Alistaire Too Ch. 06: Graduation

"It started as kind of a joke, Dad," I said easily. "But yeah, I think I have finally embraced it."

"Yeah? Well if you get a chance to go spend time at the beach with that girl, and hell, with her mom too for that matter, you better 'embrace' that, too!" Dad chuckled.

*

Once the eight millionth picture had been taken, the last dry cookie or cake had been eaten, and a couple hours of grumbly packing up of vans and SUVs had been completed, the parents went off to celebratory dinners where they rejoiced in not having to pay prep school tuition any more. Most colleges are actually cheaper....

The students who were going to the post commencement extravaganza gathered in groups and started Ubering over. Virtually all the faculty was going as well, and they mostly carpooled. Those that did drive put their keys in a lockbox until the next morning. There were no restrictions on the faculty drinking in front of us that night.

The party was centered around a huge tent in the middle of a field, both rented for the occasion. The crowd spilled out onto the surrounding grass as well, which was illuminated by soft lights hanging from tethered helium balloons overhead. There was even one of those ultra-fancy portable restrooms to use. Better yet, they even hired an attendant to keep it clean, who I very much hoped was being paid like a CEO for the evening.

The food was carefully not provided by our dining hall staff, and was thus pretty damned good.

I spent a lot of the early evening with a truly random assortment of my classmates and favorite faculty. For instance, Mr. Yardley, who was 27, one of the youngest faculty, and a favorite of mine if not everybody's, dragged me into playing Hackey Sack for half an hour with four guys with whom collectively I had conversed for about nine hours in the preceding four years.

We succeeded in having a great time, and in proving that we all sucked at Hackey Sack, except for Mr. Yardley. I'm not sure that I knew his first name was George until that game.

My father is awesome, even if he is an old horndog who insists on checking out my classmates and their mothers right in front of my own. As he and Mom were taking their leave, he had handed me six disposable mylar flasks of good Mount Gay rum. That put me in possession of one of the highest-quality, most politely concealable supplies of booze in my class.

I had distributed them as soon as I got to the field to my various friends or groups of friends. Coke never tasted so good.

As the evening passed, and I grew tired of hanging out with classmates who had never given a shit about me before we graduated, I set out to find those people, male or female, who actually had mattered to me. I saw Jenn and Poppy in the distance, and started toward them.

"Alistaire," I heard behind me. I turned to see Ms. Green waving at me, a microphone in her hand. Why the mic?

"Yes ma'am?" I asked as she approached.

"It's Nancy," she chuckled. "If you call me ma'am or Ms. Green ever again, I'll break your arms."

I was actually little taken aback by the casual, good-natured ferocity of that comment. "Yes m... Yeah, sure, Nancy. Sorry," I managed, keeping my arms intact for the moment.

"That's okay," she laughed. "This is your first Commencement Party, just like it is mine. But they keep telling me that this is our first opportunity to act like fellow adults, not teachers and students. How many teachers have you called by their first name tonight for the first time, after all?"

I actually stopped to think about that for a moment. "Three?" I said, uncertainly.

"That's all?" Ms. Green exclaimed. "Have you been avoiding us?"

"Not at all," I replied. I shrugged. Old habits die hard, and I had not even tried with most of them. I laughed inwardly. I could no more have walked up to the headmaster that evening and called him by his first name than I could have greeted the Queen of England with 'How's tricks, ya' old cunt?' Still, Ms. Green... Nancy was only twenty four. She'd be good practice.

"You are laughing to yourself," Nancy said, pointing out my rudeness.

"I'm sorry Nancy. I was just imagining saying to the headmaster, 'Hey Rocky, how's the fundraising going?'"

She nodded at my emphasized use of her name. I raised my clear Solo cup of Coke spiked with rum. She raised her own plastic glass to touch mine and she finished off whatever wine she had in it. She turned toward a nearby trash can and tossed the cup into it in a high arch. She pumped her fist as it sank right in the center of the can. If I remembered correctly, she had coached the girls' thirds basketball team that winter.

"Nice," I said. "I'd have missed that by a mile. So what's up with the microphone?"

"Do you remember the new podcast Rocky wanted me to start about the school?" Nancy asked. "Thanks for helping me find some useful and willing technical help, by the way. Well, I'm surprised to find that I've really gotten into it, and so here I am at the party with a recorder."

"You are working tonight?" I said in mock horror. "I thought the whole point of tonight's party was that none of you guys are working. That way you can all turn off your 'teacher noses' so you don't have to notice when the Bloodshot Rhinos and their crowd light up whatever dank weed they inevitably will tonight." The Bloodshot Rhinos were a student band that mostly did Bob Marley covers.

"Ugh," Nancy said, making a face. "I wouldn't touch whatever weed those boys procured with a ten foot pole." I thought that was a very interesting way for her to say that, but chose not to pursue it. Weed was not my thing.

"So, what are you doing? Recording the ambient sounds of the party to make it seem like it isn't the debauch that it is?" I asked. Then I teased, "Or are you trying to make it sound like it is more of a debauch than it is?" It honestly wasn't a terribly wild event. There was nice music, a little dancing, a fair amount of moderate, unacknowledged drinking, and a lot of war stories being told.

"No, no. I am trying to get in a few last interviews before I stash this in my car and get on with some serious wine drinking," she said. "I am doing a whole series of episodes on students whose lives have changed profoundly while here. I'm producing them mostly with interviews from those who watched the change. I came over here, because I have been working on an episode on you. I have lots of material, but nothing from you yourself."

Alarm bells went off in my head. "Who have you been interviewing about me?" I asked slowly.

"Well, most of my material is from various faculty. Coach Parvis and Mrs. Sarnioki both actually suggested you as a subject to begin with. But lots of faulty have noticed the changes in you. The name change has everybody particularly interested, Alistaire, especially since it does not appear to be tied to any particular special or embarrassing event." I snorted inwardly at that, a brief vision of Carrie Creonke bent over my mom's car fleeting through my brain. That had been a particularly special event.

"I did talk to a few of your classmates and friends, as well," she went on casually. Uh oh. "I got some good, funny stuff from your friend Trey. He's a sarcastic little shit, but he's quite funny. Just don't tell him I said that."

"Don't tell him he's a sarcastic little shit, or that he is funny?"

"Funny!" Nancy answered with a laugh. "He already knows he's a little shit. But if he hears I thought he was funny, it would go to his head. I also got some nice insights from your friend Bridget."

"Bridget?" I gulped. "She never told me about it."

"She thinks that she is funny too," Nancy smiled. "But she told me a good tale about you two's friendship. It is nice to have a good, long-term, platonic friendship to use to illustrate that they are possible. That said, she is very fond of you. You should have gone for that one!"

I rolled my eyes, for a host of reasons.

"Anyway," Nancy went on, rising her microphone. "Can I get you to talk with me at least a little on mic?"

I shrugged. It seemed the whole thing would be fairly safe.

I started to answer some questions, but Nancy was listening to me with one ear in a headphone. She shook her head. "Damn. I am getting too much background noise here. I wouldn't mind the music, but everything else is making it hard to understand you. Walk with me?"

She turned and headed off across the grassy field. I followed dutifully.

Now look. The woman is hot. Following her was not a hardship. She was wearing a light blue, short sleeved sweater that I could not help but notice pulled tight across her significant chest, and a light green cotton skirt that showed a modest third of her thighs. When she turned away, it revealed itself as being nicely form-fitting, which suited her (and me) because her round little ass was picture perfect in it as she moved.

She kept the earpiece to the side of her head as she walked, her curly mass of sun-bleached hair shoved up out of the way. By the time we got to the edge of the pool of light from the overhead illumination, she stopped and shook her head. "I hope the neighbors don't call the cops! We are actually being fairly loud out here."

I looked around into the darkness. The field the party was in was huge, and there was some heavy woods beyond it in the direction we were headed. You could see the lights of large homes in the distance in all directions, but they were all pretty far away. "We are pretty isolated," I observed.

"I'm only joking," she smiled. "But the noise is still screwing up my sound. How I thought that I could get good interviews tonight, I'll never know."

"Am I the only one you are trying to interview?" I asked, puzzled.

"No. But you are the only person I wanted to interview extensively. The others are just little snippets of sound, and the party atmosphere works for those." Nancy fretted. "Here, I know they don't want us wandering off, but let's just keep walking and we will talk as we move. It'll provide context for the background sounds."

I shrugged. Walking in the dark with her was not my idea of a bad time. And while it would be harder to make out all her fabulous details, I figured I would have an easier time looking closely at them.

The interview was actually entertaining. And thankfully, it did not center on just this last spring, but my whole four years. We would walk, and pause, then walk again in flow with the questions. Sometimes, she would pause the recording and ask me for another try at an answer that I had mangled.

My eyes got adjusted to the dark, and I was able to go back to easily enjoying the view of her beside me. That meant she might have more easily caught me checking her out, but hey, we were just fellow adults now, right?

"I should have gotten a refill before we wandered off," Nancy said, coughing slightly. "Mind?" she asked, and reached out for my rum and Coke. Without waiting for permission, she took a deep swig, and handed it back to me. "Thanks," she said, her throat wetted again. "But you should put more rum in it. It's pretty weak."

"Excuse me?" I meeped.

"Please," Nancy said, rolling her green eyes. She would clearly have been shocked if my cup had contained only Coke.

I pulled my flask of rum out of my deep pocket and added a splash to my half-full cup. She took it from me and tried another sip.

"Getting there," she smiled. "Tastes like good rum, too."

We just walked in companionable silence for a little bit, sharing the drink. We found ourselves on a path through the edge of the woods where there were benches and nature walk information signs that I could not read in the moonlight. Nancy stopped to face me and resume the interview. She was talking now about Track, and the way I had finally won my last race ever. It was a good story, and I enjoyed talking about it. I was not about to share the extra motivation I had had to break that tape, of course, but the memory was boiling my blood behind the scenes.

Also boiling my blood was standing there in front of Nancy. She is the better part of a foot shorter than I, so as I stood and looked down on her while we talked, I had a truly excellent view of the way her breasts swelled the front of her sweater. Jesus, they were nice. And I could stare all I wanted, because they were in the same line of sight as her face.

Nancy lowered the mic and stole another sip of my dwindling Coke. "Can we talk about girls for a bit?" she asked suddenly.

"Excuse me?"

"I was thinking you could tell me about that girl Jenn. Remember when I ran into you two in the basement corridor that night?"

Alarms! Yikes!

"Oh, uh, yeah," I said, as if trying to remember some incidental event. "Yeah, we had been trying to go out to the fields but the door to the Annex was locked at the end. We were backtracking when we ran into you."

"That's the night," Nancy said easily.

"Weren't there rats or something?" I added, unnecessarily and unwisely.

Nancy snorted, then laughed.

"I'm sorry?" I asked, nonplussed.

"Alistaire, please!" Nancy said with an almost teasing tone. She resumed walking and I followed. The mic was still turned off at her side. "I told you I heard noises. And I grew up in Brooklyn. I can damn well tell the difference between rats fighting and a young girl having the very best kind of fun, and a lot of it."

My eyes must have been wide as saucers. I stared at her in shock. And I honestly was still scared somehow.

"And then, when I reached you, I could tell exactly what kind fun Jenn had been having," Nancy laughed, now thoroughly enjoying my discomfort. "Your face absolutely stank of pussy."

"Well," I said at last, after staring at her like I was a stuffed fish for a few seconds, "shit."

She actually cackled. When her hilarity at my spinning brain subsided, she went on. "I was curious, though. Still am. We keep closer track of you kids' romances than you probably think, and you and she were never on the radar."

"I... uh, I was... that night was our only real date, to be honest."

"You went out with that girl once, engaged in oral sex, and never went out with her again?" Nancy asked, but her amusement had suddenly acquired an edge that I very much did not like. I am not some love 'em and leave 'em type. And I sure as fuck didn't want to be seen that way.

"Hey! Um, yeah. That was our only 'date' date. But we definitely kept, um, well, you know, from time to time." God, that sounded bad. "I... we had known each other since freshman year, but I don't think we really were friends until that night, to be honest."

Jesus, were those her nipples tenting up the front of her sweater? From this conversation?

"I, uh, I guess that I have never really had very many 'dates' at all," I said letting every inch of my sheepishness show, "with any of my, uh... with anyone really." I cut myself off quickly, but she caught my wording.

"With any of your...?" Nancy pounced. "Have you actually been with other girls here?"

"Uh..." I said. Damned alcohol. I have a hard enough time not embarrassing myself as it is.

"Man, I wish I could use any of this," she chortled. Then she went back to tease mode. In fact, I watched as she straightened her spine and pushed her shoulders back. She clearly had me busted on where my eyes were really focused. And she was playing into it... I was being tortured, and I was not hating it. "But if you had a string of girls, I'd have expected more public drama during the transitions. As I said, you seemed to have dropped off our radar of kids to watch on the emotional front this whole year, and this spring especially."

I shrugged. "As long as everybody knows about everybody else, and everybody knows up front, then there is no cause for drama. The one time I didn't... well, we fixed the drama, but not before there were tears."

The flirty behavior was gone. I was being examined, and with some skepticism. I just let my gaze on her get more intense. The nipples were getting harder...

I had joked about this exact situation. I had fantasized about it too, but mostly joked about it. But here it was. It was still a ludicrous long-shot, but I was going to try to nail this woman. And I was not going to be timid about it. I had gotten to this point by being crazily, sometimes unconsciously, bold. I had maybe a ten minute window...

"So you are telling me that you were sexing up multiple girls at a time, and they all knew?" Nancy scoffed.

I let the embarrassment fade away and gave her just a one-sided grin. I really did lock my gaze with her eyes. Green eyes really did it for me, come to think of it. "Yep," I said with a little challenge in my voice. I held her gaze, letting the wolf show, just a little.

Nancy looked back into my eyes, unfocusing for a second, then suddenly shaking her head and looking away. She adopted a more relaxed posture, crossed her arms and laughed. "Bullshit," she said merrily. "I mean, I have ample evidence where Jennifer is concerned, but come on." She looked at me, still half-grinning at her. "What could you be doing to make that the remotest possibility?"

Oh fuck yeah! I was going to make her so happy that she asked that question. I was already ecstatic she asked that question. I had to keep from jumping up and down.

"Well," I said, shrugging, "it took me a while to really grasp why things were going so very well, once they got going at all. I asked the same question you just did, often. I was very ignorant, right up until I wasn't," I let the wolf show through again, but just a little. My vision widened from just her eyes, back to taking in her whole torso. "As far as I can tell, the secret of my success, aside from honesty, caring, and a general eagerness to please, is two-fold..."

And I just trailed off. I made her ask.

"Two-fold?" Nancy prompted. Yep, she was more than intellectually curious. She was not sold or eager... but she was curious,

"The first you essentially already know. I am a huge fan of, and I'm told that I am really, really good at... uh..." I actually hesitated this time. Embarrassment crept in a little. "I love cunnilingus," I blurted out. I had almost said, 'I love eatin' pussy.' That would not have struck the right tone.

And she thought that I had blushed when she told me my face stank? She was a raspberry. "Well... ah, I can see that that might be helpful. But still, come on. What do you have to top that?"

I let the wolf out. It really isn't a predatory vibe, so 'the wolf' is probably a bad term, but... I let her see how much I wanted her, how much I wanted to offer her. Girls said I looked primal like this, and not at all safe. If I was going to pull this off, I had better come off as special.

I just looked at her like that for several seconds, then I relaxed and shrugged. "The other one kind of snuck up on me, but apparently it is unusual to have a nine and a half inch cock."

She burst into laughter which she cut off almost immediately when she saw me raise an eyebrow challengingly. I looked at her, watched her think. She was flushed now, on her heels, confused... and very, very horny. The teaser had been ensnared.

It occurred to me that being just a little drunk was working to my advantage. I would never have had the guts to indulge my Male Instinct to this extent. I doubt even my Male Instinct would have had the guts, not with Nancy Green.

But I had had the guts, and unless I was very wrong, I was about to be legendary. Probably only in my own mind, I mean, who would I tell and when? But legendary, nonetheless.

Nancy looked at me with a look of almost defiance. "Put up or shut up, buster! Show me."

We were just a few strides from one of those benches on the edge of the woods. It was dim in the gloom, and would certainly be invisible from inside the island of light where all her colleagues and my fellow freshly-minted alumni partied away. I took her hand softly and led her to that bench. Looking into her eyes, which were alight with curiosity, skepticism, and hopefully hope, I rested my hands on her thighs and pushed the fabric of her light skirt upward as I guided her to a seat.