“Blood, sex, and death.” Those were the three things Mr. Fitzpatrick taught us were part of every gothic horror novel. He was the high school english teacher I hopelessly crushed on, and I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes lingered on me when he said the second word. Sex.
I was a senior then, about to graduate. Glued to my seat even in the late, late spring when my classmates were terminally zoned out, focused on graduation, the summer ahead of them, college. But I still had unfinished business here, and today he was wearing a black tie over a light blue button-up and jeans that were just snug enough to drive my imagination wild. When he perched on the edge of his desk reading from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, I let my eyes wander up and down his body, imaging a new use for each part.
He was the new cute teacher this year, the one the girls whispered about between classes. Mr. Fitzpatrick is looking good today. I’d tried to pretend I wasn’t one of them before, it’s not interesting to have the same crush as everyone else. But his charm was undeniable, who else could make the classics so sexy? Every day when he taught his inflection would bounce up and down with passion as he taught us about Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson.