Professor Winderly's Assignment Ch. 01

Part one. The topping out ceremony

The crane swung the five-foot evergreen to the top of the steel building frame. Ten stories from the ground, the ironworkers walked catlike along the girders guiding the tree to the place they had prepared for it. On the ground their coworkers had taken the netting off the fresh spruce and hooked the cables and sling around it. On a hand-swirling signal, the crane pulled the fragrant spruce skyward describing an spiral as the hoist rose and spun in one motion. Atop the building when the ironworkers fixed the base of the tree in a box where it was balanced on the uppermost beam. The men then pulled at the branches and arranged them so none were bent or crossed. Without a look down, the burly men stepped back and admired the tree. One of the men seemed to be making a speech because all the workers stood silently listening. When he was done he pulled a bottle of champagne from his canvas rigger's bag and opened it spilling the foaming jet onto the root ball.

The angle seen from the classroom window in the next building over made it look like he had just ejaculated on to the tree. Then he passed the bottle around and each man to take a swig. Soon, the ceremony was over and men began making their way to the elevator; their shift and their work was done.

"Okay, class let's get back to work." Professor Winderly said flatly. "We've all seen the vestige of homoerotic seed rites and can go back to the discussion of blade knapping."

The students shuffled to their seats and opened their laptops to the slides Professor Winderly had uploaded to the class site. Her senior seminar on ancient peoples and customs was oversubscribed every semester. Even non-Anthropology majors flocked to the class "where you got to make cool stuff." Dee Winderly thought the best way to really understand a subject was to do something with it. Memorizing and multiple-choice tests annoyed her because the facts just vanished when the test was over. "If I can get the students to solve problems like primitive people had to, they will understand better what life was like back then," she reasoned.

Dr. Winderly knew that modern skills were slack and, left alone, her students could not make a fire, tie a knot, navigate by the stars, or even find enough food to eat. "For all our advancement," she thought, "we are the primitive ones, dependent on someone or something else to provide for us."

So in her classes students used an atlatl to fling a spear far and accurately. They knapped flint for knives and arrows and secured them with sinews or tree roots. They made fire bows and scorched tinder until it burst into flames. It wasn't until the last half of the semester that she brought out the textbooks. And by then the students absorbed the information like sponges.

The time went quickly and she only knew it was the end of class when she heard the scraping of chairs and closing of laptops. She looked up at her class and then at the clock. "Oh sorry. Okay next class we are going to use those knives to slice meat for cooking."

The students trickled out until only Jim Doumay, her G.A., was left. He was gathering the artifacts and placing them in their respective boxes. Professor Winderly looked over her black glasses and followed his movements around the room. She liked him and being only four years older than him, she wondered if he would be suitable for, well anything. He was handsome enough—a sprinter in college with strong legs, cut abs, and firm arms. His brown hair was thick and straight so it kept falling in his eyes and had to be brushed away; a habit he used to his advantage when on a date. It made him look innocent. That's how Dr. Winderly reacted as well. But she was the professor and he was her student, so she kept her observations strictly clinical lest their small difference in age make familiarity a problem.

"Well?" she asked. Jim jumped at the interruption of the silent classroom.

"Almost done, Dr. Winderly."

"That's not what I meant, Dummy. You know what I am waiting for," she intoned in her best authoritative voice.

"Yeah, I do, Doc. And I got nothing. I'm sorry. Every time I think I have an idea for my thesis, I find out that the topic has been done over and over. I know. I have to come up with something or I'll be one of those ABDs (All But Dissertation) who seem to lurk around campus."

In the two years they had worked together she always called him Dummy, not by his first name. Dummy is what his friends had called him making fun of his French-sounding. She did so at times in a teasing way but at other times in a provocative way. It irked him a little. So, he always called her Doc, because it irked her a little. She was his dissertation advisor and he was running out of time to complete it. He should have had his committee formed, a draft proposal done be, and well on his way to collecting evidence. Instead, he was taking more classes and spending time in Winderly's lab.

Dee Winderly shook her head in frustration. So many times the same story. She had tried arguing, encouraging, leaving him alone, dropping hints, sending him articles. She even invited him to home and cooked him a diner hoping the relaxed atmosphere would help him talk about his ideas. He just could not commit. He had no courage to strike out on his own. He played it safe with all his thesis ideas and the result was he never got moving.

She began to think he couldn't get moving because it meant he had not failed. If you never begin, you can always say, "Oh, I'm still working on my dissertation."

Jim finished picking up the last of the blades and set the box on the desk next to her. He was about to sit when Dr. Winderly stood to go. She didn't have time for another round of "What am I going to do?"

"Okay, see you on Thursday. We'll break out the spear rods and show them how to mount the blades. See you." Dee walked toward the door.

"Homoerotic seed rites?" Jim said the words to himself but loud enough for her to hear. "Those construction guys were doing something ancient? I'm missing something."

Dr. Winderly turned on her heel and cocked her head. "What's there to miss? You know what that's all about. Hell even the bottle of champagne is a surrogate for ejaculation. Think, Dummy! Druids? Fertility rites? Duh!"

"I am thinking, but I don't recall those as cultures of seed rites. Seed rites, you said. Right? Well how does that make its way to a tree on a building?"

Dr. Winderly put her books down on a chair nearby and sat down. "Sit, Dummy," pulling another chair in front her.

"You're so safe and so closed you can't see what's right in front of you. Sex! Dummy. It's about the power of sex. What did it look like when that fat foreman shot the champagne at that tree? It looked like he had this big fat cock in his hand and had just fired off a huge load of semen. Use your imagination a little...if you have one." She was a little surprised at her frankness but she was exasperated at his safe and closed demeanor. She didn't have the patience for it any more. If she was going to work with him, she had to go balls to the wall.

Jim blinked several times and tried to recall the scene. Well, it did look sorta like that and a two of the students snickered. From their angle and distance that is what it looked like to them. Then he sat bolt upright as a thought crossed his mind. Winderly knew what was next.

"Yes?"

"Then he passed the bottle around to the rest of the crew...." His words hung there as the realization came over him. "Are you saying that they were acting out...um...something else when they took a swig from the bottle?"

"I'm not saying it. You said it. Now tell me why that makes perfect sense." It was her favorite command in class to make her students start to assemble an argument. "And I want the real words. Big boy pants, Dummy."

Jim didn't realize what was going on. His professor had him in her hand and was going to dominate him until he could stand on his own with her. He was pulling at the thread of an idea and she wanted him to create the whole tapestry.

He took a deep breath and began. "Okay. We know that each culture imbues artifacts with power. They ascribe power to them and with repetition they believe in that power. Freud—I think it was Freud—showed that artifacts used sexual elements to convey deep meaning. He collected native art for his office so he could be reminded of that power as he saw his patients."

Dr. Winderly, leaned in tilting her head slightly to hear him better and to follow his argument. "Go on. What is it about erotic artifacts that help us get to the heart of the matter so quickly?"

"Well," Jim was cautious, "They don't lie. They are literally the naked truth."

"Keep coming." She urged him on with a smile and thought to herself, "Yeah, I'd like to see him keep cumming. From what I have seen of Boy Scout here, he shoots dust, if he shoots at all."

"Uh, we tend to overanalyze objects rather than let them speak to us at a visceral level. It's what you've been saying all along. This is the whole point. We can't understand people unless we live and think as they do. I think I see something now."

Winderly waited, leaning forward closer to him. Her nondescript heavy cotton blouse was open enough for Jim to see the top of her bra, if he dared look. Instead, he looked into her gray eyes, mesmerized by the thought dawning on him.

"So, the rituals are ways for us to have genuine experiences, not intellectual ones. And because they are rituals, people do them without shame because that is part of the accepted culture. So...so...to be an ironworker you enter a culture and take part in its rituals, never thinking about the meaning of the acts you are doing. The tree topping ceremony is a closed ritual performed far above and away from others. That makes it both safe and exclusive."

Winderly rolled her eyes. "Yes, Dummy. It's their private ritual. So what do we know about men's homoerotic rituals? "

"Yeah, I know. Chest bumps, butt slaps. They are all safe ways to touch another man."

Winderly pushed him a little further. "And the bottle?"

"Oh man! Are you saying that is a culturally safe way of..." He stopped at the thought, but she would not let him.

"Big boy pants, dammit. Say the right words to me. What does is that goddammed bottle, Dummy?" She was in his face. He could smell her perfume. She clamped onto his thighs with her fingernails.

"It's a fucking penis! Those guys are sucking on a penis! It's a cocksucking ritual."

"And!" She demanded he fill out his argument.

He stared into her eyes. He was scared for some reason. Did he not want to admit what he felt when he saw them pass the bottle? Did he actually feel something at all?

She slapped his thigh to get him to talk. "AND? Use the words, Dummy!"

"And they are drinking his semen. They're sucking a cock and swallowing the sperm. And that is what makes it a seed ritual. Oh, shit I have been so stupid. It's right there in front of me and I couldn't see it. I feel so stupid."

She didn't let him feel sorry for himself. "Big boy pants, dammit! If you retreat now, you may as well buy diapers and get the fuck out of my laboratory." She surprised herself with that f-bomb, but it seemed the right thing to say. They had crossed a line in their relationship where politeness was going to be exchanged for truthfulness.

Jim slumped in his chair. Her hands were still on his thighs. She looked at his crotch and by god there was a lump. He was feeling something after all, she thought.

Jim suddenly looked at his professor differently. She still leaned toward him. After three years of classes and two years as her G.A, had he just now noticed her? She was a nice looking woman he thought, but she was his teacher, even if she was his sister's age. Her hair, chestnut from days in the sun doing fieldwork framed a tanned and attractive face. Her gray eyes were intense but they were changing toward a tender look; her pupils opened and her brows relaxed. He stole a glance down at her blouse and saw the white lace of her bra. He wondered what it covered.

Dee Winderly was leaning on her student's legs. Her weight propped up by locked arms, hands on his thighs. She realized it was a position she could not explain, were a student or colleague to enter the room, but she did not move. She relaxed her shoulders and let the collar of her cotton blouse fall open some more. She was opening herself to her student as he had finally opened himself to her.

Then she took her right hand and cupped his jaw so she could command his attention. Her eyes drilled into his. She moved close enough to kiss him and whispered, "You dummy. Why has it taken so long for you to open up? You have all the makings of a wonderful anthropologist. You just keep it bottled up inside.

She lifted her other hand and placed it on his chest. His heart was racing. "You have to use this more and," now poking his head with her right forefinger, "this less."

Jim swooned. He thought she was going to kiss him and he was closing his eyes to accept it. She was in control of him and he wanted her to be. "Tell me what you want me to do, Doctor Winderly. I won't fight you any more." The statement was both relief and subjugation.

Winderly dropped her head and exhaled. The lump in his pants was larger now. She rested her hands on his thighs again and kept her head down. As she imagined the cock that was swelling in front of her she spoke softly to him.

"Dummy, I want you to suck seed, I mean succeed." She snickered at the slip but did not look up. He snickered too.

"Let's start with champagne first, okay? The other might be something I have to build up to." He pressed his luck with that statement. It was new territory, unsafe at any speed. But the intimacy of the heated exchange about the meaning of the tree-topping ritual broke through a barrier between them. He could take a chance with her. He would let her lead him anywhere she wanted him to go.

She looked back at him now. His brown hair was in his handsome face. She swept it back from his eyes and smiled. "Okay, champagne first." Her hand rested on his shoulder now. Her heart was racing. Her nipples were getting hard.

They sat there in tableau for a minute, neither wanting to move, both wanting to move toward each other. Finally, he broke the silence. "I think I know what I can study for my thesis." He started to say it in academic language "Maybe something on male rituals...?" He stopped himself "Big boy pants, Dummy."

Trying to muster the courage to say impolite things to his teacher, he dove in. "I'm going to study how men use their cocks and cum as part of their cultural experience. So, will you help me, Doc?"

"Yes, Dummy, I'd love to help you. We make a good team. It will be...We have to take some chances with each other. It's a risky subject and the power of the subject could end up hurting us. But I am certainly willing to supervise this investigation." She noticed her own hiding behind formal language. "Oh hell, Dee, big girl pants. 'Cocks and cum,' what more could a girl ask for?"

"We don't have a lot of time to waste on this. So, we are going to do a boot camp of erotic artifacts. Two reasons. First, you have to loosen up and get comfortable thinking and speaking about erotic activity. All those safe words make you sound like a child. Second, it's the artifacts that convey the truth. The "naked truth" as you called it. In fact, that was a nice phrase; maybe a title of an article some day.

"I have some photos and artifacts for you to look at," she said. "That's where we start. They are at my house because I couldn't take a chance on something happening to them here in the department. Come over tomorrow. You remember where? I'll post a sign saying I have to cancel office hours. That will give us time to look at them and figure out where we are going from here."

Jim didn't want to leave. His cock was beginning to ache, though, and he was afraid he was seeping pre-cum and soaking his pants. He was, and she noticed, to her delight. She sat back and shook her shoulders to adjust her blouse. Her nipples were taut against her bra, transmitting their excitement through layers of material. She didn't really care if he noticed. He did, to his delight.

Dr. Winderly broke the moment when she reached over to get her textbooks. As she did, she turned slightly away and stood up. This gave Jim a view he did not see often: her cute ass. Her jeans were never tight-fitting. That was no good in the field. But for the first time, he could plainly see she had a great ass. She had busted his balls so often by calling him Dummy that he got immune to her poking him. Because of her position on the faculty and the power she had over him, he just submitted to her jabs. But now he saw her differently and he wanted her to poke him, to control him. She was turning him on even as she was instructing him in his research.

Dr. Winderly stepped to the door and looked over her shoulder at Jim. "See you tomorrow. Office hours. My house."

"Yes. Okay. Sure." He tried to think of something more articulate but failed. She walked down the hallway and turned a corner to her office. Once inside, she dropped the books on her desk and groaned. She grabbed her belly. Her whole body was on fire. "What is going on with me? It's Dummy for god's sake. I cannot afford getting turned on by my student?" But she was.

"Maybe it's because of my period. I'm always more emotional." That had to be it. It couldn't be Dummy; it was just a coincidence. Her body was reacting nonetheless. She dropped in her chair and absently rubbed her crotch through her jeans. She tried to relax and get him out of her head, but the more she rubbed herself, the more he seemed to invade.

She looked to see if the lock was thrown on her office door. She had not turned on the light. It was only 5:30pm. The cleaning crew wouldn't make their rounds until after evening classes. She slid her hand into her pants. She enjoyed the feeling of her full bush of curly pubic hair beneath the satin of her panties.

Dee massaged her pussy for a bit without opening her jeans. She tucked her stomach in and made room for her hand. It was not working. "Oh, what the hell. I may as well get this over with so I can concentrate later," she sighed. She caught a husky fragrance in the air. She was beginning to cramp.

She unfastened the metal button on her jeans and scooted in her chair so that she could pull them down. With her pants midway to her knee, Dee felt the coolness of her office chair on the backs of her thighs. She slumped in the chair so she could spread her legs a bit and started to rub her pussy again. She had to pull her pants below her knee to get her legs far enough apart to give her complete access to her pussy.

It wasn't long before she had her hand under the panties as well. When she spread her lips, she felt the tampon string and plucked it out of the way. That allowed her to separate her swelling lips and find her clitoris. She pulled her hand back quickly to lick it and give herself some lubrication. As she did, Dee noticed the strong scent she was producing. "Pheromones!" She giggled, "It's the gift that keeps 'em cumming." She didn't have a partner at that time but was pleased to know that she had a sex scent of her own. It would be the thing that attracted a man...or a woman to her bed.

Dee let out a ragged breath trying to refrain from sighing lest she be heard in the hallway. Her lips were getting thicker and she found the bud of her pleasure easily. Working her fingertips around the head of her clitoris, Dee fell a sharp thrill run up her body. She rubbed two fingers along the outside of her soft pussy lips and then up between them to her clit again. This was her routine when she masturbated during her period. She wanted so much to dive her fingers into her burning pussy. The tampon made that awkward and she did not want to remove it there in her office. Too personal for the cleaning crew to find.