There are things that you know you can never tell anyone else.
This is for any number of reasons. Maybe it is because no one would believe the truth. Maybe it is things people are better off not knowing, things they wouldn't want to know.
Maybe it is because you have done something that, in all probability, you shouldn't have gotten away with.
For all of these reasons, you are going to be the first I tell this to. Believe it or not, as they say, but it's all true...
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We would always have a lot of trainee teachers at the college I went to. The regular teacher would have us for a term and the student teacher would sit at the back of the class, taking notes. The next term, they would swap, and we would be taught by the student teacher while the real teacher sat at the back, taking notes. I always thought this was a bit of a cheat, to try an unfledged teacher out on us like we were guinea pigs, but this happened every year in numerous classes; usually language classes.
One particular year, however, I didn't mind so much. That year we got three student teachers for three classes and they were all hot.
It always helps if you are sexually attracted to a teacher. The classes just fly by. You even find yourself looking forward to them, and are disappointed if they are cancelled, or the teacher in question isn't there. Your mind focuses instantly on everything the teacher has to say, and memorizes it instantly. You study harder so you have better grades in a hope to please them. I'm all for sexy teachers, I think it's a wonderful institution.
The first student teacher of note was Miss Banner. She was the English teacher, which isn't really a ‘language' class as such I suppose, more an academic one. Miss Banner was great, she was a chestnut brunette with a slightly dopey face (hers eyes never really focused on you), but her body was a knockout. She always wore dress suits and must have been very uncomfortable because she was virtually bursting out of them. They always looked far too tight, straining at the breasts and hips. She always perched above the desk, knees tight together and leaned forward, thrusting her chest outwards in a wonderfully disciplined display of posture. Sometimes, I don't know if I only imagined them or not, but I thought I could see her nipples.
I used to wait at the top of the stairs for her to arrive in a hope that I could see down her top when she passed underneath me but she always moved quite fast and her shirt was always very tight against her.
I've always been very good at English, I just had an affinity with it, and it took next to no time at all to get in Miss Banner's good books, especially in a class as unruly as mine was. I would often try to find excuses to call her over so she could explain something to me or, even better still, I could explain something to her. Something about a rhyming couplet, or an alliteration, or a piece of imagery, anything to make her lean over the back of her chair and breath on my neck as I drank in her perfume. I had thought about suddenly leaning back into her a couple times, as if by accident, to impress myself on her, but that's not what I wanted to be to her, someone who grabbed a quick, cheap feel.
I found the opportunity to be something more to her when we had an assignment one day. We were studying English love poems, everything from Donne to Shakespeare, and she set us all a poem to write for class which she would grade. After some complaining, we didn't have to read them out. After even more, we only had to write six lines, or a limerick.
But I decided to ace the assignment. I would write a sonnet.
We had a couple days to turn things in, but I only needed one. I knew that almost everybody else would opt for the easy limerick or cheesy little couplet verses so I had no question that I would be the best of the class. However, I also wanted it to be the best poem she read in a long time, perhaps ever. One that she might even ask me to discuss with her...
So I set to work and stayed up most of the night making the right balance of maturity of feeling and abstract loneliness, with a touch of humour in the rhymes. I finished it to my satisfaction and wrote it up neatly the next morning.
That afternoon, I turned it in to her pigeonhole, a day early.
My mind dwelt on it all that day and I wondered if it was really as good as it could have been. I wrote it late at night and some of the rhymes were a bit cheesy now that I came to remember them. And of course, there's nothing worse than cheese in a love poem. I consoled myself by saying that it would still be the best in the class, whatever the case.
The next day, I waited breathlessly for English period, the last period, to come around. Again, I was at the top of the stairs, waiting for her, but my mind was so jumpy that I didn't see her until she had passed me and started letting the other students into class. I hurried in myself.
Probably only half the class had done the assignment, which was no surprise to me or, it seemed, Miss Banner but she tried to sound angry and put out anyway. She mentioned that it was a disgrace and that she had already had one person's poem in already. I held my breath that she wouldn't say it was me, because that would be hard to live down. She didn't though, very luckily, and asked for everybody else to hand in their assignments.
She started again with the lesson and got us reading an extract of Don Juan by Byron. I was just getting into it when I felt Miss Banner brush her hand across my back. Suddenly, I was aware that she was leaning over me.
‘You're poem was very good,' she said, in a low whisper. ‘I would like to talk to you about it after class.'
As she said this last sentence, she leant into me, pressing her firm chest against my back. It was all I could do to say ‘sure,' and then she was gone. I replayed the feel of her against me in my mind and, although I read it through five times and listened to her speak about it afterwards, I didn't hear a word of Byron.
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