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<\/a>I’m waiting<\/strong><\/span> for the guy I had an affair with to die.\u00a0 He\u2019s 78 and kind of well-known.<\/p>\nI wore a red \u201cwet look\u201d vinyl coat to his English Lit class.\u00a0 This was quite a few years ago. The other girls wore rags I wouldn\u2019t even wear to paint in.\u00a0 I’ve always been fashionable.<\/p>\n
I was a pretty good student.\u00a0 I wrote a Chaucer paper about the miller — or somebody, I can\u2019t remember \u2013 maybe the pardoner.\u00a0 I compared the pardoner to the then-omnipresent countercultural huckster, such as the Columbia Records pitchman:\u00a0 “But The Man can\u2019t bust our music.\u201d<\/p>\n
The professor<\/strong><\/span> called me into his office and said, \u201cI want to see more work like that!\u201d He had a Ph.D. and a couple books out. He paid attention to li’l ol’ me.<\/p>\n We walked across campus.\u00a0 We got ice cream.\u00a0 I got the hairy eyeball from girls — and guys — my age. Awkward.<\/p>\n The prof lived in the suburbs. \u00a0I was at his house only once, when his wife was out of town.\u00a0 He had a bedroom dedicated to just books, and me apparently.<\/p>\n The prof<\/strong><\/span> was fascinated by the \u201cyouth culture.\u201d He thought I could help him on that count.\u00a0 Wrong. \u00a0 I was a high school English-teacher manqu\u00e9, not a rabble-rousing hippie.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even know what \u201cmake out\u201d meant.\u00a0 He would say \u201cHow you making out?\u201d in his class, and kids would giggle. It\u2019s like today when kids say \u201chooking up\u201d and we don\u2019t know what the kids are talking about.<\/p>\n The prof once asked me, \u201cHave you ever taken pot?\u201d Taken <\/em>pot?<\/em>\u00a0 Also, he didn\u2019t know what hash was.<\/p>\n We talked by phone every night after midnight.\u00a0 Pre-cellphones.<\/p>\n The prof and I had our liaisons at the house of a professor who was on sabbatical in California.<\/p>\n I just<\/strong><\/span> Googled the prof . . .<\/p>\n Holy shit, he\u2019s still teaching! He’s on Rate Your Professor.\u00a0 Some students like his lectures; some say he rambles. One alum writes: \u201cI took his course 41 years ago and still remember his comments on my papers. I write for TV now; both his entertaining insights and his honest assessment of good and bad in my sophomoric work help me earn a living.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe I’ll rate my prof.<\/p>\n No, let’s leave this unrated.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n
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