by Amy Brent
I couldn’t wait to tell Wynn about Haley what’s her name.
He was gonna love this girl.
And she was gonna love him.
CHAPTER THREE: Jude
I stood at the podium at the front of Professor Markle’s Psychology of Sexuality 401 class and quietly cleared my throat. My term paper was laid out on the podium in front of me, all neatly typed and printed out to make it easier to read out loud. Some students just read off their iPad or phone, but I was old fashioned. I liked the feel of paper in my hands. I liked to be able to finish one page, then move on to the next. And paper didn’t rely on the school’s shitty Wifi.
More than one idiot had said, “Sorry, Professor Markle, but the Wifi’s not working so I can’t read my paper to the class. Can I get a do-over later?”
Markle was old school.
He didn’t give do-overs.
He gave F’s.
Idiots.
I did think Professor Markle, who was closer to seventy than sixty, pushed the old school stuff too far sometimes. Like the way he had his seniors write a paper then read it aloud to the class like third graders while he dozed at his desk, not even pretending to listen. I probably could have read the transcript of a comic book and he would not have noticed. Maybe that’s what prompted me to write the paper I did. It was full of wit, wisdom, keen observations, scientific hypotheses, and good old-fashioned smut. Not to mention the shock value. I wanted to see if the old fart was even paying attention. I knew my classmates certainly would be after hearing the opening line.
I gave a curt smile to the twenty other seniors who were watching me from their seats with a mixture of boredom and disinterest. Some were playing on their phones, some struggling to keep their eyes open, most were not even paying attention. These were the morons who thought getting a psyche degree was going to be an easy road to hoe. In the fall, most of them would have a degree but be working as cashiers and waiters while I was working on my Master’s. Again, idiots.
They were disinterested and bored now, but I knew that would change the moment I read the opening line of my paper. So far, the papers that had been read were horrible, clinical diatribes that sounded like something you’d read in a boring medical journal, most copied word for word from Google or Wikipedia. I could tell by the way they were looking at me that they expected more of the same from me. Boy, were they going to be surprised.
I smiled and said, “Hi, my name is Judith, and I’m a nymphomaniac.”
I paused to let that tidbit of information sink in for a moment. Every eye in the room came up to look at me, surprise and bewilderment on every face. Even old Professor Markle looked up from his desk and cupped a hand to his ear.
“I’m sorry, Miss Allen, what did you just say?” he asked.
“I said, ‘Hi, my name is Judith, and I’m a nymphomaniac’.”
His forehead wrinkled over his bushy white eyebrows. “Oh, that’s what I thought you said.” He waved a hand in the air and gave me a nervous smile. “Very well. Please. Proceed.”
I cleared my throat again and started from the beginning without looking down at my notes. “Hi, my name is Judith, and I’m a nymphomania.” I gave them an expectant look. “This is the part where you say, hi, Judith!”
Everyone in the room said it at the same time.
“HI, JUDITH!”
Giggles all around, like a bunch of teenagers telling fart jokes. Now that I had their attention, I started reading with a big grin on my face.
“Has anyone else ever called Sex Addicts Anonymous hoping to hook up with someone to fuck?” I asked, forcing away the grin and replacing it with a serious face. “I have. And they were not amused.”
More giggles, but this time the laughter ended quickly because they wanted me to keep going. Everyone was eager to hear what I’d say next. I had to admit, I was a little eager myself. I squeezed my thighs together and focused on reading the words I’d written the night before.
“Seriously, what is a nymphomaniac? More to the point, what is nymphomania? The famous sex researcher, Dr. Alfred Kinsey, described a nymphomaniac as, ‘Someone who has more sex than you.’”
Giggles. Heads bobbing. High fives among the guys.
I looked up at my fellow students and smiled again. “I love that definition. Of course, in high school the word nymphomaniac did not exist in the vocabulary of my peers. I was just called ‘the slut’ or ‘the horny girl’ or, to quote one football player who never got in my pants but liked to say he had, ‘the fuck machine’.”
“The fuck machine? Seriously?” The comment came from one of the senior football players sitting at the back of the class, a guy with more brawn than brains. “Baby, we need to talk after class. I got some oil for your machine.”
“That’s enough, Mr. Pinson,” Markle snapped, his voice showing a strength not displayed in class before. He shook a crooked finger at the football asshole and growled like an angry dog. “Another comment from you and you’re gone. I don’t care how much pressure your coach puts on me to pass you. Understood?” He looked at me and gave me a slow nod. “Please. Continue, Miss Allen.”
“According to Webster’s Dictionary, a nymphomaniac is a woman who exhibits abnormally-excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire. Webster does not offer a definition for the term ‘abnormally excessive’, but I’m going to assume that means even more than what would be considered normal. I guess there is ‘excessive sex’ and ‘abnormally-excessive sex’, which again, I’m assuming, is not even enough for a woman like me, a clinically-diagnosed nymphomaniac.
“That’s right, I was diagnosed with nymphomania when I was nineteen-years-old and a freshman at this very university. Of course, that diagnosis came from a forty-something-year old clinical psychologist who ended up bending me over his desk during our third session and fucking me from behind while he told me to call him daddy.”
No giggles at that one, but several gasps from females. Markle shifted uneasily in his chair, no doubt wondering who the clinical psychologist might be, but didn’t attempt to stop my reading.
“Don’t worry, girls. I probably enjoyed it more than he did,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows at them. The smiles returned to their faces. “Honestly, I’m not even one hundred percent sure that nymphomania is even a thing. I mean, who’s to say that I’m not the normal one and everyone else suffers from a lack of sexual desire? What is normal, really? Maybe it’s not me, it’s everyone else. Show of hands, is there anyone here who doesn’t like a good hot fucking now and then?”
No hands went up, though several of the boys put their hands in their laps and squirmed a bit when their eyes met mine. Markle’s hands were in his lap behind the desk. I could have sworn that he was diddling himself as he looked at me with dreamy eyes. The thought of giving every male in the room a boner—even old Mr. Markle—made me smile, and pushed me to continue on.
“Did you know the term nymphomania only applies to females, ladies? The male counterpart is called ‘satyriasis’, a word no one outside of clinical phycology has ever even heard of and can barely pronounce. Both words come from Greek mythology. Nymphs were minor deities represented as beautiful maidens, usually depicted as naked and gorgeous, with big melon boobs and milky skin. Satyrs were woodland creatures that were half man and half goat, usually depicted as having pointy ears, the legs and horns of a goat, and a fondness for—” I made air quotes with my fingers—“’unrestrained revelry’. That’s where the word horny comes from. The satyrs had horns and liked to fuck. They were considered horny. Get it?”
I heard Professor Markle clear his throat, but he did not interrupt.
“I’m sure most satyrs were also blessed with long, thick, horse-like cocks with which to satisfy all those horny nymphs who came their way, no pun intended.”
I slowly turned to the next page, giving my words time to sink in. I glanced up at my audience. They were literally sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for me to continue.
“So, why is th
e word nymphomaniac tossed around like a hot potato but you never hear the word satyr? Sexism, ladies, pure and simple. Nobody gives a horny hoot about a guy who can’t keep his cock in his pants—show me a guy who can and I’ll show you a guy who’s given up on living life to the fullest—but bring a horny woman in the room, especially one that looks and acts like me, and it’s showtime folks! Just look around this classroom. You’re all looking at me like I’m some sort of freak of nature, as if you’re waiting for me to strip naked and offer myself up on Professor Markle’s desk like a pussy buffet!”
They looked at each other for a moment, then looked toward Markle’s desk as if imagining me sprawled out naked there with my legs in the air. Markle shifted uncomfortably in the chair and stared back at them in stunned silence. His mouth moved for a few seconds, but nothing came out.
I continued. “Men who get caught cheating claim they are sex addicts, that they have no control over their own actions because they are addicted to sex, like being addicted to drugs or nicotine. In my humble opinion, that’s a total crock of bullshit. Men come out of the womb addicted to sex. It’s their base programming. It is in their DNA. Their instincts tell them to find a female, fuck her brains out, impregnate her with their seed, and move onto the next woman and do it again, thereby propagating the species like good human boys and girls. And if they’re not addicted to sex, something must be clinically wrong with them. They are labeled erectile dysfunctional or medically impotent or simply asexual, not interested in sex. I just think they haven’t had the right piece of pussy yet. Or the right asshole or mouth or whatever.”
“Holy fucking shit,” the football player snorted, grinning wildly, licking his lips, his mouth watering with spit. He held up his hands to Markle, who was giving him the eye. “Sorry, dude, but this shit is awesome! The is the best class ever! That’s a fucking A paper, right there!”
Markle cleared his throat and gave him a nod as if he’d been complemented for having such great students. He held out his hands and smiled at me again, proudly, as if I was the product of his teachings. I swear, I’d been in his class for months and had never seen the man smile. I took that as a sign that I was going to get an A on this paper.
I turned to the next page. “In Victorian times, doctors believed that eating rich food, consuming too much chocolate, drinking too much coffee or tea, thinking about sex too much, reading dirty novels, and masturbation were the root cause of nymphomania. They believed it all centered on the nerve fibers in the vagina, that if a woman overstimulated her sexual organs, it would make her want to have more sex. First of all, I don’t think it’s possible to overstimulate a pussy. And second of all: duh! Good to know that they weren’t total idiots.”
Giggles. Squirming. Hands in laps. A groan from the football player.
“They believed women with excessive sexual appetites were sick because surely a strong appetite for sex must be a symptom of some horrible disease. God forbid a woman just like to fuck, right ladies? So, what did they do? These medical morons recommended self-control and moderation, which meant that if you could not control yourself and your desire for sex, you should just try not to do it so much. All things in moderation… hmmm…
“Other psychological and medical professionals of the time believed that nymphomania was a type of mental disease, not unlike schizophrenia or paranoia. The term ‘sexual madness’ became popular for a period and there are documented cases of women in the Victorian era being locked away in institutions until they could get their libidos in check. Or at least pretend to. That’s like saying to a woman, we’re going to lock you up until you stop liking sex. How fucking insane is that?”
“Totally fucking insane,” a girl in the front row said angrily, as if she herself had been the victim of such antiquated thinking. Perhaps she was, to some degree, at some time in her past. If my mom had had her way I would have been locked in my room wearing a steel chastity belt until I was old enough to get married and move out.
“Today, the term nymphomaniac is no longer recognized by the medical world. It’s passé. Not cool. Old fashioned. According to Modern Psychology Journal Monthly, the term is not scientifically meaningful because there are no specific criteria that would clearly define a nymphomaniac. In other words, there is no way to determine how much sex is too much. Instead, someone with a high sex drive is now labeled as ‘hypersexual’, with labels like ‘sex addict’ and ‘sexual compulsive’ bandied about by TMZ to describe celebrities like David Duchovny and Ben Affleck who can’t keep their big famous wankers in their pants. I think words like hypersexual are just way cooler, more millennial, more high-tech sounding. Nymphomaniac is old school, Hypersexual and Sex Addict are much more 2017.”
“I’d fuck Ben Affleck,” the girl in the front row said to her friend.
“Hell yes, me, too,” her friend replied.
They both smiled when I said, “Same here. And Matt Damon, too.”
“Please continue, Miss Allen,” Professor Markle said, frustrated at the banter. He tapped a skinny finger to his watch. “Class time is running out.”
“Yes, sir, sorry, professor.” I flipped to the next page. “I won’t even address the religious aspects of nymphomania or hypersexuality, other than to say that every religion on earth considers any sexual activity by a woman outside of marriage for the sake of sexual pleasure to be a sin. It’s okay to have excessive sex with your fat, abusive husband if the intent is just to push out more fat, little Christian babies. Otherwise, ladies, keep your legs tightly crossed and your twats locked away!
“Of course, show me a religion that doesn’t have women getting fucked every which way but loose all through the ages and I’ll show you one boring fucking religion. There is even a website called Christian Nymphos that claims to ‘teach married women to walk in sexual freedom with their husbands’. Of course, they also preach that women should be submissive to their husbands and have sex with them whether they want to or not, so take that shit with a grain of salt. They probably sell Virgin Mary cock rings and Mary Magdalene dildos at the church socials on Sunday night, after doing a bit of wife swapping on Saturday. Their website even says this, ladies: What’s the best cure for nymphomania? MARRIAGE! Can’t argue there. Marriage has killed the sex drive of millions of people, including my parents and probably yours. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Fucking A it has,” the footballer said. “My old man ain’t nailed my mom in decades. He lays it to his secretary though.”
“Amen,” said the ladies in the front row. The blonde rolled her eyes. “Fuck marriage and fuck being subservient to some man.”
“To quote Dr. Alfred Kinsey, ‘The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform’. Well, I have yet to find a sex act I could not perfect, so take that for what it’s worth.”
Giggles. Whispers. Smiles.
“So, in summation, it’s considered perfectly normal for a man to want to fuck every woman in the room, but when you’re a woman who can’t get enough sex, like me, you’re considered a slut or a whore or a fuck machine, and men think you’re easy. They think that they can treat you like shit because you can’t live without their cocks. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth.”
I locked eyes with the football player and spoke directly to him to everyone’s delight. “The fact that I want your big, fat cock inside me does not mean I’m dying for it, or willing to let you use and abuse me in exchange for it. To the contrary, my pussy is much more powerful than your cock. Wars have been fought over pussy. Throughout history, millions of men have died over pussy. Samson and Delilah. Paris and Helen of Troy. Adam and Eve. No man in history, at least that I can recall, has ever died fighting over cock. Okay, maybe in a gay biker bar somewhere, but you know what I mean.”
The football player swallowed hard and glanced down at his crotch. I was pretty sure the boner he’d had in his pants had shrunk to the size of a little sausage.
I closed the hot pink binder that held my report t
hat I had titled, “Nymphos Aren’t Easy” and looked up from the podium. My fellow students were all staring at me with their mouths hanging open and a glazed look in their eyes. A few were sighing as if they were exhausted. A couple of the guys were giving me salacious looks and licking their lips like they were first in line at a Chinese buffet. One of the girls, a lesbian named Colby, was looking me up and down with a smile on her lips. Interesting. Maybe we’d chat later.
I held the report between my hands, tapped it on the podium, and said, “The end. Thank you.”
The room erupted in applause and laughter. I held the report to my breasts and gave a little bow.
“Um, that was… most interesting, Miss Allen,” Professor Markle said without getting up from the desk. He was still sitting with his hands in his lap, squirming like the chair beneath his boney ass had grown hot. He looked at the class without getting up and gave a nod.
“That’s all for today,” he said, clearing his throat and waving a hand toward the door. “We’ll continue reviewing your papers tomorrow, though I doubt any of you will be as entertaining as Miss Allen has been here today. You’re dismissed.” He looked at me with a glint in his watery eyes. “Miss Allen, could you remain behind please. I’d like to talk to you about your… paper.”
“Sure, Professor Markle,” I said with a smile, knowing what was about to happen because such things happened to me all the time. I’d have to let the old guy down easily so he wouldn’t torpedo my grade. That was the only drawback to publicly announcing that you were a nymphomaniac; everybody thought it meant that you were easy, even old birds like Markle.
