What Women Want; What Women Need 03

Caroline:

What could I say to Arthur? I was shook by his story. I told him how horrible it all was, and how sorry I was for him. I mumbled something about how pleased he should be that he had saved Edith's life and then run back in to save another. He was a hero.

"You got a settlement," I told him, "I don't understand one thing: why haven't you had plastic surgery for your forehead? Surely, they can improve your appearance."

Arthur:

"You don't get it," Arthur screamed. "I was no hero. I was a coward. I wouldn't go back in. I was afraid, scared for my life and because I failed to answer the call six students died. Six students. Professor T. was the hero. He ran back in, he tried to help. I never saw him again. Closed casket. His wife was pregnant with their son. The boy will never know his father, and Professor T. never saw his son.

"Why didn't I get plastic surgery? Ha!! Each morning I look in the mirror and I see my red badge of cowardice staring back at me.

"One day, if -- if -- I do something valuable with my life, do something to help someone somehow, I might have my scar repaired through plastic surgery. Until then this is my constant reminder that I was tested and failed."

Caroline:

"Have you seen a therapist?" I asked him. "Someone who can help you deal with your pain?"

Arthur:

"No," I told Caroline. "I need my pain. It motivates me. It actually calms me."

I leaned closer to her across the diminutive desk in her office.

I reduced the volume of my voice, and spoke in a soothing tone.

"Do you want to help me," I asked.

Of course she answered in the affirmative.

"Then look at my forehead. Come closer." She complied. "See how my forehead changes color from dark red to light red, to purple, to orange-yellow and then to medium red and dark red, and purple, and yellow" I intoned in a serene and gentle voice. "And then back again, over and over.

"Most people find this very restful," I told her.

"I want you to focus on the colors as they go back and forth, back and forth, again and again" -- here I reduced my tempo -- "back and forth again, and do not stop observing my forehead. It should be very relaxing. I find it relaxing. Nod if you do too, but don't take your eyes off my forehead."

Caroline nodded.

My voice, already drawing her in, got even slower and softer, seductive. "Tell me if this makes you so calm so much as you concentrate that your eyes are getting heavy."

"Yes," she answered, subdued.

"It looks like you're becoming sleepy, your head is getting very heavy, and you want to rest it on your shoulder while continuing to look at my forehead. Is that how you feel?" I asked.

"Yes," she again answered in a quiet composed voice.

"Then do so, rest your head," I instructed her. "Gently." And she did. "You seem to be very weary now, very tired," I continued. "You awareness is gently floating, you're beginning to feel drowsy, a soft, extremely pleasant feeling. You feel wonderful, at peace.

"As you continue to stare," I told her, "you will find your eyelids getting even more droopy. Nod if it's getting very hard for you to stay awake."

She did.

"Caroline, allow your eyes to close, there is no need to resist, it feels so pleasant, and so warm. You feel wonderful in a totally restful state, don't you?"

"Yes," she answered, barely audible.

"It's now almost impossible to stay awake, isn't it?

She nodded.

"You want to close your eyes since you cannot keep them open. It's O.K., Caroline. Close your eyes. Rest."

I lowered my voice to a bare whisper and continued: "You are in a trance now, half asleep, but you hear everything I say, and understand you want to please me. You look like you love the wonderful warm feeling that has swept over you now. Am I right?"

"Yes."

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Caroline and Arthur had a long discussion. He directed the topics they covered, and she opened up to him about everything. He learned of her limited sexual experience, the fact that her husband had been her only sexual partner, and she was terrified of getting back to dating again.

Arthur opened Caroline up to realize that she was greatly attracted to him in a physical sense. And she found him fascinating in all other respects, especially his intelligence. If she could win him over, she believed, he could meet all her needs and she could help him emotionally and physically. Neither of them would have to engage in the whole tedious dating scene.

He explained that when she regained consciousness she would realize that she needed him and she could convince him that she needed him. If she asked him, he would move in with him, he explained to her. And that of course is what she wanted.

There was an easy way around the University's ethics code that prevented persons in authority from taking advantage of students. Arthur explained it to her.

Arthur had money and he could give up his apartment to move in with her. She would make the mortgage payments on her home, he would pay the property taxes and utilities. They could split groceries and trips and alternate paying for restaurants. Arthur coached her in all the things she should direct him to do to facilitate their new life together. He explained that she shouldn't rush him, but gently point out the mutual advantages.

Before Arthur lifted Caroline out of her trance, he implanted a trigger word that would put her into a receptive deep sleep in the future. And he made sure to impart that she would have no recollection, that she would not know he had induced her into a trance or implanted deep post-hypnotic suggestions.

Caroline:

As we spoke I came to realize that this wonderful young man needed support, and that I could provide such support. Indeed, in just the few minutes we had been together, I felt an extreme closeness to him; this was remarkable, really, given that we barely knew one another. But I wanted to know him much, much better. I wanted to help him through his pain. I knew I could.

And I wanted him in the Biblical sense, too: I found him amazingly attractive. The slightest thing he would do -- tilt his head, let out with a little chuckle, frown, brush my fingers with his, wink at me -- caused me to become aroused sexually.

I couldn't wait any longer. I told Arthur how I felt, and what I wanted for us. And he was receptive. And with some of the things he said I thought I was going to swoon, like some Victorian maiden. At one point, totally out of the blue, before we had even touched upon any sexual matters, he asked if my husband had been an attentive lover. "Not really," I admitted.

"Well, did you have orgasms?" he followed up. I turned red and my blood pressure spiked 70 points, and I sheepishly told him no.

"Well, I'll have to do something about that," he responded, "don't you think?"

Speechless, I just nodded. Vigorously.

Almost immediately, I figured out how we could legally avoid the sexual harassment protections the University provides. He simply would not take any course from me. He could transfer into the one Real Property course taught by my colleague, Professor L. I would talk to the professor first and I knew he would accommodate me. And Arthur would have to get a new course advisor. That would be automatic: just fill out and file a new form. "Unofficially I can give you in-depth, hands-on guidance every night," I told him.

"Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson?" he asked, making reference to The Graduate.

Arthur:

She spelled out all the terms of our merger, just as I had placed the notions in her. Just for the record, I wanted to place a lot more into here than mere ideas.

She asked when I could move in with her.

"Not until Saturday," I responded to her immediate scowl. "But I'll get us a suite at the Bell Tower Hotel for the next four nights until then," I told her. "My treat. Have you ever stayed at the Bell Tower," I asked.

"Nobody who actually lives in Ann Arbor stays there," she replied. "It makes no sense."

"Makes sense to me," I replied. "It's a one-block walk to the law school. And it has 24 hour room service and stocks Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée 1977."

"What's that?" she asked.

"You don't know what room service is?" I exclaimed.

"You mocketh me," she said, "what is the other foreign-sounding thingy you mentioned?"

"I mocketh you not," came my rejoinder. "The 'foreign-sounding thingy' sounds foreign because it is French, an impudent little champagne I enjoy."

"I've never tasted it," she replied.

"Well, then, that's two firsts you'll get to experience tonight," I teased her.

Caroline:

When he said that I flushed, tingled all over, experienced just a minuscule little shudder, and all my senses tripped to red alert. How can this man do these things to me?

Arthur:

"Got to run," I told her. "Be there by seven. The champagne will be chilled. I'll order up a meal for 10:00, a large meal. Sex makes me hungry."

Caroline:

Again. If he keeps this up, I may experience the "Big O" tonight, but not for the first time.

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Arthur:

Afterwards, over dinner, she asked me how I could have been so, you should pardon the expression, cock-sure of myself and my ability to bring to fruition in her the desired result. "After all," Caroline said, "you were aware that I had failed repeatedly to have an orgasm throughout my marriage."

"When I was 16, I took my first vacation alone, to Cabo San Lucas," I told her by way of answer. "I stayed at a very cheap motel right on the beach, and I got to know another guest pretty well, a guy I now call the 'aging hippy.'

"This guy lived in Northern California, where he did roofing or flooring, depending on the weather. He lived in his parents' basement. When he would save up enough money, he'd take his surfboard and motorcycle and ride all the way down the California coast, to Cabo. He would get up each morning about 5:30, and cycle up the coast around 12 miles to a good surfing beach, by the lighthouse.

"If the waves were good, he would surf all morning. If there weren't good waves, which was the case maybe half the time, he would come right back to the motel, lie by the pool and drink cervezas. When he began to run low on money, he would motor on back to Mommy and Daddy's basement and start earning to save up for his next trip.

Caroline looked at me and arched an eyebrow, clearly wondering just where this was going.

"Well," I countered, "I suppose you want me to get to the point. Well, perhaps I have meandered a bit, but I want you to know that it is a little hard to concentrate when you're sipping French champagne and wearing only French undies.

"So here's the point. One day I asked A.H. if there was some way to figure out in advance whether the waves would be any good on a given day, so as to avoid an otherwise unnecessary trip up the coast at an ungodly hour. 'Is there some way you can know prior to the fact whether suitable waves will arrive?'

"'Waves are like women,' my hippie friend announced. 'They come when they want to.'

"Caroline, it was easy: I just made certain you would want to."

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And so Arthur moved in with Caroline. He tutored her in ways to please him: he picked out all her clothing, accompanied her to an upscale salon in Bloomfield Hills where he had her hair cut, colored and styled, and had her pussy waxed and colored. When she engaged in little behaviors that bugged him, Arthur said nothing openly. Why cause resentments, when he could just put her under and implant a tad of aversion therapy to cure the offending conduct. In this way he had Caroline discontinue use of a diaphragm for birth control in favor of an injection of progestin given at six-month intervals. Arthur disliked the diaphragm chiefly because he did not want to dip his reproductive equipment into an environment that had been lathered with spermicidal cream.

They lived together openly, and did nothing to hide their arrangement from the University. After all, they were not violating the letter or the spirit of the fraternization rules. Both Arthur and Caroline achieved a kind of cult status with their respective student and faculty constituencies.

Arthur studied very hard, 14 hours a day on average, seven days a week. But he had a strict limit: every night at ten o'clock the books were put aside. And they enjoyed their nights together. Frequently in the early evening, Arthur would sit on a couch or loveseat and allow Caroline to suck him off or bring him to climax manually. He found he could compartmentalize himself and receive these ministrations without losing concentration on the text before him. He could also keep her well-tuned, skillfully fingering her pussy and massaging her nipples and clit while keeping focused on his work. Arthur's attentions were sexual more than sensual; Caroline's loving efforts were sexual and highly sensual as well.

When mid-term results were announced, Arthur had received A's in all courses, except for one Med School lab course, where he and his lab partner scored an A-. Arthur was also named Articles Editor for the law review, the first time ever for a first-year student, and made one of the moot court teams that argued before a panel of jurists including the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter. His team finished fifth out of eight teams. Only two of the 16 participants were first-year students.

Arthur and Caroline celebrated by flying down to New Orleans for Wednesday through Sunday of the Thanksgiving break. Arthur brought his little custom-made case about the size of a hardcover novel. In it were mouthpieces for clarinet and trombone. Arthur played both quite well, and jammed with bands playing gigs at night, and with buskers a few times by day in the French Quarter. They went to the Old Absinthe House, where they each bought a shot glass full and repaired to the women's room where Arthur licked the potent spirit off of Caroline's nipples and she in turn suckled it off of Arthur's stout prick. One time, early on, Caroline had asked Arthur whether he ever went down on women. "Not in this lifetime," came his prompt reply.

They settled into a very comfortable, very complementary arrangement -- note the word "relationship" has not been used. Arthur was far from giddy, but very satisfied overall. Caroline never told Arthur she loved him. She did love him but was afraid to tell him and risk his failure to declare reciprocity. For his part, he did not love her, and doubted he ever would. That said, he never gave a thought to changing things: four years would be a long time.