Day 32

The new freshman class settled into the seats before him, pencils or keyboards at the ready. Gerald sat in a chair at the front of the room, to the right side where he could watch them enter and choose their seat. Some had clearly heard about him, and he could tell where his reputation had preceded him. The pretty girls in the first row, wearing short skirts or cleavage baring t-shirts or both, whispered to each other, no doubt about the girls who came before them and had earned As from some harmless flirtation with an attractive older professor. Of course he was fully aware that though the girls looked the same year after year, he was aging rather ungracefully thanks to his habits and interests. He sometimes wondered how long it would be before his charm was not enough to balance out his waning sexual appeal.

The boys who had congregated behind the girls, clearly fraternity pledges, had likely heard about him, too. There were those rousing nights of drinking that their predecessors had enjoyed with the crazy English professor. He would quote Yeats and Joyce with a pint glass in his hand, shouting loudly and spilling beer all over the table. They called him "Profs" and laughed with him and at him, but with an understanding that he was a man of importance in their world. At least for a few months.

Once the class contained each of its 40 students, it was time for Gerald to begin his lecture, an introduction that was so familiar to him that he hardly had to think about it as he recited the words. Instead he scanned their faces. The pretty girls and fraternity boys were a staple, and he knew what that could become if he chose to indulge. But the last three years had grown dull for him, even with flirtations and drinks. His behavior had, unsurprisingly, alienated him from his colleagues, and only the liberality of the department chair, who had had his own youthful indiscretions, kept him employed at the college. That and the consistently high marks that some students inevitably gave him after earning their As through smiles and drunken binges.

His new interest had become the students who did not know him and had no interest in him, but who desired the stories and language and skills that the class promised. It was an introductory English class that was required for all freshman who did not place out of it through AP exams or other placement tests. This left him mostly either with students who had no high academic drive and no particular interest in literature or writing, or those who had a general interest in succeeding, and perhaps even loved to read, but had no real spark that identified them as someone who, like him, did not feel alive until he or she understood how to commune with Orwell, Lawrence, and Kipling. If Gerald stayed on autopilot through all of the lessons, as he could so easily do with his years of material, they would never notice. But, occasionally, there was someone unexpected—a student who, through lack of means or opportunity, could not place out of the class, and yet who held a deep regard and passion for words and stories. As Gerald began to feel increasingly mired in the redundancy and pointlessness of his teaching, and as the emptiness of his hours outside of class became more oppressive, he discovered that these rare students were his salvation. He had only found two such students in the last six semesters, but he wanted to, no needed to, find another one who could enrich and transform his life, if only for a few months.