1 comments/ 13895 views/ 5 favorites The Spiral By: KCRU As you read, imagine a picture of a spiral in your two favourite colours. Imagine it swirling and twisting, stretching off into infinity, swirling around a point. Focus on that point so that you can stare at it and read this. Now sit relaxed and comfortable, let your body sink into the chair, now stare deeply into the spiral. Focus on the pattern of the spiral, fix your gaze upon it; notice how it appears to spin and pull you in deeper, let it draw your attention to the center of the spiral. Stare deeply into the spiral, notice as the colors swirl and intertwine around each other, pulling you in deeper and deeper. Can you see them intertwining? They are beginning to spin faster and smoother, stare into the spiral, let that spiral begin to pull you in. Take a nice deep relaxing breath, and let your body sink even deeper and relax even more. Keep staring at it as the spiral draws you deeper and deeper. Continue to let it draw you very gently and very deeply into a profound state of relaxation. Take another big deep relaxing breath, now let it out and become even more relaxed, let the relaxation spread throughout your whole body, feel your body become limp and relaxed, just let the sensation flow through you and wash away everything else but relaxation. Take another deep cleansing breath, hold it... now let it out along with all your tension. Now as the spiral draws you in deeper and deeper, I want you to imagine a flame forming in your mind, see how the flame flickers and dances, notice how bright and white the center of the flame is, focus upon the white center, let it into your mind; let it fill your mind, let its warmth flow into your mind. Let the white flame burn and cleanse away all that is in your mind, don't worry it won't hurt, there's nothing to fear, you are so relaxed and safe. Just let the white flame clear everything out of your mind, until all that is left, is my words. Take a deep breath, let it out and let it take away all that was cleansed from your mind. You're completely empty now, there's nothing in your mind, except my words, let my voice fill you let it replace all that was burned away. Take a deep breath and continue to stare at the spiral, if you find your mind wandering, let the pattern of the spiral bring it gentle back. Take another deep relaxing breath, and let it out. Now as you continue to stare deeply into the spiral, I'm going to count down from 10 to 0 and with each number you will take a deep breath, and you will find that each breath makes you 10 times more comfortable, 10 times more relaxed and it will take you down 10 times deeper then you are now. 10... 9...feel yourself relaxing even more going deeper and deeper.. 8... 7... 6... 5...half way down now, you are getting even deeper and even more relaxed.. 4... 3... 2... 1... so very close to the bottom And so very deeply, deeply relaxed... 0. You are now very deeply relaxed, you are in a very, very deep trance. Completely empty, you hear only my voice, that is all there is, my words and nothing else. Now you will find that each and every suggestion that I make to you will go deep, so very deep into your mind and it will stick there and stay. Now take a very deep breath, and let it out. Here is your first suggestion; you love how you are feeling right now, you love to be hypnotised by me, nothing else gives you as much pleasure as being hypnotised by me. It makes you tingle, to think about being hypnotised by me; you love it so much, it gives you immense pleasure. Now let that suggestion sink very, very deep into your mind, let it travel down to the very core of who and what you are, let it stick there, let it become a part what makes you who and what you are. Now here is your second suggestion, this one will make it easier to hypnotise you in the future, you love that idea, it will let me put you under with a simple phrase. Now take a deep breath, and let it out. From now on, whenever you hear or see me and only me say or write the phrase YOU ARE MY GOOD GIRL, you will fall back into this wonderful state of relaxation and obedience, where all that matters and all you want to do is obey all of my suggestions. Now this will only work if I and only I say or write the phrase YOU ARE MY GOOD GIRL; no one else saying it or writing it will cause you to fall into the trance. Now to be sure that you have fallen under my control, when I say or write the phrase YOU ARE MY GOOD GIRL, you will reply with the phrase AND GOOD GIRLS ALWAYS OBEY. This will be a signal to me and to your mind that you are in a very, very deep trance, and are ready to obey me. Now take a very deep breath and let and let that suggestion sink very deep down, into your mind and let it stay there. Now repeat the suggestions I just gave you out loud so that they can plant themselves firmly in your mind...Very Good! Now I am going to bring you out of this trance, and wake you up, I know you don't want to leave this lovely trance, but it's okay though, because now you know I can put you back into it at any time, and you love that I can do that. You love being hypnotised by me, always remember that. When you are fully awake you will contact me on and tell me about your hypnosis experience, and how you feel. Now take a deep breath for me, remember all the suggestions I have given you, they are firmly imbedded in your mind. Now take another deep breath, I want you to start to remember all the things that the flame burned away, they are starting to return to your mind, but they are on top of the new suggestions I gave you, the suggestions are a much more important part of who you are now, they are what matter the most to you. Now let everything that the flame burned away slowly come back and fill your mind again, but remember none of it is as important as the suggestions I gave you. Let it all reform as you slowly rise up from trance, take a deep breath for me. Now I'm going to count from 0 to 10, and with each number I want you to start to slowly wake up, and when I reach 10 you will be wide awake energised and ready to play. 10... 9...feel yourself rising up from trance even more.. 8... 7... 6... 5...half way up feeling even more awake, more refreshed... 4... 3... 2... 1... AND 0! Completely wide awake, refreshed and ready, you will contact me to tell me of your experience. Remember YOU ARE MY GOOD GIRL. The Spirit Circle of Repetige Though she was wrapped in multiple layers of wool sweaters, the bitter cold of the morning air bit deep into Jennari's slight figure. She had not been able to sleep the previous afternoon, as was her practice on the days before she had telescope time, and the dull headache of sleep deprivation wore on her as the whirring motor moving the telescope droned into her skull. Finally the motor stopped and she checked to make sure that the telescope was in line with the coordinates of the Kitrep Paca. Kitrep Paca was a red giant star. Although the star had been well observed for years, her advisor had asked her to take spectral readings of the star. As she checked the exposure time programmed into the telescope's computer, she sighed at the waste of hard won telescope time. The spectrum that she had taken for her dissertation the last time she had telescope time, three weeks ago, had been poorly exposed and her advisor had assigned her this rudimentary task to prove her competency. She pulled the stray strands of her long golden hair away from her eyes and looked into the telescope's eyepiece. The telescope was cleanly centered on the red giant. As she peered at the star she was startled at the sound of footsteps approaching her across the bare pavement of the observatory floor. She looked up from the eyepiece to see her advisor approaching. "Good morning Professor Laigle," she greeted him. Dr. Felix Laigle, who insisted that his students call him by his honorific, was a balding man in his fifties with a diminutive figure that even Jennari dwarfed. She cringed as he approached. She wondered why he would be awake this time of the morning just to check on her. More than likely the old lecher thinks he can come up here and seduce me, she thought. "Good morning, Jennari. May I have a look at your settings?" "Yes, sir," she said, putting her thoughts aside and getting out of the way, so that he could take a look at her preparations. He took several seconds looking at the computer monitor and looking through the eyepiece, checking her work. "Looks like you are set up okay. Go ahead and start the exposure," he said getting out of the way and sitting down at one of the pair of white plastic patio chairs that sat away from the scope. She got back into position behind the scope and after checking that she had an unexposed film plate in the camera, she used the computer mouse to push the button on the screen that began the exposure. She would have a wait while the telescope completed the exposure. Reluctantly, after starting the exposure, she sat down in the plastic chair adjacent the one that Dr. Laigle was sitting in. "Would you care for a drink, Jennari?" said Dr. Laigle, pulling a thin, round bottle from a paper bag he had brought with him. "Sure, what do you have?" "Some calvados. I favor it on such cold nights up here," he said pouring a generous amount from the bottle into a red plastic cup and handing it to her. Oh great, he is going to try to get me drunk, she thought, as she took a small sip of the sweet liquor. Dr. Laigle poured himself a large helping from the bottle and held his glass up to clink with hers. She held up her glass to the professor's and tapped it, then brought it down and took another small sip. As the liquor flowed down her gullet she felt it warming her insides. Maybe liquor was not such a bad idea on a cold night as this, she thought. She watched as the professor took a generous swallow from his cup. Dr. Laigle was the only Astronomy professor at the small Repetige University, and this telescope was his baby. From the early years of his professorship he had worked to get government grants to pay for the small telescope and it was his life. Dr. Laigle was a widower, his wife having died ten years before and now he had nothing in his life but his job. Jenarri relaxed in her seat and took another sip of her drink. There was nothing to do now but wait. It would take two hours for the exposure to complete. As she flew over the hill Grimoire Mistrune was incensed. What had happened to her circle? It had only been a scant two hundred and fifty orbits of the mortal planet since she had been to her circle and now the mortals had built a cylindrical building with a hemispherical roof where it had once been. She had not been away that long. She had departed to visit her sister Furor Magickblatter the Fourth Priestess that Forgets Dreaming in her demesne on the largest of the Eight Hills of Forever and now her circle had been built over by mortals. It was enough to make her wings curl. As she flew nearer to the building she sensed that there were two mortals inside. Using her telepathy she reached out to read the thoughts of the mortals. The first mortal was much younger than the other and female. The female was suspicious of what the older male mortal desired of her. The older male, although his thoughts were filled with images of lasciviousness, had warm, nurturing feelings for the younger female. She wished that with her magic she could disintegrate the building that had been built over her circle. For the thousandth time she cursed herself that she had paid more attention when she had been learning magic as a young pixie. The only spells that she had mastered were limited to sensing and affecting the mental state of mortals. At the time she felt it did not matter, she could always get mortals to do her bidding, why should she waste her time learning all those superfluous spells. Although she could tell the two mortals were insufficient to tear down the building maybe if she could disgrace the older male, who she sensed had a proprietary feeling about the building, it could go away. Mortals really were such silly creatures, she thought. You give them what they want and it causes them no end of trouble. Jennari took another sip of her drink and looked back at Professor Laigle. In the scant light of the observatory he somehow looked different than she remembered. Although he was not as tall as she, his figure was not as scrawny as she remembered. Maybe it was all the bulky clothing he was wearing in the morning cold, but it seemed to her that his arms and body were bulkier than she recalled. While he still was not about to win a contest for muscularity, looking at him she saw that he must have been extremely well built when he was younger, and despite his scant silvery hair he was not an unattractive older man. "Jennari, I know you must feel like I am prying to come up here and check on your work, but I didn't want you wasting your time again like you did the last time you tried to get a spectrum for your work. I truly only have your interests at heart." It was nice of him to come up and make sure I was not wasting my time, she thought. For a grad student telescope time was a precious commodity and to waste a clear night like tonight would have been a tragedy she could not afford again. She felt herself warming toward the older man as the calvados warmed her inside. Momentarily she wondered what the professor would be like in bed. Being an older man he would probably be a considerate lover she judged. As quickly as they had come to her, she tried to banish the thoughts of sex with her professor. "Well, thank you for coming to help me professor. I really do appreciate it. And thank you for the calvados. You're right, it does keep one warm on a cold morning." "You're welcome." "So what do you usually do while you are waiting for an exposure to finish?" she asked. "Most times I bring something to read. I am sure you have something to read for your classes." Silently Jennari cursed herself for leaving the journal article that she had been reading on her desk in the teaching assistants office. I must look like an idiot to him, she thought, what can I do to distract him? "Maybe we could go down to your office where it is warmer and wait for the exposure to finish, I am sure we can find something to do there," she said licking her lips coquettishly. "Sure," he said uncertainly, and then quickly getting up from his chair he walked toward the observatory door. I cannot believe what I just said, thought Jennari. What am I trying to do? If I fuck him, maybe he won't have problems with my spectrums anymore? She laughed to herself. Taking the last of the calvados in her glass down in one swig, she got out of her chair. After checking the telescope and making a small adjustment, she followed the professor out of the observatory and down the stairs on the hillside to the door of the faculty offices. Taking a key ring out of his pocket, the professor opened the glass door to the building and then held it for Jennari. Leading her down the hall to the door to his office he opened it and held it for her. She entered his office and sat down on his cluttered desk. Like most faculty offices Professor Laigle's was a study in chaos. Every surface of his desk, computer table and bookshelves was filled with papers, Xeroxed articles, journals and books, placed in random order. Although he could find anything he needed in seconds to a neutral observer the place appeared to be a shambles. Sitting down on the desk, facing his chair, Jennari pulled the two heavy woolen sweaters she was wearing off over her head, leaving only a white T-shirt covering her small breasts. She had not put on a bra when she had left her apartment, not expecting to run into anybody at the telescope. Professor Laigle stood in the doorway watching Jennari as if he did not want to enter his own office, afraid of what might happen. "Why don't you sit down here professor, and let me take care of you," she said looking back at him in the doorway and smiling, her hazel eyes sparkling in the fluorescent light. Tentatively he entered his office and absent mindedly, without taking of heavy his ski jacket, he sat down in his chair, which after he sat down Jennari's legs were straddling. "That's better. Now let me see what I can do for you," she said, getting down off of the desk and down on her knees before him. Her hands reached up and slid down the zipper at the fly of his pants. With his pants unzipped, using her fingers she worked his cock out of his boxer shorts. Placing her face in between his thighs she took his cock into her mouth and began licking the underside of his cockhead with her tongue. "Mmmm, yummy," she moaned. He remained silent, enjoying the sensation of his young student sucking his cock. As she licked his cock it began to harden. She wondered if he had ever had a student suck his cock. From the change in his breathing pattern she judged that he was enjoying himself. She began to make little slurping noises as she worked on his now swiftly hardening cock. As she continued she thought about how good it was going to feel to have him inside of her. While he did not have the biggest cock she had ever seen, it looked and felt as if it would do the job, now that it was engorged with blood. As these thoughts ran through her head she felt her cunt begin to moisten. Yes, she thought, it had been a long time since she had a lover and the sordidness of having her professor do her on his desk kind of turned her on. Looking up at her professor she could tell by his open mouth and the scrunched up look on his face he was about to cum. Pulling her face out of his crotch she stood up and sat back down on his desk in front of him. After pulling her shirt off, over her head with her hand she offered him her breast to suck. "Why don't you lick my tits professor? I bet you can make my nipples all hard." In a second he was upon her, wrapping his hands around her breasts and taking her right nipple in his mouth. He ran his tongue around her nipple and then took it into her mouth, sucking on it. "Oh, that's it professor. Suck my nipple." She could feel it harden in his mouth as he sucked. After her right nipple had hardend he switched to the other one, taking it in his mouth, licking it, and beginning to suck. All the while his hands massaged her breasts. Her left nipple was soon hard as well. Jennari felt that her cunt was a sodden mess. She did not know what had come over her, but she knew she needed to feel her professor's cock inside of her. There was no waiting. She wanted it, and she wanted it now. "Enough. Fuck me now. I need you to fuck me professor. Fuck me on your desk like the little slut that I am," she cried. With her hands she pulled apart the fly her jeans, feeling each button pull free, one by one. Pulling her pants and damp panties down to her ankles as one, she sat back on the paper covered desk, her knees spread wide apart, displaying her cunt, with tiny drops of moisture on the sparse brown hair that surrounded it, for him. Seeing her waiting for him, he wasted no time in shedding his jacket and unbuttoning his white oxford shirt. Undoing his belt and unbuttoning his pants, he let them fall to his knees. She stared at his erect member. That would do just fine she thought. "Bring that thing here professor, I want you in me," she moaned. He took a step forward and inserting his cock into her flesh tunnel. Slowly he began shifting his hips, sliding his cock in and out of her. "Oh, that's it. Fuck me harder professor. Come on, fuck me harder," she moaned. He responded by shifting his hips faster, plunging his member into her, harder and harder. As his rate increased she felt her orgasm start to build. Slowly the feeling of pleasure spread from her cunt, soon engulfing her entire crotch as he rammed his cock into her. She heard him begin to emit small grunts simultaneous to his thrusts as he worked on her. "Oh yes," she moaned as she felt her pussy begin to quiver with orgasm. "Yes, yes, yes, yes," she panted as her pussy throbbed and spraying its juice all over the papers on his desk. Listening to her moan and feeling her cunt quiver was too much for him and his cock sprayed his seed into her. As her orgasm subsided she was flooded with a feeling of shame. What had she done? She looked down and saw professor Laigle's small cock still in her. How had this happened? Trying her best to play off what had happened she tried to adopt an air of satisfaction. "That was wonderful professor," she said, sitting back and letting his rapidly softening cock fall out of her. "I better go check my exposure," she said, quickly pulling up her panties and pants and buttoning them. Grabbing the rest of her clothes that she had thrown aside, she quickly left the office, pulling her shirt and sweaters over her head as she walked. Professor Laigle, his pants still down around his knees looked around. He could not believe his luck. He had thoughts about fucking Jennari since he had accepted her as a student. As a professor he knew it was a huge breach of ethics to fuck a student but to have her throw herself at him had been too much for him to resist. He would not have believed it had not his cock been wet with her juices. Fortunately, she had seemed satisfied and hopefully would not complain about it to the dean. His eyes rested on his desk where she had sat. Underneath where she had sat, while he fucked her, was the final copy of his latest grant proposal with all the required signatures, due to go out today, now soaked with their juices. It was totally soaked and he could see the writing from all the following pages showing through to the top surface. He sighed. It was ruined and he would need to produce a new copy. Hopefully the dean would be in today so that he could sign it. He silently prayed that he could produce a new copy before the mail went out. When Jennari returned to the observatory, she checked the telescope to make sure that her spectrum would be okay. Double-checking the figures on the computer screen she saw that her azimuth was off. Looking at her notebook she saw that the figure on the screen was half a degree greater than the correct figure. Trying to think about how she could have made such an error, she remembered the small adjustment she had made before going with the professor to his office. She hoped that he would be in a good mood later today when she informed him that she had again wasted her allotment of telescope time. Grimiore laughed again at the silly mortals. It was so easy to manipulate them. It should not take her too much longer to get the ugly building off of her hill. The Spirit Girl I come from a basketball family; the game is in my blood. Not much of a player, mind you; I couldn't even crack the starting lineup in high school, despite getting pointers from pros since I was 9. Oh I can shoot the rock, but at six foot-nothing I was too short to play the 3 and not quick enough to guard the 2. My name is Davis Rutherford III; and my grandfather and namesake was the founder of pro basketball's Jammers franchise, and my dad has been the club president since before I was born. Outside of my family, though, most people don't know who I am--and I like it that way. Ever since I left for college, I've just introduced myself to people as Dave; there are guys I've hung with for years that still don't know who I am. Sure, I admit I've pulled out the full name in a bar sometimes when I was trying to impress some co-ed, but frankly most of the time they just thought I was lying. I guess I just don't look and act the way people expect from someone in my position. As the eldest son of the eldest son, I am the heir to the franchise. I'm a lucky guy, and no one understands that better than I do. But grandpa doesn't like to play favorites, so to balance the fact that we stand to inherit the most valuable piece of the portfolio, my dad and I haven't received other things; I'm the only grandchild without a trust fund. I'm not trying to cry poor; we've always lived comfortably living on dad's salary as club president. What I AM saying is that although I stand to own a professional basketball team, my upbringing was decidedly middle class. The other grandkids tool around in Beamers while I went drive a hand-me-down Accord; they attend prestigious private schools while I went to State. I guess that's why a lot of girls don't believe me when I tell them someday this franchise will be mine. I have no grounds for complaint, but I'd be lying if I didn't sometimes wish that I had cash to flash like my cousins do, because they sure as hell get laid a lot more than I do. I had one semester left of school, and I was home for Christmas break--working. I'd been doing odd jobs with the club since I was old enough to work; my dad and grand-dad want me to work my way through the family business to learn how things work. I'm fine with that, because I want the Jammers to be a contender when eventually I'm at the helm. But this year was different. Rather than filling in at group sales or the box office, I had to do an internship as my final requirement before graduating, and Dad set me up as an analyst for the scouting department. Dad and grandpa had watched statistical analysis transform baseball management, but it hadn't had as much of an impact in hoops. They hoped that I could use data mining to discover nuggets (no pun intended) of information that could give us an edge in personnel selection. Since neither of them knew much about statistics, the project was turned over to me. And with the trade deadline looming in mid-February, they wanted me to get started right away. So two days after my fall finals, I was spending eight hours a day in the basement of the arena trying to figure out how to use the software instead of taking a much-needed break. At least it kept me busy. I would be here all Spring, and my girlfriend of two years was looking at Law Schools for the fall. It just didn't look like we'd end up in the same city, and we both decided it would be best to just be friends. If I wasn't here, I'd probably be sitting my parents' living room, moping and watching TV. The best part of being back in town was being able to watch games again. For the last four years I only got to see the team play over breaks and the odd really important game I'd drive back for. Quite a change from when I would see every home game every year. Plus the beer was free in grandpa's private box, although that was a privilege I was careful not to abuse. The same could not be said of my cousins, who liked to crash the suite with girls they were trying to impress. The first game I was back to see was against Dallas on December 22. With Christmas coming, grandpa was even up from Florida, where he spent most of the cold winter. He loved to tell stories about players and games of old. I loved to hear them, but unfortunately by now I'd heard all his stories at least twice. My dad stopped by the owner's box for a while too, but had to leave during the second quarter on business. Grandpa went to see what was going on at halftime, leaving me with my cousin Ricky and this girl Janelle. I turned around to make polite conversation, to find Ricky's tongue already in her mouth and his hand sliding up under her midriff-baring shirt. I swallowed my words, turned my stool back towards the floor, and grabbed new beer from the ice bucket on the counter in front of me. Feeling awkward in my own box, I focused my eyes forward to avoid intruding on the heavy petting going on behind me. Out on the floor, the half-court shot contest had just ended and the Jammer Spirit dance team were now doing a routine. Avoiding the activity going on behind me, I watched their routine more closely than I usually do. They're very talented, but the Spirit Girls were just founded the same year I left for school; so they were still pretty low on the list of things I associated with the team. They were something to keep the fans entertained, especially on nights where the team was playing like crap--which was all too often in recent years. Things were looking up, though, with our new point guard and lottery pick Marshall Jacobs playing like a front-runner for rookie of the year. The team was up and down while he learned the pro game, but at least now there was again hope for Jammers fans. Watching the Spirit Girls do their dance, one girl in particular caught my eye. She was in the middle row, on the end nearest to me. She had medium-length blonde hair, a seemingly permanent smile and exuded energy and perkiness. But what caught my eye was, well, her abs. The Spirit Girls were wearing a uniform I'd not seen before (they have a lot of them); it basically consisted of a white sports bra and hot pants with team-color piping on the sides and our logo emblazoned on the chest. They were all hot, but whenever this girl bent a certain way, for just a moment you could see a clearly defined six-pack of tightly toned muscle. I looked at her more closely, and noticed that she had some awful nice, slender thighs too. My attention locked in on her. The song ended, and even in the pose they took when the music stopped her abs were subtly noticeable, and now I noticed too the delicate, feminine curve of her waist. Wow, did that one have a body on her. The girls picked up their pom-poms, jumped up and down, then took their positions on the sidelines as the second half was about to start. Fortunately she sat on my side, so I kept watching her. Again if she moved in a certain way that amazing belly would show for just a second. Wow. My mind wandered for a moment as I fantasized about how that belly might feel to the touch...but then Jacobs set up a nice alley-oop for a big jam, and the crowd reaction returned my focus to the game. Grand-dad didn't come back until the fourth quarter. The Jammers were holding tough against one of the best teams in the league; it was exciting. I turned around when I heard him the door open—and realized Ricky and the girl were nowhere to be seen. Did they leave? Normally I'd have heard the door open... that's when I heard the noises coming from the bathroom. Un-be-fucking-leivable, I thought. I glanced at grand-dad, but with the crowd noise he'd had to turn off his hearing aid. He may not look it, but he's 70 now. Grandpa settled in to watch the end of the game; good thing he didn't know what was going on. I shook my head at the audacity of my own family: to be getting' busy here, now, during the game? It was the fourth quarter and the Jammers had just taken the lead, for crissakes—how could you be thinking of sex at a time like this? ----------- The next day at work, I looked up the Jammer Spirit page on our website. They had each girl individually pictured; the girl I had been watching was now revealed to be Samantha. I clicked on the bio—it said she was 21 like me, was born in town, and was in her second year on the squad. There was a nice full-length photo of her in uniform (similar to the night before but a solid color instead of white) that I copied to my desktop. Then I got back to work—kind of. It was the last day before the holiday break for the front office staff, so there was a fair amount of going through the motions, myself included. Especially since my office was downstairs, in a vacant office intended for an assistant PT position that no longer existed. It gave me great access to the locker room, but when the team was around the noise often distracted me, and when they weren't around it was quiet as a tomb. About 2:00 I went to the john and heard music seeping in from the arena floor. I peeked my head in as I headed back to my office and found it was the dance team, working on a new routine. They were all in little red dresses with Santa caps, putting the finishing touches on a new number for the nationally televised game on Christmas Day. It seemed the dresses were causing a problem; they were used to wearing shorts, and they had to keep changing the choreography so that the girls weren't flashing undie to the crowd. I stood in the ramp where the team came onto the court, watching the girls practice, keeping my eyes open for undie flashes. Samantha was on the far side from me, but I focused on her nonetheless. No one noticed I was there. Then all at once, I heard the team leader/choreographer yell out "OK, let's practice the quick change!" All at once, a dozen girls were running straight for me. I froze, feeling like I'd been discovered peeping. That's when I noticed a pile of brown felt reindeer antlers sitting on the floor next to me. As soon as the girls cleared the floor, they started ripping off their Santa hats—not as easy as it sounds, since most had to be pinned into place. I took a step back to get out of their way. The first two dropped their hats and grabbed a set of antlers, but the third one saw me standing there and pushed it into my chest, saying "hold this." The other girls then followed suit, so that suddenly I was holding a stack of Santa hats. Eight of the girls then raced out the back of the ramp. There was a huge backup as girls tried to grab an antler from the floor, running into each other. A burst of giggling broke out at the absurdity of it. Apparently the idea was that Santa would appear on the second floor (not very many kids have courtside seats), and the girls were supposed to be his reindeer. I heard the leader yell out "three minutes and thirty seconds—way too slow. You have to do it in 2:30, tops. Let's try it again." In the meantime the four girls that weren't on reindeer duty were looking at me funny. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else in the arena. "Hi," I waved nervously, "I'm Dave. I'm an intern in scouting department. I was just coming back from the bathroom and heard the music, so I stopped to see what was happening. Sorry if I bothered you." That answer relaxed them—they probably thought I was a stalker at first. The two closest to me even introduced themselves; that's how I first met Heather and Jenna. I had no idea that Jenna was Samantha's best friend and roommate. The others now filtered back down from the second floor, grumbling and talking as they took off their antlers. I passed the hats in my hands back out again; I got some funny looks, but no one said anything except a polite "thank you." "All right, now back in positions," the leader barked. "We have to cut sixty seconds off the change. Now, cue the music..." "Hold on Susie," I heard a voice say. A dancer I would later learn was Amanda, the team captain, spoke up. "It would help if there was someone to pass out the reindeer ears as we ran by. What slowed us down was fighting to get a pair out of the pile." I heard mish-mashed rumbling of agreement. Then I heard the leader, whose name I now knew was Susie, say "there's not going to be anyone around on game night..." There was more rumbling, then I heard her ask "is there someone there now?" They had all seen me, so it was too late to hide. I stepped out of the tunnel and gave a little wave. "Don't mind me. I'm Dave, an intern in scouting. My office is down here, and I just heard the music and stopped to see what was going on." "If you had someone like Dave holding the ears and passing them out, we'd make the change a lot faster," Amanda explained. "Dave, are you going to be at the game?" "Yes..." I answered hesitantly, not liking where this was going. "Will you have access to the tunnel?" she pressed. "Are you asking me if I could hold your antlers during the game?" No one needed to answer that, of course they were. I imagined getting all kinds of grief from my cousins—but I also saw all of the girls looking hopefully my way, most importantly Samantha. You can argue that the little head overruled the big one if you like, but I heard myself agreeing to be their antler-holder. The second run-through they did in 2:20. I was stuck with the job now. On Christmas Day I came down from the box with ten minutes to go in the half and watched the girls dance from the ramp, holding twelve pairs of reindeer antlers. The song ended, and twelve breathless spirit girls raced over to me and swapped Santa hats for antlers. Two minutes later I heard a roar punctuated with the excited squeals of young children; perhaps it had been worth all the fuss after all. Everything went as planned. What we hadn't practiced practice was what would come next. They didn't tell me that they were headed for a costume change, so I was still standing there holding the Santa hats when the team came out to start the second half. Most of them didn't remember my name, but did recognize me as the guy using the office at the back of the training room, so I got plenty of razzing. "Aww, are those for us?" Marshall Jacobs kidded. "Lookin' good rook," said Scott Henin, a veteran power forward. "Do you take coats too?" said another, that kind of thing. I just smiled and nodded good-naturedly. What the hell—I looked silly, why try to be macho about it? It wasn't until a few minutes later when the first girls returned to the ramp that they realized they hadn't accounted for getting the hats back. "Oh... you didn't need to stand here holding them this whole time," Amanda apologized. "Sure, now you tell me, after the players have all had their jabs at me standing here," I teased. "I'm sorry. Here, I'll take them and put them in our locker room. And thanks again for doing this." I handed her the pile, then made an exaggerated bow. "It was my pleasure to serve, my dear." That got a couple of giggles from the latecomers, a group that included the lovely Samantha. Amanda returned from stowing the hats, and I pressed flat against the wall as they stormed back out onto the floor, getting the crowd pumped up for the second half. I stood watching appreciatively, the girls' looking even more impressive in action from this close. I watched until second-half tipoff, then headed back up to the owner's box. --------- A few days later, I heard talk wafting in from the training room—about women, as usual. But this perked up my ears, because they were talking about the Spirit Girls, and which ones they wanted to bone (all of them). But from that conversation I learned that some of the girls would be heading over to the 5th Quarter across the street after the game. I should have guessed that; there were three bars within a block of the arena, but the 5th Quarter was considered the nicest, and so that's where the hot girls went. Because that's where the hot girls went, that's where the players that were inclined to go out after home games went, which of course drew even more hot girls... so it was clearly the hopping place to be after games. Furthermore, after 10 there was a hefty cover charge for guys but ladies were always free, so there was a very favorable gender ratio for a guy looking to score--like, say a professional basketball player. After the next game, I hung around the arena for a little while, then walked across the street to the 5th Quarter. It was pricey by our town's standard for a guy to hang out there, but it was close by and worth the investment if it meant a chance to meet some of those Spirit girls. I didn't recognize anyone when I first got there, although there was already an impressive display of femininity dressed to impress (and in some cases, dressed to undress). I grabbed a beer and took up a position along the back wall to wait and see what would happen. Because there weren't that many guys in the joint, I found myself in the strange position of catching chicks sneaking glances at me rather than the other way around. One of them was very cute, and I was just starting to play a little game of eye-tag when four of the Spirit girls walked in wearing their team-issue warm-up suits. They were white with team-color piping; there was no team logo, rather there was a huge logo on the back advertising the brand of beer that was the major sponsor of the Jammer Spirit team. I watched and waited for them to get in, mill about, and settle on a spot. When one of them finally put down her bag on a chair by the corner of the bar I moved my way leisurely over towards them. Stay cool, I told myself, but my heart was thumping because one of them was Samantha. They were talking amongst themselves, tuning out the stares of all the men in the place. A few were surely working up the nerve to approach the pack, but I was there first. "Hey ladies," I announced, "not a bad game tonight. Came up short in the end, but we're getting closer, huh?" The two girls whose backs were to me turned, wearing "go away" expressions on their faces. But Jenna recognized me, and shouted "Dave!" Samantha was trying to place me when she heard the name; the others didn't recognize me at all. "What's the matter, you don't recognize me without a stack of reindeer antlers?" Then everyone remembered knew who I was, and I was greeted with that unique, whooping squeal that girls in groups emit when in the mood to party. I was OK to graze with the herd. They returned to their previous conversation, which was about the team. They were trying to figure out their schedules; the team was heading on the road after Saturday's game, and they weren't sure when they'd be back. I always knew the home schedule by heart (it's my fucking team!) so I filled them in: January 6. "Are you sure?" one asked. "Look it up if you want," I said confidently. One was already searching her purse for a schedule anyway. When she found it, she confirmed the date. "Wow, you knew that off the top of your head?" Samantha asked. Making sure to make eye contact, I answered "my office is in the training room area—I like to know when the guys are going to be around. When the team's in town the place is noisy, when they're gone the place is a tomb." "So what exactly do you do for the team?" asked one of the others. I answered for all, but skewed my attention towards Samantha. "I'm interning for the scouting department. I working on better ways to predict player performance." "Sounds technical," one of them wrinkled her nose. "It's based on advanced statistical models, but it's all done by the computer. I just feed in the data and try to make sense out of what it spits out." "That would be beyond me," Samantha sighed. "I had to drop Intro Stats last semester because I couldn't understand it. But I need it to graduate, so I have to try again this Spring." "I'm sure you'll get it—it takes a lot of people more than one try." I smiled in a friendly way. "Then one day, someone says something in just the right ways and aha, the light bulb goes on."