“Come on in,” Susan said to the two girls at the door to her apartment. “Welcome to my happy home.”

“It seems to be a nice apartment,” Laura replied as she came inside. “I don’t know if you’ve met Stacy. She’s my roommate. Stacy, this is Ms. McMahon, who really helped me out yesterday.”

“We’re off campus,” Susan smiled. “Not very far, but off campus, so both of you, please call me Susan. I’m not that far removed from being a student myself. Come on in, sit down.”

“Wow,” Stacy said. “Is that sauerkraut I’m smelling?”

“Sure is. I consider myself German-American, even though my last name is Irish. I learned a lot of my German cooking from my grandmother, and more when I spent some time in Germany.”

“I thought you said you spent two years in China,” Laura said.

“I did. Mostly in Chengdu, which is in the south-central interior, but I did some traveling there, too. I just got back about three months ago.”

“Wow, you must get around.”

“It’s been my primary goal in life,” Susan replied with a grin. “I speak six languages fluently and I enjoy travel and foreign countries.”

“Six languages?” Stacy said, her jaw dropping.

“German, French, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin in addition to English. Actually seven, depending on whether you consider Sichuan a language or a dialect. I’m not quite as good at that, though. I’m trying to make up my mind whether to add Russian or Arabic next, but right now this new job is more important.”

“Wow, you must be really smart!”

“More just a natural talent for languages,” Susan smiled. “Other than that, I’m no smarter than it took to be a student here in the first place. Come on in, sit down. I’m sorry this place still has some student apartment-quality furniture, but I’ve only been here a short time and I’m still working on it. I’m afraid dinner is going to be a little while yet. I got hung up at the office.”

“Ms. McMahon, er, Susan,” Laura began as she found a seat on the battered old sofa that Susan had yet to replace; Stacy sat next to her. “I have to thank you again for helping me out yesterday. I realize that wearing a chastity belt on campus must seem a little screwy, but it’s important to me.”

“I realized that from the beginning,” Susan replied, taking a glance at the tall, tan girl. She was wearing a sundress, so it wasn’t possible to tell if she was wearing the chastity belt, although Susan would have bet a lot that she was. “My only real worry was whether you were being forced to do it. Once that was settled in my mind, I didn’t have any problem with it.”

“It is important to me, and it’s more than just habit. I spent a little over two months without it this summer, and I missed it all the time. I was so happy to get it back on that it wasn’t funny. I’m just not, well, I’m just not me without it.”

“Do you actually wear it all the time?”

“All the time. I’ve gone months without taking it off.”

“I have to say it doesn’t sound very comfortable.”

“It’s very comfortable, but then, it was designed for long-term wear and I’m used to wearing it, which counts for a lot. It covers a part of the body that doesn’t move very much but it allows me most of my normal freedom of movement. It’s designed to allow me to do my normal body functions, so long as I do them with some care and I’m careful about washing and drying afterward. My dad built my first chastity belts, including the one that stood off the rape attempt. That was actually the third one he built for me. The first one, well, my time was limited to a few hours before it got really bad.”

“Stacy,” Susan asked, “What do you think of it?”

“Honestly, I was pretty shocked when I first saw it, but now that I’ve had time to get used to it, I think it’s pretty cool in its own way,” the smaller girl smiled. “I don’t think it’s anything I’d ever want to do, but I haven’t had the motivation Laura has had, either. My folks would flip out if they knew about it, so I don’t plan on telling them.”

“They’re not the only ones who would flip out,” Laura added. “I mean, we proved that yesterday, but Dr. Thompson set him right down, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes,” Susan agreed, but decided she didn’t want to get into office politics – they were none of these girls’ business, after all. “Dr. Thompson is good at that, but he has a wisdom and a viewpoint that’s more than a little unpredictable. I’ve known him for years, and we’ve always gotten along pretty well even when we were on the opposite sides on an issue, which we have been a few times. I was sort of the unofficial University Ombudsman when I was a student, so yesterday was not the first time I’ve taken a student problem to him.”

“I’ll bet not like that,” Stacy giggled.

“No, that was a new one on me, too,” Susan laughed. “So how do you find that other students are reacting to it? I mean, you aren’t exactly keeping the fact that you’re wearing a chastity belt a secret.”

“I have seen some of the most incredible reactions,” Laura replied with a laugh of her own. “I mean, I’m used to it, but actually I’m surprised at how polite people are about it. I mean, once they get over the shock of what it is in the first place.”

That gave Susan a touchstone to another unique situation she’d witnessed. It was worth telling the story. “When I was a little girl,” she began, “There was a woman in my home town who wore handcuffs. I mean twenty-four seven, for pretty close to six years.”

“You’re kidding!” Laura frowned.

“No, I saw it with my own eyes any number of times. I was like nine or ten when she finally took them off. But the really weird thing about it was that nobody ever said very much about it, at least not to her. It was just part of the scenery, and people were polite. They may have thought she was a nutcase and I’m not sure she wasn’t, but they were almost uniformly polite. Looking back on it, it’s surprising how little was said.”

“Wearing a chastity belt is one thing,” Laura shook her head. “But handcuffs? That’s crazy.”

“She had what she thought was a good reason,” Susan went on. “She was very close to her younger sister, who was injured in a jetski accident, and became a quadriplegic as a result. The handcuffs were how she identified with her sister, to try to share some of the pain, or at least feel some of it. It may not have made sense to anyone else, but it made sense to her.”

Laura was silent for a moment before enlightenment sunk in. She slowly said, “I see. I think I see. You’re probably right that there is something of a parallel. Is that why you went to bat for me so quickly?”

“It likely had something to do with it,” Susan smiled. “Although the comparison didn’t cross my mind until just a moment ago. But I agree, the interesting thing was how little was said about it.”

“I guess the kids at my high school got used to it,” Laura replied thoughtfully. “I mean, I wasn’t very out about it in the beginning, but I slowly got more confident with it. It wasn’t long before everyone knew I was wearing my steel panties, but like you said, nobody said very much about it once they realized why I was doing it. They even started calling me ‘The Steel Virgin.’”

“I’ve heard that around campus,” Susan nodded. “I wonder how that got out.”

“Blame me,” Stacy grinned. “I, uh, told a few people about it. Laura told me to do it when people asked me questions about it.”

Yes, Susan thought, Dr. Thompson was right! While there may have been other reasons Laura was wearing her chastity belt, getting attention and showing off her individuality was at least one of them. It sure got her a reputation on campus in a hurry! “You know,” she said slowly, “It can be hard when you’re in a crowd of new people, like coming to a college campus for the first time. I got to be fairly well known after a while here, at least partly for going to bat for people with the administration, but you sure didn’t waste any time.”

“It has been interesting,” Laura grinned without a trace of embarrassment. “Stacy and I have met more people as a result of it than I could have believed. I get a lot of stupid questions, but once I get through that, I’ve found some of those people are pretty interesting. We’ve had group dates or been invited to dorm parties most nights, and those can be fun when people realize that the subject of sex is just not on the table.”

“That part of it almost makes me wish I was wearing one, too,” Stacy laughed. “I’m not getting hit on, just like Laura isn’t. I think the aura of Laura’s steel panties slides onto me a little, too. Sex is all right in its place, but it’s nice to have the mating game turned off for a while, too.”

“That’s a big deal around most colleges,” Susan said. “I mean, it even went on when I was teaching in Chengdu. It’s at least partly because people are of an age where it’s a big deal and they’re unattached, and I’ve been pulled into it some, too. I made a conscious decision a long time ago to not let anything get too serious, at least not for a while. I want to do some more traveling, and it’s harder to do if you’re in a serious relationship. The ones I’ve had have been pretty casual, as a result.”

“I’m right with you on that,” Laura said. “I’ve got too much to do in the next few years with college and law school to get involved with that, too, so my steel panties help keep the pressure off.”

There’s another reason and a valid one, Susan thought, but it sure is a unique way to do it. But this girl seems to be pretty unique, anyway. But let’s throw out an alternate scenario, just to see how she reacts. “I understand fully, and you’re probably wise in doing it that way. But the people who own this building are students, seniors. He’s pre-law like you are, and he’s hoping to get into Notre Dame law school. The two of them, well, they’re not married, but you’d never know it to look at them. They are probably more devoted to each other than any other couple I know of at their age, so they’re making it work.”

“I’m glad they can,” Laura replied. “I wouldn’t mind being in a close relationship someday, and I hope to be. But I’d still like to have a little freedom first before I get serious about looking for the right guy.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Susan replied, seeing that she wasn’t going to take the bait on that one. Or, if she was, it would take more digging than Susan really wanted to do.

They sat and talked for a while longer, and Susan then steered the conversation away from the chastity belt and tried to learn more about the girl wearing it. This was more curiosity about a fascinating girl than it was anything else. From what she had seen, Laura wasn’t some kind of nut. In fact, she seemed to have her head screwed on tighter than any young student she’d ever seen at Southern, and that included some tech heads who were very serious about what they were doing. She seemed competent – but audacious and mystifying, too. She was very secure in who she was and where she was headed. She’d clearly gone through some tough times and had overcome them in a unique fashion, with an impressive amount of support from her family. This girl was, in short, a girl Susan thought was going to make some serious waves with her life, and do it on her own terms.

Susan spent some time talking with Stacy too. There was no doubt that she was a sharp kid, but on the conventional side in comparison to her roommate. In the barely over a week the two had been on campus they had clearly become good friends, even though Stacy was clearly the sidekick in the relationship.

It soon became clear that Stacy had some serious problems with her parents, who were on the over-controlling side, right on the verge of being classical helicopter parents who hovered over their kids, ready to correct any problem or question any decision they made. Stacy clearly felt liberated from that degree of control here, and had plans to keep it that way – and really, her relationship with Laura offered some hope she could do it.

Dinner gave her the opportunity to break off from what sometimes had been a heavy discussion. “I like to think of myself as a pretty good cook,” Susan told the girls. “I’m like most people in that I don’t like to cook for myself very much. I’ve taken to eating in the snack bar a lot, simply because I can be visible as the University Ombudsman when I’m there. The heck of it is that I don’t want to generate any more of that business than I have to.”

“It’s very nice that you invited us,” Stacy said. “The food in the cafeteria, well, it’s good, but it’s institutional, if you know what I mean.”

“Speaking for the university, we try to do better than most colleges,” she replied. “Most colleges have a mostly student staff, with only a couple of professionals overseeing them, so the quality can be marginal. Here we can at least have people who know what they’re doing. You’re right, it tends to get institutional at times, but Dr. Thompson often eats in the cafeteria with the students and he’s sensitive to the issue.”

“You said earlier you were teaching in China,” Stacy asked. “What was the food like there?”

“Chinese, of course,” Susan laughed. “But it isn’t Chinese like we’re used to in this country, which we might as well call American Chinese, or Chinese food tuned to American tastes. Besides, Chengdu is in Sichuan, and regional cooking is stronger there than it is here. Sichuan food tends to be very hot, lots of spices, and for an American it really is a taste you have to acquire.”

“I would think it would get tiring after a while.”

“Oh, it does. But when it happens, there’s always the option of going to an exotic, ethnic restaurant like Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

“That’s exotic and ethnic?”

“It is if you’re in China,” Susan laughed. “While I was there, they even opened a Hooters.”

“Come on!”

“No fooling. The problem is that the American slang for the name doesn’t translate well into Chinese, so if you translated it back it became the ‘Owl Restaurant.’ It totally misses the joke, even though the waitresses are dressed, well, like the Chinese versions of Hooters girls.”

“That sounds strange,” Laura shook her head.

“After two years in China, I think Bret Harte said it best,” Susan grinned. “‘The ’eathen Chinee are peculiar.’ He got that part dead right. It was an interesting experience, but I was glad to be back in the States after two years, too. I might have accepted another term there if this job at Southern hadn’t come up at the right time.”

The dinner was particularly good – Susan had learned well from her grandmother – and when they finished, the girls helped pick up the dishes. One of the things the apartment didn’t have was a dishwasher, but the three made quick work of the dirty dishes, then wound up in the living room again, just talking – with Susan trying to pull some observations out of the conversation. “One of the things I’m trying to pick up from students is some of their attitudes and some of their motivations,” she explained. “I’m curious why each of you decided to come here. I don’t mean the things you put on your applications, I mean the real reasons.”

“Oh, there were lots of them,” Laura said. “I think the emphasis on a quality education is at the head of the list. I’ve had people tell me that I can get a more serious pre-law education here than I can at just about any other school I could get into.”

“We know it costs money to come here, so we try to give the biggest bang for the buck we can,” Susan replied. “Any other reasons?”

“Well, yes,” Laura sighed, obviously a little embarrassed. “The lack of jocks running around was a big thing.”

“I hear that from a lot of people, and it was one of the things that interested me. I thought that athletics detracted from the seriousness of the education process.”

“That’s probably true,” Laura sighed. “But the real reason, I mean the deep-seated one, was that I was raped by a popular jock.”

“I was, too,” Stacy agreed. “It wasn’t anything like as bad as Laura had it, it was more a case of going a little faster than I’d intended, but it wasn’t worth the effort or the stress.”

Well, well, Susan thought. That was the first time she’d heard that about Stacy. It probably accounted for the friendship between the girls, to at least some extent. She questioned Stacy lightly about it, to discover that she hadn’t had problems like Laura in recovering from the incident. Problems, yes, but not that bad. Laura, on the other hand, despite her protestations clearly hadn’t gotten over her rape, and had no intention of doing so – it had much to do with shaping her life, both positively and negatively. That may or may not have been good, but it was also something Susan didn’t feel she had reason to be poking her nose into, at least in this place and time.

“What do you think about your classes now?” Susan said, in an effort to get away from a potentially difficult area. This evening had been going too well to ruin it now.

“I’m just getting started,” Laura said. “They look challenging. I can see that the professors really want us to learn, they’re not just mouthing the words.”

“Same here,” Stacy agreed. “Uh, Susan, I do have a question. This place is very heavily tech-oriented. I mean, lots of engineering, lots of science, lots of math, lots of health care. It strikes me that a pre-law department is a little out of place.”

“Well, it is,” Susan laughed. “And you can include a couple other areas in the same department, like criminal justice. Now, it’s no big secret that this place reflects a lot of Dr. Thompson’s views. He hates what he calls ‘fuzzy subjects,’ by which he means, oh, political science, or psychology, or, God help us, sociology. Worst of all, education degrees. He considers pre-law and criminal justice to be ‘fuzzy subjects’ too, but when I asked him about it one time years ago, he made the comment that ‘when you’re raising funds to build a college from scratch, you have to go hunting where the ducks are.’ My understanding is that he worked some donor for several million bucks with the stipulation that part of the money be used to start that department. But once he committed to doing it, he’s not the kind of person to do it halfway.”

“All right, that makes sense,” Stacy smiled. “It just seems strange to not have much in the way of liberal arts around.”

“One of Dr. Thompson’s best-known and most-repeated quotes is, ‘There are plenty of liberal arts colleges around that train people for careers in fast food. We teach serious subjects to serious students.’”

“You know, I think I’m liking Dr. Thompson more and more,” Laura laughed.

“You didn’t see the real Dr. Thompson yesterday,” Susan informed her. “He was being stiff and formal because Mr. deRidder expected him to be, especially in front of a student. Catch him having lunch in the cafeteria some day, ask to join him, and you’ll start to learn what he’s really like. It’s hard to keep up with him, mostly because he’s so far ahead of everyone else you can’t understand where he’s really going until he’s been there, gone on past, and is now on to the next place. He’s a leader and a visionary. This would be just another college without his leadership and his vision.”

Eventually the evening wound down. It had been a most enjoyable one; Laura was very interesting, and Stacy was above average, although a little on the reticent side compared to her roomie. Susan told them that she’d enjoy getting together again sometime, and Laura suggested that if Susan wanted to try making Sichuan food sometime, she’d be interested in trying it out, and Stacy agreed. Susan said she’d think about it.

After the girls left, Susan was left with a host of impressions. It had been good to meet with the students, and it was clear she needed to do more of it. She’d learned a lot, and not just about Laura, either. It wouldn’t be fair to get too involved with the girls, and she needed to bring in other students, but doing it again with the two sometime was not out of the question, either.

Susan picked up the apartment a little, and began to get ready for bed, when a disquieting observation struck her: she missed having a roomie like Laura had in Stacy, and vice versa. Susan usually though of herself as being a loner, someone who was pretty self-driven, but in truth, she was more lonely than she was willing to admit.

She had been roomies with Mizuki for five years, four of them in this building, and one of them in Japan. More than roomies; occasional lovers. Though they’d done some dating and even from time to time had male hookups in bed, they’d both thought of themselves as LUGs – Lesbians Until Graduation. Neither of them had been looking for a permanent relationship at the time, with each other or anyone else.

In the summers during her college years, when she and Mizuki were doing different things, Susan had spent much of her time with her friends in Germany – and that was casually sexual too, going both ways. In fact, it had been one of her German friends who had turned her on to women in the first place.

Then, only days away from the last time she’d seen her German friends, she’d gone to China. Literally in her first hours there she’d met Theo, and after some initial sniffing around each other they’d shared an apartment for a year and a half, which for Susan had settled any question of whether she was really a lesbian or not. Her relationship with Theo hadn’t been all that serious; they’d been roomies and fuck buddies, much like she’d been with Mizuki; when he’d gotten the job in Nanchang, they’d parted without tears.

That had been six months before – six months when Susan had been living truly alone for the first time for any extended period, ever. While she’d enjoyed her job here at Southern, and enjoyed the place, there was definitely something missing without Mizuki around – or at least someone around. Theo would have done fine if he were here.

As she’d told the girls earlier, she didn’t want to get into a serious relationship at this point in her life, and that was still true. The odds were that she wouldn’t be at Southern forever, and she didn’t want to be. The odds also were that a pissing match with deRidder or someone could lead to her moving on. So that made getting into a serious relationship even less appealing.

It wasn’t something she’d really considered before, but now that she’d had the epiphany, it made her bed seem awful damn lonely – and there didn’t seem to be any answer in the short term. The whole thing was something to think about, and a little more seriously than she’d done in the past.

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