Total Focus

"And that's the only thing that has saved you. I'm looking forward to not have a steady stream of complaints about your teaching."

"I have not had any complaints about my teaching."

"I don't suppose that you would, teaching to students who presumably know little or nothing about your subject, which is why your Faculty managers schedule you to teach only first-year students." Barraclough was just about to respond to this rebuke but thought better of it. It was time to cut and run while he had the chance.

"You two intrigue me. How does this new learning method work?"

"We call it total focus," Holly said. "Essentially it consists of three phases, the ability to exclude what is happening around you so that you can focus entirely on the task at hand. The second part is to develop your photographic abilities memory so that you can recall what it is that you need to recall. The third part is developing an internal filing system that allows you to retrieve information quickly and accurately, sort of a built-in filing system for the brain."

"Could you teach this method to other students?"

"I taught Tom, so how hard can it be." I was about to protest at the slight when she kissed me.

This marked the beginning of five very hectic and rewarding years with the University.

A new course was developed with the two of us leading this. There was resistance from other lecturers when those in our classes began producing assignments that proved difficult to markdown and students who began to get ahead of the curriculum, leaving these lecturers thinking that they were no longer relevant.

We resigned our University posts at the end of the fifth year, having satisfied ourselves that we had a sufficiently strong cohort of lecturers who would be able to take over from us. It was time for a new direction in our lives.

"I have come to the conclusion," I said to Holly one night after a satisfactory conclusion to our lovemaking.

"Oh, and what might this be?"

"For years we have been studying information either in written form or by listening to others, what I'm proposing is that we travel, firstly this country and later the world, to get our information first hand."

"And what do you propose to do with this information?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead. Something will come up during our travels."

We never did get any further than Australia. We carefully plotted our journey, setting out from Sydney and heading down the coast, stopping often and studying the area and its history. The more that we travelled the more that we realised that we Aussies were a pretty innovative and resilient lot. The number of things that evolved from the inventive minds of Australian's need to improvise Just to survive in this ever-changing world.

What interested us most was small country towns that at one time had a thriving economic and social life. Most of these had seen the good times slowly disappear as the kids moved to the city in search of fame and fortune. On the surface of it everything was going along fine, but talking to these people we came to realise that the suicide rate, particularly among the men who couldn't face the fact that they could no longer support their families. The only thing that seemed to hold these communities together was their sense of humour, and sense of community. At first, the residents didn't know how to take us, two city folk wandering around the bush with a camera. They tended to open up a bit when they realised that we weren't from a TV network looking for sensationalism.

Our journey took us along the southern coastline until we reached Fowlers Bay that marked the beginning of the Great Australian Bight and the Nullabor Plain.

"We are now driving along the biggest, at 270,000 square kilometres, single lump of limestone in the world. This goes for the next 1,000 or so kilometres and the ocean cliffs are between 60 to 100 metres high (200-400ft)"

"Where did you get all this information?" Holly asked.

"While you were in the little girls' room I read the brochures in the servo (gas station)."

"What else did it tell you?"

"That it has one of the world's longest stretches of straight road and railway line. Running along the Eyre Highway is the world's longest golf course, an 18 hole par 72 course that stretches for 1365 kilometres. Because the terrain is so flat there is no natural drainage, not that it gets that much rain, but there are sinkholes leading to an extensive underground river system that, because it is connected to the sea is salt water. There are blow holes several hundred metres from the sea that expel air that builds up when water enters through sea caves."

"I heard that this area is good for whale watching."

'Yes, in season the southern right and humpback whales come along the shallow waters to calve and mate. There are several lookouts along the coast where we can stop and watch them."

We worked our way across the seemingly desolate landscape, stopping at the settlements strategically setup to provide fuel and refreshment for the travelers and the long haul trucks that crisscross the country. Talking to the people at these places was interesting and the people generous with their time and stories.

By the time we reached Albany in Western Australia, we were just about travelled out.

"Holly."

"Oh dear, this sounds ominous. When you start a conversation calling me Holly I know that I might not like what's coming next."

"You'll like this one, at least I hope that you will." We were snuggled up in bed, a storm was raging outside that discouraged us from venturing out.

"Okay, what am I letting myself in for?"

"What I want you to do is to just do nothing and say nothing while I try something that has been on my mind for some time now."

"This sounds ominous. Okay, I'm in your hands."

I took her face in my hands and kissed her, my lips barely touching her as I kissed my way around her beautiful face to her ears. I whisper of air left my lips into her ears and I felt her begin to squirm so I withdrew and nibbled her earlobe before kissing the pulse point on her neck and very gently nibbling her.

"Fuck." she whispered.

"Don't say anything."

I returned briefly to her face before kissing my way further down her body until I reached her 'goodly handful'. The tip of my tongue barely touched her nipple, but the effect was for her obviously very satisfying. I kissed my way around her right breast and across to the left one, lavishing the same attention to it before moving down her body, pausing briefly at her navel and arriving at the 'holy of holies', her pussy. I stopped, my tongue lightly touching her clit. I heard a soft moan from above me, it seemed to be working. I spread her legs just a little, enough to allow my face between them. My tongue slid along her pussy lips and returned to her clit for some time before I inserted a finger so that the nail was just hidden and moved it back and forth along the length of her slit, my tongue pushing her hood back from her clit and caressing it. My finger penetrated to the first knuckle and I felt her dampness.

Slowly, as I moved my finger back and forth, I pushed it further inside her until it was all the way in. Her hips were gently shuddering. It was time. Sliding between her legs I introduced my hard cock to her pussy as far as to conceal its head. I held him there for several, I don't know exactly how many, minutes before slowly pushing him until I was fully inside her. I held him there, again I don't know how long, before slowly pulling him until he was almost all the way out. This process of insertion and withdrawal went on for some time until she began what seemed to be prolonged orgasm.

"Oh my god."

"I'm not your god, I'm just someone who is desperately in love with you."

"You could have fooled me." She said sarcastically. "What are you doing to me?"

"In time, we have all the time in the world."

"I don't know how long I can stand this."

"Well let's find out shall we?"

"Fuck."

"No, this is lovemaking, not fucking. There is a difference you know."

I don't know how long it was before Holly lost control. "Holy crap!"

As a result of her losing it, I reached the most amazing climax of my life. It was a spectacular experience.

"Holy crap! What just happened? What has brought this on?" Holly asked.

"It was something I noticed in small towns. The people there didn't have a lot of money or the trappings of wealth that we all take for granted. What they had in abundance was a love based on companionship, not just sex. I know that sex under total focus is intense and when I come it just about blows the back of my head off, but I've come to realise that, let me put it this way, the times that I feel closest to you, really close, is when we are in bed just holding each other. There is a connection there where we are two parts of the same whole. I've been speaking to these people, not about sex so much, but what brings them closest to each other, and the answer was love and respect for each other. One old guy did say that making love to his wife of forty years was still something special, but if it was just him, and the term that he used was from a time past, getting his rocks off, there was always a sheep. What separates us from sheep is that they do it for procreation while we do it for pleasure as well. We can get so much pleasure from making love, something that's lost in just sex."

"Does it work the same if I were to take control?"

"Probably, but I think that it works best if neither of us takes control. I felt that a demonstration of what I'm talking about would be a better way of explaining it so that you would be more likely to want to explore it in greater detail."

"I think that we should try it again, together." She took my face in her hands and kissed me.

It was a cold winter's day at Middleton Beach in Western Australia and if you were to be looking, as I was, at the image on my drone controller, at the pattern that she was drawing in the beach sand, you would probably comment that it was either a fine example of geometric art or a pretty pattern. If it were the former you would probably wonder how she could do this precisely geometric pattern without any form of guidance, and to achieve it would require a great deal of concentration.

The guidance was, briefly, in her head, the concentration non-existent, that was focused elsewhere.

She was trying to come to terms with the past three hours in which she, we, had experienced something that she had not factored into her concept of 'total focus'. She had believed that the intense sexual gratification to be obtained from a total focus on our genitalia was the pinnacle of such experience. She would now have to reassess that based on the holistic full body loving experience that I had just, three hours ago introduced to her, and which had occupied us for the last three hours.

She finished her pattern and walked up the beach, deep in thought. "I've been thinking," She paused as if to gather her thoughts into words, "It would seem that there is a time and a place for everything. I have to admit that what we have just done has taken me by surprise. I never thought that the tunnel vision of total focus could be faulted, and under certain circumstances that still holds true. But we will have to rethink this and devise a process where the users can learn to recognize the times when it's not appropriate. I had forgotten about the human element in our lives, and when we factor that in, the parameters will have to be extended to include that element."

"I've also been giving this some thought. What I felt as we made love I would almost describe as spiritual in that I felt as if I were opening myself up to you completely. I also felt you opening yourself to me. This is what true love is about, an opening of yourself to another."

"I understand what you are saying, feeling, and I have to admit that this has brought a whole new element into how I feel about us."

"In what way?" I wasn't sure what was coming next, and what came caught me by surprise, it was something that we have never discussed.

"I have been thinking for some time that there is something missing in our relationship, and it hit me on the beach. I look at my parents who I sort of take for granted, and they demonstrate and vocalize their feelings for each other, and to us. They include each other and us in their lives and that's what's wrong with 'total focus'. We cannot go through life thinking only of each other, we have to become more open. I know, mainly because Mother brings it up whenever I speak to her, that they would love grandkids, I'm sort of heading in that direction myself. I think that it's about time that we started a family, so out these go." She threw her latest container of contraceptive pills into the waste bin.

We had sold our car, it was showing signs of the wear and tear of the trip, caught a REX flight to Perth and lazed our way back to Sydney on the Indian Pacific train.

We were in the middle of packing our things in Holly's apartment. We have just bought our own house and today is moving day. "Tom, darling."

"Why am I scared?"

"You know that I'm no longer on the pill?"

"Yes, I am aware of that little fact."

"Well, I'm almost a hundred percent sure that I'm pregnant. I've made an appointment with a doctor and I'd love it if you came with me, after all you are involved in this."

We now have something more to factor into 'total focus'.