Cause and Effect

Cause and Effect

When Professor Busch approached Mandy Lawrence the next day, he did not take her interest in his projector for granted, because he was not sure that it had ever been solicited. Instead, he asked her if she would like to use it. He was surprised when she declined, but by a stroke of luck for Julie, Dr. Lawrence WAS behaving irritably. You could call it luck, because it was not a 50/50 proposition, but by comparison, “Snake Eyes,” in a craps game is a 1/36 probability, and the chances of Dr. Lawrence being crabby were more like 2 or 3 in 30!  Professor Busch spent the next weekend getting what Julie sent him for, or, as he viewed it, “getting what he came for.” Her class might never know it, but they owed a debt of gratitude, split evenly between Julie and her alley cat professor.

Dr. Busch followed up with Julie by assigning her busywork that brought her to his quarters. As he accepted the books and folders she was delivering, he transfixed her with his gaze. “Do you know why you should 'never meddle in the affairs of dragons?'” he asked.

Somewhat taken aback, Julie's response was timid and hesitant. “...'because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup?'” she queried. It sounded like a pretext to climb her academic case, but she stood her ground. She had that much self-possession.

“Do you take my point?” Dr. Busch asked.

The word “affairs” was a sufficient clue. “Yessir, I'm pretty sure I do,” she answered.

“Get away with you then, and don't be found meddling again!” He disappeared behind closed doors.

As she made her way back to her dorm, Julie reflected that she had come closer to real consequence than she intended. In fact, this might still affect her grade adversely.

Chad remained solicitous as ever, and they found time to attend a movie every other weekend or so, as the semester labored on.

The biology of reproduction was the bulk of Julie's coursework in Dr. Busch's class, and his material was incredibly detailed. If this could be attributed to a character flaw, it still resulted in a better informed nursing class than other schools could boast.

He began by instructing his students to draw a diagram of the female breast, leveling the playing field and dispelling initial embarrassment. Female students had difficulty observing their own, while male students had difficulty observing for different reasons. Then, as the weeks progressed, the teacher covered volumes of material; the development of the nerves that serve arousal, and the salience of the olfactory memory, the list went on.

He used the illustration of Hannibal Lecter's comment in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Having established that his audience had breast fed her baby, Lecter asked, “Toughened your nipples, didn't it?” Dr. Busch explained in a less sinister context, that this understanding of “deadened sensation,” can improve the efforts of husbands. Or inform the overtures of lovers. Independently, it was not a double entedre, but it also served to titillate an experienced audience.

His taught them that the inner cervix sits atop the vagina, with the better known outer cervix at the entrance, facilitating the placement of a diaphragm. He discussed “nine inch nails,” and the fact that they are not mythical – see Ron Jeremy as an example.

He drew them out about the cliché “size doesn't matter.” Did all guys require large breasts? Did all girls observe bald spots as a flaw? Could a female discern the difference? Unquestionably; did she always wish to accommodate extremes? No. The woman was far more likely to embrace the person than his member; women evaluate endowment as randomly as men evaluate breast size.

He discussed girth and length, observing that a long penis provided for a more forceful impact for the hair at the base of the penis against the clitoris, because the male could use a longer stroke; the “nine inches and larger” crowd were negatively impacted here, because the tip must needs negotiate the cervix for full intromission. In the case of the labia around the clitoris, some bruising is normal.

Did circumcision affect sensation? Yes, in some cases, but was greater sensitivity better, or did it result in trivial climax?

Did the Grafenberg area exist? Yes, in fact there was a plastic surgery to raise it by injecting collagen beneath. Why didn't all women acknowledge it? Not all women learned the association; in fact, it might even be like color blindness – certain individuals might simply lack the connecting circuitry.

He also took some time to explain about the maturation of the vaginal wall. It begins at puberty, he explained, but it takes longer to conclude than most people expect. He used the example of a Persian rug:

When a Persian rug is new, its surface texture is smooth and unremarkable. However, the rug is woven with fibers of differing stiffness, and, with traffic over time, the softer fibers succumb, while to stiffer fibers stand up. This results in a texture than can be seen and felt, enhancing the original art. As the vaginal wall matures and thickens, it likewise develops texture, coincidentally enhancing its ability to impart sensation to the male member.

A public illustration could be found on an episode of Oprah, where she prompted audience members to evaluate three textures hidden under a towel. Most women could tell that their own vagina was comparable to a rougher texture, but also seemed to agree this to be a defect. They remembered it being smoother. As is typical of journalists, Oprah did not offer scholarly detail. “That's normal,” was her concluding comment.

The Professor dispelled the fog surrounding virginity, by explaining that the hymen thins out from childhood to adolescence, and that by the time menstruation begins, the hymen is usually gone.

Dr. Busch explained to his students how that the vagina can only double as a birth canal by demonstrating the topology of an accordion. He showed that it was not an accordion stretched out and looped at the ends, but rather it could be illustrated by fan-folding a piece of paper lengthwise, and then converting the length into a tube, such that the length was fixed, but the diameter could wax and wane.

As the weeks drew on and their knowledge expanded, the discussions among classmates (when they were away from class,) became progressively more frank. The word “plain-spoken,” would equally describe their candor, but the vocabulary they now employed had become complex and varied. It was no longer “plain.” Those inclined to experiment did so, with the results sometimes being offered unsolicited. Now Julie knew terms like fellatio, cunnilingus, masturbation, clitoris, labia majora, cervix, vagina, pudenda, pubic process, etc. But she was also introduced to a less technical vocabulary: squirt, cum, nut, orgasm, pussy hard, red neck rodeo, pearl necklace.

It was during just such a conversation that the TA Julie had noted earlier in the semester offered, “Did you guys know that there's such a thing as a 'cum-coma?'” In response to blank stares, she proceeded to describe a process by which the female discovering multiple-orgasms, is provoked to such, repeatedly, over hours, until she is finally rendered unconscious. This phenomenon was sometimes observed during the time in your life when you begin to experiment with sex.

Since this was neither addressed in class, nor described in her text-book, Julie was skeptical. One person asked, “Can you die from it?”

The TA shook her heard, no. “You won't die from the cum-coma,” she asserted, “but if he doesn't get off from on top of you, you can suffocate.”

After a short sojourn on the subject of the verb “to get off,” Julie voiced her doubts. “How do you know? Do you know someone who's had one?” For all her skepticism, Julie was equally prepared to suppose that a cum-coma was a sufficient cause for the fleeting behavior she had been privileged to observe.

The TA became non-committal. “Well, you know... that's how it happens. I'm not a guy, so I never fucked anybody that well.”

Julie was merciful. No point goading her into testifying, when her audience would simply doubt her veracity. “I bet a freakin' EMT would know,” she compromised. “If it happens a lot, then someone out there has probably been scared enough to call an ambulance!” The crowd laughed at this, and conversation meandered on, visiting other topics. However, the reminder served to harvest a fruit whose seed had been planted earlier in the semester.

That night, after Julie and Chad had said their goodbyes over the telephone, Julie's room-mate welcomed the third guy in six weeks into her bed. It didn't matter that he was no prize, this was the final straw. If the floodgates of Julie's desires were housed in a dam, the very ground it stood on, had yielded. Her tears were hot and secret. In five minutes, she had dressed in her old sweatsuit, and stolen into the night, targeted, like a heat-seeking missile, on professor Busch's living quarters.