The Gift of Letters

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Student learns love of books can become love itself.
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When I was a senior in high school, I learned that literature is not simply a collection of books, dusty words separated from life, distant, ethereal, somehow higher or better than the real world. Literature, I discovered, is as immediate and real as dirt, or sweat. It was my advanced placement English teacher who gave me that knowledge, and for that precious gift I can never thank her enough.

I'll admit I was something of a teacher's pet. Why not? I was eager. A good student. I loved to read. I was smart. It was the spring term and I'd already been accepted to a very good college. All of my teachers were proud of me, but Ms. Catlin seemed especially proud.

I'd already had her for creative writing as a junior, where she'd encouraged me to write honestly and openly about my deepest feelings, thoughts and desires. We kept journals for that class. "A writers journal," she said, "is not a diary. Dear god please, please don't start any entry with 'Dear Diary!' If you do, I'll explode!" She said it as a joke, and she laughed as she told us some of the silly things that had appeared in previous students' journals. "No," she said, "a writer's journal is a record of thoughts, observations, ideas, snippets and snatches to be used later, a place for the trying out of words and phrases, sentences and paragraphs. It comes from the material of the day; from the world outside and the world inside your head and heart. And above all," she said, "it must be ruthlessly honest!"

So I wrote my journal as much for her as for me. I forced myself to write my deepest concerns and ideas. My most intimate thoughts. And when I wrote stories or poems for her, I did the same. By the end of the term, there was almost nothing she didn't know about me. She knew that I hated my mother because she'd given up utterly and fallen beyond redemption into the blur and distance, the pit of drugs. She knew that my love for my father was complicated by the fact that I never saw him. He lived a thousand miles away, and although he sent checks and called regularly, I had not been able to feel the warmth of his hugs since I was nine. She even knew, because she'd encouraged me to journal about it, about my first experiences with sex--the awkward boys who'd asked me to give them blow jobs, who'd touched me roughly with inexperienced hands. I wrote about my own self-explorations, about how I'd discovered my own ability to experience orgasms not at the hands of others, but with my own hands.

And then, when I was senior, she was my favorite teacher again. She felt more like a friend than a teacher, and I--already off to college in my min--was very much a lame duck high school student. I felt very adult and beyond most of the students around me. Ms. Catlin was the only person I knew who loved books as much as I did, who could speak about poetry as if it were the elixir of life. Although she taught the standard AP curriculum, she gave me extra things to read. She met me at a coffee shop to talk about what she'd given me, and as the term grew closer to its end, the books became more wonderfully intimate.

For my eighteenth birthday, Ms. Catlin gave me a collection of erotica and feminist literature and poetry that would, she said, "Open me up in ways I'd never imagined." Fear of Flying, Delta of Venus, The Dream of a Common Language. And as if to underscore the change, the fact that I was eighteen, an adult, her friend not merely her student, she invited me to her house to discuss the books and their meaning.

I want to admit some things, but it's a little difficult. The things I do in my room are not dirty. I never think of them that way, and I'm not ashamed of them. But they are intensely private. I think it somehow tawdry to speak of them to strangers, but writing, as Ms. Catlin always said, must be brutally honest and I cannot tell this tale without speaking of those things. I pray you will forgive me if it appears unseemly to speak so directly, but truth requires it.

I had never read about sex before receiving those books. What little reading I had done in that regard was in my mother's silly women's magazines. Articles about finding the perfect partner, having more fulfilling sex, making yourself attractive to the opposite sex all seemed so disconnected from the world where I lived. I really didn't care much about sex with boys. I didn't feel the need to make myself more attractive for anyone. And a partner was the last thing I wanted just now. But the books Ms. Catlin gave me were different. The sex in them smouldered. It built slowly. Like a warm coal in the belly, it grew, setting fire to everything inside me. A thousand times I found myself squirming as I read. A thousand times I found myself amazed at how arousing words could be, how clearly a writer could speak about herself and her own fire while at the same time seeming to speak with my thoughts and voice. A thousand times I read. A thousand times the fire grew. And a thousand times, as I read, I found myself trying to put that fire out with my fingers frantically rubbing and poking into the places where the heat was the greatest. It was the stories about women making love that most inflamed me, that found me in my room, door locked, beneath my covers, hands frantically roaming across my body as if they were those of a woman from a book or poem, sent by the author to quench my passion. But the passion was not quenched, and I seemed to leave each book with the fire smouldering just a little hotter inside me.

In late May of my senior year, two weeks from graduation, three months before leaving home for good on my way from the jagged mountains of Colorado to the worn crags of Vermont, Ms. Catlin invited me to her house to talk about the books she'd given me. She asked me to bring the journal I'd been keeping. When I arrived, she opened the door and smiled at me. Inviting me in, she put her arm over my shoulder. I did not expect the feeling. My tummy heaved and there was a tingle inside me. For the first time it dawned on me that I was in love with her.

She brought me into her wonderful library, a room littered with tomes. Books on her desk. Books on the floor. Books with tags of paper sticking out of them. Old books. New books. Books that had long since multiplied beyond the ability of her floor to ceiling shelves to hold them. It was room I adored, full of the things I loved most.

A pot of tea beneath a cozy was on the coffee table between two wing chairs. Two tea cups, a tiny sugar bowl, a miniature pitcher of milk and two silver spoons rested beside the pot. A lovely dish had been arranged with an assortment of fancy cookies. Ms. Catlin poured me a cup of tea and, after taking the journal from my shaking hands, began to read it. My hands were shaking because I'd left nothing out of that journal, not my love of the books, nor the things they'd made me think and do. I wrote about the fantasies they's inspired, some of them having only two characters: me and Ms. Catlin. in my journal we made passionate love. I imagined the things I wanted to do but had never done, except with my own hands. in the journal it was clear how often I'd pretended those hands were hers.

Ruthless honesty. It was a sacred trust. An obligation. But I was afraid maybe I'd gone too far. Perhaps for Ms. Catlin the love of books was not as physical as my own love. Would she be ashamed of me? Would she be sad that I had allowed my body to so influence my reading? That my mind had been allowed to take a backseat to the feelings the words had enflame? In all the years I'd known her as teacher, as friend, not a single inappropriate word or off-color remark had passed between us. To me, my passion was pure. But now, as I watched her read my journal, I suddenly feared that it might appear dirty to her, that I might disappoint her.

Quietly she read. Quietly I drank my tea. She stopped a few times to look at me, to smile at me, to encourage me to have another cookie. It took a while for her to finish reading my journal entries. As she read, I could feel my face turning red. I knew each word in the journal. I thought them as she turned the pages. When she appeared to be reading the final entry, the one where I described my feelings when reading about two women making love, how I'd masturbated to the words, how I prayed one day she would make love to me, I found myself almost overcome with shame. How could I not have realized how wrong all that was? How had the thought never entered my mind before now? How could I have been so incredibly stupid?

But she did not blush, although she seemed to shift uneasily in her chair. When she finally spoke, her voice was weak and trembling.

"Diane," she said, her eyes resting on mine with an intensity that was unsettling, "your journals are always poetry. Your words like a scalpel, cutting to the quick, sometimes; sometimes like a velvet glove crossing my skin; and sometimes, like lips tugging on my own. You are so wonderfully honest, I must be honest as well. May I make a confession to you?"

I stared back into her eyes, flattered, confused. I understand now that I was very deeply in love for the first time in my life, and each revelation was making that love blossom more fully. I answered, timidly, scarcely able to speak, "Yes, please."

"Diane, since I first read your journals when you were a junior in my creative writing class, I have looked forward to them more than any other writing I have found. Your words filled me with happiness, hope, and admiration, and now I must tell you, also with the most awful and terrible, painful love. You were my student, you were a child, and I had never felt this way about a student. My intention was never to be other than your teacher, do you believe that?" There were tears in her eyes, and I did not understand them.

"Oh yes, Ms. Catlin. you are the best teacher I have ever had. I adore you."

"I adore you as well, Diane. But I'm afraid I've fallen in love with you, and your latest journal fills me with a longing that I can hardly believe. Tears were pouring from her eyes. Sobbing out loud, she struggled to speak. "I . . . I cannot become involved with a student like this, I can't. It isn't right. Yet I love you so, I feel my heart will just break." She was wracked with sobs, unable to speak further. I began to cry as well.

Struggling to make the words intelligible between sobs, she spoke slowly to me, words of integrity and difficulty larger than I could fathom. "Diane you must leave. I am so terribly sorry. This is all my fault. You must go . . ."

In that moment, I became an adult. In that moment I realized that love poems, truly written novels . . .art, were about life and not something else, not something antiseptic, distant and untouchable. And in that moment I realized that the time had come for me to be the adult the calendar now declared me to be.

With all the deliberatness in the world, without any moral ambiguity I spoke the first truly grown up word of my life. "Ms. Catlin, I don't want to leave. And I don't have to. I am not a child anymore. In a few weeks I'll be going to college and I'll no longer be your student. I'm not your student now. The term is almost over. I'm your friend. I'm eighteen. The law says I am an adult. You have done nothing wrong. You have simply loved me. And I love you" The words came simply. The sentences were clipped. As I spoke them I became more confident, felt more and more certain of myself. And I knew what I wanted to do.

Without speaking, I rose from the chair. Gazing warmly into her eyes, I removed my dress. Glancing away from her only to undo the fastener, I turned my bra around and unhooked the clasp. I let it fall to the carpet. I slid my thong to the floor and stepped out of it. I was naked, except for my wool socks and sandals. Ms. Catlin stared at me. Unable to help herself, she allowed her eyes to gather in my body. I was thin then, quite thin, but my breasts were rather large, with quite big, soft, brown nipples. Her eyes rested there. My legs were long. My tummy firm. My skin was so young then, smooth and tanned. In my clarity I was able to see with my teacher's, with my lover's eyes. She had not seen a pretty young women naked in many, many years, although I knew she must have imagined it. Somehow I knew in that moment, too, that she must have often imagined me that way. I turned my back to her. My bottom was round and firm. The lines from the bathing suit I'd been wearing sharply outlined my tight ass. I let my legs part slightly, exposing my nearly hairless cunt to her open-mouthed stare. She was too good, to decent, too wanting to be a good teacher to act, so I acted for her. I walked over to the chair where she was sitting and took her hand. I placed it behind me on my bottom. She was shaking. I took her other hand, and bending over toward her face, I placed it softly on my lips. I took her finger into my mouth and sucked on it. Then I kissed her. Gently at first, with a closed mouth. Then I allowed my lips to part. I traced her lips with my tongue, tugged at them with my own lips. Her hands began to touch me in other places. As we kissed, she cupped my breasts, rubbed across my back, down my ass, until, with a hand between my thighs, she let herself feel the warmth and wetness of my cunt. Her first touch there made me shudder. I stood closer to her, pulling her face into my tummy. Her hands found my wetness too much to resist, and she began to masturbate me more earnestly. I found myself pressing into her hand, my legs spreading wider. She was rubbing me faster and faster. the feeling was incredible, so much more intense than when I'd done it myself.

My breaths were coming in short gasps, and I found myself moaning aloud, uncontrollably; but just before I exploded into release she held me tight, still, motionless, except for her soft kisses on my belly, and she whispered to me, "Not yet, Diane. Wait a bit. Let it build." I caught my breath. The incredible feelings inside me became less intense, and just as I was starting to come down, she kneeled between my legs and began kissing my cunt. Nobody had ever done that to me before. Her wet tongue and soft lips felt even better than her fingers had. She sucked my clit between her lips and brushed her tongue across it. The jolt of sensation was beyond anything I'd ever felt or even imagined I could feel. She slid her tongue down my lips into my cunt, and fucked me with her tongue while her face pressed into me. It was heaven. Her hands continued to touch me, to slide across my body, fingers soft, then hard, fingernails sometimes dragging. Her hot breath blew across my incredibly sensitive clit as she mumbled and whimpered, softly saying my name, declaring her affection, and more, words I would not have thought her capable of saying, words that enflame my passion even further.

"Oh you sweet little tart. Cum for me Diane. Cum all over your teacher's face. Fuck my face girl."

My hips were grinding into her face. My legs splayed wider and wider. I was trying, I guess to open myself up as wide as I could, to take as much of her tongue into me as I could. I really don't know what I was doing. My body seemed to be on autopilot, and oh god it felt so good.

Ms. Catlin seemed to be as excited as I was. While she was licking and kissing me, she had lifted her skirt. She'd pushed her panties to one side and I could see her hand rubbing her cunt. Her moans became as loud as my own. Just before I came, my body shaking, my legs nearly collapsing beneath me, she moaned loudly and quickly stopped rubbing herself. Her hand grabbed her cunt, but it was still. Her tongue flashed across my clit like the wings of a bird, like a fantastically fast beating feather and the world exploded inside of me. All my aching, all my wanting, all my imaginings somehow were summed together in a single feeling of intense pleasure that rolled and rolled over me, explosion after explosion inside me, until the explosions subsided, and crying I fell to my knees beside her on the floor. Our faces were together, wet cheek against wet cheek. We were both sobbing, but our smiles were huge.

I realize now that the books she had given me had not been given by accident, that on some level, perhaps not even with conscious intention, she had hoped we would end up there, like that, on the floor with me. Spent. Having cum together. I realize, too, that my journals had likely had the same effect on her that the books she had given had. And I experienced, never to forget, the incredible power of written words to inspire pleasure, words chosen carefully; spoken honestly and without artificial limits, sentences written without fear, books spread widely like eager legs without restraint or shame. In that instant, naked, shivering, sobbing tears of passion and joy I knew I would go away to college to learn how to be a writer, to recreate that moment again for myself, for her, and with a little luck for many I would probably never know. I would be a writer.

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