The Senator and the Student

"I think this conversation is over with, Winnifred," Rebecca said. "But do feel free to come to my announcement speech on Saturday."

"I know where the door is," Rebecca grumbled. "And may the best woman win."

Unbeknownst to Rebecca, Winnifred had sent Chester a letter that was similar in tone and ended with the same offer. As Chester was gathering his books to go to class on Thursday morning, he read the final paragraph yet again, as if hoping his mother's demands would somehow become less awful if he went back and looked again.

They didn't. You have all too much of your sex's lack of common sense and levelheadedness, Chester, and I know all too well how hard men find it to think with their heads once they've been in a woman's bed. But I'll ask you anyway, as your mother and as Rebecca's oldest friend, I'm willing to forgive your transgression if you can talk her into withdrawing her silly male suffrage bill. You do not want to lose your privileges or be forced into responsibilities you could never handle; you may not know it yet, but one day you will! Please consider it for the love of your family.

Chester couldn't help rereading it and finding some sign that it was all a joke, much as he knew it wasn't. Fortunately, there came a firm rap at his door when he'd only been through it twice. "Chester, are you ready?" came a young woman's voice from out in the hall.

"Yes!" Chester stood up and pulled his coat on, and opened the door to greet his friend Alice. "Thanks for coming by," he told her. "Not a good time for me to be going anywhere alone!"

"I sure do admire you for taking this all so well," she said, hooking her arm through his as they set off down the hall. "I can't imagine what it's like."

"It'll be over soon, one way or another," Chester said. "Can't believe the premier called an election for just before Christmas, but at least that's close."

"I'm just sorry you won't be able to vote in it," Alice said. "But I'll be voting Egalitarian."

"Thanks." Chester felt like kissing her cheek, but that was out of the question as they stepped outside for the walk across the courtyard to class. Only a few intrepid reporters were lying in wait this time, but a few were enough to spread all sorts of scandal, he now knew.

"Mr. Croft!" called one. "What do you have to say about the election?"

"What's it matter what I've got to say when I can't vote?" Chester looked straight ahead. "Yet," he added under his breath, and Alice patted his back encouragingly.

"Do you regret forcing the premier's hand at this time of year?"

"No."

"What if Senator Wharton loses her seat?"

"Ask her."

There was more, but he ignored it. "You handled that well," Alice reassured him with a squeeze of his hand as they stepped into the lecture hall, where the press was banned.

"Thanks," Chester said. "I sure hope she agrees."

Alice did her best to usher Chester discreetly into the classroom, but they both knew by then that there would be hoots and cheers from the women and envious looks from the men. As usual, there were. "Going to sleep in the halls of power this weekend?" asked a woman Chester didn't know.

"Get lost, Janine," Alice said. "Mind your own business."

"It's my business if his girlfriend dilutes my vote by letting him vote!" Janine retorted, though she did retreat.

"Are you going to Senator Wharton's house for the weekend again?" Alice asked under her breath.

"Probably, yeah," Chester said. "Nice and quiet there for studying while she's busy with work."

"Is she announcing this weekend?"

"Yes, but she already told me I shouldn't be there. As if I want any more attention!"

He did get more attention, from the moment the professor dismissed class until Alice got him safely into the dining hall, where the press was banned. But Premiere Wynnton's supporters were not. "You really going to let your old lady take our privileges away?" asked Michael Stood, the most vocal male anti-Egalitarian on campus.

"What makes you think it's up to me, Michael?" Chester said.

"Get lost, Mike," Alice added.

Of course, he didn't. "Man, you and ol' Becky ought to come out to my farm and see how the real world lives. We've all got our roles and it works, has worked forever, and she wants to destroy that."

"Then you can vote against her next time," Chester said, and Alice laughed along with him.

"I've got no business voting! Unlike some of us, I know my place!" Michael snapped.

"We do agree about that," Chester couldn't resist saying.

"Get back in the factory!" called out a woman Chester didn't know as he and Alice assembled their lunches.

"Amen," added Michael.

"She was talking about you, too, you genius," Alice said.

"No way," said Yvette Russell, whom Chester knew from a history class they'd both taken last year. "Chester, some of us are all for you men being here with us, but that doesn't mean you're ready for the responsibility of voting yet. I wish you'd tell Senator Wharton that."

"What are you afraid of?" Alice snapped at Yvette. "That they'll vote for more wars that only they go off to fight in? What kind of sense does that make?"

"Alice, never mind..." Chester began, laying a hand on his friend's arm to soothe her.

"If they get the vote, maybe they'll want to send us off to fight, too!" Yvette shot back. "You ever think of that, Alice? You want to get sent over the mountains with the boys next time?"

"I don't want anyone to get sent over there!" Alice replied. "But it's only fair that the ones we send get to vote on it, too!"

"Alice, they're piglets! They're good for fighting and brute force, not for making decisions! I don't want some barbarian fresh out of a barn making decisions about my life!" Now Yvette was in Alice's face.

Chester had backed off; he did try pulling Alice back with a reassurance that it was no use in fighting. But she shrugged him off and went nose-to-nose with Yvette. "You are one disgusting bigot, you know that, Yvette? They're our fellow human beings!"

"They don't bleed or breed, they shouldn't lead!" Yvette retorted. "They'll never have the empathy!"

"But we've got the empathy to send them to work in our factories and fight in our wars?"

"It's what they're good at! If you don't get that, Alice, maybe you belong in the factories with them!"

Alice turned away from both Yvette and Chester, and clenched her fists. "Right, then," she said. "No use in fighting with someone who thinks that little of half the world."

"Matter of fact, Alice," Yvette chortled. "Just how do we know you're not really a man under there?" She grabbed at Alice's skirt and yanked it up.

Alice whipped around. "Try any of that, will you, you bitch?" She lunged at Yvette, who ducked out of the way and tripped Alice, but Alice latched a hand on her shoulder on the way down. Both women tumbled onto the salad table, spilling greens and dressing everywhere. Alice got a hand on Yvette's temple and tried to force her face into an upset dish of thousand island, while Yvette kicked at Alice's feet trying to make her lose her balance.

Friends of both rushed to break up the fight, including Chester, but a sensible mutual friend whispered to him that he'd best keep his own hands clean at all costs. So he reluctantly stood back and had a view of the scene as a university security officer arrived and ordered Alice and Yvette off to the dean's office.

"I am pleased to say," Rebecca declared through the snow flurries floating around her podium in downtown Laucester two days later, "Alice was set free with only a warning. But I ask you ladies, is this the mentality you want greeting your sons and your brothers if they want to improve themselves?"

She was greeted with a chorus of "No!"s, which she acknowledged with a smile. "Now, just as I respect the privacy of every one of your lives, I have done my best to keep my own business to myself. But I am willing to tell you, I love Chester Croft with all my heart and I don't care in the least what Sandrine Wynnton or Gwen Rollins think about it!" This brought even louder applause. "But this election is not about Chester or myself. It's about the men we love, and who love us, and about giving them a voice in our future. There is no point in denying that the timing of the election is unfortunate, ladies, but I ask you to join me in making it a merry Christmas for your husbands, brothers and sons by electing a Parliament that will at last make them full citizens of our country!"

Her supporters were still cheering and clapping when she stepped down from the stage to shake hands and answer questions. Surprisingly few of the questions were about male suffrage; most were about local issues like more funding for the primary school and additional lights for the side streets. This pleased Rebecca as much as it surprised her, for she could point to considerable success in bringing home the bacon over the past three years.

Nevertheless, she was not at all surprised to find Martha looking displeased when she finally finished pressing the flesh. "Don't try to tell me that wasn't a positive reaction," Rebecca said to her as they huddled with a few of her other advisors behind the stage.

"You've clearly got the votes of all the women who came out in this slop," Martha allowed. "But you can't have failed to notice the crowd is substantially smaller than most you drew last time."

"It's more than Senator Rollins got, isn't it?"

"Not by enough for me to rest easy," Martha said. "And it's a long month to the election, a month they're all going to spend wishing they could focus on Christmas instead."

"Is it really so hard to think about both?" Rebecca asked. "And it's not as though most women don't already have their minds made up about whether they want men to vote or not!"

"You do not want to take that for granted," Martha warned. "You also don't want any more stories about Chester's friends getting in trouble, even if it wasn't their fault."

"Now you sound like Chester himself," Rebecca quipped. "Speaking of which, I want to get home and tell him all about the speech. He wanted so much to be here today, but..."

"But that would have been the dumbest thing you could do," Martha said. "Good on you for at least showing some self-control on that point."

"You don't like him, do you, Martha?"

"It doesn't matter what I think, Senator."

Rebecca arrived home to run a gauntlet of reporters by her front gate, taking the time to answer all their questions as the snowfall grew heavier, and finally escaped inside to find Chester and Sarah engaged in a fierce tournament of closetball. "You're not going to take him away just when I've nearly got him whipped, are you, Mother?" Sarah demanded.

"What if I have Esther make you some cocoa?" Rebecca offered.

"I'll take it if Chester admits I was going to win," Sarah sniffed.

"You were, of course," Chester said with a grin. That settled, he scrambled to his feet and threw his arms around Rebecca even though her coat was wet with snow. "I can't wait to hear every word of your speech!" he said.

"Of course." Rebecca let him help her off with her coat, and then she rang for Esther. "Hot toddy for you, dear?" she asked Chester.

Rebecca settled on the couch to warm her damp stocking feet by the fire, and Sarah insisted on snuggling up to her. So Chester took the chair to their left without complaint and settled in to listen to a recap of the speech. "You will be proud to hear the crowd was very happy for Alice," Rebecca said.

"I'm happy for her too," Chester said. "But I'm mortified that she got in a fight over me in the first place."

"It's not you who should feel mortified, Chester!" Rebecca told him. "It's a sad commentary on us all that anyone would treat her the way that other girl did over someone else's human rights!"

"I guess," Chester said. "I just -- I really hope I don't cost you this election, Rebecca."

"It won't be you who costs me anything! It'll be ignorance and fear. If I lose. But I don't intend to." She smiled at Chester, but he didn't return the gesture. "Chester, is something the matter?"

"Got a rather nasty letter from my mother the other day," he said.

"Oh, dear," Rebecca said. "I met with her here myself. I can just imagine."

"Then you know what I'm up against," he said.

"What we are up against," Rebecca corrected. "But we knew what she'd say about us, didn't we?"

"I guess so," Chester admitted. Looking restless as ever now, he got up and strode to the window. "Remember the first snow every year when you were a girl, Rebecca?"

"And how!"

"The way I couldn't wait to get outside and play in it, and the promise of Christmas just around the corner."

"Well, it is just around the corner," Rebecca said. "That much hasn't changed."

"I know what I want to get for you, Chester!" Sarah teased.

"Yes, well, don't tell me," Chester said. "Mustn't spoil the surprise!" He turned back from the window to look at her, and Rebecca was rewarded with a much brighter look on his face.

Still, there was a melancholy in his eyes that a long sojourn by the fire couldn't erase. Nor could their dinner, or the favourite story he told Sarah afterward before her bedtime, which did at least delight her.

Rebecca still sensed it in him when they retired to her bedroom after Sarah was off to bed. "Chester, tell me what's weighing so on you, please!" she said as she lit the fire.

"Oh, Rebecca..." Chester wandered over to the window, where the curtains were open and they could just make out the still-falling snow outside. "I'm ever so grateful for all you've done, and I'm willing to put up with the girls at school who say I don't belong there -- I was used to that already, after all -- but the things they're saying about you in the papers, and even my mother now..."

"Let them talk!" Rebecca put her arms around him from behind and kissed his cheek. "Who cares what the Sandrine Wynntons of the world think!"

"Too many people do, though," Chester said, though he did welcome her embrace, and rubbed her hands with his own. "I hate to think how much uglier this could get for us both before it's all over."

"Progress is never easy," Rebecca said. "And leaders can't always be popular. I'll settle for being right, and we are! You know that!"

"At what cost?"

"Freedom and equality, Chester! Don't you want that?"

"Of course! Yeah, of course! I just..." He turned around and returned Rebecca's hug. "I've been thinking, you know, when I was younger and you were my 'best grown up friend'..." his voice trailed away into a chuckle, and Rebecca laughed along with him. "There was something so wonderfully simple about it! No politics, no fear for the future...I miss that. Just like I miss not feeling constantly oppressed now that I'm thinking about it all the time."

"It's only a month to the election, Chester. And I'm yours no matter what happens there."

"But that won't be the end of it! If you win, don't you know how that'll inflame the girls like Yvette there? And that jerk Michael?"

"There will always be unpleasant people out there, Chester. And honestly, if you want to make your way in a woman's world, I hate to say it, but you're going to have to get used to it."

Chester nodded. "I get that. It just makes me so angry."

Rebecca reached down to stroke his trousers. "I know how I can help with that!"

Chester grinned at last. "You want to play with the symbol of my oppression, is that it?"

"Don't call it that!" Rebecca was serious once again.

"Well, that is what it all comes down to, isn't it?"

"But we don't have to be that way, Chester! In my arms, you are my equal." Feeling him below the belt again, she felt him growing harder. "That is more like it, my love!" She unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants.

"Perhaps you ought to get out of this dress as well, after standing out in the snow all that time," Chester agreed, untying her sash.

"By all means!" As soon as Rebecca had Chester's pants down around his ankles, she raised her arms and let him pull her dress over her head. It took him some time to do it, during which she thrilled to the knowledge of her body coming into view bit by bit. Only when he had it off and she stood before him in her brassiere and tights did it occur to her that he hadn't undressed her last week. Did he know how to remove a brassiere?

Yes he did, she discovered a moment later as he had it undone in a graceful sleight of hand while rubbing her back and kissing her. She kept her mild surprise to herself as he pulled back and set the undergarment on the chair by the fire. The room was just warm enough for her to not feel chilly, but she welcomed his warm hands on her bare breasts all the same. "There you are, my dear," she whispered. "Do you mean to tell me now you hold two tools of oppression in your hands?"

Chester laughed, and looked on in adoring anticipation as she unbuttoned his shirt. He took his hands off her breasts just long enough to let her pull the shirt away once it was unbuttoned.

Now that she had him naked, she beckoned to the bed. "Help me off with my tights?" It was a question, but she had no doubt of the answer as she lay back along the foot of the bed and thrust her hips up.

"Mmmm, that's a welcome feeling," she whispered as he pulled them down over her hips and down her legs, which she spread as soon as he had her tights all the way off. "I've been thinking of this all week, Chester!"

"You and me both!" He scrambled onto the bed, and ran his fingers gently through her hungry bush, giving her jolts of anticipatory joy even before he'd found her clitoris.

Find it, of course, he did. "Oooh! Magic with your fingers, that's what you are!" she squealed.

"Not only my fingers, I hope!" He lay beside her, at eye level with her breasts, and he kissed them each in turn.

Rebecca rolled over on her back and let him suck and nibble at them to his heart's content, and welcomed his fingers inside her. She squealed in joy as he rubbed her inner flesh just right, with a touch none of her previous lovers had ever mastered -- indeed, most hadn't even tried. Last but not least, he flicked lightly at her clitoris with his thumb. "Oh, Chester, that's beautiful!" she moaned.

"Feels beautiful too!" he murmured between long kisses on her nipples. More confident and comfortable with her body than last time, he worked her up in a wonderfully slow build to an orgasm she was sure would be explosive when it finally arrived.

It was. "OhmyGodChester!" she shrieked, and he let up on kissing her breasts to watch her writhe in joy for a long moment. She clamped her legs shut and kept his fingers buried within her to savour the rush to the last tingle. "So lovely!" she exhaled in a dreamy tone when at last it was over. "Now you!" She patted his head. "On your back, dear!"

Chester followed her order, and before he knew it she was straddling him and guiding him inside her. He gazed up resolutely at her face. "Chester, you're not still shy now, are you?" she asked.

"Just...doesn't feel right to stare."

Rebecca laughed. "Oh, my dear, you're going to have to get used to looking at my body, as I plan to share it with you a great deal! Now then, let your eyes and your hands wander all over me if you like..." she thrust her hips hard against him and drew his hands up her sides, and set in to rocking hard. As her breasts jiggled, she caught him admiring them and welcomed his gaze as much as his hands all over her body.

Chester moaned -- not as loudly as she did, but he did it all the same and she loved it. As his moans became sharper and more intense, she grunted, "Coming?"

"Almost!" he replied.

"With me!" She picked up the pace and gazed into his eyes as she felt her own second one coming. Just in time, she was rewarded with his mouth opening wide with only a squeak coming out as he came, with her as promised. "Oh, yes!" she shrieked, and he let out joyful nothings in unison with her.