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Continuing Education

Rita Plush

    “Write from the heart! Write from the gut!” is what I tell my Continuing Ed memoir students the first day of class. “Make it personal.” The more you it is, the more engaging your story will be. “Shock us. Make it real! We’re adults, here. We can take it. Write your story as only you can.”
    Among those in this particular class was an elderly Jamaican born woman, who as a child made soap from fat, oil, and lye to do the family wash; a smartly dressed history professor with an abusive father; a Jewish man in his 70’s whose mother destroyed her art collection, rather than give it to the Nazis; and an athletic young man, early twenties I’d guessed. An interesting mix, I thought. This will be a lively class.
    A few weeks into the semester, the homework assignment was to write about a disappointment of some kind, something you wanted and didn’t get. Chairs were set up in a semicircle so everyone could face each other.
    I called for volunteers. The young man raised his hand and began to read. I listened along, and made my notes.
    He’d broken his leg playing basketball. It was in a cast, and a girl he knew came to visit. After a while he asked her to get him a soda from the kitchen and to help herself if she wanted one. She returned with a glass for each. They sipped, they talked. He described how a player on the opposing team plowed into him on the court as he was about to make a killer slam-dunk shot. He told her he was feeling bad about not being able to get around, frustrated that he couldn’t play ball. And in the same straightforward way he’d asked her to get him a soda, he said to her, “How about a blow job?”
    How about a what!? Except for the Jamaican woman’s puzzled look as she whispered to her seatmate, all eyes bore down into the tablet arms of their chairs. The seatmate whispered back. The woman’s eyes and mouth jerked wide open as if pulled by a puppet master’s strings.
    I’d heard right alright!
    And he was miffed. “Why not?!” he said. “Because I don’t want to!” the visitor said, and stormed out of his room.
    He was disappointed; he did not get what he wanted. He wrote from the gut, er, a little lower down, but let’s not quibble about a few inches. He made it real! He was not afraid to shock! Give the young athlete an A! And give me a Xanax and get me out of here!
    “Comments class?” I said, in the calmest voice I could muster.
    Grins and grimaces. Others had that not me! look. Not a one raised their hand. Dead quiet.
    “Surely someone has something to say on some part of this piece?” I urged palms up, beseechingly.
    At last, the history professor: “I thought the way he had his sports trophies lined up on his dresser was good.” Students nodded. “Yes,” I said. “It showed how much they meant to him, and what a loss it was his not being able to play basketball. Anyone else?”
    Nothing. Nothing but the fellatio in the room that everyone was thinking but could not say, and the say was on me. Not for the thing itself, this was his story, but the casual how-about-ness of it all—that I could not let go. This slam-dunker needed an attitude adjustment big time!
    I had to go about it in the right way, though. Generations older than he—I could have been his grandma for heaven’s sake—and if there was anything I didn’t want, it was to sound like some behind-the times-old fuddy-duddy. I’m on Facebook. I text. I’m woke!
    “So we have the setting,” I began, “and we have the situation. And we have... we have... we have... the... blowjob,” I finally managed to say, and heard, or thought I heard, a sigh of relief emanate from the entire class. Then I got right to it “The thing that struck me is that you seemed surprised. Annoyed even, that she didn’t give you what you wanted.”
    He slid down in his chair, long legs thrust out into the semicircle, “Yeah.”
    I don’t know what class I thought I was teaching but, “Have you ever asked a girl for a... for that before. In that way. And gotten it?” came out of my mouth.
    He straightened in his chair. “Some girls do.”
    Maybe I was out of touch. I looked around the room. For an escape route? “Anyone?” I said. No takers, but many shrugs. Where do I go with this now? The only way you can go, I answered myself. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Here goes nothing. “You might have been more successful this time,” I said, “If instead of asking for it out of the blue, you were a little more subtle, and you worked up to it.”
    “Like finessing the ball,” he said, as if the notion was taking hold. “My coach always talks about that. Yeah, finessing the ball, he calls it. Develop a strategy, he says. Lead up to the big move. That what you mean?” he said, all earnest.
    “Pretty much,” I said, wondering just whose attitude had been adjusted. “Next volunteer.”

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