By the second term of the second year I am back in a routine of sorts although I am still worried about all the work I missed. Life is still the normal hectic round of parties and lectures with the emphasis on parties. I have a nagging disquiet in the back of my mind, however, because the exams are not so very far away and they are going to be much tougher than last year. I manage to ignore this nagging doubt for the moment and decide that since everything is going so well, I will drive to Chichester and visit Louisa for the weekend. It’s a long drive but I’m sure the car can make it.

I ring Louisa to gauge her reaction and she is very enthusiastic. She mentions something about me having to sleep in a common room but I am sure she is joking. She better be joking because I am as horny as a warren full of rabbits.

I leave after lectures on Friday night. It’s getting dark and it’s raining as I navigate from north London where my college is to south London in order to get on the main road going south. Chichester is located on the south coast of England.

The rush hour traffic is bad and progress is slow. ‘Fat-Bottomed girls’ by Queen is booming from the radio and I’m singing along and feeling great. In a few hours I will be with my very own fat-bottomed girl and hopefully I’ll be in her bed. Then I notice that the car is handling very badly. I park as best I can considering the narrow road and the nose-to-tail traffic and, sliding over the passenger seat as usual, I emerge into heavy rain. It is immediately apparent what the problem is: I have a puncture. Damn!

It takes ages to change the tire and now I have no spare wheel, I am soaking wet, I am tired and I am late. The roads are quieter by now so in order to try and make up some time I put my foot down and am speeding along when I notice I’ve nearly passed the turnoff to get on the main road south. I glance in the rear view mirror and decide it’s safe to make a last-minute, high-speed maneuver. As I make the turn I hear a desperate honking and a screeching of brakes. I automatically hit the brakes too and the car skids dangerously, coming to a halt just before the embankment marking the intersection of the two roads. The other car has come to a halt almost level with me but on the left hand side of the road. The driver of the other car gets out and I do likewise. He is cursing.

"What the hell are you doing? You nearly killed both of us!"

"Sorry" I say and look remorseful. "I didn’t see you, you must have been in my blind spot."

"Jesus!" says the man. "OK, OK. It could have been your blind spot." He calms down a bit. "No harm done, I suppose. Are you all right?"

"Yes thanks" I say. "Look I’m really sorry. It was my fault."

Life tip: In life if it’s your fault put your hand up and take the blame. Nobody’s perfect.

The man has now calmed down and, getting back in his car, he drives off with a wave.

I continue to Chichester driving more slowly and I arrive safely but very late at the large block of student rooms where Louisa is a resident. She is still up when I ring her from a nearby phone box and she collects me from the main entrance and takes me to her room. She has put her nickname ‘Lou’ on the door in big letters. How cute I think to myself. We sleep close together in her small single bed but we are both very tired. The rabbits in the warren will have to wait.

We wake up late and we both seem to have the same thing on our mind. There is quite a bit of noise outside in the corridor as the other residents move about getting their breakfast. After a bit of cunnilingus, Lou gets on top of me and starts moving her hips in a slow, sensual rhythm. It’s heaven. I am licking her nipples with the end of my tongue and she is making a low moaning sound with her eyes closed. Suddenly the door bursts open and a well-dressed, well-built woman in her fifties is standing before me. Lou turns and looks over her shoulder at the astonished woman. All three of us are startled and in a state of shock. After what seems like an eternity the woman mumbles "Sorry", fumbles for the door handle and leaves us. We look at each other and then begin shrieking hysterically.

Subsequently Lou talks to her friends and discovers that this woman is the mother of one of the residents, here for a visit with her daughter. She needed the bathroom and while walking down the corridor she saw ‘Lou’ on the door and mistook it for ‘Loo’. Louisa had neglected to lock her room door.

The rest of the weekend passes quickly as Louisa takes me on a whirlwind tour of her college and introduces me to her friends. There are so many girls here I begin to wish I was training to be a teacher and not wasting my time on a biochemistry degree.

Saturday night is party night and I am drunk and dancing to the Blondie album "Parallel lines". Through the fog of alcohol it suddenly strikes me that Louisa has more than a passing resemblance to Debbie Harry except with a bigger arse. I am a lucky, lucky boy.

At the end of the weekend I return to London with all my appetites fully satiated. Roll on the summer holidays.

Back at college term 2 becomes term 3 and the inevitability of the exams is unavoidable. Everyone is in a panic revising morning, afternoon, evening and night. I am concentrating especially hard on my biochemistry course because this is my major subject. I still have weak spots around some areas because of the work I missed but I decide to leave these weak areas alone and concentrate on what I know best as this does comprise the bulk of the course. This is another big mistake.

Quite soon it’s exam time and I am sitting in the main examination hall waiting to turn over the biochemistry exam paper. I feel confident. I am the best prepared for any exam that I can remember and I should easily find enough questions on my good topics to sail through. Turning over the paper I read rapidly, searching for questions that I can answer. As I reach the end of the paper my heart starts pounding, my knees go weak and I realise my predicament - most of the questions focus on the parts of the syllabus I missed. Fuck! I am angry and scared at the same time - am I paranoid or have I been stitched up. Slowly I calm down and decide to get on with it, answering the questions as best I can. Maybe I can scrape a pass. I don’t.

University heaven didn’t last long and I am now a failure in the core subject of my degree. I am summoned to see my tutor Dr. Greene.

"I am surprised you didn’t put more effort into revising for the biochemistry exam," he says.

Wanker, I think.

"Well I think I was a bit unlucky with the questions. I was actually very well prepared in most topics."

"That's as may be but needless to say you can’t continue with your biochemistry degree as you’ve failed the core course." He seems smug. "However, you have passed enough other units to continue to the 3rd year but we’ll have to change your degree to Biological Sciences."

That's a relief. I thought for a moment they were going to kick me out. But this does mean that my intended career as a researcher in biochemistry has been knocked on the head. Not to worry, I’d been getting a bit sick of science anyway and something else will turn up. I hope.

Since my degree course has been broadened out for me I decide to scour the biology curriculum looking for interesting courses. ‘Computer Organisation and Machine-level Programming’ is one I find. Hmm, computers that’s different. I think I’ll do that next year. Pays better than research I bet.

I return home to my parents house for the summer holidays and work as a delivery driver for Williams & Griffin, a well known department store in Colchester. The money I earn helps pay to keep my car on the road and my evenings out with Louisa. One evening she suggests we visit her grandparents for the weekend...in Carlisle.

Desperately Seeking Sex & Sobriety - Copyright Paul Pisces 2002-2004

(A Cautionary Tale of Sex Tourism, Drugs, Alcohol, Prostitution & Suicide)

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