1
Alexis Haley had blonde hair, penetrating blue eyes and fascinating lips that always seemed to be frowning. She was a graduate student at Priapis State University where I was finishing my bachelor's in psychology. I had met her two years ago when I first switched my major from English to Psych. She had ignored me, which wasn't surprising. I'd had a tendency to blend in and she was a hot, snooty senior who was about to graduate with honors.
Two years later, not only was Alexis Haley still hot and snooty, she now had authority as well. Yup, I hated to admit it, but I was hopelessly outclassed.
Miss Haley, as she insisted we call her, regularly ran labs for Doctor Octavian Bennis, the dictator of behavioral psych. The doctor was out for a week with the flu and so Miss Haley was now also covering his senior classes. It was a mixed blessing.
It was a sweltering September afternoon in Berridge, Ohio, and it was all anyone could do to keep their eyes open, much less focus on periodization of social evolution in rural Cuban, Haitian and Dominican populations. Apparently unaware of our intellectual and physical discomfort, Haley was continuing to lecture without mercy.
Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps the subject matter. Perhaps it was the fact that if all went well, I would be graduating in one month and had a serious case of senioritis. Regardless, at some point I realized I had completely tuned out what I was supposed to be learning and was basically just staring at my teacher. She stood in the front of the classroom wearing a short dark skirt and white blouse with the top several buttons open, exposing the gentle alabaster curves of her breasts. Her honey blonde hair was twisted artfully in a bun, held with two miniature black samurai swords.
Sweat glistened on her neck and I watched, rapt, as a liquid line ran down and disappeared under her shirt.
Damnit, dude, I thought. You gotta get a hold of yourself. I shook my head, trying to clear the heat from my brain. I needed an A in this class to keep my GPA in line. Haley's cleavage wasn't helping me concentrate at all. Okay, I could do this. Just had to listen. What was the class talking about?
"The evolutionary challenge," she was saying, "for any third-world group is no greater than any other, regardless of socio-economic status. All developing nations struggle equally."
A hand in the back went up. A dark-haired guy named Carlos disagreed, citing the example of some Congolese villagers fighting to stay alive in the middle of a brutal war. Surely, he argued, natives living in the jungle in Brazil wouldn't struggle quite so hard.
"It would seem so on the surface," Haley answered. "Men with machetes chopping off arms and legs randomly to prove their dominance is horrible, regardless of your background."
Carlos nodded his agreement.
"Except," she went on, "the Amazon is one of the deadliest places in the world to live. Comparing apples with killer apples, the Congo has only perhaps ten-thousand men at any given time fighting to kill or maim their perceived enemies. The Amazon has over a million varieties of deadly plants, animals and insects all at war for their own survival. One statistic I've heard says the average European without a guide in the Amazon lasts a total of eleven days before their death. That's not including the indigenous tribes, many of whom are warlike. It may be horrific to have your hand chopped off at the wrist, but how much worse would it be to see your next-door-neighbor in a stew pot served as a main course?"
The class laughed and Carlos frowned and went silent. A smug smile touched Miss Haley's lips. Then it disappeared. She was looking at me and somehow...
"...I might disagree?" I heard myself saying.
Wait, what? What the hell was I doing? Apparently I was arguing with her? I hadn't planned on speaking up but the flush on Miss Haley's cheeks with the heat was apparently short-circuiting my natural shyness.
"Ah, Mister Hall," Haley said, locking her dark blue eyes on mine and smiling confidently. "So nice of you to join us."
I usually didn't add much to group discussions, on account of my natural desire to blend in with my surroundings. Social camouflage my dad called it. I called it fear of looking stupid. The class turned, vaguely amused, to Miss Haley's next victim.
"So what do you disagree with?" Her voice was clear with a note of challenge in it.
My stomach did a small flip.
"Well, um," I said. "Er..."
I didn't know how to phrase it exactly, so I just decided to sit there and sound awkward. It's not like I didn't already look it.
"Er?" she asked. She was not impressed. Neither were my fellow students.
Think brain! I said. Whatever your issue is, please get it out of your system and then shut up!
My brain did not respond the way it was supposed to.
Not at all.
I planned to say "My mistake. Please continue." Instead, what came out was "What about sex?"
The class was shocked.
There were quiet whispers, a rumbling of voices and somebody in the back hooted "Hell yeah!" A number students cracked up.
"Alright, settle down," Haley said, rolling her eyes. "I know you all are psychology students so this subject is very special to you, but let's try to keep it in your pants for the moment."
She left the whiteboard and came around to the front of her desk. I caught a glimpse of her smooth legs as they disappeared under the soft black cotton of her skirt. She looked directly at me and my heart went into my throat.
"So what about sex, Mr. Hall? Please don't mistake me, it's certainly a vital subject. I simply fail to see how it relates to comparative social evolution."
She frowned slightly, the edges of her lips turning down a fraction more than usual. I couldn't say why, exactly, but the movement made heat rush towards the center of my body.
The class was now perfectly quiet, unwilling to miss a single syllable of this tête-à-tête.
"People who have sex less, um, that is to say," I hesitated, trying to figure out where the hell I was going. Haley tapped a manicured pink nail against the desk impatiently. I was failing. Come on man, I begged. Please just stop talking.
Apparently I couldn't stop.
"Species, uh...I mean groups of people, like the women of Lesbos or the Viking tribes, specifically the Nordic clans that were the ancestors of the modern Dutch..."
I could feel my palms sweating in my hands. I balled them into fists but the words were coming a little easier now. I had actually studied this subject last year for a project in human sexuality. As long as I could remember what the hell I was talking about.
"Um..." I fumbled for words. "Well, there are a series of historic peoples who were able to beat the evolutionary odds, so to speak, by coming together at a sexual...um...level..."
Yes, I thought frantically. Keep going. Don't lose it.
"...that is," I continued, "I mean, instead of fighting, they were, you know..."
"Fucking?" Haley finished.
The word, so casually from her lips, made me hard in my pants instantly.
The class roared. Haley grinned wickedly and right before she turned around towards the white board I could have sworn I saw her wink at me, but it had happened so fast I couldn't be sure.
Whatever. Just keep going, I told myself. Just don't lose it.
"Right," I said, my heart still pounding. "I mean, um, like Brown and his partner studying the desert tribes and how they fought less, because, they were too busy doing other stuff."
The class buzzed quietly. Haley, now back at the board, drew a vertical line and then at the bottom of the line drew a horizontal line. She wrote the words "Sexual Repression" on the vertical and then "Violent Culture" on the horizontal. She drew a diagonal line between them.
"In almost every instance," Haley said, "there is a direct one-to-one ration of sexual repression and violence. Mr. Hall has made an interesting and potentially significant point. Just in the past two years there have been a handful of new studies, Brown and Littenger's seven-year Saharan investigation chief among them, that suggest it may be possible to increase a civilization's creative output if it could channel a man's desire to destroy into his desire to procreate."
A bell rang sharply. I jumped, startled. Students were diving for their bookbags and knapsacks. It was already 2:50pm. Class was over.
"Alright, no more learning for today," Haley sighed. "On your way out make sure to pick up the material for Thursday's test, including all three handouts from Spencer. Oh and Doctor Octavian wants to make sure you remember the test will also cover Balinski's analysis of the Porcupine Machine, both the movie and the autobiography."
The students were filing towards the door and I followed them. I needed to get out of the room and get some fresh air. I needed to figure out what the hell had just happened. Tucked in line between Rachel Linscombe and Daric Summers, I was almost free when I heard a soft voice behind me.
"Mr. Hall, could I have a moment."
Crap, I thought. It wasn't a question. I turned around and found my hands sweating. The last three students filed past me and then the room was empty except for the instructor and me.
She bent down and picked up her brown laptop bag. As she did, the material on her dark miniskirt stretched taut over a well-toned ass and I couldn't stop myself from staring. She stood back up and I suddenly became very interested in the ceiling.
