Free Souls, Chapter 17

"Sandy," her Design professor said to her one day in March shortly after Spring Break, "I'm happy to let you know that your University Chapel presentation will be displayed in the school gallery at the next change of shows."

She straightened up from her drafting table to face Professor Ruben.  "Thank you very much," she said respectfully.

"No, thank you very much," the teacher said.  "It's a privilege having you in my studio. You showed good promise when you started this semester, and you certainly have surpassed all expectations."

"Thank you," she murmured again.  "Do I need to run another set for the exhibition?"

"Yes, that would be a good idea.  The one I have in my office might be a little crumpled at the edges."  Professor Ruben smiled and said, "I hope you realize, Sandy, that only the best work in this school is displayed in the gallery. We do not select projects simply to be representative of particular studios and years.  It is very rare that a freshman presentation makes it in, so when I say your chapel design is among the best of the best, you may believe it is true."

"Thank you," she said once more, beginning to feel like a broken record.

Professor Ruben assumed a hearty tone.  "Well, your hard work is paying off.  And I hope you will understand me when I say that it reflects credit not only on you, Sandy, but also on me and on this school."

She again returned some polite nothing, and the teacher continued on his rounds among his students.  As she watched him go Sandy could barely suppress a raucous laugh.  "Reflects credit, on you, Professor Ruben?  Oh, no, all the credit belongs to a certain man whose initials are J.C. and he's upstairs with Gabriel!"

For a split second the idea was the funniest thing in the world.  Then she realized the implications and made silent, frantic confession:  "Sorry, Lord, that was bad, I shouldn't say that about Jeff, You're the only Lord, You're my only Lord, really, Lord, I'm sorry, please forgive me!"

But despite her protests of contrition her effective church continued to be the school exhibition space on the first floor, and her primary act of worship was haunting that room, hoping against hope that Jeff would come in and admire her work and accept the offering she had secretly made to his glory. 

One time he was there when she was. He was approaching the place where her chapel design was displayed, he seemed to be slowing down to look at it . . . And then Professor Ruben, curse the man! came up wanting to talk to her about something or other. He took quite a long time about it, and his bulk was between her and her spot on the gallery wall, between her and the object of her adoration. By the time he moved, Jeff was gone.  At that moment she knew what it was like to want to kill with her bare hands.

“Lord help me, what an idolater I was! I worshipped him! I even called him my Apollo . . . ” 

There was no excuse for it. Not for her. She of all people should have known better. 

“And it got worse.” 

She grew tired of weaving fantasies about married life with Jeff. They were always set in the vague future, and they were nothing since they might never come true. What it would be like to actually know him physically now, before they lost their time together here? What would she do if he were to take her in his arms some spring evening here at the school, someplace private, and overwhelm her with his love? Would she say Yes? Would he need to ask her to say Yes, or would her Yes already have been said?

By that time she looked back on her pledge of the previous spring as naive innocence. How silly they had all been! A soft nagging voice in her gut occasionally reminded her that the standards she had committed herself to hadn’t been made up by a gaggle of romanticizing schoolgirls.  The voice was easy to ignore. She hadn’t been to church since she was home for Christmas vacation, and as for reading her Bible, why did she need to do that? She knew what was in it already and with all the demands of Architecture school, she rationalized, she simply didn’t have time.

Besides, God must have meant her to meet Jeff, just as she was sure He meant her to be happy– overwhelmingly, deliriously, divinely-- happy with him.

The roof of the Architecture building, that would be the spot. Up there with the starry night spreading its mantle over them . . . “Jam nox stellata velamina pandit . . . ,” as the words of a poem she’d picked up in high school put it, and Jeff Chesters like a young Caesar taking possession of her body, her heart, her soul . . . “veni, vidi, vinci,” . . . a happy country he had conquered a long time ago.

Back then she never realized what a hypocrite she had become. “There I was, despising and condemning the Christys and Elspeths and Martinas, while in my heart I was just as bad as they were! Maybe worse, because I knew better!  Heaven help me, I was sure my beliefs were Christian as ever, just more enlightened, more mature!”

But they had suffered a revolution. By late winter of her freshman year she was convinced that love, True Committed Love (she had thought of it in all upper case), sanctified sex. Oh, of course, marriage would have to follow. Some day. But there was no hurry. The mutual declaration of true love was what made a marriage, not a public ceremony or a piece of paper. God certainly would understand, even approve. After all, wasn’t God love?

“Yes, blast me, and love was God and Jeff was Love and Jeff was god, and sorry, Jesus, seeya later!” 

She thought she truly loved Jeff Chesters, but in truth she was infatuated with the man, besotted by him, and couldn’t tell the difference. She hardly knew where she ended and her image of him began. Early that spring one of Jeff’s projects won the Senior Design Award and Sandy’s joy and pride knew no bounds. “You would have thought I’d won the damn thing myself,” she thought now. He was her Apollo, her god of the sun, her sustenance, her shield; and though she was only a very minor planet in his orbit, she was convinced the day would come when he would notice her and her work and make her his own.

The day came. Or rather, the night.

Free Souls, Chapter 16

"Oh, Jeff, Jeff!  Yes, oh, yes!  Do that again, oh, oh, yes, yes, yes!"

It was a warm night for February, and the windows in Professor Ruben's second-floor studio were open to counteract the unabated blast from the steam heating system. Sandy's table was elbow-deep in rustling yellow tracing paper as she sketched out alternatives for the current assignment, a new campus chapel. But her mind wasn’t entirely on her project. She was in the middle of an elaborate fantasy in which she and Jeff, the divine Jeff, were living together as artists and lovers as in La Boheme. 

It had crossed her mind that this might be fudging on the vow she’d made with her friends to maintain a pure mind as well as a pure body.  But how could it hurt?  She always imagined them as being married, so of course that made it all right. And not the consumptive Mimi role for her! No, she cast herself as a strong and equal partner, pulling her weight so together they would make the architectural world sit up and take notice.

Not for the first time she was fantasizing about their conjugal lovemaking. What Sandy lacked in physical experience she made up for from novel reading and her own imagination. As outwardly she coolly worked out the relations between the various program requirements, inwardly she was feeling all the fiery passion of their sexual relations as she dreamed they must be. What it must be like to have him kiss her, to caress her, to initiate her into all the glorious mysteries of love!

Her devotions were rudely curtailed when Tracey ran laughing into the studio. “Hey, Sandy,” she practically yelled. “Guess who I just saw just now?” The handful of other students up working raised their heads from their drawing boards in undisguised interest. They were doomed to disappointment, for Tracey dropped her voice. “Christy Mackintosh!” she whispered.

“Yes, so what?” Sandy rejoined. She didn’t appreciate being interrupted right at the climax of her imaginary lovemaking. She knew who Christy Mackintosh was, she was one of the fluffy, tight-sweater-wearing, perfectly-coifed senior girls who, like Jeff, had Professor Gabriel for their second-semester design teacher. In a just world, a girl like Christy Mackintosh would have flunked out two years before and gone into Interior Design. But somehow she always managed to do passable design and keep her studio grades high enough to continue. Oh, well, Sandy knew the world wasn’t just.

“Well,” Tracey giggled, “I just saw her heading into the women’s restroom on the first floor, and her lipstick and hair was all mussed and her sweater was on backwards and one of her socks was missing! And the seat of her jeans had dirt and mud on them! What do you think of that?”

Sandy wasn’t above a juicy piece of gossip, especially when it came from a first-hand reliable witness and involved someone she didn’t like. “Verrrry interesting,” she commented, imitating Arte Johnson's German soldier on Laugh-In. “Anything else?”

“Ohhhh, yeah. After she went into the john, Fred Holloway came slinking in, looking around like he didn’t want to be seen (I was behind that column near the telephones, if you want to know), and get this! He had grass and mud on his clothes, too. The knees of his jeans were positively gross!”

“Oh, really!” Sandy raised an eyebrow. “Did you stick around for the rest?”

“Of course I did, silly,” her friend said with a grin. “Got to get all the facts. Fred went into the men’s room and in a minute came out with his jeans cleaned off, more or less, and this really smug look on his face. Then he went down towards the snack bar. Then a couple minutes later, out Christy waltzes from the women’s john all put back together, except she’d taken off the other sock, too, and up she goes back to Studio like nothing has happened whatsoever!”

“Where do you think– ?” Sandy wondered.

“Down by Dishler Lake, most likely,” Tracey theorized. “That’s where it usually goes on.”

Dishler Lake was actually a small reservoir lying not far from the Architecture building. Surrounded by groves of trees and clumps of bushes and bordered by winding footpaths, it was a popular spot for lovers.

“But I didn’t know Christy and Fred were dating,” said Sandy.

“They aren’t! That’s what makes it so funny! Haven’t you heard about the scheme some of the older girls have going? We know Christy and Elspeth and Martina can’t design their way out of a paper bag, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, how do you think Martina happened to get her last project pinned up in the school gallery?”

It was beginning to dawn on Sandy where this was going, “You don’t mean– !”

“Yep. Scout’s honor.” She grinned mischievously. “I have it from a very good authority, a guy I know in Gabriel’s studio, that some of the senior girls are bribing the boys with sex to get them to do their designs for them! I guess Fred helped Christy out and she was out by the lake paying up! . . . . Oh, don’t look so shocked!” Tracey chided her as she saw Sandy’s horrified reaction. “You know as well as I do that some women sleep their way to the top.”

“It’s– it’s not the sex,” Sandy sputtered. “It’s– how could Christy and Martina and all of them turn in someone else’s work and pretend it was their own?”

“Oh, you and your artistic integrity. You are such a throwback. Now me, I wouldn’t do it, because what if I get hired someday on the strength of say, David’s work” (she named one of the boys in their studio) “and David wasn’t around to help me? Now you, you’d never need to do that. Your work is good enough on its own. But isn’t it funny?”

“Yes. Very funny.” But Sandy was anxiously wondering if Jeff were involved in this scam. She hoped not. God, she hoped not.

“I don’t imagine Jeff Chesters is in on this,” pronounced Tracey, as if answering her friend’s unspoken question. “His ego is too big to let him share his work. He likes women well enough, that’s clear, but I doubt he thinks he should have to pay for one!”

Sandy was about to come to his defense when it occurred to her she didn’t know anything about his dating habits. So she merely said, “I wonder if Professor Gabriel knows?”

“Well, if he’s too stupid to notice I’m not clueing him in! Hey! I wonder who the bigger whores are, the girls or the guys?” Tracey paused. “Oh, well,” she said, “I think I’m heading home soon. What were you going to do?”

“Oh, yeah, what time is it? After 10:00? Yeah, you want to leave now? I’ll come with you. See you down at the bike rack?”

“Ten minutes? OK!”

Tracey left. As Sandy organized her table and got ready to go she thought with disgust of those senior girls. If they knew anything about design they’d be learning from Jeff and be able to pass on their own. At the very least, how could Christy settle for buying work from someone like Fred Holloway? His designs were slick and commercial and had no imagination whatsoever.

“Jeff, oh Jeff,” she breathed to him within her soul, "I honor you, I adore you, I love you; you don’t know it, but I’m the only woman in this school who really understands and appreciates you. Tracey says you have a big ego. No! It’s your integrity that wouldn’t allow you to prostitute yourself like that. And you wouldn’t prostitute anyone else! Oh, Jeff, I’m working on it! Give me time, and one day I will be worthy of you!”

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by Catrin Lewis, 1983, revised 2013 & 2014.  All rights reserved