Panserhistory, part 2: Rachel

Since I started this journal several of you folks have asked me about my past. Who've I been with? you want to know. What was it like, being with them? Did they let you....y'know....do THAT to them? Did they hurt you? Did you hurt them? Did you learn anything from them? Would you do it again, if you had a chance?

So I'm going to write some entries about my history, limited as it is, and let you see for yourself. As always, all names I use here have been changed.

Part 2: Rachel

My sophomore year at college, I had gotten hooked (along with much of the rest of my dorm) on a precursor to today's MMORPGs. This one was text-based, and played over a telnet connection to a server hosted by another university. The acronym for it at the time was MUD -- Multiple User Domain (or Dungeon), and it was a sort of Dungeons and Dragons world, but programmed by regular people, college students mostly. This particular one was really cool not just for the extremely imaginative worlds that had been created by those who ran it, but also by the social aspect of things. As I discovered rather quickly, you can get to know some very interesting people by talking to them over the Internets. Except it wasn't called "the Internet" yet -- most people were still using 300 baud modems for home connections to BBSs. Much easier, as we did, to use a university's T1 lines for higher bandwidth. I kept my university email address and access to their telnet system for almost a decade after I graduated, upon which they finally retired that system....but I digress.

Anyway, I got hooked on playing this MUD, as I said, and most evenings could find me in the dorm's computer lab, typing away. I had already been a speedy typist but all the interactions and conversations I was having in this medium ramped it way up until I was over the 100 wpm mark. It's stuck with me to this day, which is very handy for instant message conversations or emails. Or trying to get one of these musings written quickly when I have limited time....but again I digress.

Back to the game. I had made lots of friends via this medium, if you could call someone a friend when you had never met them face to face. And sometimes more than friends -- several relationships blossomed between friends of mine and people they had met in the game world. I had one myself, actually, and even had some fun times experimenting with cybersex with "her" -- until I found out from a mutual friend that that person was actually a guy. Embarrassing! Dropped that one in a hurry when I found out, you can be sure. :) On the other hand, some of the relationships got quite serious -- in fact a friend of mine actually started dating one of the other players, who it turned out was just playing from a nearby dorm. They may still be together, for all I know.

Anyway, one of these relationships got serious enough for the girl to fly out and visit the guy in my dorm who was chasing her. I didn't know him well, but I'd talked with her plenty in-game, and considered her to be a pretty good friend. He'd invited everybody in our local "group" to come hang out when she showed up. I dropped by and saw most of the people in our local group hanging out and talking with him. Where was she, though? I craned my neck and looked around a bit for a strange face -- and there she was, sitting on the couch and looking a bit abandoned. So I wandered over and said hi, and she introduced herself as Rachel.

It turned out that the attraction he'd claimed he had for her had pretty much dissolved when he first saw her because she didn't meet his standards of physical beauty. This puzzled me then and puzzles me to this day -- she wasn't conventionally beautiful, perhaps, but she had a withdrawn, mousy librarian chic thing going that I personally found very attractive. And she had lovely soft lips and truly beautiful eyes, and sweet-smelling long hair.

Oops. I'm getting ahead of myself. At the time, I just hung out and talked with her, because after all she wasn't there to visit me. The guy she was there to visit wound up mostly ignoring her, but I saw her a few times over the next few days, and then she went back home. After that, we got to be a lot closer, both online and off. Over the next few months we would spend lots of time talking via the MUD, sending emails when neither of us was there, or sending real, actual letters when neither of us had online access. Things grew, and developed, and we got to be closer and closer, several times talking about the attraction we felt and a few times even fooling around with cybersex, all the while talking about how we wished it were the real thing.....and by spring break of that year we had decided it was time for me to come visit her. So I flew out to see her, planning to spend a week with her, expecting nothing more than friendship but hoping for more.

And holy hell, did I get it.

When she met me at the gate, we embraced like long lost lovers (which I suppose we were, in a manner of speaking). We went back to her place and talked while I unpacked my stuff, then she had to go to work. I went with her (she worked in a mall, so I had plenty to keep me occupied for a few hours), then we had some dinner after she got off work, and then we got back to her place....and then we moved to her bedroom, where we began kissing. Gently at first, then more forcefully. We kissed, and kissed, and hands began exploring, and clothes began coming off slowly, and then I began giving her a backrub, massaging her, and eventually, by the glow of warm candles spaced around her bedroom, we made love, for the first of what would prove to be a great many times over the next week.

How to describe having sex for the first time? Even more difficult, how to describe making love, really making love, with somebody that you feel a huge emotional connection with? More difficult still, how to describe the warmth and caring and patience she showed me? Inexperienced and virgin as I was, I was nonetheless possessed of a hugely active imagination, and I'd done plenty of reading and seen lots of porn, so I knew the basic mechanics, but putting everything into place isn't always as easy, I discovered, as "tab A into slot B". But Rachel was a fantastic lover -- patient, helpful with me, guiding me, telling me what worked for her, how she liked to be touched and tasted and mmm, yesss, like that.

I couldn't believe how exciting it was to be lying in bed, stark naked, erection pointing at the ceiling, caressing an also-nude woman who said (and demonstrated quite ably!) that she wanted me. How soft her breasts were. How sweet her hair smelled. How her lips tasted, so hungry, so fresh. How soaking wet her pussy was, and how sharp its aroma, so piercing, such evidence of arousal.

I made love to her with hands, lips, teeth, tongue, caressing and licking every inch of her body, and spending a good 30 minutes worshiping her orally (she told me later that she came three times) before I even considered entering her. If I was going to do this, I thought, I was going to do it right. Finally I sheathed my aching cock in a condom and crawled on top of her. I asked her if she was sure she wanted this (apparently still in shock), and she responded with a grin, reaching down between us and guiding me home into her warm, wet pussy.

I groaned as I slid in. Oh, gods, this was so much better than I'd ever dreamed. We started a slow rhythm; I braced myself on hands above her, our bodies wet with sweat, sliding back and forth in delicious friction. I gazed into her eyes as we made love, holding each other close, breathing in tandem. It was all soft sighs and gentle murmurs and quiet endearments, and when I stiffened a few minutes later and flooded the condom, it was one of the most exquisite sensations I'd ever felt.

We made love over and over for the next week, whenever we had spare time and she was not working. She rarely initiated things, but she was always receptive to my advances -- or if she wasn't in the mood, she never showed it and would indulge me anyway. When she was too sore too fuck, we would lie there nude, caressing and touching each other, snuggling close, kissing and fondling. We did it mostly in missionary position, but played some with doggy-style and once with her on top. We played with mutual masturbation. I was a kid let loose in a playground and she, it seemed, was equally willing, even if not quite as enthusiastic. And it was so good, so very good, to hear that despite my inexperience I was apparently "fucking fantastic" in bed. There was enough self-confidence from that to carry me through some very bad years, and it gave a huge boost to my self-image.

And when we weren't making love, we were snuggling, holding each other close, talking about anything and everything. She told me things she'd never told anyone else, and I shared secrets with her that I haven't told anyone since. We spoke of our childhoods, our fears, hopes and dreams, the things that hurt us, the things that made us cry in the dead of night. We were balm for each others' troubled souls.

And when we weren't making love, or snuggling, or emotionally bonding, we were out exploring her town. Wandering across campus. Seeing cult films at the campus theater. Eating at the great local restaurants. Hanging out with local friends of hers (some of whom were also regulars on the MUD we frequented, and ALL of those gave us very, very knowing looks when they saw us holding hands). And generally making the most of the time we had together.

When we parted, we both knew, I think, that we were far too different (and much, much too far apart) to ever make things work on a permanent basis. But, as she said as she kissed me goodbye with a tear in her eye, "we'll always have Paris, eh?" And I smiled sadly, and agreed, and gave her a long slow kiss and a long tight hug, and waved goodbye until I couldn't see her anymore, and returned home, feeling emotionally and physically wrung out.

I did keep in touch with Rachel. We still saw each other in-game, and emailed frequently, and sent letters when (inevitably) we drifted away from the MUD, which really had gotten to take over too much of our lives. At least we never got obsessed to the point where it affected our grades, as had happened with some of our colleagues! Still, we kept writing each other, and eventually she met a local guy who treated her fantastically well, and she wrote less after that, with good reason. I heard from her a year or two after that; she said that they were getting married and she was moving to Canada with him. I sent back a delighted reply, and that, sadly, was the last I've heard of her.

I've tried to find her a few times over the past few years. But she has a very common name, and when she took her husband's last name it was even more common. Google searches and Facebook searches don't help much when they turn up hundreds of thousands of results. So I think about her at odd times, and wish her well, and hope she's as happy as she deserves to be.

Because for a spring break week in 1992, she made me happier than I'd ever been.

Thank you, Rachel. I never said it enough when we were "together", so I'll say it now. I loved you, and part of me always will love you.

-- PB