The poet—in the persona of a fatherly friend or tutor—is encouraging the young man to settle down with a wife and procreate, to make sure that his beauty—Shakespeare might have said ‘genes,’ had he known about them—is passed on to new generations. But this isn’t just a procreation sonnet. Let’s be explicit about it: what is this ‘self-substantial fuel’ the young man is wasting?”
Jocelyn’s eyes grow wide with comprehension, and of course she is not slow to name the taboo.
“Are you saying it’s—he’s talking about—cum?”
“Let’s call it ‘semen,’ shall we? An Elizabethan word for it is ‘spirit.’ Yes, it’s an anti-masturbation sonnet. Hey!” The noise level has spiked. “Don’t blame me, blame Shakespeare!”
The noise is stifled by a movement that darkens the open door, first noticed by those in the last rows, then also by those who were watching my face.
“Oh—hey there, Professor Cleveland.”
I’m so high on adrenaline and so pleased to see him that I lock my eyes with his and smile at him in complete innocence. First I think the shock that runs through me is one of embarrassment, but it isn’t; it is an immediate, carnal thrill at the sight of that tall figure in dark jeans and shirt sleeves. “You’ll be delighted to hear, sir, that we are discussing questions of genre!”
The students cannot know that this is a jab meant to remind him of our first encounter, but the obvious disingenuousness of my assertion sets them off into a roar of laughter.
His eyebrows shoot halfway up his forehead, and I can see that he is struggling to keep a straight face.
“As you were.” A curt nod, and he is off.
One down, one to go. The challenges of a class full of English Lit graduates are very different from those of a general education class.
Surprise ’em. Stun ’em.
I hadn’t planned to do that, but when I walk into the room—by now it’s four o’clock in the afternoon, which seems to be a low point in almost everyone’s circadian rhythm—I am suddenly incredibly tired. High on adrenaline all day, and now I crash. I slump into the chair behind the desk, blow air like an exhausted whale, and serenely scan the faces that are already registering confusion about my behavior. Sixteen names are on my list, and I count fifteen, audibly but under my breath, then sigh again.
“The first week of the semester is murder, don’t you find? Man…I’m pooped.”
They are very, very quiet.
“What say we watch something, hmm? I mean, you must have had a long day, too, and I think we all deserve some R&R…” I rummage in my bag and produce a DVD that I insert into the player, switch on the projector and, while I’m waiting till it’s ready, I stretch out my legs under the desk, cross my ankles, and stifle a yawn. Good thing that at orientation they showed us how to work the classroom equipment.
“Right, here’s the deal,” I inform them. “I get to choose the video, and you get to watch it.” I’m riding the wave of my impromptu performance, not sure how long it will carry me. “Are you okay with basketball? I hear Ardrossan ain’t bad at basketball.”
Tessa Shephard in the second row is watching me with an expression of fascinated horror, Selena O’Neal next to her has a pained half-smile on her face, others have started to whisper and giggle. I ignore their consternation and languidly adjust the volume level as moving images of a gym are projected onto the wall.
“Hey! That’s Marv Albert!” one of the boys hisses.
“Who?”
“My dad says he was, like, the best basketball commentator ever!”
I settle in my chair and watch Marv announce, “Connie Hawkins, one-time Harlem Globetrotter, one of the most exciting players in the NBA, as a member of the Atlanta Hawks. And The Hawk will be opposed by Paul Simon.”
As the camera cuts from six foot eight inch Hawkins to five foot two inch Simon, some of the students are beginning to laugh.
“It’s Saturday Night Live!” someone whispers triumphantly.
“It’s what? Who’s the short guy?”
“Shhhh!”
Albert is asking Paul Simon about his uniform number, “decimal point zero two,” and Simon explains, perfectly deadpan, that this had been his number since junior high school, and since it wasn’t a number used by Hawkins, it would avoid confusion between the two of them. This has the students laugh out loud, and they relax into enjoying the sketch, reassured that their professor—although a little peculiar—isn’t certifiably mad.