Touch and go

A dirty story of a dirty man, plus two more Beatles references.

One terrible day my colleague Zadie said to me over coffee, “Have you heard about Johnson?”

I had not.

“He’s fallen in love. It’s hilarious.”

That did sound potentially funny. Dr. Archibald Johnson was catastrophically unattractive. How could anyone fall in love with him? He couldn’t even get promoted to Senior Lecturer.

“In love?” I said.

“That might be the wrong word. He’s had sex for the first time at the age of 45, and now he’s very happy. You might say giddy.”

Giddy? This I had to see.

“It’s very sweet,” she said, “but also kind-of disgusting.”

I repaired directly to his office. His desk chair was pushed far back from his desk and he was staring out the window. When I came in he gave me a dreamy smile, like a child that’s just walked through a cloud of pot smoke.

I had never before asked a colleague about their love life, and I wasn’t sure how to begin. I didn’t have to.

“You won’t believe it!” he gushed. “I’ve been having sex!”

I immediately regretted being there. All I could say was, “That’s nice.”

He stood up and strode towards me. “I didn’t realise how wonderful it would make me feel!”

I backed away, against the door. “Um, Ok.”

“And even more than that, making someone else feel so good.”

Oh Jesus. I had to get out of there.

“I mean, when she starts to moan...”

“Stop it! You have to stop!”

“She calls me her Big Johnson.”

“STOP!”

I turned and struggled with the door handle, while he protested behind me, “I’m so happy I just can’t help telling people.”

A horrifying thought occurred to me, and I stopped fighting with the door and turned back to him.

“Just to check,” I said, “You’re not mentioning any of this in... um... in your lectures?”

He looked a little sheepish. “Only when it seems appropriate.”

“When is that?”

“More often than you’d think.”

It felt like all the blood had drained out of my body. I leaned against the wall for support. “Next thing you’ll be telling me that she’s one of your students.”

“Oh yes — do you know Sally?”

I might have started to cry. It’s difficult to remember. Somehow I regained enough composure to elicit a strangled protest, “You have to stop! You can’t sleep with your students!”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t say anything about it in her class. She told me it might make her uncomfortable.”

I ran straight to Zadie’s office and told her everything. I admit I was a bit hysterical. “What are we going to do!?”

Zadie understood our highest priority. “We have to protect the student.”

We invited Sally to a meeting in Zadie’s office. Zadie explained how we would help her to escape from Johnson’s clutches, while I sat next to Zadie and offered support by trying to eat my own knuckles.

Sally did not take it well.

“You don’t understand!” she cried. “We are soul mates! We love each other! If I could not be with my sweet Archie it would be the end. I couldn’t live any longer!” She burst into tears and ran bawling from Zadie’s office.

Zadie and I exchanged looks. She asked, “Did we just make a student suicidal?”

“We? I didn’t say anything.”

Two days later another student was in my office asking about homework problems. I realised that he was also in one of Johnson’s classes, so I tried to ask, “In Dr Johnson’s lectures, does he ever... well... talk about... um...”

“His sex life?”

I nodded.

“All the time.”

I gulped.

“It’s fantastic. We used to take videos and post them on YouTube.”

“What!?”

“Then we realised that the official lecture recordings have much better sound quality.”

I squeaked.

“They’re super popular! I’ll show you.”

He pulled out his phone and turned it to face me. He started a video of Johnson ranting at the front of a lecture hall.

“They are trying to come between us!” he roared. “They won’t succeed! Our love is stronger than them. It makes us invincible. Just like John Lennon said, ‘When I feel my finger on your trigger...’”

Yikes! Simultaneously I pushed the phone away, and held my lunch down. All I could say was, “Any of you could destroy his career in an instant.”

“Huh,” said the student. “We hadn’t thought of that.”

I was clearly unable to do anything but make the situation worse. In desperation I rushed to the Head of Department’s office. We’ve always had a good working relationship.

As soon as I’d finished my story she acted with the brutal decisiveness you expect from a natural leader.

“The solution is clear,” she said. “An assassin.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We eliminate the both of them. It’s the only way.”

“What about the YouTube videos?”

“We pay off YouTube.”

“Assassins? Pay-offs? We can’t afford that. We’re a university.”

“Shit. You’re right.”

She thought for a few more seconds, then found another brilliantly incisive solution.

She reached for her phone and called her PA.

“I need you to draft my resignation letter. Effective immediately.” She stood up. “Someone else can deal with this. I’m going back to my lab.”

At that moment her office door burst open and Johnson staggered in. Tears streamed down his face and he was sobbing and every few moments he let out a terrible wailing moan, like a constipated sea lion.

The Head of Department and I stared at him. It was impossible not to feel sympathy for this broken blubbering shuddering thing before us.

“What happened?”

He shook his head and tried to speak, but couldn’t. He let out a series of violent yelping sobs, and wiped an already glistening sleeve over his sodden face. Finally he managed to get out, “She’s gone!”

“But why?” asked the Head of Department. “Why did she have to go?”

“I don’t know.”

“She wouldn’t say?”

He gave a hulking miserable shrug. “I said something wrong, and now... now...”

The situation was clear to me. I whispered sagely, “Now you long for yesterday.”

He bounded forward and threw his arms around me. “Thank God! Someone understands!”

The Head of Department slumped back in her chair with a look of profound disappointment. “I would still like to resign,” she said.

---

Credits.

Dr. Zadie Revell-Ludovic previously appeared in “This is not a conspiracy theory”.

The nameless Head of Department previously appeared in, not surprisingly, “An encounter with my brilliant and terrifying Head of Department”.