The Student Who Had Erotic Daydreams in Class

Dayton, November 2007

There's a secret that all college professors know, but students don't.

We can see what they are doing in class.

We're standing, and they're sitting, so we always have an excellent view of the first row.  In small classes, or classrooms arranged in tiers, we have an excellent view of everyone.

So we know when they're trying to type a text message, or sneak a peek at their notes during an exam.

And other things.

College students don't check their erotic desires at the lecture hall door, and 21-year olds don't even need an erotic stimulus -- things just happen.

Bulging and tenting.  And hands moving down there, trying to cover it.  Sometimes even helping it along.

I had a colleague who used to walk up to tenting students and ask "Do you need to be excused to take care of that?"

But I won't say anything to the student -- to acknowledge that I have noticed would be terribly embarrassing for both of us.

So I just enjoy the spectacle.


I have only mentioned it to the student once, when I was teaching in Dayton.  The student -- I'll call him Raheem -- sat in a tier where his lap was exactly at my eye level.

And he wasn't just trying to cover an occasional tent. Two or three times per class, he slid his his hand all the way down into his pants, felt around for a few moments to make sure everything was arranged properly, and slid his hand out again.

It was very distracting, to me and no doubt to the students around him.

I asked my faculty mentor what to do.  He said "Raheem is obviously a homophobe, trying to get a rise out of you so he can claim sexual harassment,  You should confront him and tell him that his behavior is inappropriate."

But Raheem wasn't looking at me during his beneath-the-belt explorations.  He was staring into space, bored by the lecture and letting his mind wander. No doubt to erotic thoughts.

So I sent him an email:

"I'm sure you don't realize it, but from my position in the front of the class, I'm looking directly at your lap.  So be careful not to sneak a text message or do anything else that you don't want me to know about."

How would Raheem respond?  Would he not understand what I meant?  Would he angrily deny doing anything?  Would he say "I was hoping to get your attention!"

He didn't respond to my email, but the next day after class, he came up to my desk and wordlessly handed me an envelope.  It contained a beautiful "Thank You" card with the inscription "Thanks for the heads-up!  I'll be more careful!"

The beneath-the-belt explorations stopped.  But soon I discovered the reason for them -- when Raheem didn't rearrange himself, he spent most of the class sessions tenting.

That was even more distracting.

See also: My Student Gets Naked in Class; and The Theater Major with a Professor Fetish.

Gay People Absolutely Do Not Exist

Heterosexual Soldier

Dayton, September 2005

In the spring of 2005, after twenty years in the gay neighborhoods of California, New York, and Florida, the only academic job I could find was in Dayton, Ohio, an hour's drive from the nearest gay neighborhood.  Too far to come home to every night.

So, for the first time in twenty years, the first time in my adult life, I would be living and working, buying groceries and going to the gym, finding friends and lovers, falling asleep every night and waking up every morning in the Straight World.

My friends advised me to stay home, find another temporary position at a college in Florida, or give up academe altogether.  I had forgotten what the Straight World was like, they said.  The heterosexuals who lived among us had learned to be civil, so they merely asked “Are you the boy or the girl?” instead of screaming “Got AIDS yet?”  But in the factory towns and farming villages of the Straight World, they were all screamers.

I would be spat on, called names, harassed by the police, refused medical care, kicked out of my apartment. My car’s tires would be slashed. Rocks would be hurled through my kitchen window.  One day I would be murdered, no doubt about it, and my assassin would get the lightest possible sentence, as the judge declared, “It’s a pity that ridding the world of an abomination must be punished at all.” Why did we all flee from our birth towns in the first place?  To stay alive.

Heterosexual Bear

I thought my friends were exaggerating.  An entire generation had grown up since Stonewall.  Surely some heterosexuals were gay-friendly, even in the Straight World, and most of the rest were simply polite bigots, keeping their hatred well concealed.  Surely screamers were rare, even in the Straight World, and actual murders rarer still, occurring only when a preacher incited bloodlust with a cry of “God wills it!”

Besides, the Straight World could not possibly be empty of gay people.  Not everyone moved to a gay neighborhood.  10% of the population would never fit.  Not even 5%.  For every gay person who fled to gay neighborhoods, there must be a dozen who stayed home, and now flew rainbow flags from their porches, strolled down the street hand-in-hand with their partners, created spaces of freedom in spite of the screams.

So I loaded my car with suitcases and books and left the Gay World for the first time in my adult life, to go into exile in western Ohio.

After checking into my hotel, I made my way up the hill to the campus, to a flat brick building with a cornerstone stating that it was constructed in 1969, the year of Stonewall.  A good sign, I thought. Maybe the Straight World wasn’t so dark and savage after all.  

When I arrived at my new office, its former occupant, a fat, sweating political scientist named Dr. Dean, was busily clearing out so I could move in.  We chatted while he knelt on the floor, taping up the last of his boxes.  He asked how I liked Ohio.  I liked it fine so far, I said.  Then, preoccupied with masking tape, not looking up, he asked: “Did your wife come with you?”

Heterosexual Captain Crunch

My wife?  Gay men had partners, spouses, lovers, never wives. Why would Dr. Dean think that I was heterosexual?  I hadn’t mentioned a woman.  I hadn’t kissed a woman in his presence.  I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.  But Dr. Dean showed no sign of looking for evidence.  He asked  by rote, with utter nonchalance, as if “Did your wife come with you?” was small talk, the precise equivalent of “How do you like Ohio?"

 I had quick, witty, withering responses prepared for the polite bigot who asked “Why are gay men so obsessed with fashion?” and for the screamer who ranted “Why do you molest little boys?”, but I had no response prepared for this nonchalance, this blithe confidence that every man has a wife, and presumably every woman a husband, that heterosexual experience is undoubtedly universal human experience.

“Uh. . .I’m not. . .I don’t. . . .”  I stammered.

Dr. Dean looked up, frowning, surprised at my hesitation.  “Or haven’t you met the right woman yet?” he offered in a kindly tone.

Finally collecting my wits, I said, “There is no right woman. I am not interested in women. I haven’t been on a date with a girl since high school.”

He stared, mouth gaping, utterly taken aback.  Was he so surprised to discover that gay people existed?  "Don’t give up,” he said after a long moment.  He returned in embarrassment to the box that he was taping. “Everyone has a soulmate somewhere.  I didn’t get married until I was thirty-six.”

Now it was my turn to stare.  Dr. Dean was not shocked about meeting a gay person  – he still thought I was heterosexual.  Saying I was not interested in women did not tell him that I was interested in men, but that I had given up on finding the “right” woman!  Saying that I hadn’t dated a girl since high school did not tell him that I dated boys, but that I never dated at all!

I stood upright and turned back toward the bright wood-framed hall where the doorways of heterosexual professors were marked with office hours from semesters past and yellowing Dilbert comics.  I wanted to scream “I exist!”  I wanted to drag Dr. Dean up by his shirt collar and force him to wake up from his smug heterosexual fantasy.  But instead I asked: “Is there a soda machine nearby?”  My first encounter with a resident of the Straight World ended in ignominious defeat.

Heterosexual Supermarket

Dr. Dean was not unique. During my first weeks in Ohio, I heard about “my wife” and “my girlfriend” constantly.  The assistant manager who signed me up for a membership at the Better Bodies Fitness Center said that she could work out with me for free.

A parishioner at Unitarian Church mentioned the Women’s Breakfast she might be interested in.

The clerk who gave me a Super Value Discount Card at Kroger's Supermarket offered me a second card to take home for her.

The DMV employee who issued my new driver’s license asked how she liked Ohio.

One professor who asked about my wife ironically had a “LGBT Safe Space” sticker affixed to her office door.

Colleagues, student assistants, new neighbors, church parishioners, and random strangers always asked about my wife within a sentence or two of “Hello.”  It was simply how one made conversation in the Straight World,

18 Heterosexuals

No one in the Straight World ever asked, “How does your partner like it here?”  No assistant manager who signed me up for a gym membership told me that “my girlfriend or boyfriend” could work out for free, no church parishioner mentioned the clubs “my significant other” might be interested in, and no grocery store clerk gave me a second Super Value Discount Card for my “spouse.”

Regardless of whether they were young or old, uneducated or educated, screamer or polite bigot or gay-friendly, they were absolutely certain, without the slightest doubt, that gay people did not exist.

What Rod the Pharmacist Was Doing Upstairs

Dayton, June 2006

When I was living in the gay neighborhoods of West Hollywood and Wilton Manors, you never dated more than one guy at a time.  If you went on a second date, you were a couple, and "abandoned all others" until you broke up.  ("Sharing" the boyfriends of your friends didn't count.)

But when I moved to Dayton in 2005, I found that juggling several boyfriends was perfectly acceptable, even expected.

Among straight men, it was a badge of honor to date several women at once.  Those who were most adept at it became folk heroes, like Don Juan, Casanova, or Fonzie of Happy Days.

Still, I was surprised by the guy upstairs.

It was a garden apartment, opening directly onto a patio and then the parking lot.  The stairway to the second floor apartment was right next to my kitchen window, so I could see and hear everyone coming and going.

Not to worry, the landlord said.  The guy who lives there is very quiet, no loud music or wild parties.

He was right.  No loud music or wild parties. An occasional door slamming, the muffled sound of a vacuum cleaner, a voice on the telephone.

And something else.

I usually went to bed at 10:00 pm in order to get up at 6:00.  But on the nights I couldn't sleep, or woke up to go to the bathroom, I heard a rhythmic creak-creak-creak.

Creak-creak-creak.

Creak-creak-creak.

It took me awhile to realize what I was hearing.

The guy upstairs was entertaining visitors.  For two hours or more, several times a week.

Most mornings, as I sat in the kitchen eating my cereal, I saw his visitors leave.

Girls.  Two, three, four different girls.

Who was this  guy, with his Don Juan-Casanova-Fonzie ability to date many women at once, and the stamina for hours of creak-creak-creak almost every night?

In my imagination, he became a Superman, endowed with every characteristic I find attractive: short, muscular, dark-skinned, religious, and gifted beneath the belt.

And maybe he was straight but curved around the edges, open to same-sex experiences on his nights off from creak-creak-creak with girls!

But I never saw him leave the apartment.

One day in the spring of 2006,  I was filling a prescription, and when the pharmacist checked my i.d., he exclaimed "Hey, we're neighbors.  I live in the apartment upstairs! Rod Perkins."

Very disappointing: a mild-mannered pharmacist, tall, blond, rather pale, and not particularly muscular (this isn't him).

Apparently our paths never crossed because he worked the 3:00 pm - midnight shift.  No doubt he then met one of his numerous girlfriends, had a late dinner date, and then returned to his apartment.

But if he had a nondescript physique, how did he get so many girls to agree to a creak-creak-creak?

And more importantly, were some of them guys?

In gay neighborhoods, you couldn't get dates based on wit, charm, humor, or knowledge of old movies.  That might keep the guy interested, but in order for him to agree to see you in the first place, you needed a face, biceps, or a basket, preferably all three.  Some guys who didn't have baskets of their own improvised by shoving some socks down there.

Rod didn't have a face or physique.  He must be gifted beneath the belt!

In order to find out, I went back to the pharmacy and gave him a guest pass to the Better Bodies Fitness Center, as a "thank you."

"I used to work as a personal trainer, down in Florida" I told him.  "We can really get you toned up."

The next Wednesday afternoon, Rod came to the gym, and we tried basic weight training and then showered down.

Nope. Not particularly impressive.  And he never glanced at a guy.

I was no longer interested in seeing Rod's bedroom, but I was curious: how did he convince so many women to see it?

Could it be that heterosexuals were not into the physical, but focused solely on wit, charm, and strength of character?

Certainly not -- back in high school, the heterosexual girls I knew all wanted jocks. Without exception. But if no jocks were available, they might settle for a guy with a car.

So I checked Rod's assigned parking space.  Sure enough: a late-model red Jaguar that must have cost a fortune.

Apparently heterosexual men don't shove socks down there.  They compensate for their unimpressive baskets with a killer phallic car.