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Interview with the Professor

By: donnylaja



**This article is for internal use only. Not for release outside the Institute, except as required by law.** 

My Interview with the Professor by Stephanie Weingarten 

The first notes I have are from my walk-in to her Fabrics and Materials class. My visitor's tag was waiting, and I was soon wandering the elegant but functional halls. As befit (I have to avoid these unintended puns) the most prestigious fashion institute in the country, the walls were very pleasing to the eye, with watercolors of past award-winning designs, meant to impress but not overwhelm. 

It being the middle of a class hour, there was hardly anyone in the halls. I could hear my heels clicking on the hard tile as I curiously, but not too quickly, made my way to Room 125, the classroom which, I was told, was specially constructed for her use. 

105, 107, 109 . . . through the doors I could hear the sing-song of accomplished professors teaching serious-minded grad students. Kind of like my j-school. The stereotype of fashion industry people as ditzy or superficial is just not true. I glanced at the students through the windows on the doors. Again, a preconception overturned. No fashion plates. Well, maybe a couple. But these kids -- kids?? they're only three or four years younger than me! -- were dressed like ordinary college kids, in fact a bit on the grungy side. Sweatshirts, jeans, sneakers, boots. Some shorts. Appropriate, on this warmish day in May. Finally, a day in the 70's! I was getting tired of this cold, wet spring. 

Now on to Room 125. The door was near the rear of the room. I peered in on the students in the back. More sweatshirts than usual, in fact they seemed to be dressed as if expecting the room to be cold. 

Now my hopefully discreet entrance. I closed the door behind me and slid into a chair at the very back, as the amplified voice spoke about shirring. Or I think that's what it was. I'm no clothing expert. 

It was a pretty big classroom, with maybe forty students. All industriously scribbling or texting notes as the professor spoke. She was in a glass enclosure at the front, behind a little podium. I had been told what to expect but the scene was unreal just the same. The sticklike podium hid none of her totally naked, hairless body, pale and bluelike in the pallor of the fluorescent light over her. The borders of the glass were encrusted with frost and her breath came out in thick clouds as she spoke, as thick as old-time cigarette smoke. 

"You s - see on the overhead the styles of shirring th - that are c - current..." 

The students impassively glanced up at the LCD screen to one side of the glass enclosure, showing a diagram with lines and arrows that were indecipherable to me. I quickly re-fastened my gaze on the professor. 

Her hairlessness made her look like a freak, an alien. She was not sickly, that's for sure. Her arms and legs were lightly but noticeably muscled. She seemed tall but then I looked down and saw that she was standing on a kind of raised metal grating, her reddish bare toes curling over the front as if to grasp it. I looked up her slightly spread legs to the shaved pubic lips. Even from the back of the room, her pink clit was visible, sticking straight out in the freezing air. Her nipples were big and brown and hard. Quite long too, judging from the ghostly fluorescent shadows they threw down her breasts. 

Freezing air? Obviously sub-freezing, judging from the frost on the glass. Her allergy requires her to be in such a controlled environment. I told myself: She must be used to it. 

Well, actually she isn't. "C - can you see this?" The nodding of students. "Th - then on to the next one." It's not stuttering, it's shivering. As my eyes adjusted I detected goose bumps on her arms and thighs. And the slight quivering of the hands as she turned the pages of her notes on the little stand in front of her. 

Fortunately the sound system was excellent and everyone could hear her quivering voice clearly. I looked at the clock. It's been half an hour she's been in that transparent freezer. Despite her strength and toughness it must be chilling her to the bone. Her toes grasped and ungrasped the icy metal grate, as if to get some feeling back. 

Now a student raised his hand and the professor answered it. A little joke. Chuckles. Teaching classes like this was something she liked to do. It was her life. The minutes went by as I took in this strange but everyday scene, warm and clothed students learning about clothing design from their freezing naked professor. 

As the minutes ran down her shivering got more violent. It was harder for her to get the words out as her teeth chattered. I noticed her skin was now purplish, even her bald scalp, upon which the heatless fluorescent light shone dimly, like the Sun uselessly scattering its weak, faraway light on the planet Pluto. I was getting upset again but the students seemed totally oblivious. 

"You s - s - see the s - samples f - from my c - c - current project . . ." The clouds of condensation came from her mouth more raggedly now in tune with her attempts at speech. The students opened up little pouches that were on their desks. "Oooooo . . . " said a few of them as the dark, furry material caressed their hands. 

The professor, shaking even more violently now, said through chattering teeth, "Using n - n - nitrogen c - compound allows m -m - more --" Her shaking knocked a page off her stand and she bent down on shuddering legs to retrieve it. "S - s - sorry.... C - c - compound allows m - more w - w - arm - m - th - th." 

"What did she say?" a girl in a fake-fur jacket whispered. 

"'Warmth'," the girl next to her said. 

"What?" 

"'WARMTH!'" the second girl said impatiently. I got the feeling that she considered the first girl to be a little slow. 

I shook my head at how indifferent the students were to what their professor must be feeling. They waited on every word to lurch out from the professor's blue lips as if she had a speech impediment that they were polite enough to pretend not to notice. Well, for them it really was nothing unusual. This scene might be upsetting to me but for them it was just another day of this class. 

The professor looked up at the clock and said. "We'll s - stop here for t - today. Rememb - b - ber, F - fashion C - club meeting at m - my house t - tomorrow night." She raised a shaky finger. "F - f - free c - c - coffee!" A smile and some amused grunts. Must be an in-joke. 

I got up and made my way to the front, fighting the wave of students who were heading out the rear. As I got to the glass enclosure I noticed for the first time a little booth-like section to the side, at the bottom of which was a kind of uphill treadmill, shiny metal with little raised holes. The professor gathered her papers and stepped onto it, flung a lever, and glass (actually it must have been hard clear plastic) came down behind her, missing her trim bare butt cheeks by only a couple of inches. A smooth, well-practiced motion. In a moment she was in the booth and it was moving toward me. She had seen me from the first. Another thing I had been told about, her almost extra-sensory perception, through her cold hard nipples. 

I got an uneasy feeling, seeing this huge glass booth approach me, but I was reassured by her blue-lipped smile. "H - how are you? You must be Stephanie?" She placed her papers in a little well to her side and nodded as she stretched her hands up to push up against two bars on each side, above her head. 

I tried not to be distracted by this position, which made her full breasts stick out and made a hollow concavity of her stomach. "Yes, thank you for taking the time -- " 

She waved her hand with a dismissive grin then put it back up on the bar. "L - let's go to my office." 

I walked beside her uncertainly as she proceeded in her movable booth. It fascinated me so much I almost forgot to watch my own step. The booth was about seven feet high, with a metal capsule on top that must be a refrigeration device. It whirred quietly. Looking down I saw the professor's toned legs, slightly separated, pushing down, one then the other. Further below, her broad feet, with widely-spaced toes, gripped and pulled down the metallic ramp, as if she were walking uphill. Step after step, as her hands pushed up on the bars above so she could exert more force downward. It must take some effort to move this thing on its unseen wheels. 

Her body was magnificent. That's the only word for it, despite the total hairlessness. She didn't even have eyebrows. But with her arms up like that, one could see every little bit of her nakedness. Her well-muscled arms, her narrow waist, her bolt upright frame . . . the envy of any woman, despite her handicap. I wondered what she looked like from behind and couldn't help myself, deliberately lagging so that I could see those tight butt cheeks flex and unflex with her treadmill-like motions. 

Catching up, I looked down at the metal ramp, flexible enough to pass over the rollers yet strong. The little holes were actually raised, like a cheese grater, for better traction. My tender soles would be cut to ribbons. But of course her feet were tough from years of going barefoot. 

A student stopped her. She looked very young. "Professor!" she squeaked. "I love these new boots of yours! They're so soft and warm!!" She motioned down to her red-clad feet, pointing the toes just so as if showing them off on a runway. 

I stole a quick glance at the professor's purplish bare feet on the freezing, pointy track, then looked up at her face. She smiled, shivering a bit. "Th - thank you," she said, her breath coming out in thick clouds. 

We continued down this hall and turned onto another. To my relief her shivering stopped. The goose bumps seemed to subside. The exertion of pushing this booth was heating her up, a bit. 

Everyone said hi as they passed. Her arms up to her sides, her feet pressing down, her breasts wobbling tightly with her steps, she nodded hello. Now, an alcove with a door with her name on it, in big, colorful, construction-paper-fourth-grade-class-project letters that seemed out of place here. 

She motioned to jackets hanging on hooks on the wall. I wrapped myself in one and followed her through the door. Her office was like a big refrigerator. No, not that bad. A lot cooler than room temperature, but not freezing. In another well-practiced motion the professor stepped off the little treadmill, opened the back of her booth, and stepped her bare feet into the same air I was in. I felt the subfreezing air dissipate from the booth, making me shiver despite my being fully clothed and with the extra jacket on. 

"Now we can say hi properly," she said, with a big smile. "Tami Smithers." 

"Hi," I said, clasping her cold, strong hand, making sure my jacket sleeve was pulled back past my wrist. "Stephanie Weingarten, from the Institute." 

Before I could say anything else she said, "Give me a minute. Have a seat." And then she padded across the room and walked into what looked like a bathroom, though strangely there was no door. She moved out of eyeshot and I heard running water. 

So I sat down, next to her desk, hugging myself with my jacketed arms. I looked down. It was a strange floor, metal plating or something like that. 

The office was cluttered, and pretty big. What caught my attention first was a kind of universal gym off to the right, past where she had parked her booth. To my left were posters over all the walls, mostly from fashion shows. Then I observed her desk. 

There was a strange metallic swivel chair, facing away from me. The desk was huge and filled with disorganized stuff -- papers, pens, little geometric figures made with magnetic sticks, a monitor. But no computer keyboard. I looked down and saw it on the floor -- one of the new ergonomic models, in two parts. A mouse down there too. With a pencil next to it. 

I looked at the row of pictures on the wall. The professor with her husband, a kind of hunky black man in uniform. An old, frail man hugging his bald daughter, the photo cropped at the bare shoulders. An old photo, obviously that man's wedding picture, in 1970's clothes, complete with blue ruffled shirt. Hideous fashions; they would probably be banned in this place. The bride reappeared in a newer photo, now much older, in a cap and gown, proudly wielding a diploma. And a recent "official Army" photo of a young soldier, standing next to the flag. 

The more arresting photos were along the desk shelf. Here was the smiling naked professor next to a horse, on some kind of high mountain plain: two beautiful naked animals, out in nature. In another picture she was on a beach, on spread knees, happily bending over as she built a sand castle. Her butt was partly to the camera and the sun hit her back, her butt, the sandy soles of her feet. Her anus was squinting in the sun, nakedly visible. The beach seemed inconsistent with her allergy, until I noticed the people in the background strolling along the surf. In heavy coats and boots. Crusts of ice defined the high tide mark. It was winter, and the outflung hair of one of the female strollers showed the wind was blowing strongly. But the prof was happy, playing in the sand like a child, and it was quite an accomplished castle. 

Another photo: the prof in a line of equally bald young women, all smiling dazzling fashion-model smiles. Again, the photo was cropped at their bare shoulders, and one could see the others were actually wearing skin caps, except for one whose scalp had a shadow of recently shaved hair. Evidently a party or celebration in the prof's honor, the models "going bald" in solidarity with their designer. 

Further photos, of a pretty black woman with short hair, of a Hispanic-looking woman, apparently cropped to leave out a huge bust, and a somewhat chunky blonde woman who had that "war widow" look about her. And one of those photos of the World Trade Center given to those who lost friends or family there on that terrible day so long ago, the worldwide menace we are still fighting. The WTC photo had two smaller photos in it, of a young woman and a young man, I imagine smiling out from long-ago undergraduate days in which they were now permanently preserved in the minds of all who knew them. 

Now the sound of a toilet flush, and the prof jaunted out from the bathroom, happy no doubt to be out of that freezer booth, into a room that was simply chilly. I hugged my jacket to me more tightly as I saw her bare feet slap on the metal floor. I glanced at the little thermostat on the wall. 50 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The room was suddenly filled with the smell of coconuts, like coconut hand lotion. She stretched absently as if to warm up her limbs. Her bare pussy was practically in my face, the famous clit big and longish, sticking out. Then grasping her bare heel and hefting it way, way up on the wall, over her head, and then bringing it down and extending the other foot just as high. Her anus, not three feet away from me, seemed to wink at me between the split butt cheeks. This was not showing off, of course. She was simply limbering up her cold, stiff body. She'd been forced to go totally naked almost half her life. Any sense of shame must have been burned out of her long ago. 

How she gets around naked, without being gawked at and bothered about it, is a well-known tale. Unauthorized photos started appearing on the internet, and then once in the press. Wanda Percival, a lawyer and an old friend of hers, brought suit for invasion of privacy. It went all the way up to the state supreme court, though in Rhode Island that's not a long way to go. The court held that because she was not naked by choice, she was not a "public figure", and anyone who posted photos could be sued for invasion of privacy. Whereupon the photos quickly were taken down. And stayed down, thanks to the vigilance of Wanda Percival and the hundreds of people who reported to her. 

"Let me say," I began, "how honored I am to interview Tami Beet -- oh sorry -- " 

She laughed. "It's O.K., you can call me Tami Beethoven. I'm used to it." 

That, I did not know. Then I looked her up and down. "You have a wonderful body," I blubbered. Damn! I'd promised myself I wouldn't say something like that. But faced with such pulchritude, it just popped out of me. 

She smiled. It was a happy smile that made me smile too, the crinkles on the sides of her eyes, the slight forward motion of her scalp as her eyebrows -- or what would be her eyebrows -- rose up. "Thanks." She looked down at herself, then lifted her breasts as if to talk to them. Not that lifting them was necessary. Amazingly, they hardly sagged at all, despite years of bouncing around without a bra. The areolas were big and dark, the nipples seemingly always hard, not surprising since all they knew was cold air. "I'm getting big titties in my old age," she said playfully to her breasts, jiggling them slightly. If I had been a guy I'd probably find this sight too much to take. "I'd be a 34 D now. No, double-D." 

She spun around the metallic chair and my jaw dropped. Jutting up from it were two big dildos, and a smaller protrusion in front that looked like a crooked finger with a little pad on it. She noticed my surprise, and elucidated, giving me a head start on the questions she knew would follow. "That's what I sit on, when I come out of that ice box." 

"Those -- things -- actually go inside you??" Despite the coldness in the room I absently let the jacket fall from my shoulders. I had been told about the dildos, but not about the size. They were huge, bigger and wider than any porn star's penis. The front one had a little protrusion about halfway up -- to stimulate her "G spot". 

She casually pressed a button on the back of the chair. The dildos vibrated and rotated in little circles, as if doing a little dance with each other. It was comical. I couldn't help but laugh, then apologized. "Sorry." 

"No that's O.K. They are kind of funny like that." She turned the machine off and then dabbed a little jelly on each huge knob, then arched her back and eased herself down. I cringed and squeezed my legs together, clenching my own butt cheeks. From her pained expression it seemed like it was not easy, even now, for her to take those things into her pussy and rectum. She turned and squirmed and squeezed her eyes shut. Finally, with an exhale, she "hit bottom". Then adjusted the pad of the crooked finger so that it pressed against her clit. 

I wondered how she could take all that into her. After years of this she must be all "stretched out" by now. Yet when I saw her pussy and anus a moment ago they looked normal, small and tight. 

"At this temperature I have to keep my endorphins up," she explained. She turned the knob underneath. There was a faint hum. 

She faced me, waiting for me to speak. I resolved to be undistracted by the slight twitches of her thighs and decided to get the basic stuff out of the way first. "How long can you be in -- this temperature -- without, uh, stimulation?" 

"You mean at ten degrees Celsius? It's stabilized at about ten minutes. Ohhh . . ." 

The dildos were having an effect almost immediately. "Do you want me to go?" 

She almost appeared offended. "Of course not. T - take your time. I know your report will be confidential, so ask anything you -- want." 

"I, uh . . ." I tried not to break eye contact but it was tough. Her "eyebrows" twitched and bounced around, her eyes popped out at me, her teeth gritted. "Zhhh . . . ohhhhh . . . Ohhhh. . ." 

I'd never looked someone in the eye during orgasm before. She wanted me to ask my next question but I just couldn't. "Uh . . . have you . . . uh . . ." 

While I stammered like an idiot her body quaked and bounced around to the extent it could on its anchor of dildos. Her eyes bulged out at me, still waiting for me to speak. After the last, irregular spasm she put her head down to catch her breath. "S -sorry . . . The first one is always the strongest . . . ohhh . . ." She sat up straight to face me again. After an orgasm like that I'd be wiped out. But of course I had been advised of her capacity. 


Interview with the Professor



"And the . . . booth you live in . . .?" I glanced over to the moveable glass ice-box thing. 

"Minus ten degrees Celsius," she said, looking over to it. "It's a wonder of engineering, isn't it? Made by an old friend of mine. Without endorphins, that's the maximum temperature that d - doesn't trigger my allergy." 

Her allergy, I'd heard, was extreme. An "anaphylactic reaction", not pleasant to look at, probably fatal if it went on for more than a few minutes. "What about hypothermia?" 

"I'm aware of the signs. I stay ahead of it." 

This time I was better at ignoring the ascent to orgasm, the heavy, ragged breaths, the slight flush along the tops of her large breasts. "Aside from warmth, what are you allergic to?" 

"Well not always warmth. I'm not allergic to skin, or tongues, thank goodness. Or if the warmth is created by my own body, like when I exercise." She nodded to the equipment on the far side of the room. "I go on that for an hour each day -- ohhh . . . But I can't touch anything porous, or fabricky. Or hair. I get shaved by my friends every other day. They use razors and a special cold depilatory cream." 

"Your whole body?" 

"Yes. They put me up on a special x-shaped frame one of them designed." A big smile, interrupted by a shudder from below. "I have a lot of very, very good friends. I'm one lucky girlllll. Zhhh!" She shuddered all over. "Sorry. 

"And stainless steel gives me no trouble," she said, tapping her chair with a cold metallic thud. I looked around quickly. The chair, the floor . . . all stainless steel. "Other kinds of metal, are O.K. too. Glass is O.K. Hard plastic, I can -- unhh -- deal with. Below mmmm - minus ten Celsius, I have more tolerance. And if it's way cold, I can touch almost anything except fabric. That's about it -- ohhhh!" 

This last moan came with a full-body shudder. As she kept her gaze on me she launched into her second orgasm in as many minutes. A quieter affair than the first one. 

"It must be hard to get around, having to avoid different, uh, surfaces," I observed. 

"I can 'wear' these," she said, pointing up with her toes at what looked like thin shoe inserts hung on a nail in the wall. "They're metal sheets I put on my soles, made to adhere to them. I don't like using them though. They feel icky, like I've stepped in some dried sticky stuff." I could imagine. 

"Don't you ever catch a cold?" 

"No. Never," she said, proudly. She extended her arms out to flex her muscles, which were lithe but well-defined. "Healthy as a horse." Once again I was amazed at her well-toned tummy, still concave despite the bulk of those rotating, vibrating dildos inside. They were so long they must extend way up past her navel. Once again her bald scalp and "eyebrows" crinkled with a smile that was playful and half-deprecating, as if she were amused by her predicament. 

I clutched the jacket around me again and shivered, wishing I had gloves as my stiffened fingers continued texting notes onto my handheld. I looked outside, through the double-paned windows, to the flowering plants and the sunlit May grass, and was about to comment on the warm weather but I stopped myself. 

The phone rang. "Smithers," she said pleasantly. Then her features darkened. "No, I don't think it's a good idea. . .Well, I told you. . ." 

Part 2

Apparently some faculty disagreement having to do with committees or something. I motioned if I should go but she bid me to say. As she spoke she launched into another orgasm, one which hardly interrupted her conversation, betrayed only by a slight pause and a couple of stammered words. And the spasms of her tummy, rhythmic and silent, as she stayed on her dildo chair and listened and spoke. She got a little animated; it sounded like someone on the faculty was trying to make a power play as to elective requirements. Faculty politics is something I don't miss. I felt odd listening in. This conversation was something that shouldn't get around. But she knew I was pledged to secrecy. 

Partway through the conversation the professor's toes began to dance on the split keyboard below. Amazing. She could use her toes like fingers. Her left foot clasped the mouse and moved it around as she looked at the monitor to her side. That little task done, she brought her foot up with startling flexibility and, using what looked like a hot dog tong, plucked a swatch of fur-like material from a drawer and placed it next to my elbow. 

I looked at her toenails. Like her fingernails, they were closely and meticulously trimmed but unpainted. Her toes were kind of freaky -- widely spaced, almost like fingers, and almost as dexterous too. She could move each once independently, as I saw as she drummed them on the desk. Then with her other foot she reached up and scratched a nipple with her pinky toe. Like a monkey. The third toe of her left foot had a ring-shaped tattoo on it, the only thing interrupting her perfect, hairless, unadorned naked beauty. Yes, this hairlessness was kind of beautiful, once you got used to it. 

The conversation went on for a bit. From her end of it I got the sense the power play was about to be, if not defeated, at least smoothed out diplomatically. And now her tummy muscles announced another silent orgasm. 

She hung up. 

After a few moments of silence she said, "Feel that." 

I picked up the furry swatch. It was warm, wonderful, sensuous. . . "Wow. . . Is this what you were passing around in class?" 

"No, a newer formulation I designed. I'm weaving in more natural fibers with the biodegradable synthetics." 

Her original patented design, "Cherish", was of course the foundation of her professional reputation and now the standard fabric for all U.S. armed services. But in the ten years since, she had kept on inventing. 

"What do you think?" 

"Mmmmm . . . it's warm and . . . " It felt almost wet, like my fingers were plunging into a warm bubble bath. 

She smiled, her scalp crinkling. "I knew it!" 

"How do you -- " 

"I take galvanic readings with a steel sensor. Also, I just ask people how it feels." 

"What is that . . . coconut smell? Lotion?" 

"No, it's my enema today. This one is a gift from one of my students. Ohhhh. . . . They compete as to who can get me the nicest smelling one. Cool, isn't it?" 

"Smells wonderful." 

"Yes. T - tastes good, too," she said, moving her butt around on her chair as she began to crest again. 

I didn't know what she meant by that. 

Now I was beginning to notice the rhythm of her multiple orgasms. I've never had them. I'm a once-and-it's-over girl. But Professor Smithers came, then quickly subsided to a plateau, then ramped up to another orgasm, then subsided again. . . I detected the ramping up and observed, "You have a lot of orgasms." 

She smiled. "It's -- either th - that or freezing my buns off. Wh - which would you rather dooo -- ohhhh!" 

"How many have you had today?" 

"The next one will be numberrrr . . . th - thirty eight -- ohhh . . . I average . . . about two hundred . . . a d - day . . ." 

Two hundred orgasms a day! I was disoriented by this information and didn't think through the next question. "Do you ever fake an orgasm?" 

The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I realized how ridiculous this question -- a typical question for a journalist to ask a woman when talking about orgasms -- was in the present context. The naked, hairless woman impaled on two dildos looked at me and her eyes crinkled and she giggled and then laughed as she came. 

I laughed at myself too. But the professor's laughter wasn't ridicule at me but at the absurdity of the question, as if she were holding it up in the air for our mutual amusement. And the way her laughter bubbled up amid her moans and spasms -- it was enchanting. People say that a baby's laugh is the happiest sound in the world. Well, this was a close second. 

We laughed together, her laughs interspersed with gasps and moans, making her orgasm longer, as I could tell from the extended jerks of her tummy, in and out, in and out, stimulated by the dildos within and the pad on her clitoris. 

As we calmed down, the phone rang again. She thought of something to write with her steel pen (she's left-handed) and picked the phone up with her foot, clasping it securely in her toes as, with seemingly impossible limberness, she brought it fully up to her ear without having to bend forward. "Oh hi Homer . . . yes . . . the booth . . . could you make the points on the ramp sharper? I don't know if it's me, or the tread, but I'm s - starting to lose traction . . . How's Mayree? . . . Good . . . glad to hear that . . . bye . . ." 

And now, a knock on the door. 

"Come in!" 

It was the girl from class in the fake-fur jacket, who her companions seemed to think was slow, when she could not make out the professor's slurred, shivering words. "Oh come on in, Phyl." The girl grabbed a jacket from the hooks and looked at me politely. I can tell when a student thinks she's failing. They have that "look". I tactfully excused myself. 

Out in the hall, so help me, I listened through the closed door. My reporter instincts, I suppose. But I could only make out an occasional word. Apparently this girl was in trouble academically and the professor was giving her some helpful advice -- going part-time to concentrate on fewer classes, perhaps. It was hard to tell. I did hear a couple of gasps interspersed with the nude professor's kind words. During the approximately ten minute talk I surmised she talked through three orgasms. Amazing, how her students could be so casual about such things. 

The girl left, apparently a bit reassured, and once again I was alone with Professor Smithers. I asked about the pictures. "You come from a military family." 

"Yes. My dad was a Navy man. With my husband, it was part of his engineering scholarship," she said, pointing to the hunky black man. "He had to go back to Iraq, which is where he got hurt, and later they sent him to Iran. My brother" -- pointing to the young solder with the flag -- "he enlisted. He did Iraq, Iran and Syria. He's a Master Sergeant now," she said, with obvious pride. I'd done my year of War on Terror duty, of course, like anyone, but I was full of admiration too. Patrolling, searching train passengers, doing neighborhood data mining software installation and the like, is nothing like actually being on the front lines. 

She continued about her brother. "He's teaching now at Fort Benning. Thank god he's out of Iraq, that was the worst. I wish that war would end." 

And now the hunky black man came in. "Hi Babe." He was in a blue sweater, the sleeve to his missing arm pinned to the front. Discolored streaks and scars were on his cheek, but he was still handsome. From what I was told, he had almost gotten killed by a roadside bomb during his first tour. 

Rod, the husband, greeted me rather formally but politely. "I'm just finishing up," I told him. 

"No, it's O.K., I just wanted to give her her lunch." And Rod pulled an enormous hero sandwich out of a shoulder bag and laid it in front of his wife. 

"Oh boy, a tuna grinder." She didn't have a Providence accent but only the natives use that word. "You're a doll, Baby!" Another kiss and Rod was gone, knowing about our appointment later. 

"So, you have -- " I paused just to notice that she was practically inhaling the sandwich, washing it down with bottled water -- "do you have any plans?" 

"What do you mean?" she said, rather unguardedly with a full mouth. 

"I mean, staying here, your career . . ." 

"Well" -- munch, munch, and a gasp as she ascended from her plateau again -- "I'm 31 now so I should think about having kids . . . mmmm. . . this is good . . ." Within a minute, I'm not kidding, she had consumed most of the hero. "I'm talking with d - doctors to see if it's p - possible -- ohhhh. . ." Truly a multitasker, she could talk, eat, and shudder through an orgasm at the same time. 

She finished up the sandwich and now looked at the clock. "Almost time for my next class." Then she drew down from the top of the desk two long rubber wires that came out from behind the wall. On the end of each was a large suction cup like thing. She fastened them to her nipples, and gasped when each was attached. "I n - need one big one to finish." 

"What are those?" 

"They have bristles that s - stimulate my n - nipples. Here," she said detaching one, "want to feel?" 

I didn't particularly want to, but I stuck my finger inside and immediately jerked it out. It felt like some lamprey-like animal had fastened its mouth around my finger and was sucking the life out of me with thousands of moving, scraping tiny teeth. Ughh! 

It seemed like such intense, rasping suction would tear up any girl, but the professor placed the tube back on her huge, stiff nipple and we both sat there, her nipples being suctioned and rasped and bit, until she came to an explosive orgasm, longer than all the others. Her head bent down and she moaned and her fists pounded the desk again and again, her bare feet slapping on the metallic floor, as the orgasm ran its course. I watched helplessly, as if it was something I should rescue her from but lacked the power to do so. After the last spasm she looked up at the ceiling as if in prayer, catching her breath. 

I waited for a tactful moment and said, "Thanks for your time." Still catching her breath, she looked at me and nodded. I got up as she detached the tubes and eased off the dildos. And now I felt a pang of sadness as she entered the subfreezing interior of the movable booth. She stood bolt upright as she placed her feet on the metal ramp, then closed her eyes, as if to brace herself for another hour at minus ten Celsius. I could see the goose bumps rising again on her breasts, her arms, her thighs. Then, her breath coming out in clouds, she said goodbye to me and her tough bare feet set the treadmill in motion and she was gone, the booth moving on its unseen wheels down the hall back to her specially built classroom. 

* * * 

I entered the office of Rodney Sykes and was immediately overwhelmed by old-style blueprints. They were on all the walls. I was surprised to see the man himself not at the computer, which sat on a small desk in the corner, but at the large drafting table which took over the center of the room. In the same type of sweater he had on when he delivered the tuna hero to his naked, orgasming wife, though a different color, its useless left arm similarly pinned to the front of what looked like a well-developed torso. I wondered how a one-armed person would exercise . . . wouldn't the armless side of the chest necessarily get less workout? 

He greeted me a little stiffly, like before, and put his pencil down and looked at me as I sat, necessarily below his eye level, in a comfortable chair, one of only two other chairs in the big office. The overhead track lighting reflected off his shaved black scalp, shinier than his wife's. He had a short goatee, flecked with gray. As I noted, a handsome face, despite the network of depigmented scars on his lower cheek and that side of his neck. 

I remembered Tami's account (I've gotten to refer to her like everyone else does now, by her first name) of his injuries. I also remembered his lack of warmth toward me, and the fact that he had kept putting this meeting off. So I spoke very politely. I began, "Let me first say . . . I greatly admire the sacrifice you made in Iraq, you and so many others." 

"You and I both know that's crap." 

I was shocked and had to think quickly. Though I'd met this type of attitude before. When it comes from disabled soldiers themselves I just can't understand it. How can they dishonor the memory of their comrades, the 200,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq, not to mention the 100,000 who have died in Iran and the 50,000 in Syria? 

"So many have given their lives," I said. 

"Their lives weren't given," he said. "They were wasted. They died for nothing, except for a politician's ego. The guys on my truck died for nothing. I lost my arm for nothing. Tell me, why do Americans love war so much? Wave the flag, tell a few lies, and they always say yes. And then they see a guy like me on the street with scars and no arm and say, we've got to keep fighting. So that next year there will be *ten* guys like me on the street with no arm. And that makes them say we really got to keep fighting." 

I stood up for myself. "I'm sorry but I'm not here to argue. I meant to be polite." 

He exhaled and put his head in his hand. Then he looked out the window, and for a moment looked like he was about to cry. Then he turned to me. "Look I'm sorry." 

As I waited, he got up and walked across the room to turn off the light. "I've had a bad day. It's five o'clock. Do you mind if we go downstairs?" 

"What?" We were up on the sixth floor, in this old office building about three blocks from the fashion institute. 

"There's a lounge down there, a nice quiet place. I feel like a drink. You can join me, of course." 

"Um . . ." 

Twenty minutes later, there we were, in a little alcove in the Bosket Lounge. I decided to pay. Like a lot of places these days they preferred Euros. I shouldn't have, not on the job, but I was sipping a red wine, watching him nurse his gin and tonic and waiting for him to speak. 

"I had some bad news today," he said. "Tami's been showing signs of her allergy." This was bad news to me as well. It had been two weeks since I'd interviewed her. "We've had to crank her booth down another two degrees Celsius. And her office too." 

So Tami had to get a little colder. "That makes me sad too," I said. After a decorous pause, I said, "My assignment is to get information. I was wondering: she either has to shiver at, what, minus 12 now? Or she can exist at plus 8 Celsius, as long as she has constant orgasms. Is that her whole life? How does she get sleep?" 

"At home we have a special apparatus that gives her a status orgasmus." 

"A what?" 

"A special kind of extended orgasm. It lasts about two minutes usually, and knocks her out. Then I lie her down. She can sleep for eight to ten hours like that at up to plus thirteen Celsius. Then the allergy kicks in again, and wakes her up. Then she goes into her booth." 

"What, the moveable one?" 

"No, she has a bigger one at home. Room sized, almost." 

"How do you . . . make love?" 

"I keep my shirt and socks on, and like that I'm O.K. for a long time really, at ten Celsuis, I mean eight now. Most of our house is at that setting." I had heard how he, as both engineer and architect, had designed their special house, way at the other end of the state, near Westerly. "Way at the other end of the state" meaning 25 miles away. 

"It must be better for her in the winter." 

"She gets around more, yes, outside. She loves to play in the snow, make snowmen." He grinned, a welcome change. "Though usually it's, um, anatomically correct snowmen and snowwomen having sex. A big hit with the neighbors. And she likes going to the beach. We're near Moonstone Beach, which has been a nude beach for years. That photo of her in her office, building the sand castle, that was at Moonstone." 

"There was a court decision years ago, wasn't there? About Moonstone? Something about nudism being a protected religion." 

"Um . . . yes, we know." 

"That must have been a very fortunate decision for her, wasn't it?" 

He gave me a strange look. 

"I've heard that you are quite a star yourself in the orgasms department." 

This attempt at getting a smile from him succeeded. Bleak as his situation (or rather, his wife's situation) was, he seemed to be relaxing, for which I felt quite pleased with myself. "Yes, you've heard." 

"Of course." Many people had. It was well known that Tami's husband was one of those men who had multiple orgasms and that he had consented to have them documented in the laboratory, and that he had helped run seminars on the topic. As a result many men had now learned that capacity. It made me a little jealous, and seemed a bit unfair. As a woman I'm the one who's supposed to be multiorgasmic, yet I can only manage one at a time. But so many others can't have any at all, including all those returning veterans with PTSD. So I really can't complain. 




Interview with the Professor



Returning to my task, I asked, "Have there been any attempts to cure Tami's allergy?" 

Rod Sykes paused so as to give me a thoughtful answer. "Early on, but each attempt seemed to make it worse. Then a few years ago, we heard about Henry Ross." 

"Oh, yes. I was told about him." 

"Yes . . . Well as you recall, he was reported captured by terrorist rebels in Burma who thought he was a spy. Of course he wasn't, no matter what the media said, he was just smuggling. They tortured him and killed him. Then the details of the torture came out. It was exactly what Tami had sometimes fantasized about as the proper punishment for him, when she would get drunk." 

"Right," I remembered. "They put his testicles in a vise and kept squeezing until they popped." He lived for a week afterward, until finally they disemboweled him. It made all the news shows, and led to calls for an invasion. But there weren't enough troops available, even with the draft we have now. 

"Yes," he said, shifting uneasly in his chair, as I suppose any man would. "So that did a real guilt trip on Tami. She's hated Ross but would never really wish that on anyone. Her allergy suddenly got worse. She went into anaphylactic shock and they had to rush her into a freezer. By the time I got there she was standing on a block of ice, and they were pressing more blocks of ice against her, front and rear. That's when I had to think fast and set up the climate control." 

"But what happened to Ross wasn't her fault." 

"Yes, but . . . I blame it on her Catholic upbringing. Guilt, original sin. If something bad happens, it's always your fault somehow." 

"I thought her family was supportive." 

"Oh of course. Her dad was in a way the rock of her life, until he died. Her brother thinks of her as a hero, even though he's the one who's been in three wars. And her mother . . . " Suddenly and surprisingly his eyes got wet. "You should have seen how proud she was when she finally got her college degree. She had always wanted to go to college, but couldn't afford it until Tami and I paid her way through. It was a beautiful day, and they were able to get Tami's booth out there, even though it was hard for Tami to see because of all the frost in the booth. Martha went over with her diploma and they touched hands through the glass as everyone cheered. 

"Sorry for getting emotional", he said, smiling. With his dark skin, in the dim light of the bar his white teeth were almost the only part of him I could see. 

After a moment I said, "How is your business going?" 

"Pretty well, considering. I'm lucky to get some Canadian clients recently." 

"I heard your specialty is refrigeration." 

"Well, it's *become* my specialty. Air conditioning too. Designing climate environments that take minimal energy. Not too many people do that. Business is O.K., considering the sorry shape our country's in. And I like being my own boss." 

I felt like there was not much more for me to ask. I reflected on what we'd talked about. "Tami is very brave and yet very modest," I observed. 

"As she sees it, she's lucky. She thinks of all the people who get killed in wars. And the arm that I lost. Or others with disabilities. Her friend Marisol, for example. A college friend of hers. For years she's badly needed a breast reduction but she can't because she's hemophilic and can't undergo surgery. The last time we visited her, down in the Bronx, she was almost disabled by back pain." 

"That's a shame." 

"Yes . . . so I suppose in the big scheme of things Tami's right. There are people worse off." 

"And a lot of people love her." 

"Yes . . . She's surrounded by freezing air, but also by love." 

"And she has lots of orgasms." 

"She counts every one in her head. Did you know that?" 

No, I hadn't been told. "Seems impossible." 

"She's always been good with numbers. She aced her major, math, when she was an undergrad." Then he paused and said, "There are some things about her orgasms that are curious. I'm sure you've heard that she can't bring herself off, with her own hand." 

No, I hadn't heard that. More and more I was beginning to think my briefing had been incomplete. 

"Also . . . you know about theta waves?" 

"Aren't those . . . brain waves?" 

"Yes. A couple of years ago there was some research in Germany where they compared theta waves of men and women during repeated orgasm. The men's were all the same. That wasn't surprising to me. For men, multiple orgasms are a learned response and theoretically, at least, any man can experience them. But women seem to fall into two classes, according to their theta waves. Some are naturally multiorgasmic, and others are once-and-it's over." 

Like me, I thought. Though I wasn't comfortable disclosing anything so personal about myself. Not to a man. "It's obvious what class Tami falls into." 

"Actually no. Tami volunteered to get hooked up to the machine. According to her theta waves, she is a one-orgasm woman." 

"How can that be?" 

"During those experiments at Chalfont, when she was strapped into those machines, she was forced to have further orgasms even after every fiber of her being wanted to be left alone after the first one. And she was forced to respond over and over and over again, session after session, all semester. So with her, multiple orgasms are unnatural. But she ended up needing them and finally craving them. And I think she sees Chalfont and Ross in her mind every time she comes. That probably goes a long way to describing her allergy. Though what goes on inside her mind, not even she probably knows. She's a very, very complicated person." 

I already suspected there was a lot going on in that pretty, goose-bumped, shaved head . . . We sat and finished our drinks. Then Rod said, "Let me at least get the tip. I have a few." Euros, that is. He got up. "It's almost six o'clock. Time to collect her." 

"How do you manage that?" 

"Our jeep has a glass box in the passenger seat. One thing she misses is being able to drive. And work on cars. That was a big thing with her." 

"Can I come with you? I want to see this jeep." 

"O.K. . . ." As we emerged into sunlight, shielding our eyes, he said, "At least the price of gas went down." 

"Yes. . . Finally! Back to twenty bucks a gallon." 

"It's about time." 

Part 3

I shouldn't have been surprised by his businesslike manner; after all, Prof. Harald Warmspring was the Dean. But I didn't expect the head of this fashion institute to be built like a linebacker. His biceps seemed to bulge out of his shirtsleeves. None of the swishiness I saw in some of the other faculty teaching their respective classes up and down the hall. When he got done with his New Synthetics class, he whisked me briskly down the hall, turning down the opposite hall from Tami's office, and sat me down with a decaf that seemed to appear out of nowhere. 

"Thanks for taking the time," I said. "You must be busy." 

"Yes. So many things to attend to in this job," he said, referring apparently to some irritation. 

"How long have you been Dean?" 

"A year. The job is a hot potato. Tami's next and she knows it." 

"I wonder if her -- disability would keep her from handling that hot potato." 

He smiled at this little joke. "Of course not. Tami can do anything." 

"How does it affect publicity? Recruitment? To have a nude fashion technology professor?" 

He got out the latest catalog. Sure enough, Tami's picture was alongside the others on the "Meet Our Faculty" page. Like the others, her picture was cropped at the neck. Still she was notable for her shaved head and the hint of bare shoulders. With the cropping, one could plausibly guess she was wearing a strapless dress. And that playful, crinkly smile, her "eyebrows" making her bald scalp move a little forward. 

"The topic of her allergy must come up." 

"She's 'Tami Beethoven'," Dean Warmspring said with a shrug. "Her nudity is part of her creative process. It isn't hard to figure that out. Well known in the industry, though she is not one to beat her own drum. She's amazingly modest for someone in this field, which tends to be filled with egomaniacs." Again, reflecting irritation, perhaps hinting at egomaniacs he had to deal with on the faculty. 

I paused. "It's so poignant. Her creativity must be an expression of her desire for covering, don't you think?" 

He looked up at the clock and then lapsed into silence for a while. Perhaps he realized he had more time to spend with me than he thought. "If it is, it's something she would never admit to. No one ever asks her. It would be too personal." 

"Do you think she even remembers what clothes feel like?" 

He thought for a second. "Probably not. Not after thirteen years of forced nudity. Practially half her life, she's been the only naked person in a world of clothed people. The memory of clothing is probably gone. By now all she has is a memory of having a memory." He pulled out a loose leaf of laminated designs and gave it to me. "Like Beethoven after years of deafness, her imagination is operating on some different plane. Like an alien from outer space, looking down at us Earthlings and noticing this peculiar device called clothes, recognizing their utility for socialization and warmth, and creating accordingly." From his florid language I could tell that he'd been thinking about it for a long time. 

"Warmth . . . She still must know what warmth feels like." 

"Oh of course. She sees it all around her, especially now when the weather's getting hot. People dressing less, lying out there in the sun with their eyes closed, enjoying the rays. She can't enjoy ambient warmth herself, and she's restricted to cold food, but she feels warmth when exercising. And during sex." 

"It must give her something to look forward too, when she's shivering in that booth." 

"Yes. We can't be thankful enough, of course. The name of the School of Design attaches to every achievement of hers, beginning of course with the armed services contract." 

"How do people feel about that? Being in bed, so to speak, with the military?" 

"In the fashion world I think everyone's resigned to it. This is a more militarized country than it was twenty years ago, and the private contractor sector is huge, at least the part of it that isn't being outsourced to Dubai. See her portfolio?" he said, leaning his considerable bulk over the desk toward me. "It begins with 'Cherish', then goes on to her military work and then some of her interesting commercial designs. One problem with her is labeling. Her designs tend to fall outside the normal categories of 'shirts', 'dresses', and so on." 

He watched with me as I slowly leafed through. These were indeed strange designs, half-shirt, half-skirt, or half-gloves, half-sweater, and half-hat, half-I-don't-know-what. There were very few skimpy designs. Almost all seemed to afford full coverage and warmth. Warmth seemed like the main emphasis. Maybe it was due to Tami Smithers's influence that women, especially, had been covering up more in recent years. 

As I got to page 37, near the end, he said, "Footwear has always been a problem with her. For some reason she has difficulty conceptualizing it, in that metallic, clothesless, shoeless universe her mind works in. But see how she's solved it?" 

I recognized the red boots the squeaky-voiced girl was showing off to the professor -- I mean Tami -- after my classroom visit. But it turned out they weren't just boots, they continued on with a kind of loop that went up around the knees. 

"The material used is very soft and pliable, ordinarily not stiff enough to serve as footwear, but Tami solved that problem with the extension around the knees. She uses math, hyperbolic functions, I don't understand it completely, to balance the forces so that support is transferred from the knee." 

"Wow." 

"As a result the boots are uniquely warm and comforting. They've been described as 'like wearing earmuffs on your feet'. Of course the model is unisex. Most of us intend to be wearing them when next winter comes." He turned from me and said, "Want to try some on? What are you, a size eight?" 

Funny how he knew that. Of course, he was an expert in fashion design and very observant. I was going to say no but I have the usual feminine preoccupation with shoes. And I couldn't refuse the floppy red items that draped sensuously across my hands. So I slipped off my Oscar de la Renta heels, not very comfortable but stylish, and pulled on the boots. "Oooohh!" I couldn't control my reaction. It was like my feet were in a warm bubble bath. I'd never felt boots so soft and warm. Better yet, I could wiggle my toes in them freely. I stood up and walked there and back a few steps. "This is magic!" I laughed at my voice, which had an enthusiastic girlish squeak just like that student's. 

Dean Warmspring laughed. "That's everyone's reaction. You should see how men react. We were in a circle around Tami's booth telling her how they felt. She always likes to hear that, about her designs. My own words were downright flowery." 

Jokingly I pointed the boots to and fro, like a model showing them off on a runway. Then I exhaled, as if afraid I was going to have an exotic kind of foot orgasm, and sat down. Still wiggling my toes in them, I picked up the portfolio again. 

"What a tragedy," I said, "that Tami can never enjoy what she creates. And now her allergy's getting worse." 

"Yes I heard. It should only help her output. It's a sad fact, that the colder Tami gets, the more violently she shivers, the more brilliantly imaginative her designs." 

I shook my head. "That is just downright cruel." 

"Look at the last page." 

It was a very shaky drawing, of a full-body suit with seams in unusual places. "What is this?" 

"A drawing Tami made in her booth a few days ago. It's hard for her to draw when shivering so much, but it looks like a kind of mechanic's overalls shirred so that every movement rubs fabric against those muscles that are being used. Kind of like a self-massager." 

"Wow." It seemed like the tenth time I'd said that. 

"It will be constructed and tested in front of her, as always. And biometric results reported to her. Of course that will not be her final design. She always fiddles with them about twenty times before submitting them for patent. She lets the models keep the prototypes. In fact she clothes a good part of the faculty and students here. This," he said, touching the jacket he had hung up next to him, "is the penultimate prototype of the blazer on page 25." 

"It still seems cruel, everyone wearing these warm clothes she designs, considering how she herself is always naked and freezing." 

"It's what she does, Stephanie," he said, calling me by name for the first time. "We thought her urge to design, and to teach design, might be a kind of self-punishment, for example for what happened to that creep Henry Ross. By the way, I'm one of the few left who opposes capital punishment, but with that guy, I would have had very few scruples pulling the switch on him. . . Or we thought that designing might be exacerbating her allergy somehow. So three years ago we made her take a sabbatical. She did math work for the Military Physics Department over at Brown. But she wasn't happy and she came back with a batch of new designs under her arm. 'It's what I do, Harald,' she told me. Then she said the closest thing to self-analysis I've ever heard from her. She said, 'My being naked, cold and naked, has a purpose. Its purpose is to make me design good clothes.' 

"So there you have it. If she didn't design clothes, Tami's shivering would have no purpose." 

What a ghastly assessment. He was trying to put a positive spin on it but it was like talking about a terminally ill person. Rodney Sykes had been bleak too. Everyone, it seemed, was sad about Tami's predicament except Tami herself. I remembered her bubbling laugh as to my question about faking orgasms, at the same time she was having one. 

I shook my head again. "What a bleak, horrible suffering." 

He waited for me to finish shaking my head. Then he said, "She has all the love anyone can have. And sexual pleasure past what you or I could imagine. . . I tell you what. You don't have a full picture of her life. Let me invite you to the next Faculty Steering Committee meeting. It's down at her house." 

"Wow, you go all the way down there? What about gas?" 

"We car pool. We'll pick you up too. Be here tomorrow night at six thirty." 

I looked down at my red booted feet, wiggling my toes in them, feeling the sensuous warmth. Then both of us looked up as we heard the whirring sound of Tami's booth approaching. 

She was in the doorway now, her beautiful naked hairless body stretched out, her arms pushing up on the overhead support bars. Her breath came out in thick clouds. Evidently she had been in the booth for some time. Frost encrusted the corners of the glass, and I could swear I saw a rime of frost on her "eyebrows". With her arms up, her big firm breasts almost stuck in our faces, the huge dark areolas, and her nipples, big and long and permanently erect in the subfreezing cold. I looked further down, past her concave tummy, the strong lithe legs. Then her purplish bare feet, the toes spread as they gripped the raised holes of the metal ramp. I could see Homer had addressed her concerns as to the metal points. They were sharper and higher now, digging into her tough soles in a way that would be very painful to an ordinary person's feet. 

I looked at my booted feet, snug and warm in the soft sensuous boots, then at her freezing bare feet, purplish and impaled on the cold metal points. My toes stopped wiggling. 

"S - sorry," she shivered. "I d - didn't know you were m -meeting." 

"It's O.K.," Harald Warmspring said. "We were about done anyway." He looked at me and I nodded. "Tami, do you mind if she attends tomorrow's meeting?" 

"G - good God." Her blue lips smiled along with her eyebrowless green eyes. "You'd b - b - be b - b - bored to death." 

"I'd still like to go," I said. I couldn't help but look down again at my feet and then hers. 

"F - fine." There was no reason to keep her hands up on those bars, giving us a full frontal view of her stretched-out nudity, but she kept them up there. "Stay f - for the l - little p -party afterwards. My f - friends will be therrre." 

"Thanks. . . I have to go now." 

"G - g - good to see you again." Now she let her arms down and, to my surprise, brought her shivering arms down to her pussy lips. Her fingers shook but after two attempts she spread her lower lips wide open. In a little babyish voice she said, "B - b - bye - b - bye!" as her clitoris, wet and erect in the cold of the booth, jumped up at me twice. Apparently a special salutation for friends. Along with Dean Warmspring I couldn't help but smile. 

So help me, I couldn't make the rendesvous with Dean Warmspring. I had to call him and apologize. He and his two car pool mates would have to spend a little more for that long ride to Westerly. 

Long! It's only 25 miles. But in Rhode Island your sense of distance gets foreshortened. Like my trip to Tami's home neighborhood, to see the house she grew up in. It was like a different part of the planet, on the other side of town, but in fact it was only a mile as the crow flies. I could have walked instead of driven. Here and there an invasion of yuppies, the occasional newly and sometimes garishly painted house, but traditionally a working-class, if not actually depressed, area. I had access to Sarah Wickland's slide show of 2001 and visited those places, Ezek Hopkins Square, the run-down church. But the church seemed to be undergoing an expansion. A young dark-skinned family with kids strolled by, Spanish phrases in the air, merengue on the radio from an open window, and my perspective subtly changed. Tami's old neighborhood was being taken over by Hispanic immigrants. Then I saw that what looked like run-down stores were actually active restaurants and bodegas, people going in and out. No bright lights, no redone storefronts, but the neighborhood wasn't depressed. It was vibrant. As for the old house itself, it seemed to have been (no doubt illegally) subdivided, judging from the three mailboxes next to the door. Two happy little kids ran around the mostly grassless front yard. 




Interview with the Professor



This was part of my assignment to get a well-rounded picture of this unique woman, whom fate had saddled with a grotesque and apparently debilitating allergy but who managed to survive and even in a sense thrive. I had also heard that she had written erotic fiction that she would post online, under an alias, of course. The first was a science fiction story was about a shy, nude young man whose semen powered a spaceship. Unfortunately, under the Coulter Act of 2013, all story sites dealing with sex or even nudity came under such strict monitoring that their owners quickly took them down. And the Institute couldn't get Homeland Security clearance to search foreign sites. But Tami had given me a memory stick with some of her work. There's quite a lot of stories in there. I'll have to set aside some time to read them. 

Anyway . . . instead of car-pooling I had to make my own way to Westerly in my mini-Hummer. Good thing the Institute pays for my gas. I was on I-95 for only a moment, it seemed, when I saw the "Welcome to Connecticut" sign and realized I'd missed my exit. So I doubled back and followed the side roads and pulled into the beachfront village at 7:45, 45 minutes late. 

It was not quite dark yet and I got a good look at the neighborhood. Despite the sandy soil, each of the small yards had a full complement of grass. With a smile I could imagine, in winter, Tami's obscene snow sculptures. I pictured her, cold but happy, putting the finishing touches on a breast or penis, her skin flushed red against the whiteness, heavily clothed passersby glancing at her as she patted snow down with her fingers and reached around to pat it down with her flexible toes. 

Her husband's greeting at the door was warmer this time. "Glad you could make it, Miss Stephanie." He took my sweater and showed me around. The house seemed small from the outside but had a lot of room inside. This was because they (or, rather, Rod in his plans) used every available cubic inch, including the basement and the attic. He showed me the home study, the bedroom, the kitchen, all separately glassed-in and climate-controlled. Downstairs was an exercise room, as I could see from the thermostat set to minus fifteen Celsius. A neglected water bottle on a bench bulged outward with its frozen contents. 

Luckily the hallways in between were not enclosed and were at normal room temperature. Rod explained that this was for the comfort of guests. Tami switched from room to room in a short mobile booth, a smaller version of the one she had at the School of Design, with a metal chair to sit on. He got into it and showed me how he passed into one of the rooms, the kitchen, via a sliding door like the one in her classroom. He switched into the booth again and emerged from it. I could feel the freezing air wafting onto my face as it escaped. Rod tried not to show it but he clearly felt the cold even in his jacket, shirt, long pants and heavy socks. I looked at the metal seat and imagined what it must feel like against Tami's bare butt cheeks. Knowing that she was used to it didn't make me feel any better. 

As we walked along another hall, toward the living room, I heard the low rumble of voices. Rod led me through the arched entrance. This room, the largest in the house, was not enclosed. He introduced me to the twelve or so people there and to Tami. But their names did not register with me because I was too shocked at what I saw. 

I tried to control the gaping astonishment of my mouth and the horrified stare of my eyes. The guests, well dressed and distinguished looking, were at a large, half-circle table, curiously painted black, with papers and sodas in front of them. Across from them, the table angled straight up about two feet, a kind of little wall, up to a platform that extended way back to the other side of the room. There, on the platform, set about three feet back, was Tami's head. 

Just her bald, eyebrowless head. Poking up from a hole that was only a little wider than her neck. The blackness of the table made it all the more shocking. It looked like a horror movie where a person dies but only her head survives and somehow keeps on living. 

There was a lull in the conversation that I uneasily knew was because of my reaction. The people around the table probably expected it, though to them this was just an ordinary scene. 

Tami -- or rather, her head, at about my eye level -- looked at me with a pleasant but somehow preoccupied smile. Her "eyebrows" jerked a little bit. Her skin was a little red and blotchy. "H - hi, Stephanie. W - welcome. Want some of this cake? President Ellender made it." 

Somehow with a nod and a motion of her eyebrows she motioned to the plate of chocolate cake in the middle of the table. I gracefully declined (I'm on a diet again) and after a few minutes had parked myself with a diet soda on one end of the semi-circle. 

"The latest capital improvements haven't gone over well," an older man in a beard and three-piece suit said, directing everyone to a paper they all held. Ms. Ellender, a heavy-set women of about 50 who was apparently the president of the corporation running the School, was across from me and sat on a high bar stool-type chair. She held the sheet up high, close enough to Tami's face that she could read it. 

I was intrigued by Tami's face. Of course, it being the only part of her visible -- in a way she was "wearing" the table, a most unusual situation for her -- one was more aware of every nuance. As she knitted her brow to concentrate on the numbers, there was a distracted quality about her gaze. Her eyes opened wide for just a second. "I see what you mean," she said, and as she did there was just the tiniest gasp in between words. 

Rod smiled at me as he went back to the kitchen. I looked over at a man who was starting to speak, in a business suit, with slicked-back hair. "It amortizes over fifteen years, but at the present three percent yield, it would double in, what --?" 

"Twenty-four y - years," Tami said. "Rule of seventy-two." 

"So how much would it have be to double over fifteen?" 

Tami looked up at the ceiling momentarily. Again, a little gasp. "F - five percent, roughly." 

She licked her lips. This was apparently a sign. President Ellender brought a glass of water to Tami's mouth. She took a little gulp and then nodded. Ms. Ellender leaned back into her high chair. 

"Well then something has to be done," the man with the beard said. 

"Perhaps another bond?" 

"That . . . would be a tough sell, at the moment," the man with the slicked-back hair said. 

And so I sat, through what Tami had warned would be a boring (to me, at least) meeting, as the bald, eyebrowless, disembodied head participated in the discussion, occasionally getting a sip of water, and at odd moments smiling at me with a strange crooked smile. 

This went on for about twenty minutes, until a pretty African-American girl a little younger than me, in short dreadlocks and a jean jacket with short sleeves, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned with her finger for me to follow her into the hall. 

Part 4

"Tonya Loomis," the girl said once we got out into the hallway, giving me a handshake and a bright toothy smile that contrasted with her black skin. She was enthusiastic and full of energy, like a kid. "Bet that meeting was boring. I hear you're on the up-and-up." 

I looked over at Rod, who was in the hallway with us, sipping hot chocolate he had made. He nodded to me. 

"So there's more to see. Let me show you our 'underworld'." 

I looked over at Rod again. "Go ahead. I'm not comfortable down there." Strange he would say that, about his own house. 

Tonya led me around a little bend in the hall, then down a narrow stairway I hadn't seen before, which led to a very narrow door. It was not as far below as the basement I had seen. 

The door opened into a dark cave of some kind. As Tonya closed the door behind us I was in a world of shadows and strange odors and furtive movements. Or at least furtive now, with my eyes not used to the darkness. I heard sounds like people eating. And a background whirring, like an air conditioner. Lastly I heard Tami's voice coming from a speaker to my side, mounted on what I imagined was a black-painted wall. 

"Yes . . . the amortization -- works out . . . What do you think -- Jane?" 

Tonya said, "Watch where you step, it's complicated." I looked down and couldn't see a thing. As my eyes got further used to the dark I could see little glow-in-the-dark painted steps going down. But it was better to feel with the soles of my shoes, like a blind person. 

We turned an invisible, black-painted corner and suddenly a bare tanned pinky toe, sticking out sideways, flexing to and fro and smeared with what looked like peanut butter, almost hit me in the face. As I saw the other toes and the rest of the foot I saw two women, one middle-aged and one younger, slathering more peanut butter on it with butter knives and then sucking on the toes. 

"This is Hermine and Gladys," Tonya said. The two looked at me with a smile. Then Hermine started ravenously licking the coated bare heel as Gladys reached down to where a large jar of peanut butter sat on a little stand, along with jars of jelly and some other things. With her fingers Gladys scooped out more and vigorously worked it in between the toes, spreading them, massaging them. The toes were already widely spread so they could hold quite a lot. But Gladys stuffed them some more. "I love doing this, it's so sensuous," she explained. Meanwhile Hermine licked the heel, giving it little bites, scraping her teeth against it. The foot reacted sensuously, flexing and unflexing, the toes spreading and wiggling as if dancing with Gladys's fingers and tongue. 

"Do you -- think the trustees would go for -- that?" Tami's voice came through on the local speaker, still engrossed in the conversation above. I though of the bald, disembodied head somewhere above us, poking up from the hole in the table, and of Tami trying to concentrate on that boring meeting while her toes were being smeared with peanut butter and sucked and licked. And of Rod, on the periphery, sipping his hot chocolate, no doubt aware of what she was dealing with below. 

The foot was sideways. I saw the ankle and shin. The leg was extended out to us. I tried to see where it came from but it was too dark. 

Tonya led me on, around a little curve. As I took a last look back at Hermine, Gladys and Tami's foot I saw that they had quite the little setup. A very dim light, like a dashboard light on a car, glowed bluishly above them. They were on high chairs around the little stand. They could stay there for hours, or until they got full. Like a table at a darkly lit restaurant, their little corner. The last thing I saw was their hands, clasped together affectingly under the stand. 

I turned another corner to the left, then my eyes were arrested by a brightly-lit red aperture a few feet ahead of me, spread by what I could see was a speculum. I gasped in what must have been horror or shock -- I guessed it to be the interior of a vagina. As Tonya led me closer I remembered the direction the toes had been pointing and realized we were actually at the rear. Tami's rectum! I resisted Tonya's hand guiding my shoulder forward but then found myself lurching forward myself, morbidly fascinated at this sight that was so strange to me. 

It was not a speculum, it was a ring-shaped thing which held the sphincter wide open while leaving the surrounding areas accessible. Two women were at the sides, perched on chairs, caressing the stretched ring and probing inside with what looked like little spatulas. Inside, the red walls quivered and twitched at their attentions. The light came from the donut itself, which must have had little filaments in it. Ingenious. I wondered if Tami's friend Homer had designed it. As I drew closer I could see the dim tracery of Tami's split butt cheeks above, trim and tight, and the junction of the legs spreading out to each side in almost a ballet dancer's split. 

The sphincter was spread impossibly wide -- maybe three inches. The woman on the left, middle-aged with white hair, placed her wrinkled, pointed finger inside as she looked back at me. "Hi," she clasped her other hand in mine. "I'm Belinda. Welcome to the Vault." 

"Tami's most secret place," the other woman said as if with pride. "This is her center, if you ask me. . . Come on in." 

She gently took my hand. I resisted, and freed it. "Sorry... it's just...too..." 

Seeing the look of revulsion on my face, Belinda said, "Don't worry, she's perfectly clean. She flushes herself all the way up." 

I didn't know what that meant, but I detected a coconut aroma. Not unpleasant at all, like in Tami's office. I watched as Belinda reached all the way in and swept her finger to and fro. Tami's inner walls heaved and sighed in response. The other woman bent over and licked her side of the ring. The left butt cheek twitched. 

"Without -- subcommittee approval -- I don't know -- " Tami's voice came through the nearest speaker. I thought of the exquisite, intimate stimulation she was receiving. While her toes were being slathered with peanut butter and sucked on. 

"Let me show you something," Belinda said, withdrawing her hand. "Come closer." 

I bent down and looked up, right up inside Tami. I felt like I was violating this kind, modest, needlessly suffering woman, whom fate had decreed must be always naked, until I realized her insides as well as her outsides were a big playground for her many admirers. And that this was O.K. with her. It seemed strange but looking up into her distended anus and into that pink, irrigated rectum, I felt like she was welcoming me in. 

"See that little hole up there?" I craned my neck to see, in the midst of all that pinkness, a little slit half an inch wide, like a closed eye. "That's her 'inner butthole'. Stick your finger in." 

"What!" 

"Go ahead. Slide it in gently and wiggle it. It's like shaking her hand." 

Part of me felt like laughing at this simile. But my finger found itself carefully pointing into the interior space, as my brain shouted for it to stay outside. Belinda guided my wrist. I poked up farther, farther, until I was inside her rectum. I felt the heat from her surrounding inner walls, as if welcoming me in from the cold. Meanwhile, from the speaker, Tami was making some kind of forceful point. 

"I don't think -- we should do this unilaterally. We need the O.K. of the Faculty Senate. And -- " 

My finger reached the slit and made contact! It was so moist, warm, welcoming. And now I pushed a little further and the end of my finger went up and forward into another empty space -- her colon! In at the second knuckle, I wiggled my finger. 

"And the p - presentation should be made through the college intranet too ..." 

I must have caused that little stutter. I felt both ashamed and, somehow, proud. I wondered: were all these women trying to please Tami? Or just disrupt her concentration? I let my finger rest there a moment, then carefully drew it out. When my whole hand was out I looked at my moistened finger with a sour expression on my face. 

"Go ahead, lick it," the other woman said. "It's very good. Tastes like coconut." 

I just couldn't do that. Tonya, who had been watching from behind, chuckled. Belinda offered an antiseptic tissue. "Here." I wiped my finger off, with relief but also feeling a bit like a spoilsport. 

Now Belinda and her partner set upon Tami's stretched ring with their tongues, then moved out to lick her buttocks, which twitched and undulated ever so slightly. Above, Tami continued to talk about whatever proposal was being discussed, arguing for openness. 

I stood back with Tonya. In the dim light she could see my fascinated face as I took in the view of Tami's brightly presented "vault", and the two licking females worshipping it. "That's ...so unreal." 

"Very real to us," Tonya said. She drew me back, back, until ten feet back we entered a little alcove. On it was a stand with a book, a little spotlight on it in the midst of the darkness. Next to it was a short couch with two very young women, hardly more than high school age. One was dressed like a Goth, all in black with a nose ring. The other looked ready for soccer practice. They were chatting a mile a minute, as teenage girls do, about something having to do with boyfriends. And sipping sodas, evidently from a little dorm-style fridge next to them. On top of the fridge, a coffee brewer, a bag of chips. I gathered this place was like a lounge for women who were waiting their turn. Leaning against the fridge were three giant feather-type things, four feet long. I guessed they were for the long-range, gentle stimulation of Tami's legs, or her sides, or maybe her shoulders. 

"Hi," I said shyly to the two girls. They nodded to me and then got back to their whispery gossip. 

"We call this the 'pit'," Tonya said. I looked around. On the black-painted wall over the couch was a message board. I made out two messages in erasable markers: 'Georgene: See me tonite. Eth.' And: 'Wendy bites. Why not? She's a vampire.' Whatever that meant. Next to the message board, a beefcake poster of a guy with 6-pack abs, hands looped into the belt of his jeans. Someone had drawn a ring on his nipple. 

"I can't believe this -- this 'underworld'," I whispered to Tonya, though I don't think the two jabbering girls would have been listening. "And these women -- these -- " 

"We call ourselves TL's," Tonya said. "I'm not sure why." 

"How many -- TL's -- are there?" 

"In all about eighty." Seeing my widened eyes, she said, "Oh no, not at one time. Tami can fit only about nineteen of us in at once." 

Nineteen! As I tried to assimilate this information Tonya looked somewhere and said, "Hi Melissa. . . Stephanie, it's my turn. Why don't you check out 'the book'. Melissa, show her around?" 

"O.K.," Melissa said, massaging her lips as if they had just done a workout on part of Tami. Melissa was tall and blonde and looked like a model, maybe Tami's age. She got a water bottle out of the fridge and said, "Can you read in that light? We have some stronger bulbs in the cabinet." 

"No ... that's O.K." I looked down at the big book on the stand. It was a loose-leaf, as if it was something that was continually updated. The title stood out in elegant scripted letters: 

Extending and Intensifying the Orgasmic Response of Professor Smithers by the TL Collective 

I opened the front cover and saw a list of "contributors" that ran two pages. Then the table of contents: 

Foreword by Jennifer McIntyre, M.D. 1. Basics of Female Orgasmic Response 2. Special Features of Prof. Smithers's Response 3. Accommodating Her Allergy 4. Tools and Equipment 5. Focus: Clitoris, G-Spot, Vagina and Cervix 6. Focus: Nipples 7. Focus: Feet and Hands 8. Focus: Anus, Rectum and Colon 9. The Professor's Upper Colon: Accessing Points of Sensitivity 10. Ears and Other Body Parts 11. Group Attack and Coordination 12. Full Body Machines and Apparatus 13. "Playing Tami's Body": Managing Her Orgasms 14. Status Orgasmus 15. Effect of Prof. Smithers's Orgasms on TL's 16. Possible Applications to Other Women (and to Men) Afterword by Tami Smithers, Ph.D. 

I leafed through the pages as if in a trance. My eyes were wide and my mouth hung open the whole time. It was like walking through a weird dream that might have been a nightmare. Most of the pages were text with drawings. There were also photos. One had Tami's face, looking at the camera, at several stages of orgasm. Her eyes bugged out at me as if staring right through me. 

Another page demonstrated a long flexible dildo called a "snake". Tami was on all fours on a table. Her nakedness made a sharp contrast with the two fully clothed women behind her who were pressing the end of the "snake" against her anus. In the next picture the "snake" was all the way in except for the final six inches which was gripped by the two women. Tami's back was arched to accommodate the intrusion, her teeth clenched, her head thrown up, her eyes screaming wide open as if shouting a desperate prayer to God. It was amazing they got all that long, wide thing inside her. The head must be up near her big breasts, which were hanging like grapefruits, the huge nipples pointing down as if pushed out by the outward pressure of the snake. Of course it wasn't in that far (it probably curved with her colon) but the scene looked like sadomasochism, until you turned the page and saw Tami lying on her side on the table with a weary smile on her face, her two clothed companions nestling the snake between her breasts. 




Interview with the Professor



The next series of photos was even more jarring. Tami was strapped to a big scaffold, spread-eagled as two huge dildos on cams pistoned into her from below, invading her front and rear. A rear view showed how thick the rear dildo was, practically splitting her trim butt in two. Tubes like the one I saw in her office came down and suctioned her nipples. Next to her was what could only be called a scoreboard, recording orgasms, contractions, and time elapsed. 

What made the scene even stranger were the people around her. In the first photo, after two hours and 86 orgasms, men and women were all around, formally dressed as if at a cocktail party, chatting and eating snacks. Tami's eyes were closed, her mouth open, her scalp and face and her whole hairless body shining with sweat under the harsh overhead light, her concave tummy quaking. A few people were watching her, with a couple of men behind, watching her rectum getting plowed, with as casual an attitude as if contemplating a painting in a museum. To the side was a table lined with water bottles. 

In the next photo, after (according to the "scoreboard") three and a half hours and 177 orgasms, Tami was actually engaging in conversation with an older man, though her eyes seemed a little wild. A different group of people from the first photo watched her intently from every angle. From her position on the apparatus she had to look down to talk to people. Her crotch was at about everyone's eye level. 

In the next photo her eyes were screaming at the camera! And maybe her mouth too, it was wide open. Her hands and wrists strained against their bonds, her thigh muscles were taut, her feet flexed, her toes spread. It was six hours in and she was apparently in the throes of her 287th orgasm! Yet around her were what looked like Chamber of Commerce types, talking to each other, only a couple looking up at her. Amusingly, a few people had their hands cupped to their ears, as if trying to hear what their friends were saying over this racket. 

In the last photo she was surrounded by TL's, who were kissing her all over, a couple of them bending over to suck her toes. Some looked at the camera and had their thumbs up. Melissa was at the side pouring champagne. A cause for celebration, Tami having experienced her 400th orgasm in the space of 8 hours 17 minutes. Whether Tami was conscious of her achievement was hard to tell. Like in the first photo, her head was tilted upward, her eyes closed, her mouth open, the sweat having dried on her body, which looked a bit thinner than it did in the first photo. The water bottles to the side were almost all used up. 

I had to catch my breath. Looking at these photos was exhausting. 400 orgasms! Then again, eight hours is a long time. . . I felt Melissa standing behind me, her long blond hair touching the shoulder of my jacket. When I could finally speak I said, "This is amazing." 

"This is our book of wisdom," she said gently. "We're always learning new things." 

"Too bad you can't put it online," I said, looking through the last chapter. "A lot of people could learn from this." 

"I'll never forget my first session with Tami," she said with a reverent tone. "We were both undergrads. I did her on a table near the college library. I brought her up eighteen times. Each time I felt I was up in the clouds with her, looking down at the world. I know this sounds goofy, but it's a spiritual experience. I learned how to give. That's so important. Learning how to give." 

I couldn't help but agree, the world being the way it is. I closed the book carefully. 

"Come, you're not halfway through," Melissa said, taking me by the hand. I went with her down another little hallway, leaving the two girls on the couch, jabbering about boys the way only girls can. 

I followed Melissa's hand around another black, invisible corner. Her hand was warm and soft, the grip firm. I wondered about the TL's. Were they all gay? Of course not, judging from the girls on the couch. How did boyfriends feel about this? It seemed like a male fantasy, what they were all doing to Tami. Yet apparently no men were allowed. Even Rod felt "uncomfortable" down here, this underworld devoted to simultaneously stimulating every bit of Tami's body, inside and out, in every conceivable fashion.  

We were almost bumping into Tami's other foot when I finally saw it. There was no little lamp here. It was amazing how the layout of the walls, what must be like a maze or catacomb, blocked out sounds from the little cubbyholes devoted to other parts of her. 

And it made it seem like a bigger place than it was. This bare foot had to be only five feet or so away from the other one, yet it was like journeying to the antipodes. Particularly when my eyes adjusted and I saw what was being done here, at what looked like a far outpost of the underworld. Tami's foot stuck out over a bowl of ice cubes. One of the TL's was running one cube around and between the toes. The other had a bristly spiky ball, kind of like a rubber porcupine, and was jabbing it gently over the instep. Then they switched places. 

Tami's voice, participating in the meeting above, came through the nearest little speaker: "I know this must be done quickly but -- but we have to cover all bases. I see it taking two weeks if we're lucky and no - no opposition." 

"This is Betty and Jalisa," Melissa said. I could barely make out their faces, especially Jalisa's which was so dark. After they nodded to me and continued their cold, spiky torture of Tami's toes and foot for a few moments, I whispered to Melissa. "This looks cruel," I said playfully. "Compared with Tami's other foot." 

"Who's over there?" Betty said, kissing and sucking a toe before she rubbed an ice cube around it. She had overheard me. 

"I'm not sure," Melissa said. "I don't go there much." As if it were a faraway country. 

"Hermine and Gladys," I said. 

"Whatever they're doing, I bet it's fattening," Jalisa said. As if talking about third cousins whom she doesn't see often. She got up off her chair and sat down in a different posture. I saw that she was tall and athletic. I thought of the other foot, coated in peanut butter. While this one was being chilled and scraped. It seemed unfair. Though I then smelled coffee and realized that the toes were being sucked by hot mouths. The toes writhed and wiggled with the stimulations, as if expressing their surprise and joy. Very expressive toes. 

Melissa and I left this dark, cold outpost, then shortly came to a standing girl who was braced, one foot in front of the other, as she waved one of those long feathers I had seen next to the couch, with a slow, laborious motion. She was in a kind of jumpsuit, suited to athletic exertions. I tried to see where she was floating the feather, but it was too dark. "I'm caressing the midriff and belly button," she explained. "Want to try?" 

I tried. This long thing was heavy. She showed me how to grip it with a minimum of strain. One hand holding it up eighteen inches or so from the end, as a fulcrum, the other at the end controlling the stroke, while I braced one foot well in front of the other. She looked at my hands approvingly, like a teacher watching a good student. I felt proud. And after a few strokes I could feel, subtly, the gentle vibrations and resistance through the feather. Though I couldn't see her, I could feel the delicate fronds either touching Tami or missing her. I knew that I was gently teasing the side of that tiny waist, the concave tummy, hopefully sending chills through her body. A tantalizing, teasingly gentle stimulation in contrast with all the more direct and intense things that were being done to her. Every activity here carried its own satisfactions. 

Tami's voice continued through the local speaker. "Without their approval it -- w - would be impossible." 

As I wafted the feather up and down I felt a chill going through my own self, as if I were on the receiving end of it. Maybe this was something of what Melissa was talking about: the excitement of exciting Tami. Reluctantly I gave the feather back to the girl. Melissa led me outward and up a couple of steps. 

Tami's hand stuck out from the darkness. Two women were touching it lightly with their hands and tongues, down the wrist and forearm. I remembered the chapter in the loose leaf on "Feet and Hands" where there was a drawing on "nerve patterns". Apparently there was a pattern to their caressing that stimlulated something up and down the arm. 

Suddenly something struck me. "How is Tami -- supported? It looks like she's in mid air." 

"There are loops of soft plastic going around her thighs and her upper arms," Melissa said quietly. "You can't see them from here." 

I shook my head. "Amazing. This -- underworld. How did it develop?" 

"Bit by bit. We're proud of it. It's been a progressive, collective project. Everything has been trial and error. Tami's very sensual, and amazingly responsive. You can bring her to orgasm a hundred different ways. But some things work better than others. Extending and intensifying her response, that's what it's been all about." 

"But she's not reaching orgasm. She's up there -- I mean her head's up there -- taking part in an important meeting." 

"She's holding back. That's for the convenience of the faculty, and President Ellender. It's the only way she can be at these meetings at close to room temperature. She hates participating from inside that freezer booth. Also for some of those folks, they can't concentrate when they see her shivering." 

I supposed the students in Tami's classes were used to that, but not everyone. I was still with these thoughts when Melissa led me toward Tami's front, where her breasts were being attended to by my old friend Tonya, and another girl whose face I could not see because she was busy sucking vigorously on the other nipple. 

"Hi," Tonya said, catching her breath as she disengaged her teeth from having pulled on the nipple she was stationed at. With both hands she was grabbing the big breast like a grapefruit, making it stick out even more than when at rest, and making the waist, below in the shadows, look even more tiny by contrast. "This is Mei Lin." 

The other girl, still with her face occupied, gave me a little backward wave. Then she went back to grabbing "her" breast, which looked all the bigger because her hands were so small. 

Tonya and Mei Lin were standing in tall, dark wood boxes that were barely big enough for them to fit in and which came up to their waists. It was explained that this way they would not interfere with those stationed below. 

These two girls were ravenous, rough, rasping. They were biting and sucking, pulling poor Tami's nipples until they stretched grotesquely out from her breasts, then letting go, causing the breasts to bounce, then attacking again. 

"You guys are rough!" I whispered. "Poor Tami must be going crazy!" 

Tami's voice: "I can do the press release. Kathy can -- speak to Gayle at the -- development office... No, I don't -- think that would be necessary." 

"I wouldn't say she's used to it," Melissa said, "but she can store up the sensations for when she breaks loose." 

That must be some orgasm she's heading up to, I thought. 

"Now," Melissa said portentously, taking my hand again, "let's go to Mission Control." 

A little flight of steps -- maybe four steps, but these were tiny steps -- away and down, then down and in, and for once I was in a well-lit place, crowded with two women as well as Melissa and me. It was Tami's crotch, the famous cleanly shaved lower lips, the world's most exposed clit poking out above. The three women were seated in front of a long, narrow table crowded with recognizable sex toys -- dildos, vibrators -- and some I didn't recognize. The women were separated by the thin square columns that held the legs of Tonya and Mei Lin, but leaned forward and worked on Tami as a skilled team. 

Tami's crotch was brightly lit with two spotlights mounted on snake supports, as if on stage. Well, it was always on display for the whole world to see, but now intensely so. At the moment one woman, a slightly overweight girl about Tami's age, was gently rubbing the lower part of Tami's inner lips, while the other, a tall, athletic looking Latina, was applying a long, stick-like vibrator to various points around the clit. The clit stood straight out, like a tiny penis, casting a little shadow in the harsh light. As the Latina girl gently jabbed, the clit danced in little jerks, and Tami's vagina, stimlulated by the rubbing of the first girl, quaked and palpitated, closing slightly and then opening again, like a goldfish's mouth. 

To the sides, I saw Tami's thin but muscular thighs, and two of the supports Melissa spoke about. They were wide straps, black so as to be almost invisible, hung by equally black ropes that extended up to some unseen anchor point. 

"This is Rosaria," Melissa said, referring to the Latina girl, "and this is Georgene." 

"Welcome," Georgene said. Then she looked up at a digital clock on what was a freestanding little wall. I looked around and saw coffee cups, tea bags, cookies, and some textbooks. Behind us there were some folding chairs, and I saw two older women seated there, watching attentively, dressed up like they were attending church. They nodded to me politely. I looked up at the unseen ceiling, and guessed they were probably directly under the flat part of the table above, where lay sodas and papers and President Ellender's chocolate cake. 

I had so many questions in my head but didn't know where to start. So I just watched. After rubbing Tami's lower lips with her fingers, Georgene produced a gigantic dildo. It was far too long to fit into any woman's pussy but Georgene didn't try. She skillfully rubbed the lips until the pussy was wide open, then she gently introduced the end of the dildo, rubbing against the pussy lips and slickly squeezing them open, then twisting gently until about four inches were in. Then she turned a switch and I heard humming. 

Tami: "Th - this is a good idea. We should form a subcommittee to deal -- with that." 

As Georgene pushed the dildo in a little deeper, then deeper yet, Rosaria pressed her long stick directly into Tami's clit, as if to crush it into her body. Tami's whole torso jerked, very slightly. Then Georgene reamed the pussy around and around with the dildo. Then she withdrew it. Rosaria withdrew the stick from the hard red clit. Then in concert they grabbed little feathers and gently tickled Tami's genitals. The clit bobbed, the gaping pussy palpitated. I thought I saw Tami's whole crotch area quiver. I've had that feeling, about to orgasm, my whole pelvis congested and heavy and seeking release. With Tami it was extreme. She had been brought right up to the point of orgasm and then left there, only to be taken up to the brink yet again. For how many times so far? 

We watched Tami's open pussy quiver for a moment. "Let's give this careful thought," her voice said from above. Muffled laughter. Must have been a joke. Then Georgene stuck her entire hand into the pussy, crunching the fingers together so that it slid in through the wet lips. To my amazement her hand went all the way in to the wrist. 

Georgene said, "Ha! Belinda's using the knuckle technique again." As we watched, Georgene worked her hand, deep within Tami. All we could see was the working of the muscles in her arm as she and Belinda, on the other side of Tami and the other side of their world, communicated in their strange language, using Tami's inner membrane and Tami's body as their medium. Both getting a charge out of it, as if achieving some new kind of international understanding. 

I remembered reading how delicate the membrane was between rectum and vagina. "Isn't that dangerous?" I asked Melissa. 

"No," she whispered back. "Like a lot of Tami, it's gotten toughened with the world using it, while being no less sensitive. Maybe even more so. Like the soles of her feet." 

Georgene, her head tilted just so, eyes looking up absently, giggled, as if Belinda had cracked a joke across Tami's innermost membrane. Like silent lovers tapping out messages in code. 

At length Georgene withdrew her hand. Then a strange sight: she and her companion started licking Tami's juices off her fingers. She looked up at me as if to say, "Want some?" I declined. 

I almost fell back on Melissa and exhaled, as if overwhelmed. "C'mon," she said, "let's go." 

Another little curved set of steps. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hermine and Gladys at their little lighted stand, continuing their peanut butter and jelly feast on Tami's toes. 

"One more thing," Melissa said. We were at the foot of that initial little narrow flight of steps. She reached up and drew back a little curtain. 

"Holy . . ." I'm sure my mouth was open and Melissa was amused at my reaction. It was a vantage point, behind Tami's neck, from where one could look down and see Tami's whole body from the rear, bathed in ghostly dim light. The glorious, lightly muscled, perfectly proportioned nakedness, stretched out in an "X", stimulated at every possible place (hands, feet, legs, thighs, nipples, torso, pussy, clit, rectum, anus) and in every possible way (tongues, teeth, lips, dildos, vibrators, peanut butter, jelly, ice cubes, rasps, pins) -- all at the same time --the little lights from the various stations here and there, like little cities along the moonlit hills and plains of the country of Tami -- while up above, Tami's brain and face and mouth were somehow thinking and talking and fully engaged in the boring steering committee meeting! 

Melissa drew back the curtain. Now we ascended the glowing narrow steps, and went up through the door and into the bright hallway, where Rod stood as before, his one arm holding up his cup as he sipped. 

Actually the hallway was probably not that bright, but it took a while for me to get used to the light. I had just one word as I blinked at him and Melissa. 

"Wow." 

Then, I giggled, knowing they would laugh too. "After all that, I'm hungry." 

Rod cheerfully took me back to the living room, with the black round table, and the wonderful chocolate cake made by President Ellender. The college president smiled at me as I tried not to make too much a show of wolfing it down, and washing it down with iced tea. I pictured spreading the rich frosting on Tami's nipple and licking it off, biting and sucking in the process. 

The disembodied bald head of Tami Smithers continued to preside over the meeting. "That's -- the plan then?" I again noticed the red blotchiness of her face and scalp. Perhaps a reaction to normal room temperature, being used to subfreezing blasts in her movable ice box. Or maybe a reaction to the intense stimulation below and the strain of repressing the slightest grunt. 

"Yes," President Ellender said. Another woman was typing the minutes on her little laptop. I took another bite of cake. 

Tami's head looked around the table. "M - meeting finished then?" I couldn't help thinking of what she was experiencing below, on every part of her body. . . 

"Thanks, Tami," the man in the suit said. After some glances everyone got up. 

Tami's eyes closed as if praying. She took a couple of deep, ragged breaths. Then she opened them. "Y - you're welcome to stay." She looked as two new people entered the room, the young girls who had been chatting on the couch down in the "underworld". She smiled at them. Then another woman came in, with a big plate of chips and salsa, and another with wine and cheese. 

"No, thank you, see you tomorrow," the President of the Institute said. The others followed her. 

The lady with the chips said, "Let's put on some tunes. Time to party!"

[end of report]