A Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

A Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

Over the weeks since their last discussion, Jerry had made a point of staying in touch with Julie. As such, when her call came in, late on a Friday night, it was a pleasant surprise, and there was no embarrassment of social debt.

“Hey girl! How's it going?' he responded to her initial “Hello.”

“Jerry, I'm such a fucking BITCH! Why do I keep DOING shit like this?” Julie was not in tears. Rather, her tone had an air of subdued resignation to it, with an edge of anger, reflected in the self-abusive content.

Jerry adjusted readily enough to the observation that she wanted to confide in him. He wondered what these new transgressions might be. “Julie, I KNOW what a bitch is, and you are NOT a bitch!” The preliminaries would hardly be binding, but why should HE bag on her, when she was obviously doing a competent job of that all by herself? “What's wrong... what happened?”

When she answered him, it was certainly serious enough: “Jerr, I had an abortion!”

She added nothing more, simply awaiting for his reaction.

Jerry could hardly believe it. His church going, service oriented, sweet little cousin, was sitting here telling him it was all a lie. Not knowing how to reply, he referenced the most pertinent comment he knew. “Abortion has TWO victims, Julie. ...why?” This last, delivered not as a castigation, but as a lament.

“Jerry, I had to grow up. I couldn't have a baby AND go to nursing school! Chad would never have understood. ...and the father; it would have ruined him and me BOTH!” Julie had indeed matured, if only by necessity.

“Who WAS it?” Jerry asked. “What POSSESSEED you? You'll probably regret it later in life!” he said, but pleadingly, not like a drill Sergeant.

Julie had prepared for this, and introduced the discussion in her own way. “Well, after Jamar, I needed to “get some,” now and then. I tried using tampons and stuff, but it was no use. Besides, they say doing shit like that will give you cancer. Anyways, Jerry, I fell in love with my Professor, and when his wife divorced him, I wanted to comfort him SO bad, I snuck into his house and waited for him naked in his bed.” Not the WHOLE truth, but a similar rendition.

Jerry didn't think it would be good for her, if he repeated the process of easing her embarrassment. “And where was Chad?” Jerry remembered that Chad had not been amenable, but she needed to explain her rationale.

“CHAAAD... was busy. First he was building something called an 'IC,' then it was a BIOS ROM chip, and then after that it was a binary adder, then an 'Interrupt...' Let's just say he was too busy to talk.” Mostly true stuff. No need for Jerry to know that Chad had taken her to those Friday night movies.

“So you fucked your Professor! What was stopping you from making like a Camel, and making it last, like water when you're crossing a desert?” He decided to go a little further. “I know I do!” This was true enough. Andover hadn't hung around, and Rachelle... well, he didn't want to talk about Rachelle.

Julie told her story colorfully enough. Fragments of her descriptions would come back to haunt him, cycling through his mind like Vultures circling carrion. ...was all the way inside me...I came, but he didn't stop! ...you know how sensitive you are, right after you cum? Well, he kept going! ...fucked me 'til I couldn't feel my legs...I made him late to WORK! ...but he LASTED...I don't even KNOW how he stayed hard that long! ...and we didn't go out for THREE whole DAYS...messed around so long we didn't even put our clothes back on; we just wore our underwear bottoms - I didn't even wear a BRA! ...'n when he does it like that, it gets sticky, but thick, like a mouthful of half chewed cake...wasn't small; if you can think of a large girth that's pretty long, too? …did it fast enough that I felt like I was getting punched in the stomach...my breathing diaphragm, not my prophylactic diaphragm. ...'n the TA came to his house to get the paperwork, 'n she SAW me! (Julie didn't go into detail, contenting herself with the somewhat self-explanatory, “I think he fucked her into a cum-coma.”)

Jerry felt like he was being used. It was not some VIXEN stroking him this way, it was his cousin. It would be perverted to jack-off to HER! Adding to the mix, was an adapted application of the story. What if he could impress Mrs. Malloy so much that SHE felt like this? Screw that, what if he could do it to Rachelle?

To be fair, Mrs. Malloy would not have come to mind, if the topic had not been Professors. He generally regarded her as an unapproachable paragon. Rachelle on the other hand? He'd wick her away from Mark in a heartbeat! The main reason he had not done so already was that he regarded her affections like nascent oxygen. He “knew” he could get her away from Mark, but he wasn't equally certain he could KEEP her! A certain grudging respect was due to Mark for this, but Jerry couldn't for the life of him see how Mark was DESERVING!

“...must have gotten pregnant the first night, because his sperm were thoroughly dispersed throughout my cilia,” Julie was saying. “And after that, what was the point in stopping? I couldn't get any MORE pregnant.” Julie's narrative had finally run its course.

“Julie, you've gotta understand: there are people out there who never screw around, and they live somehow!”

Julie interrupted him. “Sure Jerry! Who ARE they? Do you know even ONE? You THINK they don't, because they don't TELL you about it, but secretly, they're boning away like rabbits.”

Jerry felt like he was back in elementary school, his hand raised, squealing “I KNOW this one, I KNOW this one!” He had Mrs. Malloy to thank.

“Think about drug addicts, OK?” he began. “Most people don't ever use drugs, but the people who do, meet each other all the time. Each drug user knows some finite number of other drug users. Not everybody knows everybody, but they're all connected, like six degrees of separation. In graph theory, you can draw a diagram of it. Dealers make hubs, and so on. It's almost the same thing as tracing Typhoid back to Typhoid Mary. Or a Syphilis outbreak.” Excellent allusion, he thought with satisfaction. “Anyways, it's the same way with players. People who fuck confide in people who fuck, while the pure ones are never 'in on it.'”

“...or drugs, or raves or vending machines that double vend... yeah, I can see that.” Julie was revived. Maybe the whole world wasn't banging each other, every time she turned her back. “Jerry, you're ALWAYS right! I only hope I can help somebody else the same way you help me, some day.” She was unconvinced.

Jerry couldn't help noting that the comment impugned itself. Would she ever internalize the reflexive case? “Julie, it's just experience, and the fact that I've had an extra year on earth to hear about this stuff!”

Julie felt indebted to her confessor. “I'll pay you back some day, Jerr!” she promised.

Jerry didn't know what to say. No syllogism applied, but no social convention had a direct bearing on it, either. “You don't owe me anything,” he protested.

“Yeah,” Julie objected. “Yeah, I do! I can't argue with you though. I have a hospital in-service in the morning. Don't ever give up on me, OK?” her voice pleaded with him.

“Julie, I'll always love you. Don't take no wooden nickles, OK?”

“'K Jerr. G'night.”

Jerry reflected on these developments for a while after she hung up. It appeared that Chad might be marrying a courtesan.