If we continue the analogy of a feast for this psychodrama, you have had the appetizer and I hope that you enjoyed it. This is the main entree with a few side dishes. Like any good feast, this is the largest part of the meal and some would say the most satisfying, but I have a sweet tooth and I prefer the dessert. To get the full benefit of a dessert though, it must come after the main courses, so prepare for a large one. You will have time to digest it before the dessert and aperitifs.

During the next week, I failed at every attempt to track Charlie down where it wouldn't cause a scene. I called his room phone, but since so few people ever called him, he treated it like it was his roommate's phone and never answered it. When his roommate answered it, he would pretend to take a message, but Charlie never called back. I didn't want to look like I was chasing him, so I only knocked on his door once per day when I expected him to be there. He never was.

I saw him several times at the cafeteria and I wanted badly to approach him, but it seemed that other people from my floor or his were watching to see what sparks might fly. Each time, I expected him to look triumphant or smug or maybe even just happy, but he looked miserable and when he saw me, he cringed noticeably. I hoped that meant he would soon call me and we would find some way to make up, but we went into finals week and then the end-of-semester recess without speaking to each other.

Before I left, Patty, tried to pry the reason for our obvious break-up out of me, but I told her I didn't really have a clue and that maybe she could ask him so we would both know. Apparently, he told her that it was very personal and he couldn't betray my confidence. If he wouldn't tell her, then he wouldn't tell anyone else and I felt good about that. The poor girl was left with two friends who were clearly hurting and I was too embarrassed to admit what I had done. She told me there were plenty of rumors and one of them sprang from someone who thought she heard us having sex one night. I truthfully told her that that never happened.

When I came back from Spring Break, I was tanned and eager to show him how much I was over him. It wasn't until I learned that he had transferred to another dorm that I really understood how totally he was rejecting me. Over the next few weeks, I finally thought long and hard about what he had been saying to me.

The key word was 'abuse'. As a psychology student on the path to a advanced degrees, that word, if applied to me, was frightening. I had automatically rejected that it because I didn't see how it can be called abuse to show a guy what he wants to see and touch him sexually when he wants to be touched sexually. But I was taking the followup class to the Psychology of Abusers course which was the Psychology of Abuse Victims. Pieces began to fall into place when something I remembered from a first year lecture clicked with something I read in my textbook.

During the lecture, the prof had made the women in class uncomfortable and the men in the class snicker when he said, "When those with holes are held to a different standard than those with poles, that's gender bias." In my Abuse Victims text, I read that abuse victims, especially when their abuse starts at a young age and when their intelligence is above average, can become hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive to double standards. I had to read that three times before it sunk in, but when it did, my heart sped up and my chest began to feel tight. I had learned during the previous term that reliance on double standards is a trait of abusers.

So, because I was training to become a professional observer of human nature, I had to test my premises. My first test, was to presume I was a Victor and Charlie was a Charlene. Would Charlene have a valid reason to feel abused if I exposed myself to her and groped her? Of course, she would. And by the rules I was learning in my classes, if it feels like abuse to the alleged victim, it is abuse. The alleged victim can be wrong, but the pain they feel is still real. This belief was not exactly new at the time, but it wasn't yet broadly held. Now, it's the cornerstone of policies against sexual harassment and a lot of other forms of abuse today.

But the Victor/Charlene example didn't take into account the fact that Charlie was sexually attracted to me, whereas Charlene might not have been attracted to Victor. I'd like to think that if I was attracted to a guy who rejected me as a sex partner, I could still be friends with him and take a little "playfulness", but then, I wasn't raised by an abuser. Still, I had to neutralize the gender issue in the premise.

So I again re-imagined the circumstances. What if I was Victor, a gay Adonis and Charlie was a gay friend I had teased as I had teased Charlie? Would he then be justified in feeling abused? I had to assume so and then my heart really began to race.

Scenario Number 3 now. What if Victoria and Charlene were platonic lesbian friends and I had toyed with her. Would she be justified in..."Oh, god," I thought. "What did I do to you, Charlie?" My heart was really hammering now. "You bastard! I hate it when you're right." I had to believe that I was an abuser. I wanted to pretend that what made me feminine and him masculine exempted me from the rules of good behavior toward him, but I couldn't lie to myself about that. Not if I wanted to become a credible psychologist.

I felt that I now had to re-examine what I had learned of how he was raised, and my own upbringing and our relationship through new eyes. We had some key things in common. For one thing, we were both raised Catholic. He had a French Catholic heritage and my ancestors were Polish Catholics, but the religion is so embedded in the lives of our ancestors, that it is a culture to us, even though neither of us is devout. So there was a cultural affiliation that was one of the things that attracted us to each other.

In addition to that, because he had nobody else to ask to attend social functions with him, I had attended as his 'plus one' for two weddings and for another semi-formal occasion that he would not have attended without a date. This meant that he saw me wearing dresses and heard other people saying that we looked good together. One of these events included photos of all the couples and I had to agree that we cleaned up well.

He looked sexier in a suit than he did in jeans and T-shirts where his lack of beef was more obvious. One advantage to his height was that I was able to wear tall heels without making him look short. I liked how sexy and elegant I could feel when I was on his arm. These events didn't seem to lead him on, but maybe they contributed to his desire for me. In retrospect, I see that we were playing with fire.

He eventually managed to approach other girls and maybe once or twice they rejected him because they thought he was stuck on me. That didn't seem to bother him, because he was only seeking sexual experience instead of love, but he may have felt that he was sacrificing something to maintain our friendship and that might have factored into the "value" of friendship that he spoke about.

He wanted to lose his virginity for the obvious reason, but also because he believed it was hindering his social development and he was worried about the career implications of that. I pried much of this out of him because I loved hearing how a mind that sometimes seemed more computer than human dealt with living in the body of a horny college guy. I guess he was feeling the growing love between us, but felt there could be no long term commitment between us and didn't get too dependent on me. He had a plan to move away from the state upon graduation and I think that was to get far away from his family situation. It seemed as if he felt that his life wouldn't really be his until that happened and so his friendships with women would likely be short term flings.

I traced the real trouble between us to incidents of my behavior in the first two weeks after a breakup with a new guy. Every time I had fallen for a guy since I met Charlie, and that was maybe six times, it had ended badly after I'd had sex with him. Each time, Charlie had helped me to pick up the pieces and each time, I had fed on his sexual attraction to me. I was careless or reckless during those times and didn't see the pain I was causing. An abuse co-dependency had grown gradually until he realized, maybe through what he learned from my homework, that I was as narcissistic as his father. I finally came to understand that he'd done the smart thing and the right thing by abandoning me before I damaged him more.

There could be no bridge from him to me. There could be no mutual bridge-building to meet at the middle. Any bridge between us now had to be built entirely by me, but I had to accept that he could most likely not bear to ever trust me again. The most I could hope for was to regain some of his respect and that would have to be earned. In layman's terms, abuse victims can reach a point where their 'spirit' can never be mended enough to enjoy life.

It was a survival act for him to flee from me, so that suggested he still had some spirit, but to avoid more damage he would always have to be suspicious of my motives and if we had any relationship at all, he would always have to guess whether he could tolerate the pain I might cause him. There could be no bridge back to the friendship we once had. That option was what I destroyed by stupidly toying with him until trust became poison.

I did not want this on my conscience but, like a physical maiming, it was permanent. I learned from my textbook that I had possibly killed his ability to ever trust any woman, because his sex drive was now a known vector for abuse. Abuse victims learn not to trust those who wield the power that their abusers wielded. This, more than anything else, was a harm that I did not want to inflict on him. It was also possibly the only thing that only I, the source of the damage, could heal enough for him to trust the next woman who saw the good man inside the odd unfortunate person.

Unfortunately, by moving away, he made it difficult for me to find a way to fix any of the damage I had done. Doing right by him meant that I had to find him, convince him to take a risk, and then not fail him. I had to find a way to do all that despite his belief that he had no incentive to take that risk. I had nothing to offer that he was interested in except the use of my body. And that was the one thing he could most certainly not trust me to deliver.

Fortunately I took an economics course as one of my interdisciplinary electives. I learned about the buying and selling of risk and the value of insurance. Because he had revealed that he thought about the price and value of our friendship, that gave me an idea. All I needed was an opportunity to give him some insurance.

I found his number in the student phone directory and tried calling him. When he answered, he hung up before I could say two words. If his roommate answered, I would leave a message, but again he would never return my calls. If he saw me on campus, he would walk away, even to the point of abandoning his lunch when I found him in another cafeteria.

I finally decided that I had to blindly take a big risk to provide a big enough incentive for him to meet with me. I mailed him a check for 500 dollars. I knew that as long as he had enough curiousity to open the envelope, more cash than either of us could consider to be trivial would catch his interest. Neither of us was wealthy enough to shrug off 500 dollars. I half expected it to be returned unopened.

I enclosed a note that said only, "This is the money for my flight home at the end of term. Please cash it and hold the cash. Give me an opportunity and instructions on how to set things as right as I can between us. I'm not expecting miracles. Keep the money if I fail." I realized with sadness that this was actually the first time I had expressly accepted any responsibility for causing the death of our friendship. All I could do was wait.

Charlie cashed the check and sent me a note in return. It said, "Please acknowledge that you understand that we can never go back to where our friendship was. I will not risk trusting you. You are like Lucy, jerking the football away from the trusting Charley Brown before he can kick it. I will always suspect that of you. The best we can hope for in the future is an uneasy alliance."

I sent back. "I understand all that now. I understand the futility of saying that I'm sorry. I only wish to demonstrate how sorry I am and recover whatever can be salvaged from the mess I've made."

His reply was "Offer me what you teased me with".

That was the breakthrough I needed. As I stated before, I wasn't repulsed by the idea of having sex with him. I had refrained from it because I was not sexually thrilled by his body and because I was afraid it would ruin our friendship. The latter was no longer an issue. I had replaced our friendship with guilt for the damage I had added to an already damaged friend. I now understood that we loved each other. Not a romantic love, but the love that comes from sharing so much good history aside from the abuse. That love was why he looked miserable after the breakup. He was feeling guilt over the hurt he had caused me in order to protect himself. I put him in that position. I gave him reason to also hate me. I knew of his commitment to not hurt the people he loves. I caused the hurt that he had delivered to me, but he paid a price for it. It was another thing to add to my debt.

My reply to him was, "I offer it all to you.

Where and when? Patty still goes home every weekend."

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There was a knock on the door at exactly the agreed time. That was a trait of his. For once I was ready on time. I gave myself credit for not playing the feminine game of keeping a man waiting for me. I hoped he would notice that. I opened the door and paid careful attention to his eyes as they beheld me. I had tried to be my most beautiful. When his eyes met with mine, I sensed disappointment, just before they flinched away. 'Fuck!' I thought to myself. 'How did I screw that up?' I had clearly made a wrong assumption.

"I'm sorry. Please come in." For perhaps the first time in a long time, my 'I'm sorry' was heartfelt for his pain and not an attempt to appease. Perhaps he picked up on that, because he didn't bother with his standard response of 'Sorry doesn't help'. He entered and closed the door behind him. I wanted so badly to hug him and kiss him and thank him for taking this chance, but I sensed that he was as tense as I had ever seen him and I had a flash of insight. 'Make no assumptions. Make no advances. Offer only honesty. Give him the lead.'

I stood in front of him, keeping my eyes down. "I see that I have messed up. I am yours to command."

The change in him was obvious. The tension level dropped considerably. "Go into the bathroom. Remove all your clothing, jewelry, everything. And... if it isn't too much trouble, remove the makeup, too. Take as much time as you need."

"Certainly. The nail polish?"

"...is a small detail. You can keep that if you wish."

Holy Crap! I can't remember a time when I had let a man see me without makeup. He wanted, or maybe needed, total honesty and total surrender. He stepped into the study area where we had spent so many hours building our friendship. I stepped into the bathroom feeling like a painted whore. Off came the disco dress. Off came the come-fuck-me pumps. Off came my sexiest lingerie. Off came the bling.

I quietly cried as I removed the makeup. I closed the door and turned on the exhaust fan and quickly removed the nail polish from my fingers and toes. I was trying to make myself as honest and real as I could, so I stepped into the shower and washed away the perfume and even the conditioner in my hair. I couldn't do anything about the pubic hair that I'd shaved away. I was still fairly bushy though, because back in the seventies, butt-floss and french cut clothing was still only in the titty bars and bikini waxing was as alien to Wisconsin as surf board waxing. I was soon drying myself and preparing to face whatever humiliation I would have to endure.

I walked out into the room where he had doused the candles and opened the curtains to the harsh glare of the afternoon sun. I had planned to do a slow striptease by candlelight for him. To seduce him. To pay for my sins by being the slut I was. He was denying me all of that. I stood in the center of the room and he got up from the only chair in the place that was comfortable for a man of his height. I had often called it the throne, because when he was present, his need commanded it.

He walked around me and drank me in with his eyes, sometimes kneeling to get the view he wanted. He looked very closely at my boobs and I felt my nipples stiffen. He ordered me to bend over and spread my ass cheeks as he knelt behind me and watched as the sunlight fell on my most personal parts. I suddenly felt one finger on my slit. It slipped in and moved back and forth, spreading my wetness around my clit. That was the first touch from him since the day he had set me aside. A low moan escaped from me. He pulled his finger from me and I'm pretty sure he sniffed it and maybe even licked it.

He stood up behind me and ordered me to stand with my hands at my sides. He stepped close enough that I could feel his jeans against my bare ass. His arms came around me and his hands cupped my breasts. It felt so good to be touched and I felt wetness oozing down my thigh. He took my nipples between finger and thumb and gently squeezed, twisted and pulled them. My knees suddenly felt weak and I felt a few contractions in my pussy like a small orgasm. "Mmmmmmmmm."

He walked around in front of me and raised my chin so that I would look straight into his eyes. Sustained direct eye contact was extremely rare with him. He sometimes used it as a means to provide a very special, very personal emphasis on his words. "Very good," he said. "Honest and... beautiful."

The effect of that compliment on me was profound. He gave compliments so rarely, perhaps because he had received so few in his life, that they had more meaning from him than anybody I have, to this day, ever known. Because I knew that so many of the compliments I receive from men are falsely given or intended to provoke an open-legs response, my habit was to dismiss them as flattery. One of the few times I can recall angering him was when I treated his compliment as welcome but insincere.

"Thank you, Charlie." I could not believe how grateful I was that he had once again turned on the charm that I knew him to be capable of. He had often made me feel so good about myself during my darkest bouts of despair. How could I ever have so foolishly risked that?

It was then that I understood something that shocked me to my soul. Perhaps because he was often so easy-going and pliable about what we would do together, and so willing to do things for me that required his strength or his technical expertise, I had always assumed he was submissive. But since he had entered the room, I had been like a puppet on strings. He had control of my will and also my emotions. I've faced incredibly overwhelming opponents in athletic competitions and had my butt kicked by them, but I've never felt so dominated. I had a feeling I was getting a glimpse of the head games he had learned from his father.

He began to undress himself and I felt another surge of elation. This confused me and actually it even annoyed me because he was not the muscular type of guy that I liked to feel I was conquering by getting them to share their hard bodies with me. I was feeling conquered and I did not want to feel elated by that. I was not supposed to be enjoying the prospect of submissive sex with him, but he had awakened a sexual hunger that could only be satisfied by more physical contact and I found myself thinking that his pale complexion and long skinny torso would be easily overlooked.

I looked with a new respect at his naked body. His legs were surprisingly sturdy. There was a bit more hair on them than most men, but that didn't bother me. His buns were unexpectedly masculine and I could imagine them in action thrusting his cut clean straight hard cock, which was neither the largest or the smallest of my experience, into me. I had never seen any of that before. He'd always worn long pants whenever I was with him. I'd never actually seen his chest either. It was slightly sunken and I knew that this was common with tall men, but I don't think it was enough to weaken him. I had felt him push my 130 pound body across a room and despite a lack of big bulges, his arm and shoulder muscles were big enough to justify calling his upper body wiry.

He sat back in his chair and said only, "You've often bragged that you are a good Catholic girl."

Damn! I was outsmarted again. Between us, we understood that a good Catholic girl meant a Catholic girl who had learned to give good blowjobs so she could postpone losing her virginity until marriage. My virginity was gone long before I met Charlie. I thought that I would be making no assumptions, but his statement could be taken as an implied command to suck his cock. It could also be some kind of test. Something told me that I should not ask, "Would you like me to prove that to you?" That was a question about his desire and not an offer. I could have just got down on my knees, but something told me that he wanted a verbal reply.

"Can I prove that to you?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

"May I try?"

"Yes."

I felt pleased that I had drawn that from him. I did not waste time on any of the techniques I had learned for making a man hard. I was pretty sure this was Charlie's first blowjob and he was already hard, so I knelt between his feet and sucked his cock in and looked up into his eyes. He wasn't looking back at me though. His eyes were rolled back and his mouth was open. His cock was long enough that I couldn't take it all the way in, so I bobbed the knob and stroked the shaft. He was soon gasping and because I didn't expect him to last long anyway, I didn't try to keep him on edge. I pulled my head back long enough to say, "I swallow" and went on for the first cum to shoot from him. His cum kept coming as I slurped it down while he gasped and moaned.

When his cock softened, it became clear that he had become much less tense. In a sense, I think this one blowjob plus the whole situation with the top-to-bottom inspection fulfilled my obligation to give him what I had teased him with. But even though I had spent much more time having sex with other men, my time with them had never been as sexually charged as the time I had just spent with Charlie. I wanted to see where it would lead from here.

He had my dynamo humming and I was hoping that he was interested in seeing and hearing me come. I'd always hated resorting to masturbation for sexual release. That was probably a Catholic thing. But I was so into the attention he was giving me, that I would have frigged my cunt until I came like a freight train if that was what he wanted. And besides, he still had the money and he would decide whether I would get it back. So I finished cleaning his cock and then stood back up in what I think the military calls the "parade rest" position.

Charlie stood up and drew me up to hug me then. That was unexpected. "Thanks, Vickie, for the best blowjob I've ever had. Of course it's the only one..." He laughed and I laughed with him and it felt so good. He kissed me then. It was just a peck on the lips and I somehow knew he would never give me a real lover's kiss, but that felt so appropriate.

"Please, lie down on the sofa now." I was not expecting to hear that. I didn't know what he would want to hear, so I didn't say anything. I didn't think he would be hard enough to fuck me anytime soon, so I couldn't imagine what his next plan was. I laid myself down in the place where I often laid while studying.

"Close your eyes." I did. I heard him walk around a bit and then I heard some music start playing. It was my cassette of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother. The rhythm seemed to resonate within me. I soon felt a gentle kiss on my forehead. Then one on my neck. Then one on my shoulder. I recognized this from a story we had once read together. It was called The Little Death of a Thousand Kisses. To this day, I don't know whether Charlie felt he was making love to me, or whether he was just experimenting with something he read in a story. It didn't matter to me. It felt wonderful not knowing where the next kiss would be placed. He traveled up and down my body placing kisses and I didn't count them, but I'm sure it was well over a hundred.

Of course, my nipples got a disproportionate share and I was so glad that I had a washable sheet on the sofa to soak up the juice that flowed from my pussy. When he finally said, "Spread your legs", his words alone almost made me come. Kisses now fell on the newly exposed flesh of my inner thighs until finally, I felt his lips just barely touch my pussy. He then lifted my legs over his shoulders and said, "Lift your sweet little ass." I tried not to dig my heels into his back as I raised my pussy toward his face. I felt a large firm pillow slip under my ass. I settled down on it and his lips once again touched my pussy. Soon I felt his tongue slip in and taste my juices. His tongue and nose then started to work back and forth, slowly working their way up until his tongue touched my clit. I came then. Intense waves of pleasure crashing through me.

He didn't stop there though. His hands came around my thighs and started to gently squeeze my breasts. I felt another orgasm approaching and this time, his fingers were on my nipples, gently pulling them as my hands clenched the sides of what I now knew was the pillow from Patty's bed. This time, my hips bucked uncontrollably and my moans were probably heard in the next building, but I didn't care.

Again, he didn't stop. He pulled one hand back and slipped a finger into my pussy, thoroughly wetting it. It slid down my crack then and into my ass. I wasn't sure if I wanted this, but with a little pressure on my tight ring it slipped inside as he licked my clit in time with a crescendo in the song. When my third orgasm hit, I was reduced to a barely conscious puddle of heated human flesh.

When I returned from the land of Oblivion, I found him to be staring directly into my eyes. "Charlie, where did you learn to do that? Nobody's ever done that to me before."

"So I take it you enjoyed it?"

"Fuck yeah, man. That was surreal."

"I'm glad."

This was pure Charlie. He'd read a story, licked pussy for the first time in his life, made me come harder and more than any previous lover, and he didn't even know how fuckin' good it was for me. Unfortunately, I was now in an awkward position. I noticed that his cock was hard again, and I wondered what it was safe for me to do about it.