Shame by Samson Rachel
Author:Samson, Rachel [Samson, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00E893TXY
Goodreads: 18272485
Published: 2013-07-28T22:00:00+00:00
Chapter 11
When I’m twenty-two and a grad student I teach every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. My friend-with-benefits is in the class. No one of importance knows we sleep with each other, or I wouldn’t be allowed to teach him. He’s what they call a Super-Senior, one of those dudes who aren’t motivated enough to finish in four years. I always give Nathan shit for that, but he’s a decent man. He’s tall and has a barrel chest and a shaved head. In high school I would’ve blown off his looks at either ROTC bait or some Punk Rock Neo-Nazi bullshit. From the small talk after sex I gather he shaves his head because baldness runs in his family and he doesn’t want the lonely island of hair his father has on his crown.
We’ve been messing around for about a year, though we’ve known each other for longer. He doesn’t see anyone else, and neither do I, but we know what this relationship is, and leave it at that. We’re kind of like friends, because he won’t leave me alone if I cry and he knows he can stay over if he’s drunk. That’s the closest to friendship either of us has had for the last few years. The tender parts of me are locked away and numbed, closed off ever since Kate left without a word the summer after my freshman year. I don’t know why she did it. I try not to notice her absence, but it poisons me on the inside, like an abscess on my brain stem. Nathan relieves my pent-up sexual urges so I can focus on my work, which is the only thing that gives me any joy. It’s a perfect marriage. I live for school.
Normally graduate assistants like me have to play second-fiddle to a professor or teach a low level class like Composition I, but luck is on my side. Because Doctor Pratt had some kind of issue with his kidneys and since I’m his GA, Modern British Literature is my responsibility for at least the next month. We’re three weeks into the semester, and I love it. The twenty-six students in the class are almost all English majors (so they actually care) and everyone joins in the discussions we hold weekly, though some participate far less than others. They all genuinely appear to listen when I lecture. It is so nice to teach, to speak, and be heard and cared about by your peers. Teaching is as fun as being a student.
I hold a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway in one hand and write on the board. We’ve been discussing the different themes of the novel over the last class or two: mental illness and feminism were picked over last time. We’ve spent thirty-five minutes on the proverbial “Angel in the House” and I begin to create the first letter of the next theme on the board when the door of the classroom opens. I turn and my mouth drops and my heart pulls like a fishhook caught against my ribs.
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