University was the first opportunity to get away from home permanently and I took it. It wasn't that living at home was all that bad. It's that my mother was a control freak and constantly reminding me about my responsibilities while I was under her roof. Her to-do list was unending. She added new tasks almost before the one at the top was finished. She left me little time for a social life or a job and barely enough time to do my homework.
Fortunately, my father was the breadwinner and good enough at it to fund my continuing education completely for all four years with enough to cover moderate expenses on the credit card he gave me.
Living in the dorms was mandatory for all first year students. I wasn't much more comfortable in the dorm than at home. The room was Spartan, the food barely editable and the privacy non-existent. Getting a good night's sleep was equally difficult. My roommate had a propensity to entertain coeds who were indifferent to me being in the room and his moaning while whacking off when he was not entertaining kept me awake at night and on the defensive most of the time.
The first opportunity to abandon dorm living came at the end of the first year and I took it. I worked it out with my father and got a one room, second floor apartment not far from campus and a job to cover the additional expenses. I found some minimal furniture at a local Goodwill store and dad gave me one of the old televisions from home. I left it up to him to explain to my mother why I was staying at school for the summer.
The room was as Spartan as the dorm but it was mine, alone. It was a heady freedom.
By the way, my name is Kirk. Among my mother's many issues, she was also a Star Trek fan.
Midway through the fall semester a young lady about my age moved into the studio apartment across the hall. She was attractive, well proportioned and, frankly, the first girl since high school that I took more than a passable interest in.
However, my fantasies were over ambitious. We became friends. Her name was Maxine but she preferred Max. We spent many hours together talking about the usual philosophical ideas abundant in most college students. Over time, we became more casual with each other, indifferent to what we did or didn't wear and forgetting to close the bathroom door when peeing. It was a friendship that would last a lifetime and I was unwilling to venture anything more erotic.
However, she was a woman.
One evening, Max and I were curled up on my second hand sofa watching Columbo or The Rockford Files on my father's television that was balanced on a wooden cable spool I picked up a local work site. Max had fallen asleep on my arm and had slid down until I was holding most of her body in my lap. It wasn't unusual. Max frequently fell asleep in my lap and it wasn't a problem, until that evening.
She was wearing an oversized white t-shirt that barely reached the top of her thighs and nothing else. That also wasn't unusual. Sometimes she wore panties and sometimes she didn't. I couldn't figure out the pattern and I assumed it had something to do with whether her laundry was up to date.
That evening I was fading in and out of sleep myself and thoroughly enjoying the comfort and warmth of Max sleeping in my lap and watching her breasts beneath the thin t-shirt fabric rise and fall with her breathing. Absentmindedly, I began to stroke her arm and then her side over the t-shirt.
Max began to hum softly as I stroked her. Then, without apparent reason, she wiggled around and onto her back in my arms. I could reach almost as far as the top of her thighs as I continued to stroke her body. I struggled with my conscience about what to do and lost to my dark side.
I slowly moved my strokes toward the center of her body, centered on her navel. Max's humming morphed into something akin to a coo. I slowly lengthened my stroking until I was just touching the underside of her breasts and the top of her pubic hair through the t-shirt fabric at the bottom. Her soft coo became a gentle pant.
Emboldened, on my next stroke I ventured to cover the area of her pubic hair over the t-shirt. I lingered, my fingers floating in the soft pillow of pubic hair. Max's hips moved upward slightly, daring me to further explore her pubic area. I was extremely pleased at her response and my courage. Maybe my fantasies weren't just imagined.
That's when the fuckin' fire alarm went off.
It wasn't unusual, just inconvenient. It was usually the idiot on the third floor who tried to microwave Chinese take out in their original containers or fell asleep while something was heating on the stove.
Max woke with a start. "What the fuck ..." she muttered.
I got to the door just as the building superintendent was coming up the stairs. There was thin smoke in the third floor hallway. "It's okay," he said. "It's that jackass Harold again. He's dangerous. I'm going to try to have him evicted," he shouted as he turned the corner and started up the stairs.
I closed the door and walked back to the sofa. Max was sitting there, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Her t-shirt was bunched around her waist allowing me a peek at the perfect triangle of my earlier attention.
It's just Harold again," I told her.
"I think I should be heading home," Max said.
I was disconsolate. I walked her to the door. We hugged as usual. I watched as she crossed the hallway, entered her apartment and closed the door before I closed my door.
Sleep was almost impossible that night. My head was flooded with possibilities, all destroyed by that idiot Harold on the third floor.
The next evening, Max and I shared a pizza for dinner and headed back to the apartment house. We stood in front of her door. The atmosphere seemed strained. "TV tonight?" asked Max.
"I'd like that," I told her hoping for a repeat of last night.
"Give me a few minutes to get changed and I'll be over," Max said.
I agreed. Max entered her apartment and I entered mine. I left the door unlocked so Max could come in when she was ready.
We settled on the sofa and put something on the television that neither of us was very interested in.
"Kirk," opened Max. "Did something happen last night?"
I pondered her question for a moment. Max might have mistaken my pause as thinking. "Nothing that I can think of," I replied. "We were watching television. You fell asleep and Harold ended our evening. Why?"
"I had unusual dreams last night," Max shared.
"Anything you'd care to share?" I asked.
"I dreamt that you and I were ... how can I say this ... more than just friends."
"I thought we were more than 'just friends,'" I said. We have the kind of friendship that most people can only hope for."
"No, more than that," explained Max. "Something sexual."
"Would that be so bad?" I asked. "Lots of friendships include benefits without ruining the friendship."
"It seemed even more than that," Max said.
"If it helps," I said. "I had a similar dream last night."
