Author’s note:
‘One long day in December’ was rattled off after I read the encouraging comments about some of my previous stories. I’d like to say thank you to all those who liked my first batch of yarns and that this is an attempt to further develop the history of two of the characters from ‘Hypnotic Lap Dance,’ further clarifying how their relationship came to be. As ever, this tale has absolutely nothing to do with reality and I would like to apologise to all students, lecturers, tutors and, particularly, course organisers at Cambridge, especially those in or connected to Newnham College. The details I got came from a minute amount of research on the internet, not any personal experience or prejudice.
One long day in December
Tanya Covington’s first Monday morning at university in December proves to be one to remember.
Introduction: 05/12/1988
Cambridge was absolutely wonderful. The town, based almost entirely around the famous institution, was an amazing collection of old roads and buildings that housed a truly staggering variety of pubs, bars and clubs which the students, particularly those in their first year, visited with a frequency that would have very much alarmed their parents… if they’d known. Tanya Covington had been in the city for barely two months and was very much in love with it. Her father had gone to Oxford and had encouraged her to do the same, but Cambridge’s record on sciences was better than its great rival and so, to dad’s chagrin, she’d selected it in place of the other establishment.
Tanya ended up in Newnham, one of the all-girl colleges at the uni, a fact that she’d somehow missed during her application. It came as something of a shock to find out. Her natural enthusiasm had meant that, in place of reading all about Cambridge and finding out a few details about such things as her own college, she’d instead arrived and thrown herself into the party atmosphere of her first week at uni. She’d been somewhat surprised to find an absence of men at the College but hadn’t bothered thinking about it too hard. Sure there was a constant stream of blokes in and around the place, but at night, after the doors were shut, there were hardly any, but she didn’t pick up on it until it was emphatically pointed out.
When she found out it really didn’t bother Tanya, as she had no particular desire for male company. However, learning the place’s reputation did come as a shock. When she was speaking to some of her course mates, when they asked the obvious question about where she was staying, they tittered at her answer with knowing glances. Tanya had asked what they found amusing.
“Don’t you know about Newnham’s reputation?” asked one, the rugby playing son of Lord something or other. Tanya shook her head.
“It’s where all the dykes end up!” he explained to general amusement before continuing, “It’s one of the two all female colleges in the university. The other one’s New Hall, but that’s more of a backup for girls who didn’t get into the co-eds. Newnham is where all the screaming lesbians go!” Tanya had been mortified… both by her ignorance of the unofficial history of her college and for the boy’s description of homosexuals… of her… for she was a lesbian and though not especially proud of the fact she was angry that this obnoxious aristocrat thought it acceptable to label her so rudely. However, as it was early days for her at Cambridge she kept her annoyance to herself. Seeing the indecision and irritation pass over her face, the young man guessed that she was only finding out about Newnham’s reputation for the first time.
“Didn’t you know?” he asked incredulously. Tanya shook her head slowly. He and the group of boys and girls with them burst out laughing.
“God, fancy that!” exclaimed the young nobleman, “I thought they practically tied you down and shagged you new girls senseless at Newnham’s!” The whole group laughed uproariously at Tanya’s expense once more. When they finally calmed down the young man, who’d been so unpleasant, leant over and placed a friendly hand on her shoulder.
“I tell you what,” he began with an air of good natured conspiracy, “If you ever need a place to stay we’ve got plenty of spare bedrooms in Kings…” Tanya smiled and thanked him while picking his hand off her shoulder. She knew exactly what he meant. The boy was clearly used to picking up girls fairly easily, probably due to his easy charm, fairly friendly manner, bodybuilder figure and movie star looks.
Tanya was not the sort to fall for any of that. On top of her sexual proclivity she’d also been brought up as an only child in an extended Thai family. Her father was an English diplomat who’d met and fallen in love with the daughter of a Thai… businessman, for want of a better word… such as criminal. Much to Stewart Covington’s surprise the woman had returned his love and, even more surprisingly, her father had approved the match.
They got married but only had one child, though not for want of effort or desire… a second just never happened for some reason. Tanya had been born on the 1st May 1970 and had been the youngest of many cousins on her mother’s side. Her father had relatives but Tanya saw them infrequently, due to their unflattering opinion of her father’s foreign marriage. She certainly didn’t see them nearly as much as her other cousins and it was they who really moulded her emotionally. Being the youngest she learnt all about the sexual politics that went on between boys, girls, men and women long before her peers did, mainly because of the free and easy attitude of many of her close relatives in discussing such things with her.
This… education provided her with an excellent understanding of human nature and meant that she was very good at seeing through duplicity and innuendo, such as that being employed by the son of lord whoever he was… not that he was being the least bit subtle. Tanya ignored the chauvinism and sexism in what he’d said and merely took his less than delicate interest as a complement, one that would be kept at arms length. He accepted her knock back good naturedly, with no suggestions that she might be a lesbian to ease his disappointment. Tanya was mildly impressed, as she’d expected at least a knowing glance or muttered remark.
Regardless, the Thai girl had little concern for sexual politics in her first eight weeks. Cambridge operated on an extraordinarily tight time constraint, cramming between ten and twelve weeks’ worth of work into little over two months. The psychology degree she was doing was very hard and the non-stop party attitude that went with the university was difficult to keep up with. By the time December was rearing its chilly head she was very much looking forward to the forthcoming holiday, heading back to Thailand for some sun, sea and sand.
Still, her tickets weren’t until the eighteenth and she had plenty to be getting on with as she woke up, tired, irritable and hung over, on the first Monday morning of December. Her degree work was up to date, her social life was increasingly dominated by a medium sized group of firm friends and Christmas was right around the corner… but Tanya wasn’t particularly happy. To be honest, it was mostly due to the two and a half bottles of wine she’d ill advisedly consumed the previous evening, playing ‘Have you ever…?’ with some of the first year girls in her college. The game is one where a person asks a personal question to a group and all those who answer yes must drink…
Initially it had been things like ‘Have you ever gone travelling?’ As more wine was consumed the questions turned to the less mundane… ‘Have you ever woken up in somebody else’s bed…?’ ‘Have you ever kissed someone full on…?’ By the time serious drunkenness had ensued Tanya was getting asked if she’d ever had sex and if so, who with. She’d lied, like everyone else had been doing to a greater or lesser extent, though Tanya was better at it and spotted the tell tale signs when her friends were being less than truthful. But she didn’t take them to task about and had enjoyed the evening, learning a lot of things about her new mates, some of which she wouldn’t have wanted to know!
On the work front she hadn’t been idle in her time at Cambridge and had studied her subject in great detail before arriving at the institution. A new craze, after a fashion, had been developed in around English boarding schools around the time she finished, called a GAP year. Instead of going straight to university the option was available for going travelling, or working, or something for a year instead, followed by university the next October. Tanya hadn’t elected to take a GAP year. She’d been too excited about studying psychology, which was the second reason she was annoyed on that Monday morning.
During her penultimate year at school, Tanya had encountered hypnosis for the first time. It had been a wild experience in which she’d ended up entrancing no less than four people with predictable results. She’d discovered that she had great skill at inducing trances and had desperately wanted to see just how good she really was. That was why she’d picked psychology as her course at Cambridge… to learn more about how peoples’ minds worked and what hypnosis did to them. Instead it had already been a long, hard, complicated trawl though acres of literature and very little practical experimentation. This was understandably annoying for Tanya.
However, she wasn’t about to let that stop her from getting the best damn degree she could, even if it wasn’t quite what she’d expected. What Tanya had hoped was that she’d learn more about the dangers of hypnosis. All the books she’d read on the subject had offered cautionary tales of mind control gone awry. She wasn’t sure of it, but Tanya was worried that she’d come perilously close to really messing up somebody’s head, which was why she’d forbidden herself from using her skills. That had been all very well at her school, where she’d had more than one close friend to share her bed with, but at university, with all the attractive, curious young women around, the temptation was very powerful…
Still, Tanya was strong willed and not prepared to give up on her degree. On top of it she’d joined a number of clubs, most of which were just different groups of like minded individuals who’d go out drinking. Those included: the drama appreciation society, the debating society, netball, hockey, experimental music club and Sobriety Anonymous at Cambridge, or SAC… a group of supposed teetotallers who regularly held massive, alcohol fuelled parties to celebrate quite how good they were at abstaining the rest of the time.
The exceptions to these drunken party organisations were the tennis club and a town based, non-university kick boxing gym Tanya had joined to maintain her excellent Muay Thai and Judo skills she’d been learning since childhood. To be absolutely honest, the gym was the only non-alcohol based society she was part of. The tennis club only officially practiced in spring and summer. Fall and winter were for initiation ceremonies…
Evading such parties had been difficult as peer pressure really encouraged you to go out and get especially wrecked with each society as often as possible, to the general amusement of your fellow, older members. Having seen one girl get taken to hospital to have her stomach pumped after her first such event, Tanya quickly made sure no one was going to do the same to her. Her avoidance of such episodes ended up causing her to leave certain societies, but only in terms that they didn’t think that she was ‘One of us’ because of her reluctance to drink herself into a coma. By December, Tanya was only really involved in the gym, debating and tennis, with her connection to the latter two tenuous at best.
Fortunately, she was hardly alone in this manner. The massive rush to join the crowd and be part of every shindig in the opening weeks of the term led to the inevitable hang over afterwards, when actually getting up and playing hockey seemed to be such a tremendous drag that would be better left till next week… or the next week… or never ever. Tanya tried to maintain the debating, which was an excellent spot on your Curriculum Vitae according to her parents, the tennis, as it was the only sport she’d ever been any good at, and the kickboxing, because it was the one place she didn’t have to be Tanya Covington, Cambridge student. That and she liked being able to practice kicking blokes who were taller than her right in the head.
There were three instructors at the gym and all initially regarded Tanya as being a little, pretty girl who had done ballet, or something, but who didn’t really know anything about actual fighting. When she punched one man, holding sparing mitts, so hard that he’d had to rest his hand in iced water, their opinions changed and she quickly gained the reputation for a hard, fast, tough little minx. Sometimes the blokes at the gym would try and come on to her but they accepted her lack of enthusiasm with good grace, mostly.
Tanya thought about all these things as she lay in bed, half asleep after her alarm had roused her. Finally, with a degree of reluctance, she got up and went to the communal bathroom. As she returned from the shower and got dressed, Tanya wondered about her day ahead. Cambridge, like Oxford, prided itself on its one to one tuition and Tanya had an 11.30 meeting that morning with her tutor, Dr. Alice Morgan, after a two hour long lecture on the human mind.
Forgoing a bra and dressing in jeans and an armless T-shirt, though pulling on a thick sweater and boots for the cold, Tanya grabbed her bag and went out to get some breakfast before heading to her lecture. It would be pretty boring, although she always seemed to come out of it quite aroused for some reason… But, on the other hand, Tanya really liked her tutor Alice and was looking forward to her tutorial almost as much as Dr. Morgan was. The prize winning researcher had been thinking of the meeting for quite some time… though for some quite different reasons…