The Secret Journey (9 page)

You are right now the centre of my world, you
are right now the most sexual thing alive, the most desirable,
sensual woman that has ever lived and right now you are all mine.
And what makes you that way is not just your hot body and not just
the way you wiggle and gasp beneath my touch, it’s more fundamental
than that, it’s you, it’s the way you are, it’s because you’re the
woman who has read this far, you’re the woman who isn’t afraid of
my darker side, it’s because you are the woman smart enough,
creative enough, to turn these words into this complete experience.
That’s the rush for me, honey, that’s what makes this work for me
here in my sultry, steamy summer night. I know you’re there, right
there, on the other side of this page, the other end of this phone,
the other end of this road, the other side of the door.

Yeah, you’re real for me, honey, you’re there
and yes, you have gotten to the tender side of me, for just this
instant you have tamed the beast. And yes, I’m here and my tongue
is right on that magical spot, urgent, insistent. Yeah, I’m going
to get what I want from you. And you are split, spread, swollen,
slippery, so aroused you can’t even think straight. So say it
honey. Say “Yes,” for me, say “Please,” say those words, those
magic words, over and over and over, say them loud, say them with
every stroke.

“Yes.”

“Please.
”

Rythmic.

“Yes.”

“Please.”

Steady.

“Yes.”

“Please.”

Harder.

Yeah, do it harder, honey, do it faster. Do
it honey, and feel my tongue as you stroke your clit, ready now,
feel the orgasm building up. Feel your womb get tight, feel your
cunt throb, feel your clit swell to bursting. Just because it’s
tender doesn’t mean it’s not intense. Do it, honey, give it to me,
legs spread wide and wider, get your cunt open, get your soul open,
thrust your hips up, make yourself your own sacramental sex altar,
let me worship at your temple, let me take you where you so much
need to go.

“Yes.”

“Please.”

Say it.

“Yes.”

“Please.”

Stroke it.

“Yes.”

“Please.”

Fuck it.

Oh yeah, honey. Harder now and faster. I want
it for you so much, I’m going to make you come so hard, just let it
all go because you can’t hold on to it any longer, just let the
pleasure sweep your body, let your cunt explode, just be it, feel
it, do it, fuck it. Can you see yourself as I see you, like Eve,
the original woman, the original beauty, passion made flesh and
flesh made passion. Do you know how precious you are to me honey,
do you know how much I need you right now? Come on honey, give it
up for me, pump your hips, get your legs even wider and give it up.
It’s coming now, coming fast, your orgasm is there, right there
honey, and it’s going to happen right now.

Now! Now honey, release it, ride it, scream
it out, let it consume you, consecrate you, purify you. And you are
so beautiful like this, honey, you are my everything right now.
Pump it hard, honey, feel the contractions, feel the rush, feel how
right it is like this. You
are
your cunt now, honey. Feel
the tingle in your nipples, feel the throb in your clit. Breathe
for me, honey, in and out, deep and regular. God you are so
beautiful. Breathe and feel it, shudder through it, buck and spasm.
Be all woman for me, be all women. Show me how you are when you let
go. Do it.
Now!

And when you’re done, when you’re finished,
once every silver streak of pleasure has been milked from your
contracting womb, once every last thrill and tingle has come
through your body, then come down for me, honey. Let your body go
limp, let your muscles relax and let me see you in that beautiful
state of after-orgasm, your skin glowing, flushed, your eyes lidded
heavy now in the aftermath, the smell of your sex filling the room.
Breathe deep, honey. Let it wash you away, and you can lie there
and feel me next to you.

Let me brush the hair from your eyes and hold
you, honey. Let me lie with you a little while. Tell me how it was
honey, and kiss me with affection. Let me talk about what I’ve
learned from life, let me listen to your stories. Let me hear your
heartbeat with my head against your breast.

Can I get you something, honey? Water, wine,
milk or mangoes? Ice cream, whipped cream, or simply whipped until
you cream? Pain or pleasure, lace or leather, tell me your
favourite. Food, flesh or fantasy, there’s nothing I won’t bring
for you. Are you still surprised, honey, that I can choose to be
tender? I’m a real person honey, I’m more than just words on the
page, more than just a cookie-cut character. I have depths you
haven’t dreamt of. Tell me your desire, let me make it real for
you. Is it real enough yet? No, not yet, but getting realer all the
time. You’re still there and I’m still here, but we’re getting
closer. We’re in no rush, honey, we have time, here in the private
darkness of our steamy summer night. Here at the beginning of our
road.

The Teacher

It’s hard being a teacher,
a high
school teacher. What makes it hard is the girls, the women. When
they start they’re girls, gawky and shy, not quite co-ordinated,
not yet comfortable with bodies which have transformed themselves
in a few short years. They arrive as minor-niners with braces and
bubblegum, playing dress-up with themselves the way they used to
with Barbie. They giggle about boys, they flirt and fight and cry
in response to floods of hormones they can’t control, bringing on
feelings they don’t understand. They struggle through crushes and
jealousies. They dream of their first dance, first kiss, first
touch, first time. And then, a sudden four years later, they’re
women.

Young women to be sure, with their lives in
front of them, but women, not girls. They know the power of their
sexuality, and dress-up has been replaced with style. Their bodies
are firm and lithe, fully formed and fertile. They know how to get
what they want, most of them, and the ones who don’t yet will learn
soon enough. They are beautiful, in that first blush of womanhood.
They are ripe, and they know it, and they advertise it to the
world, knowing the wolves will fight it out to see who’s going to
win the prize.

Boys lag girls, it’s just the way they’re
built. They come into school still children and when they leave
they aren't yet men. Young women like older men for just that
reason. They're attracted to maturity, experience, confidence,
authority. Better to say they
respond
to such men. They
can’t help it, any more than men can help responding to women who
are young and beautiful. It’s not a choice, not an acquired taste,
it’s instinct. Basic instinct.

And if you’re an older man but not yet too
old, if you’re fit and tall, if you’re passionate about what you
teach, if you connect with your students on their level, then it’s
inevitable that attraction will happen. I’ve had Valentine’s cards
appear in homework, answered the phone to silence and a giggle and
the click-buzz of a hang-up, seen my name carved in a heart on the
window ledge in the library. I’ve had secret notes mailed to my
house and had other girls sidle up to tell me someone “likes me” in
just that certain way.

It takes self discipline to resist when they
sit in the front row, looking up at me with their eyes big,
drinking you in as you stand there being mature, experienced,
confident and authoritative. It takes more when they linger after
class to ask a question, spark a discussion, share that precious
three minutes before they have to run home to their private fantasy
where the teacher/student veil is pierced.

It’s just a crush
people say, parents
and relatives, friends and guidance counselors, as if that makes
the emotions less important. That’s wrong, so wrong. Emotions are
emotions, and if crushes are fleeting, capricious, always ill
thought out and often ill advised, they are nevertheless powerful.
I used to say, “Just a crush,” and sidestep the shy glances, the
awkward advances. What else could I do? I dated women in my own age
group, women whose sexualities are more advanced than
kiss-and-fumble, women who appreciate the side of me that I keep
strictly separate from PTA meetings and teacher’s union working
groups. And then Suzanne Smith killed herself on the last day of
school, and her note told the world it was because she realized she
could never have me.

A thing like that stays with you. Sue was
quiet and studious and pretty, with a sly sense of humour that went
beyond her years. It’s the smarter ones who are most dangerous, the
ones most likely to feel cerebral kinship across the generation
gap. I teach creative writing, the last class of the day, and
perhaps I should have recognized her attraction by the way she
lingered afterwards to ask questions. Perhaps I should have seen it
in what she wrote.

Her stories were longer than most, and far
better written than even the average professional can produce. They
tended to romantic themes. She left the last one she wrote in her
locker when she went home that day of school, having cleaned
everything else out. She titled it
The Millwheel
, a well
crafted tale of a young woman and the miller’s son, her secret
lover. They meet in a secluded nook by the millpond, and though
nothing more than a kiss occurs you can feel the passion lurking
just beneath the words. Her parents find out and forbid her to see
him because he is beneath her social station. She refuses to end
it, and they arrange to have him drafted into the army. He goes to
war and she waits, until news comes that he’s been killed. In
despair she dives into the millpond and swims until she’s swept
into the raceway, dragged down and under the churning wheel, killed
in an instant. Her final thought is of her lover, her wish that his
soul will return to his father’s mill, so they can always be
together.

I wept when I read her story, it was just
that good. What I didn’t know was that she’d written it for me,
only for me. She had laid it all out for me, as plain as can be,
and though I’m good at spotting student crushes I’d never even
guessed at hers. She laid her heart before me, bared her soul, and
what did I do? Graded it A+ in red pen and wrote 'Excellent work,
Suzanne. The use of the millwheel both to symbolize life and to
foreshadow of death is very powerful. Your characterization is
beautiful. Best of luck in university next year.'

Suzanne never got less than an A. She had a
dozen scholarships from a dozen top ranked schools to choose from.
She could have had any career she chose, anywhere she chose,
travelled, learned, loved, grown, raised children and
grandchildren. She threw it all away because I didn’t return an
attraction I didn’t even know existed, that I couldn’t have
returned if I had known. I remember the way she hugged me on that
last day of senior year, the last day of her life. She held me
tighter and longer than she should have, my first and last hint at
what lay beneath her shy and quiet surface, and I kept my
professional distance and congratulated her and shook her hand and
wished her well.

Perhaps I gave her some paternal good advice,
I can’t remember. I do remember so clearly when her mother called.
“This is Sue Smith’s mom,” she said, and then she burst into tears.
Now I bring flowers to her grave every year. I kept teaching, what
else could I do? I love my work, even when it hurts. I still get
Valentines and carefully penned notes on purple stationary. I still
sidestep them, but more carefully now, and with compassion. Never
again have I said the words, “Just a crush.”

Four Septembers after Suzanne, Julie arrived
in that same class. She was tall and tight bodied, adolescent lean
with high, firm breasts and long, long legs. She wore ripped jeans
and torn t-shirts, and one or the other was always black, tight
enough to show her figure, loose enough to show she didn’t care.
Her attitude towards school skirted the border between bored and
amused. She tolerated the system because she had to, but she made
it clear she didn’t buy our line about how important the process
was.

Julie was as smart as Suzanne or maybe
smarter, but her work was habitually late and typically sloppy,
though she’d throw in the occasional A+ effort just to prove she
could do it, if she wanted to. Most of the time she read a book in
class, making her own use of the time we made her spend at a
schoolroom desk. She was a reader, gaining admittance through words
to worlds she couldn’t yet access any other way. She was doing what
she wanted now, not waiting for some magical after-time, after
graduation, after university, after landing the career, the
promotion, the directorship. I had no idea what she did after
school, no idea what her home life was like, but her writing spoke
volumes, themed dangerous and dark. She sat in the back where
Suzanne had sat in the front, and she never lingered to talk after
class.

Until one day she did.

It was a Friday in early October, a cool and
crisp day. The bell rang at four and the class evaporated in a
babble of young voices. The usual handful stayed behind with
questions or problems to address. I dealt with each one, made notes
in my log where I had to follow something up. Julie was last in
line.

“Julie.” I looked up from my desk, gave her
the standard quick smile of invitation to tell her it was her turn.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched the previous
student go out the door.

“Julie?” She was still watching the door as
it swung shut again. The latch clacked closed, and then she knelt
down beside my chair. “I want you to teach me, sir.” Her voice was
nervous, her face determined. She knew what she was doing, it
scared her, she was doing it anyway.

My blood ran cold. On the surface it was an
innocent enough thing to say. I am after all her teacher, and all
my students call me “Sir”, as they call all male teachers “Sir” and
all female teachers “Ma’am”. Completely innocent, except for the
way she was kneeling, except for the tone of her voice when she
said it, the way she emphasized “Sir”, in just that way. She knew,
somehow, and she was acting on what she knew to get what she
wanted. I just stared at her, unable to speak until she said the
words I dreaded, the words I somehow knew were coming.