Clarissa's Revenge

****

Around that time I was getting the notion that Clarissa might have psychopathic tendencies. Most such people are not serial killers or have even committed physically violent acts. It did mean that they may lack empathy, be manipulative, have superficial charm, or any number of other traits.

Of course, I wasn't qualified to diagnose anybody. Yet it did seem that there was something off about Clary. Probably I thought that because she was continuing her grudge after a relatively minor, in my mind, incident.

What was really strange was that we hadn't seen each other in over two months and yet she was acting as if had happened yesterday. If anything, she was escalating her tactics when there seemed to be so valid reason for doing that.

Nora had been capable of some odd behavior at times, but Clarissa was going beyond anything my ex had ever done.

******

In the following week, Clarissa delivered her revenge on me. Nora had been right, and she had worked out a plan on how to do it.

I was attending a Salient staff meeting one afternoon. About twenty-five of us - almost all of the active staff - were there. As usual, there had been a considerable turnover from the previous semester. Old-timers had finally graduated - a few taking more than the standard four years - and new members had joined.

Near the end of that event, Clarissa opened the door and just walked in. Instead of her formerly cheerful voice, she used a quieter, more even tone. "I'm sorry, I was just wondering - would anybody mind if I sat in on your meeting right now?"

That was baffling, because no one had ever seen a staffer from another paper request that. We had no secrets to hide, so there was a murmur of affirmation from a few people.

"Thank you; I appreciate it." Then she got a chair and pushed it next to somebody else at the end of the table to my left.

Before she sat down, I noted that she was better dressed than I had ever seen before. She had an open blazer over her blouse, a dark skirt, nylon stockings, and black medium-heeled shoes.

She didn't look at me, but I felt chilled anyway. Something bad was going to happen, that could be her only reason for being there in the first place. Nora was a couple of seats down on my right side, and Michelle was almost directly opposite me on the other side of the table.

I should have used some pretext to excuse myself from the room. Maybe Clarissa would have done her bit anyway, but without me there her timing would have perhaps been thrown off. Yet I stayed. I knew I had done something wrong and maybe I wanted, almost unconsciously, to endure the consequences. Take your lumps, as Nora had put it.

It was hard to sit there waiting while knowing that Clary was going to pull the trigger on me. As the meeting reached its conclusion, I almost changed my mind and I was prepared to dash out the door. Then Clary started to speak.

"Now, before, you all go, I have something to say about that guy over here - your new features editor." She pointed to me. Her tone was calm but there was a hint of anger in it too.

I was so tense that I prematurely reacted to her. "Everything she's going to say is a lie."

"I would appreciate it I may speak at least. Does anybody here have objections to that?"

Yet I had the presence of mind in the next couple of minutes to be objective and think, she really has acting talent.

Clary preceded to tell a version of what had happened the previous June. She had come into the office and I was the only one there that afternoon. According to her, we had been sitting on the red couch discussing her wish to join the paper. Then I brought up a proposal that she give me sexual favors in return for getting her articles published.

She said, "Needless to say, that was completely outrageous. I wouldn't accept that and I said so. I should have just gotten up and left, but I thought that maybe it was all some kind of sick prank on his part. But, no, he was quite serious."

There was silence in the room. She had everyone's attention, including mine.

"Then he got up and stood in front of me, and he unzipped his pants, letting his cock jut out. It was fully erect by that point, and I knew he had been fantasizing about me while pretending to discuss the paper."

Well, she had been correct about me getting an erection, even before she had spread her legs for me to see her crotch.

"It was so shocking that for a moment I was unable to move. He said, 'If you expect to get anywhere here, you'll have to suck on my dick, like whenever I want you to. And you're certainly going to be doing a lot more for me than that.' "

I again blurted out, "That's another lie too."

But how could I have told the truth? The reality of that day didn't make me look much better. She had proposed providing the sexual favors, not me, and then she blew me as a kind of down payment. But then I got angry when she wouldn't do anything more over the summer, so I insulted her and she had walked out.

I had forgotten about a detail that Clary did provide. "It was a unique two-tone cock, darker on the inner half. It would be unmistakable to anyone unfortunate to have seen it."

That was undeniable proof that she had indeed seen my exposed cock, one way or the other. She addressed Michelle directly. "Michelle you could testify to the truth of that, I'm sure."

I glanced in that direction, but Michelle was looking at Clary, not me.

"Then, when I tried to get up, he pushed me down on the couch. He grabbed my hair with his right hand and yanked my head back. He then put his left hand under my skirt and tried to pull my panties off."

You weren't even wearing panties that day, but of course, I didn't say that.

"I knew I was in real peril then, but I know how to defend myself. I lifted a foot and gave him, from below, a solid kick in the nuts. He just collapsed on the floor, of course, and I grabbed my bag and got the hell out of there."

It was impressive how she had turned herself into the heroine of that narrative.

"On my way out, he yelled at me, 'You little whore, you're going to pay for this.' "

It was Nora, bless her dark heart, who calmly mentioned something. "I notice it took you a while to report this."

"Nora, you must understand how intimidated and yes, ashamed I felt after that, although I had done nothing wrong. It wasn't until this semester, when I met all of you people, that I realized that you would believe my story."

It occurred to me that Michelle, Nora, and four of the guys had seen Clarissa acting in ways that were inconsistent with her tale. But there were more than twenty people in the room, including three other women. I think they were all too surprised to have come to a conclusion at that point.

I lashed out, "So what the hell is it that you want?"

She addressed the staff rather than me. "What I want is for this D'Amato person, this leering molester - and he's capable of more than that, I'm sure - I want him to resign from this paper. And if he doesn't do it himself, I want you to fire him, ban him, for his disgraceful behavior."

She spoke directly to me. "You're lucky I don't report you to the school administration or press charges against you. But I don't want the hassles; I just want it all to go away. But first, you have to go away."

She concluded her remarks. "That's all I have to say. I trust that you will do the right thing."

Then she stood up. As she left, I imagined her lifting her skirt and mooning us. Somehow, under my shame and anger, I amused myself by imagining that she would have no panties on under her pantyhose. Her ass crack would be there for all to see.

A second later, my resolve gave way. I got up and left without saying anything. Clarissa wasn't outside the room, but I thought she might have gone down the main staircase just across the hallway. I went around the third floor and used another stairway at the back of the building.

*****

I spoke to Michelle the following day, and I have to give her credit for remaining so calm. She didn't yell at me or cry. Occasionally, she would ask me a few questions to clarify some detail.

When I was done telling my story, she gave me some opinions.

"First of all, I get that this Clarissa person is - I'd call it mentally ill. Or at least she's got some kind of personality disorder. I don't know; I'm not a psychologist."

For a second I hoped to get a reprieve, but I highly doubted that was going to happen.

"Now I do believe your version because I know you're not like that. And what she said yesterday doesn't fit with the way she acted earlier."

That seemed to be a bit encouraging until I heard what she said next.

"But it some ways the truth is just as bad. First of all, you lied to me about Jeff being there. But much worse than that, you did have oral sex with her. I know you might think, it was merely a blowjob, and you didn't even come in her mouth. Well, there was also that brief bit of finger-fucking that you did on her."

"I never used the word 'merely' "

She ignored my statement. "I know how manipulative she is, and how great the temptation must have been when she offered her cunt and then her mouth to you. Probably, but I'm just guessing, the majority of men would have given into her wishes."

"That certainly is true." What a dumb remark.

"Yet, I don't think you expect me to forgive you and just go on with you as we were. She may have invented this scheme, but you went along with what she wanted. You even admitted that you considered banging her for a while, behind my back."

That was no point in conceding how ashamed I felt. There still seemed to be a slight opening with Michelle to get me through. I said, "Well, ultimately it's your call." Please, have mercy on me. But I refrained from saying that.

"I have to sleep on it, but basically, I don't care what most men would have done. I only care about what you did. I mean, she wasn't holding a gun to your head."

To me that was an example of Michelle's dry wit. Yet I wouldn't have minded at that point aiming a gun at Clarissa's head myself.

I asked her something irrelevant. "So I guess you think less of me now?" I don't know why I had bothered to say that, since the answer was so obvious.

"It doesn't matter, I accept the reality of it. It would be great if you had behaved better, but you didn't. So, that's all I have to say about it right now." That oddly mirrored Clarissa's final words, although I doubt it was intentional.

Then she grabbed her bag, got up, and left. As I watched her leave, I knew that our breakup had just happened. It was amazing how fast and total it had been.

*****

Nora was a good audience for my story because she loved gossip so much. She herself was a source of some excellent gossip too.

When I met her a couple of days later, she said, "I just want to make it clear that I believe your version of these events. I mean, I saw how she acted in the office that day, and that doesn't jibe with what she said later. In any case, your timing on this couldn't have been worse."

"Really, how so?"

"Have you heard of Lin Farley, she teaches at Cornell?"

"No, I'm not familiar with her."

"Let me try to make this brief. She's coined this term 'sexual harassment,' and then she testified about it, just last May, here in New York before the Human Rights Commission. There was a big write-up about it in The Times in August. August 19th, to be exact." She let me ponder that, and then she asked, "You do understand what Farley was talking about?"

"Are you saying that Clarissa read that article?"

"I have no idea. I'll bet that some of The Salient staffers read it, however."

"But she was lying about it."

"It doesn't matter. Frankly, neither one of you was completely blameless on that day. It just turns out that she maneuvers better than you had expected."

"But I didn't do anything wrong."

"But you did act foolishly, thinking more with your dick as usual. I mean, it was obvious that she was playing you from the very beginning; she was pretty blunt about how transactional it all was. You noticed that and yet still went ahead and had her blow you anyway."

"She tempted me. Like, she showed her bare crotch to me."

"And what did she say just before that? 'If you can help me, I can help you.' "

"So what should I have done?"

"Since you had already figured her out, you should have just shown her the door. If you were really that aroused by the sight of her body, well - you were there by yourself. You could have just jerked off. Masturbating about someone has fewer risks than getting sexually involved with her."

Actually, there had been a suggestion of some other benefit from Clary, but I didn't tell Nora that. I merely said, "You don't mince words, do you?"

"Do I ever? Now, Mr. D'Amato, I know you pretty well. You admitted that what really triggered you was that she was going to dole out a sexual favor every four weeks or so, whenever an issue with her stories came out."

"I never thought that."

"Yes you did; you've already said that. And then you couldn't keep your mouth shut either. You had to go and call her a whore, which set her off."

"But what I said was true."

"That is also not the point. A good rule of thumb in life, when meeting someone for the first time, is to never tell them exactly what you think of them. It doesn't matter how much you believe you're right. I could give you some examples from The Godfather films."

Nora was a big fan of the movies, and she often referred to them when making some point of her own.

"I know, like Senator Geary with Michael Corleone."

"That's a good one. Scope them out first before you start blabbing. Of course, in your case, the consequences are a lot less dire,"

I quoted a line from one of the films. " 'I intend to squeeze you.' "

"And now Clarissa has just finished squeezing you."

"Should I just quit the paper?"

"Don't bother, just stop going there. Your name is already mud with at least half of them, especially the female staffers. They'll figure out what happened to you."

"But now I'll have nothing to do but go to classes."

"Interesting how that takes priority over losing Michelle. I see you can be a bit cold at times." She must have seen the look in my face, because she added, "Sorry, that was a bit low."

I still felt like fretting. "By the way, do you think Clarissa is done with me?"

"Who knows, but I suspect she's gotten what she wanted. Maybe she's becoming bored with her crusade against you. Just stay away from her. If she approaches you, make it clear that you don't want to talk to her. And for God's sake, don't threaten her with anything. I assume you've already fantasized about you'd like to do to her."

She smiled, and I knew that I some gossip for her. "Yeah, I've thought about paddling her behind, and then fucking her up the ass."

"Well, don't tell her that!"

Nora was being tongue-in-cheek with me. I replied, "Of course, I wouldn't do that. But, she's obviously mentally disturbed."

"All the more reason to be suspicious of chicks who flash their pussies at you in the first ten minutes. You ain't that much of a stud."

"Thanks, Nora, I appreciate your honesty." I hoped to sound a touch sarcastic and I think she caught on to it.

"It's been all my pleasure. Hey, all you've lost is a girlfriend and an unpaid position on a student newspaper. No permanent damage, I think. And maybe you learned something for future reference. Women only pretend to be the gentler sex. When our fangs come out - beware! So, I think we have covered this pretty completely."

That also was like Clarissa's last line. Yet I was still oddly fond of Nora a year after she had left me. "You never forget your first girl."

"That's for sure, but I'd be pretty memorable anyway. So welcome to your latest dry spell. How long was the previous one?"

"After you left? About two weeks."

"Since you're such a pick-up artist, you should do fine." I knew she was kidding me, but I wasn't that confident in my own abilities.

At least Clarissa never bothered me again. I saw her only once on the South Campus that year. Anyway, nearly a year went by before I found a new girlfriend, and she attended another university.

######

Nora appears in a number of other stories, including Freshman Hooker and Nora Works as a Dominatrix. However, those are on a slightly different timeline in which Clarissa does not appear. Her domination of Paul is in My Summer with Nora Ch. 07. His new girlfriend at another college appears in Donna in the Senior Year Ch. 01.