The World Doesn't Require You Page 18

  No, I really should go plan for my afternoon cla—

  I insist, Reggie. I feel terrible about this. And if this campus is a family, then we need to hurt each other and perform elaborate apologies.

  That got a smile from Dr. Chambers, as I knew it would, and I was correct in thinking that it would take him only a moment to change his mind.

  • • •

  When we got to the caf, I didn’t see my man Chet, the dimwit who worked the registers. He passed me free food whenever the manager wasn’t looking. In all my years on the fringes, Chet was the only one who knew of my true nature, after having seen me emerge from the hole one day. He’d brought me a blanket and some sandwiches. I repay him with good conversation. I became pretty adept at swiping food on account of his days off; if I had a little bit of money I’d buy a dollar fries or something and hold a burger or slice of pizza out of sight beneath my tray while I paid. Most times I didn’t have any money, since every little bit I earned went to my hundreds of thousands in student loan debt. I was completely broke (but yet not broken), so when Chet wasn’t there I just snatched some food and walked away cool-like. Today I snatched for two.

  Let me pay you for this, Dr. Chambers said over chicken and fries.

  No, no, I replied. It’s on me.

  He filled his mouth and nodded in thanks. Elephant-in-the-room time, he said through a wall of chewed food.

  No, no, Reggie, you don’t have to expla—†

  I’m writing a paper on the surprising aesthetics of various types of girl-on-girl pornography and what it tells us about masculinity in the twenty-first century.

  I paused my chewing and then righted myself, making sure to hold a steady and neutral facial expression. I thought I’d sized him up good, but I tell you, Dr. Chambers sure did throw me for a loop with this one.

  That’s interesting, I said. So what are you finding?

  Well, it’s, uh, well, um (I observed his stammer with interest), it’s um, early in my research yet. Very early. I’m looking at bondage, um girl-on-girl domination fantasy, wrestling and catfight videos freely available on the internet and so . . .

  (I also observed with interest the way he trailed off.)

  Tell me now, bruh, he said. You said you’re teaching lit; what sort of things are your students reading this semester?

  I’m having students read early twentieth century Cross Riverian fables in the work of Milo Sequoia.

  Sequoia?

  Oh yes. Not familiar with his work? Chambers shook his head. Most people are not (because he’s an invention all my own! Heh heh heh, I wanted to add). We don’t read our own work enough. Always looking outside Cross River when we have a whole literary world here. He was a contemporary of Roland Hudson, you know.

  I added that last part because I knew Chambers was an admirer of Hudson’s poetry. I heard him over and over bringing up the poet’s work in class—he spoke Hudson’s name in this annoying and reverent faux-poetic register—while his students watched him blankly. It embarrassed me to see him get so twisted up for something as commonplace as words, only for his students to openly sleep and stare into their phones.

  I’d love to teach more Hudson, he said. Have so little space on my syllabus as it is, though. Hudson tends to take over when I teach his stuff; I’m talking back-to-back classes on a single line.

  Well, you should teach him more. You should. I’ll send you some of Sequoia’s fabl—

  I looked over at Dr. Chambers and noticed he was gazing past me. He stared, it seemed, for thousands and thousands of yards. I turned my head to see where his vision rested. A woman waved. He waved.

  As the woman drew near I saw that it was Dr. Shana Greene—Mean Dean Shana Jean Greene—who oversaw the School of Arts & Sciences.

  Dr. Chambers, she called. How’s the essay coming?

  Dr. Chambers grimaced.

  Dean Greene, Chambers said. It’s going slow. Went back to do more, um, research.

  More research, huh? Can’t get enough research. How about I see it at the beginning of the spring semester, eh?

  Uh, okay. Yeah.

  Good. First day back. (I noticed with interest how she smirked at him.) Looking forward to reading, sir.

  Dr. Greene walked off, not even cutting me a half glance, and for that I felt both grateful and insulted.

  Administration, right? I said when she was far from us. They make my skin crawl.

  Yeah. Hey, Reece, I got to go.

  We left with a promise to share our work with each other, knowing that would never occur. There was something shaky with Dr. Chambers that I couldn’t begin to put my finger on. He was suddenly so wily and squirrelly for no reason that I could see. Something didn’t add up, but I had lesson plans to create, classes to teach, papers to grade.

  • • •

  At least twice a week I’d find Dr. Chambers sitting by himself in the cafeteria, and I’d pull a chair up to his table. He’d smile upon seeing me. Sometimes it was a put-on, sometimes his smile seemed genuine. My chair, as I snatched it preparing to sit, would scrape and squeal against the floor, causing Chambers to cringe. After that his body would become relaxed and it would be just the two of us talking shit. A volley of two conscious minds wading out into the polluted but still nourishing rivers of life. Our discussions ranged widely: music, women (there was an adjunct he appeared smitten with), our classes, poetry (he always, always quoted Hudson), the past, the present. The future never came up.

  Sometimes he paid, other times I provided the food. I have to admit here that I am usually very good at getting a handle on people, but even though our conversations flowed freely and easily, complete with natural peals of laughter—this man had made himself a mystery to me.

  Sometimes he would say, Reece, you married, got kids?

  I’d shake my head and he’d say, Lucky dude. And he’d speak no more about that, turning the conversation instead to rant about Roland Hudson’s poetry of loneliness and madness.

  Or he’d offer: Sometimes I feel like my shit is falling all apart, like pieces of me blowing right away, man. And that would be it. He normally said this near the end of lunch and we’d scurry off to our classes without addressing all the ways in which he was a straw man falling into little straw pieces.

  He seemed cowed by Dean Greene whenever she passed and sneered, reminding him of her deadline. It was bizarre, this shrinking. At odds with everything I needed him to be if we were ever to achieve our perfect rebellion. His eventual breaking could be put to good use to undermine the anti-intellectual edifice our society was constructing in our institutions of higher learning. He was to be a bomb left at the base of our dilapidated intellectual life. In essence, he would be another me. A second soldier in the shadow university I was building right in the rotting shell that is Freedman’s. Soon we’d have a whole army of ghost professors teaching ghost courses and our alternatively educated students would spread across the globe, undermining all our dead zombie institutions—the media, the governments, institutions of higher learning—that dulled our senses. Yes, Freedman’s needed to be taken down—the world needed to be taken down—but neither Freedman’s nor the world could be taken down by those who were afraid. So, ironically, Chambers in his milquetoast acquiescence to Greene’s meager power truly scared me.

  I made sure it was a day when I provided lunch that I asked him about Dean Greene’s taunting.

  After the dean walked by and looked down at the trembling Chambers, I shook my head.

  So, I said. Dean Greene?

  He grunted quizzically.

  She as mean as she seems?

  He chuckled and then repeated my rhyme scheme, Is Mean Dean Jean Greene as mean as she seems? Well, she’ll scheme to crush your dreams if she’s not too keen on your beam . . . uh—ah, fuck it, I can’t keep up. She a bitch.

  I’ve never heard of a dean looking over the work of one of her professors. It’s—I grasped for words—it’s . . . it’s so disrespectful.

  Yeah, he
said, and looked away. He crunched a fry in his teeth. Some people just . . . uh, some people just don’t believe I’m really writing this porn paper. They got me pegged as a pervert.

  So what are you goi—

  You’ll have to excuse me, Reece. I need to spend my free time making sure my shit is tight.

  I’m sorry to take up all your free time, Doc.

  No, bruh, don’t apologize. You helped me remember the stakes. I’m gonna throw that fucking essay in her stupid fucking mean smirking face soon.

  Let me know when you need a reader.

  Chambers nodded and then grabbed ahold of his brown tray and walked off, stepping with fury and determination. I smiled because I knew he was doomed. When the administration has it in for you, there is no coming back. I knew I’d enjoy watching him churn and churn in this limp and futile attempt to save himself and this churning would groom him perfectly for me. It would be painful as well, make no mistake. I liked him, after all. I ate a burger and mumbled to myself.

  I need to see this porn essay, I said.

  • • •

  I had a car once. This was back when I was an upstanding member of society, a lecturer at Freedman’s. It’s gone now. A fat woman papered over the window with thin pink slips, parking tickets, and then I watched as a fat jumpsuited man in a white truck towed it away.

  I laugh now at the rage this raised within me.

  A few months later when I was no longer an upstanding member of society or officially a faculty member at the school, I saw that woman’s flat, fat, broad back writing tickets next to a snowbank. My car was long gone then, towed to that great impound lot in the sky. I didn’t earn enough to save its life. I trotted over to her, a determined angry young ram, and I struck the broad side of that barn with my shoulder like it had a target painted on it. She went barreling face-first into the snow and I dashed off cackling, a shadow, an apparition of the night.

  Dr. Chambers, facedown on his desk holding up one of those thin pink strips of paper, reminded me of myself. What sense does it make to have to pay to be at my goddamned job? he muttered. It’s extortion, man.

  He sighed, his office strewn with pictures of naked women. On the floors, across his keyboard. He tossed his parking ticket onto the tits of his desk.

  I’m sorry, Dr. Reece. I’m not myself, man. You’ll have to excuse—

  You canceled your classes today.

  You see the latest on hatemyprofessor? Chambers turned to his keyboard and rapidly tapped his fingers along the keys. Dr. chambers does nothing but spot—I think they mean spout—bad poetry all class long. i’m mad I choosed his class it’s going to be a long semester everything about this class is bad

  You canceled your class because of a post on hatemyprofessor?

  Why did they even take my class? These people don’t care about words. To them words are the shit, the toilet paper, and the goddamn toilet bowl itself.

  Come on, man. What’s really getting to you, huh, Chambers?

  Nothing is going right, Reece. Nothing.

  The essay?

  The stupid essay. I’m a fraud, Reece. I don’t want to write this stupid essay, and furthermore, I can’t. That’s what it comes down to.

  I thought you wanted to throw your findings in the dean’s face. What happened to that?

  Findings? I have no findings.

  He shifted and sighed and rocked about, and every time he moved he knocked aside another porn image.

  What about all this?

  Look, Reece. It’s like this: One day I was sitting in my office after my fourth class and I’m dazed and tired in this little box. This cube I’m in is spinning all around me. I’m floating, rotating through space, dipping between stars, Reece. Head over feet. Feet over head. I don’t know what I was thinking. I know what I was feeling, though. You know how it is between sleep and wake. Those lower vibrations, man. Those lower signals, man. Christine can’t hear them these days. Not really. She just doesn’t listen. She barely wants to hug, most times. She wants to talk about our days and life and boring shit like that, but she doesn’t want to fuck. I like the hugging, a bit, I guess. I’m not one for talking too much, she knows that. When I try to get with her she’s like, Why don’t you try talking to me outside of when you want something? And then she tries to talk to me—I mean really droning on, man, drowning me in these long boring drawn-out conversations. She be all frustrated and shit at my silences, but I’m thinking: If we fucked more often I’d have more to say. It’s a cycle, Reece. I was just burning in that office. Vibrating. And on top of all that, so tired too. I was convinced that if I fell asleep I’d have a wet dream. I had another class to teach that day. What would I look like standing there in front of my students with a big dark wet stain on my khakis, huh? I grabbed my phone and pulled up one of those video sites. Some girl-on-girl stuff. I don’t like too much banging, penetration. I don’t like penises in my porn most of the time. None of that. I hate dicks. No dudes, just curves. I figured some images would keep me from drifting off and would probably take the fucking edge off, man. I looked at them girls writhing around, slipping and sliding—I can see them now. And then I was done until I got home and could hide out in the bathroom for a little while. Thought I’d never even remember anything about those naked sluts—their word, not mine—but I see every inch of their bodies every day, twirling in my head. It’s not sexy or anything, just kind of annoying now. I get an email from Mean Dean Greene the next day summoning me to her office. Like when I was a kid and the principal called me up after I did some shit. I’m like, What I do?

  Daaaamn.

  Yeah. Damned is right. She sits across from me, her arms folded. Those green eyes narrowing. I’m playing it cool, but my heart is . . . my heart is racing, man. She all quiet until I shrug and shift my body, like, What?

  Something you would like to discuss with me, Dr. Chambers? No, ma’am, I told her. I meant that in a lot of ways. There was nothing to talk about, since I didn’t even remember looking up porn on my phone the day before. Even if I did remember that, I wouldn’t want to discuss porn with Mean Dean Shana Jean Greene. Are you sure, Dr. Chambers? How’s your personal life? Everything going well? I thought of the night before, lying there next to Christine, our bodies touching but all the space in the universe between the two of us. She’s horny and I’m horny, but for some reason there’s not a thing we can do about it. Ever been like that between you and a woman, Reece? Some wild shit. Again, there is no way I’m discussing this with Mean Dean Jean Greene, so I just say, No, Dean Greene, everything’s keen. No, that’s not really what I said. Of course I didn’t say it like that, but that was the sentiment, you know.

  She’s watching me. Turning the moment awkward. I can see it in her face, she’s hoping I break. She’s got her stupid arms folded across her big sloppy floppy tits, and then she slides a paper across the desk as if she’s making me an offer. She’s like, How do you explain this?

  I’m like, what the hell is she talking about? I look at the paper, but it’s just a bunch of symbols to me. Can you tell me how someone came to be accessing porn sites under your login?

  Reece, I’m genuinely perplexed now, bruh. I’m turning this paper all around in my hand. So then she says, And before you tell me that someone must have logged in under your name or something, this access was traced to a cell phone. Your cell phone.

  I was logged into the school’s system with my user name and password to access the Wi-Fi, Reece. Can you believe that’s what it was, huh? I’m stammering like shit. She looks all proud. She finally has me, you know. I stop, I mean my whole body stops. My heart is still. Blood is not moving through me. I’m not breathing, blinking, twitching, nothing, jack. Then I’m like, Research.

  Excuse me?

  I know this will sound strange, but I’ve been doing some research for a paper I’m looking to publish on what we can learn about the male gaze and toxic masculinity from various types of male-centered lesbian—or girl-on-girl, if you will—pornograph
y. The absence of men in these works is a defining factor in, uh, these works and an accidental commentary on manhood and, um, masculinity.

  You said that?

  Hell yeah, I said it! I don’t even know where I’m getting this shit from, but I’m pulling it all from my ass like some beads, man, and all she can say is, Interesting. And after repeating that word a few times she tries to get me. She says, Is this related to the research you’ve been doing on the representations of loneliness in late twentieth century and early twenty-first century American literature?

  So I say, Sure is! Fuck else can I say at this point? I know she don’t believe me, but what else can she do? And this lie is the only one I got to save my job.

  She’s like, Well, Dr. Chambers. I had to ask. You understand that, right? I nod. When she dismisses me I breathe finally, relieved, jack. I made it narrowly, man. Then when I’m by the door you know what that mean woman says to me? I’d really love to see this paper, Dr. Chambers. You know, when it’s all done.

  What’s that?

  When do you think you can have a draft for me to look at? How about the end of the semester? Yes, I can look at it over the break. Give you some feedback before you publish it. There will certainly be a lot of journals who’ll want a crack at this if you do it right. You could use my critical eye. We need to keep the level of scholarship high around this corner of the campus, you know. Yes, have it on my desk by the end of the semester. I want a hard copy as well as a digital copy.

  I was floored, Reece. The disrespect. The mistrust. I was so full of rage, but I just nodded like a sheep and left that fucking bitch’s office. You think she’s looking over Samson’s poetry before he submits that shit? I got several extensions from her and I’m doing all this research, but everything I’m writing is fucking nonsense. Erotic descriptions of porn overlaid with superficial pseudo-philosophical nonsense.

  Dr. Chambers dipped his head low and balled his fists. This is all Christine’s fault, he said. Ever notice how different the world looks when you’re fucking regularly?

  I leaned back in Chambers’s lumpy office chair, the squealing springs pressing into my backside making music beneath me. The final pieces in the Dr. Chambers puzzle were set. I now understood him completely. I had questioned my choice of apprentice many times. Should I cut him loose? I often asked, unsure when or if he would even crack. It would have been easy to find another. There was the math professor who taught in full clown makeup and different floppy clown getups each day. His department only tolerated him because every year it’s rumored that he’ll receive a Fields Medal. Then there is the Women’s Studies professor who long ago lost interest in Women’s Studies and teaches only physics in her classes no matter what course is assigned to her. They would crack, but not soon enough for me. I’d have to get at them later, perhaps with the help of my new apprentice. Chambers was ripe now and all it would take was a bit of nudging. I’d guide Chambers to the river; it was up to him, however, to drown.