Friends and Benefits
Chapter Four
by be287m

Leaving Denver was like leaving a fog.  As I drove south, away from all the places that held memories of Alicia, my mind began to clear.  I thought back on Allen’s words.  Not only did I need better memories, I needed a purpose.  I needed direction.

For that entire day, I did.  It was simple.  Just get to the next gas stop.  Then the next one after that.  I’d worry about Tucson when I got to Tucson.  I’d worry about my graduate school career when I got to school.  The day ended up being the best one of the summer.  Just me and the road.  No cares.  No pain.

I’d kept the lease on my apartment over the summer.  I’d been in too much of a hurry to leave to try to get out of it.  If I was frugal this next year, I’d be okay.  Everything was in good shape when I arrived.  No break-ins.  No problems inside other than a lot of dust.  I crashed, sleeping soundly after a long day.  The next morning I unpacked my stuff and headed to the post office to collect the mail that had been held for the summer.

Amongst all the junk mail was a card from Sharon.  In it, she wished me good luck with the school year.  She’d added a goofy cartoon smiley after her signature.  I smiled.

I stopped by campus to check the graduate student office and found nothing I needed to deal with immediately.  A quick trip to the grocery store let me restock my kitchen and I found myself with a completely free afternoon.

I debated writing Sharon but remembered her request to call her later.  I decided I could afford the long distance charges since I wouldn’t be calling Alicia anymore.  I’d call Sharon after dinner which meant I still had the afternoon to fill.

That’s when my lagging gut caught up with my brain.  Alicia.  Oh.

There were memories of her here, in this apartment.  Translucent ghosts hovering at every turn.

It was time for an exorcism.

I got an old box out of the closet and started with the obvious things.  Alicia’s picture—into the box.  The bundle of her letters--same fate.  Then the mix tapes, the cutesy stuffed animal and all of the other gifts in obvious sight.  Thinking about gifts got me rummaging through drawers for the Shakespeare Festival and concert t-shirts.  Concerts triggered other memories and I walked back into the front room and stared at the poster on the wall.

It was the Melissa Etheridge poster that I’d bought at the concert Alicia and I had attended in Denver in ’89.  Alicia had practically attacked me in the car on the way home.  When I insisted on not pulling over, she yanked her jeans and panties to her ankles and proceeded to finger herself to a noisy orgasm.  I’d often smiled when a glimpse of the poster reminded me of that night.

It went in the box.

Not everything that Alicia had given me was sent into exile.  Some of the shirts had too slim an emotional attachment to warrant the bare spot in my closet.  Similarly, the coffee mug had more associations with blurry mornings here in Tucson than it did with her.  In the end, I still had an overflowing box.

Which went in the back corner of the closet.  I sat in my front room and scanned for residual spirits.

I realized the sunlit patch that I’d told Sharon about was likely to be a problem.  The memory of making love to Alicia in that spot was strong.  A little paper and some tape attached to the window at least broke up the pattern of shade and sun.  If the sight still tugged in a few days, I could consider more radical and permanent solutions.

The kitchen table was next.  During Alicia’s final visit, she’d sat across from me during my home-cooked candle-lit dinner, doing a slow extended striptease.  About every five minutes she’d remove another piece of clothing, refusing to let us set the meal aside the entire time.  It wasn’t until dessert had been consumed that she allowed me to taste her more personal treasures.  The tease must have aroused her as much as me judging by how quickly she had come under my tongue.

I broke out of my reverie and forced myself to consider the table.  My apartment was too small to move it somewhere else.  I settled for rotating it and shifting it about a foot.  At least it looked different.

I couldn’t do much about the bathroom.  When Alicia and I had decided to ‘christen’ every room, we’d found the bathroom rather small.  We’d settled for doggie style kneeling on the floor.  There wasn’t much I could do to make the place look different, but then I realized I didn’t have to.  Standing, I had to work to visualize our encounter.  Since I wasn’t kneeling, the perspective was already different enough for the ghosts to have little sway.

I realized the bedroom memories were also rather jumbled.  I moved around and stood in various places, seeing if any strong memories came back.  In one place, I recalled standing and slowly undressing Alicia while we kissed.  It wasn’t a strong memory, though.  The corner where her bra had landed was all that jumped out at me, but my fan nestled easily into the space and fixed the problem.  Then I lay down on the bed.

When I had my eyes open, no particular memories came.  When I closed them . . . 

The vision of Alicia astride me appeared.  She was leaning back and smiling as she slowly raised and lowered herself on my cock.  She trailed her hands up her torso and began caressing her breasts, which had drawn a gasp from me at the time.  The she leaned back a little further and reached down to caress my cock where we joined.  Her touch had been very light but very memorable.

I realized I’d started unconsciously touching myself.  All the memories about sex had gotten me aroused.  That was reasonable, I realized.  I shucked my shorts and began to stroke myself in earnest.

After a couple of minutes, my gut started to churn.  It was hard to keep my fantasies on the sex with Alicia without bringing up all the additional emotional baggage.  I didn’t know how Sharon could continue to masturbate to fantasies of Allen.

That got me thinking about Sharon’s pictures.  I hopped up and grabbed them and returned to the bed.  I started stroking myself with one hand while I held a picture of Sharon in the other.  I switched pictures a couple of times and came while looking at the picture where she’d been on the edge of touching herself.  The thought of actually watching her masturbate was what pushed me over the edge.

After I cleaned up, I started to feel a little guilty.  I was sure Sharon hadn’t given me the pictures for me to do what I’d just done.  I also realized that I could never tell her about it as well.  I could already imagine the look of disdain.

*  *  *

“Wait a minute, Joe,” Sherri interrupted.  “Why would she look at you with disdain?”

“Sharon did that sometimes.  She could be incredibly supportive, but she could also cut you dead with a glance.  Usually when she didn’t approve of something I said or did.”

 “So she wouldn’t approve of you masturbating to pictures that she had given you?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Why?  Did she say not to?  Or say something like these are for their ‘artistic merit’ only?”

“No . . .”

“Then they’re yours to do with what you want!  They’re your pictures, Joe!”

My chest was tight as I struggled to find words that would explain.  I met Sherri’s eyes and she gave me a small smile.

“I’m not mad at you, Joe,” she said softly.  “The tone in my voice is to get your attention.”

“You did that,” I grumbled.

“There’s nothing wrong with private fantasies,” Sherri stated.  “You can dream about any woman or any encounter you want.  Sharon, me, your mom, even Minnie Mouse.”

“I’m not going to be fantasizing about Minnie Mouse.”

Sherri shrugged.  “Even if you don’t, there’s nothing wrong with the fantasies.  It’s only when you try to make them real that there’s the potential for problems.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered.

“Actually, you tell me about it.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“Well, I didn’t try anything right away . . . .”

*  *  *

I called Sharon that night as planned.  She was glad that I’d enjoyed her card.  I told her about the drive down and how calm it had been.  She only asked a few questions, mostly logistical details, like where I’d stopped for meals on the drive.  When the conversation began to lull, I took a deep breath.

I got rid of all of Alicia’s stuff,” I blurted.

“You threw it out?” she asked, surprise in her voice.

“Oh, no!  I put all of it in a box in the back of my closet.”

“I was about to say, Joe, you might want some of that some day.”

“Well, maybe.”

“I wouldn’t throw it out,” she said.  “The closet is good.”

“Yeah, the closet’s will work.”

“Good,” she agreed.

“I just needed to get rid of the ghosts,” I said.  “I didn’t think it would be healthy to be remembering Alicia every time I looked around my apartment.”

“I understand.  That’s part of why I had to move out of the dorm.”

“I thought it was the food,” I joked.  Sharon laughed.

“That too!”

“It was harder than I expected,” I admitted.  “There were more ghosts than I’d expected and some of them were . . . explicit.”  Sharon chuckled.

“That’s okay, Joe.  I still find some of my memories of Allen . . . useful at times.”

“Useful?”  I probed, hoping.  Sharon laughed again.

“Well, what do you expect, Joe?  I can’t exactly go buy a magazine like you guys.”

“Well, you can--”

“Photos don’t do much for me, Joe.”  Sharon said, interrupting.  “Stories work a lot better.”

“I could get you some stories,” I offered.  “Online.  Just save them from the story groups and print them out and mail them to you.”

Sharon chuckled again.  That was good.

“Or you could get your own computer account,” I suggested.

“I don’t know how to do that,” she replied.

“Okay.  I’ll mail you some stories.”

“Oh, okay.  Why not?”

I grinned to myself.  I had an excuse to spend time online reading the alt.sex hierarchy now.  Not that I really needed an excuse.  While I was lost in my reverie, Sharon asked about the coming semester.  I still had no idea what I was going to do, so after quickly admitting that, I asked her about her upcoming semester.  Sharon was actually excited about her classes and that carried the conversation long enough for me to begin worrying about my phone bill.  Fortunately, Sharon wasn’t offended when I suggested we wind down the conversation.

“I’ll call you next time, ’kay?” She asked.  “In a few days.”

“Sure!” I agreed.  We said our goodbyes and hung up.

I sat for a moment holding the phone, before wandering into the bedroom.  The apartment was quiet.  Too quiet.  Sad, really.  I lay on the bed, thinking about the upcoming semester.  I had no idea what I was going to do.  I’d registered for classes rather haphazardly, not actually expecting to be back to take them.  Funny how dreams of life with Alicia had taken over.  Now I was back, and I was alone.

It didn’t hurt so much.  More the throbbing ache of an old injury.  Not enough pain to prevent me from eventually drifting off to sleep.

The next morning I awoke to brightness and broil.  I’d forgotten to close the window and the blinds and the morning desert sun was searing in the room.  I stumbled up and closed them, but the damage had been done.  I was awake, and the oven was too hellish to permit sleep.  The swamp cooler helped some, but it was monsoon season and it wouldn’t help for long.  I tossed and turned before giving up and heading to the shower.

The hot water was bracing and not nearly the pleasure it was on a cool Colorado morning.  For the umpteenth time, I cursed the desert and my decision to move to the desert.  Not only had it shattered my relationship and my career, but it was too damn hot.

So leave.  The thought teased as it had at the beginning of the summer.  But now . . . there was no urgency.  Just the tease.

To leave.  Not to run back to Alicia or run home.  But to actually go somewhere.  Out there.  To go out there, beyond the stars, as one science fiction movie had said.

That’s what had drawn me into astronomy--a childhood of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and every science fiction novel I could get my hands on.  It was coupled with the telescope Dad had given me at ten.  Some of my best memories from my early teen years were bundling up against the cold as Dad drove us into the mountains, beyond the glare of Denver’s lights.  We drank hot chocolate and I made notes in my yellow spiral notebook as we watched the meteor showers.  When we got home, Mom would have strawberry pancakes and fresh orange juice waiting.  Sometimes I could even miss the morning classes at school.

So how had I gotten here?

Well, the University of Arizona was the best.  But I’d gotten nowhere near the big telescopes on Mt. Graham.  I was stuck studying cosmology and gravitational constants.  Things I didn’t give a damn about.

I turned off the water and dried off, which was trivially easy in the heat.  I remembered Allen’s advice again.  I still had no clue as to my destination, but I knew I needed to move.

Later in the morning, I entered the department office.  I asked for the course catalog but spent my time studying the degree requirements.  If I settled for a terminal master’s degree, I could be done in a year, maybe a little more.  Even better, the classes overlapped enough with the Ph.D. courses so that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone about my change of plans until the last minute.  That meant I could keep my scholarship.

Whistling, I modified my fall class schedule, dropping one course and adding another.  The secretary commented on my happiness, but I just smiled and didn’t explain.  Then I ran some errands and headed back to my apartment.  I couldn’t wait to tell Sharon about my decision.

Of course, I did have to wait.  Daytime long distance was still beyond my budget.  Instead, I fired up the computer and my modem and logged into my university account.  I got a coke while the machines were shaking hands.  Some day I should upgrade my modem to 2400 baud, I mused.  But today I was in no hurry.

There was a huge backlog of unread posts in alt.sex.stories and its sister newgroups.  I spent most of the afternoon reading.  The majority of the posts were simple stroke stories.  I breezed through them pretty quickly.  A few caught my attention because they rang true in ways the others didn’t.  I ended up saving a couple of them.  Then I hit one I knew Sharon would love.

It had well-developed characters and involved taking a purity test at a party.  Allen, Alicia, Sharon and I had done that once together, revealing only our scores and not the answers to questions.  I scrolled back up to the top.  “Unwrap Party,” by Jordan Shelbourne.  I didn’t recognize the name, so he was probably new.  Good writer though.  I dumped it to the printer.

It had gotten late enough for me to call Sharon.  She answered on the third ring.

“That’s great!” she said when she’d heard my news.  “I’m glad you’ve got some time before you have to make a decision about school!”

“Well,” I admitted, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.  I thought I was making a decision.”

“Well, you did.  But I meant that you don’t have to leave school right away.”

“The advantage of scholarships,” I stated.

“Yeah, I wish I was so lucky,” Sharon said.

“It wasn’t luck,” I argued.  “I worked pretty damn hard as an undergrad to earn that scholarship.”

“True.  You didn’t do much besides study and spend time with Alicia, did you?”

“Ehhh, I spent some time with Allen on occasion.”

“Without me or Alicia?”

“Okay, not that much time,” I admitted.

“So,” Sharon asked, “do you think you’ll be able to come back to Colorado?”

“Depends on the job offers.  I have no idea what non-Ph.D. astronomers do.”

“You’ll find something.”

“Yeah.”  In all honesty, I was clueless about what was out there.  But I didn’t want to think about it right now.

“So, how was your day?  I guess I just talked to you yesterday so there’s not a lot of news.”

“Nope.  I worked.  I came home.  I fixed dinner.  I’m going to soak in the tub later and read a book.”

“Oh?” I asked.  “What’s the book?”

“Aztec, by Gary Jennings.”

“Any good?”

“I’m enjoying it.  You might too.  It’s got some good steamy parts.”  I could hear the leer in her voice.

“What happens in them?”

“You’ll have to read it,” Sharon replied.

“Will you loan it to me?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Great!  And speaking of reading material, I should have some stories in the mail to you tomorrow.”  Sharon chuckled again.

“Already getting them from the computer groups, eh?”

“Hey, a guy’s gotta do something.”

“Sure, Joe.  You just needed an excuse to spend all day on the computer.”

Busted.  I didn’t say anything.  I didn’t know what to say, really.

“Just when do classes start?” Sharon asked, taking me off the hook.

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Tell me about the new ones.”

With that invitation, I launched into a detailed discussion of my new academic plans.  Sharon made encouraging noises at appropriate spots and it was some time before I remembered to shut up and ask her about her upcoming classes.  Since nothing had changed since we’d last talked about her upcoming semester, the conversation rapidly wound down.

“I suppose I should let you go,” I finally said.

“Yeah, I want to get to my bath.  It’s a little cool standing here,” Sharon replied.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t grab my robe when I went to answer the phone,” Sharon explained.

“Oh?  So you’ve been naked the entire time we’ve been talking?” I asked.  Sharon chuckled.

“One of the advantages of the phone.  I can be as naked as I like and no one needs to know.”  I rolled my eyes.

“Well, enjoy your bath, then.”

“I will!”

We said our goodbyes and hung up.  Rather than sit and speculate about what Sharon had looked like while talking to me, I set about bundling up the stories I’d saved for her and getting the large shipping envelope ready to go.  I certainly hoped she’d like them.  I figured the worst case was that she didn’t, in which case I just wouldn’t send any more.

Sharon did like them, though.  In our phone call the following week, she joked about some of the less well-written ones before telling me that she’d really liked “Unwrap Party.”  We talked about our own purity test scores and I poked at her answers to specific questions, but she refused to answer.  Near the end of the conversation, I asked if it was okay for me to send more stories.  She said “sure” and I was on the computer almost as soon as we were off the phone.

That started a pattern that lasted for several weeks.  I’d build up a collection of stories that I thought Sharon would like and mail them off.  After she got them, we’d talk on the phone about which ones she liked and why.  Most of the time it boiled down to the fact that she preferred the character-driven ones over the purely graphic ones.  But for Sharon, even a well written stroke story couldn’t hold a candle to one tinged with romance.  Particularly with extremely confident male leads who displayed sophisticated tastes.  It was late October before I grew bold enough to act on those observations.

Sharon and I had just gotten off the phone and she’d told me about the snow that had fallen.  Not much, of course, as fall snows in Colorado tend to be sloppy rather than serious.  But it got me thinking about an earlier conversation where she’d talked about curling up in front of the fire with Allen on a ski trip.  If I added a bed to the room . . . .

“I love it!” Sharon exclaimed during our next phone call.

“Love what?”

“‘In Front of the Fire.’  It’s the best one you’ve sent.”

“Really?” I asked.  “Despite being written in second person?”

“Oh, that’s part of what made it great!  Particularly because the two characters were never described or named.  I could easily see myself in the story.”

“So you really liked it?” I asked, tentatively.

“God, Joe.  Enough to take it to the bath with me.  Which reminds me, can you send me another copy?  The printout got a little wet.”

“Sure,” I answered automatically.  Wow.  She’d really liked it.

“You didn’t list an author,” Sharon then pointed out.  “Who wrote it?  I’d like to get more of this person’s stuff.”

“Uhh, I did.  I wrote it myself.”

Sharon burst out laughing.  That wasn’t the response I’d hoped for.  She quickly got control of herself though.

“I’m sorry, Joe.  I wasn’t laughing at you so much as I was laughing at myself.  I have gotten so used to thinking of you as an astronomer that I was surprised at the thought of you being a writer.  But there’s no reason you couldn’t be, of course.”

“Thanks.  I think.”

“Really, Joe, I think it’s great that you could write this.  You have talents I didn’t know about.”

“Well, what can I say?”

“You can say ‘Glad you liked it.’”

“Glad you liked it, then,” I replied.  “I was inspired by the snow you guys got.”

“Yeah.  That storm gave me an interesting idea . . .”  Sharon’s voice trailed off and I just paused and waited.

“Well, feel free to write me some more stories,” she said abruptly.

“Will do!  If I think of anything good,” I replied.

“I’m sure you will.”

Unfortunately, Sharon’s words were less than prescient.  I was due for another round of mid-terms and wasn’t able to concentrate on the writing.  The few pieces I did write were wooden and flat.  Completely frustrated, the next couple of packages I sent contained nothing but stories from the newsgroups.

It was three weeks from that call when I got a bulky package from Sharon.  It was a story, typed on her own PC.  She’d scrawled “I hope you like it!” across the top of the first page.

It was written in second person, just like mine.  It involved the protagonist discovering his girlfriend was only wearing a garter belt and stockings under her winter coat.  It wasn’t that long and there wasn’t much sex.  Mostly a slow sensual tease of discovery.

I called her that night.

“Okay, I loved it,” I admitted.  Sharon gave a small cheer on the other end of the phone.  “I particularly loved the fact that she was wearing a garter belt.  I love garter belts.”

“Really?” Sharon asked.

“Really.  Every woman should own one.  You got it right in one.”

“Well, I’m glad you liked it,” she said.  “I enjoyed writing it.”

“You’ve got a good imagination for sex,” I commented.

“Oh, you have no idea,” she chuckled.

“Care to enlighten me?”

“Not tonight, Joe.  But maybe sometime.”

“I can hardly wait.”  That happily drew a chuckle rather than a snort of disdain.

We caught up on the last few days like we always did, but the phone call was short, barely twenty minutes, because Sharon had to study.  Me, I took the story back to bed where I read it again, this time, holding it with one hand.

*  *  *

“Stop, Joe,” Sherri ordered.  “You felt guilty jacking off to her pictures, but not to her story.”  I hemmed and hawed for a moment.

“Well. . . I felt like I had her permission, with the story.  The photos . . .”

“She gave those to you too.”

“Yeah, but it was . . . more like they were for art and not for ‘jacking off.’  It would have been like masturbating to the Venus de Milo or one of those renaissance paintings.”

“I’m sure people have done it,” Sherri said with a smirk.

“Well, yeah, but I still don’t think Sharon would have liked it.”

Sherri’s eyes softened as she looked at me.  She tilted her head for a moment before speaking.

“Sharon’s opinion means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

I nodded, then answered slowly.

“She was there for me.  Every time I got lonely, sitting in that apartment in Tucson by myself, I could call.  Or write, if I’d already spent the month’s long distance budget.  She was a great friend that year.  In fact, my best friend.”

“And now?”

I let out a deep sigh and looked away.  I didn’t answer.

“Did you ever tell Sharon that you’d masturbated to her pictures?”

“No.  She would have been angry.”

“You sure?”

I let out a deep breath.  “No, not entirely.”

“So,” Sherri continued probing, “were you feeling guilty or scared?”

I just stared at her, mouth open.  It was getting harder to breathe.

“They’re not the same thing,” she continued.

“I know.”  I didn’t want to continue with this discussion.  Fortunately, I was saved by the server bring the check over.  Sherri pushed the bill toward me.  I quickly checked it, then put my credit card on top.  We waited in silence while our server scurried to pick it up.

Unfortunately, Sherri didn’t let the interruption distract her.  Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes were iron, pinning me.  She didn’t say anything but I still squirmed.

“I guess I was scared of what she’d say, or how she’d look at me,” I finally blurted.

“It’s okay,” Sherri said.  She reached across the table and took my hand.  “There’s nothing wrong with being afraid from time to time. The question is what you do with the fear.”

“Like what?”

“Do you face it, or run away?”

“I don’t see how I was running away by not telling Sharon what I was doing with her pictures,” I shot back.

Sherri looked at me, but then thought better of whatever she was going to say.   We sat in silence, me fuming until she squeezed my hand again.  I looked down to see my palm in hers.  Sherri wasn’t my enemy.  She was trying to be my friend, err, paid friend.

“So what now?” I asked, when the credit card receipts returned.

“Do you have to work tomorrow?”

“I called in sick today.  It wouldn’t be too strange for me to call in sick tomorrow.”

“You won’t get in trouble?” Sherri asked.

“I shouldn’t.  My boss is a pretty understanding guy and I’m ahead of schedule on my work.”

“So what do you do?”

“I analyze data from the Hubble Space Telescope.”

“Really?”  Sherri’s eyes lit up.  “So you found a job in astronomy after all!”

“Well, it’s not much of a job.  My boss is one of the Hubble Scientists, who gets to pick where they point the telescope and what images they take.  He has a couple of us to crunch the data for him, so in many ways I’m just a glorified programmer.”

“But it’s still astronomy,” she said.

“Yeah, and I do get to work at Goddard.  I’m a support contractor and not a civil servant, but it’s still NASA.”

“See, some things worked out,” Sherri pointed out.

“I guess.”

“And this will too.”  Her tone was too firm to argue with, so I just nodded in agreement.

“Now, since you don’t have to go into the office tomorrow, let’s go back to your place.”

“My place?”

“Where better?” she replied.  With that, Sherri stood and started walking toward the entrance, checking back to make sure I was following.

I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she had in mind for back at my place, but I figured that there was only one way to find out.

--End Chapter Four—
Author’s Note: “Unwrap Party” by Jordan Shelbourne can be found at http://storiesonline.net/story/33627
© 2005  All rights reserved.  May not be archived or distributed other than for personal use without explicit permission from the author.