In the small New England college where I taught English, every professor was also required to take on the coaching of a sport or extra-curricular activity. I took on Drama since I had always loved the theatre.
We did only one big production a semester, and the one for that semester was to be "West Side Story," a huge undertaking because of the size of the cast and the length of the musical.
We had many good singers in the school, but the best female soprano voice belonged to Missy Wilson, a young blonde and pretty girl from a small town in Maine. Missy—which was a nickname for "Melissa", which she did not like—apparently had been raised by loving and well-to-do parents, and even though she was 18, she seemed so innocent and naive that both I and Paul Martin, another English professor whose office was next to mine, thought she must be a virgin. That intrigued us. I had always felt it was important for anyone to have a hobby in addition to their regular job, and Paul and I had the same hobby of plundering young and sometimes innocent college girls. It was a hobby that was easy to get away with at a college. The girls were away from home, most of them for the first time, and they looked up to their professors as mentors. And we were happy to "teach" them.
Missy desperately wanted to have the role of the lead, Maria. There was only one problem: Maria was supposed to be Puerto Rican, and Missy had blonde hair. I pointed this out to her and figured it would disqualify her.
But I did not realize how much she wanted the role. The next time I saw her in class, her hair was a rich and shinning black. She smiled at me.
I saw her after class. "You look exactly like Maria," I said.
"That was the idea. So do I get the role?"
"You get the role."
She jumped up and down. "Yeah! Thank you so much. I know I'll do a good job with it."
And she did—for awhile. Everything was going well until the third week into rehearsal. Missy came to see me in my office after classes.
"I've got a big problem," she croaked. She sounded like some kind of gremlin.
"What's the problem?"
"You can hear it. I guess I've been too hard on my throat with those high notes. Obviously, I'm not a professional singer, and I guess I don't know how to protect my throat. I can hardly speak."
That was a problem, a BIG problem if our lead singer could not sing. I racked my brain—and came up with a possible solution. I remembered reading about a famous opera singer around the turn of the 20th century who had coated her throat before every performance with live human cells provide by friendly stagehands—via oral sex.
Hmmmmm. It's true that Missy was very naïve, and the idea might work if she would swallow it—so to speak.
I explained the idea to her and told her about the famous opera singer.
"Do you think it really would work?' she asked.
"Yes, I think it would."
"But where would I get that? They don't sell it in a drug store."
"No, they don't. You would have to get it in the old-fashioned way—just as the opera singer did."
"But I can't do that with boys on the set. Everyone would know about it. I would be humiliated."
"As well as very popular," I added.
She thought about it for a minute, then looked up. "Would you to do it?" she asked.
"Do what?"
"Be the donor."
"Of live cells?"
"Yes."
"In the old-fashioned way?"
"If that's what you wanted."
Bingo! I hesitated. "I guess I could do it, but this is a very unusual request, so I would need to have a witness that I had not coerced you into doing this."
"How would you do that?"
"I think Paul Martin in the next adjoining office would be willing to do it."
"But he wouldn't tell anybody."
"Of course not."
"I guess it's okay—if you have to," she agreed reluctantly.
"I think for best results, it should be done before every rehearsal or performance—just the way the opera singer did it. So when would you want to start?"
"Well, we have a rehearsal this afternoon at three, just an hour from now."
"Then I guess we ought to start right away." I walked over to my desk and press the button on the intercom. "Paul, could you come over for a few minutes? I need you to be a witness to something."
"Sure." In less than a minute, he was there.