William

The tension makes me want to laugh. She has a crush on me, he says. He's probably right—I wasn't joking when I said it wasn't the first time. My open door policy, my wedding band, and a complete lack of interest usually suffice to scare them off when they realize it's not going anywhere. The irony is so thick it squeezes my forehead like a migraine.

I don't even know why I asked Ethan what he plans to do after he graduates. I should have dismissed him. He's sitting here. The door is closed.

Temptation. The first step is always the easiest. That's how we fall into temptation, how we let things go until we don't know how we got to where we are. It's never an instant process, a sudden swift change that throws us off guard. It's always one step that makes sense, followed by another, and another, and you don't notice when you've passed by the gates and can never go back.

Letting him sit here with that door closed is the first step. I should stop it now.

Yet I don't. I am curious to know what he wants to do, and I don't want him to leave.

I like looking at him. Just looking at him. Today he's in a long-sleeved t-shirt, a cheap one that he might buy in an arts and crafts store, the kind that's meant to have something ironed onto the front or drawn into the fabric with magic markers. Black, and so tight I can see his ribs through it. He could stand to gain a little weight, but he strikes me as the type who can't. Too frenetic, too high strung, always in motion even when sitting still.

Hell, he can't stop fidgeting. He can't seem to figure out where to put his hands, and finally settles on resting them atop his knee, which lies across his other leg, folded. The way he sits, the skintight jeans…

He's…pretty is the wrong word but I can't conjure another to replace it. Pretty implies a feminine quality that isn't what's drawing me to him, but the feeling is the same. I need another word.

I want this to go away, but it isn't, and I'm not stopping this, and I'm savoring the way his soft lips form around words.

Does he know I want to fuck him?

My bewilderment doesn't show outwardly—I keep that in.

He's speaking.

“I was thinking about it, yeah, but not high school or something like that. I want to go to grad school. I've been sending out applications.”

I lean back in my chair, then regret it. My dick strains against the crotch of my pants. I sit up, trying not to look frantic as I realize I don't have anything to do. This early in the semester, no papers to grade, no busywork laid out. I slip on my half-moon reading glasses, grab a text, and start working on the next lecture for the course I just taught, stopping to check my watch. Maybe if I ignore him, he'll leave.

“I'm trying to get everything lined up now,” he says. “All the paperwork and all that. Hoping to get a grant.”

“I haven't looked over your grades,” I mutter, as if I am totally disinterested. I look at the book so I don't have to sit there and drink him in, so I won't fade into a mental haze thinking of stripping those clothes off of him.

He's wearing striped socks.

The way he looks at me…head tilted, eyes hard, lips pursed. Does he want something?

Or do I just want him to want something?

“You can go until I need you again,” I say, hurriedly.

Ethan looks disappointed, but only for a second. “Is there anything you could do now?”

Yes, a voice burbles up from deep inside my mind like bubbles escaping a still pond, you could get on your knees.

“Not at the moment. The real work begins when the semester is in full swing. Don't you worry, I'll be running you hard.”

I flinch at what I just said, the double entendre not really occurring to me until after it's left my mouth. The edge of Ethan's mouth curls just slightly, in what might be a smile, though I can't tell if it's simple amusement or something deeper. He nods as he stands, and for a brief instant his crotch is at the level of my eyes as I sit.

The bulge is rather noticeable. I wonder what kind of noises he'd make if I took him in my mouth, squeezed his balls, ran my tongue up—

“S-see you later,” he says awkwardly, shifting his messenger bag to cover his embarrassment.

I was about to dismiss it as my imagination but…

No.

It can't be.

One of the many buttons adorning the flap of his bag is a pride flag. A pride flag.

After he steps out, leaving the door open, I fall back in my seat, finally allowing myself to be rocked by that. I try to think of every explanation I can, and they grow successively thinner: It's an ally button, he's showing solidarity. He grabbed a bunch at random, he doesn't know what it means. He…

The way he looks at me, acts around me, the way his chin rises defiant every time I speak to him but his eyes look at me with that need, the way his voice trembles…desire or fear? I know the students mock me and call me Doctor McDoom behind my back, and I've always enjoyed it; better to be seen as a harsh but fair tyrant in the classroom than an outright joke, like Professor Drone.

When I think of that awe and respect…if it is respect…in Ethan, it changes, the urge flows, one thing becomes another and what I always took to be looks of annoyance or alarm or fatigue shift in my mind, twist, and I wonder if I'm imagining any of this or if it's all real. The way he looks at me.

I have a class to teach.

I glance down and groan. No matter what else is going on in my mind I am not going to sink so low as to masturbate in my office. I close the door and lock it anyway, office hours be damned, and focus on going over my lecture notes as if I'd just remembered I have a job to do.

That does a trick; there is no boner killer like the Spanish-American War, where I will begin American History II, the second 100-level course. I offer one section of each per semester, and there's no mandatory order in which to take them. No prerequisite.

Once I'm satisfied that I am prepared, I head for the lecture hall.

Damn it.

Trying not to think of Ethan only makes me think of him in the process of not thinking of him. At least I'm able to grit my teeth and keep my thoughts contextual, and not about his lithe form or the way his shaggy dark hair forms curls and rings around his neck, the way it all frames his face to be just this side of delicate, not manly but not—

When I step into the lecture hall I become a different person, those old thoughts flowing from my mind as I prepare my opening speech, though this time I recruit a boy from the front row to hand out the papers. I give them the same spiel; it's the second course in terms of the chronological order of the material, but it's still a room full of wet-behind-the-ears freshman, many of whom are sitting down for only their second or third college course ever, depending on schedules.

I've given the same lecture several times now, and it's almost done by rote. By the time I dismiss the class, I'm ready to slump on my podium. It's only by the skin of my teeth that I don't slump out of the room as soon as I've given the dismissal, but I can't bear to give the impression that I arrive or leave at any time other than precisely when I mean to.

I only leave when the hall is mostly empty, a few stragglers up in the desks talking to each other, perhaps waiting for another freshman class in the same room.

Walking across campus, I expect Ethan to leap out at me like a phantom, even though I've dismissed him for the day. He may be gone in body but he's throbbing in my veins, diving down my stomach to gather in my pants like invisible hands moving inside my body itself.

Slamming my door, I shudder and throw my briefcase on the desk. It lands with a thump, knocking off a stack of papers that do not merit my attention. Normally at this time of day I'd sit down, open my computer, and start going through interminable emails about policy changes and insurance coverage and the faculty retirement plan. I think I'd rather pop my eyeballs out and take a potato skinner to them.

Air, I need air.

Hauling my bag down to my car, I throw it in the trunk and back out. The house she can have, but this I am keeping. My Camaro, the same one I've had since I was sixteen years old. That will leave my possession over my dead body.

Disdaining my office, refusing to go back to my cracker box of an apartment, I drive.

For the next hour I roll along with the windows down and AC/DC blasting from the CD player, letting cold January air wash over me as I jackrabbit from red light to red light and finally out of town.

I think I might be having some kind of a crisis. This isn't easy.

Stopping at one of the red lights outside of town bracketed by stripped-dead corn fields and waiting for the light to change after it turned red for no damned reason at all, I finger my wedding ring. It's too tight to twist and move, and trying makes it feel like part of my skin, dug in and permanent.

When the light turns I slam my foot to the floor. The car bucks and fishtails, throwing up twin whorls of smoke before it takes off, throwing me back into the seat. The speed limit is 45; I pass 60 in about seven seconds, then 80 not much after that, and then a hundred, and I can feel the back wheels starting to hop. I'm going too fast with no weight over the drive wheels. There's a curve coming up, and if I brake too hard I'll spin out; take it at full speed and the car will just say “no” to my insistence then turn and roll me over into the corn.

At the last possible second, I let off the gas, hit the brake, and slow the car down. The tires shriek through the turn and the outer set kick up gravel and dust. I was a hair's breadth from rolling the car.

My pulse pounding, I pull to a stop.

I palm my face and sit there across the road, the engine purring as if nothing had happened. Making an awkward J-turn, I head back to town.

Was I trying to…?

Shuddering, I take it low and slow on the way back, cruising. I turn off the radio before I make it back to town, suddenly self-aware of how it looks for a man my age to drive along blasting old rock music in a Camaro that has seen better days. She has most of her paint but rust bubbles under it along the quarter panels, and there are a dozen dings and imperfections I always said I'd fix when I had the money. When I had the money, when I had the money.

For the next four hours, I drive through, around, in, and out of town, always avoiding either campus or my apartment. I know where I'm going—if I mentally map my route, I know what I'm circling, like a shark around flailing prey. There's blood in the water.

Ever since I was served with the divorce papers, I've been thinking about this. It might be the only way to get Ethan out of my head. I've already signed the agreement. It's done. The ring on my finger is just metal, the commitment it represents solidly broken, no longer in force, no longer binding. There are no strings on me, but I always seem to act as if there are. The only place I really feel alive is my classroom, where the tyrant comes out.

Maybe that's why she left me. Because the real me was just that.

No, that isn't why. I know why. Because I didn't love her. Did, but didn't. Do, but still don't. Because I lied, even if I never once acted on it.

I kept those urges down, those desires suppressed and hidden for over a decade, and now that she's told me I'm free, it doesn't matter anymore, I'm too much of a damned wuss to do anything about it.

The Camaro crunches the gravel of the Pony's parking lot almost angrily. There was a time when it would be career suicide to be seen here; not so, now. The town's only gay bar used to be a whispered secret, a joke, a curiosity. Everyone seemed to know where it was and what it was without acknowledging it.

Now it's a tourist trap, a pit stop on the way to one of the biggest gay-friendly beaches on the east coast. Not that I'm complaining. It must be wonderful to be accepted, to feel accepted, to accept yourself. I wouldn't know.

My legs tremble as I walk inside. I should have shaved, showered, brushed my hair, done something other than just left work. I have no idea what I'm walking into.

Truly, I don't.

As soon as I step through the door, I find myself staring at Ethan.