Chapter 2

“Okaaaaaay, it looks like I can get this in by the end of the month. Is that going to be too late?”

Unable to make eye contact and only take in auditory stimuli from her, it was now I noticed how melodic and resonant her voice was. Those breasts must have hidden a decent set of lungs and she spoke with enough variation in timbre that I had to focus in to enjoy the subtle and entertaining move between each phoneme.

“No, no, that should be fine. The class is almost done but I want this as a reference for my thesis.”

I kept typing, secretly pulling up our inventory and doing a rapid-fire series of queries, enters, and exists just to prolong the interaction.

“Oh yeah? What are you writing your thesis on?”

I was officially stalling now, the order prepared in another window but hidden from view until I knew I absolutely had to let the interaction close.

The huskiness of her laugh surprised me. It was deep and resonant, from the bottom of her belly, not just the throat. Listening to it was like diving head-first into a vat of honey in the slow way that it enveloped you totally.

“That’s a great question. I’m not sure yet.”

She laughed more and I dove deeper into the honey.

“Technically I’m in history of art, but I consider myself more a social philosopher.”

I smiled dumbly, already impressed and entranced. The silence proved enough of an invitation that she continued:

“Basically, I’m interested in geographies of desire and pleasure. I want to understand the processes through which desire and pleasure is created in particular spaces and contexts, and transmuted, overlaid, enforced, or enticed onto others, and how that transmutation may alter the experience or levels of pleasure. Chakrabarty, for example, has some really interesting things to say about how that works in economic terms, but I think haven’t worked hard enough to understand how that works in biopolitical and embodied terms.”

She caught herself at this point, the deluge of academic excitement having been released somewhat.

“At the end of the day, I have this dream we figure out how to be desirous and pleasureful without ruining everything – sort of like, how could we build a new kind of hedonism?”

She smiled somewhat sheepishly now,

“Basically, I like having fun too much and I decided I needed a master’s degree in it.”

The muscles in my neck tensed and, as an out-of-body experience, I felt my head tilt up to look at her again. Of all of the responses I could have had to her virtuosic display of academic curiosity, all I could muster was:

“Oh, you’re a graduate student?”

She laughed again.

“Yeah. A bit easy to narrow that down, huh?”

Williams only had two graduate programs: one in the History of Art and one from the Centre for Development Economics. In some strange, entirely siloed way, we were on the same level. My body rankled with excitement at this news.

I put aside the charade of getting her order ready and allowed myself to be pulled back into those hypnotic green eyes.

“I guess so,” I said, dumbly, but then quickly tried to compose myself:

“I’m actually in policy economics.”

I think I squinted at the light when that radiant smile shone again.

“No way! Wow. What are there, like a hundred masters students here at a time?”

I blanched.

“No, I actually heard it’s about fifty.”

She tilted her head back for a boisterous laugh and I got a look at the aqualinity of her neck. A few lonely freckle stars peaked out here and there and added a little spark of interest from the otherwise long, slope between the tiniest bit of her clavicle that was still visible just above her quivering breasts.

First, she peppered me with questions about my own work – basically poking and proding at leftover questions from Ostrom – and rather quickly the mutual academic respect and curiosity began to flow evenly between us. We exchanged the usual back and forth of information of academic fellow travelers: what brought us to the school, which buildings did we spend most of our time in, and where on campus did we like to eat the most. I raced past any questions about eating, lest I lose my cool.

The conversation went on for several minutes and with every syllable, I was falling more and more madly in love with this woman. I never wanted this exchange to end, until she said:

“Well, we should hang out sometime. I feel like I’m either only ever talking to snot-nosed undergrads or yelling at everyone in my faculty.”

I stifled a chortle.

“Yeah, that would be fun. You’re doing really cool work; I really enjoyed hearing about it.”

She gave me a wicked look now.

“I got that sense when it took you ten minutes to start to order my book, but never asked me for my name or credit card.”

Instantly my entire face was red. I felt blackness curl up my spine, spilled over each shoulder, and slide down my throat like I was Eddie Brock. When I went to speak again, I was surprised black bile didn’t spew out and coat her head to toe.

“...I’m, uh, sorry about that. I got, uh, distracted.”

Whether she did it on purpose or not, I’ll never know, but adding insult to injury, she shifted those beautiful feet of hers and the full weight of her bust jiggled at me mockingly.

I thank whatever gods or demons that watch over me took pity at that moment and that I could see she was still smiling when I raised my head from its initial wince.

“It’s okay. Usually, someone staring at my rack is not also talking to me about Chakrabarty and geographies of desire.”

My shame was muted somewhat and so I started to actually pull up our ordering software. Two clicks. It made the whole charade earlier a little cringe, but I tried to be gentle with myself – I think the radiative power of her sensuality gave me a hall pass on basic human functioning.

Without acknowledging my act of lechery any further, I got to work and had her book order ready within moments.

“Okay, I just need your name and number.”

Her wicked grin returned, this time with an arched eyebrow, as she folded her arms over her immense bosom, tit flesh rising like the tide to entirely swallow her clavicle and make it halfway to her chin.

“For the book, right?”

I looked her dead in the eye, and I am quite sure my soul left my body at that moment because I said:

“No, I just need your email for that.”