The Professor. Charlotte Stein

never thought otherwise, honestly.’

      ‘Then from this point on we may proceed with perfect objectivity and professionalism? We may look upon your work as work, and not pay undue attention to the acts therein described?’

      ‘Yes, of course. I never meant to imply we wouldn’t.’

      ‘No question of impropriety?’

      ‘None at all.’

      ‘And you are capable of conducting yourself in such a manner.’

      ‘I am,’ I say.

      Perhaps in that moment I even believe it. I am calm, as he goes through the rules for this. My heart isn’t hammering. My hands aren’t trembling. Everything he tells me seems to make a lot of sense.

      Until he speaks, and then all I can think is:

       I was right to not want him to say rude words.

      ‘Excellent. Now then, perhaps we can begin by examining where you went wrong here: “His cock is a tree root, heavy and thick – too heavy in truth for my tightly closed sex. He has to force his way into me, pushing and twisting until I give, his own slickness the only thing easing the way. Still though, oh, still it sings through me, to have him fill me like this. My body stutters with the pleasure of it before he moves, sweet enough that I could call it a climax. Certainly it undoes me far more expertly than anything I have ever given myself.”’

      I take my time responding, in part because I have no real answer for him.

      But also because everything he says renders me mute. I go to speak and only air comes out of me. All the words in the world fall down inside my body – though that might be a good thing. The ones that occur do not seem appropriate. They seem to focus a lot on the sound of his voice, rather than the point. I keep replaying the roll of his tongue around the R at the start of ‘root’. The almost slick click of his teeth around the C at the start of ‘cock’. It takes me an absolute age to come up with anything.

      And when I finally do it’s rubbish.

      ‘I have no idea.’

      ‘No clue at all?’

      ‘Not even a tiny one.’

      ‘So it is your honest belief that a woman can come through such rudimentary penetration? No attempt at arousing her, no mention of any previous ministrations that might allow her lover to sink in, softly and slowly and smoothly?’

      He gestures with his hand, but I don’t see what the gesture is.

      I try to avoid looking directly at it.

      Or at him.

      Or at anything that ever existed since the dawn of time.

      ‘Well…it…I…that was just…’

      ‘On page four you describe the following: “I run my tongue over him slow, slow, savouring the taste. It is too bitter to love yet still I am greedy for it. When he bucks into my mouth I welcome it – that sense of him using my mouth to sate himself.” Yet I see no corresponding scenes depicting her being readied for this.’

      ‘It just seemed more realistic that way.’

      ‘If realism was your aim then why have her achieving orgasm over so little? You said yourself that you wished for a new world entirely – so take it. Don’t linger in these half-measures, hampered by the tawdry reality of teenage boys who barely care if a woman is enjoying herself or not. Go the whole way. Show me how you believe she might be made to moan. Give me reasons for her cries of pleasure.’

      His voice is bold, suddenly. Too loud and big. It swells to fill the room.

      My voice when I answer is faint and faded – as if left too long in the sun.

      ‘What sort of reasons do you think there should be?’

      ‘To begin with: her clit is her primary sex organ.’

      ‘I see, so you want me to…’

      ‘I would like to see him lick it, at the very least.’

      ‘You would like that. You would like him to lick it.’

      ‘Indeed, yes. You spend a good three pages lovingly describing a woman sucking cock. I feel some similar attention to her quim might be warranted.’

      I have to take a breath, then. A long, deep breath of air that I wish was fresh. As it is I just get a lungful of his book smell, now heavy with an undercurrent of something else. Something that seems suspiciously like deodorant working overtime to mask the scent of a body glossed with sweat – though there are no real signs of anything of the sort, on the surface. On the contrary: he seems completely composed and unmoved. He sits back in his chair with one hand ever so lightly resting on my work. Brow entirely untroubled; eyes as still yet sharp as ever. He could be talking about his elderly grandmother.

      No, no, it’s me who is drenched.

      Me who is probably filling the room with the sweet-thick smell of something faintly perfumed. Though really, could he blame me if I have? He said ‘clit’, as casually as others would say ‘cauliflower’. He trimmed it down to something you might grunt during a good hard fuck, and followed it with something that sounded like he might personally want it.

      He wants to lick, I think.

      Then struggle even harder to come up with a response. He’s waiting, now. Tapping his fingers on those papers impatiently, while I imagine his tongue curling around that very thing. Around my clit, around my quim. God, did he really say ‘quim’?

      How am I supposed to cope with him saying ‘quim’?

      ‘I will bear that in mind.’

      ‘At the very least show an awareness on the page that it exists. Show me how it feels to have her clit swell at the thought of him taking her.’

      ‘I could try. I will try.’

      ‘Give me her fingers sliding through her slippery folds, stroking over herself as he fills her and fucks her – let me see her dissatisfaction with his attempt at making her climax, when she knows she needs more, so much more. She strives for more, on the page. She aches for it.’

      ‘Yes. Yes. OK, yes,’ I say – too impatiently, I know.

      But what else can I do?

      He keeps saying things.

      Christ, the things he says.

      ‘She is no longer willing to accept so slight an offering.’

      ‘No, of course not. No, why would she ever?’

      ‘She wants to come hard – with as much abandonment as he does.’

      ‘That seems reasonable to me.’

      ‘And when she does it…’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Tell me how her back arches.’

      ‘Yes, yes, I will.’

      ‘Tell me how she tightens around him, how her clit seems to burst beneath her fingertips, how her belly clenches as though a great fist has taken hold of it. Tell me all these things and then begin again, with all the ones I cannot possibly know, as a man. For you see, there is your advantage, Miss Hayridge. You may fully articulate what it is to be a woman, exploring what pleases her best. Never overlook that, in service of realism that is really only a reflection of male pleasure and male desire. The true reality is whatever a woman actually feels, and not what men have been erasing for the last thousand years.’

      He has said many arousing things throughout this conversation. Most of which left me speechless, or at the very least unable to say more than a few breathless words. But none have the impact of that. It hits me hard, somewhere deep and low down. For the first time I fully acknowledge that I’m not just warm between my legs, or flushed