‘Tis the season, it seems, for words like “jolly,” “merry,” “happy,” and the rest of some handfuls of jubilant adjectives to be injected into just about everything. So with that in mind, I’m sorry; I apologize. It’s time to get dirty.

And it begins with Swiss Miss leaving for Zurich after the Christmas Holiday Party.

Correction - Swiss Miss had left the morning after the Holiday Party. That night, we hurried home sometime around midnight, her hands already unbuttoning my shirt, tearing the tails out of my pants, and peeling the jacket off my shoulders. I found myself thrown on the bed, pushed back, hard, landing on my back, looking up at her, the halter dress’ slinky material showing off every single one of her delicious curves. I was up on my elbows, ready for my turn, to tear the dress off her body when she raised her foot and placed it on my chest, the heel of her red strappy stilettos digging into my sternum.

It hurt. A lot.

She pressed down hard, my arms yielding as her weight shifted back onto her other foot. A half-smile crept over her lips as she surveyed what lay beneath her, foot pinning my chest down, piercing her heel right on my bare skin, the shirt wide open. She lifted her foot off, her hand coming to rub the red spot her heel had just made on me. It was a rub, a stroke, then the flash of her red nails, scraping their way down, past my stomach, and down to my pants.

“I’m going to miss,” she began to say, only a breath before she ripped the zipper down and tugged the pants down to my ankles. “My little toy,” her fingers wrapping tightly around my cock.

I gasped. Her breath, hot and wet, swirled around me, up and down the shaft and all the way to the base. Her grip tightened, her mouth closed in, and my body shut down, my senses numb to everything except the one part of me she held. And as one second melted into another, my cock was enveloped by her mouth. She sucked hard, from start to finish, her cheeks held in tightly as her eyes burned into mine. I had never seen her this aggressive, this comfortably in control.

It was scary.

Her mouth was merciless. Her tongue knew no compassion. Her hands didn’t know when to stop. And she didn’t either. She hungrily slurped me down, grabbed my balls tightly and devoured me. Her tongue swirled on the head and down the shaft as her head dove down on top of me, her other hand holding my thighs apart. She bit. She sucked. She grabbed.

My hands stayed at my sides, my neck straining to retain that eye contact with her ferocity, with her sheer lust. And as she continued to tongue my cock as she jerked her hand up and down, despite my pleas for her to stop, I was grabbing handfuls of the comforter. She had made me cum, hard and fast into her mouth, her tongue lapping at my cock, and now wiping the corners of her mouth. Reaching back behind her, she found her dress’ zipper and the tie behind her neck. The fabric slid off her body. And she slid on top of mine.

Her pussy was wet and I found myself pushing into her with ease, her hands on my chest as she lowered herself onto me. I had just cum but there was no telling - my cock was rock hard and she knew she would keep it that way, her breasts bouncing as she slammed her hips into mine, digging her nails into me to keep her balance. She stopped, once, only to rock her hips back and forth as she stared me down.

I could almost hear her growl and snarl.

She fucked me hard, her body coated now in a fine mist of sweat, tendrils of her hair falling out of her elaborately pinned hairdo, the lipstick smeared on her lips, the eyeliner now blurred around her wide and wild eyes. She bucked on top of me, her pussy beginning to clench rhythmically faster, her aggression and lust swirling with her orgasm. Grabbing my head and falling on top of me at the same time, I found my mouth on her nipples, sucking and biting as she let loose and came. I too, came again.

Quivering and shaking like the last desperate leaves on the trees lining the street, she shook on top of my body as I reached over for the only thing I could use as a blanket - my black sportcoat. I spread it over her back, hoping my body heat would be trapped between it and her.

A half-gasp, a breath, twisted by her exquisite mouth, tongue, and throat, escaped her lips. It sounded like, “I love you.”

… And now, it’s time for a little background.

I had exactly one crush during high school, and it was over my eleventh grade English teacher.

It was a name none of us had recognized before, myself in a small clump of eleventh grade students in the hallway of our high school, comparing schedules. And yet there it was, right next to the class name, “Jr. Hnr English” - the honors English class for Juniors. A mystery really, as any addition to the faculty was, in our relatively small (graduating class of 175) school. So when 6th period finally rolled around, after we’d gotten back from our first off-campus lunch break of the school year, she stood there, smiling, young, and pretty, slender yet shapely, at the front of the classroom. And I had a crush on her, right then and there. Like many adolescent boys, I fawned over the female teacher; she barely looked older than the seniors, yet carried herself with such confidence - something we knew some of the older, tenured faculty members still did not do. She quickly became the one who was the most popular with all the students, a staple at afterschool activities, the one who tried to be everyone’s friend and teacher at the same time, an infectious smile, a melodious laugh. Yes, her.

The attraction with my teacher was a strange one, as most adolescent, post-pubescent crushes are characteristically strange anyway. Childhood crushes have an endearing innocence about them; smiling little faces inexplicably drawn to their objects of infatuation. Yet, that does change rapidly when “boys become men and girls become women.” It’s a more intense version of a childhood crush, drawing up feelings of a different kind, but at the same time, the sheer lack of knowledge and experience making for a deafening silence, a blinding vision, and a numbing feeling. I liked my English teacher - a lot. My eyes were drawn to her, not just the female features barely hidden behind the boring and tired clothes high-school teachers wear (although, her attire was admittedly much more exciting, as were her curves), but to her overall. But like that song you just can’t remember the words to, all my desires went unspoken, even in my own head. No substance, but with a soundtrack that kept me hooked. Sure, I was seventeen, a melting pot of hormones, emotions, and pressures unknown to me until then, and wow, now confronted with the rising tides of sexuality.

And so with subtext I could not quite understand, I secretly pined for my English teacher, her long brown hair held in a tight bun three-quarters of the way up the back of her head, wisps of hair escaping and falling to the sides of her face and flirting with her slender neck. And at times she let it down, it falling and spilling in loose waves down her shoulders and back. She had bright and perky eyes, even with waking up much too early in the morning, to staying up much too late at night, eyes peering through a pair of glasses (with a very weak prescription), poring over the often stumbling and misspelled tangle of words, the mess of under-enthused and terribly brief high school essays. I’d like to think that my essays were welcome breaths of fresh air for her. The good grades definitely seemed to indicate it was.

You should know that my history with English teachers is not that great. In fact, while I scored A’s (90 to 100 points out of 100, depending on whatever crazy grading scale you’re used to) in just about every subject (I’m not bragging here, in class, I didn’t fool around, doodle [okay fine, sometimes I doodled], or talk, I just sat and paid attention), like math, science, and history… but English was the one subject where I was consistently getting B’s. And C’s. And grades that made me wonder what exactly was I doing so terribly wrong with simple words. I would spend the time crafting an essay, selecting my words with extreme care, following whatever blueprint the teacher had outlined was the “correct” way to write and then… abandoning it with ferocity. I’m sorry, but I don’t see how the five-paragraph essay is unconditionally right. My creativity and experimentation was often rewarded with sharp, pointy words scribbled in red ink. “Good points, but the paper is in the wrong format. 79/100″ - that was my favorite remark from my tenth grade English teacher. Best comment on any essay I wrote was one word - “what” - followed by three question marks. And as if to emphasize it, there was an unhappy face in the vicinity. Oh well.

But in her class, it was a different story. I rocked the grades in her class. C’s became B’s. B’s became A’s. And every comment she wrote fed my ego (and stumbling infatuation with her). Each essay, each paragraph, each point, each sentence, was a chance for me to win her over. I spent entirely too much time staring at her slim legs, sometimes bare and smooth, other times in sheer stockings, carrying her on very plain low-heeled and rounded-toe brown or black shoes down the aisles of the classroom as she walked, talked, and held a book while discussing the literary significance of our assigned readings. She would hand back essays, homework assignments, and quizzes, also stalking down the aisles, long, powerful strides taking her down and back as she returned the red-ink-marked papers back to their owners. And I’d receive mine, smiling from ear to ear, eager to read and commit her comments on my papers to memory.

And like I said, I got great grades. Until, Ethan Frome.

High school literature is a funny thing. As a rite of passage, it almost is forced upon the adolescent youth; their minds still questioning their own growth and place in the world, only to be confused (and often bombarded) by the deep and often-overlooked topics that literature can evoke. I didn’t “get” a lot of what was going on - and I doubt my classmates did either. But of course I tried my best. And sometimes (more often as I neared the end of high school), I just “got” it. It happened a lot in her class. And Ethan Frome is one of those books I just “got.”

We read it in the cold, gray belly of the beast that is February, the book a fitting tribute to the Northeastern winter, its fictional town of Starkville painted outside the window in the gray snow-covered abandoned fields next to our high school. And I “got” the book as I was reading it, as it was discussed in class, and as we had our test on it. And as a final term paper, I chose it, a contrast to the impending heat, humidity, and the vibrant greens of the trees of early summer. My paper was titled “An Anatomy of a Suicide Attempt,” and it was spectacular. Seven pages of double spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman, one-inch-margined essay. And I got an F. And a note, scribbled in blood-red ink, “Please see me to discuss.”

It was a shock, really. But maybe I was getting ahead of myself, my ambitious writing and track record with English teachers finally catching up to me. I spent the rest of the day just as concerned about the F (it would be my first) as I did about seeing her alone. And what she would have to say to me.

I walked into the empty classroom, the sounds of the hallway diminishing both as I entered and as the rest of the students filed out of the school, busily to enjoy their sports, or just get home. She sat at her desk, glasses nearly falling off of her nose, engaged in either paperwork, grading, or writing up essay questions; she saw me and mouthed to close the door behind me. It was as if she was too tired to vocalize words yet.

“I failed you,” she spoke, her pen back on paper, her eyes not meeting mine, “because your argument is wrong. And while you write beautifully…” She paused there, finally stopped writing, and looked up. “I can’t agree with your essay, and you’ll get an F.”

I kind of stood there, at the edge of her desk, a bit numb.

“Don’t worry,” she continued, “you’ve gotten great grades all year long. You’ll probably do well on the final, and get a B for the class.” As if that’s why I was so worried.

I finally found the words. “Why did you disagree? I ‘got’ the book - I understood all the themes. And I brought it up in a paper, and I argued my point. Pretty well, too.” Take that.

She let the pen fall to the desk, and slid her chair back. She stood to her feet. I was surprised that she stood beneath eye level, meaning she had taken her shoes off. And she walked softly, in sheer stockinged feet, to the front of her desk. She leaned back on it, right next to me, so we no longer were facing each other, but side to side, me facing the blackboard behind her, and she facing the empty classroom behind me.

“You wrote so well, [six], but your main point… I can’t…” She had turned her head towards me now. “Your paper is getting an F.”

I searched my brain. I replayed the contents of the essay in my head, the endless times I wrote and rewrote it - the basis for my argument was that Ethan, for the first time, felt love, and it ended disastrously. “Love?” I managed to ask.

“It’s the dirtiest word in the English language,” she replied, her voice hushed and low. Her eyes back on the floor as if she were reading it from the tile by her feet.

And looking at her, my brain confused… and then it hit me. The look in her eyes, the slopes of her shoulders, she was defeated. She leaned on the desk not because she wanted to sit, but because her legs could not carry her body. Her head fell because it didn’t have the strength to lift itself up. Her skin was pale because of her heart - and it’s not the heart that pumps the blood through her body but the heart she gave someone one too many times. The heart which lay used, wrinkled, worn, and dirty on the floor. She had loved someone once. And it had ended disastrously.

There’s the old saying - it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. But is that true? The feeling of love is so high, so filled with joy, and then to have the bottomless pit of loss… is that worth it - compared to the lone wolf wandering in the cold snow?

And that is what I thought about, as my lips found themselves making the motions, my voice caught in the knee-jerk reaction of saying “I love you” back to Swiss Miss.

She had fallen asleep on top of me, her weight pressing down into my body. Her heart beat in my chest. And mine in hers.