The Long Highway Pt. 35A

People really could be tough, though. It's true. When that first day's class was going well, that truth came home to me as it had in the past and would again. A late student showed up, flung open the door and without any effort to avoid disrupting the work in progress- a harmonious session it had been so far, the other students and I getting along well- barged in, pushed his way through the room, barely acknowledging me as teacher or at all, gave just a smirk, and did something I missed, out of my sight, excluding me, gesture or whatever, that got a rise, a laugh out of the rest of the class. They had left me and were now with him!

It takes only one "bad actor" to ruin a class. I'm sure you've heard that too, starting when you're in elementary school. The truths we learn back then apply in college as well. People don't grow up as much as you might think or hope. An eighteen or twenty year old is still pretty much a kid- not in all cases, of course.

It's hard to fight someone like that lout. You're trying to lead the group as before and now have to parry his distraction as well. He's competing with you and is bound to win. Think about it. His sole occupation is making a nuisance of himself. He doesn't have to contend with a job as you do, I did. And he's relaxed, even enjoying himself. To him it's a game. Bring down the teacher. He's got nothing to lose whereas you- well, worse comes to worse and you can lose your freaking job- I can, I mean.

You try to make friends with him, win him over, get him on your side, so he'll relent, show mercy. Impossible. Student bullying teacher? It happens all the time.

"You're name's Freddy, right?" How did I know? There's always a Freddy, one like him. And his name must have appeared on the roster. I'd probably glanced at it already. The rest of the students in the room knew it too. Freddy. Class clown. Jester torturing the king?

It was an Americanization of his name. I think he was Greek.Tough little guy, scrawny runt out to prove himself at the expense of the authority, me in this case, his teacher. He reveled in his show of fearlessness. Stalking around ostentatiously, picking out which desk he wanted- near that of the cutest woman in the room. Go ahead. I wasn't asking for fear, mind you, just that he let me get on with my work he'd interrupted. No skin off my back if he learned nothing, paid the lecture no attention at all so long as he didn't ask others to give him theirs.

On break time, I considered my few options. Coming down hard on the disrupter was one. "He runs a tight ship." The phrase I'd heard about other teachers came to mind. I wished it applied to me, but I wasn't the disciplinarian type. I was known as a soft touch. "No act of kindness goes unpunished." I'm sure you've heard that old saw as well. "Don't be nice to the students," I've been told by colleagues. "They won't repay you. What's more, it won't help them learn." "Being nice is really not being nice." Etc. "Students need guidance, not a friend." "Being easy on them is relinquishing your responsibility. You have to muster the strength to draw a line. It's part of your job." Hearing that stuff, I felt I was the student, and so in a way I was.

When Akemi visited Japan on her own and came back and I was getting ready to go to the airport to pick her up I thought, "What if she's decided to divorce me?" It isn't easy or probably in most cases even possible to talk someone out of such a choice. Decisions like that tend to build force over time. Women and men who make them discover they're not only leaving the marriage but are starting their own life and often that realization becomes the point of no return. I could picture a sign over the front door of wherever Akemi had chosen to move on her own, apartment most likely. The thing would read "Independent Woman Age 31." I can imagine the idea might intoxicate her. She wouldn't give that up now.

A lot of crazy things occurred to me while Akemi was gone. I even thought of making love to my dentist. We've always gotten along well. She was renovating her office when I came. There was a lot of available space and light. It didn't look like a dentist's office, stripped bare. The last workman was departing, leaving us alone there. We might have entered the same state together, stripped bare not only physically. She was wearing jeans, not her usual dentist outfit, or did I just notice because she had her smock off then? Was she quitting her job? The jeans looked comfortable on her, good, a snug fit, faded denim softened by use in the rest of her life.

--

In bed with Akemi, the word was "sugureta," which means "excellent, "extraordinary" and described our experience there. It was our first night together and a dream come true for me.

But here's the thing. I also felt an emptiness. Now I was with the woman I wanted and not with Pam and the difference was acute. Akemi's long, slim supple body against mine was more wonderful than any dream. Her sleek, streamlined bush, pouring like dark water across me. She was otter-like, such a bright presence. Unspeakable beauty, yet simply herself. I was fulfilled. But she and I didn't know each other, while I had a history with Pam. It was the greatest night of my life yet left me wondering if I could really make the leap from one long-established involvement to a brand new one, one without roots, as it were. I wasn't young, when newness doesn't matter.

These two coexisting emotions would lead to a lot of trouble, as anyone familiar with my recent life knows very well.

--

With Pam feeling good, lying together. We turn to each other. The feeling is so good I move my hand toward her bush, spread out, opening in a fan shape, faintly ash brown in color, lovely as could be.

She told me she wasn't in the mood. Mine now broken, I confronted the problem.

"I thought we were getting close, we both wanted it. It was the time when I'd expect from you a welcome and instead you said you weren't in the mood. I'm getting the feeling you're never interested in sex. Is that true?"

"Yes," Pam replied. I'm sure she didn't really mean it, was just reacting from anger.

"Then we have things to talk about." Like parting ways, getting on with our separate lives, I meant. Mind you, this conversation, the hard moments in bed, happened before I even met Akemi.

Now she and I are together and I live with all the nonsense like jealousy. All worth it, I'd say. Anyway, there's no choice. My chips are in. There's no backing out of this involvement the way I did with Pam. The passion is here. And we're married, for christ's sake.

Speaking of former girlfriends, a letter arrived from overseas yesterday and seemed at first to be from Ursula, the Swiss woman I hung out with (seriously) for a period in my twenties. The envelope was the type I remembered, same shape, same paper, thin, delicate, lightweight for airmail, pale blue- or is it violet?- square envelope not elongated "business" type used here, same address format, "mit Luftpost," handwriting similar to Ursula's, open, free, sensitive, European cursive almost an art, rather than the American, simply utilitarian style (styleless a better way of putting it).

I looked for her name on the top line of the address, confirmed the last, that of her family, but then saw the first wasn't Ursula's after all but her brother's. The letter was from Willie (the Swiss-German name Ueli). His handwriting really did resemble his sister's. The similarities in writing from that part of the world outweigh the differences from the vantage point of an American.

The question was why Ueli would be writing me out of the blue after so long. He and I were never friends. Had something happened to Ursula? Did he feel obliged to let me know, as someone who had once been important in her life?

--

I took a walk to clear my head after reading the letter (it was nothing dire after all but still left me shaken, emotions from the past stirred up from the bed where they lay in my psyche). My stroll took me past a basketball court where I saw a phenomenally large and physically fit black man shooting hoops by himself, apparently awaiting friends nearby to get ready for a game. He was transcendentally beautiful, embodied perfection in a city, in a world where flaws abound. I couldn't help gazing in admiration as I walked by.

He saw me looking and I gave a greeting, a hello, which he returned.

He was wearing something green, I remember, not much else, other than his massive musculature. His chest was wide, proportions fine, nothing exaggerated as some people who work out become, to the point of grotesqueness. You sensed he hadn't worked on that body. It just came naturally.

What would Akemi make of that, I wondered. They were different in all the obvious ways (race, size for instance) but because of the beauty they had in common they'd make a great pair. No question about it.

The jealousy thing again.

--

Akemi and I were in bed. Knocking on the living room door didn't stop. I went to open it in my underwear. Green dark print trunks. The super, cheerful as always, let himself in. The hour was early but he was wide awake as if already in the middle of his day.

We had just moved into that apartment from another in the building and he had a form to have us sign and wanted to take a final look around to check all was well. Was some curiosity at work as well?

"You like this place? No noise from basketball on the street."

He knew that had bothered me (Akemi less), was a reason for the move.

"It'll probably be noisy in the yard," I said. Our place now faced the back. There'd been quiet so far but who knew what would come?

I checked myself for stressing the negative as I often do.

The super opened a kitchen cupboard, really made himself at home, as if the apartment wasn't our private space. "Look what I found." He stood out of the way of the cupboard door to afford me a look inside. A potted plant was on a middle shelf, must have been there in the darkness from before we moved in, had gone unnoticed till now. The thing was one of the least comely flowering plants, a wax begonia, hardy, able to survive almost anywhere, and a succulent so could go for days without water. There were even blossoms in place still, like little bells or Chinese lanterns hanging, the intense red pink hue of that flower I don't like. Funny how even after you're living in a place, the scent of the people there before you can linger.