The Bogsworth Gospel

The party had been going on for almost three hours by the time midnight rolled around. Cigarette smoke wound its way around assorted-shaped forms of a fairly apathetic group of young undergrads, and the sweet scent of hashish intermingled with the nauseatingly rich aroma of Professor Rufus T. Bogsworth's maple-walnut-blend pipe tobacco.

Bogsworth had the distinct honor of being the sole representative of the university faculty present at this, another "week down the tubes" bash, one of which had been held each Friday night over the past two-and-a-half years. As always, the get-together was held in the old Philosophical Studies Center, a turn-of-the-century Tudor-style mansion located just off campus that originally had been one of several such buildings that housed the long-vacated Charles Dickens Home for Wayward Waifs.

Bogsworth stood solemnly, alone, near a gray-and-black, tar-and-nicotine-misted window that peered out over the center's grounds. The professor sucked idly away on his gunk-encrusted antique-walnut Lord Camden (crafted in the Scottish Highlands by frustrated virgins), every other puff sending a small, juggling sphere of solid white smoke aloft, half way to the mansion's sixteen-foot-high ceiling, where it settled for a moment, then slowly began to dissipate, thinning to a translucent mist, which would waft across the enormous room, prompting unsuspecting olfactory nerves to scream out for mercy.

The students tolerated Bogsworth's presence, though, because he consistently had been a strong force in their efforts toward forming more practical curricula and extracurricular activities. In fact, the previous semester, when the dominant outcry of students had been for shorter terms and an extended spring break, Bogsworth was at the fore, just in time to prevent a group of overzealous sophomores and juniors from storming stalwart Forthwright University president Albert "Iron-Fisted Academic" Goshen's office, thus preventing an already riotous situation from evolving into greater turmoil. Bogsworth had taken it upon himself to meet with deans of each college to explain, at their level, the benefits such actions as those suggested by students would mean to the university administration and its ruling faculty.

Every so often, a puff of gut-wrenching smoke would barely eek its way out from the red-hot bowl of Bogsworth's Lord Camden, slipping over the rim, and losing itself in the professor's closely cropped beard. Each time this occurred, a low, school-girl-like giggle would crawl along up Bogsworth's spine. Who was laughing at him, he wondered. Who found him so amusing?

As Bogsworth's entire beard became enveloped in a mist, the incessant giggling persisted. He quickly turned away his gaze from the solitary window near which he stood, just in time to catch a glimpse of the giggling's perpetrator, semi-cowering in embarrassment several feet away. Bogsworth immediately recognized the guilty party, and pondered how he had not sooner recognized the delicate laughter. He should, after all, have recognized it by now, having heard it so often in his History's Greatest Perversions class. Jeanne Davenport was always laughing, if not at one of Bogsworth's anecdotes, then at the usual folly that went on every class session — what with no one save Bogsworth taking the course very seriously.

Jeanne stood about average height, in the average Junior League preppy ensemble of jeans and corduroy blazer. Bogsworth could feel the young woman's intoxicating perfume beginning to work its way up his nostrils, boring deep into his pleasure center. He casually winked at her, prompting another short burst of giggles.

Jeanne's face seemed to glow beneath her sun-bleached, wheat-blonde hair, its pixie cut accentuating her beautifully quirky features: her eyes, which seemed to beckon; her nose, which delicately curved at just the right angle; and her mouth, a delicate slit surrounded by pouting ruby-red lips that seductively promised pleasures beyond one's wildest dreams — that is, when they weren't caught up in her latest fit of giggles.

Bogsworth could sense his body slowly moving toward his vision of splendor, wondering who exactly had granted permission to his feet to begin walking. His legs dragged him nearer, another part of him wanting to look away in embarrassment over his seeming boldness, what with the professor being a shy person. Bogsworth's mind was a blank. Whatever would he say?

As Bogsworth sidled up alongside Jeanne, he forced a smile, which he found, surprising to him, quickly returned. He choked for words. "Uh...."

Jeanne held back a giggle. "Hi." The courteous coed had greased the path.

"How are you, Miss, uh, Davenport?" Bogsworth sheepishly inquired.

Jeanne lowered her head, blushing. "'Jeanne.'"

Bogsworth scratched at his chin, losing his hand for a moment in his Lord Camden fog. "I beg your pardon?"

Jeanne's eyes rose to meet Bogsworth's, startled at first by the professor's roving left orb, which danced about while its companion remained intently still. "Please, call me Jeanne. Even in class you call me — er, us — by our first names.

Bogsworth's smile became less forced. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. I guess I just feel so out of place here — like a ham sandwich in synagogue."

Jeanne smiled now more than she giggled. (And suddenly Bogsworth missed the high-school silliness of it; it had begun to grow on him.) "Professor...."

"Please, 'Rufus.' Or, as some of my colleagues kibitzingly refer to me, 'Rufy.' Let's try to make this as mutually comfortable as possible."

Jeanne's lips barely parted. "OK."

Bogsworth felt an urge to reach over and gently insert his forefinger into the small space between Jeanne's bright red smile. "Uh, Jeanne...."

Her face remained still, anxiously awaiting the question.

"Would you care to...."

The slit between Jeanne's lips widened, into a smile that seemed to jump off of her face and attack Bogsworth. "What is it, Jim?"

"Fresh air. How about, how about some fresh air!" Bogsworth's voice became stilted, robot-like.

"Sure," Jeanne responded. "We can go out back. If there isn't already someone out there. We can find a place to sit and...."

"Talk!" Bogsworth interjected.

"Mm-hmm," Jeanne murmured, then turned about face and began slowly moving away from Bogsworth before suddenly extending her arm out behind her for him to grab hold of, and to follow.

Jeanne glided across the floor, Bogsworth clumsily in tow, like a lane-swerving U-Haul trailer. "I think it's out this way. I just know there's going to be someone else out...."

Bogsworth licked his parched lips, which became drier as the unlikely pair of he and Jeanne neared the entranceway to the kitchen, through which they had to pass to reach the back door.

"Ah, young romance, eh?" Bogsworth suggested of the folks already out back.

"Jeanne stopped, turned and, in all earnestness, responded "No, heavy petting mostly."

Bogsworth tried his best to not let Jeanne's candor shock or embarrass him. After all, it was he, in class, who so freely tossed about innuendos. But, he thought, class did not represent the real world; this scenario did. In class he could jokingly mention that he wished he could fuck every attractive female taking his course, and the earmarked women would merely laugh. In the real world, though, the professor thought to himself, men who stood on street corners engaging in similar behavior with unwary passersby would soon be arrested, charged with being lewd and lascivious. "Petting?" Bogsworth inquired innocently.

Jeanne again began tugging Bogsworth across the room.

"Petting?" Bogsworth again queried.

Jeanne became impatient with the allegedly learned academic's seemingly sudden naiveté. "Oh, you know!"

Bogsworth quickly clarified his bewilderment. "Of course. I mean...."

The unlikely pair reached the kitchen and on its way through bumped past several stray bodies.

"Care for something, Jim?" Jeanne asked with a smirk wide across her face.

But before Bogsworth could comment on how a batch of praline-fudge brownies did look rather inviting, he was dragged out the back door.

Jeanne had been wrong. No petting zoo here. They were all alone. Both sat along the edge of the stoop at the top of the stairway that led to the garden below, and out into a weed-infested back lot. Bogsworth strained to make out the colors of flowers he knew were there. He felt Jeanne's arm winding its way up across his side, finally reaching his head — first playing with his frosted earlobe, then weaving through his unkempt, salt-and-pepper curls (not curls so much as straight hair with arthritis).

A chill began at the bottom of the professor's back, and then climbed up along his spine, finally reaching its apex at the nape of his neck. Bogsworth adored that sensation. He had always encouraged his cat Peebles to trot across his back for the same effect. But that had been nothing like this.

In the dark, Bogsworth could almost make out the image of Peebles's small, whiskered, jealous feline face. But that vision was soon replaced by that of Jeanne, whose face closed in on Bogsworth's, blocking out the glow from the intrusive porch light above them. He sensed he was enjoying himself, but he wasn't certain. He drew his own tongue to the back of his mouth, hanging at the entrance to his throat. There was an intruder. He could feel Jeanne's warm tongue crawling across the sides of his mouth, gently massaging his inner cheeks. God, he thought, this is magnificent!

Bogsworth was conscious of his entire body being engulfed in the pleasure. His mind seemed to vacate his body and sit alongside it, an amused, satisfied voyeur, ogling the pair as they became more and more entwined in the throes of passion. His second self bellowed out instructions from the sidelines: No, not there. Touch her there! Bogsworth's conscious mind begged his subconscious mind to mind its own business and shut up, because ol' Prof. Bogsworth, ol' "Rufy," had the situation well in hand, and he it would take things from there.

In class the following Monday morning, Bogsworth nervously inspected his group of impatient students. He wasn't certain how he would be able to stand in front of them all, distracted by Jeanne's knowing face. If there was anything Bogsworth did not consider himself, it was some sort of stud. He wished he could feel confident enough to feel that way, but found himself resigned to playing the part of an embarrassed schoolboy, sure to face ribbing from all his so-called pals.

It took Bogsworth a while to finally realize that Jeanne wasn't even in class. He became concerned. Jeanne's attendance habits heretofore had been impeccable. His concern for her alone quickly superceded his concern for his jabbering classroom. He paid no attention as his lecture notes slid off his podium, and slowly drifted to the floor.

Bogsworth pushed it all aside, and made his way down the aisle between desks, leading out through the center of class. Whispers bombarded him from all sides as his body transcended further and further from his playboy's world.

"What's with 'Rufy'?" one vocal student intoned.

"I think he's lost it," quipped another. "He's entered his own world of great perversions!"

The barbs grew louder, and crueler.

Sinister laughter filled the classroom, providing the final shove that drove Bogsworth's body and existence from his controversial history 301-class hellhole. He drifted down hallways, searching for what he now knew he wanted. No, needed! No more born-again abstinence bullshit for him, he thought. Goddamn, he reasoned, I'm not a fucking monk. Yet all Bogsworth had ever taught in all his years was how warped and perverted great men had become because of their intense desires for the supreme pleasure in life.

Fifteen years of garbage, Bogsworth thought. "Garbage, nothing but God damn garbage!" Bogsworth bellowed at the top of his lungs, his voice now carrying the message through the empty corridors of Kumquat Hall. The final "garbage!" then ripped into Bogsworth's weakened heart, and he slowly tumbled across several rows of lockers, lock combination dials poking into him like tiny fists.

Bogsworth finally fell forward, onto the cold, hard linoleum floor, where he attempted to pull himself along the wall's edge, just to the intersection several feet ahead. As his face, red as an overripe tomato, edged around the corner, Bogsworth let out a sudden, silent cry. There, standing entwined with a tall, stocky, muscular figure — no doubt a "jock" — almost entirely in shadow, was Jeanne. She had practically swallowed the young man's face, as the pair so intently had at it, not even cognizant of the professor's head drawing back, away, into the other dark and empty corridor.

The ambulance tore out of the cafeteria deliveries entrance, its shrill siren shooing onlookers out of its way. Once on Hyperbole Boulevard, the emergency vehicle picked up speed, sailing past endless red traffic signals, causing at least one minor fender bender. It was a three-mile trip to Our Lady of Lingering Hopes General, all the while Bogsworth doing his best to suck in every last gulp of oxygen forced into his mouth and nostrils. He realized it was breathe or die, and suddenly Bogsworth was not quite ready to call it quits.

The entire incident flashed back and forth through Bogsworth's mind, intermingled with memories of his childhood in Gaggleweir County: The puny country boy who had somehow survived three decades of put-downs and had, despite his size, grown to the position of a highly-respected local scholar — having spent all his years of cowering seclusion intent in studying textbooks and classic literature, the latter consisting primarily of Romanticist novels, the likes of Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

When Bogsworth finally left the confines of Gaggleweir, it was a proud day; he had accepted a position of prestige at his first big-city university — no longer would he suffer the shouts of "Boo, boo, Gaggleweir U.!" Arriving at Forthwright, Bogsworth felt certain he had finally found a worthy home — perhaps not the most prestigious university, but certainly an institution of academia at which he could evolve into a well-regarded, tenured professor.

But Bogsworth never intended to make Forthwright his permanent home. He'd expected by that time to be recruited by one of the nation's top schools. All the years had passed without Bogsworth even realizing it. Each year he would reassure himself that the following year he would get The Call. But it never came. Pathetically, Bogsworth had become so intent in his preaching of the evils of society that he had contented himself with any audience — eager or not to hear his perspectives.

Deep inside his soul, Bogsworth knew that most of his students merely took his course because of its reputation as an easy credit. "Just agree with the old man's viewpoints on his tests, and you'll pass with flying colors" was one comment he'd overheard. Yet Bogsworth hoped and prayed that there were some who heeded his words, grasping bits and pieces of "Bogsworth's gospel," eventually realizing the ol' prof was right, and protecting themselves by burying their heads in his philosophy. No one ever came to Bogsworth and said so, though there'd been one girl, two semesters earlier, whose gaze seemed to be windows to a world in desperate turmoil, awaiting rescue by common sense. Bogsworth, those three semesters before, had vowed that after class he would take the young woman into his arms, anointing her with his healing hands, but before he had the chance, his potential protégé had dropped his class, and seemingly disappeared off of the face of the earth.

Damn! Bogsworth thought, wheezing as the oxygen mixture began drowning him in its healing gases. I should have saved a hell of a lot more souls!

When the ambulance finally pulled into the hospitals emergency-room entrance, Bogsworth was cognizant of his very soul crying out for help as it struggled to free itself from its frail, weakened vessel. Tears rolled down the professor's eyes, forming puddles on his life-support mask, as the attendants wheeled him into the hospital. After seemingly endless minutes of preliminary red tape — "Do you have Medicare?" "When was your last bowel movement?" — Bogsworth was finally wheeled toward intensive care, glaring neon lights overhead drilling into his skull like continuous laser blasts.

Two weeks passed before Bogsworth finally began walking again on his own power. He would stagger down the disinfected hospital corridors, knocking little old ladies off balance, grappling for their walkers, which Bogsworth's wildly flailing arms would send flying, out of reach of decrepit hands. Behind him, every couple of yards, nurses would pick up after his one-man hurricane, doing their best to calm the stricken seniors. When he finally reached the large, plate-glass window overlooking a sun balcony, Bogsworth felt his legs begin to give out beneath him. Before him, the entire city basked in the glow of a magnificent midday sun, casting wheelchair shadows helter-skelter across the cool cement balcony below. Bogsworth slid his hands across the speckled glass, struggling to hold himself steady but instead feeling himself fall backward, then forward, through the huge window, shards of glass ripping through his peaked flesh as he dropped to the scene below, finally skewering himself on an intravenous pole, hanging suspended like a child's twirl toy, spinning ever so slightly as his life's blood poured out of him, onto a small boy's cool-blue terrycloth robe, where it blotted, forming a circle that grew larger and larger as the minutes passed before attendants finally arrived.

For several minutes the room danced around, appearing as if viewed through a jar of Vaseline. When it finally came to a halt, and began to come into focus, Bogsworth spied his saliva dribbling up across his face, and felt the dryness scouring away at the back of his throat. He maid several vain attempts at speech before, in despair, he finally gave up. Sweet Jesus, he thought. You've got to be kidding. There's no way in hell — or even in Gaggleweir County — that I could still be alive. Jesus Christ, it's got to be a Goddamn dream.

Then Bogsworth's theory silently crumbled away, as towering over him Jeanne's delicate figure began to materialize.

"Professor?" Jeanne cautiously broached a greeting.

Bogsworth pursed his lips. Jeanne, he thought. Sweet, sweet, slutty Jeanne. But how I still pine for her.

"Geez, Professor," Jeanne almost whispered. "I only found out about all this yesterday. We had a substitute, and all he said was that you had had a bad reaction to some drugs."

Drugs? screamed Bogsworth's psyche. What the hell would Rufus T. Bogsworth be doing with drugs — other than chemistry experiments? Drugs? Not "Rufy."

Jeanne's smile broadened. "The doctors say you're going to be all right. You know you took quite a fall; and that pole, geez, that must've hurt like a son of a bitch, huh?

I know, Bogsworth thought. I was there.

"God," Jeanne giggled. That was it, what Bogsworth hadn't heard in what seemed like forever. Laugh again, he thought. Tears began welling up in Jeanne's glistening blue eyes, causing her green mascara to drool down across her cheeks — but she made no motion to wipe away the mess.

Please, Jeanne, Bogsworth thought again, laugh, laugh again, please....

Jeanne knelt down alongside Bogsworth and cradled his rough, dry face in her delicate palms. "Oh, Professor, this is all my fault."

Damn right, he thought.

"Can you ever forgive me? Can you?" Jeanne implored.

Forgive you, Bogsworth contemplated. After having a five-foot aluminum pole speared through my chest? Impaled. Like a shish kabob!

"Can you, Professor?"