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From: tariat@aol.com (TariaT)
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Subject: {ASS} Power and the Word (Part One) by Taria
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POWER AND THE WORD
by Taria



ONE: "Dark brown girls in blond men's arms"
__________________

Cleanthe swayed with the motion of the train, back and forth, back and forth. 
The rocking motion was mesmerizing, along with the endless clack-clack-clack of
the metal wheels on the tracks.  The heat in the car was stifling, between the
excessive steam and the crush of too many bodies swathed in fur and fleece and
thinsulate.

With a sudden jerk the train lost all speed and then slid to a halt, its rusted
brakes squealing in protest.  Cleanthe reflexively tightened her grip on the
metal bar over her head and held on for dear life, releasing her hold only
after the train had stopped.  For a moment chaos ruled in the subway car -- the
lights flickered off, then on; passengers extricated themselves and their
parcels from the laps of their neighbors.  Then all was quiet, the motionless
attentive silence of hundreds of people awaiting an explanation for this latest
inconvenience.

After thirty seconds or so the PA system crackled into life.  "Attention,
Passengers -- we apologize for the delay, and we hope to be moving again
shortly--"  The grumbling began almost immediately.  "What the hell does THAT
mean?"  "Damn trains, always makin' me late for work!"  In the seat in front of
Cleanthe, a middle-aged black woman elbowed the passenger sitting next to her,
a solid-looking black man in a well-worn watch cap.  "Won't never see this
happen on them white folks' trains," she said.  "Think they do this on fancy
commuter trains?  Metro-North?  L-I-Double R?"  Her companion grinned, yellowed
teeth flashing in a bright grin beneath a scraggly dark moustache.  "'Tis so,"
he rumbled, his voice tinged with Trinidad and Tobago.  "Don' take dem suburb
trains much, though.  Not lately, anyways."  The woman beside him cackled
loudly.  "Uh-HUNH" she grunted, as much to herself as to anybody else.

Cleanthe said nothing, her gaze fixed on the blackness that showed through the
window of the subway car.  In the scratched glass surface of the window pane
she could just make out her own reflection, smiling in that enigmatic way that
always drove Momma crazy.  "What you smilin' bout there, Girl?  I swear,
sometimes you make me wanna look for canary feathers inside that mouth..."  In
the window, her smile deepened.  What you think now, Momma?  What you think now
that your little girl all grown up and made something of herself?  Columbia
University, Momma!

Cleanthe felt the warm rush of pride she always felt when she thought that way.
 Damn straight, she thought, Columbia University.  I made it through my
neighborhood, through high school, getting nothing from nobody, all on my own. 
I'm the one takes a bus and two trains every day, two hours fifteen minutes on
the bus and the D-train and the 1-train till I get to campus.  I'm the one
doing all my studying and holding down my job at University Food Market four
nights a week.  I'm the one with a good GPA in Business and History and English
Lit...

Today's my Lit class, she thought.  Doctor Johnson today.  Cleanthe suddenly
felt hot and flushed, and saw her reflection's eyes widen and her grin fade. 
Inside, she felt her blooming pride shrink and dwindle, contracting in her
center.  She felt herself awash in a flood of guilt and shame mixed with deeper
stirrings.  She closed her eyes, grinding her eyelids together.  Bad decision,
she thought, as she felt her sense of balance slipping away.  When she opened
her eyes again she saw concern in the face of the West Indian man seated before
her.  "You OK there, Miss?" he asked, rising slightly in his seat.  Cleanthe
tried to smile and shake her head No, I don't need to sit, but before she could
speak the train jerked to a start, its grinding efforts drowning her out.  She
gave the man a reassuring look and straightened up, and remembered.

>From the first moment she'd entered the room in Hamilton Hall, the class had
been a revelation.  There in that classroom were more black faces than she'd
ever seen together anywhere on campus.  The others felt it too, she could tell.
 They were relaxed, at ease, smiling broader and talking louder than black
Columbia students usually did.  This was *their* class, they said, without
actually having to say so.  African-American Literature was *their* class. 
Their eyes were alight with that knowledge, eager faces fierce as a pride of
young lions.  And then the time arrived and the door swung open one last time
as the Professor entered.

Conversation halted.  Every eye in the room was riveted to the figure at the
front of the classroom as he casually dropped his overstuffed carry-case on the
desk.  From the shocked expressions of her classmates Cleanthe could tell that
they were all thinking the same thing: who was this white man?  A number of the
students were peering at him with suspicion, others with open hostility.  This
could *not* be Professor Lewis Johnson, not in this room, not in this class. 
No way this white man was going to step right into their space and violate
their world.

A minute passed, and then another.  The man, whoever he was, was calm and
impassive as his gaze swept across the room.  Cleanthe couldn't entirely
repress a smile.  He sure had balls, this white man.  And *so* white, too!  His
shock of blonde hair and absurdly pale skin were nearly blinding among the
brown-and-black hues that filled the room.  An icy chill passed through her as
she realized that he was looking directly at her.  No, it was as if those
piercing green eyes were peering through her, inside her, seeing deep into her
thoughts.  A hot flush rushed to her cheeks as she looked directly into those
eyes.  Can he tell? she wondered.  They say white folks think we can't blush,
she thought.  I hope he can't tell.  He can! said a tiny voice in her head. 
Hush up! she shouted back.  Cleanthe thought his eyes were crinkling in the
corners, like he wanted to smile but wouldn't.  He opened his mouth, and spoke.

"I've known rivers," he said.

"I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood
in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

He spoke softly but urgently, in a voice that commanded attention.  His words
unfurled, encompassing the Euphrates and the Congo and the Nile.  With his
words the Mississippi rose up before him, a deep muddy vision Cleanthe had
never before seen.

"I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Cleanthe was his.  The whole class was his.  His voice and his words had
penetrated their shields, gotten behind their masks.  For a moment they were
all naked before him, defenseless and vulnerable.  It was over before it even
started, but it had been there.  They all knew it.  He knew it too.  "That'll
do," he murmured.  And he reached back into his bag and grabbed a sheaf of
course outlines, and class began.

Afterwards Cleanthe hung back, waiting for everyone to clear out.  As the last
students filed through the doorway she approached the desk where the teacher
was randomly stuffing stray sheets of paper into his bag.  As she drew near he
raised his gaze and smiled at her.

"I knew you would come," he said.

Cleanthe knew she was about to blush again.  "Um, I..." she stammered.  "I
just..."

His smile deepened.  "Langston Hughes," he said.  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers. 
Amazing, isn't it?"  Cleanthe nodded, blushing, dumbstruck.  "I've always been
overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all," he continued.  "I'm glad you felt the
same way, Miss...?"  His voice trailed off in a question mark.  Cleanthe saw
that he'd extended his hand to her as well.

"Wilson," she whispered in a hoarse voice.  She swallowed.  "Cleanthe Wilson." 
She shifted her book bag and moved to shake his hand.  He took her hand in his.
 It was a soft grip.  Almost caressing.  "Cleanthe Wilson," he repeated, his
eyes glued to her face as he seemed to connect the name to the person in his
mind.  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Cleanthe."  He'd pronounced her name
right, first try.  Nobody ever did.  Her eyes were locked to his, trapped in
that same penetrating gaze.  He didn't immediately release her hand.  She
didn't want him to.  Finally, he let go.  The spell broke and he smiled again,
and wished her a good day.  She drifted out of the room and looked at her
watch.  She was ten minutes late to Chemistry.

A jerk and a squeak, and a crackly voice.  "D train to the Bronx.  Please watch
the closing doors."  Cleanthe shook her head clear of the cobwebs and looked
out of the window at the platform.  125th Street?  Shit!  Ruthlessly she banged
several people aside with her book bag and scrambled through the metal doors
just as they began to close.  *Bing-Bong* rang the door-chime as she wedged
through the narrowing opening.  *Bing-Bong*.  *BING BONG*!  The doors stuttered
twice and then let her through, spitting her out into the station.  They shut
with a satisfied *click* behind her, and she watched mutely as the train
rumbled to a start and sped up as it pulled away.

Cleanthe shook her head again and slapped it once with her palm.  Shit! 
Daydreaming again, and now she had to walk all the way back to Broadway from
St. Nicholas and then over another nine blocks, and she was late already.  Her
reverie was snapped, her bag felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she'd
be late to Dr. Johnson's class if she ever made it there at all.  Funny how she
still thought of him as "Doctor Johnson," even after everything.

Cleanthe emerged from the steps onto St. Nicholas and turned east on 125th
toward Broadway.  Down the edge of Harlem, along the border she walked.  Well,
she thought, that's what happens when you get out at the "wrong" subway
station.  At freshman orientation that's what they called it.  The "wrong"
station.  Don't never get off at 125th Street, students.  Stay far 'way from
that badass neighborhood yonder.  Gotta watch out for them natives, 'cause
they're dangerous in those parts.  As she passed the faded remains of old
nightspots and boarded-up windows, Cleanthe wondered when they'd started to use
that euphemism.  "Wrong," they'd said.  As good a code-word as any other, she
guessed.

As she neared Broadway Cleanthe looked further down 125th Street toward the
river.  Squinting in the sunlight she could see, past the shiny red-and-yellow
McDonald's at the corner, more shuttered buildings and dilapidated structures. 
She could see a long skinny sign attached to one pale ruin; she read the
letters, starting from the top and going down.  "C O T T O N  C L U--"  The
Cotton Club, she thought.  Back when white folks used to come uptown in droves
for some "local color."  What was it Dr. Johnson said about the Harlem
Renaissance?  "When Harlem was in vogue"?  Cleanthe smiled as she turned left
onto Broadway, under the 1-train tracks.  Bet the 125th Street Station wasn't
so "wrong" in those days.

After only the second Black Lit class she'd already known how much it would
mean to her.  How much he would mean to her.  She had come to Columbia to
learn, but she hadn't known what and she hadn't known how.  Dr. Lewis Johnson
had the answers to questions she didn't even know how to ask.

Their conferences had started out as office-hour appointments to go over class
assignments and readings.  But in no time their ten-minute meetings were
stretching into fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes, an hour.  Their
discussions expanded far beyond the limited scope of the classroom.  Dr.
Johnson lent her books: Langston Hughes at first, her consuming passion.  Then
he introduced her to Zora Neale Hurston and "Their Eyes Were Watching God." 
She'd read Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison before, but James Weldon Johnson and
Claude Brown and Nikki Giovanni had been unfamiliar names to her.  She eagerly
devoured them all.  She hung on her teacher's every word.  Worlds were opening
up to Cleanthe, and his words were her keys.

It was only natural that these conversations soon moved out of Dr. Johnson's
cramped office.  At first she'd only accompanied him directly from his office
to his next class.  Soon they arranged to meet in the Student Union, over soda.
 They began to have regular lunches, at local restaurants or in the food court.
 They weren't dates, exactly.  But Cleanthe started to dress up nicer on lunch
days.  

Momma noticed, and Devon too.  "Cle's got a boy-frien'," he taunted.  Momma
thought so too.  But Cleanthe denied it till she was blue in the face.  "I'm
just meeting Dr. Johnson today, is all," she'd say.  "We're doing Richard
Wright and I need some extra help."  Momma seemed all right with that, she
really did.  But lately she'd been acting funny.  "You sure do talk a whole lot
'bout that Dr. Johnson," she'd said that very morning.  "You sure he's not
intr'sted in nothin' 'sides your mind, Cleanthe?"  "Momma!" Cleanthe yelled,
scandalized.  

Her mother chuckled, and kissed the top of her head.  Then she did something
totally unlike her.  She sat down on a chair facing Cleanthe and looked right
into her eyes, not saying a word.  Then she spoke in a hushed voice.  "You be
careful, Daughter.  You hear me?  You be real careful that you look at this man
with your eyes wide open."  Cleanthe stared at her, and nodded slowly.  "I
will, Momma.  But I'm learning so much!  I can't stop now, not with so much
more left to learn!  And besides," she continued, "he's not like that at all. 
He's nothing like any of them boys I been with."  Cleanthe barely had time to
notice the strange look that passed across her mother's face.  She was late,
and she had to get to class.

Cleanthe stopped mid-stride.  She blinked, twice, and looked up at the black
wrought-iron gates that led into the Columbia campus.  "Lucky for me I don't
need my brain to find my way," she muttered.  Almost running now, she hustled
across College Walk, dragging her weighty bag behind her.  "Please let me make
it, please..." she prayed inside her head.  But as she reached the entrance to
Hamilton she heard the first booming clangs of the big bell outside.  Her
stomach sank, and all the way up the elevator to the sixth floor Cleanthe
berated herself.  "Stupid for waking up late, stupid for daydreaming, stupid,
stupid, stupid..."

By the time she got to class there was nobody left.  When she saw the scribbles
on the blackboard Cleanthe felt the onset of despair and desperation.  Oh, no! 
Exam?  On what?  When?  Had she missed a test?  The panic swept over her like a
physical force.  Firmly, she stifled it.  What's today? she asked herself. 
Tuesday, she answered.  Fine.  Dr. Johnson always heads for his office after
Tuesday's class, even though he doesn't schedule appointments.  He's there now.
 Get a grip, girl!  Cleanthe reshouldered her bag, breathed in through her
nose, and headed back to the elevator.

Back down to the third floor she went.  When the doors opened Cleanthe sprang
out, practically bowling over an elderly secretary in the process.  Shooting
apologies over her shoulder she took off for Dr. Johnson's office door and
grabbed the handle.  It wouldn't turn.  And behind the opaque glass, she could
tell that the lights were off.  Cleanthe stood there, frozen, almost in tears. 
What would she do?  She couldn't fail, she wouldn't.  She couldn't fail him. 
She closed her eyes and lowered her head, and then felt a soft hand on her
shoulder.

"Cleanthe," breathed a soft voice.  He hadn't gone after all.  Her relief at
his presence was overwhelming, and without thinking about it Cleanthe sank back
to lean against the man behind her.  Chuckling, he pulled away and pressed one
palm flat against her back to separate them.  "Sorry, Cleanthe," he said. 
"You'll have to stay away for just another minute.  Unless you want to get
coffee all over your back, that is."  He laughed again as Cleanthe gingerly
tried to shuffle out of his way.  "Here -- come on in," he said, unlocking the
door and holding it open with his free hand.

Cleanthe moved to enter the office, but in his effort to hold the door open Dr.
Johnson had wedged himself into the doorway.  Cleanthe turned sideways to
squeeze through, but only succeeded in pressing herself up against her teacher.
 For a long moment reality froze.  Cleanthe felt a burning at every single
point along her front where their bodies touched.  The peaks of her breasts
were on fire where they flattened against his torso.  Her belly sizzled at the
point of contact with his silver belt buckle.  The inside of her right thigh
crackled with electricity where she felt the pressure of his leg.  They stood
there unmoving for an instant and forever, their eyes locked together. 
Cleanthe could hear his breathing, and hers, grow ragged.  And then his head
moved closer and her lips parted, and after a split-second of hesitation their
mouths came together in a deep kiss.

Cleanthe moaned from the depths of her body and soul into his mouth as the kiss
grew deeper and more passionate.  Through a thick haze she felt him maneuver
her body inside the office.  If she could trust her ears she would have heard
the door swing shut and the soft click as he turned the lock behind him.  But
all her senses were filled with him, with his smell and his breathing and the
rough texture of his wool jacket beneath her fingertips.  Cleanthe cried out
softly as he devoured her, his mouth swallowing her and his hands engulfing her
back, her shoulders, her waist.  As he deliberately walked her backwards deeper
into his office Cleanthe submerged herself in him, breathing him in her
nostrils and tasting his tongue and teeth and lips.  She felt something hard
jut into her lower back, the edge of his desk.  Without resisting, her arms
still clasped around him, Cleanthe let him lift her up until she sat perched on
its surface, her legs dangling over the side.  

He undressed her like she was a child, pushing her open jacket back off her
shoulders, then peeling her turtleneck up and over her head.  He ran his hands
over her body, now revealed: her naked shoulders, her bare back, the tiny
pinches and folds of dark flesh at the edges of the startlingly white brassiere
straps.  Cleanthe arched her back at his touch and straightened atop the desk. 
With her head back and her eyes closed she let sensuality wash over her, and
she gasped as she felt his expert fingers loosen the bra clasps at the center
of her back.

Her breath caught as she felt the easing tension of the elastic that had bound
her.  She shivered at the brush of the garment against her forearms as it
floated off her body.  She heard a low rumble from the man who had exposed her,
and then felt the touch of something soft, delicate, and wet.  Cleanthe was
utterly transported.  She leaned back on her arms and savored the feel of a
man's tongue as it traced the curvature of each breast.  Other lovers had
attacked her chest with their mouths and teeth out of hunger and their own deep
need.  Those had been teenage boys, too overcome with their tit-fantasies to
impart much pleasure to her.  But Doctor Johnson was a man, she thought, a man
who knew how to give pleasure to a woman.

And right now, for the first time in her life, Cleanthe felt like a woman being
pleasured by a man.

Cleanthe moaned loudly as she felt suction at her nipple, and nearly shrieked
at the jolt of electricity that hit her when he lightly nibbled it with the
edge of his teeth.  She peeked down through heavy lashes at the blonde head at
her bosom, at the contrast between his light and her dark, his pink lips and
white teeth and the dark brown summits of her peaks.  She reached out and ran
her spread fingers through that yellow mane, pulling him to her and pushing
herself deeper into his magical mouth.  Suck me, she thought.  Eat me, gobble
me up.  She smiled with bliss and pleasure and passion, and gasped again at his
oral worship of her.

Dr. Johnson hooked two fingers into the spandex waistband of her tights and
pulled experimentally.  Cleanthe pushed back on her arms and levered her
buttocks off the desk surface, pushing her pelvis upwards toward him, in
offering.  With a smooth tug he pulled at the material and Cleanthe's tights
and underwear and socks all fell off in a heap.  Cleanthe sat back on Dr.
Johnson's desk, passive, naked, afraid and aroused.  She stared in wonder as
her mentor sank to his knees before her.

Her skin prickled and tingled as Cleanthe felt the firm touch of Dr. Johnson's
hands traveling over her foot and up her legs.  Her breath quickened and then
nearly stopped when he reached her knees and softly pushed them apart.  With a
gasp that was a sob she yielded to his touch and lay back on the desk, her arms
propping her up.  What was he thinking, down there between her legs?  His
fingers moved up her inner thighs, nearing the juncture of her legs.

Cleanthe felt her panic rising.  She remembered when she'd gone for her first
pelvic exam, and the Doctor had first shown her what she looked like down
there, in a mirror.  It was so hairy, so ugly and messy.  And when he'd spread
the dark flappy folds apart and shown her the inside she had seen the bright
pink flesh and thought Oh It looks like a slice, a gaping open wound in the
middle of me.  And the boys, with their snaps about the hair and the smell and
the wet, they wouldn't even barely touch it at all.  They'd just stick their
things in and push push push until they were through.

Cleanthe squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to tremble as her teacher's
fingers found her pubic hair and traced the hidden opening to her sex.  He
doesn't seem too disgusted, she thought hopefully.  She cringed at the wet
smack and the strong fragrance that issued from her as he spread her open with
his fingers.  Oh no, she thought.  Oh no...

Nothing.

No recoil, no comments, not even a change in his breathing.  And then Cleanthe
jerked in amazement as she felt something warm and wet and flexible slithering
up the inner edges of her pussy lips.  Was that his mouth? she wondered in awe.
 Cleanthe had heard that there were men who would do that to a woman, but she'd
never really --

A cry of pure intense pleasure burst forth from Cleanthe as she felt his tongue
dip unexpectedly inside her.  And then he moved up higher, higher until the
probing pointy tip was at the top and burrowing in.  Cleanthe nearly screamed
as she felt him touch her tiny button, something no one else had ever done to
her before.  He tongued it and licked it and kissed it, his lips and tongue
working and sucking her clitty, slowly at first and then more urgently.

The pleasure was too much to bear; the ecstasy too much to take.  Cleanthe's
arms lacked the strength to prop her up any more so she lay down flat on her
back, scattering a pile of term papers in the process.  As she sank back he
lifted her legs until they were supported on his shoulders, and then attacked
her even more fiercely with his mouth.  Cleanthe began to groan, and then
scream.  Every fibre of her body throbbed with the rhythm of his mouth and the
waves of incredible pleasure that emanated from her sex.

As she thrashed about on the desk and thrust her hips so he could go deeper
harder faster Cleanthe thought of her wound, and how he was loving it and
kissing it.  No, she realized, It's not a wound anymore, he's healed it, and
then it was too late to think at all.  For a moment everything seemed to stop
and then suddenly undiluted pleasure filled every pore, every crevice in
Cleanthe and it went on and on and on and then began to ebb.

Cleanthe could feel the cool sheen of sweat all over her body and the trembling
of her muscles as the orgasm petered out.  Her throat was raw, and she could
feel trails of quicksilver down her cheeks where the tears had run.  Dr.
Johnson was standing now, looking down at her with tenderness and concern.  She
could feel new tears welling up and her heart expanding and ballooning, her
love for him at that moment coursing through her entire bloodstream.  At the
bottom of her vision she saw a movement, and then his pants had fallen and his
pale manhood was pointing toward her in yearning.  "Yes," she said, and again
"yes,"  and she felt him push into her.

It didn't take very long.  It was as if he were on the verge of release already
before he was even inside her.  So liquid were her insides that she barely felt
him thrust into her once or twice before his body shuddered violently and he
collapsed onto her on the desk, spent.  "There, there," she murmured, "mmm,
mmm," as her fingers toyed with the ends of his hair.  They lay there a while,
and she listened to his breathing as he rested his head on her breast.  He was
heavy atop her, and Cleanthe could feel an uncomfortable tightness across her
back from her awkward positioning, and her pussy was all sticky and dripping
with saliva and her juices and his cum.  But Doctor Johnson had made love to
her, and he had devoured her, and she was blissful in his office, in his arms.

Later, when they had recovered and Cleanthe was getting dressed, he tried to
speak.  "Cleanthe..." he began, but she hushed him, putting a soft fingertip
across his lips.  "That's the first time I ever really made love in my whole
life," she said.  "So don't you go mess it up with talk right now."  Her
teacher nodded, slowly.  Cleanthe rose onto her toes and kissed him softly on
the cheek.  "Thank you," she whispered.  As she unlocked the office door and
pulled it open, Cleanthe spoke in a louder voice.  "Thank you for everything,
Dr. Johnson," she said.  "I learned a lot."

She walked down the hall and stepped into the elevator.  As the doors slid shut
Cleanthe smacked herself on the head with her palm.  Damn, she thought.  I
never did find out about that test!


___________________

(Concluded in Part Two)

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