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 Lifeline, Part 3

   Another two years were to pass till I met Celine again.  I had been
invited by friends of friends to spend a weekend on the campus of another
college not far away.  As the college I attended had a more technical
background, we were a little short on girls.  I wasn't very keen on some
sentimental entanglements but nature called for its rights nonetheless so I
was quite frustrated.  The college we were to visit had specialized more in
literature and social sciences so they had a lot of chicks in the yard, as
we used to say.

   Well, I could not say we were overrun by a hoard of hot chicks screaming
for a lay.  The "insider", a friend of a friend had gone out and finally a
mate of him directed us to the local watering hole, the place most students
would hang out in the summer.  The terrace of the place was crowded with
students of both sexes and finally the three of us managed to find a table
of six.  It was occupied already with three girls.  Two were the average
blonde and slim all American girls and one was a cute if a little plump
read head.  More or less successful we attracted them into the usual
conversation between students with the typical questions of "where do you
come from" and "what courses do you follow" and so on.  I wound up engaged
in a quite promising eye to eye contact with the chubby redhead.  Then,
while I deliberately looked aside lest it became awkward, I spotted a mop
of dark curly hair that looked faintly familiar.  I got up under the
pretense of going to the restroom and on my way back I saw a profile that I
knew.  Celine!  She was the last person I had expected to find here.  The
couple that had been her company at the table rose to leave so I changed my
direction and went to meet her.  A storm of conflicting emotions raced over
my soul.  Ever since I had left home I had been determined to try and burry
all my feelings for her.  I had given up all hope to ever see her again and
knew that I should break the bond between us for good.  As long as I knew
her far away it had been quite easy.  Yet stumbling upon her like that
shattered all the barriers I had built around my love for her, as I knew no
better word to describe what I felt for her.

   She did not notice my approach as she looked the other way.  I could see
that she bore a kind of serenity on her face I had never seen before.  She
had grown fuller both in face and body and it suited her well.  It was the
picture of a perfectly happy person.  I felt my bowels tie up into a knot.
It seemed she had been right in leaving me.  When she finally saw me
standing in front of her, a series of emotions chased each other over her
face.  True joy, then guilt and again a sort of distant contempt.  She rose
a little unsteady and gave me a rather shy hug.  No kiss, not even a peck.

   'Good Lord, Georgie, what on earth are you doing here?' an almost
unnoticeable slur accompanied her words, like she was a little tipsy.  I
didn't give it much attention.  On the table was only a half empty bottle
of Coke. 'Hi Celine!  I came over from Shockley for the weekend.' I tried
to sound neutral but I felt more then I heard a slight tremor in my voice.
'What a nice coincidence!  So you decided to go for the master finally.  I
always thought you were too smart for a simple storekeeper.' 'Truth is, my
father thought I was too dumb to take over the shop.  So he sold it and
gave me the money to try and make something out of me.' 'A sensible man. 
How is he?  And your mom?' 'They retired to Florida.' I could not keep a
slight melancholy out of my voice.  The more I listened to her I sensed
something peculiar.  Unlike the old Celine, who had always spoken fast, she
had acquired a strange melody in her speech, almost like she was in slow
motion.  Then she lifted her left hand she had been hiding somehow from my
view and what she held between her fingers really shocked me. 'C'mon
Celine, you can't be serious!' I exclaimed a bit angry.  'That you smoked
two packs a day was bad enough, but for crissake!  Cigars!' for what she
held looked like a medium sized brown cigar to me. She laughed from all her
heart. 'Silly old Georgie!  You are quite square, you know?' She took a
disposable from a pocket of her skirt and in the big flame of the lighter
which she had turned up to maximum, she started to relight the extinct half
of her cigar.  After a couple of fierce puffs to make it glow uniformly
thru which she rotated it back and force, showing quite an expertise, proof
she had done this many times before, she took a long hit and inhaled with
expanding chest.  Then she held her breath for an eternity, till she
exhaled a long double stream thru her nose, followed by a small cloud from
her lips.  I was really shocked but to my surprise I found myself aroused
too.  I had never before seen a young girl smoke a cigar like that.  A grin
like of a satisfied cat settled on her face and it was like I could hear
her purr. 'What on earth...?' I started to ask, but she interrupted me.
'Hey, don't play Quaker.  What's so strange about this?  A lot of girls
here have taken to cigars.  Besides, this here' she said while pointing the
cigar up which she held between thumb and index, 'isn't really a cigar.'
and to tell the truth, the smoke I smelled lacked the harshness of cigars
as I knew them.  It was kind of sweetish and bore a mixture of different
flavors.  'So what is it then?' I asked, afraid of what would be the
answer, which in fact was even worse than I feared. 'Now don't look so
horrified.  These wonderful pleasure sticks are from my boyfriend.' A sharp
pain stabbed my stomach.  Whatever faint hopes I may have had lay crushed
under the weight of this one word.  Boyfriend!  But then what did I expect?
Her words of farewell two years earlier had more or less implied that. 'His
family owns a little tobacco factory down in Virginia.  Apart from the
usual cheap stogies on a secret line the make some really special stuff.'
she giggled at my puzzled expression.  In fact she giggled and laughed a
lot more than I had ever seen her do before. 'OK, I'll tell you all, don't
worry.  I doubt that the Narco guys would agree, but they are quite
harmless.  The worst ingredient is tobacco.  You can say they are sort of
blunts.' There!  Just like I had feared!  'They have of course some weed in
them but not overly much.  Let me see, what else?  Yeah, clove, to make the
smoke go down smoothly and improve the taste and then some spices like in
pipe tobacco.  In fact I guess it really is pipe tobacco if I remember it
well.  And boy, these things make me feel so damn good!  I can't stop
lighting them up!  Thanks to my boyfriend I don't have to worry about how
to replenish my supply.  He gets tons of them from home.  Hey, wanna have
try?' I refused shaking my head almost indignantly.  I trembled with
repulsion but with arousal too.  It virtually tore me apart.

   'Tell me, do you have any plans for now?' she asked with an inviting
smile.  She had talked about her boyfriend all the time.  Was this an
offer? Or did she want to torment me further by introducing me to him?  Not
hoping for the former but fearing the latter, I was on the verge of finding
an excuse but she interrupted my racing thoughts. 'Don't worry about Diego.
He's away.  I thought we might remember old times in a more comfortable
surrounding.' 'Well, that sounds nice.' I managed to press out.  My answer
triggered an almost wicked smile on her face.

   She led me to the apartment where she lived and by what I could see, her
boyfriend lived there too.  But as she had told me he was somewhere else it
was OK so far.  She invited me to the couch and gave me a beer.  As far as
I could tell she still abstained from alcohol like she had all her life. 
She lit another of her blunts, only this one seemed of a slightly different
make as it smelled sweeter. 'You should try one of these, you know.' she
said, talking the smoke into my face.  'These are stronger and they have
quite some effect.  You can't imagine how hot you can get after one of
these.  C'mon, don't be spoilsport!  Diego and I have quite an open kind of
relation.  We often do some wild parties and it turns us on even more if we
do it with others before we do it together.  He is away with another girl.
It's so good you dropped out of the sky.  Now I won't waste another night.
Here take a hit.  You'll have a hard on in no time.' Her words made me want
to throw up.  What had become of my beloved little Celine?  I may have
accepted that she had found someone she really loved and cared for, but
this was too wild.  Not that I'm really square or intolerant, but regarding
my own life I had some rules.  I wanted to get out and flee from her, hide
somewhere and weep all night, yet I couldn't.  Celine seemed to sink deeper
into her drug induced reverie.  Oblivious to my inner turmoil she poured
some more oil into the fire. 'You know, this dynamite here is what Diego
used to get at me.' an almost crazy laugh followed.  'I didn't even know
him when at a party he talked me into trying one of these.  The clever son
of gun led me out to the back porch pretending he wanted to spare me from
the embarrassment if I should grow sick.  God, I took one hit and I was
horny like hell.  We fucked right there like rabbits.  It was like one huge
orgasm lasting the whole night.  I couldn't walk any more when he was thru
with me.  Now I can have this every day.  He gave me the other ones, the
mild ones to make me feel just good whenever I want.' she kept on dragging
fiercely on the blunt and then she said with determination: 'Now c'mon, how
horny must I get?  Come over and give it to me hard!' She dragged once
again and while holding the smoke she leant over and pressing her lips
against mine, she blew the smoke into my mouth.  She had taken me by
surprise, and I involuntarily inhaled some of the smoke.  From then on my
perception blurred.  The stuff was strong like hell.  I wondered briefly
how she was able to smoke it like that without any visible effect.  The
following hour went down in a haze.  I made love to her all right but in a
dream like state.  I felt nothing.  When the effect of the stuff wore off
and I regained my senses, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.  She seemed
somehow to regain part of her true self as when she saw what happened to
me, she burst into tears.  I left her with the bitter satisfaction that at
least this time it wasn't me who had the worst end.  But I was cheating on
me.  If it hadn't been for Lavinia, who knows...

   Two month later I was in danger of ruining my chance to get a degree,
when Lavinia entered my life and in a way saved me.  As often lately, I sat
in the sun in one of the alleys of the campus, just staring in the air
without even a conscious thought, just filled with pain and bitterness. 
For the thousandth time I wondered if I shouldn't have fought for Celine
when it was still time.  Now her greed to make up for the lost years had
driven her into the arms of a goddamn drug dealer, and who knows what was
to become of her.  I should have dragged her out of there and tried to
sober her up, but I was too weak for that and I feared she might not
understand, so I would loose her anyway.  Besides, I wasn't sure I still
wanted that strange creature that had once been my Celine.

   'Hi, what a coincidence!  Mind if I sit here and have smoke?' I jolted.
But of course it wasn't Celine.  It was the last person I would have
expected to see again.  The chubby little redhead!  She didn't wait for me
to answer, but sat down and took out a pack of MLs 100.  I hadn't smoked
much since I had entered college.  Now I somehow felt like joining in with
this little cutie, although, little wasn't exactly the right word for her.
'Sorry, Miss, err, but would you mind if I borrowed a cigarette from you? I
forgot to buy some this morning and now I'm kinda like a fish on the dry.'
'It's Lavinia.  Hi.  Sure, here, you can have as many as you want.  We
smokers have to stick together, with the campaigns against us coming up.'
'Hi.  George.' We shook hands.  'Thanks a lot.  You saved my life.' I said
grinning, pleased of her attitude.

   Whether Celine's first smoky kiss had triggered this or it went deeper,
I didn't know, but girls that smoked had always touched a cord in me.  She
giggled at my answer and smoked her cigarette with obvious pleasure. 
Except she held down the smoke for a couple of seconds each time she
inhaled there wasn't anything remarkable in her smoking style.  But it
didn't really matter.  I had no intention of any kind, too fresh was the
memory of that horrid experience with Celine and her drugs.  It was just
pleasant to sit there and talk to a nice girl.  Her voice had a slightly
mannered undertoen as if she tried to deliberately talk in a higher pitch
than was her natural one, but apart from that she had such an unspoiled way
it was very refreshing to listen to her conversation.  Somehow it came
naturally that we went to lunch together.  I found out she recently decided
to finish her studies here.

   From that day on we spent most of our spare time together and it didn't
take long till we shared an apartment.  Even if sleeping with her lacked
the explosive intensity of my encounters with Celine, she turned out to be
quite a good companion in any way.  With all her roundness, just like my
once girlfriend Laura, I enjoyed just holding her in my arms at night, or
watching TV cuddled into each other.  In one word she was cuddly.  She was
a light smoker and insisted we never smoked inside.  We, as I had somehow
become a regular smoker too.  It was like smoking, along with our mutual
attraction, constituted a sort of bond between us.  I should have known
better, but I had hopes to have found the kind of good reliable partnership
my parents had.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  The quiet joy of having
someone to spend the evenings with slowly turned into boredom.  Too late I
found that there wasn't much beyond the surface.  It was impossible to talk
to her about more serious matters than campus gossip or mundane affairs. 
She seemed totally oblivious of what happened in the world and not even
interested in learning about it.  What a difference to Celine, or at least
the one she had been a while ago.

   Yet, even thou it was I who had grown more and more disappointed,
Lavinia was the one to initiate a development that lead to our separation.
Maybe I should have done the final step earlier, but I feared to hurt her
and it was also a practical arrangement.  When she began to spend an
evening on and off with other girls, excluding me from their circle, I
wasn't truly disappointed as it gave me the opportunity to renew
friendships with other guys I had neglected because of her.  As her
absences grew more frequent and longer too, I couldn't but grow suspicious.
One night, when she was out with friends again, I didn't go to sleep as
usual.  When she finally tiptoed her way in at three in the morning, I
turned up the light.  What I saw in her face, confirmed my vague suspicion.
She had been with another guy.  She didn't deny it, maybe glad she didn't
have to hide any more.  I felt a lot more anger than sadness or pain. 
Whatever I had been feeling for her, love wasn't the name for it.

   To my surprise, she didn't understand the reason for my anger.  Instead
she reproached me that I hadn't "loved" her as much as I had in the
beginning.  This enraged me even more and to my own dismay I used some
harsh words. 'How long?' 'Oh, eh, since Thanksgiving' Fuck!  Five weeks!' I
was really mad now. 'Listen you bitch!  I have trusted you and even thou we
both heard about the dangers of unprotected sex, we did not spoil our fun
because of that.  But now you let another guy stick his dirty rod into your
treacherous pussy.  How am I to know if you haven't caught up something
from him and infected me too?' I had every right o be mad as she hadn't
stopped making love to me and perversely with more passion lately. 'But I
thought only gays are in danger!' she tried to defend herself. 'Can
somebody be that dumb?  Haven't I told you it has nothing to do with
homosexuality?  The only reason it spread among them first was that they
change partners more often than straights.  But there have been a lot of
new cases among junkies, and wives of bisexual men too.  Even if you know
the guy well, you can't be sure he hasn't caught it up from some other
girl!' I was trembling with rage and I felt a pervert desire to hit her. 
That she cheated on me, fine, but that she still defended herself was
almost unbearable.

   What came next really kicked the bottom out. 'Please Goerge, can't you
forgive me?  I'm so sorry!  I have been very stupid.  Please, can't we give
it another try?  I'll be a good girl, promise!  I'll do anything you want
me to!  Please?' It made no sense to talk to her any more.  If she believed
I could forgive her in any way, she had to be crazy.  I left the apartment
slamming the door.  The next morning I told her I had given the owner
notice for the end of the month.  If she wanted to stay it was up to her to
renew the lease.  I collected my belongings and found a spare cot in the
dorm with one of my friends who couldn't afford an off campus apartment.