For Steve ... but which one?
8
The close heat of the summer night makes you keep your window wide open and a fan on. Only a thin cotton sheet covers you. That and your boxers. That and your boxers and your fatalistic determination that you're not, in the strictest sense, fuckable. That shit covers you like a pall. It has been about nine months since your last lay—an easy single-night affair at a Hallowe'en party. She'd left before dawn, hadn't called, hadn't returned yours. And now you sleep alone. Tonight, especially so.
One of your roommates is out of town at yet another conference in Hawaii. Lucky bastard. All those bikini-clad beach bunnies with big boobs and beautiful skin. Even if he doesn't get laid—which he will—the beach time alone is worth it. The other of your roommates is staying at his girlfriend's. Another lucky bastard! He gets laid regularly, and she's smokin' hot. Even your dog has chosen to sleep outside tonight. Who knows what stray bitch he'll pick up. But there you lie, restless and alone inside the town house you all share.
The night is close. Sticky. The darkness veritably swims in front of you, whether your eyes are open or not. It's one of those brown syrup nights, Rembrandt dark, that makes you ache for the pleasure of someone to suffer it with. It's impossible to sleep in, but fucking in this weather is all the more bestial. And when you think of bestial sex these days, there's only one woman who crosses your mind.
It's that clever, leggy blonde student who sits at the front of your seminars and laughs at your jokes. Every class this semester she's been in these filmy sundresses, many of them sheer, all of them unrepentantly short. And when she smiles at you, her eyes flash wild blue sky or deep chilly lake, and you feel lost.
Everything she does distracts you. All today, for instance, she's been scratching at a bug bite on the inside of her thigh just above the hem of that mercilessly short skirt. Every time she scratched you found yourself wondering just how she got a bug bite that far up the inside of her thigh with a decided bias toward naked sex in the woods. Nevermind how short her dresses are: she was naked in the woods. It's admittedly irrational. Stupid, really.
But how you have wanted to be the naked woodland god of this nymph girl—all flesh and curves! How you would have swatted the offending mite without missing a beat. You would have been aware of her thick thighs at all times, on either side of your hips, bouncing up and down. Unlike that clearly careless cad who's fucking her now, you'd be good to her.
Today's seminar was on the love-war analogy so common throughout Western culture. Curvy nymph girl, with glowing eyes and smiling lips engaged in the discussion with such ardour you were proud to call her a student. Up to a point.
"So, that's why you see so many analogies in English literature to penises and swords," you'd instructed the class.
"No," said the honeyblonde nymph from her plump bow-shaped lips, "you see so many analogies to penises as swords because swords have been made to look like penises. But that is why you see so many analogies to women's bodies as land. Breasts as hills, vaginas as valleys, the mons veneris. Women as property."
She'd beaten you. She'd beaten you with those lips, and that sweet throat and sensuous voice. And those breasts that mocked you. She certainly had her high ground. And as she called to mind vaginal valleys, your mind spread her legs in her seat, above her head in a great anti-feminist V. You have wanted to conquer her all summer, and this one class threatened to undo you because of it.
You heard yourself bounce back and remind the class that historians still often refer to countries as "she". Then you'd asked for other examples of the phenomenon, and the gap of silence was filled with a rush of desire to demonstrate the analogy in full detail with or without the honeyblonde nymph's permission.
"Stand up, please."
"Okay."
"Lift your skirt above your waist."
"Sorry?"
"Do it or I'll fail you. Show everyone what panties you're wearing then come here and kneel in front of me."