Slow on the uptake

It's Sunday! Which means it's time to get down and dirty with Tom Baker again.

For the last few weeks, we've been following Tom as he makes his way across the country toward Kate Ramsey. In the last excerpt, his mind got a little wrapped up in all the ways he might better acquaint himself with Her Loveliness. He's still somewhat gutter-bound this week, but there are neurons firing beyond the sex part of his brain (that's a thing, right?) and a plan is about to be hatched.

And remember, you can skip the foreplay and jump right into reading about Kate and Tom in The Science of Attraction.

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 6)

“So we’re using the magnetic fields to manipulate beads embedded in the cytoskeleton,” she’s saying. “And I should probably stop here and give credit where credit is due.” Her smile is warm and kind of private, like she’s about to share something with us that makes her genuinely happy.

“Tek Chang is really the brains and brawn behind all these beautiful experiments,” she says. “He’s been in my lab for all of six months, and he’s already produced some fantastic results.”

She grins down into the audience and a guy halfway along my row responds with a little salute. I want to hate him, but it’s just not in me—he looks like a really nice guy. But that doesn’t chip any of the envy away. At this point, I would give an arm to trade places with him. He can take Harvard, and Simon, and my cushy scholarship. I’ll take her.

“He’s here at the conference if you’re interested in the details,” she says, resuming her talk and flipping slides. “You can find him at the poster session and buy him a beer.”

“Hell yes,” the dude says, in an even weirder accent. Kate flicks her gaze back down to him and treats him to a cute smirk and a wink, before snapping back to business.

And oh my fucking God, do I want that wink to be for me.

Now I’m imagining I’m the guy in her lab. And this time, when she finishes her talk, she comes down off the stage and collapses in the seat next to mine. She looks at me with an elated kind of exhaustion, high on nerves and science, and sighs happily. I lean over and bring my lips close to her ear, feeling her shudder slightly against my touch.

“That was amazing,” I say. “You were amazing.”

She responds with a little hum that resonates through my body.

I pull away, reluctantly, but she moves with me, turning her head in time so that when she utters her breathy, “Thanks,” our mouths are inches apart. I fix my gaze on her lips and she feels the pull, dropping her mouth open in a perfect little gasp. Her tongue is heavy against her bottom teeth and although I’m totally fucking preoccupied with her mouth, I’m aware that her chest is heaving with every breath.

Then I do it. I lean in and take what I want, kissing her deeply and fully. Her hands are on my face in an instant and she’s moaning into each stroke of my tongue. She shifts her weight onto me and pins me down with her thighs, straddling me as my hands move around to cup her perfect ass.

And I’m right back where I started.

Seriously, my brain goes from zero to a hundred in two seconds flat where this woman is concerned.

The place breaks out into applause and I snap out of my fog of lust to join in. Kate smiles appreciatively and then busies herself with her laptop. The chairman takes to the stage again and calls for questions from the audience. And now I’m kicking myself, because if I’d only stayed with it during her talk, I might have thought of something intelligent to ask her. Something to make her train those beautiful eyes on me. Instead, I spent the time thinking of all the many ways I could get all up in her. I am such a creep.

To be honest though, I would have had to fight to even have my question heard. The auditorium is freaking full of raised hands, and the chairman is making a dick of himself by trying to choose one out of the sea. He settles predictably on Harrison Wyatt, head of the old guard, who surely has something acerbic in store for my beautiful new obsession.

“It’s a really nice story, Kate,” he says, smarmy as hell. I hate that he’s using her first name, but I can tell that his tone is just an attempt to soften her up before the blow. He’s a sneaky fucker.

“But do you really think you’re going to get anything meaningful out of this preparation?” he sneers. “It’s a world away from living cells.”

Kate blinks. Half the audience blinks. I spent the entire time she was talking with my head between her legs and even I know that this is a stupid question.

“Oh I’m sorry, Harry,” she says, and I flinch again at their familiarity. “I should have made it more clear that these are living cells. We introduce the beads while the tissue is still alive.” She flicks back to the slide in her presentation that explained the preparation, and tries to make out that she hadn’t spelled it out the first time around.

Her response is so sweet, so self-effacing, that Wyatt comes away from his blunder with little more than a red face. But the whole audience is left with no delusions about who is boss.

She can be the boss of me anytime she wants, I think.

And that’s when it hits me. Which is ridiculous, really, given that I’ve been playing out boss–student fantasies for a good ten minutes. But there you have it—sometimes I’m slow on the uptake.

Here is what I realize: I need to figure out where I’m going next year. The Schaeffer Institute is one of the most prestigious places to do biology research in Europe. And the eponymous Schaeffer is my adviser’s BFF, so scoring a job there next spring would not be impossible, especially if I manage to win this fellowship.

I feel an odd kind of calm wash over me as I settle back in my seat. I’ve just killed two birds with one stone: I now know where I want to work after I finish my PhD, and I may even have a chance in hell of getting to know the woman that I’ve just fallen head over cock in lust with.

The only problem, I think, as Kate finally sashays off the stage and into the audience, is what the fuck I’m going to do about Nate, and my mom.

But then, just before she sits down next to her student, she looks along the row and catches my eye. I see her flick her gaze briefly down my body before dragging it back up to meet mine.

It’s yours, sweetheart, I want to tell her. It’s all yours.

I don’t, of course. But I smile, and she smiles back at me, and that’s when I know for sure that I don’t give a crap about Nate’s demands. I’m going to get my ass to Germany and find out if she’s as good as my libido seems to think she is.

I’d say the odds are on a yes.

Jump to Part 7

His every fantasy unveiled

Things are getting interesting now in The Prelude to Attraction. Last week, Tom had just caught sight of Kate Ramsey, and he was having trouble tempering his reaction. This week is no better. She's still up on stage at a conference, telling the world about her cell biology experiments — and he's in the audience, lapping it all up.

Don't forget that you can skip forward a few months and read all about Kate and Tom in The Science of Attraction.

And again, a word of warning: this excerpt contains some pretty graphic ideas about what Tom would like to be doing to our fair heroine. Close the tab now if you'd rather not partake of some racy Texan brainwaves…

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 5)

The next twenty minutes slide by in a kind of blur. There’s a near-constant British soundtrack to the whole thing, but it may as well be a montage as far as I’m concerned. The only thing I can concentrate on is the sway of her hips as she moves around the stage, the twitch of tricep when she points to one of her slides. I’m intoxicated by the gleam in her eyes, the way the corners of her lips pull up right before she nears a punch line. At one point, she fumbles an explanation, and throws her head forward as she laughs it off. I am fucking lost—seriously in need of some kind of help.

And then I sink deeper into the insta-crush. Way deeper. I imagine walking down the aisle and pulling myself up on stage. I see her expression change as I move toward her—startled at first, and then patently aroused. In my mind, I pull her to me and claim her mouth in a hot, wet kiss that has her gasping. Then I twist her around and push her up against the podium. She tugs her dress up while I unbutton my jeans, and then I’m hard against her, under her, in her—my hands reaching up to cup her tits as she gropes for my hips.

Her mic is still on and she’s moaning into it as I take her from behind, with breathy little whimpers that drive me wild. I step back and pull her hips with me. Her back arches as she drops down, still holding onto the sides of the podium, and I go deeper, harder, pulling up her up and onto me.

It’s a little too pornographic though, and seems off somehow, so I switch again and imagine myself kneeling in front of her as she gets on with her presentation. She knows I’m there, and wants it as much as I do. She steps her legs apart and I take that as my cue to lift her dress up and tug her panties down. I cup her ass with my hands and pull her into me, nuzzling into her for a moment before darting my tongue out to meet her arousal.

And of course she’s a pro, so she barely misses a beat in her presentation. She simply steadies herself by resting a hand on my head and rocking her hips against me. But then I start to feel her swell against my tongue, and her breathing becomes more labored, her rhythm a little sluggish. Her hips move faster, more urgently. And soon her fingers are knitted through my hair, both hands tugging me closer as she moves against me and finds her release all over my face.

I come to with a sick sense of sleaziness. This woman is obviously incredible, and all I can think about is how I can get up her skirt. Not cool.

Except that the energy that radiates out of her is so blatantly sexual, it’s hard to ignore. Yes, she’s all business, and it’s clear that she’s earned her stripes. But her excitement has a rawness to it—an edge—and I’m completely fucking captivated by it. I’m fairly sure that she’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I let my mind wander again, and imagine her finishing her talk, and answering all the questions that will undoubtedly follow it. I imagine her stepping down off the stage, seeking me out in the crowd, and walking over to where I’m sitting.

In my fantasy, she fixes me with a stare, says, “Did you like that?” and then pivots around to place herself squarely in my lap. And I am not about to waste any time with that. My hands start near her knees and move north, sliding her dress over her thighs as she rolls her hips and grinds against me.

“I could see the way you were looking at me,” she whispers as she leans back and turns her head to kiss me. “It was such a turn on, I just couldn’t wait to get off that stage.”

I lift her ass off me for a second, work my dick out of jeans and guide her back onto it. Because it’s a fantasy, right? And these things happen seamlessly in fantasyland. She’s wet as fuck and it’s so hot. I’m astounded by my ability to conjure this shit up, and I wonder for a moment whether she’d actually be that wet in real life. Something tells me she would be.

I shift again in my seat and force myself to focus on her talk.

Jump to Part 6

Hook, line, sinker

Okay, here it is: Tom Baker's first encounter with our feisty heroine. When we left Tom last week, he was fuming over a text message from his brother, Nate, and still trying to figure out what to do about his not-so-secret admirer, Saskia. But Kate Ramsey is standing right in front of him. And as soon as he looks up, you can bet that his life won't ever be the same again.

Don't forget that you can skip forward a few months and read all about Kate and Tom in The Science of Attraction.

One more thing: in this excerpt we're edging toward a little raciness. Consider this fair warning for the faint of heart! And for the rest of us, be patient — the real fun is yet to come...

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 4)

The next speaker is busy setting up and there’s the usual kind of background noise, as laptops are exchanged and plugged in. The microphone is still on as it’s passed between speakers and the newcomer breathes softly into it when the chairman fastens it into place.

“Oh, right— thanks,” she says, her voice hitching into half a giggle on the last word. I’m still staring at my brother’s message, but her voice hits a note that I feel in the tip of my dick.

So of course I look up.

And yeah, my body reacts predictably when I catch sight of the woman on stage.

She’s hot. There’s no two ways about it. Short, dark hair in an artful kind of mess. The sort of haircut that looks perfect straight out of bed, which is precisely where I’d like to be dragging her right about now. Smooth olive skin, and lips painted a luscious shade of red. No prizes for guessing what I’m thinking when I look at them.

My eyes trip down over her shoulders, down the lines of her dress. The white fabric glows against her skin and the thing looks like it was fucking stitched right onto her goddamn body. Over her tits, into her tiny waist, and down the curve of her hips.

She’s still talking to the chairman in a hushed tone, but the mic’s on so it carries through the room.

“No, absolutely,” she says, nodding her head. “I’m sorry.”

There’s something odd about her voice. Not odd, exactly—just different. She’s definitely not American, but it’s not that. Although the accent—English, I guess, but I’m crap with accents—carries an authority with it that amplifies her obvious self-confidence.

She’s been invited to speak in a session full of hotshots. She must be seriously kickass, and so her self-confidence is entirely unsurprising. But it’s the humor underneath it all that’s fucking with me. She’s laughing at herself as she fumbles around on stage in front of a hundred some people, and yet she’s being totally natural about it. It’s fair to say that I’m intrigued, and that Nate’s message is now the furthest thing from my mind.

The chairman calls for everyone’s attention again by clearing his throat and waving awkwardly.

We scientists are a rare breed, I chuckle to myself.

But none quite as rare as this woman in the spotlight, it would seem. The chairman is now running through a list of her accomplishments, and while I’m eager to learn everything about her, I’m even more rapt by how she’s responding to her own introduction. It’s almost like she’s blushing, but trying desperately to rise above it—to take the praise she’s earned and own it. There is something entirely refreshing about her particular combination of awesomeness and humility.

And the awesomeness, it seems, she has in spades.

“The fellowship Kate received as part of this doctoral thesis award took her to Stanford,” the chairman is saying, and I sit up in my seat, because although I work on the East Coast, at least we live on the same landmass. A part of me wants to punch myself in the face for already planning a bicoastal relationship with this woman I’ve known—or not known—for all of three minutes.

But it doesn’t matter anyway, because the chairman’s next sentence does it for me.

“But alas, her time in the States was short-lived, because she quickly got snapped up by the Schaeffer Institute in Germany, where she’s now the newest member of that rather spectacular faculty.”

It’s literally like a slap upside my head, which is fucking ridiculous, really. Because what the fuck? Why am I hurting over her moving to Europe before I’ve even spoken to her? Before I’ve even really heard her speak.

I am clearly some kind of super-creep.

But then she takes the floor, and I feel almost vindicated. Almost.

“I want to first thank the organizers for inviting me here,” she says. “This week has been absolutely fantastic, and I feel like I’m high on science.”

She looks down at her toes and bites her lip.

“Which I realize is an incredibly nerdy thing to say,” she continues, and the blush is real this time. I am destroyed, and I feel myself grinning like an idiot. Like I’m the one making her blush that way.

I briefly cycle through all the things I can imagine doing, to bring that color into her cheeks. My lips on her neck. On her chest. A hand between her thighs. My face between those thighs.

My cock makes another cameo, and now I’m shifting uncomfortably in my seat, because fuck, this woman has a half-hour slot, and I’m looking like I’m about ready to come in my pants before she even really gets started.

“I’m going to take a huge risk here today and tell you all about a project that is yet to be completed,” she says. Her voice slides over all those vowels like she’s riding a goddamn roller coaster and I’m hooked.

“And I know it’s a risk, I know it might go all wrong,” she says, pausing for effect, dragging her beautiful eyes around the room. “But the truth is, I’m just so bloody excited about this work, I can’t help but share it, even if it’s not fully baked.”

And just like that, I’m completely hard, and out of my mind for some chick I don’t even know.

Jump to Part 5

Countdown to Temptation

There's just under a month to go before Margot's story The Music of Temptation is unleashed on the world at large, and I am starting to get more than a little excited.

I've just finished the storyboard on Pinterest, mapping out the lovers' travels with the prettiest of pictures. Hope you like it!

And the trailer for the book went live today. Please have a look and tell me what you think!

The problem with Baker Senior

So last week we met Tom's mom and brother as he swung through Austin on his way toward California... and Kate Ramsey. He's at the conference now, and their paths are set to collide soon, but Tom still has to figure out what to do about his family. And part of that involves the infamous father figure.

Don't forget that you can skip forward a few months and read all about Kate and Tom in The Science of Attraction. And please let me know what you think of The Prelude to Attraction as it unfolds!

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 3)

In spite of my preoccupation with all the incoming messages—a near-constant stream of tits and guilt—the conference has been pretty fucking incredible so far. It’s relatively small as these things go, a few hundred people at most, and the program is astounding. The organizers have managed to score a stellar line-up of speakers, and they’ve left plenty of time for discussion, which is where the real science gets done.

I presented my work in a poster session yesterday, so now it’s all about checking out other people’s work, fielding questions from people I didn’t get to talk to during my session, and looking for the next career step. 

Poster sessions are kind of fun, if a little exhausting. You basically stand in front of a poster describing all the blood, sweat and tears you’ve shed in the past two or three years, and then spill your guts out to anyone who’ll stop long enough to listen. It’s a little like being a performing monkey.

Thankfully, these things nearly always involve beer, so they’re pretty easy to navigate. I’d been meaning to check out the other posters in my session yesterday, but I was literally inundated with people wanting to hear about my experiments, and when the place cleared out, I was almost too tired to move. I can run ten miles without breaking much of a sweat, but talking science for a couple of hours can seriously waste me away sometimes.

I left the place with a bunch of other students who were heading out in search of burritos and more beer. There were a couple of girls in the group who had started to make flirty eyes at me, which was entertaining for a while at least. But I was bone-tired and couldn’t even fathom following through with a one-night stand.

Same story. Twenty-seven, and already through with casual sex.

I did make the effort at breakfast this morning though. I found the two of them in the hotel restaurant and we shared a table. It turns out the girls both work in L.A., despite one of them being Greek and the other Singaporean. They were still very flirty, oddly almost more so with each other than with me, and something in the back of my head told me that this would have been a serious turn on a couple of years ago. I filed the thought away in case I had a sudden change of heart, and left them to go find a seat in the auditorium.

Saskia’s message showed up halfway through the third session of the day, which really made me wonder why—or where—she was running around topless at five o’clock in the afternoon.

I’m still toying with the idea of responding to it in the middle of the last session of the day, when my phone buzzes again. I brace myself for another nudie pic, and wonder in passing if I shouldn’t just block her texts. Instead, I’m knocked sideways when I see the message from my brother, this one just a little more harsh than the rest.

Don’t be a dick, Tom. Mom’s had enough men fucking her around to last a lifetime. I’ve done my time, now it’s your turn.

And Jesus Christ, I want to smash the screen. It’s not just that Nate’s guilt trip tugs at my own misgivings about leaving my mom alone in Austin. But now he’s comparing me to our dad, which is just about as low a blow as he could possibly inflict.

Here is the long and short of my relationship with my dad: he gives me money, I take it.

I haven’t seen him for more than an hour in five years. I know that sounds callous, but the guy’s a prick and an hour-long lunch date is about as much as I can stomach these days.

My father and his sister inherited my grandparents’ tiny ranch when their mom died some fifteen years ago. I have really fond memories of kicking around up there when Nate and I were kids, but by all other accounts, the place was a shit hole, and barely made enough to pay for the couple of farm hands required to keep it running. Imagine my father’s surprise, then, when he had someone survey the land right before selling it off, and found he was the proud owner of a fucking motherload of oil.

That’s how we went from being moderately well-off during childhood, to being stinking rich all through our teens. And how my dad went from being a fairly nice, if frustrated, family man, to being the world’s largest asshole. He eventually sold his little private accountancy practice, and retired for good, but not before fucking his secretary six ways to Sunday and comprehensively breaking my mom’s heart.

The general feeling now is that she is way better off without him, but it’s taken us all a while to make peace with the new status quo. And so now you see why Nate’s message is making me fume. I’m not my dad, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him guilt me into thinking I am.

But it’s more than that too. I’m also angry about the fact that he’s completely ignoring my mom’s point of view in this whole thing. Obviously, it’s pretty convenient for me to side with her when she says she doesn’t want me moving back home. But Nate is acting like he alone knows what’s best for everyone. And in doing so, he seems a lot more like my dad than I’ve ever been.

So I’m sitting there in the third row of this auditorium full of scientists, and trying to figure out how to respond to his message. Answering Saskia’s booty call suddenly seems like a much smaller problem. 

Jump to Part 4

Meet the Bakers

I don't know you about you, but I'm ready for another piece of the Tom Baker puzzle. When we left him last week, he was moaning about what to do with his life, and how to dodge the very obvious affections of a smitten psych major. (And let's face it, who wouldn't be smitten with the lovely Dr Baker.)

But now it's time to meet big brother Nate…

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 2)

The third problem is closely related to the second, because it involves the endless texts I’ve been getting from my brother, Nate, ever since I stopped in back home on my way to this conference in San Francisco.

Nate and his fiancée Jess live around the corner from my mom’s place, so my visits invariably involve a lot of big brother time. Ordinarily, I fucking love it. Nate and I have always been close, even when he was busy pounding the shit out of me when we were little kids. Seeing him the three or four times a year I make it back to Austin is half the reason I bother going at all.

But this time things were different.

This time, we hadn’t even cracked our beers before Nate was telling me the news about Jess’s new job.

“So we’re moving to New York,” he said out of the blue, as we stepped out into his yard.

“Excuse me?” I said, half-convinced I’d heard him wrong. He rocked back on his heels and smiled thinly.

“Jess landed a job with some kickass firm in the city, so we’re moving there in a month,” he said.

“But what about Mom?” I said, like it was a reflex.

“Yeah, about that,” he started, his expression flattening out. Something told me I didn’t want to hear what was coming next.

“I was thinking you could move back here once you’ve finished studying,” he said. “We’ll be looking to rent out the house anyway. You could move in.”

“And do what?” I said dumbly. A part of me was already numb to the idea.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What you do. There is a university here, you know.”

“I know,” I snapped, regressing about two decades with a single retort.

And I did—I do know it. The department in Austin is pretty goddamn impressive too. But for all my whining about being spoiled for choice, the second I felt Nate narrowing my options down to a single university in a single town, I started to feel an almost visceral longing for all the roads I would otherwise have taken.

“I’ve been thinking about going overseas,” I said quickly, winging it.

“Since when?”

“A while,” I lied. “It’s the best thing for my career.” Which is probably true, all things considered.

“Yeah, well, we can’t leave Mom here all by herself.”

There was a snort and a giggle from somewhere inside Nate’s kitchen.

“You most certainly can,” my mom said, appearing suddenly at the door with Jess in tow. “If either of you boys even thinks of changing your life plans to hang around in Texas waiting on me, I will personally see to it that you get the sense slapped into you.”

“Mom,” Nate moaned, moving over to slide an arm around her shoulders. “We just want to make sure that you’re being looked after.”

“I know,” she said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “And you’re very sweet.”

She motioned for me to join them, and pulled me in to her free side when I obliged.

“But also very silly,” she added. “And somewhat overbearing.”

Nate rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Look,” she said. “Your father and I split up over a decade ago now, and while I’ve really enjoyed having you boys around, I’m sure I can get along just fine without you.”

“Tom needs to go out and see the world,” she added. “And you and Jess do too.”

She looked over at my almost-sister-in-law, who beamed back at us.

“Besides,” she said carefully, “I’ve been thinking about getting into internet dating, and I can’t do that with you cramping my style all the time.”

We both groaned and stepped straight out of our familial embrace.

Mom’s dating history hasn’t exactly been a closed book in the years since she left our dad, but neither Nate nor I like hearing about it. Although we’re both glad that she doesn’t have to endure his particular brand of dickishness anymore, we’d prefer not to know about how she’s now spending her nights.

“Okay, family meeting over,” Nate said. “Let’s get this barbecue happening.”

The rest of the night slid by without any more talk of me moving back home, but Nate caught me by the elbow as we were on our way out.

“I’m serious about this, man,” he said, the context implicit. “I think you should consider it.”

And now here I am, days later, with a phone full of brotherly texts reminding me how far Austin is from the East Coast, and how good a son I would be if I packed up all my dreams and shipped them back to his place.

Of course the real problem is that I’m staring down the barrel of another six months of thesis hell, but don’t even get me started on that.

Jump to Part 3

Don't forget that you can skip forward a few months and read all about Tom in The Science of Attraction. And feel free to let me know what you think of The Prelude to Attraction as it unfolds!

In the beginning

Here's a little treat for those of you who have read (or want to read) The Science of Attraction. It's a peek inside Tom Baker's head, a year or so before he moves to Germany and sweeps Kate Ramsey off her stilettos. It's a novella in progress and you'll see bits and pieces of the story show up here in the coming weeks. This is the first instalment. Enjoy!

The Prelude to Attraction (Part 1)

I’ve got three problems, and literally zero solutions in sight.

The first should be an easy fix, but it’s proving to be more difficult than I’d anticipated.

Her name is Saskia Harding, and she’s beautiful, smart as a whip— but seriously crazy. Like bat-shit crazy. I hooked up with her at a friend’s party a few months back, and now she won’t stop calling me. 

Ordinarily I’d be all for a girl sexting me incessantly. Her propositions seem to get lewder and more outrageous the longer I hold out on her.

And the thing is, we had a lot of fun together that night. Her roommate Lisa and I work in the same lab, and she’d just defended her PhD thesis, so she’d invited all the guys over to celebrate. Saskia’s non-biologist friends had rounded out the party, which was looking like it might otherwise dissolve into nerd territory. Mixing psych and drama majors with a bunch of scientists is evidently not quite as bad an idea as it sounds.

At some point during the course of the evening, Saskia had simply walked up to me, grabbed a fistful of my shirt, and said, “I think it’s time you and I got naked together.”

And that was it. We disappeared into her bedroom and spent the rest of the night there, losing ourselves in a few hours of mindless sex.

But that’s exactly the problem: it’s all about the sex, and somehow that whole scene just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

I know, right? There must be something wrong with me. I’m twenty-seven and already jaded. It’s almost embarrassing to admit it, but I’m just not into meaningless encounters anymore. Or, to put it more accurately, I don’t mind meaningless encounters, just as long as they happen with a different woman each night. Simulating a relationship when there’s nothing left once the endorphins have settled just leaves me feeling cold.

Saskia texted me an hour ago with a picture of her tits and a message that sounded borderline psychotic.

Tooooooooom (she seriously spelled it like that) the girls miss you. Come home now pwease.

I spent no more than three hours with her ‘girls’ over two months ago. I very much doubt that they even remember me. And yet apparently I’m missed. Saskia was quick to agree that our encounter was nothing more than a bit of dirty fun when we talked about it the week after it happened. But somehow my insistence that it was a one-time thing has fallen on very deaf ears. I must be the worst booty call in history.

So that’s problem number one.

My second predicament is what the hell I’m going to do with myself next year once I’m through with my PhD. The world is my proverbial oyster and it’s scaring the proverbial shit out of me.

My adviser Simon is not being particularly helpful either. I know that he’ll come through for me when I figure out where I do want to go. He knows everyone who’s anyone, and his recommendation, on top of my Harvard stamp of approval, should make getting my first job in research fairly easy. But for some reason Simon is being decidedly quiet on the decision front. He’s not even hinting at where he thinks I should go.

I live in one of the greatest cities in the world to do research in biology, but I can’t just sit around and bounce from lab to lab. I’ll be the first to admit that my research career will only stagnate if I hang out in Cambridge forever. I need to get out—ideally, out of the States—and experience something new, if I’m really going to make a name for myself in biology. Simon managed to score a faculty job at Harvard after studying there, but even he started out with a bunch of years in England right after he finished his thesis.

So I know I need to get out. What I don’t know is where the hell I’m going to go. The options are endless, and entirely overwhelming.

My only consolation is that I’ve actually summoned up the initiative to apply for a fellowship that would at least sort out my funding for the next three years. It’s small solace—and it’s not in the bank yet—but at least it’s a step in the right direction. It would mean I could take the money anywhere in the world, and work with whomever I choose, so long as they have bench space in their lab and a willingness to have me around.

Jump to Part 2