My Yoga Teacher, Pt. 1

Sunday the 5th, 1:41 pm

"Something wrong?"

"Uh, no," he responds, not knowing what else to say. "Not ... really."

Diane chuckles at his lack of certainty. "You sure?" They both hold sphinx pose--torsos lifted, hips pressed down, face to face. "You look like something's bothering you."

"It's ... nothing."

"Don't give me 'nothing'," she says, her voice playful. "I know you're new to yoga. Don't want you getting hurt your first week."

"I'm good," Evan murmurs. "It's just something, uh, kinda weird, I guess."

"Oh?" her tone softening into curiosity. She pushes herself up to all fours, a loose strand of dirty blonde hair falling over her face. "Weird how?"

He rolls to one side, avoiding her eyes, wishing he had said less. "Uh, like..." He moves his hands vaguely.

"Where is it?" she asks, wrinkling her nose.

"Um." He looks down and gives a nervous laugh.

Her brow furrows. "Did you strain something? Like your hip flexor, or inner thigh?"

He hesitates. "No..."

She studies him for a moment. "Is it muscular," she asks carefully, "or something more ... delicate?"

He hesitates too long. Her eyes narrow slightly with understanding.

"Testicles?" she asks.

He starts at the mention. "No."

"Okay," she says slowly, reading him. "Are we talking," she pauses and tilts her head with an innocent inquisitiveness. "Your penis?"

Evan freezes, his face flushing. He doesn't believe he's ever heard a woman say that word out loud.

"It is, huh."

He gives a small nod, eyes fixed on the mat.

"What kind of pain is it?"

"It's ... it's not really pain," he mumbles. "Just irritated, I guess."

"Irritated how?"

He hesitates again. "The skin."

"Okay," Diane nods thoughtfully. She folds her bare legs in front of him, resting her hands on her knees. "So what does it look like?"

"Wha-what do you mean?" he says, rattled.

"I mean," she stifles a laugh. "What does the irritation look like?"

"Oh," he says. "It's kinda ... red."

"Is it splotchy, or just red?"

"What's 'splotchy'?" he asks.

She giggles breezily. "Like a rash, or an infection," she says. "Like jock itch."

He laughs nervously again. "No ... no, it's, I mean, I don't think it is..."

Her smile fades, the teasing gone, replaced by genuine concern. "You sure about that?" she says. "Because if it's fungal, I should probably know. We use the same shower ... hell, my students use that shower."

The shower sat in the shared space outside the bathroom. A steel head, ringed by a green plastic curtain, hung from the ceiling, spitting water straight into an open drain, making Evan think the yoga studio might once have been a laboratory or a slaughterhouse.

"Oh," he says stupidly.

She put a thumb to her lower lip, eyebrows knitted. "You want me to check it out for you?"

Evan flinches. "What? No."

She grimaces, not unkindly, and exhales slowly. "I think maybe I should see."

Evan's tongue catches in his throat. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out.

Diane smiles sympathetically. "Hey," she says low, a hand on his forearm. "It's okay. I know I'm not a doctor, but I've studied a lot about healing. I can at least tell you if it looks infected. Wereallydon't want that."

"It's not infected," he manages.

"How can you be so sure?" she replies, eyebrow cocked.

"I--I mean..." he trails off. The blush creeps up his neck, dread unfurling in his gut, like watching the slow-motion inevitability of a car wreck he can't prevent.

"You what?" she asks softly.

"I..." He falters, unable to finish.

"Are you," her voice drops, tenderly. "Embarrassed?"

He nods.

"Aw," she says, her expression melting into pure affection as she takes his arm. "Don't be ... y'know, part of yoga is about being comfortable with your body. I mean, we all gotta unlearn the negativity we've been taught about it ... Our culture is really so repressed."

"I--I dunno."

"It'll just be a peek," she says with an easy smile that melts him. He swallows hard, still red-faced.

"Evan, listen. I'm ... twice your age."

He finally meets her eyes. She's leaning in, close to him, as he lies on the yoga mat--her shoulder-length hair sticking to the back of her neck, the golden skin of her arms and legs, her green eyes quick and bright above a magnetic smile, lined gracefully by time. She doesn't look twice his age.

He nods again, weakly.

Diane pinches his chin. "Think of me like a nurse. Quick, clinical, done. Then you can stop worrying."

Evan sighs. "Okay," he says quietly. "Just to make sure it's not infected."

He knows it's not an infection. He knows exactly what it is.Why am I doing this?he asks himself.

"Uh-huh!" she says eagerly. "How 'bout you stand for me?"

Her energy unnerves him. He gets up anyway and stares at the ceiling. She crouches near him, moving her lamp closer, adjusting the light.

"All right," Diane says, resting on her knees. "Let's see."

She waits for him to move, but he's still looking up, seemingly afraid to. She smiles to herself and takes hold of the bottoms of his workout shorts. She feels him tense up.

"It's okay," she says softly. "Just relax." She tugs the shorts down by the leg openings and lets them drop to his feet. He remains still, eyes up, standing in her studio in his tight white underwear. For a moment, she looks up at him.

Her fingers slip inside his waistband, their warmth on his skin. He feels the waistband lift, open from the front, and slide down his legs.

Her eyes brighten. "Hm," she pertly says, nodding. She looks at his face, then back down.

A sickness churns in his stomach, spreading downward. He feels hollow and shamefully aroused.

"So," she begins. "I gotta ... touch it, okay?"

Evan nods, still looking up. Feeling her knuckles brush against his scrotum as her fingers wrap around him, he is acutely aware that no one has ever touched him like this before.

"Well," she starts slowly, "I see the redness." She moves her head around, scrutinizing it from all angles. She lifts his penis, looking underneath. "The good news is it doesn't look infected."

"Okay," he says hoarsely.

"Know what this looks like to me?" she says, still studying the reddened area.

He glances down, unsure whether to answer. Her sweet, almost caring expression feels strangely at odds with his dick next to her face. He shakes his head.

"Friction burn," she says, straightening slightly. At the words, his ears begin to tingle.

"Huh?" he says dumbly.

"Rubbed raw," she says, letting go of him. He detects a faint smile. "Sorry ... but that's what it is, isn't it?"

He says nothing, inwardly cursing himself for letting things degenerate into this entirely avoidable humiliation. Of course he'd known. But her words, those shimmering eyes, the light touch of her hand--all of it had unraveled him, pulling him past the point where choice felt possible; even now, her smile hits like a surge, provoking something in him he can't articulate, eliciting in him a familiar and horrifying sensation.

It begins with a small, involuntary stir that draws both their eyes, as if yanked by a string, followed by a steady swelling--the hue of the skin changing from soft pink to purple, the tissue stretching, the shaft engorging and stiffening until it stands on its own, curling toward him. They both watch in silence. It takes only a few seconds, but the silence makes it feel unending.

For all her composure, a trace of color rises in Diane's cheeks, lips pressing together, her eyelids fluttering. Evan turns a deeper shade of red, forcing himself to look up again.

"Hey, it's all right," she soothes him, placing her hands on his thighs. He shakes his head.

"Listen," she says, looking up. She slides her hands to the backs of his legs. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. I promise you, at your age, it's perfectly normal."

He nods out of habit, his jaw clenched.

"All right, that should do it for now," she says, patting his legs. "You know what? I've got something for you ... hang tight, I'll be right back." She gets up, trotting in the direction of the bathroom.

Evan turns his head toward the mirrored wall. A lanky eighteen-year-old with a bad haircut stares back: five feet eight inches tall, built of bones and nerves; skin pale, arms and legs thin; shorts and underwear bunched around his ankles, body hairless except for the black, unkempt bush encircling his raging hard-on, which, incidentally, he just exposed to his hot landlady, who had, in so many words, outed him as a literal jerkoff.

He takes hold of his erection and moves it around, checking it in the mirror, trying to see it as she must have, hoping it isn't as bad as it seems.This is about as low as it gets, he thinks to himself.

"Oh!" Diane blurts as she steps back around the corner, holding a small glass jar. Her mouth falls open, more in surprise than alarm, and a short laugh escapes before she can stop it.

"Um ... you can pull your pants up now," she says, in such a way that makes him realize humiliation has no bottom. He awkwardly pulls up his shorts, futilely trying to hide his erection in his waistband without irritating it further.

"Tea-tree oil salve," she says, handing it to him. "Twice a day should do it. It may sting a little, but it'll help." He takes it without meeting her eyes.

"We'll skip the rest of the session for today," she adds, her voice lighter now. "Pick back up tomorrow, yeah?"

He nods.

"Hey," she says. He lifts his eyes to her. She gives him a small smile. "Don't be so hard on yourself."

He nods sullenly. "Think I'm gonna go ... maybe study at the library."

"Sounds like a good idea," she says, smiling. "I'm gonna take a shower."

He retreats to his corner of the loft, the small space Diane had fashioned for him beside the shower: a twin bed tucked behind a divider and a bookcase, its passage covered by a tie-dye sheet with Ganesha on it, meant to pass for a door. He drops onto the bed and buries his face in the pillow. From the other side of the partition, he hears the water start to run. He lifts his head.

***

Monday the 6th, 4:07 am

The sound of grunting jolts Evan's eyes wide open. The first time it happened, he thought it was part of a dream, until another grunt came, and another. A week into living there, it now functions as his alarm clock. He blinks in the dark, then notices the entry points of light coming from the studio, the inevitable gaps and slits in that child's fort of a room she'd rigged together.

He rolls onto his stomach and peers through the narrow crack of the divider. Candlelight glows softly in the corner of the studio, doubling in the mirror, sending a pale seam of light across the floorboards. Diane is centered on her mat, folded into downward dog, the light from behind her forming a hazy silhouette of her very naked body.

When he came to see the place, Evan was just looking for an affordable apartment off-campus. But Diane opened the door in olive-green yoga pants and a cropped white tank top, her skin glistening from practice. Though a bit shorter than he was, her upright posture made her seem taller. Her chest was ample but proportional, her nipples hinted at through the fabric. She was fit, but not chiseled--slender arms, defined waist, strong hips and legs. Her face, which appeared slightly older than her body suggested, was softly triangular with a small, pixie-ish nose, freckled cheeks, and lips that lifted easily into a smile.

"Hi!" she greeted him brightly. "You the college guy?"

Did she just call me a 'guy'?he thought. He was charmed immediately.

She was a lively and enchanting host, twirling around the open studio, imagining aloud the space they would create together. He couldn't see it, but she assured him it would be amazing.

"That's what this place needs!" she would say, grasping his hands with joy. "Youthful, masculine energy!" He saw her as a forty-something schoolgirl--part cool aunt, part ageless ingénue. An approachable version of the girls who never talk to him.

There were other apartments in his budget range, with arguably better arrangements, but how could he say no toher? She even threw in free yoga classes to sweeten the deal.

Diane had arranged his sleeping area with a kind of theatrical care, to create for them both the semblance of privacy; it was a fiction, however. An ardent minimalist, she slept in a Murphy bed that folded out from the far wall of the studio. The only room with an actual door was the toilet. And Diane--a handsome woman with the lithe body of one who had spent half her life teaching yoga and a hippie's fondness for loose clothing and lax changing habits--would often wander around in varying states of undress, driving his virginal sensibility wild.

And every morning, the sounds came again--soft grunts, deep breaths, and the creak of floorboards--drawing him to that same narrow slit of light.

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness as she lifts her right leg into three-legged dog. Today she wears nothing but a thong, the purple of it standing out in the candlelight. Her left hamstring tightens but doesn't strain; her right leg extends, the line from hip to heel unbroken, one buttock flexed, the other stretched smooth, her hips tilting open.

Her taut breasts seem to defy gravity, suspended in a slow, gentle sway, as her dirty-blonde hair drapes down, brushing the mat near her fingers. Her shoulders remain open and relaxed, framing the long plane of her back that narrows into toned arms, which in turn frame her serene-looking face.

Her extended leg falls to the other side of her body, her chest open, one arm lifted, the light tracing the curve of her ribs as she holds the pose, glancing off the side of her face as she breathes--eyes and lips closed, nostrils flaring, a focused crease between her eyebrows. Her nipples point to the ceiling, her knees right at him. Her glutes tighten and her smooth thighs open, revealing a puffy swell in between them.

Evan shifts against the sheets, restlessly grinding into his flimsy mattress in rough, uneven thrusts, haltingly, to keep the bed from squeaking. He knows his foreskin is dry and cracked, but this is the most intensely erotic thing that has ever happened to him, an evil gift from the gods, and he finds it impossible to stop.

She flips back into downward dog, ass up. He reaches down into his shorts, tugging furiously. She goes through hervinyasa-- push-up, hips down, downward dog, hand walk, forward fold.

He covers his mouth.

She rises into Mountain, the standing pose. Her back is toward him, her front reflected in the mirror. Her arms rest at her sides, thighs drawn, calves firm. From behind, he sees her lengthen, the muscles of her back shifting once, then settling; her chest lifts and falls. Sweat gathers at her forehead and drips down in large beads, running down her neck and breasts, her abdomen and legs, catching the light like oil. The front of her underwear is soaked; the thong all but invisible. She stands impossibly still.

She opens her eyes, her pupils wide and gleaming. In the mirror, they seem to meet his. His throat tightens, his pulse hammering. He tells himself she can't possibly see him, but the longer she holds, the less certain he becomes. Cold fear creeps up his face, while pressure builds in his beleaguered cock.

Then, without a hint of acknowledgment, Diane exhales and relaxes. She slides her thumbs under her waistband and bends forward, hinging at the hips, her fleshy folds emerging to view between the shadows of her thighs; she stands and saunters over to the shower, opening the water.

Evan shuts his eyes, rubbing himself with fury. He can still see her pussy in his mind's eye. The sensation in him rises and rises, at last escaping into a bittersweet orgasm, blowing a heroic load into his shorts. He smothers himself with his pillow, silencing the sounds of ecstasy and pain.

Saturday the 11th, 8:30 am

"Good morning!"

"Mm?"

"Happy Saturday," she says sunnily. "You awake?"

Confused, he stirs, blinking toward her voice. Diane sits on the corner of his bed, a loose white T-shirt clinging to her, falling to mid-thigh, her legs bare beneath it.

The thin cotton bedsheet covers his left leg and his groin, barely, as he sleeps in the nude. He pulls at it, but with her weight on it, it won't go any higher. He slides down a little, hoping it hides his morning erection.

"Uh, yeah."

"How're you feeling?"

"I'm good," he says, then gives a sleepy laugh. "A little sore."

She smiles. "That'll pass. The first month of yoga is always the worst."

"Yeah, I guess," he mumbles.

"So ... how's your, uh...?" she asks in a soft voice, polite more than shy, her smile disarming.

It takes a moment to register. "Oh," he says. "Better, yeah."

She nods, her expression neutral. "You think the salve is helping?"

"Uh, yeah, definitely."

"That's good," she says fondly. She lifts her eyebrows with mild concern. "Mind if I check?"

He suddenly feels wide awake.

"W-what for?"

"I wanna see if the salve is working. And I should make sure the skin hasn't opened up ... It can still get infected."

She reaches out and gives his calf an affectionate shake.

"Come on now," she says, smiling as she sidles up beside him, drawing one knee beneath her. She sits back on her foot, hiking the shirt high enough to flash the same purple underwear from Monday's early morning yoga. "It'll be just like before."

Instinctively, he covers himself with his hands over the sheet, fear blanching his face. "Not today ... I don't really feel like it."

She laughs gently. "How come?"

"I--I don't want to, is all."

"Oh, honey," she says, fingers touching her lips to hide a smile, her brows lifting and creasing like she's seen a puppy. "I know it's the morning, and, well ... these sheets don't hide much."

He can't believe she said that. His cheeks burn hotter.

"I think I can handle it," she finishes, shaking his leg again. "Didn't kill me last time."

"No," he says. "Not now."

"Okay," she starts. "But..."

"I saidno."

Diane sighs, her shoulders falling. "Evan, can I tell you something?"

He nods.

"I ... already checked," she says, disappointedly.

Her words finally reach his brain. "Youwhat?"

She nods softly. "Just now, while you were sleeping."

He can't speak. His throat tightens, his eyes widening.

"Oh, sweetheart," she says, wincing. "It looks so ... it's worse than before."

"W-what made you think you could..."

"Professional curiosity, I guess," she says sheepishly. "Like a nurse, right?"

"You're not a nurse!" he yells, tears welling. "You-you had no right!"

"Hey," she says firmly, taking his hands by the wrists. "I understand how you feel, I really do ... but believe me when I say I'm doing this because I want to help you."

She squeezes his wrists. "Forget about me, you're not being honest with yourself," she continues as her voice steadies. "If I hadn't checked, you'd still be pretending nothing's wrong, letting it get worse until something serious happens."

He says nothing.

"I feel like ... you're my responsibility now ... I really care about you, Evan!" Her voice catches, enough to sound sincere.

He opens his mouth and breathes a little. No one has ever said that to him.

"But ... I'm ... so..." he gets out.

"I know," she says reassuringly, easing his hands to his sides. "It's all right."

"Please," he begs. "Don't."

"Let me help you," she says again, quieter now, her face close. "That's all I want." She takes the top of the sheet, slowly with both hands, her fingers grazing his lower abdomen. She maintains eye contact, giving him every chance to stop her. He does not.