Chapter 5

And so it began….

5

When one attends a small-town, slightly Podunk university, one learns very quickly the value of the imagination. In other words, the transfer from State U. to State College was like breaking-up with wild sex and landing Mother Theresa – you masturbate to get by for a while, but soon grow restless and are left with only two choices: one, get creative with your jerk-time, or two, get rid of the new girlfriend. Well, since most of the students at State either couldn’t afford to, or simply lacked the ambition to dump it, they had learned to make do. I had left monstrous and entered monotonous – it was a bore – a virtually fun free existence, devoid of all raucous resources. The local frat house was a broken down old fire station, and the local party spot was the village Knights of Columbus Hall – exploratory masturbation at its finest.

So, I sold out to the new scene. My wing man, Eddie, and I always did okay, but aside from scoring a couple of sultry sexsational nights and a lot of empty dates, I was lonely, and was beginning to actually desire a girlfriend…
It wasn’t until one Friday night, at the old K of C, that things got interesting. Eddie and I had acquired a third partying party that night, a girl named Colette that I had been screwing, friends-with-benefits style, for the past couple of months. She was fun and wild in the sack, but a bit too much sometimes… with her damned sorority and constantly changing personality. She was attractive, with straight dark hair and ebony skin, but just never quite made the grade, where college-aged society was concerned. A constant partygoer, searching for what most of us had abandoned just after high school ended – to be one of the popular kids. Pathetic in a way, but no one really knew it but me, so she was ideal for what I had been using her for – easy to manipulate, but seemingly confident on the outside – you gotta love them.
The first time I laid eyes on Chloe, I was taking a breather with Eddie. It was about six-million degrees inside the hall, and about fifteen below outdoors, so it was a nice escape. Anyhow, there we were, chilling. We walked around the parking lot to cool off, and on our way back in, I saw her. Her black hair was swimming around her tanned face, as her turquoise thong panties were playing king-of-the-hill with her black dress pants. “Damn that girl’s hot!” – I had to meet her.We found Colette as soon as we reentered, and I quickly described for her what I had seen outside. Colette didn’t sound too impressed, but told me that she would find out a name if she could, and suggested that she was probably just some random sorority slut, which I found ironic.
Twenty minutes later, I was out on the dance floor attempting to escape the white man’s plight, when suddenly she was upon me. Colette had swooped toward me the way one thinks of vampires as moving – you never see them coming, but then, "poof!", there they are – she looked up at me, and then back at her –“Marcus, this is Chloe. Chloe, Marcus.”
“How’s it going?” I asked, but only half-heartedly, still in shock from Colette’s very forward move.
“I’m great, you?”
The place was so loud that lip reading was really the only option…
“Good,” I screamed, “It’s nice to meet you. I saw you outside and...”
“Yeah I know, your friend already told me…”
I was pissed.
What the hell right did Colette have to be pulling this shit?
“So, where are you from?”
“Oh, I’m from Maxfield, it’s about an hour or so south of…”
“Are you serious?! I just expected when I saw you that you were a city boy! I’m from Claudue.”
Maxfield, my little town, was only twenty minutes or so from her, even smaller hick-berg. We had made a connection.
We didn’t talk much for the rest of the night, but we danced (grinded, really) till the place shut down.
Before I left I had written my number on her hand, and hers was etched into my brain. This, I could tell, was going to be interesting.