Callgirl by Jeannette Angell

Author:Jeannette Angell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781921825552
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 2008-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

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I think of Sophie, and I realize that there would never have been enough of anything in the world to heal her. Not enough dopamine, not enough cocaine, not enough alcohol, not enough sex. Not enough friendship. Not even enough love

Chapter Eleven

The one thing in my life that I protected jealously from my difficult relationship with Sophie was my teaching. Even at the beginning, some sixth sense warned me not to let her get involved in that part of myself. I may not have seen her or what was happening to her as clearly as I might have; but at some level I understood that allowing her in any way to touch my other world, the academic world, would have been catastrophic. Even when I was spending evenings or afternoons with her, even during my brief flirtation with crack, I made sure that I could continue to teach.

I was lucky in that, too. Maybe that sixth sense was really the voice of Mary Magdalene, my (sort of) patron saint. I certainly can’t claim credit for it.

I was apparently to be rewarded for my efforts, though, because as it turned out, the class on prostitution was easily the most interesting class I’d ever taught.

I don’t say that lightly: I’ve had some really interesting experiences. I was a teaching assistant for two years at MIT, in the humanities department, and corrected papers written for classes called Mysticism and Gnosticism in Literature, and Evil as a Literary Theme. The papers had no assigned topics, and the sheer breadth of subject matter selected by the student authors was staggering. It’s hard to top those, and I have never since seen anything remotely like them. They stood out, even in that venue, where brilliance in the sciences appears to go hand in hand with a purposeful and studied weirdness.

But this one was shaping up to be even more of a fascinating experience.

Sometimes you see a pattern to enrollment in certain classes.

Every time that I taught On Death and Dying, for example, I knew that I would have to spend the first few sessions weeding out those who really shouldn’t be in the class. People who had just experienced a death and needed therapy rather than academic discussion.

People who dressed in black robes with long black fingernails. That sort of thing.

I anticipated that at least two groups of people would enroll in The History and Sociology of Prostitution. I anticipated feminists, women on a mission, coming to either denounce the topic as oppression or to argue for its legalization. I anticipated a certain number of students whose primary interest was prurient and who hoped to be able to talk about sex. I anticipated at least one Young Republican, gathering information on the issues that might ignite his or her way to the political arena. And I hoped I’d have a few people with genuine curiosity and open minds.

The opening class was the one that that would set the tone, which I planned to be one of low stress and good communication paired with significant learning.

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