Page 42 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
Bram
And that’s all until the guests get here,” Ali finishes. We’re in Nagel Auditoria, a Gothic building in the heart of Astra’s campus, as we prepare for the upcoming seminar on pollinators. We’re welcoming lepidopterists—or butterfly perverts, as Ali keeps forgetting not to call them—along with ornithologists,*chiropterologists,*melittologists,*and other entomologists.*It’s me and two assistant professors on the tenure grind who’ve been trying to keep up with Ali’s tossed-out ideas all afternoon.
“And we’re committed to online-only resources, Dr. Darwish?” one of the assistant professors asks. Dr. Diana Mensah, a Brit who came over as a grad student, and whom I adopted immediately as she was the only one in her cohort even remotely interested in a future as a bryologist.*
Her compatriot in suffering, a lanky man upsettingly named Maverick McGee, clears his throat. “I’m just thinking we might need more organization beyond throwing everyone’s slides and handouts onto the cloud.”
Ali pauses, then makes finger guns. “Let’s do a seminar website, then. Thanks, guys!”
Diana and Maverick exchange adead insideglance, which Ali misses as he’s already striding up to the door, waving for me to follow him.
“You know, we’ll probably have to build the website ourselves,” I remark as we leave one of the lecture halls and emerge into the soaring stone lobby. “The web department won’t turn it around in time.”
Outside, the sun is fondly golden and the air is pleasant, despite the ever-present wind here on the hill Astra University is perched upon. The trees are waving and sighing, their full green leaves just starting to hint at the red and orange and yellow tumult to come.
“It’ll keep the APs busy,” says Ali. “Wouldn’t want them to get bored this early in the year!”
I give him a wry look as we start toward Gerhart Hall.
“Bram, I promise I won’t break the baby professors. I didn’t break you, did I?”
“Isn’t that how organizational abuse perpetuates itself, sir?”
“We should ask someone in Psych. But your concern about the website is duly noted,” he adds, too quickly to take him at his word.
“I’m happy to help with—”
He’s already shaking his head. “Bram, stop.Stop.You have your hands full—great work on that proposal, by the way, you know how to titillate those National Science Foundation program officers—but you don’t need to take on everything at Astra University that needs doing. Either the APs will get the website done, or we’ll throw everything onto”—a heavy sigh, like it pains him to say—“Microsoft OneDrive. But you have got to get better about giving yourself away, because a university isn’t like your greenhouse. You’re never going to get back what you put into it. Maybe you’ll get back what you put into teaching and mentoring,to a point, but never into the institution itself. A university will eat your health, your ideas, and your spare time, and it’ll keep only half paying the bill until you’re retired or you’re dead.”
“I’m... not sure what lesson I’m supposed to take away from that.”
Ali stops in front of our building to squat down and extend his hand. Dr. Monty, who was lazing on his side on the grass near the entrance, gets up and starts rubbing his fluffy head against Ali’s fingers.
“There’s not a lesson,” says my department chair. “I’m just telling you to do some shit for yourself for once. What does Bram Loe want when he’s not being a professor or a dad? What do you do for yourself to unwind?”
I’m assailed by the memory of Maddie standing in front of me in a classroom yesterday. Sweater up, tits covered in lace. Heavily lidded green eyes and a bratty smile.
I push it away.
“Being a dad and teachingarethe things I do for myself.”
Ali gives Dr. Monty a final pat and then stands with the posture of someone about to casually throw down a decent hand of cards. “You know... Sara’s worried.”
I groan and start walking to the doors, away from this nonsense. The thing about bonding with the same professor as your spouse while you’re both in undergrad is that time marches on for all of you and yet you still have this eternal, shared pseudo-parent in tweed.
“I’m serious,” Ali continues, half jogging until he catches up. “She feels like she has Asher, and—well, glaciers, I guess—but you chose toteachscience instead ofdoingscience, and you’re still alone after five years, and she’s worried, is all. I’m worried. I’m not saying you have to download a dating app or take up ballroom dancing, but give yourself something, man. It doesn’t have to accomplish anything other than bringing a smile to your face. It doesn’t even have to make sense. In fact, it’s even better if it doesn’t make sense! Because then I’ll know you’re not being a scientist about it. Or worse, adad.”
He claps my shoulder and then pulls open the door to the building, entering as Dr. Monty headbutts my ankles and then darts inside to find a grad student’s laptop to lie on.
IBEHAVE FORa week. Seven days. Seven days of giving Maddie rueful smiles as I make sure not to touch her in the hallway as we pass, as I make sure I don’t graze her in the kitchen as we clean up after dinner. Seven days of quietly pulling on my cock in the shower, trying not to think about what Ali said after the seminar meeting, trying not to justify and justify and justify what I want.
Give yourself something, man.
But I can’t, I can’t do it. It’s not right.
That afternoon, I come home to three banged-up cars in my driveway and muffled yelling from Fern’s room.
I set down my satchel on the sofa and peer up the stairs as Maddie emerges from the kitchen holding a bowl of denuded grape stems.
