In the first semester of my sophomore year in college I took a course entitled British Literature Survey I. It was the first of four classes I took taught by Professor Andrews. In my senior year I ran into her at some English Department function and we both commented on how odd it was, after four straight semesters, for me to not be in one of her classes.
She lamented my absence, saying that, while I seldom spoke up in any of her classes, based on my work when I was in one of her classes she always knew that there was at least one person who was actually thinking.
The next semester, when every other English major was taking Shakespeare or Chaucer, I was one of the few who took Milton, a class taught by the other Professor Andrews, her husband.
His personality was markedly different from hers, and I was always struck by what an odd pairing they seemed to be.
(In one of the in-class essays that I wrote on Milton, I had written something that had so completely missed the point of the particular play that I had written about that I probably should have gotten an F, but he was so impressed by how well-structured and earnest my essay was that, he noted on the paper, he couldn’t help but give me a B+. The flaw in my essay stemmed from the fact that it never occurred to me that, of all people, John Milton could actually have a sense of humor.)
The other classes I took that were taught by the distaff Professor Andrews – it wasn’t exactly a deliberate choice that led me to have her for four semesters in a row, it just happened that she was teaching the classes I wanted to take – were British Literature Survey II, Restoration and 17th Century British Literature, and Major Authors (Wordsworth and Coleridge).
To at least start to zero in on my point, one day towards the end of the semester in British Lit Survey I, I had a severe case of the sniffles. As I sat there trying to keep my snot in my nose, one of my fellow students – a girl – passed me a packet of tissues.
Now this would seem to be a polite gesture on her part, but the girl in question had some indefinable quality about her that just bugged me, and while I thanked her, I actually took this act of kindness to be some sort of passive aggressive act of condescension, and it made me dislike her immensely.
(If I recall correctly, another reason I didn’t like her back in Brit Lit Survey I was that she was friends with this dork who really irritated me.)
I didn’t see the girl in question – she was quite distinctive, and, I had to grudgingly admit, pretty, and my dislike for her had imprinted her image in my memory – around campus or in any classes again until the end of my junior year when she was in the aforementioned Major Authors with me.
Seeing her again brought my dislike for her to the forefront of my memory, and as we were walking out of the building after class I found myself – unwillingly – walking alongside her. While I was thinking about how much I didn’t like her, she turned to me and said, “Don’t I know you? Have we had a class together before?”
This annoyed me greatly, but I said, “Yeah, I think we were in British Lit I together – another class with Andrews teaching, actually.”
She said, “Oh yeah,” and then we parted ways.
Whenever possible I liked to take “block” classes – classes that were taught in two-hour blocks and only met two days a week. This minimized the amount of time I spent in class on any given day, and usually left my Fridays wide open. Major Authors, as I recall, met on Monday and Wednesday.
The next day I went to one of my Tuesday and Thursday block classes – American Literature I – and, much to my chagrin, there she was again.
Once again she struck up a conversation with me, and after talking to her for a bit I came to realize something: she wasn’t so bad after all.
She was smart, funny, and sarcastic. What was not to like?
From talking to her I learned that her name was Jen, she was about five years older than I was, had been to several schools pursuing several different majors, was now majoring in English, and had, at one point, been a bus driver, of all things. Not a school bus driver, but a city transit, Ralph Kramden type bus driver.
I also came to realize that the tissue thing was, in fact, simply her being nice, and not an act of passive aggression.
We got to be pretty good friends during the short time we spent together smoking before class, or walking together after class, and we always opted to pair up during any sort of group activities in Major Authors (though this annoying Eddie Vedder wannabe grad student usually latched himself onto us as well).
Though I wasn’t immediately aware of it, I was beginning to fall for her. She seemed to have an instinctive understanding of which of my buttons to push – though I don’t think that she was aware that she was pushing them – and how to push them. Bear in mind that this was when I was married, so I wasn’t lonely and desperate. These days my buttons are pretty much stuck down like the keys on a keyboard that’s had Coke spilled on it, and it doesn’t take much more than a pair of tits and a smile to capture my attention. Even the smile is optional.
In any case, the thought that I might be falling for her was the furthest thing from my mind because I was (reasonably) happily married, and certainly wasn’t looking around to see what color the grass might be elsewhere.
Though I thought about Jen all the time, I very seldom brought her up in conversations with Lorie. This may have been some sort of instinct for self-preservation, but I think it had more to do with me not wanting to share Jen with anyone else, in any sort of way. She was something…private.
My first inkling that something was up came one day when I was walking to American Lit. I’d grabbed the mail on the way, and while sifting through it found that I’d gotten something from the English Department. I opened it and learned that I had been selected to receive a scholarship for my senior year from the English Department.
Naturally I was very excited about this, and my immediate thought was that I had to tell someone. While I could have swung by the tutoring center where Lorie worked and told her, the thought never occurred to me. I didn’t want to tell my wife about this big news, I wanted to tell Jen.
She was absent that day, and I found myself crestfallen. I had so wanted to have her be excited for me, and impressed by me (One big button Jen often pushed: being in awe of my intellect. Every time I would demonstrate what a smart cookie I was and hear her say, “How do you know all of this stuff?” it was like a shot of endorphins directly into my ego.).
Still, this wasn’t exactly a red flag for me.
(Historical footnote: It was around this time that I started getting into The Sandman.)
It was a later event that actually raised the red flag and set off a bunch of warning klaxons in my brain.
At that time I was thinking about signing up for some summer classes. So was Jen. We were sitting together before class looking over the summer schedule and had selected classes that we could take together.
The classes themselves weren’t really even a consideration. What was most important, to both of us, was that we would be able to spend more time with each other.
That was when it hit finally hit me, and I realized just where it was that I was heading.
With that realization came another: I couldn’t do that to Lorie.
Jen was a far better match for me than Lorie could have ever been. She was smarter, she was funnier, she was prettier, and, to be blunt, and perhaps a bit unfair, just better in general.
But the fact remained that I had made my choice, and, more importantly, made a promise, and so, with great reluctance, I decided not to take any summer classes, and after the end of that semester I never saw Jen again.
As a result of all of this, I learned something about myself. When it came down to it, ultimately, no matter how much it sucked, I would do the right thing.
Given how things eventually turned out, there’s only one thing I can really say about all of it: I’m a dumbass.
To make a long story even longer, the apartment where Lorie and I lived in married student housing had walls made of cinderblock that allowed pretty much every sound to pass through them effortlessly.
As a result, we always knew when our neighbors were fighting, and, more disturbingly, when they had made up.
There was a period in which every morning found me being woken up by the neighbors blasting the song One by U2.
Several years later, after college and after the marriage, during the period of my drunken downward spiral, there came a morning when I found myself being awoken at a friend’s house by the sound of One playing. Confused and still a little drunk and having no idea where I was, my immediate drowsy response to this was to think that I was back in that apartment and that the last six or seven years of my life had all been some kind of horrible dream.
During that blissfully confused moment I thought that I’d been given a chance to do it all over again and that this time I would go after Jen and leave Lorie on the trash heap of my personal history before she got the chance to do it to me.
I would make things right by doing the wrong thing.
Of course, reality crashed in on me far too quickly, and I realized that no, I hadn’t been given that chance, and that no one ever gets that chance. The past was in the past, and there was no changing it.
So what’s the point of all this? What do you care? I mean, it’s not like you actually read this entire rambling narrative. Wait, you did? Why on earth would you do that to yourself?
Anyway, like most things in life, there really isn’t a point. For no apparent reason, Jen just popped into my mind earlier tonight, and I thought that writing about the whole meaningless, boring and not nearly sordid enough mess would help purge my former emotional and intellectual “mistress” and button-pusher from my mind, and give you all a view into a Pointless Moment In The History of Jon while I was at it.
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