Читать книгу Drowning in the Shallows - Dan Kaufman - Страница 11

9

Abject terror overwhelms me as I sit in front of the empty classroom waiting for my students to arrive.

It’s 5:45pm and the first class of semester is about to begin.

I should’ve had at least one bourbon beforehand.

I’d only started teaching last semester and found it horrific: three hours straight of standing in front of a group of slack-jawed teenagers who stared at me with a combination of disinterest and superiority while I stuttered, struggled and made bad jokes they didn’t laugh at.

I call this class the death cage.

It goes for three hours because it’s a combination lecture and tutorial, which is why I tell people I’m a lecturer even though I don’t have a PhD. Or a teaching degree.

Actually, I never even studied journalism – the uni offered me the job based on my newspaper experience, which left me completely ill-equipped to handle a classroom of kids. I swore at the end of last semester I’d quit but … well, I need to pay rent, and bar reviews and the odd story each week ain’t gonna cut it.

The door opens and my heart leaps into my throat as students file in. They’re young, nineteen or so, almost entirely female, and they glance at me briefly, conversation pausing, before finding their seats and filling the room with noise. It’s hard not to notice how attractive most of them are.

This is not the average ratio you find in the wild.

Most journalism students have no interest in journalism – but they need the degree to get into TV or PR, hence the sea of attractive faces and the lack of meaning in my job.

Wherever I cast my eye it settles on a girl who in another setting I could fall for, who could make everything all right – if only for a while.

I know, btw, they’re too young for me, that I’m a sleazy old man (well, I am only in my thirties, but still …), that this is the age of #metoo.

I know.

I know that single straight white men should no longer have a voice, our time is up, and as for our sex drives … well, that needs to be laser-focused on age-appropriate women – and let centuries of biological evolution (or devolution, depending on how you look at it) be damned.

I get it.

I should shut the fuck up, start a cat colony, and desex myself to fit in with them.

And you know what? I don’t argue with that. Hell, no one hates their fellow man more than me. Cats are by far better than men – or women.

But while my balls still dangle, I can either lie about finding young attractive women attractive or I can admit to finding them pleasant and yet disturbing to the eye, even though I know I shouldn’t.

Is blinding myself preferable to castration? It’s hard to say – but I need to do one or the other, since this is temptation on a grand and evil scale. Right now, for example, I accidentally catch the eye of a raven-haired beauty who smiles at me warmly, no doubt wanting to make a good impression on the schmuck who’ll be marking her work. I reflexively smile back before gaining the strength to snap out of it and look away. I shuffle my papers, type my name and contact details into my PC so they’ll show on the overheard projector, before leaning back in my chair and sticking a pen in my mouth like a cigarette to look cool and relaxed. Then I rethink this, deciding I probably look like a tosser, and take the pen out.

More students trickle in, I feel like I’m on display, and even after a semester I’m not sure where I’m meant to be looking during time lapses like this. I run my eyes back over the class, trying not to focus on any one person, but then my gaze hits a student bending over to grab something from her bag, the top of her red G-string rising insouciantly out of her hipsters, and …

Damn it.

I mean, give me a break: I haven’t seen a naked woman in months. This is like water torture.

Perhaps I need a woman of the night.

No.

Strip clubs, prostitutes, what’s going on with me?

I’m not that kind of guy.

No, really.

And I know it’s not right … although from an intellectual position you could argue it is, and many sex worker advocates are erudite in explaining their profession’s validity, and lately I have been staring at strange women everywhere, obsessed by the sight of them, the way they move, the promise of their curves, and sometimes I even get a whiff of …

There’s something wrong with me.

A friend of mine says I have a sex addiction but if that’s so I’ve surely gone through cold turkey long enough. I’m ready to be popped back into the oven.

“Excuse me, but is this Online Writing and Editing?” someone asks, startling me. I turn to see a redhead with freckles and a tight tank-top, the arc of her breasts proudly protesting against the flimsy material …

“Ah, yes, yes,” I say, averting my gaze.

Last semester I was nervous and inexperienced. Now I’m nervous, single, tense, and only slightly less inexperienced. How can I perform in front of these beauties when they’ll all be staring at me?

My stomach’s queasy. Christ, why am I doing this to myself again?

I take some deep breaths like my doctor told me to.

Count slowly to six … exhale. Then to four …

You know, I’ll be the centre of attention for these girls. I ought to be enjoying this.

I check my watch: it’s almost time to start the show.

It will be like a performance, too, as I came up with a strategy a few weeks back that might help me this semester: I’m going to act like a lawyer on a TV show I’ve been watching.

I know this sounds stupid but whenever I see this actor on TV playing a lawyer he moves his arms in a certain way in the courtroom, acting and speaking so emphatically and assertively that everyone is spellbound, and invariably he wins his cases.

So … why can’t I do that while teaching? Sure, the idea of acting like an actor is ridiculous, childish, and it might backfire horribly … but you ought to see this guy. He’s convincing. And anyway, nothing could go worse than my class last year – but this way I can pretend to laugh it all off and write a story about it for the paper’s career section if it all goes balls up.

Another student, a six-foot thug with cropped peroxide blond hair, approaches. Christ, where do these kids come from? A bad 80s American football movie? I had a guy with a similar haircut in my class last year.

The thug has an arrogant expression that screams I know you’re my teacher, but I’m stronger and faster and in school I would have kicked your arse.

He’s going down.

“I don’t want to be a journalist,” the boofhead says to me, apropos of nothing, “so if I don’t like this class can I just leave it?”

This is what you want to hear from a student.

This inspires confidence.

“Why are you in this class at all?” I ask.

His five brain cells struggle to fire the neurons to allow to him to shrug, but the sea of young girls behind him answers the question on his behalf. Hell, he’s smarter than me – I studied to be a librarian at university, part-time at night, along with a bunch of creepy middle-aged men wearing cardigans and old biddies whose form of rebellion was crocheting in the back of class. Compared to me this guy’s a frickin’ genius.

“You have three weeks to make your decision,” I say. “After that, it goes on your record.”

Actually, I’m not entirely sure about that, but I’m saying it in a confident way. I really should read the regulations.

The monkey brain shuffles off and sits next to Australia’s Next Top Model. Within minutes she laughs at one of his bon mots.

Bastard.

It’s past six now, the class is almost full.

Stop perving.

Repeat to myself: I am a decent human being.

It’s go time.

◆

“And on that note, class is over,” I say three hours later. “Finish your profiles and have them ready for next week.”

I am a god. A teaching god. Sure, none of the students are thanking me, sure they’re just packing up and forgetting everything I just said, but …

I am a god.

By comparison, let’s look at how bad my teaching was last semester.

In my first class, five of my twenty students were called Alex or Alexis or Alexandra – so I told them everyone will be called Alex from now on to make it easier.

They didn’t appreciate the practicality.

Then, unnerved at the sight of all those Alex’s staring at me in hostility, I forgot what I needed to say and began stuttering.

In the second class I ran out of material and told them to entertain themselves for 40 minutes by surfing the net – though in truth, they already were.

In the third week they were so bored I changed the lecture’s topic halfway through, and when they became bored with that I changed it again, before finally giving up and telling them to have an early mark.

If I hadn’t fudged the students’ feedback forms at the end of semester I’d have never been allowed back for another term. But this time I had my strategy and, as ludicrous as it may seem, it worked.

Not only did I act like a TV lawyer but I mixed up the performance with a little rock god for good measure. I strutted, gestured wildly, acted like an egomaniac and even thumped the whiteboard to make a point – and they swallowed it whole. I swear half the girls’ eyes glittered at me.

It’s as if they never watched Dead Poets Society, or any other movie in which teachers acted so over the top it was ludicrous.

Having said all that, I didn’t anticipate how that would affect their behaviour. Instead of slack indifference this group yelled out, laughed, shared opinions … quite frankly, part of me preferred them when they were docile.

Still, it was an improvement overall.

As the students pack up, I catch the redhead’s eye.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” I say.

“It was alright,” she says flatly.

That’s odd – she was animated during class. Is it possible these students aren’t sexually infatuated with me?

No … let’s not think about that. After all, you should never let the truth get in the way of your self-confidence.