UNTITLED

NOTE: I've been playing around with this idea for a while, and I thought I'd post the first chapter just to see if anyone is interested in seeing more. It's actually based (partly) on a true story. It doesn't have a title yet.

Chapter 1

She must be cold wearing a skirt like that in November. 

That was his first thought when he saw her for the first time. If there ever comes a time when he has to explain why he’d been looking at her rear end to begin with, that’s what he’ll say: he was struck by her fashion choice, and that’s all. Nothing else. Her thigh-highs probably keep her legs warm to some extent...

But still, he thinks, what does she feel when the wind blows?

He tries to shake the thought from his head. Too early in the morning to be a pervert, he thinks. He needs a cup of coffee. A good night’s sleep wouldn’t hurt either, he thinks wryly, squinting at the library entrance steps in the wintery light. This is his 4th trip to the library in so many days: whoever would have thought a freshman year research paper could do this to him?

He draws his own blue and red windbreaker closer around him, rubs his chapped hands before jamming them back in his pockets. The autumn had slipped away into a frigid winter without so much as a passing glance. He steps up onto the curb past a professor grimacing as he scrapes ice from his windshield, the engine in his Japanese-model sedan chattering like a stressed out greyhound while the exhaust pipe issues white smoke. He turns back to watch the smoke curl and drift away in the dry cold. His own breath does the same thing each time he exhales. He turns back to the steps leading up to the library, his head bent low.

The staircase to the library is the tallest on campus. Most of the other buildings are on relatively level ground. It’s only the library that seems to have been built on this inexplicably large incline. And it’s a steep staircase, too: the kind that makes your legs start to burn when you’re a third from the top. It makes the library seem imposing, which it otherwise would not, being a fairly bland building, it’s architecture practical and uninspired. Just as he’s starting to feel a workout-type soreness in his quadriceps, he sets his jaw and looks up.

Which is when he sees it.

It was the incline, really, that made it possible. She was about a dozen steps ahead of him in the climb, and Weston’s entire line of sight was tilted upwards. But a sudden gust of wind helped, too, joining in the conspiracy by rustling her short plaid skirt. The fabric swayed and lifted – hardly at all, really – and suddenly he’s glimpsing the under-curve of her bottom. Her white panties have ridden up between the twin hemispheres – perhaps due to the steep incline of the stairs, each step forcing an awkward sort of lunge position -- and offered little coverage. It was as plain as day to him...even though he had not been trying to look – it was absolutely, positively, undeniably true that the soft smooth flesh of her bottom was a bright pink, edging on downright rosy red.

He blinks. Without realizing it, he’s stopped ascending the steps. He’s holding on to the bannister still, steadying himself as though about to take the next step. But the next step doesn’t come.

The gust of wind was hardly big enough for her to notice. She glances away from it, narrowing her eyes against the stinging cold, and reflexively smooths down the back of her skirt – but she doesn’t turn around to see him and she doesn’t seem to suspect that she was ever exposed. She continues up the steps without paying any sort of mind to the undergrad freshman standing stunned in her wake.

And he, for his part, is still trying to process what happened. He tries to start at the beginning. I was...just coming to the library to...drop off these books, he thinks, his eyes fixed on the next step. I didn’t mean...I wasn’t...

But whether or not he had intended to see the obvious aftermath of a spanking one of his fellow undergraduates that morning, it had happened. The effect, of course, would be irreversible. There was no way he’d be able to concentrate on the symbolic meaning of animals in 11th century Medieval literature – or just about anything else – after that simple gust of wind.

The cold air teases his hair and stings his cheeks.

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Oh my god – did he just see my ass? 

She smoothes down the back of her skirt, trying to look nonchalant. A sudden flush comes into her cheeks, a spreading warmth that somehow seems to start in her stomach. If he did, there’s no way he wouldn’t notice...

In her embarrassment, she wants to break out into a headlong dash up the last library steps, and she has to focus all her willpower to maintain her pace. When she reaches the entrance, she bows her head and thrusts open the door, letting it close behind her without a glance.

Her face is still warm even after she’s escaped into the maze of shelves, her head down, cheeks flush. Why did I even WEAR this skirt? Stupidstupidstupid —

But, of course, she knows exactly why she had to wear this skirt. Yesterday was laundry day, and she forgot to take her clothes out of the washing machine when the cycle was over. There had been some extenuating circumstances in play. None of which had helped matters with...her.

She still can’t manage to use the professor’s name.

She clenches her eyes shut, trying to refocus herself. She kneels down, pretending to search a low shelf with her left hand, and with her right hand she rubs one sore buttock in a circular motion. She glances left, then right, to make sure no one is watching her. She stands up straight, unzips her fleece jacket, and strides away.

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...Huh. He’s staring open mouthed as she turns and disappears into a separate aisle of books. I did...I just saw that. He can’t believe it, even though he definitely just saw her rubbing her sore bottom, looking around her as she does to be sure no one sees her...and in the semi-crowded library, none of the people milling about the shelves seem to notice her furtive glance-around, her guilty pout before she stands, unzips her fleece, and leaves.

But he does. He did see it. He thinks that to himself now, as though trying to convince himself. Only after a stunned couple of moments does he realize that his feet are carrying him towards her.

He follows in the direction she went, even though he doesn’t see her anymore. She’s disappeared into the winding bookshelves, and at the next intersection of aisles he has to make a random guess. Still, he doesn’t even know what he’d say or do if he did catch up with her. So really, it’s better if I don’t find her at all.

He doesn’t stop following, though. Now he finds himself getting lost in his thoughts. He fantasizes about what might have happened, pulling at threads as he weaves through the aisles.

He knows some people like that sort of thing. He even had a girlfriend in high school who would tell him to spank her while they were having sex. If he was behind her, as he often was, she would press her face down and make soft, feline sounds, like she couldn’t help the way her breath was escaping her lungs, and she would squeal “Harder!” and he’d hit her bottom exactly as hard as he did before and she’d give a grateful, happy cry. She always said she liked rough sex; she was otherwise a normal girl, pretty but in a very ordinary way, with one of the highest grades in their AP English class, like liking rough sex seemed like an out-of-place character trait, and she seemed to be proud of it. Despite the impression that sort of statement might give, their sex life together was never altogether that adventurous. She never wanted to do it with the lights on. In the dark, he could see – or maybe imagine – a pinkish handprint rising on her pale flesh. Light, the color of strawberry ice cream.

The way that this girl’s bottom looks is not like that. Not like the marks of a few impassioned swats: more like the aftermath of a long, concentrated session.

None of his girlfriends have been particularly adventurous, come to think of it. Or maybe the problem is him – maybe they were wanting to try out all sorts of strange fetishes that he’d never even considered, hoping he would catch on to their hinting, nudging him to secret places...but he never noticed. He was at a friends’ dorm once and the topic came up: What’s the strangest place you’ve ever had sex? It occurred to him in that moment that he’d never done anything more sensual than kiss outside of a bedroom. He’s wondered, since then, if that means he’s sexually dull.

He isn’t exactly dull, though. It’s just that, for him, real sex and sexual fantasies are separated by a distinct line. His fantasies are private. When a passing comment arouses him, he keeps it to himself. When he finds himself exploring an internet rabbit-hole that leaves him feeling faintly turned on, that’s a private experience. His experiences with girls don’t have that sort of illicit flavor to them. Not like reading a book that mentions something like spanking and getting hard underneath the desk, which has happened before. There was that one scene in a Robert Heinlein book that he doesn’t even remember the name of – something about a cat? – where a character tells another character he’ll make her bottom pink, and later on she asks him, sort of like, Would you really do that? Would you make my bottom pink? And he’s always remembered how that made him feel. He remembers a conversation with a girl he thought was cute at a summer job at a coffee place back home. She looked good in the ball-cap all the baristas had to wear, with her light brown hair in a pony-tail sticking out the back. They had just had a screaming kid leave the shop, and she had rolled her eyes. “If I was ever like that in a public place,” and she made a swishing movement with her hand, “my mom would spank my butt.” And he didn’t think of her as a kid being spanked because, of course, he hadn’t known what she looked like as a kid – so instead, the image that came to his head was the thought of her being spanked as she was right then, standing in front of him, wearing her green apron and snug black jeans, her fashionable gold ear-rings flashing, and the thought stayed with him even as he was walking home with his apron over his shoulder, his sneakers softly scuffing the pavement.

None of that would ever come up with a girlfriend – how could it? And he’s never searched for that sort of thing when he searches for porn, either. He doesn’t really like porn very much – even the word kind of sucks the fun out. When he wants to get off, his best bet is to think of something that he’s actually seen or overheard, something he could not only imagine but know had happened. Something about the reality of it...he can’t exactly explain it. Like, it’s one thing to pretend to be embarrassed, to be an actress on a shoot where your “brother’s friend” catches you undressing – Oh, no! I-I guess I forgot to lock the door! – but quite another thing to be actually embarrassed. That sort of vulnerability could actually be hot...it’s like the first time he saw a woman naked from the waist down in real life. He can picture the scene exactly. He was at the beach, maybe 5 or 6, and he and his cousins had dug a hole in the sand that was deep enough for you to stand in and only your eyes would be showing. There was a girl in a red and white paid bikini top and loose flowing sweatpants, probably in her late teens or early twenties, facing the water. She was a pretty, pale-skinned co-ed with orange-red hair – she had wiggle in the right places. She was joking with her friends, laughing about something. Then she pulled down her sweatpants but accidentally brought her bikini bottom down with it, revealing her freckled white bottom. When she realized, she’d gasped, yanked her swimsuit bottom back up, and looked around: she was wearing sunglasses, but he’s sure her eyes were wide, and she covered her mouth, and her face was red, really red. She didn’t see him in his hole, and she didn’t see anyone else staring, so her shoulders un-tensed and she seemed relieved. Later, he heard her telling her friends in a hushed tone what had happened, because by then it was a joke to her, hilarious how she almost gave everyone on the beach a look at her bare ass before getting into the water. Funny that now, the same thing should have happened: this is probably only the second time in his life that he has accidentally seen someone’s behind. He wonders idly if that’s an average number – above average? To accidentally see two pretty girls butts in the span of fifteen years? But back then, his attraction to the other sex had just been awakening. Now it feels as though something else were awakening...

And suddenly now he realizes what he’s doing – walking aimlessly around the library, thinking about a girl he’s never met being spanked, what her face must have looked like, what sort of things she would have said – and he stops, sighs, rubs his right eye, and tries to get a hold of himself. It’s too damn early to be a pervert, he repeats to himself. He turns around helplessly for a while, then decides that medieval animal symbolism can wait, and he leaves the library to head back to his dorm.

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Could go for a coffee, she thinks. She’s forgotten about the wind on the steps entirely. She’s holding a slip of legal paper with a code on it and tapping a soft rhythm on the Psychology shelves as she’s passing. The paper says 154.3FRE, written in someone else’s handwriting, and she doesn’t know what book it relates to, but she has a feeling she’ll know it when she sees it. The professor’s mind games aren’t often very subtle. It’s too early for this perverted shit, she thinks, pouting. Too damn early...