Something I wrote a while ago

I've stopped writing in this style nowadays, so this must remain unfinished. It's almost entirely fictional, of course.

Dez Lopez's month as a student in my twenty-strong calculus class went poorly. Usually several minutes late, he would slouch into his seat and fix a pair of reddened, stricken eyes on the blackboard, as if signaling to me his extreme familiarity -- and as a consequence boredom -- with the subject. The notebook on his desk would open only upon gentle but urgent pleas on my part, pleas that began by being general so as not to attract attention ("I'd really like it if everyone took out their notebooks, please") but then inevitably, as even the most obstinate of the rest had begun their scribbling, proceeded to the embarrassingly specific: "Dez, would you please take down the problems on the board"; "Dez, maybe you could work the second problem?". It seemed there was nothing to him that was more galling than being asked to "work", and he would squander tens of minutes inventing excuses that were plausible enough to demand my immediate and already compromised attention, "My grandmother's sick, and my step-grandfather's on the phone", excuses that would dissolve whatever earnestness the class had managed to accumulate until then. He would cast barely-concealed glances at the cellphone perpetually on his knee, and it was only during these times that his otherwise grim features would break into an occasional, rather beautiful smile, lightening not only his mood but my own, giving me a momentary sense of encouragement at my ability to accommodate even the most difficult of my students. The key to my interactions with him was precisely this overreaching brand of accommodation, one that sought to bring about, within him, a grudging quietude rather than a startling outbreak of sincerity, a rearrangement rather than a transformation. I was always realistic in my assessment of how far we, as casual teacher me and shiftless student him, could play our respective roles and still achieve our respective goals, mine a completion of the syllabus, his the obtainment of a good grade, preferably an A, in the class: I never, from the beginning, sought anything more than such a state of mutual poise.

Ten classes into the semester Mr. Lopez -- as I once, in finally expressed annoyance, had addressed him -- had already frustrated whatever fragile hopes I had sustained for our relationship. His tardy forays into my class were punctuated by his rather alarming accusations of my having begun my lecture session intentionally early, accusations that I dealt with not in the graceful, firm manner that is supposed of a teacher, but timidly, considerately, using his comments as an excuse to lure him into his seat, continually engaging him as he confronted me, his blue eyes looking unabashedly into my own, brandished cellphone palpable, a symbol of his defiance; and the class, silent, looking on to see who would in fact win this implicit battle of vitality. Even when he took his seat it seemed he had conceded nothing; as I toured the classroom on one of my supervisory patrols he would consider the creased wooden surface of his desk with a shrill nail, prompting an immediate but ineffectual reprimand. It seemed he was also prurient, a man in joyful rather than apologetic thrall to his masculine urges: the girls that sat close to him did so in the unsmiling knowledge that their presence would sooner or later exact a prospecting glance or prolonged stare, or worse, some easy declaration about their aspect that too unfortunately could not be reported, insubstantial as it was in isolation, as inappropriate. No, Desmond Lopez was unfit, a person that inhabited his obvious role as bad student with a practiced insouciance far too unbearable to witness, and in my report of his delinquency to my employers I was to admit that he was the first person in whose ultimate ability to succeed as a student I had lost all faith. A few days later he was told to discipline himself or drop the class, and it came as little surprise that he chose the last option; we agreed, in the days following his departure, that it was the best, in fact the only conceivable course.

When I saw Dez outside my classroom a few days later I had an abrupt, premonitory knowledge of his purpose: he had come to apologize. As I walked to the door to meet him I felt the oppressive awareness of the past weeks, the one that had grown unbearably sensitive to his presence and actions, peeling away. Who was I to have declared him bad student? When his inevitable apologies reached my ears they had already grown stale; I had already forgiven him. Or was 'forgive' the correct word? I felt like a drunk referee of power, a man who would rather assume the ascendancy that his position granted him than engage the empathy that he was supposed to bring to it. Had I only, vulgarly, stared at his faults? There had been the time when he had not only solved all the problems that were assigned him but also explained them to his audience; I remember having thanked him curtly and waved him towards the bag of incentive-candy on the table... my attitude to him had been forbidding from the outset; his sullenness was a simple answer to my own, deeper inability to accept him as he was. In the hallway outside the classroom he administered his apology, head bent downward, legs apart, figure slightly hunched: It seemed I had won, the colorless victory of an unequal battle. My hand reached across the space between us and rested itself on his shoulder. Our conversation ended; I wished him luck.