Community: Women's Studies (Patreon)

Becoming an admissions officer at Greendale was the best decision Annie Edison had ever made. It wasn’t that she wanted to get people to go to Greendale, exactly, but after years of being frustrated by the byzantine and incomprehensible teaching methods in class after class—now she could sit in on courses, have the power to chide the teachers for being particularly bizarre, and at least warn potential applicants of what they were in for.

For her first job, she’d picked something nice and simple: Women’s Studies. As a freshman, she’d considered it a pretty unnecessary course. She was a woman, after all. What’d she need to learn about womanhood? But, according to her files, Britta was enrolled there. Annie hadn’t gotten to spend much time with Britta lately, the woman being busy with some new project of hers, maybe even a boyfriend; she was playing her cards close to her chest. But in Women’s Studies, Annie could take it easy, hang out with her friend, and even draw a bit of a salary.

So she explained to Britta—in a nervy, stammering way—when she walked into the classroom before the next course and Britta demanded to know what she was doing there.

Britta was the only other person there. Annie knew there was a teacher, of course… the file had even shown that Britta was the only student enrolled… but Annie thought that was a mistake with the paperwork, something for her to fix. It was weird for there to be a class with only one student; maybe not by Greendale standards, but Annie liked to think they had enough of a toehold in the real world to still consider this kind of thing… weird.

“What are you doing here, Annie?” Britta hissed out, keeping her voice low.

“I told you! I’m auditing the class! What’s the big deal? Can’t the professor handle two students at once?”

“It’s not that kind of class!” Britta blushed deeply. “Fine, fine, just… try and stay quiet. I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“He?” On file, the professor’s name was Marion Kalmer. Annie supposed that could be a guy’s name, but she wondered what a man was doing teaching Women’s Studies?

She guessed it was another Greendale thing. At least he wasn’t Chang.

The door swung open. Britta seemed to come to attention, sitting starkly upright in her chair. Annie curiously regarded the man who swept in, shutting the door behind him, then removing his jacket as he went to the teacher’s desk.

He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with a craggy face. His nose had been broken some time ago and healed with a crook in it. His hair was dark, cut brutally close to his skull, but the expression he wore was friendly enough.

He nodded at Britta, then regarded Annie curiously. “Ms. Perry, glad you could make it on time. And who’s this now?”

“Annie Edison,” she reported with pop. “I’m the new admissions officer at Greendale. I’ll be sitting in on your class, you know, getting an idea of your typical course, so I can properly present your teaching to new students.”

“I don’t particularly need new students. Britta’s enough of a handful, as I’m sure you know. She’s mentioned you a couple of times. Britta, what was your problem with Annie again?”

Annie’s eyes swiveled from Kalmer to Britta, who was coloring, her eyes furtive. “Britta doesn’t have a problem with me—we’re best friends!”

“Britta, be honest,” Kalmer said.

Britta bit her lip. “I don’t like that Annie is younger than me and has her whole life ahead of her and hasn’t made the mistakes I’ve made yet. She has much more potential than me and I resent her for it.”

“Britta!” Annie gasped. She’d had no idea Britta had been harboring some sort of grudge.

“And?” Kalmer prompted.

“And I don’t like that her boobs are bigger than mine.”

Kalmer nodded. “That was good, but I think we could be a little more accurate, especially since Annie is here and could get the wrong idea. Do you really not like the size of Annie’s breasts?”

“Nooo,” Britta sighed. “I like what… great tits she has. They look great. I wish my own were more like hers.”

Kalmer nodded—a deeper, firmer motion than before. “Very good, Britta. So you don’t resent Annie for her cup size, you just wish your own were larger. Have you considered surgery?”

“Mr. Kalmer!” Annie gasped.

Kalmer held up a finger, silencing her as Britta spoke: “No, I… my breasts are great. You… People really like when I wear low-cut tops and… touching them, playing with them. I like it too.” Her blush turned into a smile. “Especially when a guy maybe knows what he’s doing…”

Kalmer lowered his hand. “So you like the way men look at you when you’re displaying cleavage?”

Britta nodded quietly.

“Do you think you should show cleavage more often?”

Britta bit the inside of her cheek. She glanced at Annie before speaking. “Well, there’s this one guy I want to see my body. I really like when he looks at my body. But other people…” She shook her head. “I suppose I’d like if they looked at me like Annie, but I also like only having… this guy… looking at me.”

Kalmer undid the top few buttons on his work shirt. Under it his chest was bare, thickly matted with hair. His exposed flesh—from his forearms to his open collar—looked more like an animal’s than a man’s.

“Have you considered sending this man nudes?”

“Mr. Kalmer!” Annie squeaked.

Britta shushed her. There was a fine sheen of sweat caressing her pink face. “I… I hadn’t… I thought that if someone saw me naked… well, if I’m there, then I know… that… you know…”

“That you’re arousing him?” Kalmer prompted.

“Yeah. But if it’s on a cell phone, he might show it to his friends, laugh at how my body looks. And I’d probably mess up and accidentally send it to everyone they know and they’d all make jokes.”

“That’s the worst-case scenario. There are apps for this sort of thing that only let you send such files to one recipient. I could set it up on your phone.”

“Jesus,” Annie muttered under her breath, no longer sure what she was watching.

“Could you?” Britta asked hopefully.

“See me after class. Let’s try this nude selfie thing. Say, once a day, at a time of your choosing, you take a revealing photo of yourself and send it. Aside from that, dress however you like.”

Britta drew in a shaky breath. “And do you… think this guy I’m seeing… that he’d maybe send me photographs back?”

Kalmer pursed his lips in consideration. “I suppose if you’ve been a good girl, yes. But you can’t expect a reward simply for servicing a man. Remember…”

Britta spoke alongside him: “Service is its own reward.”

Annie couldn’t take anymore. She sprang to her feet, banging her knee on the bottom of her desk before precariously extracting herself from her seat and its attached workspace.

“I’m sorry, sorry—“ She wasn’t very sorry, actually. “What does this have to do with Women’s Studies?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Kalmer asked her. “We study women to see how to improve them. Give them more poise, more happiness, more sexual satisfaction. I’m sure you’ve noticed your friend’s been a little less… overwrought since she began taking my course.”

Britta had been a little… unlike her usual self. Less jumping to conclusions, less panicking, more mindfulness, more awareness. She hadn’t wanted to smoke weed with Pierce even after he got his medical marijuana clearance and when Shirley had invited her to see one of those awful Christian movies that was trying to be a real movie, Britta had firmly but politely declined, somehow managing not to offend anyone in the study group.

It’d struck Annie as unusually mature—one of the few times, she realized guiltily, that she’d admired Britta instead of kinda pitying her.

“So you two… meditate?” Annie asked.

Kalmer tilted his head to the side in consideration. “That’s one method we might use. The problems we’re dealing with now are more… tangible. Britta, I don’t want to be hurtfully blunt. Would you care to explain it in a way you’re comfortable with?”

Britta fidgeted, with a nervy smile on her face like a little girl who was trying not to grin at some prank she’d gotten away with. “Mr. Kalmer thinks that the problems in my life are actual problems and that the way for me to be happy is to… stop having those problems. He helped me find a better job and they gave me an advance on my pay, so I could afford a nicer apartment… and he helped me move, his cousin owns a truck… and we threw out a lot of my junk instead of taking it to the new apartment, so I don’t feel guilty about all the clutter. He found this book series by Jonas Ward that I really like, so I’m reading that in my spare time instead of using Twitter. And he—we thought it was best that I stop letting myself get picked up by guys at dive bars just so I don’t have to pay for my own drinks… in fact, he thought I should stop drinking so much too… and I should only get high once a week, and only with stuff from this one dispensary, so I don’t smoke delousing juice again…”

Annie frowned. “So he’s pretty much… running your life?”

“Yeah, no, not exactly. He’s telling me what to do, but I’m doing it, so when you think about it, I’mrunning my life.”

“This isn’t about micromanaging Britta’s life,” Kalmer explained. “It’s giving her the tools and clear-headedness to run her own life. She dresses the way she wants, she styles her hair the way she wants.” He chuckled. “I just imagined something out of Vertigo where I make you look and act like some ideal woman of mine.”

Britta laughed with him. “Maybe for your birthday. And our anniversary. And Valentine’s…” She turned to Annie. “Vertigo is this old movie, but it’s really good. He watched it with me. Mr. Kalmer thinks I should watch old movies and TV shows instead of reality TV and things on Netflix. Have you ever seen this old show MASH? It’s really funny…”

“Wait, you two are… dating?” Annie asked.

“No… I mean… no… not really… I just meant the anniversary of when I first started taking Mr. Kalmer’s class.”

“Did he just tell you to send him nude photos once a day?”

Britta shot to her feet. “So what if he did, huh? Maybe I like the idea of knowing that someone I lo… lik… have an interest in, that he’s looking at me naked and liking my tits, even if they’re not the size of ripe cantaloupes!”

Annie gasped and covered her chest with her hands. “Cantaloupes?”

“God, you’re such a prude, Annie! That’s what I don’t like about you. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, but you’re going to waste it on being a little narc! Yeah, maybe I fucked up bad trying to live my life, but at least I gave it a shot! You’re just hiding in this dumb school, trying to hang onto being valedictorian for the rest of your—“

“Britta, that is enough,” Kalmer interrupted, firmly, his voice terse. “Sit.”

“Yes, sir,” Britta moaned, back behind her desk.

“Annie, you sit too.”

“You can’t tell me what to—“

“Now.”

Annie dropped down behind her desk.

Kalmer stood, cracking his neck, and Annie found herself gripping the sides of her desk. “Well, Annie, that was a very insightful delineation of your issues with Ms. Edison. I’m not sure it had to be expressed in that way. In fact, I’m sure you don’t feel good about shouting at your friend, now do you?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re calling him sir now?” Annie muttered under her breath.