The Guidance Counselor - Chapter III (Patreon)

I’m sitting in her office.

Right now.

In her office.

Her fucking office.

Ms. Johnson flipped through a file folder and hummed to herself. “Sorry, I need a moment. Just came back from lunch.”

I straightened in my seat. Intrusive thoughts of her eating too much broke through my calm. Those lovely gray business pants always looked a bit tight. How much food would it take for that button to pop off? Was that something even possible? Or only in cartoons? I never knew for sure. I wanted to though. I wanted to see it happen so bad.

“So, I know what’s in front of me right now from Mr. Gary but tell me a little bit about yourself. In your own words.” She looked up at me, smiling warmly. “Always good to hear it from oneself.”

I was afraid she might have been too fake, too much like an HR representative just trying to shake hands and find a compromise. The tone in her voice didn’t make me uncomfortable. It wasa gentle, crisp voice. She would have been great these days doing ASMR. That wasn’t a thing back then though. But she would have totally been popular had she realized the money she could have made with that.

That voice compelled me to relax and tell the truth.

Well, not THE truth. But the closest to the truth that I have ever been to an adult.

“I don’t really know what I want to do in life,” I said.

“Nobody does,” she said. “This is my first job and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have many others after this.”

“Well,” I began, “actually no, I take that back. I do. It’s just not…realistic like my dad says.”

Nicole nodded. “You’re into art, right?”

“Yeah. But I’m studying science and it’s cool and everything it’s just…I mean…not really what I want to do in life.”

“And what is it that you DO want to do in life?”

I twitched.

You.

“I want to learn how to animate,” I said. It dropped just like that. I never said it that easily before in front of Mr. Gary.I leaned forward in my chair. “I want to make my own show about this witch, see. She’s like—I can show you.”

I fumbled through my backpack. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid to show someone my work. I knew I couldn’t be laughed at because Ms. Johnson was a professional. She had kept a neutral expression more or less the entire time since I walked in. But Mr. Gary did that too; all good guidance counselors had to, and therapists too. I knew deep down there was something I was denying – I was opening up to someone because they were a woman.

Ms. Johnson looked down at my artwork, fully drawn and colored on white printer paper.

“It’s a show about a clumsy witch named Mimi. Short for Miriam. Miriam Windstride is her name. I figured that was a cool name for a witch.”

Ms. Johnson stared at the artwork, titling her head a little bit. I looked down and realized that I had showed her one of the more lurid portraits that I drew of Mimi the Witch – one in which her bosom was front and center in a tight black dress, her long red hair flowing down both shoulders. I immediately put that one aside and showed her the more tame, “official” artwork.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “That one was a work-in-progress.”

“I see.” Her voice was once more soft-spoken and devoid of any clear expression. I couldn’t tell if she was internally writing this down as a red flag or shrugging it off as a horny teenager’s wet dream. All those worries went away the second she said, “You’re clearly very creative. Where did you come with this character?”

Well, I masturbated to that episode of Sabrina, the Animated Series where Sabrina ate too many cloves of garlic, got bloated, and belched a fuck-ton. Then the idea to create my own witchy character hit me.

I didn’t tell her that of course. But…my response was very close to the truth, so close that a single sentence was omitted and that made me nervous, but also excited to share with Ms. Johnson of all people.

“Okay, this is going to be embarrassing but I was always a fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”

Ms. Johnson shrugged. “What’s so embarrassing about that?”

“Well, I mean, when you’re a boy growing up watching that people think that you…I dunno…they call it ‘gay’ and stuff like that.”

“What made you like Sabrina the Teenage Witch?”

I cringed a little. “I always…er…kind of liked the idea of having a witch as a girlfriend. It just. I dunno. Felt appealing.”

“Interesting. I’ll have you know that many boys your age have told me things that they felt too embarrassed to admit they liked. My Little Pony. Pokémon. Rom coms. Jane Austen.”

“Really? Were any of them named Tom by any chance?”

She gave me a look. “I can’t tell you that now, can I? But it’s completely normal to feel embarrassed to admit feelings for a boy your age, especially in an all-boys school like this. Life can feel…suppressed.”

Suppressed. The way she said that word made me twitch. It resonated with me. I never before then considered myself “suppressed”. I knew I was holding things back, like my fetishes and ever-increasing sexual libido. But “suppressed” was such a strong and adequate word to describe it. Squished. Held down. Shut out. Locked out.

“I see you’re planning to apply to Princeton. Is that the school you want to go to?”

She caught me gazing intospace imaging the possible sounds of her farts. She waited patiently for a response.

“Huh? Sorry. Heh, um, heh . . . Princeton. Yeah, I knew you were going to find that weird. It’s just that my father is obsessed with wishing me there. I know I’m not going to have a chance so I’m not obsessed over it, but I did it anyway for him.”

“I see. So it’s one of those other suggestions that your father made or you.”

“Yeah.”

Ms. Johnson put down my file and leaned forward. She actually smiled at me and said, “Jason, if you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?”

That was a very awkward question when the sole thing on my mind was this woman’s body. I didn’t even know then what to do toher body; I just knew my body felt compelled to be with hers, again like magnets.

“Draw,” I said. It was the first word that vomited out of my mouth.

“Princeton isn’t exactly an art school, you know.”

“Yeah…”

“Have you considered TCNJ? Or the Stevens Institute of Technology? Or maybe—”

“No, my dad would think that’s a waste of time. Especially TCNJ.”

“But this isn’t about your dad, Jason,” Ms. Johnson said chuckling in what I sensed was disbelief. “This is a very big decision and it would be a shame if you went somewhere solely because your parents wanted to mold you into something that you’re not.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, because she was dead right. Spot on. I couldn’t imagine Mr. Gary saying that. All we ever talked about was the daily grind. Then again, we never really got in-depth into the college discussion.

“We have a lot to talk about this year, and not a lot of time,” she said with a sigh. “What other schools have you applied to or are thinking of applying to?”

“Haverford. Swarthmore. Uhhh Villanova.”

She chuckled as she wrote these down. “These all have Princeton vibes. Oh dear. You need to shoot lower. You need some fallbacks. What about Monmouth or Rutgers?”

I nearly recoiled. “Nah. My dad would hate me forever.”

“Would he? He seems to pop up a lot in this conversation. Ishe very strict?”

“Y-yeah.”

“How so?”

“Uhhhh. He has a very old-fashioned way of doing things. Always wants to spearhead things. Yells at me when I make mistakes.”

“What about your mother?”

I gulped. She was problematic in other ways. She once found my drawing of Tifa Lockhart farting buck naked when I was twelve. She called me down to the kitchen and shrieked asking me what could lead me todraw such a thing. She tore it up and burned the pieces like she was exorcising a demon. I tried not to think about it. I hated thinking about it. She always told me to close my eyes when a sex scene was on a movie. Always asked me what I was doing late at night on the computer and whom I was talking to online. She always thought I was lazy in the morning on the weekends because I never came down for breakfast on time. In reality, I was typically awake around 8 AM and spent two hours admiring fetish content, drawing my own lewd artwork, and masturbating to them.

“Yeah,” I said, and my eyes may have been wandering, “she is a bit of the same.”

Ms. Johnson hummed to herself and wrote this down. Something told me she suspected something. All she said was, “When two parents are strict, usually one parent bounces off similarly to the other, but hyper fixates on a different aspect of the child’s life.” When I didn’t say anything, she added, “Must have been frustrating. Was it?”

“Yeah.”

The bell rang. I had been so engrossed in our discussion that it made me jolt. 45 minutes had gone by just like that. Ms. Johnson herself seemed surprised. She sighed heavily and said, “Well, Jason, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can only advise you to keep thinking about what it is you want. Never lose sight of it.”

Like her? Like her ass?

I fumbled for my backpack again shoving my papers inside.

“I’ll get the door for you.”

I side-eyed the blazer she wore – the button looked rather tight around the stomach.  I thought more about how she must have felt after having a big lunch. She opened the door for me and stood there with a pleasant smile. She was about to say something when the unthinkable happened – she emitted a small hiccurp. She patted her chest and said, “Uff. Excuse me. Have a good day, Mr. Gallagher.”

My voice cracked as I replied, “You too.”