"You're getting ready for a big date, you've pined for this person. Describe the anticipation of the evening ahead, what you will wear, are you nervous? The doorbell rings, you open the door and ... start writing, take it from there, that's your first assignment of the semester due next week."
Most of the class giggled; some students groaned.
I thought it was fabulous.
Early morning English Lit with a kick, first-year fall semester.
My professor was a tall, brash, quick-witted middle-aged man. He could handily whip a classroom of sleepy college students - dreaming of warmer climes- into thinking.
He nearly shook the room when he taught, and wouldn't accept an easy answer from any student.
When he gave back our graded writing assignments, he asked a few students to stay behind, I was included.
"You should be a writer," he said to me privately.
"You're a star," he said.
"I want you to write some more stories and submit them to me so I can critique them," he said.
All semester long I spent my spare time spinning the most fascinating tales of fiction I could imagine. Well, at the time I thought they were fascinating.
He would look over my work and say things like:
"You should write longer stories. What's with these tiny bowel movements on paper? Write a novel!"
I'd answer him with: "I can't. I don't think I can be that interesting for an entire book."
"You can do it; at least combine some of these short stories into something more substantial. I will help you piece them together. Come to my office across campus next week before my 8:30 morning class."
His office was located on the top floor of an enormous brick building. I remember walking inside from the cold.
It was quiet, no students, no faculty, just an old, musty smell hanging around in the hallways.
My hand looked pale and little on the wood banister that led me up the stairs to his office. Down the corridor, I found his door half open, he was behind his desk, behind the Wall Street Journal, holding a large Styrofoam cup. A radiator hissed and knocked before I could. He noticed me from behind his eyeglasses set halfway down his nose.
"Come in," he greeted me disinterested. I thought he still had a huge presence even just sitting behind his desk.
"Hi, how are you Professor?" I smiled, thinking I was special and feeling proud of myself for getting up so early to make this visit for the sake of my craft.
“Sit down.”
His office was over heated by that old radiator and it smelled to me like coffee was being pumped through its' rusty pipes.
"You know I have your friend Molly in my other class this semester?"
"Yes, she told me she was taking your class."
"You know of course she is trying to be you?" he said.
"No, I … no." I swallowed and felt my face getting a little warm. I looked down at the neatly ordered pages in my hands.
"Well she wears her hair and make-up exactly the way you do now, and she talks about you, but she is not you, is she?"
I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders.
"Here," I said handing him my most recent literary accomplishment.
He sipped his coffee loudly but didn't move to take my story.
I rested it in my lap again.
"I looked over your last story," he said, pulling out my writing from his briefcase.
I could see red marks all over it.
"Oh my God, you have marred it." I pulled it out of his hands and flipped through the pages, bright red pencil gashes cut through many of the paragraphs, there were single word notes in the margins.
"Some of it is very good," he said, measuring my disappointment. "You have to learn to take out what's not needed, and you have to write what you know, if not, there will be holes in the page. Hemingway said that."
"Ok ... what parts were very good?" I asked.
"Do you have to be stroked all of the time?"
"No, but I want to know what parts are good." I said.
"Do you keep a journal?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I answered, thinking it was less than sometimes.
"Well, you should be journaling all of the time. Why aren't you writing in it everyday?" he asked.
"Because I'm afraid that when I die people will get a hold of my journals, read what I have written and it will be completely mortifying," I answered honestly.
He grinned and shook his head.
"Give me that." He took my new story and hit me over the head with it. I got up to leave.
"What perfume are you wearing?"
I told him.
"My God it actually floats it's amazing."
"Thanks,” I said. “See you Friday, don't be so liberal with the red pencil."
I didn't see him that Friday though - my boyfriend had broken up with me and I blew off classes in favor of hiding under the covers, and engaging in countless telephone conversations with girlfriends offering weak counsel.
The next time I attended class, I was asked to stay after.
"Come walk with me back to my office," he said, as he folded his briefcase together and locked it closed.
We walked through the hallway together, students said hello to him as we passed.
"Where were you last week?" he asked.
"My boyfriend broke up with me. I had a really bad week,"
I confessed, now feeling silly that I had missed class because of it.
"He broke up with you?"
"Yes."
"Are you kidding me? The way you look right now, if I were him..."
He was interrupted by a student who needed to make up an assignment.
I suddenly felt odd standing with him, walking across campus with him.
"Make sure you don't miss anymore of my classes, I won't tolerate that, the semester is almost over," he reprimanded me in his office.
"What did you think of my last story?" I asked changing the subject.
"The scene at the end needs work. I liked the dialogue, but you should make it longer ...what's your boyfriend's name? I can't believe he broke up with you."
"Yeah well he did."
"Sex changes everything," he said watching me carefully.
"Who said anything about sex?" I watched him back.
I wasn't biting.
"Have you ever read the poem "Nude Descending A Staircase" by X. J. Kennedy?" he asked.
"No."
He pulled a thick hardcover book out from under some papers and flipped through it until he arrived at the page he wanted.
"Here read it. It reminds me of you," he instructed.
I took the book into my hands and bowed my head, letting my hair fall close around my face.
"You can keep that if you'd like. It's actually not a bad book, and stop hiding behind those long locks." More instruction.
I closed the book and stood up to leave. I didn't want to be in his office anymore and I definitely didn't want to read a poem about some naked woman walking down a flight of stairs in front of him, especially since it reminded him of me.
"You know when I first started teaching, it was in night school and there were always women who wanted to engage in affairs...," he said.
He was standing near me now, and up close I thought he looked nothing like the professor I had so admired from the beginning of the term.
"You don't believe in that though, right?" he finished his thought.
"Right," I answered him.
"Come here," he said, taking my face in his hands.
He leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
I backed up slowly.
"Get out of here," he said.
There was a knock at the door.
A female professor poked her head into the office.
"Oh I'm sorry when you have a moment." She began to walk away.
"I was just leaving," I called to her, desperate to exit this moment.
I walked across campus with Literature Art And Artifact cradled in my arms. Stamped in bold black letters on its cover, the words: COMPLIMENTARY COPY NOT FOR RESALE. I had forgotten to thank him for the book, then I realized he had gotten it for free. He was after all, the teacher.
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