\The workings of the male brain were a puzzle to me then, as they still are today. The more I frustrated Craig, even to the point of tears, the more loving and attentive he became. The more preposterous my demands, the further he went in exceeding them. If I demanded a backrub, he would rub fragrant oils into my skin for hours. My back muscles soothed, he'd move on to my shoulders and neck, and down to my buttocks and thighs. Sometime before that point, I was usually aroused to the point where I demanded his tongue. But if I didn't, he'd continue to my feet, and massage them with oil until I fell asleep.
The men in my classes were treating me differently, too. My life with Craig had increased my self-confidence, and perhaps it was somehow visible to other men. Perhaps it was simply that I'd ceased to be a novelty. But I preferred to think I was winning my spurs. I was getting A's in most of my classes. When five o'clock rolled around in the labs, I sometimes stayed behind to repeat a part of an experiment that hadn't gone well. Teaching assistants, perpetual grumblers all, couldn't leave while I was still there, but they didn't seem to mind being alone with me in a big, empty classroom while I took my time repeating a procedure. There were few direct attempts to pick me up. Most were content to lean on a nearby lab bench and tell me their life story, or their girlfriend problems. Because I was a few years older, I began to feel more like a den mother than a potential girlfriend.
As the weather turned colder, I remained outside with the surveying instruments when my other team members gave up and fled indoors. After being raised in Bitumen, these ordeals-by-weather were nothing to me. I'd often made the hike from school to home when I missed the school bus, trudging two miles across bare, flat fields against howling winter winds. Or later, walking over a mile from the trailer to the grocery store in all weather to pick up beer, so there'd be some in the refrigerator for Mike. It had been worth the biting cold or soggy heat to avoid yet another fight.
But during the outdoor surveying exercises, my unfortunate partner had to stay outside with me, too. Most of my classmates looked the other way when I asked for help. Only Paul Winters volunteered and consistently stuck it out in spite of the bitter weather. Without noticing it, we became more and more of a team, not just in surveying, but in chemistry and physics as well. We often did our homework together in the library between classes. When the days grew dark before five o'clock, he'd walk me to the Halstead Street El station and wait with me until the train came, like a bodyguard.
The trouble was, he was growing on me, even as my relationship with Craig grew stronger. Every couple of weeks, he'd tell me about some event he was going to, and would I like to go with him? He was never pushy about it, but I could see the light in his eyes when he talked to me, and I was flattered.
The drafting classrooms were the closest we had to a common meeting place for freshman engineers. This is where gossip was spread, plots hatched, and the social pecking order established. In early December, a buzz began to organize a Christmas Party. One of my classmates was from a Greek family, and arranged an upstairs room in a Greektown restaurant. At Paul's urging, I paid my ten dollars and signed up.
"Your boyfriend's welcome, too," he said. "I think everyone would like to meet the lucky man."
But that evening, Craig shook his head. "I won't be comfortable at a student party, and they're not likely to be comfortable around me. But you should go."
"I'd rather stay home and tease you until you go crazy."
He smiled. "It's important to bond with your fellow students. Someday you'll have a professional job and you'll have to interact with your peers all the time. Some of them may even be your classmates today. Anyway, it's not too soon to start."
"One of my classmates seems to have a thing for me." I watched him closely.
Now he was serious. "I don't own you, RoseAnn. Go and have a good time."
I decided to tease him. "What if this boy wants to have a good time with me?"
He took my hand in both of his. "I'm not at all worried. I trust you--I mean, I have to trust you. The alternative is too awful to contemplate."
At that moment, I felt a rush of love and longing like I'd never felt for anyone. I stroked his cheek with my free hand. The soft look in his eyes made me wet. "Just for that, I'm going to torture you for the rest of the evening, and you won't even be allowed to come at the end. In fact, I might even make you wait longer than I planned." I grabbed at his cock and squeezed.
* * *
The Christmas party was a Thursday evening, the second week of December, after the final exams. We had the second floor banquet room of a tiny place along the row of restaurants on Halstead Avenue that fringed the neighborhood known as Greektown, just across the freeway from the university. The music reached the sidewalk outside and grew louder as I climbed the steps. A table at the top was covered with tiny glasses of clear liquid. After I'd parked my coat on a table with the others, I picked up one of the glasses and downed it in a gulp. It smelled like licorice and tasted like battery acid. I choked on it, and a waiter, who'd been watching me, laughed out loud.
"Don't worry," he said. "After five or six of those, you'll beg for more."
Gasping for breath, I wheezed, "Can I mix it with something?"
"No, ma'am. Ouzo won't mix with anything. You have to drink it straight."
Paul appeared and slapped me on the back. He was laughing, too. "Are you okay?" The band, consisting of a trumpet, and drums, and a lute-like instrument, started to play again and he had to shout to be heard. "I guess someone should have warned you about ouzo. But you get to watch others come in and toss back a shot."
Someone pulled a Santa cap from a box and put it on my head, just as Paul handed me another ouzo. "This time, slowly."
I sipped and tried to make conversation, but the music was loud in the small room. People shouted to be heard over the band, so there wasn't much to do but drink. Over two hours, I put away at least six shots, barely noticing them and not keeping count. From somewhere inside, I listened curiously as my voice rose in pitch. I laughed too much, even when there was nothing to laugh about. I was getting drunk, but I hadn't been among so many people near my own age in a long time. If I couldn't drink a little too much here, where could I?
I tried to dance with Paul, but the beat of the music was all wrong. Nicolaidis, the student who'd arranged the party, tried to teach us a Greek dance, but people were already too drunk, and the attempt ended in chaos.
