“I am being very, very disappointed.” His puffer fish face of stubble, kind but enigmatic and oh my god it felt horrible to disappoint that face, refused to look at me. My professor that spring who was known only by an acronym, held out seventeen pages, consolidated via top left corner folds, a blood red “C-” encircled next to the underlined title.
He puffed out, shaking his head, picking up and polishing his glasses with a grey, ruffled handkerchief, placing the frames back on. His dark eyes magnified, through the lens he could bear to see me, he sucked me in. “You were being the most interested student in class. Talking to the other students, asking every class, questions. I don’t know what happened here.”
The accent was one typically assigned to mid-2000s Russian movie villains named Yuri. But Professor Acronym had rejected that life of thwarting comedic spies and wooly detectives for nobler academic pursuits. I looked behind me, eager to avoid his gaze, but now captivated by the eyes of a bald violinist hung upon the wall. His face a series of smudges from an acrylic palette I would describe as “dustbin” and his eyes closed in passionate grimace. Like conjuring the music came at the cost of many thin spinal lacerations. I found myself thinking about how I could be typecast, and what I was rejecting and in favor of what.
“Mister.” (He called all his students this—all his male students—it was very endearing).
I turned towards him. Above the desk sat his tomes, stoic and dignified. There were maps on the wall showing Yugoslavia and its disassembly. These professors worked in closets of their own brain. I began to feel I was intruding.
“Send in next student please.”
There was a line of us outside the door, awaiting our release into Junior Year summer. I took one step backwards and found I desperately did not want to end, so instead I began.
“I’m so sorry, Professor. I just, I just feel like everything collapsed on me all at once.”
“Please, it is okay. These things happen, let us move on.”
His reply acknowledged my stress and denied it. I thought I had landed a powerful serve but he an experienced returner, Agassi-like, sent the ball back upon me and I was fumbling. He kind of shooed me with the back of his hand (a backhand ha) which felt like a turbine ushering me towards the door.
Acquiescing, my fingers clasped the knob. I resisted to rotate it, just tapping my fingernails against this metallic testicle. And then in a burst I pushed the door fully closed hearing the little silver jut thing contract and the door fit neatly into the jamb a word I had learned recently and I pivoted around, braced his gaze and flexed my quadriceps. I was drunk and defiant and impassioned.
“I’ll make it up to you,” I said into his southerly wind. My right arm outstretched and palm upward. I was nervous I might set him off, unleash the Yuri within. Then, I would have to deflate him somehow. But if I kept talking maybe I would never find out.
“I’ll…I’ll rewrite the paper. I loved this class and I want you to see that. You don’t have to even re-grade it. I’ll just rewrite it, I’m so sorry. Please!” I couldn’t consider the implications of this promise. I only felt the satisfaction of its presence, its potential. Future me, who was to take care of this task, was a slave. A prolific, non-procrastinating and intelligent slave.
The professor’s glasses were back off. He tucked his lips inside of his mouth for lubricating, then out they came in a duck kiss all wet and glistening now. He was transmogrified. All duck kissed and head tilted and unibrow like a tilde and nostrils like obsidian marbles. His whole face in conversation with itself. And then he let it all go through his blubbery lips like a horse and muttered something like incorrigible.
“Give me paper.”
I rested the pages on his desk and he snapped his fingers down like a spidery cage around it. Ensnarement. He went on, “You can rewrite the paper and I will regrade in the fall. Now go.” It seemed like there was a clause missing, some qualified threat, But if you don’t rewrite it…you will be mine forever! But then again he was no Yuri.
“Okay, okay. Thank you professor. Thank you.” I did an awkward bow of appreciation as I crept backwards, which in his farsightedness he saw as me searching for something I may have dropped. I then turned around and yanked the door open, dripping with expectation.