My Favorite Sandwich Man

I teach very large classes (300 to 450 students) in biology in a major university. In evolutionary biology I lecture on genetic drift, and by way of explaining what it means I refer to the Law of Large Numbers. It is a concept we are all familiar with.  If you toss a coin a thousand times, you will, again and again, get close to 500 heads and 500 tails. Another property of the Law of Large Numbers is that you have considerable variance around the mean. In a class of 400 students you are likely to get a couple of them who are, well, just "off the wall."  One may do so poorly on a final exam that he walks out, goes home and gets on his computer and sends you a death threat followed by a claim that he will kill himself in the next twenty-four hours; this happened to me in a class of 430 students.  Statistically speaking, this kind of student is much less likely to be found in a class of say forty or fifty.  All of which brings me to this story that begins in a university classroom several years ago, takes an unexpected turn in red-light Tijuana, an unusual twist in Pattaya three years later, and then several months later is followed by a series of events that I should have anticipated and did not.  Now there remain but memories of a kind that I cannot shake and have, in their own peculiar and oblique way, become part of lectures that over a thousand students a year hear, absent, of course, of any mention of Ashley and what went on between her and me in Tijuana and Pattaya and in the university prior and subsequent to our escapades. 

***

We get inside the room and Ashley fiddles to lock the door, seemingly oblivious to my presence and instructions. Finally, satisfied that no one will enter, she turns to me and plants a wet kiss on my lips while wrapping her long arms around my waist. She squeezes me, lovingly, like we have known each other for years. We're in a hotel in Tijuana that serves short-time hookers.  But Ashley is not a hooker, she is my student.

"Stop. Please," I say. 

Her hands crawl up and down my back, and then she cups my head and begins to lightly kiss around my ear.  At a good five ten she is only two inches shorter than me.  She's slim with wide hips and a hint of baby fat at the waist; she's very much in the prime of her youth.       

"Is this a good idea?"  I say, asking myself as much as I ask her.  Knowing full well the answer, as well as I know my own name.

She nods and runs her supple warm tongue down onto my neck.  The kisses are teasing, playful, not what one expects from an eighteen-year-old freshman. I feel that irresistible pounding itch in my groin.  I tell her that this is serious trouble for me, more than she can possibly imagine. But it all feels so good.

Ashley's now cupping my head with her hands together and her mouth has moved around to meet mine.  Mischievously, she works the corners of my mouth with her tongue. Then we are tongue on tongue, thrusting, probing, the sweetness of her mouth and breath forcing me on.  I press hard on her lips and return every favor. She begins unbuttoning my long-sleeve black cotton shirt, and when she gets to my belt, I unloosen the silver cowboy buckle and unfasten the top button on my 501 blue jeans. Suddenly, I feel light-headed, dreamy, and recklessly adventuresome. I don't know if it's the alcohol or the coke I had with Laura, coming as it did in the hour or so before Ashley took me utterly by surprise.  Sneaking up behind me in the darkness of the blaring Bar Tropical and placing her right hand on my cheek and purring in my ear: "I'm here just like I said I would be." 

Before I can tell her to sit down and across from Laura, my always reliable source of good coke, she plops her fanny onto the edge of the red leather seat and nudges me to the right and toward the dance floor.  The barefoot pole dancer with milk-filled breasts and a diamond stud in her bellybutton begins to unfasten her top and move toward us. Earlier I had put a couple of dollar bills in her G-string and kissed her full on the lips when she bent over to thank me.  Now I reach for another bill in the stack of ones and fives lying beside the Pacifico and a small cup of limes. I turn and catch Ashley's  fetching smile and think: Yep, Southern California through and through.  Tall, slim, perfect teeth, robin brown hair.  Surely, too, tennis lessons at six, braces at twelve,  expert at sucking off boys on the beach at fourteen, and then the BMW from daddy on big number sixteen. 
 
Ashley pulls me close, and her hand squeezes my shoulder. Laura stares at me.  She looks hurt, and puzzled

I shrug a shoulder and say, "We'll meet up later."  I add, "No te molesta. Es una chica que no conoczo bien."  I smile, hoping that Ashley does not understand my words. Laura gets up and slaps my shoulder with her left hand. It's a stinging slap. She's pissed off.  She heads for one of the empty chairs among the eight or nine stone-faced girls from Sinaloa and Nayarit waiting for someone to ask for a dollar dance, if lucky get chosen for a half hour upstairs sucking and taking it like a dog.

"Take me to one of the rooms where these girls go," Ashley whispers in my ear.  Her hand is on my thigh. She squeezes, insistent.

"Do you know what you're asking me to do?  Do you do know the trouble this could cause me?"

"I'm always discreet," she purrs. She takes the lobe of my ear into her mouth and bites it.  She giggles.  I wonder about her age.  All these years, all these thousands of students, and never anything like this, I think.  And a freshman to boot.  Fuck me.

We walk down the street.  I glance over at the slouching doorman on his stool in front of the Adelita Bar.  In his left hand he's got a firm grip on the clipboard where he notes the names of the girls and the time of arrival. He picks his nose and then signals for a taxi. Several yellow cabs are lined up, and behind the last one are four Harleys with U. S. plates.

"What's that?" she says, pointing.

"The best whorehouse between Mexico City and Anchorage," I tell her.  "Fifty for a half hour plus the cost of a room is what they charge. It's safer than sex on campus."

"Oh!  How do you know all this?"

"I'm a good listener." 

"Like I bet."  She laughs and squeezes my hand. 

We round the corner and come upon three young Americans with shaved heads who are full of arm tattoos.  They're eating tacos.  "Are you hungry?" I say.

"Yes, but let's wait."

"Over there," I say, pointing to the Hotel Leyva, next to the Chicago Club.  "Sometimes that one's even better."

"Than the Adelita Bar?"

"They're younger, thinner, and more expensive too.   The Asian men love them and jack the prices up.  Just like they do everywhere they whore."

"You know so much," she says.  "Just like in class, you know everything.  You are like wooooooow!"   

Don't do this, I tell myself.  You know what she wants and you'll regret it.

"We'll go there," I say.  Again, I point to the Hotel Leyva, the narrow entrance, the steps now visible.

"Is it clean and safe?"

"Cleaner than you'll find in a student dorm.  No bedbugs and clean sheets by the hour."

"Really!  Who goes there?"

"All the hookers who work in the Chicago Club.  A hundred or more a night some nights.  An assembly line after eleven on Fridays and Saturdays."     

She skips ahead of me and runs up the stairs and at the landing turns and kid-like spreads her legs and bends forward and blows me a kiss.  Then another one.  She's wearing tight blue jeans with sparkling sequins on the sides.  There are long tears above each knee. Her lavender blouse does not reveal the ample chest she had thrust at me that day after the lecture when she came up on the stage and dropped an arm on top of the monitor and said she'd gotten a D on the midterm and asked what she could do to pass the class.

Shit, I think. I can't be doing this. I must be certifiably nuts. We'll just lie on the bed and I'll tell her stories.  Hold her and let her put her head on my shoulder if that makes her feel good. 

I tell the woman behind the glass I want a room for the night. Every signal I'm getting from Ashley tells me that a half hour or an hour just won't be enough time. Give me three extra towels, I add. 

"Why?" Ashley says. 

"The towels?  It's called anticipation."    

"Oh."

I glance at her and see a blank face. I hand the woman two Jacksons and say, "Which one?"

"Third room on the left. It's open."

I take her by the hand. It's soft and she's got long fingers and pretty nails that are painted misty pink.  "Do you want to go back to the bar?" I say.

She shakes her head and squeezes my hand. 

I'll blame it all on her if anything goes wrong.

***

I'm lying on my back on top of the single mattress sheet, my head propped against the two insubstantial pillows.  I'm naked.  Ashley is also naked, and on her knees, between my legs, going through my pants pockets looking for the small plastic bag with the coke that Laura had pushed across the table after I slipped her a Franklin. 

She finds the coke and drops my pants onto the floor, then bends over and takes hold of her purse.  She pulls out a straw, the one that Laura was using in her drink. She's all foresight, everything I could not imagine when she asked me how she could get a passing grade after class and I said that I  sell midterm grades for a thousand, a course grade for five grand. 

Students always laugh, or blush.  Many say, "Really?"  Ashley came back with: "Is there no other way?  I'm serious."

"Yeah," I said, scanning the empty auditorium, no other student around us, feeling more playful than usual. "Meet me at the Bar Tropical in Tijuana tomorrow afternoon and I'll show you." 

She smiled, and I grinned, and she said, "I will. For sure." She didn't ask directions, say another word.  She simply turned and scampered down the steps and hurried out the back door exit.

I picked up my lecture notes and stuffed them into a blue folder and put it in my brown daypack.  I rewound her words, and thought: In a hundred years, and that's assuming she's got the guts to walk down Avenida Constitution once she sees all the twenty-dollar street hookers and steps over a couple of drunk bums lying in puke.  

She carefully opens the small plastic bag and pours a thin ragged line on the back of her hand.  She moves it to the front of my face and hands me the straw and says, "You first."  I hit left, then right, and drop my head back into the pillow and close my eyes. 

She divides what's left between the rounded muscle and fat of my thighs.  Like a disciplined addict, she  treats herself.  She then licks the end of the straw and sucks on it. With her hands at her forehead, she pulls back her thick hair and draws in one, then another long deep breath as she leans back.  I stare at her shaved pussy.  Lovely, I think. This morning, and just for me.  

"When was the first time?"

"With someone like you?  Never before."

"With coke."

"Oh, that I can't remember.  It's like…it's like ancient history."  She laughs.

She teasingly moves her right hand to my mouth and with her thumb and middle finger pinches my lower lip. She  pulls it forward, holds it until she can put it between her lips.  She hangs on, and she sucks, hard.

"You're a trip," I say.  You're a dream, I think. Like living in an imaginary fifth dimension, and who in his right mind could give a shit about tomorrow and its thousand ugly consequences.

She spreads my legs, brushes her long hair out of her face, stares at what I've got to offer. "I wouldn't have guessed," she says.

"Guessed what?"

"That it looks so much like you. So proud and together!"  She giggles and sticks an index finger in her mouth. 

"Thanks for the compliment."  

"No, I mean it.  Looks just like you when you're lecturing."  She laughs without restraint. 

"Why don't you come lie beside me?" 

She twists the corner of her mouth to one side, and then to the other.  She sniffles and wipes a finger beneath her nose.

"Come," I say. "I mean it."

"Soon enough," she says.  And giggles again, self-consciously this time. She bends over and takes me in her mouth, all the way to the base of my shaft.  I can feel her throat.

She looks up and smiles, as if to say, Good, huh?  It's then, and for the first time, that I see that her left eye is green, the right one is blue. I think it must be the coke kicking in.  Or is it the light from the hallway coming through the blinds?  I move my head to one side and then another.  "You're starting to fucking scare me," I say.

She lets go of me and says, "Just taking advantage.  Isn't this what any good student does?"

"Thanks for being so honest." I don't know whether I hate her for this rawness or admire her for her candor.    

I don't remember how many times we were all over each other that night and in the morning that went on and on.  I do recall being sore, about as sore as I had been on the second day after getting married. I used a condom the first time I got inside Ashley, and then nothing for the second, the third, however many times she kept me going.  Front,  back, me on top, Ashley standing and leaning into the wall or bent over the bed and yelling, "Harder! Harder!"   

In the morning she was showering when I woke.  As she came out of the tiny bathroom with nothing on and looking good enough to eat, she said, "Once more before I go?"

"I can't. Honestly, I want to, but I'm just too goddamn sore."  I slid off the bed and grabbed a towel sitting on the bedside table and went into the bathroom. I turned on the water.  It took me several minutes to come out of the daze I was in and pump some soap into my hands from the wall dispenser. I stood beneath the shower head with the water pounding on my shoulders for a long ten minutes, all the while wondering what this was going to cost me.  When I would get the first of her real demands beyond that pertaining to a grade.  How long it would take for her to threaten to go to the administration and charge me with a sexual transgression if I didn't give her whatever need came into her very young but obviously cunning mind.

By the time I got out of the shower, she was gone.  The only trace of her was a scrap of paper that she'd left on top of my shirt. On it she had written: "Thanks.  You were great.  Everything I imagined!" She hadn't addressed me, she hadn't signed her name.  It was then that I realized she had never once, either in class, or in an e-mail, or in the Bar Tropical, or here in this common whore's room in the Hotel Leyva, called me by my first or last name.  Or even called me Prof.

I could not bring myself to talk to her after that night in the Hotel Leyva.  But I thought about her often through the remaining lectures and late at night. What I feared most of all was an e-mail or a call saying she was pregnant and I was the one. That was the kind of call that had forced me into my first marriage and had forever shaped my attitude toward the conniving ways of women.

Ashley legitimately got a good enough grade on the final exam to pass the course, which is all she had wanted. She had taken the pass/no pass option and only needed a C to get through the class. After the grades were in the registrar's hands and I knew that she had gotten hers, I expected a note of thanks, maybe an invitation for another round at a local motel. But I heard nothing.  She simply disappeared.  Or so I thought.

***



After my second to last lecture of the winter quarter-Australopithecus to Homo habilis, and just a little more than three years after I found myself in bed with Ashley in Tijuana's Hotel Leyva, she suddenly appeared at the lectern as I was checking to see that I hadn't forgotten anything.  I hardly recognized her.  She had dyed her hair ash blond and was wearing large hoop earrings and her lips looked fuller and more mature than I'd remembered.  Her blue and green eyes caught my attention, just as they had when I lay there naked, captive to coke and my reckless lustful ways.  I stared, and the only one word came to mind: stunning. 

"You do remember me?" she said.

"How could I forget you?"

"I always meant to say something to you after we did you know what, but it didn't seem right.  I did take advantage of you, didn't I?"

"It was mutual. You presented me with an opportunity I couldn't resist."  

"Do you still go to Africa or Asia when you're through teaching?  Like I remember all those good and scary stories you told in class.  I always wanted to go to those countries after hearing you.  Your stories were just so fabulous and so much better than all that Darwin stuff I never understood."

"The answer to your question is yes.  I'll be on the road again after I post final grades. This time it's back to Southeast Asia. I'll go through Taiwan and then down to Bangkok, the best imaginable home base for travel in that part of the world."

She puckered her lips, and it caused me to remember exactly how she'd deep-throated me. All the way in and right to the finish line, as if she'd been doing it all her life. Then she said, mischievously, light from the monitor off which I read my PowerPoint presentations flicking off her right blue eye, "Like do I now get another invitation from you?"

I sniffled, my allergies giving me a momentary excuse to ponder the bait.  "What do you want this time?"  I asked. 

"Nothing. Nothing at all, I swear. I'm graduating in June.  Just one more quarter to finish up and then I'll be getting married."

"Congratulations.  Who's the lucky guy?" 

"He's a computer science major I met last year just before he graduated.  He's really nice and cute. He got a good job and we'll be living in Escondido.  Like he's so awesome!"

I resisted the temptation to say: Better than me in bed too, right? "And you want me to invite you to Asia now? Even though you're about to get married to someone not only awesome but more than a few years younger than me."

She giggled a familiar giggle.  Still the child. She  said, "So you won't  give me the name of a bar or whatever as you did last time?  And a date and time too?"

"If you promise we'll only hold hands and let me show you the sights? I don't want to corrupt you," I added, smiling. 

"Ha, ha." She looked to her left and right.  Students for the next class were coming in, starting to fill the seats. "That would be the fun part for you, wouldn't it?  Not knowing if I would show up and what would happen, right?"

'You haven't changed as much as I thought.  Or maybe you have?"  I was thinking of what I hadn't done with her but might now try.

"Have you changed?  How many students have you had in that hotel since me?"

"You were the first and last."

"Oh.  Like I was so lucky, huh?"

"How's you're memory?" 

"Good, I think. Except for the bio stuff you teach and I can never get right." She laughed and inched closer. "Well? I'm waiting."

"I leave at midnight on the 26th and arrive in Bangkok around noon on the 28th.  I'll probably spend two nights there and then take a morning bus to Pattaya, about two hours to the east.  I've got reservations at the Sunshine Hotel on Soi 8. I'll be there at least a week."

Without a word, without warning, she lurched at me and kissed me on the left cheek, the side least visible to the students now filling the auditorium.   "You won't be sorry to see me. I promise!"  She ran down the three stairs and was gone, just as she had done three years earlier.  Now her ass was more ample, more inviting.

I had a lot of work to do in the next several days.  I wanted to revise my last lecture and find a more satisfying way of presenting what I wanted to say about Intelligent Design to wrap up the course. And I still had the final exam to put together, a chore more onerous than usual since I was using a new textbook and had substantially revised several of my lectures.  My brief encounter with Ashley came to mind several times, but I did not take the exchange much more seriously than I had the one that led to our unforgettable one-time escapade.  I concluded that she was just being playful, always the tease, and it was a final farewell to me and an adventure that she'd probably done less for the grade she wanted than to be able to brag to friends and her grandchildren that she hadn't gone through the  university without fucking at least one professor.  Now she was getting married, and this alone would surely keep her from making a sudden appearance at the Sunshine one day when I had a tiny Isaan lovely on my arm or beneath me in the room.  Or would it?  I had greatly underestimated her the first time; and once I got the final exam in the hands of the teaching assistant, with only final grades to record and a few minor travel and packing issues to take care of, I began to wonder if I had indeed seen the last of Ashley.  At least if she did show up I'd have little to worry about.  Now she wasn't my student, and this meant that as far as the university was concerned she could swallow me every day of the week and there'd be no consequences. As long as she didn't take another class from me after this happened. 

***



On the afternoon of my second day in Pattaya, with Nit from the Hollywood A Go-Go at my side, I went to the desk with my key to get 3,000 baht from the money belt I kept in the safe deposit box. When I gave the envelope back to the clerk, she handed me a note.  It read:  "Hi! You won't guess where I am.  Come to the Internet service across from the entrance and you'll find ME! Ashley." 

I looked for Nit. She had gone in the other direction, to the swimming pool.  I could see her walking along one edge, looking into the glistening water.  We had gone swimming the previous evening, and she wanted to go again tonight. I sought her out and hugged her and gave her the room key and told her that I just remembered that I had to write a few e-mails to business associates. I had not told Nit what I really do.  I rarely give bar girls honest information about myself.

I saw Ashley at the third computer on the left as I entered through the glass door. Her back was to me. She was furiously pounding away on the keyboard. I would soon learn that she was working on an e-mail to her fiance. I would also learn that she told him that she was about to spend the day visiting temples in Bangkok, and that the following day she would be flying to Chiang Mai where she would go on a three-day trek among hill peoples.

I surprised her as she had surprised me that day in Tijuana, but with a difference.  Without putting a hand on her, I leaned into her neck and bit her hard. She jumped, and screamed, and then spun around and jumped up into my arms.

Fuck, I thought.  Just what I need when I've got a good one. "How long are you here for?" I said.

"Four days all together with you and then I've got to hurry back because the new quarter is already going.  I can't afford to screw up like I did when I was your star student!"

"There's a small complication. I've got a Thai girl I promised to spend tonight with.  And maybe tomorrow night too."

She frowned. "I'm jealous. I came all this way just for you."

"What about your fiance?"

"Well, I'm not married yet, am I?"

"But you're engaged," I said, looking at the diamond on her left hand.

"Sooooooooooo?  Besides, our relationship is different, right?  It's not boyfriend and girlfriend or anything like that, right."

"Here's what we can do," I said.  "We'll have a happy threesome and you'll be the three-holer."

"What's that?  Three-holer?"

I explained.

"I can't do that!" she exclaimed, slapping me on the arm.  "What do you think I am?  Also, like, I've never been in bed with another girl the same time I was there with a man."

"But you've been with a girl before."

"So what?  You've probably tried a man or two by now I bet."

"I will when the moon turns to blue cheese."

"I want to be only with you.  Like we were once a long time ago.  But I just can't do that rear-end thing. That's not me."

"You'll love it.  It's even better than deep-throating." 

"That was different.  Like now I've changed."

"How's that?"

"I'm getting married, remember?  I'm going to turn into a good girl and stay away from you!" She laughed.

"That wouldn't be any fun."

She turned around to face the monitor and said, "Just let me send by fiance my real love, okay? I don't want to be cheating on him."

"Send him my love too."

"You're a rat, you know that."

Beside the computer was a small notebook with Mickey Mouse on the cover. I reached down and took a pen from my shirt pocket and wrote my room number on the first blank page I came to.  I said, "I'm going to go for a swim with Nit, the Thai girl I'm with.  Think about us having a new adventure, something different. I'll even let you decide which side of me you want for the night when it's sandwich time."

"What's that-sandwich time?"

I explained.

She kicked me in the shin and said, "I shouldn't have come.  I just knew you were a no-good kinky rat and you didn't want to be with me."

"But I do want you to be with me. Honestly. So much in fact that I haven't even asked Nit if she'd do a threesome for the night. She might not want to. A lot of Thai girls won't, and then only if they choose the other girl. She doesn't even speak much English.  And maybe she'll be so embarrassed when she sees those huge knockers of yours I'll never get her out of her towel when she comes out of the shower."

"You!  Maybe I should just go home and get married right away and forget you for all time."

"Up to you," I said, laughing.

"Why are you laughing now?"

"That's what these Thai girls say every time you ask them a question about what they want to do."

"I didn't know you did these kinds of things with these girls when you came to Asia."

"This is the first time."

"Yeah, sure. Like, I was your first student too."

"Nit and I are going to get some Thai food on the street after we have a swim. I'll soften her up to the idea of a threesome in case you decide to come along later.  We'll be in the room after nine. The room number's in your notebook. You can just take the elevator to the seventh floor and no one will stop you.  When you get out of the elevator turn right and go to the end of the hall.  It's the last door on the left."

"What if I don't come and just go home right now and get married right away?  Is that okay with you?"

"Up to you," I said, smiling. But thinking: Please do come. I don't want to miss this one. 

And sure enough she did. Nit wasn't too happy with the arrangement, and she slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom when I started giving attention to Ashley.  She stayed there until I knocked on the door and told her to come out so Ashley could take a shower. Somehow, we did manage the sandwich I wanted and Ashley thoroughly enjoyed the experience, later telling me how "weird and beautiful" it was when I had each of them on a shoulder as we fell asleep.

The second night the three of us spent about an hour and a half in bed before going to dinner; and then we went down to Walking Street and in and out of several go-go bars.  Ashley was fascinated by the girls and their lethargic dancing and firm, thin bodies, and she had more questions for me about where they come from and how much they charge and what they do in the hotel room than she  had the entire quarter she took my evolution course. Our last stop was Lucifer's. We were only there a short while when Ashley went to the restroom and Nit said she couldn't spend another night with us. She claimed one of her roommates was sick and needed her help.  I told her I didn't believe her and asked her not to go.  I got her to change her mind when I told her I've give her 3,000 baht for the night, 1,000 more than she was accustomed to getting.  

I spent the next two days with Ashley, and only Ashley, but I really didn't enjoy our time together all that much. Or not as much as I'd hoped I would. She did everything I wanted in bed and she hadn't lost any of her technique or enjoyment of deep-throating, and once she even asked me to take her again at the back door.  But there was something bittersweet about the whole thing.  Maybe it was knowing that she would soon be getting married.  Although I rarely gave any thought to the moral dimension of my sexual behavior, I felt a tinge of guilt about what I was teaching her and how this might affect her marriage. Maybe my dissatisfaction also revolved around being in Thailand, for like so many who went there I'd gotten to the point where I simply didn't have much interest in big-boned white women like Ashley, young and shapely and as good as she was in bed.  I knew that it was largely a contextual matter, the mere fact of being around so many of these alluring dark-skinned beauties six to eight inches shorter and thirty or more pounds lighter than Ashley and so many like her back home. Maybe,  too, and in spite of Ashley's sexual talents, I liked the way I had remembered her that one time in the Hotel Leyva.  Younger, a bit fresher, and less self-conscious.   

When I returned home in time for my summer teaching stint I found a wedding invitation in my university mailbox. It had not been mailed, so I assumed that Ashley had made a special effort to come by and put it there, though why I did not know. Did she really expect me to show up at her church wedding and meet her husband? Was her idea to get some last-minute kick out of seeing me and wondering what I would say in his presence? Or was the invitation simply her way of trying to make me jealous-something I had told her was a youthful character flaw of mine and that now I rarely felt any kind of jealousy for any woman I had been with. She didn't believe me, insisting that everyone feels possessive about all kinds of things. 

I didn't-I couldn't-go to her wedding, even as a courtesy and assuming I could forget my many questions about her motives.  It was a year in Asia  when I did not return home until two days before classes began, with just enough time to revise my syllabus and take care of a number of administrative duties that I'd neglected in my long absence.

The course I was teaching this summer was on tropical biology, one that I had not offered for two years. It was open to both biology majors and those in other schools that needed a natural science requirement to graduate. Because I was a reasonably popular teacher, and had a reputation for telling good travel stories-and students always love stories, no matter the relevance to the class material-I often got non-major students taking more than one of  my courses.

I didn't bother to print out the course roster until fifteen minutes before the first class.  There were twenty-seven students enrolled. I scanned the list and noted three familiar names in the first fifteen or so students. And then I could not believe my eyes: Ashley had enrolled. 

My first reaction was one of disbelief. Then I reasoned-or rather wanted to believe-that this was a mistake. Once again, someone in the registrar's office had screwed up. But this, I knew, as I walked across campus and took a short cut through the Humanities Classroom Building to get to my class, was mere wishful thinking. I now had a new problem, and I couldn't help but wonder if conniving Ashley had known before going to Thailand that she'd have to take one final class to be able to graduate. It was easy to conclude that she was as good a liar and schemer as any Thai girl I'd encountered or read about, and that was saying one hell of a lot.

She took a seat in the rear and off to one side, the smallest of courtesies-if this is the right word-given what she had in store for me. I gave the students an introduction to the geography and biology of the tropics and identified six major conservation issues.  And then I turned to the syllabus. I don't normally allow any extra credit in any of my courses, but at the very last minute, and before finishing up for the day, I told the students that if they were really concerned about getting the grade they wanted then I would give them at least a full grade boost if they gave me an acceptable 3,000 word paper on a conservation issue in tropical Asia or Africa. I stressed that with the words "at least" I had considerable discretion to either give students less or more than a full grade for the research effort. My motive, unbeknown to everyone, was to give myself some latitude in dealing with Ashley. I was upset, more than I wanted to admit to myself.  Whatever her reason for enrolling in this class, I knew that she had me completely by the balls.  She could, if she so wanted, go to the administration and charge me with all manner of unacceptable behavior for what we'd done in Thailand if I didn't give her what she wanted. The university is uncompromising on the point that no professor can have sex with a student as long as the student is enrolled in one of his classes, or will be in the future.  It was this last proviso that made my mouth run dry before the first day's lecture was completed and I had a chance to ask Ashley what the hell she was doing by daring to enroll in a class of mine at this time.

She waited for me after all the students left for the day.  She opened by saying: "I'm sorry for doing this to you. Can we go out onto The Green and walk so I can tell you what's up in private?"

"Only if you find time for a sandwich with me on the Friday afternoon following each set of weekly lectures," I said, my sarcasm obvious.

"I'll do the best I can, I promise," she said, reaching for my hand as we broke from the walkway and headed onto the grass and toward a stone bench and a cluster of eucalyptus trees.    

"Don't," I said, pulling my hand away.  "Your husband might see us."

"Ha, ha. He wouldn't think this joke of yours is funny.  We already had big arguments when I like suggested he try something different with me and pointed back there."  She slapped herself on the ass. "He said to me: 'I don't never ever want to hear that again.  If I wanted to marry a whore I would have married one.'" 

"Strong words," I said. "Good Christian, I take it."

"We're both good Southern Baptists."

"I hope you don't talk in your sleep."

"He will never know about us or any of this. I swear he won't."

"Not until that really good argument when you want to get rid of him."

"You're such a rat! A cynical rat too."   

"But an honest one, I like to think."

"Eric is a good man. He's certainly not like you!"  She bumped me with her ass, and I suddenly felt a desire to be all over her.  

We sat on a bench under the trees and I said, "Clue me in as to what's going on. This all smells like trouble and I don't think it's good for either of us."  I sought her eyes but she wouldn't look at me.

"It's you is what it's about. After I left you and returned to school all I could think about was what we did in Pattaya and how much I really liked it."

"Which part?"

"All of it! The sandwich was the best part."

"So, all of your heavy thinking about a threesome made you do poorly in your classes. And then you failed one of them, right?"

"I didn't plan that it would be the last of my bio requirements. It just happened that way."

"What class did you take that you failed?"

"The bio of the cell, or something like that."

"And the prof who taught it was an idiot, I suppose?"

"Worse than that! That stuff about the cells and organelles is just beyond me."

"Did he talk about his dog all the time?"

There was a long silence. "I don't remember that."

Peter Flanbacker, who taught the course, loves his collie more than he loves his wife and kids. I said, "Are you taking me pass/fail again?"   

"Well, I can't, I just can't. You see, it's more complicated than that. Daddy says I have to get an A for my last class or he and mom aren't going to give Eric and me a down payment of $100,000 on a nice two-story condo in a gated community we both want."

"What's so special about an A all of a sudden?"

"My daddy's a very rich weirdo. Something about him and my mom getting together and both of them getting an A in their last class together in college. He says, 'Like that's how we knew we were meant for each other.'"

"And so a B means only $50,000? A C $25,000?"

"I don't think it's funny at all, these unkind jokes of yours. You're not being very sensitive to my needs."

"For my conscience, I've got to know how much to ask for. A hundred grand is an awful lot of blowjobs and three-holing two-girl nights."

"God! You are simply awful! I always looked up to you and thought you were this great professor with high ideals. But you're just like everyone else. Like, everything to you has on one of these little pink or green price tags."

"And you?"

"What? What are you trying to say about me?"

"Nothing special, I suppose. Just the banal observation that we're all whores. All that's ever at issue is the name of the market, the identity of the buyers and sellers, and a price."

"Wow! There you go again, snowing me."

"Maybe that's what both of us need. Lots of snow and another night at the Hotel Leyva. Or maybe a whole week there, until we're raw all over."

"I couldn't get away. Like honestly, I really couldn't. Eric would just never understand my being gone now that we're married." 

"The jealous type, huh?"

"I got what I deserved. Like he's worse than me, and I'm pretty bad."

We were walking again and had reached the library and I felt exhausted. I had no idea what to do. Sure I would've wanted to get in bed with Ashley again, but now it just seemed utterly distasteful. I had never been one of these guys who could shag a woman after an argument. I had this sinking feeling that our relationship had reached that point where no matter how horny I was I just might not be able to perform. Or perhaps only by treating her with meanness in my heart, then telling her that I've had several dozen women who were better at everything.

There were two midterms and a final, and I did something that I don't like to think about as I write these words. Because the enrollment was small-under thirty students-the university wouldn't give me a teaching assistant for the course. This meant that I had to do all of my own grading. In this case, it had one definite advantage. I could grade Ashley's exams however I saw fit and no one would be the wiser. And this, I regret to say, is more or less what I did. Or rather didn't do. I simply would not allow myself to even look at her answers to my essay questions, fearing the worst, knowing she would be lucky to get a C on any of the exams. I, of course, had to hand back the other student exams, but after the first one I took Ashley aside after class and said, "I think it better for both of us if I just hold your exams off to one side and grade them all at once. And do that extra credit for me, incidentally. Do you understand?"

"Not exactly," she said. "How will I know how I did on the exams and my paper?"

"You will know when the class is over."

"Do you want to be with me before then?"

"We'll see. I'll let you know."

"I can arrange something for afternoons, or one or two nights in a nice motel if you like. I can say I'm going to stay with a college friend. You just tell me what you want to do, okay?"

"I'm not sure exactly what I want, but let's pretend that I don't want anything from you unless I tell you otherwise."

"Okay.  Whatever you say. You're the professor so you know best."   

Ashley came to all the classes, and she behaved toward me more or less as if we'd never met, other than for the occasional mischievous smile that was left for me to read as I saw fit.  I did ask her a couple of topic-related questions in class, just as I did other students. But I chose the questions carefully to make her look good, and I think she knew it. I also think she had a good sense how everything would be played out, and that she would have to be there for me if I called and gave her a time and a place. But I didn't see her outside class. I told myself I avoided her as much for her husband as for her. I did it for their relationship, and because she was so young, and because it was really I who had taken advantage. I had to remind myself that there was a considerable age difference, and all those marriage and travel experiences I had on her. I guess I just didn't want to think about it beyond these self-serving rationalizations.

***

Three days ago, one year and two days since Ashley and Nit and I had the first of what I called our Thai-Farang sandwiches, I checked into the Sunshine Hotel here in Pattaya.  Some four hours later, after I'd taken a nap and a shower and would have a seafood dinner on nearby Beach Road before heading down to Walking Street, I stopped at the desk to get one of my five ATM cards. The young Thai clerk, who had been able to give me room 712 again-the same one Nit and Ashley and I used,  handed me an  envelope without a return address, and with airmail U.S. stamps carefully affixed.  It was addressed to me in large, child-like block letters. Inside was a card with a photo of a two-storey condo with  Australian paperbarks and a flower garden and a swan in a pond in the front yard. A dark green Jaguar was parked in the driveway. Inside the card, on the right side, she had put three holes, one near the top and two close together and near the bottom.  On either side of the hole at the top, which sat in the middle of an imprint of her lips in pink, was a circle made with a crayon.  The left one was green, the right one blue, just like her eyes. The two holes at the bottom of the card sat inside overlapping imprints of her lips, again in lipstick pink. On the left side of the card, she had handwritten: My Dearest Korski, I'll always remember you as My Favorite Sandwich Man. Love, Ashley.

Korski

© Korski. All rights reserved by the author.

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