Once in a Lifetime...

{Song lyrics taken from "Once In A Lifetime" by The Talking Heads, copyright 1980.}

...And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,

With a beautiful wife,

And you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'...

The words seeped out of the speakers and across his mind simultaneously.

Laying on the floor of a Claver Hall dorm room while staring up at the ceiling, pants and boxers rolled down below his knees, Oxford shirt and Norwegian sweater still on, he knew he wouldn't last long, it had been over a week since he had jacked off - after a winter break of at least once every twenty-four hours - and she was working him masterfully with only her tongue and he was fully primed, so he glanced to the right and looked at the shelf on the wall above her roommate's bed. Stuffed animals, picture frames, two small trophies, a few ramen packages - then to the left, a bureau - cosmetics, hairbrush, a few more pictures, a wine bottle candle, dried streams of wax thickly coating it, a box of tampons - then a closet door, a ribbon of Hawaiian leis adorning the frame from top to bottom.

He lowered his eyes. The darkened interior wall of the dorm room framed a grayish-white rectangle of light, her head a silhouette within that frame. She was teasing the rim of the crown. He couldn't see her face - a curtain of chestnut hair hid it - but when she lowered her head, she sucked him all the way into her mouth -

...And you may tell yourself, 'This is not my beautiful house,'

And you may tell yourself, 'This is not my beautiful wife'... -

and he had to concentrate hard not to cum.

He squirmed on the thin carpet, tipping to the side, hoping he might slip out of her mouth so he could last longer and not blow without assistance, that would be way embarrassing.

She let him drift out of her mouth. He felt himself quivering, the dorm room air cool on his slickened penis.

"It's jerking all by itself!" she whispered, her face still hidden by hair. "You think," she said mirthfully, "you'll cum without me touching it?", and she reached out and ran a finger lightly up the shaft, which had - thankfully - deflated some and was listing to the side but which twitched alive again at her touch.

"Hope not," he struggled to speak, attempting bravery but only achieving something approximating capitulation.

"Hmmm," she replied softly, lowering her head, "I hope to see that someday."

...Same as it ever was, same as it ever was...

He lowered his head to the floor again, eyes closed. "Hmmm," echoing her.

It was a late January Saturday night, a handful of minutes after midnight. School had been back in session for a week and they had been party-hoping on campus with her roommate and four other girls, his roommate, and his other best friend. They had pre-partied at a dorm across campus, someone in her roommate's chem lab had been celebrating a birthday, and stopped in two other dorms on the way back before slipping into her dorm so the roommate could change coats - the temperature had been dropping all evening. The quick-stopover turned into over an hour - the plan had been to venture up to The Townhouses and roam there. Once in the dorm though, they had rolled into a party that had broken out since they all had departed earlier. People wandered room-to-room, stereos competing, a few rooms serving as makeshift discos, open alcohol openly flaunting regulations for women's dorms.

She and he remained in her room, sequestered on the couch, she on his lap, drinking for sure but not aggressively. Languidly. Which was how they talked - softly, hanging on every word, they were in the glow of a newly affirmed attraction - everything the other says and does infinitely fascinating. People drifted in and out of the room and they sat cocooned, chatting with passersby and laughing at the stories of the goings-on others told. They felt very regal, as if troubadours came into their chambers at regular intervals to entertain them and they would bestow hearty laughter as reward.

It was the beginning days of a very charmed - and charming - coupling, one that had been months in the making.

He had first noticed her in the dining hall, mid-September during a routine lunch. She wore colorful board shorts, a nondescript polo, her just-beyond-the-shoulders length dark hair tied by a ribbon, and it wasn't her body - face or eyes, or even legs or the outline of her breasts - that drew his attention. Not-quite athletic, not-quite wispy, decidedly more flapper than fleshy, hers was petite and symmetrical. She had been walking across the drinks area of the cafeteria and she passed by him on the other side of the salad bar and with a pair of plastic tongs gripping spinach suspended in mid-air, he stared. It was the ribbon. He hadn't seen a girl with a hair ribbon since like, forever? His eyes followed as she approached the plates and flatware, his eyes trailing down to the floor. Chuck's. She wore a pair of black low-top Chuck's. Board shorts, hair ribbon, Chuck's?

Those...incongruities remained with him throughout the next several weeks and as September waned into October he saw that their lives overlapped each others in elliptical ways - entering and exiting classrooms, campus center, mealtimes, parties. And it was at a Halloween party that his off-again, on-again, off-again attention turned to enchantment. How could it not. She wore a French maid costume, barely, and his heightened interest wasn't only his alone. And it was after this moment and campus slid into November, their orbits grew narrower and narrower, eye contact and nodding hello's occurring more frequently. His Shakespeare Seminar had been reading Much Ado About Nothing and his professor had decoded the title as it would have been understood in Elizabethan England - pronounced "noting", as in "remarking" or "noticing". Yes, he had been "noting" Mary - as he had learned her name was - for some time, and days on which their paths intersected rang pleased him.

And she, too had "noted" him, not in mid-September or sometime in October or even November. The end of her first week on campus.

A first year student, she had heard about him from older girls on her dormitory floor. No, he wasn't one of the campus heartthrobs or an athlete or one of the douche-bag guys who plants his flag without discernment. No. His intellect. And politics. His first year he had earned a reputation as being only one of a handful of students who could actually not only respond - as a freshman! - to professors' unfathomable questions but also reply with an equally - and sometimes more! - intelligent response. Faculty talked about him, but he didn't know this at the time of course, he wouldn't know until many years later after he had earned tenure and was talking with a former undergraduate mentor at an academic conference. But his unassuming, retiring personality, though, didn't create friction or jealousy amongst his peers - if anything a quiet respect, head nods from the heartthrobs and athletes, little acknowledgement at all from the douche-bags.

His politics, decidedly liberal on a campus teeming with young and old conservatives, was a bit of a courageous curiosity, amusingly tolerated. Still, no one menacingly called him out, except for the occasional inebriated douche-bag whose flag had been denied unfurling earlier in the evening.

So it was this combination of intelligence and personal civics - frescoed with eclectic classical and punk rock tastes in both music and clothing - that made him an item of fascination to many young - and the occasional old - women on campus, men too.

Clothing harmony would prove to be one of many convergences.

And this was what she had heard of Jacob and he was immediately fascinating to her. She had observed him from afar, eyeing him when she knew he wasn't eyeing her - entering and exiting classrooms, campus center, mealtimes, parties. The French maid costume wasn't done for him specifically, she had always wanted to dress up as one because her conservative parents would never tolerate their daughter Mary Virginia doing such a blasphemous thing and college was, along with turning eighteen, the time to release all one's hidden desires. And when Mary and Jacob's circles grew increasingly concentric, in an intuitive sense she had only recently discovered she possessed and could reply on, she knew it would only be a matter of time before a salad bar-type recognition.

She slid on the carpet closer to him, lowering the left side of her face onto his abdomen, and looked up over the curve of his Norwegian sweater and turtleneck into his eyes. She was completely clothed - jeans, heavy socks, duck boots, turtleneck, Fair Isle sweater. He felt her hair on his penis and he willed himself not to cum. She traced a finger through one of his eyebrows. "You have nice eyes."

"You do, too." He penis lolled as he noted his ability to form a complete sentence.

"I'm wondering," she said, closing her eyes and stretching an arm over her shoulder behind her, straining to touch his penis, "of leaving you hanging and leading us off to the party." She rolled over up onto her knees and stared down at his semi-erect penis, shuddering lightly all by itself. It was the perfect size - not very long, certainly not the longest she had ever held, sucked, or rode, but stout. The first time she had had sex, pain. The proverbial hymen. After the third time? Still pain. An anxious telephone call to her personal ob-gyn - pre-marital sex was never copped to at the campus health center - "...tilted uterus, remember, we talked about that years ago after you had your first..." She had not noticed anything unusual about her own anatomy when compared to other women - ...they're so open and loose!... - during her own surreptitious, self-exploratory perusals of her brother's Penthouses. Her ob-gyn's advice? "...make sure he takes his time" - ...yeah, like a guy is going to go slow so i can ... - so Mary became a very practiced fellatrix - no pain and it's curious how every guy's spunk tastes - something Jason was now experiencing. And while he didn't know how - and why - she had perfected her craft - not at that moment but eventually, yes, she would tell him - his fingers and legs trembled. She wrapped a thumb and index finger around the mid-point of the shaft and gave it a little tug. "What would you think of that?"

...Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground...

He had his eyes closed, concentrating on everything but the present. He couldn't help it but he began to clench and unclench his glutes.

"Hmmm," she said teasingly, "I see you both like and hate that." She lowered her face and first kissed, then licked his navel. He flenched. "Hmmm, me love that," and she kissed the head, then swallowed him down to his abdomen.

The prior calendar year he had lost his virginity.

It was memorable for unmemorable reasons. Bed-spins. Not from emotions or ecstasy. Too much alcohol. He had to fight off both passing out and a dangerous level of nausea. Which made him last more than the usual amount of time for a first time. Veni Dormivi. I Came I Slept. He had placed out of required foreign language courses but he enrolled in Latin because he had believed, naively but bravely, that all writers should know the Classics in the original.

The Vici - I conquered - came later, for unbeknownst at the time alcohol to him operated as a stimulant not a relaxant, so instead of a drunken limpness, a drunken rigidity. Which he also discovered had made him capable of lasting more than the usual amount of time for guys his age as well, and this was another aspect of his story that upon hearing it, from the other older girls on her dormitory floor, fascinated her as well. And she was presently attempting to authenticate the veracity of his longevity - which she had no reason to doubt even before they had started because all she had heard had been proven, he was intelligent, shiningly so, in addition to owning a kind of respectfulness and attentiveness infrequently seen in guys his age. And here she was holding him in her mouth, her tongue alternating licking his testicles then the slit at the head. Marveling at his fortitude, she also marveled at their intersection.

...Into the blue again, into the silent water

Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground...

She had let him pick the music. She would always let him pick the music - their tastes were parallel. And she knew she could make him cum in less than ten seconds, if she so desired, but she wanted to see how long he really could hold out. His skills had been confirmed - it had been something he, too had been practicing, also with a brother's Penthouses - only for him it hadn't been the pictorials like they were for her but rather the "Forum" stories and "Call Me Madam" letters - women exalted men who were patient and thorough and could last longer than a minute and he would aspire to be such a man. And when he finally had the occasion to practice all that he had learned - the bed-spins encounter being the first of four other more appropriately vertiginous trysts he enjoyed freshmen year - his partners extolled his virtues - "You really haven't had many partners?" Which confirmed his belief in the power of words and the sovereignty of writers.

...Same as it ever was, same as it ever was...

Same for her, too. Lazy explorations on lazy afternoons flipping lazily through a fresh Penthouse together reinforced their intimacy. And, devotion.

...Same as it ever was, look where my hand was...

And teasing him to the edge wasn't "Introduction To Sadism". In that epoch of her life, she knew little of that other than what it broadly meant and at that age she hadn't yet been introduced to the complex beauty of pain received and given as pleasure. She knew the time was perfect though, that intercourse was inevitable, and they would look back on the humor of their inauguration - her simply taking him brazenly on the floor of her dorm room. She wanted their first time to be special and this is what she had decided would make it so.

First coitus, though, wouldn't officially occur until the following Friday after dinner in his dorm room - his roommate would spend the night at his girlfriend's apartment - and there would be two other mergings that night, once after leaving during intermission of an on-campus open mic and a third upon returning from The Townhouses before falling asleep intertwined on his bed.

Servicing him on her dorm room floor had also been purposeful. She'd been menstruating. Period intercourse held zero interest for her. Yes it's a safe time - for the most part, presumably more than while not menstruating - other times, no birth control pills - due to a parental prescription plan - or condoms either - intercourse with other guys in the past felt so...industrial, in addition to the physical discomfort. So this first time would be memorable to her for a host of reasons. For him - an awakening to the delirium associated with someone else controlling satisfaction.

And mid-rapture, he instinctively raised an arm to her shoulder and held her gently. He wanted to stop her, yes, because he also wanted to return the attention. Focus in on reading his partner would calm him, the subtle way a hip will pivot quickly in one direction followed by a back arcing the pelvis up, her sex a tangent against a mouth...a finger trailing lightly across a hairline and down a neck...a nipple gently licked up from below and over, then nibbled at the very tip, he wanted to feel her rise up against him, spreading her legs wider as he would slide his hands and arms under her thighs and slowly drew her open with both of his thumbs while making an "O" over her and sucking his cheeks in...

They hadn't formerly met until the beginning of study week at a party, which except the library and dining hall is all of what campus is at nights during exam times - one large amorphous organism that moves and shifts like an amoeba under a microscope. She had one of the older girls from the dormitory "spontaneously" introduce them.

"A formal introduction," she had said to him, releasing his proffered handshake. "How nineteenth century."

She stopped sucking and held him firmly between her lips, feeling the warmth of him pulsate on her lips as his quacking legs betrayed his efforts to strain against cumming. She closed her eyes and grinned.

"It is customary," he had replied, a slight bow, "when a young man is introduced to a...charming young woman for the first time."

She sipped her red plastic cup with a relaxed simplicity. "Indeed."

He placed his blue cup onto a nearby speaker tower. "Please, Miss," he said, bowing entirely at the waist until his eyes stared at the floor, "excuse my impropriety." He raised his head and trained his eyes into hers, then he reached for one of her hands and gently raised it while he straightened his back and brought her hand close to his mouth. "I have been remiss for not presenting myself to you in a more felicitous manner," and he lowered his head and kissed the tops of her fingers.

They inhabited the perfect level of drunkenness.

"Why yes, thank-you kind sir." She slowly retracted her hand. "I, too am most pleased to make your acquaintance as well."

The older girl screwed up her face - "Weirdos" - and disappeared off into other, more engaging and situation-appropriate conversations. And for the next few hours they slipped in and out of their pantomime with great ease and laughter. Nothing physical transpired between them that night or over any of the several others that followed until he departed campus - hungover - the morning after his Latin exam. Incrementally they had spent more time together - meals, between classes, during study time, parties - their conversations quickly growing more insular, personal, and revealing, her dreams not settled on anything specific other than happiness, his a life of letters and writing, the hope being an entry long after his death in a Norton Anthology to commemorate a lifetime of literary excellence. Like him, she, too was an English major and she said one day - as they ambled back from another party, campus a shimmering snow globe from intermittent snow squalls - partially innocent, partially testing that she always found herself falling in love with different writers. He offered no reply - words, this one singular time, escaping him.

...Water dissolving and water removing,

There is water at the bottom of the ocean...

The tip of his penis in her mouth, she turned her head to look at him. His fingers rested immobile on her shoulder. They stared at each other, unflinching.

They didn't communicate over break, save for a card she sent him, having obtained his postal address from his roommate before she had left campus. It was one of those cards a five year old would offer another five year old - a cartoonish Santa standing on the roof of a tiny house removing a gigantic bag of toys from an under-scaled sleigh, portions of the drawing covered in yellow sparkles and green felt - except for the message she penned inside - "...Oh, and Santa's going to CUM down the chimney all right! XOXOX, Me!" And once back on campus they were inseparable. They just evolved into being a couple - "Will you be my...?", "Do you want to go...?" never said - effortlessly as at a Thursday night party when one of his hands slipped simply into the back pocket of a pair of corduroys while one of her hands dipped as naturally into the back pocket of a pair of combat fatigues drawing both their hips together, furtive actions seen by a handful of friends that confirmed what had been so obvious as if sky-written.