The New Principal Ch. 06

With regret, I decided not to go back to the grocery store where Melanie worked. And that sucked for a lot of reasons. Of course, it sucked because I wasn't getting sucked. She was, by her own acclaim, one of the best cocksuckers around, and I would certainly agree to that. It also sucked because that was the grocery where the poor folk shopped. They had past-due-date bread and the bruised fruit and vegetables that I could actually afford. Now I had to go to the expensive market, and I really couldn't afford it.

But I really couldn't afford to go back to Melanie's store either. It was becoming very clear that my self-control wasn't strong enough, and I couldn't control whatever this trick was in my head. I mean, Melanie was hot to trot and seemed down from the get go, but she basically just threw me around and used me. Not that I minded, but there were so many ways that could have gone wrong. Anyone could have walked in on us, and she would have lost her job and I'd probably be drummed out of another town and job.

Well, I didn't have to worry too much about the job anymore. It became clear very quickly that they were never going to get the budget to hire me on full time. At best, they were only able to give me barely enough hours to keep a roof over my head and frozen burritos in my belly. More likely was that they would slowly start reducing my hours before eventually letting me go in one of their budget cuts. I needed to find a big change.

One night, only a few days after the grocery blowjob, I was sitting at my table on the only chair in the apartment, in front of my laptop, trying to make a budget work for the next week. No matter how I shuffled things around, it just wasn't going to add up. I needed to shift something major around. As I cracked open a crappy no-brand beer, the last of a six pack I bought in a hallucinatory fit of optimism, I thought over my options.

Option number one: I could get another job. This wasn't realistic. I had talked to folks at a local temp agency and they suggested I check back in a month or two. I certainly wasn't going to last a month or two without some new income. The only hiring signs I saw around town were at Melanie's grocery, not a healthy option there, and at a topless cocktail club on the outskirts of town, and I was pretty sure I didn't have the qualifications for that job.

Option number two: I've got a second or third cousin that lives not too far away. He's doing great, got the whole wife and two kids, suburban house, corporate job thing going on. Dude has a retirement plan and healthcare with dental. To be honest, I don't know him too well, but we had gotten back in touch over the past year. We seemed to hit it off okay. He mentioned that he'd love to have me visit him for a week or two. So, I could go there, he seemed like a great guy, but I really didn't want to bring my living dumpster fire into his white picket fence world if I had any other options. I'm sure that would end in disaster.

Option three: I could lean into this magic hoodoo thing and try to gigolo my way through life. I could go back to Melanie first. She didn't have money, but maybe I could crash on her couch or something until I could trap some woman with a heavy bank account. Just thinking about that depressed me. Had I already sunk so low. I mean, it wasn't selling kidnapped kids on the black market, but it would be really hard to justify in any way as 'good.' I don't claim to be a saint, but I do want to be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning and not hate what I see there.

Option three and a half: There was Tess. I know I had promised and signed away that I would never contact her again, but she wasn't really connected with the school, and there's no reason she would tell anyone. She was also in no worries at all financially. She didn't owe me anything, but maybe I could get a little loan from her to tide me over until the fall hiring season? She would want to see me though, and that would be a problem. It would be really hard to go back there and not be seen by someone who knows me. Maybe I could convince her to paypal me the money? No, she would want to see me. That would be a lot of fun, but I might never get away. I might end up her boytoy til the end of my days. Would that be so bad?

I sat there at my table, the beer empty long ago. My phone was face up and the contacts app was open. Underneath the name "Tess" was her avatar, a photo of her ruby-red puckering lips, and the icon: "Call."

I stared at the phone and cursed at myself.

Then there was a ding from my email.

I pulled it up and squinted my eyes in confusion. What the hell was this?

TO: Ben Lee

FROM: Kimberly Adams, Bright Hall School

Dear Mr. Lee

I am Kimberly Adams, writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Bright Hall School. We are currently running a search to replace our principal, and were given your name by a trusted source who said you would be a good fit. We are looking for an innovative, proactive educator to take charge of our school. Please review the material below and, if you are interested, reply immediately to this address with your CV and a statement of pedagogical and leadership philosophy. The Board has made an exceptional authorization for an expedited search, so we will be moving very quickly. We expect to hold the last of our interviews online by tomorrow and make our offer immediately following that.

Thank you for your time,

Kimberly Adams,

Administrative Assistant

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Bright Hall School

What the hell was this? A 'trusted source?' I can't think of anyone who would recommend me for an upper administration job, much less a principal slot. My last school said they wouldn't give me a recommendation, so it couldn't be them, and no one else really knew me professionally. But again, I was a history teacher, not a principal. I mean, I could do admin, but it wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse.

What kind of school was this anyway? There was some advertising copy below the closing.

The Bright Hall College Prep School is located in the town of Bright Hall on a beautiful, remote island in the Pacific Northwest. In the tradition of scholarship removed from the corruption and distraction of large cities, our location is deliberately remote, so that we can provide the quiet and piece of mind that promotes outstanding academic and personal success. This location is key to our identity and to our mission in training outstanding, independent men and women.

Our academic mission is as unique as our location. We provide a combination of the traditional boarding school experience with a post-secondary core of coursework, designed specifically for students who choose not to go to college or university after high school. While our classes are transferable, and most of our students do go on to great academic success at colleges and universities around the nation, we like to think that the methods, content, and personal care students receive at Bright Hall are far superior to what students often have to suffer through at regular schools, with their packed classes, uninterested professors, and destructive social environments.

Despite our distance from large cities, there is no reason to be concerned about leaving your children in our hands. Our people are first rate, from the principal and Board of Directors down to each individual teacher and staff member. The campus has all the state-of-the-art facilities you might find at any top-ranked university including cozy dorms, an excellent dining hall, science labs, and Olympic-standard athletics equipment.

The Town of Bright Hall and the surrounding area are themselves excellent reasons to attend. It is a small community is built on the foundations of our school, the small hospital, and the tourists that come to enjoy the lovely mountain trails, the numerous hot springs, the pristine white-sand beach and the shopping district, including a vibrant arts community.

The email went on with the rest of an exhaustive description of the school designed to entice parents to ship off their kids. It seemed like a pretty swank place. It was very small, only a couple hundred students total and only a handful of faculty. A quick search online led only to a fairly out-of-date webpage, and it was hard to tell much more. They had a Wikipedia page, but aside from a bit of history about being founded in the 1800s by some family with lumber money, it was nearly empty.

I spent the next couple of hours hunting down all the information I could about the school. It was legitimate and had all the certifications, but something about it didn't seem right. Maybe it was because it was simply so different. It wasn't a college, but only accepted high school graduates eighteen years old or older. I tried to find photos and more contemporary information. There were some few students with social media accounts, but they were mainly just about personal stuff, and not much about the college. There used to be a local newspaper, but it stopped printing years ago and none of the back issues were online.

I was kind of stumped. I was going to apply, of course. In earlier moments of optimism, I had polished up all my paperwork, all it needed was a quick edit to align details to the opening. So it wouldn't be a lot of effort, but something about the whole situation just seemed a bit off. From the 'trusted source' to the remoteness and unconventional nature of the school, to the kind of manic speed that they seemed to be running the search with. But, hey, I thought, as I turned my phone face-down and got to work on the application, I didn't have a lot of other options.

***

When I woke up the next morning, there was already a reply in my inbox.

TO: Ben Lee

FROM: Kimberly Adams, Bright Hall School

Dear Mr. Lee,

Thank you for the timely reply and your application materials. The Board has reviewed them and authorized an interview for the position of Principal of Bright Hall. As mentioned in our previous email, we are moving quickly on this hire, and so if you are still interested, we would like to ask if you are available for video interview today at 2pm PST. If so, reply immediately to this email, and we will be in touch with the particulars.

The interview will cover your background, but we are mainly interested in your ideas for education innovation and what initiatives you might consider putting in place if you were to be selected as Principal.

Sincerely,

Kimberly Adams,

Administrative Assistant

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Bright Hall School

Well, they weren't joking about the speed of the search. I replied with all the enthusiasm that you are supposed to have when applying for a job, but I still had reservations. Again, they were running the hiring very quickly. Probably it was an emergency. Why did the last president leave? They must have left unexpectedly. That's a big red flag. Things were bad enough to drive someone away early.

Then there was this talk of innovation and new initiatives. That might be just standard talking points, but with the unease I felt in my gut, it sounded like things weren't going well there at Bright Hall if they were looking for a dramatic new direction. Finances? Toxic management? Keeping staff or faculty? And there was the crappy website they had. Perhaps they hadn't moved forward with the times. There were lots of red flags waving around in my mind.

I suppose I'd find out some of the answers soon enough. This was still by far the best option I had going. Even if it was a total shit show, I would have a steady check for a while. I could get myself settled and look for the next opportunity. And hey, maybe it was a great place and I was letting the gloom of my current situation cloud my judgement. It could happen.

But first I needed to see if I could put my old interview suit into shape well enough to pass a video interview.

So it came, that it was nearly two o'clock and I was sitting in front of my laptop at the table wearing my one clean white oxford, a nice basic blue tie that an ex-girlfriend had given me, and my suit jacket. My suit pants didn't fit great, so I just wore shorts. The camera on my old beat up laptop didn't have a wide lens, so the most it would frame was my head and down to about nipple-high on my chest. So, shorts would be fine.

I was going over the talking points I had sketched out for the interview when there was a knock at the door.

Ah, crap. This was not the time for the god brigade or the election folks.

I hopped up, ran over, and opened the door.

"I'm sorry, this really isn't the best time... Melenie?"

"Hey there, Mister Peanut Butter Man! Aren't you looking slick? Haven't seen you at the store. Have you been trying to give me the slip?"

She stood there with a hand on her hip and a lascivious grin on her lips.

"Uh. Melanie?"

"Such a smooth talker! I actually saw you over at the pricey grocery store. I can only assume that you won the lotto or something. Or maybe you're getting you BJs from that old hippy dude with the beard who runs the register over there. I doubt he's as good as I am though. Does his beard tickle?"

"Melanie, it's good to see you, but I've got an interview in just a couple of seconds and I don't have time..."

She cut me off and slid into the room. "Oh, that's why you're all gussied up for. The shorts are a real classy touch."

"Seriously, Melanie, I don't have time to screw around. If I don't get this job, I'm totally fucked."

"So, based on what I've seen of your skillset, it's got to be an audition for a porno, right? I don't know. You're hung well enough, but you didn't last so long. Maybe I could help you out? Give a reference?"

I was about to try to grab hold of her and push her toward the door when the video conference program started ringing as the call came in.

"Fuck! Get out of here, please!" I begged her as I sat down and readjusted the camera. Within the frame, I looked more-or-less put together, despite all the chaos outside it. I cringed as I heard Melanie shut the door, but without scooting her ass out of it.

I clicked on the 'answer' icon, and I heard some rustling around, but only saw a black screen, as the image of me from my camera shrunk to a little icon at the corner of the monitor.

"Hello?" I tried to wave my hands at Melanie to get her to leave, but she just smiled back at me and paced around the room inspecting all the mess.

A few different voices came through the computer. They were talking to each other and trying to talk to me.

"Mr. Lee? Can you hear us? I don't think he can hear us."

"Hello, yes, I can hear you." But they clearly couldn't hear me.

"Well, he can't be as bad as the last one, right?"

"How many more do we have?"

"I'm not sure this is going to work. We're not going to get anyone to come."

"Wait! I think I've got it now. Mr. Lee, can you hear us now? Can you see us?"

The black screen suddenly flashed and went white with overexposure. Then their camera focused in on.

Boobs?

I could see an incredible vast stretch of cleavage and nothing more. Someone was leaning over the camera trying to fix the cables behind their monitor.

"Yes, hello? I can... see you now." I tried to keep a professional tone while enjoying the view.

"Ah, excellent. Hello, Mr. Lee. We can see you now as well."

The boobs quickly disappeared, and the image was now that of a conference table. The resolution was frankly awful. I could see that there were four, or maybe even five people around the table, but I could make much else out. The one who just sat down must be Ms. Boobs. Based on what I could make out, she must also have an incredible head of long, brilliantly red hair. But as for the rest, I couldn't even tell which person was talking.

"Thank you for the opportunity to interview with you today."

"And thank you for replying and agreeing to talk with us so quickly. I know this moving very quickly, but we would like to have the new principal on board as soon as possible. In any case, let's begin."

The voice introduced herself as Kimberly Adams, the administrative assistant who had been emailing me. She seemed to have much more authority than I expected for her position though because she was running the whole interview. She introduced the rest of the people in the room as a part of the Board of Directors, but because I couldn't put faces to the names, I forgot them all almost immediately.

We started by going over my history and experience. They seemed pleased with my qualifications. I tried to gloss over the particulars about my previous school, and, to my relief, they didn't push.

"The main thing that we would like to get to know, Mr. Lee, is what kind of principal you would be. What sort of plans would you put in place for Bright Hall?

"Well, I'll be totally frank with you. I only know the information you sent me and what I was able to find out online. So, I can't say I know the specific needs of the school. But I will say, I think you've got a really nice niche there. My first thought would be to aim for exclusivity. Go hard for the wealthy families who want the image of a traditional experience. Play up the unique opportunity. No other school can supply what you have. That would give cachet to the small enrollment. We could need to revamp the internet presence and rebrand, but if we could do that, we might even be able to put a premium on tuition. That's just the first thought for an opportunity."

A voice I hadn't heard speak before broke in. "That sounds nice, but surely that would mean an expensive investment in the school."

Aha! So that's one piece of information. They were tight on money.

"Naturally there would need to be a series of investments. I assume some money could be found, but of course, fund-raising would be key to my...whatthefuck?!"

I hope that last bit was muttered under my breath, but they probably still heard it. The reason I blurted that out was because, while I was focused entirely on the pixelated blobs on my laptop screen, Melanie had snuck under the table and was pulling down the fly on my shorts.

I tried to bat her away, slapping at her hands, but she was tenacious, and I was worrying that her giggles, which were getting louder and louder, would be picked up by the mic. I glanced frantically down to the image of myself. I still looked okay, except the way I was waving my hands around down at my lap made it look like I was making a rude gesture. And it was worse because you could only see my shoulders. So, I gave up.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Lee. I think our audio cut out there. Could you repeat that?"

I went on with my half-baked ideas for how to rebrand and renovate a small school in the middle of nowhere. It all came down to money. Doesn't it always?

"For our last question, we understand that you haven't held an upper administrative position. How would you be able to handle such a new set of obligations?"

"Well, firstly, mnahhh..." Zipper down now, and she was massaging my cock through my underwear. "I think the most important thing would be to rely on the... What you might call the experts on the gruu... ahem. Experts on the ground. The best administrators I've dealt with always worked very closely with..." I sighed out long as Melanie had finally pulled me out from my underwear. I squirmed a bit and she was able to slide my shorts and underwear down. There I sat, shorts and underwear around my ankles, trying to look professional from the waist up.