Ashley was smiling and nodding stupidly as the waiter took down Andrew’s IPA order. She was thinking that the waiter was hella cute and was also thinking that it was funny how she once again didn’t feel the least bit paranoid. Even as stoned as she was. Even in front of this total stranger. She cast a sidelong glance at the table next to them: its occupants were casting sidelong glances at her. Vowing to ignore them, she said: “Yah,” to the waiter, agreeing even though there was no need to.
She wasn’t even really sure what IPA was, come to think of it. She did know that it was beer and that she had probably drank it a bunch of times and it was a fact that mixing pot and beer was a hella good idea... but there was a big yawning hole where any knowledge of specifics would have been and in its place was the irrepressible mental image of this faux-hawked waiter-boy and Andrew, each leaning down intently to suck on one of her monkey-tits... Hot, hot, hot! More spots were peppering her vision as blood left her brain yet again and she let herself slump languidly into the corner of the booth, her tits wobbling around like jelly-molds as she did so. She sighed contentedly. Then, from her new position she gave the waiter a smug little lift of her eyebrows and drawled, “Yah. We wan’ IPA, dude.”
I’m so good with monkeys...
The waiter chuckled politely. “Okay, okay, I see what’s going on here. You guys’re partyin’. Monday partyin’… I can dig that. Got the day off of class, eh? You guys go to the college, Iassume?”
Andrew opened his mouth to respond, but Ashley blurted out ahead of him: “Yah, I’ma junior!” Heshot a look her way just in time to see her tits wobbling from the force of her shout; her eyes were raking the waiter up and down like she was trying to pull his clothes off with her gaze alone.
“But yah,” continued Ashley with a giggle that kept her tits jiggling, “we’re Monday partyin’.” She said it like it was the most mundane, same-old-shit thing in the world. “Yah, we were jus’ li’g... Why not? Right, Andrew? Let’s... I mean... It’s friggin’... Monday... right?” She continued to look the waiter up and down slowly, unable to stop. “We, li’g, got the day off’a class an’… li’g... um...”Ashley paused, during which she realized that she had no idea what she was talking about and the pause stretched on for a few empty-headed moments while the waiter and Andrew both waited patiently.
Finally she mumbled, “Um... Yah... I ‘unno...” and directed a sweet little smile at the tabletop, wondering vaguely if it was normal for monkeys to want cute waiter-boy’s to suck on their stylish tits so bad that they couldn’t think anymore.
Probably.
The waiter had noticed the attention this curvaceous brunette coed in the skimpy green outfit was giving him and couldn’t help but feel flattered by it. He also couldn’t help but notice her hooded eyes, lethargic posture, dopey smile, and rather alarming inability to finish a sentence. If ever there was a stoner—he thought, smiling at her male companion—that’s one. That is theirqueen. She and her friend positively reeked of marijuana: the stench hanging around the entire table like a sweet-smelling cloud. Still, that wasn’t all that uncommon here. A lot of college kids came through at all times of day in various... mental states. This girl was just a little more so...
Effortlessly maintaining the chipper attitude of someone who has worked for tips longer than a year, he said: “Yep, well... It’s almost finals week, isn’t it? Got to get the partyin’ out of the way early, right?”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Andrew quickly, seeing Ashley opening her mouth again.
“Nice. Well, that’s the way to do it. Think ahead, but still party hardy.”
Against her will, and against the best efforts of her still tremendous high, Ashley remembered her paper: almost literally stumbling upon the memory of it like she would have stumbled upon a pair of forgotten shoes in the middle of the floor—like: Oh right! Wasn’t I looking for these? Think ahead... Instantly, she felt her blissful calmness sagging beneath a load of dismal responsibility (though she managed to retain the mental image of the boys sucking on her tits). She realized that she would need to explain the situation to the cute waiter. He needed to know. She was sure of it.
“Okay then,” the waiter was saying. “So, I’d say our ‘finest’ IPA would be the—”
“Actually,” Ashley interrupted, with a roll of her eyes and a languid wave of her arm. The waiter stopped short. “I still... li’g... have ta finish... well, okay... start... this, li’g, really big paper tha’ I have to do it for this... li’g... class…” She paused here for dramatic effect, just like Rebecca had.
The waiter and Andrew exchanged glances.
“... For Economics,” she finished gravely, as if this were the missing piece of information in a major court case. She nodded seriously, glancing from one to the other. “Yah.”
The waiter gave a sympathetic nod. “Breakin’ for lunch? I feel that. Lunch and a few beers? Nice. So do you think you guy’s would like any—”
“I actually haven’n even started id... the paper, yet… actually,” Ashley admitted, talking over him. “An’... an’ I actually have to... um... read som’ore of... um... Chapter 30-somethin’... Which sucks. But... you know wha’ they say…” she spread her hands—in her slumped position it looked to the waiter like she was reaching up to cup two pairs of heavy testicles—“…it’s stress that kills good papers, righ’?” She giggled. “An’ I’m toooootally not stressin’ it, li’g... at all. Thanks to this guy,” she grinned at Andrew for a moment before returning her attention to the waiter, who was starting to look antsy. “See... I just gotta…” She searched her foggy mind for a metaphor. “… uh… I just gotta take the stress out of my… my sails before I can, ya know… write it. The paper… That’s… uh... that’s why I... um...” What she had just said... about sails... That hadn’t made any sense. Had it?
She turned her attention to Andrew. Pretend it didn’t happen, she told herself. Andrew looked like he was having a hard time swallowing, or something.
“Um. Right. Okay then,” the waiter nodded, his kitchen buzzer was going off, telling him that table 40’s food was up, and his hostess buzzer was going off, too, telling him that he had just gotten a new table. He started edging away. He had wasted too much time at this table. “Anything to eat for you guys?” he asked quickly, wanting to get the question in before stoner-queen made another ill-advised attempt at talking. “Our potato poppers are on special.”
“Yeah, actually I think she’ll have something,” said Andrew.
Ashley blinked. Her?
The waiter lifted his little pad of paper. “Oh? Okay, what’d you like?”
She considered. She hadn’t eaten at all so far today, it was true: but on the other hand... Spring Break was coming up. Wouldn’t it be better to lose a few pounds rather than gorge on potato poppers? She envisioned herself loading a bowl on the gorgeous beach of Cancun, leaning forward to spark it with a dozen fat rolls bunching up on her stomach. Ugh. “Uh… nothing for me,” she demurred, “I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Andrew frowned, remembering her earlier enthusiasm for bar food. “But we’re here for lunch, remember?”
The waiter held back the urge to roll his eyes. His buzzers continued to buzz, insistently.
“Yes. I am… completely aware of that,” stoner-queen was saying carefully, “I am... also am completely sure that I’m... fine.”
“Okay,” the waiter said, “I’ll be right back with your IPA.” He rushed off.
“Are you feeling alright, Ash?” Andrew asked her. He tried to ask it without the slightest trace of concern, to imply that there was nothing to be concerned about, but with a heavy dose of interest, to show that he was interested in her. It’s all about the right signals, he was thinking. She’s already warmed up to me; I just have to keep it up.
Ashley considered the question.
To Andrew it looked as if Ashley was merely considering her boobs.
It was a very nice question—she thought—smiling down at her boobs. How was she feeling? She was feeling very stoned. Not nearly as stoned as she had felt in the car (when she hadn’t been able to understand English anymore), or on the street (when she could barely walk), or in the bathroom (when her fingers had played her clit and vagina like a ukulele until she squirted on the door of the bathroom stall), but still... really, really stoned. That icky panic was all gone and her stress-level was at an all-time low. She felt great. She liked the question all the more because it gave her an excuse to redirect attention away from the already dimming memory of her paper.
Focus on how you’re feeling.
She giggled loosely, tits jiggling in front of her eyes.
Thaaaaat’s it.
“Ash?”
“Huh?” She looked up and refocused her eyes on Andrew. Had he said something?
“I said: How’re you feeling?” He studied her face—her gorgeous, sleek, flushed face: she was a goddess, an honest to God goddess—he thought. But, goddess she may be but she sure was confused. She was looking at him like he was an Analytic philosopher who had just presented a paper to a conference on Continental philosophy: total incomprehension. Time to switch tactics—he thought. Flashing her the same winning smile he had given Aubrey earlier, he said gently:
“You’re feeling great aren’t you?”
Ashley nodded slowly, brow furrowing slightly. How had he known that?—she marveled. What a sweetheart he was. An absolute sweetheart. In fact... such a sweetheart that...
Oh right... I’m flirting with him. Duh! Come on, girl, you’re slippin’!
With a burst of energy drawn from some deep reserve Ashley pulled herself upright, thrust out her chest, and cracked a frisky smile: “Yer great,” she cooed.
Andrew blinked. “What?”
She giggled: the Andrew in her flirtatious mind’s eye was slobbering on her tits like a dog on its favorite toy. With no need for the waiter’s help anymore his hands were all over both tits, pulling on the nipple of the one not in his mouth, alternating between them over and over. She could see the Andrew from her bathroom fantasy holding out the pot-smoke hose… “Here ya go, monkey.” Her pussy clenched as she leaned toward the real Andrew, feeling her tits bulging.
“You said tha’ yer... ... I mean, tha’ I’m feeling great an’... an’ then I said tha’yer great. Yer…” she tried to think of just the right way to put it. She tried to recall what she knew about Andrew from all that time hanging out with him at Raymond’s that could be used for flirting. Anything. But she was usually so stoned when she was around him that there was very little she could use: still less that she could comprehend right now. So instead of just the right flirty thing to say, all she could come up with was: “yer hella great.”
It wasn’t the most eloquent line she had ever used while flirting with a boy, but... pretty good. Especially considering how retarded stoned she was. She, the stylish Cheshire Cat, grinned at Andrew.
Andrew shrugged, he was smoothing his hands along the tabletop, wondering if it was real oak. Or something like oak. He didn’t really care, but it was the only thing he could think of to distract him from the pressure that was building up in his pants, yet again. He was going to have mad blueballs, he thought. He cleared his throat. “Um, okay then. I guess I... I have no choice but to take that as a compliment. Thanks.” He flicked a wry smile at her.
“Yah.” Dumb pride filled Ashley like helium, making her float. I’m sooooo good with monkeys. “Take it,” she sassed. “I’ll bet yer good at takin’... compliments.”
Now that was probably her lamest flirt-line ever. Oh well. No turning back now. Besides, she had this. Andrew was practically eating out of the palm of her hand he wanted her so bad. Shit, he had already barely been able to keep his hands off of her. She was the puppet-master-monkey and he was the... well... obviously, he was the puppet-monkey.
“Taken,” he said.
Giggling, she leaned back. As she did, her mind drifted away from pride and flirting, off to another topic. One that occupied her off and on nearly every day. “Wouldn’n it be, li’g… hella awesome to be famous?” she ruminated.
Andrew’s slobbery tit-sucking was displaced in her head by Kendra’s stumbling E!-replayed escapade outside the club. Kendra stumbled around and around, camera’s flashing, then tumbled flat on the red carpet. Ashley imagined herself standing over Kendra with a camera phone, naked. Kendra was hella cool. And famous, don’t forget famous! Ashley couldn’t help but wonder if she had really looked even hotter than Kendra in that video Andrew had taken of her? Or had it just been her imagination? She imagined it was her sprawling on the red carpet, all fucked up; and that it was Kendra standing over her, recording her.
“Excuse me?” Andrew asked.
“Li’g… you know know what I mean, right?” She glanced around at the busy restaurant: at all these people who, if she were famous, would never make her feel self-conscious at all, but would know who she was and want to suck on her tits and smoke her out and make her squirt all over like a… “Yah, you know... jus’ li’g... Fuck. I dunno.”
“You make a compelling case,” joked Andrew.
Ashley glared at him. “Come on. Walk on the red carpet. Movie, li’g, premiers an’ stuff. Going to, li’g, crazy-ass parties with, li’g... Snoop Dog an’ Paris, you know, Hilton an’ stuff. You know? Famous.” She searched his face for signs that he knew what she meant. “Wouldn’n that be the best?”
Andrew shrugged, keeping his face impassive, wondering what had brought this on. When he looked at her the expression on her face was so earnest, leaning forward looking at him intently, that he almost laughed. But he forced down his laughter. So she wanted to be famous? Fair enough.
“Oh man,” he said solemnly, forcing himself to keep a straight face, “I see what you mean now.Fuck yeah, I want to be famous, too. Doesn’t everyone?”
Ashley pouted: because the fact of the matter was, she was not famous at all. Sure, like Andrew had said, people around campus thought she was hot, but… they thought lots of girls were hot. It wasn’t the same as being famous, like... really for-real famous. She looked at Andrew with a long puppy-dog face:
“I wanna be famous so bad, it’s not even famous… uh…” Her Cheshire Cat smile peeked out for a moment, “… I mean..” She tried to get serious again. “...it’s not even funny. ”
Andrew gave her a grave look. “You and a lot of other people, Ashley. Believe me,” he said. “Probably every single one of these people in here would give their most prize possessions to be famous. American Idol? Top Model? Big Brother, Real World, Who Wants To Be Axel Rose’s... fucking... One-Night Stand, or whatever? People wanting to be famous is a multi-million dollar industry.”
“Yah,” Ashley didn’t care about industries, although they were a little interesting, she was more interested in getting turned on. “Everyone wants to be famous, jus’ like me. Li’g me an’ all the other monkeys.” Ashley laughed and clapped her hands, inexplicably delighted by this connection. “Right? Isn’n that so... li’g... totally monkey of us?”
Andrew stifled another laugh. She was really taking to this monkey thing. “Um, sure. Nicely put,” he managed to say with a straight face, “‘So monkey’. You’re totally right: it’s really monkey ofus to want to be famous. To want to be the center of attention.”
“Yah! An’ it’s not just the attention’f... attention’f the opposite monkey, I mean... the opposite sex either, is id?” Ashley was swelling with pride again: Andrew thought she was smart; he didn’t fall for her stoned exterior image, her pose of stupidity; he understood that she was just being a good monkey. Hell, he had understood it even before she understood it (and she barely understood it). “Part’f...part’f what makes it so… so, li’g, hot an’ stuff, is that,” she thought of the jealous inferior-titted models in her fantasy, imagined them watching Andrew’s video-phone recording of her and wanting her, “is tha’ you’re... li’g... gettin’ looked at... byeverybody, right? There’s this... this craziness to it. Li’g... li’g they all... li’g they all jus’... jus’ get hella stoned an’ watch you on TV in the morning when they’re supposed to be doin’ home-... supposed to be doin’ something else. When yer famous you kin’ be with whoever you want, cuz... li’g... everyone wants you. That’s hot.” She giggled. “Actually, I guess that’s not actually tha’ different from college.” Any guy you want... “Well. ‘Sept... obviously it’s, li’g... way even more people than college. Obviously.”
“For sure. And the really crazy thing about being famous…” Andrew couldn’t help himself, he just had to see how far he could push it, “is that a famous person can do whatever they want and everyone just—”
“Everyone just thinks you’re even more famouser than ever no matter what you do!” Ashley interrupted excitedly. Her heart was racing, her pulse pounding: Andrew got her. He so got her that it was almost scary. It was like talking to herself. “Yah. Totally. I think about tha’ alla time.” (I just won’t tell you what I do to myself when I think about it.) “You kin jus’... do whatever you wanna do an’ li’g… you can jus’ li’g…” The possibilities were endless! “Li’g, no matter what you do you jus’... end up even, li’g more famouser…” “I’ll be even fucking famouser cuz of this!”—now that had been hot. Aware that she had lapsed into repeating herself, Ashley fished around for another point to make, but she was too excited. “You can just... just be able… be able to… um...” Blank. “I ‘unno... ...”
“To suck on whoever you wanted to suck on.” Andrew said, in almost a whisper. He let his eyes flick down to her tits, making sure she saw him. He knew it was a gamble, being so blunt, but why not take a chance?
Ashley smirked. Seriously? She couldn’t believe he’d had the audacity to come right out and say it. That’s pretty much exactly what she would have said. Actually, she had been about to say you would be able to smoke as much pot as you wanted. But he was right. So right. Monkeys, tit-suckers that they were, probably also liked to suck on just about anything. Their fingers, for instance; while they were in clothing stores or wherever. Or on cocks. Or...
She smiled at Andrew knowingly. When she did Andrew knew he had succeeded and he smiled back at her.
Hazily, Ashley thought that it was just like Andrew to point that out. He was such a smart sweetheart monkey-boy who wanted to… (Her minds-eye Andrew lifted his head from slobbering on her tits and nodded, smiling up at her like he knew her deepest wishes)…who wanted to get her to want him to suck on her boobs; and he was using all his smartness to trick her into doing… well, into doing what she already wanted to do anyway. Joke was on him, wasn’t it? She chuckled at the poetry of it all.
“Well, yah…” she finally replied, letting her head sway saucily from side to side. “Tha’s what monkeys like to do, right? Suck on stuff. Duh.”
They laughed. Andrew, because he couldn’t believe his luck today; Ashley, because she couldn’t believe she hadn’t already let him suck on her tits.
Monkey-girl’s of style want to be famous and like their titties sucked—It was true, she thought, whoever said that was a friggin’ genius. She had let a lot of monkey-boys suck on her tits in the last two and a half years of college: she just hadn’t understood why. Until now.
.......
Part 20
Ashley frowned suddenly as her stomach gurgled. “Shit,” she muttered. Lying back, she put her hands on her belly and gave Andrew a droll look. “Um… I guess I’m actually kinna hungry... actually.”
Why hadn’t she ordered something to eat? Her foggy brain refused to tell her the answer.
“Got the munchies after all, huh?” Andrew chuckled. “You should’ve ordered some of those poppers.”
Oh right—she thought. The poppers. The Cheshire cat reappeared, grinning stupidly.
“Oh yah… …”
“Don’t worry though,” Andrew continued, “you can just fill up on beer.” He prayed that he had succeeded in confusing her enough and she was stoned enough to make the leap of logic that was necessary.
“Fill up… on beer?” Ashley asked incredulously, mouth hanging open. This was all part of smarty-Andrew’s ploy to get her to want him to want to want something or other… Wasn’t it? She resolved to outsmarty him: “That’s crazy. Um…” If only she could get her thoughts in a line. “Are you… um… li’g… trying to…” Her mind fumbled for the right word. “… to… uh…” It couldn’t find it (‘insinuate’ was the word she was looking for), so in a flash it supplied a similar sounding one: “Are you trying to inseminate tha’ I want to… like… drink a lot of beer? Is tha’ what you’re… insemin-… uh… semin-nating?” That had definitely been the wrong word, she realized. Pretend it didn’t happen, she told herself.
She hoped that by sheer dumb stoner luck she’d just outsmartied Andrew, even though she didn’t have any idea how.
Andrew blinked. Inseminate? “What? No… I wasn’t saying that you…”
Then she realized it: realized it all. How could she have been so blind? Andrew had seen her empty beer bottles on the table this morning and he thought that she was a… beer… drinker… person… chick.
Leaning forward confidently she said: “Jus’ cuz I... li’g... had a couple beers this morning… um... doesn’n, li’g, mean I’m li’g… some chick who… fuckin’… drinks beer all’a time.”
“That’s not what I meant. I swear.”
“Well... How’s it gonna fill me up if it’s not a lot of it?” Ashley was sure that she had him cornered. Who’s the smarty now? “Cuz tha’s what you’re saying right? Tha’ I… li’g… tha’ I fill up on… uh…. lots of… li’g…” She floundered helplessly, trying to finish her point: “a lot of… um… that of which I would be drinking... ... Beer, I guess.” Had that made sense? Barely, but yes. She giggled triumphantly. She was the smarty now!
Andrew shrugged. He wasn’t sure what her point was. “Okay. Fine. There’s a good chance that you’ll drink more than a few beers. There. Happy?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh yah? More’n a couple?”
“Look, there’s four or five pints of beer in a pitcher. I’m not going to drink it all myself am I?”
“Oh…” She blinked. She had been outsmarted, hadn’t she? She wasn’t sure. “I... I guess not?”
“Plus, since you’re trying to reduce your stress… if ever there were a perfect way to reduce stress it’s-“
“Yah, yah,” Ashley interrupted. It was crystal clear, in a foggy kind of way, “it’s mixing pot and beer… You…" She tapped the table once, smiling. "...are so fucking right.” She shook her head, loving how smart Andrew was: he knew all the angles, didn’t he? And best of all, whenever he was this smart: she reaped the benefits, didn’t she? “Believe me,” she gushed, no longer caring who had outsmarted who, “I friggin’ love mixing pot and alcohol. I know all about it. In fact, that’s… Those beers this morning? I had those cuz I was mixin’ ‘em with pot… cuz when I wake’n’baked I was… li’g… so… uh… good… uh… at… ya know… reasoning that all out. Ya see?” She beamed at him.
“You know all about it, huh?” Andrew drummed his fingers on the table and looked toward the bar, trying to spot their waiter. He was keenly aware of time ticking away: Ashley would be coming down soon, surely. They had to meet Raymond eventually. “Speaking of alcohol, where the fuck is our IPA?”
“Um…” Ashley pursed her lips, confused. Very confused.
IPA? Weren’t they having beer?
“… what’s that?”
“Oh come on, Ash, you’ve had IPA before, surely?”
“I dunno,” she shrugged, “What’s IPA?”
“This is IPA,” said the waiter, suddenly setting a pitcher down between them.
“About time,” Andrew grumbled.
“Hey man,” the waiter made a helpless gesture, “we’re pretty busy. Sorry about the wait.”
“Oooo.” Ashley wiggled her fingers and leaned eagerly toward the golden liquid, her hooded eyes gleaming. “This is IPA? It looks li’g beer!”
The waiter was somewhat taken aback. He stared at her. Was this chick for real? Stoner-queen or not, could you get that high? He glanced at the guy she was with.
Andrew shrugged, then to Ashley he said: “Yeah, it’s IPA.” He waved the waiter away with a smile. “Which, yes, is beer. May I pour you a glass?”
“Enjoy, you guys,” the waiter said as he left.
“Wait, wait… seriously though… what is it?” Ashley looked at the pitcher suspiciously. “You still haven’n tol’ me.”
“I just said: its beer.”
“No, no, what is it really. You know… like… what’s the Agramin stand for? The... the Ack’ruh’nem.”
“Acronym?” Andrew sighed: “Okay… it stands for India Pale Ale. Okay?”
She nodded. That made sense.
“It’s…” he thought for a moment… “…it’s a hoppier beer than most, more alcoholic. It was created when merchants who had to sail around the Horn of Africa (to get to India, hence the India part of the name) discovered that their beer would last longer on the trip if they added more hops to the barrels, letting it ferment longer, giving it a higher alcohol content and thus a longer shelf-life.”
“Wow.” Ashley continued nodding. She had not been able to follow all that, but it sounded complicated, cool, and interesting. Then a pot-clouded memory from this morning occurred to her: that second beer… that gross one. There were two types of beer, weren’t there?
She tapped the tabletop as if she were a big-boobed judge banging a gavel, ready to hear evidence. Her face had turned very serious. Comically so.
“What now?” Andrew asked, smirking wryly.
“Okay sooooo, that sounds cool, an’, li’g, everythin’… bu’… I jus’ wanna be sure… cuz… cuz this morning I had this, li’g, beer…” It occurred to her that most people didn’t drink beer in the morning, whether mixing it with weed or not. She wondered if she should be embarrassed about it. Probably not. “An’… um… maybe it was jus’ cuz I had gotten really high, but, li’g, one of the beers… was really… um…” she waved her arm expressively, “really… not nice, ya know?”
“Not nice?” Andrew chuckled. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious!” Anger flared inside her, flickering out of her brainstem like flames up a wooden wall: why wasn’t he taking her seriously? “It was to’ally all gross an’ stuff. To’lly mean an’… stuff. An’ I was all… ‘Fuck! What a... a fucking mean beer!’ Ya know? So… is this beer,” she pointed at the pitcher, “This isn’n mean beer is it?”
Andrew furrowed his brow. “Uh… Well…”
“Cuz I only drink nice beer.” She tapped the table once more. That wasn’t exactly true, she thought guiltily, remembering how she had drunk down the mean beer just as fast as the nice one: still, Andrew didn’t know that. Or did he?
Andrew just stared at her. “Yes,” he said finally, “I’m pretty sure this is nice beer.”
“Then proceed.” She giggled.
Andrew pulled his eyes off her chest and put her glass, full to the brim, in front of her. “Here ya go.”
“Here ya go, monkey.”
He had placed it directly in front of her boob-swollen top, so close that she could swear she could feel the cold from the glass radiating out to tickle her nipples. Had he done it on purpose? To flirt? “Thanks,” she chirped and plucked up the glass lightly, nonchalantly (after all it was only a beer, right? How many thousands of these had she drank since coming to college?), and took a careful sip.
She made a show of mulling over the taste for a moment, frowning, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
Andrew laughed. “Okay, okay. Enough theatrics.”
“Yum,” she stated finally, taking another sip. The IPA was cold and crisp and delicious. Way better than warm Rolling Rock. “Yum!” she repeated, “Seriously, yum, dude. This’s way better’n Rolling Rock. Way.”
“Yes, definitely better than Rolling Rock,” Andrew said, pouring himself a glass. “Glad that’s settled.”
“Yum!” Ashely said a third time, licking her lips. “I like IPA!”
Pause.
“Well… I mean... li’g...”
Confusion.
Was she really justified in saying that? After two sips? Andrew would think she just likedany beer, no matter what. Better seem more... deliberate. Like she needed to think it out.
“I think I li’g IPA,” she cautiously qualified. She took another sip. “Hmm.”
“Put it like this: If you like beer, then you like IPA.”
“Mmm, well…” she purred, bumbling instantly to the next logical thought. “I do like beer.You know that.”
Wait. Had she just been outsmarted again? She had. Rather than worry about it, she took another sip.
“Um, right.” Andrew decided to stop trying to follow what she was saying anymore. It was pretty much hopeless.
In her frontal lobe Ashley knew that drinking two beers upon waking was one thing, a bad enough thing, but drinking more for lunch, on top of smoking a ton of pot, when she had to start a paper later was not a good idea, stress-reduction or no stress-reduction. There were just some things that weren’t a good idea and this... this was one of them. Right? She should be at home, right now, cracking the books, reading that boring Economics textbook... Chapter whatever...
“So...” Andrew was saying, interrupting her thoughts. He was holding up his pint glass. “How about a toast? Here’s to… to you, Ashley. Cheers.”
“To me?” She giggled. “Awww. Cheers.”
What the hell?—she thought. Why not? It was all just a matter of style. Of... of... mind over matter, right? She just needed to keep her wits about her and make sure she didn’t get really drunk or anything (just loose, just relaxed, just so her paper could write itself even better and easier than ever). With a nice buzz going she’d probably be able to polish off that paper in half the time: like Andrew had said, the paper would practically write itself, so there no reason to worry. All she had to look out for was having too many beers and/or getting too high (which wasn’t even possible anyway). Although it was true that monkeys liked to get high (liked it a lot, actually, like Andrew said and like she knew well from experience) and so she therefore, logically, would smoke a few more bowls while writing the paper, she should have no problem.Smooth sailing in her... sails. Right. Unless... unless she started masturbating or something and lost track of time. But so, as long as she stayed on top of things: she couldn’t lose. It was just a matter of mind over… over monkey. Mind over monkey.
“Cheers!” She said again, with conviction this time, and clinked her glass against Andrew’s.
“Cheers.” Andrew agreed.
They both drank deeply.
.......
Part 21
Raymond looked at his watch. It was 2:10.
The second bowl, loaded to “match” the first, had been by this point thoroughly burned and the smoke given off had been skillfully pulled into the deepest crannies of Kelly’s lungs, held, and then blown out at the ceiling, over and over again until there was no more smoke, and now the time had come for Raymond to shoo away his thoroughly stoned and satisfied customer. Mac would be arriving soon and Raymond did not want Kelly around when that happened. He had toyed with the idea of letting her stay. Mac wouldn’t care, surely. But there was no way she would be able to handle seeing his bigger stash: a pothead like her would freak out if she saw a tabletop entirely layered with weed, bud-tails as long as her arm stacked up like firewood. He had seen it before; one girl had actually fainted when she laid eyes on it, like something out of Pride and Prejudice.
“Look, Kelly...” he said, sitting forward, trying to sound as brusque as possible, “that bowl’s cashed, so you should probably get going. I have other business to do today.”
“Oh… ogah...”
Kelly didn’t seem to care what he said. She was sprawled out on her chair looking at him vaguely, smiling. Her right leg twitched. She was so stoned that when Raymond looked back at her he couldn’t read her face in the slightest; couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Of course, he recognized the look on her face. He saw it on Ashley’s face almost daily. A mask of limp, mouth agape, sincerity; a thoughtful expression where the thought is clearly in process of being perpetually broken off; heavy eyelids under slightly raised brows hanging like shields over windows to protect what might be seen through them.
You could never tell what was going to happen next when a girl got like this.
“My business can’t wait,” he said, finding his excuse rather feeble.
Kelly giggled a little and her simmering eyes peered at him. She pushed her hair back behind her right ear and then looked around, slowly, for her baggies of weed. Once she located them she giggled some more.
“Oh... my... gaa'…” she drawled. “I’mmm… soooo hiiigh, duuuude… ... Man… yeah…… Okay, okay… okay... um... Yeah.”
She hauled herself to her feet, licking her dry lips. “Guesssss I... gottaaa go.”
“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Raymond said, feeling relieved. “I’ll see you later.” He stayed seated. He wanted her to leave quietly, quickly, of her own accord.
But instead, she stood stock still with her shoulders slumped, looking at the floor, face unreadable.
She was obviously thinking something over. But what?
Her baggies of weed remained on the coffee table, apparently forgotten, or else ignored.
She looked over at Raymond with those very low-lidded eyes. That wolfish smile was playing around her lips again. When she pushed her hair out of her face this time it was with a sluggish slide of her hand from her forehead to her ear. Her hair slipped right back and hung down again.
He looked back at her, trying to figure out what to do. Even the few small hits he had taken had gotten him a bit high, enough to slow him down a bit. What the hell is she thinking?—he wondered.
“Uh… Kelly?” he said. “Your weed? Don’t forget your…” He pointed helpfully, hoping to speed her along.
She slowly glanced at her baggies of weed and smirked, as if he had pointed out a strange, slightly humorous novelty item. “Yeah,” she said, in almost a whisper.
The next thing he knew, she was advancing on him, still smirking, taking short shuffling steps like a zombie.
"Kelly?" he asked nervously.
“Yeah?”
“What’re you doing?”
She was biting her lower lip now. Her hands playing absentmindedly with the drawstrings of her hoodie, twirling them between thumb and forefinger. “I wanna stay a... … a bi’ longer,” she said huskily.
Before Raymond could even think of getting out of his chair and putting some distance between him and her, she was right in front of him; her knees pressing against his knees. He now had to look straight up to see her. She was leering down at him. He remembered the hug once again as he was confronted by her tits, hovering before his face like perky pillows.
“Kelly… Look… I—”
“Shud up.” Kelly put her finger over his mouth and left it there. She was breathing heavily, clearly aroused. “Lemme… Lemme do this…” she said in that same husky voice, “I wanna… I wanna do this.”
What happened next could not have been foreseen by even the most complex of businessmodeling programs; economists would only have understood it by way of those “irrational forces” that turn up from time to time and throw everything off-kilter.
Raymond had had female customers come-on to him before, of course. He usually deflected their advances with ease… but something about Kelly… today… made his mouth not work when he told it to say “This needs to stay strictly business, Kelly. I’m sorry.” Instead, when he opened his mouth, what came out was:
“Kelly, you’ll need to be quick.”
“Don’ worry,” she breathed.
She stepped back from him, smiling, then, without a trace of modesty unbuttoned her jeans, pulled them down to reveal a lack of underwear, pulled off her hoodie to reveal no shirt beneath it, just a bra, and then stepped up onto Raymond’s chair, one foot on either side of his thighs, so her shaved pussy was in his face and she was looking down at him between her breasts. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, which, although they remained shielded, no longer needed to be read: her body was saying it all.
“Holy shit.” Raymond felt his pants tightening.
Then, with an impatient groan, Kelly bent her knees and lowered herself so she was straddling him with her ass thrust out.
“Isn’n this hot?” she asked, whispering huskily. Taking his hand and placing it up against her burning hot pussy.
“Jesus,” Raymond gasped, feeling how wet she was. Unable to stop himself, he unbuttoned his jeans with his free hand and pulled out his hardened cock.
He thought of Ashley—but oddly that only made his cock harder. She was so high these days she probably wouldn’t even have noticed if he fucked another girl right in the next room. And Kelly was so sexy, so willing. Such a... stoned-out little troll, as Justin had put it. Justin! He could come back from working-out at any second! How long had he been gone? How much more time could he possibly—?
Then Kelly grabbed his cock with one hand, steadied herself against the back of the chair with other, and plunged herself onto his shaft, removing her hand as she slid down it.
His brief flare-up of concerns winked out. “Oh! Shit!” he exclaimed.
“Mm!” She gasped, giving him an open-mouthed, rectangular-eyed stare that slowly dissolved into a huge grin as she pushed her hair out of her face again, giggling gently. “Yer bigger than I though’chewd be.” She giggled and started to pump her hips slowly up and down. “Ooo fuck. Ooo.” She kissed him with sloppy, open-mouthed passion, putting her arms around him, pulling their faces close and pumping harder. “Oh, oh, oh, fuck!” Her body smelled like pot: her hair, her skin, her juices, they all reeked of the herbal sweetness.
“Jesus, you… you smell good,” he managed to gasp as she continued pumping him in and out of her.
Laughing, pushing her hair out of her face, she slid up and off his cock and stumbled back a few steps. “Whoo!” She cried, then had to catch her balance, so she was standing, feet apart, one hand between her legs rubbing gently, the other beckoning him toward her. “Wha’s tha’… best weed you got?” she asked, her stoned face shining with sexual sweat and excitement.
“W-w-why?” He stammered, getting up. His cock stood straight out like a flagpole.
Her eyes hung on it, smiling without showing her teeth. “Whatever ih issss... You shou’ load some… in… inna bong … an’ lemme… lemme hit it… while you fuckin’... fuck me from… from behind.” The slivers of her eyes were gleaming with devious titillation, but her voice faltered slightly on the last word.
He grinned. “So specific.” A Natural Born Killers reference lost on her.
“Yeah.” She nodded with stoned earnestness.
He knew just what to load.
Twenty minutes later he helped Kelly back into her clothes. A dreamy smile hung on her sex-flushed face.
“You sure you’ll be okay for finals week?” he asked as he ushered her to the door, feigning concern but acutely aware that the only reason Mac wasn’t there already was that he must be running late.
Kelly mumbled something incoherent in response, nodding, smiling.
“Okay, cool.” With that he firmly placed his hand on her back and steered her to the door and opened it for her.
Kelly stumbled out into the hall; still mumbling something; a large bulge in her hoodie pocket where the baggies of weed were. Usually, when leaving Raymond’s with a bunch of pot, which was a by no means infrequent event, she would douse herself in perfume or at least ask for a spray of Axe or something. But today she made no such request, and blundered off toward the elevator carrying an aura of weed-stench with her.
Raymond watched her go, then sighed and shut the door.
That had gone pretty well—he thought.
“Damn,” he said aloud, shaking his head. He sighed again.
Quasi-jackass or no, it paid off to have customers come to the apartment.
Smiling, he headed into the kitchen. He needed a Gatorade or something.
.......
Part 22
Andrew watched as Ashley swallowed: once, twice, three times.
She seems to like it—he thought as he watched her. Then he laughed. Of course she likes it. How many moist-topped beer bottles had been on her weed-strewn coffee table that morning? Two. Which, he realized, must have been what she meant about him knowing that she liked beer. A girl doesn’t drink two beers for breakfast unless she likes beer, obviously. Obviously. This thought gave Andrew an oddly euphoric feeling in the pit of his stomach. He found himself wondering if Raymond encouraged her when it came to the beer; he sure encouraged her when it came to smoking her brains out. Perhaps encourage was too strong a word: enable would be more accurate. He sure didn’t let her go wanting when it came to the vast-quantities-of-herb department, that was for sure. That tabletop... Jesus. Andrew had been up to her apartment a few times before, usually with Raymond, and on those occasions weed had been retrieved from a giant box under the coffee table: but today... seeing it strewn out the way issues of Playboy were strewn out on his own coffee table... was sort of awe inspiring. It must have been her entire stash. Pretty impressive, really—although the line between impressive and unbelievable was pretty thin in this case. There had to have been over five hundred dollars worth of pot on that table, just… strewn about… like it was nothing. What had Ray said on the phone? ‘That chick does not know when to hold back, does she?’ No... no she didn’t. By a strange leap Andrew found himself imagining what her parents would think if they had seen what he had seen: that tabletop of weed, their daughter slumped on the couch with that huge bong resting carelessly between her legs. He remembered how angry his own mother and father had been when they had found his little pipe: he had been a sophomore in high school, getting excellent grades, honor roll, lead soloist in Jazz Band and so on; but they had looked at him like this one object had laid him low forever in their eyes, despite his other accomplishments. What would they think of Ashley?
No, no, no—he thought: forget parents: yours or hers. He took a sip of his beer, unable to prevent himself from wondering idly just exactly how far a girl who didn’t now when to hold back would go if she was just... nudged a little. Or shoved.
Ashley, meanwhile, knowing full well that she was the stoned Cheshire-cat-monkey, master of the art of stress-reduction, and hoping to appear casual, lowered her glass to the table. It made a loud clunk as it landed. So much for casual. She wiggled a little as the bubbles from the beer tickled her throat. She had swallowed too loosely and could feel the beer in the back of her nose. It felt weird, but good too. She looked down into the beer, at the fizzy bubbles, smiling wide.
Beer.
How wonderful—she thought, already beginning to feel lightheaded from the alcohol as it rushed without delay from her empty stomach into her bloodstream. She knew the feeling well from parties and although she had never really considered herself a drinker per se ever since she had arrived at college (over two years ago) she hadn’t passed up any opportunities to accept drinks, hadn’t balked at a keg-stand or two, tended to enjoy a couple of beers on a fairly regular basis, and even binge-drank until she keeled over, though mostly only on holidays—all just run-of-the-mill parts of your average college experience, right? Of course, no matter how average her college drinking experiences had been up until now, the fact was that today was the first time she had ever had a pitcher of beer in front of her before 5 o’clock on a weekday with no socially acceptable reason to do so. Not counting her two-beer breakfast. And even though it felt (weirdly) good, felt monkey and everything like that, she had to remember:
Mind over monkey.
Confident that this would be as easy as taking a bong rip she picked up her glass again and gulped more of her beer. Just to feel the tickles again, she told herself. Nothing too monkey.
Beer is awesome.
Hell yeah, it was! The tickles felt just a good as the first time. She swallowed and then swallowed again. She looked up and saw that Andrew was smiling at her, so she lowered her glass and smiled too.
Flirt with him. She pointed a finger and made a serious expression. “What’s so funny, monkey-boy?”
You had to be careful with these monkey-boys—she thought—they’re such crafty little devils. Of course, that didn’t really matter too much, because you could always tell what they had on their minds, couldn’t you?
Sucking on the titties of famous monkey-girls.
Right—she thought with a giggle. Predictable?
Predictable monkeys...
Andrew watched her giggle over her glass for a moment, then let loose his winning smile yet again and said: “Oh, not too much. I was just thinking about how great it must have been to, like, get high for the first time in the safety of your Dad’s hot tub. So chill. My first time was huddled in a circle with three other dudes in the alley behind my friend Dwayne’s house, out of a can. It was terrifying: even after we threw the can away we kept thinking that someone would find it and see the blackened metal and, like, immediately know what we had done and tell our parents. Youdidn’t have to worry about anything like that your first time… at your Dad's. I mean, shit... your Dad’s right there.”
Ashley blinked at him. “How... how’d you know about that? Di’ I...? Um... <giggle!> Oh yah. I told you about that, huh?”
“You did.”
“Bu’... um... Yah so...” she said quickly, wanting to gloss over her memory loss, “... Yah... in the hot tub… Yah. That was so chill.” She thought it over carefully. He was right. That was funny. She giggled. It was also funny that she had completely forgotten that she had told him about it, so she giggled some more. Or... no, wait. No. He hadn’t said it was funny, he’d said it was great... She giggled harder.
Now that was funny!
Thinking about that hot tub filled with wealthy lawyers and accountants enjoying an informal toke with their buddy and his foxy jailbait daughter visiting from Oregon (her), made Ashley squirm with delight. Her dad was hella cool. From there her mind slid easily into thinking about the month following that hot tub toke-fest. This made her smile, which, in turn, made her remember smiling just as wide, stoned off her ass, into her Dad's face as he lectured her on 'moderation' toward the end of her visit.
Dad: “You can’t just smoke an entire twenty-sack, honey. Okay? You just can’t. You have to limit yourself. Everything in moderation, you know? Too much of a good thing is not good.
Her: “Come on, Dad. Gimmie a break!”
Boy, would she be able to defend herself better now—Ashley thought wryly. Now that I know the truth about monkeys and how much they like getting high and all that. She imagined herself puffing up in front of her Dad and delivering a supremely stoned but at the same time lucid counter-lecture on the natural smoking habits of monkey-girls and their cute guy benefactors who... well... who helped them get so high that it almost seemed like they were getting too high but in reality, in the grand scheme of things, they weren’t; because they couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. They were just so stressed out that they had to do whatever came natural to relax. So, like... obviously, logically, whatever, they would spend the whole rest of the summer after their first time getting high in a hot tub, sneaking weed out of their Dad’s “secret” stash in the freezer and rolling joints on the sly to smoke before going to the mall or going swimming or watching TV... or whatever.
Blinking her way back to the present, back to the crowded restaurant where Andrew was waiting patiently for her to continue, Ashley realized that she hadn’t told him about that part. “Tha’ whole summer,” she explained in a contemplative voice, “after tha’ first time… was jus’ like…” she felt her eyes roll back for a moment as the memory returned. Come on, Dad. Gimmie a break! “…so friggin’ high…”
“You were?” Andrew offered helpfully, as if filling in a crossword puzzle answer.
She nodded. “Yah… I was… Like... I was so high tha’ I… Well, cuz... see… my Dad had this… li’g… um… what would you call it? A cigarette roller… li’g… machine… thingy?”
“Oh yah, I know those… You rolled hella joints didn’t you?”
“Yah!” Ashley beamed happily: Andrew understood her so well. He got her. He knew about the joints without even having to be told! “I smoked…” She sipped her beer. “…bunchs an’ bunchs an’ bunchs of joints tha’ summer. Well, I was only there a month more after tha’, bu’…<giggle!>… it was summer. But... um... Yah… So, I smoked… li’g… a shitload…” She bit her lip, realizing how relative that all was. “Nod as much as I do now, obviously! <giggle!>… Bu’… ya know… a, for me then, shitload.”
“Oh, I read you loud and clear.” Andrew wanted to ask where her father had been when she was using his cigarette-roller to roll joints all month.
“You do?”
“Well yeah.”
“Yah... um... Bu’ so basically... li’g... I smoked so much tha’ summer tha’ I kind of... I dunno... I kinna scared myself. So, after tha’ I was always waaaay careful about not... li’g... overdoing it... li’g at all. An’ I still do!” she insisted defensively, but not sure why, “I’m still really, really... li’g... you know, careful an’ stuff... About... I mean... I guess id doesn’n actually matter cuz... cuz I... cuz you can’t possibly smoke.... too much anyway, right? Bu’... um...”
Andrew nodded solemnly. “No, I got you. Getting high is totally this wild new experience at first and it’s overwhelming, especially when you’re still that young. I was the same way. Then you get older and you develop tolerance to it and get better at it. It’s kind of like it’s part of growing up, almost.”
She grinned. That was exactly right. That was exactly what she would have said if she had been able to think clearly. You’re grown up now. She sipped her beer cheerfully.
Letting her shoes slip from her feet she wiggled her toes, sticking her legs out straight like sheused to as a little girl on her father’s dock during the summer: not a care in the world. During the later summers, as a teenager, when she would smoke joints out on that same dock, swinging her legs the same way, feeling the water skimming her toes, she had felt a different kind of carefree. Now it seemed she felt both.
But then she noticed something: the swinging of her legs under the table made her notice that her skirt had ridden up. It was now cinched up high, almost around her waist. Her panties were exposed.
She looked down at herself for a moment with eyebrows raised, then took a sip of beer. Just to feel the tickle, she told herself.
Must have happened when I leaned back… when the waiter was here—she thought, taking another sip of beer.
More tickles.
Finally comprehending what she needed to do, she pulled her skirt down: but only because she was at this restaurant; otherwise leaving her skirt around her waist would have been the perfect flirtatious move. Obviously. She would have given an eighth of primo bud to see Andrew’s facewhen she stood up with her skirt around her waist, white panties gleaming in the sunlight, barely covering her ass, and said: ‘Oh, whoops, lookit that. My bad, dude.’ He’d swallow his monkey-tongue for sure!
She looked up and found Andrew watching her wordlessly.
........
Part 23
“Um... my skirt’s hella short,” she mumbled. To explain herself.
“Yes, it is.”
She tried to imagine what Andrew was thinking. A monkey-girl of style. She grinned. Yes. That was it.
I am the monkey-girl of style.
Still smiling, she let her eyes drift from Andrew’s face to the crowded room, then back to her beer and then back to Andrew’s face. Somewhere along the way she decided to have another sip of delicious beer. After all, it was the obvious, logical thing to do. Beer was for drinking as... Titties were for sucking. She laughed aloud and picked up her pint glass and sipped.
Mind over monkey.
Andrew was watching her, smiling. Flirt with the monkey. She smiled back. “And you,” she said, teasingly, “tried to ge’ me to not wear any unn’erwear, you nau’dy... naughty monkey-boy.”
“I did?” Andrew replied with mock surprise.
“Yah you did!” Ashley leaned forward. Don’t let him weasel his monkey-way out of your flirting! “Back at the, li’g, clothes spot where you bou’ me tha’ stuff, you sai’ tha’ I’d needed... li’g... ‘ven’lation’ or something. ‘Memmer?”
“Of course, I remember. But were you seriously tempted to take my advice when it comes to a skirt? What do I know about wearing skirts? I’ve never worn one in my life. You might as well ask a cyclist how to change the oil in your car.”
“Oh.” Ashley realized she was trapped. “Um...” She had been outmaneuvered. And she wasn’t even sure if he had weaseled out of... whatever... or not. It was all very confusing. And the alcohol in her system was steadily making her thoughts more and more sluggish. Rather than admit anything (or think about it anymore) she lifted her glass and took a nice long, ticklish drink of beer. That’ll show him...
...who the stylish monkey-girl is.
Exactly.
“Well anyway,” Andrew said as she swallowed and swallowed, “I still say you were lucky as hell to have had such a chill first time smoking pot.”
Ashley lowered her glass long enough to say, “Agreed,” then she continued to drink, unable to stop thinking how funny it was that she really liked this beer. Far more than she had expected. So much more than Rolling Rock. It tasted like… pure heaven. It was sweet... but then... sharp and almost bitter but... not quite. And tickly. Very tickly. Delicious tickly heaven. A heaven thatpopulated her sluggish head with soft, lovely buzzing; buzzing that merged wonderfully with her hyper-sensitive skin, blending into a happy throbbing that made the unwavering pulse in her clit more forceful.
I really like this...
She now definitely knew that monkeys totally liked to drink beer. Totally and completely. Obviously and logically. And it was obvious why, too: it reduced stress like nobody’s business! It had only been a few minutes and she could already barely understand why she had been so stressed out before. So she had a big-ass paper to write? So what? She could do it. It’d get done. It’d write itself in no time and she’d be back to lounging on the white couch with Sunny, bubbling fat hits off of Lucifer and giggling at Comedy Central shows or gaping at E! fashion shows... Masturbating and fondling herself like a... Well... that she wouldn’t do with Sunny.
Over the next twenty minutes she and Andrew sat and talked while Quincy’s lunch hour peaked and then waned. People left and new people arrived. The two of them talked easily about silly things, which was fine with Ashley. He flirted with her and she flirted back (as best she could). He sipped his beer and she sipped hers. At first, she resisted the urge, which whispered out of her clit, to drink faster, to flood herself with IPA and increase the delightful buzzing that led to happy throbbing tenfold, but soon enough, and with the aid of her increasingly beer-addled thinking, she was unable to stop herself and was then gulping greedily, unable to resist the fizzy tickle. Those twenty minutes were not kind to her big monkey-tongue: it quickly became far too stupid to talk very well, although it proved to be increasingly adept at getting out of the way to allow beer down her throat. Which was a decent trade-off, she decided. As they neared the end of the pitcher she knew she was well justified in venturing the hypothesis that she was drunk. As an experiment she laid her tongue flat and took a long gulping drink of beer. The result of the experiment were as predicted:
You are drunk, girl. Yes sir.
But Andrew didn’t mind. He was a monkey like her who liked beer. Who liked to get high, too. What would he care if she was getting drunk? And besides... it was all in the name of stress-reduction.
Then the topic of conversation turned to getting high and Andrew started to tease her for being so high all the time (she was dimly shocked when she was reminded of how often that really was). Unable to think of anything else to do she just giggled, sipped her beer, and agreed with him (since she knew that he knew that it was just her pose: she wasn’t really a complete space-cookie stoner monkey... Not really. She just acted that way). After this admission, almost every time she opened her mouth she was compelled from deep down to ask Andrew if they could sneak out to his car and smoke a bowl. They wouldn’t have to end their lunch of beer though… not by a long shot! They could just ease their way out to the car, maybe lean down discreetly in the backseat, put a few drops from that little bottle on a bulging bowl of sticky Kush, blaze it hard, maybe she would take a few more hits than him just because she was such a little pothead and needed to keep up appearances, and then they could amble back to their table as cool and stoned-out as you please and keep drinking this heavenly beer. Sounded like a bad-ass plan, right? But every time she opened her mouth, even though she wanted to ask Andrew to do this, wanted to spell it out in detail for him, wanted to make it into a sultry flirtation, to try and work in some reference to sucking monkeys and lean her cleavage at him and laugh like Marilyn Monroe (all teeth and thrown back head), to argue aggressively in favor of it if need be: instead, each time she would quickly swallow another gulp of beer and say something else. Since, after all, he had already let her smoke quite a bit of his weed, right? Surely she was just being greedy. If he wanted to smoke her out again, he would offer. Right? But the longer they sat there, talking, drinking, laughing, flirting like two cute monkeys in college who are all grown-up and attracted to each other, who naturally wanted to suck on each other, and the more beer she swallowed as she avoided asking to sneak out for another bowl, the less she understood why she wasn’t asking. Greedy or not, she reasoned blearily, slurping at her beer as if it were milk: a monkey-girl of style needs to keep her high going if she wants to hold onto her precious pose… Poses are everything. And... and if a monkey-girl of style wanted to... to suck on Andrew... and have him suck on her, then she really had to be on top of things. Right?
Right.
This reasoned conclusion was lost, along with all memory of its existence, when Andrew gave her a look that said it was time to get serious, leaned toward her, and said:
“You know what’s crazy?”
She shook her buzzing head.
“I’ve known you for… what? Years? Practically...”
She nodded.
“We’ve hung out a lot. Partied. But I don’t have the faintest idea what your major is. I’m pretty sure you don’t know mine either. I mean, that kind of thing doesn’t come up much, I know. But still, it’s weird. Here we are, right? In college. Studying to become... whatever we want...”
“W’ur’ll grow’ up,” Ashley added, solemnly.
He cocked his head and nodded. “Um... Right. Exactly. We’re all grown up and we’re...”
“W’ur shym’bolic.” Ashley was staring down into her beer. For some reason she found herself thinking about her dream-pony: flying through the air, her holding tight to its powerful neck, watching the ant-people.
Ant-monkeys...
“It’s... What was that?”
She looked up. Andrew’s brow was furrowed. “Oh... uh... Nothin’... nothin’... I jus’... I...<giggle!>... I can’d... zay wor’zz righ’ now.” She smiled apologetically. Andrew’d understand.
“You can’t say words?” Andrew laughed. “Gotcha. Okay. But so... I guess what I’m asking is... What is your major?”
“My major?” Ashley asked, or tried to ask. The question came out: “Mah mah’gha’?” mangled by her monkey-tongue, which was as stupid as ever. Nope. Words were not so easy anymore. Especially big ones like... Major. She smiled at herself and tried once more: “My… my… mah’juhr?” She giggled. Better.
“Yeah, I mean, I know you’re taking Econ 101…”
She nodded stupidly, so deeply that her nose dipped into her freshly refilled pint glass, the last glass of the pitcher, it should, by all rights, have been Andrew’s, but he had let her have it. Because he was nice. And because she was so good with monkeys that they could not help but do her bidding. She thought over what he had just said. She was taking Econ 101. That was a fact.
She smirked: God, that class blew.
“And,” he continued, “we were in that class together before… that English class. English 220, I think it was.”
“Oh yaaah... Eh’gish... dwo-twenny.”
“But what’s your major?”
She thought about it. The answer was not forthcoming. The throbbing had only intensified since she had filled up on beer.
Beer’s hella awesome. But it makes it... kinda... fuzzy...
“Uh…” She sat there, throbbing pleasantly. Come on, think! You're not majoring in beer, that's for sure. She smiled. That would be hella awesome, actually.
Following this thought Ashley had an odd experience. There was a strangely elongated moment, during which she saw, sluggishly, in her mind’s eye Andrew slobbering on her bulbous chest like a good little predictable monkey-boy; while at the same time, she laid a hand, moistened by slopped beer, between her legs, to give her clit a tiny push; and also, even as Andrew slobbered and her clit went <ding!> she felt a rushing force rising up into her diaphragm… At the end of the moment she blinked her eyes and, in the brief darkness, felt an explosion of sensation erupt from her crotch as her finger pressed firmly, sending a spasm up her spine; and at the same time felt the rushing force pass her diaphragm and reach her mouth:
“<HIC-up!>” The spasm redoubled on itself and she had to put out both hands to steady herself.
She blinked. Bewildered by what had just happened.
Oh shit!—she thought stupidly. I have the hiccups.
She blinked again and discovered that she was slumped back, tits jiggling to a rest after having been jerked mightily by the hiccup. Or else they were jiggling because she had just shifted her weight... Either way:
She felt good.
“Uuuuh… Whoa...”
She had no idea what she had been about to say, do, or anything. A dopey smile spread out beneath her heavily hooded eyes as she thought: Maybe... though, maybe it’s okay... Maybe it’s all just part of my pose.
Andrew smiled wickedly and glanced around. He had seen her touch herself and knew he was almost home free. If she’s so far gone that she’ll sneak a finger between her legs in public…
“Oh, I see,” he said, “you’re majoring in getting fucked up.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he waved his hand. A hiccup rocked her violently, jostling her tits, cutting her off. “No, no,” he said gently, jokingly, “I understand, I understand. I would too, if I were in your position. And of course that explains why you’re taking economics. You have to have to be pretty good with finances to be able to afford you can afford all that weed.”
“Shud up!” Ashley exclaimed, her smile a picture of drunken joy, followed by a loud hiccup.
She was now certain that she was in love with Andrew. But still, she felt compiled to deny his claim, joke or not.
“I… I don’…” She wanted to, but couldn’t. Because it was true.
Especially lately.
Just one more hit, girl! Come on!
Wishing she didn’t have to, she fought against the buzzing in her head, fought against the throbbing of her body, trying mightily to come up with a serious excuse, or… barring that, a good flirty joke in response. “…I… I’m jus’… um… <HUP!> … Uh, tha’s jus’...” What was the word? “… Tha’s jus’ my minor.” She giggled. “My major’z... <HIC!> uh... I... I mean, I’m major’n in some’in’ else <HIC!> entah’r’ly!” She barely managed to get this out before she was gripped by a giggle-fit so severe that she had to sit forward and let her head flop down to rest on her left arm.
Convinced that her joke was the perfect reproach, she imagined Andrew’s devastated, outsmarted face, leaning in slobberingly to suck her famous titties.
“Who’s the smarty-monkey now?” She imagined herself shouting down at his slobberingmonkey-face. “Huh, monkey-boy? Huh?”
“You’re so predictable!” She would cry, holding her boobs up for his mouth. “Here ya go, monkey. Suck’m!”
Andrew was laughing along with her. From his perspective across from her, she was just giggling stupidly into the table, forehead to forearm, her disheveled mess of hair trembling with mirth. He flicked his gaze across the room toward Aubrey’s table. Although he had seen her casting occasional glares his direction, for the most part she seemed to be pointedly ignoring him. At the precise moment he looked over she was talking with her friends, holding a half-full pint of dark beer (looked like stout), and looking like she was having a wonderful time without a single thought of Andrew. An act, surely.
His attention was pulled back to Ashley as she swung upright, her motions loose and sloppy, tears of laughter in the corners of her hooded eyes. Her flushed face was shining merrily. She looked like the happiest girl-who-didn’t-know-when-to-hold-back on earth.
Then her face fell and her brow furrowed. “I thiiing’k ‘m jrung.” She swayed a little, as her face ran through a slow slideshow of emotions: serious concern, then amusement, then eager joy. She held up her glass. “Dis’sss <HURK!> (Oh <giggle!> esscu’s me)… dis beer’zz really really good, bu’ fiiiiill me up?” Her brain was skipping words. Since she was holding her glass she took a deep draught, so as not to appear too... something. A little beer dribbled out of the corners of her mouth and onto the table. “Mmm.” She lowered the glass so she could hiccup, and then took another draught. “Mmm.” When she lowered the glass it was almost empty. “Mmm. Yum. Bu’... yah cuz…<URK!>” She peered at Andrew with the smiling, stupefied intimacy of an upbeat drunk, and spoke in a monotone slur: “Cuz... cuz I <HIC-urk!> cuz I kinna wanna ge’m goh inna nizz beer<HIC!> sozz I kin—”
“Yeah, I’m positive,” replied Andrew with cool confidence, cutting her off when he realized that she had slid into gibberish. “I do it all the time,” he lied. “A few pints are as good as a meal.” He chuckled. “Don’t lie… You’re not nearly as hungry as you were before you started drinking are you?”
Ashley shrugged loosely and swayed, caught herself with her free hand, then straightened. It was true, she supposed. But it seemed odd… drinking beer for lunch. It had seemed okay to her before, she knew that much. Something had convinced her of its being a good idea before, but for the life of her she could not now think of what it had been. Something about…
Her mind’s eye tit-sucking Andrew reappeared. He pulled back from her tits and looked up into her face with that mad lustful intensity that she found so intriguing. “Mind over monkey, baby.” He said.
Oh yeah! Fuck yeah!
She grinned at Andrew. She hiccupped loudly, then lifted her glass again to gulp down the rest of her nutritious lunch-beer. She carefully let her tongue do what it did best: get out of the way.
“Mm… mm… mm…” she said, after each swallow. It tasted so good.
Beer was hella awesome.
........
Part 23 ½
“She’s got the hiccups now,” announced David, Andrew and Ashley’s faux-hawked waiter, pushing his way back into Quincy’s bustling kitchen. “You can hear her all the way in the bar.”
A small semi-circle of waiters, sipping waters and sodas, chatting, wasting time in between trips out onto the floor, stood splayed around the soda fountain just to the left of the door David had come through. If you kept walking past them you would enter the main kitchen area with the sou chef line on the right, the dessert chef line on the left and the grills and head chef straight on.
“The babe at table 15?” asked Alex, one of the waiters, a tall blue-eyed lanky Russian immigrant who was notoriously excitable. When David nodded, Alex whooped and slapped his thigh.
David had been keeping everyone posted, and most of them had been finding excuses to make casual trips that took them alongside Table 15 whenever they could. excitedly.
David grabbed a glass and scooped himself some ice from the tray below the soda fountain. “Yup, the pitcher’s just about gone and so is she.”
“Oh!” Alex cried, slapping his thigh again. “This girl’s incredible! Just incredible!”
“You guys are gross,” sniped Andrea, the hostess, as she passed by quickly on her way back to the floor from the breakroom.
“But you love us anyway,” Alex called after her. She flashed a glare over her shoulder before disappearing out the door.
An older waiter named Jim, standing amongst the others, was looking at Alex with amusement in his eyes. He had just come on his shift a few minutes before, so he had no idea what was going on. “What the hell did I just walk into the middle of?” he asked skeptically.
“Just some dumb college kids,” muttered one of the other waiters.
“No, no. Not just any dumb college kids,” exclaimed Alex, punching the air. “It’s this gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous chick who came in awhile ago with this guy. She’s basically barely dressed, okay? Chest out to here... ” He held up a hand parallel with his ribs, about twelve inches out. “Figure like...” His hands traced an hourglass. Jim’s eyes widened. “...Yeah,” Alex nodded. “See what I’m sayin’? So she comes in with this guy and all they get for lunch is a pitcher of IPA...”
“Which IPA?”
Alex scoffed. “Does it matter?”
“And they smell like a Reggae Festival,” added another of the waiters.
Alex slapped his thigh again. “Yes! Exactly. Their own private Hemp Fest goin’ on out there. And they’ve just been sitting there drinking ever since.”
Jim was furrowing his brow. He shrugged. “So... it’s a hot girl drinking beer. And? So what? We see that every day pretty much. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that Alex has a thing for sodden brunettes with Triple D’s,” joked David. “It reminds him of his Russian heritage.” Laughter went up.
“Hey man, shut up. Not true, okay? Not true,” retorted Alex, with a smile that belied his rebuttal playing on his lips. Pointing at Jim he said, “You just haven’t seen this girl, man. She’s incredible. I swear. A 10. A fucking 10. An 11, even! Swear to God. She makes me wish I were single again.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t!” someone cried, laughing.
Alex held his hands out in front of his body, crossed at the wrists like he was wearing shackles and bowed his head. The laughter went louder.
“She is a real piece of work, though,” said David as he rested against the drink-prep counter. He had filled his glass with Pepsi and was sipping it. He had less than a minute left to burn before he would need to greet his newest table, drop off drink orders to one of his other tables, and then be back to the kitchen for the food order for another table: he prided himself on his internal clock. It never failed him. “She’s seriously a walking Jessica Rabbit,” he added.
“Really?” Jim was stroking his chin, looking around at the other waiters, who were nodding agreement. “Table 15 you said?”
“Yep,” David finished off his Pepsi in a gulp, then he shoved off from the counter and started to back his way toward the door, planning to spin around and jet out to greet his new table just as soon as he finished his sentence. “Come on out and take a look. You won’t be--Whoops!”
He had backed into someone. He spun around. “I’m sorry, I... Oh...”
It was the manager.
........
Part 24
Maybe it was the cold of the beer as it massaged her throat on its way to fill her already full belly, or maybe it was the relaxed glow of her pussy or the buzzing of her clit as her body-high simmered luxuriantly amid the throbbing, or maybe it was the small amount of the exact opposite of these things that was still left in her consciousness; but whatever it was, in a flashAshley remembered her major.
It was so obvious that she felt a warm glow of guilty embarrassment at having been so forgetful. She so knew it. So knew it. Well, or at least now she did.
Mind over monkey, baby!
Exactly right.
Pulling her glass away from her lips and holding it aloft, she shouted: “Ha! M’r’gah’ding!” eyes closed tight. Opening them she located Andrew (he was starting to blur quite badly) and stabbed a triumphant finger at him. “Tha’s my<HURK!> my mah’jur! Yay, I ‘memmered! Mar’gin’n.” She frowned. “Marrrgahding,” she tried again. “Mar’agnning.” Her tongue was refusing to speak the word clearly, so she decided not to worry about it. “I ‘memmbered it,” she gloated.
Andrew did a mocking golf-clap. “So you did. Nicely done. Nicely done.”
“Yah... I...” A wave of laughter came from the direction of the bar, pulling Ashley’s attention away from Andrew and out at the still busy restaurant: the new occupants of the table next to theirs kept staring at her, just like the last ones.
A slightly embarrassed giggle leaked out of her, then: “<HIC!>...” she was rocked back and had to close her eyes tight and hold onto the table for balance.
“Marketing, huh?” Andrew said. Every girl with half a head on her shoulders but no idea what she really wants to do, picks marketing for their major: it’s the female equivalent of a business degree. “I should have guessed. If you want to be famous, then... obviously, marketing’s the smart move.”
Ashley wasn’t listening: she was in the midst of realizing, with a vague sense of amused surprise, that she had kind of made a little bit of a spectacle of herself just then. Why am I all yelling... and stuff? She didn’t really know. Giggling and jiggling and flirting were all well and good, typical college experience stuff, but shouting at the top of her lungs? That was a bit much. But since she wasn’t sure what to do about it she decided that the best course of action was to giggle hard at herself and to let her tits jiggle freely, encouraging them to jiggle by rocking her upper body a little and feel them throb from the stimulation.
Seemed as good a course of action as any. And it had the added bonus of being flirtatious as hell.
“Marr’gah’ning,” she repeated proudly, between giggles, failing again to say it clearly, but remembering her major was the real issue here, wasn’t it? So why worry? She checked to see if Andrew was noticing her flirtatious breast jiggles.
He it seemed like he was. Good—she thought with a pleasant throb of her clit.
“Okay then,” Andrew went on, eyes drifting downward every few seconds, “so... you’re majoring in Marketing and minoring in getting fucked up...”
“<HIC-urk!>” Ashley’s smile slid from her face as she realized that her hiccups were hitting her harder than ever. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that. It seemed okay. But... maybe it was kind of... distracting? A little.
“... So you’re just an all-American...”
“<HIC!>” Her whole body bounced.
“... girl with a bright future ahead of her.”
...as a stripper—he thought ruefully. He couldn’t help but recall her performance in English 220. She had been so serene and astute (albeit stoned): how had that girl turned into the witless finger-sucking Marketing major he saw before him now? Maybe that other girl was still in there somewhere, buried under a supernova of weed smoke. Oddly, he couldn’t decide if he hoped that was the case or not.
Ashley, meanwhile, had an odd look on her face, halfway between mystified and pleased, her mouth hung slightly open and her hooded eyes were blank. Each hiccup was clearing out her train of thought entirely, leaving empty space... But... it felt... great, so she couldn’t muster up much interest in resisting it.
Just go with it, girl... Just go with the monkey...
“Ashley? Are you listening to me?”
Her expression didn’t change: her mind was on other things. More interesting things that were easier to think about. All this school stuff was super boring. Majors were boring. Once again she found herself thinking that she should try asking about smoking more of Andrew’s weed. About stepping out to the car and blazing up. About adding some of those special, mysterious drugs. She hiccuped hard again, forcing her to shift her weight forward heavily; which redirected her attention to her pint glass. She blinked down at it, then felt her smile return. She instantly forgotabout everything. Except: Beer! Beer wasn’t boring, not by a long shot. You’re supposed to fill up on beer. Right. Instantly she was lifting her glass to her lips and the last of the IPA was being sucked away by her numb monkey-throat to fill her up even fuller. There was a good five swallows worth left, she decided, determined to down it all.
For that paper I have to write... about whatever... Stick to the plan: fill up on beer then let bombshell language speak through me...
She lowered the glass a little after three swallows to quickly mumble, “‘Isss beer’z hella good,” around the glass to Andrew, without lifting her eyes from its depths. She knew he would understand that what she meant was that it was good for filling up on: just like she knew that he knew she wanted to do... for her paper, of course.
“Yes, it is,” Andrew agreed, taking a small sip his own while she swallowed and swallowed. “Nice and hoppy.”
Her glass now empty, Ashley clunked it down and licked her cold, cold lips with her even colder tongue.
“Aaaah!” she exhaled, lolling back lazily; the beer in her belly sloshing. “Now tha’…!” Sheemphatically pointed both fingers downwards at the empty glass, as if she were in some deranged commercial; sporting a lopsided grin and a tickle in the back of her throat from the spicy delicious IPA. “...tha’ss’um<HIC!>” The hiccup rocked her tits around on her ribs even more emphatically. Tits know what’s up. Fuck yeah, they did. “... tha’... isss’um fuggin’ nice-ass beer, dude,” she slurred. “Fur real. Fur real nice. So... <HIC-urk!>... <giggle!>... nice.”
Two kinds of beer in this world and what a lucky break for her that Andrew had the good shit on lock.
Andrew checked the pitcher to make sure it was completely empty. It was. “I’m glad you like it,” he said, “I figured you would...”
“Yah, ya did,” Ashley sassed stupidly, not sure whether that worked as a flirtatious statement or not, but hoping that it did. She wanted to flirt Andrew’s balls off. And she knew that he knew that she did. Which made it hot.
“Um…” Andrew wanted to keep things moving: Ashley was pretty blasted already (and it was still only early afternoon!) and he wasn’t really sure what to expect at this point. He honestly hadn’t considered the possibility that it would be this easy to get her so drunk. This much alcohol, on an empty-stomach no less, would have made anyone into a wild card, and when it was Ashley... Ashley who hardly seemed able to tie her shoes without being intensely erotic in some way or another and who was unmistakeably aroused and attracted to him, all thoughts of her boyfriend as gone as her bra it was an even wilder card. He needed to keep her occupied.He floundered for a lighthearted conversation topic while she looked on blankly.
“<HIC-urk!>... Jesus Chri’sss,” she mumbled. Hiccups were annoying!
Then he had it. “Man... I can’t believe Spring Break is coming up.”
“Spring Bring?” Ashley whispered; heart stopping at the rekindled memory.
“Yeah, Spring Break.” Andrew looked around for their waiter: another pitcher was in order. But there was no sign of him. “What is it? Two weeks away? Almost one and a half? And I don’t have anything planned at all. Last year I went on this gnarly camping trip, in the Rockies with... some buddies... “ He omitted their names since they were all guys who Ashley probably knew from hanging out at Raymond’s: no need to open that door. “... but shit, this year...” He shook his head. “I got nothin’ goin’ on. Probably just get high and play video games. What’re you going to be doing?” Of course, Andrew knew exactly what she was doing. For the last week she hadn’t be able to stop yammering about her trip to Cancun. Every chance she got she would brag to anyone who happened to be over at Raymond’s, sitting next to her on the couch passing the bong, all about how her Dad had bought her the tickets and the all-expense-paid hotel accommodations and everything, about how she was going to party her ass off and go completely crazy.
While Andrew spoke Ashley’s mind had been steadily filling with fantasy-images of the epic, totally awesome, Spring Break trip that was less than two weeks away. Then—
“<HIC!>” Her head rocked back and bounced off the booth seat, then lolled around on her limp neck: slumped down like she was, she was too relaxed to deal with hiccups of such force. But, she didn’t mind not being able to deal: In her mind’s eye she was frolicking on a sun-drenched beach, bong in hand, boys flocking around her, music thumping, her body so bikini-ready that the boys couldn’t keep their hands off of all the places they knew she wanted to have touched—
Andrew spotted their waiter making his way by and waved. “Hey, dude! We’ll... uh... we’ll take another pitcher here.”
“<HUCK!>” went Ashley, a blissful little grin on her face.
The waiter smiled and nodded, pausing to briefly admire Ashley’s post-hiccup jiggling breasts, then he leaned in quick to grab the empty pitcher off their table. “Sure thing. Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”
Ashley had barely noticed the waiter: exhilaration was gripping her so hard that her beery brain was doing cartwheels, her eyes crossing slightly.
“Oh... my... gaaawd,” she breathed, overcome with joy. She dragged herself up from her slouch so she could frantically and uncrossed her eyes. “Fug, dude,” she mumbled, looking around in a joyous daze. Sitting up was nice, but... it wasn’t enough. She started to bounce up and down, using the springy cushion of the booth like a trampoline under her butt: it was the only way to adequately exhibit the joy she was feeling... “<HIC-up!!!>” ...the joy of a child on Christmas that was rushing over her and through her and bouncing her like crazy, unstoppable...
Spring Break this year is going to be the absolute fucking pinnacle of awesomeness! Yay!
“<HIC-up!>” Excited little giggles were bubbling out of her and her fingers were clenched into little fists of joy that she lifted and pumped in front of her like she was using tiny free-weights.
“Whoa there,” Andrew said, reaching out a hand to attempt to steady her. He caught hold of one of her fists. It was as hot as a car engine. Jeez—he thought—she’s generating a shitload of heat. “Calm down, okay? Ash? Apparently this beer is a little too hoppy.” He flashed a smile, but knew she wouldn’t get the joke. “You’re about to hop right out of your shirt.”
“Oh... my...<HIC!>... gawd, dude!” Ashley cried, stopping her bouncing and grinning as hard as she could, not getting his joke, because her brain was filled to the brim with delight at her wonderful father and his wonderful tickets to wonderful Cancun. She was the luckiest girl on the planet! On any planet! “<HIC-up!>” Alien girls didn’t have Dads as awesome as hers!
Then she managed to calm down a little and she let herself sink back into her slumped posture of beer-filled languid throbbing, her eyes struggling to focus on Andrew. Stupid eyes... “Ooooh... mah.... gawd, dude,” she said again, because Andrew just had to understand. “I’m sooooo friggin’ <HIC!>… Whoa…” Had her hiccups always been this intense?—she wondered distractedly. That one had shaken her whole upper body back like a bomb had gone off in her chest cavity. She decided after a brief moment’s consideration that whether or not they had always been so intense, she still had to keep talking. “... I… I... um...” It took her a second to reorient. “Um, bu’ so... yah... anyways. Yah, I'm soooo friggin’ eg’sided you <HIC-up!> you don’ efen... li’g... know. Fur real. Fur... fur Cancun, I mean.” She wasn’t sure what she meant, actually, but... whatever. Andrew probably did.
“Mm-hmm,” agreed Andrew with a smile, as if she hadn’t already told him that exact same thing a thousand times already. “Cancun is real. I take it you’re going to Cancun for Spring Break? Is that what I should take from your little bouncing fit?”
“Yah. Fug yah.” Ashley knew that even if Andrew didn’t know exactly how excited she was... still... he did understand: he understood everything. Literally.
She beamed at him, wishing suddenly that she could bring him along to Cancun. He would certainly know which tasty beers to order. The thought of beer made her glance at her glass, which sat empty in front of her.
Empty—she thought.
Sucky...
So she continued along in the same vein as before, unable to think of anything else: “Yah, Spring Bring is gonna… <giggle>… <HIC!>... I mean... uh... I mean Spring... Bragk… Breeh-kk…<giggle>… (shorry, I cannaught talk righ’ now. Li’g, at all.)” He understands—she told herself—don’t worry, he understands. “Bu’ so yah, iz gonna be zo <HIC!> zo friggin’ sweet. I’m... I’m hella eg’sided.” She hiccuped again, as hard as ever. “Jeshus,” she slurred under her breath: these hiccups are hardcore.
Andrew mimicked a thoughtful expression. “You know... I’ll bet there’ll be plenty of opportunities to become famous down there in Cancun,” he said, as if just thinking of it.
Infamous, at least.
But Ashley wasn’t paying attention to him, she was lost in her own head.
Spring Break, pinnacle. Cancun, hot. Me, bikini-ready. Tasty beers and throbbing music in your throbbing body-high body.
A dozen summer’s worth of MTV Spring Break programming were sparkling and dancing before her hooded eyes: girls in sexy bikini’s doing whipped cream shooters, cute boys in speedos and sunglasses, delicious and plentiful beer being passed out like water in the desert, wild dancing, heat, music, fun, love, sex… She remembered in a flash that first summer getting high at her Dad’s: watching MTV after smoking a joint, wishing she was down there in the sun-crisped, beer-drenched wonderland.
In another flash, she remember that she was talking to Andrew: “Izz... izz so to’ally beautiful in Can’goon,” she murmured dreamily, trying to anticipate Andrew’s reaction using the reactions of all the other people she had told about her upcoming totally amazing hella awesome trip. If he was anything like all those other people... he’d... he’d... <HIC-upp!!>... … … … “an’ tha’s wha’zz onn’f the, li’g<HIC!>... Gawd,” she gave Andrew a pouty face, “Deeess fuggin’ hiccugs, dude.” She shook her head. He shook his head back, nodding symphathically. She smiled: she hadknown that he would understand! Then she returned to the important topic. “Bu’… so... yah… it’s so beu’ful tha’ you’re jus’... <HIC-up!>... li’g... li’g you see it an’ yer li’g: ‘Wow’, you know? An’… you jus’ cannaught help bu’ walg ‘rownd inna <HIC!> inna big’ini.” She beamed at the mental image. “You thin’gk I’ll loog <URK!>... <giggle!> good inna... inna bigini, Andrew?”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“<URK!>... Huh?”
“I do.”
“Oh... Me too. Loogit!… <giggle!>… See?” She pulled down her halter-top a few inches to showhim the rich, copper tan of her boobs, even though there no need since a great deal of her skin was already visible. She told herself she was flirting and left it at that. “See?” She giggled as Andrew’s eyes stared. What a predictable monkey-boy he is. He wants to suck on these bombshell babies so bad... “See?” she cooed, “I been<URK!> I been workin’ on my… my...<URK!> See?” She applied pressure, partly for Andrew’s benefit, partly for her own. Her tan cleavage bulged. “I been workin’ on my tan fer, li’g, weeks an’ weeks. <URK!> I been worgin’ onid wi’t Sunny <HIC!>.. Sunny’n me ge’ stoned an’ tan. See?”
“Yeah, I see.” Andrew cleared his throat. “Must have been hard work.”
“Huh?”
“Joke.”
“Oh! <giggle!>” Andrew was so funny! Her clit soared and sang so hard that she couldn’t stop herself from putting her left hand innocently in her lap, or from imagining herself running on the beach, bouncing in slow motion, with Andrew. “Yah... sush hard worg!” she scoffed, “I had ta li’g, jus’ lie there in the tanning bed an’ jus’… li’g… lie there… <giggle!>.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
She blinked.
“Joke, again.”
“Oh! <giggle!>… I ge’ it!”
The gravity of her clit was pulling at her fingers. Her left hand inched up her thigh. Closer and closer. She resisted half-heartedly.
“They’ve got killer pot down there too,” Andrew pointed out.
“Fug yah, they do. Leh’s jus’ say tha’ I<URK!>... tha’ it’s be a… gonna be a fuggin’ cool trip,” she slurred. She was concentrating on keeping her fingers off herself. It was very difficult. “<URK!>”
She looked around blearily, trying to remind herself of their public surroundings. It was as if her frontal lobe was trying to say to Miss Brain Stem and Miss Body: that is why you can’t play with yourself… Look at this crowded restaurant. Look at it! “<HIC-URK!>” And, as usual, the frontal lobe was right. She couldn’t just… do what she wanted. She wasn’t famous yet. But in the meantime it was a matter of… of monkey principles wasn’t it? It was one of those... principle of thing... things: even though it would feel amazing the urge should be resisted.
“<HICCUP!>”
If I were famous I could just squirt all over this table. That was the wrong thing to think, it made it all the harder to resist. The image that came to mind—of her with her legs propped up on the table, rubbing herself to a squirting orgasm while Andrew and that waiter played with her tits—was so sexy that it made Miss Brain Stem shiver like a leaf in a gale-force wind.
With an almost inaudible grunt she pulled her hands out of her lap. There.
Mind over monkey...
“Yeah, it’s too bad there isn’t an MTV reality show for you to enroll in,” Andrew joked, unaware of the battle over principles that had just been waged: “You know, to get famous the 21st century way. You want to talk about ‘monkey’? Now that shit’s monkey as shit. They’d get those cameras to follow you around and there’d be some stupid challenges for you to do… You know, like… how many beers can you chug in an hour, that kind of thing.” He watched her slack face as it slowly lit up, as he knew it would. “…it’d be called something like… I dunno… ‘Ashley MacPherson’s Reality Spring Break’. They’d put your face on t-shirts”
Christmas joy bubbled up in Ashley again. “Shut up!” she exclaimed, half disbelieving. “Yes! Yerso righ’! Tha’d be fuggin’ awesome!”
“I thought you’d like that.” Andrew chuckled.
The waiter arrived at the table. “Here you guys are. Another pitcher. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said, then quickly vanished.
Andrew finished off his glass then refilled both his and Ashley’s.
“Here ya go,” he said.
“Here ya go, monkey.”
Ashley was staring into space, hooded eyes unfocused and dreamy.
“Ash?”
She didn’t respond. Her head was filled with visions of herself smoking pot from a huge MTV bong, swilling the most delicious IPA in the world to level out the high, and giggling for the MTV camera crews that would surrounded her, filming her like Andrew’s cell phone only better; interviewing her about the cute guys she was fucking whenever she wanted and challenging her to take an even bigger a hit. Just one more hit girl! Come on! You call that a hit? Bigger! So awesome. The producers of the show would come up between takes and dribble extra drugs on the bowl out of a dropper (you wouldn’t be able to show that on TV). “Here ya go, monkey!”—they’d say and she’d smoked it up and smile and flirt with them, so good with monkeys that they wouldn’t be able to resist... anything.
“Ash?”
“Wha’?” Ashley somehow managed to refocus her eyes on Andrew. Remember your monkey-principles, she told herself. Keep it together.
Mind over monkey.
“You okay?”
“Ooo,” she blew out a quick breath. “Iss jus’…<HUCK!>’Sis IPA’s goin’ to my head,” she slurred sheepishly. An admission like this at a party would usually give rise to a wave of jeers and laughter, but she couldn’t help it: it was the truth.
“Already?” Andrew chuckled, sipping his. “Lightweight.”
“Shut up!” Ashley cried at the blurry Andrew, dull anger flashing. “I am a fuggin’ ligh’weighd. I know id, ogay?” Andrew thought he was such a smarty, didn’t he?—she thought. “I have, li’g… fuggin’… three beerz’n I’m blas’ded.” But then she giggled, unable to stay angry. She finally saw that she had a refilled glass of beer in front of her. “Oh, shid yah, more IPA!” she cried, as if what she had just said didn’t exist. She plucked up the up glass loosely and took a quick sip. “Mmmm.” Her eyes rolled back behind her heavy lids, then returned to Andrew. She waggled her eyebrows. “Hey, ‘memmer Halloween laz’ year? Ohmyfuggin’gawd! Where I god jus’… li’g… soto’lly shithoused it wasn’n efen funny?”
She was beaming, having decided to hold her beer with both hands like a burger to prevent any from escaping over the sides.
Andrew sipped his beer, looking at her warily. “Um... sure, I remember. That was a crazy night.”
“Yah, it fuggin’ was. I was li’g… so shidhoused by li’g fuggin’ noon cuz…” She sipped her beer. “… cuz Sunny kept pourin’ doh’se shots fer me. Mem’er? Wha’ were we jrinkin’ again?”
“Oh right. Absolute Pear?” Andrew chuckled, “You were dressed as a Playboy Bunny, as I recall.”
“I made a fuggin’ great... Playboy Bunny,” Ashley declared, thinking of Kendra suddenly. Kendra was a great Playboy Bunny, too. “‘Memmer my cute li’l bunny-ears?”
“I remember.” Although, truth be told, what he remembered most was her cute big tits. “You looked like the real deal, for sure. Oh, hey… your hiccups are gone.”
“They’re go-o-o-one!” Ashley sang, doing a little shimmy-dance. Beer slopped out of her pint glass. “Shid.” She leaned down and tried to slurp at the spilled beer on the tabletop, then sat back up and cried: “I was a fuggin’ hot Play-bunny, huh?”
“That's right.” Hearing a slight commotion off to his right Andrew glanced over and saw a cluster of waiters across the room watching them, a tall dark-haired one was pointing at Ashley and then slapping his thigh with excitement. What the hell? “I... um... I also remember you dancing around with some chick who was dressed as Spongebob Squarepants.”
“Ohmygawd! Tha’ was Gina! She was so wasted. Memmer? Sunny was all… She was all… li’g: ‘if Gina ge’s anymore wasted she’s gonna have ta…’ No, no… She sa’: ‘we’ll haffa carry her home!’ Memmer? An’ we did!” She slapped the table, slopping more beer out of her glass. “Wehadda carry her home!”
“I’m pretty sure we had to carry both of you home. Which was fine by me, I never knew that those little one-piece black things that you bunnies wear are so… precariously positioned. You kept popping out of it.” It had been a night that had lived in Andrew’s jerk-off fantasies for a long time.
Ashley’s peals of laughter were so loud that even people who hadn’t already been curious about the sloshed antics of the big-boobed girl with no bra, now were unable to resist taking a look.
“I waz poppin’ out, wazz’n I!!?” Ashley could no longer determine the volume of her voice. She was practically shouting, but to her it just seemed like an appropriate level for expressing herself. “I, li’g, fell outta my cos’ume li’g every two second’zz, huh? I fell outta id when we were at thad …” she struggled with her sentence, “atta thad… thad… bar too, huh?” Success! “My boobz were all…” Ashley’s boobs were suddenly commandeered by her roughly grasping hands to pantomime their Halloween exploits, but since a pantomime of such a thing was technically impossible this meant that she simply grabbed her boobs and, for some reason, pulled on them.
Although this baffled Andrew there was, in Ashley’s befuddled mind, a perfectly good reason: because they were numb, and she wanted to be able to feel them.
With both hands gripping and tugging: She did feel them.
“Oh…” Her eyes crossed as the nerves in her breasts communicated blearily with her brain. Fireworks of pleasure went off and her lips quivered uncontrollably. The pulling turned into squeezing. “Ooh my gawd,” she breathed. Now she was seeing double from her crossed eyes: she closed them and continued in the dark. “Ooooh yah.”
“Uh, Ashley?”
“Oooo, shid. Ooooo shid yah…” A shiver went up and then down Ashley’s spine, originating in her blood-engorged groin, traveling to her beer-filled head and back again. Her back arched, thrusting her tits out into her enthusiastic hands. “Oh gawd.”
“Ashley, stop that.” It was a forceful whisper, but somehow still gentle. "That’s how we get kicked out of here. Come on. There are people looking. "
“Shorry,” she slurred with a giggle, finally opening her eyes. They barely opened.
She released herself and slid toward the corner of the booth. She hoped it had just been a dream; that she had been only fantasizing about pulling on her tits here in this lunch-packed restaurant. She looked around again. A girl seated a nearby table was looking right at her, shock on her face. More people were looking too. Ashley giggled. She was less embarrassed than amused, but she was aware that what she had done was against a great many monkey-principles. Surely it was.
“Look, maybe we should be getting going,” Andrew said. His plan was far enough along now: there was no need to keep it up. Time for the next phase.
Ashley squinted at him. He was so blurry that even squinting was no help. “No, no, no, no!” she exclaimed forcefully, convinced that he was trying to trick her somehow. The beer was here, she thought slyly. He’s trying to get me to betray the monkey-principle: waste not, want not! “Le’s stay awhile longer. I… I haven’n finished my beer ye’!” She snatched it up, slopping even more onto the table. “An’ there’z a whole nother, fuggin’… pidcher,” she sipped the beer casually. “Ya know? Was tha' thing they say? Wass’ nahd <giggle!>… wan’ nahd, right?”
Andrew sighed. “Okay… We’ll finish our beers and then…”
But Ashley didn’t care what else he had to say. They could stay and finish the beer.
Who was the smarty now? Why... her, of course!
Giggling, she lifted her glass to take a nice long, triumphant drink.
........
Part 25
Sunny’s eyes slowly opened. She was looking straight up at a big, swirling cloud of colors that vaguely resembled a ceiling fan: but not a normal one. It was huge.
Where am I?—she thought, her pretty face set in a puzzled look.
And what am I doing here?
She looked down at herself and discovered that she was naked.
Where are my clothes?
She looked back up.
What is that thing?
Her mind was working incredibly fast but her body was still not responding.
Or… no…
She lifted her arm and looked at it with an expression of dreamy bewilderment. Her body was responding fine. She just couldn’t quite wrap her mind (wrap her mind!) around the crazy-thought-structure that would get it move. Get it work.
Where am I?
With what seemed like incredible effort she managed to sit up.
The room she was in was approximately the same size as her own apartment bedroom and had a mirror on the ceiling and a door and a big flat-screen television was mounted on the wall. Posters of Metallica, Korn, Tool, and The Deftones were plastered all over. On a desk was laptop. In front of the laptop was a man with a goatee playing a video game.
The monumental task of figuring out how to sit up had exhausted her and she flopped back on the bed.
The sound of it alerted the man that she was awake. He turned around.
“Hey babe,” he said smiling.
She stared at him in total confusion. His face was sliding backwards into the walls, into the posters: it was a slip-and-slid of color and shape that was all sliding, sliding, sliding.
Oh.
She smiled.
It was Todd.
Her boyfriend.
This was his room. She had been her hundreds of times.
Had tripped balls here hundreds of times.
Her smile got wider as she put the pieces together with great effort.
She could now remember the plastic baggie filled with shrooms. A full ounce of them.
She could now remember eating them like candies (she had, years ago, grown fond of the strange texture and acrid taste) as Todd laughed and told her to go easy.
Todd was getting up from his desk and walking over to her. He was moving in slow motion it seemed.
It seemed... to seem slow...
He knelt by the bed and smoothed a hand over Sunny’s blonde dreadlocks, which were thick and clean like wrapped strings of yarn.
With his face this close she could see every pore on his nose sliding backwards into a huge Metallica poster. Lars Ulrich’s grimacing face shone like a sun from over Todd’s left shoulder.
“Don’t try to talk, babe.” Todd was saying. His voice sounded like a Moog synthesizer.
She kept smiling at him. She loved him with a depth and intensity that no one else could know. It was chemically enhanced love.
He was lifting up a small plastic bong. His bong. Its name was… She couldn’t remember.
“You want to smoke a bowl out of Rupert?” Todd asked.
Rupert. She smiled harder than ever.
She nodded.
That had been hours ago.
Now Sunny strode slowly, holding onto Todd for direction, through Applewood Park. She was still tripping hard: she would probably be tripping until tomorrow. Mellowed by a few bowls from Rupert she and Todd were heading back to her apartment.
“You think Ashley’ll be there?” Todd asked as they entered the lobby.
“No…” Sunny murmured, eying the sleek, polish floor—it looked like a sheet of whirling ice, the walls were dripping out onto the ice-floor and the ice-floor was somehow also dripping up the walls—she giggled.
“No?”
“No… She’ll be… she’ll… she’ll be at... at Raymonds… I think…”
Her thoughts were like a Rubik’s Cube: things rolling and moving around a center, trying to line up into a mysterious pattern of comprehension. “No… no… … wait…”
They were at the elevator. Todd hit the button. He waited patiently as Sunny closed her eyes, smiling, giggling, thinking: he had babysat her while she tripped so many time he had lost count of the number. He had been a little freaked out when she ate the entire bag of shrooms. But… then again, he had gotten freaked out when she snorted a two foot line of Ketamine on their first date three years ago, back when they were both bumming around Europe after graduating from their respective high schools. They had meet at a hash-bar in Amsterdam, went to a club, and (after the Special K for her and an eighth of shrooms for him) spent the night in a hostel passionately fucking while a trio of shy Japanese girls on vacation hid under their blankets across the room. Yep, Sunny was crazy. Crazy like a fox.
“… No… She has a… uh… a paper… to do… she definitely has a paper… to do…” Sunny’s mind wandered off as they entered the elevator.
“Gotcha, babe,” said Todd, selecting the floor, “when we get up there, let me do the talking.”
“Okay.” Sunny was staring at the elevator lights, smiling, “But… you know… it’s… it’s cool… it’s cool cuz… Ashley’s cool.”
“Gotcha.”
When they arrived at the apartment the door stood wide open.
“What the fuck?” Todd asked.
“Whoa,” Sunny said, but she was looking at the carpet.
“Is that my tenet?” Came a raspy voice from inside the apartment. It was Mr. Bigelow, the apartment manager.
“Shit.” Todd grasped Sunny’s wrist and pushed her, as gently as possible, out of sight. “Nah, Mr. B… its me, Todd.”
“Todd?” Mr. Bigelow appeared, sauntering out of the living room into the entry-hall. “Where’s Ashley? Your girlfriend?”
“No, Mr. B, I’m Sunny’s girlfriend… I mean… boyfriend.”
Mr. Bigelow was heavyset with the shaved head of a balding man unwilling to accept the fact, his face was shrewd and his eyes beady, like a small woodland animal: he was a notoriously unpredictable manager; sometimes he was incredibly cool and laid-back, other times he would flip his lid over the oddest things. He had evicted one tenet for sneezing, or so the story went. He was dressed bizarrely in black slacks, a Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops.
He looked Todd up and down. “You seen your girlfriend today? She and her little friend apparently wandered off and left their apartment open.” He made a show of sniffing the air. “Probably they got a tad too stoned off their… marijuana… and forgot the close the door.”
Todd shrugged, his mind racing.
Sunny, sensing a problem brewing, had shuffled off down the hall and around the corner, deciding to see what kind of cool visuals she could discover at her friend Gina’s, who lived on this floor. Todd would know where to find her.
To be continued...
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