The
Empathy Pill
by Sterling
Chapter 1 of 3 Phi Phi Phi and Nu Nu Nu
The
brothers of the Phi Phi Phi fraternity were gathered to listen to the
presentation. After tons of preliminaries, their guest got to the heart
of the situation.
"As you all know, there is an epidemic of rape on college campuses."
Sighs were heard, and a muttered, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"This
has motivated much research and study. There is a drug that is ready
for a field trial. We are looking for a fraternity where all the
members are willing to be part of the study for an academic year. You
would each earn $200 for your participation."
"Is it like chemical castration?"
"No, no, nothing like that. Your sex drive will remain unchanged. The
way it seems to work is that it increases your empathy."
"Turns us into 'New Age Sensitive Guys'?"
"Well,
kind of. But it doesn't make you do anything, and it doesn't keep you
from doing anything. It's shown to be safe, and it meets all the
ethical standards."
After some discussion, the brothers decided that sounded good.
Especially the $200. They signed up.
It
was 3am in the Phi Phi Phi frat house. Everyone was plastered. Jacob
had his eye on Liz. Blond, big boobs, short skirt... She was so hot,
and now she was really drunk.
"Hey, Liz," he said. "Come with me to my room -- you can take a nap
there."
"Whu?"
"My room, come on!"
"Oh, I dunno..."
"You
don't know what you want -- I'll take care of you." Oh boy was he going
to take care of her! He'd scored this way three times last year.
He took her arm and led her to his room. She stumbled along, and he led
her to the bed, then shut and locked the door.
"I'm really sleepy," she said.
"Yeah, you just lie here."
Within moments she was out.
"Hey, Liz..." he said. "Liz?"
No response. She was on her back, with her right leg straight and her
left leg bent, knee out to the side.
He
looked up under her dress and saw her panties. He could probably do it
without moving her at all! He rubbed his hands together. He supposed he
should get a condom, but it felt so much better bareback. He pulled
down his pants and underpants and looked at the luscious piece of ass
asleep in front of him, his cock hardening, slowly. Something wasn't
quite right. But these opportunities didn't come along often.
He crept up onto her and put his hand on the inside of her right thigh
to push it out a bit more.
Oh
yeah, time to score! He'd just need to get himself hard. But things
seemed a little off. She sure was sexy, and girls liked sex. But... she
was so drunk. He'd put the moves on her when she was more sober, and
she had been pretty cold. Oh, don't be a wimp! he said to himself. But
his cock would not get hard. And... what if she got pregnant? He
sighed. Poor girl. It was really rotten, taking advantage of a girl
like that. He'd just let her sleep it off. As he looked at her
sleeping, he wondered to himself... What do girls really want? It
wasn't something he'd thought about much before. But he knew they
really didn't want to get fucked while they were passed out by guys
they didn't like. He tried to push away the realization that the other
times he'd done this he had been really rotten to the girls too.
He went out to rejoin the party and before too long fell asleep on one
of the couches in the TV room.
Carly
was putting herself in Kyle's path -- he could sense it. Last spring
he'd fucked her every day for a week before he got tired of her. Well,
it wasn't exactly that. He'd stopped because he'd made it with Anne.
But Anne had been a brief thing too. A repeat engagement with Carly
would be cool, he decided.
"Hey, Carly," he said. "Got some time to hang out?"
"Oh, let me see, like now?"
"Yeah, now."
"OK."
He started walking towards his dorm, which was a half mile away. She
fell in beside him.
He
made conversation as they walked -- this was part of the seduction. He
pretended to be interested in the psychology reading she'd been doing.
Actually, it was kind of interesting, he had to admit.
He put out his palm to her face up. Hopefully she'd hold hands with him.
She did, and then a certain unease became even clearer. He looked more
closely at her face.
She
didn't want to sleep with him. She was nervous, and she probably wanted
to talk, to be friends, maybe to have it move along to something else
later -- but if so, something long-term. That made sense to him, that
she'd want that. But she wasn't a girl he wanted to get involved with
in a serious way -- if he wanted that with any girl. He raised his hand
to scratch his head but didn't take hers again. After they'd been
walking for a while, he said he just remembered he had to go meet
someone. They parted.
Kate
and Bill had been apart for the summer. They were going to meet again
at 8 that night, and Bill thought in anticipation of getting into her
pants again. They had sex down to a routine. Kiss for a couple minutes,
then get naked. Then he'd slide his hand up there where her pussy was
and rub gently for a minute. That was about the longest he could stand
waiting. He'd roll over onto her, she'd spread her legs for him, and
he'd shove it in. It always felt fantastic, and his cock hardened now
as he thought of it. When they were doing it, he lasted a whole minute,
usually. He didn't see how a guy could hold off any longer than that.
It felt so great to feel his cock pumping sperm into Kate while the
feelings inside were so fantastic, and so much relief. If they had time
they'd do it again -- they could do it three times in an evening easy.
When
she arrived she looked as sexy as ever. They talked a couple minutes,
holding hands on the bed. He enfolded her in his arms and kissed her.
Things seemed different somehow. He kissed more, they got naked, he
rubbed between her legs -- but he could tell she didn't really want him
to shove it in.
"Kate..." he asked.
"Yes?"
"What... what would make it better for you?"
"What?"
"The sex. What would make it more fun?"
"Oh! Well, since you ask... You could do it differently with your
fingers... A little slower... Hmmm."
"Why don't you show me?"
"Show you?"
"Yeah, take my fingers and show me how to move them."
She
seemed embarrassed. But she did it. It was so nice to see her getting
excited. And when she finally asked him to slide it in, he could tell
she really wanted him to, and he loved seeing the look of excitement on
her face. He lasted all of thirty strokes before he came, but she was a
lot happier.
When they did it again half an hour later, he asked
once more what would make it better, and she suggested maybe she could
be on top. And while it felt kind of submissive, he realized he didn't
mind. He liked seeing her up there, doing it to him. She was a little
embarrassed about that too, but he kept telling her to go for it. And
ten minutes after she impaled herself, moving just the way she wanted,
she gasped with an orgasm. That was so great! As she relaxed forward
onto his chest, he lifted her up off him a little and pounded in from
underneath and came twenty seconds later.
As they lay in
afterglow, she said, "You've changed. You're... you're a whole lot
more, I don't know, you seem to care about me more."
Bill
wondered briefly if that meant he'd turned into a wimp. But he did care
about her more. And he was glad about that. And when he thought about
it, it was great seeing her happier than she used to be, really seeing
how much she liked sex, for instance.
Francine
Smith worked with the University Sexual Violence Prevention office. She
was excited by the empathy pill trial with the fraternity. Results were
only anecdotal so far, but it seemed encouraging.
But she
thought this next part was stupid. They couldn't just give the empathy
pill to men. Equal opportunity in research meant they had to try it on
women too.
The drug made people empathetic to the opposite sex.
The hormonal basis was clear enough, but this didn't sit well with the
whole non-binary gender mindset. Fortunately they could offer it to
everyone in the fraternity and everyone in the sorority, and finesse
the question of who qualified as a man or a woman -- that was up to the
fraternity and sorority to work out. To no one's surprise, the brothers
at Phi Phi Phi were in fact all cis men.
So here she was
recruiting a sorority. She smirked and shook her head. Got to keep
those sex-crazed women from impaling themselves on the stiff cocks of
unwilling men who were too drunk to consent. Yeah, right. Women were
already socialized to be empathetic to men, to meet their needs. It was
hard to see what a pill would do. But it shouldn't do any harm, either.
The
sisters at the Nu Nu Nu sorority (all cis women) listened to the same
speech. They were all in favor of anything that might reduce the
incidence of rape on campus, so they signed up without controversy.
Cait
was standing in the hall at the sorority party. She'd been getting some
weird vibes from the men already, though she couldn't tell quite what
it was. It was crowded, and now one of the guests gently put his hand
on her shoulder so he could get by behind her.
Cait whirled, eyes open wide.
"Excuse me," said the boy, who gave the quickest glance at her cleavage.
"But.... but..." said Cait.
The boy started to move off.
But she took his arm. "Um, come with me," she said. She started up the
stairs.
"Uh, I don't get it," said the boy.
"I want to show you something."
He followed her into her bedroom, and she shut the door behind her and
locked it.
"You... you... God, you want it SO bad! I... Um..." She fumbled with
his pants.
"Huh?
Um, well, I guess. I mean, you are very attractive." He took over and
pulled the pants down. "You want me to, like..." he said, hands on his
briefs.
"Yes, yes! Let me see it!" said Cait.
He pulled the underpants down. His cock was already pretty swollen, and
as Cait watched, she could see it still growing.
She
felt his desire like a furnace. "Go ahead and do it to me!" she said.
She lay back on the bed, and reached up under her skirt to pull her
panties down, then spread her legs.
The guy looked amazed, but he mounted her.
"Shove it in," said Cait, aiming his cock.
"Um, what about a condom?" said the boy.
"Just...
Just put it in. Don't worry about it! Go for it!" He hadn't touched
her, but just sensing his desire for the past minute had made her good
and ready between her legs.
The boy pushed and his cock slid in. He gasped and moaned, and began
thrusting. "Oh, shit, I, wow..."
"Come! Oh please, come!" said Cait.
After a flurry of fast strokes, the boy said "Yes!" and kept panting
heavily as his thrusts slowed.
What
a relief -- what a relief for him, and for her too to feel his relief.
But then, what was she doing here? She had just taken a random boy into
a bedroom and begged him to fuck her. Begged for a quickie.
"Um, well, that was a lot of fun!" said the boy. "Pretty surprising..."
"I
don't know what happened," Cait said. "I could just tell you really
wanted it. I had no idea someone could want sex that bad!"
The boy grinned and shrugged.
"I've got to get back to the party," said Cait, rising and putting her
panties back on.
She
liked sex when she had a boyfriend, and she liked sex sometimes when
she didn't, when she was in the mood and the guy was hot. But this...
she'd never felt anything like this boy's ferocious need.
She
was in a daze as she returned to the party. She'd never done anything
like that before. The boy wasn't even particularly attractive. Nothing
wrong with him -- just nothing notable either.
Back at the party
Thad was talking with Sheila. Thad was a notably handsome guy who'd
been to the sorority a number of times. She listened to the two of them
talk. She found herself wondering what Thad wanted.
"Hi Thad,"
she said, putting her hand on his forearm. Once again she felt
something shift. She could feel his interest, but it wasn't anything
like the other boy's.
"Oh, hi," he said, "What's your name?"
"Cait. Oh, excuse me!" she said, pretending she'd just seen someone she
really wanted to talk to.
Still
confused, she watched. There was Tom. He was an earnest, funny guy
who'd been in and out of the house a fair amount. He started talking to
Anne -- not at all Cait's favorite sister, though not exactly an enemy.
She
saw Anne suddenly look at him and then saw her look confused. Then she
saw Anne lead Tom off. Cait followed at a distance as they climbed the
stairs. Anne got to her room, with Tom following close behind. The door
was shut, and when Anne tried it it was locked. The three other doors
on that hallway were shut too. Cait passed them, pretending she was
headed to the third floor.
"Oh, no..." said Anne.
"What about the bathroom?" said Tom with a laugh.
Anne looked up, surprised, then said, "OK," with a smile.
"Uh, I was kidding," said Tom.
But
the two disappeared into the bathroom. After she had reached the third
floor, Cait turned and descended, walking quietly past the bathroom
door. She could hear the slapping of flesh on flesh and grunts.
As
Cait rejoined the party, she saw the boy who had done it to her talking
to another boy. They both looked at her. After a few hurried words, the
new boy approached her nonchalantly. This guy was definitely geeky.
Tall, skinny, thick glasses, red hair in a crew cut. She sighed. Her
quickie partner had probably told him about her. Amazing how one's
reputation could decline so fast. Well, one quickie with a stranger was
quite enough!
Yet, she looked at him as he approached. However
geeky, he had feelings. He was just as important as anyone else. Cait
was amused to hear herself thinking such naive thoughts. The boy looked
uncertain as he approached and made to pass her.
"Hi," she said. "Nice you could make the party. What's your name?"
"Oh, uh, yeah, great party! I'm, uh, John."
She
casually put her hand on his arm, and again, she felt the surge... My
God! This guy was even hungrier than the first one. He was incredibly
horny. Poor boy! And that hunger -- she could help him relieved it --
it was so simple. She led him up the stairs. The door to her room was
shut, which presumably meant Diana was inside. As they were partway up
the stairs, the door opened, and a smiling young man came out, followed
by a perplexed-looking Diana.
Cait thought she saw a definite
pattern here, but first things first. The skinny guy just wanted it so
bad! She led him into her room, closed the door and shut it. This guy
was already taking his pants off. Kind of presumptuous of him, but what
the heck, with a fire like that burning inside him, she could forgive
him just about anything.
She laid back and spread her legs, and he mounted with an eager grin.
"Can I?" he asked hurriedly.
"Yes!" said Cait. "Yes, yes, yes!" The poor boy!
His cock was thick. Maybe thicker than any of the previous dozen that
had penetrated her in her life.
"Oh, God!" he said, sliding it into her.
She
was dimly aware of the thickness and how it was a good thing, but
mostly she was aware of his excitement, and then, thirty seconds after
he'd penetrated her, he came. He looked totally satisfied. "That was
great. I thought maybe Bob was just bragging when he said you had let
him do you," said the boy.
"Hey, I was glad to make you happy, but don't tell anyone else, OK? And
tell 'Bob' not to either?"
"Uh, sure, sure," he said. "No problem. That sure was great! I'm not a
virgin any more!"
"I
had to miss that party the other night, but word has been flying around
campus that we girls of Nu Nu Nu are fast, easy lays. What the heck
happened?"
Anne spoke. "I don't know exactly -- it's the
weirdest thing. I just felt how badly this guy wanted to do it to me --
like really, really bad. And I felt bad for him. And I like sex pretty
much, even if it's mediocre sex..."
There were a few smiles around the room.
"... So I figured why not?"
"It's a reputation we definitely do not want!" said Sophia.
"We have the right to have sex with whoever we want, whenever we want,"
said Rachel with some heat.
Sophia frowned, nodded, and sighed.
"When they touch you -- skin to skin -- the feeling gets stronger,"
said Mary.
There were a few excited murmurings and "Yes! That's it!" in the room.
Mary
continued. "You can feel what the guy wants. And sometimes I could tell
a guy really wanted it, other times he didn't really care all that
much."
"How many guys got laid here that night?"
"That's kind of private information, don't you think?" said Rachel.
Cait didn't usually say much. "Five guys. I fucked five guys."
There were gasps, and cries of "Cait!" and "Really?" and "Wow!".
"It's
always been so complicated other times," she said. "You want to know if
he really likes you, if he's going to call you again. You want to know
if he's a loser so you'll be a loser if you sleep with him. You want to
know if he's just trying to score so he can brag, or say mean things
about you. About how many other girls he's doing it to. But this was
totally different. Totally. That first guy... He didn't want to
humiliate me, he didn't want to dominate me, he didn't want to brag
about it. He just wanted to fuck me. Really bad. Not even because it
would feel good. Because he just did. And it was so simple, such an
easy way to make him happy."
There were nods.
"After him,
I went out and wondered if there were other guys suffering that way.
The next guy had no desire at all. Maybe he thought I was ugly."
"No way," said a voice. "He must have been gay." There were a few
smiles.
Cait
continued. "Another was kind of interested. But half of them -- half of
them were like that. Two of them admitted they were virgins."
Sophia
said, "This must be that experimental drug, right? That's supposed to
reduce rape on campus. It seems like this is the opposite effect!"
"No!" said a half dozen girls in ragged chorus.
"Well, we can drop out of the experiment any time we want. I think
we've had enough."
"No, that wouldn't be right," said Anne, and others nodded.
"I feel weird saying it, but I feel a lot more sympathetic to rapists
than I ever did before. Those poor boys!"
There were a few cries of, "No way!" but a few nervous laughs and some
thoughtful expressions.
Sophia and a few of the other girls decided they'd had enough of the
empathy pill. But most of them kept right on taking it.
Cait
tried to focus on her writing assignment, sitting at her desk. It was
hard walking around the campus now. So many of the boys wanted it so
bad. She'd taken to walking along with her eyes to the ground. There
were so many emails, so many Facebook messages, so many texts on her
phone...
There was a knock and after a moment, a boy let himself in.
It was Steve. Steve was so horny! He was kind of fat, but...
"Hey, want to do me this way?" said Cait, getting on hands and knees on
the bed, presenting her butt to him.
"Oh, wow, that would be great!" said Steve.
She looked over her shoulder to see him unrolling the condom onto his
stiff member, then turned back around and closed her eyes.
She
felt the one hand on her rear end, the other spreading her pussy lips,
and then she felt it -- the blunt edge of male sexual craving. It
pressed inside her, and then she felt both hands on her hips as Steve
forced it in and out.
As a way to let other people feel happy,
it felt awfully good to her too. She'd been fucked twice already in the
past hour and was kind of hoping for some relief herself, so she slid
her hand up under her belly to just shy of where he was hammering in
and out. She fluttered her fingers right on her clitoris, and felt her
excitement build quickly.
As Steve's more urgent thrusting gave
way to his moan of pleasure and release, her own orgasm came. It was a
little one, but she did feel relief. The main thing was how great Steve
had felt.
"I gotta get this writing done for tomorrow, and it's going really
slowly," she said.
"Oh," said Steve, "I could give you ideas."
She
could tell he'd really like to be able to help. So he gave her ideas.
More like, he told her what to write and she wrote it. He was smart.
But later she realized that wasn't right. She'd have to do her own work.
At first Francine Smith thought it was a joke, but by the time the
third report came in, she realized it wasn't.
The
back door of the Nu Nu Nu house led down to a basement, and it was a
sensation on campus. Some boys got sent away -- mostly the popular and
confident ones, the ones who had girlfriends or who got laid regularly
anyway. The girls at the door somehow could tell who they were and sent
them away grumbling.
But a lot of them -- notably the shy, the
awkward, the pudgy, the geeky -- were welcomed inside. And they then
had their pick of a half-dozen sexy sisters of Nu Nu Nu. They were all
willing, and whichever one he liked best invited him earnestly behind a
curtain to a bed where he got to fuck her. Doggy style was particularly
popular. The girls were just as happy if he came in ten seconds or if
he pumped away for fifteen minutes. Some of the guys had been to
prostitutes and said this was totally different. This was no cold
business transaction. These hot coeds really wanted them to be happy.
And the guys loved it.
The Nu Nu Nu girls had worked out hours when the basement was open, and
shifts.
The
Sexual Violence Prevention office invited the girls up for confidential
chats. They could find no hint of coercion. The guys were using condoms
now. In the early days they didn't always, but it had been the girls
who encouraged them to just do it bareback.
No regulations were
being broken. They could hardly go after the girls for being
promiscuous -- female sexual autonomy was a bedrock principle they
operated on. The word spread and guys from off campus were starting to
show up -- and they too were welcomed in. That wasn't good! But Nu Nu
Nu was private property and largely outside of the school's
jurisdiction, so they got to make their own decisions.
The girls
they interviewed uniformly denied they were taking any money or other
compensation -- some were incensed at the implication. It's just that
these girls felt empathy for males, and what they felt a lot of the
time was the guys' strong desire for sex. They wanted to help the boys
get what they wanted, and that meant putting out.
In objective
terms, a quickie was so easy for a girl. Pull your panties down, stick
your butt up in the air, and let the guy have at you. Francine was
annoyed to realize she was getting warm between the legs just thinking
about it. The guy would come in no time, and three minutes later you'd
be free again, all the sperm and any nasty germs whisked away inside
the guy's condom. But sex was not an objective situation. It was really
all about feelings and values and relative power... Or at least it
should be.
Francine sighed. This wasn't how it was supposed to
go at all! And the problem was, reports of sexual assault on campus
were down a bit. The men of Phi Phi Phi were getting into committed
relationships more than ever, and they all were earning a reputation as
great lovers. "For a good time, get a guy from Phi Phi Phi!" appeared
on the walls of women's restrooms everywhere on campus.
Fortunately
Pfizer conducted their own investigations and uncovered the same
disturbing social patterns. They stopped the trial abruptly and
reclaimed the pills. Francine Smith and the entire administration of
the university breathed a sigh of relief.
But the funny thing
was, Phi Phi Phi guys were still great lovers. The guys still
remembered what women wanted and how things seemed to them. And there
was still a brisk flow of young men going in and out of the rear door
of Nu Nu Nu. The women still remembered vividly what the guys wanted.
Francine
Smith pondered. Guys being more sensitive lovers -- that was a huge
leap in the right direction. Girls willing to let guys fuck them
because the guys just really, really wanted to -- that was all in the
wrong direction. Something tugged uneasily at Francine when she thought
about it. How could empathy be a bad thing? Yet the empathy the girls
felt was, it most definitely was. She was sure of that! Empathy as a
new means of male oppression... Interesting thought.
Pfizer's management elite was holding a strategy meeting.
Mr. Hall, chairing the meeting, said, "Your report, Brett?"
"Well,
we had to give up on the campus market," said Dr. Brett Thompson. "And
it looks like there won't be too many lawsuits." He rapped on the
wooden conference table. "But this drug is so promising it's hard to
just give up on it. It's got few side effects, it's tolerated well, and
it has a powerful effect. The problem is it's sometimes too powerful."
Mr. Hall said, "So, Bob! Tell us about your investigations."
Bob
Traeger said, "There's a potentially lucrative market in psychotherapy.
In particular, couples counseling. It's big business, and traditional
talk therapy isn't all that effective. Instead of taking daily pills
the way they did on campus, the idea would be for the husband and wife
to take the pill on separate days, on an occasional basis. Hopefully
with each of them doing nice things for the other, it will break those
logjams where each partner feels they're doing all the compromising,
and any sort of charitable spirit has dried up."
"Hmmm," said
Mr. Hall. "I don't know anything about psychology, but even I can see
how that could work really well. So keep investigating, and let us know
how it goes."