The Composition Book

by Jones, E. B.

  The Composition Book

  E.B. Jones,

  Copyright E.B. Jones 2013

  Sometimes at night, when my husband goes to bed, I wake up and walk out the bedroom door. This evening I carefully push away the comforter covers in the dark, and my feet move softly across the wooden floors. I look in his direction. He's in deep sleep, his mouth open against his pillow. I take out a robe from the closet to keep myself warm. The closet door creaks softly when I close it again. I like how the silk robe feels on my skin.

  Sneaking out of the bedroom at night to spend time by myself didn't used to be a part of my repertoire. I remember when my husband and I still lusted after one another, years ago. Faint images of our body parts becoming entangled, driving towards one another. Muscle memory of my fingers digging deep into his strong back, blindly feeling lower as he thrust himself into me, filling me with his strength and desire. The grey, colorless morning light. His bad breath as I turned to kiss his rough face. The quiet morning sex. Keeping our moans low to not wake up the kids. Pushing aside the sheets, pungent with sex, to walk to the shower, his come dripping from me, like white tears slowly falling down the insides of my thighs. And watching the way he looked at me when I walked softly, naked, across the bedroom floor. As though he approved of his lot in life. His choice of me as a wife.

  Kids happened. Careers. My work as a literacy professor. His job as a professional carpenter. The years roughened his hands. Etched deeper lines into both our faces, around our eyes and at the corners of our mouths. The inexorable march of time like a stream passing unnoticed over rock. Cutting deeper without fanfare, always flowing, until one day someone notices that the rock is no longer whole.

  Night is when I allow myself to become someone else. In my dreams it's as though I were awake. I walk downstairs and into the kitchen and turn on the fluorescent lights. Their cold brightness hurts my eyes. I keep meaning to tell my husband to change the light bulbs and put in full spectrum ones. The quality of the light matters in more than an aesthetic way. It has the power to either dull or enhance the senses. He seems to only care about the electric bill. I squint for a moment before opening the cupboard to get a teacup. The cups are all chipped in some way or another. That's unavoidable when you have kids at home. I've nearly forgotten to care about that. It's just another adjustment you make when living under one roof with a family. I put a kettle on the stove and turn it on. I need to keep the spout of the kettle open so that the noise of the steam from the boiling water doesn't wake the kids.

  Night is my time, my place. I look in the pantry and pull out a small packet of chamomile tea. I let it steep in the hot water I've poured into my cup. The paper end of the teabag falls into the water. It's too hot to fish it out with my fingers. I put a spoonful of honey into the cup and dip the spoon into the tea and honey. I bring it to my lips. Still too hot. It burns as I taste the sweetness. Pain and pleasure.

  My dreams take me to dark places. I never know where I'll end up when I close my eyes. I have dreams so lucid that I feel compelled to write them down, in a secret journal. Who else vividly remembers their dreams? Mine haunt me during the day. I sometimes ask myself if maybe I'm actually living outside my own body during these nighttime intervals. I feel guilt over the fantasies that I have. I know my husband is sleeping upstairs. Exhausted from hauling plywood and pounding nails with his crew. And yet my thoughts sometimes betray him in a way that I could never share. A subtle wedge between us. He would understand that. With each excursion of my mind I drive it deeper.

  I take a sip of tea and sit on the couch in the living room. The residual heat from the wood stove still radiates and warms my face as I turn toward it. I close my eyes for a moment and rest my head against a cushion. My head sinks into the warm fabric. I wait patiently for my internal world to transform. I feel my breath move in and out of me. Keeping time to an internal cadence. In. Pause. Out. Darkness now, but that will soon change. It's coming.

  Light pours through a window and onto desks in front of me. Neatly arranged in rows. Hard blue plastic molded chairs behind each desk. I look around. I'm in one of my old college classrooms. The walls are a sorrowful shade of white. Almost grey. Dirty from years of having been pinned with student work. Tacks still driven into the walls with small shredded pieces of paper the only evidence of having ever supported a weight greater than themselves.

  The sudden change in scenery is jarring. Like a favorite song on the radio interrupted by static in a chorus. Falling off the airwaves as though it had never existed at all. I know I must be asleep, but I am completely aware of my new surroundings. I inhale them in great gasps of sensation, the way a captive animal might when suddenly released from a cage into the wild. My hand touches my face. Its familiar, defined boundaries are reassuring. I ask myself why my mind has decided to bring me back here, to the place where I had started my college teaching career.

  No one is around. I seem to be alone. I strain to hear sounds. Perhaps the voice of an old colleague. Or students, living away from home for the first time, talking about a party over the weekend. A new lover. Some future travels. Oblivious that their conversation might be heard by their mentors or professors. We used to pretend to ignore them. And really we devoured their words, heard in small fragments. Pieces of their lives getting mixed together, only intelligible if you no longer tried to organize them into coherent threads of time. It was like walking through a field of wildflowers in springtime with your eyes closed, to better smell the aromas and pollens swirling in the invisible eddies of air. Their lives were often so different from our own. So full of life, of lust and uncertainty and possibility. All things that we missed but pretended to no longer care for, because we had stability. Families. Careers that mattered.

  I'm no longer in my nightgown and robe. Instead, I have on a white blouse. With no bra. And a dark pencil skirt. As I look down toward my legs, I see black fishnet stockings. A pair of heels as dark as coal. The outfit clashes with the surroundings. I feel out of place. I never used to dress this way for work. It would have been far too distracting to project so much sexually suggestive energy in an academic setting. I could just imagine the stares from the men in the class. The whispers of the women, “Can you believe she wore that to class today?” I wouldn't have been able to ignore the attention. I would have been a really bad professor.

  There's a knock on the half open door of the classroom. I see the figure of a young man standing in the doorway. It's my former graduate teaching intern, Rob. He has a suggestive half smile. It looks like he hasn't shaved in a day. It darkens his jaw. I wonder if the move is calculated. I feel his eyes as though they were hands. Running down my blouse. Feeling the roughness of the fishnet stockings. A quick pang of anxiety. I don't want him to see me dressed like this. To risk revealing any of my inner world.

  When he was my intern, we used to spend afternoons after class debriefing from our lessons. Discussing what had worked that day and what we would have changed. I can remember my pulse quickening when he pulled his chair close to mine, my blood flowing through me like an express train. The flashes of desire that I felt, like the ocean's summer phosphorescence on a warm night, fleeting points of light in watery space. Not completely leaving my conscious mind. Trying to look away, to think of anything else, of my husband, but being drawn to the flashes because they represented something I once had and wished to have again.

  I tried to turn it off. To remain professional. To project the image of indifference on the facade of my face. Perhaps I had acted cold. Been a bitch with him, even. Perhaps that had only succeeded in adding energy to the high tension line that was strung between us. Professor and intern. I was still relatively new to academia, non-tenured. I had everything to lose. A career and a m
arriage. I don't know why the internship program paired us, but he was in my charge, and it was my job to impart some kind of knowledge and wisdom to him. Rob had always made me squirm when I saw him sitting in the back of my classroom, arms crossed, watching, then writing in his notebook. Judging.

  “Kim, good to see you around here again,” he says. “Do you have a few minutes to look over my lesson plan for my lead teach day tomorrow? I'd like to get your take on it, if you don't mind.”

  “Sure, I have time for you.” I flatten all the affect in my voice. Try not to betray my secrets.

  I notice him look again at my blouse as he walks closer, toward my desk. Shit. My blouse. He can probably see my nipples pushing right against it. Small dark circles free to leave their marks of contrast against the white fabric. Aiming points for the male gaze, standing at rigid attention, hinting at an arousal I still wish to keep concealed.

  He's carrying a notebook. It's one of those black and white composition books. The kind you can buy at the drugstore for $1.29. The kind where the pages are a bitch to tear out, because they don't have any perforations. Those were always his trademark.

  I remember him bringing his composition book to class everyday, judiciously taking notes as he watched me. One day he had forgotten the book in the back of the classroom. I couldn't help myself. I remember opening it. Just a quick peek while no one was around. The first pages had some notes about pedagogy. Observations about lessons. Then I found a sketch. I hadn't realized he was an artist. It was a flowing portrait...of me. Sitting behind my desk, looking out the window. Thinking about something outside my classroom. A hint of sadness in my expression. A tenderness in his rendition. I turned the page. Another sketch. And another. All those hours of watching, writing. When I thought he had been judging. He was observing. Translating what he saw into lines on the page. Capturing beauty. The smooth transition of lines from my neck to my breasts. A depiction of a hand. Another sketch that captured the outline of my ass, the curves of my legs. Something to which he might have masturbated. I remember feeling flushed and putting the notebook down where I had found it, hoping he wouldn't notice that I had flipped its pages.

  Rob pulls up a stool and sits next to me while I stand at my desk. He opens his composition book. I wait to see a sketch. He flips to a page with writing. I'm both relieved and disappointed. An outline of a lesson plan. I recognize the backwards-design format of the lesson, straight out of the most current research journals. He was always such a diligent student. So willing to try what he had learned in his graduate courses in the classroom. I remember thinking that he would make a great teacher once he was finished with his internship.

  “I'd like you to review the plan for tomorrow, starting with the goal. I'll give you a second to read each section and we can discuss afterward, if that's ok.”

  My eyes move to the top of the page. It's written in his shorthand, in black ink. His writing is sloppy. As though he reserves all his elegance of line for his sketching. I feel him sitting close to me, watching me read. I don't know where his eyes are wandering as I look down at the paper. It makes me feel hot.

  “Lesson goal,” starts the outline, “to seduce Professor Kim Arlington.”

  I stop reading and look at him. He's looking back at me, his expression still serious. I squirm a little bit in my pencil skirt. I feel a rush of excitement. Something forbidden, as though I were preparing to take a bite from the proverbial apple.

  “Is that an acceptable goal, Professor?”

  I wish that I could freeze time. Rewind it even. Take back deeds that have been done. Erase them from the record of the Universe. Given that capability, I wouldn't hesitate to submit to this seduction. I could give myself to Rob without fear of hurting my husband. Time could be wound back up, my road not taken, this moment never recorded in the dark depths of my heart.

  In this moment I am acutely aware that I suffer from the human condition. Indelible choice. There is no turning back time. Only action and consequence. To be led by passion or reason. That is where I find myself. What consequence do I dare accept? At what price do I submit to desire? I feel as though my reason is a thousand feet high. Hopelessly out of my reach. I make my choice. Prepare to lock it away in the dark part of my heart, where I keep all my secrets.

  “Yes, yes it is,” I say.

  My cheeks are flushed. My hand trembles slightly as I move my finger onto the page. There is no turning back.

  “Good. Let's review the plan, then,” he says. “If you wouldn't mind reading the lesson steps out loud now, I believe that may allow for more meaningful discussion.”

  He's bringing the 'read-aloud' literacy strategy into his seduction. Clever. This is a moment where I wish I could turn off my analytical mind. Just feel sensation and nothing else. I feel my juices moisten my cunt. I continue reading down the page. “Part one: ask her to unbutton the top three buttons of her blouse.”

  “Please,” he says, “let's go through the motions as we review the plan. That will let us know if it's truly effective or not.”

  “I can do that,” I say quietly. My fingers feel the smoothness of the buttons and I fumble to undo the top one. With each button, I feel more exposed. By the third one, I feel the hotness of his gaze on my exposed cleavage. I look at his pants and see a strong bulge in his crotch. He catches my glance and I look back at the page. I wonder what his cock would feel like in my mouth.

  “That's very good,” he says. “I think we're ready to look at the next step in the lesson.”

  I read the next line. “Step two: ask the sexy professor to stand up and hike up her skirt, shaking her ass while she holds onto the desk.” My heart beats faster.

  “This does require a bit of role-play, doesn't it?” he says. “I appreciate your willingness to give it a try.”

  I hike up my tight skirt, holding onto it with one hand. The dark fishnet stockings end at my upper thigh. I'm wearing a skimpy black thong. I hold onto the desk with one hand and shake my ass slowly in his direction. I turn my head to watch him as I do so. He shifts in his chair.

  “Mmm,” he says, “very well done. The visual is absolutely superb. I'll have to make another sketch of your ass one day. You do like my sketches, don't you?”

  How could he know that I had found those drawings? I had replaced the notebook so carefully that long ago afternoon. With the delicacy of a surgeon's hand, not leaving the faintest of scars. It wasn't possible.

  He cracks a smile. “You don't think I left my 'compositions' in your classroom by mistake?” he says. “I knew you would find them. Look at them. Think about me after you saw them.”

  So he knows. I feel caught. Like the petty thief confronted by the shopkeeper after stealing a cheap watch. I watch him run a hand on the outside of his pants, stroking it against the bulge made by his cock. He refrains from unzipping himself.

  I'm hungry for step three. I continue reading aloud. “Step three: ask the professor to remove her tight ass thong and place it on her desk. Ask for a visual exposition of her cunt.”

  I turn to face him. My hands go up my skirt and slide down my thong. I step out of it. The crotch fabric is wet. I place it on my desk. He gestures with his head, looking at the desk, motioning for me to sit on it. I continue with the second part of the request, placing my ass on the smooth surface of the desk. I spread my legs for him and move a hand down to my pussy. I haven't touched my clit yet. I feel the roughness of the closely trimmed hairs in my crotch. Slowly trace a line from my pussy to my thigh with a fingernail and feel the desire inside me grow. See the goosebumps raise from my skin. I push apart the lips of my pussy so that he can see its pinkness, glistening wet.

  “Bravo, professor,” he says. He unzips his pants. I see his cock straining against his underwear. He strokes the head of it gently through the cotton fabric.

  “Based on your sopping wet cunt, I'd say that the lesson is going fairly well so far, wouldn't you?” His hand is still rubbing his cock through his underwear.


  “Mmm, yes,” I say.

  I wonder how my husband would react if he saw me like this. Holding my pussy open for another man, legs spread wide. Wearing heels and fishnet stockings. What kind of incendiary reaction would that ignite? I imagine it would be much like witnessing the sudden collapse of a once-proud edifice. He would crumble to the ground leaving a cloud of dust hanging in the air, heavy with memories and regret. I feel a brief pang of guilt. I accept my choice.

  “Please close the notebook.”

  My cunt is dripping all over my desk. I need closure. Rob can't stop now.

  “Why?” I say.

  “I'd like to ask for your continued cooperation,” he says. “Are you prepared to cooperate?” His tone is more stern. I no longer harbor the illusion of being his mentor.

  I close the notebook. A reluctance to my movements. My fingers wet from being inside me. Staining its pages. The plain black and white cover not betraying a hint of what is written inside.

  “As important as it is to have a good plan, it's equally important to know when to break from it. I'm looking at you now, spreading your legs before me, and I'd like to improvise. Does that sound acceptable?” he says.