cock tease

originally posted July 2, 2007

I have a long history of being infatuated with teachers. There was that substitute teacher when I was in the third grade, the one who subbed for us for, like, three weeks. It was a particularly exciting period of substitute teaching, as it was cloaked in the mystery of why we needed a substitute for so long. It wasn't vacation related – where the h-e-double hockey sticks was Mrs. McMenimen, anyway? I don't remember the name of the sub, but recall that I thought he was really handsome, and I would imagine greeting him after work and kissing him at the foot of our green shag carpeted stairs. I now would probably disagree with my eight-year-old self as to the magnitude of his hotness, just as I would over the issues of the attractiveness of Ponch, Fonzie, Michael Knight, and -- I can barely tell you this -- Potsie. I would also take issue with my choice of carpet – for fuck's sake, it was 1982. Why shag? Perhaps my young brain already had a sense of what that word would come to mean to me…

One of my big teacher crushes came in high school. I fancied the photography teacher. This is not because he was hot. We should probably just get this out of the way right now: While it is true that I enjoy men who are attractive, it is also true that I have been known to enjoy men who are ridiculous. Mind you, it doesn't have to be any particular brand of ridiculous, just as long as I can really sink my teeth into it. For example, prior incarnations of the ridiculous have included a penchant for flouncy shirts and velveteen pants, reams of terrible horrible no good very bad prose, and the decision to adopt the stage name 'Flay'. I cannot tell you the number of times Kristin has muttered the words, That guy goes beyond ridiculous. That guy is ricockulous. RI-COCK-U-LOUS. Yes, it is true -- I loves the ricockulous.

Anyhoo, back to Mr. Photo. I'm not quite sure what his particular ricockulosity was. He was Jewish, and had a big mess of curly hair, and was an old hippie. He told me I should date his son. He suggested colleges I should attend, the ones where "all the flaming weirdos" went. I took this as a compliment. He told me about seeing the Doors perform when he and his wife were young, and demonstrated, alone with me in the classroom, how Jim Morrison held the microphone and moved when he sang Light My Fire. It's coming together, isn't it? Kind of ricockulous. What's even more ricockulous is the way I would listen to Abba sing When I Kissed the Teacher, after school, alone in my room. I would dance about, flapping my arms in the way you do when you dance to this song (Come on. Listen to it. Are you flapping? You aren't? You have no soul, zombie thing.) I would sing along, and modify the words to suit my situation: He was leaning over me, trying to explain the laws of Pho-tog-ra-PHEEEEEEEEE… It was a disgraceful display.

One day just before graduation, a couple of days after my eighteenth birthday, I was alone in the classroom with him and my friend Angela. Pulling me on his lap he said, Now that you're eighteen, I guess that means you can sit on my lap. This I was not prepared for. I think I laughed and sort of scooted away or something. It was that unexpected and horrifying and ABSOLUTELY RICOCKULOUS. I mean, WHAT? Where did this come from? It was all so awkward and strange and inappropriate and not in the damn Abba song. Lap sitting? Me? Huh? And what about the underaged Angela, off there to the side, doing something photography related and looking sort of wide eyed and confused? I was NOT, as Abba put it, "in the seventh heaven".

Many years later I went to see the movie American Beauty with my then husband, a "writer" of sorts (and way beyond ricockulous, and not in a good way, as though you needed to ask.) Anyway, there I was, at a movie about a guy who is hot for a high school girl, between the "writer" and a stranger who was truly enjoying the movie. This stranger was clapping and hooting and really relating to the whole thing, like the way you did when you saw Say Anything or Blue Velvet or whatever. I spent the whole movie being kind of ooked out, what between the content of the movie and all the pervy kindred spirit action going on beside me between this man and the giant Spacey on the screen.

When the lights came up I turned to get a look at the creep next to me (that is, the one I was not married to), and saw that it was Mr. Photo who I was sitting beside. Then Mr. P turned to me, and saw that it was I who sat beside him. Talk about awkward. We stared at each other kind of wide-eyed for a moment. I would like to tell you that I said something dry and witty, a la a drunk Winston Churchill, but I did not. Instead I turned and fled. Well played, Qwanty.

***

There were other teachers on whom I have crushed, but no teacher crush has ever been as important as the one I have now. Additionally, I think I've perhaps finally moved away from the ricockulous. This teacher is a Brain Scientist. You would like him. He recently had this exchange with our small child:

BS, to no one in particular: Wow, Keith Richards really looks like a corpse.

BS, Jr.: I wannarida horse!

BS: There is no horse. I said corpse.

BS, Jr.: I wannarida corpse!

BS: No you don't want to ride a corpse, because it is a corpse, and it is Keith Richards, and it is alive.

Charming, no? And not really too ricockulous. Perhaps a bit irresponsible though – I mean, no two-year-old should be looking at a picture of Keith Richards.


As I've mentioned before, the Brain Scientist likes bone marrow, and might advise you to eat some, and will happily give you a lengthy, evolutionary explanation as to why, and you just try and shut him up. Mmmm. Marrowy. Mmmm. Long winded explanations of marrowy. Huh. Perhaps this might be construed as the teensiest bit ricockulous.

The other day the Brain Scientist mentioned, in a very off-handed and entirely serious way, that he would like to start a ninja college. He went on to explain what he meant, and it was not nearly as ricockulous as you might be thinking. I won't share the details, because I think they might be a secret. I will tell you this: it involves more than merely tiptoeing from class to class in pajamas. Perhaps this is not making the case for my move away from ricockularity.

The Brain Scientist has been in many bands, too, one of which had a song called Fuck in a Pile of Bees. And it was a good song! It takes a certain kind of man to pull that off – one who is perhaps a tad ricockulous, but who nonetheless has a certain panache that is not based entirely in the R. Really. I mean it. Oh, wait. I have just questioned him about this song, and I have been informed that the formal title is in fact Erototrauma (Fuck in a Pile of Bees). I stand corrected.

Speaking of songs, the Brain Scientist serenades me quite often with songs he's been involved in. In fact, this happened just now, in the form of an exuberant verse from Spam Pygmalion.

And I quote:

Spam Pygmalion! Spam Pygmalion! Quiver in the gel of your unnatural birth!


Hmmm.

Well now.

I guess some things never change.

Jesus. Do I loves the ricockulous.