“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate.

Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

Euripides, Medea.

As I approach the end of my time in this world, I want to plant some things in the record. I don’t want this in the open record, of course. I don’t want to cause my family unnecessary pain: as the reader is aware, this account was sealed among my private papers in the University Library’s Presidential Archives. I’ve no idea who will find it, nor what will be made of this tale. All I can know is that I’ve been dust for at least fifty years before this is read.

Okay, so in the vernacular I suppose it is fair to say, ‘I done her wrong.’ I was an assistant professor and Alex was my teaching assistant. She was not a student in my department — she was studying geochemistry, but we needed a TA and she had great recommendations.

I was unhappily married at the time. My wife was a shrew no Petruchio could tame. Between the stress of going through the tenure system and what I was enduring at home I was vulnerable: I was lonely.

It started out innocently enough. I was working very late in my laboratory when Alex knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “Dr. S? Can I have a minute?” she said.

“Sure, Alex. I was just cleaning up here. Do you want to talk here?” I asked.

She looked around and asked where my RAs were. They’d long since gone home, and I said so. She spoke up, “Sure. Let me go get the papers?” Alex had a habit of putting a rising pitch at the end of most sentences, as though she was asking a question. I’d teased her about it a little, but the habit mostly remained. By the time she returned I had finished cleaning the glassware and putting the reagents away. She came in the door with a sheaf of lab papers.

“I think there’s a cheating problem Dr. S. Look at these three papers?”

I looked the papers over. It was more than suspicious — not just cheating, but dry-labbing: making data up. The basic numbers were identical across the papers and the reaction yield was well above the theoretical maximum yield. “Why don’t you tell me what you think the problem is, Alex?”

“What caught my eye first was the yield — their yield is impossible for that reaction. So, I sorted out the papers that had impossible yields? There are some others here, but they’re within one percent of theoretical? When I had them in a smaller group I noticed that these three papers all have the same initial masses and reaction temps—”

“Well done! you caught both things—”

“— so I did some more checking and these three students all belong to Lambda Nu and appear to live at the chapter house? At least their phone numbers in the directory are the chapter house’s number?”

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

Alex looked puzzled. “What do I want to do?”

“You discovered it,” I said, “I’d like to know what you think should be done about it.”

“Can you talk to them?”

“Of course I can. Or you can talk to them in my office. You found it, you should handle it if you want to. Don’t you intend to become a professor?”

“Yes? I’d like to?”

“You need to learn about this stuff, then. I’m the instructor-of-record, so in the final analysis it’s my decision. If you don’t throw the book at them, I will.”

“I was thinking of making them take a zero on this lab?”

“I was thinking more of taking a zero on this lab and zeroes on all prior labs this term. We can allow them to resubmit the prior labs, if they redo them.”

“That’s pretty harsh?”

“Not as tough as we could be: we could fail them for the lab component. It’s a better deal than they’ll get from the Dean of Students. Aren’t you familiar with the Code of Conduct?”

“Not really. I always figured that as long as I did my own work and cited all my sources I was okay.” At last, a declarative sentence.

“There’s a bit more to it than that. You ought to review it for your own benefit. Our young scholars’ lab meets tomorrow. Dismiss lab fifteen minutes early and tell the Lambda Nus to get to my office. Are you ready for tomorrow’s lab? It’s diffusion processes, right?”

“Okay? Yes, sir. Everything’s ready? Thank you.”

“Good night, Alex. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night, Dr. S.”
-o-
She had the three musketeers in my office at the appointed time. I let Alex make the case, then I asked them about it. They tried to stonewall at first, then I handed them the Student Handbook opened to the page on Academic Honesty. They caved immediately and started pointing fingers all around. I shut that down, and told them the penalty I’d discussed with Alex the previous evening. I added that they’d have to redo the makeup labs under Alex’s supervision. Alex was a little concerned about that. I asked her to stay after they were dismissed.

“I can’t stay for them to make up those earlier labs. I have to be in my own class, and after that I have to pick up Katrina.”

“Katrina’s your daughter?” I asked.

“Yes, sir?”

“Okay, they have to arrange to do this on your schedule, not theirs. Second, they won’t be in to make up the labs. It doesn’t cost us anything to give them a chance to recover from this. But I’ll bet you dinner against coffee that they drop the class before next Wednesday.”

“I can’t afford to buy you dinner?”

“No, if they don’t drop I buy you dinner. If they drop, you buy me coffee.”

“Oh, okay.”

When the musketeers came to get my signature on their drop forms, I called Alex and told her she owed me coffee. She told me that one of them made up a couple of the labs. I said, “Okay, I owe you coffee for your trouble. Name the time.”

Connie (my wife) was a Captain in the Air Force Reserve assigned to active duty. She flew Air Force transports and was gone a couple of weeks each month. Alex told me she’d like to go for coffee one day. Ordinarily, I’d ask Connie to come along for that sort of thing, but she was in Europe. I asked her to meet me at Harry Mudd, a coffee-and-pastry shop in the Campus District. We had a long talk over coffee about academic careers and life in general. Eventually, the conversation got more personal.

“You seem a little different this year, Dr. S?” said Alex.

“I don’t know why you’d say that, Alex.”

“You seemed a lot happier a couple of years ago, when I was in your environmental chem course.”

“I’m up for promotion and tenure this year. It’s pretty stressful. I may be looking for a new job this time next year.”

“I’m having some problems myself, I understand.”

“What’s going on? Comprehensive exams?” I was thinking back to my days in graduate school.

“No, sir. My daughter’s father is harassing me to allow her to visit him in Germany.”

“That’s a long way. How old is she?”

“She’s five. If I let her go, he won’t return her. I know it.”

“So you go to his C.O. with the custody order, right? That’s pretty straightforward.”

“He’s not military. He’s a French citizen. If he gets her there I’ll never get her back.”

“I see. Does he have visitation rights?”

“No. He isn’t listed on her birth certificate. She was born here — I came back from my exchange year a couple of months early so she would not be born in France. The social workers at Memorial were pretty unhappy when I wouldn’t name a father.”

“Why didn’t you name him?”

“My parent’s lawyer told me that if he appears on the birth certificate it strengthens his case if he takes me to court.”

“I see.”

-o-

And that’s how our friendship began. I became an academic godfather to Alex. That was a trust I never violated, although Connie never believed it. A semester later during mid-term exams Connie was on a training flight to god-only-knows where. I was teaching General Chemistry again (that was my year in the wringer). Alex helped me with the grading. I usually took half of the papers and she took half. We met the next day to swap sets and finish the grading. I asked Alex if she had plans for the evening (it was a Thursday night). She didn’t, so I suggested that she come to our house with Katrina. She and my son Brad could play, I’d order pizza and we could knock out the grading in an evening. Alex thought it sounded like a good idea.

We got the papers graded in about four hours. Alex and Katrina went home. But I hadn’t reckoned with a six-year old having a new playmate. I guess it was inevitable that Brad would ask Connie when “that girl” could come over again. She got the story out of him and immediately called me at my office. I had just heard that the University Promotion and Tenure committee recommended me for promotion to associate professor and tenure. The only hurdle left was the Provost’s office and they hadn’t gone against unanimous positive recommendations in recorded history. I was inside the breakwater and pulling up to the dock. Then Connie called.

Even fifty odd years later, that conversation is too painful to recount in its entirety. I was a no-good son-of-a-bitch who had fucked that little strumpet in every room of our house and in front of two six-year-olds. The conversation went downhill from there. When I got home, she told me that she’d been offered a promotion to Major and a transfer to Dayton and the regular Air Force.

I told her about the University Committee’s letter. Now I’d put my career at risk: what if that whore filed a sexual harassment complaint? She’d had it with me, she didn’t love me anymore. One can question what sort of love it is that folds when it encounters some rough weather. We tried marital counseling before she left for Dayton. She left because she said she needed some distance, ‘to think things through.’ Brad stayed with me.

-o-

Connie thought things through, and invited me to join her for Labor Day weekend on the island of Hawai’i. There is a military R&R complex near Volcanoes National Park. She made reservations for us and arranged for her mother to take care of Brad. I agreed to go and made arrangements for my classes to be covered . I was flying commercially while she was hauling something from Wright-Patterson to Hickham in Honolulu. We met up in Hilo and drove up to the cabins. The cabin had two beds, and Connie asked if I’d mind sleeping separately. I wasn’t happy, but I agreed. We spent two days hiking in paradise, and talking about our problems, wants and needs. I thought we were making progress.

On our last night, she invited me to share her bed. I told her I loved her, she said, “I know. You must, to have waited through all this.” Then she kissed me and said, “I want to do something special for you.” She got into her suitcase and pulled out a blindfold and a pair of leather cuffs. “You can stop this at any time — just say ‘artichoke’. If you want to play get undressed, big boy.” Connie and I had more than our share of problems, but they had never extended to the bedroom until she decided that I had cheated on her with Alex. I thought we had finally crested that hill.

I got undressed. She put the blindfold on me and used the velcro to fasten the leather bands around my hands; then she tied my hands above my head as I lay on the bed. She said, “What word stops this?”

“Artichoke,” I replied.

“Right. But if you say it, it’s over. Do you understand?”

“If I say the word, it’s over.”

“Roger that. Now relax and enjoy.”

She started with some warm lubricant on my half-hard cock. It came to a full erection as soon as she put a hand on me and started stroking slowly from root to head. She continued with that for an indeterminate period of time. As I was approaching orgasm, she backed off on the stimulation. She didn’t stop entirely — she starting kissing my ears and neck while she played with my balls.

She left the bed momentarily and returned with a warm cloth to clean my cock. Then she began stroking it dry, I guess to firm it up. When it was fully hard again, she kissed the head and retracted my foreskin. She leaned over and engulfed me in her warm, wet mouth. She stroked the shaft with one hand while she swirled her tongue around the head. She stopped and ran the tip of her tongue around the corona and then sucked me back into her mouth.

There is an ancient joke about God talking with Adam in the garden. God told Adam, “I’ve given you my two greatest inventions: a brain capable of abstract reasoning and a penis. But there was a design glitch — your blood supply is only sufficient to operate one of them at a time. Try not to forget this, Adam.” I always got a grin about that: on that night, it was true. My whole being seemed wrapped up in my cock. Because I was blindfolded, I had no real sense of time. There was no music playing, so I couldn’t track time that way. The only thing I had that might track time was my heartbeat, but that was so varying that it was useless even if I was capable of counting heartbeats. I wasn’t.

When she had me back in her mouth, she started sliding my cock further back in her throat than it had ever gone before. I felt the back of her mouth, the soft palate — she slid me past it without gagging, and I felt her lips on the base of my cock. I’d no idea that was possible outside of porno movies and now I was experiencing it! She began to fuck me with her mouth, and all too soon my cock began swelling. I relaxed back into the approaching orgasm when she bit the shaft lightly, and took me out of her mouth. At some point in this process she had straddled my head, and now she lowered her sex onto my mouth.

“Kiss me!” she demanded.

I figured, ‘what the hell’ and kissed her cunt lips. I’d always enjoyed going down on her, although she was often reluctant to allow me to do that. Tonight she was asking for it — so I kissed her lips, and then ran my tongue across them. It was difficult to do what I thought was a good job when I couldn’t see what I was doing, and my hands were unavailable to guide me. Despite the handicaps, I seemed to be doing a good enough job — Connie started moaning and grinding against my face. I’m pretty sure she orgasmed: at the least, her breathing got rapid and she clamped her knees against my head. She pulled herself off me again, and started paying attention to my cock again.

This time, she lubed me up and began running her fists down over my cock — her lubricated fingers opening at the head and sliding down me. When one hand was on me entirely, the next hand started down. It was like having an infinitely long cock thrusting into an infinitely long puss. It was an incredible sensation. I thought, ‘oh, she’s going to get me off this time,’ but again as I began rising towards orgasm, as my cock began to pulse with my elevated heart rate, she squeezed it hard, saying, “Down, boy!” She was playing me like an instrument — holding me at a high level of stimulation but not high enough to come. At last, I understood why my hands were tied: if they had been free, I would have reached down and finished myself. I needed to come desperately. Well, I thought I did. Mental need and physical need are different things.

This time, between bouts she played with my ass. Her fingers were wet with lube, and she massaged my sphincter, sliding a finger tip in and out. I grew up the oldest of three brothers and we had an older sister. I had no privacy. Later, when I was in college I lived in the dormitories and again had no privacy. I learned to make anything sexual in nature as near silent as I could. I am still not prone to making noise during sex (not that those opportunities come around much any more). Connie’s attentions had me moaning. I could not control that. I begged her for release. She said, “You have that much control. I’ll release you if you say ‘artichoke.’ But if you say it, it’s over. Otherwise, you’ll come when I’m damned good and ready for you to come. Comprende?”

“Comprendo,” I replied. My cock was beginning to wilt a little. She slid a finger deep into my ass and started gently rubbing my prostate with her fingertip. I sprang to attention. She pulled my foreskin over the head of my dick, and then straddled me grabbing my slippery erection with her left hand. She ran the head along her slit slowly and then eased herself down onto me. I thought I’d landed in heaven, but it turned into a torturous hell. She very slowly rocked against my pubis, giving me only enough stimulation to maintain a very solid erection. She was getting plenty of stimulation. I was sure of that because I could hear her moaning as rocked back and forth. At one point, she leaned forward to place her hands on my shoulders. I’m sure she was controlling the angle. When Connie was highly aroused, the head of her clit stuck out just beyond its hood. When I visualize it now, the angle her torso was at would be perfect to place her clit head against my pubic mound. I didn’t need to visualize it at the time: she was soon gasping and I felt contractions around my penis. I know she orgasmed that time.

When she came down from coming, she took a risk and started fucking me. She pulled her pelvis up and back down, varying the speed and intensity. She must have been watching my face carefully, because again as I neared orgasm she slipped off me. I felt her leave the bed. She returned and laid next to me. I heard a buzzing start: she turned on a vibrator.

“Oooh, baby, yeah,” she said in a low pitched voice. “I’m running the vibe around my wet cunt lips. It feels so fucking good. Yes. Right there, yes. Oh, god yes. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. I’m fucking coming. God. Oh god.” I felt the bed bouncing as her hips bucked through the orgasm. Then the bed was still and she was silent for a bit. Apparently that orgasm took a lot out of her, because she left me alone long enough that my erection eased quite a bit.

She took care of that almost immediately by fellating me again. I lost track of what was happening to me at that point. I cannot say how long this went on, nor even how many more times she took me to the brink of orgasm only to yank me back.

What I do remember is this. When she finally did allow me the orgasm I thought I might have to die for, it was the most intense orgasm of my life. I prefer to ejaculate inside a woman, but Connie finished me off with her hands and mouth. She had a finger up my ass on my prostate, and when I came she stretched time. I swear, she must have stretched time. It seemed the longest orgasm of my life. I was spent.

I fell asleep almost immediately. She released the cuffs and removed the blindfold. She must have, because when I awoke they were gone. So was Connie. In her place was a typed note on her pillow.

-o-

3 September 
Jack

I have filed for divorce in Dayton. I will never see you again under any circumstances. You are not welcome in my home. I will not visit yours.

I will not be present at the final hearing. You may do as you please.

My attorney will be contacting Terrance Michaels on Tuesday to begin negotiations on the settlement agreement and parenting plan. If you intend to use some other attorney in this matter, please make arrangements with Terrance.

My mother has taken Brad to Dayton. It is my intention to keep him there. You will have reasonable visitation.

Constance