Selma was back-to-school shopping. She was in the lingerie department rifling through lacy bras. She had looked at her course schedule earlier that day and decided that she needed a pre-term stress reliever. Her schedule was jam-packed full of courses so that she could graduate in December. Selma was getting her degree in psychology at Iowa Central University (ICU). She had high hopes of going on to graduate school to become a sex therapist.
The fall semester was going to start in less than two weeks and she was enrolled in a class taught by Dr. Marvel. Contrary to the way his fancy name made him sound, the guy was not a fun prof. He pushed his students to the breaking point claiming that it was the only way to train a psychologist. The course she was taking with him was called “Victimology”. Kind of funny when you think about it.
Selma left the mall without purchasing anything and climbed in her car. It was incredibly hot and humid, being the end of August in central Iowa, and her shopping trip was thoroughly unproductive. She decided to head to the water park one last time this summer.
On her drive home she thought about how weird her roommate, Birdie, was being lately. Every time Selma walked into the room Birdie froze up and would hardly make eye contact. Selma wished she would just come out with it and tell her what was going on. Selma didn’t like passivity; probably because Selma was about as far from passive as a person could get.
Ian was at the apartment when she arrived home.
“No time talk. Must swim,” she said as she rushed towards her bedroom.
“Rough day?” Ian asked. He knew that whenever Selma was stressed, she either went shopping or swimming.
“No, I’m just. Well, you know, school starts in about a week and I’ve got this really hard professor and I just sort of want to burn off some steam, you know?” She yelled through her door as she changed into her black bikini.
“Hey do you know what’s up with Birdie?” she asked as she threw on her cover-up.
“Nah. She’s been acting really weird though. She keeps coming up with all these reasons to use my computer even though her computer works just fine. I don’t get it,” Ian looked up from his notebook that he was filling with slanted-rhyme poetry as Selma headed to the door.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said and left Ian to muse over his writing.
The pool was packed but Selma didn’t notice the hordes of people. She had her eye on the man taking the pool passes. His hair, eyes, and skin were sexy and dark and he was speaking Arabic to a family trying to purchase rec-center passes. She jumped lines to go stand in his. She ignored the other tellers when they shouted “next!” even though she was rightfully the next in line.
She made eye contact with him as he took her pass. She made sure to stretch and strut and walk by the ticket booth frequently during the three hours she was there. Her plan worked. The man noticed her. When she retrieved her pass on her way out she noticed a post-it attached to the backside of it. It was a name and phone number. His name was Hassan. Selma smiled coyly. Mission accomplished. Pre-term stress relief isn’t hard to find when you’re Selma Bryant.
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