Tenure Track (25 page)

“
What does she want that for?” he asked, sounding a bit perturbed. Jane repeated what Mandy had told her, but he looked suspicious. “Do I have to do it?”

Jane was incredulous. “Lewis, this is a golden opportunity! One meeting, you two hash everything out, then the complaint disappears. We’ll still have to review the outcome, but unless the mediator suggests punitive action, I doubt much will happen. This is your best chance of minimizing the damage.”

He mulled over the options in his head, clearly reluctant to face Mandy again. He hated confrontations, but knew this might be the only way to save his job.

“
Come on, Lewis! It’s time to be the grown-up here!” the Chair demanded.

He finally acquiesced. Jane advised that it would probably take a few weeks to set up a meeting, as she needed to get approval for the plan and vet mediators. She was excited about the prospects of ending this drama. Looking back at Dr. Burns, leaning glumly against his desk, Jane shook her head in disbelief at his hesitancy. “Definitely too mature for him,” she muttered to herself.

Driving home that evening, Jane felt relieved at the progress that had been made and at Mandy’s seeming maturity about the situation. As she sat stuck in traffic thanks to a rush-hour pile-up, her mind could not help contrasting Mandy’s maturity with the immaturity of Jane’s spurned young lover.
Did he ever regret his treatment of Jane the way that Mandy regretted posting the photo of Lewis?
She never knew, nor did she ever care. She just knew that he had hurt her in ways that even he never knew.

Like a lightening bolt, the other memories came crashing into her present. She tried to force them out, but sitting behind the unmoving cars with nowhere to escape, Jane could not avoid mentally colliding with her past. It was the version of her story that haunted her dreams, keeping her awake more than one night, clutching Dana’s security blanket in the darkened living room, feeling shame for poor choices made long ago and feeding fears about her own child’s choices.

What Jane recalled was that she had enjoyed the young man’s regular services throughout that spring semester after their first date. Often they went for days without hearing from one another. They never met each other’s friends and she never told anyone about him. He was her dirty little secret. After that second outing, they never really went out in public. If they required sustenance for their trysts, they ordered in. Pizza and Chinese food became the staples of their affair. Luckily, he was not in the second half of her Western Civ course, so she did not have to worry about any conflicts of sleeping with one of her students. They never talked much about his classes, nor about anything else substantial.

Each seemed content with the shallowness of the relationship. She called him “Stud,” much to his delight. His pet nickname for her became “Mrs. Robinson,” even though she was less than ten years older than him. Her lover was hardly a naïve Benjamin Braddock, though. In fact, he seemed to be much more experienced in many ways than she was.

As the evidence piled up, she came to realize that his world really did revolve around sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. The sex she was all too eager to enjoy. In fact, it was the only real reason she continued the relationship, if one could call it that. He was lusty, energetic, and willing to try almost anything. As a Valentine’s Day present, he gave her a book on tantric sexual positions, which they studied and practiced together. She thoroughly enjoyed this exploration, certain on a few occasions that she had reached some type of orgasmic nirvana.

After a few weeks, Jane came to the slow realization that the young man was supplementing his income with a lucrative side business selling drugs. He always seemed to have plenty of cash on hand, especially after attending concerts. She correctly suspected that he used the musical venues to market his product. At first, he just admitted to raising some pot plants, which was one reason why, he claimed, he never invited her to his apartment. Then, one day he casually suggested she use some uppers to finish a conference paper, noting that he could easily supply her with any pill of choice. She declined the offer, sticking to her preferred drugs of caffeine, the occasional Valium, and a few hits off his post-coital joints.

She never asked directly about his own drug use, though he volunteered enough to know that he was willing to try just about anything that did not involve needles. He mentioned almost in passing that he avoided LSD because his one experience had given him a bad trip. After he whipped out a vial and suggested they do coke lines off each other’s naked bodies, she finally forbade him from bringing any drugs other than pot into her home. In hindsight, she should probably have realized that anyone who talked about drugs as openly and as frequently as he did was headed for trouble, but she never pressed the subject. It was one of the many things that she chose not to know, lest it threaten her access to physical pleasure.

Jane doubted that he was monogamous. She understood that during a high at the right music venue he would probably be willing to sleep with just about anyone or anything. He did not like wearing condoms and she never insisted that he wear one, trusting in the magic pill to prevent pregnancy and regular STD checks in case she needed a shot of penicillin. In the pre-AIDs era, that was the responsible thing to do if you were sexually active. Years later, after seeing the love of Perry’s life waste away in a slow, painful death, Jane appreciated just how risky her behavior had been.

At the time, such risks were just part of the thrill. She, who had never viewed herself as much of a risk-taker, felt more alive through her experimentation with the young man than she ever had before. Perhaps that is why she could so easily decline his drug offers.
He
was the only drug she wanted, and her addiction had a much greater grip on her than she realized.

The few times she felt what might be considered pangs of guilt occurred when she was with her friend Mark. All throughout her affair with the student she went to lunches, coffee and the occasional movie with the geeky Math professor, whom she found to be smart, witty and increasingly endearing. Jane continued to make it clear that she had no interest in romance, convincing Mark that she was in a self-imposed period of work-centered celibacy. In a way, that was sort of true, in that she was avoiding commitment to a boyfriend or husband. She had Mark and Perry for companionship and her young lover for physical release, without having to get emotionally attached to anyone. She thought she had found the perfect compartmentalization of life.

It was only when her sexual relationship spilled over into the other compartments that Jane felt uneasy about its trajectory, like the night when Mark had called while she was trying to get dressed for her second date with the young man. While she was in one venue, she preferred to pretend that the others did not exist. Not that her lover would have cared if she was sleeping with every professor on campus. She was more concerned about Mark finding out about the lover and being either hurt or disappointed in her. She did not tell Perry, either, mainly because she could not trust him not to tell Mark.

Even more disturbing were the times when her secret stud spilled over into her work life. There was the time, for instance, when he dropped by her office hours unexpectedly. She knew what he wanted the moment he locked the door behind him and turned up the radio on her desk to drown out their voices. Jane found herself unwilling to resist his overtures, possessed by some magnetic force that allowed him to take her right there behind her desk. Growing frightened by her own weakness, she told him to avoid her on campus.

He obeyed her order, until one Thursday evening near the end of March, after her late graduate seminar had ended. He was waiting by her car in the darkened faculty parking lot, eyes bloodshot, body reeking of marijuana and whiskey. “What are you doing here?” she asked sternly.

“
I need ta talk to ya,” he slurred. Not wanting anyone to see them, she quickly beckoned him into the car. He immediately popped an eight-track into the player, frantically punching buttons. “Ya know, we need a song. We don’t have a song.”

“
You’re stoned. I don’t need to see you like this.” His immature behavior was not turning her on. “Why don’t I give you a ride home?”

He casually slipped an arm around her, then gently started to stroke her neck. “I gotta better idea. Why don’t ya give me a blowjob?” He unzipped his jeans, but Jane grabbed his hand before he exposed himself. “Ooh, yeah, Babe,” he said, forcefully moving her hand down into his pants. He still never wore underwear.

“
Are you crazy?” She tried to remove her hand, but he held it firmly in place. “Someone could see us. This is the faculty parking lot!”

“
Shit, you sound like my mother,” he groused, finally releasing her hand, but still not zipping up his pants. “When’d you get so uptight?”

“
Just zip up your pants,” she ordered.

“
Do it for me, Mommy,” he begged, leaning back with his hands behind his head, smiling sinisterly. Finally realizing that he was not going to do anything, she reached for his zipper. As she did, he grabbed her again, forcing his mouth onto hers, and her hand deeper into his pants. Soon he was on top of her, enveloping her body so much that she could hardly be seen. Just as he raised up and started to fully expose himself, she was saved by a knock on the window. A large, stern-looking campus police officer, very experienced in catching students making out, was staring at them. “Take it somewhere else, will ya?” he growled.

“
Oh, fuck off, Man!” the young man barked back.

Jane pushed her lover off of her as the cop opened the unlocked door and roughly pulled the student out of the vehicle. She recognized the middle-aged officer, who had often gallantly walked her to her car on late nights such as this. “Hey, Dr. Roardan,” he greeted, somewhat surprised. “Was this kid hurtin’ you?”

“
No, Ralph,” she lied. “I think he’s just had too much to drink. I was going to give him a ride home and he just got a little carried away.”

“
I
got carried away?” the student interjected, quickly zipping up his pants.

“
Shut up!” Officer Ralph Acevedo ordered, slapping the young man on the back of the head. “You look like you’ve been assaulted, Ma’am. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jane assured him that she would be fine, though she was still in a bit of shock. Pulling the concerned officer aside after he had handcuffed the young man, she whispered, “I don’t want to press charges, Ralph. The kid just got drunk and momentarily lost control. He was one of my students last semester. I think he’s really a good kid at heart. Why don’t you just escort him over to the campus health center and let him sober up? I think that’s what he really needs.”

Officer Acevedo was appropriately impressed by her concern for the out-of-control student. He reluctantly agreed not to file assault charges, but made a point of telling the young man that the good professor was being very kind and if the officer had his preference, he would take the kid behind a bush and beat the ever living daylights out of him. The student glared at Jane, incredulous, as the officer led him away.

As she drove home that night, she swore to herself that such an incident could never happen again. Yet despite being shaken up, she was not ready to end her affair. They just needed firmer grounds rules, like no more contact on campus and no more drugs. She planned to talk to him about it once he dried out. After getting home, she took her phone off the hook to rest and decided not to call him until Monday, so that he could think about his actions. She secretly hoped that he would call her first to apologize.

He never did call. In fact, every time she tried to call him, one of his many revolving roommates answered and made up some excuse as to why he was not available, even as she could hear him whispering instructions in the background. She understood that he was upset, but thought he would see the error of his ways and beg forgiveness. One day she thought she saw him in the hallway of a large lecture building, but he quickly ducked into the men’s room to avoid her. She knew he was acting childish, but what did she expect from a child in a man’s body?

Jane was determined not to seem desperate in her attempts to reach him, though her body longed to have him once again. By the third week, she was getting annoyed with his foolishness. One Saturday morning she looked up his address in the student directory and drove by the dilapidated apartment complex where his familiar black Trans-Am was parked outside. The unfamiliar scruffy face of a roommate in a dirty T-shirt and boxer shorts greeted her groggily, then disappeared to retrieve Jane’s lover from his bedroom. The apartment was a mess, with half-filled beer cans and more than one bong in clear view. A strange, unfamiliar odor permeated the air. Glancing into one of the bedrooms, she could see a virtual field of marijuana plants aligned in a row of little pots. A potted pot farm.
Well, at least he had been honest about that
.

He came out of a bedroom, shirtless, pulling on a pair of jeans.
Did he even own any other types of pants? Or underwear?
He was clearly hungover and sleepy. “Yeah?” he said, groggily. Recognizing Jane, he stiffened. “Shit, what’re you doin’ here?”

“
You wouldn’t return my phone calls,” she said.

“
Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t wanna talk to ya.”

“
Look, I’m sorry about the incident in the parking lot, but hopefully you learned a lesson from it,” she advised. “I cannot let our personal relationship interfere with my job. I have a reputation to uphold.”