The Professor and Other Writings

by Terry Castle

  After two or three of these big-sister forays, the Professor decided that she might have to sleep with Molly after all—just once. You know: be the can-opener. Better that she—a responsible adult—initiate the innocent young person than some ugly white-trash gal Molly might encounter when she joined the Air Force—still her stated goal upon graduation. The Professor was sure she could keep it all contained; she knew what she was doing; she’d been involved in lots of situations like this one. That Molly was her department colleague’s teenage daughter seemed only to make matters more urgent and necessary. And while the logic here may have been faulty, the Professor’s unusual frankness was, I dare say, in a perverse way comforting. Looking back on it, I suspect that even at this nutty juncture the Professor did wish to continue her affair with me—or at least had convinced herself she did. Such uncharacteristic full disclosure—for she thoughtfully warned me in advance precisely when the defloration of Molly was to take place—was her upside-down, Reynard-the-Fox way of demonstrating her troth.

  Yet if the Professor could contain it, I could not—especially when she invited me over to her house shortly after said hymen-busting had been accomplished. I arrived around 10:00 a.m. Molly had left just a little while before; the bed sheets were still rumpled and gritty. Clearly it was going to be my great and groovy honor to have Sick Morning Sex with the Professor—now pink-faced and smiling sheepishly—in the scurfy unmade bed. C’mon, honey. That kid has no clue—it was all a big anticlimax. You’re It. I confess I yielded. Afterwards the Professor said she felt reborn. Cleansed. She loved me and respected me so much. We would be together forever. But the squalor of it sank into my soul, adding not a little to the septic murk within.

  Boggling to me now, that not once during this first trial of my affection did I fume or shriek or expostulate; nor did I ever disparage the Professor’s actions—not even in my journal. So great my demoralization, so pedantic my masochism, it would not have occurred to me to do so. Though floored by her behavior—frankly, I was beyond floored—was in fact hurtling forward on the way toward breaking the Pain Sound Barrier—I nevertheless had various rationalizations for remaining in a state of doltish passivity. Above all, I felt, it was my duty as an intelligent person to try to understand the Professor and give her the benefit of any doubt. My sweet, distinguished, and charming lover, singer of lovely folksongs, friend of the kindly Alice and Tom, popular teacher and respected colleague, nice person—the Professor must know what she was doing. Besides, with her and Molly it was only sex, after all, and what did that matter? (I was still abiding by the illusion that touching other people’s bodies and being touched in return was no big deal—nothing to get worked up about.) Yes: I am sure I looked mortified when the Professor reprimanded me over my burgeoning neurasthenia, as she now began to do with some frequency. And yes, I’m equally sure that a certain deep-lodged passive-aggressiveness in my character (such as I had indeed often directed toward my mother) was at times detectable in my not-so-sprightly conversation. And once or twice I couldn’t help it: I blurted out that I felt bad when the Professor slept with Molly. My own failing, of course, but yes, okay—I do feel a tiny bit hurt…. Such dazed admissions typically prompted indignation in her, followed by self-recrimination on my part. (I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so so sorry, etc. etc.) To be sure, things felt very odd—but then again, maybe they weren’t as bad as they seemed.

  Thus I made no big speeches, no operatic gestures. I had been morally flattened—trodden on to the point of two-dimensionality. I was like a piece of old gum on the sidewalk. Hanging up on the Professor, stalking off mid-conversation, refusing to see her again—any of these tried-and-true lovers’ gambits would have been impossible for me, as bad as playing truant. Anger (not that I would ever have named it as such) had to be suppressed and reformulated as self-contempt. I deserved everything I got. The Professor was right, I was acting like a head case over my school stuff. Over this weird thing with Molly. Over the fact I couldn’t sleep. I was tiresome; I would have to be better. I was behaving really unpleasantly. Oh, hell, hell, hell.

  My frequent nightmares intimated a somewhat less placid state of affairs. One from around this time—immediately shared with the Professor—was sufficiently grotesque and primal, I see from my journal, to capture her analytic interest. She was even moved to propound an interpretation of it—one that reflected, of course, her own superior wisdom and understanding of my psyche:

  Told [the Professor] about the awful dream I had last night. Though she thought it a “positive” one. Me caught inside a taxiing aircraft—a man was there who wouldn’t let me out. I finally slid open a tiny window and went out head first, landed on the runway. Then the man in the plane tried to run me over with it. I rolled out of the way, ran to the side of the field, next had to crawl through barbed wire. Ambulances all around then, there had been a crash somewhere close by, it seemed, bodies lying everywhere. Corpses laid out on a huge tarp. Pieces of limbs: a horrible scene. [The Professor] was one of the contused bodies—I had a momentary flash of seeing her, then I woke up. Today she said it was a “rebirth dream,” that I was beginning a new relationship with her. She says I have finally realized I have no power over her. Dead and gone: my image of her as “someone I could control.”

  In other words, look on the bright side, T-Ball. Gory though it no doubt was, the dream indicated that I was finally starting to confront my infantile neurosis. Maybe someday I would cease burdening people—her especially—with my callow attempts at emotional manipulation. And what a relief that would be! One truly had to rejoice. The fact—unflagged by either of us—that I seemed to harbor a wish to see her dead and eviscerated and lying on a bloody tarp meant next to nothing, apparently, analytically speaking. On the contrary: it was merely one of several signs (even a promising one!) that I was now beginning to Love Her in a New and Healthy Way.

  It couldn’t go on and it didn’t. A week or so after the Molly business cranked up I had a midterm scheduled in Victorian Fiction—the other class, along with Spenser, for which I had registered that spring. Work-wise, I had managed to stay abreast in it, largely because I’d read all the assigned novels for the course long before, in high school, once if not twice. Cathy and Heathcliff were like old acquaintances—my weird second cousins or something. The midterm format in turn looked to be straightforward: we would be given several essay questions to take home and ponder; the next day in class we were to write a theme on the question of our choice. The topics, when we got them, were predictable if uninspiring: I picked out one on Vanity Fair. And as was my mad-bomber habit with previous tests of this nature, I drafted my full essay the night before—a polished disquisition of nine or ten pages—then memorized it. The memorization was an Ayn Rand–like feat of will under the circumstances; somehow I forced myself to do it.

  Next day, all systems go. I could have recited my essay with ease. All that remained was to sit down and disgorge it onto the page. I’d glimpsed the Professor briefly on my way to the exam room—she was smiling and chatting with someone, on her way back from her morning class. Yet the sighting had depressed me. She either hadn’t seen me or was pretending not to. I couldn’t tell. Was I driving her away with my dreadful babyishness? Terrifying thought. She looked so beautiful and friendly, smiling like that at that person. I will die if I lose her. I have to grow up. I have to keep a clear head, keep the lid on. I entered the examination room and sat down. As it happened, the exam was taking place in an airy lecture hall directly across from the Professor’s office. Only ten or fifteen feet away: Her Door, with sign-up sheets and various notes about her classes posted thereon. One quivered. Magic space. The place where all ley lines intersected. She didn’t seem to be in there, though; at least the light wasn’t on. Maybe I would catch a glimpse of her later. I hope not with that stupid clod Molly. Ah, here was the T.A.—the blue books were being distributed. But why don’t things feel right with us? She’s become so harsh—so critical, as if she doesn’t really like
me anymore. A shuffle of papers and clicking ballpoints—then silence in the room as I and some thirty classmates settled down to write. Who is she, really? I feel so awful but I don’t know why.

  Almost as soon as I opened my examination book, the blackness closed in. Something shocking and discreditable, first of all, had happened to my right hand, the one holding the pen. I was trying to start—yes, trying to indite the first of my memorized sentences, In Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair … But my hand had gone all stiff: palsied and wonky, as if I were having a stroke. Hey, you jerk, what’s up. Time to start, it’s the exam, come on, get going. My fingers, however, remained frozen. My gorge began rising slowly and heavily, like a cobra uncoiling and lifting itself up, irrationally enough, by its own head. My arms, my neck, began to seize up. I shuddered involuntarily. My recalcitrant digits, terrifyingly, still weren’t gripping the pen properly. I couldn’t write without trembling. I began to pant and perspire a little. Looking down at my blue book made my vision go spotty and bleary. So far, I could see, I had made only jittery spastic marks. The floor tilted oddly and swam up at me from below.

  What on earth is happening. Take a deep breath, calm down. Just think about the essay, just write it. Stop fucking around, just write—I CAN’T—the Professor will be furious. I CAN’T HELP IT. She’ll hear you’ve had a freak-out. IT WON’T STOP. Goddamn it, just start. I CAN’T. She’ll say you’re a hysteric. Need help. She’ll drop you. Look! everybody is way ahead of you—they’re filling up their first pages and going on to the second. You’re fucked. This can’t be HAPPENING. You’ll fail. It’s fatal. This right now—this thing happening right now—it’s FATAL. So stop gasping and stay calm. You’ll die if you don’t stop shaking. She’ll dump you. Just WRITE your fucking exam goddamn it—

  But by now the panic had shot through my arms, chest, viscera, bowels, all the way down to my feet and into my shoes. My shirt was sodden and cold; my whole body shaking. The helmsman had collapsed and the horizon—nauseatingly—was lurching up and down. I had to get out of there. I had to duck. I had to knock a few things over. Kick myself. Hit somebody. Couldn’t breathe. Huge tears of fright and horror and self-hatred were now sliding out of my eyes, like eels. This is terrible. I waved frantically to the T.A.—quietly reading a book now at a desk up front—and rushed from the room. A few students looked up curiously and saw me careening out. The T.A. followed.

  Outside the classroom—even as we stood a few feet from the Professor’s office—the T.A. (a fellow graduate student, though a couple of years ahead of me) watched in consternation as I dissolved into great, gurgling teary heaves. I sobbed out wild apologies and begged his forgiveness. This has never ever happened to me before, I swear—I’ve been under a lot of stress—I feel ill—it’s really bad—I don’t know what went wrong—I couldn’t…I can’t…I’m sorry… I gulped for air and wrung my hands piteously; I had crumpled my now-soggy blue book into a sort of foul, screwed-up wedge. A thick and disgusting gray thread of mucous emerged from one of my nostrils and dangled there between us, lengthening slowly. (The T.A. and I both struggled in vain to find some Kleenex.) He was kind; looked almost apologetic, as if he himself were to blame. Of course, of course—how awful—but no harm done, really, these things happened to everybody. You mustn’t feel bad. Not at all. The professor would understand too—really—everything was going to be okay…Why didn’t I take my blue book home and write out my exam essay later when I felt better? I could hand it back in tomorrow. I mumbled some grief-stricken thanks. While no longer at risk of choking on gobbets of my own phlegm, I continued to weep unceasingly, as if inconsolable. At least my instinct for self-immolation was unimpaired: I rushed downstairs and ran into the street in search of the Professor.

  Pavane for a Defunct Infanta

  THE PROFESSOR HAD BEEN PULLING her car out of the faculty lot when I staggered up, palpably distraught, my face white and tear-streaked. She listened while I told her, very quickly, what had happened. Said get in and drove me grimly back to my apartment. On the way I was silent—aghast at what I’d done. I had needed desperately to be with her, or so it had seemed when I’d fled the exam room. Yet being with her now, I realized, wasn’t actually making me feel any better. This is all going wrong. She in turn said little and lay down and fell asleep on my bed when we got to my apartment. Ashen-faced, I sat quietly at my desk for the next hour, writing out my aborted exam essay. I was cold and competent now, even scientific: an exiled Bolshevik, in threadbare coat and tiny old-fashioned spectacles, laying out the mechanics of the dialectic with steely clarity. Becky Sharp, Waterloo, Napoleon, blah, blah. A great arc of necessity animated the lives of men, blah blah. My hands and fingers functioned perfectly now; the sentences of my essay rolled out in a voluble stream, like happy workers leaving a factory. So what was all that goddamned fuss about. The Professor went home after while; said she’d call me later, and I think she did. But things from that point on were never really the same.

  My life over the next seven or eight weeks? Fractured, forlorn days, catastrophic nights. Chaos, wailing, and darkness. Imprecations. Despairing appeals for mercy. The muffled sound of dead-carts rumbling past at 4:00 a.m. Crude chalk crosses on the doors. Dancing, hip-waggling skeletons everywhere, some beckoning, others simply grinning in hideous triumph. Ashen, serrated, almost numb with disbelief, I struggled after equilibrium by writing daily in my Plague-Journal:

  Last night at [the Professor’s] Molly called up, was drinking somewhere, wanted to come over. [The Professor] came back and told me M. was in love with her. Now tonight they’re out together. [The Professor] asked me this morning in bed if I minded if she “held onto” M. I said, No then, but later on the phone I said, Yes I would be upset by it. [The Professor] said she had a feeling she would end up “being affectionate” to M. “Poor kid.” Weird: she seemed almost proud: “I think one of my colleagues’ daughters is in love with me.” At the same time—continually affirms her love for me, said the feeling was not merely the result of the fact that “you got here first.” “You’re timeless.”

  Home alone after two days at [the Professor’s]. I feel extremely depressed, not sure why. She is with M. again, though tells me repeatedly not to worry. Still do, of course. She hurt me quite badly last night when we made love; I actually bled a little. Oh God. Then I tried this morning; she was there briefly, but I was inept. I feel I am losing confidence, wish I knew what to do about that.

  Once after we made love she said if we can weather this one, we’ve won. Want to believe her, but it’s hard though.

  Didn’t write yesterday—one of the more intense days of my paltry existence. [The Professor] called in the morning, remote, depressed. Came over soon after and told me she and Molly had ended up making love again. The night I couldn’t sleep and sat talking to myself in the bathtub. The sex with M. apparently “unsatisfying.” I felt at one point like I was going to have a case of dry heaves. Have to make a leap of faith and trust her. She says if she “has to choose,” no question but I am the one. We went into the bedroom then and made love for the rest of the afternoon. Afterwards [the Professor] said she felt reborn. I’m trying to control evil feelings about M.—who apparently said to [the Professor] the other day, Think what I could do to your career.

  Saw [the Professor] at school and we sat on the grass in the sun. She saying I should try to figure out why I was attracted to her. “If it is because you’re looking for a mother, the person you are relating to should get you into analysis and say goodbye.” Later: “What would you do if suddenly a whole lot of people decided they liked you.” She is afraid that even if I do get “socialized,” as she puts it, I will end up leaving her. “I’m just trying to arrange it so I don’t die alone—but everybody dies alone anyway.”

  She said she didn’t feel she was doing anything “morally wrong” by sleeping with M. I have to accept her perception of the situation, trust to her goodness.

  Brain-bedeviling above all: the Professor’s crazy changeabi
lity—her constantly shifting moods and modalities. Yer-But-No-But-Yer-But. No-But-Yer-But-No-But. With regard to me, she flipped insanely from vilification to ardor and back again. At times, to be sure, she was just plain old vicious—full of harsh, spouting criticisms, like a fountain. A human acid-bath. I was always watching her, she complained one evening; it was creeping her out. Don’t you even realize how it disturbs and UPSETS ME to see you watching me like that? I guess I had a particular Moron-Girl look that especially rankled her. One day I made the mistake, I see from my journal, of telling her that I felt good about a talk we’d had the night before: it had renewed my hope that things were going to work out for us. The Molly element was awkward, but I’d been thinking about it, I said; I knew I could be philosophical. I could be patient; I understood. These weak-sister comments were instantly cut off. No, the talk had been pointless and stupid. I’d just stressed her out with more whining. Not only that: I had had a childish expression on my face all through it that had greatly annoyed her. She looked down and away and frowned darkly at the very thought of me.

  In public situations—like when that nice Tina came over to talk to us in the English office the other day—my behavior was appalling. Obviously out of control. Boring and irritating like a tic. Did I want people to realize what was going on? That we’d been sleeping together? Plus I was always so devious and sly. From the very first, it seemed, I had used various sneaky intellectual wiles to gain power over her: Tarot cards, the I Ching, all your literary allusions. I was always making references that were purposely obscure, she said. This unattractive habit merely demonstrated my anger and insecurity. Tough shit if now I was getting too upset to concentrate on my homework. Or write my fucking exams. The sole journal entry I made that week was the transcription of a gruesome Professorial one-liner: