Dabney Hunter, or was her name Hunter Dabney, I never could get it right. She was one of those southern preppie new money trust fund chicks whose parents gifted her with an androgynous last name as a first name so that folks could never figure out if she was a boy or a girl just by seeing the name. There was no mistaking her as anything but all girl when you met her in person.
The first thing about Dabney is her hair. She has very red hair. Lot's of very red hair. In a crowd of people at a concert, stadium, or in a restaurant, you can always find the hair. Dabney is also a busty girl. She is not fat, but never will be thought of as thin. She has big breasts and hips to match. Her breasts enter a room, announce her coming, and the rest of her body follows. She is all about oversized breasts and hair. She is all about designer clothes and designers don't really design for women with a chest so Dabney can't help but look stuffed into whatever she is wearing. The material always strains and her nipples always look eager to burst the fabric.
I picked Dabney out on the first day of my freshman honors seminar at Hemmings. Every semester I rewarded myself with one of the freshmen in my honors seminar. It seemed only fair the wisdom I shared with them that one of them would share back. The class was called "aesthetics" and I quite enjoy the finer things.
I must admit, in many ways, Dabney was slumming for me. I usually preferred slender, lean, brown eyed brunette girls. I was happiest with a c-cup with aggressive nipples on one of those 18-year-old bodies honed thong bikini thin at the gym. Dabney broke that mold. But there was something about the hair. I had visions of a rich red bush maybe overflowing to her thighs (after bathing suit trim season ended). And there was something about the breasts.They were obviously more than a D-Cup.
Sad, but Dabney was most probably at her beauty peak at 18. We have all seen the sorry chunky red head type. Gravity would take its toll. The sun would work wrinkles into that red head's skin. The hair would lose some luster. She would gain those 20 pounds that all women gain at 30, and maybe 15 more if she had kids, and then she would be chunky. But at 18, I had to see her naked. It was all about the moment.
"Ms. Hunter," I began on the first day of class. "Please read for us..." I had her read a bit of poetry from the course packet to put her on edge.
"Dare I munch a tangerine," she began in a cute southern twang.
I stopped her. "Explain why that is different from Prufrock's 'dare I eat a peach'."
She just looked at me dumbfounded. I clearly was asking too much on the first day of class.
"A peach and a tangerine are both fruits," I went on. "Isn't fruit, fruit? Aren't parts simply parts? Are these phrases different at all?"
She gave me that "mounted trout" look with her mouth open but no words coming out.
"Do you speak Ms. Hunter?" I didn't mean for her to answer, but merely wanted, with a bit of sarcasm to drive home the point that I was in control, and that she had no clue what to say...not that anything she could have said would have been correct at that moment.
"Can anyone help the mute Ms. Hunter?" I drew attention to her plight. I liked the idea of Dabney feeling on display. I wanted her to feel naked.
A mousy girl from the back raised her hand. I pointed. She spoke.
"I think a tangerine is a fruit, but the peach is supposed to refer to female sex parts." The mousy girl had an Appalachian coal holler twang to her voice. The girl was frequently quite graphic.
"And what is wrong with wanting to eat a fruit?" I asked in a bit of falsetto."Any fruit eaters in our midst? Don't you all like to sample from all of the food groups?" I asked and didn't expect any answer. The class laughed at the obvious homoerotic overtones. "How about you Ms. Hunter," back to the prey. "Can you describe for us the taste of a tangerine? Or perhaps," I paused a beat for emphasis, "Why don't you describe for us a peach?" I slowed the pace of my words and deepened my voice. "You have eaten a peach at some point in your life, haven't you Ms. Hunter?"
Dabney's mouth moved. A few boys grinned.
"Well Mr. Wheatfield...um um...a peach is furry."
"How furry?" I shot back instantly, then paused a beat. "Well?" I expressed a bit of impatience. "What color is this peach? And don't you dare say 'peach'." The class laughed. Dabney just blanched.
I looked at my watch. The period was ending.
"Saved by the bell Ms. Hunter. Class, for next time read the next 100 pages in the course packet. And Ms. Hunter, give us about 75 words describing a peach. And make us want to taste your peach when you write about it."
I expected that had I given the peach assignment to the mousy girl, I would have gotten 75 words about an unkempt brown Appalachian muff. Dabney likely would go to the grocery and buy a peach and actually talk about it. I would have a taste of that peach before long.
The next class and the next class and the next class were all the same. While Dabney clearly had been a good student in high school, she was no match for my withering sarcastic classroom bite. I always made a point of putting Dabney on display. Of course I made the class write a few short biographical essays. Tell us about your parents, tell us about home, describe what you know as fun. I learned that Dabney was the oldest of three children. She had an alcoholic mother. Or as she put it, "Mom likes a cocktail or two with lunch, one or two before dinner, then a few more before bed." Her father was obsessed with "appearances." He was all about designer clothes and very white straight teeth. His parents could not afford braces when he was growing up so now he wore the most perfect porcelain veneers. His family had to look pretty. Mom had her eyes done. Her sister had had her nose straightened for her sixteenth birthday and was going to get a boob job for her eighteenth birthday. They were one of these poor white trash southern families made good, earned more than a few dollars, moved into a big house in the right neighborhood, drove the right cars, but no one had thought with all of this success to invite them to join the country club. Just always a step below. And her father was in sales. He sold things he didn't make things or own things. So there was always that measure of insecurity no matter how much money daddy had put into the bank many times over. Daddy expected the kids to work very hard so as not to squander the fortune he had made or the leg up into society that he had given them. Dabney could never be thin enough, smart enough, rich enough, or any other enough to make up for the fact the family was always that little step below and daddy always expecting more. That was my entering wedge.
At the open of one Wednesday class session I began, "Ms. Hunter? Make a point to talk with me in my office after class." Seed planted. She would have 50 minutes to stew on my reasons.
The mousy girl used the first fifteen minutes of our time to read from her essay on growing up dirt poor in Appalachia. There were many hot summer nights when she and friends would lay naked on the porch because they had no air conditioning and it was simply too hot to wear clothes. Dabney looked visibly uncomfortable at the prospect of folks just lounging naked on a porch.
"Ms. Hunter? Does mousy girl's story give you a taste of poverty?"
"Well, um . . . I don't know that she needs the naked people." Dabney of course pictured herself naked on the porch as she said this.
"Oh I need the naked people," the mousy girl chimed in. "Where I live, you take your clothes off when you are hot. What else do you do? You just are what you are where I come from."
"Mousy girl has a point Ms. Hunter. What do you do when you are hot? Oh never mind." I moved the class on to a discussion of images of poverty. They had read some Dickens, Steinbeck, and of course Caldwell's "God's Little Acre."
