I realize as I sit outside this door that my fear of the people sitting just 
beyond it has been growing year after year. I wonder, as I drum my fingers 
on the doorknob, how long it will be before the fear becomes so crippling 
that I can't even open the door anymore and I am replaced.

Professor Morton, the staid chair of the English Literature concentration, 
walks behind me. I don't turn to look, but I can feel his gaze burn into the 
back of my neck. He doesn't like me; he doesn't like any of the creative 
writing faculty. Even with nothing but the colors and shapes in my periphery 
I know what he's wearing and how he is walking: tweed, probably in some 
neutral dark brown, posture erect, his ring of remaining hair a defiant, 
shiny silver outdone only by his bald spot. Fluorescent lighting is not kind 
to his pockmarked complexion, and he knows it. His face is fixed in a 
permanent scowl, the type of expression worn by instructors who know they 
are destined to forever be saddled with students who are going to dirty and 
destroy the carefully-constructed universe of interpretation his entire life 
is built on.

He hates the creative writers for this very reason; he clears his throat as 
he walks behind me. It is a chastisement; he does it every year. I sit here 
trying to get over my fear and open the door, and he walks to get his mail 
at 11:45am sharp every day. He is trying to remind me that there are people 
here trying to do serious work and that I'd best get on with filling these 
childrens' heads with total nonsense.

This year it's particularly bad. I took a hiatus after my very first year as 
an official instructor, though I'd been teaching creative writing workshops 
for undergrads since I was a dissertator in these very halls. I finished a 
fourth book and won a second Lambda Award and the university, delirious with 
joy at having an "award-winning author" (and likely not even knowing what 
the Lambdas are even for), told me to bill whatever class I liked for the 
coming year.

Before I knew it, I was no longer teaching ECW 101, "Foundations of the 
Creative Process", and was now teaching ECW 351, "Writing Sexuality".

This is why now my fear is even more intense than usual. I am only 28; I 
don't think I qualify as 'old', though to the students on this campus I must 
seem ancient beyond reckoning. Somehow, though, when I began to teach 
Foundations, I became terrified of workshopping, especially with students. I 
think I was afraid of my own work, which every semester I swore to produce 
alongside the class as a sort of contract; they were forced to bare 
themselves and thus so was I.

It was the good reviews, I think. I was never once told by a class that they 
disliked a single thing I wrote. I began to TRY to write horrible, terrible 
prose. I wanted to offend them... and every single time they were just awed. 
Where was the criticism? How accessible was a story about blow jobs in a 
Maupin-esque "Tales of the City" setting supposed to be to a stereotypical 
frat boy (and I had many of them) looking for easy credit? "It was really 
visceral," he'd written. "I thought the symbolism of flying jizz in that 
last scene was really powerful." I'd written about a man coming on another 
guy's face, for Christ's sake. I hadn't used a single word over two 
syllables long. Visceral, my ass.

So that was my fear. Nobody in the department had anything constructive to 
say about my writing, and my friends had long ago sworn never to read a 
single thing I'd ever written for fear of my becoming boring (the most 
terrible sin of the modern age) and a one-trick pony. Felicia Stone, my 
editor, often sent me back drafts with not a single grammatical correction 
but Post-its on every tenth page reading "Can't you make it sexier?" And I 
never did, and she accepted it. She knew the reason I was winning awards and 
was not consigned to obscurity forever as a footnote of erotica anthologies 
was because I managed to put a literary spin on the dirty, filthy world of 
gay sex. It was possible I knew more synonyms for "penis" than any Harlequin 
writer to have lived could dream of.

Thus my twice-yearly 101 class was my only real sounding board... and if 
they only wanted to please me, I wasn't going to grow or change as a writer. 
I was afraid of them because they were the Ghosts of Christmas Future, 
beckoning me into the darkness of a lifetime dressed like Sean Morton.

I stare at the doorknob. This year might be different. "Writing Sexuality" 
is certainly going to attract a particular kind of student. Creative writing 
is not easy to do at this university; I know all of them have been 
workshopped twice, surviving 101 and 201, likely during my absence. I will 
have no repeat students. I don't even get to read their admission samples; 
June, the department secretary and a department alum, does that.

For just a moment I try to envision the mental profile. They will not be shy 
about sex... or perhaps they will. Maybe this is their way of opening up to 
the concept. In the back of my mind I resolve to have them read some Star 
Trek slash fiction as homework. I've never been much for a syllabus; for 
these workshop classes it's rarely necessary. There's no textbook and only 
two real assignments per semester. I've only failed a student once and that 
was only because he didn't show up after the first day and didn't have the 
politeness to drop like the other two. I take classes of 10 each, usually, 
but this one is slated for five... a very elite group. Normally a rough 
third of them drop every year after two days.

There is no window in the door to Becker 510, and thank God for this; they 
can smell fear, and I am still looking at the doorknob. My watch beeps: 
11:50. I've let the fear go on long enough; every year I set that alarm and 
give myself ten minutes to ruminate. Good ideas sometimes result. I get one 
for an icebreaker. I turn the doorknob.

The door itself doesn't have windows, but the room does. Large ones that 
look out over the lake. It is perhaps the best classroom in the building; 
there's a large oaken conference table and comfortable, padded chairs in the 
deep navy blue of the building's accents. Most of the chairs are pulled 
against the wall; 4 of them are filled with students, and another sits at 
the head, empty. I smile and walk over to it, setting my expanding file -- 
covered in mint green cloth and semi-transparent, it's rather more 
decorative than the dark blue ones the department issues us -- on the table 
and leaning over the back of the chair. I don't sit down. You have to 
establish dominance right off the bat or they won't respect you in any way. 
I try not to bare my teeth in answer to some primal instinct. I am in 
command. I have the all-powerful moniker of "teacher". They must obey.

"Alrighty then." I dig through a short stack of papers and produce the 
attendance sheet. "Let me take a quick roll and then I'll introduce myself, 
and so will you. Let's see..." I skim the list. There are indeed ten names; 
someone chickened out, or is very sick, or possibly died.

I briefly amuse myself with the idea that someone found out a homo is 
teaching a class on writing sex and is struck immediately dead in a fit of 
stigmata. "We found him with blood running from his eyes," they explain. 
"And he was gripping this PFLAG brochure."

"Belle Andersen?"

"Present," says a prim voice. I glance at Belle; she's seated directly to my 
right at the front of the class. Her hair is unreal. If it were any more 
blonde, any more tightly sculpted to curve exactly around her face like a 
curiously rotund picture frame, I'd swear she was made out of plastic. She 
is wearing a white shirt under a navy sweater with the university crest; I 
can't help but 'accidentally' drop something and check under the table when 
I pick it up: she wears a matching navy skirt and white leggings and black 
shoes. I stand up and look at her smile, a 10,000 kilowatt job that has 
undoubtedly cost her parents a fortune. I am tempted to mark her absent 
because she can't really exist.

"Mordecai Chenowitz?"

"Here." I swivel a bit; he's sitting off to the left side. He looks 
comfortable, but in an artificial way, as if he were shipped out of a 
plastic mold direct from Abercrombie and Fitch to my classroom. He is a bit 
plump, and his skin is a bit dark; it's offset by a perfect green preppy 
sweater and tan pants of some unidentifiable fashion origin. He isn't 
smiling, but he seems at ease; his carriage is loose, though totally 
unmoving. I suddenly wonder what his response to my icebreaker will be.

"Mark Fennel?" There is silence, and I smile inwardly but hide it outwardly. 
I have found my stigmata victim. We all know he is the fifth who isn't here, 
but as a token gesture I throw his name out again. "Anyone out there named 
Mark Fennel?" Another pause. One last one for posterity. "Don't force me to 
do the Ferris Bueller gag, it's really overplayed."

Nobody speaks up. I shrug and am about to move on to the list when someone 
speaks. "He's, uh... he'll drop the class." The voice is smooth but there is 
a hint of excitement behind it, as if he is thrilled to be speaking out of 
turn but hiding it to seem cool and aloof. I look at the owner, and find a 
young man... a little surprising, as the tambre of the speech suggests it 
might be a low tenor or a high alto. He is sitting backwards on his chair, 
so I can't see much of his body, but he wears cargos that are too large for 
the lithe frame his tight grey t-shirt reveals. His hair is short and 
blonde, his eyes dark green. He is smiling genuinely, and I am pleased to 
see it after Belle's terrifying Pleasantville visage.

I raise an eyebrow, pretend to be professional, and force myself to stop 
wondering which of Mordecai or this newcome is more attractive. Everyone 
else in the class is below my mental radar. "How do you know that?"

"He's my roommate," the boy -- young man, I force myself to correct -- 
replies. "He, uh..." There's a pause and the excitement drops out of his 
voice. "He just can't take the class, is all." Are his cheeks reddening?

"Ah." Briefly I am filled with terror. Have I summoned some sort of terrible 
fate for Mark Fennel out of my fear-fed mental ramblings? I shift my weight 
and notice that all eyes in the classroom are on this poor kid whose name I 
don't even know. "Do you know why? Out of curiosity."

Silence, for a moment. He appears to fight an inner war, and then purses his 
lips for a moment. "His parents found out, see. They don't..." Another 
pause. "They don't want him taking a class with a gay professor."

I am not terribly shocked by this, though I can see someone's face -- a 
black girl, sitting a seat or so behind Mordecai -- twist a little with 
recognition. I espy Belle; she looks smug for some reason. She probably read 
all about me before signing up, I realize. "Ah, well... these things happen. 
I'm sure he can sort of osmose the class out of you, then, mister...?"

"Ford. Adrian Ford. I'm probably next on the list."

I check. He is. "Alright, then. I'll spare you the calling of the name, 
which makes the next... Ashley Gephardt."

The black girl behind Mordecai raises her hand. "That's me." I take a better 
look at her this time; she's clearly trying to come to grips with something. 
I arrogantly assume it's my sexuality thanks to Adrian's casual outing of 
me; I flick a glance at him but he's busy scribbling something in a 
notebook. Looking back at Ashley, I give her a nod and mark her name off. 
She has a comfortable look that's more natural than Mordecai's: a dark green 
turtleneck and a brown suede vest over jeans, a rawhide necklace around her 
neck, though I can't quite discern what the pendant is. She wears her hair 
in a ponytail and is a bit plump, but she wears it well; she has that rare 
quality where she knows she's attractive without having to conform to a 
media-produced body standard. For a moment I realize how paunchy I've become 
as an academic and am filled with envy. She smiles at me nervously.

"Alright then... last but not least, Claire Ha--" I stop, just for a moment, 
and choke down a laugh. This poor girl. "Claire Hall."

A girl sitting to Adrian's right, two chairs and and entire world away from 
Belle, smiles. "It's okay. Get the laugh out now." Her smile is practiced: 
she is telling me it's okay to laugh, but she doesn't really believe it. I 
know why, too: Claire is one of the residence halls on campus. For a moment 
my gaze frosts over as I think of all the indirect jokes she's had to deal 
with -- insensitive guys saying things like "I bet it's easy to get into 
Claire Hall at night!" as if they were the comic geniuses of vaudeville days 
long past -- and I take the laugh she offered. In deference to her 
suffering, I make it short.

"Sorry, Miss Hall," I apologize as sincerely as I can. "It'll never happen 
again." I mean it.

She nods; her face is heart-shaped and probably the envy of every girl she 
knows, framed by dark brown curls only a shade lighter than her hazel eyes. 
She's wearing a dress -- something sheer and black, with a bow at the base 
of her spine -- and sensible black shoes. Claire Hall strikes me as a woman 
who developed practicality as a defense. I instantly like her, though I know 
someday she will live an unhappy life being called a ball-buster by men who 
are afraid of her.

I check the list. Counting the vanished Mark, that makes five. Nodding in 
satisfaction, I pull out the chair and sit down, stretching my legs. 
"Alright, then. Welcome to ECW 351, you lucky devils you. As you probably 
know, my name is Wesley Ryan. I am technically a professor," I say with a 
smile. People get twitchy referring to me as Professor Ryan. I admit that 
sometimes I get a charge out of it. "I say you should call me Wes. If you 
think that's not formal enough, Mr. Ryan works for me. Or 'O captain, my 
captain'."

Ashley grins, a little, and I'm glad. Everyone else laughs, and I am happy 
that they got the ref in the first place. I suddenly feel old, realizing 
that generations will soon come who have not seen that movie.

"In any event, we're going to be working closely for 15 weeks, so it's best 
that we get things started off right." I lace my fingers and crack my 
knuckles. Belle produces a notebook and a pen; I know right away she's going 
to be a challenge. Everyone else looks at me expectantly.

"It's just a little icebreaker. Just follow my lead." I clear my throat. 
There's no time for fear now. Really, I get into it once I've dived in. I've 
always been that way: you have to coax me to the water, but I can skinny dip 
with the best of 'em once I'm there.

Time to get things started.

"My name is Wesley Ryan. I am 28 years old, gay, and my favorite sex-related 
word is 'moneyshot'."

-----

Fox Mendel was about as perfect as you could possibly ask for. By any early 
2000s standard he had the appearance, the charm, the wealth, and the 
attitude down pat. He was tall, but not too tall. He was height-weight 
proportionate in a way that defied medical science. He was blonde but it was 
a dark blonde that kept him from looking like a surfer (and avoiding all the 
associated stereotypes), with clear green eyes. His skin was too dusky to be 
called fair but too light for him to be anything but a suburban white kid.

Fox Mendel got B's in everything, except gym and choir and maybe drama. 
Everyone knew it wasn't that he wasn't bright -- he was just bright enough 
-- but that he had better things to do. His family was comfortable but not 
so wealthy as to be snobby. He wore Abercrombie clothes but cut them with 
jeans from Target. He had a car but it was a '99 Ford Escort.

In short, Fox Mendel was perfect because he was totally non-threatening. He 
was likable and pleasant and actually pretty friendly. Everyone got along 
with Fox Mendel and he got along with everyone else. He was successful but 
not so much that you envied him. He was handsome but not so much that you 
hated him.

College was a bit of a shock for him. It is for everyone, really; the 
microcosm of high school which was a person's entire universe for so long is 
suddenly millions of miles away, metaphorically speaking, and he is forced 
to realize that he's no longer the center of the world.

Unless, of course, he realizes that college is just high school painted in 
broader strokes.

Fox Mendel wasn't particularly manipulative; he wasn't out for control for 
control's sake. But he knew that if he acted in particular ways particular 
people gave him what he wanted. Girls were particularly vulnerable, but he 
found that boys could be affected too. A smile was the most powerful weapon 
in the universe. And usually, Fox meant it. He genuinely liked people, 
though he rarely found them very interesting. They were diverting; something 
fun and colorful to be around. A bit like circus balloons.

Fox Mendel knew that college students were high school students once and so 
he brought the high schooler out in them. They wanted to bask a little bit 
in his perfection, a perfection totally founded on how completely, 
unassumingly baseline he was compared to a cultural ideal. There was, one 
assumed, a little bit of Fox Mendel in everyone and so everyone who liked 
that part of themselves liked Fox Mendel.

When he got to college, Fox Mendel discovered dick.

Maybe it's egregious to say he "discovered" it. Anyone reading the preceding 
paragraphs can probably draw his or her own conclusions about Fox Mendel and 
the concept of dick in general. What's being said here is that Fox 
discovered the dicks of other people, and they were terribly interesting 
compared to his own and compared to girls in general.

It wasn't that Fox didn't appreciate girls. They were fun to touch; squishy, 
a little. Like teddy bears. But he'd never slept with one, not even in high 
school when the particular, socially-driven nymphomania of high school girls 
mixed with his more-or-less perfection to create a sort of tide of possible 
sex he surfed all the way to graduation. The truth is he thought they were 
sort of icky without their clothes on.

Guys, though... they had a certain elegant simplicity that girls didn't 
have. And Fox understood them perfectly. There were certain actions to be 
taken, certain places to touch or brush or kiss or any other of a variety of 
verbs and he'd know how they'd react. It was, to put a fine point on it, 
flat-out easier.

Fox Mendel wasn't particularly aware of his own perfection; if he had been 
the entire thing would have been shot to hell. But he was just aware enough 
to know that people being attracted to him, being his friend and providing 
him with the interest and fun of the day to day (not to mention the 
occasional blow job once he realized he was into that sort of thing), was 
predicated on a very particular balance of factors and being gay might upset 
it too wildly. Turns out he was worried over nothing. If anything it made 
him more popular with his female friends than he ever could have thought 
possible. Suddenly things he had always been to them -- empathetic, 
understanding, friendly -- meant more, and the only guy friends he lost had 
never really been that interesting to him to begin with.

Being gay didn't hurt Fox Mendel's perfection a single iota, so he embraced 
it wholeheartedly.

It was easy. Fox had always been a good actor, was studying drama. It was 
the easiest thing in the whole world to be a gay guy studying drama, even if 
the stereotype was a little played. He was a good dancer (or at least he was 
a good dancer by modern standards, which is to say he could move his torso 
in a different direction from his legs and didn't mind looking like a total 
fool in public) and so the various LGBT society dances were a lot of fun. 
And of course he was pretty and willing and thus the actual sex part was in 
supply whenever he felt he really needed it.

Fox Mendel appeared to have a more or less perfect life.

-----

I am actually pretty happy with my office. Becker 525 -- it's just down the 
hall not only from the classroom I teach in but my old haunts in the 
doctoral student lounge. It's not that large. I specifically asked for a 
small office because I don't really need much in terms of space, and it 
makes the tenure-types happy when a new face shows proper humility. But I 
filled the space as best I could with things that made me happy: I put the 
standard issue stuff in storage and brought in comfortable chairs from home. 
I have an upright lamp for warm lighting. I keep a bowl full of candy -- 
good candy, not ancient peppermints unearthed from the very bowels of Brachs 
-- on my desk.

I know it sounds little old lady-ish but it works. It puts people off their 
guard and as a teacher of writing I find that useful. I think language is 
the enemy of writing. It gets in the way; writers often see language as 
their tool, something which they use to shape and form ideas into a concrete 
thing that people digest as "writing".

I don't really agree. My relationship with language is 100% adversarial. 
Words are the barrier between me -- my meaning, my ideas -- and the rest of 
the world. I think writers who fall in love with the written word are 
falling in love with the enemy. You can't do that and not lose something in 
the process.

To put in terms like my writing might involve, I make the words my bitch. I 
tie them up, I apply the nipple clamps, and I give them a good round 
fucking. It's actually quite cathartic, a really supreme high. If you're 
into that sort of thing. I'm not sure I'm really the S&M type, but I can 
appreciate the aesthetic.

I'm thinking about the first day icebreaker, about everyone's answers. 
Belle's told me everything I needed to know about her: "turgid". I think 
there's a good chance before slash fiction that word never existed. Somehow 
its use to describe erections the world over propagated it back in time; 
normal words like "large" or "full" or, christ, "erect" suddenly became 
"turgid" in an attempt to retroactively justify our need to use it.

It's not that I don't like Belle, but you can tell from the prim cut of her 
jib that sex is, to her, this vast sea of romantic metaphor she wants to 
dive into and, as someone who's had his sails a little more frequently 
unfurled, I know that she's expecting "Pirates of the Caribbean" and is 
about to get the unused footage from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". I know 
that my goal is going to be to break her into realism, slowly. Starting with 
getting her to burn her thesaurus.

Ashley's was reasonable: "orgasmic". It's practical but it's sexy. It's... 
goal-oriented. It's romantic enough, if you think about it; it's certainly a 
little more expressive than "get off" or "come", though they have a certain 
directness that appeals to my desire to cut out the semantic middleman. On 
the other side of the spectrum from Belle was Mordecai's rather prosaic 
response of "sex". I'm divided on it. It sounds stupid, but really... isn't 
there a grain of truth in that somewhere? Isn't the sexiest part of sex 
actually having it? I guess the line between someone blowing off the 
question and delving into it deeply is the width of a word or two.

Claire's made me wonder. She said "heat". It's certainly appropriate, as 
anybody who's bumped uglies will attest to... but there's layers beyond 
that. She steepled her fingers when she said it and she had a sort of 
wistful look. It was someone contemplating the discursive space of a word... 
someone willing to make words her enemy because they're inadequate. She 
gives me high hopes.

I'm sucking on a Werther's and giving the responses more thought when the 
knock on the door comes. I take a bite -- I can never suck on a hard candy 
too long; I always end up biting through in the end to get it over with -- 
and yell, "Come in."

As for Adrian's answer?

He hangs in the doorway, wearing all black but looking flush and 
fully-colored like an incompetent Goth. He has an easy stance; he's learning 
against the jamb, almost like a streetwalker. I try not to let my 
imagination run away with descriptive adjectives assessing the situation, 
but it's entirely appropriate that I was getting to his response, mentally, 
when he showed up at my door like a Mardis Gras patron asking for beads.

The object he's holding -- a short stack of stapled papers -- slaps against 
his thigh before he points it at me.

"I want to talk to you," he says solemnly, "about Fox Mendel."