"Sheesh, Jim, and I really thought you'd get through a term without another one of these."
I smiled and put the image away, nodding. "Whatever. It's become old hat." I shrugged. "But I know how crazy it's getting with the state, so I'm just doing the right thing here." I had to admit, though, the image lit me up in a way I hadn't felt since...I couldn't quite remember.
"You know who it is?"
Of course I knew who it was. Or, I had a pretty good idea. No face. Just a torso, naked, her hands above her head, arms stretched out, her breasts, barely big enough to cast a shadow. Interesting nipples. But there were distinguishing qualities that made it pretty clear who it was. "Hard to say since she was careful not to include her face, but I have a pretty good idea."
"You need help?"
I weighed the request, not wanting to respond too quickly. "I think I've got this one, but I'll keep you in the loop."
We looked at each other across his desk and I got up to leave. "What is it with these kids these days? It feels like I'm having this conversation almost every day."
I smiled and left for my office hours.
*-*-*-*
"Hey Professor!"
I looked up at the entrance. Two students were standing there, peeking into my office. The lighting was so bad I had to squint to see who it was. "Hello! Come in! Do you need some help?"
It was open office hours; I looked forward to these interruptions.
"Ummm..."
I couldn't make out who it was...a guy and a gal, it seemed. "Come on in. Which class are you here about?"
They came closer and I realized it was Tee and Carolyn, two young sophomores in my English Lit 201. I suppressed a smile. This was going to be fun.
Tee, whose real name had about 14 syllables and was almost impossible to remember (and if I didn't see it on the roster every other day, I wouldn't even have known), was so androgenous that I had to check what sex she had put down. I didn't bother to think about gender anymore. But she was cis-female so in spite of her appearance, she was a young woman. Thai mixed with Caucasian, her skin a golden brown, hair cut short with a designer style, colored with bright yellow highlights. She made a striking figure, short, slight and full of energy. She always wore loose fitting embroidered blouses, and even before the first class was out, I couldn't help but notice she wasn't wearing a bra. When she bent over to say something, the breasts I saw were practically just bumps with nipples. Every time I saw those beautiful bumps I felt a flicker of arousal.
I'm a sucker for small breasted women, so naturally I was intrigued. But sucker or not, I liked my job and just because a young woman teased me didn't mean I was stupid enough to take the bait.
Carolyn, on the other hand, was mid-western American through and through. Not heavy or overweight, but strong boned. Her breasts weren't huge, but compared to Tee's they looked pretty grand. The two were apparently inseparable. At least, I'd never seen them apart when walking the campus, and they always sat together in my classes. Maybe they were a thing. At least, that's what I had figured until I got the photograph earlier in the week.
They could tell I was more interested in Tee than Carolyn, and I think it amused them, or maybe it irritated Carolyn since she always seemed to get the attention of the young men they chatted up. But teasing a professor by flashing your breasts in class is one thing. Sending him a naked picture crosses so many lines. The picture showed up in my inbox on Monday night: the torso, a golden brown color to the skin, arms raised above her head, breasts so small they were muscles with nipples. But what nipples! Areolas bigger than a circle I could make with my forefinger to thumb...at least that's what it looked like in proportion to everything else I could see. Which wasn't much. Underarms slightly unshaven, ribs nicely delineated but not unhealthy. Head was cut off at the top, and just a hint of pubic hair, dark black, bordered the bottom of the image. Her hips beginning to widen; not an artistic shot, and probably wouldn't be any good on a voyeur porn site, but it did what it was intended to do: tease me and put me off balance.
I figured Carolyn took the shot. From her phone. Dean Thomas was impressed, that much I could tell, but probably more from the sheer audacity than the subject matter; he was a breast man and these weren't his type. Not that we ever discussed such things at work, but we'd known each other long enough that I knew what kind of woman he was interested in. What these two women had no clue about (and neither did Dean Thomas) was who they were trying to fuck with. I thought about how far to go and quickly reconsidered...although...something about Tee rang a harmonic chord deep inside me.
Stop it, Jim! There's too much to risk.
I smiled avuncularly. "Tee. Carolyn. How can I help you today?"
"We were just passing by and thought we'd say hello. We don't have anything to talk about, class-wise."
Umm hmmm. Translation: 'How'd you like the note we sent you Professor?'
I nodded and waited, looking more carefully at what Tee was wearing. More of the same - jeans with a loose fitting top, but today it was cut short, above the mid-riff and my eye caught on a glint. I pressed my smile together and turned back to my screen.
"Hey," I said, pulling up the photograph and quickly cropping it. "Do either of you know anything about this?" I turned the screen toward them, the image showing just a naked abdomen.
They both looked at it, at each other and shook their head slowly, they raised their eyebrows expressing so much guilt that it was all I could do to keep from laughing.
"You sure?" I pointed to the belly button ring. "It seems to me," I said turning the screen around back toward me, "that if you're going to sext somebody anonymously, you probably shouldn't include such obvious jewelry." I nodded toward Tee's mid-riff and they both looked, blushing, embarrassed.
"Carolyn," I looked at her. "Please go down to the Union and wait for Tee. I need to talk with her."
"But anyone could..."
I shut her down with a stare and she turned, grabbing her purse a little tighter, looking to Tee to see if she'd be alright alone and then she left.
"Please close the door, Tee."
She had grown quiet, her usual provocations smothered by this shift in my tone.
"I'm not sure you understand what you've done, here. I suspect you think it was all in good fun. Teasing a professor, showing off your body. The thing is, Tee, this could cost me my job."
She reacted by bringing her hands to her mouth and shaking her head. "No, Professor, that's not right! Car and I were just fooling around."
I held up my hand and nodded. "I get it. I do. Would you believe I have this conversation every term?"
She just looked down and back up again, the thought that she wasn't anything special hurting more than being found out. 19, 21? What a great time of life.
"Yeah. Crazy right? Sometimes it's a guy. Sometimes it's two people." I stared at her to make sure she understood this wasn't any big deal.
"So, you should know that all of my email is monitored by IT. Every professor's is. You must know that Harleston hasn't had the best track record when it comes to harassment and the state's been getting involved. So, I had to go to Dean Thomas and show him this."
She freaked out a little, thinking maybe she was going to be suspended. She started shaking. Cute.
"Don't worry," I spread my hands on the desk. "He doesn't know it's you. He trusts I'll handle this and that nobody will be hurt because of it."
Her eyes had grown as large as the areolas in the photo, the lights glinting off the tears forming there. "Shit. Shit. Shit. I told her it was stupid to do it." She couldn't stop shaking.
I didn't buy it for a moment, but I let her make me believe she was duped by her besty. Not likely. I could just hear them:
