The Division of Power according to the Constitution

The man up in the pulpit embodied what a true intellectual looked like in Ana's mind. He did so because of his undoubtable ability in rhetoric, how he conveyed perfectly his ideas as if there was no distance between his mind and his lips and how he did it with immense ease. The Professor was hardly a decade older than her, he went to the same college as she did not that many years ago, and sometimes spoke of certain professors still with the reverence only a student would have. His face was nearly unwrinkled, not handsome and yet charming, full of a vivacity that Ana was sure was the same that fueled his speeches. It was not similarity of values that attracted her to his intellect, but the confidence and the seemingly outstanding capacity of reasoning he had; even in ideas she disagreed with she found interest, if he was the one to propose them. The Professor was, in perhaps a strange way, what she wanted to be.

He spoke of the role of the Administration according to the Constitution and ignored the chair of the pulpit, which had stayed untouched since the beginning of the class, prefering to roam back and forth casually as if they were having a conversation - him and each of the students. Then something caught his eye. The screen of his phone lit up on top of his desk and he stopped his pacing, grabbed the phone and, after a second, excused himself.

"I gotta take this," He said.

Ana sighed, looked around the classroom for the first time since the Professor began to speak.

"Have you got a crush or what?" Ana heard a chuckle by her side. It was Lina. She wasn't really Ana's friend, but she pertained to that peculiar group of people that, by either lack of tact or some forced wit, thought it was daring in an endearing way to take a little bit more liberty than one allowed her. Lina liked to show Ana that she knew a lot about everyone, that she obtained some sort of secret knowledge as an insider in the social world of the university. Ana glanced at her and stretched her lips over her teeth upon the sight of her classmate crossing her slender legs and leaning in, as if Ana was going to answer her prying with a confession.

"No, I just like his class."

"I can't see him the same way now. Y'know, after I heard he's a swinger." She whispered. "He and Matilda, they go to those key parties and do that whole pinnaple thing".

Matilda was his girlfriend, another professor. Ana knew her from the hallways, a stubby woman that walked always like she had something urgent to do.

"Oh." Ana said. Lina didn't find the lack of response discouraging.

"Yeah. Anyway, after the picture, I don't doubt it. Have you seen it?"

Lina seemed to read a negative answer in Ana's face and pulled her phone out of her bag. She didn't have to browse much before secretively sliding it to Ana. The screen showed an image of the stubby professor, topless, in what seemed to be a fitting room. She looked pretty and relaxed, whatever urgent matter she hurried to in the hallways must've been resolved, and she held her camera to the mirror, proudly taking the photo. Behind her was the Professor, significantly taller, grabbing her breasts and smiling at the camera. He cupped them greedily, with some sense of ownership, and his face showed a daring satisfaction of one who's truly comfortable.

"Jesus, Lina." Ana looked away, for the first time actually showing annoyance towards her classmate's behavior. "I didn't need to see that."

Lina squinted her eyes, her playful look still there but mixed with something else.

"I was just trying to fill you in, sheesh."

She turned the other way, annoyed. Ana could swear she heard Lina muttering 'holier than thou bitch' and a warmth, of shame or annoyance, rose to her face. Ana looked down at her hands - they looked so far away-, her mind weirdly bothered.

Shortly after, the professor returned. His presence silenced the room and he easily and hastily picked up his train of thought, again pacing back and forth, as if he was winding up his argument with movement. Ana switched her weight on the chair, crossed her legs in discomfort. She felt a quaint feeling she had felt a handful of times before. Corporeity had invaded reason, his ability was irretrievably tainted by the inescapable sin of his humanity. The face of that man, serious, scholarly, gave way to a lewd grin of satisfaction in Ana's mind. I'm a man, I'm a man, said his voice, she saw the buldge on his pants while he walked, she saw the fingers on his gesturing hand sinking into the soft, warm flesh of that smiling woman, she took in the slow shift of brain into flesh and she watched that metamorphosis with horror. He must know that the picture is out there, he must know we all have seen it, and yet look how he paces so confidently, she thought, not sure if with admiration or disapproval.

Ana wasn't a prude, no, she liked to consider herself quite accepting, actually. She prouded herself of talking of taboo topics without restraint in her tongue or in her mind, she despised how sexual jargon still made so many giggle like middleschoolers. That couple of academics had been the victim of a leaked picture, or perhaps they leaked it themselves and there was no victim in the story, what would be the matter with that, they're both adults and they teach adults, perhaps it wasn't the most adequate thing to do but they had the right to do it, you never know what people get their kicks out of. And yet she still had that queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It wasn't of intrusion, as if she had seen something she wasn't meant to see. It was deeper than that, sillier than that. What bothered her was that that scenario of intimacy happened on the first place, as if she had a dogma that was just deadly struck by that Professor's hands in his girlfriend's breasts.

He rambled still about the Constitution, but Ana didn't pay attention to his words. He paced from one side of the pulpit to the other, a man and a mind, two grabbing hands, a sharp tongue that spoke and licked with equal passion. I'm a man, I'm a man, it said, and it said it calmingly, accepting, freeingly. She looked down to her own hands again. She noticed how far away they seemed from her, galaxies away, even though they rested on her thighs. Then, lifting her eyes to the Professor, she suddenly envied the fact that, for him, the distance between his mind and his hands must've been just the length of his arms.