Page 6 of Dad's Best Friend Professor
My dad shrugs. “I don’t know. The guy is too brilliant. He was a maverick in college, always asked me hard questions, and challenged my opinions. It’s hard to imagine him fitting in any workplace at all, let alone an academic environment where people debate with each other for a living. But I’m hoping to convince him to stay at Sunnyvale.”
Fitting in? I nearly cough when I hear that. Whether Tony would fit into me has been the one thing on my mind all afternoon. Not that I’ll ever have a chance to find out.
“Well, maybe he just doesn’t want to settle down and doesn’t have to fit in anywhere. Didn’t you say he inherited enough money never to work again?” my mom asks.
“Yeah, but he told me he preferred teaching to managing properties.”
When my parents are watching TV in the evening, I stay in my room to Google Tony. All I get is his website from the colleges he’s taught. From the various short bios, I glean some facts about him, but they’re mostly academic. He’s been a history professor for fifteen years ever since he was a graduate student and specializes in history of warfare.
Desperate to find out more about his modeling career, I typeTony Ryder male modelbut the search yields nothing. Damn. He must’ve used a different name.
But I find an essay Tony wrote and start skimming it out of curiosity. It isn’t just a paper describing historical events as I expected, but an argument on the nature of war. “The harsh truth is: human history is war whether we like it or not. War is an animal’s survival instinct.”
Wow. I’ve been a history professor’s daughter long enough to know how much opposition he must’ve faced with that unorthodox idea. But the analysis is down to earth, even entertaining. Soon I become engrossed in it and finish reading the whole thing.
Afterward, my fascination for the man grows tenfold. The guy is not only sexy but brilliant. The need to see him and be close to him becomes urgent and undeniable. I’m tempted by Tony’s suggestion of taking his class, but that’s crazy. I’m not planning to major in history, even though my dad also wants me to. There isn’t any job, and I’m not especially interested in it either. Besides, I plan to get at least a part-time job and make some money over the summer to pay some of my own expenses. And what about guitar? I sit at my desk debating with myself. In the end, I decide it doesn’t hurt to visit Tony’s class. If I liked it, I could audit it. I don’t have to take it for credit.
I don’t wait to check out the summer class schedule and look for the time and location for History 2020, Modern Wars.
“Modern warfare started with the widespread of gunpowder and the use of weapons that used the explosive, namely, firearms and cannons. The earliest major modern wars include the American Revolutionary War, Napoleonic Wars in the early 19thcentury…”
Tony, or Professor Ryder, says by the podium inside a medium-sized lecture hall. There are a few dozen students in the classroom, and I’m sitting in the back row.
He’s wearing a light blue dress shirt with top buttons undone, tucked into a pair of crisp grey trousers. Unlike my other professors, he doesn’t even glance at his notes, as if he knows every line of his lecture by heart. Damn. He is so confident and hot.
“Let’s look at the factors that led to the American Revolution….Mercantilism is a trading system in which the colony supplies the motherland raw material, and the motherland produces finished goods and ships them to the colony for consumption ….”
I’m so busy observing him I have trouble concentrating on the information he delivers even though he’s a great lecturer. Plus, he has a habit of placing his hands at his navel and spreading them out, drawing my attention to his belt buckle over and over. I can’t help thinking how I would undo it before I unzip his fly and take out his monstrous male member.
I’m not the only student that’s fascinated by the professor or his lecture because everyone in the room is staring at him, and few are taking notes. That makes it convenient for me to glance at my cell phone on my desk, displaying his beautiful male anatomy. I look between the man himself and his picture, imagining how much hotter he would look without that sophisticated attire he’s wearing.
Shit. I’m so sick. I ought to put my phone away, but it’s easier said than done. After I discovered the photo, I couldn’t stop looking at it. I’ve studied it so often in the past week that it’s more or less burned into my brain. I know every detail, including the shape of the veins and the tiny mole near the base. But I still can’t stop looking at it and imagine how good it feels or tastes.
“For example, timber was one important resource…” Professor Ryder says and shows us a slide in which piles of wood logs are changing into dining tables, with people laboring in between.
Shit. It doesn’t help. I keep thinking about his wood. My girly bits are on fire. Seeing no one is in my row, I slip a hand under my skirt.
“Miss Anna Smith,” Professor’s deep voice interrupts my dirty thoughts, and I look up to find his eyes on me. “Would you like to try?”
Damn. Busted. Good thing I’m sitting next to a wall and no one can see where my hand actually is. I consider excusing myself by telling him I’m just auditing, but then that seems to be too cowardly. “S-sure, could you please repeat your question?” I blush as I stutter.
“Please pay attention,” he says in a stern voice. “What does this picture say about mercantilism?”
I glance at “Oh!” I chuckle to hide my embarrassment. “Of course.” I quickly try to recall what I read. I read the chapter before coming to the class because I knew I probably wouldn’t hear a word he says. But I have trouble recalling what I read.
I take a deep breath and begin.
“Err, mercantilism is obviously an evil system. It was directly responsible for slavery, and the felling of trees led to deforestation and global warming…”
I mumble, and I hear muffled laughs around me. Apparently, my answer is dumb. There are also a few hands shooting high in the air, vying for the professor’s attention.
He presses his lips together. “Very well, see me after class, Miss Smith,” he says, and then he nods at one of the students who are dying to answer the question.
“The colonists sold timber to England and then had to purchase furniture made in England using the timber, at a much greater price. Mercantilism is an inhumane system that Britain used to exploit its colonies.”
Shit. Of course, it’s obvious.The title of the lecture is The Causes of the Revolutionary War.Why did he ask me such an obvious question? To humiliate me? Did he see what I was doing?
Chapter 6
