Dorm Discipline: Butch Returns

Butch swallowed, added "Saturday night we all got dates, go to get laid somewhere, so no dinner here."

"That leaves lets see, Monday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday."

"This semester too many of us have late Thursday clases; on your own."

"Sunday is family day. Used to be anyway; supposed to go visit relatives. Nobody has relatives close, though Kitty sometimes disappears someplace. We mostly all order our own takeout."

"Monday and Friday up for grabs? I can do a ziti that's pretty good. Pasta bake, just throw in some leftovers and a sauce, cheese on top, into the oven."

Butch looked like she'd just heard about sex. "You can do that? Do that! Do that Friday!"

I smiled. So easy to please, that's the kind of mates I liked.

"Deal."

Meant I had two days to get ingredients. No problem.

"So I can't figure it out. About Slut."

They laughed. "Not much to figure! She's a slut."

Smiling, "yeah I get that. Cool lady, good for her. No, I don't get where she sleeps? None of my business, I know. But there's two single, two doubles, one empty. That makes room for four."

Understanding dawned on their faces.

"Slut lives on the third floor."

Confused. "I thought the plaster..."

Another laugh. "She just says that. To keep busybodies away. That's where she grows her plants."

Huh. There was a hose strung to the roof, not the third floor. Anyway there ought to be plumbing on the third floor? Maybe this old house, it didn't work so good, not a surprise. I suppose I'd find out in time.

Fed, the bottomless pit in my stomach plugged for now, I wet to my (private!) bath and took another shower. Somehow my legs, balls were still sticky?

Scrubbing hard, I was brought up short by a sharp pain. Wtf? My cock was chafed! Never happened before.

Gonna have to do more skincare. Maybe lotion. Sigh. The things I do for the job.

Poked my head in the kitchen; still no sign of GG. Maybe she took off early. Maybe she was sleeping in. Not my business, but I would have been happier to know how she was doing.

Clean, dried, skin treated, notes in hand, I took off for my lab. Test writing had bit into my lab time; I needed results to publish, and soon.

The day passed uneventfully. The lab was full of obsessive young researchers, the backbone of any significant institution. Working for relative peanuts, publishing second author to professors listed as first author that likely don't know what you're doing. Hoping for the brass ring of a world-shaking discovery.

Five o'clock, nothing world-shaking yet, some reactions were one sigma out of expectation but that meant more work to prove it wasn't a fluke.

Sigh. Tomorrow is another day!

I wanted to restock beer. Having beer on hand made a house run smoothly in my experience. Helped people talk, which was most of the job right there.

As long as I was getting beer (same brand as was in the fridge; hoped it was something they liked) I got two more bottles of wine. Wine went with anything, including pizza.

Too timid to try the magic words; I ponied up for it myself. I felt I owed the house something; they were putting up with me too.

Slut had brought pizza, piled some slices on a plate, headed for her aerie on the 3rd floor. Leaving two-and-a-half pizzas for the rest of us.

I set out the wine, cracked a cap, poured myself some in a water glass. Plastic glasses would have been nice, rewashed, but the kitchen trash was empty, somebody doing their chores which was great.

Snagged a slice of all-meat, parked on the nasty couch, chowed down.

Butch got dropped off on the hog again, came in, ran upstairs, fetched a different duffel down, crammed one piece of pizza in her mouth and took a 2nd, put a warm beer from the counter into her jacket and split.

GG drifted down, wearing sweats and a t-shirt, no bolts. She saw me look, grinned lopsided.

"Still too sore!"

"Sorry."

"Don't be! I needed that. Thanks!" Just two buds being decent to each other.

I love this house, I decided.

She rooted around the pizza boxes, took a slice of cheese in one hand, veggie in the other, slapped them together toppings-inside like a sandwich.

She opted for wine, in a beer glass. Holds more I guess.

We chewed together in silent companionship for a time.

When we were down to just wine, GG fetching two paper towels from the kitchen, tossing me one to wipe off the grease. I used it, balled it up, tossed it into the handy wastebasket.

Sat and sipped. Sipped and sat. No pressure; no angst. Just a quiet evening at home.

"Pretty good!" GG raised her glass in a toast, then drained it.

"Did Slut see this? She's a wine slut too; she'll drink anything. She'd like this, twice the price of what she normally buys."

"I'll take a glass up to her. What room is she in?"

GG shook negative. "You can't miss it; trust me." Left it at that.

Snagging another glass from the dish drainer, and the open bottle, I headed up the stairs.

What I hadn't noticed last time, you get to the top of the stairs, go around back, there's a 2nd staircase runs right above the first. Should have known, the ceiling over the stairs slanted up.

A door at the top which isn't unusual in old houses. Keeps the heat from all streaming up to the top floor, leaving the rest cold.

I knocked with the bottle, heard a muffled "C'min!" and pushed it open.

GG was right; I wasn't going to have trouble finding her. The third floor was one open, unfinished space. Big as the entire downstairs, open to the walls, with vaulted ceiling up to the rafters.

And filled with racks of plants, tubs of plants, tables of pots, cabinets of seedlings. Water dripping, bubbling, fishtank pumps buzzing quietly away.

None of them pot, far as I could see. That must still be on the roof. Things started fitting together.

"Slut!" I called, which was another first for me. Never yelled that at a woman before, felt kind of weird.

She answered from behind wire shelves crowded with leafy frondy things. I saw her hand wave briefly over the top.

Picking my way carefully through the hoses and bags of vermiculite, dangling sprinklers and cast-off pots, I found her twisting a hose onto a fitting.

"Wine!" I showed her the bottle, handed her the empty glass, unscrewed the top, poured her full. Refilled my own, nearly killed the bottle.

"Gambei!" she called, which I was lucky to know meant "Drink up!" or something like that in Cantonese.

I sipped, she slurped, one hand fiddling with the drippy hose fitting.

"You have a green thumb!"

She beamed. "These are my babies. All mine! Nothing here exists anyplace else on the planet." She petted the leaves of something frondy with weird stalks, a bulb at the tip of each.

"How can that be? Endangered?"

"Noooo. Not really. Not unless they cut the water off. Then I just make more."

I shook my head. I hadn't drunk that much wine, but I wasn't figuring it out.

Slut took pity on me.

"My own invention. Genetic design."

"You crossbreed them?"

"Nothing like that. I build up DNA from several different plants, dice and splice, replace the dna in an existing plant cell with my stuff. Voila! New plant!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Folks are leery of GMOs."

"Not like that. These aren't food plants. These are industrial."

"Like alcohol?"

"Nah, alcohol is too caustic for a plant to produce directly. These are for lipids, esters, oils. Lubricants, precursors for industrial processes. Get it?"

"Oh." I didn't get it.

"It's like this. Why build a chemical line to combine diamine acid and adipic acid, when you can grow polyamides directly? In a cheap, mass ag operation. Like a farm."

"And why do I want to do that? What's, uh, polyamides?"

"Oh. Nylon! Or the stuff nylon is made of anyway."

"You can grow me a golf shirt? Cool!"

"Something like that. I can grow a plant that has higher concentrations of desirable materials it the waxy coating on the leaves, in the seed pods, on the stalk."

"Is that a cool thing?"

"Sure! I take a few cents per ton off the price of synthetic fiber, I'm a millionaire."

"I didn't know you were a entrepreneur."

"I'm not really. I just want the money to make the really important stuff. Like this." She pointed at the pod-plant, petted the leaves like a mother petting a favorite child.

"What's in the pods?"

"CBD oil! Well, almost. It's too acidic, and too much latex. Costs more than weed to refine. So far. But I'm making progress!

The latex is necessary to line the bulb, keep the good stuff in, keep it from evaporating or seeping away before it can be harvested. I solve that, I have something good."

"Why do we want that?"

"My goal is, folks don't have to pay some big conglomerate big bucks for stuff they need to survive, to reduce pain, to treat depression. Like CBD oil. They can grow it themselves!"

"How do you keep them from going into business for themselves? Cutting you out of the loop?"

"That's the beauty of it! I don't! Anybody can share the seeds around, everybody can have it, nobody goes hurting. All you need is a windowsill and a pot."

It hit me. Slut wasn't working to get rich. Slut was working to save the world, one potted plant at a time.

God damn jesus in a handbasket. I love this house.

Impulsively, I leaned in, kissed her. She laughed. "Hold your horses. Still a long way to go. But progress every time! I'm not seeing any obstacles I can't solve."

"Can I get you some more pizza? Another bottle of wine? A Nobel prize?"

A grin this time. She looked at me fondly, leaned in, kissed me back.

"I'll take you up on that pizza. Pepperoni if there's any left! Any meat otherwise."

I padded happily back down, down the stairs to the living room, a goofy smile on my face.

"Slut been showing off? That's quite an operation up there. Got raided once, she had a hellofa time convincing campus cops it wasn't a weed farm." GG had the 2nd bottle in her lap, a glass in her hand.

"They don't come in unless they can see it from the street. I thought."

"The windows weren't blocked back then. After that I painted some trompe l'oeil of an empty attic, pasted them over the glass. She didn't need the light anyway; she uses lamps on timers."

I didn't know GG could do that. Paint like that. From the street it was totally convincing.

"Any pepperoni left?" I poked in the boxes.

"Most of it left! Kitty is working late, in the studio. Preppy taking the night off, staying with a friend."

That's right; this was her slack night, no homework, no classes in the AM.

I found almost an entire pepperoni, fetched a clean plate, piled three pieces on.

Trotting back up I stopped at the door, winded. I have to start running again! Feel like a sponge.

She was nowhere to be seen. I took the opportunity to poke around, wander between the rows, admire her children.

Around the back of the last rack was an open space, the chimney from the fireplace obvious on the back wall, no windows.

There was slut at a desk, making marks in some notebooks.

Next to that was her bed, unmade, a rickety lamp table, cluttered, and a broken old padded chair, nasty.

I sat the plate on the edge of her desk. She glanced at it, picked up a piece, kept writing.

After a bit she closed the book.

"Thanks!" taking a large bite.

"You live like a hermit up here?"

"I get on a roll, I have to be alone. Makes my clear head last longer if nobody is around. Get a lot done."

"I can leave..."

"No! You're fine. I actually feel better around you. Like some jedi or something; you have a peaceful aura."

"Well, thanks!"

"Hey, you ever have to have a break from all that..." she waved at the floor, "come up here, sack out for a while. Nobody ever comes up here but me."

"I might take you up sometime."

She chewed for a bit, thoughtful. Took more bites, swigged some wine. Put the bone down on the plate.

"You want to fuck?"

"It's not 9 oclock!" I protested.

"No, I mean...fuck. Not 'treat Slut so she can think' fuck. Just ... you and me. You know?"

I did know. She'd turned fucking into a treatment plan, made it into an exercise like jumping jacks or jogging. Something to be done, even endured.

But to just relax, enjoy somebody else's body, enjoy your own? That had to be pretty rare, when you needed it three times a day just to get by.

"I would like that very much. I like you very much, Slut."

She smiled a shy smile, stood, pulled on her sweatpants drawstring, let them fall to the floor.

When she went to pull her shirt off I took her wrist, said "Let me."

She relented, held her hands over her head, let me slip her shirt up and off.

I just looked at her, enjoyed the curve of her hips, the swell of her breast, the secret between her legs.

Her happy smile, her blushing face, her deep blue eyes. Those lovely, intelligent, emotional deep blue eyes.

I dropped my pants, let her pull my shirt over my head. Let her look, then touch, then pull me into an embrace.

I was a little drunk, but now I was intoxicated by her skin, her dirty-blond hair, her lush breasts, her hot mouth. I could hardly breath.

She let me go, led me to her unmade bed, threw the covers down, laid on it, crooked one leg seductively, put her hand out.

I took it, sat on the bed, leaned down into a kiss, one hand behind her head, holding her as a lover would.

After an eternity and a second, we broke.

"May I make love to you, Slut?"

She looked down, shyly, then up again.

"Alani."

Somehow, being told her name was more intimate that all that we'd been through together so far.

"May I make love to you, Alani?"

"Yes. Yes!" She had tears in her eyes that glistened, then flowed down her cheek. I touched them with the back of my hand, then held her face in both hands, kissed her deeply.

It was hard to breath. I'd been in love before, thought I had. But now I knew so much more, what I'd had before seemed childish.

To know this woman, to love her deeply, that was enough for me now.

We fucked. First with our hands, then with our tongues, then with our sex. We coupled gently, then firmly, then wildly and with abandon.

I came in her; she came on me. We shared names and secrets and favorite positions and bodily fluids in equal measure.

When we were spent, we lay crowded side by side on that foolish narrow bed, face to face, each with an arm over the other, utterly at ease.

"That was fine. Really fine. The finest thing I've ever done."

She giggled. "I heard you and GG last night. That had to be right up there."

I pretended to think about it, got a slug in the arm for my trouble.

She looked a little sad. "This is the part where I ask you to leave, so I can get on with my work."

"Oh I'm just a piece of meat to you! A dick for your pleasure! I knew it!"

She grinned. "You are all of that, lover, and more. But if I'm to save the world I have to transplant 100 seedlings tonight. So scram."

Knowing she was in full possession of her faculties having just cum a good half-dozen times, I relented. The mental powerhouse that was Slut needed to get on with it, while the getting was good.

"You're welcome back any time! You know that."

I did know that. Which felt good.

Slipping into my pants and shirt, I snagged the empty bottle from earlier, some old plates with disgusting blobs, and made my retreat.

Looking over my shoulder I saw her naked, opening a chest cooler filled with Styrofoam cups with tiny little hopeful sprouts in them. She looked like the goddess of nature, of life, tending her earthly garden.

God I love this house.

Next: chores around the house. More help for the residents. GG becomes a regular deal