Lifeline,
Part 3
Another
two years were to pass till I met Celine again. I had been invited by friends
of friends to spend a weekend on the campus of another college not far away. As
the college I attended had a more technical background, we were a little short
on girls. I wasn't very keen on some sentimental entanglements but nature
called for its rights nonetheless so I was quite frustrated. The college we
were to visit had specialized more in literature and social sciences so they
had a lot of chicks in the yard, as we used to say.
Well,
I could not say we were overrun by a hoard of hot chicks screaming for a lay.
The "insider", a friend of a friend had gone out and finally a mate
of him directed us to the local watering hole, the place most students would
hang out in the summer. The terrace of the place was crowded with students of
both sexes and finally the three of us managed to find a table of six. It was
occupied already with three girls. Two were the average blonde and slim all
American girls and one was a cute if a little plump read head. More or less
successful we attracted them into the usual conversation between students with
the typical questions of "where do you come from" and �what courses
do you follow" and so on. I wound up engaged in a quite promising eye to
eye contact with the chubby redhead. Then, while I deliberately looked aside
lest it became awkward, I spotted a mop of dark curly hair that looked faintly
familiar. I got up under the pretense of going to the restroom and on my way
back I saw a profile that I knew. Celine! She was the last person I had
expected to find here. The couple that had been her company at the table rose
to leave so I changed my direction and went to meet her. A storm of conflicting
emotions raced over my soul. Ever since I had left home I had been determined
to try and burry all my feelings for her. I had given up all hope to ever see
her again and knew that I should break the bond between us for good. As long as
I knew her far away it had been quite easy. Yet stumbling upon her like that
shattered all the barriers I had built around my love for her, as I knew no
better word to describe what I felt for her.
She
did not notice my approach as she looked the other way. I could see that she
bore a kind of serenity on her face I had never seen before. She had grown
fuller both in face and body and it suited her well. It was the picture of a
perfectly happy person. I felt my bowels tie up into a knot. It seemed she had
been right in leaving me.
When
she finally saw me standing in front of her, a series of emotions chased each
other over her face. True joy, then guilt and again a sort of distant contempt.
She rose a little unsteady and gave me a rather shy hug. No kiss, not even a
peck.
'Good
Lord, Georgie, what on earth are you doing here?' an almost unnoticeable slur
accompanied her words, like she was a little tipsy. I didn't give it much
attention. On the table was only a half empty bottle of Coke.
'Hi
Celine! I came over from Shockley for the weekend.' I tried to sound neutral
but I felt more then I heard a slight tremor in my voice.
'What
a nice coincidence! So you decided to go for the master finally. I always
thought you were too smart for a simple storekeeper.'
'Truth
is, my father thought I was too dumb to take over the shop. So he sold it and
gave me the money to try and make something out of me.'
'A
sensible man. How is he? And your mom?'
'They
retired to Florida.' I could not keep a slight melancholy out of my voice. The
more I listened to her I sensed something peculiar. Unlike the old Celine, who
had always spoken fast, she had acquired a strange melody in her speech, almost
like she was in slow motion. Then she lifted her left hand she had been hiding
somehow from my view and what she held between her fingers really shocked me.
'C�mon
Celine, you can't be serious!' I exclaimed a bit angry. 'That you smoked two
packs a day was bad enough, but for crissake! Cigars!' for what she held looked
like a medium sized brown cigar to me.
She
laughed from all her heart.
'Silly
old Georgie! You are quite square, you know?' She took a disposable from a
pocket of her skirt and in the big flame of the lighter which she had turned up
to maximum, she started to relight the extinct half of her cigar. After a
couple of fierce puffs to make it glow uniformly thru which she rotated it back
and force, showing quite an expertise, proof she had done this many times before,
she took a long hit and inhaled with expanding chest. Then she held her breath
for an eternity, till she exhaled a long double stream thru her nose, followed
by a small cloud from her lips. I was really shocked but to my surprise I found
myself aroused too. I had never before seen a young girl smoke a cigar like
that. A grin like of a satisfied cat settled on her face and it was like I
could hear her purr.
'What
on earth...?' I started to ask, but she interrupted me.
'Hey,
don't play Quaker. What's so strange about this? A lot of girls here have taken
to cigars. Besides, this here' she said while pointing the cigar up which she
held between thumb and index, 'isn't really a cigar.' and to tell the truth,
the smoke I smelled lacked the harshness of cigars as I knew them. It was kind
of sweetish and bore a mixture of different flavors.
'So
what is it then?' I asked, afraid of what would be the answer, which in fact
was even worse than I feared.
'Now
don't look so horrified. These wonderful pleasure sticks are from my
boyfriend.' A sharp pain stabbed my stomach. Whatever faint hopes I may have
had lay crushed under the weight of this one word. Boyfriend! But then what did
I expect? Her words of farewell two years earlier had more or less implied
that.
'His
family owns a little tobacco factory down in Virginia. Apart from the usual
cheap stogies on a secret line the make some really special stuff.' she giggled
at my puzzled expression. In fact she giggled and laughed a lot more than I had
ever seen her do before.
'OK,
I'll tell you all, don't worry. I doubt that the Narco guys would agree, but
they are quite harmless. The worst ingredient is tobacco. You can say they are
sort of blunts.' There! Just like I had feared! 'They have of course some weed
in them but not overly much. Let me see, what else? Yeah, clove, to make the
smoke go down smoothly and improve the taste and then some spices like in pipe
tobacco. In fact I guess it really is pipe tobacco if I remember it well. And
boy, these things make me feel so damn good! I can't stop lighting them up!
Thanks to my boyfriend I don't have to worry about how to replenish my supply.
He gets tons of them from home. Hey, wanna have try?'
I
refused shaking my head almost indignantly. I trembled with repulsion but with
arousal too. It virtually tore me apart.
'Tell
me, do you have any plans for now?' she asked with an inviting smile. She had
talked about her boyfriend all the time. Was this an offer? Or did she want to
torment me further by introducing me to him? Not hoping for the former but
fearing the latter, I was on the verge of finding an excuse but she interrupted
my racing thoughts.
'Don't
worry about Diego. He's away. I thought we might remember old times in a more
comfortable surrounding.'
'Well,
that sounds nice.' I managed to press out. My answer triggered an almost wicked
smile on her face.
She
led me to the apartment where she lived and by what I could see, her boyfriend
lived there too. But as she had told me he was somewhere else it was OK so far.
She invited me to the couch and gave me a beer. As far as I could tell she
still abstained from alcohol like she had all her life. She lit another of her
blunts, only this one seemed of a slightly different make as it smelled
sweeter.
'You
should try one of these, you know.' she said, talking the smoke into my face.
'These are stronger and they have quite some effect. You can't imagine how hot
you can get after one of these. C'mon, don't be spoilsport! Diego and I have
quite an open kind of relation. We often do some wild parties and it turns us
on even more if we do it with others before we do it together. He is away with
another girl. It's so good you dropped out of the sky. Now I won't waste
another night. Here take a hit. You'll have a hard on in no time.'
Her
words made me want to throw up. What had become of my beloved little Celine? I
may have accepted that she had found someone she really loved and cared for,
but this was too wild. Not that I'm really square or intolerant, but regarding
my own life I had some rules. I wanted to get out and flee from her, hide
somewhere and weep all night, yet I couldn't. Celine seemed to sink deeper into
her drug induced reverie. Oblivious to my inner turmoil she poured some more
oil into the fire.
'You
know, this dynamite here is what Diego used to get at me.' an almost crazy
laugh followed. 'I didn't even know him when at a party he talked me into
trying one of these. The clever son of gun led me out to the back porch
pretending he wanted to spare me from the embarrassment if I should grow sick.
God, I took one hit and I was horny like hell. We fucked right there like
rabbits. It was like one huge orgasm lasting the whole night. I couldn't walk
any more when he was thru with me. Now I can have this every day. He gave me
the other ones, the mild ones to make me feel just good whenever I want.' she
kept on dragging fiercely on the blunt and then she said with determination:
'Now
c'mon, how horny must I get? Come over and give it to me hard!'
She
dragged once again and while holding the smoke she leant over and pressing her
lips against mine, she blew the smoke into my mouth. She had taken me by
surprise, and I involuntarily inhaled some of the smoke. From then on my
perception blurred. The stuff was strong like hell. I wondered briefly how she
was able to smoke it like that without any visible effect. The following hour
went down in a haze. I made love to her all right but in a dream like state. I
felt nothing. When the effect of the stuff wore off and I regained my senses, I
ran to the bathroom and threw up. She seemed somehow to regain part of her true
self as when she saw what happened to me, she burst into tears. I left her with
the bitter satisfaction that at least this time it wasn't me who had the worst
end. But I was cheating on me. If it hadn't been for Lavinia, who knows...
Two
month later I was in danger of ruining my chance to get a degree, when Lavinia
entered my life and in a way saved me. As often lately, I sat in the sun in one
of the alleys of the campus, just staring in the air without even a conscious
thought, just filled with pain and bitterness. For the thousandth time I
wondered if I shouldn't have fought for Celine when it was still time. Now her
greed to make up for the lost years had driven her into the arms of a goddamn
drug dealer, and who knows what was to become of her. I should have dragged her
out of there and tried to sober her up, but I was too weak for that and I
feared she might not understand, so I would loose her anyway. Besides, I wasn't
sure I still wanted that strange creature that had once been my Celine.
'Hi,
what a coincidence! Mind if I sit here and have smoke?'
I
jolted. But of course it wasn't Celine. It was the last person I would have
expected to see again. The chubby little redhead! She didn't wait for me to
answer, but sat down and took out a pack of MLs 100. I hadn't smoked much since
I had entered college. Now I somehow felt like joining in with this little
cutie, although, little wasn't exactly the right word for her.
'Sorry,
Miss, err, but would you mind if I borrowed a cigarette from you? I forgot to
buy some this morning and now I'm kinda like a fish on the dry.'
'It�s
Lavinia. Hi. Sure, here, you can have as many as you want. We smokers have to stick
together, with the campaigns against us coming up.'
'Hi.
George.� We shook hands. �Thanks a lot. You saved my life.' I said grinning,
pleased of her attitude.
Whether
Celine's first smoky kiss had triggered this or it went deeper, I didn't know,
but girls that smoked had always touched a cord in me. She giggled at my answer
and smoked her cigarette with obvious pleasure. Except she held down the smoke
for a couple of seconds each time she inhaled there wasn't anything remarkable
in her smoking style. But it didn't really matter. I had no intention of any
kind, too fresh was the memory of that horrid experience with Celine and her
drugs. It was just pleasant to sit there and talk to a nice girl. Her voice had
a slightly mannered undertoen as if she tried to deliberately talk in a higher
pitch than was her natural one, but apart from that she had such an unspoiled
way it was very refreshing to listen to her conversation. Somehow it came
naturally that we went to lunch together. I found out she recently decided to
finish her studies here.
From
that day on we spent most of our spare time together and it didn't take long
till we shared an apartment. Even if sleeping with her lacked the explosive
intensity of my encounters with Celine, she turned out to be quite a good
companion in any way. With all her roundness, just like my once girlfriend
Laura, I enjoyed just holding her in my arms at night, or watching TV cuddled
into each other. In one word she was cuddly. She was a light smoker and
insisted we never smoked inside. We, as I had somehow become a regular smoker
too. It was like smoking, along with our mutual attraction, constituted a sort
of bond between us. I should have known better, but I had hopes to have found
the kind of good reliable partnership my parents had. I couldn't have been more
wrong. The quiet joy of having someone to spend the evenings with slowly turned
into boredom. Too late I found that there wasn't much beyond the surface. It
was impossible to talk to her about more serious matters than campus gossip or
mundane affairs. She seemed totally oblivious of what happened in the world and
not even interested in learning about it. What a difference to Celine, or at
least the one she had been a while ago.
Yet,
even thou it was I who had grown more and more disappointed, Lavinia was the
one to initiate a development that lead to our separation. Maybe I should have
done the final step earlier, but I feared to hurt her and it was also a
practical arrangement. When she began to spend an evening on and off with other
girls, excluding me from their circle, I wasn't truly disappointed as it gave
me the opportunity to renew friendships with other guys I had neglected because
of her. As her absences grew more frequent and longer too, I couldn't but grow
suspicious. One night, when she was out with friends again, I didn't go to
sleep as usual. When she finally tiptoed her way in at three in the morning, I
turned up the light. What I saw in her face, confirmed my vague suspicion. She
had been with another guy. She didn't deny it, maybe glad she didn't have to
hide any more. I felt a lot more anger than sadness or pain. Whatever I had
been feeling for her, love wasn't the name for it.
To
my surprise, she didn't understand the reason for my anger. Instead she
reproached me that I hadn't "loved" her as much as I had in the
beginning. This enraged me even more and to my own dismay I used some harsh
words.
'How
long?'
'Oh,
eh, since Thanksgiving'
Fuck!
Five weeks!' I was really mad now.
'Listen
you bitch! I have trusted you and even thou we both heard about the dangers of
unprotected sex, we did not spoil our fun because of that. But now you let
another guy stick his dirty rod into your treacherous pussy. How am I to know
if you haven't caught up something from him and infected me too?'
I
had every right o be mad as she hadn't stopped making love to me and perversely
with more passion lately.
'But
I thought only gays are in danger!' she tried to defend herself.
'Can
somebody be that dumb? Haven't I told you it has nothing to do with
homosexuality? The only reason it spread among them first was that they change
partners more often than straights. But there have been a lot of new cases
among junkies, and wives of bisexual men too. Even if you know the guy well, you
can't be sure he hasn't caught it up from some other girl!'
I
was trembling with rage and I felt a pervert desire to hit her. That she
cheated on me, fine, but that she still defended herself was almost unbearable.
What
came next really kicked the bottom out.
'Please
Goerge, can't you forgive me? I�m so sorry! I have been very stupid. Please,
can�t we give it another try? I'll be a good girl, promise! I'll do anything
you want me to! Please?'
It
made no sense to talk to her any more. If she believed I could forgive her in
any way, she had to be crazy. I left the apartment slamming the door. The next
morning I told her I had given the owner notice for the end of the month. If
she wanted to stay it was up to her to renew the lease. I collected my belongings
and found a spare cot in the dorm with one of my friends who couldn't afford an
off campus apartment.
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