Gender Neutral

Paula came up right beside me to look at herself in the mirror above the sink. Her breasts were even with my eyes, although she was pretending not to be showing them off. She put on a copper-colored blouse and did up a few of the buttons. But the blouse was pretty sheer. She twisted her chest one way and then the other, but the little buds of her nipples were just too blatant through the material. So she took it back off and went back to her drawer. She fished out one of her lacier bras. She bent over to make her boobies a little more substantial and cupped them up in it. Then she straightened up and fastened the clasp. She came back beside my chair, still bottomless, and tried on the blouse again. Much more satisfactory.

Ivy couldn't believe what she was seeing: Paula walking around nude, getting dressed and undressed right in front of her male roommate. Paula bent to her drawer once again and pulled out a pair of thongy panties with about as much material as a wristband. She stepped into them and snugged them up to cover her vagina. Barely. She wriggled the back strap into her butt crack. Then she stepped into her skirt and sandals.

"Ready?" she asked Ivy, who was still too flabbergasted to reply. "Okay, then Hector. We'll see you later."

- - -

I knew that Paula had just been horsing around, trying to get a rise out of Ivy, but I had a little trouble that evening concentrating on my differential equations. My mind kept coming back to the thought that she'd still be wearing that same lacy bra and those same thongy panties when she returned. And she'd have to take them off before she went to bed.

The girls finally did come back, gabbing merrily about the show. Ivy stopped in just long enough to say goodnight. Paula sauntered over to see what I was doing, but she didn't find it particularly interesting. Someone down the hall was playing salsa music. She salsaed back to the middle of the room, swaying to the music, eyes half closed, losing herself in the rhythm. She unfastened her bra from under her blouse, fished it out, and dropped it on her desk. She held out her arms and swayed more expressively.

A new song started up, even livelier than the first. Her swaying became even more expressive. She danced back my way again. She took my arm and gently urged me up to join her. I can't dance for the life of me, but she was insistent. Finally I stood up and let her pull me away from the desk. The rhythm was pretty catchy. I started up a bit of my lazy half-tempo shuffle. Just to be polite.

She put her other hand on my shoulder and danced us around, dancing in close, dancing out wide, raising my hand and twirling herself under. She let go and danced by herself, salsaing her shoulders, salsaing her hips. She took my hand again and spun herself in and spun herself out, her skirt swishing one way and then swishing the other.

She spun herself in and I held her there. The music was pounding. She spun herself out. I put my hands on her hips, on her bare swaying midriff, and tried to match her rhythm.

She unbuttoned my buttons, beat by beat, paying close attention, keeping time with her tongue. She spun back in and rubbed her back against my chest, languorously, rhythmically, like a cat against a leg. My dick was as hard as a shin bone. She rubbed against it too, with the crack of her ass.

The song wound down, leaving us standing there. Leaving me wondering what exactly it was we were doing. But then the next song erupted with a bonga-bong of congas and a blare of horns. She whirled around and danced us again, salsaing hips, salsaing shoulders. She undid my belt and whipped it from its loops.

"So what are we doing here?" I wondered aloud.

She pushed me down onto her chair and danced for me, rhythmically, languorously. Then she straddled my lap, still pulsing to the beat, her burgundy nipples dark against the tight copper fabric of her blouse. I put my hands around the small of her back. She undid her own buttons, beat by beat, until her chest was just as bare as mine. She put her hands on my shoulders and twisted to the rhythm, keeping time with her tongue, touching her nipples to mine, first on one side, then on the other.

My cock was uncomfortably constricted. I undid the button. She unzipped the zipper. She tugged at the pants. She lifted her skirt and settled herself down again, her bare thighs skin-to-skin against mine.

The music kept pounding. Paula kept pulsing. I grabbed her ass and stood up from the chair. I toddled us three steps to the bunk, my pants all tangled around my ankles. I plopped her down, pawed my way out of the pants, and climbed up atop her.

She looked me in the eyes, still caught in the music. It was all I could do to look back. My cock had poked itself out through the slit in my underpants. She found it with one hand and pulled aside her thong with the other. She aimed and I thrust, driving it in, like a rock-hard pestle into a well-oiled mortar.

The music stopped, and we stopped with it, panting, still looking each other in the eyes. What in the hell was going on here? What was my weird misanthropic roommate doing here in my bunk, her blouse undone, her skirt askew, her un-thonged mortar a-sheath my rock-hard pestle? Weren't we the ones who always got on each other's nerves? Who always did our best to keep our subatomic particles from ever becoming entangled? Weren't we the poster children for gender neutrality?

The music started up again. Softer this time, more tender. We didn't even really like each other that much. I didn't even know if she had protection. The singer was singing so sweetly, though, softly, just on the verge of our hearing. Paula closed her eyes. I unfocused mine. We started to sway, softly, gently, slow dancing to the tender ballad, my pestle gently plying, her mortar gently milking.

Inevitably the tempo quickened. The trumpets flared. The singer sang out her passion. Paula's thighs clamped even tighter. My pestle shot its load. Paula moaned and held me tighter still.

And then the song was over. We waited for another but it never came. I disengaged myself. Paula got up. She took off her skirt and thong. She used a towel to wipe herself, then handed it to me. She hit the lights and climbed up to her bunk.

- - -

Neither of us said a word about what had happened the whole next week. It wasn't that we were trying to pretend it hadn't, it was just the way we dealt with things.

I assumed that she saw it the same way I did. It had been a heat-of-the-moment thing, the kind of thing that can happen when you put boys and girls together as roommates. It had happened and there wasn't much point in dwelling on it. It wasn't like it was ever going to happen again.

On Friday night Paula was up on her bunk when I came in. We established eye contact, which was the way we usually greeted each other then. There wasn't much going on. As far as I knew, neither of us had any particular plans. I put down my backpack. I sat down at my desk.

The thing is, even though we hadn't talked about what had happened, the events hadn't stopped replaying themselves over and over again in my mind. Even though it had been an unfortunate slip up, a violation—I was pretty sure—of the gender-neutral roommate code, it had been exciting and kind of sweet.

I got up from my desk. I milled around. Exciting and kind of sweet? Who was I kidding? It had been sex! Who could not keep thinking about that. I found myself standing next to the bed, my face just even with Paula's.

She looked up from her book. She was in one of her more empathetic moods. She gave me a sympathetic wince.

"I'm kind of on my period."

Jeez! Were my thoughts that easy to read?

And Jeez, Louise! All the time we'd been living together it had never even occurred to me that she must have periods. And she was having one right now? Was that something I was supposed to be able to tell? I felt awful embarrassed. "Sorry, I . . ."

But she was still looking at me, sympathetically, pondering the situation. "Come on," she said at last, scooting over to make a bit of room for me on her bunk.

"No, really," I stammered. "I didn't mean to . . ."

But she was already unbuttoning her blouse. "I was kind of needing a break anyway. We can just fool around. Better hand me that towel up, though, just in case."

I'd never had sex with a girl before when she was on her period. Was it even possible? She was slipping her pants off. Well, I guess she'd be the one to know. I stripped down to my underpants and climbed up to join her. She was arranging the towel.

She stretched back out and I stretched alongside her. Last week we'd been all caught up in the music and the dancing, and things had just sort of happened. This time it was much more deliberate. She reached over and began to fondle the bulge in my underpants.

I ran my hand down her naked side, over the curve of her hip, along her panty line. Kind of willfully ignoring all the reasons that we shouldn't really be doing this. I fondled a silky handful of ass. What would her slit look like now during her period?

She started tugging my underpants down. I helped her ease them off. My cock sprung out, hungry for her attention. She began to stroke it.

I fumbled with the waist of her panties. She took a pause from her caresses and worked them off. Her slit was still narrow and still lightly furred. But there was a short white string trailing out from it along her thigh, like the pull string of a secret party favor. I couldn't keep from touching it. I played with it gently, wondering what would happen if I gave it a real yank. She reached down though and moved my hand up just above the top of her slit. She pressed it gently down there into her pubic hair and slowly massaged a little circle with it. I wasn't exactly sure why she wanted to be rubbed there, but I was happy to oblige.

She brought her hand back to my cock. She stroked up and down, alternating between a feathery touch that just grazed the skin and a firmer grasp that jostled the meat. It wasn't exactly the way that I would have done it, but it was having its effect. Her breasts jiggled slightly with the effort. I enlarged the circle of my massaging just enough to let my finger dip down into her slit each time, wondering how deeply I could go before getting into menstrual trouble.

She fondled the underside of my cock, right where the shaft met the head. She brought up her other hand to fondle my nipple. It was a potent combination. Somehow she knew I was ready even before I did. She intensified her stroking and brought forth a dazzling gusher of steaming cum that shot up between her fingers and all over her belly and thigh.

I rolled back, temporarily out of emotional breath. Christ! I'd just ejaculated, not only in front of my roommate, but all over her. And she still had my weapon in her sticky hand. But her other hand snuck back to continue massaging herself. I roused myself up and leaned over to tongue her nipple. This part was alway kind of a chore for me, when you've come but they still haven't. But it's part of the deal. I reached across and gently caressed her other nipple as well. It took some time, but she kept at it. Finally she gasped and stopped her rubbing and just lay there for a while, her hand forgotten in place.

OK. So guys and girls are different. It's kind of naive to pretend otherwise. lf you're going to be living together in the same room, you can either ignore your differences, hide them, pretend they don't exist, or you can acknowledge them, accept them, accommodate them.

The towel had only a couple specks of red. Paula used it to wipe us off.

- - -

Ivy's roommate's boyfriend was coming up for the weekend. Ivy asked if she could bunk with us while he was here. She was excited at the prospect of spending the night in a gender-neutral room.

But when the night came, Paula was in one of her surly, passive-aggressive moods. We were sitting around. Ivy was trying to be light and chipper like always, but it was falling flat. Paula was in her mood, and for whatever reason I was not feeling super gregarious myself either.

"Well, I'm glad you guys have become friends at least," Ivy was saying. "You didn't use to even talk to each other."

"Who says we're friends," Paula replied. In a bored voice.

"Well, friendlier than you were. I mean, you guys do get along now, don't you?" Ivy looked to Paula for a response, but Paula didn't give her one. So she looked at me.

I shrugged. "We get along."

"It's going to be weird spending the night here," Ivy went on. "I've never really been on a gender-neutral sleepover before."

Paula yawned. "You know the rules, don't you?"

"Rules?" Ivy gave me a quizzical look. I looked quizzically at Paula.

"Didn't Hector tell you? The no pajama policy? Pajamas promote gender specificity somehow, so they're not allowed. Everybody in a gender-neutral room has to sleep in the nude. University policy. I thought Hector told you."

Ivy was eyeing Paula incredulously. She turned to me. I shrugged my expression to let her know that Paula was just bullshitting. "You're joking, right?" she asked.

"Didn't Hector tell you? The thing is, they send around these inspectors to do spot checks. It's a pretty big fine if you get caught. Hector got caught one time. It was a lady inspector, and he still had his underpants on. It was only the first week of school, so she just gave him a warning. She made him take his underpants off though, of course. Right there in front of her. He's been pretty good about remembering since then."

Ivy was almost positive that Paula was pulling her leg. But, still, she must have been getting images in her mind. "The rules don't apply to visitors, do they?" she asked.

"To anybody who's in the room. I'm surprised Hector didn't mention it. What time is it, anyway?"

Ivy checked her phone. "Eight fifteen."

"Hector, why don't you just go ahead and get ready now," she said, like a mother talking to a little boy. "So you don't forget." She turned to Ivy and shook her head. "He's a whizz at math, but I always have to remind him to take off his underpants. You can go ahead and get ready now too if you want." She started unbuttoning her own blouse.

Ivy still wasn't sure where all this was going. Neither was I. I shook my head. "Paula is a bit of an exhibitionist, I think. And she has a big imagination." But Paula just ignored us. She had her bra off and slipped down her pants as well. And her panties. "There we go," she said, to nobody in particular. She got out her nail file and sat on the edge of my bed doing her nails. She spent the rest of the evening like that, lounging around naked on the lower bunk, not particularly going out of her way to show off her private parts but not going out of her way to keep them hidden either, joining into the conversation only every now and then in a rather desultory way.

Ivy was looking to me to to see how she should respond. I was pretty pissed at Paula for being such a jerk, and I just tried to ignore her. Ivy reluctantly followed my lead, trying to ignore her behavior, although still trying to include her in the conversation. Paula was sitting back against the wall with her knees up and her pussy on full display. You could sense that Ivy was having second thoughts about spending the night.

When it finally came time to go to bed, it wasn't clear who was going to sleep where. I'd assumed that the girls would sleep together. But now I wasn't sure that that would be the best idea. What was Paula up to? Did she have something more than sleeping in mind?

But what were the alternatives? For me to sleep with Paula? I wasn't too crazy about that idea either. Would she try to have sex with me in front of Ivy? Just to show off, or whatever it was she was trying to do? But the only other alternative would be for me to sleep with Ivy. That seemed too much to ask of her on her first gender-neutral sleepover.

Paula yawned and stretched, brandishing her tits. She climbed up to the top bunk. "So where do you want to sleep?" she asked Ivy. "Up or down?" Leaving it to Ivy to make the decision. Do you want to sleep with your bizarro naked girlfriend, or with your bizarro naked girlfriend's male roommate? It was no way to treat a guest, no way to treat a friend.

"Why don't you just take the bottom," I told Ivy. "I'll sleep up with Paula."

"But . . ." Ivy didn't want to put either of us out. Plus, she didn't really know if it was appropriate for boy and girl roommates to sleep together. Especially when one of them was naked.

"It'll be fine," I assured her. I straightened the sheets and blankets on the lower bunk. Ivy was still conflicted, but she was grateful to accept my offer. She bashfully turned her back and fiddled her bra out from under her tee shirt. Then she stepped out of her pants. She turned back around shyly, letting me see her in her pink bikini panties, hoping I would approve of her gender-neutral spirit.

I couldn't disappoint her. I took off my own pants and let her see me in my tighty whities. I tried to pretend it was no big deal. We were gender-neutral roommates after all. For a night, at least. She stared at my bulge as if she'd never seen one before in real life.

"Sleep tight, then," I said, turning out the light.

"Night," she said in a meek voice.

I climbed up next to Paula. She was facing the wall, the covers pulled up tight. I wormed my way under them, my back to hers. I still had no idea what she was up to. I was still pretty pissed at the way she'd been acting.

"Night, Paula," came Ivy's little voice from below.

Paula didn't answer. She had her knees bent, so that there wasn't really enough room in the bunk for the two of us. I turned around and we fit better. Kind of lightly spooning her, my knees lightly grazing her thighs.

I thought that being pissed off would at least keep me from getting aroused. But she was naked, after all, and I was curled around her with my knees lightly grazing her thighs. There wasn't really any place to put my hand except atop her naked hip. I guess I wasn't really all that pissed after all. People have their mood swings. Paula was entitled to hers. She was pretending to be asleep. Which was a good thing. I didn't want to scandalize Ivy any more than we already had.

- - -

The next day we each pretty much went our separate ways, only meeting up back in the room after dinner. Paula's mood had cleared somewhat. None of us said anything about the night before. I'm sure if we would have brought it up, she would have said she'd only been kidding around.

They were showing a movie in the Engineering Auditorium. Ivy and I decided to go. Paula opted out.

"So what was that all about last night?" Ivy asked as we walked over.

"She gets that way sometimes," I replied. "You know her as well as I do."

"So, . . . you guys sleep together?"

I wasn't sure how to answer. I thought Paula told Ivy everything, but apparently she hadn't told her that. Did she have some reason for not wanting her to know? I didn't want to be the one to spill the beans.

Ivy took my hesitation as an answer in itself. She mulled it over all the way to the auditorium.

When we got back to the room, Paula was already asleep in her bunk. Ivy and I went down to the common room for a while, but when we came back she was still asleep. We quietly got ready for bed. Paula was kind of all sprawled out, and I was trying to work out how I'd be able to edge my way in beside her.

Ivy touched my arm and gestured that the two of us should just share the bottom bunk. I shook my head that we didn't have to, but she nodded that it was OK. I got in first, in my underwear, and scooted over to the wall. She got in beside me, in her underwear. I was going to turn my back, but that seemed kind of rude between friends. She turned on her side to face me. She smiled sweetly and closed her eyes to go to sleep.