I'd missed yet another college journalism assignment. This was getting to be a bad habit. Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Miss Roland decided to give up her time and stay back to help me. I wasn't missing the assignments on purpose; my baseball schedule had recently been flooded with make up games the past 3 weeks, making keeping up with classes very...impossible. The boys filtered out and I copped Carl's wink real sweet. Miss Roland saw it too, but chose to ignore it.
Sighing, I pulled up a chair beside her desk and opened my folder. The snap of the binder echoed loudly in the silence. It was kind of eerie having class in the art room. We had this building for another two weeks while the new renovations came together.
I didn't really mind this. Class finished late, 7pm. I was now alone with Miss Roland, or as I liked to call her, "Miss R.". She was definitely the hottest professor on campus; only 25. Dark brown hair, pale skin like a porcelain doll, lips painted red, nice big breasts that she unknowingly showed off sometimes through her blouses, and a sweet ass. Not to mention some hot legs, and she would always wear stockings...made my mind go wild. On top of all this she was from Australia, and of course, had the hot accent.
"Mike! Did you hear what I just said?!" Something about the inverted pyramid structure for lead newspaper stories... but how the fuck do I apply that to the latest Red Sox game?
'Uhhhm.' My mind was definitely not on homework at that moment.
"Geez Mike! Right now, I'm supposed to be finished. I'm trying to do you a favor by explaining it to you and allowing you to catch up." Her face was flushed, her eyes flashing. She was magnificent. Trying to ignore my building hard on, I gulped and looked at the floor. Shit. I was 20. You'd think by now I'd have my hormones under control.
By the time I looked up again, her face had softened. "Look, I know you're on a scholarship to play baseball, but part of the deal is that you earn a GPA of 4 or higher. Besides, you said you want a sports journalism career when you finish playing. You need to be committed to your work in class too. Not just the games."
'Yeah I know. I'm sorry Miss,' I said. 'It's only that I had a long game today, again. It's late and I am very sore...I wish I could relax for once....seems like I never stop.'
"I understand," she said in that wonderful accent.
"I did something to my rotator cuff, tweaked it, I think."
She walked up and looks quizzically at my shoulder. "Put your arm up above your head." I complied. "Now across your chest... and out to the side." I grimaced slightly.
"May I?" she said quietly, reaching out a hand and indicating to my shoulder.
"Please."
She took my shoulder in her hands, holding my elbow out at different angles and applied pressure to the indent between my arm and collarbone.
"Ow..."
"Sorry." Strangely, it was feeling a lot better.
"Where did you learn to do this anyway?"
"My ex boyfriend was a physio. Back home I pulled it once surfing. It kills, huh?" She stood up. "Okay, so put a heat pack on it every few hours and then lean over in a chair."
"Like this?"
"Yeah. Let your arm dangle, then rotate it up and down, left to right, and then around in circles."
"Hey, thanks!"
"That's okay. It's been a long couple of weeks for your team. I know you boys are working hard. You especially, I heard you pitched 8 innings today. Very impressive."
'Thanks' I said. 'I didn't know a girl from down under would know what innings are,' I added with a smile.
"Haha. I've lived here for 2 years now. Give me some credit."
I'll bet, I thought, but didn't say it. God I wanted to fuck her right now. She must have known that she was turning me on. Could this actually be happening? At that point I had a little hard on going. I was glad she didn't ask me to get up and go anywhere.
I realized there had been a long pause between us. She let go of my back and walked back to her desk abruptly.
"Try doing the lead paragraph and body. I'm going to do some marking."
'Okay.' I said, and stared down at the page. I had no idea what I was doing. I managed to write out the notes part -- the who, what, when, why, where and how. But then I had no idea how to turn them into a lead paragraph of less than 100 words that summed up my story. I mean, why the hell didn't they just write it like a regular story, tell the game play by play? But I guess that wouldn't be good enough for the newspaper readers. And it wasn't going to cut the mustard with Miss R.
Shit. I was screwed. I was going to fail for sure. I gave up, and started doodling in my pages. The entire back half of my loose leaf page folder was covered in drawings. That was my other passion; you see, I loved art. If I hadn't been so good at baseball I'd be doing a visual arts major at Pratt for sure. I guessed some of the other macho types I play ball with may have thought it's wimpy, but I loved to draw. And my favourite thing to draw was female nudes.
Sometimes they came from a movie or a picture. Sometimes they were from life models. But more often, they were from my imagination.
"I can see you've finished early..." Miss R said with a smile, and then flipped the paper around to see the blank page. She sighed. "You know, Mike! I don't know why I even bother!"
'I'm sorry! I just can't bring myself to concentrate. My mind is on other things...' I ran my hand through my hair, trying to act cool.
My elbow bumped the folder and paper went flying everywhere.
Spiral pictures, waves, portraits, and nudes. Nudes everywhere, floating around the room. She picked up a handful, and clicked her tongue.
"In spite of the questionable content... you do have quite a talent though with this drawing. Do you draw a lot of nude women?" She flipped through the pages.