epearl262
07-22-2013, 09:59 PM
So this is my first time putting anything on here and I'm not at all sure I'm doing it right. This is just a piece of something I've written so far, not yet completed. Just trying to get a sense of who this character is. The story is about a school superintendent.
The chair on the other side of my desk is leopard print. I bought it when I began here almost twenty years ago. I thought I was quirky then. I found it in a resale store the weekend before I started my first job here and thought it would endure me to the kids. They would come into my office and see it first thing and think I must be fun. A man with a leopard print chair.
Giddy after buying it, I angled it into my car that day and it sat for the rest of the weekend, getting warmer and warmer in the stuffy backseat. On Monday, I crammed around it my posters, pictures and desk paraphernalia and drove to the school to set up my office. The chair was the first thing I brought in. I wrestled it out of the car in ninety degree heat and carried it four floors up to door number 422. There was already a chair in there; a gray metal one. No personality, no style. A sad gray lack of enthusiasm for life, lack of character for me. Kids would come in and feel uncomfortable with the chair and by extension myself and would leave uninspired. This leopard chair, mixed with my words of wisdom and encouragement, would stir a passion in them. They would leave with a glow of fun, a knowledge that even in the adult world they can be different, buy funky chairs for their office. There are ways to escape the drudgery that has only just now, in the beginnings of adolescence, begun to show itself in life. Yes, I wake up in cold sweats worrying about having forgotten to pay my rent and I spend large amounts of time on the highway ruing trucks that drive in the left lane. But I can still have this chair. A wink to them that some rules can be bent.
The chair sits across from me now, squished lower and made less comfortable by the pressure of two decades worth of still-growing asses. Kids have used it to stifle gas, wipe boogers and dispose of gum. When Lisa saw it in my car, sometime that twenty-year-old Sunday of that weekend before my first day, she laughed at it, called it ugly. I explained to her what I thought and she squished her face at me, skepticism face. They're just going to make fun of you for being gay, she said. They have, I've heard from other teachers. Theories abound as to who my partner may be. Male gym teachers, substitutes who stay a few months and are never seen again because they move onto new jobs but in the kids' heads are fired for not being good to me in bed, lesbian gym teachers because that'd be so funny if we were both gay.
You can feel a metal piece that runs right down your ***-crack when you sit in it. The seat falls low, sitters squirm. Buying a new one was more trouble than I wanted to go through to end rumors about my sexuality.
One person remains who must sit in it today. A new hire, an English teacher at the middle school is coming for her welcoming meeting. School starts in two weeks, but she will start on Monday on training and preparing her class. This is the customary first step in starting that process; meeting with me, listening to what once was a speech about integrity, inspiration and punctuality and is now a subtly sarcastic recital that I give while contemplating my next move in whatever online game is popular at the time. Tetris, chess, Words with Friends, Angry Birds. My preference is Words with Friends, which I play with secretaries and some acquaintances from teenage years recently rediscovered on social media sites. My kids found out I played a few weeks ago and guffawed. No one has played that in like, two years, my son explained, hurting my feelings more than a man my age should have allowed. The curse of middle age is that you are always behind on trends but still care about being on top of them.
I have only met her once, when she came in for her interview. Amy Waters. She looked nice, presentable at the interview and gave the impression of averageness. The interview took place in a conference room apparently designed to intimidate. Myself, the middle school principal and the assistant principal sat at a long table while she sat before us in one of those gray metal chairs. I thought she seemed pleasant, capable, dull enough to fit in and cause no trouble. She answered the questions with limited stuttering and decent content. Half way through, thinking before responding to a classroom scenario in which a student answered a question incorrectly and was made fun of, she moved to uncross her legs and recross them on the other side, with her left on top. For a brief instant as she switched legs, we all caught a glimpse of red underwear. Lacy it looked like. Bright, bright red underneath her skirt.
The two principals, both woman, turned their heads slightly sideways not enough to be obvious to look at me. They had both noticed and had also noticed that I was the only man in the room and were wondering if I had noticed. I cast a look in their direction and they both turned their eyes away. Both are chunky, if you can call a woman that, with dyed red poofy hair. The puffed up hair and the double chins give their faces an odd effect like a smaller circle of skin surrounded by a bigger circle of red fur and more skin. They are not related but should be. The gay rumors apparently have not reached them.
I have passed fifty now, three decades past the time when a mere glimpse of female undergarments could arose me. Amy stops talking and I ask her another question, about how she will transition to a new state. They dart their eyes at me with distasteful looks, like my interest in her well-being has more to do with my ability to take her sexually than anything else.
The chair on the other side of my desk is leopard print. I bought it when I began here almost twenty years ago. I thought I was quirky then. I found it in a resale store the weekend before I started my first job here and thought it would endure me to the kids. They would come into my office and see it first thing and think I must be fun. A man with a leopard print chair.
Giddy after buying it, I angled it into my car that day and it sat for the rest of the weekend, getting warmer and warmer in the stuffy backseat. On Monday, I crammed around it my posters, pictures and desk paraphernalia and drove to the school to set up my office. The chair was the first thing I brought in. I wrestled it out of the car in ninety degree heat and carried it four floors up to door number 422. There was already a chair in there; a gray metal one. No personality, no style. A sad gray lack of enthusiasm for life, lack of character for me. Kids would come in and feel uncomfortable with the chair and by extension myself and would leave uninspired. This leopard chair, mixed with my words of wisdom and encouragement, would stir a passion in them. They would leave with a glow of fun, a knowledge that even in the adult world they can be different, buy funky chairs for their office. There are ways to escape the drudgery that has only just now, in the beginnings of adolescence, begun to show itself in life. Yes, I wake up in cold sweats worrying about having forgotten to pay my rent and I spend large amounts of time on the highway ruing trucks that drive in the left lane. But I can still have this chair. A wink to them that some rules can be bent.
The chair sits across from me now, squished lower and made less comfortable by the pressure of two decades worth of still-growing asses. Kids have used it to stifle gas, wipe boogers and dispose of gum. When Lisa saw it in my car, sometime that twenty-year-old Sunday of that weekend before my first day, she laughed at it, called it ugly. I explained to her what I thought and she squished her face at me, skepticism face. They're just going to make fun of you for being gay, she said. They have, I've heard from other teachers. Theories abound as to who my partner may be. Male gym teachers, substitutes who stay a few months and are never seen again because they move onto new jobs but in the kids' heads are fired for not being good to me in bed, lesbian gym teachers because that'd be so funny if we were both gay.
You can feel a metal piece that runs right down your ***-crack when you sit in it. The seat falls low, sitters squirm. Buying a new one was more trouble than I wanted to go through to end rumors about my sexuality.
One person remains who must sit in it today. A new hire, an English teacher at the middle school is coming for her welcoming meeting. School starts in two weeks, but she will start on Monday on training and preparing her class. This is the customary first step in starting that process; meeting with me, listening to what once was a speech about integrity, inspiration and punctuality and is now a subtly sarcastic recital that I give while contemplating my next move in whatever online game is popular at the time. Tetris, chess, Words with Friends, Angry Birds. My preference is Words with Friends, which I play with secretaries and some acquaintances from teenage years recently rediscovered on social media sites. My kids found out I played a few weeks ago and guffawed. No one has played that in like, two years, my son explained, hurting my feelings more than a man my age should have allowed. The curse of middle age is that you are always behind on trends but still care about being on top of them.
I have only met her once, when she came in for her interview. Amy Waters. She looked nice, presentable at the interview and gave the impression of averageness. The interview took place in a conference room apparently designed to intimidate. Myself, the middle school principal and the assistant principal sat at a long table while she sat before us in one of those gray metal chairs. I thought she seemed pleasant, capable, dull enough to fit in and cause no trouble. She answered the questions with limited stuttering and decent content. Half way through, thinking before responding to a classroom scenario in which a student answered a question incorrectly and was made fun of, she moved to uncross her legs and recross them on the other side, with her left on top. For a brief instant as she switched legs, we all caught a glimpse of red underwear. Lacy it looked like. Bright, bright red underneath her skirt.
The two principals, both woman, turned their heads slightly sideways not enough to be obvious to look at me. They had both noticed and had also noticed that I was the only man in the room and were wondering if I had noticed. I cast a look in their direction and they both turned their eyes away. Both are chunky, if you can call a woman that, with dyed red poofy hair. The puffed up hair and the double chins give their faces an odd effect like a smaller circle of skin surrounded by a bigger circle of red fur and more skin. They are not related but should be. The gay rumors apparently have not reached them.
I have passed fifty now, three decades past the time when a mere glimpse of female undergarments could arose me. Amy stops talking and I ask her another question, about how she will transition to a new state. They dart their eyes at me with distasteful looks, like my interest in her well-being has more to do with my ability to take her sexually than anything else.