Claire, Marianne and Arabella - three young women, three ways of sneezing and blowing

[CheekyGuy]

This story sets up a series of characters, with very distinctive sneezing and blowing habits, based loosely upon three young women I used to observe when I was a student. I'm open to any suggestions of events or situations involving them, maybe someone else would like to pick up on this and add their own text.

 

Claire, Marianne and Arabella were all studying the same subject and attending the same college, so they usually sat together at the lectures for all students at the university on that course. But they were three very different personalities, in ways which came out through the ways they sneezed and blew their noses, which all did fairly frequently, more so than most other student around them.

Claire, who like the others was aged 20-21, was medium height, about 5’6”, with a slightly pale complexion, which could flush a bit. She had quite short, slightly mousey hair, coming down just to the back of her neck. She had green eyes and a moderately thin medium length nose. Otherwise she was fairly thin, in good shape, but did not always present herself in the most flattering way as she had a tendency to bend her neck and head a bit, not so often standing or sitting straight. Usually she would wear jeans or some other trousers, flat shoes, and a blouse or shirt on top, sometimes white, sometimes pale blue, sometimes light pink. She usually carried a quick large bag with her, which she always packed with multiple wads of tissues, often pink, when she went out in the morning to her classes. If she didn’t get one wad out at the beginning, she usually would within the first ten minutes. In exams she always had a wad by her, and as she had to wear a cap (which could be taken off) and gown for these, she would put the cap on the floor and place the wad of tissues in that.

Claire sneezed often, usually several times in rounds of three to five, during a lecture. She would hold her hand over her nose and mouth when she did, but almost invariably her sneezes were stifled, as if they wouldn’t come out properly, and as a result she had to blow more to get everything out of her nose. She always blew plenty of times after sneezing, but even without she was in every sense a ‘frequent blower’, with a particular way of doing it. She would blow with one hand clasping a tissue over her nose, and blew harshly, quite a number of times. She would always bend over and look downwards while either sneezing and blowing, unable to avoid doing so, and often, but with a type of scowl as she did so, which suggested that she disliked making such a spectacle in public. She practically never honked, not least because she seemed to produce an amazing amount of snot as a matter of course. You could clearly hear big wet flow going into the tissue with every blow, super-productive, and when she blew again and again it kept gushing out plentifully. There was rarely a lecture or other class where she wouldn’t get through a significant number of her tissues. Rarely would any tissue last more than one or two blows before being ruined, and she sometimes used two at a time. She would deposit the crumpled, soaked ones, stuck together with her deposits, either in her bag, or during exams in her cap.

Marianne, was a little taller than Claire, about 5’8”, and very slim. She had an innocence or naivete about her, clearly from a well-to-do, proper and somewhat conservative family background. She had ash blonde curly hair, which she usually tied back, and always wore glasses, round with golden rims. Her skin was very pale, her eyes were blue, her mouth was a little small, with thinnish lips, and she had a significantly thin and long nose. She would also wear a blouse, usually white or soft cream, several of which had a few frills on the sleeves, and usually a long skirt, sometimes a mixture of red and green or tartan, sometimes with a floral pattern, with socks and ‘sensible’ shoes, not completely flat, but only a tiny amount of heel, or sometimes sandals. She carried a small dark brown satchel with her, but always kept white tissues in both sleeves, removing a number from several boxes she also in her room, tucking them in before leaving in the morning, just as her mother always taught her to do.

Her mother also impressed on her that if she sneezed or her nose started to run, never to sniff in public but always blow it out, but also to be careful not to do so in an over-loud or vulgar manner - she had gotten a few good talkings-to when she blew a bit too loudly when younger, told that she would never be a proper lady if she blew that way. As a result Marianne’s blows were longer and protracted, but very wet-sounding, a long continuous bubbling flow with made a sustained sound. She often sneezed, reacting easily to pollen or other allergies. Her sneezes were high-pitched ‘A-choo!’s, usually three of them, but never harsh or that dramatic, more dainty in nature. As for Claire, but in a different manner, the sound of those sneezes signified how much her nose would fill up. So without exception she would do some long blows afterwards into one of the tissues she would retrieve from her sleeve. But she had no obvious shame about blowing, which she had always learned was a natural and right thing to do. She could be talking to someone, and while doing so pull out a tissue from her sleeve, then do a dripping, gurgling blow and still look at them while they were talking – she would even do this with a new boyfriend she met during her second year, thinking it perfectly natural. She always used two hands and always blew in the praying position, holding what were quite large tissues so they formed a mini tent over her nose and would catch what sounded like a considerable discharge.

Arabella, at 5’4 shorter than either Claire or Marianne, was nonetheless the most confident and self-possessed of the three. She was attractive, relaxed, and knew what sort of figure she cut, and the amount of attention she got from the male students, and inwardly relished that. She had a very good rich and healthy complexion which she touched up every day with careful use of make-up to accentuate the best features, with medium-length black silky hair, slightly wavy. Her eyes were dark brown, she had a regular and slightly seductive looking mouth, and a regular-shaped nose for a white woman, with slightly larger nostrils than usual, which could occasionally flare a bit if she got excited or a bit annoyed. She would smile a lot, a smile of ease, not a come-on smile, communicating how she was not at all self-conscious, and she walked confidently, not striding, but breezing, sometimes with hips moving a little provocatively. Arabella had an excellent figure, not unnaturally thin, but with the right curves, and well-endowed. She dressed medium casual but always stylish, with a different coloured jacket practically every day, sometimes a leather one, quite tight jeans, sometimes heels, and either a t-shirt or other top, comfortable but which would clasp her body to show it off. She had had a string of boyfriends both before and during her time at university. If she got sick of one, she had little compunction in giving him the push and moving onto the next, causing a string of broken hearts, but that didn’t seem to bother her at all.

When Arabella sneezed, which she didn’t do so often as the others, but still with moderate frequency. Usually she would do so three or four times, and everyone would be a loud and highly dramatic piercing ‘a-CHEW’ sound, which could fill a room. Each sneeze would increase in intensity, but she had no embarrassment about them whatever – if anything, she seemed to enjoy sneezing quite a bit, and would often smile or even grin a bit afterwards. But then she would reach in her trousers and take out a tissue, or sometimes when she had a handbag reach in to take out a packet, pry open the top and extract one between her thumb and forefinger, put it to her nose, like Marianne in the praying position, with two hands, never looking down or anything, and do a huge, volcanic blow, like her sneezes building in intensity, in a way she seemed to have learned always to do, a gush beginning and then getting louder until it built to an explosive-sounding stream, incredibly productive. Unlike the other two, she generally disposed of her tissue right afterwards, which would be totally soaked (once a tissue was dripping afterwards, and she laughed and said ‘Oh dear!’ before dropping it into the waste). But as with sneezing, she appeared to enjoy the experience, even occasionally saying quietly ‘Nice!’ afterwards to some other friends, as when she would parade down the staircase on the way out from the lecture while doing her own nasal explosion ceremoniously during this.