TANTALIZED by NENIA CAMPBELL

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 Nenia Campbell
Copyright © 2014 nenia Campbell
All rights reserved.
Published at Smashwords.

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 DEDICATION
To my readers.
This is proof that you should not encourage me.
Now you must reap the consequences.

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 PART I
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 Once I half-convinced myself that I could hear pain. Sharp, stinging
cuts were high-pitched like screams. Throbbing aches were low moans.
Swellings and itches had a slow, steady, timpani beat.
The more I pondered this phenomena, the more blurred the lines of my
own self-perception became amidst the crashing chorus of chaos. Every
scratch and bruise took on new shades of meaning. Was it so unlikely that
my body had developed a peculiar brand of synesthesia?
My mother thought so. In fact, she thought the whole thing was, as she
put it “bloody ridiculous.” She's not even British, either. No. She just
watches too much Downton Abbey. Talk about weird.
I remained convinced that she was wrong. She couldn't feel what was
going on inside my body or my head—that was my unique experience. And
the folly of human experience is precisely that it is so subjective, so tailored
to the individual. One person's symphony of neural synapses is another
person's auditory hallucinations.
I remember the day when my convictions shattered. I had just sliced
my wrist, and I sat in my room for hours, listening, waiting, half-wanting to
move on but unable to let go. The only sound I heard was the sound of my
heart echoing in my ears.
That resounding sense of disillusion and disappointment serves as a
perfect comparison to how I feel when my parents rise in unison at the
breakfast table to inform me that I'm going to Fielder University against my
wishes the very next day.
Trapped. Caught in an infinite loop. Tricked.
It seems necessary to point out that Fielder is the only college willing
to accept me, out of dozens. Something Mom makes painfully clear while
listing off the various reasons I have to go. As far as my parents are
concerned, this is my last chance to make something of myself.
Because if you don't have a college degree from an accredited
university stapled to your forehead, you're worth less than the air in your
lungs.
I'm nineteen-years-old. I let college application deadlines sail by
unheeded last year and intended to repeat the process again this year. Fights
erupted at the breakfast table every other morning, preceded by loaded
questions about my plans for the future.
“I'm living, aren't I?” I said. “Isn't that enough?”
No, it wasn't.
Apparently, I had to live and be miserable.
Things got really unpleasant for a while. I cut, and drank, and stayed
out all night so I could sleep in all day, thereby avoiding further interactions
with them. My parents started discussing other subjects.
Mercifully, they started leaving me alone.
I thought the two of them had finally come to their senses and seen just
how much their constant harassment was taking its toll on me.
I should have known better.
Because they weren't being merciful. They were being stealthy. While I
was sleeping, or out, they had filled out various college application forms in
my name. I could not believe it when I found out, just how deeply rooted
their treachery was.
They had gotten copies of my high school transcripts and copies of my
SAT scores, which they scanned and sent out accordingly—by mail or PDF.
They queried letters of reference from the select few teachers who
hadn't loathed me. Namely, my creative writing instructor and the teacher
for home economics. I cringe a little when I think of what they may have
said to my benefit. “Puts cathartic release in fiction to good use.” “Quiche
has half-decent crust.”
But that wasn't even the worst of it.
For my personal statements, Mom spilled out a tearful recollection of
my institutionalization worthy of Oprah. She talked about how being at
Cherry Hill Psychiatric Clinic had made me “introspective” and “eager for a
fresh start.”
It was a betrayal on par with Judas or Brutus.
Et tu, Mother?
“Try to understand, Jessica. We're worried about you.” I had just
finished screaming at her, asking her if she had any thoughts or
considerations for my feelings—and no, not the ones that she had just made
up on paper for the benefit of the admissions boards.
Her apology did not impress me.
“I'll never forgive you,” I told her.
Six months later, and I still haven't.

People are careening around me in a wild carousel of colors and

shapes, dizzying in their sheer intensity. After spending three hours in the
car my legs already feel unsteady, but these densely-packed crowds are
giving me a sense of vertigo.
I have the passing urge to grab hold of my mom's hand like I'm five-
years-old and still afraid of the dark but then I remember that I'm still pissed
off at her and plug in my ear buds to suffer in the not-so-silence.
Besides, being the nosy busybody she is, Mom would want to know
why I'm afraid. I'm not quite sure how to put my fear into words. Much like
my preadolescent conviction that I could hear as well as feel pain, my fears
seem to transcend the bounds of ordinary human experience.
Telling my mother this would only result in an accusation that my
predicament is somehow my fault. She would probably accuse me of
sneaking drugs. That's her go-to excuse for my behavior these days.
The fact that she is partly right in this instance makes me even angrier
than I already am. I go to my iPod's menu and select my “vindicated”
playlist, which includes a bunch of I'm-pissed-off-type songs including the
titular one by Dashboard Confessional.
With the well-worn lyrics playing on the tip of my tongue, I hold my
silence as other incoming freshmen swirl around me in clothes like the
plumage of tropical birds. I wonder if it's possible for my retinas to burst
into flame from sensory overload, like maybe the rods and cones are getting
too much friction.
I don't know, I never took any science classes. Maybe the weird things
my brain does would make more sense if I had. Like the way how
sometimes, when I'm spacing out, the world around me doesn't even seem
to be moving anymore. Instead it changes to a series of shifting, strobe-like
images like in one of those old-fashioned projection screens.
 That's a real disorder, by the way. I know, because I looked it up on
PubMed. It's called akinetopsia, and it's the inability to perceive movement
or motion. Picture it. The world, moving. But for you, time always stands
perfectly still.
My world is a frieze, as elaborate as it is unmoving. My parents' lips
are making sounds and syllables, but they hold no meaning to my deaf ears.
I shouldn't be in this place.
That is truth in the center of madness.
Where I should be, I'm not sure. But this place, Fielder University, isn't
it. No, sirree.
“Isn't this exciting, Jessica?”
Mom's words make sense again, and she has the strained voice of one
who has had to drag her nineteen-year-old daughter out of bed, kicking and
screaming at five in the morning. Full of pep and forced enthusiasm,
provided by buckets of caffeine and sheer determination. As if those things
can rub off on me by association. So not happening.
When I don't respond, she says, desperately, “Just think, your first day
of college.” Since there is nobody around to keep her from uttering inane
clichés, she goes on to say, “The first day of the rest of your life.”
Fucking spare me. “I wish it were the last.”
She fake smiles. “You don't mean that.”
“Oh, trust me. I do. I really do. Completely.”
She flinches, looks to my father for assistance.
“Don't bother, Helen,” he says. “She's in a mood.”
But moods pass; they are fickle things darting in and out of the
underbrush of the conscious mind. This—whatever this is—is deeply
entrenched: a permanent squatter looming dark and dangerous in the
forefront of my brain.
I can feel my pulse ticking in my temples like a time bomb. Or a tumor.
That's another thing, I used to wonder if I had brain cancer. It would explain
so many things. The wild fluctuations in emotion. The fact that I can never
seem to focus. The weird fixations and sensations that everyone brushes off
but me.
 One CAT scan and $1,000 proved me perfectly, scientifically healthy,
with a side of “I told you so.”
“She seems to have a mild case of hypochondria,” the head doctor said.
“Perfectly normal at her age. I went through a similar phase myself in
adolescence.”
You and I are nothing alike, I wanted to shout.
I almost wished I did have cancer, if only so they wouldn't be so
condescending. Mom told me that was a horrible thing to think, let alone
voice aloud. “You're lucky you're healthy. Millions of people in this world
wish that they could say the same, and you are selfish enough that you
would throw such a gift away? God should strike you down for having such
thoughts.”
Yes, I thought, he should—but why hasn't he?
I wouldn't exactly call my situation a bed of roses, either. For example,
who tells a kid suffering through cancer that they're just in a mood when
they're upset? When their lymph nodes are swollen with bus and their
atrophying, tumor-ridden frontal lobes cause them to shout abusive things at
their family and friends, or even shit themselves in public, who tells those
poor cancer patients that they're not trying hard enough to control
themselves. Who the fuck tells them, “You know what, quit the chemo. It's
an indulgence. You should just get over that cancer by yourself. You'll feel
better.”
Nobody, that's who. Not unless they want to find themselves the center
of a communal outrage.
On the other hand, if you have a mental disorder that makes you shit
yourself in public and shout abusive things at your friends and family,
you're accused of doing it for the attention, of being dramatic. Suck it up,
you're told. Stop wallowing in your own selfish indulgences (not to mention
your own shit). Jesus Christ, there are people out there who have real
problems, like cancer, and here you are whining because you don't feel
happy or normal in the morning. Learn to be empathetic, for fuck's sake!
The amount of sympathy you get from having an illness is paid out like
a Ponzi scheme and psychiatric disorders are at the bottom.
So no, I'm not exactly eager to deal with life's shit.
 The sunlight is starting to hurt my eyes. I can see floaters zigzagging
across my retinas. The more I try to ignore them, the more they're there. I'm
starting to sweat. My shirt is plastered to my armpits. I don't belong here. I
can see it, just as plain as the arcing floaters twitching around in my visual
field.
It doesn't take a college degree to see that one of these things is not like
the others, and I'm the one who's just not right. Anyone can. Anyone except
my parents, that is, who wrote my acceptance letters for me, turning the
very things they criticize about me into my biggest selling points.
Ignorance must be a fun place to live; my parents seem to vacation
there year-round.
“Jessica, please say something,” my mom pleads.
Jessica, please, don't you want to be normal? She said, when I found
the acceptance letter. It was addressed to me but somebody else had clearly
opened it, and after I finished screaming about how it was against federal
law to tamper with somebody's mail and that I was going to call the cops on
them both, I screamed at them for applying to college's in my own name.
Oh, wait. Did you say normal? Sorry, I didn't realize I had a choice.
You mean if I shove my thumb up my ass and wish really, really hard, I
might just become normal, you fucking assholes?
“Jessica.”
Don't talk to your mother that way.
How should I talk, then? How do I talk so that you'll listen to me,
instead of spewing this fountain of bullshit. It's like I'm at the national water
park of bullshit over here. You never listen to me.
You should listen to yourself, my dad said. Then you'd hear how
irrational you sound.
And why we're so worried about you, Mom cut in.
With all due respect, Mom, fuck you.
I say that now, only without the with-all-due-respect part. “Fuck you.”
All our arguments seem to follow the same cookie-cutter pattern these days,
so formulaic I practically have them down by rote.
“Do you want to go back to Cherry Hill?” Dad is saying. “Is that what
you want? Are you telling me that you would prefer to be institutionalized
than to attend school at such a prestigious institution?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, Jessica, your father's not threatening you.”
“I thought that was why you were sending me to Fuck-All
University”—“Fielder,” Mom cuts in, because she can't help herself
—“That's what I said. Fuck-You University. Because it is an institution.
And that's the next best thing, right? A little paid vacation away from your
daughter, where you don't have to deal. Well yeah, I guess given those two
options I would rather rot away in the fucking loony bin.”
Even my psychiatrist wasn't completely on board with this decision. “It
could be a good opportunity,” was what she said, “But only if you're ready.”
Note the qualifier. Only if I'm ready.
Since she has a Ph.D., I really thought my parents might take her
professional opinion to heart. But they weren't impressed. Dr. Fields hasn't
known you as long as we have. You can be very manipulative when it comes
to getting your way. It's her job to take you seriously.
But not theirs, obviously.
You're going to Fielder, Jessica. We are tired of you bumming around
the house all day, sleeping in until three or four in the afternoon and
coming home at all hours with those boys. Your mother and I have to go to
work in the mornings. You can't hold down a job, and you refuse to try. We
made it clear when you graduated high school that we expected that you
would either go to college or work.
I knew this was some cowardly under-the-table scheme to send me
away for good. Hearing my suspicions confirmed didn't make me feel any
better. It filled me with the anger that belongs exclusively to the vindicated
and self-righteous.
If you force me to go to Fielder, I told them, I'll kill myself. I'm not
fucking around. I mean it.
Don't go into one of your moods. Not now. Do we have to dial 911? Do
you really want to be put into involuntary confinement? Again?
Don't, don't, don't. I didn't ask to be born. Why can't you let me die?
Why can't I decide whether and when to end my own life? How the fuck is
that fair?
 You destroy us when you say these things.
Then you deserve to be destroyed.
Even though I'm uncommunicative, Mom oohs and aahs over the
campus. Still pathetically trying to win me over. As she points out stores
and restaurants, anything that catches her eye and might catch mine, the
transparency of her desperation makes me sick.
I pointedly ignore her. I know it hurts her, but she deserves as much for
dragging me out here against my will. I don't want to be taken in by a few
shiny things. I want to hate this place, and it will be easier to hate Fielder if
I have nothing that grounds me to it.
Dad tells her not to bother, that she's just wasting her time. “Look,” he
says. “Let's just find the dorms so we can drop her off and get out of here so
we can beat the traffic. She's determined to be miserable.”
He's always been the first to give up on me.
“I knew it,” I cry. “You want me to go to college because you don't like
having me around, but you're too fucking cowardly to let me take care of
the problem my way. You don't give two shits about my education. Well, I
may be breathing, Dad, but I'm still dead inside, and it's because you killed
me!”
At the sound of my raised voice, a few people turn in our direction.
“My God, Jessica, shut up,” he says through clenched teeth. “We're in
public.”
“I'm sorry, am I not normal enough for you?”
The two of them are like broken records, playing in tandem but not at
all in sync. It's jarring and I hate it. I hate them. I hate this place. I hate
everything.

“These are the dorms.”

The relief in my father's voice makes me sick. He wants me gone. It's
so obvious he's counting down the seconds until he can race back home and
turn my room into a rumpus room or a guitar studio.
I stare at the brick buildings. “That's where you're sending me to live?
I've seen jails that looked cosier.”
 Even Cherry Hill had a garden.
Cherry Hill's garden was beautiful, featuring what was probably the
biggest collection of nontoxic plants in the area. A lot of the schizophrenics
liked to stand out by the fountains, perhaps attracted to the sound of running
water. I don't know. Some of them would freeze in place and stand there for
hours, unmoving, and I would marvel at how their muscles wouldn't give
out.
I would talk to them sometimes. The best listeners are people who don't
talk. It's even better if they don't comprehend what you're saying. Less
chance of being judged that way.
Dad ignores my remark. “I'll go find someone who works here,” he
says to my mom.
I squint my eyes and watch my dad depart for the yellow brick
buildings against the dazzling backdrop of the sun. Tears roll down my
cheeks. Situational. Emotional. Does it matter?
All at once, I feel resigned. Maybe it is the lack of relationship between
my body and my mind, but then it sinks in that this is really happening and
there is no foreseeable way to stop it.
None.
I'll try to hold it together until we can locate my dorm room. Until my
parents leave and I can lie down. Until then, I will do nothing except exist,
and only because I have no choice in the latter.
For the moment.
Dad returns with a blonde girl whose smile is stretched wide enough to
split her lips like rotten fruit. She is wearing a pink shirt with khaki shorts
and it is hard to say which I hate more: her, or that hideous color
combination. It makes her look like a smug, fermenting watermelon.
“Jessica, right?”
I shrug my shoulders.
“Welcome to Fielder University.”
FU. It really is such a fitting name for this college. Welcome to Fuck
You.
“She must be shy,” the blonde says.
 “No, just rude,” my dad responds.
“Well, it's certainly nice to meet you!”
Silence spans between us.
“Don't you have something to say, Jessica?”
“Nothing nice,” I sneer. If my father is going to treat me like a child,
then I am going to act like one.
Blondie looks startled, her doe eyes as wide as if she is going to cry. I
hope she does. It'll take the ass-sucking smile off her stupid face.
She gives my room key and prepaid laundry card to my father, who
takes them both with a grim expression. I zone out while she yaps about the
dorm rules, residential meetings, and some vague-sounding directions that
hold no real value to me.
The initial plan was that my parents would stay to see me settled in.
Then we'd endure one another's company for another hour or so (i.e. have
lunch) before they took off. However my behavior is so inappropriate—
their word, not mine—that they have decided to leave early. As they gather
up their shit, my father says, “I suggest you think long and hard about your
behavior, and its consequences.”
It is clear that this is intended as punishment but the truth is, I'm really
glad to see them both gone. I don't want them hanging around and
micromanaging me, pointing out my faults and apologizing for me to other
people the way they did with that blonde bimbo. Acting like martyrs who
are forced to carry my existence around like an oversized cross.
“See you at Thanksgiving,” are my parting words to them, followed by
an ambiguous, “maybe.”
Mom and Dad don't rise to the bait. They shake their heads and walk
away.
I want to run after them, beg them not to leave me, to tell me that this is
all some sick sort of joke.
I watch them head back out towards the street. My father doesn't look
back once. Mom does, shaking her head, and then she, too, turns away. I
watch them until they are completely out of sight, refusing to move, or even
cry.
 I go into my new room and lock the door securely behind me. I don't
bother unpacking my things. Everything I need is in my purse except for the
joint Mom confiscated this morning before we all got into the car. God, the
way she carried on, you'd have thought it was cocaine she found, not weed.
I raise my eyes heavenward and catch a glimpse of the fire alarm.
Probably for the best, I think. It's illegal to tamper with the fire alarm in a
public place. Shame. I could really use a joint to take the edge off.
One upside to living in a college town, though, is that there are a lot of
drugs floating around. Easy pickings, if you know where to find them. But
my last act of petty rebellion has exhausted me.
I don't have the energy to do anything but turn on the AC and lie in
bed. I listen to the white noise of the air humming through the grates as
time melts like butter in the shimmering heat.

Sleeping is terrifying.
When you close your eyes and surrender your consciousness to the
void, you lose yourself—voluntarily—and you're trustingly assuming you'll
find yourself back out of the labyrinth again.
Usually you do.
But sometimes you don't.
It's that uncertainty, more than anything, which kills me. That I might
not wake up, and wouldn't know it.
That I could be dead, dreaming I'm alive.

When I awake, my soul's pockets feel as if they have been weighted

down with the heaviest of stones. I stare at the yellow light pouring in
through the gaps in the blinds and try to guess what time it is. Time to get
up, I know. But knowing is different from doing.
I close my eyes, and slide back into the abyss.
The visible light has grown darker, more orange in tone, when I next
open my eyes. Several more hours have passed. I have fallen asleep with
my iPod playing full blast and the current song is Gloomy Sunday, an old
favorite. Nothing can weep as convincingly, or as beautifully, as a fine-
tuned violin.
The song matches my malaise, and in spite of the heat and the
brightness radiating from outside, I could be in the darkest depths of winter,
with rain thundering against fragile glass panes.
“Little white flowers will never awaken you,” I half-sing, voice
cracking a little from sleep.
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you, Billie sings back
raggedly, like a square of old velvet.
I feel like I'm caught in a glass bauble, the kind you shake to make
snow fall down on trapped miniatures. My tired heart is hibernating in this
psychological winter. It has been for years, and I'm starting to think that part
of me will never wake up.
Maybe that's why these jaded old songs, with their alcohol dreams and
film noir outlook, appeal to me. The best songs are about universal human
experience. The kind of experiences you can point at and say, “Yes, that's
how it is.”
The old pop singers, they knew how it was. That's why their songs are
always so sad, and why so many of them drank and died young. They
understood that bitter walks hand in hand with sweet.
The battery is just about dead so I tear out my ear buds before the song
can reach its mournful peak because I don't think I can take it today. At
least you can recharge an iPod's batteries. There isn't a whole lot you can do
with me that isn't just a quick-fix.
I slide out of bed and check my cell phone. Half of me expects ten
missed calls, all from my parents. The other half tells me not to bother. The
fact that there are none suggests that Mom and Dad are angrier at me than I
initially thought—or else they've just decided not to take my thinly-veiled
threats to off myself again seriously this time.
Callous, I think. Real callous. Risky, too.
I almost want to prove them wrong, just to make them sorry. What the
hell do they have to be so angry about? I'm the one who was sent away.
They got what they wanted. I should kill myself.
I should, but I won't.
 I contemplate my empty room and think of a skeleton, all the flesh and
humanity stripped clean away. I should open up some of the boxes. It looks
like I might be staying here for a while, and I want my iPod charger, my
leather jacket, my toothbrush. My mouth tastes like the way I imagine a
public toilet would; I can smell my breath all the way from here.
I pick a box at random and start scratching at the tape. My cuticles are
already raw, the nails split. One of them catches on the box's fibers and
starts to bleed.
I rub finger and thumb together, but continue my efforts. Each lick of
pain is a reminder to keep going.
Keep calm and carry on, I think. Fuck that.
Muted voices carry through my closed door from the hallway as I begin
to peel the tape back from the flaps. I can hear the muffled cadences of their
speech, punctuated by abrupt changes in inflection and tone.
My neighbor, I imagine. She sounds disgustingly perky. Like Gidget,
from those TV Land reruns.
Blah blah blah, I hear, all chipper. Blah blah-blah!
Statistics suggest that she is probably not a serial killer. Personal
experience leads me to believe she is just as unlikely to be interesting, as
well.
There is no point in investigating the matter further except to be social,
which I have zero interest in doing. Like I said, I don't want to get to know
anyone here or form any close attachments.
I've never understood the point of small talk, either. You only have so
many breaths. Why waste them on subjects you don't care about, with
people you hardly know or are never going to see again? You're only going
to walk away from them later, so who the fuck cares? It's cheap, and it's
dishonest.
So many things that we call “being social” are. Why else do we always
answer 'fine' when people ask us how we are? Even when we're not?
Especially when we're not? I'm the kind of person who will say, every time,
“I'm fucking terrible, yourself?” Mom just takes this as further evidence
that I'm a freak.
Fuck her.
 Fuck my neighbor, too. What the hell does she have to be so happy
about, anyway?
The tape is thicker on the other boxes so I have to use my room key
after I crack one of my nails down the center, trying to open it up by hand. I
suck on the blood as I use the grooves of the key to cut the tape.
That's another thing my parents took from me, by the way. They
confiscated my Swiss Army knife, which I've had since Girl Scouts. That
was a pretty dick move. I never cut myself with the knife. With broken
glass, paperclips, coils of wire, and even the backs of my earrings, yes, but
never with my knife.
Oh well. Easy enough to buy a new one. Even easier than buying
drugs. Now what does that say about the world, I wonder? Certainly
nothing good.
“We didn't start the fire,” I sing, as the key does the trick, slicing the
tape with relative ease. “It was always burning since the world's been—ha.”
Inside are clothes, which I toss aside impatiently. Beneath the clothes is
a layer of books which I don't remember packing. It's been a long time since
I've read for fun, probably not since middle school.
Mom must have put these in here. They look as if they've been
gathered at random. I even recognize some of my old books from grade
school days. Fantasy novels, mostly, with plucky female main characters. I
roll my eyes and toss them to the floor with the clothes. Typical.
Beneath the books I may or may not have packed are my toiletries.
Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, what little makeup I own. All that good
stuff. I'm thinking a shower sounds good at this point so I grab the baggie
without sorting it and head right into the communal bathroom to see how
shitty the water pressure is. If only misery washed away as easily as dirt, I
think, as I lock both doors behind me.

While standing under the shower spray I close my eyes and imagine
myself on a tropical island. This is something Dr. Fields suggested I do
whenever I feel stressed out or angry. To slow down and picture myself
anywhere calming.
 This isn't recycled sewer water cascading down on my head, I tell
myself, it's a light drizzle scented with hibiscus and the salty ocean.
What I actually smell is the apple freesia shampoo I've brought from
home. It appears to have gone rancid in the heat. How disgusting.
I rinse off the stinking suds and shut off the tap—and the therapy—
prematurely. Ordinarily I might try and masturbate before getting out of the
shower but I'm not in the mood. The soap smell is making me queasy and I
can still hear the voices outside, which keeps me too on edge to submit to
fantasy.
Are they still here? It's been hours. God, my neighbor really does have
the most annoying voice, and if that's her mom I hear out there with her, it's
obvious that it's a hereditary affliction. Yeesh.
Luckily it sounds like they're saying their farewells now and I'm glad
when the closing door corroborates this theory. I think it's so lame when
parents stick around, like they're guilty that they were so eager to dropkick
their children off the front porch in the first place, and that they believe five
minutes of hugs and kisses will make everything all better.
Newsflash—it doesn't.
I step out of the shower, checking to make sure the bathroom door is
still locked. Both of them. They are, so with the towel wrapped snugly
around my waist, I glance myself over slowly in the foggy mirror.
Like I said, I cut, so my arms are a mess of pink, puckered scars. There
are more on my thighs but they're covered by the towel at the moment. I
have one or two on my ribs, but that's harder to do, since I have to make the
marks upside-down.
On some level, I know I shouldn't be doing this to myself. It isn't
healthy, I'm putting myself at risk for permanent scarring or infection, blah,
blah, blah. At least, that's what they tell me. But I've been cutting for so
long that I can't remember what I look like without my scars. They've
become a part of me, my armor, and if they disappear, I might just go with
them.
When the psychiatrists asked me why I did it, I told them that it was
like scratching an itch. An itch that's as physical as it is psychological.
There's no resisting that siren call. Maybe that's sick, but that's life, and
that's the way it is. There's no way around it.
 Sighing, I get dressed and gather my things together. On my way to the
door I toss the shampoo bottle into the trash. Now I have to get more, which
means shopping—unless I want to try my luck with the soap dispenser
nailed to the tiled wall.
I open the door and take a step back, crying out in surprise. My
neighbor is standing outside with a plastic shower caddy dangling in one
hand. What the fuck? Who the fuck does that?
“Can I help you?” I ask coldly.
“Oh,” she says, like she's pretending to be embarrassed or sorry when
she's actually neither. “Hello.” She has one of those chubby, chipmunk-like
faces, the kind doomed for obesity in the middle age. Right now, though,
she's disgustingly cute. I kind of want to slap her for it, as well as for
scaring me with this pathetic attempt to introduce herself.
I move around her instead. “I'm done. All yours.”
She blocks my way again. “I'm Angela.”
“Do you mind?” I ask her, nodding at the Ziploc baggie full of crap and
armload of soiled clothes. Flushing, she stands aside. “Thanks. Oh, and by
the way—I'm not here to make friends. Just so you know. And even if I
were, it wouldn't be with you. Okay?”
“But—”
“And I don't want to see you fucking hanging around the bathroom
door while I'm in there, either. I don't want to have to worry about you
hearing me while I'm trying to masturbate.”
She flinches.
“Cool. So glad we had this talk.”
With that, I shut the door behind me, leaving her standing there,
stunned, in the hall. Like nobody has ever not wanted to be her friend in her
life. Well, that'll teach her to fucking stalk me when I'm in the bathroom.
What a pathetic, desperate loser.
For a moment, the cardboard sets come crashing down to reveal that
squalling monster, reality, locked up in the confines of its man-made cage.
It is a fearsome thing, beautiful, inherent only to itself. Faced with such
naked, existential truths, I understand why humans worship flesh-eating
monsters and bloodthirsty gods.
 But only for a moment.
A moment is all it takes for the veil of subjective human experience to
slide back over my eyes. When I look through the peephole, I see that she's
still standing there, shaking her head like she's trying to shake away the
tears. What a melodramatic bitch.
Then I pause.
This wave of anger has taken me aback with its sheer force and
intensity. It crashes over me in a wall of darkness, washing away what little
self-control I possess, and leaves me trembling, naked.
Am I a terrible person?
Yes. No. Probably. Depending on who you ask.
I sink back into apathy and it is like sliding into a warm bath. It's better
not to care, to solely live in the now, where there is no such thing as
consequences.

Maybe the Powers That Be are punishing me for brushing off that girl
so coldly because that afternoon I receive an automated message from the
school informing me that my pass time for registration is at 6 fucking A.M.
I set my cell phone's alarm for 5:45 A.M., since it takes me a good
couple minutes to get out of bed. Just thinking about that dull gray light of
the predawn makes me feel prematurely exhausted.
Why would they even schedule people so early? Don't they know most
college students would happily sleep past noon if left to their own devices?
My alarm went off at 5:45. I woke up bleary-eyed, thinking I might kill
someone for some coffee. I didn't have any instant in my dorm, though, and
I'm pretty sure the dining commons doesn't open before 7. I throw my
phone across the room and hear it hit something with a muted, reverberating
crash.
“Let's get this over with,” I mutter, rubbing at my temples. The flesh
feels sunken and doughy. Rough patches of acne blossom in the hollows of
my cheeks. I don't go to the bathroom, because I don't want to see myself in
the mirror. I have a feeling what I look like, when I first wake up in the
morning. There are mushrooms in caves that have rosier complexions.
 I jolt my finger across the touch pad to wake up my laptop and wince at
the brightness of the screen. I check the settings in the lower right hand
corner and groan aloud when I see that I have the brightness settings on the
dimmest possible option.
I shut one eye. Keeping the other squinted, I manage to make it to the
school website. Freshmen always get shitty pass times. The only exceptions
are for the courses nobody else wants to take. It's like an exercise in the
curing of chronic insomnia.
I have Rate My Professor open but it seems stupid, redundant, even.
No matter how good my professors are, it is unlikely that I'll learn anything
of value, even if I can dredge myself out of bed to attend class. Information
just doesn't sit well with me. Most professors transcribe their lectures on
Powerpoint verbatim, anyway.
I type the names of various professors into the data base and look at the
results without reading. Easiness, clarity, hotness. Hmm. Hotness. Maybe
I'll choose all good-looking professors so at least I'll have something nice to
look at while zoning out.
Quite a few of those names have that little chili pepper icon beside
them, though if they aren't full-up by now, the teaching skills of these
professors probably leave much to be desired.
I have two hours before the registration window closes, so I sign up for
Philosophy of Biology with Javier Rojas; Intro to Psychology with Morgan
Fineman (comically appropriate); Intro to Philosophy with Jason Gupta;
and Comparative Literature with Jason Gupta.
I X out of Rate My Professor and open Google Images instead. I'm
curious to see if these professors are worth their salt—pepper.
I spend more time searching than constructing my schedules, but only
manage to find professors Rojas and Fineman. Javier Rojas looks a little
like Enrique Iglesias but with a more pronounced nose and darker skin.
Morgan Fineman, on the other hand, reminds me of that guy on The Office
everyone likes.
They're more cute than hot, though. Certainly not chili pepper worthy. I
look, but Gupta and Delacroix do not readily turn up in my halfhearted
Google search. I pick them anyway. The majority has spoken.
 My sex drive is a fickle creature; it comes and goes, like a half-tamed
cat, sometimes deigning to warm me with its elusive presence before
slipping away to god-knows-where.
Fantasizing about professors isn't such a stretch.
Dr. Fields was surprised when I admitted to her that I masturbate. It's
like cutting, it helps take the emptiness inside away if only for a little while.
I wasn't foolish enough to confide to her that.
I've dated before, had sex before. Look, as long as you put out, the guys
will still come up to your door no matter how fucked up you are, although
how long they'll stay is anyone's guess. I didn't like a lot of them and I was
attracted to even fewer. The reasons I slept with them were more varied but
there was always some motive, always to my benefit.
And because I knew that they would eventually leave me, I always
made sure to dump them first. Less likely to get hurt that way, though some
of them said some pretty nasty things. They were just angry that I'd taken
all the power for myself.
The last person I remember fantasizing about in real life was this guy at
Cherry Hill. He was in there for torturing small animals or some fucked-up
thing like that. His diagnosis was Conduct Disorder, the psychological
precursor to Antisocial Personality.
In addition to being a psychotic dickhead, he was also doing drugs and
that was what landed him on his parents' radar. He had track marks running
all up and down his arms because he did the hard stuff. Not pot or alcohol,
or even cocaine, but heroin. Meth, too. He'd try anything once, he told us.
And if he liked it well enough, and if it didn't kill him first, he would try it a
second or a third time, as well.
He was hot, though he didn't really have much competition in the looks
department. Cherry Hill was full of people who wouldn't think twice about
farting in public or drooling, after all. Even by the standards of ordinary
society, he would probably rate an eight.
I knew this guy would probably only hurt any girl stupid enough to let
herself get too close…but I kind of wanted him to hurt me. At least a little.
Bite me. Scratch me. Cut me. Break me open, until I crack and all the
ugly things fly out of my body to drench us both in sated lust. Yes.
 When I touched myself that night I did it hard, the way I imagined he
would. Rubbing at that bundle of nerves until the fireworks exploded in
showers of white light behind my eyeballs, until my legs felt like rubber,
and my nipples were hard exclamation points of arousal beneath my
standard-issue hospital gown.
That was the night I added 'whore' to my left breast. It was my
penitence and my absolution. The staff at Cherry Hill weren't as good at
prevention as they thought they were. It's hard to stop someone who is
determined to cause themselves harm with single-minded obsession, and I
was no exception. I found a way and they had given me the opportunity.
The culprit: a button. I'd found it on the floor just a few weeks before. I
think it was from the front of one of their uniforms. The irony of that
tickled me, that the iconic symbol of their institution—the clean white
uniform of the staff—had provided me with the implement I needed to self-
harm.
I'd hidden the button under my mattress for just such an occasion. It
snapped fairly easily when I pressed it hard against the tiled floor at an
angle. I used the jagged edge to cut into my skin.
Security cameras being what they are, someone rushed in within two
minutes to stop me. By then, though, the damage was done. I'd beaten the
staff to the punch by flushing the two halves of button down the john just as
they came running in, practically tripping over themselves to get to my
room.
“Excuse me,” I said, “a little privacy, please?”
Although my sarcasm went unappreciated, I did them a favor in a way.
Learning that reality sucks ass is a valuable life lesson.
The sooner we're disillusioned, the less likely we are to get fucked
over. Simple as that.

I receive an email saying that the billing statement for my classes has
gone out. Twelve units is a decent course load, the amount required to be
considered a full time student by most insurance companies. I'm sure Mom
and Dad are clinking champagne glasses.
 Seeing those black and white words pixelated on the screen only
heightens my ambivalence; it makes me see red. I'm not serious about
academics and I'll probably drop half my classes before the quarter is
through. Who cares if that means I'm not a full time student? It's not my
money being flushed down the toilet. They can expel me, if they want.
Lots of people hear my blasé attitude about school and get offended.
Like my parents, they think school is the only good option for someone like
me. They always add that “like me.” As if I'm so personally repugnant to
them that I deserve a special class all my own. “I worked two jobs to put
myself through college, blah, blah, blah,” they say. “I moved here from
another country for the opportunities, blah, blah, blah.” Ignorant. Over-
entitled. Spoiled.
I heard these words a lot.
Once the person or persons in question finish their sanctimonious
lecture the inquisition begins. “What do you want to do with you life,
then?” is often the question I'm asked, usually with a heaping dose of
sarcasm that makes it sound as if whatever answer I give won't be worth
hearing.
To be honest, I don't know. I really don't.
Mainly because I don't see myself living long enough for that to make
much of a difference.
Life is a single Roman candle that burns in a single-second blaze of
brilliance, only to be engulfed by the all-encompassing darkness
surrounding it.
I want to be eternal; and that is why I want to die. But only sometimes.
Other times, I'm afraid of the void, and the darkness that it offers.
Being depressed and suicidal doesn't mean wanting to kill yourself
every moment of every day. That's what makes it such an insidious disorder.
Suicide is a fixed obsession but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of
your head.
Rather, it means the world takes on the very cut and dry, black and
white, unilateral aspect of a flowchart. Where all questions, instead of yes
or no, end with “to be or not to be?”
Today, do I want to live or die?
 That all depends.
Have a good day?
Don't kill yourself.
Have a shitty day? World show no signs of immediately getting better?
Kill yourself.
It's just that simple.

I don't want to get out of bed.

I don't particularly want to die, either.
What I want is to go to sleep and never wake up. Again, not die,
necessarily. Not today. Just remain indefinitely suspended in stasis. They
can thaw me out whenever they discover a cure for what's wrong with me.
Or when they develop a new drug that's just as euphoric as cocaine, only
not addictive.
It's ridiculously hot outside but I am a cocoon of warmth in the midst of
the glacial cold wrought by the AC. I half expect snow to start falling from
the ceiling, which I have been staring at unblinkingly for the last few
minutes because it's got a watermark soaked clear through the popcorn nubs
of asbestos-laden plaster that's shaped just like a knife.
Where does the blood come from? It springs to the surface so quickly
when the serrated edge cuts, whereas previously it remained unseen. How
do I know it's really mine? How do I know that I'm not really dead or
dreaming, unless I slice past that first layer of lies to get to the answers
under the skin?
Truth tastes an awful lot like old, dirty pennies.
Two hours pass before I'm able to muster up the energy to get out of
bed. I have to go through all the pros and cons.
Staying in bed:
Pro: I don't have to think, move, feel, or care.
Con: Carnivorous guilt.
Getting out of bed:
Pro: Being able to do fuck-all later.
 Con: Requires getting out of bed.
The cold is ruthless against my bare legs. I hop across the wooden floor
to get to the thermostat. As soon as I shut off the AC, I feel the heat creep in
beneath the door and through the unsealed windows. I shrug off my
sweatshirt and slide my nightshirt over my head, tossing them both on my
bed for later.
My unpacked clothes are still in an untidy pile beside the cardboard
box I opened yesterday. I sort through them and settle on a pair of jeans and
a halter top. I add an unbuttoned chambray shirt to hide my arms. It looks
bright out so I dig my sunglasses out of my purse. They look like the kind
celebrities wear on the street, when they're pretending that they don't want
to be noticed. I got mine for $2 at a drug store. The plastic is so cheap that it
blisters a little when it comes into contact with my sweat, flaking off like
dandruff, but the frames look like Chloe.
I don't feel like showering—and I think I can hear my neighbor in the
bathroom, anyway—so I pull my hair into a ponytail and hide it beneath a
baseball cap. My hand feels slippery when I've finished, like I just dunked it
in a container of greasy fast food. How gross. I slide on extra deodorant,
spritz myself with perfume, and hope nobody stands too close to me.
Unlikely. I've got my bitch face on, and thanks to cherry Chapstick, my
mouth is a crimson slash of rampant disapproval. I look mean. I am mean.
Perfect.

Fielder's campus is still crowded. I thought it'd have died down by

now, but no. Most of the students look like freshmen, running around like
ants cut off from the hive facing imminent extinction. I guess
upperclassmen are sensible enough to put things off to the last minute. I
knew I should've stayed in bed.
A lot of the freshmen have their parents with them. This would be
humiliating enough on its own, but a good percentage of these kids also
have rolly backpacks. Rolly backpacks. Are they that determined to brand
themselves as dorks? Clearly.
However freakish I may look, at least I'm not a dork with a rolly
backpack. I'm pretty gross, though. The sun is merciless and I'm covered in
a drippy coat of sweat; it runs down my back and into my butt crack, pools
in my flip-flops, and makes my armpits feel like a slip-n-slide.
I adjust the brim of my hat to ensure that my dirty hair is securely
covered by the brim. It is. I examine my sunglasses, and a few paint chips
flake to the ground. I snap them in half, right at bridge. The plastic cuts me
but I don't care. I throw both halves of the broken sunglasses into the trash
and try to ignore how naked my face feels without them.
Is this the way Superman feels when he transforms in that telephone
booth? When he changes into skintight spandex and whips off those
magical glasses? What does he do now that telephone booths have become
obsolete relics from a bygone age?
I shake my head and blink into the dazzling glare from the pavement.
Society is crumbling, and as the dregs sink lower and heavier, it becomes
easier for the sparkling bubbles to fizz to the top. For every geek with a
rolling backpack there are ten revoltingly attractive people with great hair,
perfect teeth, and flawless bodies. Like they were put on this earth to make
me feel like a disgusting sweaty pig.
Thanks a lot, God.
All the sororities and fraternities have set up tables trying to
indoctrinate the oblivious into Greek letter cults. It must be Rush Week.
There are more beautiful coeds floating around here than there are on the
backlot of the set of a Hollywood teen movie.
There is a lump of loose skin in my cheek. I tongue it nervously. When
I smile I can feel it there and it feels like my skin is sloughing off slowly,
one fleshy chunk at a time. I might consider joining a sorority but I know
they wouldn't have me. And let's be honest, I'd only be joining for the
parties, the sex, and the drugs. I'm not exactly Miss Rah-Rah.
A man in a wife beater that looks spray-painted onto his abs hands me
a flyer for a Go Greek party. He's handing them out to everyone—except
maybe the kids with the lame backpacks—but I'm flattered.
“It'll be a great time,” he tells my breasts, without exactly explaining
what's so great about it. The party is tonight according to the hastily-printed
out paper, still warm from a copier, and though the flyer does not mention
this explicitly, it'll probably be a kegger.
 I fold my arms, pushing my boobs up for his easy inspection—an
opportunity he takes advantage of—and tell him I'll be there. I'm going for
sugary-sweet, but my nasal voice doesn't really do sweet. But the frat guy
smiles vaguely, even though he doesn't respond. He's already sizing up a
gaggle of giggling freshmen girls, all of them prettier and happier to be here
than I am.
I wonder what he would do if I offered to let him do things to me,
things those idiot girls probably couldn't even imagine. I've seen porn
before. I know what men like. Would he clumsily try to pay me, the way
other men have, forcing me to slap him for the insult? Or would he
halfheartedly offer to be my boyfriend while secretly hoping I wouldn't
accept?
Would he say no?
I'm tempted to try. Call it a social experiment. But now he's talking to
the girls and one of them is putting her hand on his bicep to steady herself
from her laughter, marking her territory, staking her claim, and saying “Ha
ha ha, you're so funny! Oh! Wow! Do you work out?” and I chalk it up to a
lost cause.
Tonguing that little flap of loose skin in the back of my mouth, I decide
he wasn't all that cute anyway. There's bound to be someone better at the
party.

The frat house looks like a Victorian manor that's taken a couple of
knocks with a sledgehammer. There is a whole row of them, miniature
mansions, all identical in structure and facade. Luckily I brought the flyer
with me and I match the Greek letters on the top with the ones of iron
mounted over the garage.
I wear the same outfit from earlier, just without the baseball cap. I took
a shower with soap from the hand dispenser. Now my head smells like piña
coladas and that reminds me of a song, which I find myself humming over
and over because I can't remember anything but the first line, If you like
piña coladas… And to be honest, I don't. I like my rum neat.
Head high, I walk in through the front door. There's a man stationed
there to greet me, but he doesn't look like a frat boy even though he's got
the letters printed out on his shirt. He must be a loser if they've got him
relegated to door duty at a party.
Probably a frosh stoolie who's not allowed to have any fun until he
finishes all his hazing.
He says something to me about coats, which doesn't make any sense
because it's far too hot to even think about jackets, unless he's inviting me
to make out with him in the coat room, in which case, fuck that. I hook out
my elbow and shove him aside.
I want to be where the action is.
All the furniture has been pushed up against the wall for an impromptu
dancefloor. I pick my way past the grinders and twerkers and the dozens of
people too shy to dance, standing with the furniture and checking their
phones in the semidarkness while the light turns their facial features
grotesque.
There is a huge plasma TV tuned to a sports channel no one seems to
be watching. More people on their cell phones. Lots of drinking games. In
the back is a rambunctious game of beer pong. Lady Gaga is blasting from
the amplifier someone's brought from their electric guitar, and I make a face
when I see the ball roll through the dirt and dead leaves, only to be retrieved
and plunked back into one of the red plastic cups filled with cheap murky
beer with a splash.
“Want to play?” someone slurs at me.
“No. I'm overdue for a tetanus shot.”
Somebody else says, “Tetanus? I don't think we have any of that,
though there's Patron and Absolut.”
Want to know the sad thing? They aren't joking. They think they're
being helpful.
“Aww,” I say, “but Tetanus is my favorite brand.”
And when I hug myself, squeezing up my boobs as I look all hangdog
and pathetic, one guy actually runs out of the room to check.
I lower my arms and leave the backyard.
Losers.
 Users are usually in some secluded area, far away from the front of the
house just in case the cops come by to check things out. That's how they get
you, cops. They can't come into your house without a warrant unless they
see something that gives them probable cause. That's why when cops “just
check in” or ask you to turn down the bass, they try to snoop over your
shoulder. They're looking for a reason to bust you, is what they're doing. A
beer can. A baggie of spinach. Anything to drag your ass downtown.
I make rounds and happen upon all the usual party drama. I see a girl
screaming at a boy I assume is her boyfriend, although maybe not for much
longer because she locks herself in the bathroom and then refuses to come
out in spite of his pleading and cursing. I go back outside and sidestep the
beer pong table to find myself at a large tool shed.
I cup my hand over one of the dark frosted windows and catch a gleam
of a filter in the gloom. It's a group of guys and a couple girls, all lighting
up in the garage, talking and laughing, though they freeze like rabbits when
they hear the creak of the door. I resist the urge to roll my eyes at their
paranoia.
“Hello?” one of the guys says. He's using one of those fake-deep
voices, the kind boys in junior high use when they're calling up a girl for the
first time.
“Relax,” I say, stepping to where they can see me. I see their shoulders
sink a little in relief when they realize I'm not a cop. I nod at one of the guys
because girls tend to be more selfish with their weed. “Can I bum some?”
“I don't know,” he says. “What?”
His friends giggle, like this is the best joke they've ever heard. I feel
like they're laughing at me, at least a little, and that makes me mad. “I want
some of your weed,” I say, forgetting to use my nice-girl voice.
He thinks about this, losing the jackass grin. We're starting the serious
part of the negotiations now. Predictably he says, “Do you have any cash?”
“No.” My parents left me with a debit card. That way they could track
all my payments, since my mom and I share a joint account. “No cash.”
The guy sighs. “What else you got?”
“I'll suck you off and let you play with my tits.”
 His eyes nearly goggle right out of his head. “W-what?” he stammers,
like he can't quite believe what he's just heard. Neither can his friends, who
are silent.
“You heard me,” I say. “Want a blow job?”
“O-okay,” he says, then clears his throat. “Let's go somewhere else.
Somewhere, um, quieter.”
Whatever you say, Romeo.
His male friends have begun to hoot and holler as loudly as they dare.
The girls just look at me like I'm something slimy they've stepped on and
had squish between their bare toes. That's pretty rich, because nobody who
wears skirts that short is an angel.
I untie the neck of my halter top with more force than strictly
necessary, yanking it down to my waist. The guy yelps, “Careful!” when I
rip down the zipper of his fly, nearly catching his boxers, and, by proxy, his
cock, in the tracks.
“Shut up and let me do this,” I snap at him, forgetting who's doing who
the favor for a moment. Luckily, he's too high to remember either, and tits
have just entered the equation.
He blinks, trying to focus his bloodshot eyes on my breasts. “Your
nipples are huge.”
“You're high,” I tell him.
“Nice tits,” he says, laughing a little.
“I know, I know, biggest you've ever seen.”
He tries to use his mouth on me, but I pull him back by the hair and
make a face when I see his lips are still in a fish-like pucker. I don't want his
slobber on my breasts and he looks like the type who will suck on your
nipple like it's a fucking a pacifier.
“Keep your tongue in your mouth,” I tell him. “This isn't a date. You
can use your hands, but that's it. Got it? Also, the button-up stays on,” I add
coldly, when he starts trying to pull it off my shoulders.
“Okay,” he says again.
I get to my knees on the floor of the closet and proceed to give what is
a very mediocre blow job. He's so high I doubt he'll be able to tell the
difference.
I look up at him and with a breast in each hand, he looks pretty happy.
I'm not. He keeps squeezing them like they're stress balls and when he
remembers that they have nipples attached he pinches them like he's
shaping Play-Doh. “You're so hot,” he tells me, “so fucking hot. Do you
like what I'm doing, baby?”
I don't answer—can't answer—because I've got my lips wrapped
around his flaccid cock. Whether it's because he's nervous or high I'm not
sure but he can't get hard. Not even when I start stroking his balls.
“Ooh, aah, I love you, baby, suck me dry!”
In some ways, blow jobs are better than sex because when you have a
mouthful of cock you can't make snide comments.
I let five minutes go by before pulling away from him. I swipe the back
of my hand over my mouth and tie up my halter. He looks like a puppy
that's been left out in the rain, eying my covered breasts with a hangdog
look.
“Your cock's hanging out,” I tell him.
He tucks his penis back into his pants with a sheepish expression. “Can
I have your number?” he asks me hopefully, zipping up his jeans.
Hell fucking no. “The weed,” I remind him.
He gives me a larger amount than I expected. Then the moment I tuck
the baggie away in my jeans he whips out his cell phone and asks for my
number.
Sighing, I reel off seven digits and watch him plug the numbers into his
phone with an eagerness made doubly sad by the fact that I've just given
him the number for Domino's express delivery.
I figure he'll thank me later tonight, when he finds himself alone with
the munchies. In absentia, of course. I have no intention of ever seeing him
again.
I don't rejoin the group of potheads in the garage. I don't want to deal
with clingy blow job guy, or have to look at those prissy stoner bitches. I go
to the bathroom that one chick locked herself in earlier while I was cruising.
She and her boyfriend must have kissed and made up because it's empty
now and smells vaguely of sex. I lock the door and stand on the toilet lid to
disconnect the smoke alarm.
I check the baggie in the light, and I'm delighted to see that the guy has
given me one of his rolled joints and one of those cheap Bic lighters. I light
up, leaning back against the toilet tank. Someone knocks on the door. I
ignore it. This is the good shit. I almost feel like a human being again
smoking it. Almost.
“Come on,” a disembodied voice whines. “Hurry up and let me in, I
have to pee.” It sounds far away, the distant whine of a mosquito. But it's
annoying enough that it harshes my buzz a little.
“Occupado,” I shout back, “go the fuck away!”
Some starts slamming on the door. Jesus fucking Christ, they sound
like they're trying to bust it down or something. I've only been in here for a
couple minutes. What if I was taking a shit?
I finish the joint at my leisure, then flush the remains down the toilet.
As it hits the water with a hiss, I can't help but think that there is something
turd-like about a wet joint. My amusement fades quickly. I've got to get rid
of the smell. I check the medicine cabinets and spy an old bottle of Axe
cologne that might not even be from this decade.
I spritz it around a few times until the skunk-like scent of the pot is
completely covered by the musk. Then I reconnect the fire alarm, making
sure it cheeps to show that it's fully functional again.
A line of angry-looking people await me outside the bathroom door,
though their faces shift to confusion when the smell of cologne hits them
like a wall. “Yeah, you might want to give that a few minutes,” I say. “And
don't eat at that Mexican place on campus. At least, don't get the
chimichangas.”

I got what I came here for but I'm not ready to go home yet. I'm not
sure when I might be able to get my next fix, so I want to take this place for
all it has to offer. I wind up in the kitchen and the fridge yields some rum
and a couple cans of Coke, so I mix myself a drink with two thirds Bacardi
and one third Coke Zero and chug what's left in the can like a bro.
 The party is wearing down and people are tiring. Where it was nonstop
barrage of noise before, now there are periods of silence interspersed at
random intervals. All but the most hardcore and seasoned partiers are
starting to express anxiety about how they are going to get home.
Britney Spears is playing now, what I think of as her BDSM album.
Lace and Leather and then, after that, a remix of Gimme More. Songs that
make me want to sling on my leather jacket and high heels and go bar-
hopping under the cover of the night.
I climb the stairs to escape the music and maybe find some more
alternative forms of entertainment, but I must have taken a wrong turn
somewhere because I find myself in a darkened bedroom. Sleep sounds
good and I'm tempted to crash, but there are two people who have beaten
me to it. From the snorts and snuffling that they're making, though, it
doesn't sound as if sleeping is high on their priority list.
As my eyes adjust I can see that their faces look more animal than
human, faces slack with pleasure, eyes slitted, mouth agape. The girl is
handcuffed to the bedposts, and the chains rattle and clank as she writhes
beneath the boy, who is thrusting into her like his cock is a battering ram
and he thinks it is his life's purpose to lay siege to the Vagina Fortress.
It's a pretty small dick all things considered. He's even smaller than
Stoner Boy, who wasn't even fully erect. But then I see that she's got clamps
on her nipples, and when the boy takes the tip of her breast into his mouth
she lets out a low strangled moan. That sounds real, way more convincing
than his idea of nasty talk (“yeah, baby, take it, come on, take it all”). My
breathing changes a little. It's never occurred to me to go in for kinky stuff
but now I want to try it, see if it makes a difference. If it can make being
with someone who is so obviously bad at sex seem bearable than I wonder
what it could do if you're with somebody who actually knows a thing or
two.
As I'm considering, swinging against the door a little as I do so, there's
a sharp intake of breath that has nothing to do with sexual plateau. The two
of them have just noticed me standing there, silhouetted against the light of
the hallway.
There is a beat of silence, during which I can hear the music floating up
from downstairs. Then the girl screams, long and loud. The clamps on her
nipples bob comically as her chest heaves to draw in breath.
 The boy pulls out of her clumsily with a curse, covering his ears and
shouting at her to “shut the fuck up, bitch,” though I'm pretty sure she's
screaming too loud to hear him. His cock shows his disappointment,
rendered even more pathetic by the limp condom dangling sadly from its
tip.
“What the fuck,” he says, “what the fuck, who's there? Get the fuck out
of here, you disgusting lesbo cunt, or I'll make you wish you'd never been
born!”
“Whatever you say, Tiny,” I tell him, cackling when he trips over the
sheets in his attempt to get out of the bed and pound me one. They deserve
each other, him and Clampy.
I escape back to the party—of course, now that I'm not going
anywhere, I find the staircase just fine. I decide to stop exploring and just
chill down in the living area. Someone has put out a bunch of glasses and I
don't know what's in them, but they smell fruity and contain alcohol, so I
gulp one, two, three of them down. I need it, after seeing what I just saw.
After the third glass my stomach and liver stage a rebellion, and I
wonder if I'm going to throw up. The pot keeps me from vomiting but I still
feel vaguely crummy. I know I'd better steer clear of any more alcohol for
the rest of the night if I don't want to get alcohol poisoning, but then
someone offers me a glass of champagne they've just opened and I say yes.
I know I shouldn't, but I've forgotten what the reason behind that
rationale is, and the bubbles promise a lift of the first-degree. I wait for
bliss, but I only feel tired, so I decide to rest my eyes for just a moment.
When I open them, I'm no longer standing, leaning against the island in the
kitchenette, but on the floor, lying on the floor in a circle of cheese dust that
surrounds my body like those white chalk outlines. I don't remember eating
anything but it must have been me because I've got identical orange crumbs
beneath my nails and around my mouth.
The tie of my halter feels loose, like someone made a fumbling attempt
to unfasten it. One of my breasts has flopped out, and there is a crude
drawing of a penis cumming onto my nipple in black ink. I rub at the
drawing and curse when it doesn't come off. Sharpie. They used Sharpie.
Fucking dickheads.
 I make my way back to the bathroom where I smoked the pot. I'm
tempted to smoke more now, but I've got to get back to the dorms and need
to get this dick off my breast. There's a girl passed out in front of the toilet,
with drying vomit around her mouth. I step over her, wincing at the acrid
smell of the puke coming from the bowl, and examine my face.
No dick drawings. Good.
I do wet a paper towel and rub some soap onto the ink. It smears and
comes off a little, but you can still kind of see the cock, even though it's
faded.
Well, that tears it. I go into the tool shed and find the group of stoners.
They're still there, as I kind of expected they would be. Asleep now, circled
around an empty box of pizza like it's a campfire. I fish into each of their
pockets and help myself to their weed, or what's left of it. Then I take a
Sharpie of my own—there were several in the kitchen area, and I grabbed
one impulsively—and draw a big hairy dick on the left cheek of the boy I
gave the blow job too.
I stand back and admire my handiwork. Then I put the Sharpie in one
of the girls' hands and walk back to the dorms feeling almost glad.
Feeling almost glad?
Don't kill yourself.

My digital clock's readout informs me that it's 4:26 when I arrive

home. I don't bother changing out of my clothes or brushing my teeth. I just
pull the covers back, and do a face plant into the pillow.
If I dream, I don't remember.
Five hours later I'm awakened by the pressing urge to pee. I haven't
eaten anything in over half a day but my stomach is unwilling to engage in
a showdown with food. Not after last night's debauchery. I can't even
remember the last time I ate a healthy, well-balanced meal. Certainly not
since my parents imprisoned me in Fielder.
You're going to end up hooked up to an IV at this rate.
That happened before back in high school: I was starving myself for a
guy I didn't even like because we were dating, and because he made a few
off-handed remarks about my weight. After three days of eating nothing, I
passed out in the hallway on my way to senior English.
My parents will gladly tell you that if you are looking for proof that I'm
a retard, this is just one of many examples. They say they don't use that
word, the R-word, but it's a lie. They do, and often.
Always in regards to moi.
I figure I might as well head over to the dining commons to activate my
meal plan. That way, I can have my shit and eat it, too. It's not like I have
anything else going on today.
The unhappy-looking plants in their little concrete planter boxes glitter
with dew. There's a low-hanging mist that shrouds the mountains in the
distance in a curtain of purple haze, but it's bound to evaporate before the
sun reaches its zenith. I can tell it's going to be another scorcher, with the
humidity of a greenhouse to boot.
I take my iPod out of my pocket and scroll through the songs until I
find “Steam Heat,” and then proceed to giggle to myself as Ella Fitzgerald
sings a cover of the hit song from The Pajama Party.
I'm so fucking hilarious sometimes.
I must be getting closer because the smell of food is getting stronger. It
smells like a greasy spoon, eggs and bacon and sausage, all cooked in a
meat-based fat of some kind and left to sizzle for ages. I brace myself but
even so, the moment I push open the doors nausea slams up against me with
the force of a drunk driver hitting a streetlight.
T-boned on Hangover Boulevard like a mother.

Eating is out of the question so I go for a walk instead. Once again, I

find myself in the middle of a crowded-as-fuck campus, but as I get farther
away from the dorms and the classroom buildings, and closer to the
downtown area, it begins to thin out.
I don't have to go more than a few blocks to find a Starbucks, and I
think that coffee sounds pretty good. Sobering, anyway. As miserable as my
stomach is, I don't think it'll object to being force-fed some coffee. The only
problem is, I left my purse back in my dorm. All I've got is my shitty temp
ID card, because that's the only thing you need to get swiped in to the DC.
 Fuck. I'm not about to head back to the dorms. It's nearly ten now and
that campus is going to be packed with idiot freshmen. I don't want to see
any more living souls than I can help. I want my damn coffee.
I walk around some more, getting a feel for the stores that Fielder has
to offer while checking the gutters for dropped change. There isn't as much
as you might think. Tuition being what it is, college students can't really
afford to lose their spare change. Two hours pass before I have enough
money jingling in my jeans pocket for the cheapest thing on the menu: a
single espresso shot.
“It's going to be a hot one today,” the male barista says with banal
certainty as he starts up the espresso machine with a hiss. He looks at the
metal monolith and says, “You sure you don't want something cold?”
I want what I asked for, I think, but do not say. Now shut up and give
me my fucking coffee.
You don't fuck with food servers, though. Not if you don't want to be
ingesting other people's sputum every time you go out. I smile wanly and
shake my head, kind of wishing I could strangle him a little.
Some hipster band is playing, heavy on the cowbell. It's probably the
same artist responsible for the seventeen dollar CD that's lying in front of
the registers, right next to the cup holders and the straws. The female
vocalist sounds like a cat in heat.
I'm remembering now why I don't like Starbucks. The baristas are too
chatty and the music is lame. I bet someone told them that they will make
more sales if they chat up the customers first. Someone stupid.
“Thanks a lot,” I say, when the guy hands me my coffee. If he registers
the burr of sarcasm in my voice he doesn't acknowledge it, though the way
he hands my cup to me, a drop of burning espresso splashes over the side to
spatter the back of my hand, leaving a red mark that won't fade for days. I
don't flinch, careful not to spill any more of the drink.
But my eyes, when I look at him, say, You did that on purpose, you
pencil-dicked moron.
Caffeine is a drug. A lot of people don't know that, but its true and it is.
Anything that alters your brain's chemistry could be considered a drug. The
caffeine kicks its legs like a bucking horse in my bloodstream, forcing me
to walk it off. My head, on the other hand, feels like a floating balloon. I
wonder dreamily whether it will pop before or after I faint.
I have a fleeting desire for a shot of rum to ground me before I
remember that alcohol—and my overdoing of it—is what got me into this
condition in the first place. Alcohol is a drug too, and a lot of people don't
know that, either. My psychiatrist does and has warned me that I should
steer clear of all mind-altering substances.
Like most good advice she gives me, I chose not to heed it. Kicking the
antidepressant habit is a bitch, and I need all the help I can get. It's probably
a good thing I'm too young to buy alcohol or get into a bar. There are ways
around the law, of course, but they are more than I'm willing to pay at the
moment. But only by a small margin. I could get desperate; I often do.
When I went to Cherry Hill they diagnosed me with Borderline
Personality Disorder, which I'd never even heard of before they checked me
in, and which I was half-convinced they had made up just then on the spot.
What does that even fucking mean, borderline personality? That I'm only
part of a person? If so, just what the hell is it that I'm missing?
They were sympathetic and condescending as hell, patting me on the
shoulder and telling me they understood without actually addressing any of
my questions and concerns. Depression, they told me, is just a natural and
unfortunate side-effect. We understand your confusion and anxiety.
Well, sure, because when depression is the side-effect you know you're
in fucking trouble. How could I not feel a little confused and worried about
that, unless being borderline means I don't have emotions either? No? That's
something at least. I'm so glad you understand my situation because I
fucking don't.
I was told not to swear to which I informed them that this wasn't a
fucking bible study group and I'd do as I bloody well damned pleased,
assholes.
You have to accept BPD as a part of yourself.
It wasn't me with the problem, though. My parents were the ones who
put me in here. I accepted that I had problems. It was either that or go
completely hopping insane.
Don't blame others, Jessica. Take some responsibility.
 “Are you listening to yourselves right now?” I asked them. “Do you
hear how full of shit you sound? Accept BPD. Embrace BPD. My mental
disorder does not need a fucking hug. It's not some kid on the playground
getting fucking picked on. That's me.”
Do you often feel picked on?
“I'm feeling picked on right now,” I told them. “This is a joke. This is
fucking new-age bullshit. This is malarkey. What is this? Some radical
experimental new therapy you've decided to test drive on me?”
Calm down, Jessica.
“Go back to your daisy-chain circle-jerks you fucking college hippies.
Spare me your pseudo-analyst bullshit. Because here's how life works in the
real world. People find out something is wrong with your brain. They
proceed to run—in the opposite direction. Because maybe, just maybe, it
might be contagious. Why risk it? We don't really know how the brain
works, right? Crazy could be catching. If you know how to fix me, then fix
me, goddammit! Fix me right now, or else let me go back to my fucking
room, because I'm sick of you! Comprendez-vous?”
They ended my therapy session early that day. I think it's a pretty safe
assumption to make that I was not one of the more popular patients. But it's
true. I wouldn't have checked into Cherry Hill of my own free will; no, it
was my family who thought I had the problems that needed fixing.
As the therapies and diagnoses went on, I came to the conclusion that
Borderline Personality Disorder basically just means I'm everything most
teenagers are accused of anyway, just more so. Promiscuous. Impulsive.
Emotional. Reckless. Sound familiar?
I made the mistake of sharing this hypothesis with the doctors. I
wouldn't do that now, but I was younger then and desperate for acceptance
and approval. I can't imagine that I thought they'd pat me on the head and
give me a cookie, but maybe I did. Instead, the doctors clucked and bobbed
their heads, as if they were a bunch of chickens in lab coats.
They told me, Humor is a common defense mechanism. It's natural to
want to be liked. But you can't revert to humor all the time. Some catharsis
is healthy.
I wasn't joking, though. I was making a serious observation. And when
they brushed me off like that, so casually, I began to get seriously pissed
off.
We frown on self-diagnoses as a general rule.
Um, hello, what about introspection?
Again, they thought I was joking. I got lectured about defense
mechanisms, how they worked, how they were meant to repress psychic
pain in the unconscious mind. “That sounds like something out of a science
fiction film,” I said, “are you serious?”
Jessica, they said, you can't always play the clown.
I screamed at them for that. Just completely lost it. Here I was, trying
to open up and find out more about this ghostly-edged disorder that haunted
me, and not only were they refusing to take anything I said even remotely
seriously, they were rejecting me.
I think the staff may have threatened me with restraints. I was lashing
out with my nails, screaming like a banshee, kicking and punching at
anyone who came too close. I even threw a couple magazines that happened
to be in the waiting room. But even though they made the threat I don't
think they actually carried it out. Restraining patients is kind of a last resort
deal. It's still surprising though because I definitely remember spitting on
one of them. Dr. Hendricks, her name was. I spat right in her face. I never
liked her. She was a cunt of the first degree, the one who told me I couldn't
spend my life playing the clown, and deserved a face full of saliva for
spitting on me. Figuratively. Doctors are far too dignified to spit. At least,
not in public. In private, who knows?

Here and now, remembering my incarceration at Cherry Hill is

starting to get me all worked up. My heart is going like a hummingbird's
wings from the espresso and I can feel my pulse throbbing in my throat, like
I've just swallowed back a stutter. Those fucktards are miles away and yet
my fingers are clenching as though they're right in front of me, and I'm
seconds from strangling them all.
I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the darkened windows, disheveled
clothing and unkempt hair, and think, Jessica Abrahams, you are a fucking
mess.
 I don't realize I'm swaying, even, until some maternal-looking woman
stops me on the sidewalk and asks me if I'm okay. Then I notice belatedly
that everyone else on the sidewalk is giving me a fairly wide berth, though
that doesn't stop them from staring. Déjà vu. It reminds me of when we'd
get to go on outings at Cherry Hill as a reward for long periods of good
behavior. Like, a group of us would go for fast food or a movie. And people
would stare at us, and we would stare back, and for a moment it wasn't quite
clear who was crazy and who was just a dick.
I study the woman who cared enough about me, a perfect stranger, to
violate a few half-dozen social norms to approach me. She looks matronly.
She looks like the mother I've always wanted, not the one I've got. The kind
who sets milk and cookies out for you when you get home from school, and
French braids your hair before bed while talking to you like an after school
special.
I want her to hold me, hug me, and never let me go. I want to drop to
my knees, bury my face in her bosom, and sob. I want to vomit up my guts
into the gutter until all the vital stuff comes out and, with it, whatever is
making me feel this wretched. I want to do all these things but instead I
look her square in the eye and smile the self-effacing smile I've had ample
time to perfect after all these years.
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I tell her. “I'm just recovering from an inner-ear
infection. They just drained it.”
She seems to believe me. In any case, she looks sympathetic instead of
afraid. Most people, when they suspect I'm lying to them or having them
on, they make excuses that will take them as far from me as possible as
quickly as possible. She just tells me she's sorry, that she hopes I'm okay,
and that she's glad I'm not one of those college drunks.
I just barely manage to turn my laugh into a hiccup. “Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah, it's awful, isn't it?”
The woman smiles at me.
It's the kind of smile I almost never get anymore.
I bask in that sympathy because it's nice to have somebody who cares,
even if it's the wrong person for the wrong reasons. Take your condolences
when and while you can, because we're all dying, every one of us, every
minute of every day.
 There might not be another chance.

Still no message from my parents.

What the hell? It's been over a week now.
Are they waiting for me to break first? To call them and apologize?
That's not gonna happen.
I hope they worry. I hope it eats away at them from the inside like a
cancer.
I hope they're sick with it.

The caffeine has run its course and I'm back to feeling like a zombie.
I'm tempted to do some of that stolen pot but that won't help the zombie
feeling, it'll just make me care less about it. I'd have to tamper with the fire
alarm, too, and since all the fire alarms in the dorms connect, that would be
unwise.
There is a list of all the books I need in my in-box. It's a long list, and
expensive. There are multiple columns, offering price comparisons for the
student bookstore against various online retailers. Whatever, it's still pricey,
and I hate reading.
Whenever I try to read a book the words swim off the page and out of
my mind like fish, leaving me feeling muddled and stupid. I hate feeling
stupid, and looking at this reading list makes me think that I'm going to get
real used to that feeling this quarter.
It's going to suck balls.

Today, I decide, is as good a day as any to buy my textbooks. I'm

hoping to beat the freshman crowd and I know Mom and Dad are probably
stalking the hell out of their bank accounts to see if I've charged them or
not. Yeah, not creepy at all.
I pull on jeans and a flannel shirt. It's too hot for flannel but that's how
it goes. I grab my iPod and my wallet. I stop by the student convenience
store to pick up a bag of chips and a bottle of soda before making my way
to the campus bookstore. I buy hot cheese puffs because I like the way they
make my mouth sore. The bubbles from the soda act as the perfect
compliment, like a swarm of sweet bee stings.
I have the printout of my books in hand. They've decided to get
creative, compressing each item on the list into a nine-digit code. Maybe
this makes it easier to look things up in the system, but it's a fucking
nightmare for me. No author, no title, just numbers.
The bookstore employees quickly get fed up with me because I keep
holding up my slip of paper and demanding translations. They could just
write down the actual titles and authors, or even better, retrieve the books
for me, but they're doing that stupid thing parents do, that “helping you help
yourself” thing. It's fucking annoying because they're obviously students,
and I don't appreciate them thinking they can get all parental just because
they're two or three years older than I am.
I think we're all relieved when I get to the last class on my list,
Comparative Literature. But the reading list for this class is like half the
damn bookstore. I stare at the books on the shelf. There's eight fucking
titles. Eight.
Wuthering Heights is the first book that catches my eye because I'm
pretty sure I had to read that in high school. I don't think I actually did read
it, just looked at the Cliff Notes, but there were a lot of dippy girls in my
class who swore by it, even going so far as writing shitty fanfiction about
them and their stupid little friends hooking up with Heathcliff & co.
Pathetic.
I grab one of the newer looking copies, since I'll get more for it when I
sell it back to the bookstore unread at the end of the quarter, and go down to
the next item on the list. 323990823 turns out to be the Selected Works of
George Gordon Byron.
32399045 is Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.
It's the dual language edition, which makes it twice as long and therefore
twice as expensive. Probably twice as boring, too.
Two of the books, Lolita and The Enchanter, are by the same author,
Vladimir Nabokov. I'm pretty sure one of those books is a movie. It's the
one about the pedophile, right? I remember thinking it was okay, but
wondering what the fuck was going on.
 Venus in Furs and Story of O get tossed into my shopping basket
without recognition. The authors have strange foreign names, and I'm
starting to get the feeling that this is one of those annoyingly pretentious
classes taught by an aging hipster who thinks his taste in literature is
superior to all others.
The last book on the list is Justine by the Marquis de Sade, and that's
another name that rings a bell, because that guy is kind of infamous for
being the textbook definition of a sick fuck.
Maybe this class will be interesting, after all.
On second thought, though, probably not. The basket of books makes a
thud as loud as a gunshot when I drop them off at the checkout. I've set
aside my books from the other classes, and I've got a pile the size of a small
mountain when the girl at the register gathers them all together to ring me
up.
She glances at the titles impassively as she runs the beam of the laser
gun over the barcodes, but when she gets to the books for my Comparative
Literature course she does a double take and her face lights up.
“Oh, you must have Professor Delacroix.”
I blink at her. “Who?”
“Comparative Literature Six?”
Grudgingly, I admit that this does sound familiar.
“I thought so.” She nods sagely. “I recognize the titles. Delacroix
teaches the same ones every year.”
How dull. “Did you keep your notes?”
She laughs uproariously. Bitch. I wasn't kidding.
“He teaches Sexual Deviancy and Fetishism in Literature. That's the
official name, anyway, though they've started keeping it off the catalogs. It's
a popular course—at least, it is among those who can actually handle the
material.”
Her tone leads little question as to which camp she thinks she's toasting
marshmallows at. I roll my eyes and start jamming my books into the too-
small plastic bags, hoping she'll get the hint.
 “It's not just the material that puts people off, though,” she continues.
“Comparative Literature is a hard class. A lot of people drop by the end of
the first week. He's got a reputation for being a hard ass.”
“So people treat this smut like it's a legit class?”
“His curriculum has been challenged loads of times,” she says, “but he
always wins.”
I'm already bored, and annoyed that she managed to trick me into an
actual conversation, but my uninterested face doesn't deter her from
shooting her yap in the slightest. She's really on a roll now, using
exaggerated hand gestures like this is New York and she's shooting for
various ethnic stereotypes.
“You didn't ring that book up,” I point out.
Not that I'm a humanitarian. Not hardly. I've shoplifted more expensive
shit for far less motive. But I really, really want her to stop talking.
“Oh, right, thanks.”
She slides the book through the scanner.
“Yeah, so anyway, he's dead famous and he's always getting called
away to give lectures on the East Coast or even in Europe occasionally. He
speaks like three languages. It's really impressive.”
“Wow,” I say. “Europe.”
But sarcasm, like my hints, totally flies over her head. You can
practically hear the whoosh.
“He could teach anywhere he wants, but he chooses to stay here and I
don't think Fielder wants to push him too much, so they pretty much let him
do whatever he wants.” Goody. Sounds like a spoiled two-year-old. “Plus,
he sponsors this super reclusive publisher, whose erotic photography is
considered among the best in the world. I think his name is Nathan Shivers.
He's supposed to be as good as Mapplethorpe.”
“Sounds like a pervert,” I muse.
“What? No.” She looks affronted. “You freshmen just don't get it, do
you?”
“I get that he's paid to read and write about porn all day, and spends
even more of his money financing a guy who actually publishes. That's
pretty perverted. He sounds like he thinks about sex more than a thirteen-
year-old nerd during puberty.”
“You'll see,” she snaps at me. “Maybe. Assuming you don't drop the
first week. I bet you're not even going to crack open those books,” she
derides.
Ooh, burn.
Her shitty attempt to sound sophisticated and adult just makes her
sound like she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. I suspect she
probably doesn't know the first thing about literature, that she's just trying
to defend her she-boner for Delacroix. Whether it's justified or not remains
to be seen, but I can't imagine he's all that attractive.
Still, her attitude has me annoyed, and I feel like teaching her a lesson.
Before I leave the campus bookstore I demand to speak to a manager. He's
older than the students working here, maybe in his mid-thirties. When he
asks me solicitously what he can do for me, I tell him there's a girl at
register seven who is giving customers—namely me—a hard time about the
classes that they're taking me.
I pull my best sad girl face. “She told me I was too stupid to understand
the material. She also said that I'd probably drop out within the first week,
and that she didn't think I'd even read the books I'm buying. I'm…I'm so
hurt. I almost cried. It was awful.”
He tells me he's very sorry to hear that, so very sorry, and thanks me
for telling him. I'll be happy to know that their attitudes don't reflect the
store's attitudes at all, he says. Frowning, he adds that he'll look into the
situation immediately because that is quite inappropriate, he hopes that my
classes go well, and wishes me the best of luck in my studies. I walk out of
there with a ten dollar gift card and the knowledge that I've just made
somebody else's day even shittier than mine. That's quite an achievement.

The moment I get home I throw all my books in the closet, where I
fully intend to forget about them until the quarter ends. The girl at the
register was right about that much, but it isn't because I'm stupid or lazy. I
just don't care, and I hate her presumptions. With any luck, though, she's
been fired by now.
 I plop down in the cheaply made computer chair supplied with the
room and check Rate My Professor again. I'm curious about Professor
Delacroix now, I want to see how badly that girl was exaggerating. His
easiness rating is quite low, a striking 2.2. He is easily one of the toughest
professors in the college, harder even than Bao Li, one of the Organic
Chemistry Professors who, from the complaints about his accent, seems like
he might even be fresh off the boat.
Delacroix apparently has an accent, too, but if it affects comprehension,
nobody says so. No, a lot of the editorial comments are from disgruntled
students complaining about undeservedly low grades or skewed GPAs.
There's a bigger whine list going on here than at a five-star restaurant.
Delacroix's hotness rating, as promised, is also off the charts. At 4.8,
he's one of the most attractive professors on campus, if you believe what
everyone else is saying. I'm skeptical; I've never thought there was anything
sexy about tweed.
One comment reads, “ohmigod, listening to a man who looks like him
talk about sex for two hours straight?? heaven!! why didn't anyone tell me
reading could be so much fun?”
Another comment, from a slightly better speller, says, “His essay
exams are so hard, and I've taken P-Chem. I keep asking myself what the
heck I was doing, taking this class. But then, every morning, when he
comes in to lecture in those sexy button-downs and tight jeans, I remember.
Thank you, God, for putting this brilliant, gorgeous man on earth.”
The most helpful comment says, “Arrogant and full of himself. My
God, such ego. Don't even try to argue with him during lectures or you'll
end up with an automatic F. His tests are in-class essays and he expects you
to memorize any quotes used! Crazy! Also gets hit on like all the time by
female students. Totally annoying if you actually have something important
to ask him after class.”
I remember that Delacroix was one of the two professors whose
pictures I couldn't find online. I try again, opening a new window to Google
him. This time, I actually make an effort. But once again, I don't find any
pictures. Just excerpts from papers he's published, and they do sound pretty
long-winded.
 He doesn't seem to have Facebook or LinkedIn. That's pretty unusual.
Even I have a Facebook. I'm almost never on it, but at least I have one.
Looks like I need to attend his class to see what he looks like. What a
crock. I slide out of the chair to the floor and pull the first book on his
syllabus out of the plastic bag. Lolita. It has new book smell, fresh and
chemical, and I get as far as “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins” before
my brain decides to shut off.
It's not my fault. There's so much text crammed on one page that it
looks black. I get a headache just looking at it, let alone trying to make
sense of it.
You can read fine when you take your pills.
When I take my pills, I'm a zombie, though.
You feel better.
I don't feel at all. Just…dead.
You're not dead.
I know. That's why I have to stop taking my pills periodically, to
ascertain that I can come back. That what they do to me isn't permanent.
You're not dead, you're just a drama queen. The reason you don't take
your pills is because you're weak. You're weak, because you keep thinking
you can get better on your own, that you're ashamed to take drugs, but then
you load up on ones that you get from the street.
You're worse than a coward; you're a hypocrite.
Voices like these are the reason people buy guns and then attempt to
blow out their brains, and the brains of others. They're trying to kill that
piece of themselves that tells them what they don't want to hear. It's bad if
it's not true, but it's even worse if it is. Because when the voices in your
head have a point, when they're logical, then you know you're in trouble.
My pills are back with my parents at home, though, so taking them isn't
really a viable option.
You can always get an emergency refill filled until you can get your
prescription transferred. They usually give you at least enough to last 24
hours.
 I don't cut nearly as often when I'm not taking my pills. Not as much as
when I do. Even Dr. Fields admitted that she thought I was making
headway.
No, she said you seemed to be working on accepting your psychic pain
and learning to live around it. You didn't tell her you were doing that by
cutting and doing drugs. If you had, you'd still be in Cherry Hill.
Hardly any cutting, and even fewer drugs. Just coffee and alcohol, and
I know how much I can handle. Anyway, whose business but mine is it
what I do with my body? I wait, but the nagging voice of guilt is silent.
Convinced, or maybe just worn out.
Fuck Dr. Fields. It's all her fault I have this voice in my head. If she
really cared she would have tried harder to fix me instead of treating me
like some sort of fair weather science project, making me fill out
questionnaires at the beginning of every session that took for-fucking-ever
and served zero purposes. Since when did pyschiatry become on big, fat
Myspace survey? That's what I want to know.
Now, I'm like a half-finished sculpture. From one side, I look finished.
But then you see the other side, sanded down and grotesque, and you
wonder, “What the fuck was the person who created that thinking?”
I'm still waiting on an answer for that one.

OceanofPDF.com
 PART II
OceanofPDF.com
 We are supposed to have read half of Lolita by the time of the first
lecture but, of course, I haven't done that. Like most ungraded assignments,
I take this to be more of a guideline than a concrete rule.
I've been too tired to read, anyway. I lean against the wall with a heavy
thud and an even heavier sigh, causing several nearby students to give a
start and then fix me with dirty looks that I choose to ignore. I went to
another party last night with the intent of hooking up. This wasn't a frat
party, but at someone's house. It was still pretty wild, though, and I was
kind of hoping I'd be able to replenish my dwindling stash.
This one guy and I had sex, standing against the wall because the floor
was kind of filthy and there wasn't enough room to lean or sit. I even got
him to do some rough, hard stuff and it did make it better than straight-up
vanilla sex would have, I think. I was satisfied, anyway, as satisfied as I am
with any fuck that actually results in my coming, but then he ruined it by
getting all butt hurt when I told him I wasn't interested in a long term
relationship.
“I thought we had something going on,” he whined, making what I had
thought a decently attractive face suddenly seem utterly repulsive.
“We did,” I told him. “And now it's over, so don't ruin it by being a
little bitch, okay? Man up.”
But he wouldn't man up. He was so fucking annoying, following me
around the party, calling me a whore and spewing other abuse, and basically
just preventing me from having anything remotely close to a good time. I
had to leave the party before I was ready to, and I hate doing that because
when you're under twenty-one there are only so many ways to score
alcohol, and parties are the best way.
Yeah, I'm pissed. Not the good kind, either, thanks to that dick, but the
bad kind. The kind that usually results in me doing something stupid.
One guy standing nearby looks kind of amused by my silent fuming, if
the smile on his face is any indication. Obviously, it isn't a nice smile if he's
indulging in a bit of schadenfreude, and he looks like he thinks I'm a loser,
condemned to a bleak future.
The fact that he's also quite good-looking is just salt in the wound.
Lately, I've started noticing that when hot guys deign to look at me at all,
it's like they're trying to figure out what brand of pathetic I am. Hitting the
genetic lottery shouldn't give you any superiority over anyone else, and in a
fair world, it wouldn't. But life isn't fucking fair, so better looking people
have an easier time getting dates and job opportunities, and even get higher
salaries than those who are just closer to average, regardless of whether
they deserve it (they usually don't).
I know this is true because I read it in People magazine and they were
quoting a legitimate scientific journal to make their point, so this shit is fact.
This guy over here not only looks as if he feels entitled to superior
treatment but expects it, as well.
I look him over sourly, searching for flaws. There are none. He's
wearing acid-washed jeans that cling to muscular thighs, a polo that is
unbuttoned over a finely shaped throat, and over that, an earthy brown
sweater that matches his whiskey-colored eyes. They're not warm, though,
they're as cold and frosted as a glass served up neat, and dangerous; the
kind of eyes you could get lost in, and not in a good way.
His shoes are scuffed but obviously expensive. Real leather usually is,
and these look like the kind that almost nobody wears anymore. I bet he got
them at an upscale thrift store. He looks metro enough to try and attempt the
vintage hipster look. When he rotates his wrist to check the time I notice
he's got on a watch that's also quite nice, maybe even real gold.
He's definitely not a freshmen. He's lacking the awkward factor, and
most freshmen boys aren't confident enough to pull off leather loafers or
trendy man jewelry. For the same reason, I doubt he's a sophomore or
junior, either. No, I bet he's a senior with a job offer around the corner, and
he's got such financial security that he doesn't even have to worry about
taking it, which will only make them want him more. Like I said, totally not
fair.
I suppose he looks old enough to be a graduate student but graduate
students are supposed to be overworked, underpaid, and exhausted all the
time. This guy looks too self-satisfied and prepossessed. I bet he can fuck
for hours. He looks like the type to have a mirror on the ceiling, to admire
himself from all angles while also looking for flaws to bring up to his
partner to help “improve performance.”
I sigh again, angrily, and he says, “Bad day?”
 Oh my God, he has this clipped, British accent that's like honey to my
ears. It conjures up imagery of smoky London nightclubs and lovers kissing
beneath flickering streetlamps in the rain. This is the kind of man who can
melt panties with a single glance and knows it, and oh, I fucking want him.
I try to think of something to say. Something witty that will impress
him. I've never cared much for the BBC, but now I'm starting to wish I'd at
least watched a few episodes of something. “Hard to tell,” I drawl, because
talking slowly helps me stall for time even if it makes me sound like a total
asshole. “It was pretty indistinguishable from the norm.”
“First world problems plague us all.”
He glances down to check his watch again.
Surely he can't be that eager for class to start. What a dick move,
dismissing me like that. He can't dismiss me; I'm not finished with him yet.
I find myself studying his hairy wrists, quite a bit darker than the dark
chestnut hair on his head. No, his body hair is almost black. When my eyes
swing up to his open shirt collar, I see a few equally dark curls poking out
through the gaps in the buttons. He's got a bit of 5 o' clock shadow going
on, too. I wonder if his chest is as hairy as his wrists, which makes my
stomach go all fluttery and my nipples turn hard.
Men in romance novels always have shaved chests and I fucking hate
that. There's something bestial about a man with body hair, and the way it
chafes and scrapes as you kiss and fuck. It crosses that line between pain
and pleasure, and I love that. Yes, I'd fuck this man. I think I might hate him
as a person if I knew him, kind of even hate him now, but I'm not really
interested in getting to know him in any other sense but the biblical one, if
you know what I mean.
Maybe this is why I struck out with that loser I had the one-night stand
with last night. Maybe it's kismet. What better place to meet a potential
fling than in a class for erotic literature, after all?
He doesn't know it, but in this second he has become mine. I've
claimed him. It's just a matter of bringing it carefully to his attention,
making it seem as if the idea were all his. But in order to do that, I have to
make him look at me and really see me. Not as a person, but as a woman
with baser desires in need of being met. I need him to see me as fuckable.
It's a shame I didn't wear something more revealing.
 “Are you taking this class?” I ask after a pause.
I wish I knew what was so fascinating about that damn watch that he
can't bring himself to look away from it. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Are you an English major?”
An amused expression flits across his face, making it twice as
attractive. “I was.”
“But not anymore?”
“Not for a while.”
“Well, if you're not majoring in English anymore, do you really think
this class is necessary? I mean, you kind of sound like you've been reading
too much flowery bullshit, as is—no offense.”
I suspect he'll find this funny. He seems like he's a big enough jerk that
his taste will run to personal insults. And even if it doesn't, there's always
the off chance that it'll knock him down a few pegs and make him feel a
little insecure. Not a whole lot, but maybe enough that he'll be willing to
settle for less.
People will fall over themselves to please you if they think you don't
like them. It's counter-intuitive, but quite handy. This man doesn't seem to
be big on pleasing, though, because I see his eyes flash with what looks like
irritation. “Perhaps,” he allows, with an edge in his voice. “Or perhaps you
could do with some more.”
Shit. I backtrack rapidly, trying to think of a way to lighten the tension.
“If I wanted to sound like a pretentious ass, I'd quote Shakespeare.”
That elicits an unwilling smile. “Shakespeare is overrated,” he admits.
“I'm not a fan. But what do you think of the books for this class?”
The amusement is back, though the question seems loaded. Like this is
a test of some sort. I'm not big on conversational tests, but I'm pleased that
he's actually participating in the conversation. He has also stopped checking
his watch, too. For the moment.
I pretend to think. “Well…at least I won't be needing my sleeping pills
this quarter,” I hedge.
“You don't like them?” he says. “Any of them?”
I shake my head. “Oh God, no.”
 “You don't find the concept of illicit love at all engaging?”
He is so fucking flirting with me. Yes.
“The concept, maybe. But in literature? That's like ordering a glass of
tap water at a bar.”
The smile he gives me is cruelly knowing.
“What a crude analogy. And what do you know about bars, if I may
ask? You look rather too young to be spending much of your time them.”
Statistics are on his side but I still bristle. Age is a last resort guys bring
up when they're trying to think of reasons to extricate themselves from
being with you any longer. Experience is another one.
“I've spent more time in bars than you have, I bet,” I say. “Why, you
thinking of taking me to one? Because I can look whatever age you need
me to be.”
My careful emphasis serves the double purpose of being an accusation,
and also tapping into the deep-rooted fantasy men have to be in complete
control. Now that I've spoken the words aloud, I realize that I want him to
take me to a bar. The idea of alcohol fills me with a hot, burning need. Or
maybe that's all him, and his hairy wrists, and his strange turns of phrase
that are either British or pretentious I can't tell, his cruel barbs, and his odd
but intriguing passion for literature about fucked-up sex.
That's when I realize that I want to find out. I want to know what
makes him tick I want to know what my name will sound like whispered in
that irresistible accent. I want to tear his clothes off with my teeth, to tease
him with my tongue and to carve my name in crimson ribbons right into his
heaving chest. Even if it's for one night only and ends up destroying the two
of us, I want him.
I am almost certain that he will let me have him, too. He might resist a
little, at least at first, but most guys end up coming around in the end when
the offer of sex is on the table. It isn't as if I'm ugly, either. I may not be
beautiful, but I know how to use what I have to my best advantage. Besides,
once men get your clothes off, they aren't too interested in anything beyond
your tits, ass, or cunt, so any extra effort on your part is pure window
dressing.
 I can even be charming for short periods of time if I have to be. I'm
trying my damndest to be charming right now. It isn't a completely moot
effort, but maybe he thinks differently because his face closes off and it's a
little like walking right into a slamming door, it happens so suddenly and
unexpectedly.
“I'm sorry,” he says coldly, turning away.
My face flushes with humiliation and confusion and anger. I had him—
I had him and then, like water through my fingers, I lost him and he slipped
away.
What the hell happened?
Things were going so well.
Reeling, I try to figure out whether damage control is possible. And
while I am puzzling, another girl comes running up. Possession is inscribed
within each on of her skipping little steps, and that makes me distrust her
instantly. Could she be his girlfriend? She looks even younger than I am,
but it's possible.
Yes, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. She could be
his girlfriend, and maybe he saw her just as the scales started to swing in
my direction. Now he's giving me the cold shoulder for her benefit, so she
won't suspect anything.
She really isn't pretty enough for him.
I study her face, plain but attractive.
I bet she's a cold fish in the bedroom.
“Professor Delacroix?”
She has a high-pitched voice reminiscent of nails and chalkboards. I
look around, eyes wide. Professor? Shit. I hope the professor didn't hear me
flirting with this man I want so desperately to fuck. I don't want him to narc
me out, though a pervert like him might even try to get in on some menage-
a-trois action or something. Though if he's as hot as his rating on Rate My
Professor suggests, that might not be such a bad thing—
But her eyes remain fixed on the man I've been talking to this whole
time and he turns towards her with an ingratiating smile. “Yes?” he says, in
his deep, mellifluous voice, and I think, No, no way.
 I remember one of the comments saying that he liked to come to class
in jeans and button-downs. I also remember mention of an accent. I figured
it would be a French accent because of the last name, but France is right
next to England, isn't it? There could be some mixing. Oh fuck, I think. No.
Please, no.
“Um, my mom gave me a translation of Les Liaisons that's different
from the one on your syllabus? I was just wondering whether that would be
an issue when writing the essays. I mean, do I have to use quotes directly
from the text or can I just paraphrase because I was thinking if I did it that
way there wouldn't be a problem, but I wanted to check with you first,
since, you know, foreign translations—”
She babbles on. I barely register the rest of her words. I am full on
cursing in my head right because I am now certain that this is, in fact, my
professor.
“You need the edition I specified,” he says, with less of the charm and
more of the snide intellectual disdain that he used on me. “That's why the
translator is mentioned on the syllabus in bold. If that weren't important, I
wouldn't have wasted the space or the time. Is that quite clear?”
She flinches, some of the cute little blush draining from her cheeks.
“Oh,” she peeps. “Yeah, okay, of course. I didn't think, but that makes total
sense. I—”
“Since we won't be reading Les Liaisons for a while yet, I'm sure you'll
have ample time to return the copy you have and obtain the correct
translation in its stead.”
The girl nods miserably.
He doesn't seem to notice her acquiescence, continuing in the same
vein, “If you cannot find a copy to borrow or purchase within two weeks'
time, I can suggest some other places you might try—I assume that's the
only reason you did not try the bookstore first, that they are sold out—
however, unlike with the student store, you will not have the luxury of
being able to use your student discount.”
“The student bookstore isn't sold out,” I say.
The girl shoots me a look of pure hatred.
 “I see.” Professor Delacroix studies me for a moment, then smiles at
the girl, who isn't quite able to banish the ugly expression from her face in
time. “Then I see no problem. How convenient for you.”
I still want him. Badly. Even more so after seeing him treat that other
girl so cruelly, and letting me in on it, too, like a co-conspirator. That was
amazing. I've never seen a man so composed that he can lash out with such
careful control. It's kind of a turn-on.
I can't help thinking this is one of those situations where having a
girlfriend would be handy. You know, a female friend who keeps you from
doing reckless things like propositioning your college professors or mixing
uppers and downers. The two of us would dish about our problems over a
carton of frozen yogurt or something while making witty remarks and
observations befitting a syndicated sitcom as she slowly but effectively
talks me out of making a stupid, life-changing mistake. Cue end credits.
But I have no female friends, because I've long since driven them all
away by my flaky behavior or by sleeping around with their boyfriends just
to see if I could, or because their parents outright forbade them to be around
me while I was on one of my downward spirals. And unfortunately, stupid,
life-changing mistakes are kind of my specialty.
Nope, it looks like I'm going to be fucked.
Hopefully, I think, in more ways than one.

We follow Professor Delacroix inside the room.

I can't help but think most girls in my position would have fled from
the building by now, or dropped the class out of pure embarrassment.
Maybe that says something about me that I don't, but I take a ringside seat
up front determined to suss him out.
The front row is pretty packed. I notice a lot of my seatmates are
female, and they are all staring up at Professor Delacroix with such
expressions of rapt devotion that it makes me feel a little sick.
There's a decent number of men in the class too, and while I'm sure at
least some percentage of them are gay, I suspect the male turnout is due
more to the lecture material than the actual lecturer himself, now clearing
his throat and signaling that class is about to begin.
 I stop craning my neck around and pay attention.
“Welcome to Comparative Literature Six,” he says, once it's quiet. “Or
as it's also called, Sexual Deviancy and Fetishism in Literature. If this is not
the class you signed up for, I suggest you leave. Now. Things are about to
get”—he smiles—“rather nasty.”
Appreciative giggles from the peanut gallery.
I fight not to roll my eyes. So not funny.
Since nobody gets up and leaves, Delacroix continues. “Some of you
undoubtedly signed up for this class thinking it was going to be fun. I'm
sorry to have misled you. While I would be loathe to discourage one from
the perusal and enjoyment of classic literature, I do emphasize that this is
not an easy course, and mere enjoyment will not be sufficient for a passing
grade. There will be a great amount of reading crammed into a relatively
short amount of time, and I will keep you very, very busy.”
I bet you will.
“I expect you to do all the work I assign you, whether or not it will be
graded. In addition to daily readings there will be a short paper assigned at
the end of each week to judge your grasp of the material. To do these
assignments is to your benefit, as your two midterms and final—ten and
twenty page essays, respectively—will be based on material comprised
from your weekly essays. Unlike the smaller essays, all major paper
assignments will be graded by me, and I suggest you don't waste my time.
Or yours.”
He steps down from the podium, and I notice that he really is a very tall
man, easily topping six feet. I feel a shiver coming on as he walks right by,
close enough that I can feel the displaced air being stirred up in his wake. If
I wanted to, I could reach out and touch him. I don't, though. Not yet.
“I don't take roll, but attendance is mandatory. But how will I know,
you ask. Simple. By your grades. My lectures contain copyrighted ideas and
materials so you will not be able to find Powerpoint editions of my lessons
online. And since the topics we will be discussing in class will be focal to
your weekly essays it will become readily apparent to me who is a regular
attendee of my lectures and who is not by the quality and sophistry of your
work.”
 Now people are starting to look uneasy. A few people around me are
even groaning and nudging each other with rebellious expressions that say,
quite clearly, I'm out of here. Never mind that the professor is right there
and can obviously see them.
A few raise their hands, though whether out of protest or the desire for
elaboration we don't get to find out, because Delacroix starts the next
portion of his speech with a curious little half-smile.
“I don't take questions. Not now, and not for the rest of the quarter. My
lectures are meticulously planned down to the minute, and you will not
impress me with superficial insights or by parroting my own words back at
me. If you have an observation or comment you are absolutely dying to
share with me, do it by email or at my office hours. That is what they are
for. The same is true of questions, though I suggest making damn sure it
isn't answered in the text or in my lecture first.”
Those who raised their hands lower them looking shamefaced. He
smiles and once again, the effect is such that it becomes almost painful to
look at.
“You are perhaps thinking I am an ogre. You would be correct. But
there is no one better than I in this particular area of study, so I can get away
with it. Follow my rules, numerous though they are, and we will get along
quite nicely. I do my best to put on a good show. Have I succeeding in
scaring any of you away yet?” His eyes scan the lecture hall and for a
moment I swear, they linger on me.
Not a chance, Professor.
Delacroix walks back to the podium. “Now that we've laid down some
of the ground rules, let's get back to brass tacks. Erotic literature. Erotic
literature is a relatively recent phenomenon—at least, it is in the mass-
produced sense. Such materials were not widely distributed until the
invention of the printing press. Prior to that, creating such works was time-
consuming and costly. Examples are rare and highly prized, because of their
limited availability.
“Books of this type tended to be read by small circles of wealthy,
intellectual libertines. When you keep in mind the fact that they needed to
be literate, as well, in an era where most of those who were literate were
members of the church, I'm sure you can imagine just how small the circles
in which these books were read were.”
He picks up a piece of chalk.
“For your edification, the invention of the printing press in Europe is
accredited to Johannes Gutenberg during the mid-fifteenth century. You
don't need to write this down”—this is directed to the suck-ups who are
falling over themselves looking in their backpacks for pencils—“I merely
want you to appreciate just how modern literature as we know it really is. In
more ways than one.”
He writes PRINTING PRESS—1450—JOHANNES GUTENBERG on
the chalkboard. Then he sets down the chalk and wipes his fingers off on
his jeans.
“The printing press made books more affordable and, as a direct result,
easier to circulate. Erotic literature, which had previously been enjoyed by a
relatively small and select target-specific audience, could suddenly be
accessed by a great many people. It went, as you might say”—he makes air
quotes with his fingers—“mainstream.
“As it became easier for these books to wind up in the hands of
everyday folk, religious and political organizations became concerned about
some of the more unsavory aspects of these works. This led to censorship
and the creation of obscenity laws in both legal and moral constructs. As a
result, many of their authors chose to publish under a pseudonym or even
anonymously to avoid prosecution.
“Like other works of literature, erotic literature was sometimes written
to explore the revolutionary, the taboo, or the socially relevant. Many works
of literature reflect the intensely personal fantasies of the author—perhaps
most notably, the Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. They
are the individuals responsible for their eponymous namesakes, sadism and
masochism.
“Other works were meant as social commentary. For example, works
written about prostitution and sex work served the dual purpose of bringing
attention to the circumstances of individuals involved in those dubious
professions. I suspect that still others were written for the sole purpose of
being incendiary.”
 He pauses to draw breath, and half the class seems to inhale with him,
myself included.
“There are only so many books that I am physically able to teach given
the amount of time allotted to us by the quarter system. I can think of ten,
maybe twenty, books offhand I would love to add to my curriculum if only I
had the time. That said, I do have a list of further reading I provide to
students upon request, so if you are interested, please, don't hesitate to ask
—by email or at my office hours.”
It's really too bad I hate reading so much. This is just the opportunity I
need to approach him.
With any other professor I might pretend, but I have the feeling that
Delacroix would see through my act as clearly as if I were a window.
“The eight books I have chosen for this class are personal favorites of
mine, and I find that they work well together for this course. While you
may not consider Wuthering Heights or Lolita works of erotica, or indeed,
even romance, they do contain elements of fetishism and sexual deviancy
that are still pertinent to this class, in spite of their lack of romantic sexual
content.”
It must be close to the time to leave because people are starting to zip
up their backpacks. I see that look of irritation arc through his potent eyes
just before he slams his hands down on the podium with a bang loud
enough to make several people jump.
I lean back in my seat again.
Now this is more like it.
“You may have heard some of the controversy surrounding my lesson
plan. Yes?” He eyes us searchingly but nobody raises their hand, although a
few people start to. “Even my teaching my methods. Considering the nature
of the topics we cover in class, I expect that half of you will become
offended by at least one topic of discussion in this class. As I said, I expect
that; it doesn't bother me.
“And so long as you are able to be offended in a quiet, respectful
manner, this shouldn't even be an issue. The trouble is, most people cannot
remain offended in silence. They must share it with others. If you think you
will be unable to keep your viewpoints to yourself, I strongly recommend
that you drop the course now. Because, and again, this is the only warning
you will get from me on this topic, I will not go head to head with you, or
be drawn into a debate. No. I will simply give you an F.
“And let me tell you something else. This F won't be discriminatory
because it won't be because I don't respect your political or religious views,
and the ways that they shape your personal opinions on sexual matters. It
will be because you chose not to follow my instructions. Students have tried
to fight me on this matter in the past and they have lost. If you want to
argue, Fielder offers several debate classes in varying intensity. I suggest
you sign up for one of them instead.” He pauses several seconds to let that
sink in. “All right, then—class dismissed.”

Wow, I think. That was quite a lecture.

My stomach feels fluttery. It's like I have the flu, but I know it's not
because I'm sick. It's because Professor Delacroix has seeped into my
blood, sparkling like champagne, stinging like poison.
Oh, God, I haven't felt like this in forever.
Those eyes.
That body.
I slip into the public restroom, shaking a little with the shivery intensity
of my emotions. There's one empty stall and I take it, even though it smells
like shit. The moment the latch is in place, I slide my hand between my legs
and find that little bundle of nerves. I'm already wet and my legs nearly give
out as the anticipation of pleasure jolts through me like a shot.
As I stroke, I imagine his commanding baritone urging me on, and
that's the straw that breaks this camel's back. I come with a shudder,
lurching into the dispenser for used sanitary napkins. Oh, yes.
I flush the toilet and exit the stall, leaving none the wiser. I am a
masturbatory ninja.
As I wash my hands, I happen to catch a glimpse of myself in my
reflection. Sweaty, messy hair. Worn flannel. Torn-up jeans. I look like a
devout follower of Kurt Cobain circa 1991. Not an undeniable sex goddess.
Not unless he has a thing for female lumberjacks.
His lecture should have discouraged me, but if anything it only served
to strengthen my convictions. A man who thinks about nothing but sex all
day is surely drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It's only a matter of finding
a fire that burns at his frequency.
I decide to skip Philosophy of Biology. Delacroix will be a tough act to
follow, in more ways than one. Javier Rojas, Enrique doppelganger or no,
just won't cut it. I peeked through all my textbooks and I'm just not
interested in hearing about evolution versus creationism and the wonders of
epigenetics.
I'm far more interested in getting to Delacroix.

Cutting Philosophy of Biology leaves me an entire afternoon free to

do what I want. On the pretense of getting food that will sit well with my
finicky stomach I decide to go shopping. I often feel nauseous in the
mornings so I like to keep a ready supply of ginger ale and saltines around.
When I'm stressed, I munch saltines like they're popcorn.
I should also get a new bottle of shampoo. I think my neighbors are
starting to notice that the soap in the dispenser is disappearing at an
alarming rate. I heard one of them in there this morning pumping the
machine hard and saying, “How the hell is this disappearing so fast? Is
someone drinking this shit?”
That's ridiculous. It's not like it's mouthwash.
If I were on talking terms with my neighboring dorm mates, I might tell
them that there's a special breed of urban rat whose digestive systems have
adapted specifically to eating soap, but I doubt they'd be amused. Worse
still; they might take me seriously and then I would be forced to make fun
of them.
Since I'm not acquainted with any of my neighbors, however, this
doesn't really bear thinking about. I am, however, continually amazed by
the number of stupid people in this college. Are they just handing out those
athletic scholarships these days, or does Fielder have particularly low
standards?
It must be the latter—they let me in, after all.
The automatic doors part for me with a beep. Focus. Remember what
you're here for.
 I grab a plastic basket, knowing that if I get a cart I'll only end up with
far more than I need because the compulsion I get is to fill it. There are so
many racks I find myself looking at everything. Key rings with dangling
mini-Rubik's cubes. Lip balm scented like popular soft drinks. I get the lip
balm because they have my favorite childhood soda as one of the flavors.
My lips are pretty chapped, anyway. I always lick them when I'm thinking,
so they're always cracked.
It begins, I think ominously. I come to the store for one thing and end
up with fifty more, while simultaneously forgetting to buy the thing I
originally went to the store for in the first place. This is another complaint
of my parents about me: they think I'm far too reckless with money and that
I have no concept of value. I think that's a laugh, considering how
expensive those textbooks were, and they made me buy those. Even I could
see that was a total rip.
Okay. Shampoo.
I look around for beauty care, but the registers are on one side of me,
and clothes are on the other, and I see that the rack nearest to me has the
most amazing top on display. Sheer black lace with appliqued black
flowers. Nearby is a short polyester skirt with strips of leather running up
both sides to make it sportier.
I have the perfect shoes to go with it. Strappy black heels that make my
calves look far less flabby than they actually are. They'll go with pretty
much anything, though in this moment I'm sure that they were made
specifically for this skirt and blouse.
Fine, you can try them on. But they won't fit.
I take them to the dressing room. The fitting room attendant hands me a
placard with a painted on “2.” Part of the fun of trying on clothes is a
morbid sort of fun house mirror form of entertainment. You can try on
things you wouldn't be caught dead wearing in public, laughing at how
horrible they make you look. (“Look how fat/sallow/butch I am! Ha ha
ha!”) It's like magic, in a way, because the moment you take off the clothes,
you immediately look ten times better.
But these clothes—the blouse and the skirt—do fit me, and in a
flattering way, no less. Of course, they're a little on the snug side because
the largest size left is a medium and I'm really more of a large. I have to
take my bra off to get the shirt over my chest, which gives the outfit an
entirely new, scandalous context because if you look closely enough you
can kind of see my aureolas, though the nipples themselves are hidden
behind that nest of sewn-on flowers.
The price tag is dangling under my armpit. I examine it, reluctantly
tearing my eyes away from my reflection. Ouch. The clothes cost way more
than I should be spending. My budget is for school supplies and food—
saltines and ginger ale, that's what I came here for—but I have an image of
myself wearing this outfit to Comparative Literature and in that image I am
completely irresistible.
You don't find the concept of illicit love at all engaging?
Are student-teacher relationships illicit enough for you, Professor
Delacroix?
I wonder what he'll do if he sees me in this getup. I picture him with an
erection squashed up against the fly of those snug faded jeans as he sees me
sitting in the front row in my short skirt and see-through top. He won't be
able to get me out of his head, I bet. Even better, he won't be able to do a
thing about it.
Have any of his students ever tried something like this on him before? I
hope not; I want to be the first. I change back into my denim and flannel,
tossing the skirt and blouse into my shopping basket, which the attendant
made me leave outside.
Before I leave, I swing by the food department and grab two six-packs
of ginger ales and an entire carton of saltines. My total comes out to
seventy-five dollars, which is no sum to sneeze at. There's other, hidden
costs as well. The blouse and skirt are both dry-clean only, because the
leather trim on the skirt turns out to be real leather. I don't mind, though.
Seventy-five dollars is a small price to pay to look like a million bucks. I
snap open one of my ginger ales and toast myself as I ride the bus back to
the dorms. It isn't until we're about a block away from my stop that I realize
I forgot to buy shampoo.
I'm in such high spirits I don't really care. I can use the soap dispenser.
My neighbors don't like it, they can call up the housekeeping service and
demand a refill. All I know is that I can't wait until Professor Delacroix's
next class. It's going to be a lecture that neither of us, I'm sure, will ever
forget.

The days pass by as slowly as dripping syrup. I hang my new

purchases in the closet and go about my business, skipping classes by day
and attending local parties by night. My mind is abuzz with possibility—I
cannot wait for Wednesday to come.
When it does, slowly, taking its sweet-ass time, I don the skirt and
blouse with glee. I was so excited I had the energy to shave my legs for
once without growing completely exhausted. The clothes don't look as good
on me today as they did in the store dressing room and for a moment I
consider returning them—I haven't taken the tags off yet—and backing out.
But only for a moment. I'm feeling reckless and I've come this far,
haven't I? I've only been looking forward to this day all week. This is the
point of no return as far as I am concerned.
I shrug on my leather jacket and begin the slow walk to school from the
dorms. My doubts follow me, like trained dogs on leashes. I can hear their
nagging footsteps in my wake. I hesitate before stepping inside the
classroom, struck by something an awful lot like stage fright. Recklessness
is nothing new to me, I have done many reckless things in my life, but this
easily makes the top ten list, no problem. I've never tried to seduce an older
man before. I have had older men try to hit on me, but that's different,
passive—I didn't ask for that to happen. This is me taking total control over
the situation, making my wishes and desires obvious, and I realize now that
I don't even know whether Professor Delacroix is married or not.
God, what if he has kids?
No, somehow I doubt that. He doesn't seem like the father-type. I doubt
he's the marriageable type, either, though if he is, it's unlikely that his wife's
breasts look as good as mine do in this top. I can see he's wearing another
one of those button-down shirts, baring a triangle of golden throat peppered
with those curly dark hairs, and I know that I have no choice but to walk
into his classroom and act blasé.
Maybe too blasé. At first he doesn't even register my presence. I am
wearing the leather jacket over the blouse. Even when I take it off it isn't
readily apparent that I'm not wearing a bra because of the appliqued
screening. Still, I expect some sort of reaction or acknowledgment on his
part. This is fate in the making. Delacroix, oblivious, shuffles his notes,
gazing off importantly towards the horizon as he plans his next words
carefully down to the minute.
I suppose it will be easier to draw attention to the fact that I'm not
wearing underwear. I tug down the hem of my skirt with a little smile.
Unless your thighs are practically glued together the whole time you're
sitting down, it's almost impossible to sit decently in a short skirt facing an
elevated platform. I can feel my bare ass cheeks sticking to the fabric of the
chair, and yes, okay, that's a little gross. I feel sorry for the next person who
unknowingly sits here, but not sorry enough to do something about it or feel
repentant.
Delacroix looks like a god from his podium. The light catches on the
bristles that surround his mouth, make the dark of his hair shine with white
heat. I smile up at him. You wanted to see me, Professor? Now you can. Am
I everything you ever wanted?
In my chest, my heart is a buzzing constant.
“Humbert is an unreliable narrator,” he is saying. “Part of the genius—
and the weakness—of first person narrative is that you only get one half of
the story. In this case, Humbert's. In order to properly read and understand
Lolita, you have to look at what's inscribed between the lines. As with
negative space in art, the meaning can come from what isn't physically
represented in the work as much as from what is.”
Look at me, I order him. I'm here. Look at me.
The scratch of pens on paper mimic my building frustration, and the
crackle and sizzle of my nerve endings as they catch fire like dry twigs.
Look at me.
“Is Lolita asking for it, as H.H. would so desperately have us believe?
Or is he a rapist fulfilling his own selfish desires? A superficial read might
lead one to believe him to be the victim of a cruel and sociopathic child
with a penchant for destroying older men. On the other hand, we know
Humbert is an unreliable narrator from the get-go, and the assertions he
makes for his innocence are chillingly similar to the defenses used by many
perpetrators of rape and assault. That is—that she was asking for it.”
 I cross and uncross my legs in agitation, leaning back in my seat. The
pull-out desk hits my arm, and with a muted curse, I push it back into the
side of the seat. In the corner of my eye I sense movement and I am
gratified to catch Delacroix in the act of a double-take. He has just seen—
something. He isn't sure what.
We have just reached a natural pause in his discourse, meant for
emphasis. But it goes on for a second too long as his eyes linger on my
naked thighs and the dark shadows that lie between them.
There are stirrings as the other students murmur to themselves,
wondering aloud whether they are actually expected to answer the question,
or whether it was rhetorical. Professor Delacroix did say that he never took
questions, didn't he?
His eyes single me out at last. I smile up at him, lowering my crossed
arms. His eyes drift down to my blouse and he bites his lower lip, looking
for a moment as nervous as a teenage boy at prom. Imagination can be so
much more tantalizing than reality, much like the negative space he was
talking about earlier, but I decide to give him something to keep him up
tonight.
I pull down on the hem of my blouse, pretending to straighten it. For a
moment my nipples slide out to press unimpeded against the tautly
stretched lace. Delacroix coughs, clears his throat. There is a flush in his
hollow cheekbones and I suspect rather strongly that he is perspiring
beneath that dark wash shirt.
“The truth,” he continues, scratching almost desperately at the stubble
on his throat, “is probably a mixture of both.” His eyes meet mine over the
lectern and narrow, making it clear what he thinks I am.
“Your assignment for next week is to write a ten-page paper citing
various passages in the book that lend credence to one view over the other. I
want to know what you believe—who is the victim, and who is the
perpetrator? If you choose to write from Humbert's point of view, I expect
you to discuss in addition whether you think it is love he is feeling, or
merely lust. You will turn in the paper on my desk before class starts or I
will consider it late and dock the appropriate percentage accordingly.”
I let my head loll to the side as he talks, regarding the fly of his khakis.
They are loose enough to leave something to the imagination, but I wonder:
is there a slight bulge in the crotch that wasn't there before?
“You're dismissed,” he says, chillier even than the AC going full blast
above our heads.
He has let class out thirty minutes early.
This is an unheard-of event, apparently, judging from the surprised
looks being exchanged. Delacroix said himself that he planned his lectures
down to the very minute—and now he's squandering away thirty of them?
What's going on?
From the look Delacroix sends me, which could freeze Pompeii mid-
explosion, I have an idea. My lips curl into a satisfied smile. I can't believe
it. He is sporting a bona fide erection in the middle of class. All because of
me. And it was so simple, too.
In history you learn about entire kingdoms crumbling into chaos
because of a woman—or, in some cases, multiple women. I smile at
Professor Delacroix, putting an extra bit of swing into my hips as I sashay
out the door. I'm beginning to see just how easy it is to bring a man to his
knees with a few flashes of bare skin, and the whispered promise of hot,
sweaty sex.
Really, it's not so impressive.

That is the first time I enjoy the privilege of having the upper hand
with Professor Delacroix.
And though I do not yet know it, it will also be the last.

I can count the number of lectures I've attended this week on one
hand, and most of those have been Professor Delacroix's. My two
Philosophy classes are equally dull, made more so by Delacroix's oratory
prowess, but I do pop into Introductory Psych to see how things are going. I
attended the first class, which was a brief overview. Brief overview is
teacher slang for 'cram the entire lesson plan into a single class period to see
how many wimps drop the class.' And his plan must have worked, because
the classroom does look significantly emptier.
 Fineman is talking about something called behaviorism, which I guess
is the study of behavior. I never could have guessed that from the title, so
good thing he's here to elaborate for us.
“Behaviorism was one of the most popular schools of psychology in
the early to mid-twentieth century. You might say that its hard science and
revolutionary approach suited the zeitgeist of the times.”
It's really quite sad. He looks so much like John Krazinski, and yet
even that can't hold my attention. Not after sitting in a classroom with
Delacroix for an hour and forty minutes, embroiled in that voice and body
that just ooze sexual pheromones.
“It stemmed from the belief that thought and action were generated by
stimulus-response patterns and were almost entirely behavior-driven.
Remember, behavior is something that can be observed, which means it is
relatively easy to record and test. This was also quite a bit more appealing
than the, um, relatively abstract and elusive qualities of mental processes.
“Neuroscience has made gigantic leaps and bounds in the last decade,
completely changing how we view the brain and its components. In the
twentieth century, psychologists did not know as much about the
physiology of the brain—partially because they did not have instruments
that could, um, measure living tissue in action. The trending view was that
the mind was a black box, which, in philosophy, refers to a concept that can
be defined only by the actions it produces.”
“Kind of like a gestalt?” someone asks, without raising their hand. I
glance at the professor, expecting that congenial facade to disappear. But
rather than looking irritated or threatening to expel the student forcibly
through the double doors for daring to interrupt his meticulously planned-
out lesson plan, Fineman smiles proudly and says, “Very similar. Good
application of one of our previous concepts.”
And the student beams like a lottery winner. Yuck.
Fineman pauses to take a few more questions and comments before
moving on. “If any of you, um, watch South Park, you may be familiar with
the episode with the underwear gnomes,” he says, half-smiling. He clicks
his remote at his laptop to giggles and muted applause—unlike Delacroix,
Fineman is an enthusiastic devotee of Powerpoint—where he has
Photoshopped a screencap of the episode in question.
 I squint a little, because I should be wearing glasses although I am far
too vain to wear them. There are some little garden gnomes dressed in red
and green. They are pointing at a sign mounted to what seems to be a cave
wall that reads Phase 1: Cognition. Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: Behavior.
From the laughter that greets this image I guess this is some kind of
witty reversal of something that happened within the episode, but since I
don't follow South Park or psychology his effort is wasted on me.
I thinking I remember Fineman having pretty good ratings across the
board. The comments were harsher, with some people saying that he
stammered, which could be a little distracting. A couple others complained
that he tended to geek out and go on long tangents that, while interesting,
didn't really have much to do with whatever he'd been discussing before.
All of these things are true, and it's too bad because I'm sure he's a nice guy,
but something about that kind of makes me want to kick him when he's
down. After the fifth time he says “um” I start keeping tally on the blank
sheet of binder paper in front of me, thinking I could post my evidence on
the site as testimony.
Fineman clicks to a different Powerpoint slide and we spend the rest of
the period learning about behaviorism, including operant conditioning (that
is, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment) and
classical conditioning (basically, Pavlov's dogs in action). This actually
rings a bell—ugh, disgusting pun so not intended—and I'm pleased he's
finally talking about something remotely familiar, though I guess you'd
have to be living under a really stupid rock not to know about Pavlov.
As I'm scratching down my fifty-seventh “um” tally mark on my paper,
I get a genius idea. I can use this conditioning stuff to get Professor
Delacroix to notice me during his class. I have to think about it for a bit,
wait for the idea to crystallize, but then my brain does a mental finger snap.
I'll wear my leather jacket every time I have something sexy and sheer on
beneath it, and see how many lectures it takes his brain—either one of them
—to make the connection.
Fineman mentioned that the connections forged between associations
are strongest when they are rooted in drives basic for survival. Apart from
eating and sleeping, sex is one of the most primal, not to mention the most
necessary. I doubt it'll take long.
 It doesn't.
No, it doesn't take Delacroix long at all, and I love the way that he
starts to be unable to take his eyes off me the moment I set foot in his
classroom. Every time I take off my jacket, it's like I'm doing a strip-tease
for him, and its just the two of us, alone amidst a class of hundreds. An
island borne of lust.
I'm wearing a sheer silk blouse and my tightest pair of jeans. The jeans
aren't all that tight anymore, though. I haven't been eating much. I don't
really have the time, and being around food always seems to make my
stomach upset. Actually, my stomach's usually upset in general. I always
feel sick. I don't mind, though; I like the way my hipbones feel, jutting out
of my skin like an ocean jetty breaking through the surf. If I can see my
bones, I know I have some. That's one less lie to worry about beneath the
skin.
Delacroix's one harried TA passes back the Lolita essays from earlier
this week, calling out last names and waiting for the aforementioned
individual to raise his or her hand. He's clearly not doing them
alphabetically, else mine would have been returned first. I wait impatiently,
thrusting my hand into the air when I hear my name. It does interesting
things to my breasts, and I find myself hoping that Delacroix is looking my
way. The TA seems to be. His hand shakes a little as he hands my paper
back, and that reaffirms my new-found sense of power over men, of being
able to bring them to their knees.
On that subject, I took the view that Lolita was asking for it.
Demanding it, even. I didn't explain why, though, since I wasn't interested
in combing though my book to look for supporting passages in the text. She
had to know the effect she was having on H.H. It might have been a game,
whose consequences she was unable to fathom, and maybe she didn't
deserve what happened to her towards the end, but then, they say you
shouldn't play with fire if you don't want to get burned in the first place.
I'm not very surprised to see that I've gotten a D-minus on my paper.
It's circled twice as though the grader was surprised that anyone could sit
through Delacroix's brilliance three days a week and completely offshoot
the point. The grader appears to be Delacroix himself—I recognize his
handwriting at the top—which amuses me, because he said he wouldn't be
grading this weekly essays personally. Clearly, I'm the exception. I'm even
more amused by what he's written. See me after class. His words are written
in scarlet letters, with his office hours inscribed beside them in all-block
capitals.
So he's finally given in. I try to catch his eye. I want a glimpse, a
glimmer, of what made him submit to me at last. He does not look at me,
however, and will not for the rest of the lecture. Out of shame? Out of
embarrassment? No, not that. Something else. But what? Whatever it is, it
makes me feel like the victor, the proud conqueror. I've caused the professor
of erotic literature to get shy around a real woman. I've found him out,
called his bluff, and proven him a fraud, all in the same breath.
I've won.
…haven't I?
Doubts immediately make their entrance, right on cue. That was a little
too easy. I'm no Helen of Troy. I've been flashing my crotch and my breasts
at him, and he reacted the way I wanted him to, but what if it wasn't out of
lust? What if I'm in trouble? What if he's called my fucking parents?
No. I don't think he would do that.
Something tells me that he's too proud to play the harassment card, too
machismo and misogynistic to admit that a woman could get to him by
wielding her sexuality like a weapon.
By the time I walk up to his office I'm all set for a showdown. But
Delacroix already has a student in there with him—a female student—and
he barely glances at me. “Are you here for my office hours, too?” he says,
in that voice of careful disdain. “I'm with another student at the moment,
I'm afraid. You're welcome to wait in the hall.”
Putting me in my place. Or so he thinks. I shrug my assent. Not all of
us can be gracious in defeat.
The other girl smirks at me. I make the peace sign and flick my tongue
between the V, enjoying the look of disgust on her face. To complete the
gesture, I raise my fist and slap my elbow at her, telling her “fuck you” New
York style before storming back out into the hall to compose my game plan.
I lean back against the wall and stare up at the air-conditioning vent.
All the hairs on my arms are standing up. I can feel them bristling against
the silky sleeves beneath my bulky leather jacket. Is it cold or fear? I feel
like I'm on drugs, teetering on the edge of the abyss. One wrong step, and I
could fall.
And part of me wants to fall, just to see if I would survive, or shatter
into a thousand jagged pieces.
My concentration is shattered by a voice saying, “Thank you, Professor
Delacroix.” She practically bows as she backs out of his office reverentially.
“I've never thought of it that way, but I can see what you mean. Thank you
so much for helping me.”
Oh, for fuck's sake. What a kiss ass.
I make the appropriate gesture and then jolt with a guilty start when I
hear his disembodied voice say, “Miss Abrahams. I believe you're next?”
Did I tell him my name?
I'm pretty sure that I didn't.
That disturbs me a little. If I didn't tell him, how does he know? There's
no seating chart and it's a big class. Huge. At least two hundred when
everyone shows up, and most people do.
This loss of control shakes me a little but I'm determined not to show it.
I stride into his office with my head held high, letting my arms swing
naturally at my sides. “You wanted to see me?” I borrow one of his
heartbeat-long dramatic pauses. “…Professor?”
His smile disappears. “Close the door, please.”
I do. Eagerly.
“Lock it,” he says, with that same quiet insistence. “I'd rather not have
anyone barge in.” He arches an eyebrow. “Unless the idea makes you
uncomfortable.”
The words are laced with irony. He needn't have bothered.
Unashamedly, I'm already reaching for the latch before the words are half-
out of his mouth. The moment it clicks shut, Delacroix is out of his chair
like a shot. I'm stunned by how quickly he can move. Then his hands are
slamming against the closed door on either side of me, caging me in.
He towers over me. I'd be a little frightened if he weren't a professor, if
he were some man I'd met randomly on the street. But he is, so I take a
moment to appreciate how well his jeans mold to his muscular thighs, and
the way his button-down shirt firmly adheres to what I imagine is an
equally toned chest.
He's Dela-licious.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing, Miss Abrahams?” he roars.
For a moment I think he is yelling at me for checking him out, but that's
silly. The situation is far more serious and that would be like yelling at
someone for not making their bed right after they've burned the house
down.
I sneak a look at him through my eyelashes trying for coy. “Isn't it
obvious?”
“Miss Abrahams.” His voice is brusque. “I am trying to give you the
chance to explain yourself.”
I take off my jacket and throw it on one of his chairs. “I think I've made
my position clear.”
“Yes, I suppose you have.” He raps the back of his hand against the
wooden panels. “I've had quite enough.”
“Have you?” I look right into his eyes. Difficult considering our current
position. “I've seen the way you look at me. I'm not blind.”
“Nor modest, either. Do you honestly think you are the first to have
tried what you are attempting?”
That takes some of the wind out of my sails. I'd hoped not, no, but if he
can make me lose control like this, I suppose it stands to reason he could do
the same to others. I set my teeth. “I don't care if I'm the first as long as I'm
the most successful,” I inform him.
He laughs at that, humorlessly. The laugh stops dead in his throat as I
unfasten the top button of my silky blouse. Then another. His eyes are
riveted and when he first tries to speak, he makes a sound like a stalling
engine as the curve of my breast is revealed.
“This little game of yours can get us in trouble.”
But he doesn't look away from the exposed line of skin and I don't stop
unbuttoning. “I've been in trouble before.” There's one left, just below my
navel. The way Delacroix is staring at it, I'm surprised it doesn't burst into
flame. “Trouble doesn't scare me.”
 “What about expulsion? I can see to it that you are expelled. All I have
to do is make one phone call.”
I flick open the last button. “Then do it,” I hiss, arching towards him so
that my blouse falls open like a curtain to bare both my breasts. I practiced
several variants of this move in my bedroom mirror, trying to get it just
right. I can see from the expression of raw lust on his face that I have. He
exhales deeply, his hands clenching as he lowers them from the door.
“Fuck,” he says, barely audible. He watches my nipples as they pucker
in the cool air of his office. His tongue darts out, tasting, wetting his lower
lip. I bet he's imagining me in his mouth. If he plays his cards right, it
doesn't have to stop at his imagination.
“Are you going to call the dean, Professor Delacroix?” I circle one of
my nipples with a fingertip. He sucks in a breath that sounds knife sharp,
and I know if I press against him right now I'll feel his cock struggling
against his trousers. “Call him. I'll wait.”
“I'm sure you will, you little harpy.”
His voice is tense. I may have broken him.
Neither of us moves. The air is thick with delicious tension, and I wait
for him to grab me, to tear off what remains of my clothes and put his
mouth on me, hard, before replacing it with his cock.
Delacroix is the first to break the silence, but not in the way I expect.
He moves to stand behind his desk, using it as a barrier to put space
between us.
I feel terribly cold in the absence of his body heat but I'm not about to
fold my arms or cover myself. I'm not doing a thing that might indicate
embarrassment or a desire to hide myself. I put my hands on my hips and
look at him, tossing my head a little. “Well?”
Delacroix has composed himself. In an almost conversational tone, still
a little ragged, he says, “I hope you'll understand if I don't ask you to sit
down.”
“Well, I do mind.”
I plop down in the seat across from him.
“You're very contrary, aren't you?”
“Only because I know I've got nothing to lose.”
 He looks up from my open shirt. “Nothing?”
“I could lose the rest of my clothing. But that's entirely up to you.” At
his stony silence, I shrug and begin buttoning up my blouse. Inside, I'm
furious, chastened and enraged. That son of a bitch. It's all I can do to keep
the tears from coming, or to scream at him in rage. “Your loss, Professor,” I
spit.
“What do you want from me, Miss Abrahams?”
“I want you.”
“But why?” he wonders aloud. “Power? To have an older man wrapped
around your finger? A better grade?” Delacroix looks at me sharply. “You
are in danger of failing my class, you know.”
“I'm not here to discuss my grade.”
“I gathered.”
Another pause.
“I want you out of my class, Miss Abrahams. I'd prefer that you leave
of your own volition, though I will remove you myself if you force my
hand. You are an impediment to those who are actually there to learn, and I
won't stand for that.”
“I don't give a fuck about your students.”
“Yes, it's quite evident where your school of interest lies,” he says,
rather nastily. I should feel irritated. I am a little, that barb was sharp. But
I'm proud of him for being catty and not taking my shit the way so many
other men have. Delacroix won't let himself be pushed around. I like that.
Smoothing down the front of my shirt, I say, “Are you filing a report
against me to the dean or not?”
“I should.”
“But?”
The ensuing smile is chilly. “My graduate students would tell you that I
am quite the contrarian myself. One is never too old to have a rebellious
streak, no matter how…inconvenient.”
“How old are you, Professor?”
“Old enough to know better.”
“That isn't an answer,” I point out.
 “Leave my class, Miss Abrhams. I mean it.”
“Why would I want to do that?” I ask, leaning forward. “Wouldn't you
miss me?”
He chooses his words carefully. “Because if you leave voluntarily, it
will be easier to assume plausible deniability if we are ever discovered.”
If we are ever discovered.
Oh, how those words affect me.
“So you do want me.”
“It appears as though I have no choice in the matter. You are nothing, if
not persistent.” He crosses his legs on the desk. “And the only way to get
rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Or so they say.”
“Who says that?”
“Oscar Wilde. Haven't you ever read The Picture of Dorian Gray?”
I shake my head. “Is he erotic literature, too?”
Delacroix sighs. “You must read Wilde. He was a brilliant man, and a
wise one, with many cuttingly astute observations about the world that were
far beyond his time. He also said: 'Everything in the world is about sex
except sex. Sex is about power.'”
I have to repress a shiver at his sheer intensity. Delacroix's, that is. Not
Wilde's, though from the sound of those quotes, it seems as if the two of
them could be cut from the same seductive cloth.
“Do you agree with him?”
“I do. Immensely. I thought that was clear.”
He looks at me sidelong through those cold brown eyes. Lust swirls in
their depths, and so does something else. Something darker, that lurks in
their dregs. I desperately want to know what it is.
“You are dismissed, Miss Abrahams. I have no further use for you at
the moment, though I trust you will take our conversation to heart.”
Fuck my heart. Our conversation went straight between my legs, where
it rocked me, and shattered me, as if it were the world's best multiple
orgasm.
I nod, because this is the safest option. If I spoke now, I might say
something stupid.
 “That will be all then. Please leave the door open on your way out, if
you will.”
“That's it?” I ask incredulously. He's dismissing me like a whore, which
I find kind of thrilling. But I would have liked to have been used like one,
first.
“I expect to see notification that you have dropped my class in my in-
box by tomorrow afternoon. Three o' clock, precisely. No later. No
exceptions. Otherwise, this conversation never took place and this will be it.
Am I making myself quite clear?”
Crystal.
As I'm leaving, he says, softly, “I do hope you know what you're
getting into, Miss Abrahams.”
His voice will haunt my dreams tonight.

I drop out of his class the moment I get home.

Of course, this takes my total units for this quarter from 12 to 9, which
means I am no longer in good academic standing. I will have to take 17
units or more next quarter to make up for the deficit.
At least, this is what the error message on my student account settings
informs me. Not that I care.
I click the stupid “agree” button that pops up at me, without reading
any of the crap in the dialogue box. It's all a bunch of bullshit anyway. All
that matters is that I have managed to drop successfully.
Now the fun can really begin.

Three days after dropping out of Comparative Literature, I receive an

email from an address that I don't recognize. My email provider has
helpfully marked it as spam because there is nothing written in the subject
line, and there is nothing written in the body apart from a date, a time, and a
location.
But I think I know who it is from.
Oh, yes, I think I have a pretty good idea.
 I smoke the last of my pot stash before meeting him, in order to calm
my fluttering nerves. I smoke in the shower with the water running, cupping
my hand around the joint to keep it from getting wet.
All the scars on my arms and legs seem to rouse and itch at once,
stirring up years of bitter history. All those memories of fucked-up angst
and stupidity. I scratch at my dampening sleeves roughly, in an attempt to
shut them up.
The address Delacroix gave me takes me to a field. All the grass is
dead, the color and texture of straw from the dry, sweltering heat. Across
the field is a gas station and a row of old stores that look like they're leaning
against each other for support. This is an older part of town, I'm guessing.
Not exactly on the wrong side of the tracks, but definitely next-door to it. I
loop my thumbs through the belt loops of my skirt and eye one of the
cigarette shops, wondering if I have time to buy a pack.
The crunch of gravel makes me turn my head swiftly in the other
direction as a Mercedes pulls up to the curb. The glossy black surface
gleams darkly under the light from the setting sun, and it reminds me of a
shark gliding through the deep in search of prey. I guess that's me. I'm the
prey.
The window rolls down and I recognize Professor Delacroix in the
driver's seat, but only barely—he's wearing a rather conspicuous pair of
Marc Jacobs sunglasses that cover nearly half his face.
“Get in,” is all he says. It's all he has to say; his voice says so much
more.
Getting in is probably one of the stupider things I've done in my life,
but I do it anyway. It's like a scene from a movie. I'm involved but also
detached. Another item in a steadily growing catalog.
The passenger door shuts behind me as I slide in one leg at a time to
keep from flashing him in my skirt. Almost immediately I hear the thunk of
the child safety locks being activated. I look at him nervously and clear my
throat. “Professor—?”
“Don't talk.”
I know I should feel scared—like maybe at the end of this trip there's a
shovel and an unmarked grave—but I also feel like anything could happen,
in a good way. Like I said, stupid. It's the middle name my parents forgot to
give me.
We drive on in silence unbroken by music or words. There are fewer
buildings now, mostly ranch-style houses, and the spaces between them are
growing wider by the minute. Delacroix parks in a pullout just outside one
of these houses. It's surrounded by cypress trees that throw the car into
deep, cool shadow.
He takes off his sunglasses very deliberately and tosses them into the
backseat. He turns off the ignition and folds up the retractable cup holder
that has served as a barrier between us this whole time.
Not anymore.
I open my mouth again—“Professor”—cutting into a yelp when he
yanks me back by the hair, fisting his hand into my dark curls to silence me
with a rough, thorough kiss. He yanks my jacket behind my shoulders to
pinion my arms behind my back, simultaneously forcing my spine to arch
against his body. I can feel his erection, and shudder violently.
“I told you not to talk.”
I snort air through my nose, struggling a little in my surprise. I didn't
think he'd be so rough. Delacroix slams me up against the glass window
with a growl, and I feel a wave of lust so intense that it is nearly blinding in
its intensity. I feel moisture between my legs. I'm half-afraid someone will
see us, but the windows of his car are tinted. Then my fears veer towards
the opposite direction: that perhaps nobody is around to see us at all.
“Professor,” I choke, around his probing tongue.
“Alexander.” He pulls away from me, tucking a few strands of hair
behind my ear. His voice when he speaks again is a sultry hiss. “Call me
Alexander.”
I nod my agreement.
He bites my lower lip, catching it between his teeth and sucking it hard
for a moment before freeing me and moving down my body to subject my
throat to the same treatment. His hand has migrated from my hair to my
thighs. I feel his fingers splay over my skin possessively, sliding up and
down the length of my leg, moving higher each time, until he's teasing
beneath the hem of my skirt.
 A low moan escapes me when his thumbnail grazes the outer edge of
my labia, promising pain and even greater pleasure. He traces through the
slick folds, watching my face as greedily as I undoubtedly watched his in
his office. “No underwear,” he says, and I slowly shake my head. A frisson
of deep desire blossoms within me, unfurling hot, silky petals of spine-
tingling sensation. This is punishment, I realize. Punishment for almost
causing him to lose control.
Casually, he brushes his other hand over the front of my blouse,
smiling a wolf-like smile of satisfaction when he feels my nipples pressing
against the thin fabric. “No bra, either, it seems.” He rubs one between his
fingers, and the pads of his fingers feel rough even through the slippery
material. “You are a very bad girl, Miss Abrahams.”
“Oh yeah?” I pant, very much aware of his other hand. He's stroking
the outside of my opening, but not where I need him to touch. No, not even
remotely close. I close my eyes and draw in a shaky breath when his
knuckle runs around the perimeter of those nerves, and buck against his
hand. In a throaty voice I do not recognize as my own, I ask him, “How bad
do you think I am, Alexander?”
He laughs, delighted. “You could be a specter from one of the books in
my class.” He lets the tip of his finger enter me, just for a moment, and my
spine melts like hot glue when he begins to stroke my clit. “You are a
manifestation of every man's fantasy. The guileless wanton whose lust
knows no limits, whose willingness no bounds.”
“Is that…is that your fantasy, Professor?”
He yanks my blouse aside in response, deftly undoing the buttons with
his free hand. He flicks his tongue around my aureola, raising goosebumps,
before taking the tip of my breast into his mouth. With the fingers of his
other hand he is stroking, squeezing my clit, and I arch against the seat. I'm
unable to get comfortable, because I'm all tangled up in my seat belt and the
sleeves of my coat.
“I wanted to fuck you right where you sat in the middle of my lecture
hall. My students could watch for all I cared as long as it meant that you
were mine.”
“Oh my God,” I choke, as my nipple pops free from his mouth, and he
blows cool air on the skin, as wet and glistening as I'm sure I am between
my legs.
He bares my other breast.
“Do you know what you have been doing to me with your teasing,
Miss Abrahams? I have never wanted to claim a woman as much as I have
you. Thoroughly. Ruthlessly. Until no inch of you is left untouched.” He
takes the nipple between thumb and forefinger, twisting sharply. I let out a
hoarse cry and feel my lower body constrict with just as much force as the
warmth drips from my lower belly like golden beads of honey under his
careful ministrations. Yes.
“When you came into my office it was all I could do to keep myself
from flinging you to the floor and taking you there. My God. I have had
female students approach me before but never with such meticulous, cold-
blooded calculation. My cock has not been subjected to such abuse since I
first discovered the joys of self pleasure.”
He laves apologetic kisses over my bruising skin, and my breathing
becomes hitched, both from the sensations and from the mental image of
him pleasuring himself with hurried, desperate force.
I wonder, did he make himself come in his office?
How long did he wait until after I'd left?
If I had stuck around, with an ear to the door, would I have heard his
soft cries of pleasure.
“My, look at you. I've never seen such a display. You are a picture. You
look and sound as if you are about to come. Are you about to come?”
I can barely manage to nod. My hips are moving faster now, in tandem
with his long fingers as they slide in and out of me the way I wish his cock
would. But then he stops. He stops everything, and I mewl in protest,
staring at him through eyes that feel glazed.
“Beautiful,” he says, drinking the sight of me in.
When I squeeze my thighs together, shimmying back and forth to
provide enough stimulation to my cunt to keep myself plateaued until I can
free myself from my fucking jacket, Delacroix grabs me by the arms to
keep me in place. “None of that.”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
 “There is no problem, Miss Abrahams. I don't want you to come,” he
says silkily.
“Please.”
“Now you beg for mercy? You will find none with me. I don't think
you realize what exactly you've signed up for, but you will. I'll have you
begging soon enough, but when you do, it won't be for mercy.”
The silence is broken only by my ragged breathing as I come down. I
curse at him, but he waits me out. “Do you enjoy rough sex, Miss
Abrahams?”
How dare he talk to me about sex.
“You son of a bitch.”
He brushes his lips over mine, laughing when I try to bite him.
“Feisty,” he says approvingly.
“Is that your way of wriggling out of foreplay?”
“Oh no. I enjoy many forms of play.” He watches my breasts as my
breathing hitches. “Especially when I can serve pain along with pleasure.
Denial of sexual gratification is just one facet of this glittering blood ruby.”
I shudder. “You must be cramping a little.”
“Fuck you. You're a sadist, then. Like that guy. The one on the list of
books you said was epinimous.”
“Eponymous,” he corrects me. “Yes. I am fond of de Sade's work,
though it is a bit rough and riddled with purple prose. He languished in his
fantasies. That much was obvious. Hmm. That reminds me. I still expect
you to read every book on my syllabus. Even though you are no longer in
my class, as per our agreement, they will still be of use to you. They will
tell you what I am about.”
“You're assigning me homework before having sex with me?”
“Don't mistake me. I want you. You are what they call a tease. I don't
like that, and I intend to make you fully aware of my displeasure by fucking
you senseless and subjecting you to all kinds of stimulation that will make
your tender young body shiver and writhe for my touch, and mine alone.
Sometimes it will be in pain, sometimes in pleasure, but always, always
with passion.
 “I think you could satisfy me, Miss Abrahams. I want you to. But you
will have to be willing to endure my readings, in addition to bearing the
brunt of my wicked desires. Depending, of course.”
“Depending on what?”
“How badly you want to please me.”
“What makes you think I want to please you?”
He looks me straight in the eye. “Why else are you here? You have
shown me what you have to offer, Miss Abrahams, and I have seen; and I
accept.”
His eyes are hot, promising fire that scorches and sears with a burning
so sweet that it borders on ecstasy. I recall for a moment that girl in the frat
house with the clamps on her nipples. I shiver a little, and like a wolf,
Delacroix pounces.
“It can be a beautiful thing, pain. Dangerous. Addictive. It's like a drug,
sometimes. A rush. Yes, you understand,” he adds, when my face lights up.
“The thrill that comes from toeing the line.”
His teeth close lightly over my nipple and I shiver violently at the
torment he creates with his skillful mouth and tongue. It makes me wonder
what he can do with the rest of that powerful body. I'm dying to find out.
“Are you going to fuck me now?”
He pauses only long enough to say, “No.”
I groan. “For fuck's sake, then. When?”
“I want to take you to a club I know in the city first,” he says, the
words muffled by my breast. “It has a BDSM dungeon where they practice
edge play.”
“What is edge play?”
“Proof that the human imagination has no limits when it comes to
sexual gratification and pleasure, Miss Abrahams. The pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow.”
He seals an open-mouthed kiss against the nipple, leaving a ring of
saliva that glitters very faintly in the lights from the street. I am acutely
aware of his breath on my damp skin. My other nipple hardens, and I can
feel the skin of my breast prickle with anticipation. I want him to take me
into his mouth. I want him to tear off my clothes and fuck me until I can't
think.
Without lifting his head, he raises his eyes to regard the expression on
my face. It seems to satisfy him because his lips curve into a sinful smile as
he fastens the two middle buttons, covering my breasts but leaving my
collarbones and belly bare.
I want him.
I want him so badly that it aches.
“You are not to touch yourself. Not until we go to the dungeon. Once
there, we will look at everything. If you are not too shaken by the evening's
end we will make arrangements and I will be the one to bring you pleasure
—and pain. Otherwise, you are free from any obligations and can do as you
will.”
“That isn't fair,” I rasp.
“You should have thought of that before you wrote the rules of this
game. Do you think those little outfits of yours were fair play?” He draws a
circle around my navel with the tip of one finger. “Flashing your breasts at
me. Flashing more. Well, now it's my turn, Miss Abrahams and I want you
to see everything with clear eyes as I lead you into temptation.”
He kisses me again, and I taste his conviction, as dark and silky as red
wine. My eyes slip closed, and he lets me sink back against the seat.
“Don't look anything up. I want you to be surprised. Not afraid. Well,
perhaps a little afraid, but only as much as I choose to make you. Edge play
is often portrayed in an unfavorable light. You might find yourself…
intimidated.”
“I kind of want to see what this is all about.”
“You will,” he assures me. “When I take you to the city. Not before.
Don't go tasting from the tree of knowledge prematurely, Miss Abrahams.
You may find its fruit is far too bitter for your liking.”
No good ever came from ordering a woman not to do something. Just
look at Eve, or Pandora, or any female character in any fairytale ever.
He should know better than to try that with me.
“Okay, Alexander.” As he pulls my jacket back up to my shoulders
where it belongs, I kiss him again.
 “I promise.”
I lie.

Edge play is a subdivision of BDSM. Normal BDSM employs

consensual, safe, and sane practices (CSS). The thrill of edge play comes
from putting both safety and sanity at risk, and as a result participants get
high off the resulting chemicals produced by their bodies to ease the
psychological trauma. Endorphins from pain, adrenaline from fear. Because
of this, the article I'm reading informs me, edge play can be dangerous,
even deadly, if practiced incorrectly.
Beads of sweat dot my forehead and the skin beneath my armpits.
There is a strange clenching in my belly. I'm nervous, light-headed.
Adrenaline from fear, I think. Dizzied, I perform an image search next.
Immediately, I am greeted by scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a
horror movie. Clearly, these images are taken from porn or professional
studios, but that makes them no less gruesome. Bruised, and bleeding flesh.
Flesh bound by nylon, hemp, and leather straps. Suspension from piercings.
Genitals studded with metal, and piercings with slender chains. Nipples
impaled by sharp needles. Hot wax the color of blood melting across naked
thighs. One picture shows a man in a slave collar being fucked from behind
while the faceless man behind him hooks an arm around his neck and
covers his mouth with a free hand. That one I know—auto-erotic
asphyxiation.
For a moment, I wonder how you would even say the safe word if
you're in the middle of being choked to death. If edge play even has a safe
word. But then what if something becomes too much? I look at the pictures
again and feel a chill. It's nightmarish.
It is a lot to take in.
I blow off my classes for the next few days with the intent of putting
my mind at ease. Instead I spend all day asleep, and all night awake haunted
by the imagery on my computer screen. I search beneath the loose board in
the bed frame, lifting up the mattress. I hope that there's a little bit of pot
left from my stash but I've been checking back for days and like all the
other occasions before, I end up disappointed.
 I binge in the dining commons instead, eating six plates of food that I
just end up throwing up again. Out of guilt, out of nausea, out of a general
illness I can't put into words but that rises up like a monster from the deep
whenever food enters the equation, and, by proxy, my belly.
I check my email constantly. It's a total one-eighty from before, when I
was only receiving messages from the school. I'd been neglecting my email
for days on end, and now I'm paying the price. I curse as my laptop lags,
stalling, as the 208 messages in the queue flood my in-box. None of them
are from Alexander. No, they are all about courses, deadlines, events.
Various memos and reminders for things I don't care about, and never will.
FU, I think. I delete all of them and it feels good. Just press
CTRL+DEL, hold them down in sync, and everything disappears like
magic. I wish more things in life were like that. My life would certainly be
a whole lot better if it came with a mass-delete option. Maybe I'd even be
able to get some sleep at night.
But then again, on second thought, maybe not.

Days go by without word from Professor Delacroix. I mean—

Alexander. For someone so eager, he really is taking his sweet-ass time.
My body feels raw.
I want to masturbate, but denying myself feels good in a way I didn't
anticipate, too. I keep picturing him, watching me as I obtain my long-
denied release. In these fantasies, he is using his mouth on me while
touching himself, teasing me through the clothing before tearing them off
with his perfect teeth.
I consider sending Delacroix an email reminding him of our
engagement. He has my address because he's contacted me before, but I'm
wondering now if he deleted it from his in-box to remove the evidence. I
still don't know if he's married or single, and if he's living with someone it's
possible she goes through his emails. I would, if it were me.
I don't like the idea of him living with someone else, though. I'd rather
believe he sent it from the school computer and deleted it from there. Since
I'm no longer in his class roster, he can't look me up. Not easily, though my
email is public.
 If he were determined enough, he could find it.
If I did drop him a line, it would serve the dual purpose of giving him
my email address again, too, just in case he's lost it. But I don't want to look
clingy and pathetic, especially not if he's changed his mind.
Why would he, though? There was lust in his dark eyes when he
looked at me. I try to think back to what happened in his car, to remember
what we said to each other and whether anything could have possibly been
misconstrued, but I'm blindsided by memories of the way his mouth felt on
my body as he kissed and licked and teased me to oblivion.
The memory makes my mouth dry and my nipples feel raw. I can feel
them chafing against my bra as I prowl around my dorm room, my belly
clenching, moisture between my legs.
I search beneath the mattress again. I have no pot left. Same as the last
five times I've checked. Damn. It looks like I might have to cope with
reality the old-fashioned way. Waiting it the fuck out.
By Friday, I am a wreck.
Several parties have come and gone. I would have gone to them, if only
to restock my stash and maybe get a drink or two, but I don't. Because I
might hear from Professor Delacroix and I don't want to miss his invitation,
and because I usually end up trading sex for drugs at these things.
Technically, Delacroix only told me not to pleasure myself, but I have the
feeling that sex in general falls under that whole umbrella.
This could be difficult. Fidelity doesn't come natural to me. I don't like
putting myself out on a limb for someone else. Staying faithful to a single
person opens you up to getting hurt.
Unless you're the one who makes the first move.
Guess I'll just have to beat him to the punch, then.
Except it looks as though he might already have.
On Friday, just when I half-convinced myself that I am never going to
see nor hear from Professor Delacroix again, I receive another one of those
emails from an anonymous sender—different address, this time—
instructing me to meet him at the same place before. Only, after dark.
He actually writes, “See you after dark,” and something about the way
that sentence is constructed seems positively weighted with sinister
promise. It's like he's a vampire, extending his hand with the promise of
leading me into twilight debauch.
Obviously, being who I am, I accept.
I am not sure what the dress code for a BDSM code is. Black, probably.
I wear the black lace shirt that caught his interest that first day, and which
I'm sure will again, with a pair of dark jeans that have leather laces up the
sides. My mother hates them, thinks they're slutty, which is part of the
reason I got them in the first place. Since she wouldn't buy them from me, I
stole them a few days later while she was out running errands. The rush
from stealing was almost as good as getting the jeans.
I put on some lipstick, too, which I immediately wipe off because it
makes me feel slutty. Then I laugh bitterly, because it's almost too sad. I
suck boys off for weed and flash my tits at my teachers, but it's red lipstick
that makes me feel like a whore.
There's logic for you.

The black Mercedes pulls up half past the hour, fashionably late. The
door opens with a muted sound that nonetheless echoes the thud of my heart
against my chest as I see him. Oh my God. He's wearing tight leather pants
that cling to his firm thighs so closely that it's as if he's slicked them in
dark, glistening oil. His shirt is white, plain, the type of thing he might wear
to lecture—except it's half-unbuttoned, to show his dark body hair. He looks
like a pirate from the cover of a romance novel, or maybe a sex god from
the wrong side of the tracks. My brain all but melts with lust, as he slings an
arm around the passenger seat, bracing himself to push open the door wider.
His whiskery-colored eyes slide over me like syrup to coat me in
lustful approval as sticky-sweet as sugar. I can feel the soft press of my
nipples against the blouse, and Delacroix licks his lips as his gaze drops to
my breasts. “I'm beginning to like that shirt,” he says conversationally,
“now that I know that the fruits which lie beneath it are no longer out of
grasp, like Tantalus and his hanging grapes.”
“Tantalus?”
“From Greek mythology. The patriarch of the cursed House of Atreus.
He killed and cut up his son, baking him into a feast for the gods. As
punishment, he was banished to the underworld to stand in a shallow pool
that receded when he attempted to quench his thirst, surrounded by grapes
that would elude his grasp when he tried to satisfy his hunger.”
The hunger in his eyes slides over my skin like soft, rough velvet. I
want him to touch me, and for a moment I think he's going to, but he
doesn't.
“That was his fate, for all eternity. It his from his name that the word
'tantalize' comes.” Delacroix leans in, his lips just touching mine. “And you
do look tantalizing, Miss Abrahams.”
“I look like a man who can't eat or drink?”
“No, my dear. You look like a woman who could drive a man to such
extremes. I want to see you bared before me, your body entirely at my
mercy. I want to taste every inch of your skin and see if it's as sweet as I
have led myself to believe in my sleepless nights.”
“Did I keep you up, Professor?” I ask softly.
“In more way than one,” he says, the warmth slipping from his voice
like a robe being cast off, leaving his tone so naked it's almost indecent. He
slips a silk tie from his pocket, looping it around my eyes. His lips brush the
hollow beneath my ear, the stubble around his mouth rasping against my
skin.
“I think you'll taste like summer.”
I shiver when he buckles my seat belt, and the heat of his bare skin
sears mine through the gaps in the lace. I'd give anything to erase the
barriers between us, for that exquisite sensation of skin on skin. My thighs
are tingling, and I can feel moisture trickling between my legs, soaking into
the crotch of my jeans. My muscles are contracting, aching with an
emptiness that only he can fill.
“Do you want my mouth between your legs?”
A low, pleading sound warbles through my lips.
“Pity you're not wearing a dress. It's harder to do in jeans.” There is
pressure on my fly. His fingers, exploring me through the denim. My chest
hitches as they come to play over the tender spot where I've been denying
myself, stroking once, idly, before removing his fingers. “I'd like to tongue
your cunt.”
 “O-oh?”
“I'd pinch you between my lips and suck, until you were drowning in
an ocean of pleasure with nothing to hang onto. If you were very good—”
He traces a finger beneath the strap, from shoulder to hip, brushing the side
of my erect nipple. “I might even let you come.” A gasp escapes me, and he
chuckles. “So responsive,” he says. “Are you ready to discover the small
pieces of heaven ensconced within the inferno?”
“Yes,” I tell him, staring into the darkness. My voice sounds breathy,
faint.
“We shall see,” he says in response.

The drive could last seconds. It could last hours. Time ceases to have
meaning in the artificial gloom of the blindfold. I think about the story he
told me about the man cursed by the gods. What was the point of that? I try
to ask, to understand, but Delacroix resists all attempts at conversation,
clearly preferring that I sit in silence.
Sometimes, when the car is stalling, I think I feel a fleeting touch on
my body. It lasts only a few seconds, but it is enough to drive me mad. I
want to ask if he did it, if he touched me, but Delacroix seems annoyed
when I speak, seeming to prefer that I endure the torment without question.
I know when we are there because Delacroix pulls off my blindfold. I
find myself staring at what looks like a squat, old abandoned warehouse
through the dashboard. The sky is darker now, spangled with stars reflected
darkly in pools of unidentified liquid that spatter the street. The rainbows in
the water seem to indicate the presence of motor oil. I stare at the club
again, dissatisfied. Corrugated metal with spots of bright orange rust. Dark
windows, covered by posters and fliers for strippers and exotic dancers.
“Is…are you sure that this is it?”
“What do you think?”
Well, I don't know. That's why I asked.
“Are you frightened?” he wants to know.
“No.”
“Don't lie to me, Miss Abrahams. Never lie to me. I know you are
frightened. Your body betrays you.”
 I fold my arms over my breasts. “I'm not frightened,” I snap at him.
“Do your worst.”
“Don't make promises you can't keep, Miss Abrahams. You will only
disappoint the both of us.”
He raps on the door and a metal plate slides with a screech to reveal a
pair of eyes that look jaundiced in the orange glare of the streetlight nearby.
“What's the password?” a low male voice says.
“Caligula,” Alexander says unhesitatingly.
The door opens.
“Who's that?”
“Caligula?” he says idly. “A Roman tyrant.”
But I'm referring to the bouncer, a big, scary black man who is all tats
and piercings. He's got to be at least 6'7” because he dwarfs Delacroix. But
he bumps fists with Alexander and waves us through with a knowing smirk,
which surprises me.
“Do you come here often?” I ask Delacroix.
Even though he's made it clear he prefers I don't talk, I'm curious, and I
can't help feeling annoyed and jealous too. The way Delacroix acted, it was
as if nobody had ever made a pass at him like that before. At least, that was
what he had led me to believe.
“I used to,” he says offhandedly.
“Alone?”
“No,” he says. “Not alone.”
I figured as much but hearing it confirmed doesn't make me happy.
Delacroix notices my frown and shakes his head. “Don't pout,” he says. “It
makes your lips sag. You want to please me, don't you?”
Yes, but I want to be the only one.
So I say, “Not particularly, at the moment.”
We step into the main room. There is a bar against the far corner where
several people are sitting on stools upholstered in a strange fabric that
glows beneath the UV light. They are sipping cocktails I can't identify,
which says a lot. Could be the lights though, warping the color. Rendering it
alien.
 “Relax a little,” Delacroix tells me.
A lot of the bar patrons are wearing leather, and not much of it. One
woman is wearing a bandeau top that scarcely covers her nipples. But apart
from the attire, this place doesn't look too different from an ordinary bar. I
am not impressed.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“Yes,” I say, unhesitatingly.
To the bartender, he says, “Give me a Leg Spreader and a Dirty
Redheaded Slut.”
“Are those real drinks?”
Delacroix says, “It would appear so.”
“Do I look like a Redheaded Slut?” I hold out one of my dark, brunette
curls for his inspection. Someone in my family was Greek, so I have the
pointed nose, the out-of-control hair, the green-based skin.
Other people call it 'olive' but that only looks good if you have a tan. If
you don't, you just look like you're seconds away from throwing up all the
time.
“Would you have preferred a Slippery Nipple?”
“Whatever,” I say. “Alcohol is alcohol.”
“That's not quite true,” he says, but I'm not about to argue semantics
with him. I'm parched, aching for a drink. Aching for sensation, aching to
be touched.
I'm an empty cup that needs filling.
I can only hope he's capable of doing the trick.
I watch the bartender pour three different kinds of liquor into one glass,
four in another. Delacroix hands the Dirty Redheaded Slut to me, which I
might take as an insult except this whole scenario has become sightly
surreal. I take a sip and the alcohol goes right to my head. I shudder a little.
“So is this it?”
“No. The fun happens in the basement.”
“What kind of fun?” I ask, gulping down another fourth of my glass.
The alcohol is really taking effect now. I'm starting to sweat. “Maybe we
have different definitions of fun. Most people do.”
 “The kind of fun that lives on in infamy.”
I admit that does sound like my idea of fun.
I drain my glass and hand it to him. Delacroix shoves both of them
aside, along with a tip, and slings his arm around my waist again as we head
towards the elevators. It's awkward walking alongside him like this; he is so
much taller, and my hip keeps smacking into his waist, but he doesn't seem
to mind.
The doors close behind us with a metallic chiming sound. Delacroix
runs his hands beneath my shirt, fitting them into the grooves of my waist.
They are a perfect fit, although slightly cold.
“You might not like what you're about to see.”
I'm about to tell him that I'm not upset by a little bit of hot wax and
acupuncturists' needles, but then I remember that I'm not supposed to have
looked up any of that stuff—but only barely. My tongue feels as loose as a
flapping shutter in a rough wind.
Uh oh, I think. I might be drunk.
“It could upset you.” He kisses me, backing me against the elevator
wall. He tastes savagely of alcohol. “It could upset you. It upsets a lot of
people. But just remember, it is all voluntary and consensual. Nobody is
here against their will, however much it may appear to the contrary.” His
erection presses against my belly, straining against its confines.
I like the feel of him jerking against me, and grind my hips against him,
savoring his surprised reaction.
Delacroix takes a step back and holds me at bay. “I want to fuck you,
Miss Abrahams. Yes. I want to fuck you—hard and painfully, and so
thoroughly as to make you feel as if you will never walk again—but I want
to have your permission. Your unequivocal permission. I want there to be
no doubt in your mind that you want everything, everything, I have to
give.”
“You have it,” I say, casually.
“We'll see,” he says again.
The elevator doors slide open.
The first thing that hits me is the smell and how familiar it is. Sour,
stale sweat and old leather. The smell of any school gymnasium catering to
post-pubescent children. With one difference. Because the other smell is
also familiar, but far less nostalgic; it is the fake butter smell I have come to
associate with jizz, sour, salty, sweet, and illicit.
I feel as if I have wandered into some kind of circus. Or maybe onto
the set of a French erotic film. Lacy lingerie, leather corsets, period pieces,
everyone has some kind of theme going on that makes them stand out from
the rest, while still managing to blend in. Others are dressed like animals, to
varying degrees, and a few are completely nude save for what their
piercings and tattoos cover.
I stare and don't feel the least bit guilty for staring because there is
alcohol in my blood, and because these are people who are asking to be
stared at. I've seen people having sex before, but never people who actually
wanted to be seen. It's odd; this willingness to be in the public eye makes
me feel even more like a voyeur. Maybe it's because these people are just as
aware of me, and forming their own judgments as a result.
Enigma emanates from unseen speakers but no one is dancing to the
music. Few people seem to even be aware that there is music. Most of the
groups are huddled in the center of the room, standing together but separate.
One man is completely naked except for a tail that trails out of his buttocks
to tickle the backs of his thighs. I stare at him incredulously, watching him
twitch his ass to make the horsehair sway.
“Why is that man dressed up like a horse?”
Delacroix looks around to see who I'm talking about, but he doesn't
register any surprise. “It's his scene. Some people get off on total power
exchange.”
I look at him blankly.
“It's the term for when the dynamic between a dominant and
submissive is skewed, to the point where one may be on par with a god, and
the other, scarcely human.”
I watch the young man prance around.
“How does his tail stay on?”
“It's inserted into the anus.”
“Like a butt plug?”
“Precisely.”
 “Why would he do that?”
To which Delacroix says, “Why not?”
I can't think of a proper argument. It just seems strange to me, but so
much does. I feel like a butterfly that's been forced to shed its cocoon
prematurely. “What's with the people in the center of the room?”
“Most of them are submissives.”
“And the people just walking around? Are they the dominants?”
When I posit this hypothesis Delacroix smiles but doesn't respond. His
eyes are roving around, searching for something he doesn't appear to feel
like sharing. The dominants—if that's indeed what they are—are wearing
more clothes than the people in the center of the room. None of them are
naked. Some of them are even fully dressed. Apart from that there is
nothing to separate or distinguish the two groups from one another. Not
attractiveness, not build, not even gender. I have to admit, that much
surprises me.
A stirring redirects my gaze. One man takes a woman in a black merry
widow aside. She has to be in her late thirties, whereas the man barely looks
old enough to order alcohol. He shoves her hard against the wall—which
doesn't look very clean—keeping her pinned by the back of her neck. Then
he cocks his arm back far enough to make me flinch, smacking her ass hard
enough to cause the flesh to jiggle.
The skin immediately turns pink and flushed but the woman seems to
enjoy it. She squirms and writhes against him, until he gets annoyed and
says, “Spread your legs. Wider,” he snaps, when her attempt fails to appease
him.
“Y-yes, Master.”
I roll my eyes as he says, “If you are dressed like a whore, you should
—and will—act like one. I want to see your cunt open for me, so I can see
how wet you are for me. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” she says breathlessly.
Delacroix catches me making a face and shakes me. “Show some
respect for other people's fantasies. You are acting like a child.”
Chastened, I lower my eyes to the ground. But I raise them again to
watch the couple as the man unsnaps the front of his leather pants. I hold
my breath as he takes his half-erect cock in hand, which is the biggest I've
ever seen. He doesn't use it to fuck the woman, though. Instead he uses his
penis to flagellate her broken skin, and the woman whimpers and says,
“Please, Master. Please. I want you to fuck me.”
“You must be punished for your transgressions,” he tells her. “You have
been most ungrateful.” He unsnaps the front of her black merry widow so
he can spank her breasts as well, watching with a sort of dark satisfaction as
they bounce with each strike.
That the man is young enough to be her son does not appear to bother
either of them. The woman continues to moan, and the man takes the tip of
her breast into his mouth while reaching around to slip his fingers between
her legs.
Delacroix watches them expressionlessly.
“Do you find this erotic?” I ask him.
“Not this particular scenario, no, but I can see the appeal of
flagellation. The mottled flush at the point of impact is not dissimilar to a
maiden's blush.”
“He's spanking her tits.”
“Not anymore. But yes, I see what you mean.” Delacroix smiles.
“There's something Freudian about that. You seem like you would be a
selfish lover, Miss Abrahams. So focused on yourself and what others think
of you. Learn to let go.”
“This is silly,” I hiss. “Stupid. How does that make me selfish?”
“I brought you here because I thought you could handle it. Can you
handle it? Or do you want me to take you home?”
“No. I do not want to be taken home like some disobedient toddler.”
“Then don't act like one.”
We pass a woman getting her breasts bound by rope. The rope cables
around her chest so tightly that her breasts have taken on a slightly purplish
hue from the constricted blood pooling in her flesh. Her partner takes two
lit candles and sets down one on each of her engorged breasts, which are
sticking straight out.
We watch the blood-red wax course down the sides to drip down her
skin, painting her body like the poster of a horror movie. Hot wax can hurt
the skin, Delacroix informs me. They make special candles for sex play,
although some hardcore individuals prefer the sting and bite of ordinary
ones.
Another man nearby has clamps on his nipples. They have a long chain
that connects between them and runs down to link to a metal ring around
his cock. His partner bends him over the table and fucks his ass. When the
man arches his back the clamps on his nipples tighten and pull on his dick.
His moans are almost loud enough to drown out the Enigma that is still
blasting from the speakers, on loop now.
Yes, I can understand pain as release.
We go into another room that feels a little warmer. The floors are tiled
and smell like antiseptic. Lemony and chemical. There is a beautiful black
woman sitting in a chair, stripped to the waist. A man wearing Latex gloves
stands behind her, sponging her back clean. She closes her eyes, which have
eyelashes as long as a giraffe's. At first I think he's giving her a sponge bath,
or oiling her hair, which has the same slippery sheen as silk, but then the
man with her takes a needle from the tray at his elbow and begins to insert
them into her flesh one at a time.
I watch her face carefully, wondering if it hurts, but apart from a few
delicate winces she remains perfectly still. Her tolerance for pain is
impressive. It takes years to develop such callused reserve.
I would know.
Once the man has finished his work he takes a long piece of colorful
ribbon and begins working it through something I cannot see while
speaking to her in a low voice that sounds almost like a rumble from where
I'm standing.
She glances our way and smiles, revealing teeth that are less white than
I expected. I'm not sure why I fixate on that, but I do, and it makes me feel a
little ill at ease. “Would you like to see?”
“See what?”
She tilts her head up and then to the side, describing the general area of
her back. I hesitate, but politeness and curiosity win out, so I say, “Sure.”
The woman does a pirouette, revealing her back. There are about
twenty rings of silver metal sticking out of her spine, ten on each side
facing parallel. The man has woven the ribbon through the rings, back and
forth in a zigzagging pattern, pulling the skin taut so that it looks as if she
has a Victorian corset laced right into her skin.
It's chillingly aesthetic, and makes me think of Gothic stories about
fairytales gone wrong.
“It's beautiful,” is what I say aloud, and Delacroix smiles; I've passed at
least one test tonight.
On the other side of the room, another woman, also half-naked, is
having needles inserted into her breasts. The needles are thin and tapered,
like those of an acupuncturist, and have little rhinestones on the ends. The
woman doing the inserting is using them to create a sun-like corona to
frame her submissive's brassy gold nipple shields. It's interesting, but not as
pretty as the corset piercing, and looks far more painful. But Delacroix
seems very pleased, and tells the woman they look beautiful, touching and
stroking her breasts as he speaks on the pretext of examining the other
woman's handiwork.
I'm annoyed by the way he lets his fingers linger. I'm pretty sure the
woman is a lesbian, and basking in his compliments and nothing else, but
the fact that Delacroix would touch another woman's naked breasts while
with me makes me extremely angry.
He compliments them both a final time before turning back to face me.
His face bears a relaxed smile as he asks me, “What do you think of my
getaway?”
“It's certainly no Love Boat.”
“I'd have thought that show was a little before your time,” he says.
“Hello. Cable TV. Reruns.” I narrow my eyes. “What the fuck was
that? Your hands were all over her. Or were you just giving her a free breast
exam?”
“Are you jealous, Miss Abrahams? You don't need to answer. I can see
it on your face.” Delacroix pulls me towards him, not quite embracing. “It's
not Love Boat. Is that all you have to say?”
“It's not quite as bad as the pictures on the internet led me to believe,” I
mutter, half-turning away, not about to let him off so easily. But then as I
see the shadow pass across his features I quickly realize my mistake.
 “You looked it up online?”
Fuck. “Well, yeah. Now that you mention it.”
“I told you not to. You promised me.”
“Did you really think I'd let you take me to some fucking fetish club
without making sure you weren't into something really fucked up?” I ask
him. “You've already shown how little you care for rules.”
“And you, as well.” My words draw out a hint of a smile that softens
his forbidding expression. “As opposed to something far more
wholesome?” I'm about to smile back at him, but he closes his hand around
the back of my neck the way the man who was spanking that woman in the
first room did. “I take that as a sign of your tacit approval then.”
“Not so tacit,” I point out, looking up at him. If he moves closer, we
will be kissing, and I'm a little frightened by how badly I want his lips on
mine in spite of (or perhaps because of) all I've seen. “I still want to fuck
you, even if you're a freak.”
“Good,” he purrs. “We will spend the evening together then. Not
tonight, I don't think, but soon. Very soon. In the meantime, I'll have to
think up an appropriate punishment for your defiance.”
He unbuttons my blouse just under halfway. I feel his breath on my
exposed skin and it drives me wild, but I throw a look at the table with the
needles and wonder just how severe his punishments might be. His mouth
doesn't make contact, though I can feel the condensation from his breath
beading on my breasts, chilling in the cool, disinfected air. “Until then, I
forbid you to touch yourself without my express permission. I will be the
one to satisfy your desires.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Alexander,” he says, freeing the final button of my blouse. “I told you
to call me Alexander.”
“Alexander,” I repeat, closing my eyes as the rough pads of his fingers
graze me. Is he going to fuck me in front of all those people? He just told
me we wouldn't be spending the evening together. But surely he wouldn't
pass me off to someone else—
Cold air plays upon my breasts as the last of my modesty slips away
with the lace. “You will walk back to the car exposed,” Alexander is saying,
“so everyone knows you for the brazen you are.” He snaps his fingers and
the man hands him a leather collar, which he fastens around my throat. He
takes one of the ribbons from the man's tray and binds my wrists behind my
back. “You will walk with your head held high knowing that where their
eyes burn and blaze across your naked skin my hands and mouth will soon
follow.”
“Yes, Alexander,” I say, voice choking with need.
“Good,” he says, “Now, come. Walk with me.”
He parades me back the way we came and I hold my head high, as
instructed. The other club-goers appraise me and I don't feel as self-
conscious as I thought I might. Not too much. It's a thrill, having these
jaded libertines look at me with desire in their hollowed eyes. Delacroix
tightens his grip on me, reminding me—and the observers—that I am his.
Will he touch me now?
We draw more stares at the bar on the ground floor. One man drops his
drink when he sees my bare breasts, and I smile to myself that the sight of
me half-naked could have such power over a man.
But then, that's precisely what got me into this place from the start.
When I look at Delacroix his expression wipes the triumphant smirk from
my lips, and I lower my eyes again. We have arrived at the car.
“You enjoyed that,” he says harshly. “Little slut.”
“You told me to enjoy it. To imagine that their eyes were your mouth
and fingers.”
The corner of his mouth lifts a fraction. “And did you, Miss Abrahams?
No, don't answer. I can see that you did.” He lowers his head, kissing each
nipple as we stand on the sidewalk. I shift, afraid someone will see and he
says, “But you are not so confident now?”
“I'm cold.”
“So I see.”
He breathes across my ribs.
“Let's get you warmed up.”
Delacroix straightens and opens up the car door for me. With some
difficulty, since he hasn't unbound my hands, I get in. I expect him to fasten
my blouse and untie me, but he merely pulls the seat belt across my open
blouse, so that it settles between my exposed breasts, and slips the blindfold
over my eyes.
“Aren't you going to button my shirt?”
“No.”
“Why not?” I cannot quite quell my unease.
“Because it pleases me to see you like this.”
“What if someone else sees me?”
“They will wonder,” he says, “and they will desperately hope.” He
kisses me lightly on the lips but I can feel his eyes on me, and the ghostly
eyes of countless others. It is as sweet as the anticipation that precedes
imminent satisfaction, and so I laugh.
When he finally opens the door to let me out, about a block away from
the dorms, my body is burning with the brand of his lips and tongue. I a
letter, affixed with his seal, and inside are all the insidious whispers and
promises he has made to me.

3829 Willow Crest Lane

Wear that little skirt with one of your blouses.
And nothing else.

Delacroix lives in a secluded residential area set back behind a well-

manicured lawn. The houses on either side look smugly suburban. I wonder
if he's personally acquainted with his neighbors, perfectly average middle
class families with 2.5 children and 1.5 cars. I wonder what they would do
if they knew what sorts of activities occupied his nights. Move, probably.
My heart is going a mile a minute. I zip up my jacket to my throat as I
ring his doorbell, nervous that I'm about to get what I want. Because this is
what I want, isn't it? I can hear footsteps approaching the door and my
mouth goes dry.
“Miss Abrahams.”
 He wipes his hands on his jeans before taking mine and pulling me
over his threshold and into the lion's den. “How very punctual.”
The carpet is beige, the walls white. The décor is surprisingly banal.
There are some Chinese vases by the door, both in red and blue, and a few
rosewood accents, but nothing more exotic than that, although I think I can
smell incense. Patchouli, which I've never cared for. It reminds me of
hippies, and weird specialty shops.
“I thought I'd succeeded in scaring you off.”
“Were you trying to?”
“I'm a difficult man to please. Sometimes my intensity frightens
people. Women.”
“That's not what your comments on Rate My Professor say,” I point
out.
Delacroix looks irritated. “Schoolgirl fantasies. Nothing more. They
want a boy to cosset and caress. Not a man with real appetite, who knows
what he wants and orders it. Commands it. And I don't have relationships
with my students, as you well know.”
“I know.”
“Can I get you something to eat? Drink?”
The very mention of food makes me feel ill. “You have any alcohol?”
“Choose your poison,” he says, waving at the drinks cabinet.
I watch him pour me a shot of tequila, neat. I gulp it down as he
watches. “Another?”
“Yes.”
So he pours me another, and I down that one too.
“Ready?” he asks, fingering the zipper of my coat. I nod, and he leads
me into his bedroom. I don't realize I've been holding my breath until I hear
it escape my mouth in a hiss, as if my lungs are deflating like ruptured
balloons.
There are restraints bolted into his bedposts. Several candles are lit,
hence the incense smell. On the nightstand he has a chilled bottle of wine,
ropes, scraps of silk, weighted clamps, handcuffs, and a box of Magnum
XLs.
 “How romantic,” I say.
“I'm going to fuck you, not romance you, though when I'm through you
might not know the difference.”
When I turn around, Professor Delacroix is in the process of stripping
off his shirt. One of his nipples is pierced, which surprises me. He has a
tattoo on one of his shoulders and that surprises me, too. It's quite well
done: a single blooming rose with vines curling around the petals in an
interlocking pattern.
“That's amazing.”
“It's a Rose of Jericho.”
“Does it mean something?”
“Yes,” he allows, lips twisting into a smirk, and when I look closer I
see that there is what looks like the entrance to a female's genitalia hidden
among the folds of the flower. It strikes me as tacky, and for a moment, I'm
disappointed in him.
“Are you allowed to have tattoos and piercings if you're a professor?”
“It's never been an issue. I don't make it a habit to display them. Take
off your jacket, Miss Abrahams.”
I unzip the jacket, and toss it on a nearby chair. Delacroix takes off his
watch and sets it on the nightstand. Then he takes me by the shoulders and
slides the blouse off, stretching it taut across my breasts. One of the buttons
pops and I curl towards it instinctively, but he tightens his grip.
“How much do you like this blouse?” he asks me.
“I like it okay, I guess. It's…um, not my favorite.”
“Good.” Another button rolls across the floor. “Because I intend to tear
it off you. You know, your essay rather led me to believe that you didn't
read the book.”
“What book?”
“Lolita.”
“What does that matter?”
“I told you to keep up with the reading. Did you finish Lolita, Miss
Abrahams? You've had ample time.”
“Yes.”
 “Oh? What did you think of Humbert's death?”
“Poetic justice. Obviously.”
My blouse comes off with a loud tear, catching painfully on my skin.
As I cry out, he says, “You didn't read the book. I suspected as much, but
now my suspicions have been confirmed. And your disobedience is not
limited to that, either. Why were you wearing that jacket, Miss Abrahams? I
don't recall telling you that you could wear that.”
“I had to take the bus to get here. You could see right through my
shirt.”
“So? That didn't seem to be an issue at the club. Nor in my class, either.
Do you have any idea how many of my male students were caught in the
crossfire of that wanton display you put on for me? My own TA included.”
I remember the way his hand shook when he handed my essay paper
back. Now it makes sense. “Did he say something to you?”
“In passing.” His breath tickles my neck. “I like it when you play the
whore for me, Miss Abrahams. I want you to play the whore, to wear your
red letter proudly. I thought I made that clear. Which reminds me. I still
need to punish you for your … research.”
“Punish me? Punish me how?”
He takes one of the clamps from the nightstand, pinching it open. My
belly clenches like a fist. It's like he read my mind, to see into my deepest,
darkest desires. I cry out as the metal teeth bite into my nipple.
“What do you think?” he says, giving the vise a little squeeze. “Was
Lolita the wicked temptress or the tragic victim?”
“I don't know,” I gasp, as he lets the weighted end swing free from his
fingers.
“The first blush of youth.” His mouth closes over my other breast as he
teases the clamp between his fingers, tugging on the weight, increasing and
decreasing the pressure as he stimulates me with his teeth and tongue. “It is
a foolish man who plucks fruit from the vine before it has ripened and
expects it to taste sweet.”
“Also, he was a pedophile.”
“That is the lazy answer. You aren't using your imagination, Miss
Abrahams.”
 He kisses my breast, laving his tongue on the glistening tip before
replacing his lips with the second weighted clamp. Then he turns his
attention the scraps of my blouse still clinging to my shoulders.
I hold onto the fabric stubbornly when he tries to bare my arms.
“Don't.”
“What's the problem?” he asks, halting his tugging without releasing
his grip. “Are you a virgin? I should hope not, with that mouth of yours.”
“No. But I want to leave it on.”
“I want it off, and you will obey me, or I will punish you more than I
already have. I have another set of clamps, Miss Abrahams, made for a
woman's clit.”
“Professor—”
“I'm not your professor.”
“Alexander—couldn't you turn the lights off?”
“I don't do it in the dark, Miss Abrahams, and as long as you're with
me, you won't, either.” He's succeeded in baring another half inch of my
upper arms and I see his eyes catch on the top of the 'h' in 'whore.' “Do you
cut yourself?”
He's put two and two together faster than my own parents.
I hear him suck in a breath as he sees the pink and white marks
crisscrossing my skin, his lips moving as he reads them aloud with quiet
reverence. “My fucking God,” he whispers, “look what you've done.”
My parents sent me to Cherry Hill when they found out. I was there for
six months, supervised even when I took a shower. For half a year, I had no
privacy. None.
I wait, shivering a little in the semidarkness, as I wait for Delacroix's
reaction.
“You twisted little girl.”
“Do you hate it, Alexander?”
“I love it,” he growls, slamming my arms over my head. “You have
managed both to surprise me and to please me, in one sweeping gesture. I'm
going to fuck you for it, Miss Abrahams. Fuck you hard. But first I'm going
to tie you up. When I release you, I want you to get on your knees and arch
your spine as if you're bowing, so your torso is suspended.”
“Yes, Alexander.”
“Good girl.”
He undoes his fly, sliding his jeans low on his hips without taking them
off. His erect cock springs out, magnificent, at least nine inches long. The
last two inches or so are a deep rose, verging on purple at the tip. I've never
had anyone this big inside me before and I know it's probably going to hurt.
That knowledge makes me feel a little dizzy and it takes me a moment
to register that Delacroix has a piercing in the head of his cock. A diamond
stud, simple but classy. He swells under my admiring gaze.
“Like what you see?”
“Oh yes. But didn't the piercing hurt?”
“Most things in life do. At least the ones worth doing. Why else do you
cut words into your skin?”
“Every one of these words is something that someone called me.” I
trace the word 'freak' along my thigh, where the hem of my skirt has slid up.
“The more it hurts, the deeper I carve it in, so that by the time I've finished,
the name loses all of its power.”
“Words never lose their power, Miss Abrahams. They can wax and
wane, but never to the point of complete impotence. Why else do you think
we have the classics? If anything, you ascribe them more potency by
writing them down somewhere you cannot escape from—yourself.” He
leans back, giving me space. “Turn over.”
I feel his cock brush against the base of my spine.
“Turn your head. Don't look at me. Stare at the wall.”
His hands slide up my skirt, baring my ass cheeks. He spreads them
wide and inserts two fingers into my pussy from behind, sliding all the way
in to the last knuckle. Delacroix thrusts with them, using his thumb to rub
my clit, hard—harder than even I would do—and before I know it, I am
panting like a dog in heat.
“You're already so wet.”
“I want you inside me.”
 “I am inside you.”
“I want your cock in me.”
“Oh?” Delacroix slides his fingers out of my vagina and inserts one
into my anus instead. I tense, yelping a little. It doesn't hurt that much, but
I've never had anal sex before. I always thought the idea was disgusting, on
par with scat. But this—this feels good. Every time he slides his finger out
there is this feeling of release.
I know this pain. It's the kind that feels good because it means the
worst is over.
“I want to claim your ass someday, Miss Abrahams,” he says, as he
thrusts with his finger. “But not today—today, I just want to play with you a
little and explore what you have to offer. You are the playground of which I
have free reign. I'm going to discover every inch of you.”
“Why do you keep calling me…Miss Abrahams?”
“If you want me to use your christian name, you must earn it.”
That reminds me. “How did you find out my name? I—didn't tell you.”
“I went through my roster, one name at a time, plugging them into the
search browser until I found the correct profile.” I feel him get off the bed
and then hear the sound of running water as he washes off his hands. The
mattress indents, signifying his return, and I hear the crinkle of a condom
being unwrapped. “Jessica Abrahams.”
Hearing my full name come from his lips makes my skin prickle.
“Yes, Alexander?”
His response is to plunge into me, all of him at once, and the pain as
I'm forced to stretch for him makes the tears jump to my eyes. But I take
him in, all the way to his base, and his low moan of satisfaction makes it
worthwhile. Soon, the initial discomfort fades, melting away into icy waves
of pleasure so cold that they burn like the hottest flame, and I cry out with
wild abandon, not caring who can hear me. With each thrust, his pelvis
slams up against my ass, and I feel the momentum of it all the way inside
my womb, carrying me higher.
He fills me, transforms me. And when he pulls on the clamp as I come,
imbuing my orgasm with red flashes of pain that pierce through the
pleasurable blue haze like lightning in a clear sky, I think, rather deliriously,
that I would have it no other way.

I don't remember falling asleep but I must have because the sky is now
a dark indigo with no traces of the sun left at all. My body feels deliciously
sore, a deep-rooted ache, like an abscessed tooth. My nipples are throbbing;
Delacroix hasn't removed the clamps. He is, however, shaking me awake,
face creased in annoyance.
I can't help but think that the creases make his face look a lot older.
“Get up,” he says. “You can't sleep here.”
“Please? Just five more minutes. That was wonderful—”
I trail off into a scream as he takes hold of both weights and yanks the
clamps off. I massage my throbbing nipples, which look as though they
might now be bruised.
“Whores don't sleep in their masters' beds, Miss Abrahams.”
He sounds genuinely angry and I feel a thread of fear wind through me.
But then I look down and see that his cock is erect, nudging my belly. This
is playacting.
I hope.
I'm not sure, and that uncertainty makes me begin to get aroused again,
because that fine line between safety and danger has a siren call I've never
been able to resist. I lower my hands from my breasts and I slide out of bed,
naked, while he watches.
I bend down to reach my blouse, presenting him with my ass. Since it's
ripped, I take the tails and tie them beneath my breasts. The fabric is
uncomfortable on my tender skin but I ignore the pain.
“Where's my skirt?”
He flings it at me from the bed, where he is leaning back like a king. I
see that he has taken himself in hand and is now stroking himself with an
absentminded lust as he watches me.
“I don't want you to shower tonight. I want you to sleep in your own
bed, covered in my scent and seed, so that when you arise, you will smell
me all over you, and awake with the knowledge that you are mine.”
 He gestures for me to come closer.
“I want to fuck your tits.”
“How would you know if I didn't shower? I could just not tell you.”
“I'd know,” he says.
His cock slides into my cleavage, squeezed by the weight and pressure
of my breasts. As he thrusts, my blouse gets untied and Delacroix groans
when he sees my swollen nipples. “Did I hurt you?”
“What do you think?”
“I like the way you look with my mark on you. You are like a sweet,
ripe fruit, untouched but for a single bite.” His eyes reluctantly go to my
face again. “Perhaps it was a bit much—at least for the first time.”
“I'll heal.”
“I think I want to come on your ass,” he says. “Turn over. And lift your
skirt. Did I stutter, Miss Abrahams?” he says, when I don't move. “Quickly,
now.”
Hot stickiness splatters my backside. When I lower my skirt it plasters
against the cum, making the fabric stick. It's disgusting. It's a rush. I've
never felt so used.
And even though it's ridiculous, I believe him. He would know. He can
read me like a book. Nobody has ever been able to do that with me; they
take one look at my cover, then set me down and back away. Delacroix
revels in me. Nothing about me scares him, because he's always able to
match it. We're two peas in a fucked-up pod.
He takes a half melted ice cube and runs the dripping piece around my
breasts. The coldness burns at first, but the throbbing dies down as the skin
grows numb. I pant a little when his warm bristled mouth covers the chilled
skin, and he slides his cold hand between my legs to pleasure me.
“Don't scream,” he says, “or I'll bite you.”
“Yes, Alexander,” I choke. “What if I don't scream?”
He kisses my other breast, and a second finger slides in to join the first.
“You like old-fashioned clothing, don't you? I'll purchase something
vintage, something sexy and unique, for you to parade yourself around in.”
 Delacroix drops to his knees and bends me backward against the
mattress. With his cold hands and colder fingers, he brings me to climax but
I don't scream. I bite my knuckle until the skin tears and I can taste my own
blood in my mouth, but I don't make a sound. He's aroused, but not erect,
and there is no urgency to his movements as he gradually slows.
“What's your size and your favorite color?”
I tell him both, rounding down. I think he knows that I'm lying though,
and that he's amused I'd bother.

There is an email from a do-not-respond address from the school

informing me that I am in danger of being kicked out if I do not improve
my grades. I have a 1.8 GPA and am in poor academic standing. One of my
professors—Rojas—has sent me a personal email suggesting that if I am
not serious about the class I might consider giving someone on the waitlist a
chance, as he has noticed I rarely, if ever, attend lectures.
The more diplomatic Fineman has suggested I avail myself of some of
the extra credit opportunities he has made available, along with a link to the
section of his website that has the various resources listed and categorized.
My parents must have received identical copies of these emails. My
cell phone shows that I have nineteen missed calls, one from Fielder's
administrative department and the rest from my mother and father. I haven't
thought of them much at all these last few weeks. Having wild, kinky sex
with Alexander Delacroix has eclipsed the vast majority of my concerns
and worries, but now they are springing to light once more.
I chew on a hangnail. The skin splits. A bubble of blood bursts in my
mouth.
Mom and Dad won't give up until they reach me, but that's a problem
easily resolved. I just won't pick up my phone. It's unlikely that they'll drive
all the way down here to yell at me in person. Not when the whole point of
this exercise was to ensure that they wouldn't be forced to have me around
in the first place.
I delete all the calls and all the emails. It leaves me with a feeling of
peace.
 I even manage to make it into the dining commons without being
hindered by feelings of nausea. I'm starving for once, actually, and there's
no shortage of food. A dessert bar, several fountain drink stations, four
different kinds of pizza, pasta, hamburgers, a salad bar, cold cuts, even
American-style Chinese.
I help myself to pepperoni and because I'm feeling daring, some Philly
cheese steak pizza too, with a slice of cream-cheese spread fruity dessert
pizza. I prep a tuna sandwich with all the fixings, grab two containers of
Jell-O, and then, because I deserve it, a big slice of chocolate cake with a
dollop of whipped cream on top.
The whipped cream makes me think of sex, which makes me think of
Delacroix.
I wonder how he'd react if I brought a spray can of the stuff to his
house and asked him to lick it all off my body prior to his usual brand of
rough love.
Just the thought gets me all hot, though my appetite has since fled.
I eat mechanically, shoveling it in without tasting. There's no way I
should be able to eat everything, but I do. The scraping of my fork on an
empty plate is a discordant bell jarring me awake. Somehow the dining
commons went from full to empty.
My stomach gurgles and saliva floods my mouth. I run to the bathroom
and just barely make it before the vomit rushes out. It fills the bowl,
spattering the floor, the lid. There are flecks of it clinging to the strands of
hair around my face and just the taste it leaves in my mouth leaves me
feeling nauseous all over again. I gag, and a bit of bright green stomach
acid splashes into the heart of the foul slime.
As I clean myself up, I look at my reflection. I don't recognize the girl
in the mirror, who is all skin and bones beneath the cancer-gray t-shirt. She
looks back at me with bottomless eyes. They look like sinkholes set in the
gaunt framing of her face. She seems familiar, but maybe she just has one
of her faces. She certainly couldn't be me.

“You were sick?”

 Delacroix is in the process of binding my body with rope but at my
words he pauses and looks up. The ropes cut around my wrists, binding
them over my head, looping under my arms to constrict my ribs twice, so
my breasts are bulging out between them.
“Yes. I can't eat. Food makes me sick.”
“But you aren't actually ill.”
“No.”
He continues knotting. More rope runs down my midriff, on either side
of my navel, curving into my thighs to cup my crotch like a G-string.
“Thanks for your concern,” I say sarcastically.
We've already fucked twice—once with his cock, and one with a dildo
made from a red jelly-like substance that has tacky glitter suspended inside
it. It had various notches and protrusions designed to give even more
intense pleasure, including one for clitoral stimulation. When he turned on
the switch to trigger the vibrations I thought I might die.
“Would you like some water?”
I nod my head gratefully.
“Ask me then,” he says graciously.
“May I have some water, please, Alexander?”
“Of course,” he says, and I hear the faucet run. He comes back with a
full glass, which he tips into my mouth a swallow at a time. As I drink, he
says, “I'm going to fuck that tight little ass of yours. I want to feel it pucker
and clench around my cock.”
I swallow hard, and nearly choke. “Are you sure I'm ready?”
“You are as ready as you'll ever be. Would you like to use the clamps?”
I love it when he plays with my breasts. “If that's what you want,” I
say.
“I want your nipples sore,” he tells me. “So I've increased the weights.”
The lack of circulation around my breasts has made them even more
sensitive and I let out a breathy cry as he affixes the clamps to my nipples.
“A bit of pain is natural, but if it becomes more than what you can tolerate
the safe word is waterlily. Otherwise, I won't stop. Not even if you scream
—and I do hope you scream.”
 He slides on one of the condoms and slathers it in clear jelly. With his
hand, which is still a little cold and sticky from the lubricant, I feel him
spread my ass cheeks to reveal my anus. The head of his cock circles the
hole.
Delacroix bites and nuzzles the side of my throat, sliding the head of
his cock inside. I gasp and clench, pushing back reflexively. The feeling is
indescribable, base. Elimination and fornication combined.
“Oh yes,” he growls, “you fit me like a glove. Take me, Miss
Abrahams. Take it all.” And he smacks my ass hard, still inside me, and I
moan against the wall.
He pushes in, inch by inch, and my cries become screams. True to his
promise, he doesn't stop. My screams seem to spur him on. When he starts
thrusting, I use the safe word. Nearly scream it in my desperation. I sob in
relief when he pulls out his cock.
Because for one terrifying instant, I was afraid that he wasn't going to
stop.

The girl in the campus bookstore was right about one thing. Delacroix
does sponsor an artist of erotic photography. He has several volumes of the
books in his study, nestled beside hardcover editions of all the books he
teaches in class, and various other erotic literature.
We flip through the books together, the light catching on the glossy
paper. All of them are nudes, with the focus on the dips and divots, the
curves and inclines, of the human form, male and female. Lots of genitals,
covered by scraps of cloth and in various stages of arousal. Some pierced,
some shaved, others not.
The full body shots are interesting, I think. Especially when paired with
shots taken of individual parts of the body. Sometimes the face doesn't seem
to match, and then it's interesting to think about why that is, and whether
expectations play a role.
There is an entire volume devoted to breasts. Nipples pressed against
glass panes, covered by sheer fabrics, or peeking through lingerie or
carefully arranged flower petals. Delacroix shrugs when I ask if he's a tit
man. “I find it extraordinary how integral nipples are to a woman's sexual
pleasure.”
He flips through the section on tit torture, and a few close-ups of a man
fucking a woman's breasts with his cock. “And also how integral breasts are
to a man's,” he adds, almost as an afterthought. “As I said in the club, it
seems very Freudian.”
I tell him I'd rather look at the book of cocks, just to make him mad. He
looks irate, but hands it over and does not get up as I look through it. There
is a vaguely smug expression on his face as he sits through the proceedings.
Perhaps because none of the penises pictured are quite as large as his.

I had hoped that if I kept him occupied, Delacroix would forget his
demand that I keep up with the reading. I can barely manage to get out of
bed in the mornings, let alone crack open a book.
No dice. Not only does he remember, he also punishes me if I forget.
Lately, he has even started adding some supplemental readings to the list.
For example, he has forced me to read 120 Days of Sodom in addition
to Justine. He says that it is a short piece, with only the first chapter actually
written in the style of a novel. All the others are outlines, with footnotes de
Sade wrote in the margins instructing himself on how to finish the novel.
I read the books, or try to, and quickly find myself growing disgusted,
not only with de Sade's flowery writing style but also with the horrors he
writes about in the name of sexual fantasy. Not only does he seem to have a
fetish for scat—something I've always found gross—he also enjoys brutal
acts of physical violence and torture, including the rape of children, genital
mutilation, and disemboweling.
“This is not erotica.”
“Oh?” Delacroix says.
“It's torture porn.”
“There are many who would agree with you.”
“But what do you think? You don't get off on this.”
“I appreciate his merits as a writer,” Delacroix says. “He makes many
interesting points on what it means, truly means, to possess a human being.”
 Maybe Delacroix feels like he has to defend de Sade's place in his
curriculum, but I feel like a stronger disclaimer would have been more
comforting. I've started to suspect that Delacroix might be what
psychiatrists would call a “sick fuck” in layman's terms.
“Don't worry,” he says, a tad mockingly. “I'm not going to make you
eat shit or set fire to your intestines.”
“That's disgusting,” I snap at him.
“Read Venus in Furs,” he suggests. “I rather suggest it'll be more to
your liking. You remind me of the main character in many ways, Miss
Abrahams. You aren't quite sure what you want. Only that you do. Want,
that is.”
Venus in Furs is more palatable—and short. It's the only book he
assigned that I actually read all the way through. The main character is
whiny, though; it's hard to sympathize with his plight.
“Although I do think it's interesting how power corrupts the girl he's in
love with,” I tell Delacroix, when he asks. “She starts out shy and awkward
and is always asking him if he wants her to stop, but by the end I think she
enjoys the role.”
“It sounds like the book resonated with you.”
When he says it like that, I suppose it has. Though what that says about
me, I don't like to imagine.

OceanofPDF.com
 PART III
OceanofPDF.com
 By this point I have pretty much stopped attending classes. There is
no benefit to me. Not anymore. I have also stopped reading the books that
Delacroix assigned to me as one of the conditions of our relationship. They
are too dark, too boring, too reminiscent of my own fucked-up life.
Sometimes, ever the teacher, Delacroix will quiz me, ask me which
book I like best and why, or whether I found any quotes that leaped out at
me to strike my fancy, so I have learned to stay brushed up. Every week I
read the Cliff Notes for the books, look up quotes, which I then
immediately forget.
It annoys me, how pleased he is when I trot out these facts like a cheap
parlor trick. I get the feeling that I'm nothing more than a project to him.
Like he thinks I'm his own Pygmalion. That's another book I haven't read,
by the way, but I've seen My Fair Lady, with Audrey Hepburn. I know how
it works.
At the beginning of our next meeting, Delacroix seems to be feeling
particularly chatty. He's wearing a wool sweater and glasses—I've never
seen him wear glasses before, they make him look ten years older—and
asking me about Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and whether I've ever done
anything sexual on a bet.
This relationship, I think sourly.
Except that was a bet to myself, and I am still not quite sure whether
it's one that I have won or lost. I'm tempted to discard him, but he keeps me
on edge and that's more than most men are capable of doing to me these
days. At least he makes me feel something.
I tell him about the boys I slept with, only to throw them away later on
just to prove to myself that I could, or to see what they'd give me to
persuade me to stay.
“How cruel,” he says, with obvious distaste.
I shrug my shoulders. “Takes one to know one.”
“How true.” Delacroix walks to the bed, where there is a mess of pink,
candy-hued fabric. “Put this on, if you please, and we can get started.”
“For me?” It is a corset. I remember him promising me vintage
lingerie, though I figured that was just him talking big.
 “If it fits.”
“Let's see.” I strip off my clothes, kicking them to the side. There are
panties, also pink. A ruffled, crotchless G-string. I pull them on first before
sliding the corset over my head.
At first I think I have put it on backwards—the fucking thing has more
laces than a high-top sneaker—but then I realize that the bodice has
intentionally been scooped out in front, to leave the wearer's breasts
uncovered.
The hard structure of the corset digs into the underside of my breasts
rather painfully, forcing them into an unnaturally full and perky shape. I cup
them, feeling their weight and fullness in my hands, as Delacroix laces up
the back. He is standing so closely behind me that I can feel his warmth on
my bare skin, and our eyes meet in the mirror, though they drop briefly to
my hands.
“I like watching you touch yourself, Miss Abrahams.”
I let my thumbs slide over the nipples, watching his face carefully.
“Like this?”
His tongue creeps out, wetting his lips. “Just like that.”
I take a step back so that his cock is pressing against my ass. Mm. He
has such a nice dick. For that reason alone, it would be a shame to end this.
Delacroix grabs my waist, then changes his mind and squeezes my
breasts instead. I put my hands over his and tease my nipples out, until they
are fully erect.
His hands are hot, burning my skin. I feel him jerk against my backside
as I tilt my head up to look at his face. “Do you want to touch me now?”
I pluck at his fingers, bringing them closer to my goal. Little bumps
erupt around my dimpling aureola as the rough pads of his fingers make
contact.
“Do you want to use your mouth?”
Delacroix shudders. “You shouldn't tease me, Miss Abrahams.” His
voice is a reprimand; it is the kind that promises imminent punishment.
“When you behave this way, it drives me mad with the desire to bring you
to heel.”
 “Then do it.” I rub my ass against his erection, and he shudders again.
Growling, he lowers his hand from my body and grabs one of the ties from
his dresser. As he controls his breathing, he pulls it taut between his hands,
looping the ends around his knuckles. “Put those wanton arms behind your
back.”
“How can arms be wanton?”
“Don't talk, Miss Abrahams.”
Okay, then. I cross my wrists behind me and he binds them, roughly,
with his tie, pulling tight. Not bothering to be gentle. I must flinch because
he says, “Pull your hands apart. Just a little. I want some slack in the knot.”
The room swirls around me. I can't remember if I ate this morning. Did
I eat anything? Delacroix walks back in front of me, and as he leans in the
scratch of his wool sweater against my nipples makes my thoughts shiver
away. His hands squeeze my butt cheeks as he looks down at me. “Tell me,
what are you thinking?”
“I—can't remember when I last ate.”
“Are you hungry, Miss Abrahams?” he asks me.
Not so hungry that I don't recognize an opening when I'm given one.
“Hungry for you, Alexander.”
He grins, pleased. “Are you? Well, I am pleased you have brought your
appetite along with you. I intent to give you much…” Delacroix pauses,
brushing his lips along my cheekbone. “Food for thought.” His mouth seals
against my ear so I feel the damp heat of his words like a brand. “Have I
ever told you how much I love your breasts?”
“Not in so many words.”
Delacroix is the type of man who feels the need to brand what is his, to
have it be separate from the rest of the world. “They're beautiful.” He sucks
my throat, hard enough to leave a mark I might have to explain away if I
had anyone around to explain away to. “You have such vibrant coloring,
like ripe fruit.”
The hard bulge in his jeans grinds against my crotch. It feels good, with
so little serving as a barrier between us, and I spread my legs wider to give
him better access.
 “Do I taste sweet?” I ask, gasping as the ridge of his cock skims along
my clitoris.
“Mm-hmm.” He slides his hands up my waist, kneading my flesh.
“Like cream. Your nipples, Miss Abrahams, are like raspberries, ripening
under the late summer sun.”
“How poetic.”
I can't quite keep the irony from my voice.
Luckily, he doesn't seem to notice. “They've always been my favorite
part of a woman. Well, apart from the lips. Do you know, I love watching
women apply their lipstick, filling in all those sweet, smiling curves with
red.”
Alexander has noticed my attempts to dry hump him and pulls away.
“None of that, Miss Abrahams.”
“Why are you torturing me?” I growl.
“Because you aren't surrendering yourself to me. Accept only what I
give you.”
“And if it isn't enough?”
“Then you must work harder to earn more.”
“Do you want me to put on lipstick for you?”
“Perhaps later. I've often wondered what it would be like to watch a
woman apply lipstick to her nipples, to heighten that deep, delicate rose or
peach to a sultry, mouthwatering scarlet. Would you do that for me?”
“That could be messy,” I say, thinking of the potential stains.
“It would be done for a night in, while the breasts were bare,” says
Delacroix. “Not for a night out.”
“Let me guess. Naked except for black lace panties, high heels, and a
pearl necklace.”
“What kind of pearl necklace?”
“Not the kind you're thinking of.”
Delacroix chuckles. “I prefer pink lace to black.”
He unfolds a silk tie which he fastens over my eyes. I recognize it from
one of his lectures, as well as from the ride to the BDSM club, and I feel a
little thrill that he is using it from one of his lectures, and I feel a little thrill
that he is using it in the here and now.
My lust fades. I can't help but wonder if it's been used for this purpose
with another woman. He is a little too good at tying nights; I doubt he
learned it from boy scouts, either.
“Is that why I'm wearing this outfit for you?” I ask, putting his attention
back on me. “For a night in? With lipstick?”
I imagine he is smiling. “Perhaps, although you never answered my
question.”
“Yes—,” I start, and then cut off into an abrupt gasp.
Something rough glides up my belly. It starts from just above my groin,
with thousands of small, cutting teeth that bite into my skin as it continues
its ascent towards my throat. “What does this feel like?” he asks.
“Not lipstick.”
“Such a smart mouth.”
He circles my nipples.
“Perhaps a lighter touch.”
The movements become light, teasing. I rear up on my bound arms. “I
want you to fuck me now.”
“Hmm, but perhaps that isn't what I want.”
“Alexander. Please.”
“What does this feel like, Miss Abrahams?”
“Like your beard when you haven't shaved in a while.”
“Oh?”
“Without the softness of your lips to cushion it.”
“Do you want my lips on you, Miss Abrahams?”
“Yes. You know I do. I want you to do it harder. I want your cock
inside me, filling me. But most of all, I want you to stop teasing me.”
“Those weren't options, Miss Abrahams.”
He stops everything, leaving only my hitched breaths.
“Never issue commands to me. Not unless it's our safe word. Now I
have to punish you for being greedy.”
 I am silent, waiting, scarcely daring to breathe.
“We're stopping now,” he tells me.
“Everything?”
“Is that what you want?”
“No. Not at all. I want you to continue.”
“No more commands then.”
“No, Alexander.”
“I need my hands, so I'm going to give you my cock to suck. You're
going to get me nice and hard with that beautiful mouth so I can fuck you
when we're done. Isn't that generous of me?”
“Yes, Alexander.”
“So it looks like you will be getting at least one thing that you wanted,
Miss Abrahams.” And with that, his cock thrusts into my open mouth, silky
soft over the steeled muscle beneath. I love how completely it fills me, how
there's scarcely room for air. He tastes salty, musky, clean. Vastly preferable
to the mostly unwashed potheads I've been fucking.
He slides in and out of my mouth, and I hear him open something with
a muted pop. Champagne? He thrusts harder, faster, and I hear the sound he
makes, the low almost surprised sound, right before he comes. Delacroix
seems averse to semen, and always tries to aim for the sheets after I suck
him off. He doesn't quite succeed, and I can taste him, the hot salty warmth
of his seed, in the back of my throat.
Something slick and wet circles my aureola after he pulls out. At first I
think it might be his cock but the texture is wrong and the surface area of it
is too small and narrow. The sensation reminds me of wet clay and feels
soothing after his abrasive massage.
I relax, enjoying myself. I don't mind pain, but this is a pleasant
interlude. It isn't until he starts on my lips that I realize he's doing what he
alluded to earlier: it's lipstick. My belly clenches.
I didn't think he'd really do it.
“Smack your lips together,” Delacroix orders, filling in what he's
missed when I do.
“What color did you use?” I ask him.
 “Candy Apple Red,” he says, clearly reading from the label. He blows
softly on my lips and breasts to dry them. “When your nipples pucker up
like that, it's like they're begging for my kiss.”
“Will you kiss them, Alexander?”
“I think so. Perhaps as a reward for pleasing me. But first, I want to
take your photograph.”
All the heat in my body drains out as I freeze. While I was enjoying
myself I didn't notice, but I'm suddenly aware of just how vulnerable this
position has left me. “Here? Now?” I can't quite keep the horror from my
voice. “Like this?”
“Yes.”
“I don't think so.”
I squeeze my thighs together, aware that my crotch is bare between
them.
“Are you crazy?”
“What if you're wearing a mask in the picture?” This solution is so
quickly offered, I can't help but feel that this is less spontaneous than
preplanned.
“What would you do with the picture?”
“Keep it,” he says huskily, and I feel my breath halt as I imagine him
masturbating to my photograph between classes, cleaning himself up with
wadded-up essays from his failing students. The fantasy has just enough
cruelty and fetishism to appeal to me.
“And that's all?” I ask, a little faintly.
He doesn't respond, waiting for me.
“Okay. Fine. But not until I'm wearing the mask.”
He removes my blindfold. I watch him stalk towards the dresser,
barechested now, and admire the way the muscles in his sides move with
each step as if there are a network of pulleys working in tandem beneath his
skin. The rose on his bicep seems to pulsate with life.
He produces what looks like a bird mask, brilliant and elaborate, like
something from a masquerade. It is silver, with a spray of feathers fringing
the edges, studded with what look like rhinestones. “You got the idea of the
mask from Story of O,” I say.
“You've been reading your books.”
Cliff Notes, actually, but he sounds so pleased I don't correct him.
“Good girl,” he purrs again. “Yes, I did. I had it specially
commissioned from an artist colleague of mine. It seems as though I might
have to reward you again.”
“How?” I ask, interested.
“How would you like?”
“Dinner?” I suggest. We have never gone out together in public, not
since that one evening at the BDSM club in the city. Delacroix hesitates.
“Perhaps.” He sounds less than enthusiastic about the idea.
I let him pose me the way he wants, even though I feel silly in just the
mask, naked save for a few scraps of lacy fabric. My lipsticked nipples
shrivel in the cold. He has colored them in very carefully, but rather than
being sexy it looks as if I have a rash.
Delacroix snaps several photographs, even though I only agreed to one.
“Just in case the others don't come out,” he says. “Arch your back, spread
your legs more.”
“Can I see the pictures?”
“Soon,” he tells me. “After they develop.”
“That's a digital camera, isn't it? They don't need to develop. Why can't
I see them now?”
“Because I said no.” He straddles my waist and plunges into me. It still
feels uncomfortable, but not as painful as the first time. My body is getting
used to his girth. “You're still remarkably tight,” he says. “I'm surprised.
You seem experienced.”
I buck my hips with the intent of throwing him off. It only causes him
to sink in deeper. I spit at him, and Delacroix casually slaps me across the
face.
“Unwise.”
“You insulted me.”
“A whore cannot be insulted, Miss Abrahams.”
 I glare at him through the eye holes of the mask.
“I think you deserve to be fucked from behind,” he says. “Like a slut.
Or a dog.”
“Whatever you want,” I say, a little sarcastically.
“Whatever I want, Miss Abrhams? Because I want to stimulate your
anus while I fuck you. I want to insert some beads, as many as you can take,
while I've got my cock inside your pussy. I want to stretch you out until you
can take all of me in. And then I want to fuck that tight little ass, to stretch
you out until you bleed for me, until you scream for me, and I can fill every
inch of you.”
I'm still angry at him, so I shrug and say nothing, pretending his words
have no effect on me.
Alexander is rougher than usual, even picking up his discarded belt
from the floor and using it to hit me across the breasts and belly. As the
evening wears on, I get the impression that he's trying to get me to say the
safe word, to bring the evening to a close. But I don't, and so the torture
wears on, pleasure and pain becoming so hopelessly intertwined that I
haven't the faintest hope of disentangling them.

I used to think having an addictive personality was a good thing, like it

was synonymous with being the life of the party—that it meant people
couldn't get enough of you. Then I found out it was the opposite, that you're
the crazy person everyone avoids because everyone and everything is just a
means to an end for their poison of choice.
By that time, I understood.
Most of the time, I would have liked for a way to avoid myself.
And then, with alcohol I found a way.
Alexander might just be another.

J
“ essica, you need to focus on your future. We're not going to be
around forever. What are you going to do when we die? You don't have any
job experience and now, you won't have a degree either. What are you going
to put on your resume?”
 “This is unacceptable, young lady! You aren't even trying. We didn't
pay five thousand dollars so you could fuck off all quarter and spend all day
in bed. You get your ass to class and you learn.”
“Answer your phone!”
“Jessica, pick up the goddamn phone.”
Listening to my voice mail was a mistake.
Delacroix notices my face and pulls away from me without pulling out.
“Is something wrong?”
Only everything. “Do you have any alcohol?”
Delacroix sighs. He pulls his cock out of me and slides out of bed. I
watch him walk, naked, to the bar. He has a nice ass, though it is slowly
starting to sag. I wonder how come I've never noticed it before; I've
certainly seen it enough times.
He pours me a full glass. I drink it all in two swallows and push it back
to him. “More.”
“Please,” he says, with light emphasis that pisses me off. He may be
older than me but he's not my fucking father. Raising an eyebrow, he fills it
up again, only halfway this time.
I drain it and then say, “Fill it up.”
“Do I look like a bartender?”
“Please,” I beg.
He looks disapproving, but he does as I ask.
I did say the magic word, after all.
I wipe my mouth off with the back of my hand and burp, once. “Do
you love me Alexander?”
“You've had too much to drink,” he says, not kindly.
It's true. Of the bottle we've shared, I've drunk the better half.
I push my glass away as if I can hide the incriminating evidence that
way.
“That doesn't answer my question,” I say, throwing one of his favorite
phrases back at him. “Nobody else loves me. But you do, don't you?”
Delacroix doesn't respond.
 “Make love to me,” I say, into the silence. “I mean, fuck me. Fuck me
hard. I want to be so fucking used I can't remember tonight, or any other
night.”
To which he says, “I'm driving you home.”
I protest but he doesn't take no for an answer.
He never does.

I
“ hope you understand why I couldn't let you stay the last time.”
“Yes,” I lie, because I don't understand.
“You were out of control.”
“Isn't that the point of BDSM? To give up control?”
“Yes,” he says. “To give up control. Not to throw all control to the
wind.”
Same difference, I think.
We have sex and I feel nothing. For the first time in a long time, I get
no pleasure from the act.
Neither of us comes.
Alexander produces a box from the side of the bed, which silences my
retort. It's a velvet box, the kind that's been shown in hundreds and
thousands of movies.
Is he proposing?
I never thought of myself as the marriageable type. Inside the box are
two ruby studs. Earrings, I think, until I see the two barbells intersecting
them.
Nipple rings.
“What's the matter? Don't you like them?”
“They're beautiful, but I—I can't wear them.”
“Would you like to?”
His eagerness makes me shiver. “No. I don't think so.”
“That's a shame.” He closes the box and slides out of bed. “They were
quite expensive. Surgical-grade steel, studded with real rubies.”
 “You know I don't have piercings.”
“I was hoping I could persuade you,” he says sulkily, and for a moment
I want to hit him.
“What do I do with these?” I hold up the box. Tempted to throw it at
him for his attitude, but not quite daring. My heart twists uncertainly in my
chest at the blank look that slides down his features.
“Keep them.” He shrugs. “Sell them. I must get to work. I'm sorry you
do not appreciate my gift.”
“I didn't say that.”
“Not in so many words,” he agrees. “Excuse me.”

I go to the dining commons. I eat too much again and end up throwing
up—again.
I'd kill someone for some alcohol. One of my neighbors has left her
mouthwash in the bathroom and I take a swig of that. My stomach aches,
like I've got a burning ball of lead in my gut.
Alexander.
He's all I can think about all the time.
I can't get that look of rejection out of my face.
That awful sex.
Maybe we need things spiced up between us. It certainly bears thinking
about. So few things bring me pleasure these days, I'm unwilling to
sacrifice any of them; they're the only things keeping me alive.
Even though he's told me never to call him at home, I call him.
“Miss Abrahams,” he says, sounding displeased. “I thought I told you
—”
“I know.” There is a pause. He waits. “I've changed my mind.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I'll come get you.”
The phone goes dead. I wonder if I've made yet another mistake.
 I don't care.

I am clutching the box so tightly that the sharp corners beneath the
velvet are leaving marks on the inside of my palm. Red crescents that will
not heal for at least a day. I barely feel the pain. Alexander greets me with
an impassioned kiss that seems fake.
“You look beautiful.”
I don't feel beautiful.
“Have you brought the rings?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I was thinking we'd do this in the bedroom.”
“The bedroom,” I repeat.
“It's easier if you lie down.”
“Have you done this before?”
I have that voice—it's the one that tells me not to cut, not to drink, to
take the pills.
That voice is so loud that sometimes I have to drown it out with my
own actions.
This is one of those times.
I want to please Alexander. I don't want him to look at me with the
coldness in his eyes.
I want him to hurt me, so I won't feel pain.
“Yes,” he says. “I have.”
“On who? The same person you went to the BDSM club with?”
“No,” he says. “Would you like a drink first?”
I'd like several. “Just give me a bottle.”
Delacroix rolls his eyes but hands me a cheap white with a twist cap. I
swallow what I want, then set the bottle on his counter and follow him into
the bedroom.
“Take off your shirt, Miss Abrahams.”
 He watches me unbutton it. Nothing sexy; it's the plaid flannel I wore
the first time I met him. I'm not wearing anything beneath it, and my
nipples are pebbling from the cold. Alexander always keeps his house so
cold. He nudges me back, moving my arms over my head.
“I'll be next to your heart, Miss Abrahams,” he says, as he kisses down
my chest. “My name will sear into your very soul, so that with every beat,
you will know who it is that owns you.”
I can feel his cock hardening against my pubic bone. I feel slightly
sick. I think it might be the alcohol. But then again, it might not.
“How are you planning on doing this?” I ask him, as he bends to kiss
one of my breasts. “This doesn't seem very hygienic.”
“I have medical-grade disinfectant,” he says. “I also own an autoclave,
so don't worry about infection.”
I make the mistake of asking what an autoclave is.
He informs me that it is a device that uses pressurized steam to clean
medical instruments by raising them to temperatures in excess of one-
hundred-and-twenty degrees.
“Why do you own an auto-whatever?”
“Needle play can be dangerous if it isn't hygienic.”
“Isn't needle play temporary?”
“Usually. Not always. Are you having second thoughts? You seemed
like the type who would enjoy piercings. I was surprised to find out you
only had your ears done, and no tattoos, either.”
“What kind of type is that?”
Though I don't need to ask. The type who skips school for days on end.
The type who drinks alcohol out of the bottle, without a glass. The type
who seduces her professor and then doesn't bat an eyelash when he takes
her to a club where the going is always rough. The type who is completely
out of control.
I don't need to fucking ask. I know the type.
He's right; it's me.
Delacroix pulls back from me.
“Do you want me to stop?”
 I know the word to make this stop. The one word.
“No.” I let out my breath. “Just do it, okay?”
Alexander kisses me on the mouth. “Yes,” he says. “Yes. I will.” Then
he slips on a pair of latex gloves with a snap that makes me flinch.
“Relax,” he says again.
He tweaks my nipple to elongate it, briskly swapping it with
disinfectant that feels far too cold. Then holds it in place while he readies
the needle with his other hand. I'm bracing myself, but I still scream when
he pierces my flesh.
Alexander clamps his forearm over my mouth as he forces the stud in,
but he needn't have bothered. Like a wildfire, the pain burns itself out
violently but quickly, leaving only a dull throb. I can't breathe, but I'm
afraid to struggle while he's adjusting the stud.
When he pulls away at last, I gasp air.
“Do you need a gag?” he asks, somewhat callously. “Something to bite
on?”
I shake my head as I open my eyes, which are dewy with tears. Your
dick, I think. “Your were fucking choking me, you son of a bitch,” I rasp.
“I did not want my neighbors to hear.”
“Fuck you.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
“Isn't that the point?” I snap at him.
Quietly, he says, “You know what I mean.”
I do. The piercing catches the light from the bedside lamp, radiating
sparks of fire. I arch my back, watching the reflection flare back at me.
I can see my face, painted in red.
Alexander follows my eyes.
“The soreness will only last a few days. Do you like it?”
It is far lovelier than the words marked haphazardly on my skin, with
no rhyme or reason.
With one difference.
This is his, instead of mine.
 “It's beautiful.”
“I'm glad. There are many kinds of play you can do with piercings.
Some I think you may enjoy.”
“I somehow missed this chapter in the BDSM handbook,” I say.
He puts the spent needle in a baggie and gets a fresh one. “This isn't
basic BDSM. They practice safe and sane play; edge play is neither. That's
the thrill of it.”
I touch the stud, and my nipple throbs a little.
I am neither safe, nor sane.
I guess neither is Professor Delacroix.
“Don't touch. Let the skin heal.” He pushes my hand aside. “I'm going
to do the other nipple, now, love. Try not to be too loud—I think my
neighbors are home. I won't cover your mouth if you're good.”
It's the first time he's ever called me 'love.'
Does he actually love me? Could anyone actually love me, with me
being who I am? What I am?
I would like to think so.
The second time hurts worse because now I know what to expect. But I
manage to lower the volume, and my scream transforms into a squeaky
wheeze.
“That's my girl.”
He adjusts the stud, wipes away the blood, and then throws the needle
away in the same baggie, along with his used latex gloves.
“There. The worst is over.”
I want to forgive him for the pain when he kisses me, carefully
avoiding my throbbing breasts as he wraps his arms around my waist and
holds me tightly to him. Could he love me? I wonder.
“You are Juliet, Beatrice, and O. Tempted, tempter, and temptress.”
I like the idea of being part of such an unholy trinity. Maybe, rings out
in response to my unasked question. It's like the keening of a sad bell.
Maybe.
“I own you now,” he tells me. “Completely. Inside and out.”
 “Do you love me, Alexander?” I ask him.
“Take off your jeans,” he says, by way of response.
He removes the leather collar from the nightstand and snaps it around
my throat. I wear the mask, with its spray of earthy feathers, as Alexander
mounts me.
My orgasm, when it comes, seems endless. The endorphin rush is
better than cocaine. I collapse against the sheets, and the mask slides off to
hit the floor with a soft clatter.
Alexander cups my breast, and lets out a soft gasp, still inside me
though I can feel him softening.
Alexander doesn't climax; he came in his pants while he was piercing
me. He doesn't say as much but I can see the white stains on his jeans for
what they are. Neither of us mentions it, the way we didn't mention our last
time together and how awful it was.
But I feel a twinge of nausea uncurl within my stomach. It might just
be fear.

I call the phone number listed on the school's website. It's the
department phone, but nobody picks up. Damn budget cuts. Maybe this is a
sign.
To what? Leave well enough alone?
Maybe in the beginning I told myself that I was going to maintain a
distance between us, but things are different now. What we have might be
shit, but it's shit that I'm invested in, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it
just slip through my fingers. It's mine.
I try his home phone several more times to no effect, and punch the
'end' button on my phone hard. He doesn't teach today, and rarely goes out.
Either he's gone out, or, more likely, he's not taking my calls.
How dare he. I could kill him for that.
Maybe I will.
I know where Alexander lives, though dropping by his house
unexpectedly screams stalker ex. On the other hand, if he were truly
concerned about that he wouldn't have given me his home address. And if
it's a breach of trust to abuse that knowledge this way, he shouldn't have
abused mine first.
Before trying the door I search the outside. Alexander keeps his spare
key under a stone by the porch. It's surprisingly cliché. Guess it just goes to
show that no matter how special or sophisticated we think we are, we're
only human in the end.
I shake my head as I unlock the door and step inside, holding the door
to make sure it doesn't make a registering sound as it swings shut to latch
behind me.
His house is quiet, except for a few soft, furtive sounds emanating from
the back of the house. Where his bedroom is. Is he asleep? Sick?
I walk into the bedroom and the have to stop, frozen, because
Alexander is in the middle of fucking another woman in what I have come
to gradually think of as our bed.
She is older but beautiful—more beautiful than me. Her breasts bounce
as she rides Delacroix as if he were that man from the club who was dressed
up like a pony. Delacroix always insists on being on top when he's with me.
Her negligee falls demurely over their intertwined legs, shielding their
shame.
“Jessica,” Delacroix says, breathing hard, surprised but unrepentant.
It is the first time that he has ever used my real name.
“What the fuck is this?” For a moment, I'm too shocked to be angry,
though the anger quickly comes. Boy, does it come. I scream at him. “Who
the fuck is she?”
“Oh, so this is the Jessica I've heard so much about.”
And then I see the matching rings on their fingers and the album that
lies open at their feet. I recognize those breasts, surrounded by pink and
colored in red.
Those are my breasts.
It's an entire album full of pictures. Pictures of me.
“You sick fuck,” I gasp. “You fucking psychopath.”
“Calm down, Jessica.”
 “Don't you fucking tell me to calm down. Fuck you! Fuck you with
bells on!”
I snatch at the book. Both of them try to grab it, but I'm faster and more
desperate. I race out of there with my catalog of shame. The thought occurs
to me that Alexander might have extras, but I won't deal with that. Not now.
I run all the way to the dorms where I lock the door behind me. I flip
through the album with shaking hands. There is a picture of me with the
owl mask, arching suggestively on the bed. All of me is revealed on the
pages. I wince when I see my vagina, glistening like raw oyster, between
my spread legs.
I remember the girl at the bookstore telling me that Delacroix
sponsored a hermetic artist of erotic photography. Nathan Shivers, I think
his name was. Then I realize that the two could very well be one and the
same: Nathan Shivers could be Alexander Delacroix's Clark Kent. It's too
much for coincidence.
The grim truth hits me with the force of ten cannons.
He's going to sell this book to people.
I'll be on people's coffee tables, in their bedrooms, their bathrooms.
Why would he do this to me?
Revenge for making him lose face?
Or is he just that twisted, and I was unlucky enough to get involved
with him in the first place?
I go to my desk and grab the first pen I see. It's a purple gel pen, half-
empty. I slash it over a memo pad to make sure it still works and then I
scribble out a hasty note. It isn't a suicide note so much as a confession. I'm
not even sure what I intend to do with it, only that it needs to be written.
I jot down the basics, detailing the circumstances of our affair,
Delacroix's nom de plume, and my unrelenting agony. I tuck the note
between the pages of the book and leave the dorms. I'm not sure what I'm
looking for, but I spy a drug store. It's just a few blocks away. A lot of the
students load up on snacks here during finals.
A tide carries me through the automatic doors. I find myself walking
mechanically down the aisles. I pick up a plastic carton of gummy bears, a
box of ready-to-eat chicken broth, and a bottle of aspirin for my throbbing
head. I like the taste of chicken broth, always have. A lot of people don't
like it because it's sick people food but there's something calming about it.
Something pure.
I guess it reminds me of being little, and feeling taken care of. Safe and
domestic.
Outside, I sit on the curb and swallow down a tablet of aspirin with
some broth that I sip right out of the box. Then I remember that the adult
dose for aspirin is two tablets, so I take another. And then another. And then
another. Because why stop there? I keep going until both containers are
empty and my stomach is as sharp as a blade. I set the book beside me on
the sidewalk and wait for darkness to come.
It doesn't take long.

I open my eyes to four white walls. There's no stereotypical “am I

dead?” moments. I've been in and out of enough hospitals to know I'm not
dead. I've traded one statistic for another. Thwarted suicide attempt.
I recognize the inoffensive artwork, the smell of antiseptic, the
uncomfortable bed with paper sheets and its snot green hypoallergenic
pillow. If there is a purgatory, it looks an awful lot like a doctor's office.
I groan. My throat feels bruised and sore. My stomach isn't feeling so
great, either. I may not be dead, although I strongly wish I were. The
inoffensive artwork blurs before my eyes, and it's worse than vertigo
because now I feel like I might throw up.
My noises of distress attract a doctor in the process of making rounds.
He has salt and pepper hair and a disapproving expression that could have
been chiseled out of granite. I wonder if sanctimoniousness is a special
course offered at med schools, since nobody seems to do it better than
doctors.
“That was a foolish thing you did,” he tells me. “You're lucky to be
alive.”
“Well, I feel like shit,” I snap.
“Yes, well, having your stomach pumped will do that.”
I'm a little awed by that. I've never had my stomach pumped before.
Never had to, although I've come close a few times by overdoing it with
alcohol. Especially Four Loko. Drink too much of that stuff and you'll black
out, easy.
There were some girls in Cherry Hill who were veterans of the ER.
One OD'd on ecstasy at a rave and was rushed to the nearest hospital when
she started showing signs of advanced hyperthermia. She had to be force-
fed charcoal to neutralize the toxic effects. Her teeth were still a little black
when she first got checked in and stayed like that for weeks. “It was a bad
batch,” she said, shrugging.
I remember being so jealous of her blasé, world-weary attitude.
Taking the aspirin with food was probably a mistake.
My piercings are on the nightstand. I suppose they had to be removed
for the various procedures involved in my recuperation. I pitch them into
the wastebasket with a noise of disgust. Fucking Delacroix—he's the one
who got me into this mess.
Now I'm trapped inside a hospital room while he does God-knows-
what—
I remember the book. The book! I look around wildly, searching the
room. My purse is sitting on a chair nearby. My piercings were on the
nightstand before I threw them out. Even the clothes I was wearing before
the incident are present, neatly folded (and undoubtedly searched).
Where is it?
I stab the call button and the same doctor from before comes back in.
His bedside manner has not improved; he still looks very annoyed with me.
“Yes?”
“There was a book beside me on the curb. Where I passed out.”
“All the belongings you had on you at the time have been returned to
you.”
“But they're not,” I snap. “The book isn't here! So where the fuck is
it?”
“I hope you aren't implying that any doctor in this facility would steal
from you.”
Actually, the thought hadn't even occurred to me. But now that he's
mentioned it, I guess it's as likely a scenario as any, although the thought of
some whack-job in a white coat jerking off to the fetish photographs
Delacroix took of me make me feel like throwing up. “I don't know,” I say,
“would they? I was asleep.”
“Unconscious,” he corrects, automatically.
“Whatever,” I say. “Same thing.”
I know it's not but I say it because I suspect it will annoy him. It does.
“By the way, we notified your next of kin. Your parents are on their
way.”
“My parents?”
This is terrible. They're going to send me back to Cherry Hill. Which is
what I wanted—at least, it was in the beginning. But not now. Not while
that bastard is still free. Not after he used me up and then tossed me out like
yesterday's jizz-rag.
Maybe Alexander stole the book.
I wonder if he was the good Samaritan who called the paramedics. He
could have been following me. I didn't tell him where I lived, but it's
possible he was driving around looking for me. Maybe he even watched me
attempt to off myself and was glad I was saving him from having to ensure
my silence.
“I want my book back,” I tell the doctor, just to make sure I cover all
the bases.
“We'll look for it,” he says in a tone that suggests he will do no such
thing.

My mother comes to sign me out of the hospital. Dad has decided to

stay at home. Caught between anger and concern, he chose the more
familiar venue of anger. It's just like him to sit at home and brood.
“Oh, Jessica, why?” Mom says tearfully.
“I told you I wasn't ready.”
Which is the wrong thing to say, because that just makes her cry. The
nurses all eye me evilly. I guess Dr. Douche has been telling tales because
none of them are looking at me with much sympathy, considering I just had
a vacuum shoved down my esophagus.
 I check through my wallet to make sure nothing is missing. I could
have sworn I had five bucks in there, but I can't remember whether I spent it
myself or not. Could my mother have taken it? The nurses?
“What's this I hear about you asking about a book?”
“You don't want to know,” I tell her, remembering the crying fit at the
ER.
My mom slams her foot down on the brakes. “Goddammit, Jessica!”
“Trust me, Mom. You don't want to know. It's bad, even for me.”
“What did you do?” she says, in a low, hollow voice I'm far too
familiar with.
I reel off the specifics. Seduced professor. Started an affair with said
professor. Professor was into the whole BDSM scene. Professor took fetish
photography of me. Professor published said fetish photography into a slim
volume he intended to publish under his pen name. Found this out when
professor was in bed with another woman, both of them poring over said
slim volume as they were in the middle of—
“That's enough,” Mom barks. Her face is equal parts white and green,
like she doesn't know whether she wants to scream or vomit. Maybe both, at
the same time. If she is, she really ought to stop the car.
“I told you—,” I begin, only to have her motion me to be quiet.
She starts driving again and doesn't stop until we reach the dorms.
“You are a stupid, stupid, stupid girl,” she says.
“That's not a very nice thing to say to someone who just tried to kill
themselves.”
“Suicide is one of the most selfish ways of dealing with your
problems,” she snaps at me. “There are some desperately unhappy people in
this world who still manage to get out of bed in the mornings. But you
wallow in your problems, and when you run out of problems, you create
new ones. Who do you think has to deal with the emotional fallout that
results from suicide, Jessica? Your loved ones. Your friends.”
“I haven't got any friends,” I point out.
“That's nobody's fault but yours.”
“What about Professor Delacroix?”
 “He's certainly not your friend!” She explodes.
“No, I mean, what are we going to do about him?”
“You should have thought about that before.”
“But he can't just get away with what he did!”
Mom pinches the bridge of her nose. “You shouldn't have let him take
those pictures of you. You shouldn't have slept with your professor, period.
I thought I taught you better than that, Jessica. I thought I raised you better
than that.”
A bolt of fury courses through me, made even more intense by the
bitter knowledge that she is right. “So you're saying that it's all my fault?”
“No, that's not what I'm saying. He's a grown man. He should have
known better than to take advantage of an emotionally disturbed young
girl.”
“So you're saying I'm emotionally disturbed now.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she says, “did you think Cherry Hill was a
summer camp?”
“I don't think even summer camps force you to participate in
macrame.”
We were given only the softest of yarns to work with and even then,
staff were always in attendance just in case someone got the bright idea of
trying to strangulate themselves.
Mom makes a sound of disgust.
“How you can joke about it….”
It's either joke about it, or start screaming and never stop.
While she goes to the car to retrieve her overnight bag I check my
email. There's another one from that anonymous address, the one Delacroix
always used for our meetings.
Are you all right?
Great. He knows.
But now I don't think that he has the book after all. There is an edge of
concern to that email that wouldn't be present if the book was in his
possession. He'd be far more self-assured and smug if it were. That means
that as long as he thinks I have the book in my possession, I have the upper
hand.
Fuck you, I write back. No, I'm not all right.
The response is instantaneous. Let me see you. I'd like to take you to
dinner.
Here's a suggestion for the main course, I write. Go eat yourself.
Mom sees me with the laptop and says, “What are you doing?” before I
can close and hide it. At my silence, she strides over and takes it from me in
spite of my protests. Her eyes flick over the screen, reading the words. A
line forms between her eyebrows.
“Is this him?” she asks. “The…teacher you had the affair with?”
“Yes.”
“'Do you have it?'” she says aloud. Delacroix must have sent another
message.
“He thinks I have the book,” I tell her. “I thought he'd taken it, but I
guess not. Cocksucker.”
Mom is silent, thinking. She looks so tired and disappointed. I hate her
for making me care. I hate myself for caring. Love and hate: two sides of
the same spectrum.
“He's asking what you want now,” she says, when my laptop pings
again.
“His suffering,” I say coldly. “I want him to suffer. I want him to be in
hell.”
“Let's talk to the police,” Mom says.
“They can't give me what I want.”
“Put on your shoes,” she says wearily.

There aren't many things that can get a tenured professor fired.
Especially not if he is actively publishing, and otherwise generating money
for the university. In that case, it's damn near impossible.
Luckily for me, Delacroix has found one of the few political hot
buttons left in the world: sexual scandal and debauchery.
 People can't stand the idea of other people having sex, especially if
they aren't having any themselves.
Throw a double life as a seedy erotic photographer into the mix and,
well, you can forget that research grant.
A university is as self-preserving as any living, breathing organism. It
rejects the failing part of itself so that the greater whole may survive and
thrive.
Delacroix is amputated from his post and left to rot like the filthy,
stinking gangrenous appendage that he is.
Is this a satisfactory outcome?
Not nearly as much as seeing him on his knees would be. Begging me
to take him back.
Not that I would—probably.
It would depend how hard and convincingly he could beg.
I wonder what will happen to him.
“You shouldn't even care,” Mom says angrily.

My grades are thrown out, chalked up to the psychic distress of being

involved with an older, predatory male. Never mind the fact that I was the
one who initiated the affair, or that I enjoyed the vast majority of the so-
called perversions he inflicted upon me.
No. I'm the simpering pathetic girly-whirl who didn't know what she
was getting into. Isn't that just typical. You're either asking for it, or having
it forced upon you without your consent. Who decided women always have
to be passive in sex?
I know when I'm being offered a good deal, so I take it. And in return, I
receive the Victim card to play as I so desire. I'm offered a fresh start with a
clean slate, which I refuse—and I think the dean of admissions at Fielder is
relieved, although my mom is horrified.

Mom wastes no time starting my detox program.

My stomach refuses to cooperate in the proceedings, naturally. My
mother takes the opportunity to point out how skinny I've gotten—it isn't a
compliment—and then asks if I am starving myself again, making myself
throw up.
I hadn't realized that she'd noticed.
“No,” I snap, trying for outraged and failing.
I can see from her face, the tautly drawn lines around her mouth and
eyes, that she does not believe me. Well, fuck her. She'll see.
She makes a gentle soup. I can only manage a few swallows before I
am forced to push the bowl back in disgust. For the third time in as many
days, I am taken to a doctor. This trip reveals an ulcer in my stomach lining.
“Are you often stressed?”
He is holding a clipboard. A moment ago he was scribbling away but
now the pen is poised, ready, as he waits for my response. I look at him like
he's crazy.
“What do you think?”
“I don't know,” he says patiently, “that's why I'm asking you. I want to
get a second opinion here from the patient herself. So you tell me,
Jessica”—it feels so strange having people call me by my first name again
—“do you think you're stressed?”
“Yes, I think I'm fucking stressed. I'm about to be checked into a
goddamn mental asylum, for God's sake!”
I'm not sure why I tell him this. Shock value, maybe. He blinks, but
that could be because I'm shouting at him. “I see,” he says, in a way that
doesn't make it clear what his particular revelation is. “May I have your
permission to speak to your mother about your health?”
“I don't care,” I say flatly.
He has me sign something on the clipboard. I hear his heavy footfalls
fade into the white noise of the hospital corridor. Going to the waiting
room. Calling my mother aside into one of the empty rooms. Talking to her
about—
My imagination goes blank. I have no idea what the doctor will want to
speak to my mother about.
Whatever it is, it isn't good.
 Her face is grim as we march to the pharmacy to pick up my new
prescription. The pamphlet the doctor gave me says the pills are meant to
neutralize my stomach’s acidic chemistry. There is also a list of dietary
restrictions that I probably won't follow.
My name is called and Mom follows me to the register. I reach out for
the bag, but my mother takes it and slips it into her purse.
“What the fuck, Mom?” I say.
“You can't be trusted to take care of yourself.”
“That's bullshit.”
“Is it, Jessica?” For a moment, I think she's going to explode. “Is it? Do
you even remember why I'm here?”
Yes. Yes, I remember.
“Fine, you can carry the pills,” I say. “Bitch.”
I'm dragged to the dentist, as well.
It takes a little while to find a place in Fielder that is covered by our
HMO. I suppose Mom is trying to get me vaccinated before shipping me
back to Cherry Hill. Might come home with fleas, otherwise. After my X-
rays, I am told that I have two cavities that need to be filled.
I share this news with my mom, who looks more annoyed than she did
earlier, if that's even possible. She and the nurses plan evasive action. Mom
explains the necessity of having it done sooner, rather than later, tiptoeing
around the real reason why while the other staff and patients try not to
eavesdrop too conspicuously. I read a magazine in the waiting room and
pretend I don't notice all the stares.
The dentist is the first to cave. Maybe he feels sorry for my mom. Or,
more likely, he wants the two of us out of his office, so we will stop
distracting people from having their root canals.
“We can try to squeeze you in tomorrow.”
That's what she said.
I lick my finger to turn the page of the magazine I am reading.
Mom shoots me a Look. “Tomorrow would be great.”
Shots in my mouth. My favorite. At least they’ll make me numb. That
watered-down general anesthetic is probably going to be the only drugs I'll
get for a while. Unless you count antidepressants, which sure as shit aren't
miracle pills, so I don't.
Cherry Hill feels like it's supposed to be punishment. But as I listen to
little children crying that they're scared it's going to hurt, and the quiet blare
of the drill, I think that I've never felt safer than I have when I'm
sandwiched between those four padded walls.
The nurses with their pillow-like breasts, as quick to offer words of
comfort as they are to brandish their needles loaded with enough muscle
relaxants to take out a small pony, let alone an underweight teenager girl.
The office where we made our weekly confessionals with the psychiatrist,
the one with the tortoise shell glasses who spent most of the session
nodding, saying “um-hmm” or “how does that make you feel?” and then
smiling and bobbing her head some more. The bland, stomach-friendly
food. It is existence at the lowest common denominator.
I suspect minimum security prisons are a lot like Cherry Hill, except
there is less stigma about having been in jail than there is about having been
in a psych ward. In any case, it'll be a whole lot better than staying at home,
under my parents' resentful stares.
Though I'm trading one Gestapo regime for another.

And what about the book?

I'm not sure what happened to it.
Mom spoke to the police, eventually, once she got over the shame and
embarrassment at having to request my erotic pictures back.
The cops were sympathetic, and they looked, too (or so they said) but
the book seems to have disappeared right along with whomever made the
anonymous 911 telephone call.
“If anyone tries to publish it, we'll know,” they assure me. “And then
they will be dealt with to the full extent of the law. But I doubt that thing
will ever resurface.”
As if this is supposed to make me feel better, knowing that the book is
out there, unscathed.
Mocking me.
Taunting me.
 Tantalizing me.
I remember that story Delacroix told me, about the man doomed to an
eternity in hell without food or drink. Desire without satisfaction.
Is there any better example than an unsuccessful search?

Tomorrow I am being sent back to Cherry Hill.

My father still isn't speaking to me, will hardly even look at me. Once
again, he cannot wait to be rid of me.
“He'll come around,” Mom says, very hesitantly.
I whirl around to look at her. “Don't condescend to me,” I snap. “I'm
crazy, not stupid.”
“You're not crazy,” she says, alarmed.
I just look at her until she flushes and looks away.
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Beneath my sleeves, my wrist is bleeding. I didn't cut a word this time.
I've been slashing the labels on my skin, rendering them illegible. Clearing
the slate, so to speak. I doubt I'll have the chance to do it in Cherry Hill and
my parents are too stupid to notice.
No, the goddamn page has turned on me yet again.
I've entered a new fucking chapter in my life, as my dad would
probably say, if he were on speaking terms with me. Which he isn't, and for
all I know, never will be again. I've never seen him so pissed.
Yeah, this is a whole new chapter, all right.
A chapter where Alexander Delacroix is considered a fraud and a
lecher.
A chapter where my family is busy consulting with lawyers to sue him
in order to cover my psychiatric bills.
A chapter in which a father has had Enough, to the point where he has
stopped putting on these pathetic pretenses of love or affection, and when
he refers to me at all, he refers to me in the third person to my mother, as if
I'm gone—or dead.
 A chapter in which Nathan Shivers is doomed to fade into obscurity
with other failed artists.
A chapter in which I am alive…for the moment.
I already know how story ends. I die. But whether it's at twenty-seven
or one-hundred-and-twenty-seven is anyone's guess.
I suppose it all depends on what happens next.

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 Ack(!)knowledgements
I'd like to take this time to thank:
Louisa, for her beautiful covers. I think she did an especially
nice job with this one.
You, for reading this book.
My friends and family for their support.
My PH whoarcruxes
All the wonderful new people I've had the pleasure of meeting
through my books and reviews.
Thank you!!!!!

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