Gender Neutral

- - -

Sharing a room with Paula was often aggravating. She'd be pissed about something, and I'd have no idea what. I'd be sitting at my desk, which would irritate her even more, since it was right by the sink and she couldn't even brush her teeth in private. She'd be going around in panties and tee shirt, but I didn't dare look for fear she'd bite my head off. She'd be slamming things around in her wardrobe for no other apparent reason than just to slam things around. She'd be sitting sullenly in her chair right in the middle of the room, and I'd have to squeeze past to get undressed myself. She'd be fuming herself to sleep on the top bunk, and I'd be lying in the bottom one trying hard not to make a sound.

But she wasn't pissed all the time. We'd pretty much gotten over our initial resentment toward each other. We'd gotten somewhat used to living together. We tolerated each other most of the time, and sometimes we even treated each other like regular roommates.

There were sexual tensions, of course, a guy and a girl living together in the same room. Other people, I suppose, might have dealt with those tensions in other ways. We dealt with them our way. We had sex. We treated it sort of like being workout partners. She did her part, I did mine. She didn't begrudge me my pleasure, I didn't begrudge her hers. We tried to keep our emotions out of it, although I'm not sure we always succeeded.

I was sitting at my desk one evening trying to figure out how to express Newton's laws of motion in cylindrical coordinates. She was up on her bunk, rustling around, getting ready for bed. Something soft hit the floor. A piece of clothing? Her shirt, perhaps?

I wrote the 'a' double dot with the dots over the arrow. But somehow it didn't look quite right. Should it be the other way around, with the arrow over the dots? A second piece of clothing hit the floor. A more forceful impact. Her jeans?

More rustling. Another impact, this time on the corner of my desk. Her bra. The one she'd been wearing.

More rustling. Another missile. This one careened off my head and landed on my paper, obscuring my double dots. Her panties. The light blue ones.

"Trying to work here," I grumbled.

"Oh, Hec-tor," she called, in a sweet, playful voice.

Theta at least didn't have an arrow. No question where the dots went for theta. "Trying to work here," I repeated.

But she had an agenda of her own. "Oh, Hec-tor," she called again, even more sweetly this time.

I put down my pencil and turned around. She was lying on her side, her head propped on her fist, like a nude courtesan in an oil painting. She raised her eyebrow enticingly. I played dumb.

"Wanna fuck?" she hinted.

"How's a guy supposed to get a college education around here?"

She pouted in mock disappointment, gliding her free hand over the flair of her hip.

Christ. Maybe the dots could wait. I unbuttoned my shirt, pulled it off, and tossed it at her, hitting her square in the forehead. She didn't flinch. I unfastened my pants, stepped out of them, and tossed them at her legs. Then my tee shirt, pow, at her chest. Then my briefs, pow, at her groin.

Then I stepped up on the frame of the bed. She lolled over onto her back. I crawled up and dragged my chest like a blanket, over her toes, over her knees, over her hips, over her nipples. Her pout had softened into a bit of a smile.

- - -

Paula rarely stayed out late on weeknights, but one night in February it got to be midnight and she still hadn't come back to the room. I debated giving her a call, just to check that she was OK. But I didn't want her to think I was being nosy. We were roommates, sure, but that didn't mean we were each other's keepers. So I went to bed, and finally to asleep.

She still hadn't come back by the next morning. But I ran into her at lunch.

"Everything OK?" I asked.

"Yeah," she replied, "I was at a friend's."

She didn't come home on Friday night either. Or Saturday. I happened to spot her on Sunday afternoon, walking along the quad, her arm around some guy, his arm around her. They made a handsome couple, joking and laughing, oblivious to everything else in the world.

OK. So her friend was a guy. And she'd been spending the night with him. Certainly one of the many things that the two of us never talked about was our love lives. But I'd never picked up even the slightest hint that she had a boyfriend. Nor had there ever been any sense when we'd been fooling around that it had been behind anyone's back.

OK. So she'd met someone. A classmate, probably. That's what college was all about, wasn't it? Meeting new people. I didn't really even have any right to be jealous, did I? It wasn't like she was breaking any vows that the two of us had ever made. Our relationship, if you even wanted to call it that, had never been anything more than one of convenience. 'You doing anything tonight? Me either. Wanna fuck?'

Still, though, it hurt a little, seeing her so happy on his arm. Happier than she'd ever been with me.

She finally came back to the room on Sunday night. She didn't say anything about where she'd been. She just bustled about, humming to herself, doing her laundry, getting ready for the week ahead.

Needless to say, this new development had an effect on the parameters of our cohabitation. We stopped having sex, of course. She just stopped bringing up the possibility, and, out of deference, so did I. She still went around the room in her underwear, but she went back to hanging up the beach towel when she came back from her shower. I guess she was trying to convince herself that the two of us we were nothing more than innocent gender-neutral roommates, and that our living together didn't pose any real threat to her new relationship.

I had conflicted feelings about all this. On the one hand, Paula was happier than I'd ever seen her. She felt good about herself. Life no longer seemed so much a zero-sum game. "Hey, Hector," she'd say. "You've got to come see the beautiful sunset tonight. It's really spectacular. Come on! Hurry up!" Like we were old buddies. She'd brush against me in passing, or touch my arm when we were talking, not in a flirty way at all, but just in a friendly, neighborly way, as if she were overflowing with affection and had enough to share even with her gender-neutral roommate. I liked this happier version of Paula and I wanted to be happy for her.

But at the same time it hurt that she kept this new aspect of her life completely separate from her life in two fourteen. She never talked about her new beau or any of the things they did. She just didn't seem to think that it was any of my business.

I also missed our 'workout' sessions quite a bit. And I was pretty jealous that she was having them now with somebody else.

Then, one day, a couple of weeks later, everything changed. Paua became sullen and deflated, as if all of her newfound happiness had leaked away. No more nights out, no more spectacular sunsets, no more humming to herself. I'd come back in the afternoon and find her asleep on her bunk. I assumed that something must have happened between her and her beau. But she apparently didn't think that that was any of my business either.

- - -

Paula was at her desk. She had her math book open and a pencil in her hand. I'm not sure what she was thinking about, but it certainly wasn't math. From time to time she'd try to focus, but she wouldn't stay focused for long. I kept waiting for her to ask for some help like she usually did. I'd come to think of her math grade as a reflection of my tutoring ability, and it kind of griped me that she wasn't paying attention. Eventually I went over to take a look.

It was a chapter on logarithms. You've got X amount of money in the bank at such-and-such an interest rate. How long until it doubles? You've got Y amount of some isotope with a half life of so many million years. How long until you've only got 1% left?

I started in on one of my award-winning explanations. But her heart wasn't in it. I ended up just showing her which formula to use and then watching to make sure she put the right numbers in the right slots.

She finished up and put her paper into her binder. It was getting late. She brushed her teeth. She went to her wardrobe and changed into a nightshirt. It was the one that went down just far enough that it was hard to tell if she was wearing panties or not. The one she wore sometimes to let me know that she was feeling a little frisky.

But that night she looked more despondent than frisky. I was surprised when she asked, "Do you want to maybe fool around a little? It's kind of been a while." She tried to put a bit of sparkle into the question, but her sparkle wasn't very sparkly.

It had indeed kind of been a while. And she knew why. In fact it had been even longer for me than it had for her. It kind of galled me that she thought she could just snap her fingers and have her benefits kick right back in again as if nothing had happened.

"Kinda tired," I said. "Mind if I take a raincheck?"

She had no choice but to accept my answer. "Thanks for the help." She climbed up to her bunk. She got under the blankets. "Night." She turned her back to the light.

It wasn't like she'd given any thought to my benefits during her little affair. And now she wanted what? To cry on my shoulder? A sympathy fuck? From her ever reliable, ever unjealous, ever supportive pal? As if she could just go off and screw whoever she wanted and then come back and everything would be just like it was before?

I brushed my own teeth, not caring how much racket I made. I got undressed. I decided I'd just read for a while in bed. With the light on.

But I couldn't really concentrate. I got up and turned off the light. She was lying up on her bunk, as still and forlorn as a pile of forgotten laundry. What did happen between the two of them, I wondered. Did they have a fight? Did he dump her? Had he not been able to handle her mood swings? Whatever it was, she seemed to have given up any hope that it could ever be repaired.

It had been spiteful of me to reject her like that. All she'd wanted had been a little human kindness. Something she might have thought she could count on from a roommate.

Christ. I climbed up to her bunk. She was asleep, or pretending to be. I worked my way under the blanket. She was facing the wall. I settled in beside her, gently wrapping my arm around her waist, letting my knees lightly graze her thighs. She kept on pretending to be asleep, but I don't think she really was.

- - -

So the two of us drifted back toward our old routine. The sadness she'd felt after her breakup slowly dissipated, as did my resentment. We started having sex again. She still had her mood swings, but there were as many rosy times as icy ones.

Paula asked if I'd proofread her English paper. "I'll let you fuck me later," she proffered in her coy, little-girl voice.

I read the paper that afternoon. It wasn't half bad. In fact it was pretty good. The topic was income inequality, and she'd illustrated her points by contrasting the lives of two people from her neighborhood: a threadbare old lady who rented a room down the block and a Mercedes-driving rich guy who lived in a gated condominium around the corner. The writing was effective, the argument sincere. To tell you the truth I was kind of impressed.

"It's not bad," I told her when we were back in the room together that evening. "Really good in fact. You're a pretty decent writer." Her eyes lit up from the praise. Until I took the paper out from my backpack. It was covered in red ink.

"Oh, those are just a few edits," I told her. "Grammatical stuff mostly. Well, and a few little suggestions." There was quite a lot of red, actually. Maybe I'd gone a bit overboard. She was looking dispiritedly at the second page. A lot of red there too.

I tried to explain the difference between architecture and construction, between the plan and the implementation. But she wasn't paying much attention. She'd fallen into one of her funks. "It's the ideas that are the important things," I said. "The images. The old lady with the holes in her stockings."

"Yeah," she said. "Our teacher really laps that shit up."

I felt terrible about how hamfisted I'd been. What right did I have to go scribbling suggestions all over anyone's paper. She was in her funk all evening.

Finally, even though it wasn't quite time for bed, I asked if I could collect my fee. She paid up, but in a lackluster fashion, pretty much just lying there, leaving everything to me. I tried to make it nice for her, but I couldn't tell if I succeeded. Afterwards we just lay there in the bunk, neither of us really having anything better to do.

God. How many times was this that we'd had unprotected intercourse? I'd convinced myself that she was a modern liberated woman who would take it upon herself to take the necessary precautions. But I started to feel guilty. It was my responsibility too.

"So, um, I presume that you're, um, on some sort of protection?"

It had been how many months? She gave me a flat, ironic look. "Thanks for asking."

But then she said, "I've been on the pill since I was fourteen. My mother learned one thing in her life, I guess."

We kept laying there, our knees touching, but only because we hadn't bothered to move them apart.

"Your mother, huh?"

Eventually, almost indifferently, she told me a bit of her story. Her mom was a single mom. She didn't know who her father was. She had a brother a year older and didn't know who his father was either, although the two of them didn't look anything alike. Her mother couldn't have been much older than Paula was now when she had them. But somehow she'd managed to bring them up and to get the brother into some military college somewhere and Paula here into State.

In all these months we'd been living together we'd never really talked about our personal lives. I told her about my time in the warehouse. I told her how it had looked from the outside: guys not that much older than me with big muscles from wrestling boxes around all day, their pockets bulging with cash. But when I got the job it was tedious as hell. And what passes for decent walking around money doesn't really go very far at the used car lot.

"I could have told you that," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "Well," I said.

"So now you're going to be an engineer. What do engineers do exactly?"

"Design things. Washing machines, computers, bridges. Anything that runs or needs to not fall down, an engineer needs to design it."

She thought it over. It made sense. Things didn't just design themselves. "Do engineers make a lot of money?"

"Some do, I think."

The wheels in her brain were turning, but whatever conclusion they came up with was just filed away without comment.

"What about you?" I asked. "What are you going to do when you grow up?" As far as I knew she didn't really have any specific major yet.

She was hesitant to say. Her arms were resting in front of her chest, but I could still see one of her nipples.

"You might think about journalism," I suggested. "Seriously. I'm sorry I marked up your paper so much. It really was good."

She heard what I said, but the words didn't seem to register. As if they just didn't translate into her particular frame of reference.

"Well, you'll figure it out eventually," I said.

She could have just left it there. Most days she would have. But that evening, for whatever reason, we were being honest with each other. "I've figured it out," she said.

I waited for her to go on.

"I'm going to be a trophy wife." She said it without a trace of irony.

"Marry a guy with tons of money," she explained. "Make him happy by letting him make me happy."

Trophy wife. I'd only ever thought about trophy wives as being something that middle aged executive types acquired when their old ones wore out. It had never occurred to me that they had to come from somewhere. "They teach that here at State?"

"You need a college degree. You've got to be presentable. I'm signed up for tennis lessons in the Spring." She had it all figured out.

I felt kind of disappointed with her, though. "So you're going to marry some guy for his money? Do you really think that that will make you happy? What about love?"

"I'll love the money." But she was open minded. "Him too, maybe. Who knows?"

She was sincere at least. She wasn't the only girl in college whose main goal was to find a husband. She just wanted to make sure she got a rich one. Richer than an engineer, presumably.

"Can I ask you something? Something I've been wondering about. Remember that kegger at the beginning of the year? You . . . uh . . . I kind of got a not very flattering impression of you that night. But since then . . ."

She didn't say anything for a while. Then she gave me a quick look. "God," she said. "I never drank more than half a beer in all of high school. I guess I have to thank my mother for that too. Let's just say she gave me an object lesson on what happens if you do. But at the party . . . I guess I thought, well, here I am, a college girl now. All grown up. Ready for anything."

She looked into my eyes again, intent to be understood. "But I'll tell you one thing. When I learn something the hard way twice, it stays learned."

I felt an overwhelming tenderness toward her. Beneath her peevishness, her standoffishness, her feigned lack of concern, she was just as vulnerable and uncertain as everybody else. I drew her closer.

I'd never had sex with a girl twice in the same session before. But my cock was hard again against her thigh. I started rocking it gently, in and out between her legs, levering it up to pet her vulnerable femininity.

She flexed her hips to open herself for me. It was a bit awkward the way we were lying. We maneuvered until we found a suitable position, side by side, she straddling my hips, me lying between her thighs. She reached down and guided my cock into her vagina. We lay there a moment, just like that, wetly engaged, as close together, I guess, as two roommates can get. And then we started rocking again, gently, unhurriedly, sweetly. Very sweetly.

- - -

The year went on. My courses were tough, but I worked pretty hard at them. We did Maxwell's equations, and it blew my mind. I tried to explain them to the girls—the charges, the currents, the fields, the fluxes.

"And then look what happens when you solve them. Look what happens! These two constants come down and what do you think you get? This one is related to electricity, remember, this one to magnetism. But when you multiply them together and take the square root . . . you get the speed of light! The speed of light!"

Ivy was trying her best to follow along, but she didn't quite see why she was supposed to be so impressed. Paula just took my word for it. She was more interested in the emotion anyway. She filed away just enough buzzwords to bring back up for a witty rejoinder at the yacht club someday.

- - -

In late April, Paula's mom got sick. "She's not really sick," Paula said. "She always does this. She starts feeling like she'd not getting enough attention, and so she starts coming down with all these symptoms. Shortness of breath, panic attacks. I wish she'd grow up."

Paula had to start going home to take care of her. She'd spend the nights there and then drive her mother's car in to class. They lived in town, but way on the other side, so it was a pretty long commute. For a couple of weeks I didn't see her hardly at all, although Ivy sometimes ran into her on campus and kept me posted.

I found out from Ivy when her tennis class was, and one afternoon I dropped by. She was playing against one of the other girls in the class. I couldn't tell what level they were playing at, but they were going at it pretty seriously. Her opponent was a little more graceful, but Paula made up for it with stubborn determination.