What Women Want; What Women Need 03

Editor's note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.

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The series "What Women Want; What Women Need" is reportage, not fiction. It involves more than a dozen persons and spans several decades. This Installment Part 03 deals with two individuals, only one of whom was in an earlier installment.

Caroline is an attractive and very accomplished woman who, at age 30 was beginning her fifth year as an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. A wunderkind who graduated High School at age 15, she breezed through her Undergraduate and Law Degrees at Harvard in six years. At this point she became a Law Clerk to a Judge sitting on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, situated in Cleveland. After two years there, she spent a year as United States Deputy Assistant Solicitor General and then was recruited to teach at the University of Michigan Law School.

An extraordinary accomplishment to join the faculty of a prestige law school -- the U. of M. has been on everybody's "Top Five" list of law schools for the last half-century -- nonetheless, she started in the law school with the least impressive assignment: teaching the mind-numbing course "Real Property" to first-year students.

Arthur, featured in the first two Installments of this series, is a Dominant who himself graduated High School at an early age, having skipped Kindergarten, First Grade and Third Grade. [The somewhat humorous story of how that happened is recounted in Part 05 of this series.] From there Arthur acquired an undergraduate degree at Cornell, and spent two years earning a Master's Degree in Comparative Religions at Princeton Theological Seminary.

This episode begins a few days after the conclusion of Arthur's Paris trip, recounted in Parts 01 and 02.

Caroline:

I really shouldn't be dismayed. I knew from the outset that, as in all fields, I would have to "pay my dues" before I could expect to make an important impact as a law professor. That said, Real Property is the one area of the law that has not changed since the Supreme Court reversed itself in Corrigan v. Buckley, the 1948 decision that reversed earlier precedent and voided racial covenants that run with the land.

Moreover, the study of introductory Real Property is stultifying. I know the subject cold, of course -- it is inarguably the least conceptually-challenging subject in a law school curriculum. But for a group of first-year students, many of whom did not have particularly rigorous courses as an undergraduate, it often presents a challenge. So they hate it, because it is demanding; and I hate it, not because it is a snap, but because of the repetitive boredom. Some days I think that if I have to say the terms or "indefeasible estate" or "fee simple determinable" I'll go nuts.

Still, I teach before a packed lecture hall three days a week, four sections of 100 first-year students each.

I do augment my unstimulating teaching duties with occasional well-paying free-lance research and brief writing for a boutique law firm in Ann Arbor. It provides some variety in my professional life, and allows me to put extra money in the bank.

While serving in the Solicitor General's office in Washington, I met an interesting and attractive man, Irv, who was one of three Assistant White House Counsels. He was a graduate of Yale Law School, and three years older than me. Because I graduated High School so young, I had no boyfriend before going away to school. And then in college I studied extremely hard -- to the exclusion of a serious social life. So I was inexperienced. In fact, Irv was my first lover.

After ten months together we married, and when the Administration changed, I took the teaching job and he joined a top law firm in Detroit. He worked long hours in his job. But not that long: it turns out he was seeking his satisfactions, as they say, outside the bounds of our marriage. He claimed it was "meaningless" -- I'm sure no woman has heard that before -- but his infidelity wasn't trivial to me. In fact, it was a deal-breaker: my divorce came through on the first day of class for the new school year.

The time spent in the Nation's Capital had been exciting: everyone you deal with is important (in reality or at least in their own minds); my work was interesting; D.C. was a center for the arts; the night life was scintillating; and there was a plethora of interesting, available men. Now I find myself trapped for the time being in Ann Arbor, experiencing the mirror opposite: no one particularly important; performing boring work; in a college town where the culture is found at the local Cineplex and the most exciting night life is found in a pizza parlor that features a banjo band. Oh, and I have no man, my marriage ending before I had even experienced a bi-lateral orgasm. Shut up, Caroline, no one cares.

Arthur:

Here I was, new to Ann Arbor, about to embark on an extremely audacious course: enrolling in the Law School and the Medical School, seeking to acquire both J.D. and M.D. degrees in four years. I applied to both schools separately. My acceptance was never in doubt: my LSAT and MCAT scores were both in the 99th Percentile; and in undergraduate and graduate schools, every grade I received was an A or the occasional A+.

Neither school knew that I had applied to the other. And this led to the arduous task of convincing both institutions to allow me to matriculate simultaneously. I met with the Deans of both schools, individually and jointly, and we hammered out an arrangement wherein I would pursue both degrees over four years (including full-time course-load during the Summer). By way of comparison, a law degree normally takes three years (no Summer session) and a medical degree normally four years (also without Summer study).

My friends and family -- and the staffs at both schools into which I was enrolling -- thought I was crazy, and the most favorable odds available from anyone were about two to one that I would fail.

So here I was, first day of class, confident of academic success, with only one concern: getting laid. Here was the problem as I saw it: to secure both medical and law degrees at a leading University over four years was a major challenge. And quite the grind, considering that it came after a six years of undergraduate and graduate study. I was smart enough -- and cocky enough, God knows -- but I had to ensure that I would have my, well, you know, physical needs met.

However, a conventional social life would involve pursuing women who all too often would need tedious maintenance requiring a lot of time and patience I didn't have to give. Bedding a number of women serially would mean going through the whole getting-to-know them process over and over again. Basically, given that I would be working about 12 hours a day, seven days a week, this was a non-starter.

What I needed was a woman who would meet all my needs exclusively and require almost no attention, let alone coddling or even caring, in return. A tall order in this day and age, no? But a necessary one given the academic demands I faced. So I gave it some thought, and before long I acted.

Caroline:

Professor H., one of three other women on the faculty, did not know me well. But we ran into each other in one of the dining halls and she pulled me aside and asked how I was doing, considering. "How are your doing, considering?" was exactly how she worded it.

"Considering what?" I asked in response.

"Well you know, your divorce," she replied.

"Oh, O.K.," I answered. "But, how did you learn I was getting divorced?" I asked.

"Well, you know," she indicated, "from students. They gossip about everything, especially faculty. And I overheard several of them. More than once."

I was only moderately dismayed to hear this. I mean, no one likes to be the subject of gossip, but what they were saying was true and . . . well, better that undisciplined lips should be discussing my marital life than, say, if I were bow-legged or flatulent.

Arthur:

Monday morning, first day of school, in the law school Real Property class, one of the students whispers to another something scurrilous about Professor L. (Caroline), the professor, and her "needing some" now that she was divorced. I queried and found out that she had just been divorced, and that (according to the student grapevine) no replacement for her husband had been acquired. The notion of filling that gap for her was not exactly unappealing: she was one hot babe, and only eight years older than me. The eight-year gap was actually somewhat appealing to me since that would place us both in our sexual primes. (Research has shown that a male's peak sex drive is at age 20 or so, but for a woman age 29.)

Later that morning, I went to the Registrar's Office and requested that Professor L. be designated my course advisor. (Students could request any member of the faculty and were routinely given their choice.) When I went to my box before leaving school at the end of the day, there was a notice of the appointment of Caroline to be my course advisor as requested. It showed her office availability: open hours Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00 -- 4:00, and other hours by appointment.

That night, I breezed through the assigned caselaw reading in Real Property (boring), Civil Procedure (pedestrian), Contracts (interesting), and Criminal Law (fascinating). Then I turned my attention to other, more important, things. And I decided upon an audacious plan. It had only a moderate chance of succeeding, but with only minor detriment in the event of failure compared with a magnificent upside if successful.

Some background: At Princeton I was well-acquainted with Gloria, a graduate teaching student in the Psych Department. (Dirty little secret: at Cornell, as with the other Ivy League schools, 90% of the teaching is performed by teaching assistants and only about 10% by the big-name, rock-star professors.) Gloria and I were close "friends with benefits," a term just having come into use. We didn't apply much significance to the arrangement. We both understood that we were ships passing in the night, and that neither of us would play a role in the other's life after graduation.

Well, Gloria taught hypnotic technique, and I occasionally assisted her with labs she ran with and for her students. I found it fascinating. I had tried out the procedures I had learned from this source, and from my wide reading, for the first time just a few weeks earlier, while in Paris. (See What Women Want; What Women Need Part 02.) That was the first time I had put a woman into a mild quasi-hypnotic state without her knowledge. I reviewed everything, and decided I might as well give it a try sooner rather than later.

Caroline:

It was the second day of class, a Tuesday, and I was in my office in mid-afternoon. It was during the period I had "open hours," so I couldn't leave except for a serious reason. No students had come in to see me; it was too early in the school year. None of the students had had time to get into any kind of a scrape for which they would seek my advice.

There was a knock at the door, and a striking young man entered my tiny office and with permission sat at my desk. After a moment, I identified him as one of my students. I recognized him because of a hideous, multi-colored scar on his left forehead, apparently the result of some serious trauma. Were it not for the scar, he would have been a truly stunning and handsome young man.

Arthur introduced himself, indicated I was his course advisor and said he had just come in to get acquainted.

"Why did you choose me?" I asked, "I'm not one of the big names on the faculty." The Michigan faculty had a great many nationally-recognized legal scholars.

"Well," he responded, "I figured since you teach probably the most mundane course in the law school you could help keep me grounded."

"You think Real Property is mundane," I asked.

"Well, it is inarguably humdrum, unexciting," he continued. "Nothing requiring deep legal analysis like Conflict of Laws. Now that must be among the most conceptual courses offered. Don't you agree?"

I laughed, and concurred. I was struck by this student's affability and knowledge of our curriculum.

When he told me he was also a medical student, I was floored. "How can you study both at the same time?" I asked.

Arthur:

"Well," I told her, "I am capable of serious, sustained hard work. And, I am -- you should pardon the immodesty -- pretty damn smart. I've got bucks, proceeds from a sizeable personal injury judgment, so there will be no distractions from a part-time job or anything. And I am unattached -- no girlfriend and no prospects. That avoids what might otherwise be the most considerable distraction of all. I just don't have any time to devote to pursuing women. And with this," I pointed to my scar, "I don't have to worry about too many pretty young things hitting on me."

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Try as Caroline would to look away, her gaze kept returning to Arthur's face. She kept staring at the deep scar, the slight concavity, the red and yellow and purple blotches of discoloration. It was sort of like when someone tells you not to think of a blue elephant. Over and over your mind keeps returning to a blue elephant.

Caroline:

I felt like such an idiot, staring at his forehead. I noticed that it was not only scarred, but if he turned his head in a certain direction you could see that it was also indented, very slightly, as if part of the head had been scraped away.

The situation was so awkward, and so I compounded it by asking how he had injured himself.

Arthur:

"I don't talk about it much, but you are my faculty advisor so if you've got five minutes, I'll give you the brief version," I told her.

Caroline:

"I was a junior at Cornell, though only 18 years old" he began. "I was dating a graduate student who was 5-1/2 years older than I was. Edith was the daughter of a San Antonio surgeon and his socialite wife, had led a very sheltered life, and was a virgin. We held hands, we hugged, we necked (to use an old-fashioned term), and nothing more physically. Nothing. I didn't push her. I cared for her.

"I lived on campus in the fraternity to which I belonged. She lived in a dormitory on the edge of the campus. It had been a small single-story motel that the University purchased as the campus grew in size. There were 24 private rooms, two corridors spreading out on either side of a small central entrance to form a Y-shape.

"Edith had called me that February afternoon. We had a date to see a movie that night. She told me that since it was so cold that day that rather than walk back to my fraternity after I dropped her at her apartment, I could stay with her. 'If you want, she said.' The unspoken subtext was clear.

"I was surprised, and pleased, but I asked her if she was sure," Arthur continued. "'I am ready,' she said, 'time to grow up.'

"So that evening Edith and I had a light meal, saw a movie, and went to her place. I was careful -- I had never been with a virgin -- and tried to be tender and considerate. And it was beautiful. Afterwards we drifted off to sleep in one another's arms in her lumpy double bed."

At this point, Arthur frowned and paused. He seemed to be searching for the right words. I sensed the happy tale he recounted was about to take a change for the worse.

"At about 2:30 or 3:00, I don't know exactly, I awoke. I felt funny. My eyes were watering and it was very hot in the room. I began to choke. The room was dark, and the lamp by the bed table would not turn on. The electric alarm clock was blinking.

"I pulled the shades to let in a little moonlight. I could see light smoke in the room."

Arthur paused again.

"I opened the door to the corridor, and it was filled with thick, thick, black smoke. It was too thick to go through. I closed the door, shook Edith to get her up, screamed to her that there was a fire and that we had to leave through the window."

"If you want to stop, that's O.K.," I told Arthur.

Arthur:

I continued relating the tragic events. The window consisted of thick, cantilevered panes of glass in a very sturdy metal frame. This was a style known as jalousie windows.

"I grabbed the chair by the desk, and began smashing the window," I told Caroline. "The window apparatus was very solid, hard to break through. The chair began to break apart, and I used the other chair and finally broke through an opening big enough for us to crawl through.

"I grabbed her and she balked, saying she wanted to get her coat. 'No time,' I said and half carried, half-dragged her to the window and helped life her up and through onto the cold ground. I followed her as she shouted that I was naked. 'A minor point at such a moment,' I shouted back to her, quoting Rhett.

"It was about 22 degrees outside, and I was undressed. Other students were huddled outside on the ground. People from the building next door were bringing blankets. Supposedly the fire department was coming."

Caroline:

What could I say? I just sat there, riveted, listening to Arthur's account. "I spotted Professor T., whom I knew slightly," Arthur resumed. "He was a visiting English teacher (from England, actually) who was Resident Advisor in the tiny dorm. He came and grabbed me and told me to come help: the other side of the building, the east corridor, still had five or six rooms that had not been emptied. They might have passed out from the smoke, he related, and we should try to get them.

"So together we ran into the east corridor, through the smoke," Arthur related. "Professor T. tried a door. It was locked and together we smashed through. He ran in and carried out a co-ed who was unconscious.

"Meanwhile I went to the next room, which was unlocked. Inside I found a male student who was out of it: semi-awake, semi-coherent. He resisted at first, but I dragged him out. And I slumped onto the frozen grass, exhausted and freezing.

"Professor T. returned, frantic," Arthur continued. "He shouted at me to come with him again: there were more rooms we had to reach." 'I can't,' I told him. 'I just can't.' He shook his head and left.

"At some point I passed out," Arthur recounted.

"What a story," I said. Talk about a trite remark. Open mouth, Caroline: insert foot.

Arthur:

"There's just a little more," Arthur said. "I had two surgeries: one to repair my arm," I pulled up my sleeve to show Caroline the eight-inch scar on my elbow, "and one on my head. I also had burned tissue in my lungs, from the smoke. That was treated with inhalation therapy.

"When I came to, late the next day, there were my parents standing beside my hospital bed. I was floating on a cloud of morphine, and I drifted in and out of consciousness for the next 24 hours.

"Two days later I awoke from a brief nap to see a well-dressed somber man I did not know standing beside my bed.

"'I am Dr. H,' he told me. I didn't get it; he wasn't wearing a white coat, and I had already met my doctor. Then he explained, 'I am Edith's father. Mr. M.,' -- he pronounced my last name, which ends in a vowel, like it was something he would scrape from the bottom of his shoe -- 'I have two things to say to you: First, thank you for saving Edith's life. Second, Edith is withdrawing from school. My wife and I are driving her home in about an hour. You are never to see her again.' And he turned and walked away."