HOW BRAVE I MIGHT HAVE BEEN

HOW BRAVE I MIGHT HAVE BEEN(L. Douglas St. Ours) HOW BRAVE I MIGHT HAVE BEEN



Mrs.Powers was the prettiest teacher I had ever seen
When I was a sophomore in high school she was the dish
I obsessively fantasized over when not pursuing girls my own age.


I'd take the long way to nearly every class then I'd slow down by her door,
crane my neck for a not too obvious sideways peek like I was passing the gates of heaven.
A furtive glance and an insatiable desire to catch a glimpse of her stooping or crossing her legs
and not watch where I was going and collide into another horny student coming from the other direction
both losing our attentions in our lookings followed by textbooks tumbling,
slamming the floor, making her turn and look, but I'd be gone.


Those accidents happened a lot that year before I was assigned to her class,
when like many boys my age I discovered true titillation reading Terry Southern's Lolita light sex romp "Candy." I would mentally devour passages and even entire chapters, concealing "Candy" inside my textbook and forget where I was and become so aroused that when the class bell rang, I'd have a damn hard on and had to hide it behind my books I strategically carried in front of my waist.


Anyway that following year I was placed in Mrs. Powers class as eager as a puppy
till the dread set in when she called me to the front of the class to read my composition
just as I was staring at her from the safety of my desk
with salacious thoughts like she was an incarnation of Marilyn Monroe.


Standing beside her I felt like a raisin stuttering and nervous, a fly too close to the fire.

When she noticed my discomfort, she gently touched my shoulder
and I jumped as if she had put ice down my shirt.


Up close her scent and glow left me wobbly wrestling with my id
thrusting my loins so high in my head they swamped my mind recalling her stretching in her high heels, her hem rising to chalk a lesson on the highest section of the blackboard.


And it was as frightening as salvation when she fleetingly looked into my eyes
as if she could read my thoughts and then smiled so sweetly she melted my shaking body into a lump of wax oozing as if a laser had struck and lit it like a candle.


She carried herself with grace and elegance just like the wife of a very lucky judge, which she was.


And watching her then and remembering her now, I'm still not sure how brave I might have been in the ultimate and unlikely scenario of her stepping out of her dress to seduce me.




By L DOUGLAS ST OURS
March 2010