Remedial Trig

The air in the double-wide was always thick with dust. The afternoon sun would catch the swirling eddies in a glittering show that could mesmerize an easily distracted student like me. It was Mrs. Tindall's chalk-dust, mostly, detonated in a soft cloud at the start of each class when she erased her Greek-alphabet soup from the preceding period. It didn't help that the school janitors rarely made it out to the trailers more than once a month, allowing a substantial accumulation of atomized higher mathematics to settle on all horizontal surfaces.

"A few more years of this and I'll have a worker's comp claim," Mrs. Tindall liked to say, coughing dramatically, "assuming I live that long. God forbid they'd let the principal's office go more than a day without cleaning. Or the locker rooms, for that matter."

Perhaps it was the remote location of the trailers--separated from the main school building by the staff parking lot--or their proximity to the football field, where she could watch the little princes of the varsity team running their mid-afternoon drills; or perhaps it was the implied ignominy of being banished to a prefabricated and 'temporary' outpost (the trailers had been in place for at least a decade when I passed through high school, and I suspect they're still there today, nearly thirty years on); whatever it was, Mrs. Tindall felt no compunction about airing her opinions of the school system that employed her. I'd seen teachers roll their eyes and twist their faces over the latest innovation from the administrators, but I'd never heard another teacher rail against the status quo with the same gusto Mrs. Tindall summoned.

"Look at them out there," she'd say, gazing at the football team high-stepping and side-stepping across the turf. "The anointed ones. Future gods in their training helmets. Prancing like a third-rate dance troupe. And they get to skip fifth period for it! How does that make you all feel?" She'd turn back to us in the classroom, her face a mask of disgust. "Is that where we place value in our society? Here you all are, academic contenders, consigned to a trailer on the edge of a parking lot to learn 'trivialities' like advanced math. Meanwhile these knuckle-draggers out here, frowning at their untied shoelaces, are convinced their future consists of multi-million-dollar contracts, limousines, and night-clubs. And the real scandal of it is, they might be right! This country used to celebrate intellect and industry, innovation, hard science..."

And on she'd go.

It was entertaining to listen to, and it gave me an opportunity to sit and stare at her without being too obvious about it. As noted, these rants would typically fire up while she stood at the window, prompted by the sight of our privileged athletes. If the weather was fine, the season just right, and if--the god of lechery feeling especially generous that day--Mrs. Tindall was wearing that skirt, I'd be treated to a back-lit silhouette of her thighs and hips, scissoring about their sacred hinge. The definition was not good, but my imagination filled in the details from dog-eared biology textbooks and borrowed pornography.

At that age, every woman was of sexual interest to me, and I mean every woman. High school was a simmering pot of sexual potential, from my classmates (curiously, the least interesting to me) to the faculty, the haughty administrative staff, and the perspiring cafeteria workers. I had a geography teacher, a solid, round woman made from granite and oak, who wore canvas smocks and had a wispy five o'clock shadow. I persistently fantasized about standing on a chair and clogging her throat with my trusty erection in order to arrest the drone of facts about western cattle-ranching practices and California's agricultural water budget. My premise was that she would welcome the distraction from dull routine and be flattered by my attention. One thing would lead to another, of course, and with encouragement from my delighted classmates I would give Ms. X (sorry, I've completely forgotten her name at this point) the climax of her life, culminating in the structural collapse of the desk on which I'd impaled her.

(It was characteristic of my outlook at the time that I thought this scenario had at least a non-zero probability of occurring. I sometimes think adolescence is the last opportunity to sense the truly infinite potential of life, just before the doors start slamming shut.)

Mrs. Tindall, however, was a slightly different proposition, in that she had snagged my attention beyond the mental catalog of potential partners amongst whom I'd randomly shuffle in order to fulfill my masturbatory inclinations. For some reason, Mrs. Tindall had become interesting to me as a woman, as an actual human being.

From this distant vantage, it's clear enough that what set her apart was her willingness to step out of her assigned role as an automaton of the education system, to reveal herself as a free-thinking personality of emotional depth. At the time, though, it was enough for me to register that she was one of the few 'cool' teachers I'd encountered during my slog through the institution. Not that she was a particularly pleasant woman; with her mercurial moods and temper she could be exhausting to deal with, both as a teacher and as a militant dissenter from the system we were all caught up in.

She was slender, not especially pretty--which might have been due to the near-perpetual scowl she wore--and when not scratching on the blackboard, her resting posture nearly always involved folding her arms across her chest in a defensive or protective way. This had the effect of pushing up her small breasts, which I always appreciated, and had the added bonus, when she was wearing a buttoned blouse, of offering the possibility of a glimpse of bra.

She was quick to deploy a sardonic humor which, while refreshing in small doses, could curdle into sarcasm after prolonged exposure. I welcomed her swipes at the injustices of life, which seemed to me reasonable and perceptive, often opening my eyes to the more absurd aspects of our times. But after a while, unrelenting sarcasm becomes indistinguishable from bitterness or sour grapes. Cynicism is a heavy weight to carry around if you don't set it down and take a breather once in a while. In Mrs. Tindall's case it was obvious, even to a sixteen-year-old's coarse sensibilities, that there was an underlying sadness to her world view. Events unknown to me had led her to this place. It reminded me of an aphorism my 10th grade English teacher (Mrs. Rosen; phenomenal ass) had passed along when my class read The Great Gatsby: A cynic is a disappointed idealist. [Not her invention, of course, and the internet now insists this observation be attributed to the comedian George Carlin. I have my doubts he came up with it, either, but in a few short years I'm sure it will become established 'fact' as the internet continues its stealthy re-write of history.]

Anyway, this air of sadness about Mrs. Tindall caused a complicated reaction in me, something like the repulsion between two magnets of the same polarity in close proximity: the same force in nature and strength, alike in every way but unable to occupy the same space. It was an idea I was unable to process fully at the time, mercifully, so I duly ignored it and hoped it would go away.

One afternoon in January, the bright winter sun was angling low through the grubby glass of the trailer's windows. Mrs. Tindall had been pacing the classroom while we worked on a set of trigonometry problems. The carrot she had dangled over us was that completion of the exercise would mean no homework that day, so it was in everyone's interest to be done before the end of the period.

I don't know what your experience was with math, but I had somehow landed myself in the advanced track after middle school, meaning I and my cohort were on an accelerated path that would, presuming all went well for the next three years, result in a senior year full of the joys of A.P. Calculus and A.P. Statistics. It was never suggested that this might not be an appropriate route to take, the assumption being that any 'serious' student would be eager to max out his academic options in the 'serious' subjects.

For my part, I took math as it came, and freshman and junior year were easy, a cinch, requiring no special effort from me. But by sophomore year, math gave me the persistent impression that I had run headfirst into a brick wall. I was dazed, disoriented, inclined to believe I'd somehow slept for an entire academic year and woken up a year behind my peers. Or perhaps they'd been taking classes on the sly during the summer while I'd lolled and fidgeted in my customary vacation stupor. In any case, by sophomore year, advanced-level math was suddenly not only difficult, but impossible for me. Accordingly, I flunked out, or flunked down, to the basic level, where to my pleasant surprise the kids were more fun to be around and didn't have unusual habits like sitting cross-legged in the desk-chair combo units, or yanking hairs from their arms for the duration of fifth period.

But on the day I'm recounting, I was still in junior year, still in breeze-mode, and had sprinted through Mrs. Tindall's assignment in a matter of minutes, leaving me plenty of time to stare at the plastic ceiling of the trailer and, of course, stealthily observe Mrs. Tindall as she prowled the aisles of desks, arms folded, content in a blissful atmosphere of learning and productivity.

She had passed me twice already, while I tapped my teeth with a blue Bic ballpoint and shifted restlessly in my hard chair. She no doubt thought I was struggling with a problem, applying myself with the mental rigor she liked to emphasize as crucial to the analytical mind. "There are no hunches in mathematics," she would say. "If you can't explain to yourself how you arrived at the correct answer, your answer is as good as wrong."

The truth was I was tracking her progress, watching the flex of her calf muscles as she stepped slowly amongst us, the metronomic oscillation of her hips in sync with the click of her heel on the hard floor, the fabric of her skirt lagging with a gentle sway.

On her third pass by me, approaching from the back of the classroom, I sensed her pause for a moment when she drew parallel with me, as though she was about to inquire if I needed help. I froze, not least because I had my left hand in my pocket and was absent-mindedly massaging the head of my semi-erect penis through two layers of cotton. I was filled with sudden dread that I might have been discovered, a dread that soon escalated into terror at the thought of the possible humiliations that might result from it.

Mrs. Tindall didn't say anything, but nor did she continue on her way. She lingered at my side far longer than would have been necessary to make a cursory, over-the-shoulder check on my progress. I held my breath, waiting to see which way the moment would break.

"Having trouble, Freddie?"

I turned my head to look up at her, my cheeks on fire, and it was some relief to see the usual creases of her frown in place, the long-suffering pursed lips, the tightly-folded arms across her ribs. If she intended to bust me for being a depraved public masturbator, she was holding off for now.

"No, ma'am."

"Huh. You've been staring off into space for the last five minutes. I thought you might have been sending up a prayer to Pythagoras."

"I finished already."

"Did you, now? Well that has to be some kind of record, even for you. I hope you didn't skip showing all your work. Higher math isn't multiple choice; there's no credit for lucky guesses."

"I think I got it all."

Let's face it, I knew I'd got it all. Rattling off trig proofs in pre-calc, junior year, was like reciting nursery rhymes. I don't know why--and as I said, the savant-like prowess wasn't to last much longer--but while I was sixteen years old the mathematical universe sang for me like a church choir.

"Hmm. Well, let's just see."

At that age, I was more or less oblivious to the concept of the fields of personal sexual energy; or rather, I should say I lived life in a permanent state of partial sexual arousal, and therefore wasn't yet attuned to the subtle variations in the energy field when it interacted with that of someone else. But as Mrs. Tindall bent forward and drew my worksheet toward her across the desk, it was obvious even to me that something was going on.

I was sitting at a slight skew in my chair, my right elbow on the desk, while I reclined as far as possible within the tubular steel frame that connected chair to desk. This facilitated my left-handed pocket-rocket while the over-all effect continued to be that of a casual, laid-back daydreamer chewing on his pen and staring at the ceiling.

Mrs. Tindall produced a red pen from somewhere (up her sleeve? Behind her ear? How do teachers do that?) and started reviewing my work. Her right hip was adjacent to my left upper arm, though not touching, while the hair on my bare forearm stood on end at the faint brush of her skirt. The crackle of static charge compounded the underlying flow of energy that seemed now to be circulating between us. I could have sworn there was an audible hum, but with the hindsight that comes with maturity I see that the hum--and much else besides--was only in my head.

Nonetheless, the pounding of my heart was real enough as, deep in my sweltering left pocket, I dared to move my left hand a fraction of an inch to re-engage the head of my cock.

Mrs. Tindall gave off an interesting, complicated scent. Most obvious, but only ephemeral, was the tang of chalk-dust; more of a taste than a scent, it was a neutral, occupational association, like sawdust to a carpenter. Underlying it was the innocent floral bouquet of commercial laundry softener: familiar, pleasant, but unattributable to a single living person; rather, it was a generic scent, an olfactory signature of the times--call it alpine lace, or ocean breeze. Beneath all of this, however, was a unique marker of Mrs. Tindall's own making. At the time I had no words for what was circulating in my sinuses, and the only reference I had was the scent-memory of my fingertips earlier that year when Julie Goodluck let me finger her pussy one day in her backyard. Whatever was circulating in the humid air-space, it was intoxicating. My breathing grew shallow and I could feel my face flushed with heat from a fresh surge in blood flow.

The trick now would be to manipulate my cockhead without the movement being apparent to Mrs. Tindall. With the stakes so high, the thought of actually getting away with it only made my excitement grow. I was fully erect by now, my cock straining against the waistband of my shorts, the foreskin almost fully retracted, and my index finger poised just above the base of my fireman's helmet. I gave my frenulum a tentative swipe to gauge the associated movements of the muscles in my arm. As far as I could tell, my upper left arm didn't move, which was a relief because Mrs. Tindall's hip had shifted slightly, and was now in unmistakably direct contact. I wondered if she was as conscious of it as I was.

While I manipulated myself I studied the line of her slender torso along to her shoulders and her lowered head, where the intellectual part of her was engrossed in my mathematical noodlings. She seemed to be taking it slowly, following my working line by line, as though confident she would find a flaw she could seize on as proof my work was slapdash and careless. Let her keep looking. Meanwhile here I was, my head about a foot from her ass, making regular strokes with my forefinger while remaining otherwise completely still in her presence. I'd even stopped waggling my pen against my teeth and lips. The tension of remaining motionless in a quiet classroom--where the loudest sound was muffled throat-clearing or the swish of shuffled paper--made the clandestine thrill of the moment almost too much to bear. I couldn't allow even my breathing to reflect my increased cardio rate.

After about a minute of this I'd hit my stride and was growing optimistic I might be able to pull off a spectacular victory that would go straight into the hall of fame for Surreptitious Jerking-Off Under High-Risk Conditions. Climax was close and approaching rapidly, spurred on by the most minute movements of my fingertip, a far cry from my usual spasmodic contortions when ministering to myself in private. The concentration of effort in such a small area, the constraints of the circumstances, the fear of discovery and public exposure--all in a near-monastic atmosphere of quiet and focus--combined to a single, still dot of awareness, a meditative vanishing point.

Here we go, I thought with rising excitement, as the first involuntary muscle spasm rippled through my belly as though I'd been stuck with an electric cattle-prod. Nothing's gonna stop it now.

Nothing, that is, except for the sudden movement by Mrs. Tindall as she detached her hip from my arm and straightened to full standing position. Which meant it had to stop, and stop immediately.

I don't recall another moment more... suspended than that frozen droplet of time when Mrs. Tindall glanced back to look at me as she turned a page in my worksheet. There was nothing in her expression that told me she was any the wiser about what I was up to, but nor could I be sure at that moment that my vision was functioning correctly. Time was dilating, just as my pending orgasm was stalled in a vestibule between a dark interior and the full glare of daylight. It was as if the projectionist showing the movie of my life had flipped the stop button, but left the projector's lamp burning to show an infinitely long snapshot of this moment on the screen; the drama at its peak but unresolved.

Finally, the movie restarted and the scene was able to play out. Mrs. Tindall looked away again and bent over my desk, propping herself on her left elbow, her chin in her left palm. What was different, however, was that she had shifted her stance, redistributing her weight such that her right thigh was now in full contact with my left forearm, her knee against my left thigh.

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune (W. Shakespeare). If I might paraphrase to fit my more lowly endeavor, there is a moment in a boy's sexual stimulation, as in the slog to the top of a snowy hill with a sled in tow, when the crest is reached there is no turning back. Down the vertiginous slope he must go, ready or not, and damn the consequences.

I resumed my digital stimulation, and at this point it was undeniable that the flexing of the muscles in my forearm was being transmitted to Mrs. Tindall's right thigh. I knew it, and I knew she knew it because she began to bob her knee--ever so slightly--up and down against my thigh. She seemed to be ever more intent on the worksheet in front of her on the desk, and as my vision flickered in and out of focus, just before the familiar momentary blackout, I saw she was scribbling something on the sheet in what seemed a very determined manner.

The flood came, inexorably, and the surging hot flush soaked my waistband and coated my pelvis as though a well-drilling rig had finally struck an ancient aquifer deep below the surface.

After what felt like minutes but could only have been a matter of seconds, Mrs. Tindall said, "Hmmph," and stood up. "A little sloppy, perhaps, but you've grasped the logic." And she moved on up the aisle towards the front of the class without once looking back.

In a stupor, I reached for the worksheet on the desk. She'd made a series of red checkmarks down the right-hand side of the paper, where I'd introduced relevant trigonometric identities to make my case that sine-squared something or other equaled the inverse tangent of some other combination of variables, about which no one but Mrs. Tindall would ever give the slightest damn. There were four or five pages of this, and at the bottom of the final page I noticed she'd written in thickly applied ink, "EXCELLENT," all in capital letters, and she'd underlined the word in even heavier strokes of her pen, not once or twice, but four, five, and six times; deep, red, bold strokes of emphasis, acknowledging my achievement.