100 SEX VIGNETTES, #2

Airing Out My English B.A.

Poor Jeb. He is a simpleton. Truth is, I wouldn’t even be with him if he wasn’t so obedient. Married him for that reason, and some might call me a bitch for it or a goldilocks, but I’m a more altruistic woman than all that—without me, his life would be pathetically banal. Poor boy would have ended up with a proper priss, some eye-plucking, prick-abhorring Pauline, the kind of girl who prefers mani-pedis to orgasms.

Take last night, for instance, when Jeb walked into the living room in the most darling outfit: slacks, corduroy jacket, bowtie, spectacles. His hair slicked back, his pubescent facial stubble making an attempt at a mustache. And he’s thirty. He’ll never be able to grow a proper one—which I love goading him about. The biggest joke going is that men have any balls of their own, as if the simple phrase “I just wish you were a little bit bigger” weren’t enough to castrate any Lothario, let alone a Labrador like Jeb. Jeb! Here he was, dressed like a 1950s dandy. Not the kind of look that would get him any play in Chelsea these days. And he can’t even see out of his damned spectacles because they’re just reading glasses, and he’s walking completely unsurely toward the podium, which he’s never seen before, in the middle of the living room. I brought it home from my lecture hall. The only thing more fun than role-playing, after all, is being the only one in on the joke.

On the podium is a Norton Critical Edition of the Canterbury Tales, closed. I can recite the prologue by memory, but Jeb assures me that he’s never so much as read a “modern” English version of the stories. He’s a banker without a job, or a eunuch in today’s parlance, and always uses that word modern as if it has no historical significance. You mean a version written by Hemingway? I’ll ask. By Faulkner, Joyce, Wolf, Jean Toomer? Painted by Matisse? Designed by Le Corbusier?

“Open the book,” I tell him. He is five feet in front of me, no more, and I am in a chair just to the side of the podium. Wearing a summer dress, legs crossed, no stockings. Our furnace is banging behind me—it is November, after all.

He opens the book to where it is marked with a silk ribbon.

“Start with the line, it’s about half down the page, that reads I am thynn Absolon.”

“I am thyn Absolon, deerelying. Of gold,’ quod he, ‘I have thee broght a ryng.” He holds up his left hand, so that I can see his wedding band. Gold, matte finish, English scroll. My taste, of course. He’d have gone for something platinum and shiny.

“You’re butchering the words, darling. It isn’t phonetic.”

“Really? Old English isn’t phonetic?”

“Middle English. This isn’t Beowulf. This isn’t fucking Judith or the Codex Exoniensis.”

“I’m supposed to be the scholar.”

“Oh yes, and you’re doing a fine job of it.”

“What’s in the bottle?” he asks.

“That’s better.” In my hands is a Nalgene, the kind I used to bring to class when I was an undergrad ten years ago. Ten years. It’s enough to make a girl feel old and slightly bitter. It’s enough to make me fill my Nalgene with whiskey instead of water. And my cheeks are rosy red, but that’s the rouge and not the alcohol. “I used to carry this thing with me to every class. Helped me keep my focus. “Do you think it helps me look young?”

“Very.”

“Yes, well, I like it when you lie. So I used to have this professor, can’t remember his name. Started with an F, I think. And do you know what he wore? I’ll tell you. He wore glasses and bowties, and he had a mustache big and gray, and gray hair swept back over his head. He used to bring us cookies, I think to make up for the fact that he was a terrible professor. And an alcoholic. Something for all young scholars to aspire to.”

“I’m sure.”

“Don’t talk. And he had this awful little dog that shit all over the sidewalk. That’s only important because I used to live across the street from his house, and I had to be very careful every day not step in the dog shit. I think he felt it beneath him to clean up after the bitch.”

“Sometimes I feel the same.”

Now, I know I told him not to talk, but when he has a little moment like this, when he verges on witty, I like to let him enjoy it. Otherwise he could never get hard, I’m sure. You see how good I really am to him?

“Well,” I say, “do you know what happens one morning? F comes to class to tell us all about ‘The Miller’s Tale.’ But he’s stinking drunk. Much more so than I am now. He’s so drunk he can’t read very well. And he’s sweating, and he’s staring at this book and the print is so fucking small. Now mind you, this is a big class. Two hundred kids. And it’s eleven in the morning. So he loosens his bowtie,” and I nod as Jeb loosens his, “and he takes off his glasses—very good—and he gets his eyes real close to the book. His nose almost touching. And then do you know what happens? Because he still can’t read? Because he’s clearly not ill, he’s just drunk, and I, in the front row, can smell his breath and I know it? He puts the book on the floor and gets down on his knees as if to pray to it. And he says, ‘It’s just so hot in here.’”

“It’s so hot in here.”

“Yes. This man whom I’m supposed to respect, on his knees. This man, for whose guidance and wisdom I’m paying thirty-some thousand dollars a year, and he reeks of whiskey.”

“Is that whiskey in the bottle?”

“Please do shut up.” And I want to say, Of course it’s whiskey, you ninny. Did you think I said whiskey by accident. Did you think that I would say whiskey but drink tequila? I’m teaching you about the layered structures of an English poem, and you think I’d be inconsistent? But I am too good to tell him these things. “And there he is, and here I am, wearing a skirt”—I pull the fabric on my knees—“I mean, it is summer, and I’m just trying not to laugh at this man. Read.”

“My mooder yaf it me, so God save.”

“And you know, there’s a peculiar thing about this F, Fog, Fogley, whatever his name was, and it’s that when he reads, he tries to look up at the ceiling. Seeing our darling little faces is apparently too much for the man, yes, so he gets a sentence in his head—good boy—and, now wait, as he starts to recite it he lifts his gaze as if to God almighty. Usually it’s just cowardly, but from his knees it’s pathetic. From his knees and drunk. It’s slow, it’s difficult. He’s slumped and has to crane his neck back and lift his chin with each sentence. I know he can’t help seeing my legs.” I nod so that he can start.

“Ful fyn it is, and therto wel ygrave—”

“So as he lifts his head”—and now poor Jeb, a mere foot from my feet, is no longer following my history, but his own fate—“I uncross my legs for him, and he can no longer utter a word of his maligned Middle English. And the class is laughing at him, and I am putting my hands on my panties, drawing them aside, and asking him to come a little closer because he clearly hasn’t gotten a good enough look. To get really very damn close, to get his face right up under my skirt, so that with his head in my lap, and face in my cunt, and hairs in my hands”—and I put my fingers in his hair—“I can let fly for him, at him, in his darling mug a thunderous queef! Ah yes. And that, my darling, is our lesson on ‘The Miller’s Tale.’”

Read Sex Vignette #1

By Thomas McCafferty