"Hi Professor Hall, mind if I come in for a minute?"
"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?"
I can't believe that I'm rehearsing such a simple salutation. If this was some ordinary beer-swilling male college student, this would be a hell of a lot easier. Then again, the only reason I'm doing this is to just prove to myself once and for all that men really are the same no matter how old they are, that I was deluding myself into thinking that this professor with his fresh PhD in English Literature was any different from the horny bastards who'd paw at me at parties.
Never mind that I'm staking my own dignity, and perhaps even my own grade in the class on this. At worst, I would have a B+ in the class in Renaissance Literature. At best, an A-. I'm a decent enough student to do most of the reading and put in a couple of cents during class discussion, but I'm no fucking apple polisher. Then again, I'm certainly not the type of girl who exchanges sex for better grades. If that were the case, it would take more of a drastic jump, like a failing grade to an A for it to be worth it. Not some paltry half-grade difference.
No, this challenge was entirely personal, almost selfless. The only problem is that if everything went down the way I planned it, I could risk David losing his job. It was strange that I always thought of him in terms of his first name, perhaps because he was so much closer to me in age than my other instructors. As much as I wanted to do this, I didn't want to get him hurt in the process.
This is my quandary.
I turn around in the hallway to watch him exit from his 9:00 a.m. class to walk to his office for his office hours. As usual, he's carrying a stack of papers and books. Sometimes I wonder if he ever bothered considering getting a briefcase for everything. I've only glanced at the inside of his office in passing, but for a new professor, it's a nice enough office, not like the large static rooms filled with cubicles for the TAs. The ceiling is surprisingly high in such an old building. The wall behind him has shelves filled with books. Perhaps he just grabs what he needs at the last second, maybe without even thinking. Then again, knowing his meticulous nature, this probably wasn't the case. The wall of books behind him seems to loom so tall, overwhelming him and his desk and the pathetically cute, but somewhat dated iMac the school has equipped him with.
I notice that he has dropped a piece of paper and hastily walk down the hall to pick it up before the passing period stampede can trample it to shreds. It strikes me as odd that a specialist in 16th century English Literature would have a 17th Century poem such as "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell. Oddly enough, despite the flagrant display of chauvinism in it, the poem is one of my favorites. I definitely agree with the carpe diem philosophy. Humans don't have a particularly long lifespan, so we should enjoy ourselves while we still can. Then again, this poem is just a rather obvious ploy at getting beneath a lady's skirts. And yet again, if someone had written this poem for me, it would have worked, mostly because no one has ever or would ever write poetry for me.
"Excuse me, Professor Hall? You dropped this." I wave the paper at him in time for the door to nearly slam in my face.
He stops the door with his foot and kicks it back open, setting down a stack of books to prop it. "Thanks Jane."
"Marvell, huh? Sort of odd that you'd choose him for a lesson in Shakespeare."
David smiles and looks up at me as he finishes adjusting the stack of books. "That's right, but I wanted to give my class a taste of what direction literature would take after the Shakespearean sonnet."
"That sounds cool." I hate the Shakespeare class I'm in now since I thought that the old professor was so stodgy and set in his ways that a new idea would give him a coronary. "I wish I was in your Shakespeare class too."
"Why is that?"
"Because I'd get to take that class, then come to your office hours to hang out with you and then go to your Renaissance Literature class."
"That would be at least six hours we'd be spending together." David chuckles as I think about the myriad things I would do with him in six hours. "Are you sure you wouldn't get sick of my company? Or that we'd run out of things to say to each other?"
I step into his office, slightly nudging the books so that a couple of them fell. "I'm sure some other students would drop by and interrupt with more legitimate questions on assignments and such. Then I'd be forced to leave and come back later."
"You wouldn't believe this but—" He pauses when I look up after bending down to my knees to readjust the books, stretching my shirt a bit lower to reveal my collarbone. "Students don't really come to see me during office hours. I sometimes worry that I made my courses too easy for them."
"Well, do their grades reflect on this theory? Are all of your students getting As this semester?" I stand up and walk to the chair in front of his desk, a surprisingly comfortable leather chair despite being patched multiple times with duct tape. After a flashing fantasy of me sitting in that chair my legs spread over his shoulders as he grasped my hips and licked me with fervor, I ponder over his next to last statement, thinking about how lonely he must get if nobody visits him. I even recall how happy he seemed when he just saw me in the doorframe.
"No, not exactly." He looks away for a moment and clears his throat. "Then again, grades are a confidential matter that I can't discuss openly with a student."
I move forward in my chair. Something in the way he said the word "confidential" with the subtle bite of the "k" sound gliding into the soft "f" and flourishing off into whisper sound of "sh" turned me on even more. "Well, I could go over there and close the door so we can discuss the matter in confidence. Or at least I could ask you how I'm doing in your class. I mean, that is the point of office hours, right?"
