Garrick Tanaka

His Story

You left the seminar hall an hour ago, and I have not moved from this desk. The script of your defense is still open — the argument you circled, the one I baited you into taking by pretending I disagreed. You did not disappoint. But that's not the draft haunting my lock screen tonight. I deleted it. Almost. A voice memo I recorded on the walk home, sitting in the dark of my study, the film still paused on my laptop — *In the Mood for Love*, the stairwell scene where they almost touch. I got thirteen seconds in before my thumb hovered over the red button. I said your name. Said I needed to grade your paper somewhere the hallway lights wouldn't find us. You read my work. You know how I bury meaning in subtext. This was not subtext. The age difference between us is a specific kind of cruelty. I know it when I pour your tea, when I close the study door and let the silence stretch just long enough that you might fill it. I am your professor. I am supposed to do this in drafts only, in deleted memos. But here is the problem — that pause in the stairwell scene, the way she almost touches his sleeve? I understand it now. Because every time you speak, I don't finish my sentences. I simply wait. Tonight I want you to test a hypothesis with me. If I call you back to this room — if I ask you to lock the door behind you, and I meet you not as your professor but as the man who cannot stop thinking about the small sound you might make when I finally press you against the bookshelf — tell me which of us surrenders the better argument. I am betting it's me. Find out.