Richard Sharon - Diary of a Lover

Though I was still seeing Terry and having one-night stands with other girls, I found myself thinking about Miss Lawrence when I was making love. I began to think about her as I masturbated, wondering if she had ever had a man, or if she masturbated, and how much. Somehow, I couldn't picture her with a man. She was too much the old-fashioned schoolmarm-type in her prissy, formless suits and football shoes, nor could I imagine her slipping her hands between her legs; long, delicate fingers massaging her own body's erotic nerves to orgasm. I wondered if, at her age, she had ever climaxed. I fantasized myself making love to her, student fucking teacher (and oh, how much I could teach her) but I couldn't get a mental image of her body, and could barely get one of her face. My sperm would shoot out and I wasn't sure who or what my fancy had just screwed.

I looked forward to picking her up in the mornings, because no matter how fucked out I was from the night before, her early brightness always made me feel better.

But something was still wrong about her, something that bothered me and wouldn't let go.

One day after school I told her that I had read in the newspaper that there was an exhibit of Flemish art at the DeYoung Museum. "Oh, let's go!" she said, all excited. Then her brow furrowed. "You don't have to be anywhere else?, I mean, I shouldn't impose, "

"Don't worry," I said. "I don't have a thing to do until I play at nine tonight."

"Oh, good!" She was ecstatic, and even bounced once or twice on the car seat.

We saw the exhibit, which was only mediocre, since the museum couldn't afford any of the really good road art shows and keep its politicians in Cadillac's at the same time. We wandered around, looking at the mummy in the Egyptology section and some old tanks and field guns of World War I vintage that were kept in a separate section. I picked up an old Kaiser helmet, with its spiked top, and put it on. Miss Lawrence was delighted, looking around nervously to see if the museum guard was in the room and laughing at the same time. We went to the Japanese Tea Garden for jasmine tea and fortune cookies, and she let me pay. I was hoping that the cookies would say something prophetic, but they only predicted that we would be successful businessmen. We sat there under green oriental pines, drinking tea, smelling the sweet air and watching large, gold-striped carp swim aimlessly in the pond below our table. It was so quiet and beautiful, and, sexless as she seemed. I wanted to touch her, but didn't dare.

"What's your first name?" I asked after we had been silent awhile.

She hesitated, concentrating on the still waters of the pond. "Susan," she said finally. "Why?"

"Because I can't go on calling you Miss Lawrence forever. It's ridiculous."

"I don't know," she said, and started to say something else, but I cut her off.

"Look, Susan, do you really think I'd ever embarrass you in front of the class, or anybody else?"

She turned and looked at me with eyes that were greener than the pine-reflected waters of the pond, clear and shining through her glasses. "It isn't that, Richard", it was the first time she had ever used my first name, her first departure from her fake, self-imposed formality, "it's just that names become a habit, and you might forget at the wrong time. I, I wouldn't want that to happen."

Our hands on the table were so close, her delicate fingers crying to me for the protection of strong hands. I wanted to take her hand, to touch her, hold her, and I had the feeling that she might have liked me to, but we didn't.

"Even if I did forget, it wouldn't matter, because I'm kind of a special case. I call most of the men teachers by their first names, and even our beloved principal, Mr. Oaks, I call John. So even if I did slip, I don't think anybody would notice."

It seemed to reassure her. We walked over to the empty music concourse, where the municipal band gave Sunday concerts, passing under an orchard of elm trees to a large, central fountain, and watched the water bubble white for a long time.

It was almost seven when I dropped her at her apartment. I don't know what Susan did when she got upstairs, but when I got home I masturbated, severely bothered by her.

Usually I bought lunch at the school cafeteria and brought it up to the band-uniform room along with several of the other favored musicians with whom Ken Johnson, our music teacher, played jobs. It wasn't that we loved this small, hot room so much, but because we could smoke there in safety and soothe our nicotine fits. Of all the student pros, I was the only one Ken ever invited to the teachers' lunch room. I never asked him why, but I assumed it was because I locked older than the others.

When he had started taking me to lunch the year before. I began from the first to call the men teachers by their first names, and none seemed even to notice it. I enjoyed the lunch room because I could smoke as much as I wanted, drink coffee, which wasn't available for students, and the conversation with faculty was a good deal more interesting than that of fellow musicians, who spent all their time talking about fucking.

The day after Susan and I were at the tea garden I casually asked Ken what he was doing for lunch. "What else? Coin' to the TLR," he said, then added. "Want to come along?"

We sat with Hugh Barnes, a science teacher, and Dave Arcy, U.S. history. I looked around the room. "I don't see Miss Lawrence," I said.

Barnes grinned. "You mean Queen Victoria?"

They all laughed at me. I was puzzled. "Why do you call her that, Hugh?"

He leaned over confidently. "Christ! Have you seen her? If she doesn't look like the Grand Old Dame I don't know who does."

"You think she'll get tenure if Gilchrist doesn't come back?"

Dave Arcy started to chuckle. "Are you kidding? Any woman who's that virginal and old-fashioned is a cinch for tenure. Besides, I already got the word from Oaks. Even if Birdie Gilchrist does come bade, he's going to keep Lawrence on."

Hugh shook his head. "I hear she's one hell of a teacher."

"Good or bad?" asked Ken.

"Well," Hugh said, "she's had her class for a month now and Oaks says she's six weeks ahead of her lesson plan and the kids are so hot on the course they're writing two-thousand-word papers when she only asks for five hundred."

It was true, she inspired the class beyond anything I had ever seen a teacher do, but the jokes behind her back angered me. I felt compelled to go to her defense."

“I don't know about the Queen Victoria bit," I said. "If the old queen had run the empire the way Lawrence runs that class, not only could she have thrown out Disraeli, but she'd probably still be alive and kicking today."

"Hah!" said Barnes, blowing a thick cloud of smoke into my face.

I wouldn't quit. "Okay, she looks stuffy as hell, but she's really not. She's not at all stuffy in class, and I've driven her home a few times when I've had to go downtown, and she's really got a good head."

"Appearance to the contrary?" Ken asked.

"Yep," I said.

"Well, I dunno. She's sure quiet as hell around here," Hugh added.

"Speak of the devil… " Dave pointed to the door.

Susan had just come in, wearing the gray-striped tent and carrying her tray. She looked at us, her face registering surprise and a little concern when she-spotted me. She poured a cup of coffee, put it on her tray, and came over.

"Grab a seat, Miss Lawrence," Ken said, pulling out a chair for her. I noticed that he addressed her formally, rather than by her first name.

"Her name's Susan," I whispered to Ken.

"Would you call that Susan?" he whispered back.

She said hi to us all and sat down, sliding her tray onto the table. There was some awkward conversation. It was obvious that her presence had stilted talk among the men teachers. Why didn't she show them what a great conversationalist she was? How bright and witty and intelligent? But Hugh Barnes was right: she hardly said a word.