**This article is for internal use only. Not for release outside the Institute, except as required by law.**
My Interview with the Professor by Stephanie Weingarten
The first notes I have are from my walk-in to her Fabrics and Materials class. My visitor's tag was waiting, and I was soon wandering the elegant but functional halls. As befit (I have to avoid these unintended puns) the most prestigious fashion institute in the country, the walls were very pleasing to the eye, with watercolors of past award-winning designs, meant to impress but not overwhelm.
It being the middle of a class hour, there was hardly anyone in the halls. I could hear my heels clicking on the hard tile as I curiously, but not too quickly, made my way to Room 125, the classroom which, I was told, was specially constructed for her use.
105, 107, 109 . . . through the doors I could hear the sing-song of accomplished professors teaching serious-minded grad students. Kind of like my j-school. The stereotype of fashion industry people as ditzy or superficial is just not true. I glanced at the students through the windows on the doors. Again, a preconception overturned. No fashion plates. Well, maybe a couple. But these kids -- kids?? they're only three or four years younger than me! -- were dressed like ordinary college kids, in fact a bit on the grungy side. Sweatshirts, jeans, sneakers, boots. Some shorts. Appropriate, on this warmish day in May. Finally, a day in the 70's! I was getting tired of this cold, wet spring.
Now on to Room 125. The door was near the rear of the room. I peered in on the students in the back. More sweatshirts than usual, in fact they seemed to be dressed as if expecting the room to be cold.
Now my hopefully discreet entrance. I closed the door behind me and slid into a chair at the very back, as the amplified voice spoke about shirring. Or I think that's what it was. I'm no clothing expert.
It was a pretty big classroom, with maybe forty students. All industriously scribbling or texting notes as the professor spoke. She was in a glass enclosure at the front, behind a little podium. I had been told what to expect but the scene was unreal just the same. The sticklike podium hid none of her totally naked, hairless body, pale and bluelike in the pallor of the fluorescent light over her. The borders of the glass were encrusted with frost and her breath came out in thick clouds as she spoke, as thick as old-time cigarette smoke.
"You s - see on the overhead the styles of shirring th - that are c - current..."
The students impassively glanced up at the LCD screen to one side of the glass enclosure, showing a diagram with lines and arrows that were indecipherable to me. I quickly re-fastened my gaze on the professor.
Her hairlessness made her look like a freak, an alien. She was not sickly, that's for sure. Her arms and legs were lightly but noticeably muscled. She seemed tall but then I looked down and saw that she was standing on a kind of raised metal grating, her reddish bare toes curling over the front as if to grasp it. I looked up her slightly spread legs to the shaved pubic lips. Even from the back of the room, her pink clit was visible, sticking straight out in the freezing air. Her nipples were big and brown and hard. Quite long too, judging from the ghostly fluorescent shadows they threw down her breasts.
Freezing air? Obviously sub-freezing, judging from the frost on the glass. Her allergy requires her to be in such a controlled environment. I told myself: She must be used to it.
Well, actually she isn't. "C - can you see this?" The nodding of students. "Th - then on to the next one." It's not stuttering, it's shivering. As my eyes adjusted I detected goose bumps on her arms and thighs. And the slight quivering of the hands as she turned the pages of her notes on the little stand in front of her.
Fortunately the sound system was excellent and everyone could hear her quivering voice clearly. I looked at the clock. It's been half an hour she's been in that transparent freezer. Despite her strength and toughness it must be chilling her to the bone. Her toes grasped and ungrasped the icy metal grate, as if to get some feeling back.
Now a student raised his hand and the professor answered it. A little joke. Chuckles. Teaching classes like this was something she liked to do. It was her life. The minutes went by as I took in this strange but everyday scene, warm and clothed students learning about clothing design from their freezing naked professor.
As the minutes ran down her shivering got more violent. It was harder for her to get the words out as her teeth chattered. I noticed her skin was now purplish, even her bald scalp, upon which the heatless fluorescent light shone dimly, like the Sun uselessly scattering its weak, faraway light on the planet Pluto. I was getting upset again but the students seemed totally oblivious.
"You s - s - see the s - samples f - from my c - c - current project . . ." The clouds of condensation came from her mouth more raggedly now in tune with her attempts at speech. The students opened up little pouches that were on their desks. "Oooooo . . . " said a few of them as the dark, furry material caressed their hands.
The professor, shaking even more violently now, said through chattering teeth, "Using n - n - nitrogen c - compound allows m -m - more --" Her shaking knocked a page off her stand and she bent down on shuddering legs to retrieve it. "S - s - sorry.... C - c - compound allows m - more w - w - arm - m - th - th."
"What did she say?" a girl in a fake-fur jacket whispered.
"'Warmth'," the girl next to her said.
"What?"
"'WARMTH!'" the second girl said impatiently. I got the feeling that she considered the first girl to be a little slow.