Don't Tell Me Who to Love

“Mr. Hamlet, I’m only going to ask you this once and you’d better give me a meaningful answer…What the hell were you thinking when you started this relationship with Miss Peters?” College Principal Rich Lucas’s hands formed a pyramid on his desk as he posed the question to Keith Hamlet. Principal Lucas’s glasses-wearing eyes burned into Keith’s soul like a Molotov cocktail, yet the math teacher and his student Vikki Peters sat across from him in his office hand-in-hand like nothing was wrong.

“Normally, that would qualify as a rhetorical question,” said Keith as he straightened his tie and argyle sweater vest, seemingly the perfect picture of calmness. “But if you really want me to take it seriously, then here’s my answer. I was thinking the exact same thing when any other man falls in love with a woman. I pursued a relationship with Vikki here because she was the one for me, end of story. She’s a consenting adult, I’m a consenting adult, so I really don’t see what the problem is, Principal Lucas. In other words…” Keith leaned in closer and tensely whispered, “Don’t tell me who to love.”

Rich leaned his wrinkly face closer and said, “I’m not telling you who to love. I’m telling you to use some common sense. You took this job as a math teacher knowing full well what kind of influence you’d have over your own students. It’s not a matter of non-existent statutory rape. It’s a conflict of interest. You could very well show favoritism to Miss Peters knowing other students would suffer.”

“If you actually bothered to look at her grades,” said Keith. “You’d know that math is a subject she struggles with. She gets no favoritism from me just because we’re dating. She certainly didn’t date me because she’d thought she’d have an advantage.”

“I’d love nothing more than to believe that,” said Rich as he leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers behind his bald head. “But you knew the rules long before you took this job. This school forbids teacher-student relationships no matter what the age difference is. You broke the rules and now you’re about to lose your job because of it. I’m sorry, Mr. Hamlet, but I have no choice but to…”

“Wait!” shouted Vikki while holding her bare arm up in defense. Her long brown hair and lovely figure in the frilly blue dress she wore already made her hard to resist, but Keith’s heart beat faster upon watching his love come to his defense. She was no damsel despite what Rich thought; she was a badass metal armor-wearing knight. “You do this to him, Mr. Lucas. This job is all that he has left!” Not the best argument ever made, but the spirited delivery was what counted the most.

Rich chuckled with his mouth closed and said, “You’re right, Miss Peters. It is all he has left…aside from his wife, his children, a house, a dog, a car…whatever will he do without a lovely lady such as yourself?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you this, because quite frankly it’s none of your goddamn business,” said Keith. “But my wife divorced me long before I started dating Vikki. I know you can’t relate to something as complex as having a heart, Mr. Lucas, but hear me out. Being divorced is bad enough with the alimony payments and the bitter words exchanged in a courtroom. But the loneliness, the emptiness I felt afterwards, THAT was what made me lose focus of my job. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat…but Vikki took my pain away. I’ve been doing great up until the point where you called the two of us to your office, Mr. Lucas.”

A tense silence was shared between all three occupants of the room before Rich Lucas burst into mocking laughter and slapped his desk with the palm of his hand. When asked what was so fucking hilarious, he said, “Jesus, Keith, you should have been a poet instead of a math teacher! That was pure gold! Maybe when I fire your ass, you can get a career writing songs for sour-faced rock bands!”

The horse laughter came to a quick end when Vikki shot up and barked, “Enough!” Rich peaked up at her like he was taking her more seriously than when she gave the weak defense earlier. “This is why I hate going to school,” she sobbed. “Aside from the stupid classes, you’ve also got ridiculous rules that don’t mean shit in the real world! We’re not doing any harm to each other or the other students by being together! Keith says I took his pain away? Well, he took mine away too! If he hadn’t come to me when he did, I’d probably be dead with a bloody wrist somewhere!”

Rich held his hands up defensively and said, “Calm down, Miss Peters. Have a seat.” After she complied with both of those requests, Rich leaned in closer and said, “I certainly didn’t mean anything by what I just said to your…boyfriend, for lack of a better term. I was just…you know…Are you sure you don’t want to major in poetry too, Miss Peters?” The obnoxious hee-haws and desk slapping continued, much to the tearful dismay of Vikki and the teeth grinding rage of Keith.

“Laugh all you want, you smelly little prick!” belted Keith as he stood up and pointed his index finger at his accuser.

The donkey gut-busting was replaced with a serious stare into Keith’s crumbling soul. “What did you call me, Mr. Hamlet? I’d choose my words carefully if I were you. You’re not only facing termination, but you’re also in danger of being blackballed from the educational community as a whole. No college is going to want a sexual predator on their campus. Say what you will about the Brock Turners of the world, but at least he never pretended to be a romantic lover boy like you, Mr. Hamlet!”

Keith’s dynamite veins pulsated throughout his body. His fists clenched and turned his knuckles bright white. His muscles tightened underneath his dress shirt and sweater vest. Visions of him punching the shit out of Rich Lucas danced in his head like wild flames. Oh, how he would have loved to turn this disgusting human being’s face into slime and sand. He was close to carrying out his fantasy when he flipped over Rich’s desk and caused him to scatter backwards into the corner while Vikki barricaded Keith with her arms.

Pointing his index finger like a colt forty-five ready to blow, Keith shouted, “I am sick and tired of you judging me like a common criminal! Who’s going to take YOUR job for saying stupid shit like that?! Who’s going to put YOU on the fucking chopping block?! If you want to take my job, go ahead and take it, but if I fucking fall, you’re going down with me!” Vikki managed to push Keith back a little further to calm him down slightly.

The loving gesture did nothing to mask the massive flood of saliva Rich Lucas gulped nor the quaking in his tan slacks-wearing legs. With a shivery voice, he said, “Save your empty threats, Mr. Hamlet. You can’t do a damn thing to me or my credibility.”

Vikki sat Keith down in his chair and rubbed his shoulders and head in a further attempt to calm him down. While she achieved that small goal, Keith’s rage still caused Rich’s balls to shrink even in silent mode. “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in divorce court, it’s that the truth doesn’t mean shit. Men will try to screw women and women will try to screw men. The winner of any court case isn’t about who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s about who has the most believable pile of happy horseshit. I’m not necessarily saying I’m going to lie in court to get one over on you. I’m just saying…my shit smells like a my girlfriend’s cologne while yours smells like a fucking cow pasture. I’ve plead my case to you and got nothing. What’ll happen when I plead my case to a state judge?”

Still convulsing in the corner, Rich threw his glasses to the floor and said, “You’re fired, Keith. I’ve heard all I want to hear from you and your mistress. Just do me a favor, Mr. Hamlet: when you show up in court, try not to flip over any tables like you did in my office. You see…I too know what it’s like to lose someone I love. I’ve been alive a long time and had six marriages. The judge isn’t going to like your anger. You’d better learn how to keep that under control without your woman present. But then again…you millennials aren’t exactly known for your wisdom!”

A fiery aura radiated off of Keith Hamlet and he didn’t give two shits if he was proving Rich Lucas right. The now former math teacher could feel his own blood singeing his skin like a vat of acid. His exploding heart could have been powerful enough to level Hiro-fucking-shima all over again. Every time Keith closed his eyes in an attempt to quell this anger, his eyelids felt like little skillets burning breakfast as well as the whole house. Anything Keith Hamlet could have done in this moment would have jeopardized his chances of keeping his teaching license. And then…

“So not only are you an asshole in general,” sobbed Vikki. “But you’re also a flaming ageist. You’re a bitter old man in a school full of young students. I bet that just eats you up inside. That probably won’t look good in the eyes of an impartial judge. You know, somebody who can apparently be more impartial than my boyfriend here!”

Rich Lucas ran out of verbal ammunition as evidenced by his quivering lips and slurred speech. Keith, on the other hand, had plenty to say if only through his actions. He wiped away Vikki’s tears with his thumb and shared a lengthy hug with her in front of a disgusted, yet defeated Principal Lucas. “Don’t worry, Vikki,” said Keith. “This asshole can take away a lot of things from us…but we’re not going down without firing the first shot. Look at him, he’s pathetic! He knows he’ll lose miserably, but he’s too jittery to put his words together and admit it!”

“I love you, Keith,” whispered Vikki.

“I love you too, Vikki.” The romantic couple shared a gentle tongue kiss in front of Rich, who turned his face into the corner in a failed attempt to avert his “innocent” eyes.