16. Chapter 16 Theo
Chapter 16 Theo
O ld fears and doubts about people noticing my stutter are risks I face in situations like the one Staley, and I shared—a most lovely situation where our bodies pressed perfectly against each other. Staley surprised me with her mindful and kind questions. She afforded me decency because my disability does not define me.
There was no rebuttal of her smart mouth or opportunity for me to capture her image as she walked out the door, but what’s left in my mind is a flash, a bird’s-eye view of us clutching each other, holding on as if dying is softened by the presence of a loved one.
Launching herself into the fluff of my blanket, causing one of my walls to crumble, exposing reason four hundred and sixty-two of why I find myself drawn to her.
A cold shower was the first thing I did this morning before Staley arrived, and a cold shower is how I’ll follow up our visit. I strip without caution as I make my way to the bathroom, my cock bouncing free from my boxer briefs in need of relief.
Water sprays over the top of my head, snatching my breath away and leaving me gasping at the intensity. My forehead meets the tile in defeat. Although ice water rains on me, there is nothing but heat emanating from my groin, demanding my complete attention.
I hiss as my hand meets the rush of adrenaline coursing through my cock. The image of how pink her hand turned from the burn invokes ideas of how I might color other parts of her body. Words swirl inside of my head as I work out lengthy strokes between my legs.
Her mouth blooms from the press of
a licentious kiss like
A wild Sweetbriar in the midst of Spring, she
thanks the rains.
The sweeping blush of cottony clouds
drift up her neck like
My hands, so precise, spin something as
sweet as her, like
Sugar, she warms in my embrace—
Words are difficult to string together as I know the poem is unfinished. I’m too caught up in the release I’m chasing to add anything more. I recite a few lines back, committing them to memory as I tug at the rigidness of my cock at the end of each poetic turn, praying for softness again. My breath hitches as pleasure dances with the imagery of me kissing each of Staley’s skin speck by speck until the taste of her laugh melts in my mouth.
Stroking and pulling faster, I break as my self-imposed punishment turns into release, causing me to finish on the shower wall. Tension leaves my shoulders as a shiver runs through my body. Tepid water runs over my head and shoulders as I pant through the thrill of the words I string together in Staley’s image.
After I towel off, I slip into some heathered-gray sweats and gather my discarded clothes from the hallway. I bring the shirt to my nose in a bundle and breathe in the lingering scent of Staley, sunny and sweet. Lines on repeat course through my mind as I sit at my desk. The pen is light in my grip as I scribble the poetic shower epiphany. The rest of the words come to me without hesitation.
Because she and I—She and I—are nothing more
than the Ruddiness of a lover’s touch
at dawn when the night
caresses the day, And all of the world is
in love with the color pink.
Staley is an awakening within my creative body, and if I’m given the chance, I will make sure she knows what she does to me—with words and touch.
Professor Graham is a rigid instructor. I’m to arrive at his classroom thirty minutes before the start time to double-check his notes and assess the state of his chalk supply. It doesn’t matter that he has regularly shown up ten minutes late for the past three weeks.
The auditorium is quiet as I prepare for the lecture, loading slides on my laptop for Graham’s talk about poets’ use of the mundane as imagery for the emotional aspects of man. On today’s docket, Ginsberg and Bukowski.
A ping echoes through the empty class as an email alerts me. It’s from Graham.
Theodore,
Please inform the following students of their official admittance to the class:
Alex Miller, Jack Charles, Staley Monroe.
You’ll need to sign their add/drop slip so they can take it to the Bursar’s Office.
If memory serves me correctly, the other two students listed in Graham’s email are the jokers who tried to roast Staley on the first day of class. A desperate urge to use my hands for violence, by way of the grade book, burns through my mind, but I’ve never been much more than a pacifist. Angst is best used for recording work, especially those with more dominant scenes.
The building is old, as the polyester-covered ceiling tiles silence the sounds of students and their lighthearted banter entering the class. I keep my head low as if looking at something scholarly on my laptop, straining to hear any sound of Staley without giving away that she is exactly who I hope to hear.
Ragged Converses should grace my presence at any moment. Instead, it’s Gabby who situates herself in the theater-style seat as she pulls up the tablet arm of her chair up and over to cover her lap. The neon sticky notes and highlighters gleam from the see-through pencil pouch she places on her desk.
It feels risky, but I look at Staley’s preferred seat and find it empty, and Gabby catches me and smiles. I have questions about Staley, and Gabby can tell.
Gabby interrupts my cascade of panicked thoughts with a discreet whisper.
“If you’re wondering where Staley is, she had to do something important before class. She might be a few minutes late.”
Relief floods my body as Gabby offers me a sweet, knowing smile. My pencil taps nervously against the lectern because waiting is a penance eliciting the most primal part of me. If I could stand on the podium and command everyone to leave the room, I would do so to practice everything I want—no, need—to say to Staley. I want to formalize a date with her outside of cuddling hours and separate the work from personal. It’s important to me she knows how much I respect the sanctity of her profession.
Barb was right. I cannot continue my life isolated and silent if I want any connection. I must speak with or without the stutter to Staley because she’s already said my voice is pleasant. And if I’m at a loss for words, I’ll pull a Virginia Woolf and invent some.
Another chime pushes through the chatter of the auditorium.
What now, Graham?
Shit.
He wants me to run the lecture.
No, no, no.
My hands shake and my palms sweat as I consider how slim my options are:
Puke, run out the upper doors crying, or stammer through today’s instruction.
If I want even the slightest opportunity to speak with Staley, to make it clear I want to see her again, I need to gamble with the notion of falling apart while I stammer through the lecture. I flip through the slides and take my place in front of the class, preparing for a torturous crash landing. It’s one thing for Staley to hear the stammer in my voice. It’s another to see the irritated looks of my peers cueing me to hurry up with my delivery. This sort of attention only makes my stutter worse.
“Ahem . . .”
I clear my throat again.
“Um, Pr-professor Graham w-won’t be in today.”
The dudebros gleaming smiles filled with what can only be described as tomfoolery. Unaware of which one is Alex and which one is Jack, I do my best to move my attention away from them. There’s no need to bait their idiocy if I can help it. Gabby feels safe, so I focus above her head and shake away the tension in my shoulders.
“It’s best if—”
Alex or Jack cuts me off. “It says here in the syllabus you’re not set to run the class until week six and week nine. Are you s-sure you’re capable of teaching us t-today?”
Leaning back in his seat, he grins mischievously and bumps his elbow into his seatmate as if he’s delivered the funniest joke ever. The one that spoke stifles a breathy snicker, where his seatmate sits uninterested. Standing frozen in front of a class of a hundred students being challenged by two of the poorest excuses of alpha males possible is not how I win this day.
Against my mother’s oft poorly delivered advice of not resting on my laurels, I go against the grain and rely on what I excel in. Staying silent in the face of bullies will get me nowhere, even at age twenty-two.
Closing the laptop triggers the projector to power off. The screen behind me goes dark, and the class is at full attention. Gabby’s eyes go wide as she takes in my firm stance. I look past her but can’t help but notice how her head careens backward toward Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
“What’s your name?” I ask, singling him out.
The mouthy guy wears a loud button-up shirt with a design that represents one of those Magic Eye prints. The hidden image is a collage of marijuana leaves and hacky sacks. He points to his chest, questioning if he’s the one I’m addressing. I resist rolling my eyes because these guys are all the same on every continent and in each setting—slow on the uptake.
“It’s Jack.”
My only comeback is meter and rhyme, and I can deliver it without stumbling.
“‘Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.’”
A joint could hit the floor three buildings over; they’d hear it with the way silence echoes throughout this room. Jack’s eyebrows pull up in confusion as he eyes Alex. Alex shrugs his shoulders, looking as puzzled as his counterpart. Alex offers only a glimmer of being less than interested in engaging in this conversation.
“You’re not f-familiar with it?”
At the ready, Jack smirks as he replies, “Seeing as this is The Craft of Poetry, and it’s our third week of class, no, I don’t know the p-poem.”
Gabby interrupts the standoff with an answer.
“A.E. Housman, right, Mr. Sullivan?”
Upon first assessment, I was worried Gabby was a student who sat in the front row, eager to be a superstar student, but now I see she’s more than that, and yet I cannot help but notice Staley’s absence.
“R-right, Gabby. It’s called ‘Here dead lie we because we did not choose.’ A poem about w-war from the perspective of d-dead p-people. You’re probably wondering wh-why I recited a poem about World WarI when it’s 2019.”
My tongue feels thick and heavy as the stutter isn’t backing down, and I’d usually care, but right now, I’m feeling braver than usual because Barb is right. I need to live my life despite how others might perceive me.
Without missing a beat, Jack chimes in with no regard for how easily I can take away his spot in this class.
“Yes, we’re desperate for the answer.” He chuckles.
“One of the w-ways we study poetry in this cl-class is by analyzing it in the present day, how it translates to t-today’s time and space. We have new battles to face in this m-millennia. What Housman was trying to c-convey is deeper than dead young men on a b-battlefield. If we were to apply some of what we’ve learned already in this cl-class regarding themes, mood, and literary devices, what comes to your mind f-first?”
Vulnerable is an understatement. I allow myself to speak freely for the first time in a very long time, stutters and all. It’s tiresome, if not nerve-wracking. Right now, all I care about is asserting who is in charge. Gabby sets one of her highlighters on her desk and places her palms on the tops of her thighs when she offers perspective, softer this time.
“When I read this poem the first time, I couldn’t help but see how Housman used a caesura in his metrical line to make the reader pause and focus on the surety of young men and their beliefs of the world.”
“Yes, Gabby. But w-why? Why does Housman lean into the pause when he speaks about shame in the line before it?”
Jack interjects. “Sullivan, I’m not finding this poem anywhere in the syllabus. Aren’t you paid to teach what the professor assigned us? What the hell is a caesura? A salad?”
He says the word caesura similar to the way one says que sera .
I rap my knuckles on the podium, ready for this fight. Sure, it’s all metaphorical and well over Jack’s head, but I’m unwilling to lose to them.
“Professor Graham isn’t h-here. I am. So, I direct the question to you, J-jack. Why do you th-think Housman leans into the pause after he speaks of men and shame?”
Jack straightens in his seat, pulling his shirt down and exposing fraternity letters underneath it. These letters are his badge of honor. He positions his finger and thumb alongside his jaw and ear, demonstrating how committed he is to being an ass.
“Do you need time, Jack? We can w-wait, or I can ask a student who understands the m-material better.”
This time, Jack rolls his eyes as a few students around him raise their hands, prepared to answer me. The momentum at which others know the answer irritates his cocky state as he fidgets in his seat. Alex elbows him as if to say, C’mon dude, let it go . Or, knock it off ? I can’t tell. Alex sits up and puts Jack out of his misery.
“Young men going to war, there’s no stigma there. They sacrificed for their country and gave their lives. I guess the poet is trying to say the dead men would die before they allowed themselves any sense of shame.”
Jack slaps him on the shoulder and throws his palm out for an atta boy for rescuing him.
“You’re close. But what does it m-mean for the h-here and now?”
With my shoulders back and my face relaxed, I scan the room, assessing the faces before me, and it feels good to see how attentive everyone is to my lecture. Before Alex can reply to me again, Jack chimes in.
“Shit, Sullivan. We don’t know. Again, you pulled this poem out of your ass, and you’re expecting us to psychoanalyze every bit of it on the fly, that’s lame. Are you trying to embarrass me in front of everyone?”
I move to the base of the stairs and brazenly put my arms out wide.
“If we’re looking at the meaning of this piece of poetry concerning this particular exchange between m-myself and the two of y-you, well, it’s glaringly obvious, wouldn’t you say?”
Alex huffs out a reply. “Sullivan, dude—call on someone else.”
“It’s about irony and attitude.” A voice from the back of the room stops us all in our tracks.
Every student turns in unison like they would in the movies. Staley leans against the wall with her arms crossed—she’s in a new shirt now, this one more form-fitting and less Pauly Shore–esque—with her leg bent back. Her entry is epic and well-timed.
When did she get here? God, she is radiant.
“How s-so, Miss Monroe?”
A grin sweeps her face, illuminating her freckled cheeks. A bit of her hair falls from behind her ear—taunting me to ignore how an audience surrounds us. Staley descends the stairs with purpose, light on her feet.
“We’re talking about the right here and the right now?” she prompts me.
I nod and gesture for her to continue because her voice fills the corners of my heart where emptiness has long overstayed its welcome.
“Instead of you two meatheads having some humility and letting Sullivan teach you, arrogance blinds you. Instead of asking questions about things you don’t know or mocking someone for how they speak, you walked right into the trench he dug for you. He’s the teaching assistant of this class for a reason, and yet you mistook his vulnerability as a flaw.”
The amber of her eyes intensifies as her look at me remains steady. When she reaches Jack and Alex’s row, she stops and turns to them, placing a hand on her hip while gesturing with the other.
“The only flaw here is how some people think because they are young and without imperfections, they can walk around with their heads up their asses thinking they are better than those who might be different than them. Would you get up and speak to a class full of your peers with confidence if you had a stutter? I doubt it. Sullivan isn’t rising against your attempt at being an alpha jerk. It’s pathetic bully behavior if you ask me.”
This is the longest Jack and Alex have kept quiet, and I revel in Staley Monroe’s brilliance. She doesn’t offer them an opportunity to contest her argument or give them any hope of fighting back.
She sits beside Gabby, whose mouth hangs open in admiration. Staley smiles and winks at me. A damn wink! I forget all about being made fun of for my stutter and bask in her presence.
“I’m sorry I was late, Mr. Sullivan.” She pauses, smiling. “It won’t happen again.”
She settles in and pulls out a notebook, ready to take notes. The rest of the class is a long, drawn-out slog in which I discuss the merits and importance of the line in poetry. With every word spoken, I pray for time to expedite itself so I can thank Staley alone. Ask her out.
She is poetry in the physical form, tackling life at full steam. The way I can still feel her touch humming across every expanse of my skin is poetry too. She laughs at something Gabby whispers to her, and if I could capture the sound in the form of balladry, I would.
“Can Jack, St-staley, and Alex please see me after class?”
The guys look at one another, questioning the reason for my request, but I offer no details. Let them squirm a bit. Jack and Alex fight against the current of students trying to swim upstream to the back of the auditorium. Staley stalls in her departure, packing things into her bag, pretending not to be in any rush to meet me at the podium.
“Sullivan, you wanted to see us.” Alex addresses me for both of them.
“Professor Graham asked m-me to inform you; all th-three of you have been taken off the waitlist and added to the class.”
Jack uncrosses his arms, lowering his guard. This isn’t me being the good guy I usually am. This is me doing my job.
Staley’s smile breaks through from behind the two dudebros, and it’s delightful. Alex nods and turns to leave, his sidekick in tow. I return to my belongings strewn about the lectern to occupy my mind for ten seconds. As I gather my items, I straighten the papers and return my laptop to its designated sleeve.
My top priority is not making myself obvious, so I busy myself with my papers as Alex leans in to speak to Staley. It’s not the whispering that catches my attention but the words leaving his mouth.
“Tomorrow, right?”
It’s stupid to think I’m her only cuddle client, but is Alex Miller one too?
It’s not my business.
She confirms his question with a single nod. Before leaving the classroom, she looks at her phone and quickly types. When she’s done, she looks up at me from the top step of the classroom.
A notification alerts my phone: an email from Staley. I make a mental note to get her personal phone number so we’re not constantly connecting through a cuddle app.
Theo,
Do you want to get coffee with me sometime?
Staley
The expanse of my smile connects with hers as she waves goodbye on her way out of the auditorium because it appears we both have a date in mind.