"There's something wrong with me. I'm attracted to every one of my female students. Every one. This should be illegal. And they like it, they know. Professor Myyyy-errrrs, they say. Such a sexy name I have. I didn't hang around with girls like that when I was their age. I dreamt of it. Of course. But I don't even think there were girls like this when I was in college. It's like they're always naked. I never sowed my oats, do you hear me? I married young, I thought it was a mature and literary thing to do. It would make me a man. And if I got divorced, it would also be a literary thing to do. I'd be another Mailer. But-cruel joke-I don't want to get divorced. I have failed a lot in my life and I don't want to make a legal document of my failure. So I look at every young girl and wonder what it would be like. I've been adulterous a thousand times over just by looking at them. Eighteen is too young, they should raise the age to thirty. Help me doctor, help me, I even want to sleep with you."
I was talking to Sharon, an English professor-beautiful, a lesbian since birth. Smarter than you. Inappropriately dressed in tight seventies basketball shorts. Red hair, blue eyes, her skin pouted. Imagine a playmate from The New Yorker. Every sane man's dream.
"You've got a problem," she said.
"Hell yes, I've got a problem. What do I do?"
"Maybe you have to sleep with one of these girls. Then you might see how young they are. Like sleeping with a child."
"Maybe it would be the most profoundly erotic experience of my life. Then what?"
"Maybe you'll have to teach her more than you think."
"In this day and age? And besides, I'm a teacher."
"You've got an answer for everything."
"It's a problem. It either has every answer, or no answer."
"It's a fairly dull problem, Eugene. Professors have always been tempted by this and many have gone through with it. More have gone through with it than been caught. And most of those who have been caught haven't been fired."
"You're not much of a help. So you think I should go through with it?"
"Yes."
"I know I'm just looking for approval. If I beat off, the problem will go away. But it always comes back, like hunger for Chinese food."
"I'm leaving."
"You're right. I'm sorry."
She looked at me with amusement and disgust, like a mirror. Then she wrote something down on a notepad, as if making a diagnosis. She stood up and stared at me intently for a moment. In her look: softness and respect and some lust. They should sell how that feels. And then she took off her top. She stood there with poise, as if I'd offered a piece of my life and she was offering me a piece of hers.
"What do you think of them?" she asked.
"They're nice," I said stupidly.
She walked around the desk, hand trailing along the edge, and sat on my lap. Sweetly, not aggressively like a porn star out to avenge her life.
It became blurry at this point. I saw flashes of her smile, her acceptance. This wasn't going to last long. "Can I go?" I said. My clothes were still on.
She smiled. "Yes," she said.
And I did. It was my first wet dream since I was fourteen.
***
And now I was fifty. I was lying in bed next to my wife. Stephanie, beautiful. The woman from the dream was my wife when I met her, at 23. Mixed with a girl who walked her fashionable dog around our neighborhood, also around 23, wore tight basketball shorts, naked with clothes on. Probably didn't write for The New Yorker. I wrote down the dream immediately in a notebook beside the bed, which was something I'd been doing lately. One time long ago, I dreamt the first scene of a novel, woke up, and didn't stop writing until the book was done. So I was trying to force inspiration. A quick analysis: the dream was about a more hopeful time when I was convinced of my future, but now the future was here and nothing like my faith. Mostly, the dream told me what I desired. I knew that already.
