Graduate Studies

She kissed me, but she 
did it symbolically,
as part of her final exam with Professor Goodbar,
known far and wide 
for his success with electricity, molasses, and girls who wear glasses. 

She attached a papier-mache head to a wheel, and 
turned a crank;
never did a lump of dailies and glue
express such dumbstruck speechless desire for me.
It came around, leaned in by means of a flexible metal vetebra,
and laid one on me.

Oh the hours
we had spent
deposited across her bed like rag dolls,
discussing emotional boundaries,
primitive impulses among Thai villagers,
and deflecting each other's endearments and tender fumblings.

This is when something went wrong.
Just as my Inner Wanton was awakened
by the kiss of her oscillating manufactured surrogate,
in walked Professor Goodbar and oh,
the smile she gave him.
Oh the sugared data.

There's a limit, you know,
to what a girl can take, 
even in the name of course completion.
I realized I had been a dupe,
a foil,
a representation
of fetish and fantasy, of foolery and fuck-headedness,
trotted out like a show pony with a little engine hidden in its tossing head.

Well.

For months, 
we had learned symbology, transference, 
normal and abnormal expression, data collection and interpretation.
But when I brained the Professor with my darling's papier-mache double,
THAT was real and he fell face first into her lap
like unexpected erratum,
mumbling some other woman's name
and it felt good, yes so good, to walk out of there and become a 

guitar shredder or a softball pitcher instead.  
________

For Play it Again, Toads and Hedgewitch's Get Listed challenge.