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When Strane and I met, I was fifteen and he was forty-two, a near perfect thirty years between us.
how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him:
trying to breathe in what was left of me.
He was careful with me.
think it stopped when I was twenty-two, when he said he needed to get himself together and couldn’t live a decent life while I was within reach,
That seems the likely ending to this love story: me dropping everything and doing anything, devoted as a dog, as he takes and takes and takes.
“That’s a nice dress,” he says. “I like your style.”
Creep
It seems strange for a middle-aged man to notice girl clothes.
Exactly....
I spied you from the window there, thought I’d say hello.”
Weirdo
“You know, if you were my age,
Puke
I could say much nicer things.”
Weirdo
back to scan the ground for the exact leaf he held up to my hair.
Oh hell....
my chest burns from wanting to tell. But what is there to tell? He touched my hand a couple times, said something about my hair?
“If I tell you,” I say, “you have to promise not to overreact.”
You know it's wrong
“My politics teacher.” I don’t even hesitate in the lie. “Mr. Sheldon.”
In the margins of my class notes, I keep track of the details he lets slip about himself:
Oh brother
Mr. Strane says he has something for me. He opens the bottom drawer of his desk and takes out a book.
Holy groom
“That reminded me of you.” Then he reaches behind me and tugs on my ponytail.
Ew
That means something.
It means he is a creep
He asks me questions about myself,
“That isn’t true,” he says. “I notice you all the time.”
Ew
“Then let me smell your neck,” she says. “I’ve missed your scent.”
Also creepy....
he says, and before I can move, he hooks his fingers around the backrest of my chair and wheels me right beside him so we’re less than a foot apart.
“Nessa, I have to ask, did you mean to sound sexy here?”
Creep
This, I realize, is a test. He wants to see my reaction to being called sexy, and embarrassment means I failed.
Yeah to see if you will snitch
Then Mr. Strane’s knee touches my bare thigh, right below the hemline of my skirt.
Gross
“I think we’re very similar, Nessa,” he whispers. “I can tell from the way you write that you’re a dark romantic like me. You like dark things.”
WTFFFFFFF
He keeps writing notes on the poem while his other hand strokes my knee and my mind slips out of me.
Ew
We tried to re-create the first time, me in flimsy pajamas, the lights low. It didn’t work. He kept going soft; I was too old.
It doesn’t matter so long as it tells me what he wants, what this is, if it’s anything at all.
“Well, look at you. Little pussy cat.”
Ew
“I’d like to find you a big bed, tuck you in, and kiss you good night.”
SICKO!!!!!
He said he wanted to kiss me; maybe he would have done it.
I erase the notes and write BITCH in big bold letters that take up the whole board.
Not the jealousy
“I might’ve gone there,” I add. “You know, to scope it out.”
Stalker
I clench my jaw and breathe hard through my nose. His innocence feels put on, like he’s playing with me by playing dumb.
“Putting in the Seed,”
Gross
“I want you to think about sex.”
Wtf
“I’m relieved,” he says. “I was starting to wonder if I’d been wrong about you.”
He reaches down then and opens his bottom desk drawer, pulls out a book, and my ears prick like a dog’s.
Grrrroooooooommmm
“If I lend you this, you have to promise me not to let anyone know it was me who gave it to you.”
Ew
Lolita.
Oh WOW
He’d be free to do whatever he wanted with me, no chance of getting caught.
“Such a dirty mind / I always get it up for the touch of the younger kind.”
I’ve been wrapped up in my own frustration and impatience, never considering all that was on the line for him or how much he’s already risked touching my leg, saying he wanted to kiss me.
What if I’d been offended, told on him? Maybe all along he’s been the brave one and I’ve been selfish.
BECAUSE ITS WRONG DUH
He kisses the top of my head then, his own half kiss, and again I press my mouth against his neck.
I gesture at the space between our bodies. “This.” Smiling faintly, he says, “I like that, too. What about this?” He leans forward and touches the tips of his fingers to my knee. “Do you like this?”
Unbelievable
“I want to be a positive presence in your life,” he says. “Someone you can look back on and remember fondly, the funny old teacher who was pathetically in love with you but kept his hands to himself and was a good boy in the end.”
Wtf
“Some days I sit in your chair after you leave class. I rest my head on the table like I’m trying to breathe you in.”
????????????
