Freshman Year - Part 11, I Visit Cornell

I decided to telephone my older brother, Verne, who was at nearby Cornell University and see if he was up for a visit the following weekend since I really didn’t feel safe at my dorm. He was really excited about me coming to see him and complained that I didn’t come often enough and it was only a short Greyhound bus ride away. His fraternity was even having a brother fraternity visiting from Pittsburgh this weekend, and one of Verne’s frat brothers wanted to meet me because he was looking for a girlfriend. I thought, egad, not another geeky looser. But Verne assured me that this one was not only smart but athletic and cute. I planned to take a Friday afternoon bus there.

The week was pretty uneventful. But on Thursday night, the dorm pres was hanging out at the pin ball machine with my roommates wondering when I would be back from work with the college chemistry department. My roomies were all impressed that he was looking for me since they did not know what had happened to me the previous weekend. Apparently Nancy had harbored a real crush on the pres for some time. When I walked in he began to blush and got all shy. He walked up to me and asked me to come with him. I looked at him angrily and said, “No thanks.”

Nancy said in a pleading tone, ‘How can you say no to him? Look how much he wants you?”

He took a broom from the hall and began to dance with it. He put the bristles on his face and pushed his face through them comically. Just then the dorm’s resident alcoholic walked in. You know, all dorms have them, but you hardly ever notice them. They just stay on the periphery of folks and then one day they fail out and are gone. Well ours had a crush on me. Lucky me. His nose was all out of joint because he was the only one who had seen me leave the pres’ room on that fateful night last weekend. He misunderstood what he saw, took it hard and was insanely jealous.

He began, “What does he have that I don’t? I’m as good a guy! I can give you everything he can and more if you’ll just give me a chance…” Then he was hanging on my sleeve. There is no way to shake such a person without being rude.

“Please, I have had a very hard day and I would like very much to go up to my room and relax. May I please do that?” I said.

“Oh. Of course, you do that. But you’ll see one day soon. I will show you Sue! I will show you! Yes I will!!!”

The pres was stifling a laugh behind his hand so no one could see him being rude. I turned to go up the stairs and took my leave as soon as I could.

Early Friday afternoon I was on a Greyhound bus to Cornell for the weekend. I sat in front so that I could admire the beautiful rolling hills of the Upstate New York countryside on the way there. The bus dropped me in front of the Myron Taylor Hall Law School.

It was a short hike from there down past Cascadilla Creek to Verne’s fraternity house.

The house was a Greek revival design with a center hallway. Off to one side was a parlor and on the other was a pool room. Verne was lucky in that he had his own room at the house on the second floor. I would sleep in his room and he would bunk where ever a brother was out for the weekend.

I gave him a big hug when I saw him. I had really missed him and it was good to see a friendly face after all I had been through. Tonight we were going to a lecture on gross tropical diseases (oh boy!) and then we would visit the animal collections of the natural history club to which he belonged. The evening flew by and while we were seeing the animal collections, I suddenly got an idea. They had weird cockroaches such as Madagascan hissing ones, and giant flat ones, and I thought, why not keep some as pets in my dorm room to keep the roomies away from my stuff? So I asked Verne how difficult it was to keep roaches as pets.

“It is not difficult at all Susie. I can set you up with a few right now if you like.”

So he did. He gave me some wax paper cups with lids and enough insect kibble to last a lifetime, showed me how to water them, and that was that. I was all set. I took home 8 little roaches all of my own! Wouldn’t Nancy and Tiffany be surprised?

Anyhow, the other animals that were there were Verne’s pet tarantula, which he insisted that I hold. He said that it would be just like holding a kitten with eight paws and it was. There was also a boa constrictor, but we left it in the tank because I was cool with snakes having had them as a kid.

The next day Verne, one of Verne’s friends that had a car and a major crush on me and I went to do a “bio-rape” at Buttermilk Falls State Park. What that means is we were going on a major collecting binge for insects and what ever else caught our fancy. This was one of my very favorite things to do; to be out with my brother collecting bugs. (Cut me some slack; I hadn’t had sex yet!) I don’t recall us catching anything particularly spectacular, but we had a wonderful day and I did get to see my brother get chased around by a pissed off non-venomous water snake that he had caught and released. It was pretty funny.

That evening, the frat brothers from Pitt were there for a party and I was to the play the hosting little sister role. That was fine with me so long as I could find a guy who wasn’t too geeky. Plus, I was on the lookout for this Tom guy that wanted to meet me who was a friend of Verne’s. Verne’s friends were always geeks. I wasn’t very hopeful about that at all. So I showered and put on my best jeans. I was ready for anything.

The party was going strong and I walked amidst all of the geek-Dom smiling and feeling pretty. But I felt bad for these sincere boys with good hearts and stiff dicks who were hard up for companionship. I could only be with one, but which one? Finally I saw one cute enough for me on a bench in the entry hall and I sat next to him. He had black hair and was kind of handsome. He looked at me and knew he was the lucky one. He struck up a light conversation, where did I go to school, couldn’t be here, I was way too cute, blah, blah, blah… So on and so on. Then he asked if he could kiss me. I said sure, go for it. So we made out. It was pretty hot actually. He must have been experienced, he had his tongue way down my throat and I was sitting on his lap and could feel his erection on my ass. He held me so close. He pulled away and said, “I’m probably talking out my ass, but would you like to go upstairs?” Then he quickly apologized and got back to making out. And so a bit later the evening ended and I retired alone to Verne’s room.

Sunday morning I had breakfast with Verne and then took the Greyhound bus back to Cayuga. I arrived at my dorm and couldn’t wait to show my roomies my new pets! They were thrilled, as you might imagine. I knew they would never go near my stuff again!

Then they told me what had happened that weekend. Apparently I had missed the big event while at Cornell. The dorm drunk had stormed into our room on Saturday night and jumped into my bed wearing only his mesh black bikini underwear declaring his love for me at the top of his voice and lay there for a time until he discovered that I was not there. Then in a stupor, he left. I didn’t know what to say. But what I did say is, “We are so going to lock our door from now on!” Thank goodness they agreed.

My roomies told me that he wanted to apologize to me. I told them that there was no way I would listen to that. My first free moment, I telephoned Verne to tell him I would be coming again for the following weekend. He said sure, no problem.