Submissively Addicted To You

Chapter One-2

She stroked my hair as she had before, though more like a loving mother this time.

“I’m okay with what I have here,” she said in all earnest. I hoped to God that I wouldn’t have to repeat this scene. Then she continued talking. “I didn’t mean to move on you so quickly, but you looked so pretty today. Here I’d been planning this for weeks.”

“You planned this?”

“Since the day you sat next to me in discussion group. I knew I could have you as long as someone else didn’t get to you first.”

“Why did you think that?”

“I know certain kinds of women, women like Polly Montgomery. I know when they’re ripe, and, girl, you were you ripe for plucking today.” She finally sat up, giving me the space I needed to breathe—well, almost breathe. “By the way, you’re not a lesbian, so don’t get confused on that score.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend anything that had happened or what was said in the last hour.

“Bisexual is a better word for you, Polly. But, don’t worry, I promise I won’t flaunt what we’re doing.”

“No, please don’t!” I managed my first raw emotion, then sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed.

“No. It’s too soon to shock people. I mean the world needs to be shocked. But hey, I’m not going to get political today, least of all with you.” She stroked my hair again, “But you…don’t you have that class you were talking about?”

“Yes, yes I do.” I jumped from the bed and stood up to straighten my skirt. My panties felt squishy between my legs and the s****l scent rising up to assault my nose would haunt me all day. I found that my books had been thrown in a heap on the floor. I retrieved them quickly, standing up hugging them close to my chest protectively as I moved to the door.

Galen stopped my hasty retreat, calling to me, “We’ll do it again sometime.”

I looked back, shaking my head bewildered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“You say that now, but you think about it, Golden Girl.” This time the name came out affectionately.

“I really have to go.”

“Then you do that.” She grinned again. “But the Chagalls. Take them. I really did buy them for you.”

“Right. Thank you.” I found the plates on her desk with the beautiful colors beaming at me like great big grins. While Galen watched, I put down my books, made a neat stack of the pictures and laid them carefully between the pages of my largest textbook to prevent them from wrinkling.

I turned back to her. “Thanks, I mean really, you didn’t have to.”

“Yeah, how else would I have seduced you up here?”

I smiled, embarrassed, then rushed in, “I gotta go now,” and moved quickly to the door.

I wanted to stay. That fact hit me in the face as I was on my way out and dashing down two flights of stairs, then walking into the sunny day, which was much warmer than it had been an hour before.

My belly growled with hunger and I recalled the muffin she promised with a wince of regret.

I moved through my classes in a daze and finally hit the coffee house at 4:00 pm, ordering a fat hamburger with fries, something I almost never do, but by that time I was ravenously hungry and light headed, needing something to ground me back to earth. Galen had been in my thoughts all day, the s*x replaying in my mind obsessively. I feared that if I didn’t dwell on that amazing event, the incident would become little more than another of my fantasies, not something that actually happened.

So consumed with the images of my morning hour in Galen’s dorm room, I thoughtlessly polished off my hamburger giving scant notice to what was going on around me in the coffee house. Couples smoozed in romantic trysts while other, more fanatical, students flung heated political opinions back and forth like daggers. I suddenly came back to my senses in that din of noise and activity, when a food tray carried by a pair of masculine hands appeared on the table before me, right where I was staring with my fixated gaze.

Jerked back into my body, I looked up to see Dale Joyce sitting down in the seat across from me. Our knees instantly collided and I shifted in my chair. I must have looked as stunned as I felt because Dale felt the need to explain. “The Essence of Miro? Or did you forget?”

Yes. The Essence of Miro. The four part project assigned by Prof. Bailey the previous afternoon, although I had no memory of Dale Joyce being in my group.

As for hearts skipping beats, mine leapt forward impetuously. Dale was a senior majoring in pre-law, a political genius type, his dark hair long and curling behind his ears, his eyes intense, whether focused or darting. Wiry body. Tempestuous zeal. Perfect fronts for an innate charisma that made him a well-known personality on campus.

“So we’re partners,” he said smiling as he started in on his burger.

“It’s supposed to be a group of four. Did you invite the others?” I crisply reminded him, feeling suddenly like a stodgy old schoolmarm trying to gain control over unruly students.

“I know the other two,” he grimaced. “They are going to slide through this on your coattails. But me? I don’t slide on anything. I figure you’re going to know everything already so I’m here to help, I mean do my share. I even like the guy.”

“The guy? You mean Miro?”

“Yes, Miro. A Spanish painter from the 1920’s and beyond, known for his surrealist paintings of whimsical fantasy. His stuff’s cool.”

His stuff’s cool. I even like the guy. Like? An interesting word. You like your friends, French Fries, ice cream, and springtime afternoons with nothing to do. But liking a painter as important as Miro? It sounded so trite. His stuff was cool? Art’s not stuff. And his work isn’t cool; it’s art. He wasn’t a guy in my world; he was a God. But of course this was Dale Joyce trying to borrow a piece of my mind; Dale Joyce on his way to Harvard Law, and becoming a US Senator from Rhode Island in his later years. Even at that moment in the student coffee house, he exuded every bit of the success he was destined for, just as Galen Davis exuded the out of the closet, in-your-face lesbian she’d soon become.

I wondered what my essence exuded at that time of my life, or was I just another blank slate white female waiting for the man of my dreams to make my life for me? That may well have been the case, as much as I’d been hoping for the past three years that I’d meet the right guy and get married. All I’d managed to attract in my three college years were a few lame dates with uninspiring intellectuals, and suddenly a lone lesbian, who I had no intention of carrying on with further. Now, to my surprise and a degree of horror, Dale Joyce was gracing me with his attention. Of course, I had to remind myself, this was only because I was someone he could use to get his ‘A’ in Early 20th Century Art.

The fact that I didn’t think too highly of Dale Joyce and his motives had nothing to do with the physical response I had to his attentive presence at that tiny table. My negative attitude held no sway when my leg brushed against his or when I felt the radiance of his broad smile blanket me as though I were special in his eyes. Thoughts of Galen Davis were now as far from my mind as the Arabian desert, once I grew accustomed to the fact that I was actually sitting across from a man I’d been watching for the last three years. I wouldn’t call my interest in him a crush; my feelings would never blossom that rashly, since I considered Dale Joyce unapproachable, and clearly off limits to a girl with my simple aspirations. He’d approached me because he wanted something from me, but I could not squelch the physical uproar lighting fires in my s****l body.

“You have some time now?” he asked.

“You want to discuss the project now?”

“As good a time as any, huh?” He took a couple big bites of his burger and washed it down with his Coke.

I watched his every move, finally agreeing with a wary, “Sure,” and a shrug of my shoulders.

“Okay, then.” A moment later, he was ready, burger finished, jumping from his seat and expecting me to follow him. Which I did. We moved together side by side as if we belonged that way. I was, of course, self conscious, while Dale was as casual as you please, taking us on the south footpath toward the row of student housing that lined the campus perimeter. He took the steps of an Indy house two at a time, while I still nervously fingered the railing apprehensively.

“C’mon,” he motioned me on opening the front door, then he disappeared inside. Something terribly familiar about this moment, like déjà vu, made me feel intensely weak.

Dale was climbing the inside stairs by the time I finally stepped into the front hall of the house, which was, like most off-campus residences, a lot dingier and messier than its prim exterior would suggest.

His room was at the top of the stairs on the right. I crept in like a shy field mouse, finding Dale standing, waiting for me with a smile.

His grin got bigger, enough to welcome me inside before it faded. “Hey, I really don’t bite.”

Oh, now…life was getting freaky with Galen’s words from earlier in the day springing from his lips too, suggesting that there just might be a conspiracy afoot to derail my well-ordered life.

“Sit down,” he said.

Dale’s nervous agitation, which was his constant state of being, had my nerves on edge. But I followed his command and sat prim as a church girl keeping my legs together and my back straight as an arrow. To my right, a print of Miro’s Catalan Landscape hung on the wall, which did surprise me. I had to assume he hadn’t lied about his interest in Miro.

Then while I watched him closely, Dale went straight to his stash of drugs and after lighting a joint and taking a drag, he offered it to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t smoke.”

“Not even to get high?” He stared at me as if I were a complete mystery.

I shook my head again.

He remained on his feet, moving restlessly around the room, smoking the joint until the air was filled with smoke.

“So, what do you do, Polly?” he asked. He then pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat on it straddling the seat and leaning forward.

“What do I do?”

“Yeah, what do you do?”

“I’m an Art History major.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty clear. How about for fun?”

I shrugged and self consciously stared at the floor, focusing on the ugly brown frayed rug. Dale’s vigorous energy made me so uncomfortable that I found it impossible to look at him. “I don’t know, movies, TV, a few parties.” I paused a moment, then hastened to add, “And I paint,” because I thought it sounded good. I even managed to look at his face.

“You paint like Miro?” he motioned to his print.

“No,” I laughed. “Nothing like that.” I ducked my head again sheepishly. “I just fool around.” While we talked, I awkwardly held my books on my lap. The stack wanted to slip off so I kept shoving them back, which drew Dale’s attention. He abruptly sprang up, took them from me and set them on his desk. I nervously gazed at where the edges of the Chagall plates extending beyond the pages of the book, where I’d so carefully placed them.

“So, you fool around?” With another drag on the joint, Dale’s sweet-smelling exhale filled my lungs and I wished that I hadn’t turned him down. Maybe I’d be more relaxed, like he was relaxed and easy going, not so erratic and excitable now. His easy eroticism sprung forth and I had a feeling I was being seduced again.

I was.

“I fool around with paint,” I said.

“Because? Why?” He raised his brows with interest.

“It’s fun. It pleases me.” And I have little else to do on weekends, I didn’t say aloud.

“You know you caught my eye a long time ago, Polly. I really got into this project because I knew you were in my group.”

This was absolutely unbelievable to me. What had I done today? What was different? Why the attention now and never before? Of course, he might well have been lying.