Supervision

The Cambridge blew on a warm Wednesday in June, and there I was with my hand around the cock of a young man whose dissertation contractually obliged to mark in eight weeks.

The three of us were wedged into the sticky booth at the back.

knees knocking under the table.

Me, David and Cal, who I first met in the autumn across my own desk on the other side of an interview panel in a way that did not appear in the minutes.

If the faculty could see me, Dr. Katherine Harrison, who spent 40 minutes last term telling a room of new supervisors about appropriate distance and the value of the open door.

now working her way along the length of one of her own finalists while her husband sat opposite and watched.

The hypocrisy was doing more for me than the wine.

He is heavier than he looks, Cal.

21 and built like a bicycle.

and yet there is a solid, insistent, slightly indecent weight to him in the hand, and I had gone wet in the taxi on the way over simply from knowing I was going to be holding it within the hour.

That is the thing nobody warns you about, not the risk, the anticipation of the risk, which is a different animal and considerably worse behaved.

Pass the beer mat, would ya? David said, the same voice he uses to ask whether we've run out of bin bags.

I slid it over with my left hand.

My right stayed where it was.

Beering up, I said, close enough to get the aftershave.

Something expensive and slightly too old for him.

A Christmas present from an aunt, at a guess.

He cleared his throat.

Yes? then because that had cleared not cost him enough.

God! Steady on, I gave him a squeeze that made him sit up very straight indeed.

Do try not to make a scene.

He got warmer as I went on, and slicker at the tip, and I wiped my palm on him and used it.

And every time I moved, he went silent for a full second, mid-sentence, mid-breath, like a man, who has just remembered leaving the iron-on.

I did it during the beer order.

I did it while he was telling David about his supervisor's supervisor.