Many afternoons Paul Cantor stood at his office window in the English Department and looked down at the campus below watching the students walking to their classes, some riding bicycles, others romantically holding hands, some sitting on the benches or along the wall of the large circular fountain sending splashing rainbows of water into the air. This day, however, a weary sigh escaped from deep within him before he went back to his desk to attempt reading the papers his students had turned in two weeks ago but which he had been avoiding. Normally, he would have read and graded them, writing extensive comments and handing them back within a week, but now he could not face looking at another paper. He sat back in his black leather chair, reclining, closing his eyes, stroking his white beard with one hand and tapping his red pen on the desk with the other wondering why he was procrastinating, but knowing the lethargic moods that had been darkening his generally cheerful, energetic spirit for the last several months was now unbearable.
He knew he was depressed, tired, frustrated, anguished and fighting off despair. What frightened him the most was thinking about suicide, ending it all, but shoving that thought away, knowing he did not have the courage. Still, it was a thought that had previously never entered his mind and was now lurking in the shadows, poking him from a hidden corner, scaring him with its presence, its insidious whispering in his ear.
He should be happy that his latest book of poetry, his fifth, was on the short list for a major award. He had been invited to give readings at several colleges and was proud of his growing reputation as one of the more important poets writing today. He hadn't written a new poem in at least eight months and though he had several drafts of a new poem started, he hadn't looked at the three lines he had in his notebook for weeks and knew he was stuck. He also knew from experience that when he was unable to let the lines flow and pour from him, he was not ready to write the poem and was okay with that. It was part of the process, but this was different. Now he didn't care if he ever wrote another poem and realized that the passion that made him such a prolific and highly regarded poet for the last thirty years was withering like so many other aspects of his life.
Paul loved women and though he was faithful to his former wife, Evelyn, for most of their twenty five year marriage, in the last few years before their divorce, he had several passionate one night stands while he was off giving readings. "Why not," he'd think when the opportunity presented itself and his sex life at home had died. He was frustrated, often horny and knew he was getting older. It was flattering to see how a student or even a young female instructor or PhD candidate practically threw herself at him after a reading and so, he would willingly let it happen and have no regrets when he'd hook up and they'd go out for a drink then end up in bed, knowing it was not a relationship but just a hot night of wild sex with no strings attached.
He had married Evelyn when they were both in graduate school where she earned her masters in anthropology but decided not to continue. They met at a party and became immediately attracted to each other and fucked in the back of his car that night and as often as possible after that. She was smart, sexy with long blond hair and a body that made men's eyes turn, but she only wanted Paul which amazed and gratified him.
For the first three years of their marriage, their sex life was exciting, imaginative and wild, never kinky but definitely daring and on the edge; however, after their two children were born, three years apart, their sex life didn't disappear but was definitely not what it was before the children. Eve gained weight, in fact, a lot of weight so that by their eighth year of marriage, sex became a once a week event, usually on Saturday nights after going to dinner and a movie.
Paul missed the sexy blonde woman he married and found himself fantasizing about the attractive young students he saw everyday on campus. Though he would never act on his fantasies, he liked how they flirted with him, how they told him how much they loved his last book of poems, how his classes were their favorite. He maintained his professional, distant manner with them, never indicating how their tight shirts, jeans and tiny mini skirts aroused him.
Even their eighteen year old baby sitter, Becky, made it difficult not to look at her now that she was no longer the skinny fourteen year old they had used and who was adored by their two boys, Daniel and Jonah. Paul tried ignoring the dramatic changes that had gradually taken place right before his eyes and now, she was a sexy young woman and not a child. He tried to ignore how her skimpy clothes tantalized him, how her unself-conscious way of laying on the floor with the boys with her ass straining her jeans or her short skirts showing more thigh than they hid made him look away, but then he'd swallow and couldn't help but look back at her in a way he knew he shouldn't.
Still, he never indicated how Becky gave him fantasies to jerk off too and had no idea how the distinguished professor and highly regarded poet lusted for her, nor did his sexy female students realize how he looked at their bodies when they walked away, their hips swaying. They had no idea how he had to close his eyes and turn away, knowing he would never cross the professional barrier between teacher and student, though often he was tempted and wished he was not so uptight. Still being around so many sexy young women fed his imagination, often stimulating poems which he never published.
He also found himself at dinner parties with their friends, sitting next to his overweight wife, looking at the wives of people he had known for twenty years wondering what they were like in bed, knowing several of their husbands cheated on them with students or female colleagues, wondering if they knew their husbands cheated or if they also had affairs. Sex was often on his mind and the lack of lust he felt for his wife now made his desire for other women more intense and his fantasy life more vivid, even resulting in looking at porn on the internet. Still, his outward appearance gave no indication what was going on inside. He felt he had a secret fantasy life that both excited and frustrated him.
One woman, in particular, Jenny Davidson, the wife of his office mate, Charles, or Chuck as he preferred being called, often cornered him after she had a few drinks. He liked how close she stood to him, how she touched his arm to emphasize a point, how she smiled looking into his eyes, or commented on a poem of his she read in Atlantic Monthly or, depending on how drunk she was, told him how stuffy and boring Chuck was, though he was kind and generous to her. She had a way of biting her lower lip when she said that, looking into his eyes and he knew she was just flirting and drunk and nothing would happen. Still, he thought she was pretty with large sparkling green eyes. It was exciting to have these private conversations with Jenny, especially because she always wore low cut dresses or a blouse with several buttons undone, practically touching him with her breasts, arousing him and causing him to wonder what he would do if her seductive ways became even more aggressive and they arranged to disappear to a room upstairs or make a rendezvous at the local Super -8 Motel, something he fantasized about but knew would never happen, still he was tempted.
So, here he was, sitting in his office, ignoring the papers he should be grading, realizing he was one year from retiring, now divorced from Evelyn for three years, living in a small but comfortable apartment but feeling empty, lonely, sensing his life was almost over at sixty five. He had a prestigious position at the university, was highly regarded as a poet, yet he was feeling despair and a longing for something he couldn't quite name. He knew it was related to the lust he still felt for the young sexy students but most of all was the realization that the women who used to look at him, flirt with him when he walked by no longer did.
Painfully, he remembered when he was a younger man with a dark beard, long hair, how the female students looked into his eyes and smiled when they passed, how they came to his table in the university cafeteria to sit with him, ask for his autograph or show him a poem they had written, wanting his comments, or they would come to his office with a question or advice, dressed provocatively and clearly wanting more. Even as he got older, his dark hair turning grey, flecks of white in his beard, his skin showing wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, he could feel their attraction to him, several saying as they leaned forward, how they liked older men, how more experienced and patient they were than the young studs on campus, clearly coming on to him. He enjoyed the flirting and in his subtle, distant somewhat shy way, flirted back, though still not going over the professional line regardless of how tempted he was.
He now had white thinning hair, a much larger wrinkled brow with his receding hair line, a paunch that he had recently developed despite watching what he ate, knowing he should exercise; his walk much stiffer than before. Though he would look at the lovely women he passed, noticing their bodies the way he always had, now, when he looked at them, hoping to catch their eye, it didn't happen. He was an old man and they didn't see him.
Sighing deeply, glancing at the pile of papers, he wondered if he was foolish not taking advantage of all the sexual opportunities he passed by because of his professional ethics, and now he was old and what he longed for was impossible. He remembered a line from one his poems, "Sometimes life is like licking honey from a thorn." The line made him chuckle then shaking his head, "It's true. My fucking life has been more thorn than honey."
When he said that, he threw down his red pen, stood up and grabbed his brown tweed sport jacket with the leather pouches on the elbow, thinking again that he looked like a cliché and wished he could be as far from this campus as he could be. He wished he could start over, be a carpenter like his dad, drink beer and watch ball games instead of getting a four year scholarship to Princeton then spending forty five years in the stuffy ivory tower of the university with all its protocol about teachers and students, much of it ignored, he knew, but not by him, at least not until ten or so years ago on reading tours.
Now, at sixty five, no longer attractive to younger women and not interested in the shriveled up older women he met, he realized like a dagger at his back, those days were behind him.
