It's Not Shakespeare Read Free Page B

okay?”
    “Mm-hmm, yeah. Sunday. Love you too.”
    And with that, he was alone in his rather nice house in Stanford Ranch, wishing he was anywhere else at all, as long as he could be on his knees, worshipping the cock of Sophie Winchester’s anonymous underwear model. Was it James’s imagination, or had that man had the longest, darkest fringe of eyelashes in the history of mankind?
    He focused on those eyelashes as he made himself a small salad with a broiled breast of chicken (he was at the age where he had to worry about cholesterol) and bananas and yoghurt for dessert. He focused on the sloe-colored, blue-black liquid eyes they sheltered as he cleaned up. He thought about the balanced, almost snub nose (the better to make the man look way too young for James, right?) as he surfed the internet for porn and watched CSI:Miami simultaneously.
    It wasn’t until after all the porn that he started to fantasize about the biceps, the smooth dark skin, the washboard stomach under the tank top, and the entire package under the jeans beneath that.
    By then he was ready to head off to bed for his sad masturbatory climax and sleep.
     
     
    H E REGRETTED his fantasizing on Wednesday, when he had Sophie in class again. He wanted badly to ask her about her friend and the setup and the entire thing but it all felt so adolescent and pathetic. If he’d been straight, dating Sophie was right out of the question—she was barely twenty, and he didn’t like to think of himself as a douchebag. Surely her friend would be out of the question too? Besides, he was doing just fine. He had his dog. He had his small house in the cookie-cutter suburb. He had his crappy car, which would run just fine for another year (or so his mechanic assured him), and he had his dignity. Well, as long as no one saw him at night with his internet porn collection and his pile of come towels in the hamper, he had his dignity.
    He finished his lecture on the three major dystopian works and then asked if anyone had read the Vinge enrichment materials and was unsurprised when Sophie raised her hand.
    “Can we really call the Vinge works science fiction anymore?” she asked thoughtfully, and he nodded. At least for this one, he was prepared.
    “We’re on our way to making some of the technical aspects a reality, I grant you. I mean, how long before we combine our ATM cards with our cell phones, put them on our wrists, and plug them into our neural systems? Absolutely,” he said with confidence. “We’re well on our way. But the thing that has us flummoxed for that one is space travel—and that’s one of the reasons I think this book hasn’t made it into the official canon of dystopian lit.”
    “But we don’t have the big baby farms like we had in the Huxley, either!” Sophie objected, and James smiled, because this debate was really the best part.
    “No—but we do have the mass education, the government indoctrination, and the distraction from actual real, meaningful political subjects with media and knee-jerk emotional topics. Which, by the by, was a part of 1984, as well.”
    Sophie stopped for a moment and blinked. “Ohmigod, you’re totally right! The proles were totally the ones getting all the porn and the alcohol, and they were the ones who got to have the sex. It was the educated party members who had to be distracted with all of the bullshit! You’re right—that has come true. But why can’t we say the Vinge stories are good based on their similarities to the modern-day realities?”
    And the debate was on. Other students began to participate, and soon there was a low murmur asking how to get hold of the enrichment materials, and people were genuinely surprised when class ended.
    James smiled at the students as they left and waved, and Marlowe slobbered approvingly at his feet. Sophie Winchester was the last one to leave, though, and she stood at the door and looked back, obviously waiting for him as he gathered his briefcase and his dog