“I like Shakespeare a lot.”
“Shakespeare. Well. That is impressive.”
“‘To be or not to be,’” Jacks says to the ceiling.
“Jack,” she laughs. “That’s not Shakespeare.” She looks at me. “Is it?”
“Actually, it is. It’s from Hamlet”
She slaps his arm with the back of her hand. “Well, look at you”
He gives an exaggerated smug look.
“Marianne?” I say to her.
“Yes, Barney?”
“I was wondering … could I… “
“Down the hall on the right,” Jack says.
I ignore him. “I was wondering if I could read something to you. A poem. I’d really like to.”
“Well, sure, Barney. Is it something you wrote?”
“No, it’s by Shakespeare, a sonnet.”
“Oh, dear.”
“It’s really beautiful and I think … I really think you’ll appreciate it.” I look around for the other book. “What’d I do with the Norton Anthology?”
“The what?” Jack asks.
“The book you … that other book.”
Jack fetches it from the countertop. “Here ya go. Gimme some a that Shakespeare. Hit me with it, baby.”
“I’m sure it’s in here somewhere.” While I quickly look through the index, Jack stands behind Marianne’s chair massaging her neck and shoulders.
“Mmm,” she tells him.
I turn to page 674. “This is one of the sonnets he wrote to a woman. No one knows who. She’s called the Dark Lady.”
“Black chick?” Jacks asks, massaging away.
“It just means anonymous.”
“That feels good,” she tells him.
I clear my throat. “Okay. Well. It doesn’t have a title. So. Here it is.” With all my heart I read:
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’—”
“Hey, I’ve heard that,” she says.
“It’s pretty famous,” I admit.
“Let the boy read, Mar.”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead, Barney.”
I begin again, my face close to the tiny print:
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate … ‘“
The further I read, the more passionate I feel, seducing her right in front of Jack, making love to her with my words—and they are mine, I make them mine as I speak them. By the time I reach the concluding couplet my voice is quaking:
‘“So long as men can breathe … or eyes can see … /So long lives this … and this … gives life … to thee.’”
I look at her.
She’s sitting there with her head back, eyes closed, lips parted, while Jack is kissing her lovely white neck and waving bye-bye to me.
I close the Norton Anthology and leave it on the table along with the art book.
Out on the sidewalk, I begin limping back to the bookstore.
Graduate Teaching Assistant
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY 1972
I figure “assistant” means I’ll be helping out a professor: making coffee, filing stuff, running after sandwiches, maybe correcting some essays. But after a crash course with a dozen others, I’m given my own class: Freshman Composition, section 7, 9-9:50, M-W-F, room 104. I’m supposed to walk in there and be the teacher.
I walk in. They know I’m the teacher because I’m wearing a tie and closing the door behind me. I look at them sitting there looking at me. I haven’t quite closed the door yet.
I tell them I forgot my pen.
Out in the hallway I stand against the wall. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m sorry …
“Sir?”
This great big pretty-faced girl in a lumberjack shirt and bandanna walks up. “You the teacher?”
“What did you want?”
“Sir, my name is Penny Ledbetter? I registered late and all the other freshman comp sections are closed and I was wondering—”
I tell her to go on in.
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.” She continues standing there. “Sir, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just… I forgot… something.”
“You’re sweating very heavily, sir. Did you know that?”
“Warm in this tie.”
She opens the door for me. “Coming in?”
I shake my head. “I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. They’ll have to get someone else. I’m really very sorry.”
She closes the door. “Sir, none of my business, okay? But is this your first time teaching? Is that why you’re out here?”
I nod.
“Can I give you some advice?” she says.
I nod.
“Walk through that door, sir, like you’re stepping out of an airplane. You’re a sky diver. It’s your first jump. Just step through that door.”
“I tried that.”
“And?”
“I stepped out here again. Which I obviously couldn’t do from an airplane. So the analogy doesn’t work.”
She points at me. “See? You just taught me something. And you sounded like a teacher.”
“It’s easy out here.”
“So what happened when you walked in?”
“Nothing. I told you, I turned around and walked out.”
“Say anything?”
“Just… that I forgot my pen.”
She laughs right out loud, right in my face. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says, shaking her head, still laughing. “Your pen … that’s very …”
“Get in the room,” I tell her, jerking my thumb at the door. She stops laughing.
“Find a seat. In you go.”
“That’s good, sir. Keep that attitude.”
“Hurry,” I tell her.
“Right.”
I follow her in and close the door behind me.
Topic: Something about myself that I would like to change.
Cynthia Olmsted writes that she would like to lose ten more pounds for three reasons, each developed in a separate paragraph: appearance, health, self-esteem.
Kevin Wilson wants to smoke less marijuana because his mind keeps drifting like a boat with nobody rowing and a gigantic waterfall lying ahead and yet who among us is able to say what tomorrow may bring, kay sera, sera, let’s just hope the war ends soon but if you want to know where I stand, that’s easy, Hell no I won’t go!
Patricia Klein would like to change the fact that she’s too nice a person and lets everyone take advantage of her: Its always the sweat people of this world who get eaten up because lets face it everyone likes to eat sweats!
Penny Ledbetter, the big pretty-faced girl from the hallway, would like to be less critical of other people, especially her roommate, and briefly describes three basic flaws in her roommate’s character: laziness, pettiness, and arrogance. At the bottom of the paper she’s left me a note: Sir, I would stop pacing around so much and try speaking slower. Otherwise very good job so far.
Then I come to this, from Philip Norling:
I would like to stop thinking about her. She is so beutiful. When she smiles it is like the sun rising in the morning over a field of gently swaying daffidils. I want to hold her in my arms and say “I love you.” I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her forehead and her eyelids and her cheeks and her chin and her lips. I want to slide my hands down around her skinny white throat and close my fingers tighter and tighter, looking straight into her beutiful blue eyes until she is dead. That is one thing I would like to change about myself, I would like to stop thinking about her in that evil way. And if I do not stop thinking about her in that way I am going to kill myself like the Romans. You sit in a tub of hot water and cut open your wrists and fall deeper and deeper asleep until your dead. Did you want paragraphs?
I read it over again. He sounds serious. I don’t know what to do. It’s almost one in the morning. I could talk to him tomorrow after class—if it’s not too late. Jesus. I call information
and get his dorm-room phone number.
Someone grunts hello, half asleep.
“Philip?”
“No.”
“Is Philip Norling there?”
“Sleepin’.”
“In his bed?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Never mind. Thank you.”
The next morning taking roll I get a good look at him: skinny, pony-tailed, patchy-bearded, slouched down in an oversized army jacket.
Pretty standard-looking.
I tell the class I’ve decided to set up individual conferences in my office over the next few days to talk about this first batch of papers, and I schedule him for two-thirty this afternoon, with no one afterwards.
I spend the period working with them on some grammar and punctuation problems running through their papers. I try to pace around less and speak more slowly.
“Phil. Hi. Come on in. Have a seat.”
He sits in the white plastic chair I’ve set by my desk. Casually as I can, I ask him how he’s doing.
“Okay. How’re you.”
“Not too bad. Getting a little sick of all this rain.”
“Know what you mean.”
“Okay, let me see … if I can find it,” I mutter, looking through the pile of papers, like his was no different from anyone’s. “Here we go. Well. I gave you a B.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He puts out his hand for the paper but I hold onto it.
“You ask down here about paragraphing.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, even with a very short piece like this you could probably—”
“Did you want it longer? You didn’t say anything about how long. I could prob’ly talk more at the end there.”
“No, actually it seems pretty complete: ‘… and fall deeper and deeper asleep until your dead.’ Strong sense of … closure there.”
“How’s the spelling?”
“Fine. There’s an ‘a’ in ‘beautiful’ and you want the contraction ‘you’re’ instead of the possessive where you say ‘until your dead.’”
“I have a real problem with that.”
“Any other problems you’d like to talk about, Phil?”
“Well …”
“Just feel free.”
“Okay. The word ‘its’? I can never remember. Which one gets the—whaddayacallit—the apostrophe.”
“The contraction. The one that breaks apart into ‘it is.’”
“Gotcha. Okay, well, thanks,” he says, holding out his hand again for the paper.
I hang on to it. “Before you go, Phil, I really think we need to discuss the content. Don’t you?”
“What about it?”
“Phil, you talk about killing a girl, about strangling her, and about killing yourself, cutting your wrists in a bathtub. Do you see how I might feel a little bit… concerned here?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“I see what you’re saying. Thing is, though—no offense, okay?—but I would have to say you kind of missed the whole hidden meaning of the thing.”
“Help me out, then.”
“It’s like … okay, it’s like when Jim Morrison of The Doors, on the album Strange Days, where he says, ‘What have we done to the earth? Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn and tied her with fences and dragged her down.’ See, that’s what Ym doing in this paper: speaking … you know …”
“Metaphorically?”
“Right. Exactly.”
“So you’re saying the girl is used as … “
“A symbol. That’s all. Just a symbol.”
“Symbol for what?”
“For … you know … whatever. For Life itself.”
“Explain.”
“Okay, it’s like, there’s Life, right? Life is wonderful, Life is beautiful, but it can also be a bummer and you’d like to strangle it. That’s all. That’s all I was trying to say.”
“What about cutting open your wrists in a tub of warm water?”
“Same deal. The whole … symbolic thing going on there. I shoulda made it a lot clearer, I know, but you didn’t give us a whole lotta time. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. And I think a lot of other people felt the same way. Just telling you what I heard.”
“That I didn’t give enough time?”
“It was like twenty minutes before we got started—so that’s, what, half an hour to write an essay? I mean, you’re the teacher, and I don’t wanna be telling you how to do your—”
“No, you’re right, you’re right. I didn’t realize—”
“Hey, no big deal. Live and learn. Anyway, I better get going. I got—”
“Phil, listen. I’m going to be honest here. I’m thinking I should show this to my supervisor Dr. Cunningham and let her decide what to do about it, if anything. This is my first teaching job, and actually, even if it wasn’t—”
“This is your first teaching job?”
“Right.”
“Coulda fooled me, man.”
“Oh?”
“It’s like you been doing this all your life.”
“Well, thank you. Actually, after a little initial stage fright, I really began to—”
“See, the problem is, if you give it to your boss? She’s gonna read it and think, Whoa, this guy’s a sicko, he needs help, blah, blah, blah, and if I try to explain to her, like I did with you, about Jim Morrison and The Doors, she’s gonna say, The who} and I’m gonna say, No, that’s a different group, that’s Pete Townshend’s band, and she’s gonna say to herself, This guy really is a whacko. You see what I’m saying?”
“That’s very good, I like that, The Who. But I think you underestimate Dr. Cunningham. First of all, she’s a very—”
“I’ll bet I know who you re into. Bob Dylan, right? You’re a Dylan head. Am I right?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I could tell. See, that’s why you’re able to understand what I was trying to do in my paper—because I mean, let’s face it: Dylan, he’s the master. Talk about symbolic: ‘Einstein disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk passed this way an hour ago—”‘
“‘—with his friend a jealous monk,’” I cut in. “Yeah. ‘Desolation Row.’ Great song.”
“Great album,” he adds.
“Bringing It All Back Home, right?”
“No,” he corrects. “Highway 61 Revisited”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll have to check that.”
“Feel free.”
“I saw him down in Carbondale last year,” I tell him.
“Hey, I was there,” he says. “Great concert.”
“Think so? I was a little disappointed. Those three girls as backup singers. Seemed a little slick for Dylan.”
“I know what you mean. I remember thinking, What’s with the chicks} But hey, that’s Dylan, right? Always changing.”
“That’s true. That’s a good point,” I tell him.
“Hey listen,” he says, getting up, “it’s been cool talking to you. Not many teachers I can really open up to, you know?” He takes the paper out of my hand. “I’ll look this over. See where I went wrong. Maybe next time I’ll get you some paragraphs.”
“There ya go.”
“Hey. Dylan forever.”
“Right on,” I tell him.
“Catch ya next time,” he says.
“Okay, man.”
When he’s gone I tilt back in my chair, feet on the desk, hands folded behind my head, staring at my Dylan poster on the wall …
I sit up. For Christ sake, that’s how he knew.
He’s not in class next time and I’m worried. Afterwards I phone and get his roommate.
He didn’t slit his wrists. He swallowed a bottle of barbiturates. His roommate found him on the floor and called the health center.
“So is he okay? Do you know?”
“I guess. They pumped his stomach. He�
��s still over there.”
“But he’s okay, right? He’s gonna be okay?”
“Prob’ly. He didn’t take that many. I don’t know where he got ’em. They weren’t mine. I don’t even do downers. I just had ’em for sleep. Can I ask who’s calling?”
He’s in a room by himself, sitting up in a hospital gown, flipping through a Rolling Stone magazine. He looks pale and very tired. But he starts talking right away.
“There’s an interview here with Mick Jagger. He talks about Dylan. Says some cool things. Do you like Let It Bleed?”
“Do I what?”
“Let It Bleed. The Stones album. You like it?”
And that’s all he’s willing to talk about—music.
At one point I say to him, “Phil …”
“I don’t wanna discuss it,” he says, “okay?”
“Have your parents been informed?”
“Yeah. They’re on the way.”
“You fooled me, Phil. You know that, don’t you? You fooled me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I think you know.”
“Hey, you like The Dead?”
“Pardon?”
“Grateful Dead. They got a new one out. You heard it?”
I go to see my supervisor—tiny, white-haired Dr. Cunningham—and tell her about Phil. She listens carefully.
Then she takes off her glasses, sets them on her desk, folds her hands and says, “Let me make sure I understand this correctly. A student in your class turns in a paper in which he talks about wanting to kill himself, and mentions the method he intends to use, then subsequently does in fact try to kill himself—and you’re just coming to see me now} Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Well … basically.”
“That is appalling.”
“Thing is … “
“That is utterly inexcusable.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Dr. Cunningham, I really do, but—”
“What section.”
“Sorry?”
“The class. What section number.”
“Seven.”
“I’ll get someone to take over. Your assistantship is terminated.”
“Dr. Cunningham, listen …”
“Please leave this office. Now.”
I don’t especially care for her tone of voice and would like to point that out to her but I’ve got this hard little ball in my throat.
Reason for Leaving Page 5