by Greg Fields
“He was a handsome man. Tall, tanned. Dark wavy hair and darker eyes. He dressed in sport coats and designer shirts. He was thirty-four. I guess he was going through some premature midlife crisis. He didn’t want to grow old, not doing the same mundane things, not wasting the wider opportunities he thought himself deserving, not wasting away with that woman who was his wife. I made him feel young, he told me. ’Lynda, with you I can defeat time, at least for a while.’ God, can you believe that? That I fell for that? His wife didn’t love him, but he couldn’t leave her. Too messy. Too many responsibilities. But she was dragging him down with her traditional ideas, her sense of comfort. He told me that she was stagnant, that she would never take a risk or look for a new experience. He sure as hell wasn’t like that. He took a huge risk with me. And I guess I was his new experience.
“Anyway, he kept coming on to me in class. Smiling at me, winking, asking me to come see him to discuss my papers, that sort of thing. I was attracted. I was flattered, too. I can’t lie. He seemed so clever, and of course I had never cultivated anyone’s attention before. I fell for his act completely. In class he was very animated, hopping around the room and making these outrageous gestures. One time he even perched on an open window ledge to illustrate something about a Philip Roth story. “Defender of the Faith”, if you’ve ever read it. He made the story come alive. We thought he might actually jump, maybe because it was only a second-story window, and he made us recite some nonsense and swear we believed it before he would come down. We all talked about that class for weeks. It was exciting for us. He excited us. And me.
“But he could be so gentle, too. He recited poetry so softly. Some of it was his own. And he could sing. Sometimes he’d put his poetry to music and sing it. Everybody loved him.”
“Some more than others, I take it.”
“Yes. Some more than others. I would go to his classroom after school to talk about my work, like he asked. Almost every day. I’d stay, and we’d talk about . . . all types of things. Me, him, his family. What he wanted to do after teaching. How he wanted to become great. He really moved me. I felt close to him. I felt unique, like I was the only one to whom he could relate. I guess that’s what he wanted. He may well have tried his act on others, but I was the one who bit.
“I thought about him more and more,” she continued. “At home. At night, in bed. I convinced myself that I could save him. Please don’t be judgmental, kid: I was young and stupid and terribly naïve. Besides, my home life was no picnic, as well you know. You’ve met my parents. I needed an escape.”
That much was true, thought the other. She had met Lynda’s parents that first weekend when they had dropped off their daughter. Both of them had struck her as totally humorless, especially the father. Lynda told her later that they were fundamentalists. They tolerated no deviation from the literal word. They were fiercely conservative. Lynda had nearly been sent to a Bible college. Only the intervention of Lynda’s counselor had convinced them that their daughter could get a fine education and successfully elude Satan at the place she had chosen. Her roommate considered that Lynda had retained little of her upbringing.
“One day in the classroom he touched me. We had been talking about his wife, how cold she was. He told me that he got more out of our conversations than he had ever gotten from his wife. I challenged him, he said, and I made him feel good about himself. Not worn or frayed. Then he leaned over and put his hand on my wrist. Nothing else. I went home that night and couldn’t sleep. My wrist still tingled. This was the first real warmth any man had ever shown me. I wanted more. It was all such a contrast to what I had become accustomed to, that pious, frigid boredom I thought was all a man could be capable of. And I trusted him. I trusted him to show me more, to follow up on what he had begun. I looked at it as another type of lesson, another lesson he could bring alive.
“The next day I went to his classroom again. He wasn’t expecting me. He was alone, thankfully, because I don’t know what I would have done if anyone else had been there. He was standing at his bookcase. I just went up to him and threw my arms around his neck. And he looked down at me, so afraid and formal. He didn’t flinch or back away, though. And I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t know quite what to do, to be honest. I just wanted to hold him. But at last he smiled, and then he kissed me. Hard, on the lips. Up ’til then I think I had only been kissed twice, each time at the end of a well-chaperoned date, and we had to sneak it. But he kissed me, and I told myself he meant it.
“He closed and locked the door. We spent the rest of the afternoon necking on his desk. I don’t think we spoke more than a dozen words between us. I didn’t think we had to, and he obviously didn’t want to. He would keep breaking away every few minutes to unlock the door and check the hallway, but no one was ever around that late. At the end of it he said that he had to be getting home. Goodbye, see you tomorrow. That was it.”
“Where did you go from there?”
“It was pretty apparent that he had sparked something in me. I wanted more. I had such a warped view of things growing up. I had always been taught that sex was evil, necessary between married people but a straight ticket to hell if you weren’t. And any woman who toyed with a married man was a harlot, pure and simple. There was no give in it. And now all those silly teachings in themselves seemed evil and warped because they restricted something wonderful, this wonderful situation, this wonderful man. I wanted Peter. I wanted to be everything to him. Anything that stood in the way of that couldn’t be right. Those stupid doctrines couldn’t apply anymore. I needed him, and he gave every indication that he needed me, too.
“I wanted to be sophisticated. I wanted to be old enough for him. I changed the way I carried myself, and tried to change the way I dressed. I spent less time with my friends, almost no time at all. I became less outgoing, less girlish. I wanted to think about Peter, how I could make myself adequate for him.
“After about a month of sneaking around after school, he told me that he wanted to sleep with me. I was a virgin, of course, and underage, but he said that didn’t matter. You know, after we started getting physical we didn’t talk as much as we used to. I should have been suspicious, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to make him happy. I was looking for some fulfillment myself, too. I don’t know. I was confused, but I knew that I felt good. I was looking for a quick and easy answer, and I thought Peter was it. I wanted to live my life for him, to go away with him. After that step, the rest of my life would be as it should. All conflicts resolved.”
“Did you ever think of his family?”
“No more than he did. He told me he wanted to leave them. But he never once told me he wanted to take me with him. I just assumed that’s what he meant.”
“And of course he didn’t.”
“Of course. We took me to dinner one Saturday night, then we went to a motel. It was so laughable. I had to be home by eleven. I guess he did, too, although I can’t imagine what excuse he gave to his wife. After that we got together as often as we could. He even screwed me once right in his classroom. The ultimate act of power, I suppose. Usually I’d tell my parents that I was going to the library and he’d pick me up down the street. We’d do it in his car out in the woods. I never saw the inside of his house.”
“How did it end, Lynda?”
“Real simple. We went on like that for about six months, throughout the autumn and the winter. Then one night he told me we couldn’t go on like that anymore. He had just fucked me in his car. There we were, sitting in the front seat, the windows all steamy. We couldn’t see anything. Our clothes were all messed up. You know, except for the few times we went to a motel we never took our clothes off. We just unzipped and unhooked the relevant areas.
“Anyway, he just came out with it. ’I can’t see you anymore, not like this.’ Of course, this poor naïve child was stunned. I cried. I asked him why. He didn’t really say. I know he never mentioned his family as a reason, or guilt, or responsibility. He said he’d alwa
ys be my friend, and that he’d do anything he could for me, but that was as far as things could go. He was so smug, too. He knew I’d never use our affair against him, even though I could have gotten him fired and thrown in prison. That’s probably the reason why he picked me. He knew I was too timid, too locked in, to do him any harm.”
“So he just used you as a dalliance and then cut you loose.”
“For a long time afterward I tried to attribute some noble motivation to what he did, and to how he ended it. His family, I thought. He didn’t want to cheat anymore, he was afraid of hurting me. Whatever. Then it dawned on me finally that he didn’t care about me in the least. I was a diversion. I made him feel sexy, feel young. I wouldn’t expect that I was the first student he ever tagged. I would expect he’s doing the same thing to someone else right now.”
“What about you, Lynda? What did you do?”
“The admissions office here accepted me conditionally. My grades, all my work, went straight to hell that last term. My senior year wasn’t any better. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t hold myself together. I’d break into tears sometimes just thinking about Peter and what he did to me. I couldn’t control it. I didn’t spend any time at school. I didn’t talk to anybody. I was so afraid I’d run into him in the hallways, or I might let myself slip around my former friends. I got to campus in the morning right before classes, and left at the final bell. And of course I didn’t dare tell my parents.
“I thought about Peter and I came to hate him. I still do. Even the memories turned sour. All it was was raw sex, nothing else, nothing deeper. He used all his charms as bait. He turned it all on and off. He was never mean, but looking back I can tell he never really cared about me, certainly not above the waist.
“You know, he’s almost ruined me. I haven’t seen a man socially since him. I haven’t felt comfortable around men. I keep thinking they all want only one thing, that no one cares. We’re all biological, kid, women as well as men. Peter knew that before I did, and he snared me. Now I know it, too. I’m not getting snared again. Ever.”
“And that’s why you came here. You couldn’t stay home any longer.”
“Yeah. Everything changed complexion. I couldn’t face my life there. I suppose I was ashamed, and so I ran. It’s better here, I think. At least I’ve got a chance to reconstruct some things. I won’t ever get over the bitterness that you so cleverly sensed, but I can begin to learn to live with it here. Human nature is black. It really is. I know that as sure as I know that the earth is round. And so we keep spinning along, trying to outmuscle everybody else, trying to take whatever we can get. No morality, so no regrets.”
“I’m not going to disagree with you. Lynda, in one sense don’t you think you might have been fortunate, though? I mean, to learn something so hard, and what did you lose, really? Your virginity. A piece of your youth. Your emotional involvement wasn’t real, you admit that. Wouldn’t it have been worse if you really loved him, if you had given up everything to him, and he in turn really loved you? Wouldn’t the scars have run even deeper? Here you lost an illusion and it’s made you harder. Peter may have done you a favor in that. But what if you had lost something even rarer than an illusion, something that you might never find again?”
“You may be right,” she replied after a pause. “But I won’t know that until I experience something more complete, and I’m not sure I ever will. To get there you have to make yourself vulnerable. I can’t do that. I won’t do that, at least not now, and probably not for a long, long time. The damage is done, girl. I’ll leave Romantic love to all you wide-eyed innocents. I’ll never experience that. Peter did me no favors. He just did me.”
They walked on, silently, each falling back into her own interpretations to sort out the pieces Lynda had brought forward, to shake them, to examine their color and textures, then put them into some type of order that made at least a little sense. It was a private process for each of them.
Years from now the other would remember this confession in detail and feel similar wounds, derived less harshly but still echoing the same conclusions. Human nature was black, and cold, and barren. Anyone approaching it with a childlike simplicity would be eaten alive. She would come to learn this in greater depth, but in fact she would be discovering nothing new. She walked on, side by side with her mutilated friend, arms occasionally brushing. She felt nothing beyond the vacuous emptiness in the pit of her stomach and the tension in her elbows and knees. Her eyes held the ground in front of her feet. At last, the evening could take hold.
“Let’s go back,” she said. “It’s getting cold.”
“If we stay on this path it’ll take us around to the front of the dorm.”
“Let’s hurry.” She noticed for the first time that she could see her breath. She thought instantly of her father, the image passing before it could be captured or considered. Around the path’s bend they came into view of the main classroom building. They quickened their pace wordlessly and headed up the gentle incline that led past the old building to the warmth of their room.
***
A week later, Lynda Hoelscher ventured out of her bitterness. Or rather, she acknowledged it fully and wielded it as a weapon against what had heretofore been unassailable. She shook her bitterness by its roots.
She attended a party at one of the college’s fraternity houses. There she got incredibly drunk, drunker than she had ever been before. She had arrived shortly after dinner, the first girl to walk through the massive front doors. She headed straight for the bar in the basement, parked herself on a stool and made certain she never saw the bottom of her glass. As the evening progressed men came up to talk to her in a steady stream. It had all the earmarks of a ritual; she was the prey. Her senses dulled, then rose again, swimming and twirling. She grew evil.
One young man in particular caught her eye. He had spoken with her briefly, like all the others had been rebuffed, and now sat on a bench in the corner of the dank basement, temporarily by himself. Lynda refilled her glass, tottered off her stool, tripped across the room and dropped herself next to the pleasantly surprised young man. She had noticed him because as the evening wore on, he appeared to be among the youngest in the room. His eyes were wide with wonder.
She said nothing to him. She merely leaned onto his shoulder and stuck her tongue into his ear. She would not remove it. Instead she probed deeper, making little sucking noises. The young man, absolutely stunned, made no sense of it, but he had no desire to fight it. He leaned back, half closed his eyes, and let the show continue. He was amazingly aroused, and drew his arm around her shoulders to hold her in place.
After a time Lynda’s tongue grew weary. “You got a room here?”
“In Courtney,” he replied, indicating the freshman men’s dormitory.
’Perfect,’ thought Lynda. ’How wonderfully perfect.’
They walked the short distance up then hill to Courtney, Lynda unsteady, the arm of her new friend tightly around her waist, bracing her. His roommate had gone home for the weekend. The dormitory itself was quiet, too, its residents prowling through the Friday night. The young man led her through the door to his room, shut it slowly and locked it behind him.
Lynda turned to look at him in the better light. ’Lord,’ she thought, ’he seems so innocent.’ For indeed he was. His young face had no lines to it, retaining the soft roundness of adolescence. His cheeks and chin had no whiskers. His blue eyes stood out clearly. Although he had had a few beers his demeanor had not blurred, his body had not become droopy or liquefied. His long blond hair curled under his ears, but it only added to his childlike quality, as if he were a young boy whose mother had let his hair grow out to see how it fell and what color it would be. ’He looks so young.’
“Take your clothes off,” she purred. “I want to see you naked.”
The young man complied, his excitement mingling with his nerves, compelling artificially slow movements and a weak, scrawny smile that he hoped would convey confidence.
He was, to be sure, puzzled as to why this was happening to him. He knew, though, that he should feel fortunate. This girl was gorgeous, a fantasy come to life. His friends, most of whom not sharing his virginal state, would be impressed. And he himself stood to learn something.
Lynda watched him undress, not bothering to take off her jacket. She grinned as she evaluated his body, which did not carry the softness of his face. It was hard and fairly muscular. ’Not unlike Peter’s,’ she thought.
He laid his jeans across the chair and turned back to her wearing only his shorts. He took a step toward her, but she backed away and held up her hand, smiling as she did so.
“All the way,” she said.
“What about you, babe?”
“You first.”
Again he complied, obediently peeling off his shorts and kicking them under the bed. He stood before her, tumescent, trembling slightly in spite of his best intentions.
“That’s better, lover,” Lynda cooed, her voice growing low and throaty. “That’s much better.”
She walked up to him, each stride catlike in its calm, unhurried deliberation. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed herself to his naked body, kissed him full on the lips, parted them and wetly entered her tongue into his astonished mouth. She waited for him to respond. His breathing deepened, his already firm erection grew firmer. He rubbed himself against her loins, sucked rapturously on her tongue. Soft groaning sounds slipped from his unplumbed depths.
Lynda Hoelscher, too, responded. She had her man. It was time now to use him.
With a breathless fury she drove her knee upward into his unprotected scrotum. Instantly he doubled over in shock and agony. Her arms around his neck kept him from falling, and she drove her knee into him a second time. The young man collapsed on the floor, writhing spasmodically as he clutched his exploding groin.
“So long, lover. Take care of yourself.” Lynda bent over the young man’s quivering body and planted a kiss on his cheek. He did not respond except to roll to his side. Lynda walked to the door, unfastened the lock and passed through. She closed it behind her on the first sounds of her young man retching violently, the vomit splattering off the carpet and onto the tiles floor beneath his bed.
