"You need to be in my office in 20 minutes, slut. Do not disappoint me."
The message, sent to my work email, came from a throwaway Gmail account and contained no salutation, no closing, and no signature, but I knew exactly who had sent it. The ever-present anxiety and dread that had been an unwelcome part of my life for the last six weeks suddenly intensified. What else could he possibly expect of me? Haven't I performed every task he's asked me to perform? Haven't I already been punished enough for my small indiscretion? Why does he want to see me in person?
I'm a part-time English instructor at Riverbank University, a small private college in Ohio. Six weeks ago, one of my students, a baseball player named Jake DeVaul, submitted an essay that was such a blatant cut-and-paste job that I could have found it online in under 30 seconds even without plagiarism-detection software. Although Jake begged me to allow him to rewrite the essay without getting campus administrators involved, Riverbank's policy required that I send the case up the academic food chain. Therefore, I reached out to my dean, Dr. Jeffrey Harrison from the College of Arts and Sciences, whom I recognized from faculty meetings but had only ever spoken to in passing. Dr. Harrison asked me for a narrative in which I was to describe the assignment and offer evidence of Jake's dishonesty. And that's when the trouble began.
I should have been paying closer attention to what I was doing, but it was 4:30 in the afternoon and I was exhausted and frustrated thanks to the abysmally-formatted bibliographies I had spent the afternoon grading. I had written Jake's plagiarism narrative that morning, but it was only after I had finished my grading and decided to leave campus for the day that I realized that I hadn't yet emailed it to Dr. Harrison. In a rush to leave my office, I attached what I thought was the plagiarism narrative to the email, hit "Send," and figured that I wouldn't hear from Dr. Harrison until he had decided what Jake's punishment would be.
During the next day's office hour, I was sitting at my desk responding to student emails when I was startled by the sound of someone clearing his throat loudly. I turned away from the computer screen and saw Dr. Harrison looking at me with an expression I couldn't interpret as he leaned against the doorway.
"Good morning, Amanda. May I have a word with you?"
"Sure, Dr. Harrison. Would you like to sit down?" I asked as I motioned toward one of the empty chairs in front of my desk.
"Yes, thank you. And please call me Jeff," he replied. As he entered my office, he kicked the door stop aside and allowed the door to close. I was a little baffled by this; when students are in my office, I always keep the door open to avoid being accused of improprieties. I assumed that Dr. Harrison (or Jeff, which I suppose I should now call him) wanted to talk about Jake's plagiarism case without my colleagues overhearing him.
"So, Amanda, about that plagiarism narrative you sent. . ." Jeff pressed his fingertips together as his voice trailed off, and he looked me with the same odd expression.
"It's a pretty straightforward case, really," I insisted. "I just need to know whether Jake's going to fail only that assignment or if he's going to fail the entire course. That's entirely up to you, of course, regardless of what the official policy is."
Jeff shifted in his chair and said, "Well, Amanda, the problem is that you didn't really give me much information about Jake's case in the, um, narrative you sent me."
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean," I stammered. "I wrote the narrative yesterday and sent it to you before I left campus."
"You sent me a 'narrative,'" Jeff retorted, "but I'm not sure that you sent the file you intended to send. I'm not sure what your little story about your 'friend' David has to do with Jake's plagiarism case. Oh, there was punishment involved, to be sure, but it was completely irrelevant to what happened here."
My heart immediately skipped several beats. Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! What the fuck had I done? Instead of sending Jeff a copy of the plagiarism narrative, I had attached a draft of an erotic story that I'd written for someone else. Holy fucking fuck was I in trouble! At the very least, I was about to get fired, but if I was lucky, Jeff might let me finish the semester.
"Oh my God, no! I can't believe I did that. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. That file shouldn't even have been accessible to me at work, but it was on the same flash drive as Jake's plagiarism narrative." Hot, angry, embarrassed tears streamed down my cheeks as I continued, "Dr. Harrison—I mean—Jeff, I'm really sorry. I know that you won't offer me future contracts because of this, but please let me finish the semester. It's so difficult for students and instructors when someone new has to take over a class. I know because I've been there. Please let me stay."
"Amanda," Jeff said, "I'm very disappointed in you. I don't know you very well, but your full-time colleagues in the English department tell me that you're one of our most highly-respected adjuncts. Believe me when I say that I want to continue to offer you courses in the English department, but I simply can't allow what you've done to go unpunished."
"You're the only one who knows about this," I stated flatly. "I didn't copy anyone else on that email. What's going to happen to me? Are you going to suspend me for a few days? Will I be offered fewer classes in the spring?"
"After reading that story you sent, I think you and I can work out a trade that will be, shall we say, mutually beneficial to both of us," Jeff replied, glancing meaningfully at me.
I've been told that I'm oblivious to flirting and come-ons, but I immediately took the hint. "Wait! That was just a story! A fantasy!" I insisted. "I wouldn't do anything like that in real life."
"Well, that's too bad," Jeff replied. "I thought you enjoyed working at Riverbank."
"I
do
enjoy working here! I graduated from this school almost 20 years ago! I like the students. The students like me. My classes fill up quickly even though I have a reputation for being strict. My colleagues respect me; you said so yourself. I don't want to do anything to compromise that."
"You don't want to do anything to compromise that?" Jeff asked, punctuating his mimicry of me with a contemptuous snort. "Then I think you need to do as I say. I had no idea that you were such a dirty little slut. But I guess I should have known. You nerdy-looking types usually are. I like that a lot."
I looked down at my lap; I just couldn't make eye contact with Jeff. The story that I accidentally sent him was a fantasy, but it could have happened. At that point I was willing to agree to almost anything Jeff asked of me in order to end this conversation. "What would you have me do?" I asked, shrugging weakly.
"That remains to be seen, little girl," Jeff replied, "but I think you and I are going to have a lot of fun together. You'll be hearing from me in a few days."
And on that note, he got up, opened my office door and put the door stop back in its place, and walked out, whistling nonchalantly as he entered the hallway. I ran to the ladies' room, where I dissolved into a tearful mess, attempted to compose myself before my next class, and wondered what I had gotten myself into.
I didn't have to wait long to discover what was in store for me. Two days later, a message from an unfamiliar Gmail address appeared in my inbox with the subject line "Question about the assignment." I clicked on it, assuming that it was from a student who was having trouble accessing his or her official Riverbank student email account. I was instead greeted with the following message:
"Good morning, slut. I hope you haven't forgotten about our agreement. I'm assuming that a dirty girl like you has a lot of toys. Am I right about that? Tomorrow I expect you to wear a skirt or a dress to class. You will slide a vibrator into your panties, and you will drive to campus with that vibrator torturing your clit. You may not cum while you are driving. Once you are on campus, you may not leave your car until you cum, and you will write a brief story telling me how it felt. I expect to receive a response to this email by midnight tomorrow night. Do not disappoint me."
My heart was pounding as I read the message, but by the time I had finished reading I had calmed down just a little. I own lots of toys, of course, and driving to work with a vibrator in my panties didn't sound like too harsh of a punishment. Maybe I could handle these tasks after all.
The next morning I walked to my car ready to get my first task out of the way. I was wearing a white button-down blouse with a red scarf around my neck, a black knee-length pencil skirt, and light blue cotton panties with flowers on them. I pulled the vibrator—a white bullet vibe—out of my work tote, slid it down the front of my panties, and prepared to be deliciously tortured during my 25-minute commute. Every time I switched from the accelerator to the brake, the extra pressure on my clit made me want to explode, but I didn't cum.