I had just left my early morning class in Ancient Greek. I was still conjugating and parsing shit in my mind as I passed into Smith Hall. That and the fluorescent lighting were giving me a headache. Trying to mellow out, I strode slowly into the "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales" classroom for the first day of class, my overloaded backpack weighing me down. I was tired from the previous night's shift as a lab assistant at Christ Hospital, but the promise of learning, my personal chimera, kept me trudging forward.

My eyes were drawn to a girl with dramatic, dark brown curls that swirled around her face and down onto her shoulders. In that setting, her beauty was like a sucker punch. She was a fucking babe. She had a delicate frame, was a little busty, and had eyes that were sharp and alive like they were three steps ahead of the schlubs surrounding her. Before I had time to warn myself what a terrible idea it was, I made a beeline toward her and took a seat directly across the aisle from her.

Later, when each of the students introduced themselves, I found out that her name was Beth. She was from New York City and was a master's student in English literature. So, she was sexy AND smart. My knees weakened. Her enormous dark brown eyes were doing it for me.

I couldn’t stop watching her. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she spoke in a rapid-fire way, her hands cutting through the air. But every so often, her voice would catch, like she might be doubting herself, and then she’d tear on like a force of nature as if daring anyone to stop her. The professor just let her go as if he knew he was no longer a part of the show.

Her classroom performance was a pas seul, a one-person ballet, and she was certainly the most beautiful creature I'd seen on campus! Every time she laughed at a joke, or raised her hand to ask a question, I felt more drawn to her.

At the end of class, the students filed out, and like a moth to a flame, I made my way toward her. Along the way, I was warning myself that I was just another douchebag and that she was waaay out of my fucking league! But this was my moment. I clumsily introduced myself, which was the only way I knew how. My legs felt like they were going to give way.

"Hey, I'm Zach," I managed to blurt out, but with a distinct quaver in my voice. I had no fucking idea what to say next, but out it came. "I'm a history major. I'm hoping a Chaucer course will beef up my transcript, maybe make it look like I have breadth when I apply for grad school at Berkeley. How about you?"

Beth briefly scanned me with those eyes that made me want to piss myself. Then I noticed her tilt her head slightly, like she was weighing whether I was some fucking joke that had dropped out of the sky or maybe I might be worth a second of her time. "Hi, Zach. What's up? That sounds ambitious. I suppose you want a date."

I gulped. She hadn't shot me down entirely, but she had quickly shown me that she was no one to be fucked with. So...okay...she was smart AND sexy AND blunt. Alright. Alright. "Yeah," I said, my voice cracking slightly. "You're right. Absolutely right. You see right through me. I'd love to take you out, get to know you. Like you said, I'm ambitious!"

Beth smirked. Smirks are NOT a good sign. "Well, aren't you adorable," she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. "But you know what, Zach, the history major dude? I'm kind of busy. Got books to read, papers to write, yada yada."

"Let me be part of the yada yada, Beth. I get paid tomorrow. We could grab a bite and take in a movie. I can be crazy entertaining," I implored.

Beth rolled her eyes a little, but she didn't say no. She was cogitating. "Fine," she said with a sigh. "You do have SOME game. But it's just dinner, and I’m not going to be the dinner, Mr. Not-That-Smooth. And I really don’t think you’re my type."

"What is your type, Beth?" I asked, knowing this whole deal might collapse any minute.

Beth looked at me like I'd just suggested that Shakespeare was a fraud. She sliced into me with, "Someone with a clue, maybe? Someone who can actually carry on a conversation without going into some weird, stuttering free fall!"

"Oh, I can do that. For sure. It's just that I get a little tongue-tied when I meet someone genuine and amazing!" Was I hanging myself right there in the hallway with half of the English department watching?

Beth looked at me like she was sizing me up, like I was something in a yard sale that she wasn't quite sure about buying. "Alright, Zach," she said with another Beth smirk, "you've got your chance. Don't fuck it up."

I shot back with, "Okay, I'll start not fucking it up right now! Gimme your number and I'll text you tomorrow. It'll be great!"

Then she softened a little, which was a relief. "Okay, ambitious dude," she said, scribbling something down on a piece of paper and holding it out to me. "Here's my number. Don't text me anything weird, alright? No dick pics!"

"Okay, I’ll text you. And I won't mention how fucking perfect you are! Later, Beth!" I replied. Then I shot out of there before I destroyed the progress I had made! Then, as I headed for my next class, I remembered that old blues song about asking for water and getting gasoline. That goddam girl was def gasoline! I had to up my game!

That night I did my laundry. I wanted to dress for the date in a way that would make me look like a solid guy. I had never been a fuckboy, and I didn't want to come across like that. She was a smart girl, a good girl, she wouldn't respect that. So I tossed in a pair of jeans that were new, but not too new, and a conservative shirt. I decided that I would also wear my go-to tweed jacket. I wanted to look like a young intellectual who knew how to get laid but isn't gonna try to jump a girl's bones on the first date.

So, I stood in front of the washing machine, watching my clothes spin around. That had to be a metaphor for something. And I thought about how much I needed to behave myself and get things right with this Beth deal. I was determined to treat her right...to be the kind of guy she deserved. I wanted to be the one who'd listen to her and talk to her about her feelings, who'd get her literary allusions, who’d understand her dreams, and who'd laugh at her jokes because I really got them. The theme was going to be, "Zach, dude, take it slow."

All I could think about was how I wanted her to be my girl. Impossible? Most likely. Hell, I came from a working-class family, one generation away from the hills of Kentucky. I had almost zero polish, but I knew I needed some. I wanted to be the kind of guy who could have a smart and beautiful girl like her. I wanted to be the kind of guy who deserved her.

God knows, it all came easier for her. She was smoking hot, and she knew it. She knew she didn't even have to try. And she was even more than that. I'd seen her in class, and how her eyes lit up, with her hands flitting about and sweeping through the air as she spoke about authors and ideas and why they mattered. This girl was a fucking keeper, not just some girl I'd pour alcohol into at a party and do her in the backseat of my car. I had to face it. I was already halfway in love with her.

Twenty-four hours later, it was showtime. I texted her for her address. "Hey Beth, it's Zach. What's your address so I can pick you up?" I waited. My heart was hammering like it was trying to break out of my chest.

A minute later, she replied tersely, "Hyde Park. 685 Elm Street, No. 3B." Bitch was icy. I stared at the screen, trying to maintain, but I couldn’t. The game of my life was on! This was it!

Driving into Hyde Park in my beat-up Prius was like entering a fantasy world that had always been forbidden to me. I rolled my window down, and everything smelled like blooming flowers. The streets were wide, and the lawns were manicured and enormous. People lived like this? The houses looked like fortresses to keep guys like me out. Who the fuck were these people?

I finally arrived at her townhouse. It didn’t look like a student lived there. This was no garret…no dorm room. It was posh, complete with ivy climbing the walls and a door that didn’t look like it had been designed locally.

My heart was in my throat. I screwed up what little courage I had and rang the fancy doorbell. When the door opened, I was almost surprised that she was really there. This was a new Beth. She was wearing a little black dress that hugged her oh-so-tightly. She was so stunning that it hurt to look at her.

This was not the girl from Chaucer class. This was a woman, gorgeous and elegant. And not a local woman. This was a lush, big-city woman, a New York City woman. Her crazy curls were now in a loose updo that made her look both sexy as fuck and sophisticated. For a moment, though, I caught something softer in her eyes — like she knew she was putting on a performance and wondered if I would buy it. No probs, I bought it. "Hi, Zach," she said with a smile that pierced my soul.

As we walked to my shithole Prius, I felt like a fraud…the world’s luckiest fraud! My date was this beautiful Hyde Park woman, and I hadn’t kidnapped her! She had said yes! Police couldn’t arrest me!

The conversation on the drive to the fancy place that I had picked out was a little awkward, but I was a trooper, and I held my own. “Zach, dude, sounds like you’ve done this before,” I screamed at myself!

When we arrived, she cased the joint with an air that said she'd seen better. "It’s charming," she lied. She was going easy on me. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? The place was a giant step up from my usual date-night pizza place. There would be no paper plates on this night.

I had to pretend that I knew how to act, but I had two years of French, and I had spent an hour earlier that day watching YouTube fine dining tutorials! The waiter, Henri, was a pretentious prick with a French accent, and he was wearing a fucking bow tie that made me want to smash his face. He took our drink orders. Like the gentleman I wasn’t, I deferred to Beth, and she ordered some fancy whoop-de-do wine that I couldn't pronounce…or afford.

When the idiot faux garçon returned and pulled the cork from the bottle of wine and held it to my nose, I sniffed it like a connoisseur and nodded. I leaned on my two years of French and, as snootily as I could manage, I said, “Bonsoir, Henri. C'est notre première visite. Veuillez verser le vin. Il a l'air délicieux.” And I said it with a satisfied smile, like I was a regular. That cork-sniffing could have been perilous! Thank God for YouTube fine dining tutorials!

The wine made the conversation flow a bit better after the cork-sniffing obstacle. Beth and I talked about Blake and Saul Bellow, and she laughed at my favorite history jokes. I told her about my dreams of becoming a professor of European history. She spoke of her love for poetry, revealing her delight in teasing out the meaning of every line. But then she leaned in closer, her voice quieter, “It’s not just the poetry. It’s that I need the world to make sense somehow, and poems are the only place I’ve ever found that.”

I responded with some astonishment that, “Actually, Beth, that is uncanny. It is exactly why history has consumed me. History tells us where we’ve been, explains who we are, and is the least fallible guide for understanding what we can become.” There! She hadn’t been expecting that from a hillbilly boy!

Then I gazed at her some more. I admired her earnest involvement with poetry. Actually, I admired every single fucking thing about her! I was in awe of her self-possession and her self-awareness.

After dinner, she suggested we go for a walk. It was a cool evening, but we both had jackets. Mine was my go-to tweed that I had picked up one day at Goodwill with my last five dollars. Hers was pretty and feminine and came from some boutique in Manhattan.

She opened up and told me about her family back in New York, saying, “My parents have always been overbearing, but they love me. The rub is that they want me to be perfect in every way. There’s almost no let-up with that. My dad is a corporate attorney, the kind who always has a stick up his ass. My mom, though, is so cool! She’s progressive and independent-minded. She’s a philosophy professor at NYU.” She went on to tell me that she was a trust fund baby from money left by her Russian immigrant grandparents, Natasha and Izzy, who had owned a string of candy stores and had scrimped and saved all their lives, leaving her and her brother enough money for life.

“You come from good people, Beth, both your parents and your grandparents. That is high praise where I come from. Your story of your grandparents’ goodness, and the pathos of their lives, and the sincerity in your voice as you related it all to me touches my heart,” I said. “The love that Beth and Izzy had for you is such an important part of you. I so much wish that I could have known them.”

Then I countered with, “Beth, my mom became pregnant with me back in Kentucky at age 15 when she fell for some farmer boy’s goofy hillbilly charm. Then, true to type, the boy bolted for Detroit, never to be heard from again. Her situation was made worse because she was from an evangelical family and lived in a little evangelical Faulknerian hamlet, so after her belly grew and I was born, she lived in shame. Every day. And I was a daily reminder of that shame.” I then told her how my mom became a waitress, and how my sisters and I had survived on her tips for many years. “We paid for things with the dimes and quarters she brought home,” I said.

I also told her, “Beth, your mom and dad want you to be perfect. That’s a burden, for sure, but it’s not all bad. My mom and my latest stepdad just hope I'll fall into something that pays steady money… digging ditches or driving a dump truck. They think this college stuff is stupid.”

After a while, we found a bench outside a massive monastery. She leaned into me, her head on my shoulder as we watched the full moon rise just above the cross that topped the building. She shivered, and I held her close. Without thinking, I turned her face to me and kissed her deeply, with all the soul and tenderness that I could muster. Then I looked up at the cross and thanked whatever gods may be for giving me this night!

When we returned to Beth’s townhouse, she led me into her curated living room, which was filled with stray books and papers marked in blue, black, and red. The walls held paintings she had started creating in her high school years. I had never known any painters before, except for the kind who wore those goofy-looking painters’ pants.

She offered me a drink, which I did not decline. Then I took a moment to admire her, head to toe, as she reached for the crystal decanter. She had this way of moving like she was a ballerina who might vanish into thin air at any moment. But her ass! I had to be careful not to stare too long.

When she turned to hand me the whiskey, she caught me looking. "You like?" she asked with a smile that said she knew the answer. I blushed, took a sip, and nodded. The whiskey scorched my throat. This girl knew how to pour a drink! "Hell yes, I like. You look amazing, Beth," I said, trying to sound cool like none of this was new to me. She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was flattered…and I wanted to flatter her forever. "Thanks," she said, sitting down on the couch and pulling her legs under her. "Now, tell me what made you fall in love with studying history, history boy."

The conversation flowed easily as we sipped our drinks and talked about our studies. She was surprisingly interested in my area of concentration, which was the cultural history of Europe between the world wars.

She surprised me by asking insightful questions about fascism and communism and Leon Blum that made me feel like she might actually understand what made me tick. I wasn’t used to that. For my part, I was intrigued by her love for Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her passion for the poems was so real that I felt like I could almost touch it and, like everything else about her, it was a huge turn-on. The more I learned about her, the more I realized that maybe, just maybe, we weren't so different after all. We both had big imaginations and big dreams…our souls were on fire!

She grabbed a book from a shelf and started reading aloud. I leaned back and listened. She looked up and caught me staring. "You're quiet," she said with that Beth smirk I had come to know. "Don't tell me you're not enjoying this."

"I cannot tell you that," I said, taking another gulp of whiskey. "It's just...you're really so good at seducing me."

Beth laughed and said, "Is that right, Zach, seducing you?"

Then I switched gears with, "I could be wrong. But what if I'm doing a good job of seducing you, Beth?" There. I had thrown down the gauntlet.

"And what makes you think you're seducing me, Zach, much less doing a good job of it?" she asked like a world-class, gold-medal prick tease.

"You're an ice-queen on the outside, Beth. It’s your default position. But that's only a part of you. You're also warm on the inside, and you like me. You're just not brave enough to say so. Be brave, Beth. Drop the ice-queen bullshit! Be brave enough to give love a chance. Give me a chance," I blurted. “I’m worth it!” I felt tears forming in my eyes. I was coming on way too strong, but at least now it was all on the line. I was on the line.

Beth stared at me. Then she slowly set her whiskey down and closed the distance between us. Before I knew it, she was straddling my lap, her hands around my neck, her breath hot against my ear. "You think you know me, don't you, Jethro?" she murmured, her voice sounding like the alcohol might be kicking in. But her hands lingered on my shoulders as if she wasn’t sure if she wanted me to really, really know her or not.

"I feel like I've known you all my life, Beth, without being able to be near you. I certainly have been looking for you all my life. And now you’re here with me. You're finally in my lap. You've found your place," I said with absolute conviction.

I thought I saw a hint of vulnerability in her face when she averted her eyes momentarily, gathering her thoughts, strategizing. Then she leaned in and kissed me. Her lips were soft, but urgent, and her tongue slid across mine. Her hands explored me. Dude, whether I was some kind of Jethro or not, this was turning out well!

But I was also dangerously close to losing control of my game plan. I had promised myself that I would take it s-l-o-w, that I would treat her right. So, I stupidly broke the kiss and pressed her forehead to my chest. "Beth," I whispered, "you're...you're so much. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get into this like this. I promised myself that I would respect you!"

Then she did something that made me feel like I had just passed some kind of final exam. She slipped that goddam dress down and let it fall around her waist! Her bra did nothing to hide what I already knew…that she had the breasts of an angel. They were perfect. She broke my reverie with, "You’re a decent guy, Zach. I like that. But you do want me, don't you? You want to pillage my village, don’t you?" she asked.

"Any fucking man on earth would want you, Beth. But I want you even more than any of them ever could," I declared.

Beth softened and let out a sigh; the games and the flirty banter were over. It all melted away like the candles in her living room. She was no longer just a hot, acid-tongued babe who loved poetry. She was a woman now, vulnerable and sweet, with an engine that wouldn’t quit. Her hands slipped under my shirt and over my chest.

She unbuckled my belt, and my reluctance fled the room like an escaped convict. This shit was on!

We undressed each other, hurriedly and clumsily.

Then we went at it right there on the living room floor. She was no fucking ice-queen now! "Do you want it fast and hard, or do you want it slow and easy, Beth?” I asked, offering her options as if I were a perfect gentleman.

“Both,” she replied. That word sent a surge of desire through me. She pulled me toward her, and I entered her, and she rolled those eyes.

The pillow talk phase was ancient history. This was getting real. I was making love to this goddam princess like it was my job and I needed a raise. After some time…was it a long time?… or was it a short time?... I could feel a soul-shattering denouement building, you know, the kind that you never forget, and my toes were curling. And she screamed out, “You’re such a good fucker! Oh my God! Shit almighty! Fuck me up!” This fancy New York girl, so careful in her word choices, was screaming at me to fuck her up! So, I did. Very lovingly, of course.

And a bit later, she went over the brink. Very loudly. I made a mental note to use ear protection next time.

My careful plan to exercise self-control and treat her like a lady had failed. Entirely.

I couldn't help but feel like I'd just conquered something. Like I'd finally proven myself to both of us. I deserved her, and I knew that I had earned a place in her world. “Zach,” she said, “When you talked to me tonight, you really made me feel alive. And you really did seduce me! You’re no Jethro, baby.”

Then we lay there in silence, putting our feelings in order, letting our blood pressure levels ebb. After twenty minutes or so, idly playing with one of her curls…I finally murmured…"Beth, I don’t want ever to let you go."

Then those damned eyes of hers met mine, and for a moment, I saw something in them that I hadn't seen before. And she didn’t smirk. Instead, she smiled and softly whispered, “Never let me go, Zach.”