Message-ID: <7343eli$9801151902@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: tariat@aol.com (TariaT) X-Good-Line-Length: yes Subject: {ASS} Power and the Word (Part One) by Taria Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-Id: <19980115201300.PAA21511@ladder03.news.aol.com> POWER AND THE WORD by Taria ONE: "Dark brown girls in blond men's arms" __________________ Cleanthe swayed with the motion of the train, back and forth, back and forth. The rocking motion was mesmerizing, along with the endless clack-clack-clack of the metal wheels on the tracks. The heat in the car was stifling, between the excessive steam and the crush of too many bodies swathed in fur and fleece and thinsulate. With a sudden jerk the train lost all speed and then slid to a halt, its rusted brakes squealing in protest. Cleanthe reflexively tightened her grip on the metal bar over her head and held on for dear life, releasing her hold only after the train had stopped. For a moment chaos ruled in the subway car -- the lights flickered off, then on; passengers extricated themselves and their parcels from the laps of their neighbors. Then all was quiet, the motionless attentive silence of hundreds of people awaiting an explanation for this latest inconvenience. After thirty seconds or so the PA system crackled into life. "Attention, Passengers -- we apologize for the delay, and we hope to be moving again shortly--" The grumbling began almost immediately. "What the hell does THAT mean?" "Damn trains, always makin' me late for work!" In the seat in front of Cleanthe, a middle-aged black woman elbowed the passenger sitting next to her, a solid-looking black man in a well-worn watch cap. "Won't never see this happen on them white folks' trains," she said. "Think they do this on fancy commuter trains? Metro-North? L-I-Double R?" Her companion grinned, yellowed teeth flashing in a bright grin beneath a scraggly dark moustache. "'Tis so," he rumbled, his voice tinged with Trinidad and Tobago. "Don' take dem suburb trains much, though. Not lately, anyways." The woman beside him cackled loudly. "Uh-HUNH" she grunted, as much to herself as to anybody else. Cleanthe said nothing, her gaze fixed on the blackness that showed through the window of the subway car. In the scratched glass surface of the window pane she could just make out her own reflection, smiling in that enigmatic way that always drove Momma crazy. "What you smilin' bout there, Girl? I swear, sometimes you make me wanna look for canary feathers inside that mouth..." In the window, her smile deepened. What you think now, Momma? What you think now that your little girl all grown up and made something of herself? Columbia University, Momma! Cleanthe felt the warm rush of pride she always felt when she thought that way. Damn straight, she thought, Columbia University. I made it through my neighborhood, through high school, getting nothing from nobody, all on my own. I'm the one takes a bus and two trains every day, two hours fifteen minutes on the bus and the D-train and the 1-train till I get to campus. I'm the one doing all my studying and holding down my job at University Food Market four nights a week. I'm the one with a good GPA in Business and History and English Lit... Today's my Lit class, she thought. Doctor Johnson today. Cleanthe suddenly felt hot and flushed, and saw her reflection's eyes widen and her grin fade. Inside, she felt her blooming pride shrink and dwindle, contracting in her center. She felt herself awash in a flood of guilt and shame mixed with deeper stirrings. She closed her eyes, grinding her eyelids together. Bad decision, she thought, as she felt her sense of balance slipping away. When she opened her eyes again she saw concern in the face of the West Indian man seated before her. "You OK there, Miss?" he asked, rising slightly in his seat. Cleanthe tried to smile and shake her head No, I don't need to sit, but before she could speak the train jerked to a start, its grinding efforts drowning her out. She gave the man a reassuring look and straightened up, and remembered. >From the first moment she'd entered the room in Hamilton Hall, the class had been a revelation. There in that classroom were more black faces than she'd ever seen together anywhere on campus. The others felt it too, she could tell. They were relaxed, at ease, smiling broader and talking louder than black Columbia students usually did. This was *their* class, they said, without actually having to say so. African-American Literature was *their* class. Their eyes were alight with that knowledge, eager faces fierce as a pride of young lions. And then the time arrived and the door swung open one last time as the Professor entered. Conversation halted. Every eye in the room was riveted to the figure at the front of the classroom as he casually dropped his overstuffed carry-case on the desk. From the shocked expressions of her classmates Cleanthe could tell that they were all thinking the same thing: who was this white man? A number of the students were peering at him with suspicion, others with open hostility. This could *not* be Professor Lewis Johnson, not in this room, not in this class. No way this white man was going to step right into their space and violate their world. A minute passed, and then another. The man, whoever he was, was calm and impassive as his gaze swept across the room. Cleanthe couldn't entirely repress a smile. He sure had balls, this white man. And *so* white, too! His shock of blonde hair and absurdly pale skin were nearly blinding among the brown-and-black hues that filled the room. An icy chill passed through her as she realized that he was looking directly at her. No, it was as if those piercing green eyes were peering through her, inside her, seeing deep into her thoughts. A hot flush rushed to her cheeks as she looked directly into those eyes. Can he tell? she wondered. They say white folks think we can't blush, she thought. I hope he can't tell. He can! said a tiny voice in her head. Hush up! she shouted back. Cleanthe thought his eyes were crinkling in the corners, like he wanted to smile but wouldn't. He opened his mouth, and spoke. "I've known rivers," he said. "I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers." He spoke softly but urgently, in a voice that commanded attention. His words unfurled, encompassing the Euphrates and the Congo and the Nile. With his words the Mississippi rose up before him, a deep muddy vision Cleanthe had never before seen. "I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers." Cleanthe was his. The whole class was his. His voice and his words had penetrated their shields, gotten behind their masks. For a moment they were all naked before him, defenseless and vulnerable. It was over before it even started, but it had been there. They all knew it. He knew it too. "That'll do," he murmured. And he reached back into his bag and grabbed a sheaf of course outlines, and class began. Afterwards Cleanthe hung back, waiting for everyone to clear out. As the last students filed through the doorway she approached the desk where the teacher was randomly stuffing stray sheets of paper into his bag. As she drew near he raised his gaze and smiled at her. "I knew you would come," he said. Cleanthe knew she was about to blush again. "Um, I..." she stammered. "I just..." His smile deepened. "Langston Hughes," he said. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Amazing, isn't it?" Cleanthe nodded, blushing, dumbstruck. "I've always been overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all," he continued. "I'm glad you felt the same way, Miss...?" His voice trailed off in a question mark. Cleanthe saw that he'd extended his hand to her as well. "Jones," she whispered in a hoarse voice. She swallowed. "Cleanthe Jones." She shifted her book bag and moved to shake his hand. He took her hand in his. It was a soft grip. Almost caressing. "Cleanthe Jones," he repeated, his eyes glued to her face as he seemed to connect the name to the person in his mind. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Cleanthe." He'd pronounced her name right, first try. Nobody ever did. Her eyes were locked to his, trapped in that same penetrating gaze. He didn't immediately release her hand. She didn't want him to. Finally, he let go. The spell broke and he smiled again, and wished her a good day. She drifted out of the room and looked at her watch. She was ten minutes late to Chemistry. A jerk and a squeak, and a crackly voice. "D train to the Bronx. Please watch the closing doors." Cleanthe shook her head clear of the cobwebs and looked out of the window at the platform. 125th Street? Shit! Ruthlessly she banged several people aside with her book bag and scrambled through the metal doors just as they began to close. *Bing-Bong* rang the door-chime as she wedged through the narrowing opening. *Bing-Bong*. *BING BONG*! The doors stuttered twice and then let her through, spitting her out into the station. They shut with a satisfied *click* behind her, and she watched mutely as the train rumbled to a start and sped up as it pulled away. Cleanthe shook her head again and slapped it once with her palm. Shit! Daydreaming again, and now she had to walk all the way back to Broadway from St. Nicholas and then over another nine blocks, and she was late already. Her reverie was snapped, her bag felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she'd be late to Dr. Johnson's class if she ever made it there at all. Funny how she still thought of him as "Doctor Johnson," even after everything. Cleanthe emerged from the steps onto St. Nicholas and turned east on 125th toward Broadway. Down the edge of Harlem, along the border she walked. Well, she thought, that's what happens when you get out at the "wrong" subway station. At freshman orientation that's what they called it. The "wrong" station. Don't never get off at 125th Street, students. Stay far 'way from that badass neighborhood yonder. Gotta watch out for them natives, 'cause they're dangerous in those parts. As she passed the faded remains of old nightspots and boarded-up windows, Cleanthe wondered when they'd started to use that euphemism. "Wrong," they'd said. As good a code-word as any other, she guessed. As she neared Broadway Cleanthe looked further down 125th Street toward the river. Squinting in the sunlight she could see, past the shiny red-and-yellow McDonald's at the corner, more shuttered buildings and dilapidated structures. She could see a long skinny sign attached to one pale ruin; she read the letters, starting from the top and going down. "C O T T O N C L U--" The Cotton Club, she thought. Back when white folks used to come uptown in droves for some "local color." What was it Dr. Johnson said about the Harlem Renaissance? "When Harlem was in vogue"? Cleanthe smiled as she turned left onto Broadway, under the 1-train tracks. Bet the 125th Street Station wasn't so "wrong" in those days. After only the second Black Lit class she'd already known how much it would mean to her. How much he would mean to her. She had come to Columbia to learn, but she hadn't known what and she hadn't known how. Dr. Lewis Johnson had the answers to questions she didn't even know how to ask. Their conferences had started out as office-hour appointments to go over class assignments and readings. But in no time their ten-minute meetings were stretching into fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes, an hour. Their discussions expanded far beyond the limited scope of the classroom. Dr. Johnson lent her books: Langston Hughes at first, her consuming passion. Then he introduced her to Zora Neale Hurston and "Their Eyes Were Watching God." She'd read Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison before, but James Weldon Johnson and Claude Brown and Nikki Giovanni had been unfamiliar names to her. She eagerly devoured them all. She hung on her teacher's every word. Worlds were opening up to Cleanthe, and his words were her keys. It was only natural that these conversations soon moved out of Dr. Johnson's cramped office. At first she'd only accompanied him directly from his office to his next class. Soon they arranged to meet in the Student Union, over soda. They began to have regular lunches, at local restaurants or in the food court. They weren't dates, exactly. But Cleanthe started to dress up nicer on lunch days. Momma noticed, and Devon too. "Cle's got a boy-frien'," he taunted. Momma thought so too. But Cleanthe denied it till she was blue in the face. "I'm just meeting Dr. Johnson today, is all," she'd say. "We're doing Richard Wright and I need some extra help." Momma seemed all right with that, she really did. But lately she'd been acting funny. "You sure do talk a whole lot 'bout that Dr. Johnson," she'd said that very morning. "You sure he's not intr'sted in nothin' 'sides your mind, Cleanthe?" "Momma!" Cleanthe yelled, scandalized. Her mother chuckled, and kissed the top of her head. Then she did something totally unlike her. She sat down on a chair facing Cleanthe and looked right into her eyes, not saying a word. Then she spoke in a hushed voice. "You be careful, Daughter. You hear me? You be real careful that you look at this man with your eyes wide open." Cleanthe stared at her, and nodded slowly. "I will, Momma. But I'm learning so much! I can't stop now, not with so much more left to learn! And besides," she continued, "he's not like that at all. He's nothing like any of them boys I been with." Cleanthe barely had time to notice the strange look that passed across her mother's face. She was late, and she had to get to class. Cleanthe stopped mid-stride. She blinked, twice, and looked up at the black wrought-iron gates that led into the Columbia campus. "Lucky for me I don't need my brain to find my way," she muttered. Almost running now, she hustled across College Walk, dragging her weighty bag behind her. "Please let me make it, please..." she prayed inside her head. But as she reached the entrance to Hamilton she heard the first booming clangs of the big bell outside. Her stomach sank, and all the way up the elevator to the sixth floor Cleanthe berated herself. "Stupid for waking up late, stupid for daydreaming, stupid, stupid, stupid..." By the time she got to class there was nobody left. When she saw the scribbles on the blackboard Cleanthe felt the onset of despair and desperation. Oh, no! Exam? On what? When? Had she missed a test? The panic swept over her like a physical force. Firmly, she stifled it. What's today? she asked herself. Tuesday, she answered. Fine. Dr. Johnson always heads for his office after Tuesday's class, even though he doesn't schedule appointments. He's there now. Get a grip, girl! Cleanthe reshouldered her bag, breathed in through her nose, and headed back to the elevator. Back down to the third floor she went. When the doors opened Cleanthe sprang out, practically bowling over an elderly secretary in the process. Shooting apologies over her shoulder she took off for Dr. Johnson's office door and grabbed the handle. It wouldn't turn. And behind the opaque glass, she could tell that the lights were off. Cleanthe stood there, frozen, almost in tears. What would she do? She couldn't fail, she wouldn't. She couldn't fail him. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and then felt a soft hand on her shoulder. "Cleanthe," breathed a soft voice. He hadn't gone after all. Her relief at his presence was overwhelming, and without thinking about it Cleanthe sank back to lean against the man behind her. Chuckling, he pulled away and pressed one palm flat against her back to separate them. "Sorry, Cleanthe," he said. "You'll have to stay away for just another minute. Unless you want to get coffee all over your back, that is." He laughed again as Cleanthe gingerly tried to shuffle out of his way. "Here -- come on in," he said, unlocking the door and holding it open with his free hand. Cleanthe moved to enter the office, but in his effort to hold the door open Dr. Johnson had wedged himself into the doorway. Cleanthe turned sideways to squeeze through, but only succeeded in pressing herself up against her teacher. For a long moment reality froze. Cleanthe felt a burning at every single point along her front where their bodies touched. The peaks of her breasts were on fire where they flattened against his torso. Her belly sizzled at the point of contact with his silver belt buckle. The inside of her right thigh crackled with electricity where she felt the pressure of his leg. They stood there unmoving for an instant and forever, their eyes locked together. Cleanthe could hear his breathing, and hers, grow ragged. And then his head moved closer and her lips parted, and after a split-second of hesitation their mouths came together in a deep kiss. Cleanthe moaned from the depths of her body and soul into his mouth as the kiss grew deeper and more passionate. Through a thick haze she felt him maneuver her body inside the office. If she could trust her ears she would have heard the door swing shut and the soft click as he turned the lock behind him. But all her senses were filled with him, with his smell and his breathing and the rough texture of his wool jacket beneath her fingertips. Cleanthe cried out softly as he devoured her, his mouth swallowing her and his hands engulfing her back, her shoulders, her waist. As he deliberately walked her backwards deeper into his office Cleanthe submerged herself in him, breathing him in her nostrils and tasting his tongue and teeth and lips. She felt something hard jut into her lower back, the edge of his desk. Without resisting, her arms still clasped around him, Cleanthe let him lift her up until she sat perched on its surface, her legs dangling over the side. He undressed her like she was a child, pushing her open jacket back off her shoulders, then peeling her turtleneck up and over her head. He ran his hands over her body, now revealed: her naked shoulders, her bare back, the tiny pinches and folds of dark flesh at the edges of the startlingly white brassiere straps. Cleanthe arched her back at his touch and straightened atop the desk. With her head back and her eyes closed she let sensuality wash over her, and she gasped as she felt his expert fingers loosen the bra clasps at the center of her back. Her breath caught as she felt the easing tension of the elastic that had bound her. She shivered at the brush of the garment against her forearms as it floated off her body. She heard a low rumble from the man who had exposed her, and then felt the touch of something soft, delicate, and wet. Cleanthe was utterly transported. She leaned back on her arms and savored the feel of a man's tongue as it traced the curvature of each breast. Other lovers had attacked her chest with their mouths and teeth out of hunger and their own deep need. Those had been teenage boys, too overcome with their tit-fantasies to impart much pleasure to her. But Doctor Johnson was a man, she thought, a man who knew how to give pleasure to a woman. And right now, for the first time in her life, Cleanthe felt like a woman being pleasured by a man. Cleanthe moaned loudly as she felt suction at her nipple, and nearly shrieked at the jolt of electricity that hit her when he lightly nibbled it with the edge of his teeth. She peeked down through heavy lashes at the blonde head at her bosom, at the contrast between his light and her dark, his pink lips and white teeth and the dark brown summits of her peaks. She reached out and ran her spread fingers through that yellow mane, pulling him to her and pushing herself deeper into his magical mouth. Suck me, she thought. Eat me, gobble me up. She smiled with bliss and pleasure and passion, and gasped again at his oral worship of her. Dr. Johnson hooked two fingers into the spandex waistband of her tights and pulled experimentally. Cleanthe pushed back on her arms and levered her buttocks off the desk surface, pushing her pelvis upwards toward him, in offering. With a smooth tug he pulled at the material and Cleanthe's tights and underwear and socks all fell off in a heap. Cleanthe sat back on Dr. Johnson's desk, passive, naked, afraid and aroused. She stared in wonder as her mentor sank to his knees before her. Her skin prickled and tingled as Cleanthe felt the firm touch of Dr. Johnson's hands traveling over her foot and up her legs. Her breath quickened and then nearly stopped when he reached her knees and softly pushed them apart. With a gasp that was a sob she yielded to his touch and lay back on the desk, her arms propping her up. What was he thinking, down there between her legs? His fingers moved up her inner thighs, nearing the juncture of her legs. Cleanthe felt her panic rising. She remembered when she'd gone for her first pelvic exam, and the Doctor had first shown her what she looked like down there, in a mirror. It was so hairy, so ugly and messy. And when he'd spread the dark flappy folds apart and shown her the inside she had seen the bright pink flesh and thought Oh It looks like a slice, a gaping open wound in the middle of me. And the boys, with their snaps about the hair and the smell and the wet, they wouldn't even barely touch it at all. They'd just stick their things in and push push push until they were through. Cleanthe squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to tremble as her teacher's fingers found her pubic hair and traced the hidden opening to her sex. He doesn't seem too disgusted, she thought hopefully. She cringed at the wet smack and the strong fragrance that issued from her as he spread her open with his fingers. Oh no, she thought. Oh no... Nothing. No recoil, no comments, not even a change in his breathing. And then Cleanthe jerked in amazement as she felt something warm and wet and flexible slithering up the inner edges of her pussy lips. Was that his mouth? she wondered in awe. Cleanthe had heard that there were men who would do that to a woman, but she'd never really -- A cry of pure intense pleasure burst forth from Cleanthe as she felt his tongue dip unexpectedly inside her. And then he moved up higher, higher until the probing pointy tip was at the top and burrowing in. Cleanthe nearly screamed as she felt him touch her tiny button, something no one else had ever done to her before. He tongued it and licked it and kissed it, his lips and tongue working and sucking her clitty, slowly at first and then more urgently. The pleasure was too much to bear; the ecstasy too much to take. Cleanthe's arms lacked the strength to prop her up any more so she lay down flat on her back, scattering a pile of term papers in the process. As she sank back he lifted her legs until they were supported on his shoulders, and then attacked her even more fiercely with his mouth. Cleanthe began to groan, and then scream. Every fibre of her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth and the waves of incredible pleasure that emanated from her sex. As she thrashed about on the desk and thrust her hips so he could go deeper harder faster Cleanthe thought of her wound, and how he was loving it and kissing it. No, she realized, It's not a wound anymore, he's healed it, and then it was too late to think at all. For a moment everything seemed to stop and then suddenly undiluted pleasure filled every pore, every crevice in Cleanthe and it went on and on and on and then began to ebb. Cleanthe could feel the cool sheen of sweat all over her body and the trembling of her muscles as the orgasm petered out. Her throat was raw, and she could feel trails of quicksilver down her cheeks where tears had run. Dr. Johnson was standing now, looking down at her with tenderness and concern. She could feel new tears welling up and her heart expanding and ballooning, her love for him at that moment coursing through her entire bloodstream. At the bottom of her vision she saw a movement, and then his pants had fallen and his pale manhood was pointing toward her in yearning. "Yes," she said, and again "yes," and she felt him push into her. It didn't take very long. It was as if he were on the verge of release already before he was even inside her. So liquid were her insides that she barely felt him thrust into her once or twice before his body shuddered violently and he collapsed onto her on the desk, spent. "There, there," she murmured, "mmm, mmm," as her fingers toyed with the ends of his hair. They lay there a while, and she listened to his breathing as he rested his head on her breast. He was heavy atop her, and Cleanthe could feel an uncomfortable tightness across her back from her awkward positioning, and her pussy was all sticky and dripping with saliva and her juices and his cum. But Doctor Johnson had made love to her, and he had devoured her, and she was blissful in his office, in his arms. Later, when they had recovered and Cleanthe was getting dressed, he tried to speak. "Cleanthe..." he began, but she hushed him, putting a soft fingertip across his lips. "That's the first time I ever really made love in my whole life," she said. "So don't you go mess it up with talk right now." Her teacher nodded, slowly. Cleanthe rose onto her toes and kissed him softly on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispered. As she unlocked the office door and pulled it open, Cleanthe spoke in a louder voice. "Thank you for everything, Dr. Johnson," she said. "I learned a lot." She walked down the hall and stepped into the elevator. As the doors slid shut Cleanthe smacked herself on the head with her palm. Damn, she thought. I never did find out about that test! _____________________ Concluded in Part Two -- +--------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `------------+ | story-submit@qz.little-neck.ny.us | story-admin@qz.little-neck.ny.us | | Archive site +--------------------+------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ |