My Only Talent Ch. 27

"My treat!" she announced. "Austin's finest gourmet breakfast: the incredible bacon, egg, and cheese Taquito!" I had never had one before, but had I always supposed that was some kind of small taco from Ecuador. I was so hungry that anything with bacon sounded fine.

Orinda laughed. "Candy, you know I love you, baby, but the only way to go here is the Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit!"

Not one to offend either lady, I got one of each. The Taquito was okay, but the hot sauce was not: hot that is. The Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit was just about perfect. There was only chewing at our table for a while.

Finally Candy spoke up: "Same time tonight, my lovelies?"

Orinda looked at me before answering, and Candy interjected immediately: "What's up with that look?"

Orinda looked shy and embarrassed and pleased all at once, and her Suzie sent contentment tinged with excitement. "Well, Candy, I am promised to be Robbie's pet and he is promised to be my Master for the next two days. I am to go with him to all the Rush parties, and he can do anything to me or ask anything of me he wishes, and I must give myself fully to him. Tonight I am going to learn how to please him best, and if I do well, tomorrow night he will please me."

Candy cut her eyes at me. "Is that true, Robbie, and if so how do I fit in to the plan?"

"Very well, I thought!" I grinned at her. "Tonight, Orinda will learn to go beyond her considerable natural talents and learn to suck my dick just the way I like it!" Candy's eyes got big, and Orinda giggled. "Do you want to audit the same course, or take it for the grade?"

My Suzie receiver came in real handy just then, because Candy's face looked offended, but her Suzie was intrigued. "Does she have to wear a leather suit and crawl on her hands and knees?"

I interjected. "No, she must wear normal clothes, with an imaginary collar and leash underneath. But no bra and no panties allowed!" I went for it. "As will you."

Orinda made a kissing noise at her, and mouthed "yes" silently. Candy smiled. "I promised Jackson I would be at the PIG dinner tonight, but I'll be back at my place before 1:00 AM." Maybe this Rush thing was going to be all right.

*******

Orinda and I walked back to the dorm. I turned my phone off mute and noticed that a text had come in, from Dr. Graendel. It still seemed weird to call her that.

"Roberts: start keeping your food and exercise diary again, and change your running routine from MWF to TTS, since we will be lifting and working in the early morning conditioning class at 7 AM MWF. Run only 5 miles from now on, jogging the first ½ mile, and then sprinting one mile and running one until you get to 4.5, with the last ½ mile as a cool down jog."

"Later we will do graduated wind sprints and pacing until you can do 5 full miles at a very fast pace, giving you more aerobic exercise in less time. I know it is a challenge for me, but give yourself up into my hands and in one quick semester, I will mould your upper body into something you can be proud of."

Something fell into place for me: a memory of the last time I had tuned into Saskia's fantasy signals, and a connection between some of them. I would have to try a ping when I saw her three days from now to confirm my suspicions. If they proved true, maybe I could do a little special training for her at the end of the semester, when she was no longer officially my instructor.

Orinda stumbled on a curb and I reached for her arm to hold her up. She took my hand and kept it as we walked, and then said, "Robbie, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Orinda, but be careful, because I will always tell you the truth, if I can."

"Had you ever been with Candy before last night?"

"No. I kissed her once at a lake party, but that was all."

"Did you know she wanted to be with you, though?"

"Yes. She made that very clear."

"But you did not act on that?"

"Not until last night."

"Why not?" She looked worried.

"It's complicated. It has to do with the two women that you saw me with at that costume party. "

"Go on."

"All I can say is that they are wonderful young ladies and I am proud to call them my friends."

Her face relaxed a little bit. "So you won't tell me about what you do with them, other than to say that?"

"That's right. Nor will I talk about what I do with you to anyone." She smiled.

"So you would not talk about the details of your relationship with them. What about the big picture?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

She moved her arm from mine to around my waist. "For instance, the tall blond girl that Lizzy Faye saw you with in the laundry room. I know a lot of intimate details about that, but not the big picture. Such as, do you love her?"

I answered without thinking. "Yes." Then I realized I had violated my own code. "I shouldn't have told you that."

She laughed. "Yes you should have, if it's true. And that's not something about her it's about you. I didn't ask if she loved you. Although Lizzy said she was very vocal in saying that she did."

We walked in silence for a while, and then she said, "Does she know about Candy?"

"She has met Candy, and she knows that Candy wanted to sleep with me, but that I didn't, then."

"Will you tell her now? Will you tell her about me?"

"Yes to both."

She looked very thoughtful for a while, and then said "How will she feel about that?"

"Well, she actually thought I should have slept with Candy, as long as she was there, too." I realized I had violated my code again.

"So she is okay with you having other women sometimes?"

"Sometimes."

"And she likes to be with other women, too?"

"Sometimes."

"How about two women with one man, like last night?"

"Sometimes."

We had been moving south along the Drag, and now turned east along 21st. We were almost back to the dorm. Candy seemed to realize she had to ask things a little faster.

"What about one woman and two guys. Would you do that with her?"

"It makes me very uncomfortable."

She sniffed. "Isn't that kind of hypocritical of you?"

"In one sense maybe, but there is a big difference: She gets turned on by other women, and I don't get turned on by other guys."

"So you were born that way, it isn't a decision?"

"I don't think so. Maybe for some people it is, I don't know about them."

"What do you mean?"

"Take for example the ESU campus. There are roughly 50,000 students here, and according to the university, more than half of them are female. Every day when I walk across campus, I see at least a dozen women that make me think 'Wow, she is nice! I wonder what she looks like without all those clothes on. What would it be like to touch her?' It's automatic, it's like a spinal reflex, and it's not a choice. I see several dozen more women that make me think 'I wouldn't kick her out of bed' and that's a reflex too, not a choice. But I have never had that kind of reaction to a guy. I think for some people, the numbers are different: maybe 10 girls to 1 guy, or one to one, or 1 girl to 10 guys. I don't know how I would react if that was the way it was for me."

"But couldn't you just do her along with another guy, without you doing the other guy too?"

"I'm not sure if I could." I didn't mention that I was going to find out if I could do it in a few Sundays. "If you weren't into girls, would have spent the night with me and Candy just to please me?"

She drew in a big breath and sighed. "Probably not."

I kissed Orinda goodbye and she went up to her room to rest and change, and after I made a quick trip through the late breakfast buffet to charge my batteries, I did the same. I went over today's schedule of visits, all pretty decent frats that had sent me invitations and one sorority who asked me to their 'Special Rush Night Mixer" this evening. That sounded like some wild college days to me.

Tomorrow was the last day of rush (and of my arrangement with Orinda) topped off by the BOT 'Special Slumber Party. Now isn't that special? I had time for a nap or a run, but my trainer was recommending that I cut back a bit on the distance. I set my alarm to give me enough time to take a shot at the early lunch line before I met Orinda, and then let the gentle fingers of Morpheus caress my cortex.

*******

Orinda was dressed a little more formally when I met her at the entrance of the dorm, since we were going to a sit down dinner at one of the frats, I suppose. She had on a dark green version of the 'little black dress' that looked amazing, with just a little hint of the same green on her eyelids, and some very high heels. Her eyes sparkled and danced when she smiled at me, and I allowed myself to think that I had supplied some of the mythical 'Vitamin D' that had improved her mood and looks. She kissed me on the cheek sweetly and whispered "No bra and no panties, Master" and then lightly touched my ear with her tongue. What a woman.

The dinner invitation was from Alpha Nu, one of the frats that Kevin told me was going to make a big push to get me to pledge. As Orinda and I walked westward toward their near West Campus house, just past a row of giant West Campus high density apartment blocks, I reviewed what I knew about them. They had the rep of having parties almost as big as the PIGs, but with less of the GQ fashion and much less expensive booze, but reportedly in much greater quantities, with at least one pledge death by alcohol poisoning in the last few years. One of their themes was 'memories that last a lifetime' but they reportedly were often so wasted that they might not remember anything. The had a lot of engineering and science majors as members, which was a little bit cool, but their average GPA much lower that UDT, which was not so cool.

Kevin had offered a few more gossip grapevine insights, to wit, "totally white bread upper middle class guys who couldn't get bids to PIG but want their parents to think Alpha Nu is just as cool. They do lots of stuff with the Zetas. The Zeta girls suck dick better than the Alpha Nu guys, but not by much." I had looked at their website, and discovered the Dallas area rush captain was a guy I knew that was one year ahead of me in high school, and a total dipshit. Strike one.

When we walked into the house, the first guy to speak to us, who had obviously been drinking since well before lunch, ogled Orinda, and got his beer breath right in my face, sounding a bit like that old Notre Dame coach on TV, saying very sloppily "Welcome to AN, where we have the best parties, the finest girls, and the best memories." He was obviously impaired, and unable to judge any of the above. Strike Two.

The overall rush captain, a guy I didn't know but recognized from the web page, shooed the bozo away and tried to recover the fumble. "Roberts, isn't it? Welcome. I'm Sean Martin. I am so glad you guys could come to dinner with us." He introduced both of us to all the folks around. Ball One. He offered to get Orinda a drink, and actually laid some pretty good bullshit on us. Ball Two.

A lot of beer was consumed during a respectable waiting period for dinner, wherein two guys hit on Orinda. I could tell her Suzie was offended, not attracted. She gave both of them a really evil look that said 'I was hoping for something further up the food chain' and then smiled at me and blew me a kiss. What a woman. Dinner turned out to be pretty good: steaks and baked potatoes done on their big built-in grills outside, and they had at least four kegs of beer that I saw.

I had to hunt to find the coolers with Diet Coke in them, passing through a blue clouded knot of cigarette suckers right outside the door. They did not allow smoking in the house, and the joints seem to be confined to an upper deck overlooking the backyard grills. There was one big plus - a make your own ice cream sundae line: my sugar cravings were quieted for a while.

Perhaps enlivened by the sugar hit, my Suzie receiver began to scan all the girls in range to see what they might be like and how they fit with the Alpha Nu culture. Orinda spotted someone she knew from high school, and motioned to me she was going to go talk to them, so I concentrated even further on my signals reconnaissance mission. I noticed a trend.

Most of the girls that were hanging on the arms of the Alpha Nu guys were not sending much in the way of Suzie for them, and some of them were actively thinking about other guys they would meet later tonight. I spotted two very nice looking girls with great big engagement rings, sending zero for the guys they were holding onto and smiling at. Maybe if one of the brothers becomes a divorce attorney he will have lots of business in a few years, but he might be on his second or third wife himself. Strike Three.

Orinda came back over to me and whispered in my ear "When can we leave here?" She had read my mind.

We walked a little north to drop in at Chi Omega Chi sorority. I still not exactly sure why they had invited me, but what the heck? All I learned from their web page was that all the girls they put on the web page were great looking, went to school at ESU, and wanted to make the world a better place. They put more pictures on their webpage than all the other sororities combined, and judging from the pictures, they redecorated their house with a new party theme about every other week.

They were mostly business majors, which meant they had good grades and high SAT scores to get in at ESU to that highly sought after program. They were all good looking enough to be the face of corporate communications, or do the six o clock news, that was for sure. My invite turned out to be a 'stealth recruitment' effort by Sigma Mu Delta, one of the frats that Kevin said was after me, but had not actually invited me to anything during Rush.

Kevin, as usual, had some info from the Greek Grapevine. They were really two sororities in one: sweet girls by day and man-eaters by night. Most of them had an official 'college' public boyfriend they went to football games and parties with and an unofficial 'townie' boyfriend that they never introduced to anyone on campus. The townies got all the pussy. I was reminded of the 'religious' college girls from Baylor and Trinity that came to Austin to party with people who didn't know their real names. When it came to sorority politics, it was all 'take no prisoners, mean girls rule'. Perhaps another good group for future divorce lawyers to know.

They had a very nice and well kept house, and by far the best appetizers I had seen at any Greek event. The first thing I noticed was that they were even better looking in person than in their pictures, which was very nice. The second thing I noticed was that the vast majority of them were smokers, heavy smokers, and they smelled like it, which was not very nice. The first girl to greet us was Missy Manginoochi, a sophomore fashion major from the Woodlands near Houston. She looked like a virginal valedictorian that went to Sunday school three nights a week, but her Suzie was sending stuff just this side of a Melanie meltdown. When I introduced Orinda and then myself, she paused and waved at a tall and pale blonde guy who was schmoozing another group of freshman looking guys.

It took him a few minutes to work his way over to us, and in the meantime, Missy made it clear she knew exactly who I was, and if she hadn't actually been at the Halloween or 'Addicted to Austin' parties, she had certainly heard a lot about them. She turned a dazzling, if slightly yellowed smile on Orinda, and said "Were you one of the girls who got to dance at the 'addicted to' party?"

Orinda smiled. "No, I was at the UDP Halloween party, though. Would you like to have danced naked on TV? Would you let the Master have his way with you?"

Missy's Suzie vibrated through my forebrain like a jackhammer, even though no one else apparently noticed. She not only wanted to dance naked on TV, she wanted to be sure everyone in the world had her tuned in on a high definition monitor. She smiled shyly, a look she may have had to practice in front of a mirror. "I don't know if I could actually bring myself to do it, but it would have been an exciting memory."

Missy's event recorder was full of a lot of exciting memories that involved a great many people having their way with her, and she seemed to have to get more and more daring and risky to keep the excitement coming, so to speak. A few of the parties she had enjoyed totally exceeded Suzanne's wildest fantasies, and would have sent even the Amazing Pliskin running away screaming. I considered Missy a very high risk, very low return kind of girl.

She gave me a smoking look, very authentic considering she smelled like my old teacher Miss Kuratko. "So, Robbie, are you into leather?"

"Sometimes."

The blonde guy arrived. He was, unsurprisingly, the rush captain of Sigma Mu Delta, one Peyton "Kato" Kaelin, who up close looked so pretty I was convinced he was actually wearing makeup. Strike One. Two things became clear: He and Missy were 'dating' and she sent no Suzie for him nor did she have any exciting memories of him in her event recorder. She quickly re-adopted the virgin valedictorian persona and he seemed to be buying it all the way.

Peyton was dressed up PIG style or maybe even a little beyond, in a light grey and blue patterned double-breasted slim cut suit with a pink shirt and pink pocket square and a powder blue tie that matched his eyes, in penny loafers with no socks. I am not even sure what that was supposed to convey. He might have been a fashion major, too. I tried hard to read his signals, and found, perhaps not happily, that I was getting much better at recognizing and deciphering male 'Suzies' or whatever I should call them.

First the good news: he was not sending for me. Next, maybe good news for him, he was not sending for Missy either, which could have been either a penchant for staying in sick relationships or good judgment, but probably not both. Finally, he was sending enthusiastically for Orinda, which boded well for him in the long run. Orinda had no interest in either one of them.

As we made small talk, and he began to introduce his selling points for Sigma Mu Delta, I formed a theory: all of these people were behaving like they were being videotaped as an audition for some kind of reality show. They were all trying way too hard to convince themselves and others that they were having a really good time. Strike Two. Strike Three. I realized another vibe: most of the PNM's that were here desperate to get a bid, any bid.

Kevin had explained the usual Greek sales strategy during Rush, especially the abbreviated three day Spring Rush. The first night it was all "love and happiness" like the line from the smooth old song. Everyone was a buddy, and greeted warmly, like everyone was taking ecstasy. All the PNMs were meant to feel included and wanted. The second day was for feeling out prime targets and deciding if they should be given a bid, and introducing the idea of selectivity and potential exclusion.

It was like in football recruiting, the coaches didn't want to give anyone an early offer unless they were sure it would be immediately accepted. There was a feeling of momentum, and PNMs should feel a foregone conclusion that they wanted to pledge somewhere they needed to get on board soon. The third and final day was about elimination: PNMs figured out they might not get a bid, and were meant to fear exclusion and rejection, so in the final hours, they would take any bid.

Here, timing was everything - if you didn't get an early bid from the top four, how low should you go to make sure you got accepted. The lower tier frats had to close hard at the end, or adopt a strategy to offer lots of geeks (especially if they had a 4.0 GPA) to go Greek and then cull them if they prove to be too un-cool and/or the frat's overall mean GPA was up and you could turn in a good grade report before you dropped them from your rolls.