The carefully selected upper division honors students filed into the seminar room and jockeyed for the best chairs to watch and to hear their distinguished guest professor. Each of them had been selected individually, either by the chair of their major department or the head of the program in comparative literature, to participate in a special graduate-level honors seminar on his theories and to experience a taste of sublime, world-class scholarship. These were the elite, the students who were good enough, smart enough, and mature enough to handle the material. Now the lucky students were taking their seats around four tables arranged in a square in the old-fashioned classroom in the College's oldest and most historic academic building.
The distinguished visiting professor Doctor Viku Dicae sat at the table, watching the students walk in. His tousled hair, black with scattered gray, and handsome, chiseled, aging face with a wry smile gave him a rebellious look despite his academic prestige. He was dressed casually, with a leather jacket, an open blue shirt and jeans, and he slouched in his chair. It was the uniform of the nonconformists, the traditional style of dress of every angry young man and rebel for the last 70 years, and for those of Dicae's age who had been young once but had forgotten why they were still angry.
Some professors liked to sit on the same level as their students, pretending that school was a democracy. Others liked to speak standing, from a tall podium, which gave them an air of authority but also of arrogance. Many liked to use a stool in front of the class, to be free to walk around or just sit, as they chose, like an academic standup comic. A few preferred to stand at the table and use a small desk podium that brought their notes up where they could see them easily, especially the ones who were nearsighted.
Dicae did none of this. He sat at the front table with no notes, nothing but air between him and the young minds (and Kiki feared, young bodies) in front of him. None of the students sat next to him -- they all wanted to watch his face and gestures closely and they couldn't do that if they were sitting alongside him. There was only a pitcher of water and a glass beside him that Kiki had brought him, playing the role of his personal assistant.
Kiki usually went to sleep during Dicae's classes, just because she wasn't getting any sleep in her bed. Dicae's idea of a good night's sleep was three long naps between five fucks.
Kiki took the tall stool, which Dicae would not be using, to the back of the room, just behind the students who sat opposite Dicae. She would be directly in his line of sight, though, and she smiled her trademark smile, with the corners of her mouth turned up, at him as he sat there. She wanted him to remember where she was in the room. Right now, she was in plain view of everyone and, of course, most of the young men were staring at her now, having sex fantasies about her, but the focus of attention that day was Dicae and the students would soon be giving him their rapt attention, hanging on every word and trying to impress him, and then they wouldn't even see her. She would be behind them, out of their line of sight but not the professor's, unseen but for Dicae.
Everyone was in their seats now, a minute before the seminar was to start. Kiki looked down at a laminated card she held, made up by the College administration so that she could identify the students. On it was printed the name and a photo of every student allowed to take this very special class. Last night, she had been allowed to read through their confidential files and she made a few phone calls to get the gossip.
To Dicae's right, there was a girl named Zoe, the daughter of one of the biggest donors to the College. She was lovely, with long chestnut hair and a generous bosom (D cup, Kiki would say) she displayed in a low-cut blouse using an uplift bra. Kiki guessed that she sagged a little already but from the shape and the sway she bet those tits were gorgeous! Definitely she would be tempting Dicae and what a disaster it would be if he corrupted her and offended her father! That would be catastrophic for the College!
Next to Zoe sat a tall, large-boned but pretty redhead with curly hair, looking very Irish, named Ollie, which Kiki guessed was short for Olivia. Kiki thought that Ollie was probably too big and strong-looking for Dicae's taste. He seemed to like to physically dominate his women, as he had been demonstrating for the last week every time he mounted Kiki. Both Zoe and Ollie were listed as women's studies majors.
Then there were several guys and a few skinny girls that Kiki thought probably wouldn't be Dicae's type and so she didn't worry about him hitting on them. But there was one girl who took a seat with her back to Kiki's stool -- she might be trouble! With a sultry, pouty expression, flouncy blonde hair, and a big bosom that was barely confined in a sorority sweater too small for her, she was gorgeous and had a nice ass, too. What was worse was that she was wearing a short skirt but her legs were bare. Where she was sitting, Dicae would have a clear view up her skirt! Kiki thought that from the looks of her she was probably the type to wear white cotton panties but you could never be sure with these sorority girls.
To Dicae's left sat a small, voluptuous blonde girl with a peaches-and-cream complexion and rather vacant eyes wearing jeans and a stretchy top that showed off her perky nipples. That was Felicity!Now this girl was dangerous. She wasn't a top student and even seemed to be a little slow on the uptake, but she was a faculty pet because, well, to tell the truth the professors all had wet dreams about her! Even the women professors! Felicity was hot and didn't even seem to know it. That naivete made her fondness for sex even more appealing. She was a regular at the off-campus "tits out" parties and was even known to put out in front of her friends with guys she liked, and she saw nothing wrong with that. Neither did the guys.(If you find this interesting, read Felicity Gets Fondled).
Next to Felicity was Horst, who had wangled his way into being her boyfriend by playing hard to get. He was the brilliant but conflicted and hyperemotional German philosophy student carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders while trying to decide whether to change his major from philosophy, where he might have hoped to create a Schopenhauer revival, to comparative literature, where he might find his voice as a poet, not that he had written any good poetry yet. Felicity thought he was so deep -- she wet herself whenever he looked at her. The rumor was that she passed her economic final on the promise that if she did he would bone her every night for a week as an incentive.
Next to Horst was a tall, brunette, woman with a slim figure and cute face, wearing tight jeans that accentuated her skinny legs and a scoop top that proved to the world that she had small breasts and didn't wear a bra. Her name was Gretchen, famous for bringing the short-lived craze for "balls out" parties to the College together with her boyfriend, Stryder. (If you find this interesting, read Gretchen Does the Groping.) Stryder didn't make good enough grades to be invited to this special honors class. Kiki decided that Dicae wouldn't make a play for Gretchen. Not flashy enough.
Next to Gretchen, three seats removed from the object of his desire, sat David. Poor ineffectual David. Having blown the chance of a lifetime to deflower his virgin townie girlfriend, he had mistaken the pity fuck Felicity gave him afterwards for real interest. Loser. (If you find this interesting, read Helene's First Time.)
The hour hand stood straight up on the wall clock, but a few more minutes were allowed to pass as the last few students filed in. The chair of the philosophy department and the director of the comparative literature program had stepped into the room to make the introductions. The chair, who outranked the director, introduced Dicae with a short biographical sketch and discussion of Dicae's contribution to world thought that took about fifteen minutes. The comparative literature director then tried to top him with a short but brilliant exposition of Dicae's influence on world literature that took another ten. They were blowing through a big chunk of the seminar time and the students were getting restless. They had come to hear Dicae, not the same old farts from their other classes!
Nobody introduced Kiki but most of the students had already seen her around and knew that she was Dicae's "personal assistant" for his time on campus. But the students knew what Kiki was doing. Some of them had already known that she was considered the town slut, from conversations with townie girls they were trying to seduce. ("Leave me alone and go see Kiki!" they would giggle!) For two weeks, the students had laughed behind Kiki's back at her provocative, slutty clothing and the lustful way Dicae always looked at her. Sometimes they imitated her pigeon-toed, mincing way of walking in the morning because they guessed (correctly) that she had been fucked by Dicae all night. Little did they know that Kiki's sexual availability to Dicae was for their own protection and the service that she was doing for the good of the College!
Kiki stifled a yawn. She was sitting stiffly, legs together, because both of the academic leaders had their eyes on her the whole time, as if they particularly wanted to make an impression on her with their erudition. She didn't want to give them a show, since she wasn't wearing underwear, because it would not be dignified. The students were looking at each other and some of the young men were idly looking at Kiki, undressing her in their minds and thinking how awesome it would be to look up her skirt if she would just relax and open her legs.
The distinguished visiting Professor Viku Dicae then began promptly and got straight to the point, since the students had just been cheated out of a half hour.
"Over the next three hours I will tell you of the work I am now doing, which I think is very exciting to me and to my work. If what I say is not clear in English, you must raise your hand and tell me. Moldovan is a good rich language for philosophy discussion, best language in world for poetry and deep thought, but English not so refined I think, so my thoughts come out in English complicated but sometimes the concept do not translate so well I find." He paused. "Let me begin."
"You know that Platon said that thoughts are a shadow cast by universal ideal archetypes," he said, and the students, all having read Plato's Republic, nodded. "You know too that Chomsky says that we are all born with a universal grammar in our head for language. Well, I say that we have universal ideal ideas in our head and that the purpose of literature and philosophy are to bring them to our awareness in our brain, by stimulating them to be awake." The students were suddenly hanging on every word. This was new. Even Kiki, who had read Dicae's most famous book during her third semester at State, was fascinated to watch him spin out his theores in person.
Dicae continued. When scholars or artists write or communicate through visual art or music, he said, they are sending messages that have structured and coded meaning, like DNA molecules in sperm, and these messages enter the brain and interact with the ideal concepts that are already there, like an egg, awakening them and combining with the structure and coded concepts in the person's brain them to form an idea that the reader or a viewer or a listener understands and feels is his or her own but is really the product of this union, like a fertilized egg in womb which is our mind or feeling or sexual arousal at the level of reason or emotion or horniness, which hold and nurture our innate ideas or feelings that come like egg from ovary we -- how you say it - ovulate. He continued to elaborate on his theory.
"Wait a minute, please, sir," said Horst. "Are you suggesting that when we read a book the author is really fucking our brains?"
