Office Hours

It's the beginning of summer, and the spring semester is almost over. I messed up another essay by not following directions. I can't believe it. Professor Allen passes back our essays about Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. On the top margin of my paper, in neat, tiny lettering, Professor Allen has written: Amanda, this is a fine paper, but did you not understand the question? Please see me later. I clap my hand over the comment, feeling disgusted with myself and slightly nauseous, and try my best not to cry during her lecture.

I don't know how she can be so intimidating to me—she is only five feet tall, skinnier than I am, with a small nose and a small mouth. She has chin-length curly blonde hair and red glasses. Every day she wears a black blouse of some sort, and jeans. Her blue eyes scare me most. When we make eye contact with one another, she never looks away first.

After class we arrange a meeting later in the week during her office hours, and when I come in on Wednesday, I am shaking. I am also sweating from the day's humidity, sweat stains showing through my blue t-shirt. Her office is small, with a faded oriental rug spread out on the hardwood floor, and her three bookshelves are crammed and overflowing. There's a painting of two women embracing, which surprises me, but I'm too nervous to entertain any inappropriate fantasies. I can't believe I messed up my paper.

She asks me to take a seat, and I sweat and tremble and try to explain the paper. "I'm not usually like this," I rush, "I usually write decent essays—I was overwhelmed when I wrote this one, so much going on—I didn't read through the instructions adequately enough—but I shouldn't be making excuses—"

"Amanda," Professor Allen says, grimacing a little. "Slow down." She catches my eye and my heart is pounding. "You have a history of doing very well in my class, so I'm not that concerned. You can do a re-write. It's not a big deal." Her calm in the face of my anxiety makes me feel ridiculous.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, on the verge of tears. "I'm—I always do this. I freak out whenever I fuck up. It's making me so stressed out."

She laughs quietly. "I'm shocked by this disclosure of yours." She's being condescending, but also kind, and when she stands up to close the door to her office, something is changing. She leans against her desk and looks at me like she's judging whether or not I'm qualified for something. "Depending on a few things, I may be able to help you out with this problem of yours," she says.

"What?"

"How about you leave the questions to me. Have you ever been fucked by a girl?"

"Lots of times, but—"

"Do you like it?"

"Yes," I say, taken aback and overwhelmed. "Yes, a lot."

She seems satisfied. "Get out your essay." I shuffle through my backpack, trying to locate the paper, and she snaps, "Hurry." I pull it out, show her, and she tells me to read her instructions aloud.

"Mrs Ramsay is often seen as an "Angel in the House": an epitome of the domestic or feminine virtues, loved by all, and the real centre of a family." I will my voice not to shake as I read, but she's moving around the office—she stands behind me in the chair, above me, leaning over, her breath against the back of my neck. She starts touching me between my legs, over my khaki pants. I attempt to turn around so I can see her and figure out what's going on. "Don't try to fucking look at me," she says. "Keep reading." She rubs harder.

"Shit," I say, my voice faltering. "How does Mrs Ramsay differ from the sentimental ideal of femininity endorsed by, say, a Victorian novel? If not, how do you—" My breathing becomes shallow, I'm about to come, and suddenly Professor Allen stops touching me.

"Pull down your pants, Amanda," she says evenly, "and bend over my desk." I'm worried I'm going to mess up her stacks of papers on her desk, but she grabs my hair and shoves me down and there's the corner of a hardback book pressing into my left breast. "So you can read this time, I see," she says to me, softly fingering my ass and the inside of my thighs. "Tell me, how hard is it to decipher a simple question? I wasn't asking for a huge fucking explanation about why Lily was secretly in love with Mrs. Ramsay. Are you stupid? Do you see anything about that in my question?"

I can't believe she's saying this to me. They are the worst possible things I thought I could ever hear from a teacher. But I hear them and I want her to touch me more. "Answer me," she says.

"I made a mistake," I say.

"So how are you going to prove to me you're not incapable of following simple instructions?"

"I'm not sure—"

"How about you do something really simple for me." She's fingering my cunt again, opening it and making me feel exposed. "I'm going to hit you. And all you have to do is lift your ass up in the air after each hit and ask me for another one. That's not very hard, is it?"

"No," I say, gripping the edge of her desk. I hear a rustling behind me, but remembering what she told me about looking at her, I continue to stare at the wall in front of me. She's running something along my ass, something thin and light. For a moment I am relieved, thinking that whatever tool she is using, it is little, so it will not hurt—

But then she hits me, and breath it hurts so badly that I lose my breath. "Fuck," I cry out, trying to stay inside my head. I raise my ass off the desk and ask for another. This continues for quite some time. In-between hits she reaches underneath me and pulls my nipples, or yanks my hair, or squeezes my neck. She tells me she does this so I can keep taking more. Sometimes she fucks my cunt with three of her fingers, but never long enough so I come. The hitting gets harder; the sting is the worst a few seconds after the immediate impact. If I ask for another and raise my ass before the pain hits me, the task is easier. The hitting gets more frequent, and she stops playing with me in-between. She then concentrates on one spot—the back of my lower left thigh—without any sort of break or variation. My stomach swirls and I feel dizzy. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick. I can't do this. I can't do this. She encourages me, "Amanda, you can do this for me," and I hold out for a little longer, but I can't any more. I just can't. I'm going to start crying. I'm going to have to ask her to stop.

One final strike pushes me over the edge, and I do start crying, gasping and holding my head in my hands so she can't see my face. "I can't," I say. I expect disappointed silence from her, or some sort of patronizing coddling, but instead she doesn't miss a beat, seeming unsurprised, and she tells me to flip over on my back. She approaches me, standing in-between my spread legs. She starts rubbing my clit in maddeningly slow circles. "So you couldn't even do something so simple for me," she says, "What does that say about you?"

"It means I fucked up," I say, almost unable to find the words. "It means I can't follow instructions."

"That's right," she says. She lifts her fingers away from my cunt and holds them close to my face. "And you know what? Look how wet my fingers are from you—look how turned on you got. From not following directions. Maybe you like fucking up." She shoves her wet fingers in my mouth, to the back of my throat so I gag a few times. She pulls out and slaps my face. "Do you?" she asks. She slaps my face again. "Do you like it when you disappoint me?"

"I don't know—" I say.

"Well perhaps you should stop worrying about it so much," she snaps. She begins rubbing my clit again, harder and faster, and I'm close to coming. I'm still crying, embarrassed and confused and displaced. My legs won't stop shaking. "Are you going to come now?" she asks. When I nod, she reaches out with her other hand and digs her fingernails into the back of my upper left thigh, where she had hit me for so long and so hard and I could not take it. I wince from the pain. With that reminder I explode, convulsing on her desk, and she watches me, unmoved. Afterwards, she smiles at me, and tells me I did a good job.

This is the last time I ever cry about a fucked up essay in college.