No Sex
Ellen sat at her dorm room desk, virtually in tears, her crumpled calculus homework sitting in a wadded ball to the side after she swiped the desktop clear so she could put her head down. Everything was going wrong. Everything was failing to shape up to the right college experience and she knew it was her own damn fault. She’d sensed for years, since puberty, that the family values her parents drilled into her were false and harmful, but the personal habits of a lifetime were hard to break. She remained stiff and formal around boys. She retained that slightly condescending tone in her voice when sex came up. It was her mother’s tone. Channeling through her, her mother’s tone and attitude put the kibosh on every chance Ellen had to come out just a little from under her shell. Her clothes, her manner of speech, her gut reaction to sexual situations, all of it was wrong and she was helpless to stop it. How did one reverse a split-second gut reaction built up over a lifetime? What hope was there if she couldn’t?
Joanna came in. Her assigned roommate, Joanna was a much freer person. And since they’d been forced to spend so much time together, Joanna had a better inkling of who Ellen was than the rest of the campus who only saw the formless sweaters, the down-the-nose gaze, the slight stiffening at a sex joke.
“Hey, what’s wrong there?” Joanna asked her.
“Oh, I, it’s just nothing. You know. Meeting guys. Guys who can tolerate me.”
“I told you you just have to do a chill image,” Joanna said. “And maybe get a new outfit.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Ellen said. “I know I come off as prudish. Maybe I am a bit. We can’t all be sex-crazed dirt-bags. But I’m not some timid church mouse! I just come off that way. Maybe I’m not going to be a stripper, but I wouldn’t mind fooling around at least a little bit!”
“Well, maybe striking terms like dirt-bags from your vocabulary would help,” Joanna said, just a touch testily.
“Oh jeez!” Ellen sobbed, burying her face in her arms for a moment. “That just pops out!”
“Have you thought about just throwing caution to the wind and going for it? Put on the skimpiest thing you do have, maybe that purple blouse with the black skirt, head down to McFurdins, and see who’ll pick you up? Even odds say it’ll be another virgin boy from our own class.”
“And crabs if it’s not,” Ellen said. “Oh jeez, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“Alright, I was reading something in psych class last week. Maybe you need to, let’s see if I can remember this, maybe you need to latch onto something, real or otherwise, and say that you’ll improve for the sake of that thing or person or whatever.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, like my brother did this once. I think it’s the same thing. He put up some cheesecake poster on his wall. And whenever he didn’t want to do his workout routine, he just said to himself that he had to do it for her sake, so he could compete with the guys that she would actually date. He knew damn well he wouldn’t ever actually meet her, but he just used that as a mental excuse. Whenever he felt like slacking, he’d look at the poster and do it for her.”
“Well, teen boys will do that,” Ellen said.
“Yeah, and he put on twenty-five pounds of muscle his senior year and dated a cheerleader. The point is, find something, anything, and just put your motivation all onto that thing or idea or whatever.”
“I’ll try anything. It sounds harmless. But what? I’m not putting half-naked guy posters on my walls. That’s just a bit much for now.”
“Okay, okay. I’ve got a goofy idea. Maybe it will work, maybe it will be just something silly that girls do. Are you in?”
“Maybe, what is it?”
“Now, you’re definitely not into the whole church thing, right?”
“No. Intellectually I’ve given that all up. I just have the old habits and attitudes.”
“Good. Then let’s head over to the library. It’s Friday night, and if I’m not drinking, I’m at least doing something weird.”
The two girls hurried out and across campus. Along the way, Ellen read some of the hundreds of #MeToo posters and fliers for the upcoming rally for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Lattice-King College had never had too big of a problem with sexual assaults and such, and the student body had been oddly welcoming even to untraditional sexual practices like the GLBTQ club. Odd for a formerly Christian school. Ellen was happily re-assured by the upcoming rallies. She was trying desperately to shed some inhibitions, and it was nice to know she probably wouldn’t be set upon by ravenous guys looking to exploit her.
At Fischer Library, Joanna led them up to the fourth-floor collections and to the book she obviously had in mind. The two of them were virtually alone up there, and Ellen was a tad dismayed at what she was looking at.
“An occult book? A spell book? Really?” she asked.
“Why not? It doesn’t have to be a real spell, right? Just something to latch your thoughts and ambitions to. You can tell yourself, ‘I must loosen up and embrace two percent of my inner sluttiness because the spell allows it.’”
Ellen laughed a bit at Joanna’s hammy intonation, but figured why not? “Alright, we’re here. Do you have one in mind?”
“I was looking up something for my folklore class, but I spotted one that I think might work.” She flipped through the pages. “Here we are.”
Ellen looked, trying to read the gothic typeset used. ‘Processe Usede in the Oppenning of ye Female Minde to SEXUALE Awakeninges’ It was under a single page in length. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
“Let’s get a study room so we can speak louder,” Joanna said. A few minutes later they were seated at a table. The book was open.
“It looks like I’m supposed to just repeat this long incantation,” Ellen said. “And then, I guess I’ll feel loosened up.”
“It says the spell lasts until ‘Reliefe is Acquirede’,” Joanna observed. “Or until someone uses the counter spell in the appendix. Well, I don’t think it will come to that.”
“No,” Ellen said, laughing. “Alright. Wow, this would cheese Mom off like nobody’s business. Doing a Satanic Ritual to loosen up my loins.”
“Yeah. Okay, just start reading here.”
Slowly, speaking phonetically, Ellen began to recite the words on the page. It sounded like Latin sort of, but she didn’t know enough Latin to really know. It could have been Swahili for all she knew. It wasn’t like the spell would actually do anything. It was for her psychological motivation, nothing more. Certainly nothing seemed to be happening even as she approached the end of the incantation. She read the last of the sounds and stopped.
“Hmm. Okay, I don’t feel any different. But I’m supposed to latch onto this as motivation for, for, Joanna?”
“Ellen,” Joanna said, pointing to her chest, “What are you doing?”
Ellen looked down. She was wearing a button-up blouse that day, and in the brief moments she was speaking to Joanna she’d been unbuttoning it, and was halfway down. “Oh! Well. Huh! How about that,” she said. “Well, I guess I may as well finish the job!”
“Whoa, hold on!” Joanna said, but Ellen ignore her. She wanted out of that hideous blouse. She’d bought it at the church garage sale and probably belonged to some old biddy. It had no place on a hot, nubile young college girl, so she wanted it off her. And same with the ugly bra. Bras needed to be lacy and thin or ignored entirely.
“Ellen, stop it!” Joanna tried to tell her.
“No, this is my one real chance,” Ellen said, standing up so she could get her skirt out of the way by tossing it in the trashcan. “I cam get past all the Christian brainwashing in one fell swoop. I just need to find the right guy. Or guys. Or fraternity. Or football team.”
“Ellen, listen to me. Listen to my voice. This isn’t you!” Joanna said as Ellen pulled off her granny-panties and used her feet and arms to anchor and then rip them apart just on principle. She was naked now aside from her shoes, which she easily kicked off.
“No, it’s the new me,” Ellen said. She twirled around. “Don’t I look sexy? Don’t I look hot? Too hot to stay a virgin, that’s what I look like. Come on, let’s go get laid. You should strip too. It’s liberating.”
She charged out of the room, intent on finding a man that night. And her body was pretty good, too. Untouched by excessive sunlight, as the old Ellen rarely went to the pool, she was smooth as silk and light as air. Her bush was, unfortunately, untrimmed, but she’d fix that later. It seemed unlikely to be a deal-breaker with any guy that mattered. Maybe she would let a fraternity shave her. That would be fun.
“Ellen, Ellen, for god’s sake, listen to me!” Joanna was walking beside her down the stairs, trying to ruin her night.
“I did! And thank you!” Ellen said, stopping on the stairs to try to assuage Joanna’s issue, whatever it was. “This is the best! I feel so alive!”
“You’re naked on the library stairs! Something is wrong!”
“Nothing is wrong,” Ellen said.
“I can’t let you leave like this!”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Ellen said. She quickly gave Joanna a hard shove, and her roommate began tumbling down the rest of the flight of stairs, stopping down on the second floor in a heap. Ellen walked past her and continued down to the first floor. Only on the first floor did she find anyone else there. A few students and staff were there, and all of them noticed her quickly.
“Who wants to get laid?” she asked loudly. “You, glasses guy. Wanna fuck?”
“Are you high?” he asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll fuck you. But it has to be real consent. I…”
“Too late, and too much talking,” Ellen said. “Anyone? Anyone?” Everyone was staring at her. “Wow, this is the wrong crowd for me,” she said before heading for the front door before any surprised staffers could stop her. Behind her, after she was out of the building, she could hear Joanna yelling.
“She’s not herself! Something’s wrong. Call someone.”
“Oh, good, she didn’t die in the fall,” Ellen said. “That would have been a shame.”
Back in the library, Joanna was facing the library staff and a few patrons, but realized that explaining anything to them was pointless and unnecessary. “Fine, I’ll get my stuff and go,” she said, limping over to the elevator. Everyone was still too surprised to act quickly. Only seconds had really passed since Ellen’s loud show on her way out. Joanna hurried back to their study room and flipped the book to the appendix. If the spell was real, the counter spell should be real too. And if it was all psychological, she could probably still read the counter spell and break it anyway. Ellen, poor brainwashed Ellen, desperately needed help before she did something foolish.
The counter spell was on page 945. She flipped through the irregularly cut pages to 945. It was an awkward search in a huge tome of nearly two thousand pages total. As she narrowed in on it, she found pages 942, 943, and 948, then 949. She looked closely as saw that the pages had been neatly cut out with a knife blade, but there was a post-it note stuck to page 943. Joanna quickly read it. ‘Dear girls, Ha ha. Love, all menfolk’
Joanna stared at the writing. So simple. So mocking. And so devastating. She couldn’t even guess how long it had been there. Decades? When were post-its invented, anyway? Were they one of those World War Two things to save glue? She had no idea. And now no idea how to deal with Ellen, who was now out of her sight and wandering naked on campus, somewhere.
Ellen was headed into the SUB. Unlike the library, the SUB was packed, and she was horny. The walk from the library, with the cold night air on her tits and cunt, had sent her all the way over. She wanted sex. She needed sex. Masturbating herself during the walk over had given her a couple orgasms already, but she wanted the real thing. She needed cock! Hell, she would have taken cunt. Anything genital, she didn’t care what as long as she could touch it and get touched in her crotch by it.
“Let’s fuck!” she shouted at the top of her lungs as soon as she got to the Rathskeller. She held her arms up high as dozens of heads turned to see her. “Come on guys. And girls, if that’s your thing. Who wants to run a train on me?”
“She’s high,” some girl in the crowd said.
“She needs help,” someone else said. “Better call an ambulance.”
“I don’t need an ambulance. Unless you want to strap me to a gurney while you do me!” she snapped. “Ooh, bondage. I hadn’t even thought about that! Who wants to tie me up and play rape?”
Two big guys stepped forward, and Ellen smiled. Between seeing their faces in the Crimson Scroll and the numbered jerseys they were wearing, she knew they were football players. She smiled at them and lifted up her tits, wiggling them so they could get a better look. “What do you say, boys? Want to drag me around by these twins before you fuck me?”
“This girl is clearly going through a neurological event!” one of them said loudly. “Anyone who tries to take advantage of her has to get through us.”
“Hash tag me too!” his friend said. There was some scattered applause and a lot of nodding of heads. Ellen looked at the crowd in astonishment. Wasn’t this supposed to be where they pulled a gang bang and did bukkake all over her? Or some good triple penetration? She wasn’t even sure how she know knew these terms, which she had never actually seen used, but it was a fair question nonetheless.
“Fine, I’ll go elsewhere!” she said, turning to leave. But the footballers were there in her way.
“Sorry, miss, but you’d regret whatever you’re going to do. You should stay here until help arrives.”
“If you won’t fuck me, then you’re no help at all!” she screamed. She began masturbating herself, slishing wildly at her sopping wet cunt as she tried to dodge around them. But they caught her easily and pulled her aside. Someone guided them into an office, away from prying eyes.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “You have no right to keep me here! I want sex, damn it! Fuck me or fuck off! Cock or GTFO!”
“Just try to stay calm,” one of them said. Soon a female building employee came in, and the footballers, averting their eyes from her body, stepped out to guard the hall. Another woman came in, and the two of them stood over her, keeping her seated.
“Wanna fuck? You two look like lesbians,” she said.
“Just take it easy, hon. I’m sure you didn’t know what you were taking. There’s no sex for you tonight, don’t worry.”
“No!” she screamed, jumping up and lunging for the door, flailing about as they restrained her. “No! Let me go! Let me fuck! I need sex!”
Ellen was desperate. Cumming at her own hands was doing nothing. She needed another human being to use her, abuse her, fuck her, smack her up, something! Anything! She needed something up her cunt that she didn’t put there herself. A cock. A finger. A stapler. It didn’t matter anymore, but she was frantic. She began screaming unintelligibly as her desperate need outweighed everything else.
Twenty minutes later, the students at the SUB caught sight of the naked girl, covered by sheets of course, was taken screaming and strapped to a gurney into an ambulance. The EMTs seemed unable to sedate her, as she kept shrieking obscenities at everyone she saw. It was widely considered by all present to be a very unsettling event in their college experience.
Two weeks later, Joanna sat glumly in her now-empty dorm as she got the news that Ellen wouldn’t be returning to campus. She’d been scouring the library books looking for another version of the spell and counter spell, endangering her own grades. Now Ellen’s older sister was visiting her. No one had connected Joanna’s spell idea to the event. On questioning she just said they were studying together when Ellen broke down. It was plausible, and supported by security camera footage.
“We don’t know if she’ll get better,” Anna, Ellen’s sister, said through her tears. “She’s in the mental hospital. Full restraints. They can’t seem to sedate her. They can’t drug her. She rips her clothes off. She, does things sexually to herself. Masturbation. She’d injure herself through rubbing if they didn’t strap her wrists down.” She paused. “I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault. I just figured, you’re her friend.”
“Thank you for letting me know,” Joanna said.
“We don’t know her. Mother thinks she might literally be possessed by demons. And that’s such a Catholic thing to say, it shows how desperate we are. She just screams for sex and more sex. Any sex. Sex with anyone at all.” She paused. “Obviously, that’s one thing we can’t give her.”
Joanna sat there listening. And the one thought running through her mind, that she couldn’t really tell to Ellen’s family, was why not? Why not give her sex? Let one person penetrate her, maybe with a finger. Something. Anything. Maybe it would break the spell. Maybe it would relieve her psychotic break.
“Yeah, we can’t seem to help her. But at least we’ll help her keep her purity. No sex. We’ll beat this yet, if it takes years, we’ll beat it yet,” Anna said. And Joanna cried a little inside.
