I am definitely not the super stud that people think that I am. If I had fucked all of the many girls that claimed to have been my sexual partner, I would have done nothing during my years of college but fuck. Okay that might be an exaggeration, but it is not a small one, I could count the girls that I had actually made love to on the fingers of one hand. So how did my reputation start?
It all began with an innocent response to a question from one of the guys in the freshman football team. We were in the locker room after a game, and yes, we were naked, and yes we were comparing dicks. Mine was not the biggest dick in the team, that honor belonged to Hank Waszcovski, six four and weighing a bit over two hundred fifty pounds. Hank scored often enough, but his size was a problem, he had very few second dates. We were standing there toweling off when Chuck Snowden looked at me. "You must do all right for yourself Kris."
My name is Kris, short for Kris, Pendelbury, and I'm the starting quarterback in the team. This is the glamor position in any team, and I come under a fair bit of scrutiny from the fans, both male and female alike. "I get enough to satisfy me." This was the non-committal answer that defined my reputation. They weren't to know that I was easily satisfied, that I had other priorities that didn't include fucking cheerleaders, or any other girl.
"I bet a few wide-receivers pass through your bed." He laughed at his own pun. He spread the first and second fingers of his right hand and moved his left index finger up and down between them to illustrate his point.
"I don't kiss and tell." The tone of my voice suggested that I might have a lot to tell, when in fact there was nothing to tell, at least nothing that would interest him or anyone else. This was where my nick-name of 'Studdley' began, and where the interest of the cheerleaders was kindled. The fact that I had not dated any of them became irrelevant, my reputation as a super stud grew with each season. I did nothing to stop it.
My entire, well I couldn't call it entire, focus was academic. My GPA was good enough to win a place at State U, but before the scores had even been released, I had been scouted by them and granted a football scholarship. Which was just as well, because there was no way that my family could afford my tuition, and no chance of taking out a loan to cover it. This could be explained by telling you that my father had been a conscientious employee of a company known as the 'crooked E', and lost everything, including the will to live with the shame of it all. He left my mother with three kids, me, my sister Rita, and brother Glen, with no income and no family home. We went from an affluent gated community to a trailer park in a matter of weeks.
I figured that while a football career, even if I made the bigtime, would be short-lived, I needed a career that would last, so football was relegated to hobby status. I trained enough to keep fit and learn the playbook by heart. I played well enough to keep my position in the team, but off the field I studied hard, harder than I played football, and definitely harder than I partied. My grades reflected this. A rumor was started that suggested that I had a ghost writer doing my term papers for me. I chose not to refute this, after all how many jocks consistently achieved straight 'A's?
You can imagine my utter shock when I was handed back my English Lit paper only to find an 'F' in large red ink on it. "Mister Pendelbury, did you actually read 'Tess'?" She, Professor Lawrence, was referring to Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'.
"Yes I did. I know that you have your opinion on this book, and this is supported by the study notes available in the campus book store, but I detected an undertone to this work that resonated with me. I was expressing my observation. Regardless of that, I answered the question and justified my answer with quotes from the book. Didn't you tell us that as long as we answered the question, structured our paper correctly and justified our reasoning, you would not mark us down. Have you not marked this paper down simply because you did not agree with my hypothesis?"
"You're in the shit now Studdley.' Someone behind me said.
"See me after class, we'll discuss this further."
Professor Lawrence ordered me to a chair in front of her desk. "The reason that I graded your paper an 'F' is because I don't believe that you wrote it."
"What? Are you telling me that I am not capable of writing my own term papers?"
"When I am confronted with two identical papers and one comes from a student who is hard working and conscientious, and one from a student who is in this university on a football scholarship, I would have to assume that you copied the work of the other student."
"This is bullshit! I have never seen the need to copy another student's work. As for my being on a football scholarship, because of circumstances, my father committed suicide, my mother could not afford to pay for my tuition, so this was the only way that I could get here. My grades were more than sufficient to gain a place on my merits. I suggest that, before you accuse me of cheating you should check that out. I am not a dumb jock. You can test my knowledge of Tess by asking me anything that you like about the story. If you knew anything about the life of Hardy you would have to consider my paper on its merits, because I based it, not on the superficial story of Tess, not on its treatment in the study notes, but by a knowledge of Hardy's attitude to the Victorian social and Christian mores, and his opinions of them. The very fact that the heroine of this story was considered, when this was first published, a 'fallen' woman is a case in point. This was unheard of in his time. The fact that, when Tess and Angel were fleeing the police after she had killed Alec, they did not go to his family who were strict Christians, but sought refuge at the most holy place of the old pagan religion, Stonehenge, was a reflection of his attitude to the church of his time."
"Okay then, what was the name of Tess' son?"
"She called him 'Sorrow' and when he died she buried him in un-consecrated ground. The church would not have allowed him to be buried in the church cemetery because she had conceived him out of wedlock. Hardy made it clear that the circumstances of her pregnancy, she had been raped by Alec, was not her sin, but the church saw it otherwise. On the night of her wedding to Angel, he confessed to having had sex with another girl. He expected her to forgive his indiscretion, which she did, but when she explained that she had given birth to a child as a result of her being raped, he shunned her and legged it to Brazil taking with him her friend Izz as his mistress."
"What happened when he returned?"
"He found Tess living with Alec as his mistress. He begs her to forgive him but she tells him that he is too late, so he leaves. She has an argument with Alec, accusing him of lying to her when he told her that Angel would never return. She stabs him to death and sets off after Angel. They share a brief happiness until, in their wanderings, arrive at Stonehenge, believed in Hardy's time to have been a pagan temple. Tess lays down to sleep on a stone, believed to have been a sacrificial altar, to symbolically await her fate."
"You say symbolically, what do you mean by that?"
"There are two recurring themes in Tess, the strength shown by farm workers using the traditional methods as opposed to the hellish descriptions he gives of the new farm machinery. The second is the differing attitudes shown by the country folk following Nature and the seasons, and the Christians with their sense of moral superiority. This is illustrated in the symbolism of the final chapter at Stonehenge."
"You have a different take on this than in the study notes, and, listening to you just now, I have to conclude that you were the author of that paper, and that you have a love for Tess that shines through."
"I know that this is going to sound very much against type, but when I was writing this paper, I inserted myself into the story as Tess' lover. I was with her when Alec raped her, I shared her pain and told her that I would never have done this thing. I was with her on her wedding night, listening to Angel spurning her, instead of forgiving her, telling her that she had done nothing for which she needed my forgiveness. I shared her anguish when Angel found her living with Alec, and her telling him that he was too late, and then her confrontation with Alec in which she killed him. I understood that she felt that he was the cause of all of the trouble that she had been forced to live through. I was with her at Stonehenge when she told Angel that he should marry her young sister Liza-Lu as she prepared herself for her fate. I imagined that Hardy would have had the same feelings for his heroine as he wrote this novel."
"Mister Pendelbury, Kris, you are definitely not what I thought you were. I have underestimated you, and I apologize for that."
"No need to apologize. What you thought I was is the image that I promote, it's easier that way."
"Be that as it may, I will investigate this matter further. In the mean time I have scrubbed the 'F' and given you an 'A+' instead."
"Thank you for that. I think I know who copied my work and why."
