I had this other book about two monkeys, Saba and Shana. They lived on an island, and the island ran out of food, so Saba built a raft and sailed away to find food to bring back to Shana. Shana waited and waited and every night she gazed up at the stars and wondered if Saba would ever come back. A few other things happened and all kinds of animals worked together to support Shana. Saba eventually returned with food and all was well.
I had this teacher in highschool and I thought he was really great. He taught English lit and creative writing.
I definitely would have allowed him to molest me and I wouldn't have told anyone.
He never even tried.
Maybe he was molesting someone else, but I doubt it. I suspect he just wasn't the molesting type. He seemed sort of devoted to his wife, who was (is) a rather famous and very celebrated Canadian poet, though rumors swirled that he liked to fuck girl students right after they graduated. A few times, during class, one former student knocked on the door and he went galloping out in the hall to see her. There was a rumor they were loveys (typo and it stays). I saw him giving her a long hug once in his classroom when I went there to pick up an essay. She had been the star poet at our school, published in a few major magazines by the time she was seventeen. She wrote poems about cancer and radios and furiously cunt-stained leotards and things. Yeah, very fucking eloquent. When I was in this teacher's class, she was in her second year of writing at university. She was that girl. She wore scarves. You know?
I was so jealous.
Guess what Dave's doing? Sleeping. Because he's tired. He finished renovating the shower tonight. It's been three weeks of renovating and I've had to shower at other peoples' houses. I could have had baths, but I don't like taking baths. I don't like looking down and seeing the water pooling in my belly button and all the little wet blonde hairs on my pasty skin . All I can think is:
I AM A MAMMAL IN A TUB.
I AM A MAMMAL IN A TUB.
I AM A MAMMAL IN A TUB.
Anyway, back to the teacher story*. This guy was my hero. I worshipped him. I used to go to all his poetry readings. He got stuff, you know? He was so intense and ascerbic and funny- a brilliant teacher, perfect with teenagers- he could get even the dumbest twats excited about Beowulf or Sir Gawain or fucking John Donne. And you could always pick out which kids were in his writing class by eavesdropping on conversations in the hallways. Everything was cliche this, cliche that with them. I was just as bad. Flare jeans are so cliche, I would say to myself, I'm so glad I wear pajamas to school. I'm a real original!. Yep, I was that kid. The kid in the pajamas and slippers with the rat-nest hair and the scowl, wildly in love with my English teacher and tolerant of my flamboyant boyfriend who did things like stick safety pins through his cheeks at assemblies, getting blood all over everywhere just to be punk-rock and awesome.
I was a prime candidate for molestation... how I longed to be groomed, to be taken advantage of!
Of course it never happened.
Of course he was professional and respectful to the end.
In 2007, I was applying to a BA in Communications program and I needed an academic reference who could attest to some writing ability on my part. Since none of the profs at Camosun would have remembered me and since this teacher had accelerated me from Grade 9 English into English 12 and AP Lit, I facebooked him and asked for a letter of recommendation. He graciously agreed and emailed it to me, but I needed a signed letter, so he said I could drop by his place in James Bay. I went there and took Ava with me- so excited to see him again and so thrilled to show off my beautiful baby that it didn't occur to me how different I looked compared to the last time I saw him.
He answered the door in a wife beater, looked me up and down. And I saw myself through his eyes. The disappointment. Gone was the plucky, gaunt teenager with quirky but endearing features and the big sky future ahead of her, the future filled with coffee-shop poetry tours, scholastic successes, dirty but romantic bumsex with dashing foreign poets and politicians. Maybe he thought I would have grown into a swan, or at least a cutie-pie granola mom. Not this frumpy sausage-lady standing on his porch with a crying infant, enormous leaky tits and jiggly arms like some goofy, desperate escapee from Bountiful. I saw all of that wash over the man's face- the shock, the disappointment. So I talked a lot. Because I felt uncomfortable. I blathered nervously for way longer than was appropriate or necessary.
When I got back to my car and was driving away, I started to feel angry. What a shallow cunt, I thought. His behavior toward me was clearly influenced by my eighty extra pounds. I wasn't thinking straight, but it seemed clear to me that he had deliberately forced me to feel uncomfortable. He didn't even PRETEND to be interested in me,I fumed, He didn't even ASK whether I was still WRITING, not even to be fucking POLITE and even after I LICKED his ASS, praising his ASSHOLE collection of poetry, his mediocre-at-best book of short stories and his DISMAL new novel.
I wanted to drive back and scream "YOU'LL NEVER BE AS GOOD AS YOUR WIFE, DICKHEAD! STOP FUCKING TRYING! HOW DAAAAAARE YOU JUDGE ME!!!!"
Instead, I went home and looked at his facebook page while Ava was napping. I read all the adoring wall messages from his current students, and I cried and cried and cried into a huge bowl of ice cream. Then I ate the whole bowl and licked it clean and cried some more.
Then I noticed his facebook status.
"Joe Blo is taking his ninety-year-old mother out for lunch!"
I commented:
"Ninety years old? Must be nice to be middle-aged and still get to take your fucking mother out for fucking lunch, eh? What the fuck did she do that was so fucking great that she got to live to NINETY FUCKING YEARS OLD?! I bet she smoked a pack a day and ate fucking wonderbread, didn't she? MY MOM RAN MARATHONS and she's DEAD at FIFTY, so FUCK YOU!"
I read my message over. Maybe that's a little harsh, I thought, so I added:
"LOL, just kiddin'... TTFN :)"!
Some people live to be the heroes of the young.
They love the promise, the blank slate minds.
The nubile limbs, so many years shy of ruin.
*Details of story changed. Lots of details. Lots of this stuff didn't actually happen. LOL, TTFN!
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