Love in the Time of Climate Change (6 page)

“Wait a minute!” I peered over his shoulder. “Indoor miniature golf? Are you serious? Where?”

“Look, dude. Check it out. The Chicopee Mall. Are we there or what!”

We spent a happily high half hour YouTubing indoor mini-golf sites throughout the country, adding to our bucket list a road trip to the three-story, thirty-six-hole South Carolina range with live alligators, a llama you can ride, and a fifteen-foot dragon that spews real fire.

Awesome or what?

And then back to the business at hand: stalking.

For all its trials and tribulations, Jesse loved working
at the hospital. He was proud of the work he did: he was always rushing into the thick of things to troubleshoot computers on the fritz. He loved hospital drama. And, as jealous as he was of me because of my students, he was continually feeling the fire down below when it came to his doctors and nurses.

“So many beautiful women,” he sighed, stalling out on one of the profiles. “And those outfits are so fucking hot!”

“Which ones?” I asked. “The nurses or the mini-golf?”

He ignored me.

“You checked her out yet?”

“Who?”

“Dude. Who do you think?”

“I don't do students.”

“Bullshit. What's her name again?”

“I told you. I don't Facebook students.”

“Tell me her name? Some pirate thing, right?”

“I'm not going to tell you her name!”

“Dude, come on, I'll make dinner tonight. Tell me her name?” he pleaded.

“I don't Facebook students.”

“You don't have to. I will.”

“No.”

“Come on, Casey!”

“No.”

“The next two nights.”

“Done.”

It was the typical Facebook site for a teacher, little to go on, not much divulged. Nothing for middle-school eyes to gawk at. You couldn't access squat without the coveted friend status.

With one perplexing exception.

“Uh oh!” Jesse gasped. “Could be time to flip fantasies.”

“Huh? Where? What are you talking about?” All my attention was focused on that stunning face, those dazzling freckles, those deep, blue, adorable eyes.

I had barely noticed that there was another person in one of the pictures.

“Christ, are they holding hands?” Jesse asked.

I looked again. The image was taken from quite a distance, but the two women looked awful close.

“They're not holding hands.”

“Are you sure?”

“They're not holding hands!”

“Hard to tell. You may be barking up the wrong tree,” Jesse said.

“I'm not barking.”

“
Woof woof
.”

“Shut up! I'm not barking, damn it. Even if I was, it doesn't mean anything.”

“Dude. She's holding hands with another woman. It means something.”

“For the tenth time, she's not holding hands!”

“Relax. Take another hit. Why are you getting so defensive?”

“I'm not getting defensive,” I argued, my voice rising a notch.

“You are. What's up with that? It's not like she's potential. She's a student, remember? Untouchable. Beyond reach. Taboo. Forbidden.”

“Believe me, I remember!”

“God, she
is
hot though. So's the woman she's holding hands with.”

“Jesus, will you stop already! She's not holding hands. Anyway, it could be her sister.”

“Do you hold hands with your sister?”

“A best friend.”

“Do you hold hands with me?”

“Women are different. You know that. They're always arm in arm, hugging and shit like that. They're totally into it. It could be her best friend.”

“Best friend with benefits,” Jesse said.

“Shut up!”

“Why don't you friend her and ask? You could be like, ‘Hey darling. It's your sex obsessed, desperate-to-get-in-your-pants, climate-change prof here. Just drooling over your profile and wondering if you were doing the deed with the chick in the pic. Please get back. LOL. As in: Lots of Lust.'”

I punched him in the arm.

“You're a pervert,” I groaned. “You really are.”

“Whatever,” Jesse answered, pulling up another one of his nurses. “Good thing it doesn't matter.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Good thing.”

M
R
. C
ONDOM CAME TO MY CLASS
Thursday afternoon.

I had met him at a workshop a number of years earlier at the University of Massachusetts, and we had clicked immediately. He was an Indian gentlemen (Indian as in India), now in his sixties, with deep, dark wrinkles and a British Indian accent to die for.

I would have given anything to talk like him. All of my social awkwardness, my angst, my occasional bouts of low self-esteem would disappear in a heartbeat if only I could speak with that lilting roll. Everything he said, no matter how seemingly trivial or mundane, sounded just right.

He had worked for years in the Indian government on population-control issues, and had retired to this country to be closer to his daughter who had relocated here. This was the third semester in a row I had invited him in as a guest presenter.

“I am extremely happy to be here,” he said to my class, smiling as the wrinkles danced on his face. “Beyond happy. Ecstatic! And I want to share something
wondrous that happened on my way to your lovely college this afternoon.”

He reached into the oversized backpack he had slung across his shoulder and took out a rusty-looking brass lamp.

“On a whim,” he said (God, how I loved how he said the word
whim
), “I stopped by that antique store on Olive Street. What do you call it?”

“Treasures and Trash,” one of my students called out.

“Correct,” Mr. Condom replied. “Treasures and Trash. Perhaps more of the latter than the former but I was not disappointed. Oh no. Far from it! For this, this is what I found.”

He paused for dramatic effect, holding the lamp aloft.

I saw one of my students nudge another and exchange a WTF-type of glance.

“I paid for it and then sat in my car, nibbling on a biscuit, wondering why I had done such an impulsive thing. It is not like me. I don't go out and buy brass lamps on a whim! Even a very cheap one such as this!”

There was that word again.
Whim
. And nibbling on a
biscuit
. I made a mental note to see if I could audit a British as a second language class next semester.

“For some unknown reason I took the lamp off the dashboard where I had been staring at it, put my biscuit in the cup holder, and rubbed the lamp three times with my left hand. Just like this.” He rubbed the lamp with a slow, counterclockwise motion.

The students were transfixed. They didn't have a clue where the hell this was going.

“Suddenly,
POOF!
” As he yelled the word
poof
, he threw the lamp up in the air, and then caught it.

“Do you know what happened then?” he asked.

It was like story time in the kids' section of the public library. My students were wide-eyed, some with mouths agape. They were hanging onto his every word. It was a rare day when I got anywhere close to receiving this degree of rapt attention.

“At that very moment, just as I finished the last rub, a beautiful genie sprang from the lamp. A genie! She was dressed in a flowing Indian sari of silk and satin comprised of iridescent pink and purple hues. Shapely and buxom with jet black hair and deep-brown skin. Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. A genie!”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“‘Praise be to you, master,' the genie cried. ‘You have freed me! I have been trapped in this lantern forever. Praise be to you!'” He bent his knees and lowered his head, bowing down as the genie had done in his story.

“Well,” continued Mr. Condom. “You can imagine that I was quite surprised. It is not every day a genie appears out of a brass lantern.

“‘Master!' says the genie. ‘In appreciation for my freedom I shall grant you one wish!'

“‘One wish?' I exclaimed. ‘What a rip off! I thought I got three!'”

The students laughed.

“The genie shook her head. ‘One wish, and one wish only. And no, it can't be for a hundred other wishes or for a billion dollars. It has to be for something politically correct. I am, after all, that kind of genie!'

“Whoa. Was I lucky or what? Talk about being in the right place at the right time. But one wish. Only one. What was I to wish for? The genie asked for a bite of my biscuit, and I was happy to oblige. Evidently one gets quite hungry trapped in a lantern for eternity. While it happily munched away, I thought and thought.

“One wish. How about, a reversal of climate change? No more melting glaciers, rising sea levels, terrible droughts!” He turned with a flair toward me.

I gave him two thumbs up.

“But wait?” he went on. “How about putting an end to species extinction? Why stop at saving the polar bears? I
could keep all of God's creatures alive!” He did a little jig and flapped his arms. A few students applauded.

“But then again there's that whole issue of crushing, oppressive poverty. I must think of my brothers and sisters back home in India. So much pain, so much misery. With my one wish I could end it forever!

“Well, by this time the genie had finished my biscuit and was clearly getting bored with my deliberations.

“‘Look' she said, glancing at her watch. ‘Time's a-wastin'. I'd love to chat but I've got places to go and things to do. Let me give you a hint, bro. You know those three things you'd love to do? Stop global warming? No more extinctions? End poverty?'

“‘Whoa, dude,' I cried. ‘You could read my mind?'

“‘I'm a genie,' she said. ‘I can do all sorts of cool shit.'”

The students laughed again, still transfixed.

“‘Believe it or not, I can grant you one wish that will take care of not just those three wishes but a hell of a lot more as well!'

“‘Tell me, oh wise one,' I said, attempting to bow my head but hitting it instead on the steering wheel.

“‘It's a simple wish,' said the genie. ‘A very simple wish. It's cheap. It's easy. And it's totally doable. Just wish for everyone, every time, to simply use one of these!'”

My speaker reached into the brass lamp and, with a dramatic flair, pulled out a Trojan Maxima condom. With one smooth motion he unwrapped it with his teeth, and waved it above his head.

“‘Use this every time you humans do the deed, and your problems will be solved! Global warming, extinction, poverty.
Poof!
Gone. Agreed?'

“‘Agreed!' I shouted.

“‘Thanks again, darling! Good luck saving the world. I gotta run.' The genie kissed me on the cheek and—
poof!
—she was gone.

“End of story.”

My students gave him a thunderous round of applause.

Mr. Condom put down the brass lamp and turned serious.

“No environmental problem—not climate change, not species extinction, not poverty—will be solved without addressing the birth mother of them all: the human population explosion.”

He then launched into a population PowerPoint—irreverent, funny, hard hitting.

It started off brutal. After all, cataclysmic, exponential growth rates are not an easy pill to swallow. Seven-plus billion of us on the planet. Seventy-plus million new us coming on board each year. Those countries and regions of the world most stressed and least able to handle it were the ones getting hammered with the greatest increases in population. Those people struggling the most, barely getting by, hungry and desperate and already driven to despair, were the ones having the most children.

He led us to the abyss, had us peer into the yawning chasm, and then gently guided us back.

“I am not a two-point-plan man, preaching gloom and doom. Your professor and I share the same mantra: ‘Better to be an optimist and a fool, than a pessimist and right.' However, I am quite convinced that I can actually be three of those four.

“I know I'm a fool. I am confident I have done a more than adequate job of convincing you of that today.

“I know I'm an optimist. I wake up every day knowing that things will get better. The world is a beautiful place and I do believe it will stay that way no matter how much we humans attempt to screw it up.

“And I am entirely arrogant enough to honestly, truly, deeply believe that I, like your professor, am right.”

I basked in the glory of being singled out by him.

He pointed to dramatic reductions in developing countries' birthrates over the last few decades. He correlated
the rise of maternal health programs, reduction of infant mortality, and increased access to education, particularly among girls and women, with profound reductions in population growth. He charted a realistic path toward zero and even negative growth. His optimism was compelling and contagious.