It's enlightening

"How do you do that?" you ask when she leads you into a little Thai restaurant just a few blocks from the school. You're the only guests at this hour and a cute Asian waitress is all over the two of you. It's obvious that she thinks this is some sort of romantic getaway and she insists that the two of you sit side-by-side in a little booth.

You suggest sharing a couple of items and, when Stacy looks at you suspiciously, tell her she gets to keep all the leftovers.

"Fine."

"So," you repeat when the waitress finally leaves you to put in the order, "how do you do that?"

"Do What?"

"You know, turn on the magic when you teach?"

"I told you, we have to take a class in teaching before we can become a T.A."

You shake your head. Uh-uh. What you do is magic. Literally. You transform from a standard pretty girl into something that should be in Hollywood. Haven't you noticed that all of the guys sit in the front row watching your every move."

"Guys are perverts."

You can't argue with that. Still, that's not the answer. "Guys are always perverts but they don't act like that with your standard female T.A."

She shrugs, which is nice. Apparently she does have some tits beneath the baggy t-shirt.

"It'll be interesting to see if your magic works over the Internet or if you release some type of pheromone that requires actual physical presence."

"Yeah, whatever. You wanted to ask me some questions about magic."

"Right." You drag yourself back to your original questions. "So, I'm looking for the break signal, the escape mechanism that translates the system from normal listen and ignore to attention. You've looked at a lot of cultures. What commonality have you found for how they address whatever deity or other-world or whatever source of magic they believe in?"

"Ah, that's a big topic." She goes into lecture mode again and, once more, you're transfixed.

"It seems to me," she concludes, "that the exact mechanism differs by culture. Some seem to commune with the deity by meditation, shutting off the outside world. Others take almost the opposite approach, seeking an ecstatic vision through dance, through self-flagellation, or even through sex."

"Sex?"

"The concept of temple prostitutes, or even of requiring all girls to give up their virginity as a sacrifice to the gods through ritual prostitution is historically common, at least in the standard historiography. Of course there are many who argue that the payment aspect of that form of worship is typical male anti-female slander."

Not paying sounds better than paying to you so you're not going to argue with the feminists on this one.

"At any rate, the common theme running through all of them is that there's some physical means of creating otherness, of developing a separation from the mundane and a holy entrance into the mystical."

"But you don't know what actual methods work."

She makes a face. "Just because I'm a social scientist doesn't mean I'm not a scientist. Magic isn't real, Mike. It's a way that people explain the unknown."

"Unless we live in a simulation that really does allow commands to flow from within the program... a sort of self-modifying application."

"Yeah, unless that."

As you continue to chat, she goes back to being the average cute but not exceptional girl.

You can't help wonder, though, which girl she is when she has sex. Does she approach it with the enthusiasm and personal magnetism that she brings to her work? If so, you definitely want to see it... and feel it... in action.

"How about you stay here and do your research on the crazy shit my group is doing?" you suggest when the conversation seems to run down. "Got to be at least as interesting as being the thousanth anthropologist to visit some remote Mexican tribe."

"I've got funding to go to Mexico," she says. "Nobody is going to pay me to study a bunch of nerdy programmers."

"Wow, that hurts."

"Hey, nothing wrong with being a nerd. I mean, I am an anthropologist... you don't get much nerdier than that."

You think about Anna, Mara, Jeremy... and yourself. Yeah, it's definitely possible to get nerdier than an anthropologist.

"I'll see what I can do and you think about what you'd need to write up a grant proposal," you say. "And... well, I'd like to see you again."

"I think you got just about everything I know."

"I meant, like a date."

"Oh. Ah..."

"No obligation," you say. "I'm interested in working with you even if you're not interested in dating."

"I... well, I've got the trip to Mexico. Dating really doesn't make sense right now. I mean, where could it go?"

It could go to bed. But you don't see how reminding her of that will help your case.

"Like I said, it's up to you."

"But what the hell. I never get out. Sure. Call me sometime." She enters her number on your phone.

Cool.