Milla at College - Week 01

Milla's body felt like one large jangled nerve when she woke up on Tuesday morning. One problem was that it was early -- her Statistics and Probability class started at 9 -- but the main thing was a sort of orgasm hangover from her night with Rane at the Santa Rosa Star.

Her legs were still wobbly as she put on her bathrobe and walked down the corridor to the dorm's unisex bathroom. She brushed her teeth at one of the sinks -- the only fixtures in the bathroom that were out in the open. All the toilets and the showers were separated into stalls.

The freshman looked at herself in the mirror -- her long, blonde hair needed a good brushing, and her eyes were puffy, but she looked otherwise normal. You would never know from her outward appearance, she decided, that inside her body everything was highly sexualized and on edge. If she had looked in the mirror and suddenly realized that she was brushing her teeth with a penis instead of a toothbrush, she wouldn't have been all that surprised.

That thought led her to a sudden pang of unhappiness that she hadn't gotten much of a look at Rane's penis. Only a quick view of it, dripping and droopy, after they finished in the light cast off by the Star. It had felt large in both length and girth inside her, but she couldn't be completely certain.

The hot water splashing on her head and slipping down her body in the shower helped soothe her mind, but didn't do a thing to ease the tingling sensation on her skin; in fact it made it worse.

Back in her room, she rooted in her underwear drawer for a fresh thong and found the old bible that Rane had stolen from a fraternity and asked her to hang onto. It was cool to the touch and inviting to hold, but she resisted. She dressed herself in a short, paisley-patterned skirt and a light blue collared shirt that she kept unbuttoned and knotted beneath her breasts.

Her stats class didn't snap her out of her frayed mood. The teacher was a nebbishy guy who wouldn't have been considered handsome in any possible universe, and he spoke in a monotone that practically invited one to nap. It didn't help that he used a series of terms like "variance" and "standard deviation" that he seemed to expect people to know, but that Milla had no idea about. She was taking the class because she thought it might be less painful than calculus, but that was looking like a mistake.

Where were all the female students, she wondered, looking at all the dudes sitting alongside her -- and not one of them handsome. Didn't other women have to fulfill the one-math-class requirement?

After class,she walked to the school cafeteria, and sat there sipping coffee. Linda, the Latina junior she had met and hit it off with on her first day, had told her that the cafeteria's coffee might be the worst in the world, but Milla wouldn't have known the difference. Her mom and her sometimes-to-often girlfriend Fatima had made "coffee" that was mostly toasted chicory leaves and ground chicory root, which grew wild in odd crannies of the Sierra Nevada marijuana farm that she'd grown up on.

As she remembered the sweet yet bitter aroma of the chicory, she heard an obnoxiously chipper voice call out, "Hey Milla-vanilla!"

Looking up, she saw Linda, dressed in jeans and a floral-print blouse that accentuated the honey-brown tone of her skin. Next to her was a white woman with a too-pinched nose. She was wearing black jeans and a fuchsia tee that reverberated unpleasantly in Milla's eyes.

"Can we sit here?" Linda asked. "This is my friend Gaby -- we just had our Latin American history class."

"Hey," Gaby said, smiling and chasing away the sour impression on her face.

"Sure," Milla said, "just don't expect scintillating conversation."

"Why?" Linda asked, suddenly curious. "You hung over?"

"Something like that," Milla answered and before long, she was telling Linda and Gaby all about her encounter with Rane at the Santa Rosa Star.

"You know," Gaby said in response, "every year a handful of people jump from the balcony there." She nibbled at the salad on the tray in front of her. "Its what they call an 'attractive nuisance.'"

Linda balled up her napkin and threw it into Gaby's face. "You're an attractive nuisance. Here this one's talking about getting taken from behind by a Black stud, and you bring up suicide!"

By the end of their meal, Milla felt much better. Gaby -- whose parents were Uruguayan college professors at a different UC school -- turned out to have a mordant sense of humor. At one point, they played Kill, Fuck or Marry with leaders of the pink tide in Latin America, which was a topic that her lefty upbringing had prepared her to be surprisingly conversant in.

"Who would you kill?" Linda asked her.

"Maduro," Milla said without hesitating, meaning the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

"For sure," Linda said.

Gaby said, "Glad we can agree on that."

"All right, what about the fuck? Linda asked.

"No question," Gaby said. "I'd fuck Kirchner."

Milla looked questioningly at Linda. "Néstor or Cristina?" she asked, referring to the husband and wife who ruled Argentina for a decade and a half.

"Oh, please," Gaby answered. "Cristina."

Linda nodded. "She is kind of witchy-hot."

Gaby chose to marry Michelle Bachelet, the dowdy ex-president of Chile. She shrugged, explaining, "Not a lot of women to choose from."

Linda said she would choose to fuck Evo Morales, the Bolivian ex-president.

"Ewww," Milla weighed in. "His head is so square, like Frankenstein."

"Okay, he's a little ugly, but he's a big guy," Linda said. "And maybe something else would be Frankenstein-sized, if you know what I mean."

They all laughed. "What about marry?" Milla asked.

She didn't hesitate, "Lula" -- Inacio da Silva of Brazil.

"Solid choice," Gaby said. "You could respect him."

Milla had her fuck answer ready, the former president of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, but even as she named him, she cast around for someone she'd choose to marry.

"Yeah, you would't want to marry Correa," Linda said. "He's too good-looking, you know? He would definitely cheat."

"What about marry," Gaby asked.

Milla looked around the room. She thought about saying Lula, but she didn't want to repeat Linda's answer. Hugo Chávez came to mind, but he didn't really do anything for her.

"Come on!" Linda chided. "Gotta choose someone!"

"Okay, okay!" Milla squinted her eyes and said quietly, "Mujica?" José Mujica was the former president of Uruguay, a roly-poly gnome of a man who had legalized pot.

"Nooooo!" Gaby and Linda called at the same time and doubled over laughing.

* * *

Milla's Intro to Psych class was held on Wednesday in a large room with raked rows of seats that could probably hold a couple of hundred people. It was only half full for Professor Andrade, an elegant-looking older woman with not one, but two shocks of bone-white in her long, otherwise raven-colored hair.

"Computer scientists have what they call the 'black box' test," Andrade said at one point. "The idea is to create a computer human enough to fool you into thinking it's a person. But aren't people just as much of a black box as any computer? What strange and unfathomable traumas might hide beneath the skin of the person sitting next to you?"

At the end of class Andrade mentioned that the midterm exam would be a paper based on an informal experiment conducted by teams of two. She recommended using a setting or an activity that the students were already acquainted with. They would have to turn in a "proof of concept" for her approval in two weeks time.

"And if you don't have anyone in the class that you want to work with, come down to my desk," she said. "We'll find you a teammate."

Milla wondered why so many of her classes seemed to be setting her up to work with strangers. She was meeting with her acting teacher later that evening to practice their scene together, which she was only doing with him because she had registered late and there was nobody left for her to pair up with.

She walked down the aisle, but before she got to the steps leading down to the podium, an Asian-American student with big shoulders caught her attention. He was standing in the row below hers, next to a smaller guy, also Asian, who was bent over picking up a bottle of water.

"Do you have anyone to do the midterm project with?" The big guy asked her.

"Um, no," she said as the smaller guy snapped his attention to his friend.

"Neither do I," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Lee."

The sleeve of his t-shirt was straining to stretch over his bicep. He was very well muscled and cute, with dark, tousled hair, and remarkably smooth skin. "I'm Milla," she said.

"Dude, I thought we would do the paper together," the smaller one said.

Lee looked at his friend without letting go of Milla's hand. "I figured you'd do it with Freddy," he said, using his chin to point a few chairs over.

The little guy looked at Lee, then at Milla, then humphed. "Fine," he said, and stalked off.

Milla retracted her hand and said, "Look, I don't want to cause any bad feelings..."

Lee grinned. "Oh, he'll be fine." He slung the strap of his backpack over his right shoulder, which only helped draw Milla's attention to just how big his upper torso was. "Do you maybe have time to chat now?" Lee asked. "Come up with some thoughts on what we could do?"

"Okay," she said. They wound up sitting down on a low stone wall just outside. There was a light breeze playing with her hair which prompted her to reflexively push it back behind her ear. As Lee settled in next to her, his bicep brushed against the side of her breast. He probably hadn't even noticed it, but the part of Milla breast where they had touched stayed hot, as if his muscle had been made of molten lava.

"What year are you?" he asked.

She blushed a little and said, "I'm a first year."

"Really?" he said. "You look older."

Lee turned out to be a sophomore on the wrestling team with a partial scholarship. "That explains it," she said softly.

"What?" he asked, tilting his head to one side.

She smiled and blushed a little. "Why you are so ... cut," she said, gesturing at the arm that she could still feel.

"Ah," he muttered and added, "I did a lot of weight training over the summer. Coach hates it, says wrestling is mostly about flexibility. He's worried that the added muscle will slow me down."

Milla smiled and said,"At least you look good."

"Thanks," he said, smirking.

Neither of them could come up with any decent ideas for an experiment, but because of Andrade's comment about using activities they were familiar with, she mentioned that she worked as a cocktail waitress at the Corner Cafe.

"What's that like?" he asked.

"My first shift's on Saturday," she said. "Ask me after that."

They agreed to visit each other's turf on Saturday: Milla would go to a wrestling meet at the Plum Street Gym in the afternoon, and Lee would come and watch her work at the Cafe that night.

* * *

Milla rang the door to Professor Harrison's bungalow as the sun was setting. He answered with a cell phone pinned to his ear. "Yeah, give me a sec," he said to the phone. Then to her: "Sorry, Adamley, gotta finish this call. Come in, make yourself comfy."

She stepped into the foyer while Harrison walked into a nearby office and closed the door. She peeked into a sitting area and a kitchen, taking a seat at a stool in front of a freestanding counter. The house was decorated tastefully, but sparely. There were no plants or flowers -- no touches that one might consider feminine.

A long-haired white cat looked up at her from a corner of the kitchen and mewed softly. "Well, hello there," she said and walked over to pet it. Milla's mom didn't like cats -- "Useless members of a household," she liked to say -- which had only made Milla more curious about them.

This cat seemed older, and it enjoyed the way she rubbed the underside of its jowls. She sat on the clean white tile floor to get closer, the porcelain of the tiling was cold on her upper thighs and made her glutes constrict. The cat climbed onto her lap, purring loudly, lay down in a sphinx-like position on her legs, and began kneading its claws into the skin of her thighs through the cotton of her skirt.

"You know," she said looking directly into the cat's topaz-colored eyes, "that hurts a little." It also felt kind of good, but she didn't mention that to the cat.

Harrison opened the door to his office and boomed out, "Sorry about that! That was my wife -- my ex-wife, I should say -- there was an issue with our son." As he entered the kitchen, he looked around for her, finally spotting her on the floor with the fluff being on her lap. A look of surprise took over his face.

"Everything okay?" She asked.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "School thing. You know, he doesn't like a lot of people."

"Your son?"

Harrison smiled. "No, my cat. He's a cranky old git, just like his owner."

"He seems sweet to me," Milla said. "What's his name?"

"Brando," Harrison answered. "I know -- it's a cliché for an acting teacher."

She smiled. "Wasn't going to mention it."

Harrison seemed to be thinking about something else, maybe about his child, but he roused himself and asked, "Do you mind if I join you guys down there?"

She shook her head, and he sat himself down in a half-lotus position pretty nimbly for a man in his late 40s. She saw that his eyes were a surprisingly deep shade of aqua blue and had gold flecks in them. Ten years ago or so, before the beard had developed its gray, Harrison had probably been an extremely handsome man.

"Adamley, please do not take it the wrong way or file a Title IX suit over what I am about to say: Is it okay if I pet your pussy?"

She laughed, more because she couldn't believe he had said anything so ridiculous than because she thought particularly funny or clever, but he didn't seem to care. He reached out and stroked Brando firmly, in a practiced manner that made the cat purr louder and churn its claws at an even faster pace.

"Oh, he really likes you," he said after a moment. "Most guests he just hisses at. Those he doesn't hiss at wish that he had only hissed at them."

"Hard to imagine," she said into her professor's blue and golf-flecked eyes.

"All right, you dirty old Tom," he said and stood up. "I now require this pretty young thing to rehearse a scene." He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a bag of cat treats that Brando clearly recognized and leapt off her lap to receive.

Harrison held his hand out to Milla, to help her up from the ground. His hand felt smooth and soft, and she noticed that his hands had been manicured with clear polish on the nails, which seemed a bit ridiculous to her, but her attention shifted when he pulled her up into a standing position just a millimeter too close to where he was standing. She breathed in a bit of his scent, like basil with a touch of lemon, before taking half a step back.

"Have you memorized your lines yet?" he asked.

"Nearly," she said. The scene she had been assigned, by virtue of the other scenes pre-selected by Harrison having been claimed, involved a waitress named Andrea being harassed -- attacked, really -- by James, a cook at the restaurant they work at, and beating him off by thumping him on the head with a bottle of ketchup.

"Do you have any outfits that might pass for waitress attire?" he asked, as he walked into the sitting room.

"Well, I am a cocktail waitress," Milla said, "but I got the feeling they worked at a diner."

"They do," Harrison said, "but there's nothing particular in this scene that spells that out. And anything that helps you get into the character...."

Altering the scene was one of the things that Harrison had warned his students not to do during class. "Isn't that changing the scene, though?"

"No, I wouldn't say that," he said, "just reimagining it."

"Could we reimagine something else then?" she asked hesitantly.

"What?" he asked.

"What if," Milla started, "instead of actually grabbing Andrea and kissing her, maybe James just tried to?"

Harrison looked at her seriously. "May I ask why you want to make that change? Is it because you're doing the scene with me?"

Well, yeah, that was a big part of it. But Milla wasn't sure she would feel comfortable playing the scene with another student either, so she said that instead.

"Well, it's your scene, Adamley," he said calmly, "but I will note that I selected these scenes because they have at their heart an emotional truth, and you are messing with the emotional truth of this one."

She could hear the disapproval in his voice, but he was also letting her decide. She nodded and said, "I would prefer it."

He paused then said, "Okay. Let's rehearse it your way, and see how it goes."

She exhaled, relieved, and was surprised to realize just how literally she had been holding her breath. "Thank you," she said.

The actual practice went well. Harrison didn't mention the change again or indicate he had an issue with it. He also complimented her on having learned the lines so well so fast.

He opened the front door to let her out and said, "By the way, Adamley. Would you be interested in cat-sitting for Brando? I go away from time to time, and the student who used to sit for him graduated last May."

"Sure," she said.

"That's good," Harrison said. "He really seemed to take a shine. I have a trip coming up soon. I'll text you the dates."

* * *

When she and Linda walked into the Plum Street Gym, Milla immediately smelled the funk in the air. It was a mixture of old sweat, rubber mats and testosterone -- it was kind of gross but a little sexy too.

The meet was against a nearby stealth Mormon college named Windsor. The grandstands were sparsely populated by a mix of people who seemed older than the typical campus crowd. Parents, Milla conjectured to herself.

The floor of the gym was covered wall-to-wall with mats, in the center of the floor was a large circle with a smaller circle inside where a match was taking place. There were long folding tables alongside with officials sitting in front of digital displays.

The wrestlers sprawled on the floor with a ref standing over them were smallish guys in ear-flap helmets and tight, shiny singlets -- the Santa Rosa athlete was wearing purple and gold, the school's colors, while his opponent was all in white. Apparently, the Santa Rosa guy had just done something good, as the display at the table behind the circle pinged up to Santa Rosa: 2, Windsor: 0.

After a moment, the ref blasted on his whistle for some reason, and the athletes stopped grappling long enough to stand in a crouch and face each other inside the smaller circle. Milla thought that they couldn't be much taller than her, although of course their shoulders were big. Not as big as Lee's, but still large. She looked closer at the digital display, and found "125 lbs." on it.

The wrestlers got back into it right away with the one in white grabbing the other's leg, and then the two of them tumbled down to the floor. There was a wild and woolly scramble that was hard for Milla to actually tell what was happening, but it ended with the Windsor wrestler lying on top of the Santa Rosa guy, with his legs wrapped around the other's ankles. The scoreline changed to 2-2 and the Santa Rosa wrestler used his arms, still free for the most part, to prevent getting pinned.

There was a pause in the action, and Milla looked over at Linda. They were both dressed in their Corner Cafe uniforms, and Linda looked spectacular, Milla thought. "Lee said he was in the 184 pound weight class -- I hope they haven't gone yet."

An older white woman sitting on the next row down and a little ways to their left evidently overheard because she turned to them and said, "No, they're the second-to-last weight class," she told them, handing them a small piece of paper. "Here's a schedule."