Blake took a sip of beer and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible while he watched the girl across the table from him eat with a quite intensity that surprised him. It was more than a little difficult to be inconspicuous with the girl wearing an off white tank top that left her midriff bare, obviously without a bra and tight denim jeans. He glanced down at the floor and her long, slim legs and bare feet then quickly back up.
The meal wasn't anything fancy, Mississippi pulled pork, mashed potatoes and oven roasted brussels sprouts, the pork and pepperoncini peppers something he had tossed in the slow cooker this morning before running off to class.
Jessica glanced up and caught his eye, her fork pausing midway to her mouth before lowering back to her plate.
"I'm sorry, you probably think I'm a pig," Jessica said softly, her voice a mezzo soprano that made Blake smile.
"No, there's plenty, so if you'd like more go ahead," Blake replied even though Jessica was already most of the way through her second helping.
Jessica smiled and finished the last bite already on her fork before pushing back in her chair, her eyes glancing from Blake to around his small apartment, her eyes lingering on the two book cases he had along one wall that were stuffed to overflowing with scores of books.
Blake waited patiently while she looked around, the idea that he would have a beautiful woman eating dinner with him seemingly ludicrous this morning. He still wasn't quite sure how Jessica had ended upstairs with him, only that she had been sitting on the front steps of the apartment across from his and had offered to help carry up a couple bags of groceries upstairs from his car. Blake had hesitated, his own awkwardness making him uncomfortable around such a cute, barefoot girl offering to help, but had eventually accepted, Jessica walking around his living room to examine his nick nacks of arrowheads, pottery shards, fossils, rock specimens and books while he had put the groceries away.
"Have you read all of those book?" Jessica asked when she finally looked back at him.
Blake nodded with a smile while staring at her blue eyes. He could just see an amber halo around her iris and wondered what her eyes would look like up close.
"Some of them more than once," Blake replied.
"Like... the Joys of Sex?" Jessica asked with a small smile, her head tilted to the side.
Blake felt his face heat in embarrassment but nodded back.
"Parts of it," Blake said with a smile of his own.
"I'm sure," Jessica said without a change of expression, "The pages aren't stuck together, are they?"
Blake coughed back a laugh and glanced down for a moment and then back up grinning at her.
"No, I've got a VCR and tapes if I want to masturbate," he said trying to shock her as much as she had just surprised and shocked him, her smile widening for only a moment.
"Really," Jessica replied without any other change of expression.
"Honestly... you know what the two most important things in that book are to have an amazing sex life with... whoever you end up with?" Black continued, "And I'll even give you a hint... it's not any of the... what... dozen or so pictures of the different positions it has the couples trying."
Jessica watched him for a moment and then reached out to take a sip from her own beer before setting it aside.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Communication and generosity," Blake replied, "Being able to discuss in an open, honest, truthful way what you like and enjoy and just as important what you don't."
Jessica continued to stare at him, her expression never changing.
"Tell each other about the fetishes you might have... about the fetishes you've always daydreamed about but never had the opportunity... or courage to actually try.
"Being able to in that moment tell your partner that that feels really good, don't stop, keep going, keep going!... or to say that this is nice, but can you do this again... try that for me."
"And generosity?" Jessica asked after a moment when Blake paused, her eyes never leaving his.
"If you love your partner, if you want to stay with your partner, whoever it is you end up with, then be generous with your emotional and physical affections," Blake explained, "Never reject the person you supposedly love by telling them you're too tired or not in the mood or too stressed. You should make the effort to be sexual with your partner every single day... and that doesn't mean sex... although... yea, not going to complain... but... be sexual together.
"Something as simple and easy as being naked together, sleeping naked together, making a point of touching each other, a long, lingering hug... or kiss... make it a point to express your emotional and physical love.
"Every single day."
Jessica watched him for a few more moments with the same small smile before replying.
"And that's all in that book," Jessica asked.
"Well, maybe not in exactly those words, but yea," Blake replied.
"And what's in 'Sex at Dawn'?" Jessica asked, "Is that about waking up with a boner in the morning and... taking care of it?"
"No," Blake said with a laugh and wondered if Jessica had also noticed his copy of the Kama Sutra, "That one is... harder to explain I guess... no pun intended.
"It's ah... I guess, it's the authors asking what's... normal.
"Looking around the world and seeing cultures practicing monogamy and polygamy and polyandry, open group marriages... even ahhh, I don't know, even homosexuality and god, a hundred different other ways people have came up with to be together and be with each other.
"And they asked the question what are we supposed to be, what did we evolve to be as homo sapiens sapiens."
"And what are we supposed to be?" Jessica asked after waiting a few moments.
"This isn't me... this is them," Blake emphasized with a grin, "But, their argument is that we're a bunch of orgy loving, gangbang having, cream pie chasing monkeys at heart. That we evolved to be that way and are physically and sexually adapted to have multi male, multi female couplings, that even the shape of the head of a man's penis argues for that since it's perfectly shaped to remove any semen already inside of a woman before adding a little more.