Chapter 26 - Cecilia's façade
On the first day of classes Jason returned to his job modeling for the art department. Although he no longer needed the credits, he enjoyed modeling so much that he decided to do it for the remainder of his freshman year. Because both Cecilia and Ken had completed their humanities requirement, Jason did not expect to see any familiar faces in the spring semester life drawing classes. However, but it turned out there would be a familiar face in one of the classes; Cecilia's friend Suzanne Foster. Although Suzanne already had been at the university for a year and a half as an art major, she had not yet taken life drawing, which was an art department requirement. So, this time around it would be Suzanne's turn to study his body in detail and render it to paper.
Suzanne enjoyed looking at Jason's body and thought about various photography projects she night want to try with him as her model. She approached him about modeling, which he readily agreed to do. He warned her that he could only model the nights Cecilia was duty RA, because he did not want to take any time away from the relationship or his studies. Also, his girlfriend had to approve of any modeling projects ahead of time, so it would be best if she were to approach Cecilia directly about anything she wanted him to do.
However, Jason enjoyed Suzanne's work and was flattered that she wanted to feature him in her next project. He knew that her work would be part of a major spring art show and later possibly published in a nationally published photographers' magazine. Appearing in a widely distributed magazine appealed to the exhibitionist in him, because he would have the chance to show off his body to a large audience of photography enthusiasts.
Jason's public appearances in the nude extended beyond his modeling sessions for Suzanne and the drawing classes. A European news magazine approached him about doing an interview for a feature that concentrated on US college students who were nudists. During February he was also scheduled to speak on behalf of two nudist organizations in Indianapolis and St. Louis. He was to be among several speakers at symposiums in Indianapolis, and would address a college crowd in St. Louis. Ken, Lisa, and Suzanne had promised to accompany him to the Indianapolis presentation. Cecilia also had promised to go, but secretly was hoping that Burnside might come up with some tasking that would make it impossible for her to break away from the department.
----------
Jason, Lisa, and Ken began their second semester of classes without having Burnside's Theory of Economics class hanging over their heads. Having taken and passed that class cleared the way for enrolling in classes in several departments, making it easier for the three freshmen to think seriously about what majors they might want to choose. Jason decided that he wanted to double major in Political Science and International Affairs, while Lisa decided to major in business administration. Ken, still trying to figure himself out, decided to double-major in psychology and education with the eventual goal of becoming a counselor. As he put it:
"With as screwed up as I am, I'm sure I can see eye-to-eye with everyone else who's screwed up."
All three students had gravitated towards departments with classes that had the Burnside class as a prerequisite. Even the psychology and education departments had started using Burnside's class as a means to cut down on the number of students pouring into their programs, using the justification that anyone able to pass that class was a serious student as opposed to a dilettante.
----------
Cecilia's future was much more set by her circumstances than were the futures of Jason and his two friends. She had to complete the requirements to get a Bachelor's degree in economics within a four-year period. She had some flexibility with taking electives, but not very much. For the humanities requirement she had thought about taking another art class, possibly with Suzanne as a classmate, but her decision to tackle Spanish changed those plans. She had decided to exchange an easy credit for one much more difficult.
Cecilia's Spanish professor turned out to be every bit as harsh as she had heard. It turned out he was the Spanish department's version of Ruth Burnside. Even worse, he epitomized the stereotype of the snooty Spaniard who looked down upon the variations of the language that had developed in Latin America, visually cringing when he heard Cecilia speaking for the first time with her rough street accent. In response she quickly snapped in her street Spanish: well, if I knew how to speak properly, I wouldn't need to take this class, would I?
Over the first month of the semester Cecilia earned the respect of her professor by demonstrating she truly was interested in improving her Spanish and that she had taken the class solely with the goal of bettering herself. Her attitude and background contrasted with most of her classmates, who of course, were non-native speakers enrolled because it was a department requirement. The class was perfectly suited for her immediate needs because it gave her the proper structure she needed to express herself in both speech and writing.
Besides giving Cecilia proper structure, the instructor also corrected numerous errors she made that were not normally made by a Spanish-speaker with formal education. For example, she confused the letters "b" and "v", using them interchangeably when she wrote words in Spanish. Her professor drilled her on that mistake, forcing her to memorize which letter went with which words and putting huge red circles around her spelling mistakes. As the semester progressed, Cecilia noticed fewer and fewer red circles on her papers as she memorized the lists of words her professor had typed out for her to study. She also noticed her speech improving as she began editing out the slang and anglicized words from her childhood. As was true for her English, her Spanish street accent was stubbornly resilient, but it seemed that in everything else she showed marked improvement.
By her fourth semester in college, Cecilia already was taking junior-level classes with the economics department. Burnside's ultimate goal was to get her scholarship student to take a couple of graduate-level classes before the end of her senior year and get a feel for what she might expect as a graduate student. She knew that Cecilia really had no choice but to continue her studies upon graduating, since there was little she could do with a BA in economics. She would have the choice of pursuing an MBA or perhaps work towards a future in economic development, but, unless she had something in her background that made her stand out, she would have a hard time getting the financial help she needed to pursue the next level of her education. Burnside hoped to give her that something extra and get her through the MA program with some assistance.
Although Cecilia's probation had ended and the exam crisis from the previous year was forgotten, Burnside was her usual unpleasant self when dealing with her student on a day-to-day basis. At least once each week Cecilia had to stand in Burnside's office justifying why she had not mentioned some famous economist in a research project, or why she did not have a formula properly memorized, or why she had not properly applied some theory to a real life situation. In addition to her own work, there were endless tests and essays Cecilia had to grade, her ongoing duties as RA, and her self-appointed project to fix her Spanish. At the end of each day she relieved her stress in the gym, and then relied on Jason to massage her and give her an orgasm to settle her nerves. She reflected how reliant she was on her nightly routine; without her nightly massage and orgasm she really would be going nuts with all the pressure she was under.
At first it seemed that the relationship between Cecilia and Jason would continue during the spring as it had during the fall, as least on the surface. It still was Cecilia who was telling Jason what to do most of the time. It would remain his responsibility to attend to her needs, to massage her body, give her shoulder and neck rubs, satisfy her clitoris with the gentle caresses of his tongue, hold her, and comfort her. When she needed him to be there for her, he would be there for her. He was taking another Burnside class during the spring, and spent hours standing at attention in the nude, answering her questions about what he was studying. Whenever he did anything to offend her, it was clearly understood he would bend over to receive the belt. As for his outside activities, he would ask her permission before making any commitments.
However, as she interacted with Jason and watched him running around the dorm and hanging out with his friends, Cecilia reflected that he was changing. He certainly seemed more self-assured than he did in the fall, which was something she had not expected. During the fall she had forced him to be successful in his studies, but that very success made him more willing to stand up for himself, defend what he believed in, and also defend his relationship with her. Jason had started growing up.
------------
During the second week of classes Cynthia Lee got together with Cecilia. Cynthia had spent New Year's in Danube City celebrating with her sister and brother-in-law, and came back with some good news. The Danubian government of Vladim Dukov and the national government of his counterpart to the south had finalized a border treaty that incorporated the idea of moving the Danubian consulate to Sumy Ris. The consulate itself would be a compound enclosing the disputed church and graveyard, along with two buildings built in the 18th Century that would contain the offices for the Danubian diplomats. However, what was really exciting was that the nearby castle and several other ancient buildings in Sumy Ris would be sold to a private group of Danubian investors who were planning a restoration and tourism project. If the project went ahead as planned, Sumy Ris would become a major destination for Danubians making pilgrimages to the church and traveling south to other parts of the Balkan Peninsula.
As for the rest of the border, the negotiations had gone extremely well. About 40,000 ethnic Danubians would be re-incorporated into the territory of their native country as a result of the border changes. There would be customs agreements and several internationally managed nature preserves. Most importantly, there would be a bi-lateral agreement to de-militarize the border region in exchange for better cooperation between the two countries' police forces. For the first time in its history, Upper Danubia would have completely secure borders and a formal ally.
