There's this guy, you know, like there always seems to be, in my AmLit class. He's got cold eyes, a constant scowl, and my affections, for some unknown reason. He's got that look down cold, the look of someone who'll make out with you and then beat you up afterward, someone who'd cross his fingers that you'd drop the soap in the shower, slice you up as soon as kiss you. A good-looking bad boy.
He always comes to class a few minutes late, on the opposite side of the lecture hall, far left on the edge to my right aisle. There are only so many times I check the clock and let my eyes linger on their return to the front before he catches on. He's asleep halfway through class, half of the time, the other half in a ostentatious display of boredom. Occasionally our eyes will meet, and it's straight back to Emerson, Fuller or whoever the professor's blabbering about that day.
Fine. Whatever. I can handle this clandestine mental molestation, how well his chest fills his sweatshirt, the breadth of his shoulders, the imagined strength of his legs, his baseball cap kept on while he's getting off. I enjoy the distance; I don't have to worry about meeting him after class near the bike racks or by the flagpole. Safe and distant. Safe and secure.
But then this punk walks into my discussion class this week, first time he's shown up. We're sitting in a horseshoe, which is odd, since most discussions are in a circle. I'm on one end. There's a table where the TA piles her shit and then an open seat, the other end of the horseshoe: the only seat left for him. He plods over and sits, directly in my line of vision. What's more, his head lines almost concurrently with the TA's, so lustful stares could be mistaken for rapt attention.
Fuck. We catch eyes. Twice. Thrice. Again. Damn. He's on to me, and he's not responding with a coy smile or a 'fag-punching' motion, but instead something inbetween. Damn him, and his dead eyes.
After class, we file out, joyous to be free of Melville for the next week. Equidistant from the door, we made our way to the door, him stepping back to allow me to pass (Ladies First, I wonder?).
I would have said something, but I was too busy choking on my own fear.
He turned a different way than I, and I didn't run into him at the bike racks, so I'm safe. But damn. It's my first "bad boy."
