****This work of fiction portrays only people who are 18+ in sexual situations. It also deals heavily with mental illness, self harm. dubious consent, out of control behavior and touches on the after effects of suicide. None of this is intended to be fetishized or glamorized, rather, they are dealt with in a way to understand how once broken people who have sought help can find comfort in mutual understanding. This story is also a very slow burn, so if you're after "quick and dirty" I'm afraid you'll find plenty of dirty, but no quick at all. If any of that sounds like a drag to you, feel free to give it a miss, otherwise I hope you enjoy. This was quite cathartic to write.*******
None of us really ever knows what the people we meet have endured. Its funny that we often have the thought 'if only they knew what I went through...' but it seems the vast majority of people are not willing to extend that same grace to others.
There are legions of people who drift around us everyday who are nursing deep emotional scars. Far fewer - but still entirely too many - have physical scars as well. I run across a whole lot of the former in my job, but Molly was the first of the latter that I encountered.
She was in my Monday Intermediate Algebra Support class, as well as my Tuesday/Thursday Mathematical Structures I class. At the beginning of the semester I hardly took notice of her at all, which to me was a big plus, since most of my students were kind of pains-in-the-ass.
As the semester wore on I noticed more and more about Molly. She was usually pretty chipper in class, and more than happy to answer questions. She didn't pick up math quickly or naturally, but it was easy to see that she was working hard at it. High C's and low B's were the norm for her, but she seemed satisfied with her results nevertheless. She didn't socialize much with the other students, but she was also one of the few who actually responded to my jokes.
The first time I took extra notice of her was in early spring when she finally showed up to class for the first time without a hoodie on. She was wearing a yellow tee shirt with a row of airplane seats across the front that I immediately recognized. I was used to the little Gen-Z shits in my classes wearing Nirvana, Pixies, or even Black Flag merch, but this was the first time I had seen one of them in a Rilo Kiley shirt.
If you're going to co-opt the pop culture of a generation before yours, at the very least do it with a little style, like Molly.
As the semester wore on, more students started emerging from their winter clothes, and Molly was no exception. In cold Jersey January she just about always wore jeans and an oversized hoodie, but by the time the calendar had flipped to April she more often sported denim shorts and t-shirts.
Early in the semester I hadn't really taken much more notice of her figure than any of the other young women in my classes. She was short and slender with very light eyes that stood out from beneath her dark hair, which she almost always seemed to have hanging down around her face. Gretchen, who usually sat in front of her in Mathematical Structures, was far more conventionally attractive and pretty much lived in skin tight yoga pants. But, something about Molly ended up catching my eye.
Just about every semester there's at least one student who would wheedle their way into my subconscious only to pop up in my masturbatory fantasies. I tended to think of my little crushes as the tame form of the type of obsession which might lead to stalking in some other people. Kind of like how some people can have a bit too much to drink, but always call a cab rather than driving, and never drink to self-medicate.
Walk right up to the line... perhaps even gaze over it, but never cross it.
In very rare cases I'd be attracted enough to try and find the student's social media and pray for athleisure or bikini pics to use as jerkoff fodder. But that was as far as I was willing to take it. Maybe you think it was already entirely too far. I suppose that all depends on your perspective.
I'm smart enough to know that most things done surreptitiously are usually things you're fully aware are either wrong, or in the grayest of areas. I certainly knew I couldn't say "Hey Olivia, looks like you had a great time in Punta Cana! I saw your pictures and the ones in the black bikini made me come so hard!"
By the time the semester was wrapping up I had thought about Molly multiple times while jerking off, but since I had no luck finding her on Instagram, Twitter, or VSCO it seemed that would be the end of it. She had mentioned that she was going to be moving on to Rutgers in the fall, so her time in my classroom was coming to an end.
Such was the nature of being a community college professor. Students drifted in and out quickly, and when they were gone that usually spelled an end to their time in my fantasies.
Then, in early May, as the semester was coming to a close, Molly raised her hand during the final exam. I walked back to her desk and stooped down to hear her whispered question. As I listened, my eyes were pointed down into her lap. It was nothing untoward, just that I had my head turned so she could whisper closer to my ear and not interrupt the other test takers.
And that's when I saw them. Molly had dozens and dozens and dozens of scars all over her upper thighs. Some were very light and thin, while others were thick and stood proud of her skin. Many were in neat rows, but some seemed chaotically strewn about. Their one uniform characteristic was that they all appeared to be well healed and old.
That was good. It didn't seem like Molly was actively cutting anymore.
I answered her question and returned to my desk at the front of the room. I should have been looking out for other hands with questions, or being vigilant for cheaters, but instead I was under a heavy press of memory and strong emotion.
Molly with the lap full of scars.
Meghan with the lap full of scars.
Meghan and I dated when we were in grad school. Upon being introduced to one another, one of the very first things that I had noticed about her were three thin scars on her upper arm, like a Roman Numeral III. Its not polite to ask new acquaintances about their scars, and so I didn't.
I was instantly drawn to Meghan, in a way I had never been to anyone before. She was exciting, spontaneous, bitingly funny, and a very deep thinker. She wasn't my "usual type" in appearance, however much a 23 year old guy with six years of dating experience could have a type.
I had always dated nerdy girls who tended to have fuller figures, and I had even been branded a "chubby chaser" in undergrad because I dated girls who were probably size 10's & 14's. Just goes to show you how fucking assy 20 year old bro's are.
Meghan was very slender, almost waif like. Also, aside from wanting to be a mathematician, she was far from being a nerd who I could watch Star Trek with or take to the comic book store like I had with previous crushes and girlfriends.
None of that mattered though, and I instantly found her totally alluring in a way that surprised me.
I courted her right away, but she kept telling me "you don't really want to be with me" in a way that I thought was a judgment of my intentions, but was really a warning.
When we ended up dating things were consistently hectic. What she called her "hot and cold personality" was actually undiagnosed bipolar disorder, or what we un-charmingly called manic-depression back in the 90's.
Eventually I would spend time in therapy working on the issues that had lead me to finding Meghan's behavior infuriating yet infatuating. But that was far, far too late. For her, and for me.
Meghan's insistence on lights-out sex turned out to have nothing to do with modesty and more to do with hiding her scars. Naturally, I could feel them when I touched her legs, even in the dark, but the few times I asked her about them she got very mad and effectively shut me down. And I certainly didn't do enough to follow up.
By the time we both wrapped up our Masters Degrees our relationship was also coming to a close. I had been convinced by friends that she was pulling me down with her, and after being rebuffed when I suggested couples therapy she broke it off with me.
I only saw her once after that, albeit briefly, a few months later at a mutual friend's wedding. The III on her upper arm had become a IIII. Not a roman numeral after all as it turned out, but apparently still counting.
