Love in the Time of Climate Change (8 page)

Disaster #3: The straw that broke the camel's back. There they were, lying in plain view for the whole world to see, as God is my witness—recyclables in the trash can. And not just recyclables but returnables. Three beer bottles and a Pepsi.
Returnables in the friggin' trash can!

I desperately tried to focus on Twin Number One, who was inching, inching ever closer. She had taken off her sweater and I could see her nipples, hard and erect, poinking through her braless top. Her hand was on my thigh and her tongue was in my mouth and I was
losing it
!

I could now hear Jesse and Twin Number Two, giggling and frolicking in the back bedroom, oblivious to the living Climate Hell that was happening here, right here, at this very moment!

What was wrong with me? I breathed in and out, out and in, desperate to make my OCD go away. Make it stop. Don't be so crazy, don't think these crazy thoughts, don't let all of this crazy climate crap get in the way of fondling some absolutely fabulous breasts.

This was pathological. This was insane.

What was wrong with me!

“Are you okay?” Twin Number One asked. I think it was Patty.

“I don't know,” I gasped. “I think I might have a clove of garlic stuck in my throat. All of a sudden I feel nauseated. I can't breathe. I need to step outside. I am so sorry. I feel like such a jerk but I have got to get some air!”

I got up, grabbed my bags of food from the farmer's market, and staggered out the door.

—

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jesse yelled. He had come back late that evening and found me curled up on the couch eating garlic cloves and watching the cartoon channel.

“You got up and walked because she didn't have the right lightbulbs? You forfeited your first chance in months to get laid because she had recyclables in the trash can?”

“Returnables,” I whispered, eyes cast downward.

“What?”

“Returnables. There is a difference.”

“Who gives a flying fuck! Jesus, Casey, there could have been the goddamn Hope Diamond in the trash and I wouldn't have given a shit. What the hell is wrong with you? She was twenty-something. She was hot. She wanted it. And you turned her down because she doesn't recycle?”

I couldn't look him in the eye.

“If I'm going to make love to someone, then I want there to be.…”

“Make love?” Jesse interrupted, incredulous. “Make love? Earth to Casey. Dude, no one was about to make love. You were going to have sex. Sex! Do you even remember what that is? Sweet Mary and Joseph, how long has it been?”

Once again, downcast eyes. It was not turning into a banner day for my self-esteem.

“God!” Jesse continued, spittle dribbling down his chin. Once he got on a rant like this there was no stopping him. “Please don't tell me it was with that visiting professor from Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan or Fuckistan or wherever the hell she was from—the one who didn't speak any English?”

“She spoke English,” I replied.

“I hate to clue you, bro, but ‘yes, yes, do me' is not fluent English. And that was, what, almost a year ago?”

It was times like these that I wish I had a woman for a roommate. A woman wouldn't go off on me like this. A woman would be empathetic, kind, adept at getting me to open up and talk about my feelings. She would wrap her arms around me in a roommatey, warm-and-fuzzy kind of way and tell me what a wonderful, sensitive person I was
and how everything was going to be all right. She wouldn't launch zingers straight for the jugular.

Jesse banged his fist on the table.

“I know why you're so infatuated with her,” Jesse said.

“Who?”

“You know who!”

“I don't know who you're talking about.”

“You do too. The pirate. The Twenty-Nine-Year-Old. The teacher in your class.”

“I am not infatuated with her.”

“Please. Spare me. Do you know why?”

“Do tell.”

“She's one of your students. That means she's forbidden, off-limits. You've set her on a pedestal and you can't get close enough to tear her down. She's your perfect woman.”

“Once again, I don't have a clue what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do,” Jesse said. “Look at your dating life. It's a sad series of one-and-done. Do you know why?”

“No, but I'm quite sure you do.”

“It's your OCD, dude. No one lives up to this ridiculous ideal you've set. They either drive a car that gets shitty gas mileage, they eat with disposable chopsticks, they don't know the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the goddamn atmosphere—there's always something, something that keeps you distant. Why can't you just take gorgeous breasts and progressive politics and be done with it? You're so over-the-top. I mean seriously, do you actually want them to be as obsessed as you are? That is a total recipe for disaster!”

“She doesn't eat with chopsticks.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Dude, did you listen to a word I just said?”

“At least we have each other.” I offered.

Jesse shook his fists in the air. “You know what else I'm tired of?” he said. “I am sick and tired of wasting all my time at my therapist's talking about how fucked up you are. Seriously. I never get a chance to talk about how fucked up
I
am. I'm too goddamn busy going on and on about you. There is just so much rich material there. Seriously, I can't compete! You know what?” He was practically screaming. I hadn't seen him this wound up since I lost half an ounce of weed at a party. The neighbors had no need to put their ears to the wall for this one.

I sighed.

“What?”

“I want my last three damn co-pays back. Twenty bucks a session. I want it back. All of it. Sixty bucks. Seriously—I'm not kidding. You owe me!” He stormed into his room and slammed the door.

Wallowing in self-pity, I slowly let another garlic clove dissolve in my mouth and turned to watch, my eyes watering, the coyote get blown to smithereens by the roadrunner.

I
HAVE A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP
with really warm weather. The love part is the outfits women wear to class. These skimpy, lacey, borderline-see-through things that sometimes leave little to the imagination. Quite a feast for the eyes. I feel so lucky to be alive when those gorgeous late-teen/twenty-somethings come in struttin' their stuff. Oooh-la-la!

It almost makes global warming seem like a good thing.

The challenging part is keeping my baseball-cap-on-backwards, slumped-in-the-back-row guy crowd focuses off of their classmates' lovely rear ends and on
The
Issue.

Of course, keeping myself on track is not always an easy thing, either.

My students were taking their first quiz and Samantha was sitting in the front row. I was grading papers at the desk facing her.

There is something about women in their late twenties that is enough to make a grown man cry. They're at the absolute
pinnacle of their physical peak; it's hard to imagine anything more spectacular.

Even my gay friends say the same thing.

Ralph, a guy I hang out with in the art department, told me once that one of the few times he has ever questioned his sexual orientation was on a sunny fall afternoon, painting outside, surrounded by his barely clothed female students.

“A very pretty picture,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” I replied.

Anyway, try as I might, I was having incredible difficulty not staring at her.
Gawking
is probably a better word. Cleavage, after all, is like heroin for the eyes. One look and you're hooked.

In my defense, it was important for me to glance up occasionally. Make sure no one was using cell phones to access information. No one was copying off of each other. Give my students at least the illusion that Big Brother was watching.

It was the looking back down that required superhuman effort.

My god, she was beautiful. Golden hair, a face full of freckles, breasts to die for, and a swimmer's body. It was hard to imagine anything more perfect.

Later that evening, I was folding laundry when the Roommate walked in. After his cascade of complaints about the usual suspects (incompetent boss, slacker colleagues, bullshit bureaucracy, no toilet paper in the men's room), he actually asked me about my day.

“I gave a quiz, and of course meanwhile I had a shitload of grading to do, but it was all I could do not to stare. Curse her for sitting in the front row! Curse her! I could hear every breath, every in and out. Every time she crossed and uncrossed her legs. Each time she nibbled on her pen. It was driving me nuts. I didn't get a damn thing done.”

“Let me guess. The Twenty-Nine-Year-Old? The one you're not infatuated with?”

“Duh! Who do you think?” I sighed. “Oh my god, she has, like, the baby bear of breasts.”

“The what?”

“You know, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”

“Dude, you're going weird on me again,” Jesse said.

“The children's story. It was the baby bear's porridge, his chair, his bed. That's what Goldilocks chose. Not too big, not to small. Not too hard, not too soft. Everything was just right. That's her. That's Samantha. The baby bear.”

“Hold on. Did I miss something here?” Jesse asked. “How do you know how hard or soft they are?”

“Hypothetically speaking. I'm telling you. She's beautiful. Goldilocks would have gone nuts!”

“Goldilocks was a lesbian, too?” Jesse asked.

“Asshole!” I threw a pair of underwear at him.

—

As previously noted, one of my favorite pastimes is eavesdropping on student conversations. I consider myself quite an expert on this subtle art. I'm a master at the casual tipping back of the chair, the looking engaged with something else when I'm not, the ear cocked sideways in a not overtly obvious way. It's how I gather some of my best information. While obviously partial to juicy tidbits about sexual indiscretions, vicious family feuds, inappropriate drug and alcohol use, and other fascinating glimpses into the dark side of student lives, I am, on occasion, willing to accept on-topic academic droppings.

I was at the cafeteria, attempting to be productive and grade papers, when a conversation struck me as worth tuning in to.

“No way!” Student #1 gasped.

“Way,” reiterated Student #2.

“They actually shit on their legs?”

I tipped my chair back even further to get a clearer earful from the table behind me.

“Shit and piss. Evaporation works, dude. Cools those blood vessels on their feet right down. Urohidrosis. God, I even remember the name for it. Science word of the day in the lunatic's class.”

The lunatic was my natural-history colleague. Walking past his classroom was always a treat. More than once I've heard him bellowing out obscure, bizarre nature vocabulary words.

“Know this, my minions!” he'd shriek. “It is, after all, the
Science Word of the Day
!”

Evidently
urohidrosis
was today's.

“Awesome bird!” applauded #2. “Eats road kill. Throws up. Shits on their legs. My kind of party animal!”

They went on to have a reasonably intelligent conversation about these particular party animals—turkey vultures, a marvelously adapted raptor. Evidently it was all fact. The mix of urine and feces on the bird's feet was an effective mechanism for cooling blood vessels.

“Dude,” continued #1, “they're the poster child for evolution. I mean, it got me thinking.”

Wow! Students thinking! It was every professor's dream come true. Here they were excitedly talking about a lecture while wolfing down burgers and fries. What could be better?

“I wonder if we're next?”

“What do you mean?” #2 asked.

“You know, with all this climate change shit going down, I wonder what we'll look like in a thousand years. Ears the size of elephants? Hairless? Wicked big eyes for seeing in the dark because you can't venture out during the day?”

“Dude, I dated someone who looked just like that,” #2
laughed. “She kept telling me she was ahead of her time. I just never believed her.”

“Look on the bright side,” #1 said. “No more trips to the bathroom during keggers. Just let it go. Piss on your own feet.”

“Dude! You do that now anyway!”

“That's because I'm so fucking evolved!”

Just then my chair, which had been tilting precipitously, got the best of me and I went sprawling to the floor. Students 1 and 2 leapt up to help me to my feet. The whole cafeteria stared in amusement.

I thanked them and slunk out the door, trying to avoid eye contact, once more painfully reminded that if life truly is the survival of the fittest, then I was completely screwed.

—

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

The Roommate was in his weekend position, prone on the couch, laptop in lap, music blasting, pot smoke circling lazily overhead.