by Q. Zayne
“Are you alright?” He sounded so concerned, as though he were at fault.
“No. I mean yes, I’m fine. I’m so sorry!”
He released my arm. I missed his hand the moment he broke contact. I shifted my grip on my briefcase, checked my bun, and did my best to look composed. Fat chance of that with him standing so near. I inhaled a faint whiff of soap, toothpaste and a heady, masculine scent that had to be all him. I gave thanks my Latino crush didn’t reek of one of those horrible men’s colognes or the hair spray favored by too many of my classmates.
“No problem. Don’t concern yourself. I’m so pleased you’re interviewing for my study. Are you ready? Come this way.”
“You are? I mean, good. Yes, I’m ready. Sure thing.” I bit my lip to keep from babbling. He was pleased. He said he was pleased I was interviewing. It was like a dream. I walked after him, unsteady on my sensible heels. Oh, my. He was fine from behind. In all the weeks I’d been eying him at his lectures, I’d never dared get this close to him. I made myself catch up to him and stop staring at his ass like a woman in a prison movie who hadn’t been laid in years. I got into step with him and focused on breathing. I hadn’t been laid ever, but being a virgin was beside the point. I needed to ace this interview.
He opened the door and gestured to me to enter his office. Unlike most professors who left their doors open—perhaps to reduce the risk of being accused of impropriety or for a quick escape from mentally unbalanced students studying abnormal psych—he shut the door.
The sound gave me a jolt. I was alone with him. It was after hours, and I hadn’t heard anyone in the building. I hadn’t passed anyone on the way there. Of course, campus security still patrolled. I wasn’t afraid really, just unnerved by the isolation. It was too much, too fast, being alone with him in circumstances where anything could happen. I should be so lucky. I tried not to stereotype, but it did seem Latino men were less prejudiced toward full-figured women than Caucasian guys. As much as I wanted to know if my compression bra would help with eye contact, I couldn’t look at him. I just couldn’t. I stared down at my nails and discovered a chip in my pale pink polish. Damn. I stared at my briefcase.
Doctor Lorenzo cleared his throat.
I glanced up in time to reach for the sheaf of papers he handed me.
“I’m sorry there’s so much to fill out. We considered setting up the questionnaires online, but there’s greater security in keeping paper copies in the safe. The more we progress, the more privacy we lose. I’m not sure that’s progress. I’m tempted to move to Europe where there’s more respect for individual rights to privacy above the prying of corporations. One of the biggest cloud storage vaults online was caught scanning user documents. What I often wish I could impress to students is that everything they post on social media and their blogs exists forever. Even if you erase it, other people can access it. We have a generation of people risking long term consequences of exposing themselves publicly. Few of them have any grasp of the ramifications.” He waved his hand, dismissing the topic.
“I understand,” I said, just to make sure I could still talk. The man’s passion magnetized me.
“It’s a lot to fill out, and for the purposes of security, it isn’t allowed out of this room. You, however, are allowed out of the room, but the papers, every page, must remain in here. Please help yourself to refreshments.” He gestured toward a bamboo stand with a big fruit bowl, packets of healthy crackers, and bottled water.
“Take your time, Brie. I have a meeting with my colleagues. Dr. Wright and Dr. Keene will assist with your intake, providing there’s nothing disqualifying in your application.”
Disqualifying? Something might disqualify me from helping with his research?
“Um, what causes disqualification?”
“I’m sorry, Brie, but I can’t tell you that. I can’t discuss the application or the study with you at all, as that would bias the results. I do want you to know that I hope you become our subject.” He gathered papers into a worn case that could double as a saddlebag and stood. Everything about him was macho.
He smiled and my anxieties seemed to drain into the floor. By the time I managed to smile back, he was out the door.
Our subject, he said. I felt a chill. That sounded like experimental subject, as in one of those old science fiction movies where the scientist locks the girl up and does terrible things to her. Often a scary-looking probe is involved, or maybe I made that up. Before I came to college in the fall, I had a collection of vintage science fiction paperbacks and magazines, the old pulps. The lurid covers hinted at greater perversion than ever befell the heroine on the page, but they were a great come-on and fueled a lot of fantasies. The mad scientist was one of my favorites. Maybe that was why when Lorenzo, Doctor Lorenzo, first stalked into the lecture hall in his lab coat and package-hugging jeans I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Not that I needed other reason beyond his being off the charts hot.
I took a deep breath, eyed the snacks, and adjusted my chair to use his desk for filling out the application. After a moment of hunching over because their was no foot well on that side of the desk, I took a quick look around the room. With his passion for privacy, the professor wouldn’t have a hidden cam in here, would he? I stood, pretending to stretch, and eyed his chair. Who would know? Maybe he wouldn’t even care. I couldn’t resist.
I hustled over there and sat down. Ah. It was still warm from his ass.
Rushing, in case the time I took on it might be a factor in acceptance, I filled in the first page with my name and other standard info. The request for emergency contact information made me wonder if there was anything dangerous, but schools and companies always asked for that to cover their asses.
I flipped the top page over and started reading the second page.
Are you a virgin?
I blinked. That was actually the first question. No way. There’s no way they could ask that. This was all kinds of wrong. As hot as Lorenzo was, I should just get up and leave. I could make an excuse, stomach ache, cramps - that one always stopped questions from male teachers dead.
I took a deep breath. Was this a joke? Was it part of the psychological profiling? Maybe this was a test. They wanted to see how the experimental subject responded to being probed. Or maybe he was a pervert. Come to think of it, being a psychiatrist with a research project at a university was a good cover for indulging personal kinks. No, not really. The stakes were too high for anyone sane to pull something like that. If he got caught, he’d lose his position—his career, really—no one else would hire someone with sexual harassment on their record. Well, he’d mentioned moving to Europe, maybe there were countries where the laws were different, where sexually probing your female students wasn’t a big deal. My roommate Angie traveled all over the world. I felt so provincial, having never been out of California except for short jaunts into Baja California and neighboring states.
My mind kept veering away from the question in front of me. My first impulse was to write, None of your fucking business. I suspected I’d be disqualified for that. Maybe he told me about the prospect of being disqualified as a warning. I flipped through the pages to make sure they were in sequence and checked the last one. Why didn’t this damned thing come with instructions like a test?
Well, it wasn’t a multiple choice question. It was yes or no. I knew the answer, I just didn’t want to write it, and I especially didn’t want Doctor Lorenzo to know.
I huffed out a breath. I hated this. I’d spent all morning preparing for this interview, and now it was horrible.
I had two choices, fill out the application, or don’t. Stay or leave. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to be part of the study if it started by prying into the status of my hymen. For fuck’s sake, what kind of study was Lorenzo running? Damn it. I really wanted to do everything right and impress him. I stood up from his chair and it knocked against the wall. I held still, half expecting a campus cop to burst into the office and interrogate me for being in a
professor’s chair. I hot-footed it to the other side of the desk and grabbed a water bottle. I drank and visualized the ocean lapping at the rocks at my favorite beach. By the time I peered into the tide pools, I was breathing normally again. Take that, anxiety.
Okay. I came here because I wanted to help with Doctor Lorenzo’s research. I couldn’t fathom why he’d hit me with that too-personal question, but he did. However, it was impersonal. Presumably, this application went to all applicants. That reminded me that if I didn’t do well on the application, someone else would score this opportunity.
I finished this water and demolished a packet of crackers. I ate an apple to get my teeth clean. The sweet crunchiness soothed me.
Alright. I’d skip sexual probe question #1 and get on with the rest of it. If it got any worse, maybe I’d slap him when he got back.
The visitor’s chair wasn’t as comfortable as his, but I wasn’t about to hazard the professor’s chair again. I set my briefcase on my lap and used it as a desk.
What the fuck.
How often do you masturbate?
Are you orgasmic?
Are you multi-orgasmic?
Do you read erotic books?
Do you watch erotic movies?
Have you watched any hardcore porn?
Do you enjoy images of naked men?
Do you enjoy images of naked women?
Which of the following fantasies, acts, and scenarios do you find arousing? Rate your arousal on a scale of one to five, with one being the least arousing and five being the most arousing.
The list of fantasies, acts and scenarios was un-fucking-believable. The questions about being penetrated by three men snagged my attention. I shut my eyes, fighting the images. He mentioned two colleagues helping with my intake. My mind must be dirtier than his, but he was the one who handed me this application.
I slammed the papers on the desk. He seriously asked me to an interview to question me about sexual arousal, my sexual arousal? How fucking dare he?
But why did he want to know?
I couldn’t do it. My eyes burned. I’d wanted this so badly. But I could not fill out that application. I couldn’t even pretend to be someone else and fill out that application. I couldn’t do it at all. My eardrums rumbled. Damn it. Damn him.
The door opened. I jumped. He was early. What was he, a mind reader? At least he arrived before I started bawling.
“How are you doing?” His glance darted from my face, to the papers and back.
“How do you think I’m doing, you pervert?”
“You’re upset,” his voice was calm, his eyes dark pools of peace.
“Bravo, Sherlock.”
“I don’t understand.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant my reference to Sherlock Holmes or my being upset. I couldn’t bring myself to answer in either case. Damn him.
He went to his desk and picked up my application.
I held my breath as he leafed though it.
“What happened?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t answer those questions.”
“Mm.” He bit his lip.
I pushed my glasses up my nose, sitting on the edge of the seat, as though waiting for my judge and executioner.
Executions were big thrills back in the day, still were, some places. How was it death, sex, pain, can be wired so close together? Was I really a freak? Did he sense that? Was that why he picked me? Or was all of this impersonal, and I didn’t matter at all? That would be cruel, but life was cruel. You didn’t go long in life as a big girl without getting clear on that.
“Well, if you won’t cooperate with the questionnaire, provided you answer one question honestly, I could bypass the application and take you directly to testing.”
“What is all of this about, Doctor Lorenzo? This,” I gestured to the application, “Is nasty.”
“What is so nasty about desire?”
I stared at him. It was like he wasn’t just from another culture, he was from another planet. Was it possible he didn’t grasp that interrogating students about their sexual activities and sexual fantasies could get you fired in the U.S.? Hell, sued and maybe worse. I could picture an irate dad or mom attacking or even shooting him if this got out. Hence the high security on the papers. That suggested maybe he did understand the risk he was taking. Was researching sexual desire worth it to him? Was this study worth risking his career? And knowing the stakes, and being mortified with embarrassment, was I seriously still considering helping him?
I was afraid the answers to all those questions was yes.
I loved the way he smelled. I was lost.
“I do want to know, Brie. What is nasty about desire?” He leaned against the edge of his desk. That made his bulge more prominent.
I licked my lips and made myself look away. He sounded as though he wanted to know the answer to that question, that it mattered to him intensely. I adored how my name sounded with his deep voice and sexy accent, he rolled my r, making my name a great cat’s purr. I was at a loss. Maybe just as breast feeding wasn’t an issue in some parts of the world, some of the things that made me speechless weren’t a big deal where he was from. But it was hard to imagine a professor anywhere asking a girl if she was a virgin.
“It’s just uh, intensely personal. Private.” I grasped at a possible lifeboat. “You talked about online privacy before. To me, that,” I waved at the application, “Those questions are an invasion of privacy.”
“I see.” He tapped his full lower lip. “What I’m asking though, is what is nasty about desire. Privacy is a separate issue. Nasty is a judgment. That suggest the activities that result in a baby coming into the world, or activities indulged in purely for pleasure are bad. Is that what you mean?” He spread his hands, as though to emphasize that he couldn’t fathom it.
I totally did not want to go into stereotypes, but playing alongside the tape of the muy caliente Latin lover was one about centuries of Catholicism in most Spanish-speaking parts of the world, unless I was misinformed. Or maybe he was from Amsterdam or something, and I was an ignoramus. My worldview was undergoing an earthquake. I didn’t know anything anymore.
He tapped his long fingers on his thigh, waiting for an answer. The man had to work out. Just wrong for a professor to be so buff. Double wrong for a shrink.
“Well, I’m no authority. It’s just that, well, I’ve been raised to believe it’s bad and wrong. Sex. That desires and, well, sensations, fantasies, all of that is dirty and unmentionable. You just don’t don’t expose that.” Especially not if you’re as perverted as I am and a virgin on top of that.
“Alright. I don’t agree, but as some people say here, we will agree to disagree. Alright?”
“Alright.” I nodded, lost.
“It would mean a great deal to me if you will help me with my research. You’re articulate, even though I realize that you’re embarrassed, and that’s hampering your ability to communicate. I can get a great deal of information out of you without you having to say a word.” He eyed me like an interrogator in a torture flick.
Oh, hell. What was he up to? Why me?
“Um, I’d like to help.” I really didn’t want him to pick someone else. For one thing, I’d be freaking jealous. For another, he might get his hot ass fired. Most of all, if this study involved any hands-on nastiness from the hot shrink, I didn’t think I could resist. I ignored the nagging voice telling me to get the hell out of there.
“Good. Perhaps it will be easier for you if I whisper the one question in your ear, and you nod or shake your head in response. One question and you must be honest. If you don’t wish to answer the question, you may leave, and we will never speak of this again. Your decision has no bearing on your grade, my willingness to assist in your academic career, or my esteem for you. Understood?”
I nodded, relieved that I didn’t have to talk.
He leaned toward me. I inhaled his delicious manliness. His lips touched my ear. An electric current went right to my cl
it.
“Brie, are you a virgin?”
The man was obsessed. The one question I most did not want to answer was the one question he wouldn’t let me out of. Damn him. Well, it was show or fold. I had to answer or leave. I knew what I had to do.
I nodded. My ear brushed his warm lips. Bliss.
“Good. I’m delighted. You’re qualified. We’ll begin in fifteen minutes. Feel free to have a snack or use the restroom, whatever you’d like. Take a spin in my chair. Make yourself comfortable.” His smile blasted me with sunshine. His euphoria suggested he won the lottery and could leave the sexually-repressed U.S. for an oasis of sexual freedom.
I envied him his joy. I sat on my hands as he exited his office, not even turning to catch a glimpse of his ass. My hymen qualified me for his study. Right. What the hell was I doing?
My First Treatment
DR. LORENZO LED ME into a large forum with a viewing room across the top at the back. “This is where our work begins. Welcome to the study of desire.”
He nodded to a tall, tanned man with silver streaks through his thick dark hair and mustache. He looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors when he wasn’t studying desire after hours.
“This is Dr. Tobias Wright, an eminent psychiatrist who has contributed a great deal to the controversial subject of sexual aberration. Please excuse me, Brie. I’ll be back in a few moments. You’re in good hands with Dr. Wright.”
The stranger took my hand and squeezed it.
“You understand why you’re here?”
“Yes, sir, Doctor Wright. I’m reporting as an experimental test subject.”
“Good, that’s right, Brie. I’m sure Doctor Lorenzo briefed you on the confidential nature of our research. You must refrain from telling anyone. Not a word to your family, friends, roommate, classmate, other professors, therapist, pastor, priest, doctor, boyfriend, girlfriend, no one. Even mentioning the study in vague terms is forbidden. Do you understand?”
