An Immodest Proposal
by Mudak
Chapter 5
The week felt like it moved at a snail’s pace for Vanessa. When Thursday finally rolled around again, she woke up with a start, took a shower, and got dressed. As she rummaged through her closet for a good outfit to wear to her linguistics class, she had a naughty thought: why not go bra-less today? Maybe she could distract the teacher a little bit.
She suppressed a giggle as she put on a silk blouse and began to button it up, keeping it open enough to show off her cleavage. She ogled herself in her mirror for a few minutes from all angles before she decided she was ready to go out and have some breakfast.
She didn’t see anyone she knew at breakfast and, as a result, ended up eating alone in a corner of the cafeteria. She didn’t really mind it that much, though, since she spent her time gazing out the large windows and into the courtyard below.
She started to think about seven words with a real importance to them, in hopes of guessing what today’s lecture would be about. Her first thought—after she counted them out on her fingers—was “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” (Assuming, she told herself, that the hyphenated phrase “self-evident” only counted as one word.) But what truths about words are self-evident? That they represent whatever concept, action, or object they come to describe? Although this is a true statement, that sounded more like something that belonged in a class that talked more about the history of a language. Kind of like how the word ‘pursue’ today means to chase after something, but back when Thomas Jefferson wrote “the pursuit of happiness” he meant the word in a similar fashion to how someone pursues a career today.
She closed her eyes and imagined Justin wearing a powdered wig and standing around among the founding fathers, maybe even helping Jefferson or Thomas Paine with the editing and publication of their works. Then she pictured herself, a contemporary of the founding fathers, offering her own, private inspiration to fight the good fight, to help craft a young country, starting out in the world and trying to become a more just place.
Her daydream lasted for nearly two hours. When she finally glanced at her watch, she realized she needed to run in order to make it to her Wurdz class on time.