Splitting the Infinitive
Jean Roberta
I’m standing in my office waiting for Didrick Bent, the one I think of as Dim Bulb. I don’t like to be kept waiting. As long as I have nothing better to do, I glance at myself in the mirror on the back of my office door. I am only 5’3”, and I have placed my mirror so that my face is perfectly centered in it and taller people must duck to see themselves in my domain. I would rather stand than sit, and I prefer to see other people below me—I suppose I picked up this preference when I began teaching English at the university ten years ago. I like the legend that Emily Brontë died standing up. Like any great work of fiction, this story probably contains more truth than fact.
I am not a vain woman, but I find comfort in my own reflection. I like to know how I appear to my audience. My long chestnut hair, turning to gray, is coiled and pinned at the back of my head. The overhead light picks up the silver at my temples and gives depth to my large brown eyes. I reapply the burgundy lipstick that dramatizes my full lips, and powder my small nose to cover the shine.
I am wearing my white silk blouse without a bra because I see no need for it; my breasts are still “assertive,” as my first woman lover used to say. When I dressed this way as a teenager in the 1960s, the men who called themselves my brothers treated me like meat. Now my students are disconcerted when they realize that they can see my nipples, but they must control their tongues as well as their hands. A tenured position is better than a suit of armor.
My black wool skirt and the cotton petticoat under it brush against my boots as I pace. My wide leather belt emphasizes the contrast between my small waist and my full hips, and it can also be used for other purposes. I am beginning to simmer with anger at Didrick’s lateness, which is not surprising. She is the spoiled child of misguided professionals who have always given her expensive toys to substitute for their attention. I suppose they think that a university education is equivalent to the sports car they gave her for giving up her post–high school slacker life and moving back in with them. They, and she, have no idea with whom they are trifling.
The hesitant knock on my door may be meant to appease me, but it’s the last straw. The purpose of a knock is to attract the hearer’s attention, is it not? Brushing one’s oversized knuckles lightly against the wood as if testing it for splinters seems as pointless as daydreaming in class.
When I pull the door open Didrick is already blushing. “I’m sorry I’m late, Doctor Chalkdust,” she gasps, seeing my look. She lowers her head in my presence, which somewhat compensates for the fact that she is a good six inches taller than I am. At age nineteen, she could be called a baby butch or a tomboy brat. Her short sandy hair always looks like it’s just come out of a wind tunnel. Like most young women, she is a bundle of contradictions. She obviously spends too much time trying to look as if appearance doesn’t matter to her; she desperately wants other people to accept her as a cool dyke who knows the score. In her own language: as if.
“Didrick,” I intone, trying to keep my temper on a leash, “you’re in serious danger of failing this course. Do you know that? I’ve gone out of my way to help you pull up your socks and start learning how to express yourself, and you respond by wasting my time.” I could drive her away from me forever, and she knows it. Perhaps this would be the ultimate way of hurting her.
She doesn’t know how to start apologizing or explaining herself so she begins to stutter. “I thought—I thought, I mean I used the Spell Check on my last essay, and I thought it looked all right—” This kid is not a cyberpunk or cyberslut; she is a cyberfool who expects a machine to do the thinking for her. Her words make my hands itch.
I sigh. “I thought we could start by discussing that wretched essay, but I see how badly you need a reality check.” She knows what this means, and she is already breathing hard. Her large hands are shaking and in another minute the crotch of her jeans will become visibly wet. I’m not willing to wait that long. “Take off your pants, Didrick,” I tell her, “and keep my name in mind.”
“Yes, Doctor Chalkdust,” she answers, not daring to look me in the eyes. She has seen the diplomas on my office wall often enough to know that my first name is Athena. She also knows that for her, that name is unspeakable.
She steps out of her bunched jeans and man-styled underpants. Her long, muscular thighs and firm young ass gleam pearly in the office light. I know that she is embarrassed when anyone sees the triangle of curly light-brown hair at her crotch, and this knowledge makes me smile. “You know what to do,” I warn. She is as slow as molasses today.
Quivering slightly in fear or anticipation, she bends over my desk and rests her head on her folded arms. I’ve decided to use my eighteen-inch wooden ruler because she finds it more humiliating than other means of correction. I will have trouble resisting the urge to break it over her lazy butt.
The first smack makes a satisfying sound and she jumps. The second and third dangerously stimulate my temper instead of soothing it. Against my better judgment, I want to see blood and hear the unwilling scream of a young rebel who has lost her mask. She is already whimpering, probably more from fear than from pain. For a slow learner, she has an uncanny ability to read my moods.
She also seems able to send the heat from her swollen clit into mine, and I can’t (or won’t?) block it out. Like everything else about this big colt, her reactions to me seem beyond reason. I would rather die than tell her this aloud, but her energy slams into me with a force that I can barely contain. In Portia’s words: “my little body is aweary of this great world.” When I was growing into womanhood, we were never told that we could channel the tides.
I’m not satisfied, not even close to it, but I know how dangerous it would be to go as far as I want to. In reality, I am at her mercy. I can see that the edges of my ruler have raised some little welts on her very red cheeks. She will heal from these minor wounds much sooner than my career would heal from the coup de grâce she could give me by telling someone over my head what takes place in this room. Too many of my colleagues have heard about the office renovations I had done last summer. Does anyone know that I had soundproof insulation put in, or why? Didrick can afford exposure no more than I can, but whether she can carry our little secret to the grave is another matter. After all, she told me her whole life story (admittedly not a long epic) during our first session.
I slide the ruler back into my desk, but she knows better than to move without permission. I can’t resist running my right hand gently, slowly, over her hot cheeks while my left holds her hips in place. She flinches from my compassion as much as from my discipline. “You stubborn little girl,” I murmur into one of her freckled ears. “How long do you think you can keep this up?”
I put my hand firmly on her neck to keep her down and to let her know that I’m here, I’m not going away, and I’m not going to lose faith or let her lose hers. A humble pencil on my desk attracts my attention. I reach for it as if I were planning to write a list of her grammatical sins on her back with its sharp little point. I withdraw from her just long enough to anoint the pencil with baby oil from a bottle on my desk. Then I find the small, puckered mouth between her butt cheeks and slide the eraser in until four inches of wood are embedded in the site of her punishment. She groans, and an uncontrollable shiver of pleasure seems to run all through her. Reaching between her legs, I find her cunt lips so wet that a little more attention will probably make the juice run down her legs.
The pointed end of the pencil looks like a little tail, and I wield it so that it dances in spirals and figure eights inside her, stroking walls of flesh that were never explored this way before I touched them. When I draw the pencil out it will be smeared with her shit, and she will blush to see it. I imagine running a steel pole into her hot, pulsing guts and raising her off the floor with it. I imagine her bleeding and crying—but never, never resisting me, even in her innermost core.
“Doctor Chalkdust,” she whispers, begging. She needs to come
soon, but she will hold off until I give her my blessing. I am tempted to find out how long she can last, but that test can wait for another day.
“Come for me, baby,” I tell her, running the sharp burgundy fingernails of my right hand over her bursting clit. She jerks violently, trying to suppress a childish yell as the pencil probes her at an unexpected angle. Her thin veneer of machisma has melted away, leaving her face covered with tears. She convulses helplessly as I draw the pencil out of her and pull her down to the floor.
While she is still open and panting I pour oil into my left hand. Then I push each of my small, slick, well-manicured fingers into a cunt as wet and heaving as an ocean cave. I form a fist inside her and let it rock her the way it wants to.
She is afraid of exploding out of her skin. I know that she is ashamed of her needs and her ignorance but she is terrified of the possibility that in an instant I can change her into someone she doesn’t recognize. Education is about transformation, and she feels as confused about that as all my other students do. I wonder if any of the others have dreamed of writhing on my fist in anguish and relief, screaming my name in the silence of their half-formed minds.
“Didrick,” I call her, almost singing her name to the rhythm of my fist and her hips. “You have to give me more. I know you can.” Her heat is rising up my arm, which is aching. Nonetheless, I won’t stop until I’m finished. I know that this strong young animal plays on the women’s basketball team. I picture myself fucking her in the gym, surrounded by her amused teammates. That would be a suitable penalty for writing another essay like her latest masterpiece.
She is crying, shaking, and gasping louder and louder, as if she is about to start howling like a wolf. I know that she wants to please me and is terrified of failing. In class she watches me when I call on my most articulate students for answers, and her face is an open book. I suspect that she wants to kill Reginald, my wannabe pet, who keeps inviting me to watch him rehearse with the other young Hamlets in the Shakespeare Club. Alas, poor Didrick—know ye not a budding queen when he poses before ye?
I am kneeling over my hapless pupil, who hasn’t had a chance to catch her breath since her last climax. Now she seems about to erupt like a volcano. “Not yet,” I warn her, pressing her cervix. “I’ll be very angry if you come now.”
My threat comes too late. Her hot cunt clutches my fist over and over, and the more she tries to control this greedy mouth, the more it talks back in its own way. My right hand checks out her clit and my gentlest stroke sets off a new wave of contractions. I suddenly wonder what she would look like giving birth.
She is soggy with spent energy, gratitude, shame, and guilt. I can see her bracing herself for a few strokes of my belt. I usually give six for disobeying an order. “I—I’m s—sorry,” she snivels. “I couldn’t help it, Doctor Chalkdust.”
I feel generous. “Ssh,” I soothe her, petting her head. She reminds me of a racehorse colt in training. I feel blessed to have such a powerful female creature under my control. “This time I’ll let you make it up to me instead of punishing you, Didrick,” I offer, “but stop blubbering or I’ll change my mind.”
She glows, and her blue eyes almost reflect an image of my body under my clothes. I want to shed all of them, but I can’t allow her to be covered more modestly than I am. “Take your shirt off,” I tell her. I know that she takes pride in her muscular arms, but the heat of my gaze on her small breasts makes her uncomfortable, so she grabs the hem of her T-shirt and pulls it roughly over her head as if to get the process over with as quickly as possible. Her pungent sports bra soon joins the pile of her clothing on the floor. I smile at her innocent pink nipples and she forces herself to seek approval in my eyes.
Without a word, I walk to the antique chaise longue that stands in a corner of my office near the floor lamp with the ivory silk shade. I turn on the lamp and it casts amber light on the midnight-blue velvet that will soon receive my bare skin. “Turn off the overhead, Didrick,” I tell her casually. She rushes to obey, and we are left in an intimate circle of light. The books on my shelves watch us from the darkness like discreet mentors.
I sit. “You may undress me,” I offer, “beginning with my boots.” She kneels at my feet and studies one small, creased leather boot as she carefully pulls the laces out of their holes.
After my boots are neatly placed, side by side, under my desk, Didrick raises her head and gasps as she sees my hair flowing over my shoulders, released from its pins. “You may bury your face in it when you get there,” I tease. She blushes, and looks flustered as I stand up and slowly, deliberately, unbuckle my belt. She looks relieved when I hand it to her in a coil, like a sleeping snake, to place on my desk.
I turn my back to her, shaking my hair over my shoulders. She reverently unbuttons and unzips the back of my skirt as if it could easily tear. She is moving too slowly. “Hurry up, brat,” I warn her. Her fumbling fingers pull the skirt downward and I must remind her to pull the petticoat down with it to save time. As I step out of the fabric at my feet, she waits awkwardly.
I remain standing for a moment so that she can take in my black satin panties and the matching garter belt that holds up my stockings. When I sit down, I gesture impatiently. She begins shakily unbuttoning my blouse. She removes the sleeves from my arms as gently as a loyal maid, but as she glances at my breasts, she can’t keep the predatory gleam out of her eyes. I am reminded that I am making myself vulnerable to a newly ripened incarnation of the Amazons of old, a novice warrior who doesn’t yet know her own strength. As I watch her, she drops her eyes as if sheathing a weapon that might give nightmares to a sheltered soul. Her chivalry pleases me even as it makes me see red.
“Sometimes you want to take me hard, don’t you, honey?” I demand. As usual, she doesn’t know what to say. “You can tell the truth, baby,” I whisper in her ear as she kneels at my stockinged feet. She mumbles something and I tell her to repeat her answer.
“I want to satisfy you,” she says bravely to my face. “If you’ll let me, Doctor Chalkdust,” she adds quickly.
I chuckle as I slide my panties down with one hand then kick them off. I gesture in a way she recognizes. She fastens her mouth on my left breast like a leech, sucking steadily as if she could pull the milk of knowledge out of my hard nipple. “Ahh,” I sigh as one of her big hands envelops my right breast. Her mouth and her hand speak to my hungry pussy, and I can hardly sit still.
“I want your fingers, Didrick,” I insist. “Now.” I seem to be filled with boiling lava. I am so close to coming that my touchy clit could not stand any direct attention. I don’t want to be tickled now. I want to be plowed.
She pushes two long fingers into me and begins to pump, slowly at first and then faster. A third finger, not wanting to be left out, finds room inside me. With her head against my heart, she fucks me tirelessly. Like a devoted knight in service to her queen, this child strokes me harder and deeper than anyone else I can remember.
Didrick, Baby Dyke, you move me more than I’m willing to tell you. I don’t expect my heart and my mind to change much in the future. Why must yours?
Thank the Goddess for soundproof walls. I hear my own animal sound as if from a distance while large quakes and smaller tremors run all through me in quick succession. She stays deep inside me until my breathing has steadied.
I kiss the top of her head. “I have to be home soon, baby,” I murmur into one of her protruding ears, “and so do you.” Penelope is usually too tired for what she calls “lovemaking,” but she is a good cook, and she no longer asks me to explain my absences in detail. After twelve years together, we are probably getting as much from each other as we can reasonably expect.
Didrick doesn’t want to move. “Doctor Chalkdust,” she
asks, desperate to hold my attention for a moment longer, “did I split a lot of infinitives?”
The child can be trusted to screw up her priorities. Luckily for her, this topic no longer makes me feel rabid. “Yes,” I l
augh, “but that’s one of your minor problems. I’m more concerned about your dangling modifiers and misplaced punctuation, paragraphs that are all over the map, and your argument as a whole.” I sigh. “Didrick,” I advise her as patiently as I can, “you need to learn how to think.” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
She can’t look at me because I have hurt her. She tries to hide her tears from me, and the sight of her wet gaze makes my cunt tighten. “You’re so smart,” she gushes. “I don’t think I can ever—”
“Sshh,” I silence her. “Never say never. I’ll let you rewrite that essay. If it’s still not clear, you’ll rewrite it as many times as you need to. Until your logic would persuade the devil to change his mind.”
Didrick’s smile is part hopeful, part skeptical, and part sassy. “I’ve never been good at putting words down,” she confesses. As her friends would say: duh. “Do you really think I can fix it that good?”
“You’ll fix it well, honey,” I threaten, “or you’ll face the consequences.”
She looks dangerously close to the psychic state I think of as her bottom trance. I stand up at once. “Turn on the overhead, Didrick,” I remind her briskly. The circle has been opened.
As we both put on our clothes and prepare to face the outside world, split infinitives strut through my mind: to soundly thrash, to thoroughly fuck, to helplessly wriggle, to sweetly beg, to piercingly scream, to stubbornly love, to boldly go where few (or many) have gone before. I remember that rules were made to be broken, and that to fully live is to dance on the edge of a knife.
Didrick, you are my offering to the Goddess I serve. Don’t bring my judgment into disrepute by messing up. “You have to come in again this week,” I tell her. “Come here at one o’clock sharp on Wednesday to work on your essay. You’ll be here all afternoon.”
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