April's Fool

This one's a change for me. It's in a different category than my previous work. And it's currently a one-off short story. I see some potential in it for more—either elaboration or continuation—but I haven't decided yet whether I'll do either.

I value your comments and feedback. Circumstances permitting, I'll respond to either—eventually.

—CarlusMagnus

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The Norns had woven the web of my weird, and there could be no escape. She walked into my classroom on the first day of classes in August of 1994. She caught my eye immediately.

I didn't know, then, that my doom had come upon me. I didn't even suspect. It was a first-semester advanced calculus class of about twenty students. I was to be the professor; she was to be one of my students. I was fifty; she was twenty-three. I was a stuffy, pompous, foolish, middle-aged (to be charitable) man; she was a vibrant, unaffected, judicious young woman.

It was her body that attracted me, naturally. (Double meaning fully intended.) I've just admitted to being an old fool, and what could be more foolish than for a mathematics professor of nearly thirty years' experience teaching to allow the physical attributes of one of his female students to influence him?

An academic I am and have always been, but my experience did extend to things outside the ivory tower—including women. I was a mathematician, not a monk. Nor was I a saint—certainly not a saint!

There had been young women when I myself was young and a student, and there had been older women when I myself was older. Some of those women were beautiful; some of them not. Some of them I'd bedded; some of them not. Some of them I'd loved; some of them not. Some of them had loved me; some of them not. The four divisions hadn't been the same, needless to say. Except maybe for the last two. When I was younger, those two had lined up with each other almost perfectly—but the wrong way!

I'd been married to the one exception to that alignment at the beginning of my academic career—back when I was a young Ph.D. Married briefly. Disastrously. Oh, we'd been deeply in love with each other—before that marriage, and during it. And, sad to say—indeed, almost too sad for words—after it. That we loved each other had made our breakup exquisitely painful for us both. In spite of the pain—or maybe because of it—our settlement had been amicable. In fact, I still lived in the house that she and I had bought early in that ill-starred marriage. As part of that settlement, I took sole possession in return for a few years' monthly payments to compensate her for her share of the small equity we'd built in it.

But the only other good thing either of us could say about that divorce was that there were no children whose lives our disaster would blight.

She'd needed more from me than I could supply. I was a young man dedicated to an academic life—a life of doing research in an obscure and esoteric corner of mathematics. Research, essential for earning tenure, requires devotion—even more devotion than a spouse requires. As it turned out, my mathematics didn't leave enough of me for a wife.

There had been other women after the divorce, but there'd been no more love—not on my part, anyway. I had discovered, back when I was a graduate student, that university language departments (particularly, and fittingly, the Romance language departments!) were full of single—and libidinous—women. It was a discovery that had served me well as a young man and continued to serve me after my divorce. The most recent connection had been a couple of years ago with a woman, about my own age, in the French Department.

None of those attachments had lasted for more than a year or so, and they all ended without rancor. In some cases an end to a relationship had probably been a good thing; in others, maybe not. But I'd been burned, and I wasn't going to be burned again. After all, a cat that sits on a hot stove will not do so again. But it won't sit on a cold stove, either.

And then…

And then she walked into my classroom.

I fell in love with her—immediately! Well, I fell in lust with her immediately.

I'm not sure why. Objectively speaking, her appearance wasn't especially striking—she was an average-looking, healthy young woman. Her body had all of the standard female equipment, of course, and it seemed to be in the usual places on a moderately athletic figure. Her clothing wasn't particularly revealing—though it wasn't particularly modest, either. But there was an air about her—something in the way she carried herself that spoke to me, saying I am Femininity!

Falling in lust with a female student had happened to me before. It's something of an occupational hazard. University professors, even of a male-dominated subject like mathematics, encounter quite a few stunningly attractive young women in the normal course of their work. After all, the campus of any university of reasonable size is populated largely by young people—thousands of young people—at least half of whom are women.

Where there are that many young women, it would be surprising if there weren't quite a few very sexy ones. Some of those young women, including some of the sexy ones, come to the offices of male professors and suggest—sometimes subtly, sometimes not—that they are willing to do anything in order to get a good grade. Or, in some cases, just to get a passing grade.

It must be understood that when they say anything, they really mean anything but study.

Why do I call that an occupational hazard? Because there's nothing more hazardous to a professor's occupation than getting caught trading a fuck for a grade—unless it's enjoying the fuck but not delivering the grade.

Sex, like any other worthwhile activity, requires that, in order to be very good at it, one exercise discipline and practice thoughtfully. The young women who want to take the easy route to a grade are precisely the ones who are trying to avoid discipline and practice. That is, they're exactly the ones who're likely to be bum lays. So the odds are that what some of us call quim pro quo (meaning if I, the pro, can stick my quo into your quim, then you'll be happier with your grade) isn't really worth the risk.

I'd understood all of this from the time I'd first started teaching as a graduate student working on my doctoral degree. So I'd managed to resist the temptation to fuck with any students.

But then she walked into my advanced calculus classroom, and I was smitten. She took the center seat in the front row and looked up at me where I sat on the corner of the desk at the front of the room. And she smiled at me.

It seemed a perfectly innocent smile, of the kind we all exchange with each other when we meet someone we've never met before. If there was guile in it, or seduction, I didn't see it. Later—much later—she denied that there had been any of either.

In the daze that resulted, I said something like "Good morning."

Her smile deepened and she returned my greeting: "Good morning, Professor Harrison." Her voice, which, really, was just an unexceptional female voice, resonated with something deep in my groin.

As she spoke and I resonated, the bell in the clock tower just outside the classroom building tolled the beginning of the class hour. Maybe I should have sent to know for whom that bell tolled.

But it was time for the class to begin, so I read the roster aloud, calling off names and trying to form connections between names and faces. After half a dozen names, I came to "Fiore, April."

"Here," she said, simply. My groin resonated again. Now I knew her name. Somehow, I carried on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For the first couple of weeks of class, things went along almost routinely in that advanced calculus course. Almost routinely, that is. Usually, after the first few days of a semester were past, I got to my classes just in the nick of time—if on time at all. This course, I found, was an exception to that rule, because I discovered that I loved watching April walk into the room and take her seat. I wanted to be there in time for that event. Of course, I had to watch everybody walk into the room and take their seats, lest people see how stricken I was with her.

There were several other young women in the class. A few of those women had bodies to die for, and I certainly appreciated watching those bodies walk into the classroom and take seats. But only the thought of watching April's body could bring me into the classroom seven or eight minutes before class started.

Every time she seated herself in my classroom, she granted me another of her engaging smiles and greeted me warmly. Always, too, I was aware of commotion in my pants—not enough to cause embarrassment, but quite enough for me to be aware of it.

I must admit that I was almost disappointed, near the end of the second week of class, when I read the first homework papers from that class. I begin my advanced calculus course with a few weeks of "epsilon-delta arguments" about "continuity" and "limits." (Don't worry about what these technical words mean—there won't be a quiz.) Most students find this material very difficult at first. Many find it very difficult at second, at third, and so on down the line for quite a while. This class was no different in that respect. The notions these arguments involve caused the usual trouble.

April was different. Her work demonstrated that she grasped the ideas well and that she had unusual control of the algebra required. What she'd written was better, overall, than I expected most students to have accomplished with these matters by the end of the semester. Consistently, she presented all of the things needed for complete arguments, even for the most difficult of the problems I'd assigned. She had the necessary insight—extraordinary insight, in fact—and, on that count, these initial efforts easily deserved the A that I gave them.

But she didn't organize her facts into arguments. Reading her work on each problem was a bit like reading a recipe that gives all of the ingredients and explains all of the procedures needed for a dish, but lists those elements in random order—without regard to how one actually prepares the dish. I wrote a note on her paper saying that her observations were astute and complete, but that she needed to organize them. I told her that she couldn't continue to get away without organization.

Still, her paper was, by far, the best in the class and she had earned that A.

Why did this almost disappoint me? Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I'd entertained the fantasy that she would need "help" if she were to pass the course—"help" that I would be happy to supply in a private setting: In a bed, say, with both of us naked! That fantasy hadn't reached the level of my consciousness, but it must have been there and it couldn't have been too far below that level. Well—I was conscious of the bed part and the naked part, but not in the context of "help."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I handed those papers back at the beginning of the next week. A day later, April appeared in my office during my regular office hours.

She wasn't sure what I meant by "organization." She thought she'd presented complete arguments; she had difficulty understanding what I had meant when I had said that she hadn't. She had brought her paper with her, and we went through her work, one problem at a time.

In doing so, we did something that's very common when mathematics students consult with a professor. She sat in a second chair at my right side, and I pulled the leaf above the right-hand column of drawers out of my desk and placed her paper and a blank pad on it—where we could both see what we wrote as we talked about things.

There is absolutely nothing unusual or suspect about this; discussion of mathematics almost requires it—especially in offices like mine, which had no blackboard. It does, however, mean that a wise male professor who is consulting with a female student must leave his office door wide open. That was a practice I had observed conscientiously throughout my career.

Any observer would have said that it was an ordinary student-professor consultation. Our conversation was strictly about the mathematics and how she could arrange her insights to lead a reader through the points she had made in a way that would lead to an inescapable conclusion. I could see that she was beginning to understand what I saw as a problem with her writing.

But there are things that observer would have missed. The first was the resonance her voice again struck in my groin—this time from her position at my side!

The second was her scent—the delicate, female scent of her body that our proximity made inescapable. It whirled in my head through the entire session, bringing me fantasies of the delights that body might hold for me.

I knew that I must not stare at her—especially not at her most interesting parts. But that didn't keep me from stealing glances when I knew that her eyes were on our work. Those glances did not, let us say, discourage my fantasies.

Nevertheless, I controlled myself.

Rigidly.

So to speak.

As we began discussing the last of the problems on the assignment, she leaned forward over the piece of paper we were writing on, and her knee pressed against my thigh! She gave no indication that the contact was anything but accidental—indeed, no indication that she was even aware of it. But that touch intoxicated me almost beyond reason, and it was all I could do to maintain enough of my concentration to make appropriate comments about the thoughts she was expressing. That is, I think that they were appropriate, though I don't recall them—or the thoughts they were responses to—very well.

For the rest of our session, her knee continued to rest against me. Sometimes it pressed gently; other times, it thrust vigorously; on a few occasions it rubbed against me. I was nearly paralyzed with the fear that she would notice the contact, find it inappropriate, and chide me, or herself, or the two of us, for allowing it. Even worse, she might come to think me a lustful pervert—which, of course, I was, but she didn't know that. (Did she?)

At last, we finished our discussion of her paper and what she could've done to improve it. She rose from the chair beside me, and her knee broke its contact with me. She gave no indication that she'd even noticed anything unusual about our conference, but she looked into my eyes and smiled warmly as she thanked me for my time. Although I usually rise politely at the close of such a consultation, I thought better of doing so this time. The embarrassing bulge in my crotch was well hidden by my desk; I thought it best that it remain so! When she had gotten her things together and added the work we'd produced to them, she smiled again and was gone.

I was disappointed when our session ended. Not because nothing—nothing of an overtly sexual nature, that is—had happened; I hadn't expected that with a student as talented as she. I was disappointed that the opportunity to spend time in thoughtful discussion with her was over. Later, when I was no longer spellbound by her physical presence, I reflected on the incident. I was surprised to find that it didn't matter to me that we'd been talking about mathematics; anything would've done. With other students, the subject matter formed the bases of our relationships; with April, it was something else. That something else surely included the sexual attraction she held for me, but I then began to understand—though dimly—that there might be more to it than that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Several weeks passed, and April's work improved. The course material got deeper and harder, but her insights were becoming deeper. They penetrated in ways that continued to impress me. More importantly, the way she organized her thoughts in her writing changed for the better. She was taking big steps toward abandoning chaotic lists of observations in favor of real arguments.

Most of the responsibility for that improvement came from her own efforts. But those efforts included weekly visits to my office, where we discussed ways of writing arguments. We soon had an informal standing appointment—three o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesdays—and our meetings usually lasted for an hour or so. I keenly anticipated those meetings. April's presence invigorated me.

She was an unusual student. I've always been willing—eager, in fact—to discuss mathematics with anyone who will sit still long enough. April was not only willing to sit still; she was eager to learn how to do and how to write mathematics. I think it was about then that I began to think that she might have both the talent and the interest needed to become a real mathematician herself.

In some ways, our weekly conferences proceeded much as our first had. She was always thoroughly prepared, and she always sat at my right, facing the same way I faced, as I pulled the leaf out from my desk and placed a pad of paper on it so that each of us could write out thoughts where both could inspect the results. But our discussions deepened and the topics we investigated grew further afield, as I learned that she very much wanted to pursue avenues that were not an official part of the course she was taking. I found myself actually preparing mathematical explorations to discuss with her.

April's body continued to allure me, too. The appearance of her rounded shapes; their imagined softness; the subtle, natural perfume of her body—all of these things aroused me, and not just figuratively.

By the end of those first few sessions, her knee usually pressed against me as we carried on our discussion. She seemed wholly unaware of the contact, and I did my best not to reveal the transports of delight her touch brought me. As the semester's end approached, that accidental (?) contact grew deeper and broader. By December, three-quarters of the length of her thigh would come to rest against mine well before the end of each meeting.

She seemed completely unaware. Fearing that the touching would end if she became aware of it, I maintained a pretense of ignorant indifference.

Always, when we concluded our business, she looked into my eyes and smiled her warm smile. As the semester progressed, I thought that those looks deepened and the smiles got warmer. But, I guessed, that was my imagination. She was, as I've already said, young, vital, and my student; I was middle-aged, stodgy, and her professor. Nevertheless, I found myself returning her looks more fervently and her smiles in a way that I hoped was warmer.

The semester ended, and April earned an A in the course. From the first assignment, I'd had little doubt that she would, and I was pleased to be able to assign her that grade. I was especially pleased at the improvement I'd seen in how she wrote arguments. There were two or three otherAs in the class, but none as solid as hers. Those other folks had done good work, but they didn't have the same feel for what they were doing that April had.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The month-long winter break between semesters seemed interminable. I did have my research to keep me company—it had been a while since I had published a paper, and before long my department chair would be nagging me. (Not that there was much else that he would, or even could, do about it—I was tenured and effectively immune from any action he could undertake.) I also had my preparation for courses during the coming semester to work on. I'd be offering the second semester of advanced calculus, along with another upper division course—Numerical Analysis I. So I had plenty to do.