*** In this installment, the class of petulant students Jane teaches, and is eventually captured by, is nicknamed the Slut-Hogs—perhaps the director’s least successful pun/cultural reference.
††† My best friend, who first informed me of the mockery, began calling me this to my face as a joke. His mockery, he presumed, was different than the mockery of strangers because it was well in line with our adolescent form of bonding, making vicious light of each others’ shortcomings and insecurities. I am no angel or innocent victim, I made jokes at his expense as well. In the long run, our form of bonding accumulated unspoken resentment and hurt so tender that most of my friends can’t even bear to look at each other these days. To admit the pain of the cruelty was to expose a weakness none of us were willing to make visible, and over time we found ourselves rubbed raw. My friend was the first in our circle to realize the damaging nature of our engagement and he apologized and ceased the mockery. I never did. In fact, I accepted his apology and immediately mocked him for it; after all, his newfound compassion proved he was growing soft and weak.
‡‡‡ As long as there has been a town called Cross River, and even before, folks have spoken of the water-women, mystical shape-shifting water creatures who live on an island beneath the waters of the Cross River. The water-women—also known as woes, kazzies, sirens, and shauntices (a corruption of the word chanteuse—in some myths, the water-women sing)—exist only to cause havoc. After the creature has found a mark, it takes the shape of that person’s ideal partner (they nearly always take on a female form) and create in him or her a physical, chemical, and emotional dependence the mark usually takes for love. The woe either disappears, leaving its mark delirious with increasing despondence and madness, or it draws its victim to the Cross River, where the mesmerized mark drowns him- or herself following the water-woman beneath the river’s surface. The legend of the water-woman is an enduring Cross Riverian myth passed orally, though some of the most evocative accounts are in print—for instance, every slave narrative written by a Cross Riverian features a scene of a water-woman arriving nude and water-slicked from the bottom of the river to draw hapless newly freed men to their deaths. Every Cross Riverian knows someone who knows someone who has encountered a water-woman.
III.
The Spring; or, Special Topics in Loneliness Studies
1.
I’ve begun writing this section probably a hundred times and I’ve stopped that many times and deleted the words and I’ve gotten up from my computer to blow clouds of reefer smoke hoping against hope that the plumes could clear my head. These are the words I simply don’t want to write. The times I simply can’t bear to live again.
Writing many of the previous pages nearly killed me several times over; the act of remembering is a hand squeezing the soft pink flesh of my brain. Just think, this moment, or any of the thousands that make up the present and the immediate past, any single one of them—maybe all of them—may soon turn into a tortured regret, a stray thought that will harden and become difficult to live with, a monster holding a hatchet constantly returning to hack away inside your skull. And these days I’m writing now, they are a more vicious beast than the previous days. Their teeth and claws are more soaked in red. No one left that time without a mark.
Simply, simply put: watching Chambers unravel just wasn’t as entertaining as I thought it would be.
• • •
My own unravelment went something like this: My hair grew thick, thick, thick back then, at least it was thick when I wanted it to be, not the thin wisps I’m stuck with now. Most often I cut it low because of the sprinklings of gray that I thought made me look like an old man. I could never imagine that the sprinklings would turn into colonies of white that would eventually, with some resistance, form a nation on my head. My cheeks drooped a bit here and there. A few lines creased the valleys of my face deeper than I wished. Freedman’s had caused such stress—it was clear that my youthful attractiveness would soon fall away. My point is that the job had aged me beyond normal wear and tear, but I hid it well and you could only see it if you knew where to look.
I spent hours, many hours upon hours, of my life back then grading. It was fine, though, mind power would save the world, I told myself. Each student was a little bomb I’d fill with the napalm of critical thinking and the force of reasoning and logical discourse. This and only this could sweep over the land and remake our society—given enough students, given enough time. No class too big! No student too dim! Bring them on and I will turn them into small supernovas. That was my battle cry. I churned and burned with hope.
What I didn’t know is that they only let you get so far within the confines of their system. They’ll never let you endanger the status quo. They’ll find a way to undermine you, destroy you. That’s why I have to create my own system.
Dr. Kr— ran the department at the time. He’s dead now, not soon enough to aid me, though I am grateful for his passing. It was his actions that helped me finally gain sight beyond sight. Him and a student named Maggie.
Maggie the magpie, I’d say when calling roll. She of the bright eyes and seat at the center of the front row. She of the insightful comments and dazzling papers that leapt with grace, beauty, and wisdom.
Something nagged at me about one of her papers, though. I had given it an A, and never for a second did I question my scoring. But it was an anecdote, an aside, really, that kept coming back to me. Something I had heard as an echo long ago, maybe. I dug and dug. And what I discovered was so astonishing it left me with few words. Her paper was the twin of one I’d written as an undergraduate at Freedman’s. It featured my earliest invented Cross Riverian fable! I stared into it as one stares into the stars. I had forgotten my practice of creating history. When I confronted Maggie with the evidence her face turned delirious with joy. She twirled and laughed. Woo-hoo-ha-hoo! she exclaimed. She had been plagiarizing me all semester, she told me. And she twirled again and left my office and in the heart of my heart of hearts she’d forever remain a villain. I never saw Maggie again, and to this day I’m left with the question of why. What was the point? Who told her to target me? I’d heard from a student that she hated the way I mocked her name, but that couldn’t be it. Could it? I stayed up at night wondering, but never came upon a successful answer.
In the meantime, my bills piled. My student loans grew millstone-heavy, bruising my neck and bending my spine. Idra’s frustration became a monster roaring between us. We argued over money and I began to hate this woman, my second chance at love, at not dying alone in a hole somewhere. She had no interest in hearing about Maggie, whom she mocked as my girlfriend. I now dreamt of Maggie in the skimpy dresses she used to wear to class, which I paid no attention to when she was my student. In my dreams she’d twirl in her short skirts, her cleavage fat and always taunting, always exposed. Idra and I barely looked at each other, much less touched. I now distrusted my students and watched them cockeyed. They were subject of another recurring dream, they played the part of shadow-demons, I an angel; they clawed at me, ripping my wings from my back and dragging me into the firepit. It’s all over when you hate your students—they kept coming and wouldn’t stop—and I now saw them for who they were and what they were worth.
Money, and only money, could solve this, make this at all worthwhile, maybe money and a position with more prestige, more respect. I went to Dr. Kr—’s office to ask about a tenure-track job.
Sorry, my boy, he said. I’ve been trying to open up some tenure-line positions for some time now, but the university just won’t budge. I’ll tell you what, I don’t want to hold a talented professor like you back, so I’ll write you a letter and you can use it to apply for some jobs. There’s one open in Port Yooga, I believe.
I left, not happy, but with hope. Probably the last time that useless emotion graced me. I made a show of putting in applications so Idra could see and soften her tone toward me. Her tone hardened. Whenever she spoke it felt as if she were bashing me with wo
od. She always said my moods made me hard to deal with. Well, I said, if I don’t get any of these jobs—think I have some moods now? I’m ’bout to serve up some depression like you ain’t never seen!
And of course I didn’t get the jobs. Not even a call, not even an acknowledgment. Zipseys. Nada.
I reviewed my materials. They were excellent. Top-notch. I’d hire me, I thought, looking over my cover letters and my curriculum vitae and all my old syllabi. I was a catch.
Maybe you’re not as brilliant as you thought, Idra said, and it was true. As brilliant as I liked to believe I was, Dr. Kr— was more brilliant. He’d never lose his brightstar if he could help it.
I sent out the letter he had given me, but I had never read it. It was like one of my Cross Riverian fables, I could scarcely recognize the beautiful, heroic academic swashbuckler Dr. Kr— described.
But there in the middle, like a stink bomb:
If I may say that Dr. Reece has any defects at all, it is that perhaps he’s too bright, too optimistic and hopeful. He believes in his students with a childlike naïveté that can often serve as an obstacle. For instance: a plagiarizing student snowed Dr. Reece for nearly an entire semester because he wanted, no needed, to believe she would one day do for the Humanities what Carl Sagan did for the stars. Turns out she was actually handing in essays Dr. Reece wrote as an undergraduate. The “genius” he saw in her work was his own. A bit of an extreme case of Narcissus staring into his reflection in the river. This is a small quibble and something that can be tamed with the right training. Training I have had little time to administer on our small, but frustratingly hectic campus. Think of Dr. Reece as a big picture thinker who often has trouble finding Waldo among all the clutter.
The scoundrel knew what kind of damage he was inflicting. I would never get the chance to confront the good doctor. His heart had a beef with him over Thanksgiving break and Dr. Kr— lost the argument. He currently resides in Hell and periodically he bathes in yellow rain courtesy of yours truly standing above his grave.
With Dr. Kr— gone the university got to reorganizing the department, slashing the jobs they could slash. Not just me, but soon a bunch of us were out on the street (quite literally, in my case!), replaced by adjuncts.
Chambers’s downfall reminds me of my own, though his is sadder. As I sit in the morgue alone surrounded by candles, walls closing, widening, I’ve become far more despondent than I ever have been. Aww, man.
2.
[NOTE: The best way to discuss the events of the Spring 2018 semester is to present the documents Dr. Chambers used in his course and his later correspondence with his superiors. These documents were submitted to the Faculty University Committee in Fall 2018 as part of Dr. Chambers’s attempt to maintain his status as a tenured professor at Freedman’s University.—SR]
To: Dr. Jason Oliver, Chair—Department of English and Cultural Studies
Sent: October 1, 2018, 3:58 a.m.
From: Dr. Reginald S. Chambers, Assistant Professor—Department of English and Cultural Studies
Cc: Dr. Sarah Bridge, Provost
Bcc:
Subject: Re: Grade Appeal and Employment Defense Documents
Attachment: Semester Materials.zip
Drs. Oliver, Bridge, and Greene,
Please find attached a copy of my Spring 2018 syllabus, writing prompts, and assorted other documents relevant to my English 101 classes from the previous semester, Ms. Montana’s grade appeal in particular, and any and all administrative charges against me.
Forgive the lateness of these documents. I have been so exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally by the events of last semester that I did not have the psychological bandwidth to properly review and send these documents. I’ve sorted some—but not with the rigor that I’d usually apply to such a task. I’m afraid I’ve given you a kind of document dump (or alternately, I’ve taken a document dump into the university’s servers) in the hopes that this mess of papers vindicates me. I am certain they will, as I have done nothing wrong, and in fact have been myself wronged. If I am given a fair shot and these papers do not vindicate me, it’s that my failure to properly curate the documents has led to some confusion. The other reason could be that this process was never meant to be fair and is simply a pretext to a miscarriage of justice that will need to be litigated by our legal system. I have reason to believe this will be the case.
Have at it; or rather, have at me. Take me apart.
Dr. Reginald S. Chambers, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
(currently on “sabbatical”)
Department of English and Cultural Studies
Freedman’s University
x3725
The only method
Proven in time
To stop
The heart from hurtingIs to stop the heart
—Roland Hudson,“Firewater” (excerpt), from The Firewater of Love
3. SPRING SEMESTER, 2018
I feel the need to step in here and offer something in the way of commentary, of context. I heard little to nothing from Dr. Chambers before the opening of the spring semester. After sending me his essay—blessed confirmation he was still batshit—he ignored all my emails. I hadn’t yet seen the glorious document he was calling his syllabus, so I was unsure if he was still going ahead with his class. For that matter, I was still unsure if he planned to send Dr. Greene his essay as a delirious sort of fuck-you.
I paced about the nearly empty campus toward the end of winter break, smoking the reefer I managed to scavenge from unlocked dorm rooms. Perhaps he had changed his mind. A disaster for me. I readied my syllabi, hoping that keeping busy would free me from thinking about the problem of Dr. Chambers. It didn’t, of course, but at least I was able to get some things done.
When I finished my syllabi and had no other major tasks to complete, my mind again turned on itself. I remembered that this work is lonely work. I saw no one, not even the dimwit. The circle of time is a drain we spin. I circled and circled, dizzied and mad, thinking of nothing but the good doctor. I paced, read, wrote fables, checked Chambers’s hatemyprofessor ratings, paced, wrote, read, hatemyprofessor, read, paced, hatemyprofessor—and on and on, gaining not a shred of satisfaction or peace of mind. I found myself so empty and alone that I hallucinated, imagining myself as a shambling explorer, collapsing in the cold tundra of Antarctica. That’s when, through the haze of the snow and cold, I saw a rescue team. They lifted me by my armpits and set me to ride a white current of cold air. There, floating above it all, I realized that I had not encountered a rescue team at all; instead I had encountered academics back on campus for Faculty University College, a mess of seminars and speakers the university sets up to inspire faculty at the outset of each semester. And the academics had not actually lifted me, or engaged me in any way. They assumed I was a homeless man (true enough) and they walked around me as I lay on the ground imagining myself adrift on the cold continent. Some actually did engage me, to be fair; they pitched pennies at my face. I stood and greeted a few (they ignored me). Soon it was down the hill I went, back to the morgue, where I shaved and cleaned myself up. I hadn’t attended Faculty University College since I was actually a faculty member. Perhaps I’d see Chambers there.
• • •
I dressed in my best professor finery—rust colored sports coat complete with the elbow patches—and it was like Clark Kent removing his glasses. People who previously walked by throwing pennies at my face were now asking me about my research as we ate pastries and sipped our too-hot coffees.
They were all out, all the characters. The math professor, so brilliant and accomplished he could each day dress as a clown, chatted in his whiteface makeup and floppy red shoes with the history professor who every semester taught as a different character from history. Last semester it was Thomas Jefferson (he drew compl
aints when he asked his teaching assistant to portray Sally Hemings); this semester he dressed as Harriet Tubman. Then there was the tall skinny blond with the strong jaw, his hair swept into a fashy cut—Dr. Faison, an assistant professor of philosophy, but I referred to him as the Aryan, as I suspected he was part of the neo-Nazi leader Ian Lipser’s call for white supremacists to infiltrate historically black college faculty. Yep, the gang was all there, but no Chambers. Reginald was too much of a conformist to skip these things. Perhaps I misjudged him or perhaps he was changing, transforming as a caterpillar in a chrysalis.
The talk this morning was mostly on Ulysses Sparks, the fool behind hatemyprofessor. Calling him a fool, I suppose, is a bit of an imprecision. The site was a beast, growing and growling like a living, breathing organism, and Sparks had the brilliance and audacity to take his performance on the road. In the fall, he embarked on a campus tour he called Moments of Hate. For an hour or so he’d dance about a stage and rain down invective on academia for its supposed liberalism and pedantry, for the way it stunted the brilliance of students with its rules and grades. To this, the students would cheer and wave their arms wildly. And for the pièce de résistance, for two minutes the face of the professor from that school with the worst ratings on hatemyprofessor would be blown up on the big screen, larger than life, a canvas on which the whole campus could project the depths of its hatred.
No, Sparks was no fool. The very second he announced his Moments of Hate Tour, engagement at his site increased tenfold, and just the other day he released his spring schedule. Freedman’s enjoyed the distinction of being the only historically black college on the list. There was no combating him. Whenever a college pulled the plug on his rally, he and the students who invited him would appear on television railing about the disappearance of free speech on college campuses. Those schools would find themselves with an even larger crowd of protestors than would have been at the rally. Yep, far from a fool. Of course, the money he offered these schools was too handsome to turn down. Most of these administrators with their failing budgets would dance naked for money if it came down to it.
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