Never That Cool Again

In high school I was as cool as it gets. Sun glasses, stylish haircut, hip attitude, cigarettes, a full flask in the backseat of my GTI and a continually erect penis. I owed the space that I inhabited. I was the one who knew everything about the most alternative music to listen to. The cool kids consulted with me. I ran with the top shelf crew. I was so cool that I was almost famous. Teachers were more interested In me than I was in them. Girls and a few guys heads always followed me as I walked passed. I was healthy, angry, nice and untamable. I smiled at the less cool and isolated no one. My coolness gave me a kind of diplomatic immunity that I used to help liberate the less fortunate. I had my whole life in front of me. Nothing came between me and the pursuit of my dreams (except my fathers pessimism).

Twenty five years later and I would like to think that I’m still cool for a 43 year old guy. I’m no where near as cool a I once was though. A belly, a mortgage, a professional career, a meditation practice and the aging process all make coolness a state of being that is not so easy to attain. I don’t know if it is responsibility that gets in the way of coolness or a gradual loss of interest in one’s reflection in the mirror. When a young person has dreams of rock and roll accomplishments, coolness is often a preliminary stage. Coolness is letting others know about the inner creative genius they are yet to see. It’s an outer display of an inner belief in one’s self. Once the dreams have lost their grip- so does coolness.

Most people will never be as cool, as famous, as obsessed over and as filled with unattainable aspirations as they are in high school. For this reason- a lot of people see high school as the greatest time in their lives. Especially if they were one of the cool kids. And
after all, such a small percentage of those cool kids gets to grow up and be Keith Richards, Tom Waits or Kanye West. Most cool adults get told that they are refusing to grow up. Cool adults often hang on to coolness in exchange for chronic feelings of failure. And the rest decide to grow up, embrace responsibility and the daily grind and save whatever is left of their coolness for the weekends.

The adult who is able to preserve their coolness and still earn a decent income is the true hero in a world that demands that we leave our coolness at almost every front door before we enter (that’s why I always take the back door if possible).

Profile of a Young Rampage Shooter

i’m so angry. this world is a prison from which I long to escape. all around me I see people being turned into zombie’s by the world of bills, money and jobs. i don’t want to become a zombie like what the world turns all adults into. it disgusts me. how could adults give up their freedom like that? how could they allow themselves to become so mediocre? this society is sick and people just go along with it. they follow the law, they do what the police say, they listen to their corrupt government, they allow corporations to make tons of money off them, they show up for work on time- they do exactly what they are told. i can’t stand it.

my parents are always so stressed out. they are always so angry. how the fuck do they expect me to be happier in my life, to do better in school if they are always so unhappy? every day my mother worries about stupid shit. every day she asks me questions about my day, “how are you doing?” “did you do your school work?” “you cant do this or that before all of your homework is done, you know this right?” “did you clean your room?” “why do you not put more effort into things?” “who do you think you are just sitting around while everyone else works?” “how do you expect to do anything with your life if all you do is day dream, play video games and surf the net?” it is constant questions like this all day long that make me hate her. i wish she would just shut the fuck up, leave me alone and get her own life in order rather than focusing on me so she does not have to focus on the fact that her husband is an abusive dick and she is stuck in an unhappy life.

my father is so obsessed with work and money that if he is not working he is stressed out from how much he has worked. america turns adults into pigeons scurrying around for any available crumbs. work, work, work and work more- it disgusts me. why are adults so afraid of being different, of not trying to appear like they have money and influence? my father is obsessed with his reputation. everyone thinks he is a nice and successful guy. people look up to him because he has a job where he makes a lot of money. he knows how to paint the picture of success and people love him for it. but at home he is a miserable dick. sometimes he hits his kids, he yells a lot, he is mean to my mother and he always expects us to do what he wants. it is like he takes of his mask and becomes the unhappy man he truly is deep down once he comes home. he is like one of those villains in the video games I play- on the outside he looks good but once you do not do what he wants you to do, or act like he wants you to act- he becomes filled with rage.

and they tell me I have a MENTAL ILLNESS. what the fuck!!?? i have a mental illness? you bastards should try growing up in a house like mine. try living under the same roof with my parents all the time and then going to a school where I am always told what to do, am on lock down and forced to do work I hate. try it mother fucker. you think you would not start to not give a fuck? you think you would not lose focus and concentration? you think you would not have little interest in following rules and doing your work? you think you would not become quiet and resigned? you think you would not do stupid things? you think you would not want to blow up the world? come on- you jerks can not tell me that I have a mental illness until you have lived in my shoes for a few days. i don’t have a fucking mental illness- I have fucked up parents and live in a society that stresses them out beyond belief. the problem is not in my head- it is in your head and in the institutions that all these ignorant adults have bought into. i am not the cause- I am just one of the many symptoms of the world adults have created.

and they want me to take medication? are you kidding? they need the medication. it is like taking an anti acid pill when you have just eaten a bunch of acidic food. STOP EATING THE ACIDIC FOOD AND THEN YOU WILL NOT NEED THE ANTI ACID PILL! these people are so fucked up. my school counselor and parents want me to take medication so that I can focus more, so that I can follow the rules more, so that I can be less depressed, so that I can be easier to control. yeah that is the quick fix- give me the drug, make the drug companies even richer and don’t bother looking at the root cause of what is wrong with me because what is wrong with me is YOU.

so you wonder why I hate this world. you wonder why I am so angry at everyone, especially all of the kids in my school who seem to blindly go along with what adults say. don’t they see how they are being manipulated, conformed and indoctrinated into the very system that is the problem in the first place (and how if they don’t go along with it they get put on mind numbing drugs!)? they are like undigested food for this fucked up society we have created. dont they realize that the adults who are the problem are the ones turning them into the conditioned drones just like the adults are? i cant stand watching this happen everyday. it disgust me. i have no respect for them. in video games we destroy anything that is a threat to our survival. we do it in an instant without any hard feelings because it is the right thing to do. it is what we have to do to free ourselves from the hell that is all around. it is how we get our honor back and restore harmony to our inner and outer world. why the hell should the “real” world be any different than the world of video games? the world of video games makes so much more fucking sense than the world that adults have made. in video games when there is a threat to my survival I am able to annihilate it. but in the real world when there is a threat to my survival I am put on medication and told I have a mental illness. what the fuck!!!

i am SO angry.

The Man With A Moving Nipple (from the archives)

I know this may seem strange but I am suffering from a moving nipple. It is my left nipple and it gesticulates and twitches like a firecracker. At the moment, the uncomfortable movements of my nipple have become chronic with little intermission in-between. This discomfort has become a part of my life, another bewildering ailment that I must learn to live with.

My nipple began to move after I was in a very upsetting argument with my father. He was in a hospital bed recovering from a surgery and we managed to fight with one another about what, I cannot remember. Consumed with guilt for upsetting my father during his darkest of hours- I left the hospital in a terrible state of mind. The stress was causing my chest to constrict and I remember having difficulty breathing. It was when I turned on my car engine that I noticed my left nipple beginning to twitch. I placed my right palm upon it, as if I was trying to comfort my broken heart. I drove off into the night trying not to think about my moving nipple. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of what would become a full-blown dis- ease.

As the days passed my nipple picked up speed. The twitches would come in unpredictable spurts and I was often forced to have to sit down and try and relax when the episodes would begin. The twitches turned into strange gesticulations that would wake me up at night and force me to place an ice pack on my chest. The moments that my nipple would not be moving became like tropical vacations for my weary mind, which was being over worked by the torment of my moving nipple. The sensations were like aggravating tickles combined with what felt like pinpricks that seemed to leave me feeling like I was a man being slowly crucified from the inside out.

As the weeks passed my moving nipple became more chronic. It rested little and began to control my every waking hour. I had read some where in Greek mythology of a character that had suffered from a very similar ailment as I was. His moving nipple became so violent that it slowly began to make its way onto his forehead and announce all of his private thoughts to whomever was around. Not only did this character suffer the humiliation of having a talking nipple on the center of his forehead but also he was unable to think without the nipple revealing his every thought! Of course it is not difficult to understand why this character took his life by forcing his lover to cut off his head. Once he was decapitated the nipple did not stop talking for over an hour- it told his lover of all his previous affairs!! Ever since I have read this tale I have been terribly worried that my chronic gesticulating nipple is going to break free from its root and make its way onto my forehead!! If the world were able to hear my every thought I would certainly loose everything that I love!!!

Last week I visited a Doctor who knew not what to make of my condition. He told me that he had never seen anything like this before. He recalled reading in a medical journal many month back about someone who had suffered from a similar ailment for most of his life- but he could not remember which medical journal it was in. The Doctor wanted to put me on some medication to see if he could relax the tissue but the side effects for the medication seemed to great to take the risk. My Doctors conclusion was that I was suffering from a stress-induced ailment that was causing calcium build up around the nerves of my nipple tissue-, which is putting pressure upon my nipple. The ensuing twitching and gesticulation is the result of this pressure. If it did not go away in a month he recommends surgery.

In the mean time I still have to live in this world. I have to make a living so that I can continue to have a roof over my head. As much as I want to hide away in my closet and write poetic lamentations all day- I cannot. I have a mouth to feed.

It is not difficult for you to see my ailment, or what I have come to call my crucifixion. There is what appears to be a constant vibration and rotation under my left shirt pocket. When people notice this they immediately ask me if I am okay. I tell them that I am fine, that what they are witnessing is an annoying muscle spasm. My high school students make fun of me and refer to me as a freak. They all want to touch my nipple and when I let them there are loud uproars of “EEEEEEWWWW,” or “That’s so disgusting!!!!” Whenever I go out into public people stare at my nipple as if they had never seen anything like this before. I feel like an aberration, like all eyes are condemning me to constant judgment. Now I know what it must feel like to be a big-breasted woman.

The only thing that I can do is learn to live with my ailment. Every night before bed I put a chamomile cream upon my nipple, which seems to relax it a bit. I also wrap my chest in a towel before bed, which seems to reduce the annoying vibrations of my moving nipple, allowing me to get some sleep. There is nothing that I can really do (besides having my nipple surgically removed) other than accept my current situation. I see this condition as an opportunity for me to deal with the various causes in my life rather than the effects. If I can learn to change the stressors that have caused my moving nipple than maybe over time my nipple will stop moving. I believe it was Pascal, Socrates or Emerson or maybe Nietzsche- who said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living, so I am examining my self- trying to understand the various ways that I have caused my own dis-ease. Maybe, through this process of self-examination, I will eventually become the only man who can set myself free.

Stuck In High School!

After 37 years, I am still in high school. It is a mystery to me how this has become my life. After all I do not know if being stuck in high school is the epitome of the American dream or a nightmare. Maybe I am repaying a karmic debt from a past life or maybe I am paying penance for the things I have done in this life- what ever the case may be, I am still stuck in high school.

I am currently sitting in a history class while students are taking a written examination that I designed with the intention of making test taking entertaining. Occasionally I hear small explosions of laughter as students read some of the more comical questions that I have inserted in between the more serious ones- “how many times a day did Abe Lincoln masturbate?” For the most part the room is so silent that I can hear the hum of the freeway which sits just behind the school. I am the Teacher of these students but at the moment I feel like them- stuck in a place that I do not belong. I am always perplexed by the similarities that I find between myself and my 15 and 16 year old students. It is true- I am twenty years older than most of my students but like them I am still pre-occupied with sex and what I am going to do with my life. It is as if a large part of me is yet to grow into this thing I often hear referred to as maturity. I feel as if I have never left high school, my body has aged but my spirit or soul is still stuck at 16. It is a difficult phenomena to explain- but as I sit here writing in my notebook and my students are taking their examination- I feel strangly equal to them. It is as if we should all just be friends and ditch school.

When I was in high school, the first time, I was an apparition. You could see my physical body but my soul was some place else. I was stoned most of the time and Teachers only knew my name because I was the tall lanky guy in the back who never spoke and was seen by all as being weird. At school dances I would get drunk on liquor that I stole from my fathers bar and stand in a corner trying to spy on couples who were making out. Sometimes I could be found lying in the school hallways, broken down into an agitated state of tears crying out “get me out of here!” I did not read a single book nor did I do more than was asked of me. I was preoccupied with blow jobs and death and not once did I get a grade that was higher than a C. My father had to pay off the principle to let me graduate after 6 years of high school.

Now some 20 years later I am still stuck in high school. Somehow the fury of the fates or divine consciousness has managed to transform me into a Teacher. It is like a great magic trick that has been performed in front of my eyes. The trick is on me and I stand there trying to figure out how the magician has created the desired effect. I am perplexed and can not seem to come up with an answer. I am in a state  of absolute dis-belief. How did they do it? It just makes no sense.

The Outdoor Furniture Salseman.

I want to take a job selling outdoor furniture but my wife is unwilling to compromise. “You are a Teacher, and there is no way I am going to let you sell yourself short by becoming an Outdoor Furniture Salesman,” she told me with determination in her eyes. “Why would you want to do this to yourself,” she asked? ” The only response that I could muzzle together was “I have always wanted to sell outdoor furniture.”

Some of my fondest memories of youth include outdoor furniture. Sundays would be spent sitting out back with my entire family. We would drink lemonade, eat burgers from the grill and swim in the over chlorinated pool until the sun set. When you sat on the furniture dripping wet a certain aroma was given off by the furniture which I can still sometimes smell. When I am around outdoor furniture I feel young again, without any health concerns and without a care in the world. I become relaxed and nostalgic- recalling the days when I was a happy young man.

Now that I am older and all of my childhood is practically buried six feet under- I am desperate to again feel the pleasures of my youth. When I went into Osh Outdoor Furniture Suppliers for the first time I was only looking for an outdoor chair to stick upon my deck. As I browsed around the tables, pool chairs, umbrellas and pillows I immediately felt intoxicated by the smells and memories that were given off. I remembered a past I had all but forgotten. The Sundays spent out back with my family, the evening barbeque’s, my first sexual experience on the pool chair, catching my father and mother kissing beneath the umbrella besides the fire pit- all these memories and more came at me like a fierce wind. I felt a joy in my heart that had not been there when I walked into the outdoor furniture store. Without even purchasing the chair, I went up to the check out stand and asked the older gentleman behind the register if I could have an application for a job. I filled it out in the shop and was called in for an interview the following day. I was hired on the spot when the manager asked me why I wanted to go from teaching high school to working with outdoor furniture. “I want to work with outdoor furniture because it makes me feel young again, ” I said. To which he replied, “I can relate, that is exactly why I work with outdoor furniture as well.” We shook hands like two men united by a common desire- to be young again.

“I understand that you want to feel young again, but why do you have to go to such extreme lengths to do so?” my wife asked me in desperation. “Unless you have had the same experience with outdoor furniture as I have, it is to difficult to explain to you. It just feels like something I need to do.” “But what about teaching? Are you just going to quit and tell your students that you are leaving them for outdoor furniture.” My wife had a point, I do not think that my students will be happy about my decision. “They will get over it, besides as we get older we forget everything anyways…do you still remember your high school teachers?” I asked hoping that she would agree with me. “I remember almost every single one, even the ones who could not handle it and quit. Just think- you always will be remembered as that teacher that quit to go sell outdoor furniture.”

I decided that I would sleep on it. My wife was planting doubt in my head and I was afraid that the repercussions of my decision would be greater than I was aware of. I longed to spend my days in the presence of outdoor furniture. To describe pool chairs and umbrellas to costumers seemed much more gratifying than explaining nouns and verbs and the Great Gatsby to high school students who were incapable of listening. To smell the scent of outdoor furniture rather than the sent of fake cologne and dirty lockers, what more could I ask for. As an Outdoor Furniture Salesman I would be able to spend my work days reminiscing about the pleasurable past of my childhood which is now forever gone. I could remember the faces of those that I loved who have now passed on and once again swim in the pool of my childhood. I could be sitting out back with my grandfather one sunny June afternoon and listen to him say to me again and again- “enjoy being young kid, because when you get older and enter the real world, it’s a bitch.”

My wife threatened to separate from me if I took the job. Before I was even awake this morning she rolled over on the side of the bed and said, “I will not be married to a man that is constantly undermining himself and not living up to his fullest potential. I will not sit by and watch you destroy your life because you want to spend your days reminiscing about your childhood. That part of your life is gone and if you take this job as an Outdoor Furniture Salseman, than I will not sit by and watch you fall.” I was half awake but already frustrated by her perspective. Right when I was about to respond to her the phone rang. She answered it and then looked at me and said, “It is Osh Outdoor Furniture, they want to know if you made a decision.” She handed me the phone with a stern look that seemed to say you better not. I looked at the clock and it was almost noon.

Beam Me UP!!

I am not of this world, nor do I belong in it. I am a stranger in paradise, an outcast marginalized by the rules and norms that I seem to have trouble accepting. The standardized modes of operation make me feel standardized so I always find myself running away. Humans do things in particular ways. I suppose the desired result is order and control. Through my many meetings with Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel and Schopenhauer I know that order and control are mere fictions of the mind which deny the individual the full experience of life. So I run. I detest. I quit. I lament and for thirty six years of my human life on earth I have stood alone in doubt of all systems which seem to deny me my soul. I am not of this world, nor do I belong in it.

For the past few weeks I have been teaching at an inner city high school. They recently asked me if I would not mind sending them my profile (degrees, experience, interests) and then they would link this to a personal web page for Teachers that they are in the process of creating. I told them that I was uncomfortable with this idea. I told them that I was not interested in the arrogant art of listing my credential after my name (which seems to me to be a modern phenomena. Example Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. or Betsy Small, M.A). I prefer to remain one with the people, incognito, not displaying my credentials or experience upon my sleeve. Now my job is in jeopardy, I have offended several Educators who take pride in their graduate degrees and I have separated myself further from the crowd. All the things that one most do to fit into this modern world make me feel as if their is not some sort of ploy at hand to kill our dreams and marginalize each human into a submission in which we can never climb out from. So I run. I lament. I quit and I am always saying in the back of my mind “beam me up.”

If there was life on other planets do you think they would be sensitive to my situation? I consider myself to be a rather unique humanoid who would be a prime subject for some kind of abduction (they could study my brain and all the multifarious form of rebellious and unsatisfied neural transmission that cause anxiety, fear and aberrant thoughts). I am not offering myself up to this sort of experimentation- but sometimes I wonder if it would not be a better option than the fate of a human living on earth. Maybe alien abduction would offer me away out from the rules and norms that keep me stapled to way of life that feels tormented by Sartre’s concept of “No Exit.” So I run. I lament. I quit. And I write. I am not of this world nor do I belong in it.

A month ago I was working a few days a week in a very busy restaurant. My duty was that of a Waiter and I did my best to please the upper class families who dined in the establishment. One of the duties that all Waiters had to perform was making milkshakes (chocolate and vanilla) for the numerous children of the rich (and occasionally a few adults). When the restaurant was busy, which it frequently was, making milkshakes was a task equivalent to a trip the dentists office. It was painful and extremely messy. Here I was- stuck in a job where I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off making milkshakes while I had screaming customers waiting for water or food and the kitchen yelling out my name because the food which was waiting for me to take was getting cold. It was a no win situation which gave me chest pains and palpitations. But I did not care about this. The only thought that seemed to pass through my aggravated mind other than this sucks, was I can not believe that I am 36 years old making milkshakes. After two weeks on the job I quit and told the owner that I found the milkshake making duty an insult to my pride and well being. He just looked at me with a frown that seemed to say “you ain’t gonna have an easy time in this life.” Beam me up!!!

Sometimes I wonder if my dedication to being a writer and painter is not self sabotaging me into a life of poverty and making milkshakes. Of-course, I am aware that contentment and happiness all come from within. Of-course I know that if one is content with their life within, then making milkshakes or representing myself as a high school Teacher with a Master’s degree should not matter. Whatever I do should be a reflection of my inner-well being, despite the job. This seems to be the equation that is accepted by most spiritual practitioners- and I do not disagree. But I have a sensitive soul that feels easily compromised if put in certain situations. My soul shouts out at me that I am not representing it well enough and my body reacts to this revolt. I live in a particular era that seems to be based on the concept of compromising one’s soul in order to have inner and outer peace. Maybe what this life is all about is compromise….and this seems to be a lesson I am having difficulty learning. So I keep running, writing, lamenting and dreaming of a day that I will be either abducted by aliens or I will write the great American novel and move to Spain.

Full Catastrophe Living.

All my concern over sex, hookers, guilt, shame, money, health, spirituality, the environment and my car has taken its toll on my mental health. I was once a motivated young man with grand aspirations of fame and fortune. Now I sit at home, day after day with an empty bank account and an obsession for transgressive bliss. I stare at pictures of naked lusty women on my computer as if they could offer me a chance at salvation, but I know full well that I am escaping from the reality of “the job.”

I am not a big fan of “the job.” The only work that I really like to do is paint, write, read, meditate, sleep and look at the Craig’s List Erotic adds. Working to me is a labor which strips me of the time that I could spend doing the things I love and puts me into contact with people that I would normally never want to talk with. Work as a violation of the life I am trying to live. But rent is due in a few days, I have skipped many meals due to lack of funds and my wife is getting fed up with my habitual claim “that I have no money.” “Well you need to get a job,” she always replies. “I really do not want to get a job,” I retort. “What, are you just going to stay at home all day writing your ridiculous blog and expect that checks are going to show up in the mail?” she replies straightening her back bone like she is preparing for battle. I am wounded by her assault on my blog which I spend many hours preparing for distant readers I will never know. “The blog is valuable work, don’t pick on the blog. Pick on me and the fact that I do not want to Teach High school anymore, nor do I want to wait tables. There is nothing else that I am qualified to do and I have no ambition to do much at all,” I sob at her. “Well, this full catastrophe living has got to end. We have rent due in a few days and we need money for the bills. I can’t afford it all and we are going to be out in the streets if you do not get a job!!”

I could not disagree. I needed to find work. I had been applying to various jobs every day online but no one was biting the lines that I sent out. Each day I look at my email hoping that there will be a response but there never is. Just empty space. Sometimes I spend hours writing back to employers who have not taken a moment to respond to me. I write that it is bad karma not to respond to an email but that I understood because it was probably only a reflection of the way in which they treated themselves- with no respect. Sometimes I will get a screw you back or a what would you know about karma, you are out of a job? But every day I put one foot in front of the other and try to maintain faith that every thing will turn out well. It is important to be centered when you are engaged in full catastrophe living.

“You need to get up, take your resume and go around to various restaurants and hand it out. You can not spend the majority of your day writing away on your blog. I will not allow it.” This is how I awoke this morning, my wife standing over me with a stack of unpaid bills in her hand. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest as I made my way out of bed and asked her to heat me up some water for tea. In my office there was a stack of freshly printed up resumes on my desk, with a note “I have complete faith in your ability to find a job.” I thought that after I published my first book of short stories, that the writing life had belonged to me. No longer would there be worries about work and economy. I would be able to write for a living and not have to clear another table or teach a freshman how to read. I was free and I was also wrong. The moment I thought the writing life had begun was the moment that full catastrophe living kicked into first gear.

I dressed in a nice black suit, put gel into my hair and headed out into the rain with a stack of resumes wrapped in plastic under my arm. I went around to three or four restaurants all of which took my resume with a quick glance and sometimes a few questions. One lady asked me what I like about working in a restaurant and all I could do was smile and wish her a good day, as I made my way out the exit. I handed resumes off to a woman at a real estate office, a manager at a record store, the post office and a doctor’s office. Any place where money could be made. When I returned home that day my wife had opened my unemployment check which had come in the mail and said to me, “you are lucky again.” There was enough to cover the rent and bills and a few hundred bucks left over to feed my personal fancies. The rain was coming down, it was dark outside and I retired to my office to start writing this post. As I turned on the computer my wife came up behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “what do you want for dinner, it’s my treat.” I looked up at her and said “whatever you would like.” I had not eaten all day and any food sounded nurturing. I gave her a kiss and as I looked at her I said, “see, full catastrophe living isn’t so bad after all.” She made no reply.

Absurdistry Reconsidered.

LET THE IMMORALITY PLAY ROAR ONWARDS!! BASED UPON THE QUALITY OF A FEW OF THE COMMENTS THAT I HAVE RECEIVED, MY ARM HAS BEEN TWISTED AND I HAVE DECIDED TO REMAIN ON THE AIR PERPETUATING DEGENERATE AND PERVERTED TALES OF SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION/ADVENTURE AND ANIMATED PERSPECTIVES ON TIME AND SPACE WHICH SEEKS TO SLOW DOWN THE RAMBLING VOICE IN MY HEAD. I KNOW MANY MAY HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO SEE THE IMMORALIST GO AWAY BUT ONWARDS I GO, ONE FOOTSTEP AT A TIME….WITHOUT A CONCERN ABOUT WHERE I AM HEADING. THANK YOU TO THOSE FEW, WHO RE-KINDLED THE LIGHT IN AN ALMOST DARK ROOM.

High School Teachers Don’t Get Offices!

I can not find a job teaching. They fear me. They abhor me- I have a reputation. For four years I have taught high school English in an inner city school with all poor black students. It was the hardest job I ever loved but my disappointment grew to epic proportions when The Department Of Education shut the high school down. They did not want to spend the money on poor black kids getting an education (they rather put them in jail). They also wanted to stop dangerous Teachers such as myself from teaching.

The department Of Education knew that I was teaching my students about exploitation and oppression in our society. They knew I taught about racism and white male supremacy. They could not understand why I taught the things I did when I should be teaching The Great Gatsby. The school received several notices from The Department Of Education about my teaching style and as a result the school administration started to monitor my classroom closely. One afternoon I was caught by a school administrator observing the black breasts of one of my students. I was also caught once dancing in a bathroom with a bunch of my students. The final break was when I was caught with a black princess on my lap while in the middle of teaching a class.

I loved my students and they loved me. It was not my fault that one of my female students was always insisting upon showing me her breasts, without my permission. It was not my fault that a black princess enjoyed sitting in my lap every so often. She even once told me that she “enjoyed feeling me harden up beneath her black buttocks.” I agree that I was passive about what was going on. I knew that these students faced every hardship that a student could face. They were poor, black and the educational system barely cared five cents about their future. I repeatedly taught them about the importance of them asserting themselves and getting the best possible education that they could- or else they would end up victims of a racist society. The sexual play, the dancing…these where all deeply ingrained ways of connecting with my class.

When one of the administrators caught me looking at one of my students breasts she immediately called me into her office. I was told to sit in front of the administration and answer various questions. I told them that the student enjoyed showing me her breasts and there was little I could do about it. They asked me if she had ever touched my penis and I told them never. They wanted to know about the black princess who always sat on my lap, and I told them that nothing was going on between us. I then asked why high school Teachers never get offices? and they looked at me with blank stares. “A lot of this could be avoided if I had my own office. But instead my office is in the classroom and students have more access to me this way,” I tried to explain. What I wanted to really say was that I would have more privacy to do wanted I wanted to do if I had my own space to do it in. One of the administrators knew that I meant this, looked at me and said, “high school Teachers don’t get offices…they get classrooms.”

The black princess asked me one day if she could get an A in exchange for giving me a blow job. I did have to think about it for a minute but was able to refrain. She sat on my lap until I agreed to give her an A anyways. Another student with long red braids started coming up to my desk and sticking her tongue in my ear. She would whisper things like “you so fine Mr S,” or “My tongue in your ear feels so good.” I would let her rummage around in my eardrum for a bit and then begin lecturing on Malcolm X or Aristotle’s notion of tragedy. The students enjoyed the comedy of our classroom, because it was a break from the misery of their impoverished lives.

I believe that one of the reasons that the school was shut down was because of me. Word got back to The Department Of Education about what was going on in my classroom, and overtime they decided that the school administration was not doing enough to “change my ways.” I spoke in front of the Department Of Education at one of the hearings and told them that standardized education creates mediocre students who are trained to be workers in the corporate work force. I am not interested in creating workers, I want to facilitate conversations that will allow my students to receive a quality education. One of the members of The Department Of Education asked me “Do these conversations entail conversations about sex?” The only answer I could think of was an affirmational “of course!”

I miss the African princess, the breast flasher and the tongue licker- but I don’t miss the administration. Administrators are like parasites, they suck the blood from those who are trying to grow. Because of my reputation in the education community finding a job has been more difficult than finding gold. My Resume is turned down as quickly as it is seen and I never receive phone calls back. The students in all the high school’s know about me as “Mr S, the Teacher who tells it like it is…and tries to get some booty while he is at it.” In reality I am just trying to have a good time in a world that has become so series. And besides, maybe I will retire from the Teaching business for good. High school Teachers don’t even get their own offices, are underpaid and under appreciated. Why go back? Today I have an interview as a Waiter at a local restaurant. Who knows, maybe it would be good to start a new career.