The Final Project ((UnHolyPimpHand & RennyStyle))

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Jacob McCall woke up with a hangover that felt like his head would be split into pieces. He groaned out loud as he wrested himself from the tangle of dirty sheets and stumbled over his clothes from last night on the way to the bathroom where he began desperately slurping at tap water from a trough made by cupping his hands.

It had been a good party, Jacob reassured himself as he tried to wrestle with the Excedrin bottle with wet hands. Jacob, like the rest of the brothers in Lambda Kapa Omega were film majors at the prestigious art school Midland Aesthetics Academy. Though they each had their own ideas on what defined a Cinematic Masterpiece—all of them were aspiring filmmakers, which in the eyes of the University made them similar enough to group together into a fraternity.

MAA—being a liberal arts college—reviled the traditional role of the Greek system within the traditional college scope. Hazing and binge drinking—social Darwinism at its very worst, these were not the sort of things that the school wanted to encourage. So, instead of Greek houses based on ethnicities, gender identities or religious backgrounds—all of the fraternities and sororities were based around shared interests and academic focus, hence: the film frat.

“Yo, wake up,” Jacob groaned, kicking the bedpost of Jeremy Smith, his roommate, “we’ve got intro to cinematography in less than an hour. Drink some water and brush your teeth.”

Jacob, a devoted apostle of Takashi Miike, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, was still a little bit disappointed that his crush, Jessica had been a no-show at their big party the night before. He didn’t know much about her—aside from the irrefutable fact that she was absolutely perfect. It had taken some work to muster the courage to invite her in the first place (their first actual conversation), but he supposed it had been a long shot in the first place.

Once Jeremy was moving, Jacob made his way downstairs, sidestepping overturned, red Solo cups and empty liquor bottles on his way to the kitchen where he cleared space to start a pot of coffee. He sighed as he realized that the last coffee filter had been used to steep weed stems in off-brand vodka for something that George Lane (another roommate) called Vodka Chronic. Jacob decided that a paper towel would have to serve the same purpose.

“Wake up, bro. Class in forty,” Jacob jostled George’s shoulder in his spot where he’d passed out on the kitchen table, “you know how Mr. Kaiser feels about tardiness.”


*-*-*

Running about five minutes late as a collective, the boys of LKO were relieved to find their hard-nosed professor Mr. Kaiser running late as well—which was unlike him. Too grateful to be suspicious, the boys took their seats near the back of the class, some of them wondering out loud where their infamous professor could have been.

Jacob was about to suggest some explicit and bloody end for their despised professor when the door at the back of the lecture hall swung outward, revealing Jessica—suddenly and unexpectedly, backlit by the sunlight at the back of the dimly lit hall. Jacob was temporarily dumbstruck, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Jessica, the girl that Jacob had been crushing on for some weeks, was under the arm of his hard-assed, middle-aged professor. Professor Kaiser even helped himself to an unapologetic, open-mouthed kiss before sending her on her way with a playful swat to her statuesque, nearly perfect ass before making his way to the front of the classroom.

“Sorry for the delay,” Mr. Kaiser smirked, organizing his belongings on the surface of his lectern, “looks like we’re all here now. So let’s get started. I trust that you all watched ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ as you were instructed.”

Jacob had done his homework, but he’d never understood Stanley’s passionate and directionless rage until this very moment. He briefly imagined playing out the rape scene with himself as Stanley and Jessica as Blanche.

Of all the people on earth, why did it have to be him?

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

The unbelievable bastard!

Jacob grit his teeth as he was called out by name for staring too long, embarrassing Jessica too for no damn reason at all except as a flex to make himself seem more impressive—which seemed to be the whole reason she was there in the first place. Shouldn’t he have walked her to class, not the other way around? Jacob knew that she had a class on the other side of campus. He’d committed her schedule to memory—not in a creepy way, but just so that he knew when and where to look for her. Keep inviting her to parties that she blew off to fuck Professor Kaiser, apparently.

He was so furious that he felt like he might steam the wrinkles out of his clothes with rage alone. He wanted to punch that arrogant fuck in the ribs and strap him to a chair Clockwork Orange style while he forced him to watch him bring Jessica to climax over and over…

Instead, Jacob was forced to watch the reverse taking place in his mind’s unblinking eye, as he imagined Kaiser’s gross, old body sweating and grunting over that beautiful, bronze goddess—who seemed to be loving it despite every-single-thing about the situation.

“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Professor Kaiser announced in his arrogant, over-enunciated, priggish way that he said everything, “a timeless classic and a paramount achievement in fill’um.”

Professor Kaiser had never said the word “movie,” as far as Jacob could tell—and was quick to correct anyone who made the mistake of referring to one of his favorites as such. Deep Blue Sea was a movie—but Jaws was a “film.” He always said it the same way, too—in that over-pronounced, condescending even when no one disagreed with him, kind of way—“fill’um.” As though he were too proud to accomplish the word in one syllable.

“Yes, Mr. McCall. Good to see that we’ve managed to recapture your attention for the moment.”

Bastard! Unbelievable bastard!

“I’m curious what your thoughts on the ending are, professor. It seemed to me that it could have ended much sooner—after the rape sequence, I really didn’t need all the ‘boo-hoo-poor-Stanley’ shit. I mean, Blanche had an attitude, sure. We, the audience, didn’t like her—but she still didn’t deserve to get raped by some big, drunk gorilla.”

“An interesting interpretation. Was she raped?”

“Um, is that even in question?”

“It takes place off screen.”

“Right, but this was like in the twenties or whatever… they couldn’t even show a toilet bowl on screen.”

“Not quite.”

“Whatever, you get the point. It was a long time ago, they had harsher censorship laws back then.”

“Who can tell me at least one way that Blanche was asking for it?”

Jacob’s voice joined a chorus of exasperated sighs as it became clear what Prof. Kaiser’s individual interpretation of the film was.

*-*-*

Later that evening, Anthony Kaiser was dressed to the nines. He was seldom seen without a collared shirt and sport coat, but for the elaborate dinner he had planned for Jessica and himself, he’d stepped things up quite a bit. His coat was custom tailored from designer patterns and his shirt underneath was borrowed from a tuxedo. He wore a wide pin at the center of his collar in lieu of a tie, in the shape of a golden film reel.

“Kaiser, party of two,” Anthony told the hostess dispassionately, already looking past her to the dining room to assess the quality of the tables, given their position in the room and proximity to the entrance or the kitchen.

“Yes, sir. Mr. Kaiser—here we are. Right on time. We’re just setting your table up now. If you’d like to wait at the bar, I’ll call you over when it’s ready,” the cute hostess smiled, roughly Jessica’s age and beautifully kempt to reflect the high-class ambiance of the restaurant.

“Wait?” Anthony asked dramatically, leaning closer to the hostess aggressively, “it’s eight o’clock. My reservation was for eight. Why should I have to wait?”

“Yes, sir. I’m terribly sorry, it won’t be more than a few minutes. We just need to lay fresh linens and set up new dining sets—”

“Let me speak to a manager,” Anthony sneered, glancing over at Jessica just long enough to wish she was dressed better.

Jessica looked amazing, there was no denying it—but her dress clearly came off the rack and was trying to compensate for not being tailored by simply being tight. As good as she looked, she was probably wearing the cheapest garment in the room and it made Anthony think she looked trashy.

“Not to worry Mr. Kaiser. Your table is ready, please, this way,” the maitre d’ reassured him as he came over in an all-white tuxedo. He was closer to Anthony’s age and also a man, which earned him more respect than he’d given to the hostess.

“We’ll take a bottle of Cheval Blanc ’44,” Anthony informed the maître d’ as he pulled out Jessica’s chair, but then left it there to take his own seat and unfurl a napkin in his lap dramatically.

 

[UnHolyPimpHand]

Anthony made certain to test the wine before accepting it, swirling it in his glass and loudly gurgling the fluid through his front teeth to aerate it. He nodded reluctantly, indicating that the wine lived up to his standards, howsoever barely. He made a slight face at Jessica, who’d taken her glass from the bottle before Anthony could adequately determine its quality. He’d known that she was rough around the edges—but it was more than made up for by her body—at least he’d thought so earlier in the relationship. Increasingly, however, it felt more and more like he was raising her as a child than dating her as a peer.

Jessica’s order to the waiter was just another example of her immature and short-sighted nature.

“And her salad, let’s get that with no parmesan cheese and no croutons. She’s a dancer, she doesn’t need the empty calories,” Anthony amended Jessica’s order to the waiter before making his own, “I’ll have the steak tartare, make sure that the yolk is whole and the whites discarded.”

Anthony handed his menu over his shoulder, his eyes turning back to his date. For as immature and foolish as she was, she was always a treat to look at. He could feel the eyes of others—men his age, comparing their saggy wives to her—women older than her wondering what he did to keep her interested… He loved the attention, even if his feelings for the girl herself were waning.

“You ought to know better. You’re supposed to be keeping in shape,” Anthony reprimanded, taking another loud slurp of his wine, swishing it across his gums before swallowing, “you’re so lucky to have me. You really are.”

Anthony smiled a self-satisfied smile, feeling Jessica sufficiently corrected for her order.

The rest of dinner was tense, but cordial as neither felt comfortable to talk about anything more serious than the wine and trivial events taking place around the school that didn’t directly affect either one of them.

The steak was slightly tougher than Anthony would have preferred and the robin’s egg that topped his raw beef entrée still had too much of the egg white still clinging to the yolk—but it was tolerable, which is a win against Anthony’s standards. As they finished, Anthony began to anticipate what was to come next.

“Well, should we have dessert—or should we go back to my place for something sweet?”

It was rhetorical, of course. Jessica couldn’t have dessert during performance season.