“Huh,” Laura dryly stated with more of a chuckle than a syllable, browsing through the newspaper, her scanning eyes stalling on a distinct headline.

“What is it?” her roommate, and lover, asked between two generous gulps of overconcentrated cheap instant coffee, while lazily reading Sartre’s Les Jeux Sont Faits, pupils still almost hidden behind eyelids.

Laura looked up from the semi-crumpled paper in her hand and threw Jamie a dismissive glance. “I’ll never understand how you drink that stuff or even how you can chug down something so hot in such large sips.”

“Shrouded in mystery,” came the reply with an exaggerated air of natural coolness trying a bit too hard to suppress a grin, “like so many things about me. Take my missing gag reflex.”

That last addendum was delivered so soberly that Laura nearly choked on the contents of her own mug.

“You do know this causes throat cancer, yes?” Laura inquired with a chiding tone.

“What? Schlucking dick?” Jamie teased with eyebrows raised, still not shifting focus from the book and taking another generous helping of the searing-hot liquid to make a point. “Speak of experience?”

“You know what I mean,” Laura replied, voice heavy with eye-rolling.

“That’s a lot coming from someone who smokes,” the wide-smirked comeback.

Laura rolled her eyes. “And so do you!”

“...but only after the abundant addition of our homegrown,” Jamie completed the remark, still wearing a self-confident air and finally putting the book open side down yet careful not to crease its spine “But what was it that caught your attention, again?”

“Here.” She folded the paper and turned it around, tapping on the headline in question.

Suspended Teacher Back in Salisbury High—Principal: “Deserves a Chance but Keeping an Eye on Him.”

Jamie skimmed the article and caught a few keywords and lines: suspended for relationship with a student... consensual according to official sources... teacher suspected to have influenced student but no evidence... under strict supervision by the authorities...

“Sound like sexy Lexi’s back, huh?” Laura joked. "He used to be a phys ed teacher. Total dick.”

“So he already had a reputation back when you were there?” Jamie asked. “The name, I mean.”

“Oh, although I didn’t have him, I knew who he was. Kids talk. But we gave him that nickname when I was already in college, though, and the media of this sleepy little town jumped at the scandal of the teacher sleeping with his student. Nothing else going on there, except anarchists mowing their lawn during Sunday mass or using the Lord’s name in vain when stubbing their toe—just imagine the blasphemy!”

With an eyebrow raised over the remark of the sheer level of outrage in that little town, Jamie soberly stated, “Yeah, they made sure to milk our story for all its worth.”

“You heard of it too?” Laura replied with a question before backpedaling. Not quite sure she had understood, she tentatively reiterated, “Wait, your story? You knew the guy?”

“Yes, I was the reason he got suspended,” Jamie answered, still keeping the factual attitude while folding her used breakfast napkin and avoiding Laura’s eyes. Once it was folded enough, Jamie finally returned her look and re-affirmed her initial assessment. “He got suspended because he was fucking me.”

Those words seemed to float through the room while Jamie looked after them, waiting for Laura to react.

“What? Oh, I keep forgetting we went to the same high school.” She quickly did the math. “True, I graduated the summer before you started your freshman year so we never met.”

Remembering to be upset, Laura corrected her tone, albeit a tad too forced. “But... how? You and him? I never knew you actually slept with guys too!”

“Well, I wasn’t really into them at first—I mean, teenage boys, ugh—but I quickly came to like the attention they gave me despite being oh-so-straight. And Mr. Jackson was, below his hard shell, a very sweet and loving man. Classical male of his generation, you know. Trying hard to appear tough and cover up unprocessed traumas with an all-too-thin layer of fake ego and loud dominance. You know, men don’t have feelings because feelings are gay or for pussies and whatnot. What’s wrong with being a gay guy, having feelings despite being straight or with pussies? I like all of them.”

“But how? And why you?” Laura blurted out and quickly attempted to clarify, “I mean because...”

Jamie smiled and waved her off. “No worries. I know what you mean, and I know you enough to understand that your ‘someone like you’ comes from genuine curiosity and not from being a bigoted asshole.”

Jamie waited until Laura’s facial features relaxed. “How about we make new coffee and take this story to the couch? Listen to some calm music and cuddle up. It might get a bit emotional.”

While Jamie brewed up two more mugs of coffee, Laura slipped a first pressing of Bill Frisell’s History Mystery on the record player. She sat down on the couch and lazily reclined, the loose tank top she used for pajamas slipping up her midriff.

She was basking in the mild hangover of half a beer and three self-rolled cigarettes too many when Jamie came and first attempted to hand Laura her mug but, seeing her comfortable position, opted for putting both coffees on the living room table instead.

“Diluted with skimmed milk (yuck) to sub-homeopathic amounts of caffeine and so grossly oversugared that the spoon won’t sink—just the way the princess likes it and just black for me,” Jamie quipped.

Laura stuck her tongue out. “You don’t get to shame me for not liking the cheap lyophilized dust you dare call coffee.”

“Still beats Starbucks,” Jamie offered—shrugging, frowning, and slightly shaking her head—to both their agreement, “but surely stands no chance against Her Majesty’s refined tastes.”

“Wanna cuddle up now or want your little girlfriend to sulk all day because you offended her for being picky with colonial products that most often come from exploitatory conditions? But, no, that would only prove your point of me being a diva.” Laura pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Ugh, nooo, too much thinking for a Sunday morning.”

“...at 2 pm, my precious flower,” Jamie completed Laura’s approximation of the time of the day while slipping between her legs and snuggling into her arms.

Laura tousled her lover’s short hair. She liked it when it was freshly trimmed like that and seemed to just glide between her fingers like a very fine brush.

“So this... story...” Jamie began with a strategic William Shatner comma, turning around to lie belly up and half-exposed, snuggled in Laura’s arms.

“It was in my junior year when I started noticing. Those were different times. Way before there was such an active community that gave so many people the courage to come out. Let’s just say I was... different, being a... let’s call it a mood of nature—“

“A wonderful mood of nature,” Laura interrupted in a soft, loving whisper, making Jamie chuckle and smile.

“You’re sweet,” the latter replied, reaching to scratch Laura’s neck. “My case left the principal speechless and in an uncomfortable situation, so in the end, I got to choose which phys ed class I wanted to take. Anyone else in my situation would have been given postnatal hormone treatment and corrective surgery, urged by the doctors but my parents decided to leave the choice to me once I’d come of age, despite the peer pressure. I was, already at birth, branded as the undesirable improbability of sexual hormones. Or, as the priest of our church would call it, a child of the devil. My sole existence defied the lord's creation, yadda, yadda.

“Did it make my life harder? Hard to tell. Would it have been easier growing up in the neat little box that’s easy to categorize only to satisfy the social standards that don’t apply to a statistical minority? Add to that the reasonably large chance of me not agreeing with the choice my parents were peer-pressured into making for me. Consequently, I may have grown up convinced of being in the wrong body, and that may or may not have led to all sorts of other issues. Impossible to tell.

“I’m digressing.” Jamie profited from the short excursion to take a sip of the already ‘too cold’ coffee.

“So, here I was, ending up in boys’ phys ed because I preferred their program. Here again, why did we even categorize between boy and girl disciplines? What's wrong with girls playing basketball or boys interested in ballet? True, expressive gymnastics makes them gay, right? At least, it made my choice easy. As for the after-class showers, I skipped those. I was fortunate enough not to sweat too much or not to have a strong body odor—courtesy of my sexual hormone situation, I guess. Not sure, though. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t shower. Personal hygiene with teens isn’t necessarily the strictest. Even if I had been the only one, though, having perfectly androgynous looks already raised mixed types of attention and now imagine them discovering the hardware between my legs is a textbook case of sexual chromosome aberration on top of that.

“I sure enjoyed the smell of fresh sweat on my classmates, though. Especially that one guy. Every time he tossed the shirt he’d soaked through... Still, he obviously had no eyes for a little twink-looking kid like me who seemed to refuse to go through male puberty.

“This made me popular with the girls. You know, the stereotypical fat ‘femboys and gays are so much more sensitive’-stamp. Well, I had friends if you wanna call them that. And being popular with the girls, in turn, made me popular with the jocks, although their friendship mainly served a singular purpose. Also, they were too dumb to understand my occasional flirts. The girls, too, mind you. Didn’t realize I was only using them to rehearse my lines, either. Before you judge, they, too, used me as a means to an end. Tit for tat.”

Laura interjected, “Your smooth remarks with which you always wrap me around your finger? Are you kidding me?” She kissed her roommate on the forehead.

Jamie shrugged. “Oh, they were clunky and coarse. Needed years of honing.” A sigh followed. “Can’t blame those bimbos, though. This society is so normative that most kids don’t consider the possibility of me even existing, let alone hooking up with me. Too far off our clearly defined and deeply ingrained fundamentalist categories.

“Except for that one Mr. Alexander Jackson. Took me a while to notice. His approach was also the weirdest ever. Probably because he feared for his job and didn’t know how to even talk to a teenager, much less someone whom he had such an unhealthy obsession with. As a phys ed teacher, it was easy to put up with it. He just had to yell at us and shout Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant quotes. But how did one show affection and kindness to a seventeen-year-old?

“Well, he tried. He soon enough realized I was no receptacle for his all too fake tough guy act. I saw it in the looks he gave me every time he was done with his legendary beratings. His outbursts left me indifferent; I nearly pitied the guy. And he realized I did."

Another chug of the caffeine extract descended Jamie’s gullet—to keep the emotions at bay.

“At first, I thought the glances he threw me were unvoiced pleas for forgiveness. He sure knew how to treat every student the same. After a while, though, when he kept ordering me to help him tidy up and put away the material, I thought it was his way of punishing me for not complying with his obnoxious act.

“He would always stand behind me, arms akimbo, trying to make himself appear big and strong. Well, he was muscular and had a chiseled athletic physique despite being closer to fifty than to forty. But his mere presence felt unnatural.

“I quietly took the punishment as it would always delay my entry to the locker room and, by the time I’d get there, most of the guys were already done showering. Made it easier to avoid the questions about why I didn’t shower and the remarks about how it was gross. But chewing nails and eating your buggers isn’t, apparently. Compared to cheap spray-on deodorants, I much preferred the smell of sweat but to each their own.

“I don’t know what exactly tipped me off but one day, just out of the blue, I boldly confronted him."

Jamie paused and sighed loudly. Laura felt her roommate tense up. In response, she tightened the embrace. Her hands roamed Jamie’s body tenderly, placing little, reassuring scratches.

Jamie chuckled expressionlessly. “I remember it so clearly, so vividly. I was putting away the basketballs. I had my back to the door of the material room. I hadn’t switched on the lights because the old neon tubes took forever to light up and they flickered like a guaranteed headache. I knew the room by heart by that point and the light coming from the wide-open door was enough for the packed room anyway. The room darkened as his broad body stepped through the door and although there were still a good dozen steps separating us, I swear I could feel his presence and his breath in my neck.

“I tried not to let him notice I was startled by him being here. His breathing was unsteady as if he was trying to say something or hesitating to do something he wasn’t sure about. Something big and risky. Being a teenage fool like I was, the words came out of my mouth no later than they had formed in my mind, completely bypassing any filter of reason. In fact, I’m still amazed by the nonchalance I mustered in that moment; possibly out of annoyance or because I was tired of his game.

“‘If you’re so interested in me, why don’t you just fuck me and get this over with?’”

Laura nearly choked on her own saliva. “You did not!” she commented between coughs.

“Oh, you betcha,” a shit-eating grin connecting both ears. “Sure was a bold statement. Even for a teenager."

Laura was both shocked and amazed by her lover’s words. Desperate for anything to say, her lips moved but she failed to find the right thing to say while her hug loosened over being so distracted.

Jamie chuckled, finding Laura’s momentary vocal indisposition rather amusing. “At first, he was as speechless as you right now, probably trying to figure out whether I was joking or trying to lure him into a trap to end his career—wouldn’t have been the first student trying—you know what kids won’t do just for a couple of minutes of popularity at that age. Teenage kids are reckless, self-centered monsters and have a twisted idea of the word 'limelight'.

“I tried to stay as calm as possible while being tense, excited, and scared at the same time. I knew I had so easily overstepped a strictly taboo boundary. The mere shame over those words that washed over me would have been enough to make me melt into uncontrollable tears had I not been surprised by how easy it had been to unsettle the teacher.

“I could see the level of distress in his eyes and how he, too, was struggling with emotions. It helped me keep my shit together. As long as I managed to appear sober and calm, I told myself, I had the high ground.

"'What are you?' he finally more stammered than anything. I could have laughed at him, and humiliated him right then and there. I could have broken him—ended him if I had wanted. This simple question. This expression of utter frustration over my case he simply failed to put in one of the neatly labeled little drawers his limited mind allowed for. And yet there was something else I thought I’d heard: obsession.

“’Why is that so important?’ I asked as calmly as I could to make him understand he was in a safe space while still keeping my guard up high. For all I knew, he’d vent his frustration by belting me or, worse, taking advantage of my vulnerability I too easily laid bare with my initial question. ‘Is it not okay that I get to be who- and whatever I want to be?’

“He was struggling, close to tears, but I knew this could flip so quickly and unpredictably. I still chose caution and was trying to estimate whether I could reach the baseball clubs or hokey sticks faster than him if necessary. Theoretically, I could, but I was also afraid I’d be unable to move out of fear. The last thing I wanted was to suffer his feigned wrath descending on me and him compensating his deviant tendencies with a lacrosse stick.

“His next words, however, nearly shook me out of my reverie. ‘Why are you so beautiful?’”

Jamie paused, let Laura process the words, and picture the intensity of the situation. She was holding her roommate in a snug cuddle. Despite Jamie’s demure demeanor, she realized what kind of emotional stress her lover had to be under, sharing the story in this intimate detail for the first time.

Jamie turned to lie on the side and snuggled against Laura’s breasts, gaze fixed on the laggard wiggling of the record player’s tonearm over the irregularities of the disc before the narration continued, “I observed the first tears running down his cheeks as his composure further deteriorated.

“’Why do I desire you so much?’ He was sobbing when he said those words. Against all reason, I slowly approached him and reached for his cheek. In retrospect, this could have backfired so badly and gotten me hurt, into the hospital even, or worse: he could have taken advantage of the situation and crippled my views of love and sex for life. Still, I made him look at me through swollen eyes when his final words came as a faint whisper. ‘Why am I so obsessed with you?’

“No idea what came over me but I felt pity for him. I caressed his cheek with my thumb and stood on my tippy-toes to kiss his tears away. At that moment, he had all walls stripped from him, his true self exposed to me. I realized that I had that same power over him that he’d had over me just minutes ago.

“The expression in his eyes was filled with a plea for mercy. He was very aware of the situation and of what he had just said. In some way, we were even. I had confronted him with my inappropriate and provocative boldness. He, in turn, had replied by opening his heart. We could have called it a tie and left it at that but the curiosity in me that needed to see the real person underneath his fake cover won.

Since side A was finished, Jamie wiggled free of Laura’s arms to get up and flip the record.

“Timing sucks!” protested Laura. “I wanna know what happened.”

Jamie lifted an eyebrow. “Well...” came the teaser dripping with anticipation. “If you want, I can try to show you.”

“Show me?” Laura inquired, intrigued.

“Aren’t you excited?” Jamie countered, voice laden with playfulness.

Laura blushed. “Ah.... bit,” she admitted, looking away.

Guided by Jamie’s hand, she found her lover’s eyes.

“I did... this,” Jamie whispered, eyes locked with Laura’s. Their foreheads touched softly at first, then a little more when Jamie’s hands cupped both of Laura’s cheeks.

Softly, Jamie kissed Laura’s forehead. Just a quick but loving peck. Then her cheek. Each of them. Her neck. On either side. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. Laura couldn’t help but part her lips to feel Jamie’s soft pout on hers as the innocent peck turned into the need for more.

Jamie’s hands had moved down to Laura’s upper body. As they broke the kiss, they looked at each other, panting, cheeks flushed, wanting more.

“Is this how you seduced the teacher?” Laura barely more than just mouthed, voice filled with need.

Jamie giggled. “He wasn’t as easily convinced as you.” Then, smiling at Laura while slowly descending for another kiss, “Then again, you’re a tart and he was confused.”

Laura smiled into the kiss but soon let herself melt into the familiar pout that was so talented in evoking her carnal needs. Her titter was dripping with desire as her partner’s lips traced her neck and she felt a hand gently squeeze her breast, naked under her thin Sunday attire.

“Did you fondle his chest like this too,” she playfully asked, somewhat wondering if Jamie only touched her to compliment her on the feel of her breasts.

Jamie grinned suggestively, albeit not offering the reply Laura had expected. “Yes. And he liked it. A firm grip on his pectorals he seemed to be so proud of.”

“Of course,” Laura dismissively commented, rolling her eyes.

“Oh no, not what you think. It had little to do with male self-gratification or worship of his muscles. I wanted him to understand how vulnerable one feels when being touched this way and how thin the line is between feeling desired and feeling fragile, and how this touch can also transport trust; that he could trust me to only touch him like that when he allowed me to. That I was aware of the power I was wielding and not planning to turn it against him or abuse it while showing him I trusted him to do the same with me.”

They kissed deeply, sensually, and yet only shyly—the kind of kiss that evokes a craving, makes the heart beat faster and cheeks blush with excitement. A pair of hands entwined while the other hands were getting more daring in their exploration, seeking to arouse the ticklish sensation that yearns for tenderness.

“I remember his first touch. The first time he lay his hands on my body,” Jamie resumed the elaborations. “I immediately understood why he’d been so reluctant to make his move. It was far more than just his position as my teacher. His grip left no room for hesitation. It was strong, dominant. It didn’t hurt and I never felt in danger but the submissiveness it instantly caused to manifest in me... It was so perfectly natural to submit myself to his hunger. Then and there; even in the way he walked back to lock the material room door and leave the key in the lock.”

“So it’s he who taught you that,” Laura stated, giggling as the hand caressing her body and gripping her in specific places amplified the ardor Jamie’s touch inflamed deep between her legs. “Just like you’re doing it now. There’s no questioning your intentions and you claim possession of me so easily by a simple touch.”

“This is just a role I learned to play,” Jamie explained, “while for him, it was natural. Like an instinct. Just like I have the instinct to serve and you have the instinct to challenge and invert roles.”

Laura was parting her lips, allowing a whimper to escape as the fingers exploring her body dipped to find her natural lubricant. She mirrored the touches until her hand found Jamie’s melting crotch and her fingers dug into the flesh she found.

Fingers entwined and lips explored, seeking to catch every drop of love dew. Each touch was rewarded with moans building towards ecstasy as tongues mapped and re-mapped all mounts and crevices anew. Lips sucked on nerve endings, sensitizing them to a needy ache.

Words yielded to moans as mouths were devouring skin and juices alike while teeth hungrily bit and nibbled, tantalizingly eliciting lust-saturated cries.

The faint static and the periodic clicking of the needle against the junction of the groove with the idling circle accompanied two heaving lumps of flesh that were comfortably snuggled in a complicated knot of limbs.

“And after all this, how come you’re still with me?” Laura asked, more out of curiosity than jealousy. Before her lover could reply, she added, “You know... he gave you so much. So much you needed. Many things I cannot give you.”

Jamie snuggled deeper into Laura’s chest, resting the face between her boobs. “He didn’t have such an amazing pair of tits.”

She playfully giggled in response. “I’m being serious!”

“Your giggle says otherwise.”

“You’re daft.”

“But also being serious,” Jamie re-iterated. “At least partly. You know I love your boobs. Of course, because they are boobs but mostly because they are yours.”

They unlocked their entanglement to look each other in the eye.

“I love you, Laura and you love me back. That’s what I need. You could have an Eiffel Tower for a dick or watermelon-sized tits—or both for that matter—and that wouldn’t make you any better or less good for me.”

“But you loved him too. And he loved you back just the same.”

“Yes, we did have that and I’ll never forget it.” A brief moment of hesitation. “And I’m pretty certain I still love him to some degree. Yes, a part of me misses him badly. But I would miss you too. Just like there are things you’ll never be able to give me, there are such things that you have and he did not. Take the power structure between us. Unlike the very mood-dependent dynamics you and I have, he easily dominated me, and for a while, that was good. He was, even in sexual matters, a teacher who taught me so many things."

Jamie stood up and stepped to the stereo to lift the needle from the record and put the vinyl back into its sleeve.

“It was how we worked. He would lash out years' worth of locked-up deviant desires and bottled-up frustration at me. In a very loving way, though. He was clearly a top but I trusted him blindly to respect my well-being and my safe space.”

Jamie squatted to slide the album back onto the shelf between Larry Cornell’s Eleventh House and Amy Winehouse’s B-sides. A finger browsed through records until it halted, satisfied, on Extreme Noise Terror’s Phonophobia. A smile and a wry glance that met with an amused smirk.

“Always with the crass contrasts,” she giggled. “So romantic.”

“Of course,” came the reply shortly before the chaotic midrange-heavy unpleasantness started grinding its way through their eardrums.

Laura shook her head slowly, taking the last sip of her coffee as her flatmate came back to snuggle into the cocoon again.

“He gave me trust and reason to trust him back. He was the first who made me understand I was desirable and not just a freak. It was an invaluable experience. Both at that age and in my body. After having grown up questioning the legitimization of my existence and learnt that I better not disclose my true self, this was the first time someone loved me because I was who I am.”

Laura welcomed her partner in her arms and played with that brush of short, soft hair bleached platinum blonde.

“The first in many things. He taught me so much.”

A pause for a snuggle and a deep breath.

“So much about myself and about love.”

They kissed.

“And that’s where you come in, my love,” Jamie said, smiling at Laura. “You see,” playing curling her long hair on an index finger, “there are so many factors. We love each other. He and you have complementary hardware as well as complementary desires, needs, and preferences. You have a very empathetic personality which I somewhat missed in him. Yes, he kept making sure I was comfortable and safe at all moments but with you, this is just so much more natural and intuitive. You never ask me because you just know. He could not do without me clearly verbally communicating.”

An audible sigh with slightly more weight than intended.

“He was great in so many aspects but what he lacked in, you make up for a hundredfold.”

“That’s sweet of you to say but what about me, then? What do I lack?” Laura pressed on.

Jamie smiled softly and apologetically before offering an evasive reply. “What you lack, he’d easily make up for just the same.”

Jamie kissed Laura on the tip of the nose again, leaving her with this vague reply, then yawned and stretched.

“But why question it?” while arching the back. “Does it have to have a reason? I like it the way it is.”

“I like it too,” she replied. “I was just curious, is all, and it feels nice to know you accept me as I am and don’t feel like my flaws are driving you away.”

“Could be me saying this,” Jamie retorted, snickering. “I love that you are like the diametrical opposite of him. In a way, it makes me feel like I have everything for both your kinds of people.”

Chuckling, Laura coyly ogled her lover from head to toe and back again. “Well, physically you do have all it needs for both our preferences.”

“Well, I guess, in a perfect world, I could have both of you,” Jamie stated with an air of playfulness and melancholy alike.

“I’d love that,” Laura chimed in.

Jamie sat back on the couch and leaned into Laura’s embrace.

They sat there for a while, gently drawing on each other’s skin with their index fingers.

“And what do you feel like today?” Laura asked. “Have you made up your mind what you want to be today?”

Jamie smiled. “Why is that so important?”