luyenai, Author at NSFW story

In Lieu of Rent, Ch 1 [exhibition] [f,7m]

When I was a PhD student in Seattle in my mid twenties, I lived on a tight stipend. I rented a room in a big house near campus with seven guys—all young, fit undergrads—for $630/month, leaving me very little left over for grocery and healthcare, let alone travel or fun or an emergency expense.

One night we were all sitting in the living room up to our own activities, and I made a mistake. I sat on the floor typing my thesis on my laptop, which rested on the coffee table, and when I twisted to stretch after a long period of productive but statue-like stillness, I knocked over my housemate’s mega-size diet coke onto my keyboard, frying my $1,300 machine. I could not afford to replace this.

For me to continue my work, I would have to bus to the library and pay by the hour, and even then I wouldn’t have access to my zotero collection of sources or my zettelkasten of notes. With just two semesters left to finish and defend my thesis before my stipend ran out, this felt like the toll of the final bell, the end of line, the end of hope. This may seem dramatic to those who have not been in the throes of a PhD, but I promise that in the circumstances it was a reasonable and proportional reaction. Read more »

My Mistake [mind control] [mf] [exhibition]

I did not intend to enter the auditorium, filled with more than one hundred of the undergraduate students for whom I TA, wearing only my underwear and bra. But that is what I ended up doing.

When I stepped into the building, I was clothed. I know this because I looked down at my phone and saw my clothes in my periphery. At some point during my walk down the hallway to the auditorium, my dress and cardigan vanished, a fact that introduced more questions than it answered.

This was not something I would have done on purpose. Invariably I wore conservative outfits to work because I attracted unwanted attention in the athleisure clothes I preferred. Men in the back rows would raise their hands and point at some page of their textbook that they claimed they could neither understand nor paraphrase, and ask me for clarification, so that I had to come stand beside them to read the passage in question. Many of them would try to touch my shoulder or arm or lower back, but I always grabbed their wrists and removed their hand so that they would feel uncomfortable, and learn not to try again. One student, after I declined his request for a tutor-with-benefits arrangement, told me I had “the kind of body that causes men psychic pain.” This was not the way I wanted people to perceive me while I was on the clock. Exhibiting to my students was the last thing I would have chosen to do. Read more »