It was not a good beginning.
The moment he walked into
Medieval England 521, I noticed him. He didn't seem to belong. Actually, he
didn't belong, pure and simple. Graduate history students are mostly women.
The few young men who pursue the field often seem cut from the same bland cookie
cutter; uniformly scholarly, with khakis and open oxfords the accepted uniform,
sporting a lot of horn-rimmed glasses. They're always on the short side. If
they play a sport at all, it's tennis.
He was different. The semester
that commences at the University of Virginia the last week in August might be
called "fall," but in Charlottesville Virginia, on August 29, anything
remotely resembling "fall" is still weeks away. It was sweltering
hot outside, so muggy it seemed like a steam bath. Many of the students were
in shorts, but his outfit pushed the edge of the envelope. He was wearing a
ragged beige tank top that announced, "There is no off season," and
a pair of loose black athletic shorts. Both items had seen better days... five
years ago. He wore a pair of ratty looking Nike athletic socks; one was still
half-way up around his calf, but the other was fully bunched at his ankle. His
shoes were in striking contrast to the rest of the outfit; they were high-top
basketball shoes, and looked brand-new and very expensive. He hadn't see a razor
for the better part of a week, and he carried a backpack that was surprisingly...
round.
The most striking thing,
however, was his size. He was huge... at least 6'7" and very muscular.
Shoulders and arms with muscles like ropes under gleaming tan skin, bulged from
under the tank top, and even though his long shorts reached nearly to his knees,
I knew that the thighs I could not see would be ridged with heavy muscles. As
he walked towards the center of the classroom, I found myself watching his progress
with something that approached amazement. Other students, I noticed were looking
at him, too, some almost surreptitiously, but a few others, particularly women
who I assumed were undergraduates, were gazing with wide-eyed amazement.
And it was no wonder. Whoever
he was, he was blatantly, arrogantly, completely, one hundred percent masculine.
Under dark brown hair that was cropped quite short, his rough-stubbled face
was not handsome... rather, it was sharp, almost predatory... but taken with
everything else, the body, the walk, the unbelievable shoulders, it did not
matter one whit. Not handsome, but most women (at least those who weren't instantly
intimidated out of their minds) would find this guy very very attractive. I,
however, emphatically, did not.
Most graduate history courses
were held in seminar rooms, smaller classrooms where the instructor and six
or ten students would sit in comfortable chairs around a conference table. But
Medieval England was a perennially popular class, often taken by third and fourth
year undergraduates as well as graduate students. Registrations typically ran
twenty or more, so we were stuck in a standard classroom, with small, bolted-down
desks.
He moved nonchalantly through
the classroom and approached one of the archaic desks. This is going to be something
to see, I thought in spite of myself, and it was. He paused, eyed one of the
tiny units with a look of weary consternation, and sighing, wedged his long
rangy body into it. His legs, stretched out, blocked the entire aisle... there
was no way he could sit "properly" and get his knees under the desk.
He looked ridiculous.
The disreputable canvas
pack hit the floor and I figured instantly why it was so rotund; there was a
ball in it, a basketball from the size of the bulge. The whole pack rolled down
the aisle, just a little; he nudged it back into place with his heavy shoe,
and then reached down to fumbled in the front pouch, removing a most-definitely-not-new
spiral notebook and a Bic pen.
I blinked. This was too
much. I didn't know who he was, but I knew he could not belong here. This was
Medieval England, for heaven's sake, not the gym.
"Excuse me." My
voice sounded strained, even to myself. He seemed intent on testing the pen
and did not look up. "Excuse me," I repeated a little more firmly.
"Young man." It sounded ridiculous even as I said it; another thing
I had noticed about him was that he seemed older than the other students. He
was my age, twenty-eight, or at least close to it.
He lifted eyes that were
startling blue to my face. "Yes?" His expression was just slightly
shocked, as if he could not believe I was talking to him, or, at least, as if
he could not believe I had referred to him as "young man."
Heedlessly, I proceeded.
There was something about him that, at very first glance, just... pissed me
off and I knew two things: first, he obviously did not belong in my classroom
and second, I didn't want him there. I pulled myself up to my full height of
5'4" hoping I looked professorial standing behind the desk. "This
is HIEU 521. Medieval England?" My tone said clearly: Silly you. I stopped
then, expecting that Basketball Jones would jump to his feet, and say, "Oh
my God, I thought this was Phys Ed 101. I'm terribly sorry," and stumble
his gigantor body right straight out of my classroom.
Nothing of the sort happened.
What did happen was this: First, his face tightened into an expression that
was not actually mean, just sort of simultaneously amazed and stern. Then, he
tipped his head to one side, stiffened his massive shoulders and said, "I
know. I can read."
I should have let it go.
A wiser woman would have. Hell, even a stupid woman would have. Only a complete
moron would have opened her mouth again. And this complete moron did. "Well,
are you registered for this class?"
His expression went from
the previous one of slightly confused annoyance to complete, slack-jawed amazement,
and color flowed into his cheeks. I'd embarrassed him, I realized, and no wonder.
Every single other person in the room was staring at him. "Yes, I believe
I am," he responded evenly.
"Are you certain? This
is a graduate history course."
He blinked, once, and his
expression changed into actual anger. "Yes, Ms. Taylor, and I am a graduate
history student." He said "history" just as I had, slowly,
as if it would be a new vocabulary word to the listener.
"Are you sure?"
What was possessing me? All I knew was that I could not stand him on sight...
and I did not want this Neanderthal in my classroom.
If he'd looked angry before,
now he looked furious and still completely baffled. "What the fuck..."
he muttered, but loudly enough so that everyone in the classroom heard the obscenity.
"If you're going to
use language like that, perhaps you should leave." My voice sounded pious,
old-maidish, even to me. I was aware suddenly that a few of the other students
had shifted their attention from him... to me. Some of them had taken classes
from me before; they were aware that I was acting in a completely atypical way.
His jaw tightened ominously.
"Maybe we should both leave and discuss this out in the hall."
Now, every eye in the room
was on me, and most of the students looked mystified. How had this happened?
Sixty seconds I'd been calmly looking over my notes for my first lecture in
a class that I love... and now... this. I was in a lose-lose confrontation was
some behemoth I'd never seen before. I licked my lips. "Perhaps we should,"
I snapped, and walked out. One quick glance behind me showed me he was following...
and that the easy rangy stride of his entrance was gone. It had been replaced
by a quick fast step that put him equal to me in a second. By the time we'd
reached the door, he was right at my back, "guiding" me out with a
large hand at the small of my back.
"Move it," he
hissed in my ear.
Within another moment, we
were out in the dim corridor. My back was against the wall, and he was looming
over me, his large arms stretched to either side of my head, pressed firmly
up high against the wall. I was trapped by his huge body. He was even more intimidating
up close, the muscles corded, and I could see dark hair under his arms. I had
to crane my neck up to see his face. If I looked straight ahead, my eyes fixed
squarely on the word "There..." on his tank top.
"What the hell
is going on here? I have never in my life been treated like you just..."
He stopped, as if he did not know how to complete the phrase. "Don't you
like basketball players? Is that it?"
"I don't know any basketball
players," I snapped dreadfully off balance.
"That's no excuse.
Jesus, what sort of problem do you have with me? You're acting like you've never
seen a... man before."
"I don't have any problem
with you." It sounded incredibly lame, on the heels of what I'd just done,
but truly, what else could I say? As quickly as my irrational rage had come,
it left and the awful realization had dawned: he was almost certainly a duly
registered graduate student and my mistake was enormous. An insult this serious,
... before the bell had even rung on the first class of what had to be his first
semester... a new student who'd done nothing offensive whatsoever other than
show up - on time - for his class... was bordering on cause for dismissal, and
I knew it. "I just... Your clothes..." I was fumbling, and I knew
it. "You need a new shirt," I snapped. "That's all."
"And you need... I
don't know what the hell you need." He looked down at me assessingly. "Maybe
a bare-ass spanking."
"What?" My voice
went shrill and my face flamed. "That's... disgusting. I'll report you
for sexual harassment."
"And I'll report you
for... insanity." He didn't sound particularly concerned about my threat.
After a long pause, he sighed. "Look, I haven't a clue what it is about
me that set you off, but I'll tell you something. I need this class and you're
not going to run me out of here, before the first session, just because,"
he lowered his voice, "you don't like my fucking shirt. I have a feeling
it's a lot more than my shirt you don't like... but we don't need to talk about
that right now." He looked over at the door and looked back down at me.
"Now I suggest we get back in there before every single person in that
classroom is totally convinced you're crazy... or I lose my temper completely
and turn you over my knee."
"What?" I couldn't
keep my voice down. "You wouldn't dare."
He lifted an eyebrow. "You
really want to find out?"
I swallowed hard, my face
scarlet. "I'll..., I'll " I sputtered, speechless.
"Report me, right?
Fine. Go do it." I chewed the side of my mouth. The silence lengthened.
"I'm waiting." I sniffed. It was hopeless. Every single person in
that classroom would testify that I had started the confrontation; if he were
a full-fledged student, registered for this class there was no way I could win
in this situation. "Come on." He waited again. "Not so brave,
are we?" He didn't wait for a answer. "Fine. Then why don't we both
go right back in there, and I'll be a good little student... and you be a nice
little professor, and I won't tan your butt." He turned and walked back
towards the classroom, as if what I was going to do was a foregone conclusion.
I almost shrieked an obscenity
at his broad back... but thankfully, for once on this dreadful morning, I stopped
myself in time. "Fine," I muttered. He didn't even turn.
Just before he walked through
the door, he did glanced back at me. "You can apologize to me later."
Without another word, he disappeared.
My face flamed. I hated
him completely. It was not, as I said, a good beginning.
Chapter 2
"I made an utter fool
of myself today," I sighed to Sandra Tomonoski, one of my fellow instructors.
"An absolute ass." Sandy, whose specialty was the Restoration, was
a little older than I, but she was my best friend in the department. We both
specialized in British history, admittedly of different eras, but we still had
much in common, and two years earlier we had gone on a two week trip to England
together. She was probably the only person in the department in whom I could
confide completely, and I was glad to see her.
I was sitting in the history
lounge, wearily sipping a cup of hours-old coffee, looking out the window idly.
It was hot as the devil outside, but from within air-conditioning, the grounds
of the University were gorgeous at this time of the year. Yet I hardly saw any
of it... it was all a green blur. The ancient coffee's bitter taste was dreadful,
but I drank it anyway, feeling as if it was almost a deserved punishment. I
was very much afraid I was, at the very least, out of a job. Bye-bye tenure.
I'd spend the rest of my career teaching World History to barely-literate high
school sophomores.
The rest of the class had
been a disaster. I'd fumbled, blushing and sweating, through about half of my
lecture, constantly conscious of the Neanderthal (whose name, I'd learned in
the first minute of class, was Jeffrey Martin -- and yes, he was on the roster)
and his outrageous threats. I found I could not meet anyone's eyes. Finally,
I gave up, handed out the syllabus and book lists, and excused everyone over
half an hour early. Students who had had me before had shuffled out of the classroom,
glancing at me as if there were a significant chance that I was really an evil
Jo Taylor inhabiting the body of their formerly quite normal professor. New
students walked away even faster, and I got the impression that they were heading
to the nearest empty classroom so they could fill out their add-drop forms,
with the emphasis on "drop," as quickly as possible.
Sandy came over to stand
next to me. "What happened?"
"I insulted a student.
In public." No need to put any frosting on it, I realized. "With no
provocation," I finished softly.
"In class?"
I nodded glumly.
"Why?" she asked,
her eyes wide. She sat next to me without taking her eyes from my face. I could
see she was surprised, and no wonder. I had a reputation for being a very good
lecturer and quite popular with students.
"I lit into some guy
right as he walked into the room."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing, basically.
I just... well, he seemed like he didn't belong. He was huge... probably six-six
or six seven, and he looked like something straight out of White Men Can't
Jump. I couldn't believe he was in the right place and, well, one thing
just led to another."
"Jeffrey Martin?"
I'd been looking out at
the lush green foliage outside the window, but now snapped my head back to her.
"Yes... how did you know...?"
"About Jeff Martin?
Everybody knows. Where have you been?"
"Who is he?"
She ignored the question.
"You insulted him? Jo..." She seemed actually speechless for a moment.
"I can't believe it. Why?"
"Who is he, Sandy?
Why should I know about him?"
"Everyone was talking
about it last year, when he was admitted. He's a basketball player, Jo. Played
for a team that won the national championship when he was in college, Notre
Dame, I think, and then went on and played in the NBA for three years. The Celtics."
My jaw dropped. "The
NBA? So what's he doing here?"
She shrugged. "Well,
what I heard was that in the NBA, he wasn't really going anywhere. Didn't play
much, and after last season, he just quit. And as for why he's here... he likes
history, I guess, and we're a good school. It was his undergraduate major. How
come you didn't know about this? God, for a couple of weeks this was all anyone
talked about."
"The car accident probably."
The previous winter, during an ice storm, I'd been involved in a bad collision
that had shattered my leg and wrist, and resulted in my missing a good part
of the semester.
Sandy nodded. "Oh,
that's right. Well, Jo, he's here... and it looks like you really put your foot
in your mouth. This guy's a celebrity." She bit her lip nervously. "Did
you really insult him?"
"As opposed to what?"
I snapped sourly. "Just kind of insulting him?" I looked away,
feeling worse than ever. Insult had just been added to injury. I'd not only
humiliated a new student, I'd humiliated a famous new student. "Yeah, I
really insulted him."
She brushed her hair back
with her hand, and I was not pleased to see how truly appalled she looked. "What
happened, Jo?" I mumbled out the beginning of the confrontation, then,
as I reviewed it my mind, my voice trailed off. It was even worse in the retelling.
Sandy, however, would not let it go. "So, how did it end?"
"At one point, he suggested
that we... uhh... continue our discussion out in the hall, so we both went out
there."
"This was after class?"
"No." I looked
away again and licked my dry lips. "This was all before the class even
started."
"My God."
I snorted a sick chuckle.
"Actually, though, all in all, he seemed more confused than really hurt.
It was like he couldn't believe I was doing it. That's hardly surprising because
I couldn't believe I was doing it, either."
"What did he say?"
"Well, I told him he
needed a new shirt, and then he said I needed a spanking... I don't know. He
accused me of being...," I pressed my lips tight, "...crazy."
I looked over at her. Hot tears had suddenly welled into my eyes and they stung.
"I'm really screwed, aren't I?"
Sandy shrugged, her upper
teach catching her lower lip, suddenly seeming reluctant to meet my gaze. "It
depends on if he tells anyone or complains. I don't know. From what I've heard,
Jo, he's a pretty nice guy. Maybe if you apologize, it'll stop here. Face it,
he's probably not going to want to start something major in the first week either."
She snorted. "You better give him an 'A,' though." She glanced at
me slyly. "He said you needed a spanking?" Sandy looked interested.
"Maybe I'll insult him."
"That's sick."
"He's single, he's
gorgeous, and he's got some money, Jo."
"He's a Neanderthal."
"He's gorgeous. And
from what I've heard, he's kept pretty much to himself since he came to town.
He's not living anywhere near grounds. He bought himself a farm out in Ivy,
and other than showing up a few times unannounced to shoot hoops down at the
Dell, no one's really seen much of him."
I shook my head. "Well,
I've seen entirely too much of him. And I'm sure he feels the same way about
me."
Sandy was silent for a few
moments. "You know," she said, her voice suddenly more thoughtful,
"I don't think you should beat yourself up over this. The more I think
about it, if you just let it drop, go into class next Tuesday like nothing happened,
I bet he's going to do the same. What's in it for him to cause a lot of trouble
for you? It's not like you gave him an 'F' out of spite, or did something that
could affect his standing in the long run. It was the first class, and you got
off to a bad start, that's all."
"Bad start." I
repeated. "That's putting it mildly." But I didn't say more, and somehow,
with a sudden rush of relief, I sensed she was right. The incident had been
unpleasant, hell, downright offensive, and totally uncalled for. But really,
what would be in it for him to cause me so much trouble that I might not have
my contract renewed? And he had made two rather offensive comments to me, after
I started it to be sure, but still... He'd used an obscenity in the classroom,
and then said I needed a spanking. A "bare-ass" spanking, to be precise.
I might get in hot water for what I did, but there was no way that comment would
pass muster either. Sandy probably was right. I muttered a brief, relieved prayer
that she was.
