Fighting Forbidden Urges

You open the door to the Teachers' Lounge, and a cacophony of voices detonates. The teachers gossip about the previous weekend. The upcoming regional inter-school sports competition. Or the weather forecast. But Sophia knows how to avoid getting lost in that morning tangle of excited nerves: you home in on the pastry table, with its passable coffee and doughnuts. Just focus on that, whispers her inner voice, still squeaky from last night's restlessness. Yet, even this strategy has its downside, because within seconds, Mr. Frome—the human manifestation of industrial smog—is by her side throwing at her hastily made-up pick-up lines just to hold her attention.

"Now I remember who your twin sister is," Mr. Frome says, his face the face of ancient man who has just discovered fire. "It's that singer. You know the song that goes…" Mr. Frome tilts her head trying to summon the lyrics. "Cause baby you are firework, make them go oh, oh, oh…"

If it weren't for the more pressing task of choosing the right donut to match her coffee, she would have seen how Mr. Frome's eyes bulge out of their sockets in trying to hit the high notes.

"Katy Perry!" Mr. Frome explodes. "Stupid me. It was Katy Perry! You look exactly like her!" He sidles closer, like a conspirator plotting to stab Caesar. "Any chance you're related to Miss Perry?"

Her response, as always, serves the dual purpose of polite acknowledgement of Mr. Frome's sorry existence, and also icy dismissal. She flashes the sweetest, perfect, pearly white-teeth American smile. "Sorry. Doesn't ring a bell." She strides off.

Mr. Frome is left standing there by the table of pastries, uncertain whether to spend the next few precious seconds staring more at Sophia's ass or at her smooth long neck—both of which are receding in the fair distance.

Mr. Frome isn't actually reliable—he gives off that sticky impression that he regards the world as a huge porn movie, with the people he meets merely actresses ready to play out his fantasies. In plain language, he's the slimy creep that thrives at the bottom of a duck pond—and here, in this school, he unfortunately teaches history. But Sophia couldn't help feeling flattered—especially now. With the recent inclusion of Brad Silverstone in her class, she needs some reassurance that she is beautiful—her husband's earnest supply of "you are heartbreakingly pretty" notwithstanding. In the ladies' room, Sophia stares at her face in the mirror, trying to glean any of that "hot pop star vibe" people like Mr. Frome have always used as some tired pick-up line. She scrunches up her breasts and admires her cleavage—full, milky white, jiggling so subtly with the promise of untold pleasure. She turns her face at different angles, and couldn't help but agree with all those fools: yes, that's a face and body that could launch a thousand ships. Or hit pop songs. Or turn otherwise decent men into smarmy, twitchy history teachers.

Sophia couldn't put a stop to the sexual advances from the opposite sex even in the classroom—although in this setting, she has the upper hand as the so-called males are merely strapping sixteen-year-olds who have yet to understand the finer aspects of compelling a real lady to take off her panties. With the exception of Brad Silverstone, who got in her class by a special privilege—his family owns the school—everyone in the classroom is putty in her hands. But now, Brad is staring at her—a few days in her class and the boy has succumbed to the inevitable. She pretends she's reading the book on her desk, underlining lines she finds important, writing annotations, and everything else a teacher normally does. But inside Sophia Masterson is a quivering little schoolgirl swooning for that boy, and it takes Sophia all her acting skills to continue playing her role in this little drama. Because if Brad realizes he's part of her dirty fantasies with her husband, the can of worms will be opened. All hell breaks loose. And all those clichés about bad consequences will fester in the here and now.

Sophia did not really recognize Brad when she first met him at the park—the owner of those chiseled good looks and disarming smile was often in some local newspaper's lifestyle page, forced to preen for the camera by his father, and Sophia, unfortunately, never liked reading newspapers. Brad, according to local and international speculation, is obviously being groomed to assume leadership of the multinational Silverstone business empire when the time comes. But that time should be a decade in the future: at eighteen, despite all his strange, attractive mixture of boyish nonchalance and sex appeal, qualities that have been pushing Sophia's buttons since Day One, Brad in all honesty is still a boy. And he's bad news, if you don't know how to play your cards right.

As she sits there, playing the English teacher's role to this class of rowdy boys who barely bother hiding their pubescent desire for her, Sophia spends half of her time pretending maturity and the other half desperately enforcing that pretense. At heart, though, she's still that naughty young girl who loves to tease. She often catches her students—what with their raging adolescent hormones and pent-up desires—staring at her butt with their jaws dropped as she writes on the board. And when she's feeling very naughty, she loves torturing them more in little mischievous ways: a pen drops, for example, and she innocently bends over slowly to pick it up, her skirt inevitably pulled up high by the angle of her curves, revealing her smooth, shapely thighs and a hint of lacy underwear. At times she toys with her pen using her tongue, pretending to be absent-mindedly thinking about something as she reads a book. Sophia knows all the secret hard-ons, the uncomfortable pent-up lust of youth, the talk in the cafeteria, and she enjoys it all. It's safe as long as she puts up this innocent persona, this consistent pretense of never being aware of how hot she is or the tornadoes of lust she is causing, like Marilyn Monroe in one of those "dumb blonde" movies. Except Sophia's actually a brunette and if you look hard enough, you'll recognize an awareness in her eyes—she knows she's playing a role for the sake of appearances, the kind of intelligence that the boys at Camden High School, with their preoccupation with that important matter of where babies come from, could barely discern.

In her two years of teaching English and literature at this high school, Sophia Masterson has lived half her days in a fantasy world, which she unleashes, like a dam of raging waters, at night, in bed with her husband.

"I caught Jim looking at my breasts," she'd purr in the middle of love-making.

Derek would use his mouth to play with her nipples. "Who's Jim, again, darling?"

"That boy I told you about. From South End. Curly hair, big arms, the one who couldn't spell 'fuchsia pink.'" Sophia giggles.

Derek laughs. "Do you want him?"

Sophia moans an assent as Derek dives down in that sweet spot in the middle of her thighs. Sophia has a weakness for this: whenever Derek tongues her clit, her mind explodes in indescribable pleasure. Images flash in her mind: Jim, her favorite student, banging her in the boys' locker room; Sophia, spread-eagled and naked on the floor of the classroom, the entire class of boys jerking off over her, coming on her face; her mind whites out.

"Pretend I'm Jim, honey," Derek says as he rises up, a mischievous snicker in his face, as he prepares to penetrate her. He then proceeds with a cadence that has always reminded Sophia of a train, slowly but surely chugging, the engines pounding, the pistons gunning for speed.

These days, Sophia finds Brad a distraction—he's often on her mind. She imagines they're in some sort of passion play, in which both of them go through the motions, feeling with their mind-fingers what's allowed and what's not, doing their little dance. And strangely, she doesn't feel any guilt—she hasn't mentioned Brad to Derek, not even once. Not yet, at least.

The day she first encountered Brad Silverstone was not exactly one for the fairytale books. She was jogging in the park one early morning, trying to complete her daily goal of twenty laps around the park's perimeter, when suddenly her high-tech pedometer sounded an alarm. Confused but still not slowing down, she was looking at the device on her wrist when her face smashed against a brick wall, pieces of which flew everywhere. When she recovered from the shock, she realized it was not a wall but the broad chest of a man, who was as surprised as she was with the explosive encounter. And the bricks were actually a bag of baguettes the man had been carrying. Sophia was instantly on her knees gathering the bread and apologizing profusely, while the man coolly stood there and watched her.

"I'm really, really sorry," Sophia was saying as she handed him back the soiled bread. It was awkward. The paper bag was torn to pieces, and the man had nothing else to do but hold the baguettes like he's trying to hug them. He's smiling, though—those pearly whites looked meticulously cared for.

"Don't worry, I'll pay for the bread," Sophia's mouth was saying even before her brain reminded her she didn't have her wallet with her—who brings a wallet on a morning jog, anyway?

Seeing her blushing and speechless, the man said, "Never mind. Shit happens." He laughed. He was a foot taller than she was, Sophia realized as she squinted in the sun looking up at him. She realized, too, that she had been staring at the man's face slack-jawed much longer than was comfortable when the man said, "Is there something in my face?"

"Oh, no, I'm sorry. This is embarrassing. I should pay you. But I don't have any money with me."

"No, really, it's okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Maybe if you'd go have coffee with me or something, then that would be a fine compensation for demolishing my food."

Sophia was tempted to say yes (he was, after all, very attractive) or to tell the truth (she had a class to teach, on top of performing the wifey morning rituals Derek expected of her), all these while rationalizing that she was not really cheating—it was the least she could do as compensation for possibly ruining this man's breakfast. Deep down inside, however, she knew she was lying—she was drawn to this stranger in the way a moth is to a flame. But in the end, she said, "Maybe next time. There's something I have to do at school." (In hindsight, she couldn't understand why she didn't tell him she was a high school teacher.)

"Yeah, okay. Maybe next time."

"Yeah, see you."

Later that day, an accident on the freeway delayed her for more than an hour. Worse, her skirt was caught on the car's door as she closed it, leaving an obscenely high slit that reached her upper thigh. Classic Sophia, always clumsy. She imagined all the boys staring at her smooth, long leg, which would be visible even at the smallest movement. She concedes that this must be the worst Monday in history when, on the hallway, she meets the infernal assistant vice principal, Carol Smith, grinning as if she had just won the lottery.

"Have you seen him, yet?" Carol was brimming with so much energy this morning.

"Him who?"

"Brad Silverstone!"

Sophia stared at her, not comprehending.

Carol grunted and oh-so-slightly shook her head in that distinct, condescending way. Sophia couldn't understand why Carol hated her. Guy Mendes, one of the history teachers, told her once at the cafeteria that before Sophia had started teaching at that school, Carol Smith was the "toast of the town," was the center of all the attention. All that changed when Sophia was hired to teach English—she was younger, and even the baggy things she occasionally wore could not hide the fact that she's one breathtakingly voluptuous female. Whether or not that was the true reason behind Carol's thinly veiled resentment, the fact remained that most of the time Carol behaved as if she was clutching a pair of sharp scissors behind her back, always on the verge of stabbing Sophia with it at the least provocation.

"The biggest event to happen in recent campus history," Carol said, ice on the edge of her words, "and it just flew over your head, Sophia."

"Alright. Sorry." (Why is she apologizing all the time? Especially to this evil bitch, of all people?)

"Well, you better—" Carol stopped, her face initially frozen. She always had that ability to shriek without actually shrieking, and she was doing it now, addressing someone behind her.

"Oh, ready for your first class, Mr. Silverstone?" Carol's voice was so sweet it could kill ants.

"Yeah, sure."

That voice. Sophia turned around and her jaws dropped for the second time that day: it was that man at the park this morning.

"You're Brad Silverstone?"

Brad was equally thunderstruck. "You!"

"You're not a man? I mean, you're still in high school?"

"Obviously, Miss Masterson," Carol turned to Brad. "May I call you Brad? Let me tour you around campus, then I'll drop you off at your first class." Carol said this almost in sing-song.

Brad ignored her. "You still owe me one coffee, Miss Masterson."

Carol's expression was one of confusion and a growing, deep sense of annoyance—here she was, acting in her best professional capacity (who's to say she's going beyond what's professionally expected of her by being excessively sweet and attentive to the Silverstone boy?)—and yet again, she was being ignored.

"Uhh, yes, maybe next time," Sophia muttered, her palm sweating as the boy shook it—squeezed, actually—then noticing Carol's darkening demeanor, added, "in a completely friendly teacher-student sense, of course."

"Yes, of course." Brad smiled.

The bitterness in Carol's voice gave it a rare gravity. "Why don't we just stick to the day's schedule?" Carol led the boy by an arm, as if afraid that someone might snatch him away. But Brad turned back, waved at Sophia. "It's a date, Miss Masterson! I'll find you later!"

"It's not a date!" she called back, afraid that people might misconstrue it in the wrongest sense, but she wasn't sure Carol or Brad heard.

And Brad did find her—as it turned out, he's in her class, an overeager advocate of strong women in English literature and an ardent enemy of people who have no idea what a dangling modifier is.

Sophia didn't tell her husband that night about Brad, but she secretly fantasized about him as Derek experimented with a few new sexual positions (he fucked her on the edge of the bed, with the aid of a few pillows). Brad had started class four weeks late because of some business errand in Switzerland that he did not care to elaborate. Everyone immediately realized who Brad was, of course, and no one in their right mind would go quizzing the sole heir to the gilded Silverstone throne about stupid things like what he did in some far-flung European country. It was as if everyone understood that Brad should be given the royal treatment—the usual bullies avoided him or tried to befriend him, but they were coolly rejected by Brad's dismissive "who the fuck are you?" glare. Girls swooned and had their panties in a twist whenever Brad walked on the hallway. To his credit, Brad tried to act like an ordinary person. He spoke with everyone that seemed nice or did not try to embarrass him with excessive fawning. But make as much as a mere mention of the immense Silverstone wealth, and Brad would instantly lose interest in the conversation and abruptly wander away.

And Sophia Masterson, try as she might, couldn't just ignore him: he's the big, ripped, good-looking white elephant in the room.