This is a long one, and takes some turns before it gets to this episode's action. Hang with it. Everything in it is meant to be entertaining, and to serve the longer-term story.
Sylvan Courtyard -- Five: What's Fair Play Again?
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"Here, I'd rather you break this sentence down into three separate ones, instead of this complex rats nest you have here," Patty Bohannon told me, circling the latest part of my writing that offended her sensibilities. I didn't mind. I had asked her to red-pen this segment of my draft dissertation after all. Well, I didn't mind much...
I still preferred to keep my ornate, overly complex style of writing, but I could see her point here. I had agonized over that sentence and it never was quite right. Sometimes simple sentences are necessary.
I paused my own work to make the change in my computer, then I resumed going over Patty's math, trying to catch any that didn't work. We had developed a good working relationship recently, once we determined that we were not going to have a good personal relationship.
Patty was the promising date that had ended up anything but, the night that Becky and I had begun the little voyeuristic dance that had led eventually to our recent occasional pleasant exchanges of bodily fluids. While Patty was damned attractive, and we found we liked each other very much, we were in irreconcilably different places in our lives.
Patty, like me, was a doctoral candidate, but she expected to burrow in once she had her degree and stay here at the University, whereas I knew for nearly certain that my professional future lay in many possible places, but not where I currently was..
Patty also was in the market for a long-term, hopefully permanent guy. I obviously did not check her box since she was staying and I was leaving. Meanwhile, I was utterly opposed to even having casual sex with someone I feared might be a good fit for me long-term.
This was in part because I knew there was no path to tenure for me here, but also because I had had two wonderful, serious relationships in my life, both of which had ended horribly due to outside circumstances. I was in no mood for another such heartbreak--ever. So, as long as I was here, I was just going to have to settle for the occasional rambunctious sexual escapade with a variety of hot women. Woe is me.
I did still occasionally look wistfully at Patty, because if she had been down for a one-off or even a series of hookups, I'd have boned her into next week happily.
Instead, I settled for a productive friendship where we helped each other with our academic weaknesses. There was something about her that had begun to itch in the back of my mind, but I was not sure what it was. It would come to me eventually. In the meantime, I found myself taking fewer of those wistful looks.
"Hey, this proof doesn't work," I said, spotting a problem for her. "Look, I think you are safe, and you can find a way to pull it off, but you took an unsubstantiated leap here. See?"
"Oh! Shit. The step is just so obvious, I... Gimme that."
*
The relationship math I had reviewed while having my working lunch with Patty sprung back into my head as I sat in my last-ever class with Professor Thames. Ever since a joke in bad taste by one of my buddies, I had found myself examining my professor more and more. The more time I spent examining her, the more I became focused on the fact that, despite her being at least 15 years older than me, she had the sort of body I'd really love to have some rambunctious sexual escapades with.
At the moment, she was reviewing subject matter that I had down cold already, so my mind kept speculating more even than usual. However, my usually wandering eyes instead focused more and more on the way her superstructure made for a tight fit of her businesslike white dress shirt.
Dammit, I'd love to get with this woman. After all, I told myself in rank justification, it was not out of the realm of possibility. She was not seeing anyone specific, and I had seen her bring multiple different dates to the various kinds of events where that was expected. Not all her dates were her age, either, if maybe not as young as me...
Nor would she and I be out of the range of propriety. After my exam in a few days, and a few more days for the grade to be reported, she would no longer be my teacher, and would have no chance to be my teacher in the future either. Moreover, she was not likely to sit on the board before which I would eventually defend my dissertation.
In seven to ten days, I would still be a student, but never again would I be
her
student. She would be a colleague from that point forward.
The only problem was, she was my mentor and advisor's
bete noir
. The two were the sort of collegially open rivals within our department that could be more easily described as enemies than frenemies.
Making a pass at her, successfully or not, could possibly (probably) piss off the most important man in my professional existence--a man I liked and respected as much as any man I'd ever known... except Dad.
Not worth it.
Except... The more I looked at her, the hotter she became.
*
When I eventually got my grade, I started thinking again whether I wanted to or not. I know, my mind goes to dangerous places when I've spent enough time watching a beautiful woman.
My advisor and I have lunch every Tuesday, where we go over the state of my own research, and just as importantly, whatever I am currently doing to assist him with his. We also talk basketball, baseball, and sometimes comic books.
Lately, I had begun to notice that when we talked college sports, a lot of the universities he'd mention were ones that either had respected, or more often up and up-and-coming, departments in our field. I knew what he was doing, and I thanked him for it, but it was a bit silly the effort he kept expending to keep my thoughts about my future focused elsewhere than here. There just was no tenure-track place for me at the university, and I knew it. Everybody knew it. Even the department chair had started being a real dick to me lately, and I suspected it was because he wanted to discourage me from asking for an instructorship in the vain hope of something more meaningful opening up later.
I loved the university. I loved my life at Sylvan Courtyard. But when I finally received my Ph.D., I was going to have to go elsewhere. I could not abide the thought of New England weather, and I was not going near any West Coast cities, the way things were out there. My thoughts were on the mountain west or the surrounding plains.
Ah, mountains...
"Listen, Professor," I interjected, realizing I might be about to piss him off. He was in a good mood that day, so I figured that it was as good a time as any, if I was going to pursue this cockamamie idea at all.
And I was going to pursue it, because PhD-level mind or not, I think with my dick more than is good for me.
"I honestly am not sure if I'm glad to be done with Professor Thames' class or not," I mused, as if making idle conversation.
My mentor, as he always does when her name comes up in virtually any context, rolled his eyes. "Grow a pair, Ken. Call her Mandy now. She's a colleague, not your teacher." He chuckled in good-natured evil. "In fact, tell I told you to call her Mandy. That'll piss her off."
Noted. Do not under any circumstances tell Professor... Mandy that he had told me to call her that.
"Why on Earth are you not glad to be done with that class?" he went on. "She was always one for assigning gratuitous amounts of work." I shrugged in wry acknowledgment of that point. "And not that it really matters much, but I assume you got an A?"
"Yes, sir. Of course," I smirked. "But it has been a while since I have gone into a final where I wasn't sure of that outcome to start."
He smirked at me in a way that told me, whatever their problems, he approved of her making me work for my A. Then he asked, "Then why are you of a mixed mind about escaping her fevered, not-terribly-academically-inspiring class?"
Here we go.
"Well, have you looked at her?" I asked, with a humorously glum expression.
He pushed his glasses down his nose and rolled his eyes at me again, not terribly impressed by the question.
Of course. He was a single, heterosexual male in the prime of life who worked in uncomfortable parallel with the women. He'd seen her.
"Of course, I've seen her," he snorted. "But even that body isn't much to look at, the way she dresses these days. Certainly not enough to want to extend your endurance of the irrelevant piffle that is her work," he scoffed.
I was simultaneously bemused at his use of the phrase, 'even that body', and just the tiniest bit irritated that he called her work and her class 'irrelevant piffle'. Whatever my opinions on her tendency to issue far too much work, I suspected that Professor Thames was probably his intellectual and professional equal, and that was high praise for them both.
But I mostly focused on, 'even that body'. He had known her far longer than I had known either of them. He must have seen her dressed at times in outfits other than what I'd seen. Despite his dismissive tone, he was giving me further motivation to risk pissing him off.
"I just... I know you guys have your difficulties," I began. He snorted again. "But I brought her up because, well, I wanted to know if you'd have any serious concerns or objections if I were to... I was thinking of asking her out, um, on a date, now that the class is done," I finished in a rush.
He just stared. It was not the happiest stare he had ever awarded me. Much worse, he did not say anything. Not one word. I hate when he does that. I tend to babble when he does it, until he finally lets me off the hook. He doesn't do it often, and this was the first time I had gotten The Stare in a good long while.
"I mean, I find her interesting, and despite her clothes, I've kind of been fixating on her ever since..." Yeah. I was going to shut up before I said something about Petey and his impertinent suggestions. In fact, I was going to shut up period, and wait until The Man said something. It was past time that I treated him as if he were now my colleague too and not just a person that I was utterly beholden to for help and approval in my career.
"Let me get this straight," he said at last. His face was unreadable, but at least he was no longer leaving me to stew in my own juices. I thought... hoped he was giving me some respect for shutting up and waiting him out for once. "Let me get this straight. You are asking me if I mind if you try to fuck my ex-wife?"
"Wait! What? You and she were married? When?" I yelped incredulously. My mind wanted to panic afresh, and in spades. But my fundamental nature had me almost laughing out loud.
"You didn't know? I thought everyone knew. I thought Mongolians on the steps used to hear us argue," he mused. "We married the month after we got our bachelors, and I didn't escape that matrimonial durance vile until eight years ago now, right after we both got tenure."
