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November 5, 2010
Now, quite a few years later, I often wonder how I have the temerity to look back on that night. I picture myself scrawling, “I will not sleep with my mother’s best friend ever again,” in rows down a chalkboard. Even though I understand it might not have been the most honorable way to behave — God knows what my mom would think — the only guilt I felt that night was for my complete absence of guilt. I figured what the hell. How often do you get the chance to sleep with the woman who gave you a C- on one of your history papers?
How often does someone get the chance to sleep with the woman who gave them a C- on one of their history papers?
Neither of us mentioned our former connection as we dressed in the dark. Outside on the porch, smoking a post-coital cigarette, I did the calculations in my head. Ms. Caruthers was forty-four-years old. She had turned twenty-one when I was born, gotten married for the first of five times when I was two, gotten divorced for the second of five times when I was six, and had two daughters before I hit puberty. In grammar school, the year she taught me, I was nine years old.
On the playground the older students used to call her Spud Puppy. I have never known why, but it now seemed apt. Not that it made a difference to me what people called her. Even to this day I have never been able to address her by her first name.
“Can I tell you something?” I finished my cigarette. “Something nobody knows?”
“Of course.”
“I heard back from Ole Miss.” I lit another cigarette. “They flat-out rejected me.”
Due to my incredible wisdom and range of foresight, I had only applied to two MFA programs, one at Columbia and one at Ole Miss. The rejection from the latter had arrived earlier that week.
Ms. Caruthers did an amazing job of calming me down, mostly by unzipping my jeans with her teeth. The legs of the chair squealed beneath us as the legs of my former teacher wrapped around me. She situated herself on my lap as though I were a seesaw.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, the low register of her voice reminding me that my mother was still within earshot.
Later, with her jeans crumpled at my feet and with her body mounted on my lap, Ms. Caruthers whispered, “We shouldn’t be doing this,” the low register of her voice reminding me that my mother was still within earshot.
“I think we just did.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You’d think at this point in your life,” I said with a smile, “you would want to live a little.”
Briefly, I worried that I had crossed the line with Ms. Caruthers, but she laughed, thank God. The poetic irony of what she said next seems almost too poetically ironic now.
“Maybe some day you can put this in one of your stories.”
The next morning, Ms. Caruthers and I both pretended nothing had happened, and for a while, I thought we had really gotten away with it. At our first moment alone together in the house, unfortunately, Ms. Caruthers pulled me aside and said she couldn’t find her panties.
Not only had I slept with my mother’s best friend, but I had also slept with my fourth-grade teacher — killing two birds with one come shot — and now, as both of us tried to keep the affair a secret, her underwear was lost in my room, just waiting to be found by my mother. It was absurd.
In the days after our night together, Ms. Caruthers and I looked everywhere, between the sheets, under the bed, behind the dresser, to no avail. Maybe my mother had already found them. She might have assumed they belonged to a girl my own age whom I'd recently brought home after a night out. Maybe my mother simply threw them away. During our few moments of privacy, Ms. Caruthers and I retraced our mistake by discussing what had happened. When we realized we would never find the panties, we resolved never to make the same one again.
She and my mother left at the end of the weekend. For a while, thinking about what I'd done made me feel like a bad person, but I eventually let myself off the hook. A week later I received an email from Columbia notifying me of my acceptance to their program.
Commentarium (44 Comments)
Yup, fiction writing alright. The sad thing is, even if this is a True Story and the author just did a s*itty job of fact checking HIS OWN LIFE, the story still kinda sucks. There's little to no discussion of the "why" of the encounter, and whatever the emotional content was, it sure wasn't discussed effectively. Maybe the author can follow up with "How I Really, Truly Banged My Therapist In the Bathroom of the Burger King I Was Fired From."
Fiction or not, I liked the story.
I'm not normally one to doubt the veracity of the stories here -- I usually am happy to give the author the benefit of the doubt, but how many people write history papers in the fourth grade?
There's some seriously awkward sentence structure in this story. It explains the rejection from Ole Miss, but not the acceptance from Columbia.
I dunno. I wrote "history papers" in the fourth grade, or at least history "paragraphs" about Columbus and stuff. Way to fixate on a little detail, in any case. I liked it.
I was glad he acknowledged that she was 40 and looked 40, and didn't have to pretend that she was some little twig w plastic surgery. Not that there's anything wrong with lookin' 40
Dude...you smoke? Only gay men..or men with gay tendencies smoke. You sure it wasn't Mr. Caruthers you're talking about here?
Fake. If she were in her mid-forties at the time of this encounter, how could she still be in her mid-forties years later when his friend met her??
At least he wasn't in 4th grade when she slept with him. Married 5 times and not yet 50? Ye gods.
Well, he doesn't say how many years later it was.
Well, he says that he was 23 at the time. He also states that when he was born, she was 21.
21+23= 44 = mid 40's.
Years later could mean anything from 2 years to 20 years.
Either way, the story was entertaining. Who really cares if it's real or not? Take it for what it is, entertainment.
yeah, gots to call bullshit.
1. Outside of picking up a STD or unintended pregnancy, who regrets having sex with just about anyone at age 23?
2. who doesn't get into Ole Miss?
Fake story. Who can't get into Ole Miss but does get into Columbia?
Delightful!
Makes my life sound like a fake. His characters are true to life. The characters in my narrative are over-thinking and just dumb. I've had come-ons like that... and then over-thought them until the moment was gone.
Ah, i haven't slept with one of my teachers . . . but i did do so with the wife of one of my professors three years out of college. In a bizarre way, the experience was quite similar. So the story resonated with me.
BLEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
this is so inappro-BLEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGLAUGDYEHJFJKERFGWJHKWKJED
Ugh. it has nothing to do with age difference but thats so fucking sketchy to fuck a kid you taught in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
This is really poorly written -- not at all up to Nerve's usual standards.
To be fair, vomit, if this did happen it's likely she only wanted him because he was a young verile man who had fantasized about her during puberty, not because he was in her class.
Does that ever happen? Adults falling in lust with children but preserve that lust into their adulthood?
Yiiiiiiiiiikes. In spite of the awkward attempt to be highbrow, this would be more appropriate beginning with "Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me......" Oh Nerve. Whomever is approving these submissions just can't tell between fantasy and reality.
I find it interesting that the very first comment was "Hell in the hell were you eleven in fourth grade?" Now that comment's gone, and line has been revised to nine years old. I dunno about you, but that _screams_ fiction to me.
Yeah. Nerve originally published the story with the sentence: "In grammar school, the year she taught me, I was eleven years old." Now he's nine. And the comment is gone. Shady.
Um . . . Mississippi, Florida vacation home, Columbia MFA. Looks like Nerve is rebranding Snowden Wright. But it's still just horrible, insipid writing. (Thanks for not dragging Dartmouth through this one.)
Fiction or not, I like it
I don't understand why everyone immediately assumes this is fiction? Ole Miss's MFA program admits 3-5 ppl a year, while Columbia is closer to 30-50, so it makes sense that someone could get rejected by Columbia and not Ole Miss. Someone mentioned that no one in 4th grade writes papers, but I know that I did--not that they were world class research papers, but papers nonetheless.
@Daniel Webster: I don't know if this is Snowden Wright, but it seems if it is, he used a pseudonym for a reason. Maybe to protect the teacher? Or her two daughters? What you have done, Daniel Webster, by inaccurately dragging an author's name into this publication, is shame a mother, potentially put a school teacher in line to be fired for past misconduct, and embarrass her two completely innocent daughters.
Shame on you.
Funny how jealousy makes people cry "fake!".
Ole Miss doesn't have a creative writing MFA.
Um, I just looked at the Ole Miss list of graduate programs, and an MFA in Creative Writing is indeed offered.
gross. all of it. no jealousy here - teacher should never be allowed around kids (future lovers) again. such garbage. why is nerve putting this filth up?
Not that I'd personally want to bone someone I'd known since they were a kindergartener, but having sex with someone at age 23 that you knew at age 9 doesn't make you a retroactive pedophile. That's completely ridiculous.
gross. all of it. no jealousy here - teacher should never be allowed around kids (future lovers) again. such garbage. why is nerve putting this filth up?
re: jacoby/tobes - JEALOUS!!! but......a little icky, i agree
yeah...this has "Snowden!" written all over it, come on Nerve, really?
Is there a big chunk of this story missing? Page 1 ends with the mother leaving and page 2 starts off with him smoking a post-coital cig.
Everyone on Nerve always says everything is fake - anyone else notice? Either way, don't care, story's OK but nothing too special
Whether it's true or not, it could've been better written.
I think Ole Miss = Mrs Caruthers
The truth is mom and friend visited. He fantasized about boning her but instead had to masturbate. They left end of the week. Now he desperately tries to write his fantasy as non-fiction. Pretty pathetic.
The teacher was a sexual predator. Not the criminal kind. Just the Sex-In-The-City kind. Five marriages! And she farks the kid on the first night, but they never do it again. There is a lot missing from the story in the way of developing the sexual tension between these two. The guy's had 10 years (13-23 years old) to become sexually aware of this woman (I don't count the 4th grade, 9 year old as sexually aware).
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