he can imagine him having sex. This surprises her; she glances
around quickly to see if anyone has noticed. Mouths are gaping,
eyebrows scrunched up, trying to decipher the verbs and tenses
on the board. One guy has fallen asleep.
She can still feel the heat in her face, and she looks down
at her notes and conjugates coucher, just in case. The image
is hard to shake off, and she looks up again at the teacher.
She sees gray hair, chalk-marked jeans sagging off a non-existent
butt. She doesn’t sense the slightest stud vibe, but there
he is in her head anyway, steaming up the back of her corneas.
Naked, he sits cross-legged, his glasses tossed onto a nightstand.
Candlelight illuminates faceless wife, perched on his lap as
he bounce-sigh-bounce-pant-bounce-lifts her weight, his head
tilted back, facial expression of… what? Adoration? Hmm.
The picture in her head changes. Now, that’s better; it’s
a look of hardcore agony.
His blue eyes turn from his wife and he is suddenly looking
at her. She burns again. He asks her a question and points to
the phrase he has written on the board. She shrugs meekly. He
groans, asks another student. As soon as he does, she looks at
the words, reads them effortlessly, and sighs.
Quiconque rougit est déjà coupable; la vraie
innocence n'a honte de rien. Whoever blushes is guilty—true
innocence is not ashamed of anything.
Stupid.
he day is balmy, the first one of the year.
She has to squint. Students scurry and roam outside the building,
like ants from
different colonies, unaware of each other. She sees flip-flops,
tank tops with barely-there straps. Some of the tank tops
are nicely filled out. She looks down at her own V-neck and
decides she’s a demure kind of sexy instead of this young,
spring-break-in-Cancun kind of sexy.
From where she stands she can see the dorms. She lost her virginity
in one of them, ages ago. Her born-again roommate from freshman
year told her once she saw three couples “fornicating” during
one brief walk across campus. It was nighttime, and with the
lights on, blinds open, dorm rooms became free peep shows. It
was the same roommate who admonished her for giving up her purity
so early in the school year in the same breath that she coaxed
every lurid, graphic detail out of her. For some reason, the
image of sex in dorm windows comes to mind now, superimposed
over the scantily clad girls in front of her. One girl walks
past, a hint of her asscrack showing over low-riding pants. When
did you last have sex, she mentally asks Asscrack Girl. Did
you do it in one of the windows of Benson Hall? Asscrack Girl sees
a friend, runs and hugs him, wiggling her behind as he lifts
her a few inches. Did you do it with him?
She’s going crazy today, she thinks. She’s a Dean’s
Lister, a feminist, a Red Sox fan, and she’s read all the
books in the Lemony Snicket series. She has better things to
do than cast her schoolmates in pornos. Men fucking women, women
fucking women, and sometimes even two women with the star forward
from the basketball team, look to her for constant direction.
Stupid.
She walks into the Student Union in search of a Diet Coke and
distraction.
he is actually relieved to be in Art History discussing Greuze’s
Broken Pitcher, even if there are idiots in her class. The
girl with the jewel-encrusted crucifix obscuring all her other
features
insistently claims the girl in the painting signifies the masses,
and the broken pitcher is their broken relationship with Christ.
The cocky guy who has missed half the classes since joining
his frat, is spinning the class all off on a tangent somehow
connecting
the broken pitcher to unemployment rates during the Great Depression.
Stupid.
Sighing, she is patient, sighing again and again as she digests
her so-called peers’ comments and systematically discards
their worth. The class wallows in a pit of circular reasoning.
Just as she is about to reach her limit and set them all straight,
the teacher says, “What if it’s about sex? What if
the pitcher is her virginity?”
Silence blooms. Her classmates look at each other, some giggling.
Quickly, she tries to view the painting with new eyes, but it’s
too late. She’s imagining the young teacher in a dark and
smoky bar, her wild hair tamed and her lips rubied. Her teacher,
no longer just an academic, is staring straight at her, a smirk
playing around her edges. The fabric of her dress is cinched
in just the most indecent of places. She wonders if the smoke
isn’t from cigarettes, but from the teacher’s skin,
making the air smolder. She is still staring at her, awaiting
the casting of her partner for the night.
n the bathroom, she bangs her head on the partition. Sighs.
Class is continuing down the hall, but the repetitive blushing
was attracting attention. She is resigned. There can be only
one remedy.
Banging her forehead one more time, she loosens her belt, slides
her hand down, her finger poised. Her eyes are closed as she
whittles away at her insanity.
She gasps. In her head flit dozens of bodies, writhing; phalli
plastic and turgid with real blood penetrate all manner of orifices.
Nipples are pinched and twisted and bitten. Fingernails scrape
skin, causing raised welts but not blood. Earlobes are licked,
cusps of backs caressed, inner thighs nudged. It’s hard
to say where one body or one coupling ends and the next begins.
Well-trained, she does not moan, but her gasping is just a bit
too audible. Straining, she consciously slows her breathing,
even as her finger is toggling furiously.
She is nearing the end, anxiously anticipating release, when
suddenly the air she takes in is foul. She hesitates; she breathes
again. Human pollution, reeking of feces and digestive gases,
swirl into her nostrils and she gags. She clamps her lips shut,
but she can’t help it. She retches, and bending over the
toilet, spews.
She hears a toilet flush; the culprit walks toward the doors
without washing her hands. As she retches once more, she hears
the footsteps pause, and a mutter. Sounds like, but she’s
not sure, “…sheesh.”
he is at home, in loose cotton pants and lounging. She has been,
thankfully, undistracted by visions of erotica since the day
before. Boyfriend comes in the room, sprawling on the bed next
to her.
They exchange random minutiae of the day; it is a game they
play for the sake of a good relationship. If you sit still and
act a little interested while I tell you about what the cafeteria
lady said about my new outfit, I’ll pretend—just
for a few minutes—that your job is the most intriguing
thing I’ve heard about all day.
As he finishes, he reaches over and hooks her neck in closer
to him, nuzzling. She approximates a purr, and her hand slides
down between his legs. He always likes it when she does this;
she claims ownership of his genitals; his stud value rises when
she gropes him. But today he shoves her hand away. It’s
stupid, but she finds herself pouting.
He says, “Not right now.”
Me not mood, he signs.
You can have a kiss, but sex with you is the last thing
I want,
his body says.
He starts telling her about one of his classes today, a test
or a paper or something he got from the teacher. She thinks she’d
much rather cook dinner, watch tv, meditate, anything, as long
as it doesn’t involve making Boyfriend happy.
he ants in the tank tops have gotten her attention once again.
It’s not their scant clothing that draws her to them
like a pheromone, or the overactive sex lives she likes to
imagine they have. One after another, she passes them deep
in a ruse of being late for class and therefore unavailable
for conversation.
This one with matching pink belt and kitten heels is sexy. This
one with her jeans biting painfully into her waistline isn’t.
Curly red hair in a suit on her way to the conference center—sexy.
Cross lady rushing after Curly with a cell phone—not. Stick-figure
lady with hair teased three inches past its God-given height… for
some unexplainable reason—sexy. Rapunzel with tacky monogrammed
bag—not.
What is it that makes certain people sexy, inspiring admiration,
stares, and visions of doors that open to reveal frenzied fucking?
What special antibody is hidden in certain gods and goddess’ blood
that makes their very skin pulse and hint and tantalize with
lurid secrets? Her face is aflame. She senses she is dangerously
close to the brink, but the brink of what she knows not. Being
discovered? Perhaps it is the brink of shame, under which lie
inescapable fathoms of all-out, well-publicized harlotry.
She ducks her head down, her hair blinding her from the rest
of the colony, and walks up the hill to Hall Memorial Building.
She reaches the doors, and in that moment before she reaches
up to open one, she looks at her reflection in the glass, a Pavlovian
hair-check long overdue.
The woman in the reflection startles her. Rounded, prominent
breasts over a large belly. Her feet look too small in comparison.
Her jeans, fashionable flares, flop over her ill-proportioned
shape. The pert freshman in her has yielded to the freshman fifteen.
And the sophomore seven. Ten more junior year. And who knows
how many more now? Her doppelganger also has a different face
than she has on the inside. Not a bowtie mouth, wide, laughing
eyes, but a broad forehead, broad cheeks, and small, blank coals
for eyes.
Stupid.
She looks away as quickly as possible. Judging ants’ sexiness
seems ridiculous now. If she saw herself, she’d point to
the “not sexy” anthill without a second glance.
he is back in French now, and just as she sits down, a strong,
warm hand claps her shoulder. Her teacher’s blue eyes
are smiling at her. Why does he single her out? He’s
a good teacher: funny, easy to understand, and never puts anyone
on the spot. Except her. When he tells the class a joke, he
stares straight into her eyes, pinning her to her chair. Maybe
that’s why she makes him fuck in her head. To control
him, to have power over him.
Her other teachers have fallen to the same fate. Art History
perpetually whores around in bars. Modern Art has a collection
of whips and handcuffs in the top right drawer of her desk. Literature
of the Harlem Renaissance participates in swinging parties every
other weekend.
Only her Introduction to Drawing teacher is chaste.
She is never part of the fantasy. The scene is independent of
her sometimes; other times, she directs, casts, produces. The
characters look to her for their next move, unaware of her intentions.
But then again, she is unaware too. The fantasies always seem
random. They must be. She has no reason to be envisioning her
French teacher fucking his wife, who she has never met and therefore
cannot accurately cast.
But her French teacher is also a dork. He laughs too loud. He
walks funny. He gets excited over mislaid verb tenses. Modern
Art can’t sign to save her life. Harlem Lit wears orthopedic
shoes and takes a swim in a vat of outdated perfume every morning.
Intro to Drawing is… well, hard to grasp. Big, but not
obese. Her double-breasts are caused by an ill-fitting bra. Her
eyes are small, expressionless. Her forehead and cheeks are too
broad.
Her French teacher is talking to her. She blushes—busted
dreaming—again. As soon as he rolls his eyes and turns
around, despite the best of her efforts to focus on past perfect
tense or something like that, he’s fucking his wife.
hey are playing their game again. Boyfriend drones on about
some Biology test. She wonders if she should tell him about
her fantasies, if they’re too weird to reveal. He is
fretting over the differences between monocots and dicots
when she lifts her hands. He pauses, waiting.
She giggles.
“Well?”
It’s nothing, she signs.
Come on.
She thinks frantically. Finally, she ad libs: You think me sexy?
There is a pause. He rolls his eyes just as his lips curl up.
You not just beautiful, you fuckable, he signs.
She giggles again. This is much more uncomfortable than she
thought it’d be. No, I’m not. Stop it.
He shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and looks at her, considering
her. Before she can say something else to fill in the silence,
he is on her, his mouth devouring hers. She manages to simultaneously
giggle and return the kiss, but she is unsatisfied. She wiggles
out from under his weight, and sits on the bed again.
No, I’m not, she explains. He listens to her complaints:
she’s gained too much, she was scared by her own reflection,
she’s too ugly, not unique enough. She knows—admit
it, she demands—that he sometimes feels obligated to bed
her. She is only halfway finished with her speech when he stands
up without warning. He crosses into the bathroom and emerges,
carrying a full-length mirror. He props it up against the wall
and makes her stand in front of it.
There’s the girl he loves in the mirror, he tells her.
She smiles shyly; she is enjoying this; she practically begged
for it. He lists his favorite traits, and she giggles at some
of them, even though they’re all personality traits and
not physical. She looks at him, averting her gaze from herself.
He sees this. Suddenly his hand darts out and pinches her nipple
through the fabric of her t-shirt. She gasps, covering her breast,
astonished. There’s the nipple he loves, he says.
Finished, she signs.
More, her face begs.
He smiles. From her other side, his hand darts beneath her pajama
bottom’s waist, quickly flitting past her clit. She can’t
stop giggling, her face aflame.
What you doing?
“Shhh,” and Boyfriend’s hands are all of a
sudden everywhere—her ass, grasping at her breasts. His
tongue seeks hers out. She seems to resign herself; her back
bends inward, toward him. Abruptly he pulls away and shoves her
back in front of the mirror.
You beautiful, you fuckable.
She smiles, red again.
Say it. You sexy.
“No!” She is too embarrassed to use her hands now.
Yes! Look mirror, look you, say you sexy!
Finished! She turns to kiss him again, but he pushes her back.
You sexy?
“I’m sexy,” she whispers. When she smiles
so widely, it’s hard to read her lips.
No! Say it, tru-biz!
C’mon, finished! I don’t want to.
He slides his hands under her T-shirt, and her color begins
to fade; she thinks he has given up. Slowly, he strips her, never
allowing her to turn away from the mirror. She hasn’t stopped
smiling. This slow languor that can only lead one place is pleasant.
She could stay in this place, this movement forever.
One of his hands is on her back, just below her neck. He is
pushing her, and at first she doesn’t understand. Then
her eyes widen and shoot to his face, asking…? He smiles
yes, and she bends over, uncertain.
It takes him a moment to find her, but then he is inside her,
moving. He still hasn’t let her turn away from herself;
her hands are braced on the wall on either side of the mirror.
Her nose is inches away, her open mouth expelling hot breath,
steaming her reflection. This is embarrassing, unenjoyable. Her
feet are about to lose purchase—he is thrusting so hard—and
bending over like this isn’t comfortable. Her breasts have
stretch marks, the legacy of developing from nothing in the fifth
grade to a C-cup in the sixth grade. It’s hard not to be
ashamed, watching them peal back and forth, ringing out a rhythm
of nonchalance. He calls them tits and occasionally reaches for
them, but to her they are breasts, medical, in need of adjustment,
and undesirable. As he rams home, she can feel the fat on her
hips reverberating. She searches for a suitable place to rest
her eyes, anywhere that won’t make her cringe. Just as
she is beginning to get used to looking at—or learning
to ignore—her face, he stops. Just then, she realizes she
was, tru-biz, enjoying it. Her eyes, protesting, seek him out.
Say it.
She smiles, like she’s finally mastered a concept she
struggled with all along. Her fingerspelling is drawn out.
Me S-E-X-Y.
he couple are in bed now, her on bottom and Boyfriend on top.
The sweat glistens on his back, striped with furrows her nails
have dug. Their pace varies;
sometimes it is slow and languid, and other times it is fast, animalistic.
Teacher’s blue eyes pin her abdomen to her chair, but
this time when he points to the phrase on the board, she is prepared.
She’s seen that one before: Quiconque rougit est déjà coupable;
la vraie innocence n'a honte de rien. She isn’t blushing
now as she translates. The teacher nods, and continues his lecture.
She goes back to her fantasy. This time, she’s on top.
[END]
© 2005 Allison Kaftan - Contributor's
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