During my years as a college professor, I assiduously avoided intimacy with students. In an environment of unspoken permissiveness, I took an unforgiving stance. Thou shalt not encourage, accept or enjoy the intimacy of students. As with most prohibitions, this one went against all natural inclinations. When, for example, one young woman, blond hair flowing over her shoulders, airy sundress hanging gracefully on breasts and hips, put her hand on my chest and teasingly accused me of flattering her with good grades, the thrill that surged through me was dizzying. But I knew that this was simply her way of getting what she wanted, just as a basketball player once gave me tickets to a game. A sublimated quid pro quo that slipped undetected below the illicitness radar. And though I wouldn't want to exile libido from the classroom entirely, I told myself sternly, the excitement of teaching and learning should circulate around the material at hand, not around the personalities involved.
But every once in a while it is nice to be adored. Twelve people enrolled in my "Psychoanalysis and Culture" seminar, all seniors, nine women. The material was difficult, the evenings were dark and cold, but I was on top of my game. Soon, I was spending all week writing elaborate lectures. The class was a frenetic dance between blackboards, notes and texts. And if teaching, like hitting a baseball, has a sweet spot, I found it that semester. My arguments would grow to baroque complexity only to reach an elegant simplicity in their conclusion. After the semester had ended, my student evaluations astounded the teaching committee. I was loved. After each seminar, my fans would follow me to my car. And students would report their Freudian epiphanies to their other professors, who would relate them back to me.
But there was one student not taken by me. She wasn't resistant to the material, nor did she show any dislike for me or the seminar. But what was breathtaking to the rest of us left her unmoved. I would not have fallen for her had it not been for this irresistible distance. She was neither the smartest nor the prettiest nor the coolest. But somewhere along the line, she had been inoculated against the allure I held for everyone else.
I, however, lacked all immunity to her charms. If her seductive disinterest weren't enough, she had the bluest eyes and the fairest skin one could ever dream up. And lest you think Rebecca was a preppy, she had dirty blond dreadlocks with frosted highlights. Her affectations were punk, but underneath there was a femininity that allowed her to hold down a job at the bridal registry of an upscale department store. Her beauty was understated yet persuasive enough that she could pass effortlessly from feminist cultural studies to counseling brides on crystal. Her low-slung, vintage men's jeans weren't worn to disguise the generosity of her hips or her stomach. Her boots were edgier than the clunky Doc Martens everyone else was wearing. And I thought that her small, black cardigan could also be worn at the bridal registry, but imagining that pristine incarnation of my otherwise grunge crush was too delicious to dwell on for long.
The real treasure, though, came at the intersection of her undersized cardigan and her baggy jeans. There, she had left the bottom buttons of the cardigan unbuttoned, and before the black cashmere met the faded denim, there appeared a triangle of porcelain white stomach. At the bottom of this triangle was the loveliest bellybutton I had ever seen, pierced by a single steel ring. Her stomach didn't conform to any ideal. It was neither flat nor muscular, but it was defiantly, if subtly, displayed. At the center of this otherwise covered body, there appeared a brazen challenge to gaze at flesh, to be moved by the warm sensuality of skin, to be pushed by the edginess of a belly-button ring and to imagine, if you dare, another triangle, six inches below this one.
With 11 pairs of loving eyes gazing at my every move, with 11 pairs of attentive ears anxiously awaiting my next pronouncement, I delivered lectures to Rebecca alone. The days separating my contact with Rebecca grew longer. Awaiting some gleam to appear in Rebecca's deep blue eyes or some quiver to shoot through her impenetrable calm, however, was futile. I had to settle for gazing at her stomach as she breathed, watching it crease in different ways as she adjusted her slouch.
As the end of the semester approached, Rebecca began to ask me questions
about desire and its satisfaction, about pleasure and its thresholds, that
made me delirious with curiosity. She was trying to get an answer without
letting on the real question. After the final class, I hurried to read her
paper first, hoping it would disclose what she had been getting at. It
turns out that our quiet, reserved bridal attendant, our bad-ass,
not-
I had found Rebecca's brutal indifference maddeningly seductive. And although it filled me with desire, I could never have been the top she was looking for. Ironically, that I loved the adoration of my students was for her the greatest turn-off. I fed off of their adoration and sometimes I pandered to it -- to her, this made me unworthy. I lacked the severe autonomy, the unapologetic strength, that she sought in a top. The very fact that I had won over the affection of the rest of the class made me appear to Rebecca weak, not irresistible. And in Rebecca's eyes, I saw my own neediness reflected. To accompany my shattered self-image, she did leave me one small gift, a token, really, of her cruelty: stapled to her paper were a dozen photocopied pages from "The Story of O." Choice excerpts, for my pleasure. I've returned to these passages often since then, but when I dream, I return to that soft, white triangle of midriff. And although I would have preferred the warmth of human flesh, I still miss my captivity. I have never since been the teacher I was then.
