The Scholar & The Athlete

Tuesday morning and the world bulges, hot and green. It’s too warm for autumn in her cardigan, which clings uneasy like snakeskin, not right and strange. Her lecture room is in a corner of the quad. The wooden pews are desecrated—dicks, balls, profanity. No vaginas. 

11am: the Scholar’s laptop is open and ready. She tries to sit still, yet can’t help but smooth her hair, push her glasses up her nose, check her reflection in Photo Booth. She’s sweating. The lecturer goes through the slides for Week 7 of Intimacy, Love, and Friendship while her eyes flick absentmindedly towards the door. The Scholar taps a BIAB nail. She is waiting for something.

Ah. Here it comes. 11:27 and the door opens, admitting a tall, broad-shouldered woman. She carries a duffle bag, which bangs from leg to pew. The Scholar tries to catalogue the laziness of her gait—the shape of her biceps, her training jersey—though she can’t accomplish much whilst looking determinedly at her laptop. 

Like last week and the week before, the Athlete walks halfway through the room to sit at the Scholar’s row. She slides in threateningly close, the bulk of her possessions (sweaty jumper, shoes tied to backpack) spilling out next to the Scholar’s handbag. Is this a dance, or just coincidence? It cannot be quantified, so the Scholar refuses to be distracted. She switches to her Google Doc and starts taking notes. Susan Faludi. Lesbian separatism. Leo Bersani: there is a big secret about sex. Most people don’t like it.

She writes that down.

But the Athlete doesn’t share the Scholar’s ambitions for honours, master’s and PhD candidacy, instead pulling out a protein smoothie, a Musashi bar and an apple. The Scholar shoots her a look but is rewarded only by the sight of her hands unscrewing the bottle. The Athlete’s fingers flex. A vein pops. Fuck.

The Scholar forces her mind elsewhere, to her endless source of terror: all the things she must do. She swipes to her open calendar. Once more she wishes her body would settle down, that her twitching fingers would rest in their filaments. But they keep moving. The Athlete knocks her food wrapper into the Scholar’s zone of influence. It lands with the same impact as a small-scale bomb. The Scholar eyes it. Did she notice? 

Yes, the Athlete has noticed—just as she’s noticed those long red nails typing on the keyboard, the O-neck cardigan pulled down over her thumbs, and the constant switching between Canvas to The Guardian. The Athlete moves slowly, purposefully, to retrieve the wrapper. She smiles. 

The Scholar smiles back, and continues to monitor, in her covert way. Efficiency is control. Knowledge is control. She tunes into the lecturer while she reads the slides for yesterday’s skipped tutorial while she works at a piece of fibre stuck in her gums. She is a girl, so she watches. Her relief is in the watching. There is some kind of pleasure in watching. She imagines it’s the same kind of pleasure as dying.

—

The Scholar goes to her tutorial. She does her work. She tries to stop craning her neck in search of the Athlete. Instead the Scholar cradles her handbag as though for comfort, thinking of all its precious contents (her books and lip gloss: her last recourse).

But when the Scholar goes home she thinks about the Athlete. She thinks about her while she takes off her skirt and her bra. She fucks herself with her fingers, and wonders what the Athlete is doing.

—

The Athlete is on her bus. Down King Street the Scholar tries to keep her attention on her book, though (she must be imagining it) the Athlete keeps glancing her way. The Scholar snatches glimpses of her sports watch and sneakers. She can make out the shape of the Athlete’s breasts. She seems to be threaded through with power, shocks of muscle, sinew, bone.

They get off at the same stop and start walking the same way. The Athlete smiles. Says, “Hey, aren’t you in my lecture?” The Scholar says, “I think so.” She knows to be eminently coy, soft, touchable. They talk. The Athlete asks if she wants to get a drink at a pub down the road. The Scholar is coiled so tight she thinks she must be vibrating, because here, finally, is what all her watching has been for. There will be no death for her, only life; the pure physicality, butchness, all-encompassing rightness of the Athlete.

They go to the Newtown Hotel. The Athlete orders a Stone & Wood, so the Scholar does too. She tries to hold it as the Athlete does: palm flat against the pint glass, not gingerly by her fingertips. She watches as the Athlete watches her fingers. She waits.

Further investigation reveals the Athlete’s area of expertise. “I play soccer,” she says. “Right back.”

“Like Lucy Bronze,” the Scholar says.

The Athlete pauses, reassessing. “Yeah. Do you know much about soccer?”

“A little,” she admits. “I got pretty into it during the World Cup. I guess I’d never seen that before: women being so physical. I never played sports. So—I don’t know.”

“What?” The Athlete angles her head and smiles. Belatedly the Scholar realises they’ve shifted closer. It’s like the other woman knows what is unsaid, and she wants to make her say it.

“I guess I didn’t realise it was so freeing, even through watching someone else. I feel like so much of the time I just…watch.”

“And did you like watching them?” 

She’s a cocky shit, but it works. The Scholar blushes and looks away, but she forces out, “Sure.”

They eat dinner. The Athlete pays. The Scholar lets her but will not forget it. If this is the way things are, she will learn. 

At last, an invitation is extended to see the Athlete’s house. The Scholar has never wanted anything so much. To take, to give: she wants that power. Her blood sings, yes yes yes, trapped and thrumming. So much pleasure is in the waiting, this she understands now, too. 

They walk to the sharehouse. No-one else is home. And the Scholar waits. And 

they’re kissing and she’s sitting in her lap and her arms are holding on so tight and her clit throbbing with the waiting and her hair hanging down like a mirror her mind blanked out the Athlete the Athlete and her arms locked around her waist and she puts a hand on her cunt feels her pelvic bone and the Athlete is lying on the bed legs spread hips jerking and she takes the hammer out of her handbag and gets to work.

—

Winter. First week after semester break and again the Scholar is in the pews of the lecture room, though this time she arrives late. She thinks she enjoys the attention; the darting of eyes to her figure as she opens the door and takes her place. It’s like her bones fit better. Like she’s taller.

The Scholar wears a jersey pilfered from the Athlete’s room, which suits her new broad shoulders, strong arms. She took bones from the Athlete and grafted them to her own. Then she took arteries, veins, fingernails, teeth—all those things she liked so much. And now a beautiful, powerful body. 

She wants to fuck like this. There are so many scholars in this room, uptight and restless, marking her form. Finally she feels that rightness which always evaded her.

She chooses a pew and sits next to a girl with her laptop open. The Scholar begins.