"The professor stood in an invisible cold sweat at the front of the lecture hall. There were 500 eyes blinking intently in his direction but there was only one pair he avoided. Whever he caught her blinking in his peripherals vision he thought, no, he hoped hers were more of a flutter at him - more than an automatic reflex - an attempt to draw his attention towards her. His mouth was runnung dry but he controlled his breath and continued.
"The ancient Greeks..." He explained, "they didn't think of love in the way we do. They divided it into types that were far more specific and comprehensible. What we call lust, they termed 'eros' - or what we recognise as the erotic. Love that the body..."
A hand had crept silently but dangerously into the air. It hung there patiently but persistently. He had paused for too long.
"Yes, Vanessa?" He managed after a beat.
Want to carry it on?!x"
"I was just wondering..." he could hear a falseness in her tone and the fullness in her lips as she grinned broadly when she spoke. "...which came first - did the word come before the myth or did the myth come first and was interpreted later to be a byword for lust?"
She had done the assigned reading, which was both surprising and slightly amusing. Clearly the answer was in the chapter she would have read, but noone else in room seemed to realise they were already supposed to know. It was perfectly normal for his freshman undergrads to ignore the reading list for at least the first 6 months of the course but the teasing lilt in her voice made him wonder what she was really getting at; was she hinting at a connection between them? A shared joke on the rest of the class who were waiting for my reply with quizzical expressions on their faces, clearly not having read the article on Cupid's Roman and ultimately greek origins? It was impossible to tell.
The silence needed filling.
"Well, Vanessa..." Shit. Now she knows I know her name. Why would I? Out of everyone in here, each anonymous face...why would everyone think I knew hers? The prickling of my neck and the creeping flush would only make things worse if I let them grow. "The Greeks, as far as we can tell, saw the personification and the personified as the same thing in their origin. The sun god was also the sun, for example. It's a bit of a chicken and egg question I suppose. In a way, they came together, at the same time".
A snigger from somewhere near the back. A few giggles.
"Ok...thank you folks...yes...I said 'come together'. Well done."
General laughter. Relief. The tension was broken. Vanessa had laughed too, but briefly. She placed the top of her pen in her mouth for a second, looked down at her pad, then looked up and brushed her hair behind her ear. Biting her bottom lip playfully, she scribbled something onto her notepaper, tore it off, folded it once and, without anyone noticing, gestured with it towards me, placing it slowly and deliberately under her thighs. Then, a wink.
The lecture bell rang, and the class was gone. I walked straight to where she had been sat and, looking over my shoulder to make sure I was alone, retrieved the note from where it had been left. Before I could open it to see what had been so hastily scribbled, I sensed someone a few paces behind me.
"Professor?"
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