#5 Many Things Beginning with the Letter I

There was once a time when every book could have been read. Every known page never burnt, every ink stain ever dried, could have had its due. This opportunity, he knew, has always been lost.

This man understood that, and mourned all the things he never learned how to do. He was a teacher, and generally disliked. This man had earned a major in liberal arts, a minor in world history, graduated university in the top 20 of his class; was once a solemn thinker. But he couldn’t figure out why they’d stuck him with an ethics course. “Of course,” he thought, “they’d make me teach the one thing I know nothing about.” He then considered that high school never really goes away.

“Beautiful,” he thought, “just fucking beautiful.”

On a Monday morning in amber October, this man learned the value of a moment. His name was Ivan.

Ivan liked to follow protocol; Ivan didn’t like to rock the boat. Normally, this would incite nothing more than a grunt and a nap from his audience. It just about inspired nothing.

But that Monday Ivan had a familiar feeling running through his world-weary body; the old sensation that he would be the butt of yet another joke.

“Good morning, class.” He droned in minor key fake enthusiasm, taking their names. Through a half smile he forced out the words,

“Today we’re going to talk about…ahem…teen sexuality.” He couldn’t help but imagine what it was like to have to watch him at that moment, one hand a strike of self-pity; the other, disparagement. He almost sympathized with the little bastards, bored and faceless. But for no more than a second. The lot of them –what a constant fucking reminder!

He would have been a writer, had another set of ink-blotted pages. He wouldn’t have settled, but then, hope dies at the publication house. Most of his type, they become teachers.

Ugh, those whining, ungrateful, sullen little bastards! He really used to want to keep them from ending up…well…

Looking out over a sea of dead expressions, he forced himself into grumbling about abstinence, puberty; the sexual behaviour of adolescents to adolescents. Very standard. He was used to no one giving a shit; he was dreary enough to put himself to sleep. He was used to telling that pudgy, quiet kid to pay attention. What a humiliation.

So, of course, when Julien took a stand, it caught poor Ivan quite off guard. He really did want to help them once; he didn’t want to help raise cowards. What a humiliation.

All the kid did was stand up.

“…Is there something wrong?” came softly out of Ivan’s lips. Protocol. And yes, there is. The kid can’t just walk out, can’t just leave? Yeah make a joker look even more like a fool, etch into a scraped existence, why don’t you, you little fucker?! Ivan wished such a phrase would follow the standard. Maybe, one day. But there are ways of reaffirming the title.

“…I’m getting the principal in on this!” Oh, great, the same slimy bastard that worked me into a professional corner, slashed my salary and perpetually ignored me back when I gave a damn! Oh yeah, he’ll really know what to do about this! The same guy who used book money to pay for Fruitopia in the school vending machines! The same asshole who told me “We don’t need another English teacher, but we do need somebody for ethics. It’s kind of a, philosophy course.” Did he call anyone when the department started to disappear?

Ivan felt his submerged passion rise into his cheeks, eyes, lips. For once in twenty-five years, his body felt something above cold.

“…And of course, fuck you!” Ivan hadn’t had a phrase as such directed at him since high school. Fucking high school. He couldn’t wait for Friday.

He almost wished that kid had brought a gun; Ivan would later recall his first year teaching. He had furious hope, adoration, ambition; he wanted to change the world. Such love, love he pushed so hard it killed his spirit. Ivan used to try; he didn’t push anything anymore.

He calmed the kids down after the comedy. It wasn’t as funny as they thought, he told them, becoming something of himself again.

“Now, where were we?” He took one look at that steeple before continuing; he’d lost his faith a while ago. Insult to injury, he thought.

The last fifteen minutes or so had him puking out tired slogans “If you must, then use a condom, but abstinence is really your best bet.” Sure, he thought, that’ll get through to’em. This was the closest the man had gotten to sex in years. None since and little during a frigid marriage, so bitterly ended he lumped lust into a category of knowledge next to ancient history. Such friendly clichés in so little time, and he immediately craved a cold shower. Is it okay to feel raped if your forced into abstinence? He thought.

“Comments, questions?” He had just enough time not to feel completely useless before next period. And a galaxy of nothing hit the room’s atmosphere in awkward explosions of silence when, breaking from gorgeous reverie, Annie asked,

“What do you think?” such an air of sweet innocence for such an unanswerable question. Follow protocol, follow protocol. Make the P.T.A happy, don’t stir any shit; don’t clarify anything honest. Don’t tackle any real queries; the penultimate in excellence for a burnout.

He replied,

“Um, I think it’s good to be safe.”

“But-

“I can’t say anymore; it would be unethical.” Good. That line was goodly enough to work first period. Fantastic that most people aren’t awake enough for thunderous outcries of disappointment. Most. Just grunts, a nap, maybe even a sigh.

Another class, another fifty-five minutes wasted on the same damn course. It didn’t matter if the kids had different names; they all still looked identical to him. Only, quieter this time.

Once again Westminster belched out of the ceiling and the death march began once more. The droves filed out asymmetrically; commodities of an assembly line. Poor Ivan, bloodshot again. At least teachers get recess too. Only one more class till lunch hour.

That damn bell went on forever.

He sauntered out through the back gate with the bell still ringing, standing on the edge where no one could find him; his own private concrete island. He stared at the leaves detaching slowly from their posts in arctic wind. The black protrusion shot upwards to the sky; grand judgement on delicate lives. And Ivan, he had to teach to those kids whatever their parents didn’t have the time or the stomach for. Things these parents should already know. A cigarette butt got flicked on the opposite end of the lot and three distant strangers disappeared as Ivan lit up himself. No children; no sexual desire. The system had killed the sex instinct; no passion at all. Just the end of a burning tube of tobacco.

The next bell came soon after his musings and he crushed the butt into the asphalt like dried pepper, and went back inside. Another fifty-five minutes. In this time-span, history. Canadian history up in the science wing.

Just read from the book…

And then the musical message blasting through. Lunchtime. He made it down from the upstairs wing and around the corner to his hallway. And to the noise, the unrelenting, growing noise. The unsettling noise. Like a marching band of rabid hyenas, they almost crawled, clawing towards one classroom. His classroom. For the first time in quite the round of years, Ivan actually felt something like curiosity. A pang of fear? He followed the herd, for a little while allowing the current to steer him forward. The riot grew denser, forming a mezzanine shape as he walked into a raucous nucleus of rockers, lovers, sluts and morons. And then the groaning, the moaning, the panting that didn’t quite fit in with the crowd. He started to cut, to burst through as if out of the tip of a hot thermometer, pushing some students aside.

And there it was. On his desk. And this is the closest he’d been to sex since his marriage.

Two students. Of his. Fucking. On his desk.

What a humiliation.

Up and down, heaving, pushing, groaning, screaming, and to quite the audience. On his desk with all his papers, his mug beneath them in the drawer. This certainly did not follow protocol.

Flustered, he yelped,

“That’s enough, thank you! Stop! Please! GET OFF MY DESK!!” A colour similar to the heat he felt that morning infiltrated his face, and felt as if he were going to fall right over.

Fuck, finally! he thought as two staff members broke through to help him, prying the two apart.

Ivan went home early that day.

He called in sick Tuesday and Wednesday, refusing to face the joyless masses as they took what they could of pleasure out of his misfortune. It was far easier being one of them; faceless, truly nameless; a barcode. A permanent code.

“90756233…” Ivan whispered in his sleep Wednesday night.

On Thursday, he entered beige and concrete halls again, to be greeted by an oily bastard in a tweed jacket.

“Hey, how ya feeling? That’s great! I gotta tell ya I’ve had one helluva week. Yesterday, this kid’s mom…but never mind. You sure you’re ok? Ok. I took care of it for you and those kids have been expelled, so you won’t have to deal with’em ever again. We don’t need to deal with that here, now do we?”

All Ivan wanted to do was scream, smack him in the teeth. I don’t need your pity! But he wasn’t about to start complaining.

“No, we don’t.” He stared blankly as his boss placed a macho caress on his upper arm.

Lucky, poor Ivan. What a nice, dreadfully nice, and monotonous morning. Ahh, Canadian history first period, what an unexpected relief! Beautiful, average, unassuming.

Lunchtime. When the boys came rolling in. There Ivan was, prepared to buy his Fruitopia, and two leather-children cut through jumping onto the counters, unzipping their pants, and splash! Quickly on the stroganoff!

Fuck not today! Not again!

And down the hall they went, scurrying as prey while staff members ran after, breathing heavy, desperately.

I’m not even gonna bother.

And like a call to intermission, the fire alarms went. Filing out in droves, quicker, spastically. This is not a drill.

Half my life is over, so whatever.

He followed the current to the front gate. Outside his employer seemed to drip up to him lick an oil slick, melancholically relating to his worker bee,

“Oh well, this is mighty unfortunate.”

“Yeah.” puffed out Ivan as he stared dumbly at the small fumes escaping from the back gate, filing upwards, clouding the view of the steeple.

“What a week, huh?”

“Sir, I quit.” Ivan declared simply.

“Excuse me?” The greasy principal blinked with cow eyes at his former employee.

“I’m not coming back tomorrow. When they let us back in, which should be soon enough, I’m getting my things, and I’m going home.”

“You sure you want-

“Find another ethics teacher Sir. And, uh, by the way, you have got to be the most incompetent leader since Warren G. Harding. Don’t let the P.T.A get you down.” Ivan said as he gave the man a macho caress of the upper arm.

“Um, okay then.” And following the anti-bully campaign’s brilliant slogan, Ivan just, walked away.

The next day he slept till noon, then began typing. That old cliché: the last dying leaf on an autumn branch, he was it. Holding on, writing for dear life.

Soon after he would be published, celebrating all the things he learned how to do. And then he was published again. Again.

Many things beginning with the letter I. A novel.

Of all the death, the police sirens and news flashes and public displays of…affection, all of it came out as faith. Ivan was his own steeple.

There was once a time when every book could have been read. Every known page never burnt, every ink stain ever dried, could have had its due. This opportunity, Ivan knew, he could become a part of.

His fan base did. The critics did. His lover did.

He always loved Fridays.