Elliot Mabeuse

That is to say, she seemed like a perfectly normal suburban girl to me. In light of what happened between us, that's important to keep in mind. She wasn't weird, or a loser or a geek, or neurotic in any meaningful way, and in fact the work she turned in was very good. She could spell and she could write and she knew how to use semicolons, which is a rarity these days bordering upon the freakish. She was a very smart girl and could have coasted through the class but, as is true of so many students these days, she really wasn’t interested in being smart and apparently had never found

much use for it. What she was, was something else I still don’t know how to define.

Sensual? Sexual? Submissive? Obsessed?

Some of my former students tell me I'm intimidating at the beginning of the semester, and I do like to start out pretty tight and relax as I go along, so maybe that's what got her. Or maybe it was when we started talking about poetry of the Beat Generation and the sexual license and drug-use of the Beats. Maybe my own acceptance of these kinds of behaviors came through. But soon Emma was coming down the steps of the lecture hall after class to hang around the lectern with a few other students to continue the discussion or just schmooze as I put my notes away.

Sometimes I'd end up walking her out of the building.

Emma liked poetry. She really did, and that surprised her and surprised me too.

You know, the way they teach poetry now, they have the kids start writing in third grade and everyone's a poet, and that's nice. Their hearts are in the right place, but what they learn is that any bunch of words you put down in vertical form is a poem and so people end up thinking poetry is crap, which most of that kind of poetry is. We don't study crap in my class.—because not all poetry is equal and there is such a thing as bad poetry and most poetry falls under that heading. More importantly, there really is such a thing as
good
poetry, profoundly good poetry—exquisite, thunderous, magical, fantastically beautiful poetry, and that's the kind of poetry we covered in my class, and that's the kind of poetry Emma liked. And, of course, so did I.

When Emma heard there were people around who were still writing that kind of poetry and not only did I know where they hung out but I hung out with them, she was

rather stunned. But this was towards the end of the great Chicago Poetry Reawakening, and the scene was still going rather strong in the bars and clubs I went to.

We talked about other things I wrote, and one night after class I mentioned I wrote stories as well. When she asked me what kind of stories, I didn't even stop wiping down the white board. I automatically gave her my stock reply: "Romance."

That wasn't entirely true because, as I said, what I was really writing at the time was pornography, BDSM mostly, savage and passionate and very graphic, pouring all my own sexual frustrations into it. I wasn't proud of this, and normally I avoided the question altogether, but that night's lecture had been about Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs, drugs and sex and homosexuality, and Emma seemed to have a breathy, spellbound look about her that I wanted to be a part of, so I told her. A community college poetry instructor doesn’t get many chances to impress his students.

Then she asked me if I published under my own name and I did the unthinkable.

I gave her my pen name—my porn name—and I told her my stories were on the web. I even told her where to find them

It was an idiotic thing to do and I'm not sure why I did it.

Wait. That's an ingenuous thing to say and a lie. I know damned well why I did it.

I was a middle-aged, adjunct instructor at a crummy community college and would never have the money and prestige someone like Emma would respect and I wanted to impress her. I wanted her to know who I was inside. I wrote porn and I pretended to look down on it, but when I wrote, I poured my heart and soul onto the page and I knew it showed. It was powerful stuff.

In any case, I was there for the summer only, so what did I care? If she read my stuff and got shocked, then the hell with it. At least I'd have the pleasure of scandalizing her. Odds are she wouldn't even remember my pen name or wouldn't bother looking up my stories anyhow.

There happened to be an hourly exam during the next class session, so I really didn't get to talk with her before then. I just passed out the blue books and they got to work. She kept her head down and began writing, and I leaned against the lectern and kept a casual eye on the kids, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off those long legs now, or the heavy thrust of her breasts against her cotton tee, the way she twisted her hair in her fingers as she concentrated. One time she looked up and caught me staring at her, and she seemed to hold my eyes a bit longer than necessary before returning to her test. There might have been a slight smile on her lips or I might have imagined it.

The students turned in their bluebooks one by one and filed out, and Emma kept her eyes down discreetly as she slid hers onto the pile, but when I got back to the office I was using, I turned to hers first, and on the second page, outlined in a square of pencil, it said,
"I read your cheerleader story! It was incredible!! Is it for real? –Curious!

E."

The "curious" was underlined three times.

I sat there in the office with my heart in my mouth. I knew the story she meant, of course, and now I ran through it in my mind, assessing the damage, wondering just how much I’d revealed. I was both ashamed and wildly thrilled—thrilled she'd seen my dark imagination at work, ashamed at the hack job I’d done on that particular story. It was a toss-off piece—no real plot, written for a BDSM site: a teasing college cheerleader is

abducted and tied up in the deserted gym by the domineering football coach who slowly strips off her clothes and does all sorts of thoroughly rude and nasty things to her, all of which she of course secretly loves. It wasn't my greatest piece of work, but the parallel to our current student-teacher situation gave me chills.

I graded the other tests quickly, hardly concentrating as I turned over various responses in my head. By the time I got to Emma's test, I went to her little message, and where she'd written, "Is it for real?" I folded it over. I uncapped my red pen and felt my jaw clench as I wrote,
"As I've been telling you all term—write what you know…"

I was sorry as soon as I wrote it. I felt sick and demented—predatory. I was glowing.

She'd written a good test but no better than a B. I gave her a gift, an A minus.

She'd know it was a gift too—payment in advance, a joke. With my hand almost trembling, wrote.
"This grade is negotiable."

I debated a long time whether or not to put a smiley face winking next to it. I finally decided not to. Why pretend I was kidding?

I left the tests outside my office where the students could pick them up.

The next class, she came in wearing a short sleeve blouse that was a bit snug and opened perhaps just one button too low, revealing the slopes of her breasts. She was wearing a skirt too. That wasn't unusual—a lot of the kids came to class straight from work, as did Emma. Maybe I’d just never noticed before?

She didn't sit in her usual place either, high up near the aisle. The lecture hall was a miniature auditorium that had seats and tables bolted to the concrete floor which

rose in steep tiers like an operating theater, and Emma slid into a seat in the center of the fourth tier up so her knees were on a level with my eyes. Her placement was so blatant it was almost comical, and I might have laughed had we been alone or further along in our relationship, but at this point there was no relationship between us, and so when I looked up from my lecture and saw her knees casually apart and the hem of her skirt sliding up as she idly scratched her thigh, I actually started to stutter. Of course, I could see right up her skirt to the white crotch band of her panties, stuffed tight with the flesh of her sex.

She wasn't taking notes, though she pretended to be. I could tell. She doodled on her pad, or leaned back and stretched and pushed her shoulders back, straining the buttons on her blouse. She crossed her legs and pulled her skirt up, and her knees and the bottom of her thighs seemed to itch a lot. Whenever I looked up, her head would be down, but she did everything except fellate her pen and thrust her hands between her legs. It was a wonderful performance and I saw I'd seriously misjudged her. She might or might not be submissive, but she definitely wasn't shy.

When the class ended, I said, "Emma? Could I see you for a few minutes?"

She had to wait while I explained some other students' grades to them, and then she gathered up her books and slid out of her chair and came down to the podium.

Maybe my description of her behavior and clothes makes her sound cheap, but I assure you, she didn't look cheap. She was a beautiful girl—perfectly made up, with just the faintest hint of perfume.

"Yes, Mr. Devlin?"

I collected my notes. "So you read that story?"

Her eyes lit up, a smoldering glow. "Yes. I read more too. You have a lot. That beach one and the one about the girl in the basement, and the clothes, and the one with the girl who gets kidnapped…"

I nodded, then looked her in the eye. "You know, I only told you about those stories because I trust you."

As I said, people tell me I'm an intimidating guy. I don't notice it. I'm big and strong, and I know I have a lot of anger inside, and maybe that shows when I'm being serious. But I'm not mean, and I don’t intend to scare people. Something inside me felt Emma starting to respond. I couldn’t say what it was—whether her breathing changed or something in her eyes or the attitude of her body, but she seemed just a little bit scared.

"Of course," she said. "I wouldn’t tell anyone else, Mr. D. I mean, I don’t think anyone else would understand."

"No. They wouldn't." I snapped my briefcase closed and gestured for her to follow me. "But you understood, didn’t you, Emma? What did you think of them?"

We walked up the stairs of the lecture hall. She was just behind me. "Well, they're very good stories. I mean, you know… They're very good. I just wondered… I mean, they're not real, are they? Those things the men do in there, the things they do to the women…"

We were at the head of the stairs now, at the exit. I snapped off the lights, leaving just the spotlights shining down on the empty lectern. Maybe that had something to do with it—the darkness, the dramatic lighting. I turned to her.

"They're real enough, Emma. They're all based on things I've done. Things I do.

I've changed the settings. I've changed the characters—their names, their ages. But they're real. Why do you ask?"

We stood by the open door to the corridor. It was late, almost ten o'clock and there was no one around. Even the parking lot was deserted. Emma stood with her back to the cinderblock wall, not knowing where to put her eyes.

"
Darkness stirs my soul,
" I quoted. "
Desires whose name I cannot speak. Hisbody is within me, his spirit is upon me, and I am his anger and his joy. I am hissickness and its cure. He shames me with my pleasure; my surrender conquers him. Alldissolves between us and he sees me as I am.
"

There was a long moment of silence in which nothing stirred between us but our breath. I put my hand on the door frame, blocking her way. I don’t know why I did. I did it without thinking. I was waiting for an answer from her.

"Who wrote that?" she asked nervously.

I ignored her question. "Is that how it is?"

She didn't answer. In the darkness, I saw her chest rising and falling.

"Did you have a question for your teacher, Emma?"

Again, no answer. That was answer enough.

I put down the briefcase and pushed the door closed. The hydraulic door-closers hissed softly and then the lock caught and clicked firmly shut. I knew no one would be coming in here until after midnight. We were alone in this empty lecture hall together, alone in this vast, enclosed and vacant space, a magical space suddenly filled with sexual threat. Things began to work between us that we had no conscious control over.

A certain amount of light still spilled from the glass panel of the door into the darkened auditorium, but that just made the real world feel that much farther away. I put my hand on the wall next to her head and leaned over her. I had no doubt about her now, and I knew my eyes were glowing as I stared at her. I knew who she was, like a fox knows a rabbit. I could feel her. That was the thing.
I could feel what she felt.

"You've been like this all your life, haven't you?" I asked. "The things that were in those stories, they’ve been exciting you since before you even knew what sex was."

The rabbit looked at the fox and saw there was no point in lying. "How did you know?" she asked.

“Because I’m the same way.”

I took the books from her hands and tossed them on a table.

"Come here. Away from the door."

I led her a few feet into the auditorium, away from the square of light. She was still standing with her back to the wall and I leaned over her again, keeping her trapped.

Her eyes were shining with something between fear and excitement, her lips parted and glistening.

It's a strange and thrilling feeling to know what a woman's feeling, to be in two places at once—to be the fear and the cause of the fear, to be the strength and the weakness. It was happening to me with Emma. It was happening very clearly.

"Lift up the front of your skirt."

"What?! Mr. Devlin—!" She looked shocked.

"Just do as I say. Lift it up and hold it at your waist."

There was a moment when our wills collided and we just stared at each other, but I knew in my heart she wanted this. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. I knew it because I was both of us. I felt my will overcome hers like my hand closing over her fist, like an embrace, and I felt her give in. Her hands went to her skirt and she began to gather up the fabric.

"All your life you've been waiting for someone to find out," I said to her. "You've been dying for someone to know. You've needed someone you could tell and you've prayed for it. You've ached for it. Haven't you, Emma?"

Her skirt was gathered above her panties now, and I lowered my right hand and touched her bare thigh, midway between knee and hip, smooth and warm as the summer sun. She stared at me in the dark. Her nostrils flared.

"No," she said. "No."

"You've dreamt about a man who would show you what's inside, who knows what you can feel, because you know there's so much more, just waiting. So much more you're just waiting to give, to have taken from you, don't you? That's it, isn't it, Emma?

To have it
taken
…"

My fingertips slid up her thigh, slowly working around to reach the soft and sensitive insides where the skin seemed to tremble, stroking first one leg, then the other, caressing her as if she were a frightened animal. My body was very close to hers now, almost touching her. Her breasts rose and fell in the dim light.

Suddenly she put her hands on my shoulders and her skirt dropped over my wrist like a curtain. I kept my hand where it was between her legs.

"No," I said quietly. "There are rules here, Emma, and the first one is—you don’t touch me. Not without permission. I touch you, but you don't touch me. Understand?

Now pick up your skirt."

She took her hands off my shoulders and lifted her skirt again, revealing her snug panties and the smooth plane of her belly, tanned as dark as her legs. I brought my hand up and boldly stroked her between the legs through the smooth synthetic fabric and she shuddered. I felt her legs quiver. She was warm and soft and humid and I could feel her anatomy perfectly through the thin material—her swollen labia, the awakened bump of her clit.

"It's good to be touched, isn't it?" I asked her. "It feels good to have someone else touch you, someone who cares what he's doing? She likes me. She likes being touched. I can tell because she's getting wet. She's getting wet and she's opening like a little flower."