The Do-Gooder

by Jessie L. Star

  For a moment it looked like Livvy was going to shake her head, but then she suddenly blurted, "Why do you do it?"

  That surprised a bleak little laugh out of me. "You must be new." When she looked confused, I waved a hand dismissively. "Let's just say I'm atoning for past sins. So, what do you want?"

  My question provoked a furious red blush that flamed unattractively up her pale neck and blotched out onto her cheeks. Well, that could only bode well.

  "I have a boyfriend," she started hesitantly before stopping abruptly and beginning to pick at the skin around her nails.

  "Good for you." I looked at my watch then back at the, I assumed, first year before me. "And?"

  "And I went to an all girls' school."

  "A fun mix," I agreed. "So, are you pregnant?"

  "What? No! We haven't...I haven't...I'm a virgin." She lowered her voice and looked around anxiously. Seeing that, as always, people were looking, she slid down lower in her seat as she admitted, "I don't even know what, you know, a guy's thing looks like."

  "Penis?" I checked and, when she nodded shamefacedly, I shrugged. "Nasty looking little buggers, but they get the job done. If you're just after a visual, the internet's great for that. Or, you know, you could just get your boy to drop his dacks and give you a squiz."

  "No!" She made eye contact again and it was vehement. "We're not at that stage yet and I don't want to get freaked out by stuff on the web."

  I could see her point on the latter score, but felt a burning little twist in my stomach at how differently she was viewing her first time compared to how I had. The idea of 'we're not at that stage yet' had never even occurred to me.

  I suppose some of my surprise showed on my face as Livvy continued to explain, "All I got at school was a quick look at a plastic model of a womb and I know there's more to it than that."

  A sudden vision of Fletch, the muscles on his chest contorting, his fingers tightening, flashed through my brain and I had to lick my suddenly dry lips before I could respond, "Oh yeah, there's definitely more."

  "I really like my boyfriend and I know we're heading in that direction. I just...I don't like to go into things unprepared." She tucked some of her blondey-brown hair back behind her ears, the epitome of uncomfortable. "I know it's weird to ask a stranger about it, but people were talking and they said that you helped people out and

  that-" she stopped and the table top suddenly became absolutely fascinating to her.

  "And that I would know plenty about the male form?" I suggested dryly. "A spade's a spade, a slut's a slut, it's alright, Livvy, you can name it up."

  "I don't like that word. I wouldn't call anyone that." Her voice was still quiet so it took me a moment to process what she'd said. When I did, I felt the hair rise along my arms.

  "Fair enough." I briskly waved the feeling of being chastised aside, and focused back on Big Blue. "So, sex education for Livvy." I scribbled it down and then reached into my bag to throw my mobile across at her. "Name and number in there, please."

  I bit lightly on the end of my pen and then scratched out a few preliminary ideas, time-lining a rough lesson plan and plotting out my approach, as Livvy punched her contact details into my phone.

  "What are you studying?" I asked as I finished up.

  "English Lit."

  Of course. She had 'able to quote Pride and Prejudice cover to cover' written all over her.

  "Right, here's what I want you to do, shelve the Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, sexually repressed longing rubbish. Your homework is to get yourself a feminist-raving, man-bashing, 'here's my vagina, hear it roar' eye-smarter of a book." When she looked a little alarmed I gave her a stern look. "My deed, my way."

  I threw another quick glance at my watch and slammed Big Blue shut.

  "I'm off. I'll text you the wheres and whens soon." I stood, slinging my bag over my shoulder with one hand, and snatching my folder up with the other. Livvy seemed a bit shell-shocked with my sudden departure, but managed a feeble wave as I sailed past her and a quiet,

  "Oh, OK, thanks."

  It wasn't that I was late for my next lecture, far from it, but I'd found over the years that leaving early and, therefore, arriving early at my next destination was an excellent time management strategy. The five or so minutes I scored to myself before the start of a lecture was invaluable planning time, incredibly useful given I was usually handling more than 20 deeds at a time.

  I enjoyed the sharp click of my high heeled boots on the pavers as I stalked across campus; to me it was the sound of confidence. I couldn't understand the girls who slumped around with nothing but the soft 'thump' of sensible shoes or, even worse, the flip flopping of thongs or ill-fitting flats. It seemed, however, that I was in the minority with this opinion at uni, and I couldn't wait to finish up my degree in public relations and head out into a world that understood the power of the pump.

  As if cruel fate had been listening in to my thoughts, my enjoyment at the sound of my own precise footfalls was interrupted before I'd gone too far by the very slapping, scraping sound that I so despised.

  Looking to my right I saw, as I'd immediately suspected I would, that Fletcher Townsend had come alongside me; shoulders as broad, teeth as white and feet as inappropriately clad in thongs as ever.

  "Gavin Wyley, right?" He asked, precluding any niceties.

  My toes curled in my boots and my grip tightened on Big Blue, but those were the only reactions to him I allowed myself.

  "No," I replied crisply, "Lara Montgomery. Honestly, Fletch, how insulting that you'd forgotten."

  "You set Gav up last night." His expression was neutral, but I heard the disapproval lacing his words and stiffened.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "A guy with absolutely zero sex appeal hooks up at Sloane's party and you have nothing to do with it?" He said disbelievingly. "Come on, Lara, nobody at this place suddenly makes a fool out of themselves without you having something to do with it."

  My grip on Big Blue became even tighter, although this time it had less to do with Fletch's appearance setting my oft-ignored libido on fire, and more to do with how much I wanted to crunch my heavy folder into his face.

  "You saw Gav at the party, then?" I asked crisply, looking determinedly forward.

  "Hard to miss him."

  "So he was noticeable?"

  "Like I said." He was suddenly suspicious and I smiled thinly.

  "Then it sounds like a guy with concerns about fading into the background had a good night."

  I turned my head sharply, my dark ponytail whipping round, to send him a triumphant look. He was unimpressed, however, rolling his painfully familiar eyes as he leant back to hold the door leading to the Commerce building open for me. He waited until I was forced by the doorframe, and his large build, to press in close against him before he replied, our proximity making it a murmur in my ear.

  "Maybe that's what it sounds like, but trust me, it looked like yet another poor sucker was making an idiot of himself in your messed up quest for redemption."

  I pulled away sharply. It was stupid still feeling betrayed by the things he said, but even after years of hearing the same stuff, I did.

  "So pleasant these conversations we have, Fletch," I said sarcastically. "I'm so glad you take time out of your, no doubt busy, schedule to come and have a go at me to my face."

  "I'm not having a go," he said quietly, his shoulders seeming to grow even broader as he turned his back to the couple of other people waiting to go into the auditorium who had looked our way.

  "Yeah, you are," I contradicted him, making to march off, but freezing as he wrapped a hand gently around my arm, holding me in place next to him for a moment.

  "When's it going to stop, Lara?" I knew he wanted me to look at him, but I refused. "When are you going to let it go? Donny-"

  I wrenched my arm from his grasp. "What is wrong with you?" I snapped, feeling almost light-headed as the blood rushed to my head and my heart
started to pound.

  He'd crossed a line, and he knew it, it didn't, however, stop him from finishing lowly, "This is your last semester, babe. Your last thirteen weeks surrounded by people who give any sort of a damn about what we did in high school. Leave it here, yeah?"

  With his piece said, he left abruptly, leaving me, as always, wondering why he was the only one who saw something so bad in me trying to do good.

  ----------

  Fletcher fumed as he walked.

  Here he was again, on the wrong bloody side of campus, his hand buzzing from its brief contact with Lara's arm, his head cloudy from her perfume, and, as always, he'd come out of it the bad guy. His life was nothing if not predictable.

  Well, whatever, he'd tried; she'd thrown it back in his face, job done.

  …done, that was, until he saw some other evidence of her martyr act and found himself compelled to try and shake her out of it. He knew it was useless, knew it just pissed her off, but he hadn't yet been able to take his own advice and let it go.

  Gavin Wyley, though. An image of the sticky lip print on his cheek and mussed clothing at the party last night was lodged in Fletch's mind and there was no getting it out. He knew it’d been fake, had known it from the second he'd seen the set up, but that didn't stop it being Lara's lips that had been on Gav, lips that had been firmly off-limits to Fletcher for three years.

  Damn. Three years.

  Three years since he'd buried his fingers into the heavy softness of her hair, pushed into her up against the wall at that party and broken all the rules.

  He'd cheated on his girlfriend.

  He'd screwed his mate's sister.

  He'd fallen completely and irrevocably in lust with a girl he'd known was just using him to forget.

  Chapter 2 –The Naked Education

  "Right on time, good."

  It was three days later and I was perched on an art stool in one of the studios for hire on campus watching Livvy almost sprint into the room for her first lesson. The studio was painted a light cream colour and lit by dazzling down-lights, giving the illusion of brightness even though I'd pulled the heavy blinds across the windows ringing the space. What was about to occur was not for other's eyes.

  "Yeah," she puffed, leaning over and resting her hands on her hips for a second as she sought to regain her breath. "I had to run from my last class, I hate being late."

  I nodded calmly, but internally, I was reappraising her slightly. Positively. I did love a fellow punctuality addict.

  "Good stuff. Come on in and take a seat." I pointed at the paint-spattered stool I'd positioned across from me and Livvy hitched herself up as requested. Punctual and obedient, lovely.

  "So, first off, tell me about your homework," I instructed briskly, "what did you read?"

  "Man is to Woman Be." She pulled the weighty tome out of her plain black backpack and held it up as proof.

  "Hardcore fem-lit." I nodded, impressed. "And what did you learn?"

  "My body is my body and mine to do whatever I want with," she said promptly. "I should respect it for the pleasure it can give and receive, and listen so I can hear what it's telling me." She faltered and then looked across at me somewhat sheepishly. "It sounds like the sort of thing people put on those trashy posters of sunsets and stuff, but I guess it's true."

  I picked at a piece of random arty detritus that had found its way onto my jeans, thinking as I did so that I would totally have pegged Livvy as someone whose room would be plastered with those sorts of posters. Interesting.

  "Anything else?"

  "Oh," she sighed a little bit despondently. "Only that our whole society is based around the propagation of male dominance and women are just pawns in their game to be the alpha."

  There was something of a grimace hovering at the corners of her mouth and so I prompted, "Do you believe that?"

  "I'm not sure," Livvy looked across at me quickly with those oh-my-grandma-what-big-eyes-you-have of hers, as if checking whether that was wrong, but I kept my expression carefully neutral. "I mean, I get that a lot of the structures of our society and everything are geared towards men historically, and I don't want to discount that, but...I don't feel like a pawn."

  "Good for you," I said decisively and she looked incredibly pleased with even this, fairly mild, praise.

  "I wanted to ask you, though…" Livvy pulled at a lock of her hair as she spoke. "That book was interesting and everything, and I really felt that my brain clicked to some stuff I'd never really thought about before, but I wasn't sure how that related to me and…you know…getting with my boyfriend."

  "The line between sex and sexuality gets blurred," I said bluntly. "But the first is vastly improved by knowledge of the second." And how I wished someone had been there to point that out to me all those years ago.

  She opened her mouth to reply to that, but didn't manage to get a word out before another voice suddenly called out from the cupboard off to the left.

  "Girls," the shout began, "it's great that neither of you are our pawns and I get that sexuality is super fun to talk about, but can we come out now? It's bloody freezing back here."

  Livvy let out a little squeak and nearly toppled off her stool, reaching a hand out to my arm in order to steady herself as those giant eyes of hers got even wider.

  "Yeah, OK Stefano, come on out," I yelled back, nudging Livvy's hand off me and going forward to meet two boys as they exited the small space usually reserved for storing paint, easels and other art supplies.

  "Well that was fun!" Stefano bounded out gleefully, followed by the much less exuberant Alan. "I never got the chance to literally come out of the closet."

  "Strikes me you never spent much time in one," I observed. "Right then, Livvy," I pushed the boys forward until they were standing in front of my good deed recipient of the moment, "this is Stefano and Alan."

  Stefano beamed over at Livvy, his teeth a bright white against his olive tan. His nails shone with the gleam that put the 'man' in manicure and there was a trendy smudge of eyeliner along his lids. And then there was Alan who, whilst the grooming opposite of Stefano with his scruffy bed hair and dry skin on his elbows, was a good sport for responding to my summons when he clearly would prefer to be anywhere else.

  "Hello." Livvy looked between them, her expression firmly fixed on polite, but wary.

  Fair enough too, I suppose. She knew that this was a sex class, they'd been hiding in the cupboard and, oh yeah, they were both naked beneath very small, very flimsy robes usually used by live drawing models.

  "Right, so these guys have agreed to demonstrate one of the most fundamental differences between penises." I channelled Mrs Symons from grade 8 sex-ed class and her dry, uncompromising tone from when she talked about correct condom application. "Stefano is circumcised, Alan isn't."

  At this Livvy literally gulped and I looked at her sternly.

  "No embarrassment. We're all grownups, yes?"

  Livvy, Stefano and Alan all nodded.

  "We're all going to be respectful of each other and not talk about what goes on in these lessons, yes?"

  Nods again all round.

  "Right, so there's no issue. Drop your gowns, boys, let's get on with it."

  I'd barely finished speaking before Stefano had thrown his cover aside. He added a little stripper-esque dance as he did so for his own amusement, but Alan was less enthusiastic. He let his gown drop down a little bit, but it was only seeing that Livvy's eyes were firmly on Stefano's theatrics that made him quickly let it go and then hunch in self-consciously.

  Immediately I reached out and crossly shoved his shoulders back square. "Come on, Alan, you can't be ashamed of what you got."

  Stefano leant round to have a look for himself and then gave Alan a thumbs up. From a man who’d seen plenty of penises in his time, this was a ringing endorsement and, straight guy checked out by gay guy awkwardness aside, Alan seemed reassured.

  "So," certain that Alan had had his confidence restored, I refoc
used on Livvy, "what do you think?"

  "They're..." She slid off her stool and hesitantly stepped forward to peer a bit more closely at the boys' genitals, curiosity obviously overriding embarrassment. "They're smaller than I thought they'd be."

  Stefano let out an exaggerated gasp, while Alan paled and resumed his hunched position. I, however, wasn't surprised. I patted the boys comfortingly on their bare backs and then looked to Livvy knowingly.

  "Lit porn, right?"

  Already flustered by the guys' reactions, Livvy stopped midway through her stumbled apologies and looked at me in disbelief. "Pardon?"

  "English major, I should've known." I nodded. "You've been reading romance books, right? The ones where the throbbing manhoods are all a good 10 inches? Well, firstly, that's erect, and secondly, that's bull. Right, boys?"

  Alan stayed mum, looking horrified by the whole thing, but this was Stefano's go-to subject and he jumped in with alacrity. "That's right. I mean, that's not to say I've not seen some good ones in my time, but the elephant trunks are rare." He rubbed at his artful stubble contemplatively and added, "And not necessarily your best option, performance-wise."

  "Of course, I really am so, so sorry. I really didn't mean to be rude."

  Livvy's eyes were most eloquent in conveying her horror at having insulted them and the boys were soon falling over themselves to reassure her. I observed this with interest and deduced she was one of those girls; the ones that seem to accidentally wrap boys around their little fingers. A handy skill, even if she didn't seem to realise it yet.

  When I got bored of the apology/reassurance cycle I cleared my throat pointedly and we moved on.

  I'd wanted to bring a pointer, like some of my lecturers used to indicate pertinent parts of their Power Point presentations, but Stefano had flatly refused to allow me near his privates with anything resembling a stick. For that reason, I had to point out the parts I was referring to by jabbing my finger towards them, but it seemed to get the job done.