickly flipped through it to find the set-up sheet for network access -- one of the niceties here was that each room was wired for high-speed access, as part of the terms of the lease. I found the page in the back of the stack, with a plastic envelope attached containing a cable. I ripped the bag, removed the cable, and figuring that it had to plug into the network jack, plugged it into the wall. I proceeded to scan the back of my computer to find the match -- there it was, marked with a diamond icon with two hash marks through it. I plugged it in, and set the sheet next to the computer, reading through the instructions quickly while I waited for the unit to boot up.

I quickly changed my configuration to what was specified and launched my AOL account. Boom -- damn, it was fast access, even faster than dad's at home. Smiling to myself, I rubbed my hands together in a nefarious manner, preparing to pull His profile. Open the profile window, type in the screenname... Then I stopped for a second -- what if this was just some elaborate practical joke that Yvette had thought up? What if He didn't exist, or worse yet, existed, but not where she might have led me to believe? I took a deep breath and held it. My finger hit the enter key, activating the request for His profile.

Member Name: The CyberPoet
Location: Tampa, FL; occasionally Germany, or Atlanta
Sex: Male
Marital Status: Unmarried, dating a bit
Hobbies: When once was a spark, 'tis now a flame.
Where once was a drip, 'tis now a sea.
When you remember your life, will you wish you could do it over again?
Or will you fondly remember your time with me?
Computers: In the darkest of dark days,
the bitter one resents and the religious one prays,
only the loved one is taken and stays, unafraid
Occupation: Looking for true friendship, deep love, touching the core of life. A good sex life should just be a side benefit of those.
Personal Quote: In the heat of the afternoon, when lovers burn and tourists swoon,
I take your hand and say, I think I'd like to be your friend some day. -- CP

Yes, that's Him. Who else would wax poetic in their profile? I followed the link to His homepage, and came across a picture (it must have been the same picture Yvette spoke of), and some more verse, words that seemed to seek me out directly, as did His eyes from that picture, staring at me, staring straight through to my core.

Have you ever just shuddered from the thought of being totally enraptured?
Daydreamed of the fantasy of being taken and stimulated, pushed to the max?
Do you ever get to the point that you are looking at a man,
and you want Him so bad, so very badly, that you want to taste Him,
to feel Him, to hold Him.
And the craving is so strong, you just want to walk up to Him
and say "just take me and make me yours,"
and you get so horny from the thought of Him taking you that you shiver involuntarily
and it makes you know that you want to be wanton and touch this strange Man
and feel His body and be with Him,
and that makes you feel naughty and you know that if you were with Him,
you would become wanton and give in to whatever urges He wanted you to have...

But you also want to be loved and feel a need to have something deeper,
longer, more permanent, to belong,
and you are so very scared to say anything about your desires or fantasies or wishes,
because you might get rejected, or worse, there might be a scene and humiliation,
and you think that even if He would allow you to be with Him,
it might not be serious afterwards, but just something that came and went
and that would hurt too much for words, so you don't say anything,
just imagine it all instead and just stand there quietly, screaming on the inside.

IS THIS YOU?
I am just like you. I crave, but I fear.
I want love, but I fear.
I desire permanence, but I fear.
I need you in the worst way, but I fear.
I fear that you will not want me to say what I feel.
I fear that you will not understand what I offer.
I fear you will not accept what I mean.
I fear you will not want us.
I am just like you.
I crave, but I fear.
THEN LET ME TAKE YOUR FEARS AWAY.

My heart soared, and suddenly remembered that I was holding my breath -- and gasped. He exists! I looked at His picture again, and imagined all sorts of things, nice things, romantic things, sexual things, perverted things, naughty things... Thank God I was wearing that pad!

I felt my stomach flip-flop and tighten itself into a knot. My mind was flooded with negative thoughts, dark thoughts, with reasoning and consequences. Was He Yvette's, mine to know only from afar? Could life be so cruel as to put Him within my reach, but outside of it at the same time? What if He was gay and the woman He described in the poems I had read were really describing a drag-queen? What if He was available, and yet showed no interest in me? That would be damnation in and of itself. Or if He showed interest and then stopped because of something I said, something I did that didn't appeal to Him, to His sense of right and wrong, to His personal philosophies, to His tastes?

I logged out, seethingly angry for knowing the Yvette had the strength to seek Him out without such misgivings, angry with myself for not having the confidence in myself to... to... to know? I shut down in a fog of despair, and for the first time since I was a little girl, I went to the bed and knelt at its' side -- and prayed. My tears flowed freely as I prayed, unsure if God was listening, unsure if God even existed, unsure of how to pray or what to say... I blabbered onward. Finally, I found some inner-strength and got to my feet with an 'Amen.'

I went to the sink and washed my face, then tried to clear my mind. The buzzer on the washer had gone off to signal its completion, and I occupied myself for the moment with the task at hand, moving the laundry to the dryer.

Inside, my inner-voice spoke to me again...

Of course I was sexy! And if even if I wasn't the absolute sexiest creature on the planet, I sure as damn well was cute! And intelligent. And open-minded. And, well, frankly, a perverted wench waiting to bloom trapped in the body of a college coed, if my dreams were any indication... He wants a princess, a slut, a little girl, a sophisticated woman... And I was all those things -- well, maybe not quite truly sophisticated in a worldly sense, but I would try to be -- sophisticated enough.

The words from His web page came back to me... Let Me take your fears away.

I smiled a smile of hope. The tears were gone, and I realized it was just about time for Yvette to come bouncing in... My stomach unraveled from its' knots, and I realized I was quite incredibly hungry.

I turned on the dryer and unlocked the front door -- almost getting hit in the face as Yve opened the door just a fraction of a second after I unlocked it, before I'd had a chance to withdraw my hand. It startled me immensely.

"Hey, toots, did you sleep good?" she asked.

"Like a dream," I answered, trying not to smirk at the thoughts of the dreams' contents. I definitely wasn't ready to tell her about it.

"Was I right about the sheets and comforter, Caroline?"

"God, were you ever, Yvette... It was so blissful and," I stopped myself before I said something incriminating, but the nasty part of my mind continued to say 'kinky,' but fortunately that voice was not in control of my mouth at the instant.

"Wondrous, I'm sure," she said, finishing up my sentence. The fact that we had been separated for a couple years showed, as she used to be able to finish my sentences perfectly, always knowing exactly what was on my mind.

"Yvette, I don't know about you, but I'm starved and my refrigerator is still empty."

"Well, we can grab a bite of something on the way, or if memory serves me correctly, they now lay out a plate of cookies and brownies at the orientation. But if you're starving, we better get something real." Checking her watch, she continued, "are you ready to go? Oh, and I need your key so I can get a copy made..."

"Let me grab my stuff."

I picked up my purse and a notebook, double checked the purse to make sure I had some pens in it, then turned back to her and handed her the spare key "Here's the duplicate. OK, let's go."

As we walked down to her car, she handed me two keys. The first she said was for her place (the bronze one), the second (steel?) she needed for me to hold onto just in case she lost her's. I imagined it was to a storage facility or some such and didn't ask, figuring its purpose would be apparent to me with time, or perhaps distracted with my own hunger. I added the keys she had given me onto my key chain.

She drove to a local bagel store, where after ordering, she commenced in some banter with the man behind the counter, who she finally introduced me to. He was a Mediterranean man by the name of Steve, the owner of the establishment. He seemed quite pleased to meet me, and joked affably about the food he was preparing, having supposedly slay the cream cheese beast himself just yesterday afternoon so that it would be fresh for our needs. I grimaced mildly, but kept smiling. While he put the finishing touches on the meal, Yve guided me over to a drink cooler; I grabbed an orange crush, only a little self-conscious that I wasn't drinking a fruit juice instead. Steve handed me my order, in small brown paper bag, and called out "I hope you two pretty ladies have a wonderful day."

As we drove towards the school, it occurred to me that we hadn't paid. "Yvette, stop the car! We have to go back."

"Why, Karri?" she asked as she started to slow down.

"Because I forgot to pay the man..." my mind fumbled for a second, then produced his name. "Neither of us paid Steve for the food."

"Karri, it's already taken care of. Now don't worry your little head about it... Now eat up before you have to get to orientation."

I sat, again confused, as my mind tried to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that kept cropping up about me. I absentmindedly brought the bagel to my lips and bit off a large bite. Unlike the Greenery, this time there was no credit card or other transaction of any sort. Was Steve just a bit daft, slow, perhaps? No, definitely not -- he wasn't slow, having a certain mannerism about him that even through his joking showed his business sense. I pondered as I chewed...

Maybe Yvette was dating Steve? No, that couldn't be it. He had been a bit too formal to her. My inner voice chimed up -- maybe Yvette had become a 'working girl,' a prostitute or call girl, and he was one of her customers? I couldn't see that. She had daddy's money to fall back on, and quite a bit of it at that. Then again, maybe she was just doing for the kinky sex... She did have the piercing. And it wasn't like I hadn't had the fantasy about being one, pleasing men professionally. Hell, every girl had the fantasy at some point. And if anyone had the gumption to make a fantasy a reality (at least out of those people I knew in my little existence), it would be her.
Or maybe a stripper? It's not like I hadn't had that fantasy either -- hell, she and I used to talk about it when were in high school, wondering what it would be like to have a crowd of adoring men salivating over us...

I opened the orange crush and drank a bit to clear my palette before I spoke. "Yve, do you work in the sex industry?"

"What?!?"

"I said, do you work in the sex industry? are you a stripper? A call girl, a prostitute?"

"No, Caroline, I am not a stripper, and I am most certainly NOT a woman of the night, nor have I ever been. What in the world is up with you? Yesterday, you asked me whether I was a lesbian, and today you ask whether I am a prostitute? What is it with you?"

"It's just that we never seem to pay for food at restaurants. I was wondering why Steve gave me that food without asking for any payment, and all I could think of was that he knew you professionally... in an adult way."

"Oh, Karri, you poor misguided, confused one. I told you not to worry about it. If it will put your mind at ease, you can think of it as my having a professional account, or in laymen's terms, a bar tab, at each of these places. They get paid each month like clockwork."

"Then why didn't you let me pay at the Greenery?" I queried. "It's not like you don't have to pay for it in the end."

"Didn't I let you pay for the pizza last night?" She redirected my attentions, but I didn't figure it out until later...

"Well, yes..."

"Then it's only fair. It was my turn..."

I opened my mouth to protest, especially seeing as she hadn't gotten any food herself -- just a drink, but before I could say anything, she had turned into a parking space and shut off the engine and stepped out of the car. I took another bite of my food, then opened the door and started a balancing act of trying to manage my purse, my notebook, my drink and my food at the same time. Yvette took my notebook, greatly easing my load, and then glanced at her watch and told me to walk with her. She turned and headed towards some of the buildings close by. I started after her, catching up to her in a few steps. The conversation had come to a lull on my part -- I was busy trying to consume my food before we arrived wherever we were going. She walked fairly quickly, occasionally nodding at people we passed, an intent expression on her face that communicated to those we passed very effectively that she was busy and could not be bothered to stop and talk.

Our path followed a curved sidewalk, then passed through a building's central core, then across a small open expanse to another building that looked as if it had been assembled by someone obsessed with forty-five degree angles on the horizontal surfaces. Ducking through a door that seemed like all the others on the building, she held it open for me, then ushered me down a hallway to yet another unobtrusive door. She guided me into that door, stepped up to the counter and said "We're here to pay for her orientation."

Just don't ever ask me to find the place again, I thought to myself. After giving the girl at the counter the mandatory fee and my social security number, I received a receipt. Yvette then asked the girl a couple questions that made little sense to me ('A&L - cooper hall'? Yes). Yvette guided me back out and back across the path we had just come in on, through first building again, and then directly across a small street to an auditorium. The auditorium's lobby was filled with long folding tables manned by students, each with a clipboard. Yvette handled getting me signed in as I finished up the last of the bagel -- well, what I would permit myself eat of it (it was yummy but filling). I discarded the rest in a trash can.

"OK, Karri, you're all set. Just go inside and find a seat, listen to whatever they have to tell you. I'll catch up with you when it's over."

She handed me my notebook, as well as a welcome packet they had given her, and I got a forlorn look on my face. She shot back an inquiring half-smile.

"What if you're not here? I don't know my way around, and I have no clue how to get back to our complex."

"Don't worry... I promise that you will walk right past me when you're close to the end of your orientation. Anyway, you have my cell phone number memorized, right?"

I just nodded. She continued, "well, if you get done and haven't seen me, just find a phone and call me."