DEKALB

1972-1974

UNIVERSITY

(Nicki)

I lay naked with Ross in the grey room, my heart beating hard.  Though we had removed our clothes, I still felt very warm.  Her animal scent was heavy and forbidding.  I gazed at her triangle of hair, squat and black.  Then I stared across the room, without thought.  Wind hissed through the trees outside her Douglas East dorm room in DeKalb.

Tentatively, I slipped my arm around Ross and grazed my lips against her cheek.  She returned my kiss hungrily.  I placed the palm of my hand against her fat, little breast.  We kissed again, thorough, patient.

I lay mute for about ten minutes, aware of the heat of Ross’ body.  Trembling, I slid my leg over both of hers, pressing my weight against her belly.  I flicked an index finger inside against her cunt's pliant walls and yanked it up and down.  She moved convulsively.  We exchanged some words.  Then my cock, erect against her perineum, jerked briefly and almost unnoticeably, wetting the pink cotton sheets beneath us.

A few minutes later, Ross stroked my cock, like a small, wet bud now.

Ross called and said that she did not want to see me anymore.  She mumbled that she was going on medication and entering therapy.  After I finished speaking to her, the phone clicked, and the dial tone buzzed.  I called her back, but no one picked up.

I scurried along the snowy street in front of the Douglas East dorm.  A girl in a window called out to a boy that she loved him.  He grinned.  Grimacing, I shook my head.  I went on alone.

Nicki and I stretched out next to each other on the couch, in her Neptune West dorm room, on a red coverlet, in front of the TV.  I started to caress her breast.  Lisping, she told me to take off my jacket.  Then I poked my fingertips into her yielding breast, squeezing it.  Beneath my fingers, her nipple stiffened hard and rough.  As my fingers massaged, her unbuttoned shirt slid against the back of my hand.  She bent toward me.  Her fat, young breast, cupped in my palm, shifted under the flannel shirt. She began to ask me what I was doing.  Slurring her words, she started to repeat her question, then faltered as if she had forgotten what she was going to ask.  I said that I had not known she was planning to attend Northern Illinois University.  She nodded and replied that she was a dance major.  I added that I had not seen her since grade school.

I unbuttoned the rest of Nicki’s shirt and flipped it aside.  Tentatively, I bent down and sucked on a large, stubby nipple.  Her hand grasped the nape of my neck.  I pulled on the nipple, then bit her breast’s soft underside, kneading it between my teeth.  When my lips twisted it, Nicki moaned faintly, her fingers curling over my cheek.  I sucked on her thickened nipples, one after the other.  My tongue tasted the salt of her sweat.  I leant back, took one ripe, white breast and stroked it.  I just barely kissed her breast's fragrant brown tip.  She struggled out of my grasp and switched off the TV.

We raced past half a dozen sunbathers.  A dozen geese waddled near the edge of the East Lagoon.  We scattered them when we trotted onto the pond trail.  As we shot out from beneath a patch of willows, the sun glared down on us.  Nicki put on a burst of speed, leaving me behind.  Gravel crunched beneath her feet.  Her big breasts bounced wildly beneath her t-shirt.  She darted between two Frisbee players, their heads whipping around to follow her.  Laughing, she galloped across the bridge to the lagoon’s island and flopped onto her stomach.  She waved for me to hurry.

Nicki’s short, black hair.  Pixie-cut.  Her green eyes.  Pointed nose.  Her soft, pliant lips.  Her white teeth, a few of which were crooked.  Gap between her two front teeth.  Long tongue.  Specks of pimples.  Long, up-tilted breasts.  Big nipples.  Her tiny waist.  Smallish abdomen. 

The wrinkles of her navel.  Velvety, auburn bush.  Her slim, curved-in vagina.  Grainy, pink-red vulva.  Tiny clit. Tight, little rear.  Her thin thighs.  Strong calves.  Slender toes.

Big brassiere.  T-shirt and jeans.  Cigarette in fingers.  Her strong hands.  Her broken nails.  Red chipped polish.  Coins of ears.  Unsteady voice.  Wiggly walk.  A lovely odor.  Glasses she seldom wore.  Gravelly voice.  Scars on the inside of her left elbow.

Scornful and child-like.  Angry.  Not too bright.  Slight lisp.

Nicki lounged back on her bed, naked.  When I sat down, she mumbled, her green eyes fluttering.  I grasped her hand and pressed my fingers against hers briefly.  She stammered.  Out of the blue, she started to tell me about That Girl, a TV show she loved.  I slipped my hand behind her head.  As my lips met hers, I pushed my tongue into her mouth.  She caressed my long hair and then my beard.

I darted my hand down and pinched Nicki’s clitoris.  She shuddered and jammed her legs together, crying out huskily.  I stroked her thighs.  After a while, they parted.  I touched her vulva, then propped myself up with my elbows, the hollows of her hips resting below my face.  Slowly, I sucked her lips into my mouth, as much as I could gather.  My head rolled around.

Nicki pounded her cunt hard against my face.  She grunted and moaned, the sounds blending into one another.  I thrashed about, my cheeks and beard wet.  As my tongue slid past her vulva, I flicked her clit with my index finger.  Her lips pulsed against my lips.  When my tongue ran in a circle once, she pounded on the bed with her fists and humped her behind up and down.  Her long breasts flipped around.  She let out a groan, first low, then high.  She flopped back onto the bed limply.

Nicki dug a small, red velvet bag out of her closet and perched on her bed.  Frowning, she beckoned me over.  She removed several items from the bag: rubber tube, syringe, spoon, lighter, bottle of water, alcohol pads and plastic bag of heroin.  When I sat down beside her, she smiled at me.

Nicki cleaned the spoon with a pad.  She placed a chunk of white powder in the spoon, then poured a little water on it.  She heated the spoon with the lighter, dropped a ball of cotton in it and drew brown tar out into her syringe.  Carefully, she set the spoon down, cleaned the inside of her elbow with a pad and tied the tube around her bicep.  She grabbed the syringe and injected herself.  After she removed the tube, she flopped back.

Nicki whispered that she felt warm.  She asked me to put Eat a Peach on her stereo.  I put my hand on her thigh, but she removed it abruptly.

When I groaned, Nicki laughed.  Her hand continued to chug on my cock, her grip soft, her fingers relaxed.  Murmuring, she rocked on her bottom.  Her other hand slid down my thigh.  Quietly, she licked her thick lips.  I lifted my feet and set them down, felt an orgasm rising and groaned again.  Out of my speakers whispered “Living in the Past”.  Nicki tilted her face up and stilled her hand.  My swollen glans peeked beyond her fist.  Two beads of seed rolled from its slit.

Nicki resumed massaging my cock, frowning.  I wrapped my fingers in the strands of her wavy hair.  She nodded a few times, then rubbed her hand against her slightly acned cheek.  After she wound my penis in an arcing circle, she tugged it again.  Two students walked by outside my dorm room, talking.  Moaning, I untangled my hand from her hair and lay back on the bed.

Nicki flopped down, one arm crooked over my left thigh.  She smacked my cock up and down.  She spat in the palm of her other hand, then swirled it around the tip of my cock.  Mumbling, I thrashed about.  Her fist crept up and down over and over.  She rose on her knees and grabbed my penis with both hands, her fingers twisting.  I plucked at one of her puffy nipples.  Spunk streamed out of my cock in links of grey over her hands.

I burst into her room at Douglas East.  Nicki and Madison, a friend, were stretched out on her bed, in each other’s arms.  After Madison rested her head against Nicki’s shoulder, she peeked up at me.  Nicki smiled and kissed Madison.  Madison colored darkly.

I sat down next to Nicki in the back of the Stevenson South cafeteria.  When I started to talk to her about her heroin use, she hunched over.  It was lunchtime, with people milling around.  Glowering, she snapped that she did not want to talk about her dope.  I asked her why she took it.  She said that she did not know.  Then, nodding her head, she muttered that she liked the rush. 

I rested on my right side, one leg bent at the knee.  Gently, I caressed my inner thighs and balls.  I grasped the shaft of my penis and massaged it.  As my forefinger and thumb rubbed my scrotum, I inhaled deeply and shook my head.  My thoughts were about Nicki.

I stroked my swelling penis, then paused.  My fingertips massaged my balls lightly.  After I fondled my belly and thighs, I inhaled and exhaled quickly.  I jerked my penis, then stopped and waited.  Bit by bit, my body tightened, then relaxed.  I grabbed my hard penis again and pumped it up and down.  As my balls began to strain, my hand faltered.  Then semen spurted over my fist thickly, running down my fingers and catching between them.

In Drawing and Composition class, near the Olson Gallery, I sketched a portrait of my Mom.

While I was speaking, I realized Nicki had passed out again.  Like a child, she lay in my lap, her head cradled in my arms.  A bit of vomit clung to her lower lip.

Nicki crouched in a chair by the bookcase, babbling inanely.  Only gradually did I realize she had in her hands in her pants.

When I leant over and kissed the top of her head, she peered up at me and made a moronic face.

Nicki’s jeans were tight.  They fit over her cunt, particularly her vulva.  They cupped her ass.  She could not kneel in them.  When she tried to bend, the material strained and sizzled.  She grunted to get into them.

As she bent over at the practice bar, her left toe balanced on point and her right leg swooped back and up in a curve almost to her head.

In the vacant classroom, I reached beneath Nicki’s coat and slid my fingers between her legs.  She stiffened.  Quickly, I wrenched her zipper down, slipped my hand under her yellow panties and inserted a finger.  When I wiggled the finger, she inhaled.  She grabbed my arm and lurched against me.  I tugged my finger up and down repeatedly.  Suddenly, she yelled at me to stop.

Nicki huddled over by the wall, wrapped only in an Indian cloth, inspecting one of my paintings.  She wheeled suddenly and grinned.  I glanced over at her.  Hooting, she threw the sheet open and flapped it around, showing herself to me.

Nicki and I and our friends stood on a corner near Lincoln Park in Chicago.  It was at a huge antiwar protest organized by the Mobilization in the spring.  Wind pushed against us.  Hand-in-hand, chanting, we began marching down North Clark Street toward the Loop.  In the distance, to the south, the gorgeous skyscrapers of downtown Chicago soared up against a blue hazy sky.

In the Holmes Student Center, I stood chatting with Kevin, an art teacher.  Someone walked up behind me and ground their slight breasts into my back.  I heard Krysten, a friend, whisper an obscenity in my ear.

I snuggled in bed, waiting for her, late at night.  Only the tip of my nose stuck out from beneath the cotton blankets.  It was dead silent.   Outside, it was raining fiercely.  As I was drifting off to sleep, I heard her clatter up the stairs, calling to me angrily.

I fingered Nicki’s old jeans pleasurably.  The seat was shiny, and the crotch was worn a bit thin.  The legs were somewhat frayed at the bottom.  The jeans smelled of her scent.  They recalled her curves.

On the island in the East Lagoon, clad in a halter and shorts, barefoot, Nicki danced sinuously to the Sigel-Schwall band.  They played “Hush Hush”.  Chuckling, she grabbed my hand and pulled me up.

She used that mouth to suck cock.

I could not be sure, but I thought she was winking at me.

As she brushed by me, I touched her smooth, silky arm.  Her countenance was unchanged.  She did not notice me.

Instead of taking hold of the doorknob, by accident, Nicki grabbed me by my rear.  She let out a tiny giggle.

Before I saw her, I recognized her by her scent.

On her splayed knees, before me, her hands on her thighs, Nicki leant back.  Thick bushes sheltered us in Hunter Park.   The spring grass was damp because it had just rained.  With a convulsive move, one more time quickly, she swooped forward and licked my cock.  Her teeth touched me a little.  She rocked back abruptly and slapped her hand across her mouth, her breasts and stomach lifting.  With a strangled sound, she hiccupped.  As her eyes widened, she hiccupped violently, her breasts jiggling.  She put her thumbnail past her thick, wide lips and nibbled on it.  Her head bowed, she hiccupped again.  Nicki smiled, exhibiting the gap between her two front teeth.  She started to grab for my cock again, but another hiccup popped out of her mouth.

Nicki swatted me on the arm.  Stammering, she said that she did not want to argue about using horse.  I shook my head.  She added that she did not shoot up that often.  She undid some of the buttons on my shirt and reached in to tickle along my ribs with her broken nails.  As we lay on the lawn behind Neptune, she left her arm coiled around my waist under my shirt.  It was late spring but still cool out.  I started daydreaming.  The track marks inside her elbow scraped against me.

Nicki lay on her side, her back facing me, the blanket and sheets thrown carelessly over her thighs and calves.  A tiny gold earring rested against the lobe of her right ear.  Her shoulder blades were arched, and her spine was curved.  One leg was angled up slightly.  Between the large cheeks of her ass arched the pale cut of her anus.  It was pink, soft and clean.

In Lundgren Library, Pamela showed me the National Geographic magazine with the Altamira cave paintings.  Excited, I leafed through the pages.  She beamed at me, slipped her arm through mine and laid her head on my shoulder.  I was home for the summer.

Solemnly, Nicki swept into the room, clad only in a long, white linen skirt that hung from her hips and met the floor.  A circle of lilies lay far back on her head.  As she moved, her long breasts tilted up and down.  She began singing a song that I had written specially for her dance class.  It was fall.

Nicki broke off abruptly, smiled and said that she was too busy rehearsing to see me right then.  After she folded my hands in hers, she kissed them.  Still smiling, she removed a flower from her hair and passed it to me.  She kissed my cheek and smoothed my long hair back.

After Nicki unknotted the light beige shawl, which hung around her shoulders, it slipped to the floor.  She moved one of my window’s thin blue curtains over, then shifted the other one out of the way.  The sun was setting, and orange light poured over her.  Unlit Christmas lights framed the window.  Carefully, Nicki climbed onto the ledge and examined the dusty window with a fingertip. She unlatched the window, plucked the orchid from her right ear and dropped the flower out, which slowly whirled down to the snowy street, ten stories below.  Cold crept into the room.  It was still mid-winter.

Nicki fluffed her long white dress out about her and made a few strange remarks about “The Big, Two-Hearted River”, a superb short story I had been reading.  Almost as an afterthought, she started to tell me how I would like heroin if I tried it.  I was at my easel, painting a portrait of Chloe.  I grimaced and shook my head.

Nicki pointed out the window, plopped down on the sill and rocked on her bottom, laughing.  In the orange light, her fingers settled on her wide hips, then at her knees.  Nicki folded her hands about her mouth and yelled at someone in the street, who shouted back.  She pulled her short hair loose from a rubberband and tossed the rubberband on the floor.

Nicki ran her fingers down her thighs and calves, unlaced her boots and kicked them off, one after the other.  Lithely, she half-rose and peered out at the frozen cornfields to the west.  She rolled off the ledge, colored gray now by the fading twilight.  Bending, she picked up her robe.  While she perched on the edge of my bed, she talked more about the short story.  Then she whispered that she had to take a shower.

After a time, Nicki bustled back from one of the floor bathrooms, chafing her short, wet hair with a thick towel.  It was evening now, and the room was dark.  She swarmed towards me, laughing, shivering.  As she lurched to a halt, she dropped her robe and toweled her ass with one hand.  Wet footprints trailed out behind her.  With her other hand, Nicki began to comb out her hair, knotting it in back with the rubberband again.  She started toward the small Christmas lights at my window, which sparkled now, mentioning the short story again, making a crude observation.  Her lisp was prominent.

I lowered my head, raised it and muttered to myself.  Nicki glanced at me and grinned, drying her large breasts with the towel, her head at an angle.  Her hips worked from side to side.  I put down my brush, marched over from my easel, grappled with the window and slammed it shut.  She half-whirled and stammered, laughing softly. Then her eyes turned dull.  She propped herself up on the window ledge again.

Nicki tilted back, so I could look out the window.  Under a dark sky, below the dorm, among the streetlights, branches of trees waved about.  Here, it was warm and cozy.  She reached up and touched my cheek.  I went over to my desk, flipped open a silver box and took out a joint.  After I lit it, I puffed on it.  Against the evening’s blackness, the Christmas lights twinkled around Nicki.  Her eyes dreamy, she padded over, hunched up against a wall and started biting her nails.  She came over to me, took the joint and puffed on it, too.  Then she dropped the joint in an ashtray and led me to my bed.

As Nicki and I lay down on my bed, she kissed me.  I stroked her damp hair.  The full moon and the Christmas lights lit my dorm room softly.  I took her in my arms and whispered that I wanted to fuck.  She narrowed her eyes, and her head jerked.  Then she nodded.

Nicki plopped her lips on mine and laid back.  She stared at the ceiling.  For a time, I kissed her breasts and sucked on her nipples.  When she reached down and fondled my penis, I groaned.  She grabbed a pillow and stuffed it under her ass.  I slid on top of her.  We kissed again, my hard cock pressing against her thigh.

I rolled off Nicki, went to my chest and found a condom.  Back in bed, I tore open the wrapper and rolled the condom onto my hard penis.  She eyed me impassively.  I lifted myself back on top of her and fed my cock into her slit.  She felt tight around my penis and wet against my balls.  We kissed, our tongues pushing against each other.

After I began thrusting into Nicki, she started jerking her hips up and down.  We both stayed silent.  I dug my face into the pillow under her head.  She threw her arms around my back tightly, her calves crossing over my thighs.

We kept bucking against each other, sweaty now.  Nicki grunted loudly once.  Suddenly, I shot my semen into the condom, grunting.  She thrashed several times, whimpering.  Then, for a minute, panting, we lay there.

As I raised myself off Nicki, my cock flopped out.  I slid down beside her.  Quickly, she kissed me on the cheek.  For a time, I could not move.  Then I unrolled the condom, which had a strong odor, and dropped it onto the floor.

Nicki thanked me in a tiny voice, her eyes far away.  I told her I had been a virgin.  She jerked her head toward me, staring.  I said that was not exactly true.  But I added that it was the first time with someone I really liked.  She smiled and touched my cheek again.

After Nicki got dressed and left, I retrieved the condom and examined it.  It still smelled.  I placed it in a tin box in my chest for safekeeping and then sat on my windowsill in the moonlight.  The Christmas lights glowed on and off.

Nicki rushed into my dorm room.  Whining, shaking, she bent down.  Her hair looked stringy, and her skin looked dry.  Then she dove under the covers of my bed, coughing.  I asked her what was wrong.  She mumbled something, but I could not hear what it was.  I began to plead with her about the powder.

In the Pizza Villa, on Lincoln Highway, in mid-winter, I noticed Nicki.  She lounged by a jukebox that blared out “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys”.  People crowded the door behind me, jostling.  After I galloped up to the group she was with, I slapped her on the ass.  She whirled around in surprise, her hair flying, her eyes big.  Squealing, the other girls also spun around.  I did not know the girl.  She was someone else.  People pushed past us, and I stepped aside.  When I apologized, stammering, she listened blankly.  The girl skipped forward, then tapped my shoulder, giggling.

Ross smiled slightly when she saw me in the Hillside Restaurant, a hamburger joint on Second Street, and spoke over-gently to me.  I grimaced.

When I called Chiyo, her roommate answered.  Her roommate yelled for her to come to the phone.  Chiyo sounded surprised after I brought up the typing I wanted her to do.  She sighed wearily.  We talked for a while, and sometimes she laughed.  At last, I hung up.  I told my roommate John that I thought Chiyo wanted me to ask her out.

When I saw Chiyo again, I did not mention the phone call.  We chatted politely.

Nicki started to tell me a story about her childhood.  I pulled my penis out of her when I realized I was softening.  She spun slowly and crouched, facing me, her breasts swollen, the nipples rock-hard, then continued her story.  A spring breeze shifted through the window in my Stevenson South dorm room.  She glided over to the bookcase and picked out Cannery Row, with which she returned quickly.  She handed me the book.  In the background, “Tamalpais High” played.

Nicki jumped on her bed, catching her flinging breasts, then lowering her hands.  As I caught her hand between my fingers, she squirmed around.  My penis got a bit softer.  She freed her hand from my grasp and waved it back and forth while she finished her story, using the book to illustrate it.  She slammed the book shut and planted her hands on her knees, quivering.  Her legs closed tight.  By this time, my penis was limp.

I started to get up, but Nicki grabbed my thigh and would not let me go.  When I tried to rise again, she gripped me tighter.  I slumped back down on the floor.  As she nestled her cheek against my hip, I stuffed a pillow under my head.  It was early morning, and sunlight shone on the worn floorboards of her dorm room.

Nicki began tracing her fingers across my belt buckle lazily.  Up and down, they eased along my thigh.  Her fingers traveled along my zipper.  They inched across my ass, then rubbed my balls.  Over and over, she retraced her fingers across the same areas.

Nicki started whining and making little sounds.  Her thumb and forefinger came to my hard cock and outlined it under the denim.  She grew silent, then made a surprised, inquisitive noise.  Her fingers kept tracing my cock.  I inhaled and stretched.  She whisked her hand back and forth over the rest of my middle again.

Nicki ran a finger bit by bit over my cock, swollen now in my jeans.  After she stopped, sighing, I whispered to her.  She spoke sadly.  This time, I sighed.  I got up, but she held onto my leg once more.  I dragged her a bit, stopped and lay down again.  We stayed silent.  Suddenly, she jumped up and loped out of the room.

On top of me, Nicki jerked her hips from left to right and back again.  I cried out and nearly came inside her.  She smirked and asked me if I liked that.  She wore a long red dress, and she smoothed the skirt down.  I tried to grab her large chest, but she batted my hands away.  At last, because I was so drunk, I could not come.  So, Nicki rose and led me over to the kitchen sink, where she jerked me off in a tissue.

As I opened my dorm room door, Nicki greeted me, stuttering slightly.  She declined the wine I offered.  It was spring.  Below us, on Stevenson South Drive, traffic rumbled by.

We sat on the floor, watching All in the Family.  Nicki rested against me again.  After a time, I raised my hand to her chin, turned her lips to mine and kissed her.  She frowned.  She had a nose ring in her right nostril.  We watched more of the show.

I unbuttoned Nicki’s shirt and pulled her shirt and then her t-shirt off.  Her breasts were long, rounded and upright.  I told her they were the best ones I had ever seen.  Blushing, she muttered that she was not pretty, but her body was nice.  As I hefted one breast, she caught her breath.

I unbuttoned Nicki’s jeans and slid my hand down.  After she parted her legs, I began to finger her slit.  Her hips started to struggle.  She unzipped my jeans, dug out my cock and began stroking it.

 Nicki crouched on hands and knees on my bed, her ass toward me.  Her eyes narrowed. She craned around to peer at me.  Her mouth split open and closed.  She flipped her short black hair around sloppily, her large, tear-shaped breasts hanging down, jiggling.  As I attempted to insert my cock into her, dog-style, Nicki tried to escape me.  Then she giggled.  When I tried to plunge in again, she feinted to the left.  I missed her once more, my penis springing around.  She laughed delightedly and ducked down, hugging the bed.  I could not get my cock get inside her.

When I got up to leave for a moment, Nicki frowned and nodded.  I found a copy of Pierre Louÿs’ verse and showed her “To Her Breasts”.  She studied it for a few minutes, then giggled and stammered that she did not read poems.  She added that she thought they would get to poetry in her next semester.

I walked into Nicki’s room.  Her desk drawer was partly open.  I spotted her heroin kit in its blue box.  Abruptly, I closed the drawer.

Dreamily, she remarked how she hated it when her panties got bunched up in her crotch.

In Swen Parson library, she called to me, but I did not answer, so she grabbed my book and whacked me over the head and made me yip.

I tossed water on her, so that her big nipples formed through her green cotton work shirt.

With the blue tip of her tongue, she licked the pink palm of my hand slowly.

Nicki lay on her side in my room, lifting one leg as high as possible while resting the other flat on the floor.  Her groin and rear strained at her shorts, and her breasts pushed against her t-shirt.  Sweat covered her face.  She kept grunting.  She kept trying to chase me away.

At a party in the Douglas East dormitory, Nicki huddled in a corner with a young blonde woman.  They kept touching each other’s hands and laughing.

Scowling, she handed me the telephone.  It was Ross.  It was good to hear from her.

At the Friends Meeting, near the campus, in DeKalb, I listened to the pretty girl speaking.

Tiny bruises tattooed her large breasts.

The light through the silk screen dyed her small breasts a bright red.

In bed, she always made me keep my feet around hers, so I warmed them.

Nicki yelled at me that I did not understand girls.  I said that I did not think about them.  She stared at me, then grimaced.

When Nicki finished, spit and semen soaked the hair around my cock and balls.

She squatted in a dark corner of the gallery, wearing the heavy, wooden mask I had painted.  She waved her hand.  Grinning, she removed the mask and let it clunk to the floor.

As we sat side by side, watching Band of Outsiders, I fiddled with her nipples.  She ignored me.

Finger in cunt, tongue on clit.

On a mild spring night, at her parents’ home outside Charlevoix, in the above-ground swimming pool, Nicki tossed me a beach ball.  I threw it to Kaylie, who pitched it to Frankie.  They all wore string bikinis.  When they flung the ball back and forth, their young breasts and asses shivered.  They kept giggling.

Later, Nicki and I kissed in front of her parents’ house, perched on her Chevy.  I fondled her big right breast, then sucked on the swollen nipple.  I slid my hands around to the small of her back.  Two small red tattoos adorned the base of her spine, six inches apart.  One at a time, gently, I touched them.  Then I sucked on her tongue hard.

I could smell another man’s odor on Nicki.

Jessica and Nicki crouched on the carpet, opposite me.  In my dorm room, it was dark.  Outside, a little C-moon shone, and a light rain fell.  It was late spring.  A bootleg from the Allman Brothers at Syracuse University played in the background.

I sipped from a plastic cup of white wine.  Jessica and Nicki had already emptied their cups.  Nicki whispered to Jessica, peered at her and smiled.  Jessica glanced at me, then away.  Frowning, she gazed at Nicki and shrugged. 

I set my cup down, then settled my hand on Jessica’s warm, rounded thigh.  She peered down at my hand.  As Nicki giggled, she leant over and bumped her lips on mine.  I grabbed her large right breast and squeezed.  She grinned, then rubbed her shoulder against mine.  A little drunk now, I dragged her to me and pushed my tongue in her mouth.  She threw her arms around my neck.  People down below us on Stevenson South Drive got out of their car, slamming the doors.

Nicki and I broke apart.  Jessica frowned again.  I slipped my hand in hers.  Nicki kissed me again, her tongue swaying against mine hard.  I smelled the wine on her breath.  After I lifted her t-shirt and shoved her bra down, I bent, sucking on her left nipple.  It swelled in my mouth.  Nicki moaned.  She cupped her fingers over my cock, erect now in my jeans, and squeezed it roughly.

I glanced over at Jessica.  She had blushed bright red.  I kissed her lightly.  As she shook her head, her thick, wavy blonde hair fell over her face abruptly.  I cupped her pert right breast.  Nicki knocked my cup over, a little of the wine spreading out over the tiles.

Jessica shivered suddenly.  I pulled at her blouse, then unbuttoned it, her breasts dividing, then settling.  Quickly, I scooped my hand under her bra and lifted her left breast.  She dipped her head.  Murmuring, Nicki closed her fingers hard against my penis again, tore at my belt, yanked the zipper down and freed my cock.  She stroked it.  My thighs stiffened.

Jessica lurched against my shoulder.  While Nicki held the shaft of my cock, Jessica brushed her index finger over the tip.  I took Jessica’s chin in my hand and kissed her for a time.  Slowly, she kissed me back.  Nicki jerked her hand up and down my cock.  Jessica began rubbing her thumb under the tip.  I leant back and removed Jessica’s blouse and bra.  Still flushing, Jessica grasped my cock and began jerking it up and down, too.  I moaned.  Then I dragged Nicki’s t-shirt over her head and unhooked her bra.

Jessica and Nicki released my cock and stared at it.  Suddenly, Nicki darted down and lapped along its length.  I stretched again, reached over and played with Jessica’s stiff right nipple.  Below me, Nicki licked slowly.  Jessica kissed me again, her breath smelling of weed.  Her lips were hot.  She ducked down, dabbed her tongue at the tip of my penis, then straightened and began sucking on my nipples, one after the other.  I grabbed a bottle and gulped down more wine.

Jessica flopped down beside Nicki, sucked my cock into her mouth and bobbed her head briefly.  I moaned again.  Nicki pushed her tongue at my balls.  I propped myself on my elbows, then laid back.  Reaching up, I caressed Nicki’s left breast and Jessica’s right breast.  Patiently, they sucked and licked at my cock and balls.  I gazed out at the moon, feeling faint.  Rain still came down faintly.  “Statesboro Blues” whispered from my stereo.

Jessica peeked at me.  I grabbed her right arm and struggled up, then helped Nicki rise.  My big cock bobbing, I led them over to my bed.  The girls stripped their clothes off, then they worked together to remove mine.  We plopped down on the bed.  As they both slouched half on me, their breasts puddled against my ribs.  Their hands darted across my chest, then at my penis.  A faint light from the moon came through the window.

Jessica rolled over, found a pipe on my bedside table, lit it and puffed, marijuana smoke hovering over us.  She laid the pipe in an ashtray, then turned back.  When I stuck my tongue in her mouth, she made a muffled sound.  Nicki laughed.  She flopped forward and sipped my cock in greedily.  Then she leant back and laughed again.  Jessica kept kissing me, murmuring.  Nicki began bouncing her mouth on my penis again.  After Jessica broke the kiss, she ducked back down to my cock.  She and Nicki both licked at the tip of my penis.

At last, I sat up.  Woozily, I found a condom in the tin box on my table and rolled it on.  I grasped Jessica by her shoulders, pushed her on her back, crammed a pillow under her ass and slid on top of her.  Her hips were wide, and her cunt had a wet blonde tuft of hair around it.  She was sweaty.  When she parted her legs, I fed my cock inside her and began thrusting.  She hissed.  Nicki shifted to one side.  Jessica raised her legs, crossing them over the back of my thighs.  I pushed into her over and over.  Nicki kissed me on the cheek, then smiled wildly.  I kissed Jessica, digging my tongue in her mouth.  I sucked on her tongue hard.  She began bucking against me.

I slid off Jessica.  Grimacing, she stared at the ceiling.  I seized Nicki and swung her around, her ass facing me.  Quickly, I peeled off the condom and replaced it with another.  I aimed my cock at her swollen cunt and shoved it in.  She grunted, her full ass angled up as her shoulders flopped down.  I began dipping in and out.  Her ass bobbed up and down, and her short black hair swung to one side.  I burped from the wine.  Jessica looked dazed.  When I slapped Nicki’s rear, she gasped, then began rocking her hips fast.

Abruptly, I yanked my cock out of Nicki, put on a fresh condom, settled back onto Jessica and began plunging into her again.  She threw her arms around me.  I forced her arms up above her head and held her hands down.  After Nicki crawled alongside us, she smiled and stroked my back.  Grunting, I came hard in Jessica.  She began bouncing her hips.  Then we were still.  I heard people in the hall outside my room, laughing.

I turned to Nicki and kissed her softly.  She kissed Jessica on the cheek, then thrust her tongue in her mouth.  Moaning, Jessica kissed her back.  She groped for Nicki’s large breasts.  After a time, I slid bit by bit out of Jessica.  Finally, both girls broke apart and huddled against me.

We rested for a time. The Allman Brothers swung into “Hot ‘Lanta”.  At last, I reached down and started fingering Nicki.  Nicki flushed, raised her hips and tightened her cunt.  She clutched at my free hand.  Her hips circled.  She cried out abruptly and swore.  Grunting, her hips thrusting, she came several times. 

Then both girls lay with their arms over me, their eyes closed, in the moonlight, with the spring rain whispering down outside.

The American Literature class finished.  Nicki met me in the hall.  As we walked with me out of Reavis Hall, she threw her arm over my shoulders.  I described a short story on which I was working.  Then I said that I did not know about being in school.  I added that I did not think I was doing well.

It was early afternoon.  A late spring breeze floated around us.  When Nicki seized my hand and began to chatter, I smiled at her.  Skirting around Evans Field House, we strolled through the campus.  Beds of gold daisies decorated the grounds of the Field House.

Nicki kissed me while we waited for the stoplight to change at the corner of Lucinda Avenue and Annie Glidden Road.  She laughed and rested her head on my shoulder briefly.  Then we arrived at the Stevenson South dorm and entered.

As I gazed out my dorm window, Nicki leant against me.  I touched her cropped, black hair.  She had cut it even shorter.  It was bristly now.  She peeked at me and parted her crooked, white teeth.  Gently, she slipped her arm around my waist.

Nicki ambled across the room to the small table by my bed, picked up a tiny bottle and unscrewed it.  She touched Lavoisier scent behind her left ear, her eyes calm and sleepy.  She clasped her hands and rested them across her belly.  I studied her.  When I waved her back, she returned.  Her short, copper-colored nails rapped at my chest.  She observed me quizzically.

I touched Nicki on the arm.  The scent of spring roses wafted through the open window.  She sighed.  Then she whispered to me, asking about my painting.

After dinner, the phone rang.  Nicki mumbled that she was sick, real sick.  She asked me to come over quickly.  She began to weep.  I hurried across the campus to the Neptune dorm.  It was evening out, and the sun was setting.

Out of breath, I burst into Nicki’s room.  She huddled on her bed, shaking.  She had turned slightly blue.  Alison, her roommate, sat with her, holding her hand.  Nicki jumped to her feet and rushed into my arms.  She babbled.  Her pupils were dilated.  When Alison asked what was going on, I yelled at her to call the campus police.

Nicki slumped against me, her eyes closed.  Alison stared at her, her mouth open.  I shouted at her again to call the police and tell them someone had overdosed.  She darted over to the phone and dialed.  I dragged Nicki up and down the room, her breathing labored.  I stopped and slapped her twice.  Several times, she gulped loudly.  Again, I pulled her around and around.

After fifteen minutes, the police and medics appeared.  They laid Nicki on the bed and gave her a shot.  Then they loaded her onto a stretcher and carried her to a waiting ambulance downstairs.  I climbed in with her.

In the Sycamore Hospital emergency room, the doctors hooked an IV to Nicki’s arm and strapped an oxygen mask over her face.  She tugged the mask off her face and asked where I was, lisping.  I told her that I was here and held her hand.  She nodded finally.

After a time, I left the emergency room and trudged down to the end of the hall.  I stared out the glass doors and into the darkness, shaking my head. 

I held her cunt like a sacred object and kissed it reverently.

Strolling along Lucinda Avenue, near the Holmes Center, I asked her about her heroin use again.  She shook her head.  Then she yelled at me to get fucked.  I shouted back at her that I did not want her to hurt herself.  Her eyes narrowed, and she stalked away.

We snuggled in bed together.  Nicki sang out that she could feel my hard cock.  But she just lay there when I touched her.  She felt cold.

Nicki and I hopped off the bus to Swen Parson Library and entered through a side entrance, in early summer, near the end of the school year.  We found a vacant table upstairs and piled our books there.  The scent from the lilac bushes in front of the Castle, one of the administrative buildings, drifted in through a nearby window.  Guffawing, Nicki knocked her shoes off and lounged back in the hard, old chair, then kicked me in the ankle lightly.  A student next to us shut their book with a bang and got up to go.

I opened a book on design.  Nicki giggled loudly and pointed behind me.  I twisted but saw nothing.  As I turned back, my books began to tip into my lap.  I caught some of them, but she finished pushing the rest of them over the edge until they banged to the floor.  She laughed uproariously.  While she chortled, I rose, slipped and fell slightly, then pulled myself up.

The section librarian made a sign for us to quiet down.  Snorting noisily, Nicki buried her face in her arms.  The librarian rushed over and ordered us to leave.  We gathered up our things and headed for the exit.  Before we left, Nicki spun and blew a kiss goodbye to everyone.

We wandered over to the East Lagoon.  Summer sun warmed us.  As we walked, Nicki babbled.  I looked over into the black pearls of her pupils.  After we settled down, she began to read, her head bowed, and fell silent.

I did not open my book.  I turned to Nicki and said to her that I did not want to see her anymore.  I told her that it was the smack.  She started to cry, then nodded.

TRAVEL

1974

TRAVEL

That summer, in Charlotte, as I climbed onto the Greyhound bus to New York City, I noticed a girl sitting halfway down the aisle, gazing out the window.  She was pretty: long black hair, green eyes, full lips.

I swung into the seat beside her and began stowing my things.  At last, I turned and said hello to her, smiling.  She said that her name was Isabella.  I told her my name.

Isabella said that she was from Texas and was going to Vermont.  She added that she had been living with her sister, and her brother-in-law did not like her, so she was going to stay with friends in Burlington.  When she reached down to retrieve a bottle of water, her blouse slid up and her brown back and pale blue panties showed.

Miles slid by.  People and buildings appeared and disappeared.  Summer crops were still in the fields.  While we talked, Isabella kept touching her hair and licking her lips.  I patted her hand once.

Isabella rose, muttered that she had to go to the bathroom and pushed past me.  She did not return.  At last, I rose and struggled to the back of the bus.  She was slumped in the seat next to the bathroom.  I slid in beside her.

Isabella grasped my hand, smiling.  I curved over and kissed her.  She thrust her tongue into my mouth.  I touched her pert breast.  After she put her head on my shoulder, she caressed my chest.  We kissed again, just touching our lips.

I pushed my hand between her legs.  She frowned, then kissed me again.  When I squeezed her cunt, she flicked her chin up and made a sound.  Her nipples poked through her orange cotton blouse.  I smiled.  Isabella, though, jumped up and darted back down the aisle.

After a time, I rejoined her.  We did not talk.  The bus pulled into Washington, DC.  I told her that it was my stop to switch to buses.  She nodded and started to say something, but then she stuck her lower lip out and turned away.

I exited the bus and trudged into the terminal.  A few minutes later, I returned outside, searching for Isabella’s bus.  I wanted to speak to her.  But her bus had already left.

In the summer night, she reached toward me and pursed her fingers against my zipper.  She tugged my jeans open, snaked her hand inside and grasped my penis.  Gently, she drew it out, flopping a little against her fingers.  We lay on a blanket at Coney Island.  Waves crashed on the shore.  Languidly, she bent down, her brown eyes slitted.  Her coarse, dreadlocked hair was barely visible.  She kissed the soft, pliant tip, her broad, pink tongue swirling against its length.  Murmuring, she sucked the glans past her big lips.

I slept in the small tent with the young woman.  I did not have a tent.  It was raining hard.  She had invited me to share her tent.  I did not touch her.  It was in east Tennessee.

The Romani woman sitting across the aisle from me on the Trailways bus outside Detroit caressed my hair and squealed that Gypsy girls would love my long hair.

Another pretty girl waved at me as she sped by.  About noon, a police officer pulled up and questioned me, warning me not to stop cars inside the Dixon city limits.  A girl slowed for me.  As she banged the stick shift around, her arm hit my arm.  She complained to me about the school at which she taught.  Without warning, she braked the car near a long valley.  Her hand shoved past my face, pointing out vast fields of poppies nearby.  Then we drove on.

Early in the morning, I walked on again.  A photographer snapping shots of siloes offered me a ride, explaining how he wanted to preserve their images while they were still around.  A young girl gave me a lift.  We chatted easily.  She said that her name was Rivkah.  She crouched at the wheel, laughing hoarsely, her long, red hair glistening in the sun.  When she dropped me off, I stared at her car until it rolled out of sight.  I stood on bluffs above the wide Mississippi River.

I thought about my future.  The river wind ruffled my hair.  The sun roasting me, I plopped down on the short, dry grass and daydreamed for a time.  Across the river, dark rain clouds gathered.  It was early fall.  I had flunked out of school.  Wearily, I hopped down some long cement steps, two at a time, and trudged over to the Mississippi River’s shore.  Nicki crossed my mind.  I had not called her, and she had not called me. 

North of Galena, I found myself being picked up by another pretty girl, who was heading west.  I told her, on second thought, that I had changed my mind.  I said that I wanted to return home.