Part one. The topping out ceremony
The crane swung the five-foot evergreen to the top of the steel building frame. Ten stories from the ground, the ironworkers walked catlike along the girders guiding the tree to the place they had prepared for it. On the ground their coworkers had taken the netting off the fresh spruce and hooked the cables and sling around it. On a hand-swirling signal, the crane pulled the fragrant spruce skyward describing an spiral as the hoist rose and spun in one motion. Atop the building when the ironworkers fixed the base of the tree in a box where it was balanced on the uppermost beam. The men then pulled at the branches and arranged them so none were bent or crossed. Without a look down, the burly men stepped back and admired the tree. One of the men seemed to be making a speech because all the workers stood silently listening. When he was done he pulled a bottle of champagne from his canvas rigger's bag and opened it spilling the foaming jet onto the root ball.
The angle seen from the classroom window in the next building over made it look like he had just ejaculated on to the tree. Then he passed the bottle around and each man to take a swig. Soon, the ceremony was over and men began making their way to the elevator; their shift and their work was done.
"Okay, class let's get back to work." Professor Winderly said flatly. "We've all seen the vestige of homoerotic seed rites and can go back to the discussion of blade knapping."
The students shuffled to their seats and opened their laptops to the slides Professor Winderly had uploaded to the class site. Her senior seminar on ancient peoples and customs was oversubscribed every semester. Even non-Anthropology majors flocked to the class "where you got to make cool stuff." Dee Winderly thought the best way to really understand a subject was to do something with it. Memorizing and multiple-choice tests annoyed her because the facts just vanished when the test was over. "If I can get the students to solve problems like primitive people had to, they will understand better what life was like back then," she reasoned.
Dr. Winderly knew that modern skills were slack and, left alone, her students could not make a fire, tie a knot, navigate by the stars, or even find enough food to eat. "For all our advancement," she thought, "we are the primitive ones, dependent on someone or something else to provide for us."
So in her classes students used an atlatl to fling a spear far and accurately. They knapped flint for knives and arrows and secured them with sinews or tree roots. They made fire bows and scorched tinder until it burst into flames. It wasn't until the last half of the semester that she brought out the textbooks. And by then the students absorbed the information like sponges.
The time went quickly and she only knew it was the end of class when she heard the scraping of chairs and closing of laptops. She looked up at her class and then at the clock. "Oh sorry. Okay next class we are going to use those knives to slice meat for cooking."
The students trickled out until only Jim Doumay, her G.A., was left. He was gathering the artifacts and placing them in their respective boxes. Professor Winderly looked over her black glasses and followed his movements around the room. She liked him and being only four years older than him, she wondered if he would be suitable for, well anything. He was handsome enough—a sprinter in college with strong legs, cut abs, and firm arms. His brown hair was thick and straight so it kept falling in his eyes and had to be brushed away; a habit he used to his advantage when on a date. It made him look innocent. That's how Dr. Winderly reacted as well. But she was the professor and he was her student, so she kept her observations strictly clinical lest their small difference in age make familiarity a problem.
"Well?" she asked. Jim jumped at the interruption of the silent classroom.
"Almost done, Dr. Winderly."
"That's not what I meant, Dummy. You know what I am waiting for," she intoned in her best authoritative voice.
"Yeah, I do, Doc. And I got nothing. I'm sorry. Every time I think I have an idea for my thesis, I find out that the topic has been done over and over. I know. I have to come up with something or I'll be one of those ABDs (All But Dissertation) who seem to lurk around campus."
In the two years they had worked together she always called him Dummy, not by his first name. Dummy is what his friends had called him making fun of his French-sounding. She did so at times in a teasing way but at other times in a provocative way. It irked him a little. So, he always called her Doc, because it irked her a little. She was his dissertation advisor and he was running out of time to complete it. He should have had his committee formed, a draft proposal done be, and well on his way to collecting evidence. Instead, he was taking more classes and spending time in Winderly's lab.
Dee Winderly shook her head in frustration. So many times the same story. She had tried arguing, encouraging, leaving him alone, dropping hints, sending him articles. She even invited him to home and cooked him a diner hoping the relaxed atmosphere would help him talk about his ideas. He just could not commit. He had no courage to strike out on his own. He played it safe with all his thesis ideas and the result was he never got moving.
She began to think he couldn't get moving because it meant he had not failed. If you never begin, you can always say, "Oh, I'm still working on my dissertation."
Jim finished picking up the last of the blades and set the box on the desk next to her. He was about to sit when Dr. Winderly stood to go. She didn't have time for another round of "What am I going to do?"
"Okay, see you on Thursday. We'll break out the spear rods and show them how to mount the blades. See you." Dee walked toward the door.
"Homoerotic seed rites?" Jim said the words to himself but loud enough for her to hear. "Those construction guys were doing something ancient? I'm missing something."
Dr. Winderly turned on her heel and cocked her head. "What's there to miss? You know what that's all about. Hell even the bottle of champagne is a surrogate for ejaculation. Think, Dummy! Druids? Fertility rites? Duh!"
"I am thinking, but I don't recall those as cultures of seed rites. Seed rites, you said. Right? Well how does that make its way to a tree on a building?"
Dr. Winderly put her books down on a chair nearby and sat down. "Sit, Dummy," pulling another chair in front her.
"You're so safe and so closed you can't see what's right in front of you. Sex! Dummy. It's about the power of sex. What did it look like when that fat foreman shot the champagne at that tree? It looked like he had this big fat cock in his hand and had just fired off a huge load of semen. Use your imagination a little...if you have one." She was a little surprised at her frankness but she was exasperated at his safe and closed demeanor. She didn't have the patience for it any more. If she was going to work with him, she had to go balls to the wall.
