Chapter 2 #2
“Absolutely,” Jessica said. “A poem that includes that fun detail is called an acrostic poem.” She popped the famous Edgar Allan Poe acrostic poem titled ‘Elizabeth’ on the screen and read it out loud.
The letters of each of the nine-line poem spelled out the name ELIZABETH.
She then showed several other examples and segued back to Haiku.
She kept her eye on the time and, with four minutes left to the class, said, “Your assignment for today’s lesson is in the Period 7 assignment folder online.
You’ll be writing three Haiku and at least one acrostic poem.
” A hand went up. She winked at the student and added, “One of your Haikus may double as an acrostic poem. Saves time, right?” The hand went down.
She smiled at the student, knowing that would be the question.
She made a show of glancing at the clock, even though she knew full well what the time was, and said, “Time to pack up, but do not stand until that bell actually rings.”
Once the bell rang, Jessica made short work of resetting her notes for the next and final period of the day.
In fifty minutes, the weekend would be officially there.
She couldn’t wait for tomorrow. Mistress Starr always came through for her.
And, wow, did she need relief from all this stress.
Ooh, and maybe her occasional play partner, Cazadora Catalina, would be there and want to play in one of the private rooms. A girl could dream. It had been way too long since—
“Ms. Bennett,” Principal Herrera said.
Shit. She’d forgotten he was there. Get a grip, Jessica. He had officially jolted her back to reality.
The principal walked up to Jessica’s lectern in the front of the room.
He was nearing retirement, and his clothes were as gray as his hair.
Even his skin looked gray. A smoker, came the unbidden thought.
Jessica couldn’t read the chicken scratch notes on his legal pad, but she probably didn’t want to.
She was confident in her teaching methods, so whatever he had written didn’t matter. Except…it did.
“That was an inspiring lesson,” he said. “I think we can expand on that.”
We?
“As I was listening back there, it occurred to me that we haven’t had a good poetry slam at PUA in ages.
And our literary magazine fizzled out a few years ago.
Look into resurrecting those, won’t you?
” Without waiting for a reply, he added, “I’ll tell your department chair about this.
” And with that, he nodded once as if all was settled and headed out the classroom door.
The students filtering in for her Period 8 class parted to make way for him as he walked out.
The door had barely closed after the exiting administrator when the bell rang to start class.
No. She needed a minute. The students were happily chattering away, so it was safe to take that minute.
She turned her back on the class and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet in the corner of her room.
She rifled unseeing through the files as she willed her emotions to subside.
Anger was prominent. No discussion? No asking if I even want to head up a literary magazine?
Just ‘Do this.’ She growled under her breath.
Anxiety was next. If I don’t do it, they’ll think I’m not a team player.
Anger resurfaced. Why can’t I ever fucking say no?
Jee-zus. She took a deep breath and slammed the filing cabinet door closed with more force than she had intended.
No rest for the weary, Jessica thought as she took a cleansing breath. She forced a smile and turned toward her students, who were still chatting happily. Probably because this class was the only thing separating them from the weekend.
“Ms. Bennett,” a student said through the din of student voices, “I hear we’re starting boring poetry.”
Jessica smiled. She had to. The show must go on.
The repeat lesson went well, and once the last student shuffled out the classroom door, she leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.
The exhale came out more like a sigh. Yes, she was tired.
Always being “on” was exhausting. And then this literary magazine and poetry slam bullshit was something she now had to carry into the weekend.
She couldn’t help it. People pleasers weighed themselves down with other people’s expectations.
She had to get home. Her queen awaited her.
She wished her queen were a flesh-and-blood human Domme who would throw her on the bed and have her way with her the moment she walked in the apartment.
But no, her queen was three-year-old Misty, a cuddly calico cat who was the best listener ever.
Not that great at giving advice, but whatever. Can’t have it all.
Jessica closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths.
She should learn how to meditate, which might help her stay out of her head.
With a sigh, she opened her eyes and clicked open her school emails to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything left undone and groaned out loud.
An email from her department chair lay there like a wet blanket.
Marjorie Whitaker: Fantastic news, Jessica. Let’s talk next week about the literary magazine you want to set up. Very exciting. We haven’t had one in a while. Have a good weekend.
Jessica groaned. “To answer, or not to answer, that is the question.” She started reciting the rest of the Shakespeare quotation from Hamlet but stopped herself with a laugh.
“Turn it off, Jess,” she reprimanded. Yes, she not only needed to turn off teacher mode, but she had to turn off her worry about these new school demands.
Otherwise, it would hang over her head all weekend. She clicked open the email.
Jessica Bennett: Yes, I would like to talk to you about this. Can we meet on Monday? I have cafeteria duty during period 6; we could talk there.
She had to pick her battles. She didn’t appreciate the fact that this particular one had been forced on her.
Be assertive, not aggressive, a mentor said once.
There was a fine line between the two and she had to find where it was.
She reread her response. It wasn’t aggressive, even though she wanted to tell both of them to take a flying leap.
Didn’t they understand how overwhelmed she was as a newbie teacher in a very competitive school?
Didn’t they understand that as a teacher new to the school taking away one of her planning periods for cafeteria duty was a severe handicap?
And didn’t they get that she was still learning the school culture and had yet to find a friend there?
Jessica groaned and hit send. She shoved her school laptop and the six-inch stack of worksheets she would grade over the weekend into her messenger bag. She then grabbed her coat making sure she had her phone and keys, then flew out the door.
Jessica pulled into her parking spot at the top of the hill near the road and walked down the sloped driveway to the two-story house.
She rented the entire bottom floor from an older, widowed woman who lived on the second floor.
The cool thing about the house was that it was built into the side of a hill, and both women had first-floor access.
Jessica had to walk along the side of the house and down a few steps to get to her apartment from the back door.
The backyard was a bit overgrown, but her landlady’s son mowed it on the weekends.
She could mow it; she was perfectly capable, but she wasn’t going to offer since she knew it would end up being a freebie chore for her.
At age thirty-one, she was still having trouble establishing boundaries and saying no.
She was too nice, one former Domme had told her.
She needed to sturdy up that backbone. Too bad the real world didn’t have safewords you could yell out to stop something in your life.
“Hey, Herrera,” she said once she got in the door and locked it behind her, “I call red. Stop making me do shit I don’t want to do.” She laughed. “As if.”
Excited meowing pulled her worries right out of her head.
“Hi, baby girl,” Jessica said, her heart filling.
She dumped her overfilled bag on the kitchen table and scooped up the meowing cat.
“I know. I know,” she said as she squeezed the furball in her arms. She kissed the top of the cat’s head three times and then put her back down on the old but durable linoleum floor.
“You know the rules, fuzzball. I get changed, and then we both eat.”
Half an hour later, Jessica was in her sweats, plopped on the living room couch, facing the television.
Her long dark brown hair, a gift from her father’s Greek heritage, was pulled up into a messy bun to get it off her neck.
A TV tray was set up in front of her with last night’s leftover takeout, General Tso’s Chicken, from the highly recommended Chen’s Chinese Place.
Misty, having snarfed her dinner, was on the carpet licking her chops and taking a bath. She’d be in Jessica’s lap soon enough.
Jessica lifted her glass of white zinfandel.
“Here’s to a restorative weekend.” She laughed.
Most people would wish for a “fun” weekend or something like that.
She hoped for that, too, of course, but the thing she really needed was to rest and recharge.
Her outing at Dominique’s tomorrow evening was integral to that plan.
She took a forkful of dinner and then powered up her home laptop.
She never used her school laptop for anything personal.
No searches, emails, or website visits. Her personal and school life?
“Oh, ‘East is East and West is West, and never the two shall meet,’” she said out loud, quoting the Rudyard Kipling poem.
She opened her internet browser and went straight to her go-to website, . She cleared through the dick pics in her message box as she ate. She was oblivious to that crap by now and simply deleted the nonsense.
“Ahh, we have a new member application for the Sapphic D/s Relationships group. Let’s see.
” She clicked open the request and was immediately slammed with male energy.
The name alone, Luscious Lesbian, was enough to turn her stomach.
Just in case, she took a quick perusal of LL’s page and, sure enough, barely hidden thirsty male.
“Denied,” she said gleefully and tapped the remove button.
She loved the group she had created a couple of years ago.
She wanted it to be a safe space for her sapphic sisters to interact about their particular proclivities.
Male energy was icky. Hetero energy was sometimes icky, too, but they had their spaces on Kinks.
Kinks was drowning in it. This was her space. No one was going to mess with it.
She dove into the group site to see if anyone had started a new chat topic or responded to any old ones. “Yes,” Jessica said, raising both fists in triumph. “You go, girl.” Rachels_Toy had a new story out.
Rachels_Toy: Hey, y’all. Another new chapter has been uploaded to my page. I wonder what mischief and mayhem our lovable submissive Muriel has gotten herself into this chapter. Hints? Nah. Go read. It’s good for you. LOL. Link in the next post.
Rachels_Toy: Click HERE for Chapter 32.
Jessica responded underneath RT’s post.
Juicy_Babe: Love it, RT! What a perfect way to start the weekend. I’m looking forward to reading it.
And she would read it. In a bit. Maybe some one-handed reading before bed, perhaps?
Absolutely! She perused the group site for a while, Misty now in her lap, but wasn’t feeling that core satisfaction she sometimes got on Kinks.
No, not that kind of satisfaction, that would be later in her bedroom and hopefully again at Dominique’s Dungeon tomorrow.
What was missing tonight was the sense of connection and belonging she craved. Tonight, she just felt lonely.
She sighed. Maybe there just weren’t too many sapphicly-inclined women on Kinks. Or maybe, and she was leaning this way, just maybe everyone was paired up and in relationships already and didn’t need a place like her group to unwind and mingle.
Whatever.
With another sigh, she decided to get another chat topic going. Maybe someone was out there this weekend.
Topic: We Love Our Mascs and Studs
Question: Is there a difference between “male” energy and “masculine” energy?
“Fuck it,” she said and posted a second new topic.
Topic: How Do You Say, ‘No?’
Question: How do you say no to something you just don’t want to do or know how to do? How do you let the person (Domme/Boss/Family member) know that you just aren’t interested?
With yet another sigh, she closed her laptop and clicked on the TV. She was so behind on her favorite singing competition show, Voices Discovered. She settled in and accepted the fact that, at age thirty-one, she was a cat lady, home alone on a Friday night.