Atlantea Ch. 01

"I'd say yes, but I think it might fall off," I said. "As it is, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to walk tomorrow."

"Good," she said. "And, are you still thinking about Meg?"

"Who's that again?"

* * *

It was several weeks before Phoebe asked me to start returning the favors she was doing for me. During this time, she gave me a blow job every time we met up, as long as we had privacy. She even went down on me in a bathroom stall at the Caps bar. It only had a women's restroom, so she'd had to sneak me in.

Apparently more worried about my state of mind than the condition of her throat, she was aggressive about offering herself to me. I think she was worried that I wouldn't feel okay using her so often. I have to admit her strategy worked, at least as well as anything could have. True, I remained pretty blue about Meg, but I had cum down my friend's throat so often, and in such a pleasurable way, that my thoughts usually drifted to reliving those moments rather than my ex.

Still, I had been starting to feel pretty guilty by the time Phoebe called in her first favor. I had not done much for her, at least not in the last two weeks, and I noticed the frequent oral sex was hard on her throat. Although she never complained, her voice was raspier than it normally was, and I occasionally smelled cough drops on her breath. Thus, it was a major relief when she did, at last, ask me to do something in return.

"Hey, so you still up for doin' me a favor?" she asked.

"Of course! Anything you want!" I said enthusiastically.

I was hoping it would be something as challenging as the blow jobs, to balance things out, and was disappointed when she described what she needed.

"I have this friend, Rhea? She's doing her postdoc at the School of Public Health, and needs subjects for a survey."

"Um, sure," I said, unable to hide my disappointment, "That's probably nowhere near equivalent to your amazing blow jobs, though."

"Perhaps not," she said, "But I might have a few more favors to ask of you later."

She was grinning like a cat.

"And also," she added, "This survey sounds like a big pain, to be honest."

Phoebe was correct, as things transpired. I met Rhea the following day, at a coffee shop near school. Her face was distinctive-looking, if not quite pretty, with olive colored skin, curly blond hair that came down to her shoulders, and piercing blue eyes. It was hard to tell what her ethnicity was; the folds of her eyelids seemed Japanese, but that did not go with the rest of her looks. I quickly gave up trying to guess.

"Sorry this isn't online," she said, after introductions. "I couldn't get that set up, for one reason or another."

She had no accent at all, so much so that she didn't sound like a native English speaker. She slid a thick manila envelope over to me.

"Would you be able to fill those out in two weeks?"

"I think so? What's in it?"

Rhea explained that the professor she was working with had a large-scale study of past and current trends in breastfeeding in the United States, especially in relation to the availability of formula. I was to fill out a rather lengthy survey of which women, if any, in my family, had breast-fed, who had used formula, and who had used both. Each woman had to have their own sheet filled out, and the survey was to include all of my sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and any female cousins. I was starting to see why Phoebe had cautioned me.

"No problem!" I said, however, eager to do something for Phoebe.

It was a problem, though, due in part to the sheer volume of paperwork the requirements implied. I come from a large family that is unusually skewed towards females. I have four older sisters and no brothers, for example. My mom has three sisters and one brother, and my dad, like me, was the youngest kid and had five older sisters. The forms were also surprisingly detailed. I had to track down how many kids each woman had had, whether they had breastfed each child, and for how long, if, and when, and why, they switched to formula, as well as what bra size they used when nursing.

My mom, thankfully, came to my rescue and did most of the leg work. She was a staunch believer in breastfeeding and upon hearing that I was helping an academic study on the matter, volunteered to track down any information she did not already know, including from my father's side.

"You're gonna need help with this one," she said, referring to the notoriously woman-heavy family tree.

It was a running joke that my dad and me, as males, were heavily outnumbered, even at family reunions where you might think things would balance out; my substantial fleet of cousins is predominantly female.

In the end, despite the vast number of females to account for, my mother was able to track down most of the requested details, even including the five cousins who had children of their own by that point. She even had been able to get nursing bra size information for all but four women. I wasn't surprised by any of my sisters' proportions; as the youngest sibling I'd been inundated with uncensored bra talk my whole life; there was little mystery there. But as I transcribed all the information to Rhea's forms, I noticed that, throughout the family tree, women tended towards heavy busts, with the majority wearing a D cup or larger.

Rhea was ecstatic when I pushed the heavy envelope across the table towards her, a few days before the deadline. We had decided to meet at the same coffee shop.

"Oh, thank you!" she said happily as she flipped through a few pages, "This is a gold mine. I don't think anyone else has had nearly so much... data!"

"Well, my family includes a lot of good Catholics," I said, "In all senses of the word. And for some reason there seem to be fewer men than normal."

Rhea was staring at me with an intense, penetrating gaze. I became nervous and started to ramble.

"My dad and I used to joke about being in the minority, but I never realized how extensive it was until my mom got all this stuff back to me. Even my older cousins have had mostly girls. Maybe it's a genetic thing or something? Like the guys produce fewer Y-chromosome sperm, or maybe the women's ovaries filter them out or something?"

I blushed as I realized this was way too intimate to share with a comparative stranger. Plus, I was just speculating about something I knew nothing about. Rhea, however, looked intrigued.

"That may be so," she said, finally breaking eye contact and idly twisting one of her curly golden locks around a finger. "That may be so."