About Transfer Credits

All I can say about my time with the girls after Liam dropped me off at the hotel and the drive home from New York City is that I had the fewest complaints about my night after the show among all the girls in our little coterie. I hadn't paid too much attention to my appearance on the way back to the hotel, but I took some time to straighten myself out once I was back in the room. Michelle pushed me for details on my night with Liam, and I, good girl that I am, did as he asked and regaled them with a detailed account of my night. "No wonder you can't walk straight," she said to me while she helped blend concealer over the lines of hickeys along my neck. I had blue jeans to wear as bottoms, which covered the little sucker marks up the insides of my legs, but I was absolute trash with most makeup. I hardly ever wore more than lipstick on a daily basis. Once home, I took pictures of my thighs; I liked the way it looked -- like little dark purple flowers winding their way up my thighs -- and thought I might plan a new tattoo with the inspiration.

Two weeks later was early move-in and orientation. Princeton was everything I wanted it to be from the moment I moved into the dormitory, from the Blair Arch to Nassau Hall. Mom drove me down and helped me settle in. Her face was overwritten with worry by the time we made it through orientation and the bookstore. I had, of course, been away from home before, during my summer in Syracuse and my cross-country train trip, but she's my mom. She lived a pretty sordid life before I came along, from what she told me, and she was thankful that I took more after my dad than her. It made it easier for her to trust me with big things. Still, this was a step forward in my journey away from home, and I was all she had. There were tears when she left, but I told her not to worry and to take some time for herself -- maybe go on a date if she managed to find a man worth seeing in our little town.

My dorm mate, Caroline, was anything but fastidious. Between leaving her clothes all over the place and the travesty that was her desk, I don't honestly know how she managed to get anything done. Still, she was a nice girl and as nonjudgmental as they came, but pretty lost regardless. She settled on English at enrollment because she thought it would at least give her a few different options like law, literature, and journalism. But really, she didn't know what she was going to do in the long run. She didn't really have a firm grasp on anything she wanted, to be honest, but, instead of trying to branch out, settled into a kind of neutral zone. In short, she was sweet but boring.

My advisor, Dr. Holland, an overworked associate professor, was equally sweet but boring, with the added difficulty of being hard to get to commit to a schedule. In spite of constantly working, he was almost never in his office. When one of my classes was dropped due to low enrollment, his only advice was to see what was available and work it out with the professor teaching. He would sign off on whatever; just send an email. The department secretary had to run off a list of available courses to replace the Aesthetes & Decadents of the Fin de Ciecle class I really wanted to take. He was also kind enough to take pity on me and introduce me to one of the seniors in the creative writing department, Cameron, who took me under her wing.

We sat together for lunch with a few of her other friends, Anna and Tao, who all had opinions on who to take and who not to take. Even though I was on the creative writing track, I still had to take a few classes on critical theory and period literature -- Shakespeare, Post-Modernism, and so on. After taking a few minutes to look over the list of classes with space available, there was only one I was interested in. "Medieval Writers and Lovers," I said the class name aloud while we finished eating.

Tao took the list out of my hand, saw the details, frowned. "Don't do that to yourself," he said. "Trust me. Besides, that class is for upperclassmen and grad students."

"What?" I said, sort of shocked. "I like that sort of stuff. All those old Arthurian romances are what really got me into reading as a kid."

"No, the topic is fine," Tao said, "it's the professor."

Anna took the list from Tao and made a wordless sound of either disgust or pain from the back of her throat. "Maretti. Forget about it. I'd rather not matriculate."

"He's not that bad," Cameron said, shaking her head.

"They call him 'The Hammer'," Tao said, warning. "He speaks and reads Medieval French. Who the hell does that?"

"He's one of if not the most demanding professor in the whole department," Anna added. "And he has zero flexibility with anything. You either do it his way or you suffer."

"And he has the highest rate of published students in the whole department because of it," Cameron argued. "He teaches creative fiction on top of his literary courses and he sits on the Fine Arts committee."

"You're only saying nice things about him because he's your manuscript advisor," Anna countered. "He has a thing for his advisees. They're, like, the children he never had because he's too much of a curmudgeon to ever get laid."

"Pay no attention to her, Amelie. She's saying that because he wouldn't let her suck his dick to improve her grade in his Beowulf symposium last semester," Cameron jabbed back with a knowing sneer.

"That is such bullshit!"

"If you're interested," Cameron said to me, "send him an email and ask for a meeting. Tell him I told you to do it. He's prompt, so you can expect a reply before nine tonight."

I did just that and had a meeting scheduled for 7:00 AM the next morning at his office. I did a little digging beforehand to try and get a feel for Dr. Giovanni Maretti. Double major in English Literature and Philosophy at Fordham University, Masters in Comparative Literature and PhD from Columbia; Rhode Scholar; published in six different academic journals in three different languages on a regular basis, and five novels to his name. No wonder his standards were so high. Grade My Professor scores were all over the place for him, but most of the harsher reviews were that he was too hard. I enjoyed a challenge, though, and I felt compelled to go through with this. I wanted this class.

I was up early and cleaned up in the communal showers. His reply to my email had mentioned that the course was typically reserved for upperclassmen and grad students, but if I could make a compelling enough argument he would consider allowing me to transfer in. Since he wanted to meet in person, I guessed he wanted to take the measure of me, so I made my best effort to look as professional and serious as I could. I wore a red pencil skirt that stopped just above my knees an a pair of tan wedge heels. I had an airy, sheer cream colored blouse that fit the skirt and a white tank top underneath. I left my hair down, put on a little lip gloss, and hit up the coffee kiosk in the residential hall on my way out the door.

I printed a paper I wrote in my AP English class on Medieval heroic literature my senior year in high school, and prepared some mental note about Chretien de Troyes, as I'd read him in translation ages ago. I kept everything in my messenger bag, a little brown leather tote that I carried with me everywhere. I went over what I would say in my head in detail and tried to think of convincing arguments for why an incoming freshman should be allowed into such a high level course.

When I arrived at the department office, there weren't many lights on. He liked to start before the department secretary, it seemed, and the only way I knew which office was his was the light coming from under the door. I took a deep breath and steeled myself before I knocked.

"One moment," he called from the other side of the door. I closed my eyes and heard the sound of him scribbling -- probably writing notes on a paper or, if Tao and Anna were to be believed, ideas on how to torture his students. A moment later he opened the door and I found myself looking into the chest of a neatly pressed white dress shirt in a tan linen sport coat. I hadn't expected him to be so tall. I looked up.

And then my breath caught in my throat as I fumbled my coffee cup. "Shit," I hissed. He was quick, grabbed the cup and my hands to steady them. A bit splashed out and landed on his shoe, a brown leather wingtip that looked like he'd only polished them this morning. My eyes went down to it, stayed there, would have stayed there forever. Because as much as I had thought about and prepared for this meeting, this interaction, I was not prepared to look up and see those penetrating blue eyes staring back at me.

"You know, it would be nice to have a surprise encounter with you once where you don't spill something on my shoes."

"I am so sorry, I..." Shit.

He put a hand under my chin and brought my eyes to his. "Hello, little girl," he said, smiling. "I guess that's one less secret for both of us, isn't it, Amelie?"

"I guess so," I stammered, "Professor Maretti." I found the will to breathe again, but then noted his hand was still on mine. I felt heat rising to the sides of my face and throat with the memory of every ache he'd left me with in body and soul during our first meeting.

"Come on in," he said and stepped back into the office, opening the door wider to let me through. The space was set up more like what I imagined a study to be than an actual office. He had a desk, true, but the walls were all lined with shelves filled with books -- leather and cloth bound, and paperbacks as well, some of which had titles that were familiar to me and others as alien as a moonscape.

He closed the door behind us. "You can have a seat over there," he said and gestured to one corner of the room where sat a chaise lounger that looked like they were plucked out of an 19th century French furniture catalog. Two similarly styled chairs sat in front of his desk. "You've been well, I hope?" he asked as he took a napkin from the top drawer of his desk and wiped off his shoe.

"Yeah," I said, noncommittally as I sat my things down beside one of the chairs and my coffee on a coaster on the little round drum table. "I'm sorry, can we talk about," I gestured around me, "this for a moment? You're a professor at Princeton?"

"Tenured as of a year ago, finally," he said as he brought his own cup from his desk to the table. "Which is why I keep all of that," he peaked his eyebrows, and I knew exactly what he meant -- the book -- "a big secret. No one here knows I wrote that novel, and I would like to keep it that way. As progressive as this school is, finding out one of your professors was a BDSM smut peddler, one time or not, would likely put things in motion that involved the phrase 'Unpaid Administrative Leave'. Liam Jolliet doesn't exist here; understand?"

I nodded. Neither of us had sat yet. We were looking one another over, and if his mind worked similarly to mine, he was measuring how to proceed from there. I folded my arms in front of me, suddenly awkwardly shy again, and turned my eyes sideways to the singular window in the room, the blinds pulled so only a bit of sunlight entered the room. "I guess," I said, slow and hesitating, "that means what we had in New York isn't going to repeat itself."

"I didn't say that," he said as he took a seat on the chaise lounge. "I said Liam doesn't exist here. Neither, for me at least, does that book. All that means is you and I are now ourselves, and not who we pretended to be for the game we played in New York City. But, Amelie," the way he pronounced my name properly right away made me smile, "if we play this game here, we are going to have to be careful about it. Do you understand?"

I nodded and smiled faintly as my hands fell to my sides. "I understand," I said and, with the door shut and the blinds drawn, my smile broadened a little more. "When does everyone else arrive, usually," I asked as I rounded the table and slid comfortably into his lap, "daddy."

He grinned and slid a hand up my knee to rest on my thigh just above the hem of my skirt. "The secretary usually gets here about 7:30. Others? Typically skip morning office hours unless they have something scheduled. I," he patted my leg, "have another appointment at 7:30, though, so you and I will have to wait for another day to exchange our proper greetings." I nodded and started to slide off his lap, but he pulled me back. "Just where do you think you're going?"

"Sorry, daddy," I giggled and put my arms around his neck as I went in for a kiss on the lips. The scent of him had started to fade from the book he gave me when we parted ways last, and I was very happy to have a fresh whiff of his cologne. I would be happier, though, when I had the scent of his sweat and his rutting cock on my body again. And the taste of him in my mouth. "So, what do I need to do to get into this class of yours?"

"Well," he started, and it didn't sound good, "to be honest, you just started college, and you don't have the critical theory chops yet for what this class is going to demand, at least as far as I'm aware."

"One second," I said and slid off his lap to grab my bag. I passed him my paper and rattled off some perfunctory information on Troyes and the Arthurian Romances to show my familiarity with the period, and, of course, having gone to Catholic school for most of my life, I was already aware of the Rule of St. Benedict, which was, I knew, on the assigned reading list for the course.

"I should have known you were a Catholic school girl," he quipped as he flipped through my paper. He made a few noncommittal sounds as he read through it faster than I thought possible. "Conclusions are good, if derivative," he said, "and you can write well enough academically. Why this class, though? There are easier courses to fill out your lit prerequisites. And Cameron told me Anna and Tao already tried to warn you off of me."

"They didn't really have much nice to say, no," I agreed.

"They equivocate too much in their theses and build on weak critical foundations. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but they are both going into journalism -- not really cut out for the academic stuff."

I cringed visibly. He really was a harsh critic. "Regardless of what they said, and keep in mind I had no idea you were...you at the time. This is the only option that interests me on the available class list, and I have to maintain full-time status to keep my scholarship. I've always had a fondness for this stuff; I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in learning more about the period or the literary works that came out of it."

"But, still, this would have to be some kind of exception. In the years that I've been allowed to teach this course, it's always been restricted to upperclassmen and grad students. Why should I make the exception for you when there are other, viable options in the course catalog for you to take?"

His line of argument infuriated me, as though he did it on purpose. "Because," I stammered, almost trying to claim something that wasn't really mine. The way he looked at me, I knew he was trying to provoke a response; to see which way I would turn the argument. I had the feeling that if I offered myself to him physically in exchange it would backfire. I had already committed to that in my mind. It would offer him nothing new. "Honestly, I hate wasting my time with anything that I already know won't satisfy me," I said. "This is interesting to me, and I don't see why I should commit to something less than what I actually want just to satisfy this school's requirements for my major."

He inclined his head to the side a little and passed me back my paper as he stood and crossed the room. "Here's the deal," he said as he flipped three volumes off the shelves behind his desk. "I want a thousand words on Bernardus Sylvestris's Cosmographia by the next class. Pick your critical theory and apply it to the paper, but I recommend cultural criticism. If you can do that and make a substantive contribution to the conversation, then you are in. Here's the text, a copy of the Rule of St. Benedict, in case you lost yours from Catholic school, and Tropics of Discourse -- Hayden White is a personal favorite of mine."

"The next class is tomorrow night," I said.

"Yup," he responded. "Didn't you ask me not to be gentle once? Better get crackin'."

I thought for a moment I might argue for more time -- that was a lot, considering my already full plate and writing schedule. But then I remembered the game. He applied it everywhere, apparently. "I won't disappoint you," I said with more confidence than I felt.

"There's a good girl."

...

I spent every free minute I had that day and the next reading -- first the collection of critical essays he loaned me and then the text of Cosmographia itself once I knew, or had at least a decent idea, what I was looking for. Cameron was kind enough to help me fill in some of the gaps at lunch on both days. By the time the class rolled around, I had twelve hundred words typed up and a headache, but felt armed with enough detail to put up a good fight in class.

When one student argued that the text was an attempt to Christianize a Platonic and Pagan view of the creation myth, I pointed out that the copies of the Timaeus that served as inspiration for the work were incomplete and that Bernardus served more as a mythopoeist in the same tradition as Geoffrey of Monmouth, writing modernized versions of older myths to try and write their culture into the historical fabric woven by the ancient Greeks and Romans; that the work served more as a symposium -- a kind of entertainment -- than any actual ontological text.

"That seems kind of a stretch," said the other student.

"I found a paper published in 2010," I went on, "that used similar tropes to define three separate eras of medieval heroic literature in the same way. The time frame for when this was written fits the model -- mid 12th century -- and the audience was the Pope at the time. I don't think Pope Eugene II would have taken kindly to the wholesale rewrite of Genesis if he didn't understand that this was meant for entertainment purposes."

"That's far too complicated of an argument for this. Occam's razor. The Church of the period was well known for usurping non-Christian rites and making them part of the church."

"That's intellectual laziness, though; it's dismissive of the remaining historical and cultural contexts. Besides, the Church would have existed in Greece, where these deities were borrowed from, for a thousand years already."

"Cultural appropriation is low-hanging fruit, Mr. Donovan. Do you have the citation for that reference, Ms. Belladonna?" Professor Maretti asked. "Maybe the rest of the class would benefit from some extra reading as well." A murmur of disapproval passed through the class and I shrank just a little in size. "Hey," he continued. "She's a first semester, first year student. Don't be mad she found information you didn't. Be embarrassed you didn't find it yourselves and do better. Ms. Belladonna; meet me in my office after class."

I kept fairly quiet for the last few minutes of class, my mind cycling between the pride of winning the argument and the embarrassment of apparently trying too hard. I had those moments in high school, too, where I acted outside of my age in the upward direction and drew fire from friends and acquaintances. "Act your age," was something you expected parents to say to a child being willfully immature, not your supposed peers to cry when you out smarted them.

I went to Professor Maretti's office (how weird it was to think of him with that name) and waited quietly after class while he chatted briefly with another student in the hall. The secretary left at 5:00 PM, and the remaining offices sat empty. He came in early and stayed late, apparently. I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk, feeling somehow as a naughty child called to the principal's office for saying a bad word or flinging mashed potatoes at lunch. When he came in and shut the door, I expected to be reprimanded for not knowing my place in class. These were upperclassmen and grad students, as I'd been told a hundred times already. Donovan was working on his graduate thesis -- albeit not in Medieval literature. I had spoken out of turn, and I was certain to be punished for doing so.