Beauty
Kenneth Radu
Fall 2009
Fall 2009
“We don’t need to ask what the poet means, just what he feels. Better yet, Adam, what do you feel when you read these lines?”
“What lines?”
The guys chuckled; one or two guffawed in that attention-gathering way of hulky jocks. Oh dear, perhaps her marked preference for athletes and other beefy males had become too obvious, once again. The more serious, academic-minded boys disappeared from her range of vision, although she encouraged their poetic sensibilities because, after all, it was a poetry appreciation class. One or two of the students had literary aspirations which she, of all people, would be the last to discourage. Not a poet herself, Mandy understood the creative impulse. She painted swirling, delicate water colors inspired by dream imagery, studied Indonesian dances at the Java Institute in Montreal when not teaching, and meditated in the lotus position under a print of vulvar flowers by Georgia O’Keefe.
The less physically gifted among her students benefited from the presence of jocks who helped to spread good cheer in her class room. Most of the two dozen students consisted of males who belonged to one college sports team or another. Five girls sat in a corner, smirking more than smiling she noted, giving each other pregnant looks. Everyone passed. She awarded A’s liberally, if they wrote anything like how she talked. Assigning a mark was easy. She didn’t correct grammar or structure because Mandy was certain they benefited more from her comments like “I enjoyed the soul of your essay.” No one had ever complained about a high mark.
“Were you paying attention, Adam?”
“Yes, miss. I was following your lines, miss.”
In the library study carrel last week before her evening class began at seven, not expecting but delighted to see him, they had found a secluded spot. She had unwound her batik sarong, purchased in Jakarta where she had taught English as second language for a few months before too many clucking tongues in the market place, and that incident of betel juice spat in her face, indicated that it was time to leave. During his penetrating embrace of her jasmine scented body on the third floor near the philosophy stacks, Adam had repeated, “Oh, miss, miss, oh God, you’re so hot, miss.”
In cooler moments Mandy agreed. Unlike many of her female colleagues she had not lost sexual allure simply because of the pedagogical imperative. She had never believed in the traditional hierarchy of education, or the arbitrary barriers it established between student and teacher who were more or less the same age, give or take six or seven years. Well, that wasn’t as true as it used to be, since time inexorably pushed her further and further away in years, but surely not in desires.
That commune in California had taught her the joys of openness and the role sensuality played in developing the mind. Logic and rationality had corroded the Western spirit. And how beautiful the boys! Those chiseled, muscled bodies, the curvature, the firm thighs, the long strong legs, the lips and hips, the flat washboard or smoothly hard stomachs, the bright and sensitive eyes awash with healthy lust, the vigor of their fingers; oh, glory be, their manhood! The classical Greek sculptors had it right, Michelangelo had it right. They understood the power of beauty.
Students learned so much better if they were also loved. Occasionally Mandy experienced a twinge of guilt when she thought about the girls, but she had always encouraged them to loosen up, to join in the camaraderie of the classroom, and not assume that resentful look of romantic heroines who wondered if their boy friend really loved them. Ah, love, love, love was not simply a subject of sonnets or pop songs. It was thrilling physicality like Adam’s provocative chest, his nipples pushing against the tightness of his black t-shirt. Oh lovely nipples. She had licked them almost within reaching distance of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
True, times were a-changing: a lesson emphatically made clear at the end of her first teaching year in that Connecticut private school where the head master suggested that her methods and their curriculum were irreconcilable. At least the good man had written a glowing letter of reference to ease the transition and avoid unpleasantness. Here, Mandy believed she had a permanent home when she was hired three years ago. This college had opened in the heyday of countercultural movements and prided itself on innovation in pedagogy and non-traditional teaching techniques.
In the early years of its existence, several teachers had been hired on the basis of real life experience in the work world, alternative knowledge gained in the Third World, and not upon standard degrees which they did not all possess. Half the faculty had revolutionized the sixties, or tried to. Despite grayness and sagginess, many still wore jeans and not a few of the older teachers sported pony tails. Yes, she had been born after the fact, but her parents had smoked, toked, chanted, meditated and protested all over the United States before finally emigrating to Canada to escape, they declared, the conservative shutting down of freedom and the lies that had betrayed the spirit of America under Nixon. Her sojourn in the commune was the result of an impulse to explore heightened consciousness and liberation shortly after graduating from the University of British Columbia.
There she absorbed Eastern Thought in a totally non-structured way, walking through a forest with one guru or another, men who had transvalued themselves and emerged, well, transcendent, above the muck and mire of mere American materialism. They had elevated coitus to a platonic ideal without sacrificing the physical. They freed learning from the tragic tyranny of marks. Three gurus taught her tantric sex which she tried to convey to her student lovers, but they tended towards impatience and quick thrusts, satisfying in their way, but not entirely spiritual. Oh blessed boys, who had such pleasure in them to give, who had so much to learn.
“Jean-Claude, what do you feel about Whitman’s lines? Please read them aloud first, so we can all enjoy them again.”
He did not look at her sitting on the desk in front of the blackboard, one leg crossed, and sandaled feet visible beneath below the hemline of her sarong. The muscled structure of his shoulders apparent beneath his jersey, Jean-Claude shifted his legs and leaned forward, hunched over his book and read the lines:
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Dear heart, he read English with a heavy Québécois accent that made her bones tingle with pleasure, although today his voice had a hurried, hard quality today. So demanding when he made love, a bit too insistent. After the fourth time last month, they had a little tête-à-tête about jealous possessiveness, and not expecting more than the ecstasy they shared in the moment. Really, he mustn’t think of breaking up with Rachel of the auburn hair and distinctly pouty expression, who sat in the back row. Surely, Jean-Claude didn’t believe that Mandy could ever replace his girlfriend, such an intelligent young lady. He had stormed out of her apartment. Ah, the sensuous texture of his skin, like hard silk impervious to the abuse of football. Conceivably out of pique Rachel had spoken to the Dean who in turn requested a meeting. She had been careful to give the girl high marks, and the boys were all over eighteen, well, except for one, maybe two, but no one knew about them, she didn’t think.
The meeting with the dean, her department head, and a union representative was directly after class. Why had the union become involved? A student had complained about her marking methods, that was all she had been told by the chairperson, that, and “other issues” which required consideration. The matter could hardly be a question of labour relations. She taught her classes well, her success rate above average, students contented, indeed, happy. To be sure, disaffected students always existed; even the most talented of teachers suffered those in a class from time to time. Had her marking been too generous?
Perhaps it would be wise not to put Jean-Claude on the spot, so Mandy turned towards, well, a female seemed advisable, but not Rachel. Louise had golden frizzy curls just like hers, although the girl’s body tended towards the Rubenesque which, great for a painter, did not appeal to athletes.
“Thank you, Jean-Claude. Let’s get someone else involved. Louise, what do you feel about the lines Jean-Claude just read?”
Louise mumbled an answer to which Mandy paid scant attention because the class had come to an end. Jean-Claude unfortunately rushed away. She wanted a word with him. Surrounding her as usual, Mandy couldn’t dally with the jostling athletes. Adam slipped her a note which she read as she sauntered toward the dean’s office on the second floor. Mandy wondered if she should agree to meet Adam on the weekend. The dean’s secretary was decidedly cool in her greeting. That did not surprise Mandy as much as Jean-Claude sitting hunched over as usual, almost panting under an official school portrait, but did not reply to her question. The dean opened the door and personally motioned for Jean-Claude and Mandy to enter his office.