My heart was pounding. The truth was, as silly as it must sound, I had a crush on him. He was the perfect image of the adventuring archeologist. Six feet and six inches of lithe, graceful power with a firm square jaw that could never shed its stubble and piercing eyes that made my stomach flutter every time there was a brief moment of eye contact during one of his lectures. As he gathered up his briefcase I finished shoving my things into my bag and hurried down the auditorium steps to greet him. I had to stop myself from taking them two at a time. I pushed my glasses up my nose and flinched at the gesture. With my sweaters and baggy clothes and unkempt hair in a loose ponytail I must have been the very image of a geek. I felt half my age as I stood in front of him, shifting on my feet.
“Professor McCray?” I said.
“I read your paper,” he said, not looking at me. “Fascinating.”
I felt my cheeks grow hot and knew I was blushing. I’d taken a risk on that one, I knew. I wrote a paper on the bowdlerization of archeological finds. The centerpiece of my work was the censorship of the discoveries in Pompeii, the Roman city smothered by ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. When the city was discovered mostly intact, preserved by the ash, the archeologists of the time hid and some times deliberately destroyed dozens of murals depicting all sorts of taboo subjects. Nude nymphs and Priapus, the demigod famous for his huge, permanently erect penis. I stifled a smile just thinking about it. I had a severe case of the giggles the whole time I was writing the paper. Professor McCray cleared his throat.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I”m told you’re looking into graduate schools.”
The professors were talking about me? “Yes, sir.”
“No need to be so formal. Join me in my office?”
My heart slammed against my ribs and I swayed a little on my feet. Visions of amateurish seductions floated through my head. I thought of tugging the loose neck of my sweater to expose my shoulder a little. My outfit was less than flattering and far from sexy, and I suddenly felt self conscious about everything, from my battered sneakers to my hair which I hadn’t washed for two days.
“Sure.”
He nodded and shouldered his bag. “This way.”
I followed him out of the lecture hall and through the building. The faculty offices were on the upper floors. The elevator ride up was awkward. I sunk into the corner, all my courage gone as he stared straight ahead. Like a gentleman he held the door so I could pass first as we stepped out of the elevator. I knew the way to his office by heart. I’d almost knocked on the door once, and one time I very nearly visited during office hours. He was only available for two hours on Wednesday and Thursday, and the one time I went to speak with him I realized I had nothing of any relevance to say and slunk off, defeated. Now I was watching him open the door. He swung it open and motioned me inside, then closed it behind us as I stepped into his office. My heart fluttered a bit more. Every professor kept their door open when conferencing with students. It was an unwritten rule.
This was the first time I’d ever actually been in here. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. His office was better furnished than the department head’s. The plain white walls and ugly indoor/outdoor carpet were hidden beneath elegant appointments and antiques. He had more books than anyone I’d ever seen. His desk was enormous, and old. He sank down behind it and dropped his bag at his side and motioned for me to sit in the club chair beside the desk. I dropped into it and tried not to sigh as I sank into the richly padded leather. My nerves jangled up again and I swallowed, folding my hands in my lap so they wouldn’t shake.
“It’s an interesting issue, isn’t it, the way we censor ourselves?”
I noticed something on his desk. It was a carven statue, ivory maybe, I wasn’t sure. A stylized man and woman intertwined with another man, in some kind of lewd sexual pose. The more I stared at it the hotter I felt. The little ivory woman was having sex with both men at the same time, pressed between them, a look of pained ecstasy etched on her face. He noticed I was staring at it and turned the base in his fingers as he spoke.
“What turned you to a controversial subject like that?”
I shrugged, and I sensed disappointment clouding his features, so I immediately started explaining myself. “I noticed it the Pompeii murals in a book and I started doing research. Once I found they’d been censored I started looking in other places. The temple in India…”
“Khajuraho,” he said.
“Yes, that one. It struck me how uptight western attitudes about sex are reflected in our archeological methods and historiography. Even our own mythology is heavily bowdlerized. Did you know the norse god Loki got pregnant by a horse and cross-dressed?”