Theory and Practise

"You know," I said, "I've worked out what the problem was with that movie."

"Do tell," Nina commanded.

"It was theoretically a good film," I said, "that's why they make us watch it, after all. It was well-structured, and the design was mathematically perfect, and you could count all the references to Freud and the quotes from silent-era classics and stuff. But..."

"Yeah?"

"He forgot to make it worth watching. It's theory versus practise. It was two hours of people saying stuff they didn't believe in situations that made no sense."

Nina thought for a moment, then nodded. "I guess. Wanna put that in your essay?"

I sighed. "I'm going to, yes. I can't pretend that I liked it."

"Best of luck with that." She finished her herbal tea and gathered up her books, looking to head onto her next class. I took a quick breath and made my move.

"Would you like to go for a drink -- later?" I asked.

Nina looked at me hard through her very plain glasses. "Would this be a date?" she asked.

"I guess so."

"Well, okay. But there are conditions."

"Okay." I was getting used to this sort of thing from Nina. She wasn't always easy to deal with, but I liked her. Maybe I have a masochistic streak.

"We're not going anywhere that's full of your friends," she said, "I don't want you showing off that you've pulled some goth chick."

"Okay," I said, trying to remember a few pubs or bars that I could vouch for that wouldn't have anyone I knew hanging around.

"And second," she said, "we're not going anywhere that people are going to stare at me like I'm a freak."

"Sure," I said, though this might be harder. I didn't think of Nina as a freak, but I'd got to know her over the last couple of weeks, and I know that some people are stupid. Nina was indeed a goth -- and not one of the cute, perky, black-velvet-and-heels type, either. Well, she wore long black velvet skirts, but apart from them -- she shaved her hair on the sides of her head, while letting it grow long on the top so it fell down her back in a long bleached-white ponytail. Her glasses had small rectangular lenses and a thick black frame, and she wore a nose ring; today, she was also wearing a pale grey t-shirt and Doc Marten boots. She was skinny and pale, with black-painted fingernails.

To be honest, a week before, I wouldn't have said that she was my type. But we'd ended up sitting side by side in the Cinema Appreciation classes, and we'd discovered that we had something in common. We agreed that Hammer horror movies were classics, and when the lecturer insisted that we sit through The Phantom Menace, we survived by sharing whispered jokes at the expense of, well, everything in the film, until the rest of the class shut us up by sheer weight of dirty looks. We didn't agree about everything, but we could talk the same language.

Anyway, I didn't imagine that I was her type either. I like to think of myself as a jeans-and-indie-rock sort, but that's being hopeful. I don't do cool very well. But if she was prepared to go out with me, I was prepared to live with her conditions.

"And finally, third -- no, I'll leave that one for now. But you've got the first two, right? You won't embarrass me?"

"I've got it. Your rules."

"Good. Because there'll be a test at the end. See you outside the Union at seven."

And without any further explanation, she was gone.

But she showed up on time, and when I suggested a pub that was not too bad (I hoped) and not too distant, she agreed. We set off together, talking movies as usual, but she seemed quieter than usual, huddling within her long tatty black coat as if she had bigger things to worry about.

We found the pub and a free table, and I shed my coat and offered to buy her a drink.

"Guinness," she said.

"Half?" I asked.

"Pint!" she commanded.

I went to the bar and bought a pint of Guinness and a beer for myself, and carried them back to the table. Nina actually looked pleased to see me, with a quick grin that reminded me why I was going to all this trouble. I had enough trouble finding girls who I found interesting; finding one who actually seemed interested in me was a bonus.

I passed her the Guinness and sat down as she toyed with it, but after I'd drunk some of my own beer and said something about the French romantic movie we were down to watch next on the course, I looked and realised that she'd finished half of the glass. If I hadn't known her better, I could have sworn that she was nervous about something. But Nina was never nervous -- I'd learned that already.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah." She threw me another of her quick, twisted grins. "Hey," she said, "what do you think people actually think of you?"

"Me?" I shrugged. "I know that one. They don't hide it much. They call me a geek."

"Does that worry you?"

"I can deal with it. How 'bout you? I gather that you don't want people calling you a freak, but you obviously like the goth thing."

"Yeah, well, that's me. Do geeks hang out together?"

"Quite a bit. But that gets a bit inbred, you know? I may be a geek, but I like to get away from that sometimes."

"Yeah. Goths hang out together a lot. Come on."

"Pardon?" I saw that she'd finished her Guinness, although I still had a little of my own beer left.

"I said that there'd be a test."

"At the end of the evening, you said."

"Yeah, well, it's kinder to everyone if we get it over with."

I grabbed my coat and followed her out of the pub. "Where are we going?" I asked.

"My room," she said, but then she clammed up, and I trailed back through most of the same streets as before behind the shapeless flapping of her coat. At her accommodation block, she let us in with a key card, and led me to the door of her room. That, she opened as little as possible, preventing me from seeing much that was inside until I'd followed her through. Then she closed the door and snapped the light on, and I drew a sudden breath.

The room was pink. There was a pink bedspread thrown over the standard-issue bed, and pink satin cushions strewn all over the place. A teacup and saucer with a pink floral design sat on the desk, next to a stack of textbooks and -- oh my god -- a pink My Little Pony. The walls were decorated with pictures of real ponies and kittens.

I took another, careful breath. This situation was going to require a little thought.

Nina stared hard at me with a surly expression. "Like it?" she said.

"It's not what I expected, I admit," I said.

"Okay, I'll let you off with that. I brought all this stuff from home, of course. My room's been like this all my life."

"You're homesick?" I asked.

"Nah," she said with another scowl. "Glad to get away, really. But this is me, right? So what do you think?"

I sat down on one of the armchairs, moving a pink cushion aside as I did so. "I like you," I said, "and it's not like there's some kind of rules."

"Yes there are," said Nina, "my rules, remember?" She sat down abruptly on the bed, sending a teddy bear and a rag doll flying. "People have to take me like I am. But that means that --" she pointed at a cute kitten picture "-- as well as this." Her finger stabbed fiercely at her weird hairstyle.

I shrugged. "Makes sense."

"So you don't think that this is freaky or screwed up?"

"It's just a room. You want it like when you were a kid, fine. Some time, you can come see my collection of SF movie posters."

She stared hard at me, then cracked a weird smile. "Okay," she said, "you pass the test."

"The test?"

"Taking me as I am. I guess it's because you're not goth. I've brought goth guys back here. Three of 'em so far."

"And they didn't pass the test?"

"Two of them wouldn't stop laughing; the other one seemed downright shocked. I think he wanted to cure me."

"So what did you do with them?"

"Oh, chucked 'em out." She scowled again. "I'm getting a bit of a weird rep with the goth mob, I guess, but most of the others don't quite believe what those three said. Anyway... Like I said, congratulations. You pass."

"Glad to hear it."

"And there's bonus points for that."

"What do you mean?"

"You're the first guy to pass." She stared at me, daring me to react in some wrong way. "So you'll be the first to stay. My ... first. Congratulations."

"Oh," I said. "Oh ... crap!"

"Oh crap, " she repeated after me. "What the fuck does oh crap mean?"

"I guess that it means Snap."

"What?"

"Congratulations to you too. If you want."

"Oh," she said, "crap."

We sat staring at each other. "Do you want?" I asked eventually.

"I guess," she said. "I'm all psyched up for this now. Crap."

"Me too." I found myself laughing nervously. "Look, let's take this slow, right? It can't be too hard. How many morons out there manage it every night?"

"Not as many as say they do, I reckon." But Nina actually grinned there, a little nervously. "But you're right -- none of us would be here if a lot of total idiots hadn't worked out how to do it, from scratch. C'mon over, and we'll talk about this."

She swept the cushions and a couple more soft toys off the bed as we both took our coats off, and I kicked off my shoes and she kicked off her boots, and we lay side by side. I kissed her, and she kissed me back. Only then did she think to take her glasses off, dumping them on the bedside table.

"Right," she said, "I guess that we at least both know the theory."

"Do we?" I asked. "I mean, the stuff in school and all the boasting from the class studs covered the basics, I guess, and I got this mumbled talk from dad a couple of years ago, but none of that was really about what happens here..."

"9 Songs ," Nina muttered, "and Empire of the Senses. And stuff."

"I'm not sure how far I trust those. We're not psycho-crazy suicidal Japanese. But okay, let's see if we can turn theory into practise."

She sat up abruptly and yanked her t-shirt off over her head, then stared at me. "How's this?" she demanded.

She wasn't wearing anything underneath -- apart from a pair of nipple rings, that is. Her breasts were small, but quite neat.

"Nice," I said, and meant it. I craned up to kiss one of her dark nipples.

"Hey," she said, "keep this fair."

I got the hint and quickly took my shirt off, and she squeezed her body against me. I ran my hands over her back, and she kissed me again, mouth to mouth. As she broke away, I grinned.

"What's up?" she demanded.

"Oh, I was just noticing -- no tongue stud," I admitted.

"Yeah, yeah, I've seen Pulp Fiction," she said, "and that's not what this is about, so don't get distracted."

"Distracted?" I said. "Fuck it, I'm lying a bed with a topless girl for the first time in my life, and you think I'm going to get distracted?"

"You mentioned the fucking no tongue stud."

"True," I admitted. "Sorry. But I may have to distract myself a bit, or..."

"Or what?"

"It's a guy thing. I don't want to get carried away too soon."

"Oh," she said. "Oh, yeah. I've heard stories."

"They're probably true."

She lay down again and we kissed some more, and I moved a hand up and carefully caressed her breasts. She didn't complain, so I did it some more. Then I tried kissing them and licking them, which we both seemed to like.

"Okay," she said, "ready to try something more?"

"Like I said, the problem is slowing me down."

She smiled, then stood up and unfastened her skirt. Then she threw it over a chair, covering two cushions and thus reducing the volume of pink in the room a little. She ripped off the short black woollen socks she'd been wearing under her boots, so now she was stripped down to a large pair of plain knickers. She scowled at me again, but kind of ruefully, then turned her back to me and pushed them down.

"Nice," I said again. She turned around, with her arms folded over her breasts -- but this was a weirdly defiant sort of pose, because it left me feeling obliged to stare further down.

"Oh, right," I breathed.

"What's the big deal?" she demanded, "You've seen pictures, I'm sure."

"Yes," I admitted, "but I guess -- well, I guess I wasn't expected you to have shaved. Not there."

She shrugged. "Tried it as an experiment, a while back," she admitted, "and then, this evening -- well, it seemed right, somehow." With two steps, she was beside the bed, her pussy on a level with my face. "What do you think?" she demanded.

I moved my face to look closer. (No, there were no piercings.) "I think that I could learn to like it," I said, and leant forward to plant a kiss.

Nina jumped back half an inch, but then she relaxed and stepped forward again. "You'd better," she said, "because you're going to have to pay it some attention."

She clambered a little clumsily onto the bed, and lay beside me again. I caressed her breasts once more, cautiously -- I wasn't sure if I was falling in love with her, but I was going to love them forever -- but after a moment, she grabbed my hand and guided it downwards. So for the first time in my life, I felt those odd little folds, nestling within the shaved area which still had a little hair where her electric razor had missed or she'd been understandably cautious.

"Feel that?" she demanded.

"Yeah," I said. "Excuse this, I'm still... That's the clitoris, right?"

"Yeah. And it likes being touched, thanks, but treat it nice, don't just maul it, okay?"

"Treat your clitoris nicely. Right. Got that." I nodded, and tried a few careful caresses, but she still had hold of my hand, and now she guided it a little further.

"And that's my cunt," she said. "Go on, feel it -- it doesn't bite."

This was all completely new stuff to me, but I did my best, probing the entrance with my index finger. I was pleased to discover that the stuff about women becoming damp and lubricated was all true, and when I looked at her face, I saw that Nina was even smiling a little, so I probed some more. Tentatively, I added a second finger, and as her grip on my hand relaxed a little, I used my thumb to brush her clitoris. She gasped slightly.

I paused, and looked at her face. "You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, fine." Mostly she was looking thoughtful. "Don't worry," she said, "I've had three fingers in there before now."

I guess that I looked a bit nonplussed at that, and she glared at me, but not too angrily. "Look," she said, "I assumed that somebody would pass the test, one day, and I didn't want to have to put up with any sort of bullshit about either of us getting hurt. So I've tried to make sure I'm as ready as I can be down there, okay? Anyway," she allowed herself a smile, "I had to have some fun while I was waiting."

I didn't complain, and I continued to probe; the good thing about her no-bullshit attitude was that she told me exactly what was working and what wasn't. But by now, all this was having an effect on me.

"Is it okay to go on?" I said, cautiously.

She smirked. "Yeah, I guess we'd better," she said.

I got off the bed and hastily pull off the last of my clothes. My hard-on was really straining by now, strange to say, and I turned back towards Nina nervously.

"God," she said, "will it really fit?"

"No need to overdo the flattery," I said.

"No," she said, "I'm serious." The attitude had slipped now; she was staring at my cock with what looked worryingly like horror.

I lay on the bed beside her again. "We'll be fine," I said. "It's pretty standard size, honest -- I'm the one who's been in all the bloody school boy's changing rooms, okay? Anyway, three fingers, remember?" Then my calm slipped a bit -- I was getting quite desperate by now. "Let's get on with it, okay? You'll be fine, I promise."

She visibly pushed her nervousness aside and focussed on the intention. "Yeah," she said. "Let's."

She rummaged in around her bedside table and produced a pack of condoms. "Thought I ought to be ready in case anyone did pass the test," she admitted. Then, "Perhaps you ought to wear two of these? Might help?"

"American Pie!" I said, and she scowled. But then I nodded. "I ought to, I guess..."

She tore two packets open, then carefully moved down to my groin and fitted each condom in turn.

"That okay?" she asked.

"Fine," I said, "neatly done."

"I've practised."

I gawped, and she smirked. "On a banana," she explained. "That's what they use in some education films, so I thought it made sense. I wanna get things right."

"Okay," I said, then took a deep breath. "We'd better..."

She got the idea and rolled onto her back, then drew her knees up as I knelt between her legs. We kind of fumbled around for a while until we worked out that it worked best if she guided me where I should go, and then she said "there it is," and I pushed instinctively.

Despite all the preparation, she was still a bit tight; a sense of being squeezed too hard broke through my Jesus I really am fucking a real girl thought, and she gasped a bit unhappily. But when I paused, she smiled at me; a forced smile, maybe, but she held me and rocked her hips a bit.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi yourself. You okay?"

"Great!" She smiled again, and I think that was a real smile. "So far, so good."

"You like it?"

"Yeah. It's... Yeah, this works, I reckon."

I was moving slowly, carefully, and Nina reached round and put a hand on my back. Then she ran a single fingernail gently down my spine.

I think it was meant as a small, friendly caress, but she might as well have pulled a big lever marked "ORGASM NOW". I groaned, thrusting convulsively a couple of times, and she looked puzzled, worried even, for a moment. Then I collapsed on top of her, and my hard-on began to shrink.

"Oh," she said.

I rolled onto the bed next to her. "God," I said, "sorry about that."

Nina said nothing, but looked at my crotch. Reaching down delicately, she rolled both condoms off my limp cock together, then held them up and pulled a comic face at the sight before grabbing a tissue to wrap them up and binning them.

"Look..." I began.

"No!" she snapped suddenly. "It was fine! It wasn't anything like the movies..."

"No, well, sorry..." I said.

"Don't you get it?" She was kneeling on the bed next to me now, naked and still wonderful to my eyes. "It wasn't like the movies -- it was better! I felt you inside me! Didn't you feel that too? Right inside me! How cool is that?" She was squeaking so girlishly now that the pink room no longer seemed so strange.

"Okay, that was pretty cool," I said.

"Bloody right it was cool." She wriggled round to lie in front of me, her neat buttocks pressed up against my crotch. I put my arms around her, and ended up with one hand cupping each of her breasts. "We've obviously got the theory right," she went on, "now the practise is just a matter of..."

"Practise?" I completed the sentence.

"Yeah! Any idiot can do it, more than once, so we just keep going, right?"

"Suits me," I said, "I'll try harder next time."

"Maybe you need to be more Zen about it," she suggested, "you know, act without thinking or something."

"Do or do not -- there is no try," I said.

"Don't you go quoting Star Wars when you're talking about screwing me! "

"Hey, be fair -- it was from one of the good movies!"

"Hmmph." She wriggled against me. "You'll be getting me into a gold bikini and a stupid hairstyle next."

I nuzzled her bleached ponytail aside so I could kiss the back of her neck, and didn't say anything. We lay together silently for a little while.

"Is that who geeks wanna screw, though?" Nina demanded. "Carrie Fisher as a slave girl?"

"Give me some credit," I said, "I mean, you know that I like The Matrix and Blade Runner more..."