The day I noticed my photography teacher looking at me differently than he did any of the other students at the Academy really had my head in the clouds.

My name is Alexander Blake and I just turned 18 during the summer. It’s my second year at Whitewall Academy for arts and science and I don’t really put a whole lot of effort into anything other than my social life, and in that way I’m really no different from the average boy my age.

I’ve got nearly red hair, bordering on the light brown scale of blond. Strawberry some call it, sand I’ve heard my mother say. My eyes are blue, light and almost gray in color and my face is kind of effeminate and pointy, yet soft. I keep up my appearance, my hair is combed back in a loose pompadour, styled with perfection in mind and only the most expensive hair care products. I’m slightly shorter than some of my peers and my best friend Victoria, who for the sake of providing context was the only one who understood me before I met him.

Mr. Wolfe. A man who was only a few years younger than my father, a legend in the community as he was both a famous photographer and painter as well. His work was plastered all through the hallways and school grounds of Whitewall, displayed with such a profound boldness to every piece, photographic or not. There was something validating about the subjects. Given the fact that the likeness of women was used in each art piece, and I was a young man.

Each portrait was the very epitome of some very fucked up power dynamics, always with a male figure looming, and if not there was sure to be a woman disheveled and helpless looking in some way. Some of the subjects seemed to be in their own world, a drug addled haze in their far away staring eyes. Something very abused looking about each beautiful young woman.

I wanted to be this subject. I wanted to be helpless to him. I knew that from the moment he put his hand on my shoulder and told me, “Alex. I see a lot of greatness in your work.” Praise that was longed for, I needed it and the touch alone made my knees weak.

I had to play it cool, with my reputation on the line. “Yeah? Th-that’s cool, I guess. Thanks for saying that.” I didn’t look up at him, to meet those steely brown eyes of his, to look into that face. It was far too much that he complimented me and I stammered like a tool.

He was hot. The girls hit on him, my best friend particularly tried her luck and very openly too. His hair was chesnut, shaved shorter on the sides, longer at the top and he had grown out his facial hair and kept it trimmed. It wasn’t too bushy or anything. He looked like your typical hipster and even made jokes about it in class, so it was really fucking hard for me. I had no clue I even liked dudes, and I didn’t really know how to go about it, especially not with his hand on my shoulder.

No one fucking touched me affectionately growing up, and my father often used me as a punching bag when he was drunk. He’d get away with it if he weren’t one of the richest men in the North Pacific.

“Are you feeling okay, Alex?” The man’s soft and almost fatherly voice spoke to me directly, and he removed his hand off of me. I almost protested immediately.

“Yeah, teach.” I said calmly. “Just probably need a smoke.”

He smiled at me through his beard that bristled around his lips and eyes that crinkled at the corners. “Alright, so lets take a walk outside then, unless you’d rather not be caught seen with your teacher.” He laughed and I stared at him. He wanted to spend more time together and it was making me both nervous and excited.

“It’s whatever.” I tried to not seem too happy about it and we walked outside of the classroom into the dead hallways, no one was still around really, everyone had other shit to do and I was the only one hanging out with his teacher, it made me feel kind of lame and I lit a cigarette instantly, but so did Mr. Wolfe.

“You smoke?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He replied, “I like to have a cigarette once in a while, maybe after class but it’s not really a habit.”
I looked sideways at him and he didn’t seem to notice as my eyes lingered a bit on his lips around that white cylinder. I smiled and to anyone who has been in the same room as me for more than five minutes, it was rare to be seen. He smiled back.
“You know, Alex. I didn’t think someone as cool as you would want to hang out with an old hipster like me.” I was floored, and almost stopped walking down the side of the road right then and there.

“You’re not as lame as I thought you’d be.” I said to him, making myself seem a lot less interested and eager than I felt. He laughed again and It made me feel better.

We walked and spoke about random stuff, he asked about my dad as most people do, I asked about his career and photography in the magazines and art became a very common topic between us, praising me for my creativity often, but not in a way that made me really suspicious of him. He was very charming and conversation continued to be very fluid. It was even starting to get dark out as we walked along the path back to school and the student dorms which would be closing soon after curfew.

We said our goodnights, brief and a bit awkward. I went to bed and slept for a change, well enough so that I was refreshed for Mr. Wolfe’s class in the morning.
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Next day
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He wasn’t looking at me any more than the other students and it drove me mad. I focused so hard on him, so intensely on how it bothered me that I thought for sure he could feel my rage. It was all I could do to keep from exploding. I know I can be a bastard. I’ve got anger problems and it’s something I am medicated to hell for. But this was too much. There were nearly tears in my eyes from straining, suppressing complete fury that by the time class ended and everyone else filed out I slammed the door.

“What the hell was that Mr. Wolfe?” I wasn’t sure what I was asking him to explain as I shook with anger.
He looked at me without the due confusion I was half expecting him to greet me with, I was expecting to get a hand across my face- because that’s how my problems had always been ‘solved’ by my father, but he just smiled at me. I wish he fucking hadn’t. It made me even more pissed off, and I grabbed hold of a chair nearest to my desk and tossed it. It clattered nosily against some desks and Mr. Wolfe didn’t even flinch.

“Cut that out, Alex.”

I stopped and stared at him in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say to me, after ignoring me all fucking class?” I screamed, my face turning red, my blue eyes trained on his as I lashed out like the apex predator I thought I was.

“Nobody could ever understand what kind of a connection we have.” He said with that soft and irritatingly calm voice of his, he even dared to approach me and I thought I’d try to tear out his throat with my teeth for being brave, for challenging me. But he saw through it all. That scared little boy who just wanted his approval.

“That’s why we’re going to start working together on projects, Alex. Me and you, I think you really have a talent and you’re going to get far with it.”

There it was again. I was furious for reasons I don’t really understand.

“You think you can compliment me and ignore me when you fucking please old man?”

He was quick, grasping my jaw in between his thumb and index and looking down into my face, almost cold in the way he stared and held my gaze. “I think I could do just as I want to with you, Alex.” He said flat, devoid of tone and emotion. It chilled me but in a way I felt like those women in the paintings and photographs. Really damn helpless.

I snapped my head from his grasp and spat on the floor at his loafers. “Whatever. You and my dad think you can do whatever the fuck you want.” I felt like saying, completely disagreeable. Defiant and to my nature, thinking I was a lot cooler than I was. “It’s not going to happen that way, so fuck off you jive ass dick smoker.”

He shook his head. “I’m disappointed.” My heart sank when he said that. I really didn’t mean to piss him off, and I’m always putting my damn foot in my mouth. Temper was a lot of my problem. “Leave.”

“W-wait… Mr. Wolfe I’m s-sorry.” I began my apology. Consequences really never seemed like they were that big of a deal unless I actually had to deal with them. He shook his head again, “I said leave, and I don’t usually repeat myself.”

I sighed. Defeated by my own damn ego and temper. So I grabbed my bag and left the room for lunch.

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