KOI 12: Another One from Danny's

Another One from Danny's House: LoriLee

Columbia. March, 1974

Besides her name, there was something still more unfortunate about LoriLee Loomis. She was one of those quiet girls you meet sometimes who, though of good intelligence, present a sort of druggy blank at the window of the personality normally used for carrying on interpersonal relationships.

In sexual relationships, LoriLee moved from boy to boy in a roughly serial-monogamous fashion, for longer or shorter periods of time. In public and in bed, she was unable or unwilling to commit herself to much more than bodily presence beside her partner.

Personally, she could take care of herself, had her own interests and opinions, even had a core set of long-term friends (Danny's wife Candi was one). But LoriLee seemed never to be more than half-present to anyone at any time.

Her coupling, as I said, was almost automatic. One boy would leave, perhaps bored, and LoriLee would immediately replace him with another from the group of desperate undergrads which immediately formed outside her door. She never spoke about her past, never alluded to any kind of future beyond the next student loan check. Never talked much at all, in fact.

She had a sort of humor about her, but after a while it wasn't very funny.

Whether it was due to old drugs or old stepdad, LoriLee was an almost passive sexual entity... yet one who seemed to be beyond... perhaps outside?.. any kind of hurt.

Not that her suitors had any great depth of erotic personality, either.

One night, a suitor was me.

LoriLee had accumulated an old car at the start of the spring semester and had moved out of Danny's house to a larger, quieter room farther from campus. Most of her time she still spent hanging out around the old place. On a freezing Sunday night in March, I found myself beside her - and Randy and Cheryl - in R and C's cramped room. We watched professional wrestling on teevee while Randy bragged of his old contacts in the Kansas City wrestling world.

I'd ducked into Danny's on my way back from the library, after finding out that the light jacket I'd put on earlier in the day was no match for the wind that had sprung up after sundown. LoriLee had slapped together a sandwich for me in the house's communal kitchen, and we had sat at the table sharing someone's Dr Pepper for a while, desultorily discussing LoriLee's art project and her next student loan check. Then we'd retired downstairs to Randy and Cheryl's.

As it became apparent that Dick the Bruiser would emerge victorious in the championship bout, unless the the fat Indian's manager did something illegal with the folding chair he was waving around the ring, I stood up to leave. I flapped my arms as if to warm myself up for the walk home.

"Take a blanket, Rich," said motherly Cheryl. "It's too cold to walk around in just that windbreaker."

"Becca left for home this afternoon," I replied. "I'll let memories of this weekend warm me."

"I'll drive you back," said LoriLee absent-mindedly. Her eyes were glued to the screen. The fat Indian's manager did indeed take out Dick the Bruiser, just as the referee looked away.

"Good idea," said Randy, who always had to have the last word.

LoriLee stood up and shuffled into her coat, still staring at the television. She hadn't any television set back at her new place.

I was still a bit hormonally hyper after the weekend with Becca, and LoriLee seemed to sense it from the way I waited for her at the half-opened door. Or maybe she didn't. The teevee announcer announced the next program. It apparently sounded interesting to LoriLee.

"Or maybe I should watch this," she said, glancing at me with a look of dull apology. I smiled and nodded and began to leave.

"Or maybe not," said LoriLee.

"That's right," said Randy.

*****

"There's a paper due last week I should really start," said LoriLee in the hallway outside. We got out the back door and into her enormous old sedan and drove to my place in silence.

LoriLee turned down the driveway to the makeshift "parking lot" at the backdoor entryway to my furnished basement apartment. I started to gather up my books and papers from the afternoon's work, and popped open the car door.

"Do you have any Pepto-Bismol or anything like that?" LoriLee suddenly asked. " ' something about that baloney I had for supper."

What was left of the weekend's testosterone gave a little nudge to the base of my brain, but I was more immediately reminded that nothing had been cleaned up in my place since that morning. Specifically, the old mattress Becca and I always removed from the squeaky bedsprings while she visited me, was still on the living room floor, its bedclothes awaiting Monday washday.

"Yeh," I said. "Come in if you don't mind the mess."

LoriLee half-smiled, as if thinking of the general funkiness of everyone's life that cold spring in 1974. She turned off the ignition and the engine coughed to rest.

*****

The door of the apartment's makeshift bathroom opened directly into the little living room, which itself opened, if that is the word, to the tiny kitchenette. Perpendicular to the bathroom door was a mangy couch, and stretched out on the floor in front of the couch was the mattress that belonged in the bedroom. LoriLee sat on the couch's arm nearest the bathroom, in which I was scrambling for the Pepto-Bismol bottle. I found it, along with a spoon which I rinsed in the bathroom sink.

LoriLee had removed her coat in the overheated apartment. She was broad-hipped and big-boned, but not oversized, and youth was still well on her side. Her face was attractive in a straightforward, athletically expressive way, framed by dark blonde hair that fell in untrained waves to settle on her shoulders. Her large, wide breasts really needed the support of the bra beneath the flannel shirt. The worn spots on her jeans seemed to highlight the mound beneath the fly, and the roundness of her thighs. Nudge, went my glands.

I poured out a tablespoon of pink liquid and fed it to LoriLee. She opened her mouth submissively (!?) to take the spoon, and I was oddly aware of the warm movement of her lips and tongue along the implement as she sucked up the medicine. Our gazes had fixed on one another as the medicine was poured. LoriLee swallowed. I knew that Pepto-Bismol had to be applied by the pint in order to be effective, so I poured a second spoonful and pointed it at LoriLee. Not moving her eyes from mine, LoriLee took my hand in both of hers, and guided the spoon well to the back of her tongue. Her lips tickled my fingers before she began to push the spoon away, and my other arm was around her before the spoon was out of her mouth.

The kiss was long, of mint flavor and chalk.

"Wait, I'll unlatch myself," said LoriLee, sitting up and beginning to unbutton her shirt. "It's faster."

It was the first time she'd spoken since entering the apartment.

Balling LoriLee was... comfortable. Her body took me easily and quickly, LoriLee indicating that little foreplay was necessary or wanted. The dirty bedclothes grew wet from our sweat as we labored, and the core of LoriLee's wide hips played skillfully as we bobbed. LoriLee liked kissing, and seemed to like my tongueplay around her thicksupple nipples, though it had little visible effect on them.

As we screwed, I was strangely aware of the depth and breadth of our combined experience. I stroked her smooth greywhite shoulders and her thickfleshed back slick with damp. I was kept excited by the thought of the nights like this we'd both had before, with other people. I wondered about the origins of LoriLee's own special strokes, the source of the move she sometimes made at just that point of the upward bob, the memory behind the smile that broke across her face as I kissed her just there on the corner of her mouth.

LoriLee was almost silent as we made love.

We made love for a long time. The weekend with Becca had removed any biological urgency from my lovemaking cycle, and while LoriLee seemed to enjoy the process she reached no special peak of her own. Twice, perhaps in response to unconscious prompting from me, she sped her movement. This was gratifying to me but provided no apparent change in her own enthusiasm. Every couple of minutes, we'd change position, LoriLee-legs straddling my shoulder for a while, me riding one or both of her legs for a while, she flipping me over to my back for a while and crouching above me. After letting her ride me, I realized we were both panting with exhaustion. I threw her over, mounted her missionary style, and asked simply,

"Okay?"

"Yes," said LoriLee, with a happy enough air of " ' thought you'd never ask."

On cue, her practiced movements sped up. After losing the transmission for a second, I recovered, and with a little aching thrill I deposited in LoriLee the half-teaspoon of jism that had collected since that morning.

We lay side by side in the low incandescent light for a few minutes. Then LoriLee began to dress.

"That was nice," she said.

"It was, yes," I said. "Thank you," I added.

"Thank you," said LoriLee, with a half-laugh.

We kissed without passion, and LoriLee left, adjusting her coat as she walked out. As I entered the bathroom to turn on the shower, I heard her car start up.