Can't Help the Way That I Feel

by Lori Bryant-Woolridge

  He cleared his throat and the buzz quieted. He smiled briefly, then began telling us of his kupenda. Until he said the word, I’d never heard it before and had no idea what it meant. Its meaning became clear to me after one line. A love sonnet tumbled from his lips, the words like butterfly kisses as they connected with my ears, caressing my cheek in anticipation of what lay ahead.

  Lips like yours.

  He spoke of worship and baptizing a lover’s lips in a cadence that made me hold my breath in anticipation. Adler exuded drama and flair in a manner that commanded that one stop and take notice, and we all did. My daydreaming never got started. I could barely move.

  I shivered when he paused, and took him in. Squarish glasses dissected his chocolate-brown face, providing an outline for his eyes. A neat goatee punctuated his chin, adding emphasis to the movement of his mouth as he spoke. He smelled good, like spice, and his scent enveloped us all without being overbearing. Adler seemed to appreciate that there was not a person in the room who was not under his spell. We were all mesmerized, breathing in time with his words, heads turning like Galilean moons, tracking his path as he paced back and forth.

  This man was no amateur, and he appeared happy that he’d successfully gotten everyone’s attention. At least we would all stay awake during his presentation. That was an accomplishment in itself. Most of the speakers we had to listen to left me and my colleagues barely awake and staring at the clock.

  Goose bumps covered my arms and I wrapped them around my body, trying to understand what I was experiencing. His voice ebbed and flowed like soft waves. I found myself sucked in, focused on the imagery he created and if someone had looked closely, I’m sure they’d have been able to see my body swaying in response to the meter of his words.

  All other sound in the room was pushed far away. Other than Adler’s voice, I could only hear my own heartbeat. The poet’s words had become its touchstone. He’d moved on to the next poem, also about love, but more explicit this time.

  Heaven is between your legs.

  My body was tense now, and I pressed my knees together as I tried to quell the familiar stirring. It had obviously been a long time for me if a few sexy words could get me riled up. But I’d promised myself that I would stay focused on school and on nothing and no one else.

  Adler sipped from a glass of water and I took a breath, glancing briefly around the room. Everyone else seemed to be as mesmerized as I was. I was sweating, but it would look unscholarly if I fanned myself or wiped my brow. This was not a neighborhood coffeehouse or open mike on the wrong side of town where I was supposed to talk back. Here, I was expected to act like a sophisticated graduate student and be both attentive and respectful. I put my hands on my face, pressing my palms inward against my cheeks, as if the pressure could stop the flush. He could baptize me anytime.

  The poet came right up to me when he was finished and shook my hand. I felt as if I were watching a film as I stared at our hands, clasped together as he pumped them up and down.

  “You are—?” He raised his eyebrows as if he were amused. I could barely hear his words as he spoke to me and then ran his tongue over his generous lips.

  “Geneva.” I wanted to say more, but my throat had suddenly become parched and dry and the words couldn’t find their way out into the open. I was too close to him, feeling almost smothered being in his space.

  His wide smile seemed to hide questions I was sure I didn’t want to answer. All I could muster was a slight nod before he left me standing there to move on and greet others who appeared more appreciative of his words than I. I didn’t wait for the room to clear out. Instead, I pulled myself away and slipped out the back door while others gave Adler their congratulations.

  The presentation had been good, but my face and body were betraying me. By the time he’d finished, the room had felt too hot and too small, certainly devoid of air-conditioning. I quickly found the faculty restroom at the end of the hall, briefly looking over my shoulder before I slipped inside and turned the lock on the door.

  I dropped my briefcase onto the floor, pushing back the thought that the blue tile was certainly full of germs, and rummaged through my handbag for what I needed. I shoved my black cosmetic bag aside, moved the lipsticks and the discarded receipts that I’d neatly folded, my fingers quickly finding the comforting smoothness of an egg shape. I dragged my toy from its hiding spot in the lining of my purse, glad that I’d had the foresight to keep it in my bag for emergencies like this. Adler may have been hot, but men came with complications. My sex toy could give me what I needed and would ask for nothing in return. This was my secret weapon, one of the things that would help me stay on target and away from the entanglements that had caused me so many problems before and would surely distract me from my goal today.

  My shoulders began to relax as I flipped the switch. The bullet jumped to life in my hand. I moved the safety tag to the side. Do not insert fully into any body cavity, it read. Hanging my purse on the hook behind the door, I lifted one leg and put my foot up on the toilet seat. I leaned back against the wall and in one movement, lifted my skirt and moved my thong to the side, quickly inserting the smooth, shiny metal deep into my already wet pussy. So much for safety warnings.

  I closed my eyes and let my body grip the object inside me. My breathing sped up and became shallow as waves of pleasure washed over me. I pressed my back against the wall and let my knees press together, enjoying the vibrations. I imagined that I was with Adler and gripped my breasts as he might, massaging them gently.

  He would surely play with my clit, so I rubbed myself, slowly at first, then more forcefully as the tension built. I imagined his full lips as they encircled my lips, and the probe of his tongue. He breathed on my clit first, without touching it, then gently ran his tongue over my labia. I shuddered and pressed my eyes closed tight to hold the picture in my mind. Adler flattened his tongue and pressed it hard over my entire pussy. I arched my back, raising my hips to meet his face. In my imagination, he ate my pussy good, but slowly, inching me toward my crash. He got me closer with each caress of his tongue but pulled me back each time with a rhythm that was not unlike that of his poetry. Sweat dripped down my face, and I wiped it with the back of my hand, barely remembering to stifle my moans. I was in a precarious place, practically public, and the thought that the thin wooden door wouldn’t hide much added to my excitement. I was almost there.

  A knock at the door interrupted my release. I managed to speak. “I’ll be right out.” I slid the switch on the bullet, turning it off. The hum wasn’t too loud, but I couldn’t be sure. There would be some interesting talk around the department if they figured out what I was doing.

  I did my best to collect my belongings and make it look as if my bathroom visit had been like any other. When I opened the door, another student was waiting impatiently. She smiled with tense lips and I tried my best to return her gaze.

  “You okay?” she asked. She was shifting her weight back and forth as if her need was urgent. “I didn’t think you were ever coming out.”

  I shrugged. “When nature calls…”

  I walked back to my car in slow motion, not believing that a few pretty words had affected me the way they had. I was totally thrown off, exhausted as I might have been if I’d had a long workout in the gym. Or in the bedroom.

  “What did you think of Mr. Adler? Wasn’t he delicious?” A fellow student waved at me as I passed.

  “Delicious.” I parroted her words, wanting to tell her that in my fantasy, not only was he delicious, but he was fucking fantastic as well. I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to him. He was fantastic, even though he was off limits. Satisfied, she took it to mean that I was in agreement with her.

  It had been Adler’s being that had left me breathless, not just his words. There had been something about him that demanded others take notice. He possessed a charisma the likes of which I hadn’t seen in a long while.

  I needed a drink or something, obviously—more l
ike something or, should I say, someone. It was just yesterday that I’d been walking across downtown Baltimore with my best friend, lauding my manlessness, and now I could barely breathe just imagining being with one.

  The light had turned green and we’d continued on our way. “I don’t need a man in my life. Not right now,” I’d said.

  “I hear you.”

  “I’m just going to be a diva, get my PhD, and I can worry about all that later.”

  She’d laughed. “Yup. Besides, have you seen the male students?”

  “They all look like rejects from life, so they came to get educated instead. I wouldn’t lay down with any of them if I had a wooden pussy.” We’d laughed like I’d told the biggest joke, and it had seemed so right. Still, a few breathy words from a handsome man had left me all hot and bothered, and the throb down below challenged my self-control. Perhaps my divaness was all in my head, fabricated like the fiction I crafted and refined on a daily basis.

  I looked in my rearview mirror and straightened my thick eyebrows with my index finger. I didn’t have to worry though. Adler would be leaving after a few days of lecturing in the department. There would be very little time for his torture, even less time for me to get distracted. I had to look on the good side. I would be enjoying poetry more than I ever had.

  “The Tonight Show” has gone off and my computer buzzed to life. The wee hours of the night were my quiet time, the time when I tried to create magic on paper, a story that I could actually sell. I’d been rejected more times than I could count, but I was still at it. I wanted my words to embrace the page and leave an impression on my reader, and I hadn’t done that yet, but I was close. I could feel it.

  One of my professors had said that my work was too safe. “You can’t create emotion if you take the easy road,” she’d said. “You have to find a way to excite your reader. Be daring. Take chances. Write your pain.”

  I’d shrugged off her comments. What did she know? She’d also told me to write what I know, and that is what I’d been doing, with painstaking detail, but it hadn’t been good enough. My work still came back with rejection letters and sometimes with more red pen marks than a first-year writing student would get.

  “What if I don’t have any pain?” I’d said. That hadn’t been the reply she expected. She had no answer for me, at least nothing that had moved me from this spot that I found myself in nightly. I shook off thoughts of my professor and tried to focus.

  I always checked my mail first. It was part of my process, the routine I used to get started. I scrolled through the myriad of emails. Most of them were junk or spam from someone trying to sell me clothing, a remedy for a short penis, or the proposition that I had won some lottery or the other and could claim my winnings if I only sent all the money I had to some foreign locale. I chuckled. Sometimes it seemed like my odds of winning the lottery were better than my odds of getting published. I deleted the latter, and filed the messages about sales from my favorite stores in a place where I could look at them later. Online shopping would be my reward for producing at least three pages worthy of keeping. Usually, the browsing was the highlight of my day. A message from the department coordinator caught my eye. It was addressed to all of the students.

  Join us for one last evening of poetry and critique with our guest, James Adler. This is your last chance to ask any question you may have. He will leave promptly at ten to catch the midnight train to the next stop on his multicity tour.

  I lingered on the message, taking my time in filing it in the folder I reserved for messages from the department. Of course, I already knew that he would be speaking again. That is the way it was done with visiting lecturers, and I also knew that I was expected to be in attendance. My financial aid required me to be present at all department events, and the department head was a stickler for following the rules.

  It was interesting to me that Adler was taking the train to his next stop, as opposed to flying. That said that he was a patient man, someone who liked to take his time. The feeling between my legs started again, and before I knew it, I’d been sitting at the computer, alternating between staring at that message and web-surfing for two hours. Two hours without writing a word. Two hours wasted just thinking about seeing some stranger again. So much for avoiding distraction.

  I was hoping things would be better the next day, that I might have recovered from whatever spell Adler had put on me. I was wrong. When I walked into the lecture hall, he was already there. I drew in my breath as I walked by him and the four students who surrounded him, all of them in various phases of orbit, still more than enamored with Adler’s presence. He glanced up when I entered, giving me a backward nod. I shivered. There was just a slight hint of a smile on his face. His lips turned slightly upward. Although he didn’t move his head from facing the person who was talking to him, his eyes followed me as I walked across the room and found a seat by the open window. I let my eyes get pulled into his almost in a challenge, and I sat with my back slightly toward the wall as if I was trying to protect myself. After what seemed like too long, he finally released my gaze. I shook it off and flipped through my moleskin notebook, not seeing the words on the page, but looking for something to bring me back in, to anchor me.

  Once again, I was breathless as he made his presentation. Today, he talked about his craft and answered questions. His voice still had a rhythm about it, like music, and I was trapped in its bars. My mind played games with me now and I imagined that although he spoke to the whole room, his eyes found me at the end of every exchange. It didn’t make sense, but I felt as if he was talking only to me. Adler spoke, and my body hummed with need in response. The whole session seemed to last only ten minutes, even though we were there for more than an hour. The students around me gathered their things to go, and a new group surrounded him. I put my belongings together slowly, grateful that it was over. Everything felt heavy and it took extra effort for me to lift each piece and place it back inside my briefcase. I kept running his picture over and over in my head, waiting for my fog to lift.

  I was glad that Adler was finally done. Now, I could get back to my routine. He would be leaving us and taking his special kind of gravity with him. A crowd of people milled around by the door, blocking my exit. I stopped to let them move aside and paused, looking back over my shoulder. He was alone now, gathering his notes to leave. I watched guiltily for a second and he looked up, catching my gaze again. Our eyes locked and his nose flared just as a hint of a smile flickered across his face. Adler glanced at the clock and then gave me that backward nod again. My breath caught in my throat. Or did he really look back at me? I wasn’t sure.

  I gasped, then tore myself away and slipped out the door, making a beeline for the parking lot. There was work to be done tonight. I didn’t have time to sit around and exchange meaningless glances with anyone, no matter how magnetic he seemed. I reminded myself of my resolve to focus on the important things, and a flirtation was not one of them. An unwritten masterpiece was waiting.

  I couldn’t believe I was doing it, but I was, nonetheless, driving to the train station. I didn’t know what I expected to find there or that I was even going at the right time, but I knew that Adler would be taking the midnight train out of the Baltimore County Station. I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. I hadn’t thought or spoken my intentions. In fact, I wasn’t sure what they were. I felt ridiculous but I didn’t turn my car around and go back to my apartment to get down to the work that was perpetually waiting for me. Instead, I kept running over our last almost-exchange in my mind.

  A backward nod. An invitation. Or maybe just a backward nod. My inner voice had been screaming at me, but by now the more adventurous me had tied her up, gagged her and thrown her in a corner of my psyche. Adler hadn’t explicitly said I should come, and if I had read between the lines incorrectly, I would look ridiculous. My gut told me I wasn’t wrong, though. Adler would not complain or even accuse me of stalking. If he’d felt half
of what I had, he’d be grateful to see me.

  I was going against everything I believed in. Smart women just didn’t approach strange men, and certainly not in a dark place at night. I knew nothing about Adler, yet I was drawn to him. A small colloquium, a normal occurrence in my daily life, had turned into such a distraction that I was sure I was doing the right thing. By forcing myself to confront him, I would be able to move on and get down to the business I needed to be taking care of. Something told me that seeing Adler one more time would get him out of my system and keep me from spending one more unproductive night paralyzed in front of the computer. I was just going to look, and that never hurt anyone.

  The station was surrounded by tons of parking, a sprawling asphalt lawn punctuated by the white parking lines. As I pulled in, I angled my car away from the yellow light of the new-fangled streetlamps, to the place where the shadow of the railroad trestle obscured the light. There were only a few cars left, just as I’d hoped. Most of the commuters had already started their journey back to wherever it was they had come from for the night. I shivered, then checked to be sure that my doors were locked. My dark spot of choice was also a prime spot for me to be mugged or carjacked, but the adrenaline rushing through my veins kept me from being afraid. I parked where I could see him, but he might not be able to see me until I wanted him too.

  I sat in the corner of the lot, not sure how long I might have to wait. I turned my car off and stared into my rearview mirror, watching the bottom of the massive steps that led to the platform. Three cars came and went and I searched the occupants, willing one of them to be Alder. I was as still as Lot’s wife, barely breathing each time someone emerged from a car and headed up the steps. I remained frozen as I examined each person’s stride, looking for Adler’s familiar one. I waited thirty minutes, long enough to start to feel the beginnings of regret. Just as I was about to leave, a car pulled in that I recognized as belonging to the department head.