The cottage’s old broom closet was tight with brooms. Mrs. Jerome and I often did math in there, when the weather was a certain way, and Mr. Jerome would watch through the keyhole with those awful European peepers. Mrs. Jerome refused to let him enter the broom closet out of embarrassment; she said it would be too much like drinking her own fluids while angels watched. You might imagine it was hard to do math with all of those brooms in the way, and there was much struggling and comedy as I grasped the wooden handles and screamed out the names of all the gods as we reached the end of our learning session.
   I straightened my mesh tie, exited the broom closet, shook Mr. Jerome’s hand, and walked out into the streets. Rain again; there was always rain when Mrs. Jerome called me into her cottage and asked me to help her do math – hard math, new math, consumer math. It is hard to keep alive in this cold world when you are leaving a wonderful place and it is raining, and suddenly you are not in that place any more. You were doing math but mere minutes ago, cozily, in a broom closet, and your mesh tie is wet and the bad teenage men on the rooftops keep staring at you and laughing, as if they know everything about your ways.
   “Shut up, boys!” I called to the bad men, and took a sharp left turn onto Sunshine Avenue.
   Sometimes it seems as though the whole world is one large teenage man laughing and pointing on a rooftop, shirtless, putting his roofing knowledge to use, hard at work fixing the roof, expanding the roof, massaging it, preparing it for new visitors and new days. Young nubile sweat is pouring off of his arms and it is disgusting. He won’t stop ridiculing you with his eyes. His words do not matter; it is the hatred oozing from his lips that bind your arms together and pierce your wrists. You can’t move and it hurts and the badness of everything is so clear and pure like that sinful September rain that is destroying the cloth possessions on your body.
   If the pain that comes with the knowledge of knowing that other people exist were not there, constantly scalping at your scalp and peeling the enamel off your teeth, all would be fine, and you could do math in a luxurious antique cottage several times a year without feelings of intense guilt crushing your intestines. I cannot say that I do not deserve pain, however; I practically order it every night in my kingly bed with my cool kingly sheets and golden watering jar. My ego is strong and violent and thick. It runs like a river through a mine, swallowing the things that are good and shiny and making terrible things happen to the working dwarfs, and all the fat wives find when the sun comes up are several pick-axes and a tattered Farmer’s Almanac from the past.
   When I was a boy I wanted nothing more than to be a prostitute. It sounded romantic to me; it guaranteed the possibility of flesh and it secured my future in my mind. When I instead grew up to be a tutor I was aware that my goal had almost been realized. I was so close. This profession, my profession, is the world’s second oldest profession: the profession of instruction. Pompous humans invented this terrible sea, and I’m swimming in the middle of it, drowning, almost, but still surviving. It’s been twenty-one years now that I’ve been lapping up the tutor waters. What else could I be doing? I’d like to see heaven some day, but that will have to wait for now, because I am a TUTOR, after all, and I have things to do. I have people to teach, to instruct. I hate my life and everything that comes with it but how do I change? That boy on the rooftop knows all about the horror I’ve caused other people, and I hate him. I don’t know how he found out but he did and I wish the worst for him and his family. Some people have the devil in their gullets.
   Mesh ties come with the tutoring trade, and the rain and the pain come with it, too, and I love lapping up the little bits of rainwater from the end of my wrist-sleeve as I walk down Sunshine Street. Mother would always scold me for eating rain, but Mother isn’t around anymore, and I cannot resist that sweet natural taste.

2:15 pm  •  6 June 2011  •  11 notes