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