Interview with the Professor

This was part of my assignment to get a well-rounded picture of this unique woman, whom fate had saddled with a grotesque and apparently debilitating allergy but who managed to survive and even in a sense thrive. I had also heard that she had written erotic fiction that she would post online, under an alias, of course. The first was a science fiction story was about a shy, nude young man whose semen powered a spaceship. Unfortunately, under the Coulter Act of 2013, all story sites dealing with sex or even nudity came under such strict monitoring that their owners quickly took them down. And the Institute couldn't get Homeland Security clearance to search foreign sites. But Tami had given me a memory stick with some of her work. There's quite a lot of stories in there. I'll have to set aside some time to read them.

Anyway . . . instead of car-pooling I had to make my own way to Westerly in my mini-Hummer. Good thing the Institute pays for my gas. I was on I-95 for only a moment, it seemed, when I saw the "Welcome to Connecticut" sign and realized I'd missed my exit. So I doubled back and followed the side roads and pulled into the beachfront village at 7:45, 45 minutes late.

It was not quite dark yet and I got a good look at the neighborhood. Despite the sandy soil, each of the small yards had a full complement of grass. With a smile I could imagine, in winter, Tami's obscene snow sculptures. I pictured her, cold but happy, putting the finishing touches on a breast or penis, her skin flushed red against the whiteness, heavily clothed passersby glancing at her as she patted snow down with her fingers and reached around to pat it down with her flexible toes.

Her husband's greeting at the door was warmer this time. "Glad you could make it, Miss Stephanie." He took my sweater and showed me around. The house seemed small from the outside but had a lot of room inside. This was because they (or, rather, Rod in his plans) used every available cubic inch, including the basement and the attic. He showed me the home study, the bedroom, the kitchen, all separately glassed-in and climate-controlled. Downstairs was an exercise room, as I could see from the thermostat set to minus fifteen Celsius. A neglected water bottle on a bench bulged outward with its frozen contents.

Luckily the hallways in between were not enclosed and were at normal room temperature. Rod explained that this was for the comfort of guests. Tami switched from room to room in a short mobile booth, a smaller version of the one she had at the School of Design, with a metal chair to sit on. He got into it and showed me how he passed into one of the rooms, the kitchen, via a sliding door like the one in her classroom. He switched into the booth again and emerged from it. I could feel the freezing air wafting onto my face as it escaped. Rod tried not to show it but he clearly felt the cold even in his jacket, shirt, long pants and heavy socks. I looked at the metal seat and imagined what it must feel like against Tami's bare butt cheeks. Knowing that she was used to it didn't make me feel any better.

As we walked along another hall, toward the living room, I heard the low rumble of voices. Rod led me through the arched entrance. This room, the largest in the house, was not enclosed. He introduced me to the twelve or so people there and to Tami. But their names did not register with me because I was too shocked at what I saw.

I tried to control the gaping astonishment of my mouth and the horrified stare of my eyes. The guests, well dressed and distinguished looking, were at a large, half-circle table, curiously painted black, with papers and sodas in front of them. Across from them, the table angled straight up about two feet, a kind of little wall, up to a platform that extended way back to the other side of the room. There, on the platform, set about three feet back, was Tami's head.

Just her bald, eyebrowless head. Poking up from a hole that was only a little wider than her neck. The blackness of the table made it all the more shocking. It looked like a horror movie where a person dies but only her head survives and somehow keeps on living.

There was a lull in the conversation that I uneasily knew was because of my reaction. The people around the table probably expected it, though to them this was just an ordinary scene.

Tami -- or rather, her head, at about my eye level -- looked at me with a pleasant but somehow preoccupied smile. Her "eyebrows" jerked a little bit. Her skin was a little red and blotchy. "H - hi, Stephanie. W - welcome. Want some of this cake? President Ellender made it."

Somehow with a nod and a motion of her eyebrows she motioned to the plate of chocolate cake in the middle of the table. I gracefully declined (I'm on a diet again) and after a few minutes had parked myself with a diet soda on one end of the semi-circle.

"The latest capital improvements haven't gone over well," an older man in a beard and three-piece suit said, directing everyone to a paper they all held. Ms. Ellender, a heavy-set women of about 50 who was apparently the president of the corporation running the School, was across from me and sat on a high bar stool-type chair. She held the sheet up high, close enough to Tami's face that she could read it.

I was intrigued by Tami's face. Of course, it being the only part of her visible -- in a way she was "wearing" the table, a most unusual situation for her -- one was more aware of every nuance. As she knitted her brow to concentrate on the numbers, there was a distracted quality about her gaze. Her eyes opened wide for just a second. "I see what you mean," she said, and as she did there was just the tiniest gasp in between words.

Rod smiled at me as he went back to the kitchen. I looked over at a man who was starting to speak, in a business suit, with slicked-back hair. "It amortizes over fifteen years, but at the present three percent yield, it would double in, what --?"

"Twenty-four y - years," Tami said. "Rule of seventy-two."

"So how much would it have be to double over fifteen?"

Tami looked up at the ceiling momentarily. Again, a little gasp. "F - five percent, roughly."

She licked her lips. This was apparently a sign. President Ellender brought a glass of water to Tami's mouth. She took a little gulp and then nodded. Ms. Ellender leaned back into her high chair.

"Well then something has to be done," the man with the beard said.

"Perhaps another bond?"

"That . . . would be a tough sell, at the moment," the man with the slicked-back hair said.

And so I sat, through what Tami had warned would be a boring (to me, at least) meeting, as the bald, eyebrowless, disembodied head participated in the discussion, occasionally getting a sip of water, and at odd moments smiling at me with a strange crooked smile.

This went on for about twenty minutes, until a pretty African-American girl a little younger than me, in short dreadlocks and a jean jacket with short sleeves, tapped me on the shoulder and motioned with her finger for me to follow her into the hall.

Part 4

"Tonya Loomis," the girl said once we got out into the hallway, giving me a handshake and a bright toothy smile that contrasted with her black skin. She was enthusiastic and full of energy, like a kid. "Bet that meeting was boring. I hear you're on the up-and-up."

I looked over at Rod, who was in the hallway with us, sipping hot chocolate he had made. He nodded to me.

"So there's more to see. Let me show you our 'underworld'."

I looked over at Rod again. "Go ahead. I'm not comfortable down there." Strange he would say that, about his own house.

Tonya led me around a little bend in the hall, then down a narrow stairway I hadn't seen before, which led to a very narrow door. It was not as far below as the basement I had seen.

The door opened into a dark cave of some kind. As Tonya closed the door behind us I was in a world of shadows and strange odors and furtive movements. Or at least furtive now, with my eyes not used to the darkness. I heard sounds like people eating. And a background whirring, like an air conditioner. Lastly I heard Tami's voice coming from a speaker to my side, mounted on what I imagined was a black-painted wall.

"Yes . . . the amortization -- works out . . . What do you think -- Jane?"

Tonya said, "Watch where you step, it's complicated." I looked down and couldn't see a thing. As my eyes got further used to the dark I could see little glow-in-the-dark painted steps going down. But it was better to feel with the soles of my shoes, like a blind person.

We turned an invisible, black-painted corner and suddenly a bare tanned pinky toe, sticking out sideways, flexing to and fro and smeared with what looked like peanut butter, almost hit me in the face. As I saw the other toes and the rest of the foot I saw two women, one middle-aged and one younger, slathering more peanut butter on it with butter knives and then sucking on the toes.

"This is Hermine and Gladys," Tonya said. The two looked at me with a smile. Then Hermine started ravenously licking the coated bare heel as Gladys reached down to where a large jar of peanut butter sat on a little stand, along with jars of jelly and some other things. With her fingers Gladys scooped out more and vigorously worked it in between the toes, spreading them, massaging them. The toes were already widely spread so they could hold quite a lot. But Gladys stuffed them some more. "I love doing this, it's so sensuous," she explained. Meanwhile Hermine licked the heel, giving it little bites, scraping her teeth against it. The foot reacted sensuously, flexing and unflexing, the toes spreading and wiggling as if dancing with Gladys's fingers and tongue.

"Do you -- think the trustees would go for -- that?" Tami's voice came through on the local speaker, still engrossed in the conversation above. I though of the bald, disembodied head somewhere above us, poking up from the hole in the table, and of Tami trying to concentrate on that boring meeting while her toes were being smeared with peanut butter and sucked and licked. And of Rod, on the periphery, sipping his hot chocolate, no doubt aware of what she was dealing with below.

The foot was sideways. I saw the ankle and shin. The leg was extended out to us. I tried to see where it came from but it was too dark.

Tonya led me on, around a little curve. As I took a last look back at Hermine, Gladys and Tami's foot I saw that they had quite the little setup. A very dim light, like a dashboard light on a car, glowed bluishly above them. They were on high chairs around the little stand. They could stay there for hours, or until they got full. Like a table at a darkly lit restaurant, their little corner. The last thing I saw was their hands, clasped together affectingly under the stand.

I turned another corner to the left, then my eyes were arrested by a brightly-lit red aperture a few feet ahead of me, spread by what I could see was a speculum. I gasped in what must have been horror or shock -- I guessed it to be the interior of a vagina. As Tonya led me closer I remembered the direction the toes had been pointing and realized we were actually at the rear. Tami's rectum! I resisted Tonya's hand guiding my shoulder forward but then found myself lurching forward myself, morbidly fascinated at this sight that was so strange to me.

It was not a speculum, it was a ring-shaped thing which held the sphincter wide open while leaving the surrounding areas accessible. Two women were at the sides, perched on chairs, caressing the stretched ring and probing inside with what looked like little spatulas. Inside, the red walls quivered and twitched at their attentions. The light came from the donut itself, which must have had little filaments in it. Ingenious. I wondered if Tami's friend Homer had designed it. As I drew closer I could see the dim tracery of Tami's split butt cheeks above, trim and tight, and the junction of the legs spreading out to each side in almost a ballet dancer's split.

The sphincter was spread impossibly wide -- maybe three inches. The woman on the left, middle-aged with white hair, placed her wrinkled, pointed finger inside as she looked back at me. "Hi," she clasped her other hand in mine. "I'm Belinda. Welcome to the Vault."

"Tami's most secret place," the other woman said as if with pride. "This is her center, if you ask me. . . Come on in."

She gently took my hand. I resisted, and freed it. "Sorry... it's just...too..."

Seeing the look of revulsion on my face, Belinda said, "Don't worry, she's perfectly clean. She flushes herself all the way up."

I didn't know what that meant, but I detected a coconut aroma. Not unpleasant at all, like in Tami's office. I watched as Belinda reached all the way in and swept her finger to and fro. Tami's inner walls heaved and sighed in response. The other woman bent over and licked her side of the ring. The left butt cheek twitched.

"Without -- subcommittee approval -- I don't know -- " Tami's voice came through the nearest speaker. I thought of the exquisite, intimate stimulation she was receiving. While her toes were being slathered with peanut butter and sucked on.

"Let me show you something," Belinda said, withdrawing her hand. "Come closer."

I bent down and looked up, right up inside Tami. I felt like I was violating this kind, modest, needlessly suffering woman, whom fate had decreed must be always naked, until I realized her insides as well as her outsides were a big playground for her many admirers. And that this was O.K. with her. It seemed strange but looking up into her distended anus and into that pink, irrigated rectum, I felt like she was welcoming me in.

"See that little hole up there?" I craned my neck to see, in the midst of all that pinkness, a little slit half an inch wide, like a closed eye. "That's her 'inner butthole'. Stick your finger in."

"What!"

"Go ahead. Slide it in gently and wiggle it. It's like shaking her hand."

Part of me felt like laughing at this simile. But my finger found itself carefully pointing into the interior space, as my brain shouted for it to stay outside. Belinda guided my wrist. I poked up farther, farther, until I was inside her rectum. I felt the heat from her surrounding inner walls, as if welcoming me in from the cold. Meanwhile, from the speaker, Tami was making some kind of forceful point.

"I don't think -- we should do this unilaterally. We need the O.K. of the Faculty Senate. And -- "

My finger reached the slit and made contact! It was so moist, warm, welcoming. And now I pushed a little further and the end of my finger went up and forward into another empty space -- her colon! In at the second knuckle, I wiggled my finger.

"And the p - presentation should be made through the college intranet too ..."

I must have caused that little stutter. I felt both ashamed and, somehow, proud. I wondered: were all these women trying to please Tami? Or just disrupt her concentration? I let my finger rest there a moment, then carefully drew it out. When my whole hand was out I looked at my moistened finger with a sour expression on my face.

"Go ahead, lick it," the other woman said. "It's very good. Tastes like coconut."

I just couldn't do that. Tonya, who had been watching from behind, chuckled. Belinda offered an antiseptic tissue. "Here." I wiped my finger off, with relief but also feeling a bit like a spoilsport.

Now Belinda and her partner set upon Tami's stretched ring with their tongues, then moved out to lick her buttocks, which twitched and undulated ever so slightly. Above, Tami continued to talk about whatever proposal was being discussed, arguing for openness.

I stood back with Tonya. In the dim light she could see my fascinated face as I took in the view of Tami's brightly presented "vault", and the two licking females worshipping it. "That's ...so unreal."

"Very real to us," Tonya said. She drew me back, back, until ten feet back we entered a little alcove. On it was a stand with a book, a little spotlight on it in the midst of the darkness. Next to it was a short couch with two very young women, hardly more than high school age. One was dressed like a Goth, all in black with a nose ring. The other looked ready for soccer practice. They were chatting a mile a minute, as teenage girls do, about something having to do with boyfriends. And sipping sodas, evidently from a little dorm-style fridge next to them. On top of the fridge, a coffee brewer, a bag of chips. I gathered this place was like a lounge for women who were waiting their turn. Leaning against the fridge were three giant feather-type things, four feet long. I guessed they were for the long-range, gentle stimulation of Tami's legs, or her sides, or maybe her shoulders.

"Hi," I said shyly to the two girls. They nodded to me and then got back to their whispery gossip.

"We call this the 'pit'," Tonya said. I looked around. On the black-painted wall over the couch was a message board. I made out two messages in erasable markers: 'Georgene: See me tonite. Eth.' And: 'Wendy bites. Why not? She's a vampire.' Whatever that meant. Next to the message board, a beefcake poster of a guy with 6-pack abs, hands looped into the belt of his jeans. Someone had drawn a ring on his nipple.

"I can't believe this -- this 'underworld'," I whispered to Tonya, though I don't think the two jabbering girls would have been listening. "And these women -- these -- "

"We call ourselves TL's," Tonya said. "I'm not sure why."

"How many -- TL's -- are there?"

"In all about eighty." Seeing my widened eyes, she said, "Oh no, not at one time. Tami can fit only about nineteen of us in at once."

Nineteen! As I tried to assimilate this information Tonya looked somewhere and said, "Hi Melissa. . . Stephanie, it's my turn. Why don't you check out 'the book'. Melissa, show her around?"

"O.K.," Melissa said, massaging her lips as if they had just done a workout on part of Tami. Melissa was tall and blonde and looked like a model, maybe Tami's age. She got a water bottle out of the fridge and said, "Can you read in that light? We have some stronger bulbs in the cabinet."

"No ... that's O.K." I looked down at the big book on the stand. It was a loose-leaf, as if it was something that was continually updated. The title stood out in elegant scripted letters:

Extending and Intensifying the Orgasmic Response of Professor Smithers by the TL Collective

I opened the front cover and saw a list of "contributors" that ran two pages. Then the table of contents:

Foreword by Jennifer McIntyre, M.D. 1. Basics of Female Orgasmic Response 2. Special Features of Prof. Smithers's Response 3. Accommodating Her Allergy 4. Tools and Equipment 5. Focus: Clitoris, G-Spot, Vagina and Cervix 6. Focus: Nipples 7. Focus: Feet and Hands 8. Focus: Anus, Rectum and Colon 9. The Professor's Upper Colon: Accessing Points of Sensitivity 10. Ears and Other Body Parts 11. Group Attack and Coordination 12. Full Body Machines and Apparatus 13. "Playing Tami's Body": Managing Her Orgasms 14. Status Orgasmus 15. Effect of Prof. Smithers's Orgasms on TL's 16. Possible Applications to Other Women (and to Men) Afterword by Tami Smithers, Ph.D.

I leafed through the pages as if in a trance. My eyes were wide and my mouth hung open the whole time. It was like walking through a weird dream that might have been a nightmare. Most of the pages were text with drawings. There were also photos. One had Tami's face, looking at the camera, at several stages of orgasm. Her eyes bugged out at me as if staring right through me.

Another page demonstrated a long flexible dildo called a "snake". Tami was on all fours on a table. Her nakedness made a sharp contrast with the two fully clothed women behind her who were pressing the end of the "snake" against her anus. In the next picture the "snake" was all the way in except for the final six inches which was gripped by the two women. Tami's back was arched to accommodate the intrusion, her teeth clenched, her head thrown up, her eyes screaming wide open as if shouting a desperate prayer to God. It was amazing they got all that long, wide thing inside her. The head must be up near her big breasts, which were hanging like grapefruits, the huge nipples pointing down as if pushed out by the outward pressure of the snake. Of course it wasn't in that far (it probably curved with her colon) but the scene looked like sadomasochism, until you turned the page and saw Tami lying on her side on the table with a weary smile on her face, her two clothed companions nestling the snake between her breasts.