An Immodest Proposal
by Mudak
Chapter 13
Professors Morrison and Wells met in a local restaurant to discuss the just-ended semester.
“So, Justin. How many students are you sending to me for next term?”
“Well, my “Wurdz” class had 24 students in it, and I’ve asked them all to sign up for your—“
Dr. Morrison interrupted his colleague with a hearty laugh. “You ‘asked’ them? Really? Is that all you did? For some reason, if you ask your students to do ... well, just about anything, it’s a safe bet that they’re going to do it.”
“All I did is suggest it to them.”
“Yes. It was just a suggestion. I got it. You can literally get your students to do anything. And I do mean anything. If you wanted one student to go out and commit some heinous crime, they’d do it without question and you and I both know it.”
“But I’d never do that!”
“Right, but you could.”
“Whatever.”
There was a brief pause in the conversation. Robert broke the silence by asking, “So how’d you send your students off this year?”
“Oh, nothing spectacular. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Suggested taking your class. I guess that’s about it.”
“Fuck you, Justin! Just the other day I was telling a friend of mine that you always do something outrageous on the last day of class. Like the time you arranged a hieros gamos ritual.”
Justin began to laugh. “I wouldn’t call it a true hieros gamos. It felt more like the big famous scene from the movie Eyes Wide Shut than anything.”
“But that movie was supposed to be hieros gamos and you know it.”
Justin peered at his friend and colleague over the top of his glasses. Robert returned the gaze with an equal intensity.
The two university professors stared at each other in silence for nearly a minute before the linguistics teacher relented. “All right. Fine. This year I made my students eat human flesh because I had them believe they survived a plane crash.”
“Really?”
Professor Wells nodded his head.
“Did you really feed them human flesh or did they just think that was what they were eating?”
“I think you know better than to ask that question, don’t you, Rob?”
Rob raised his drink to his lips before answering, “Yes. Yes I do. I don’t know how you maintain such control. I take it you didn’t personally take advantage of any of your students this year?”
“I never do. There’s always one or two who are tempting and this year her name was Vanessa, but I remained professional with her.”
“She going to be in my class next term?”
“Probably.”
The two men both took sips from their drinks. Professor Wells broke the silence. “I’ve told you enough about my Words class. Now tell me about what you did with your classes this past term.”