One good thing about professionally tutoring students for the SAT in the Midwest is that no one asks if I was admitted Early Action (no) to a school like Stanford (no). Queries from parents here tend to be along the lines of, "Did you yourself graduate from an accredited four-year institution?" (Yes.)
I am a statuesque redhead in her early 30s with stunning blue eyes and a supple (possible SAT word) and lithe (probable SAT word) body. A delicate tracery of veins shows through my nearly translucent skin, particularly around my neck and upper chest when aroused: a veritable road map of desire.
Jeremy was my first tutee. A tall, well-built high school junior, with tufts of dark hair peeking through the collar of his Pendleton work shirt, he hoped to attend Carleton. We initiated our sessions in the Berkowitz living room, but soon moved to Jeremy's bedroom for reasons of enhanced lighting and space.
One day after running through a few rudimentary vocabulary warm-ups, he confided that he felt a special connection to me. I was standing near his bedroom window, autumnal light silhouetting my leggy physique, a slightly too-short kilt encasing my girlish waist. "How," I asked, "do you explain this affinity? (definite SAT word)" "I think it's because you're Jewish." I stared at him. He clarified: "You know, Stanley Kaplan." I laughed and moistened my index finger in the corner of my mouth like a sweat-slaked Burmese maiden tentatively tasting her first dew-drenched sugar-cane shoot. "Oh, Jeremy, I'm not Jewish; Kaplan is just the organization for which I work."
"Still," he said and looked down, his full eyelashes accentuating the vulpine shape of his eyes. "Jeremy," I whispered, "have I hurt or confused you in any way?" I placed my hands at the base of his broad neck and began to slowly rotate my thumbs in a circular motion in order to alleviate any tension I may have spawned in my young charge.
I continued to comfort him while inhaling his scent of rain-washed grapes and purring softly that I felt sure his chances of admission to Carleton were rock solid. "Let's continue our drill," I coaxed, "write the following words as I dictate: prowess, glisten, hilt, stimulate, nexus."
I noticed Jeremy's pencil trembling as he turned and gazed up at me. I looked down at him and parted my lips, emphasizing a prominent overbite which has led many to mistakenly think me French: "Yes?" "I'm not sure," he confessed, "of the difference between prostate and prostrate." "Jeremy," I offered, "why don't you lie on the floor and I'll show you."
Eddie Phillips had a wrestler's torso: taut and muscular with what I can only call torque. His weakness was math and my weakness was allowing him to see me in an angora sweater my second husband claimed should be registered as a weapon. That Tuesday in November, I was extremely tired: stifling yawns and stretching my arms in such a manner as to arch my back and make evident my fatigue. "You seem exhausted," Eddie said. "Concentrate on your rigid protractor, Eddie." "I like your sweater."
"Eddie," I asked, "do you know what will soon be long and hard?" He stared at me, the downy hairs on his forearms glinting in the glow of his desk lamp. I answered my own question: "The math section of the SAT if you don't focus."
"I'm having trouble finding the hypotenuse," he explained. "Many do," I responded, tossing my coppery coils like a young lioness surprised in the midst of a morning bath by a stealthy intruder. "Shall I help you?" "Please," he said in a throaty rasp.
"If you want to measure the hypotenuse, there's a little trick they taught me at Princeton." "You went to Princeton?" he asked incredulously. "No, silly," I said as I ran my finger from his clavicle to the base of his sternum (two probable SAT words), "Princeton Review: my previous employer." "All you have to do," I explained, as I lifted a sheet of paper from his work surface and wetted its very tip with the edge of my tongue, "is take your test booklet and use it as a strong, straight edge to measure all sides of a given triangle."
He gaped at me, his eyes coming to rest in a field on angora. "It's a shortcut, Eddie. Not strictly legal, but certainly...admissable. Let's just call it a lesser sin."
"I'm not sure I get it," he replied. "Remember, I'm not good in math." I yawned again with the concomitant arching of my back. "It's all in the angles." He looked confused. "Proportions, Eddie, proportions. If one side of a right-angled triangle is six inches, and another is eight, then my question for you, mister," I said as I breathed damply against his freshly-shaven cheek, "is how long is your hypotenuse?" His eyes grew wide, as if in awe of his answer: "The length of my hypotenuse is ten inches."
