Free The Misconception by Darlene Gardner Page B

alphabet, couldn’t complete a sentence. Marietta wished she could see his face to get a clue to what he was thinking, but all she saw was a blur.
    “I don’t mean to be rude,” she told the blur, “but could you please say whatever it is you want to say. I’m already late as it is.”
    “Will you go out with me?” Robert’s words came out in a rush, surprising Marietta with their intensity. She’d known Robert for six months, ever since he’d joined the biology department, and didn’t have a clue that he considered her as anything other than a colleague. “To dinner, I mean. Or a movie. Or, well, anywhere.”
    “Robert, I—” Marietta began.
    “I know you’re off to class, Marietta. Don’t say anything now. Just think about it. Please?”
    She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t need to think about it. She wasn’t in the market for a man. If she were, he’d be six feet four and so sexy he made her heart threaten to beat down the walls of her chest cavity. While Marietta tried to reject that ridiculous thought, Robert walked away so quickly she didn’t have a chance to say anything at all.
    Resigning herself to turning him down later, Marietta squinted and walked the rest of the way to class mostly by memory. It felt as though somebody had opened the doors and let in fog.
    Reaching the podium in front of the class in the giant lecture hall seemed like a miraculous feat. She shuffled her notes until she had them in a vague order and then peered at the class. From what she could make out, the lecture hall was remarkably full.
    She wondered if more people were here today because of the article that had appeared in the Washington Post Style section, airing her unorthodox views on love, sex and man-free motherhood. She’d impulsively said her lectures were open to the public.
    A flash of red crossed her eyes, and she realized it was Vicky Valenzuela. The contact-crunching feminist took a seat in the front row beside a string of females. The rest of the foxes, no doubt.
    Marietta adjusted the microphone and cleared her throat. “I take it advance word must’ve gone out that today’s lecture is about sex.”
    Standing in front of a crowd always gave Marietta a case of the jitters, which she could quickly dispel by getting the students on her side. Laughter filled the room. The FOCs, who apparently hadn’t been versed in classroom decorum, clapped.
    “Notice that I said sex, not love,” Marietta continued. “Sex is absolutely essential for our survival as a species. Love isn’t. But I’ll get to that later in the lecture.”
    Now that her jitters had subsided and she had the attention of her students, Marietta launched into a well-researched lecture that included traditionally accepted dogma about mating behavior. Whenever she said anything that could be vaguely construed as pro-female, the FOCs, who she’d come to regard as her own personal cheering section, applauded.
    “As you can see, men and women choose their sexual partners because of deep-seated evolutionary tendencies that began to develop in hunter-gatherer societies,” she said well into her talk.
    “Men subconsciously seek out women who have youth and good health, positive signs of fertility. They’re looking for a vessel in which to spread their seed, because this response is deeply ingrained within them.
    “Women subconsciously want men who transmit signals of strength and power. In the societies of old, when food was scarce and predators plentiful, it was extremely important for females to have males who would help provide for them.”
    She took a breath, because she was about to get into the part of the lecture that had at its heart, no heart.
    “Love simply didn’t play into it. It doesn’t play into it. In short, love doesn’t matter.”
    One of the FOCs whistled her approval as the others clapped, and murmurs spread through the classroom like wind chimes carried on a breeze.
    “That’s the most ridiculous