“I think I need another drink,” said Minju, looking down at her empty glass, taking one more dramatic and noisy sip from the straw. “Your turn, Penny,” she said.
“I don’t know if I’m going to have any more,” I said.
“I got the first round, babe,” said Minju. “You’re up.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, straightening up my posture and waiting as Minju slid out of the booth to let me free.
“Get me a beer,” said Erica, handing me some bills. I scooted on my butt on the pleather seat underneath us until I was at the end of the booth. I stood up and Minju smiled happily at me.
“I’ll do a gin and tonic,” she said.
“Gin and tonic and a beer,” I said, recounting my friends’ orders.
“Let’s grease these wheels!” exclaimed Minju, slipping past me and collapsing down into the booth. She moved next to Erica and the two of them offered up a thankful smile.
Just as I was about to make my way up to the bar to get our next round of drinks, my eyes moved to the faculty booth to catch a quick glimpse of Harriet. But as I looked over, I was surprised to find Harriet already looking at me, her eyes fierce and intense, and it was then for the first time I noticed how icy blue they were. As Harriet and I gazed at each other, neither of us shyly averting our eyes, I felt an uneasy rumble in my stomach, a tiny cramp, an upset little rustle. Slowly, carefully, Harriet let a smile move over her lips. It was a warm and inviting smile, a knowing smile, a playful smile.
I offered a weak and uncertain smile in return and then I looked away, looking instead up toward the front of the bar, and began to make my way through the boisterous crowd of writers.
*
A little later on the evening, I found myself alone in the booth as Minju and Erica and the rest of them had gotten up to socialize and move around the crowd. That crowd, however, was thinning out. A number of people hovered around the bar, ordering new drinks, eating the free Spanish omelette and spicy potato tapas that the bartenders would often put out. I was still nursing my second drink, which had grown watered down, but I didn’t really care. I wasn’t the drunken writer type like a lot of people in my cohort. Many of them seemed to revel in the idea that writers should be lushes but that wasn’t the kind of life I could live.
Looking down into my bag, I slowly pulled out a handful of the story critiques from class and began to sift through them. There was something so fulfilling to look at copies of your story scribbled all over with notes from other people who took writing as seriously as you. Whether or not these people, my classmates, were right in their criticisms, it was still amazing to have the feedback, to know that all these people read and thought about and reacted to your story. It’s scary to put yourself out there, to put your art in the hands of thoughtful and critical people, to be unsure whether it will illicit a positive or negative reaction, but it’s an absolute rush at the same time. It gets your heart beating.
“Don’t dwell on all that,” I heard from outside my booth. As I looked up, I saw Harriet’s smiling face looking down at me. “I see you saved me a seat,” she said, looking at the mostly empty booth. Just me and some other peoples’ bags.
“I appreciate all the criticism,” I said, straightening the heap of papers and then pushing them back into my bag. “It’s helpful.”
“Just don’t tie your self-worth to what your critics say,” said Harriet, her hands on her hips. “Penny, are you going to invite me to sit or what?”
“Oh! I’m sorry,” I said, scooting further into the booth. “Yes, please sit. I’m sorry, Harriet.” She laughed softly.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting down in the booth and sliding in.
“I’m sure it gets easier,” I mused. “I mean, I know logically not to take any of the stuff classmates say personally, but when you’re in that moment, someone saying to your face that they don’t like your work, it’s not the most… nice feeling.”
“It gets just a little easier,” said Harriet. “But don’t count on that feeling ever going away. I still get bent out of shape when I read a negative review. I was told by a better writer than me to not even read reviews of my work, but I’m not that far along in my evolution yet. I guess I’m a masochist.”
“That’s reassuring to hear,” I said with a smile.
“Maybe for you,” said Harriet.
Sitting there in the booth next to Harriet, I felt a weird energy traveling through me. It was a bit of excitement mixed with anxiety, like I didn’t quite know what to say to her while having her full attention and simultaneously worried that I might say something stupid or naive, or even worse, gushing and overly complimentary. I didn’t want to come off as some super fan or groupie or whatever. I wanted to treat her as my professor, whom I looked to for clarity, but also almost like a peer. We were both writers, after all.
“Are you drinking anything?” I said, trying to make conversation. I wasn’t sure where I was going with it.
“No,” said Harriet plainly. “I don’t drink.”
“That must be tough in a bar,” I said.
“It used to be,” she said. “But I’m over it. I’ve been sober for over ten years.”
“So, you’re…” I said, trailing off, letting her fill in the blanks.
“I recognized I had a problem,” she said. “And I righted it.”
“I see.”
“You see all those people over there at the bar?” she asked, waving her hand through the air, motioning toward the people drinking, carousing, talking loudly, some talking sloppily. “That used to me. I used to think that was fun.”
“And what made you stop?” I said.
“It’s fun, or it seems fun, until you hit a certain age,” she said. “I don’t know, sometime in your 30s. When you’re still doing that, going out drinking most nights, living that writer lifestyle, into your 30s, it becomes more of an albatross than a good time.”
“What do you think it is about your 30s that changes things?” I asked.
“That drinking you’ve done for so long,” she said. “That thing you thought you were in control of, it becomes a habit. It becomes a strange second nature, it becomes something you just assume you’re doing. I didn’t like that feeling. It scared me.”
“I understand,” I said. “I don’t really drink.” I took hold of my glass and swirled the liquid around in it a bit, all the ice melted, the glass still half-full.
“That’s good,” she said. “You’ll go a lot further in this vocation if you avoid the cliches.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Harriet paused for a moment and then looked down and laughed to herself.
“Look at me,” she said. “I sit down and I make this conversation a loaded one. I’m sorry, Penny,” she said.
“That’s all right,” I said with a smile. I was beginning to feel comfortable with Harriet. I could sense she had her own anxieties just like me and it made her feel all the more real. She wasn’t just some writer on the cusp of celebrity. She was an actual person too.
“Tell me about yourself,” said Harriet. “Are you from Chicago or are you just here for the program?”
“The program brought me here,” I said. “I’m from Michigan originally.”
“That’s not a far walk,” mused Harriet. “The program brought me here too,” she said. “I was living in New York before I got this position. And there’s a good chance I’ll be heading back there before too long.”
“Don’t you like Chicago?” I asked.
“Not particularly,” she said. “No, let me rephrase that. It’s just not what I’m used to.”
“City life is a bit too much for me,” I said. “I thought I’d like it, but I don’t really care for it. I think I’d much rather live on a farm.”
“You may reevaluate that opinion once you visit New York City,” said Harriet. She was becoming more comfortable sitting next to me and she slouched just slightly as we conversed. I felt our upper arms touch.
“
Maybe,” I said. “I’m open to it.”
“I could show you around,” said Harriet. “I love Brooklyn. I miss it.”
“Maybe one day,” I said, lightly smiling still.
“Am I keeping you here?” asked Harriet with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t mean to corner you.”
“Oh no!” I said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything or be any certain way. This is just who I am. I’m weird,” I admitted.
“I like weird,” said Harriet. She grinned. “Can I ask you something, Penny?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m all yours.”
“Maybe I got the wrong implication from your story,” she said. “But I just want to maybe see if you can clear something up for me.”
“Totally,” I said. “Any feedback from you I can get on my story would be amazing.”
Harriet flattened her lip, looking thoughtful, and she turned her body a bit in the booth to get a better angle to face me. She hesitated for a moment, perhaps unsure how to address the situation, but eager to clear it up regardless. It was like she was wrestling with herself on the inside, maybe scared to leap over some imaginary line between us, student and teacher, unsure whether what she was about to say was something she could actually say without fear of retribution. As I waited through her plaintive pause, I was quite certain I knew what she was going to ask.
“Are you…” said Harriet, still mincing words. “Are you a lesbian?”
“Oh my God,” I said with mock outrage, lifting my hand up and gently placing it on my chest. “How could you ask me something like that?”
For a moment I saw shock in Harriet’s eyes but it just as quickly became a roaring fire. It’s always exciting to feel like you messed up and then to suddenly realize that you’ve been had. Despite her realization that I was teasing her, it took Harriet a moment before she could say anything else and instead she just butted her shoulder into mine in a playful collision.
“I can’t believe that I’m that easy to screw with,” she said finally, shaking her head at her own imprudence. “You got me, Penny.” I smiled sweetly at her, happy to have been able to successfully tease her, noticing the growing blaze in her icy blue eyes.
“I got you?” I said, pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I see that weirdness coming out of you,” said Harriet. “C’mon, stop screwing with me. I’m trying to get to know you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sweetly. “What was it that you wanted to know?
“You’re really dragging this one out,” she said. “Which makes me think that I’m correct in my assumption.”
“You might be,” I said tauntingly.
“I usually am,” she said. “Well,” said Harriet, continuing on, breaking it down for me. “If it makes you feel any more comfortable, I too am a lesbian. I know my writing generally doesn’t make that explicit, as I deal with subject matter more along the lines of certain family dynamics, like what I grew up with, but there you have it.”
“Ah,” I said. “So your novels are kind of autobiographical in that regard. Makes sense.”
“Yes,” she said. “All about young girls hiding who they truly are for the sake of conservative and strict family, yes Penny, yes my novels do lean to the autobiographical side of things.”
What I loved about having this more down to Earth conversation with Harriet was that I could see how much of a normal person she was. It made me surprisingly joyful, playful even, to know that she was just like me, like any of us. She had her own fears and troubles, she was experiencing some nervousness in talking to me despite the fact that I was just her student, nowhere near her level, and that it was almost as though she were trying to impress me.
Yes, in fact, it had started to become more obvious. Harriet was trying to impress me. I swiftly felt myself bubble over with giddiness, excited that Harriet Drake was interested in getting closer to me. Harriet Drake, presumed nominee for the National Book Award, budding modern literary great, my professor and guide and current mentor, and an extremely beautiful woman about 15 or 20 years my senior. That Harriet Drake.
Perhaps because I was the younger one in this little back and forth, that gave me a certain amount of power. Like, despite the fact that I thought Harriet was objectively prettier than me, my youth gave me a leg up in the little flirty seduction dance. Underneath the light dusting of makeup on Harriet’s face, little cracks were visible. Her entrancing blue eyes, their lovely vibrancy notwithstanding, had a sliver of pain in them. I wasn’t just another student to her, it appeared, I was someone of romantic interest.
“Harriet,” I spoke up.
“Yes?”
I reached into my bag and removed a scrap piece of paper and a pen. In a quick scribble, I wrote down my phone number and slid it her way. She first looked down at the number and then up to my face.
“I should really be going,” I said. “I live on the westside and I have quite the hike from here.”
“All right,” she said solemnly, looking back down to my number.
“But maybe we could get together this week,” I said. “Provided you’re not too busy or anything.”
“I’d like that, Penny,” she said with a lustrous grin. Harriet deftly put a single arm around my shoulders and leaned against me into a hug. “I’ll give you a call.”
And with that, Harriet moved out from the booth and offered me a smile. She waved her hand slightly and then turned, making her way back into the booth with the other faculty members as I started to get my things together and prepare to leave.
*
Although I wanted to sit there and continue talking to Harriet, something inside of me urged me to go, to get out of that bar, to make her feel as though the whole thing should be a bit of a chase. I imagine that Harriet’s romantic life revolved around her being the one chased, so to turn the tables on that, to make her feel a little out of her element, it was very exciting for me. But I also had to figure out how to not come off as desperately impressed by her, in awe of her writing abilities and her success, and I knew I would have blown the entire thing had I stuck around, doted on her, maybe even went home with her. No, that just wouldn’t do. I wasn’t eager to appear to be just another literary fan girl.
You don’t impress anybody by being loose, by catering to their whims, by serving their ego. It breeds contempt. It gives them the sense that you’re someone that can be taken advantage of. I think you’ve got to play a little bit of that hard-to-get game if you want to make something real. So that’s what I was doing.
But, and I’ll be honest with you, I was terribly infatuated by Harriet and anxious to be… gotten.
Sitting up in my bed, lounging in just my t-shirt and panties, I wrote some thoughts down in my notebook. Mostly about Harriet, about the idea of a teacher and student tryst, just some notes that I half-considered turning into a story. I knew that kind of story had been done to death, a sort of taboo relationship between the older teacher and the younger student, how they navigate the age difference, how they keep it discreet from those around them that might judge. Perhaps it was even a bit cliche, this story line, but the truth was that it was such an often used trope because it was so common in life. And each tale of this particular flavor of lust is just different enough to make it compelling.
I already felt compelled by the little game between Harriet and I.
I lifted my phone from the rumpled bed sheets and looked into my text messaging app. Harriet had texted me the day following our little bar talk, just to “give me her number,” and to “thank me for the lovely conversation.” I couldn’t remember the last time I was pursued. As I thought about it, I considered that maybe I’d never been pursued, always the pursuer myself. This whole thing gave me a passionate elation that I’d never quite experienced before. It felt really good.
As I reread our text conversation, I sighed happily to myself and dreamt hazily of Harriet, of having her there next to me in bed, of having her personally read and critique my s
tories, and I even pictured what it would be like to walk into the National Book Award reading with her, dressed fancy and grinning. Yeah, maybe I was a fan girl.
“I wanted to give you my number,” began her text. “Save me as a contact!”
“Done,” I had typed, leaving it at that.
“Thank you for the lovely conversation,” was her next message. “I hope to have more of it.”
“Surely,” I responded. As I looked on, rereading these words in my head, I remembered the thick pulses of my heart as I awaited her next text. I was playing with her, making her work a little bit, but I wasn’t sure how long I could make myself last before I began to gush.
“Do you only type one word responses?” she wrote back. I laughed aloud in the moment I received that text, as well as again when I reread it laying there in my bed.
“No,” I wrote back, still giggling.
I don’t know what made me so devilish in my dealings with Harriet. All I knew was that I was having fun, trying to pique her interest, trying to build her up. It was great.
“Fine, be that way,” she wrote. “I’m doing a reading on Friday, will you come out?”
“Sure,” I typed. “Text me the details.”
And she did, punctuated by a little smiling emoticon.
I scrolled up and down in my text app, reading the conversation once more, smiling wide, feeling empowered. I was intensely excited to meet up with her at her reading, which was now this evening, unsure whether or not it would be a date type thing or if I’d just be another admirer there to support her. But I didn’t care ultimately. I was feeling in a bit of a frenzy that she and I were involved in this little sporty venture.
Before I knew it, I had set my phone down on the bed and I was laying back into my pillows, happily beaming, eyes closed, my hand tenderly massaging myself through the thin tensile fabric of my pale blue panties. I could feel my own subtle dampness. It had been a little while since I’d gotten intimately involved with someone. In fact, I hadn’t had a girlfriend since before I moved to Chicago. There was that little one off with this girl Kristen, who I’d met through Erica, but that didn’t really work out and it wasn’t too inspiring anyway.
My Writing Professor: A Lesbian Romance Page 2