It was a characteristically temperamental Midwestern spring day, gray skies, wind, rain and all. My friend Mari and I were taking shelter at the coffeehouse at the end of vomit row since it was closest to the English building and our Renaissance literature class had just finished. This had become a weekly ritual, sitting and chatting over delicious hot beverages.
However, one topic came up at least once during our meetings.
"You know how he crosses his legs a lot during class, what's up with that?" Mari took a sip from her still-steaming cup of tea.
"Yeah, not to mention almost every other part of lecture and discussion is a somewhat Freudian interpretation about orgasm, phallus and wombs..." I licked a bit of chai latte froth that clung to my upper lip.
"He must really need to get laid." She sighed. "But, you know, someone with all that pent up energy is probably a really good fuck."
This was probably not what I needed to hear. Most of my other friends would tell me I was crazy for wanting to seduce our somewhat mousy, possibly sexually-repressed professor. If I had told Mari that our little game of showing up to class wearing dresses and skirts to see if we could get a rise out of poor Professor Hall was a lot more sincere on my part, she would have probably just told me to tell her how it went.
"He's just so stiff in class, all buttoned up in those suits he wears..." I trailed off, not wanting to go off into meandering slips of words relating to other uses of the word "stiff."
"I know." She said. "He just looks like if given the chance, he'd fuck someone right up against the wall."
I felt a slight creep up my spine and fall back down again, as if punching me right in the gut. All right, it wasn't the "gut," but I only like using the word "womb" in an ironic, "let's make fun of Freud" sort of way.
At the same time, I recall Mari making a similar comment in our D.H. Lawrence class when our professor had asked her what her interpretation of Gudrun's motivations in a chapter of Women in Love was. She had simply said, "Sometimes a woman wants a guy to take her and throw her up against the wall." There was a moment of silence followed by our older professor, Eddington, who was usually curmudgeonly in a way that made House, M.D. look like Mister Rogers, saying, "That's not bad."
My jaw was on the floor from that. If Professor Hall had taught the Lawrence class, I probably would have needed a new pair of panties after every class and a straight-jacket. My vibrator would have come to life just to hang itself with a note saying that it would rather no longer exist than be subjected to such exhaustion.
Hyperbole aside, it had been a dry spell my last year of college. Then again, I wouldn't know what a dry year meant until I moved out of state and didn't know anyone and spent most of my time catching up with science fiction. Back then, it just meant I had no new sex partners and was still having a weekly casual fuck with an old friend from freshman year.
Still, that wasn't enough to keep me from being a bit too curious about my Renaissance literature professor.
"Oh yeah." I sighed, trying to will away the image of Professor Hall backing me into a corner of his office and pinning my hands over my head. "He'd probably pin a woman's wrists over her head and wrap her legs around him while he drove her into the wall."
So much for blocking out my thoughts.
To my surprise, Mari didn't have a paroxysm of agreement, but was uncharacteristically subdued.
"What?" I asked.
She nodded upward, looking over my shoulder.
I turned slowly to see Professor Hall at the counter paying for what looked like an Americano or even a drip coffee. He didn't bother going to the counter where the sugar, honey, stevia and other sweeteners surrounded cream carafes in a chaotic chess game where the board wasn't marked.
I swear, my life is like a bad movie sometimes.
He hastened out of the coffee shop as suddenly as he had appeared, not settling in a booth or on a couch with a pile of papers to grade, a book to read or a laptop to clack notes in.
"Don't worry, he probably couldn't hear us." She poured the last drops from the tomato-red one-person teapot into the equally vibrant cup.
"Yeah..." I trailed off, wondering what he would have said or done had he heard me, knowing he was the reference for my pronouns.
This simply wouldn't do. My neurotic sexual obsession with Professor Hall was cutting into my bantering time with Mari, which was another highlight of my typically mundane week. I had originally met her in an advanced poetry writing class. Her work was dark, vivid and of course, erotic and sensual. My work was usually of the angry, personal identity politics nature. We had a mutual hatred of the pretentious poetry workshop professor.
She was much taller than me, Mediterranean features: glowing complexion, curly dark hair, a nose that she practically decked an in-law for even suggesting that he knew a plastic surgeon who could "fix" it. Another one of my friends had been bowled by Mari after first meeting, calling her an Amazon. To this day, I still wonder how someone as gorgeous and brash and interesting as her had difficulty meeting decent guys. Then again, this was in college, so I imagine she's done a lot of weeding out since then and found someone worth the trouble or just decided to not bother with it anymore.
When I hung out with her, I felt like the mouse who tried to run with a tiger.
"Shit, I have Business Writing in ten." She looked at her cell phone clock. "I'll catch you later."
"Later." I said, getting up and slinging my bag over my shoulder.
I loved that coffeehouse. Our usual place was in a corner tucked down a small set of stairs with a couple of overstuffed old velveteen couches and a well-ringed coffee table with board games missing pieces and dog-eared trade paperbacks resting on a shelf beneath it. However, it was taken by some group that had scheduled a meeting there, so we were up with the rest of the madding crowd.
I walked down the stairs instead of leaving immediately, noticing how despite the reading lamp, that little area was dark. I hadn't even noticed it was there until Mari had pointed it out. I couldn't help but picture running into Professor Hall here again, having a brief chat that would somehow lead to me straddling him on the couch, his hands grazing up my thighs, fingers slipping beneath my panties as I kissed him, pulling at his dark hair, biting his lips. He would undo the fly of his pants, lowering them and loosening his cock from his boxers (I couldn't picture him as a briefs wearer, even though he was a bit tightly wound). I would slide my panties down from under my skirt (fantasies always have to be in a skirt for easy access) and we'd fuck quietly so that no one would even notice we were downstairs.
"Oh, excuse me." A jolt brought me back to where I was on the small stairs, where the barista was walking back up with a full bus bin.
"Sorry." I mumbled, looking back down for a moment and walking to the exit.
