“A part of the Writing Love Series”
One hot summer day, to be precise one Friday the thirteenth of August, at about a quarter to three in the afternoon, I fell in love. I had to tell her, not loving her but something else. What was the worst thing she could do to me? I didn’t think she would scream. No, that would be too embarrassing for her. At worse she would slap me, if she didn’t like what I was going to tell her. There were onlookers, sitting along the café-lined sidewalk, sipping on their lattes and mango juice and waiting for something to happen in their otherwise boring day. But, if she slapped me it would be more embarrassing for her than me. This was her town, the place where she lived, where she knew the locals and was the youngest faculty with a prestigious career ahead of her in one of the most well known universities in the nation, and I, a peon compared to the rest of them.
I told her I wanted to have sex with her, just like that. How long did she think I was going to listen to her brilliant stories and poems, converse with her about them, and not bring up the subject of having sex with her? I couldn’t bring myself up to telling her that I wanted to make love to her, even in the context of having sex. So, I said it, “Sex, sex,…kill me if you want, I want to have sex.” I looked at her, no, I gazed into her eyes, and uttered those words without flinching, and held my gaze steady, not even moving a bit to see what was happening around me, which disappeared in a haze, no more street noise to break my focus. My aim was to stir her down to complete submission to my desire.
She blushed a bit at first, looked down on the concrete sidewalk for a while, and then with a hint of a smile on her lips began to drag the tip of her right shoe on the pavement, then swung it back and forth like a pendulum, a few inches at a time, a few times, barely touching the ground, gyrating her torso with it, like a schoolgirl in love with her neighbor’s boy. She looked up at me, still holding my gaze steady, and said, “You naughty naughty boy, so you want to have sex with me, yeah?” I didn’t flinch. It was too late to back down now.
“Yes, I want to have sex with you.” I said, with determination in my voice.
“I’ll tell you what, we’ll have the best sex you’ve ever had.” She said it with a lustful voice.
She put her hand behind my head and then with her long fingers tilted it down and pushed her forehead against mine, and with her lips gave me a peck on mine.
“Come, come, I’m sick of these university intellectuals coming on to me all day with their lectures about this subject and that, and all they want is to have sex with me, and they don’t even have the guts to say it, the way you just said it. Come, come! We’ll have the best sex ever imaginable. We’ll go to a cheap hotel in downtown, the cheaper the better. Our primeval minds seek the smell of sex pheromones and sweat, which draws opposite genders together. It affects our behavior physiologically. You don’t even now what hits you; it works on us on a sub-conscious level. Our olfactory has evolved over millions of years to crave for this kind of essence, and we, the modern humans, mask it with artificial perfumes. It’s a shame really. I know a place, by 11th and L, by the Greyhound Bus Stop. A lot of winos and homeless people hang around there, which makes it even more exciting. Sometimes they don’t bathe for months, makes them sexier than any men’s underwear model I’ve ever seen. We’ll find a place there and we’ll have sex. We’ll turn off the AC, if they have any, and we’ll sweat like two pigs in heat, and after we’re done we’ll open the windows and let the bay breeze cool us down, and then we’ll have sex again. Come, come with me.” She said, at times like a university professor, at times like a nymphomaniac in need of fornication.
She began to walk swiftly towards her car, sometimes as if she was gliding on air, all along dragging me behind. Long before we reached her car she pulled out her keys and with her remote unlocked the doors. We sat in the car; she put her arms around my neck and kissed me, this time more passionately. Before long, she was driving in a highway towards downtown, her left hand on the stirring wheel, and the other one on my knee, and then she began to move her fingers, from my knee upward, but stopped short of my genitals, just close enough to excite me, without touching it, and then turned her hand around and moved towards my knee again. Her clear color manicured short fingernails barely touching the garment that covered my skin, gliding on the surface, back and forth, just enough of it to exhilarate me, but not too much of it to overwhelm.
“Open it. I want to touch it.” She said, with a whisper that I could barely hear.
“Are you sure you can drive?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but I do my best to do both.” She whispered back.
“I didn’t mean it to be this way.” I said.
“It’s O.K., don’t worry about it. I know what you meant.” She whispered again.
I pulled my shirt out and unzipped my pants. She played with me till I couldn’t take it anymore. I rolled down the window, put my arms on the sill, stuck my head partially out of the window and breathed the warm salty bay breeze, yet she did not stop. I hunched forward.
“Please don’t.” I said, frustrated.
“What’s the matter pretty boy? Isn’t this want you wanted, you naughty boy?” She teased me, and then recited one of Shakespeare’s sonnets that she sometimes used in her lectures:
“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”
“I didn’t mean it this way.” I said, sheepishly.
“Don’t worry, I understand. I won’t tease you anymore. We’ll have fun.” She said, this time more assuring.
The rest of the way we didn’t talk much, just touched and held hands. When we reached the bus station she drove around the block a couple of times till she finally pulled over in front of a cheap hotel. There were a few winos hanging around the place.
“Are you sure about this place?” I asked her.
“Don’t worry, my lover boy. You’ll see. It’s going to be fantastic. The element of danger will enhance our pleasure even more. Go get a room. I’ll wait for you here till you get the room, then I’ll park the car in that garage over there and I’ll meet you back here in the lobby.” She said, and handed me some money for the room. I tried to refuse but she insisted.
“You better save your money for your tuition. It’s my treat this time. You’ll see. You’ll like it. You can return the favor after you graduate.” She said.
Before going in the building I turned around and looked at her, she was still looking in my direction, and then with lifting of her chin she willed me into going in. The place looked creepy, the kind I had seen only in the movies. At the end of a damp hallway an unshaven man with a nicotine-stained mustache was sitting behind a counter, smoking a cigarette right under a sign that said not to do so.
“What can I do for you?” He asked, with his cigarette still in between his lips.
“I want a room on the top floor facing the bay.” I told him.
“You can’t see the bay from here.”
“I know, I just want a room in that direction.”
“How many people?”
“Two.”
He looked up at me, still dragging on his cigarette and said, “Prostitution is strictly forbidden here by the City ordinance.”, and without looking back he pointed towards the general vicinity of a sign behind him.
“She is not a prostitute.” I said.
“I need to see your IDs” He told me and pushed a registration card in my direction.
I pulled out my ID with a twenty-dollar bill, pushed them towards him and told him, “Here is mine but don’t worry about hers.”
I looked back towards the front door, through the hallway. She was still there, waiting to make sure. I tilted my head down to let her know that I was getting the room alright. She gave me back an assuring smile and drove away.
I sat in the lobby; waited for her for a while but she didn’t show up. I told the desk clerk to let her in if she comes around while I was gone looking for her. I went outside and looked, and began to worry about her. There was no sign of her anywhere, no sign of any disturbance either. A derelict woman came by and asked me for some change. I emptied all the coins in my packets into her hand and asked her if she’d seen a woman with her description. She thanked me for the change and left, as if she didn’t hear a word I said. I looked in the parking garage, and a few other places, but couldn’t find her. There was no sign of her anywhere. I went back to the hotel; the man was lighting up another cigarette with his last. I asked him if she came by yet.
“I believe she stood you up.” He said, looking up at me through a puff of smoke.
I threw another twenty-dollar bill on the counter and asked him if I could buy a pack of cigarette from him, and a book of matches. He grabbed the money and slid a pack of cigarette and a book of matches on the counter. I went upstairs to a hot room, and laid down on a dirty bed and began to smoke, after so many months of going without.
***
The old flip clock sitting on top of an old table by the bed turned a flap, 2:43, about a quarter to 3 AM. It was precisely half a day ago that I wanted to make love to my English Literature professor, but my words failed me miserably.
