The Conference

Somehow I managed to crawl out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, and guzzle a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar just in time to head out to my panel. All the while, Jerad was lying almost unconscious in sleep. Well, I guess he'd earned his rest.

I felt a little odd leaving in my room. I would have to check out later today and return home, and I figured he would too. I approached him, kneeling down by the bed as he lay there, naked and on his back, and said:

"Jerad, I have to go. Just make sure to close the door firmly when you leave."

He slowly emerged out of sleep, and a look of childish apprehension came over his face. "What's gonna happen to us?"

"We can talk about that later, Jerad. When we're back on campus. Right now I have to go."

I didn't even bother giving him another kiss—perhaps that would have sent the wrong signal. So I just got to my feet and left the room.

When I returned after my panel, the room was empty, but otherwise exactly as it had been when I'd left, including the untidy bed that had been the focus of that incredible lovemaking session. The room smelled pungently of sex. I tidied up as best I could, although I scarcely knew why (the maids would surely not care whether the room had been used for multiple copulations or not), packed up all my belongings, and got the hell out of there.

This was a Sunday, and on Monday I was back in my office on campus. The whole incident with Jerad was already coming to seem like some wild dream or fantasy, although my aching pussy and derrière told a very different tale. But as I greeted the few colleagues who were there (this was the day before New Year's Eve, and the new term wouldn't begin for another week), I couldn't help wondering how I could have let myself be manhandled by that young man.

No, that wasn't fair. Sure, his initial invasion of my hotel room was alarming, but I had quickly come to see that he was anything but a predator—he was, in fact, rather pathetic in his inexperience with women, his inability to control his emotions, and his obsession with a woman he couldn't possibly know very well and with whom there was no real possibility of a relationship. And yet, his physical appeal, and the almost inconceivable pleasure he had given me (and himself), made it impossible for me to get him out of my mind.

And so it was not at all surprising that, late in the morning, he sidled into my office, a mixture of embarrassment and eagerness on his face.

"Hello, ma'am," he said.

I had to confess that it bothered me that he hadn't once spoken my name. The "ma'am" may have been some unconscious feeling of respect for a woman much older than himself—but that very fact made me feel even older than I was.

"Hello, Jerad," I said wearily.

He sat down at a wooden chair next to my desk, staring down at his hands. I knew what he was thinking. It wasn't merely that he was wanting to explore my body again; it was that he really hoped for some sort of long-term involvement, ridiculous as that idea was. Or perhaps he was fearful that there

wouldn't

be any further involvement—and that seemed to be etching a hint of fear in his expression.

I had no choice but to tell him where things stood.

"Jerad, listen to me. What we did in Philadelphia was—well, it was wonderful. I've never been through anything like that before."

"What about your husband?" he muttered.

"Oh, you know I was married once?"

"Yeah, someone told me."

"Well, we weren't exactly as passionate as you and I were that night."

"Not even at the start?"

"Not even at the start. He's just not that sort of guy. He's a lawyer, and maybe our marriage was more of a working partnership than a love match. I don't know. But—"

"That's no way to live," he said bitterly.

"Maybe not, but that's how it was. As for us—"

"I love you," he said like a broken record.

"I know you do, and it's very sweet of you to say that. But you really can't believe that we could really have a relationship, can you? Jerad, do you know what kind of trouble I could get into if the administration found out what we did? I'd be fired immediately, and you'd be expelled."

"No one's gonna find out."

"Maybe not, but it could always happen—especially if we keep on seeing each other. What could we do? We couldn't go out on dates and risk someone recognizing us. All we could do is have sex."

"I want more than that with you."

"I just don't see how that's possible."

He said nothing to that, not even looking at me but just staring mulishly ahead.

"Jerad," I said with as much tenderness as I could, "you're a dear, sweet man, and you could have the pick of any woman you want."

"I want

you,

" he said aggressively.

"But you really need to find someone of your own age. Even if we have some kind of dalliance right now"—that perked him up, and he gazed at me with sudden excitement—"it wouldn't work in the long term."

"I don't care about the long term. I want you

now.

"

And with that, he grabbed my hand and held it in a vice-grip, glaring at me almost menacingly.

"Jerad, please," I begged, wrestling my hand away from him and rushing to the door to close it, lest someone see or hear what was going on in here. Even that was against the rules: a professor isn't allowed to meet with a student with the door closed, for obvious reasons.

But he reacted to my action in a way I didn't expect. He leaped up from his chair and—just as he had done in the hotel room—all but pinned me against the door, placing his arms on either side of me as he barked,

"I want you so bad!"

I now felt far more alarmed than I had done in that room in Philadelphia. I deftly dodged under one of his arms and fled to the middle of the room—although the office was so small that there was no real way of putting any meaningful distance between him and me.

He whirled around, and that strange mingling of pain and desire on his face really unnerved me. As he stalked closer to me, I held up a hand and placed it on his chest, saying:

"Jerad, I have an idea. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. Just sit down and let me tell you."

With extreme reluctance he resumed his place on the chair next to my desk.

Heaving a huge sigh, I said, "I have a daughter."

I didn't tell you about her, did I? Well, I do. Her name is Marcia.

"She's twenty-two," I went on. "Just about two years younger than you. She graduated last June and has found some work on a nonprofit downtown. I really think you'll like her. She's smart and pretty and sweet and kind and a bit sassy—all the qualities you think I have. She's actually very much like me."

Jerad reacted to this news with some suspicion, and I wasn't surprised. I myself felt horrible about trying shove this guy—who might well be considered mentally or emotionally unstable—onto my own daughter. But I was heartened by my knowledge that she could deal with him a bit better than I could: aside from the fact that she was of his own generation, she was a no-nonsense kind of girl who could handle all different sorts of men with some aplomb. Marcia was certainly no wilting violet!

Whether Jerad would actually agree to this almost obscene handoff was another matter. After a long silence he said, "She—she's available?"

"So far as I know," I said with some relief.

As Jerad again fell silent, I took the initiative. Sitting at my desk, I tore off a bit of paper from a stack on front of me—it was a pile of old term papers—and scribbled her phone number on it.

"Here," I said, handing the scrap to him. "Give her a call sometime. But let me talk to her first. I'll let her know you'll be getting in touch."

He looked at the paper as if it had some kind of magical rune on it. "Okay," he said with surprising humility.

And, to my astonishment, he turned around and walked out of my office.

* * * * *

Marcia Watson really was a young woman a mother could be proud of. She was pretty and smart and passionate about wanting to make the world a better place. After getting a degree in history from the university where I taught (and where she rightly didn't take any classes of mine), she found ready work in a nonprofit organization that focused on helping disadvantaged people get jobs, take care of themselves and their families, and in general improve their lives.

She hadn't told me much about any college romances she'd had, but I got hints that there had been more than a few boys who'd sought her out. I don't at all want to imply that she was "easy" with her favors, but none of the relationships seemed particularly serious or long-lasting. And that was fine: maybe she was too young to be ready to settle down; or maybe she'd noticed that I myself had settled down a bit too early, marrying my college sweetheart, giving birth to her a year after my graduation, and struggling to help my husband through law school while I myself pursued my own graduate work.

When I called her about Jerad, she gave me the telephonic equivalent of a blank stare.

"Who's this guy, Mom?" she said, as if vaguely doubting my sanity.

"He's a graduate student in my department," I said.

"And how well do you know him?"

I was dreading that question. "Not well," I replied evasively. "I—I spent some time with him at the MLA conference in Philadelphia."

"And what's he like?"

"Well, he's smart, from what I hear."

"From what you hear?"

"I haven't had him in any of my classes."

"Gee, Mom, I hope he isn't just a brainiac."

"Uh, no, I can assure you he's not that."

"What else can you tell me about him?"

"He's quite good-looking—"

"Oh, Mom, I don't care about that!"

"Dear, it can make a difference. He's actually quite—intense."

"Really? Definitely not all brain, then."

"Definitely not. In fact—"

"In fact what?"

"Oh, nothing."

"And why do you think we'd hit it off?"

That was the $64,000 question, wasn't it? What the hell could I say? It was becoming obvious enough that Marcia was more than a little puzzled by her own mother was trying to set her up on this blind date—and she was smart enough to sense that there was something more here than just my altruistic attempt to find a suitable young man for her.

"Oh, Marcia, just meet him, will you? I'm sure he'll show you a nice time." God, I hope that didn't sound to her like a

double entendre!

Marcia heaved a sigh. "All right, Mom. Whatever you say."

It was close to a week before I heard that Jerad and Marcia were scheduled go to on their first date on the next Friday night. Given that he wasn't "entirely a stranger" (Marcia's unwittingly accurate characterization), she'd agreed to have dinner with him, even though she almost never did more than have just a cup of coffee on a first date.

That evening I was on tenterhooks as I tried to find something—anything—to distract my attention. I have to say that my emotions were mixed. I won't deny that our unbelievable encounter at that conference had made it almost impossible for me to think of anything else. I kept going over and over in my mind every moment of that episode—not just the repeated couplings, but the sense of closeness that we established merely being naked together for such a prolonged period of time. There's nothing like the contact of skin on skin, from head to toe, to make one feel intimate with someone. And I won't deny that, in spite of my dread of the consequences, I was yearning for a repeat of that incident, perhaps the most transcendent moment of sexual ecstasy I'd ever had.

And yet, I yearned equally for Jerad and Marcia to "hit it off"—even if the prospect of his becoming my son-in-law, after what we'd done, would strike most people as unthinkably vile. Of course, I was getting way ahead of myself: maybe the two of them wouldn't be interested in each other at all, and that would be the end of it. But then, would he resume his quixotic quest for my body, and my heart? And if I turned him down, what would he do?

I didn't hear from Marcia at all that evening. I wasn't sure how to react to that. Either they had had a perfunctory dinner and a parting of the ways, or . . .

It was only the next morning that I spoke to her—and, to my surprise, it was in person, as she came to my house around 11 a.m. I will say at once that she looked a bit on the disheveled side—and my heart flipped over that. They couldn't have—? No, surely not!

I looked her over with perhaps new eyes—the eyes of a young man who thought of her not only as a plaything for an evening but as a person with whom a long-term relationship could be built.

She was definitely pretty. A few inches shorter than me (five foot six), she had a trim, compact body that any man would have salivated over. I suppose my breasts were a tad larger than hers (not that I was indulging in any sort of comparison!), and my hips flared a bit more than hers, perhaps as a result of giving birth to her. But she was a scrumptious little item in every sense of the word. Her soulful, oval face was framed by a cascade of curly dark hair; but her sharp green eyes displayed both intelligence and a worldly wisdom far beyond her years, and her overall bearing told any man who might have wanted to take advantage of her: "Don't mess with me, guy; I'm small, but wiry."

All she said, after walking through the front door, was, "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, dear," I said nervously.

Instead of saying anything more, she wandered around the living room contemplatively, as if she'd never been in the place before. Her silence irritated me a little.

"Well," I said, "are you going to tell me how it went?"

We both knew what "it" was. She looked up at me with an unreadable expression. After continuing her baffling silence a bit longer, she sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her, saying, "You'd better sit down for this."

"Jesus, Marcia!" I cried. "What happened? Something went wrong?"

"No, Mom," she said impatiently, as if I were a mother hen needlessly concerned about one of her chicks. "It was fine. It's just—a long story."

I lowered myself tentatively on the sofa and stared at her as she told me the story:

We decided to meet at a nice but inexpensive diner that we both knew. On this first date I didn't want to bankrupt him by making him take me to some fancy and pricey place! As a grad student he couldn't possibly have a lot of money at his disposal.

He picked me up at my apartment in his car, so that we wouldn't have to use two vehicles to get to the diner. I was initially impressed by his appearance—even though, as I said to you, it's really not important to me. Let's face it, Mom: most guys really aren't very good-looking, and a girl just learns to accept that. But his face struck me as sort of interesting, and nice to look at. I couldn't see the rest of him at first, since we were both bundled up in heavy coats; but when we went into the diner and took our coats off, I saw that he was a fairly impressive physical specimen: tall, lean, and muscular. Not your usual bespectacled Ph.D. candidate!

I hope he liked what he saw of me—but I couldn't tell, because for at least the first hour or so he deliberately seemed to avoid looking at me. He did everything he could not to look me in the face, except for some quick sidelong glances. Gee, was I so ugly as that? I didn't think that was it, but I couldn't figure out what was going through his mind.

At last he seemed to catch my eye—and then he stared at me fixedly as if I was some sort of peculiar specimen he was gazing at through a microscope.

You did say, Mom, that he was "intense"—and that sure is the truth. It took me forever to get him to talk about himself—talk about anything, really. But then he did suddenly loosen up and tell me all sorts of things about his childhood and family life and stuff. He's an only child, like me, and he seems devoted to his parents—especially his mother. Very touching!

But I have to say that, through that whole dinner, there was something unnerving about him. The expression on his face was really odd: it was like he was both sad and in some sort of pain, especially when he looked at me. He swallowed and licked his lips a lot. Once, when I tried to get him to calm down (he seemed fidgety as a cat) by putting a hand gently on his arm, he stared at my hand as if it was some an entity from outer space.

I tried to get him to talk about his graduate work, but he wouldn't say much. I think he's studying William Faulkner. When I asked why he hadn't taken one of your classes, he blushed and shook his head rapidly. I had no idea what

that

meant!

All this may make him sound like a weirdo, but I don't mean to do that. I did find him rather sweet in a strange sort of way. I could tell he was tender-hearted, and he definitely wore his emotions on his sleeve. That's so refreshing in a man: if more guys did that, we'd probably have fewer serial killers in the world!

I have to say that, after the dinner was over, I felt it was a success, and I would have been happy to see him again. But I really had no idea whether he wanted to see

me

again. At times I thought he scorned or even hated me; at other times I felt he might be getting some sort of fixation with me.

So, when he took me back to my apartment, I didn't know what exactly would happen. We just stood there on the threshold of the front door, looking shyly at each other. This is really an awkward moment on a first date. If you've had a nice time, you want to do more than just give the guy a handshake. But doing anything more might send the wrong message.

Well, Jerad made the decision for me. Without warning he wrapped me in his arms and gave me a big bear-hug.

His move startled me, and the way he was holding me was practically expelling all the air from my lungs. And he wasn't letting go!

Finally I managed to say, "Hey, Jerad, take it easy! It's a little hard to breathe here."

He released me at once, and he cried, "Omigod, I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay," I said, smiling at him. "Why don't you come inside for a minute?"

I know, Mom: a woman shouldn't invite a man in on a first date. But after all, he was in your department, so what possible funny business could he pull? Anyway, it was cold outside, and it wasn't much fun being embraced while both you and your guy are wearing heavy coats.

So we went in. As you know, I live on the third floor, so I tried to give him a genial smile as we waited for the excruciatingly slow elevator to heave itself up. He had again fallen into the habit of not looking at me, mostly staring at the floor.

I let him into my place, and we removed those coats and hung them up on a hatrack near the front door. He gazed around my place as if it was Buckingham Palace; I heard the words "so lovely" escape his lips.

He sat down on a couch in the living room, his hands folded in his lap like a little boy trying to be obedient in the company of a person he didn't know very well. I felt I needed to put him at ease, so I said, "Would you care for a liqueur?"

He looked puzzled and said, "What's that?"

I smiled at his unworldliness. "It's a sweet drink that people have after dinner. Kind of like alcoholic candy."

Without waiting for a response, I went over to my limited supply of booze and poured us both a shot of chocolate mint liqueur. I figured it would be something he'd like.

"Just sip it slowly," I said.

But after his first sip, he actually smacked his lips and then downed the remainder in one gulp. "That was great!" he said, holding out his shot glass and silently asking for another round.

I gave it to him, and he seemed to settle down a bit, resting comfortably on the couch and looking around benevolently at his surroundings. Then, all of a sudden, he leaped up and headed toward a corner of the room.

"Wow, look at all those LPs!" he cried. He made a beeline for my collection of several hundred LPs, with a turntable and speakers next to them.