Radical Empathy - Part 2 free porn video

Radical Empathy By Akira Marx Part 2: It's trite to say it, and I really hate these cliches, but it was love at first sight. Of course it was, I was an eighteen year old guy away from home for the first time. I had one thing on my mind and it wasn't the physics lab I had in a half hour. Maybe lust at first sight would be more appropriate, but that makes this sound tawdry. Let's just settle on an overwrought reveal instead: Cue the spotlight. Hit the fan. Give me the soft focus, pull in slow...aaaand, action! In front of me sat the most beautiful girl I had ever laid eyes on. The afternoon sun streaming through the Student Center's high windows sparkled in her long, inky dark hair, loose strands picking up the stray beams, encircling her in a radiant halo. She was daintily eating a salad, deliberately guiding each forkful of greens to her mouth, a speck of milky white dressing left on her pillowy soft and oh so kissable lips. While I stared, she tugged on the strap of her tank top, making me wish I could caress those bare shoulders. Skinny jeans conformed to her legs, looking like they were painted on, a covering of deep navy. She was sitting alone. And not just sitting alone, there wasn't anybody within two tables of her. It was surreal, practically every other seat in the place was taken, people staked out along the far walls of the dining area trying to balance drinks and books while they ate their lunches, but none of them made a move to any of the plethora of empty chairs. Well, guess I only had one choice. If I were a more rhapsodic storyteller this is where I would go for the gauzy, avant garde flashback within a flashback of when I met my roommate at the beginning of the semester. Big scene, me all bright eyed, naive, the young lad excited to be entering the hallowed halls of academia. The reality is that about five minutes after we sorted out who got which side of the room, he gave me his unsolicited thoughts on how getting girls was all a numbers game and he had already scouted the facebook of every incoming freshman girl in our dorm. Yeah, sketch as hell, but he must've been onto something because between the two of us he wasn't the one who had spent half of the past month sleeping on the couch in the dorm lounge because their roommate had a new friend he needed to show his sheets off to. So back to the present, or the present in the past...the pluperfect? Whatever. I had been in a dry spell since I got to college and here in front of me was a literal angel on earth and nowhere else to sit but near her. You better believe I was going to make a move. I put on my smoothest smile, the one I had practiced in front of the mirror for hours back in middle school, a bemused smirk with one slightly raised eyebrow. Settling into what I thought was a nonchalant strut, I made a line straight for the chair directly across from her, when about two dozen feet before I reached my mark I was suddenly hit with an oppressive wave of some invisible force. I should be a little more clear, it wasn't a physical sensation, like it's not like I was pressing up against a wall, it was more like the feeling of when you try to push the positive sides of two magnets together. An unseen repulsion, but just like with a pair of refrigerator magnets, with some focus and effort I was able to force my way forward. A few strides away from the chair, a low, almost imperceptible murmuring seemed to whisper right in my ear. "Stay away stay away stay away," like it was straight out of a horror movie, the mantra repeated. Slowed but undeterred, I finally reached my goal. Setting the tray holding the fast food burger and fries that was my lunch down on the table, I uncorked what at the time I thought was a pretty smooth line. "You know they say it's dangerous to eat alone. There's nobody to give you mouth to mouth if you choke." The words hung there, the silence deafening aside from the still present whisper which now felt like it was coming from the center of my skull. She looked up at me, her heavenly face contorted into a look of utter disbelief. "What are you doing? Who are you?" Her voice was filled with bewilderment. My bravado was a little shaken by her unexpected reaction. "Hey, I'm Matt. And I'm hoping to join you for lunch." Her eyes widened, a hint of fright creeping in, "How did you get so close? You shouldn't get close to me." The whispering intensified, a shivering hiss. "STAY AWAY STAY AWAY STAY AWAY!" My legs shook, a dull ache compelling me to get up, but I forced my feet to stay flat on the ground. I could tell my will was rapidly weakening but before I could move, the beautiful girl, the focus of my desire and the only thing giving me the strength to remain seated, sprung up from her chair. Without a word she bolted for the door of the Student Center, the crowd that had surrounded the empty tables parting quickly as she moved through it. As if a storm had broken, my heart slowed and the intangible pressure disappeared. Still rooted to my chair, I shook my head, noticing that she had left her salad and a spiral notebook behind. I flipped open the cover looking for any hint to her identity, when I saw taped to the inside was a printout of her class schedule, complete with name and major: Gwen Davies, Freshman, Biochemistry. ------------------------ I still can't believe people used to put their addresses on their facebook profile. Just right there, for any weirdo or psychopath or me to find. Gwen Davies, my mystery woman, had a name. And a couple minutes of internet searching later, plus a few days to not seem like a stalker, I was outside her door. Yeah, that still makes me sound like a stalker when I look at it again, but trust me, it was romantic in the moment. I figured she had lucked out, getting a room in the upperclassmen dorm, and when I saw that she was the last door on the floor, definitely a single, I was cursing her good fortune under my breath. I didn't realize that it was a special arrangement made with the help of the school and a false doctor's note prescribing strict solitary living conditions. I steeled my nerves, a little worried about a repeat of the other day, and knocked. "Gwen? Hi, it's Matt...umm, from the Student Center?" I called through the solid hunk of dormitory-grade fire resistant wood. There was no response. I knocked again and waited. Still nothing. Of course not, it was a Saturday and what are the odds someone as hot as her would be sitting around with nothing to do. I was about to turn and head back to the elevator when I caught a shadow quickly pass across the door's peephole. I then found myself doing something I never would normally, being more forward towards a stranger than I could've imagined. "Gwen, I know you're in there. I just want to return your notebook." I held it up in front of me, making sure it was right in view of the peephole. After what was probably the most uncomfortable ten seconds of my life, I heard the loud thunk of the deadbolt being slid open. The door opened and there she stood, straight out of my recent fantasies and in front of me once again. It was clear she wasn't expecting visitors, dressed in fuzzy pajama pants and a muscle tee. Even without makeup and her hair pulled back she was a knockout. She seemed to take a second to regard me. "You're that guy from the other day. The one who sat next to me." "Uh, yeah. Matt. I'm Matt Johnstone," I offered up lamely, holding my hand out, which she ignored. "Yeah, you said that. A couple times now." Gwen continued to look me over, studying me, but not with consternation like at the Student Center, this time more puzzled, intrigued. "So, you can just come right up to me, huh? Interesting." While I wouldn't call her demeanor inviting, I couldn't help but notice there was no sign of the tangible hostility I had experienced before. "Well, I bet a girl as beautiful as you has guys bothering her all the time." "Mmhmm, yeah," lost in her own thoughts, she spoke more to herself than to me. "And you're not running away now..." I was completely off balance. I didn't know how showing up here was going to go, and I would've told you beforehand that I figured she'd be more likely to slap me than to invite me in, but I really didn't expect this...this indifference. No, not indifference, she seemed interested, but decidedly not in the way I was hoping. I held the notebook out in front of me, hoping to snap her out of whatever it was she was noodling over. "I brought you your notebook. You left it on the table when you, uh, ran away." My gambit seemed to work. "Hey, I didn't run away! I was trying to protect you." She didn't elaborate on that last point. "But thanks for bringing that back, I guess." She snatched the notebook out of my hands, the quick motion causing her shirt to shift, the low cut armholes doing nothing to hide her lack of bra and giving me a generous view of sideboob. I want to say that I handled myself like a complete gentleman. That my eyes didn't immediately lock on to her chest like a man who wandered the desert spotting an oasis, and that Gwen didn't immediately notice where I was staring. I want to say that, but again, I was eighteen years old and who are we kidding here. She abruptly slammed the door right in my face. My face, which had started to feel like it was burning, the blood pounding in my ears. I was overcome with a profound embarrassment, which of course, I had gotten caught staring, but I couldn't quite figure out why I felt so...naked. Why I felt this sudden need to cover up. ------------------------ Who can say, really, what a good first impression is? Like, maybe you showed up to a job interview and your fly was down the whole time. Pretty bad, right? But everybody was so dazzled by your credentials that nobody cared. Or what if it's the first Thanksgiving with your significant other's family? You bake a pie from scratch, make sparkling conversation with the parents, and get along famously with the little nieces and nephews. But all anybody remembers from that year's gathering is that after dinner you had accidentally tucked the back of your skirt into your tights and were forever after nicknamed granny panties owing to your unfortunate choice of underwear. So you see? Things are subjective, and there's no one way a given situation will play out...but yeah, getting caught staring at the tits of the girl you desperately are trying to ask out is probably not the best look. And the three weeks that had passed without the hint of an appearance from Gwen had reinforced my worry that she wasn't exactly as enamored with me as I was of her. I had slipped my number into her notebook hoping that she might call, but that was before I blew it so spectacularly. Well, no sense beating around the bush. Presumably you've been following the story so far and know we end up together, so I might as well get on with it, and don't worry, I didn't do anything creepy to track her down this time. No, in fact she reached out to me. I couldn't believe it after I had given up hope, but she texted me one afternoon with a simple message, "This is Gwen, I want to see you." Surprisingly, I didn't break the phone's screen with how hard I hit the send button when I replied, asking when and where. We met back at Gwen's room. Disappointingly for me, this time she was prepared for a guest, dressed casually in a tie dye t-shirt and jean shorts. No chance for a nip slip this time. Was I mistaken, or had she put on a little mascara too? Maybe I had a shot after all. "Look, I'm going to level with you. There's something strange about you." Well, that glimmer of hope faded quickly, as she was all business as soon as the door was closed. "Something strange about me? Like you're one to talk." I didn't mean to be so defensive, but the words came out like a reflex. "Sorry, that was uncalled for. I don't really know you...but maybe I can get to know you?" "No, you're right. I am weird. Believe me, I know." She didn't seem offended at all by my rudeness and brushed off my hamfisted pickup line. "And you're also right that I want to know more about you, but not like you're thinking." It's funny, whether you're in grade school or an adult, it's always hard to just tell somebody you like them, and even more awkward when you know they know. "What? Nooooo, I just meant like I want to be friends..." "Oh yeah, I'm sure," she laughed. Hey, better she laughed than nothing, right? "But like I said, I'm not normal, and you seem to have a different reaction to being around me than I'm used to, so you're going to help me figure out why." I still didn't quite understand what she was getting at, but if it meant spending more time with the girl of my dreams, then sign me up. "Sure, yeah, I can help. Just, uh, what does helping mean?" She proceeded to tell me about her life up to that point. About how as a young girl she had difficulty in crowded settings, and that her parents had thought her shyness was just a garden variety social phobia. It was only when she was a little older that she was able to articulate that her being overwhelmed when she was around others wasn't out of anxiety, but because being in a crowd was like being set in front of a firehose of emotions. Gwen is an empath, a particularly sensitive one, and she was channeling the emotions of everyone around her. Can you imagine that? Being a kid, barely knowing how to deal with your own feelings, and having wave after wave of sorrow, happiness, anguish, and rage just whipsaw through you like a mood swing tilt-a-whirl that you can't get off? Now imagine how much worse it would be when even at home, your only refuge, it won't stop. When your parents, the only people on this planet you can seek comfort from, are completely incapable of hiding their growing despair in not being able to help you. It's a miracle she survived at all. None of a phonebook's worth of doctors could help, and no pharmacologic intervention could blunt the condition. Ultimately, her parents decided to homeschool, wagering that if not being able to provide their daughter a normal childhood, they would at least be able to offer some semblance of a stable emotional space. Then, one day, it all stopped. It was her tenth birthday, and her mom had made her a unicorn cake. The rainbow colored vanilla confection was everything she could've asked for. Tucked away in a photo album are pictures from that day, and in every single one of them is a girl with the biggest smile, lopsided but ear to ear and wide enough to show off a missing eye tooth. When I asked Gwen about it once, if she was that excited for her birthday, she told me that what the pictures showed was her happiness. Hers, not anybody else's, not a reflection or interpretation of another person's emotions, but her own for the first time she could remember. For the next couple years things were normal. She was able to enroll in school again, go to slumber parties and dance class, just live the life of an average girl like she always wanted. You would've been hard pressed to find a more cheerful, outgoing kid. So of course, as abruptly as things changed before, was how quickly they did again. This is the part that Gwen never told me the details of herself, but her mother let slip to me once, that right after she had gotten her first period was when they realized something was wrong. It was her mother who noticed it first. The irritability, fatigue, unexpected crying jags, not Gwen, but herself, and also seemingly Gwen's father too. Classic PMS symptoms, but that wouldn't explain both parents. She got her answer a couple weeks later, when Gwen sheepishly came to her for some mother-daughter advice. Touching, really, like something right out of an after school special. Our bodies, ourselves in real life. And if that had been the only instance it would've been an odd note to an odd childhood, but the phenomenon persisted. Suddenly, instead of Gwen feeling other people's emotions, they were experiencing hers. Now go back to the metaphor from before, about being on the receiving end of the fire hose of emotions. Well what if you were an adolescent girl who was at the head of the spigot and couldn't turn it off. Exposed to everyone, not able to hide anything about yourself from parents, teachers, classmates. Back to the doctors, who again couldn't help, but now the tests and examinations began to get more invasive. This time it was the parents' turn to experience the fear and dismay their daughter felt, being treated like a lab experiment. They had no choice but to pull her out of school again, except after a couple years of normalcy the separation from her friends was more acute. Every day the school bus went by without her on it was another reminder of what she lost, and what she could never regain. Looking for a fresh start, the family moved across the country hoping that a new environment could at least dull the hurt. Who's to say if it did, but either from distance or time, Gwen was able to create a new normal for herself. Mostly keeping to herself, her new friends were movies and TV, and without the distractions of a social life she excelled in her studies. So much so that she got a full scholarship to any of a number of colleges, room and board included. After nearly half a decade having spent more time with her parents than any teenager would ever want to, she saw this as a potential lifeline. All it took was an impassioned argument, and a couple tricks she had developed in the subsequent years to use her ability to persuade her parents to get her way, and they relented, but only under the condition that she not go to a school too far in case she ever needed to come home. With a few precautions taken - the single room, a schedule of mostly online classes - she started her life as a college coed. In the first few months she made limited trips out among the other students, and while there weren't any calamities, she ran into the same problem over and over again. So intrinsically concerned about what effect she would have on others, she had accidentally erected a barrier of anxiety around herself. Her urge to keep everyone at arm's length was literally keeping everyone else away from her. That is, until I unwittingly pierced that bubble. ------------------------ "So you're trying to tell me that you have some kind of mutant power that lets you make other people do what you want?" I have to say, I think I was doing a great job being restrained and not calling the funny farm to take this clearly delusional person away. "Yes and no." She seemed unfazed by my comment, "It's not a mutant power, my chromosomes aren't abnormal, and I can't really make people do things. It's more simple than that, people around me feel what I feel. Like, if I get scared of something then so will whoever is near me, and if there's a thing I really want, then so will they, but it's not like I can make you quack like a duck." I was trying to keep an open mind, really I was, but the disbelief was hard to hide. "So is it like some sort of hypnosis?" "That's actually one of the theories this one psychologist I saw came up with, but hypnosis doesn't really work on multiple people without any cue to hypnotize them," She then went to her desk drawer and took out a wrinkled photo. "Here, let me show you. Turn around." Alright, I'll humor her. I spun to face the back of the door, waiting for the blunt trauma in the back of my skull she must be setting me up for. I stood there, the ending of the 'Blair Witch Project' playing through my head, when I heard a quiet sniffling behind me. Before I could sort out what was going on, I felt warm tears begin to stream down my face. It was like my heart was ripped from my chest, I was enveloped in an unspeakable sadness. "W-w-w-what the fuck?" I managed to blubber. Gwen wiped some tears from her own eyes. "You want to tell me that was hypnosis?" "OK, I get it, but what does this have to do with me?" She went to put the picture away, an age-faded polaroid of a fat, orange tabby cat I could just make out as she slipped it back into the drawer. "Focusing like I just did, any other person would've been in a heap on the floor right now, wailing like their mother had just been killed." The veil of grief had lifted from the room as quickly as it came on. "You paint a beautiful word picture..." "But you're not," she continued. "You have some sort of resistance to me and I want to find out why." Kind of a weird proposition when I think back on it, but my imagination filled with lascivious fantasies of a sexy lab coat wearing Gwen examining me in every sort of way, poking, prodding...fondling. I don't remember what I said exactly when I agreed to be her guinea pig, but it probably seemed sauve and cool and not at all like I was desperate to be close to her any way I could. A real meet cute for the ages, and so began our less than traditional courtship. For the next couple months I would come to Gwen's room every Saturday where we worked through whatever latest hypothesis she had come up with. Gwen has an analytical mind, and the courses she was taking in biochem gave her endless avenues to explore, but admittedly two teenagers trying to solve the mysteries that countless trained professionals had already failed to unravel was never going to end with much success. What it did do was give Gwen the opportunity to get used to being around another person who wasn't a family member. Unlike the brief period when her abilities had disappeared, now she was acclimating to socializing while controlling her emotional influence. At the same time, we were also discovering our own compatibility. Between our shared love of film, similar senses of humor, and, at the time, almost identical coursework, before long my visits to her room were less and less about discovering the secret to my resistance and more just an excuse to see each other. Going out in public was something that Gwen only did with little other option, and was planned to be done as quickly as possible. That day I first saw her was a fluke, the result of having back to back meetings with her course advisor and then another with the bursar's office because of some paperwork issue, but no time to return to her room to eat. By sophomore year, after several months of our meetups, things had changed significantly and she was able to do dinner and a movie with little issue. She had told me at first that I was like a security blanket for her in these situations, a stable anchor who she knew if things got out of hand would still be able to tolerate whatever the situation was, and ultimately get help if needed. And that denial as to why we kept going out together may have worked if her powers weren't broadcasting her attraction to me every time I was with her. Not that I needed any metaphysical nudge to feel the same. You already know I was smitten from the beginning, but the months together let me get to know her so much better. My heart did flips whenever I saw her cute, crooked smile, and I just loved the way she would tug at her hair when she was thinking deeply about something. There was no ignoring it anymore, we were actually for real crazy about each other and officially a couple, but that's not to say everything was all picnics and rainbows. Just because Gwen was a good student didn't mean that doing an honors course in biochem wasn't hugely difficult, and even if I was protected to some extent, being on the receiving end of her stress and anxiety over keeping her grades up took its toll. Allow me an aside here. I mentioned way earlier that I washed out of premed, and while I don't blame that on Gwen, if I'm being honest I think it may have contributed to me ultimately switching to a less demanding major. Boy, did being around her ever kick my ass during finals week. But outside of the usual rigors of school, Gwen also found that her heart just wasn't in trying to crack the code of her own affliction anymore. Presumably now that she had it under a little more control, she felt free to explore other interests, which is how she ultimately wound up a lawyer instead of some sort of molecular geneticist or something involving test tubes and lab coats. One thing we were able to figure out early on when we were still pretending our days together were about science, is that Gwen's projection grew in strength equal to the intensity of her own feelings. I just told you about how classes played into this, but there was something else that came around monthly that was definitely not an experience I thought I'd ever become familiar with. That time her mother told me about how she first discovered the evolution of her daughter's ability, well she was trying to commiserate after she had overheard me complaining in the background that I was feeling especially bloated one day when she was on a call with Gwen. We were still college kids, though. These concerns about life and careers were seemingly in our distant futures, and I was already learning that being with Gwen was a window into a world I never would've gotten close to understanding without her condition. Maybe I've given the impression so far that I was less than experienced when it came to the ladies. That wasn't entirely true, sure I wasn't racking up the notches on the ol' bedpost, but I did know what it takes to seal the deal...at least some of the time, and was I ever completely wrong about most of it. It's not a surprise that men and women have different ideas of romance, but whatever 'Men Are from Mars' book or Cosmo article you may have read about it can't even begin to capture the difference in perception. Like, everyone wants to be attractive, but what does that mean, really? Being attractive, It's a performative thing, always aiming to achieve what you imagine somebody else would like. For me, that meant trying to be cool, or handsome, or strong. That sort of James Dean or Humphrey Bogart kind of guy, a classic example of manliness but remarkably shallow if you think about it. Square jaw, stoic, maybe a bit of rebelliousness, but never a hint of vulnerability or need. I never fathomed the depth in what it was like to feel pretty. So much more complex than my attempts at playing the idealized man. This was to strive to be awash in an internal joy. A strength of its own in confidence and allure, but also to want to be pursued rather than be the pursuer. To be seen as not just an object of desire to be ravaged but also a treasure to be protected. To be soft, and delicate, and, well, feminine. That kinda messed with me in the beginning. Our first real date as boyfriend and girlfriend was especially funny. As much as I instinctively wanted to reject the possibility, Gwen's power overwhelmed my opposition. I must've checked on the condition of my nonexistent makeup more times than the actual girl at the table. On the flipside, being able to sense how much she wanted everything to go well clued me in on where the night was headed. That didn't stop it from becoming a little awkward, to say the least, when we got back to her room. Once inside, she looked at me expectantly, and it was a beat or two before I took my cue and leaned in for a kiss. I want to say it was like fireworks, but after what could only have been a minute but felt like an eternity of unexciting mushing our mouths together, I was wondering what she was waiting for. Come on, let's get this show on the road. Was she going to take the initiative or what? My lips had parted in anticipation for a tongue...and of course it failed to arrive because so had hers. Thank god we waited until we were back in the privacy of her room for that first kiss. I would have died of embarrassment had anybody else seen me then. The plaintive look of desire on my face, both hands pressed into her chest and a foot lifted off the floor for balance. We didn't go much farther that night. It was a little difficult to get the engine revved back up once I realized how much concentration it would take, but it wasn't long after that when we first made love. I use that term purposely, making love. Hey, I would've sneered at it too if I hadn't been the beneficiary of such tender, affectionate intimacy. Believe me on this, when you have the key to becoming perfectly in tune with your partner, losing yourself in not only yours but also their every pleasure, the temptation to give in and let go of your own individual self is intoxicating.