All my hopes of becoming titillated by great literature were dashed when I noticed it was written in Middle English. In order to understand the sexual connotations, you had to read the footnotes. There’s something about a footnote that slows down the action. I usually skip them. Sex is about stripping bare, relating to the other person without any clothes. Footnotes are like wearing two sweaters, adding on what doesn’t need to be there. I trust authors. I don’t need to see proof that the facts the authors claim are true do exist. I know they wouldn’t deceive me unless they had to.

She wore two scarves. One of wool to match her coat. The other of cotton to match her dress. She looked stunning. But anyone who dressed up for a Chaucer class would definitely not find me appealing. Though, I appreciated her not changing her seat. Some women don’t like you sitting in back of them. They can’t tell what you’re fantasizing about. And I fantasized a lot about Cybill’s back. I’m embarrassed to say they were all of an erotic nature. I was never a ‘Back person.’ Usually backs don’t turn me on. But Cybill had an amazing back, one of the best that I had ever seen. Most backs beckon you to catch up to the woman so you can gaze at her profile. That’s their only purpose, besides holding the body erect. I kept staring at her back. Her shoulder blades were well defined.

She must have worked out a lot. And once in a while she faced me to say hello. But I felt safer viewing her from the back. That way she couldn’t see my face while I was having fantasies about her.

The teacher asked us why we were taking a Chaucer class. Most students said they were taking it because it was required. Cybill said she was taking it because she heard Chaucer was the father of English literature. And to understand the son, which of course was the greater of the two – William Shakespeare – you had to understand the father. The teacher was impressed. But he wasn’t impressed at how she recited Chaucer. She kept stumbling over Middle English. The teacher said she was being too emotive. The emotions were in the words, they were strong enough by themselves, they didn’t need a fancy delivery. "The line, ‘When that April with its sweet roots,’" the teacher said, says it all. She didn’t have to shout it.

One male student would greet her at her desk every morning. He’d try to make small talk. It seemed that his talk kept getting smaller, because for the most part he’d just stand there and gape. One time he got brave and revealed something about himself – he was a math major. Therefore, they had something in common – he wasn’t required to take Chaucer, either. ‘Why don’t we meet one night at a café and talk about our love for Chaucer,’ he said. She must have been thinking about her recital of the Prologue of the Canterbury tales, because she shouted, ‘No. I’m not interested in meeting
you after class to discuss Chaucer or anything else.’ He was embarrassed. He ran out of the class. She stood up, faced the class and said, ‘I can’t believe a mixed-up math major would have the nerve to ask me out.’ Then she sat down. It was like her social life was part performance. I knew better than to ask her out. And anyway, I was in love with her back. What kind of date would it be if I spent the evening sitting behind her. No one would think we were a couple.

The math major stayed away from class for two weeks. He stayed clear of Cybill. She never looked at him. A guy I knew in class said he didn’t think asking someone out on a date was a misdemeanor. He said it was mathematics – the more you ask the better your chances of someone saying ‘Yes.’ – which was something a math major would know. He was convinced that Cybill was going to be famous one day. She made a minor incident the talk of the class. No one talked about Chaucer anymore. They talked about Cybill. He was right.

Hal Sirowitz is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. His first book was Mother Said (Crown). His latest book is Father Said (Soft Skull Press). In between he wrote My Therapist Said, and Before, During & After.

I had to hand in work to be accepted into the class. I dashed off several love poems. I got accepted. But I was expecting Ellison to praise my writing. He never mentioned it. On the first day of class he came with the secretary of his apartment, who attested that he was indeed Ralph Ellison. He was authentic, not bogus. I heard of James Dean imitators, but I had never thought writers were able to draw that much devotion.

Ellison took out his lecture notes and read about the philosopher Kenneth Burke. Burke said the most important word in life is ‘No.’ Some students disagreed. They said the word ‘Yes’ was more important. It was obvious by his response that he had never taught before. He told those students, ‘No. You’re wrong,’ and continued reading his notes.

One student asked him to put down his notes and tell us what it was like being a writer and how he became one. Ellison grudgingly took time off from his notes to answer. He said earlier in the day he saw a policeman giving a ticket to a woman whose dog peed on the sidewalk. Ellison claimed the dog did nothing wrong. In fact, the urine would help the grass grow. That was what should have been there, not concrete. The dog was just doing what was natural. It was the sidewalk, not the dog or woman who was at fault. But you can’t give a ticket to a sidewalk. He said that was why he became a writer – to take the side of the dog, to represent those who have no voice. Then he went back to the importance of the word ‘No.’

That was the way the class went the rest of the semester. Students kept interrupting him from his lectures, asking for anecdotes. (I stayed out of the power struggle and didn’t challenge him. I was trying to get on his good side. I was still waiting for him to make positive remarks about my poems.) He didn’t like that. He said he spent the whole summer writing those notes. Notes were difficult to publish. Therefore, if we don’t learn something from them, no one will. Then he’d force himself to tell another anecdote.

He told us he reads two books religiously the same time each year: ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Moby Dick.’ I was amazed he could read the same books year after year. He read Mark Twain’s book to appreciate the first attempt by an American author to write in the vernacular. He read Melville’s book to remind himself that you can’t exhaust a subject. He wished that book was even longer.

He’d also piss off the Black students by telling them that no matter what they wear or what music they listen to, it’ll be watered down and taken over by society. Culture is vulnerable to outside forces. Whites will be dressing like Blacks and imitating their music. He thought of this idea long before it was proven true by the Beastie Boys. One Black student claimed it was biologically impossible for a White person to grow his style of Afro. Ellison said the stores will now sell Afro wigs.

For the term paper I wrote about the significance of the word ‘No.’ It was supposed to be ten pages. I ran out of original ideas after three. How much can you write about ‘No?’ To make up for this discrepancy I included seven pages of love poems I wrote the night before. I made sure each poem revolved around the lover saying ‘No.’ A week later I get a call to see him. He said I didn’t hand in my paper. I said I did.

‘That didn’t look like a term paper,’ he said. ‘There weren’t any footnotes.’

‘It’s all taken from personal experience,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t able to footnote it because I don’t want the woman to know the poems are about her.’

‘Is it okay if I give you a ‘C?’ he said. ‘That’ll solve this problem.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. He still didn’t comment about my poems. Yet, years later I appreciated his silence. I realized he was being gracious. The poems were bad.

Hal Sirowitz is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. His first book was Mother Said (Crown). His latest book is Father Said (Soft Skull Press). In between he wrote My Therapist Said, and Before, During & After.

“That means you have made a commitment to silence. The first obligation is to shut off your cell phones. And just because the train stops at a station doesn’t give you the right to turn it back on to listen to your messages. The phone is off for the duration. If by some mistake you didn’t turn it off completely and it rings, you’re not allowed to answer it.

“But don’t worry about not having anything to do. The way this train has been running, we’ll most likely have an eventful trip. We’ve lost our electricity two times on the way here. There’s a good chance we might lose it again. There seems to be more electricity in the sky than in the wires.

“Don’t blame it on Amtrak. Blame it on Con Edison, then the weather. Amtrak isn’t responsible. We guarantee you a safe ride. But if you look at your ticket, you’ll notice there’s no fine print guaranteeing we’ll get you to your destination on time. Luckily, the driver used the train’s momentum to coast into the stations.

“Also, it was helpful that we were going downhill. Unfortunately, the remaining part of our trip is uphill. We’ll just have to wait for the electricity to get turned back on. How long that’ll take, I couldn’t tell you. I work for Amtrak, not Con Edison or the Weather Channel. So thank you for you cooperation. I hope I can thank you again for it when we’re stuck.”

On Amtrak’s Regional Train – that’s the cheapest way to go – I sat in the Quiet Car. When Amtrak first came out with the idea, I thought it was an urban legend. I only believed it when it was explained that Amtrak was referring to the passengers and not their noisy engines and high-pitched loudspeakers. It means you can’t use a game boy, a computer, nor cell phone. Only the train and conductors can make noise, which they do by announcing over and over again that the train was sitting still. They claim it was due to the train ahead. They never blame their own train. They say they’re sorry for the inconvenience. But they never look sorry.

When the conductor took our tickets the Indian passenger sitting behind me complained about the guy yawning two seats back. He wanted the conductor to personally escort the yawning guy from the car. He said he had nothing against yawning. He does a lot himself, but always in the privacy of his home. He said the yawning would not be so bad in the other cars where it’ll get drowned out by cell phones.

The conductor told him this “quiet thing” was going a little too far. Next, people were going to complain about heavy breathing. If he threw the yawner out of the car, tomorrow’s headlines will read, “Conductor Fired for Harassing Yawner.” He’d lose his job.

Luckily, the yawner fell asleep, so it ceased to be a problem. The complainer was just waiting for him to snore, so he could lodge another complaint. He felt snoring would cause the conductor to act. But the yawner wasn’t a snorer. He slept like a baby. Meanwhile, the conductor was going back and forth through the aisles squashing out any conversations, saying no one in the Quiet Car was allowed to talk, except him. The job provided him with lots of sadistic pleasure.

“It tastes even better than chicken,” she says. “Plus, it’s healthier, because I never fed it grain loaded with chemicals. It ate what I had.” But I couldn’t imagine them sharing French fries and a hamburger. She looked like the “heavy on ketchup” type. Whereas, it didn’t.

“I’d eat it myself,” she said. “But it’s hard to eat what you once loved.” I’d think that you also wouldn’t want what you once loved to be eaten by strangers.

Luckily, she had no buyers.

They say pets soon look like their owners. I’m happy to say the iguana looked nothing like her. Though, it was hard to get a clear picture of what it really looked like. For now the dominating message its facial expression was trying to convey was, “I’d be much happier on someone else’s shoulder.”

“It comes from a diner,” one student answered.

“And before it got to the diner, what was it?”

“It was always a pickle,” he said.

“It was once a cucumber,” I countered. “It was soaked in vinegar until it became a pickle.”

“You’re wrong,” he argued. “My mother cut them in half. There was no cucumber inside. It was all pickle.”

Thus ended my attempt to educate my class on the origins of pickles. My student’s view was accepted over mine. I couldn’t override his experience.

Teaching, I have come to realize, is a race to see who can get to impressionable children’s minds first. There are educational experts who claim that using the scientific method – hands-on experiments – work best. But I tried that once and it didn’t go over well: I was teaching the principle of gravity. I had each student put a stalk of celery in a cup of red dye. I wanted to show them that sometimes, nature works against gravity (the red dye creeps up the stalk). But I had to discontinue the experiment when I discovered that a student had been eating the celery. The other students were so angry about the missing stalks that they weren’t able to concentrate on their schoolwork.

A few weeks later, I taught my class about how to protect themselves against diseases. I gave each student a slice of white bread, which was already moldy. I figured that would ruin the thief’s appetite. I was trying to show them how the refrigerator protects food from going bad. But I hadn’t foreseen the invasion of ants. They swarmed into the classroom every night.

In the end, I tried to look on the bright side: at least the ants in our ant farm had made some new friends.

I divided my class into two revolving groups. One would read magazines in the waiting room while the others would watch the dentist at work. The only problem I didn’t foresee was my students also wanted time in the dental chair. But just sitting in the chair was not enough. It’d be like mounting a horse, then having to dismount without being able to ride it. They wanted the dentist to poke his hands in their mouths.

I was hoping that need would pass, but one of my students had a temper tantrum. He wouldn’t stop kicking and crying unless he had a turn. Luckily I had a great excuse not to intervene: the dentist’s hands were still in my mouth. I tried commanding the student with my eyes to obey, since I couldn’t use my mouth. But eye language only works if the student is looking back. His eyes were locked on my feet. He was hoping for a chance to grab on to them and pull me off the chair, so he could be next.

The dentist decided he could not give me proper care under these circumstances. I had to come back next week. I also had to bring him magazines to replace the ones my students destroyed in the waiting room. Since they didn’t have scissors they just ripped the pictures out. One student showed me a picture of a man in a dental chair. Other than that, there wasn’t much resemblance. The dentist and patient were smiling.

Another group would head for the slides. There was always one student who would climb to the top, then stay there, causing a traffic jamb below. Eventually the ones behind him would shove him down. The perpetrator would get back on the slide and do his non-moving act again. If I caught him, I’d banish him from the slides. But there was always a risk he’d do his version of a sit-down strike, and not come with the class when it was time to go. Sometimes, it was easier to grab his legs and help the others push him down the slide. I wasn’t taught how to do that in graduate school, but when the tough – my students – don’t get going, intervention is required to get them going again.

Then there was always one overweight student who would sit on the seesaw and yell for someone to join him. It was usually the tiniest kid who would take up his offer. They’d sit there for the whole period, wondering why they couldn’t get the seesaw to move. I’d push down the side the tiny student was on and explain the principles of weight distribution, but they’d never listen, preferring to be left in a wondering state.

A few would run to the sandbox, only to discover there was no sand. That wouldn’t stop them. They’d mimic playing in the sand. But there’s a limit to mimicking. After a while it stops being fun. Their solution was to go to the school’s garden and import dirt. But dirt is different from sand. It may contain rocks. Being a teacher makes you an expert at spotting possible weapons. It’s easier to remove the students than the weapons, so I’d banish them from the sandboxes.

The rest of the students were at the monkey bars. Instead of climbing them, they were used to play their favorite game – “Jail.” It consists of placing certain students inside the bars and trying to prevent them from escaping. I don’t know the derivation of the game, but with most of them having one parent or relative in jail, it became meaningful. The only problem was that the same students would always be the wardens and prisoners. I tried to change that, but once they took on a role, they wouldn’t swap.

I was glad when the whistle blew, and playground time was over. If only the equipment at the playground was used properly, it wouldn’t have been so difficult. But my students used them for their own purposes. That took some creativity, which was what I was trying to teach. I didn’t want to squash that.

I tried improving my second grade special education students’ skills at addition by having them count pasta. I had them line up the brown and white rigatoni into two groups. Then all they had to do was add them. It worked well – my students were learning while enjoying what they were doing. Then I noticed that after each lesson my pasta supply got lower. Someone was stealing them.

I occasionally checked their book bags to find the culprit, but he was obviously too smart for me – I never found any trace of the missing pasta. Then one day I heard this loud cracking noise and discovered it was coming from my student Henry’s mouth. It was filled with pasta.

I tried getting him to stop, explaining they weren’t good for him uncooked. But he claimed they hadn’t hurt his stomach yet, so he felt they were safe. I had to abandon that lesson for the sake of his health. Plus, it was my pasta. He shouldn’t be eating what didn’t belong to him.

“The Indoor Voice”

A sheet was passed around to all the staff at my special education school notifying us that telling our students to speak lower by placing our fingers to our lips was no longer permitted. Instead, we were to use the more humanitarian approach – tell the students to use their indoor voices and not their outdoor ones. But the problem was the moment I’d say it, the students were suddenly reminded that they weren’t outside, which was where they wanted to be. So for the rest of the lesson, I’d be bombarded with their pleas, “Take us outside.”

Then there were students who spoke loudly in both places – inside and outside. I tried getting them to whisper, but they insisted on doing it in my ear. After getting an earful of spit and still unable to make out what they had said, I abolished that practice.

Next, I tried to get them to think before they spoke. And when I caught them thinking, I attempted to anticipate their questions, so they wouldn’t have to say anything. But that didn’t stop them from speaking afterwards. I finally accepted that just like rock music wouldn’t be what it was if it wasn’t played loud, my students wouldn’t be themselves if they had to speak softly.

The more games the New York Knicks won the more they raised the ticket prices. I could only afford to see them at Madison Square Garden if they continued to have losing seasons. I’d buy a ticket from a scalper. Instead of charging more he’d sell it for a fraction of what it was worth, because no one wanted to see them.

Therefore, it was in my best interest to root for them to lose. I had to do it silently, so I wouldn’t get beat up by a fanatic fan. I didn’t mind if they won as long as they did it in moderation. I was afraid that winning could become addictive. I’d breathe a sigh of relief each time the other team ended the Knick’s winning streak.

In the early eighties the Knicks had a center named Ken Bannister. He was nicknamed "The Animal." He had a strong set of teeth, & liked to bite opposing players. He felt that since he was shorter than most centers he had a right to make up for his lack of height by creating fear. He’d usually try to bite the other player in the arm. But if he was knocked to the floor he’d bite the leg. He led the league every year at getting thrown out of games for biting.

He was a power forward, but because the Knicks didn’t have a center he was forced to play out of position. Since he wasn’t playing his true position he had an excuse not do well. The only times he had good nights were when the opposing players were tired of getting bitten, & wouldn’t guard him. But since the Knicks were doing so poorly they had the opportunity to get a center in the draft. Bannister was forced to play power forward again, & no longer had any excuses. He was released.

The Knicks thought they could improve by hiring a new coach. They chose Hubie Brown, who loved to experiment by making a player play a different position from what he was used to. That way he could yell at them more. If the players played their natural positions he’d have nothing to teach them. But by making a shooting guard play the point he had to teach him all the fundamentals.

Brown made Louis Orr, a small forward, into a power forward. Orr was as skinny as a stringbean. Players at that position have to be strong. At first Orr did well, because when the power forward on the opposing team saw that Orr was guarding him he’d get overexcited & demand the ball. He’d usually commit a walking violation or miss an easy shot. But the more Orr played the more the opposing player would calm down. He’d get used to Orr & hit all his shots.

The Knicks would try to improve by getting the player they had wanted ten years ago. But by the time they got him he was either too old or too crippled by injuries to be his old self. They did this with Kiki Vanderwegh. He was once a great shooter, but when the Knicks finally got him he’d only shoot air balls – the ball wouldn’t hit the rim. His shots were still beautiful to look at – the ball would fall in a perfect arc – but it was like his body was too tired to propell the ball the necessary distance. It kept falling an inch short.

The Knicks traded for a power forward named Truck Robinson. The year before he had led the league in rebounds. But as soon as he got to the Knicks he said he was tired of doing all the dirty work, & wanted to shoot. But since he had never shot the ball much he wasn’t good at it. He also didn’t want to take easy shots, but preferred to take them from far away. But when he took those shots he was no longer in position to grab the rebound. He was eventually traded.

At one point the Knicks were close to being good, because they got a superstar named Bernard King. But he soon became a victim of one of Brown’s rules. Brown had many of them, because breaking one of them gave him another excuse to yell. You were not allowed to let the opposing player take an uncontested layup. You had to foul him & make him earn the two points from the foul line. Brown thought if you were able to intimidate the other players they’d depart from their game & played scared.

One night King stopped a player from making a layup, but by doing so he tore up his knee. The player didn’t act intimidated. Instead, he showed a lot of concern for King, even though the injury was not his fault.

King tried to rehabilitate his knee. He went swimming every day. He made great progress as a swimmer but none on his knee. He never played for the Knicks again.

The Knicks drafted Trent Tucker. He was a specialist at making the three point shot. Calling someone a specialist meant he couldn’t do other things well, like dribble the ball to free himself for a shot. Tucker would never miss, but in order for him to take the shot he had to be left undefended. The other teams knew that, & made sure someone was covering him. Therefore, he had to take them from a longer distance to be left open. Instead of a thirty foot shot he took a fifty foot one. That was just too far for him.

The Knicks had this philosophy of hitting the open man. Instead of being selfish & forcing a shot they were supposed to pass the ball to whoever was left unguarded. Since the other team knew about this strategy they’d purposely leave the worst Knick shooter unguarded. As soon as he’d get the ball the opposing player would dare him to shoot. He’d miss most of the time.

The players would get frustrated watching the same players keep missing their shots. They accused each other of deliberately being a bad shooter, so they’d get the ball more. It destroyed the team chemistry. I kept hoping for more team dissension. It meant there would continue to be cheap seats.

Ken (The Animal) Bannister expressing himself. Photo: George Kalinsky