Colton Stories: Knox Pt. 01

Good readers, I present to you clueless Colton dude #2: Knox Sartelle. Not much nookie in this one, so please be patient - or go read another story if that's your jam.

Knox

In the past 36 hours, my life has gone to hell in a handbasket. OK, so maybe that's being a bit too dramatic, but it sure felt that way.

36 hours ago, my dad and I were in Moscow, doing his annual summer research. My dad is a historian. Next to the great John Lewis Gaddis, dad's "father doctor," and doctoral supervisor at Yale, he's the premier Cold War historian on this side of the pond. Dad is a tenured, full professor at his alma mater, Colton College, in Maine. The name Prentiss Sartelle is well-known, and highly respected in academic circles. In truth, all his books have 'A.P. Sartelle, IV' on the spine. Dad's is an old Virginia family, and in old Southern families there are five generations of guys with the same name. There was an Andrew Prentiss Sartelle V, my older brother, but he died after living for about an hour.

Colton has changed a fair bit over the past 5 years, and not all of it has been good. Dad has turned down several good job offers, and I know Princeton has made him a hell of an offer. I also know that we're going to spend a good deal of time talking about whether he should take the job over the next 6 weeks while we're in Moscow. Dad has friends in high places in the Russian government, so he gets special access to Kremlin archives as he researches his biography of Nikita Khrushchev.

It's just my dad and I, now. My mom was killed in a car wreck 4 years ago, the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. Until she died, I attended a high-powered New England prep school. I'm a football player - a damn good one - I might add. I should have had Division I offers, but when I transferred back home and attended a county high school that played a lower division of football, any buzz that I'd created faded quickly. I'm not mad about that anymore. My dad and I are tight, and we needed one another as we grieved my mom. I get tuition remission at Colton, and started as a freshman. I'm an inside linebacker, and was a DIII All-American last year as a Sophomore. I led the nation with 138 solo tackles. Some of that is me, but the guy who plays in front of me, Trent Zetocha, had a big part in that as well. He's a mountain of a dude, and loves eating double teams. That leaves me free to roam, ramble, and create havoc. When I was named an All-American, I took Trent to dinner in Portland and watched that dude eat so much surf and turf that I think there were villages in the developing world who felt the impact.

Going to Colton has been good on two fronts, but a total shit-show on another front. Academically, it's a great school. My parents were both smart, and my dad's a professor. School has always come easy to me, and I genuinely enjoy the work. Football has been a scream, and we'll be salty as hell this upcoming season. Those have both been amazing.

The dating scene at Colton sucks, however. We have this "femi-nazi" as the VP for Diversity and Inclusion named Natalie Gilbert. She's an absolute psycho. That "herself" is pissed at every biological male on the entire planet, though she claims gender is just a social construct. It's absolute bullshit. She's also the reason my dad is looking at other jobs. He loves the Provost, but this Gilbert psycho thinks history is something she can conveniently re-write as the whim hits her. As a historian, my dad has forgotten more legitimate historiography than that hack will ever know. Not only does she hate dudes in general, but she frowns on heterosexual dating. Hetero couples are made to feel like lepers if they're seen together on campus. And forget about any public displays of affection. Being a straight dude on a campus full of smoking hot coeds is a shitty deal given Natalie Gilbert's presence at Colton College.

As a historian, my dad is big on unintended consequences. We arm the Mujahadeen to fight the Russians in the 1980's, and end up arming the Taliban in the 2000's. Unintended consequence. An unintended consequence of all the dude hate at Colton has been "The Society." It's a group of hetero guys who are tired of being told they're the root of all evil in the world. They'd like to pursue a lovely co-ed, but know it's frowned upon. So, once a year there's an "auction." Guys bid on the rights for a particular girl. If he wins, the rest of the males on campus know to stay away from her. I thought it was total bullshit, and didn't take part. That brings me to my second unintended consequence. There are two phenomenal women on campus: Grace Federspiel and Sara Jones-Easley. They're smart, hot as hell, and shy. They're also best friends with my good friend, Eden Adams. Eden and I have known one another our whole lives. She's amazing. So, if these woman pass with Eden - damn skippy I'd ask them out. I'd ask either one of them out in a damn heartbeat, but two assholes have called dibs on them. Grace and Sara are the "property" of dudes named Chad and Isaac. Chad is a shit thrower, and a shittier defensive lineman. Isaac is a basketball player. But I've made up my mind while Dad and I have been in Moscow. Screw those dudes. When I get back, I'm asking Grace out on a real date. If she says no, I'll ask Sara out. The Society can kiss my ass.

I figured all this out in a bizarre way. Dad has a colleague in Moscow, the archivist for the Kremlin, and he has a daughter who's a year older than I am. Svetlana and I have also known one another our whole lives, and on a scale of 1-10 - she's an '11.' Blonde hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, big tits, and an ass that stops traffic. She's also only two inches shorter than my 6'1." My senior year in high school, our relationship changed. When I turned 18, we became friends with benefits - or whatever you want to call it. Every summer for the last 3 years, we copulate like rabbits. Given how shitty dating life is at Colton, I really look forward to my 6 weeks in Moscow every summer.

So, it's Thursday night of our second week in Moscow. Svetlana and I are alone in our rented apartment, and her lovely blonde hair is bobbing up and down as she gives me the most amazing blowjob you can imagine. Full disclosure: Svetlana is the only girl I've ever slept with. Since we're also good friends, we've always felt very comfortable giving feedback while we have sex. She knows exactly what I like, and what drives me crazy. Same thing for me. I now actually have some semblance of a clue when I go down on a girl. Tonight, for some reason, she's pulling out all the stops.

Dad is at a Moscow University dinner, and then will be attending a faculty mixer. That means Svetlana and I have roughly four hours to have as much hot monkey sex as a 20- and 21-year-old can dream up. I don't know about you, but this 20-year-old can dream up a shit ton of hot monkey sex. This is promising to be a damn good night.

And then my phone went off.

Dad and I have a code we use for when we really need to talk to one another. Since we're on the same campus, he didn't want me to feel like he was looking over my shoulder all the time. If he calls, and then hangs up - and then calls again - I know it's for real. We need to talk, ASAP. Begrudgingly, I tell Svetlana to stop and answer my phone.

"Sorry to interrupt, Knox."

"It's OK, Svetlana and I are just sitting here hanging out," I lied.

"Well, something has come up. We need to fly back to Boston tonight," he said flatly.

"Shit," I muttered. "Are you serious? We just got here."

"Language, Knox," said my dad, more amused than mad. "You're in the presence of a lady, not in a locker room."

He sighed, "I'm sorry. I know how much we enjoy our time here, but there's been some serious changes at Colton over the past week. I need you to get us two seats on the red eye to Logan tonight. And Knox, we need to do that ASAP. When that's done, start packing. I'll excuse myself as soon as I decently can and come help you."

"Wow. This sounds serious," I said, my mind just now catching up with the fact that a beautiful Russian woman was no longer orally servicing my manhood.

"It is. It's all really, really, good news," he said. I could hear my dad grinning through the phone. He hated slang like "really, really" so whatever was going on was blowing his mind.

______________________________________________________________

"So let me get this straight," I began. We were about half an hour outside of London Gatwick. Once we'd landed, we'd take the train to Heathrow, and then the flight on to Boston Logan. All told, about 15 hours of travel time. Figuring in the time change, we'd be getting into Boston at about noon local time. "Natalie Gilbert got her miserable ass fired. The AD, and men's crew coach have been fired as well. The new AD is from the Groton School in Boston, and the dude taking Gilberts' job was an officer in the Marine Corps? And, when all of this went down, the VP of Student Development resigned, and now an old friend of yours and mom's is interviewing for the job?"

Dad grinned like a school kid. Or, like I did when Svetlana just went ahead and mounted me as soon as I got off the phone so we could have one last epic roll in the hay before I had to leave. Damn, I missed that woman already!

"Kimberly and Richard Carmichael were friends of ours. We met them in grad school. He was doing his work in philosophy, and she did her MBA. She went on to get an EdD in Higher Ed, and he got a PhD in philosophy. They were our next-door neighbors in married student housing at Yale. They moved to Memphis, and were at different schools. She was the VP for Student Development at Rhodes, and he was at Memphis - which has an outstanding philosophy department. Six years ago, he took a president's job at a small college in NYC, until the trustees ran him off. In the aftermath, Richard had a total nervous breakdown, and had an affair - with a married couple," dad explained.

"So, wait - he was carrying on with both the husband and the wife?"

Dad nodded his head.

"The whole thing was very public and very," he paused, "awkward. Kimberly didn't fight him when he asked for a divorce, and she took what was little better than an entry-level job at Stanford. She was totally overqualified for the position, but their oldest daughter Katherine had just been accepted there, and taking the job was a way to lessen the financial impact of the divorce. Last I heard, Richard was doing some freelance fundraising for various institutions in NYC, and both girls have been in California with Kimberly. I understand that all three are coming this weekend to visit the campus, and then Kimberly's interviews begin on Monday morning."

"By the way Knox, their plane gets in an hour after ours does. By the time we clear customs, and claim our bags, their plane should be arriving. The school is sending the new women's athletic team bus to pick us all up. We'll unpack and have a nap and then take the three Carmichael women out to dinner tonight. Provost Adams has made a 7 PM reservation for us at Via Paloma. We'll need to dress appropriately."

"That sucks," I said sourly. "We'll be dead on our feet, and we've got to put on a dog and pony show for three visitors?"

"All that I've just told you - and I mean all of it - is tremendously good news for us. Particularly for me. If all that Gloria told me in her email is true - and I have absolutely no reason to doubt that it is - it means I can stay at Colton as long as I please. I don't need to tell you how many memories - good memories - of your mother are in our house. I was dreading the thought of leaving our house and that campus. I may leave Colton one day. I may date again, and even remarry. But I'll do those things when I choose to do them - not out of protest - and not because some two-bit revisionist hack runs me off."

Dad had gotten teary, and all I could do was nod. If all this made my dad happy - or at least not sad - then dammit, I was gonna nut up and do what needed to be done. It was the least I could do.

_____________________________________________________________

Dad neglected to tell me that Kimberly Carmichael was a stone-cold fox. I mean, if you looked up MILF in the dictionary, her picture would be in the entry. If that was not enough, she was attracted to my dad, and I wasn't the only one who was catching what she was throwing down. Her two daughters were also damn fine, and they were not-so-coyly looking back and forth to one another as we were all catching the "first date" vibe our parents were giving off at radioactive levels. The entire two-and-a-half-hour ride to Colton was spent with my dad grinning like a kid at Christmas, and Kimberly touched his arm so many times I lost count.

Prentiss keeps himself in fighting trim. He cycles, and does some light weights. He's always watched what he eats. Dr. Prentiss Sartelle is a classic Sartorialist (his term, not mine) so, when he drops some serious coin on an Anderson and Shepherd bespoke sports coat, or a Harris Tweed jacket, he wants to make sure he can wear his "commissioned pieces" for as long as possible. Showing some discipline at the table, and getting his ass moving on a regular basis are both good for that. Plus, dad loves to hike and sail. Put it all together, and my dad is one buff 48-year-old. He's still got all his hair, and he has made the Colton Sororities' lists of best-looking-male professors several years running.

I say all of that to say this: two ridiculously good looking, middle-aged people were seriously digging one another for the entire ride. And you know what? I wasn't even pissed. I was happy for my dad. He smiled, and laughed more on that bus ride than I'd seen him smile and laugh in the past four years. Hell, I was ecstatic. And I wasn't alone. The Carmichael girls were pleased as punch, too. Their dad had done a real number on all of them, and seeing their mom being doted on, and treated with respect by a good-looking dude who could sling $3 words with the best of them was freaking cat nip.

Did I mention that the Carmichael sisters were easy on the eyes, as well? Kate was older, taller, with one dimple. Caroline was 2 years younger, bustier, and had dimples in both cheeks. Neither of them is as tall as Grace Federspiel, or Sara Jones-Easley, so I was content just to talk to them and play it cool. No need to get distracted by two new entrants in the Knox dating game. I'd had a couple of years of practice at just being a plutonic safe space for co-eds. I could play that game with the best of them. Plus, they were genuinely interesting people to talk with. They were both smart as hell, and as overwhelmed by their mom's possession of game with the opposite sex as I was with my dad's. I had to give it to Prentiss, he was scoring points left and right, and I wondered how soon before I'd stumble downstairs one morning to find Kimberly Carmichael wearing one of the old man's Brooks Brothers button-downs as she turned on the coffee maker, sporting mussed-up hair and a smile.

"So, mom tells us you're a football player," said Kate with a tone in her voice. I wasn't quite sure what the tone was, so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

"I am. We'll have a good team this year, so I'm looking forward to fall rolling around. How about the two of you? Do either of you play a sport?"

Caroline smiled, "I row crew, and Kate is singer-songwriter. She's got an EP up on Spotify and Apple Music."

"Wow. Congratulations. You must be good."

Kate blushed. "Our dad is an accomplished guitar player. He taught me. Mom has a great voice, so I guess I got that from her. When," she paused, "when things got bad between them, I almost quit playing. Mom insisted I keep it up. It became a kind of therapy for me."

"That's what football was for me when my mom died," I said softly. Shit. I'd never said that to anyone. Not even my dad. "My maternal grandfather played at West Point, and then my mom was one of four girls. Pops Dodd loves to watch college football, so my mom was always encouraging me to play. When she died, it became a way for me to honor her memory. I'd like to believe she's proud of the player I've become."

"So, you're good?" asked Kate.

I nodded. "I was an academic and Division III All-American last year as an inside linebacker. I led the nation in solo tackles. We lost in the first round of the playoffs, but it was the first time in a decade we made the playoffs. We've got just about everyone coming back this year."

"Caroline is awesome at crew," said Kate. "She has a full ride to Washington, which is a total crew powerhouse. Mom wasn't going to consider it because of the academics, but when dad tried to forbid her from going there, suddenly mom loosened up," she grinned.

"Man, I'm sorry about your dad. That sucks," I lamented. This was not just well-intentioned BS. I meant it. My parents doted on one another. Divorce was a word I'd never even heard mentioned in my house. I know it would have rocked my world if my parents had decided to go their separate ways. My mom's death had devastated both of us.

"Thank you," said Kate with a smile on her face. "I don't think some of our friends understood what a crummy deal it was for us. For being a major metropolitan area, New York City felt like a very small place when the gossip was flying. And it was even worse for our mom. I, for one, am glad to see her smiling and laughing with your dad. It's been too long."

I nodded. I was feeling the effects of the time change, and the air travel, and trying to catch a few winks in an airline seat. We weren't flying in the back of the plane, but we weren't flying first class, either. Dad's 185 lbs. fit much better than my 220 lbs. He got his 40 winks on the flight home; I watched a couple of movies. I was damned tired. Before I knew what was happening, I had nodded off.

___________________________________________________________

"Knox! C'mon son - boots and saddles!"

My dad woke me up with the customary Dodd family greeting. Major General Franklin Dodd was armor, by God. My mom grew up a military brat, and spent lots of her growing up years in Europe. Armor ruled the world during the Cold War (well, that and nukes), and Pops Dodd was at the top of the food chain. He was a "hard-charger" and possessed command presence. His second daughter - my mom, Kristine Dodd Sartelle - possessed the same attributes. Mom had been a hospital administrator, and a damn good one. She commanded the Maine Medical Center (now Barbara Bush Children's Hospital) the same way her old man had commanded Abrams A1 tanks. Firm, fair, and right down in the muck with every other swinging dick. And both father and daughter were beloved by the folks who served under their commands.

I noticed the pool of drool on my sweatshirt, and slowly disembarked from the new, totally kickass ride the ladies' teams were now sporting. We grabbed our bags, and made our way into our house.

"Looks like we have new neighbors," observed my dad. My eyes were bloodshot, and my head was full of cotton, so I didn't particularly give a shit at the moment. I only wanted to collapse in my bed until it was time to shower and get ready for dinner. A couple hours' sleep, and I just might feel like a human being.

Three hours later, and we were doing the same thing all over. But this time, as I staggered into the shower, my dad hung around.

"Knox, I'd like to talk to you if I may," began my dad. "Normally, I'd wait until you were done with your shower, but, well..."

"Dad, I get it. You and Kimberly were giving off some serious vibes on the ride home. It's been four years. Mom would want you to move on, and Kimberly seems awesome. Her daughters are cool, so aside from the fact that I'd have to be staring dudes down who were trying to chat up my stepsisters, I don't see a downside."