The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 561
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 245: JLHS Part Two 18
Sun., Oct. 7, 2007
… Keely had to get back to the D train. She lives up around 205th in the Bronx and said that she found the place for something like a thousand a month - one bedroom. Kate was saying that you could find that in Washington Heights. This came up in the car and Keely mentioned that Lisa was living in a real dumpy little place but on the upper east side. It’s a good neighborhood but she is in half of an already divided living room - four people in there all paying $900 for virtually no space. She was encouraging Lisa to move either up to the Bronx or to upper Manhattan. I don’t know anything about how Lisa ended up where she is. All I know is that she’s from Texas and decided to come here.
Kate merely had to get on the A train and go down a couple of stops but she got into the car with Ben and Keely anyway. I guess Ben was going to drop Keely off somewhere near the D, which would be downtown from there so I don’t know where they went from there. But Ron was still there so I started walking down the block there toward his door when he said he was going back to the bar. I wasn’t too drunk and was feeling pretty good so I told him that was a good idea as far as I was concerned. Ron had been pretty quiet during most of the conversation but then again, Kate had done more than 50% of the talking and Keely had taken up more than her fifth of it as well. So none of the three of us were getting a lot in. Keely both complimented me on the comment that I’d made that day 4th period when Vieira had taken the opportunity to show us a 20/20 t.v. show on the failures of public education. But this was a John Stoessel segment and I had made it clear that he is not a reporter but a paid government propagandist. I called him a “CIA shill,” to which Lisa had asked what I meant by that. She couldn’t believe that I was calling him CIA., which merely means that she hasn’t been sufficiently exposed to conspiracy theory. Unfortunately Lizzie was out both Thursday and Friday and so wasn’t there for that but she would have appreciated it.
Keely did, I think, but then she thought that what I said about “purpose” in the discussion wasn’t adversarial enough. I had been responding to a comment by Segal about how it’s the little things that really count. We had been made to read a very syrupy, melodramatic short story that most took as true about how a teacher is touched by the difficult life of a student and this changes her approach to teaching. The kid then grows up to be a big success and keeps in touch with “Miss Thompson.” All of this in about 300 words. I did find it nauseating and I guess Keely thought I should have been a little more biting in my comment but what I was actually saying was that purpose really doesn’t matter at all because what does matter is what we are and how we seem as human beings. But the fact that she would make this mild criticism of me just makes me wonder a bit about her. I don’t mean that I expect to be universally liked, accepted or even respected. I just thought it was another case of her jumping in a little sooner than she ought to have.
Ron and I headed back to the Irish place but it was filled to capacity. We had wanted to eat something but I guess that was what everyone else had in mind because the food there is good. Ron has changed his diet since last year and it really shows. I’ve mentioned this but he looks really good. Since that day in that place on his birthday last year, he has probably lost 25 pounds, which he had probably gained slowly over the two years there. The first year was not too bad on him but last year was rough and then he started having serious problems with Valerie. That was probably very bad for him at first but in the long run might have been one of the things that enabled him to make the change. He told me that he had a major crush on Kate already and I know that he really liked Amanda. Kate is not much like Amanda. She’s cute and very bubbly and doesn’t seem to have any sort of need to be in charge of anything. Her figure is better than Amanda’s although Amanda might be better looking in the long run. But Kate is sexy and very alluring. I can certainly understand having a crush on her. To my mind, though, Lisa Ray looks like a supermodel - bad complexion and all. She’s got a smile that can compete with Luz’s.
That place was too crowded so we went another couple of blocks down and ended up at the bar where I did the open Mike last summer with Andy and Ron both present. Unfortunately this place doesn’t have food so we just ordered a couple of small bags of potato chips and spent an hour drinking two or three last beers and talking about how strange it was for each of us to be in this situation that we’re in. I started talking about how the more I seem to resist the idea of teaching, the deeper in I seem to sink. I’m not kidding, friend. This is exactly how it seems to me. I mean, on the one hand these days I really wish I could get out of this job. There are a lot of things that are very disagreeable about it to me. It’s hard and time-consuming for one thing, or two things maybe. It involves dealing with a lot of people and that’s something I’ve never liked or been too good at. I still wish sometimes that I’d just not wake up at all rather than have to wake up to this life. When things were at their worst with Luz, I thought that a lot and it still seems to me that there is a good chance that I won’t make it through 2007. There is supposed to be some big shift for me in the “7” years, remember and I don’t see how that is going to happen now this year unless I die. I think that’s a real possibility and the truth is that I don’t even care much anymore. Most of what I’ve really wanted to do has not happened and now it’s really getting too late for any of it. I’m beyond 54 now so what’s the point? Of course, I’d like to see something happen for myself even now but I don’t care the way I used to and I certainly am losing the hope and expectation that I’ve carried around for so long. And the alternative is this job which I am good at only if I can stay in a relatively healthy mental state. That never used to be a problem for me but it could be now. I never wanted to be a teacher and still don’t want to be one. I don’t care how good it is for me or anyone else.
And Ron reminded me of that. He went through a few strange metamorphoses himself, from funk band to firefighter to anti-LASIK advocate to Valerie Carter, whom he ran into in a Florida bar and ended up becoming her default manager when what she really needs is a handler, to aborted law school attempt to NYC teaching fellow. That’s quite a trip there. Clearly, like me, he had other goals in mind - has other goals in mind. He’s told me that he hopes to turn the media stuff that he has been honing at the school into some other sort of career and he will probably do that - unless, of course, the forces of fate step in again to guide him in some altogether different direction because that is how it feels to me and that’s what I said to him. It feels like I’m caught in some big karma net and there is nothing I can do about it. There is some force out there that says no matter what I want, I have to be a teacher and there is nothing anyone can do about that. I suppose I’ve had some free will at various points over the years but the upshot is that it never is big enough to overcome this teaching destiny. Maybe that’s what is most frustrating. I mean, I’ve tried to do what I’ve wanted to do, especially as a writer, but that is where I actually have had the least success of all - the one thing that I really wanted to do and decided to do and actually did and did well, The books I’ve got are very good. That means nothing in the face of whatever it is I’m up against.
Ron knew exactly what I was talking about but also was very encouraging. He thinks I’m a great teacher and has seen how much the kids like me. That’s something he appreciates. I don’t know how good a teacher I am and that’s part of what seems unchangeable. I don’t do much to make myself anything and it seems like the less I care, the better I’m considered. Ron still feels like he’s walking on eggshells when it comes to Cerrone and Johannes. In fact, he was supposed to be going into the school the next day (yesterday) morning - early - to help Johannes arrange her “space.” She has a sort of little office downstairs in the studio area. There are three small rooms to the right, a central “lobby” and then to the left is the big t.v. studio. Ron turned the back little room into a sound booth for the recording studio. The middle little room seems to have been taken over by Alan Roomshadd - something like that - who is the techie guy there. Johannes somehow has taken the front room for herself and I guess that must be not merely with Cerrone’s approval but with his help. But why Ron would have any obligation to go in there and help her do anything is the real question. He is one third of the visual studies program now but that ought not to mean that he has to help them with what are essentially personal issues. For this year, at least, he feels that he has to do this sort of thing.
So I’ve hardly seen him this year. He’s in the basement most of the time and I don’t go down there much. I’m down there during 8th period as a co-teacher with Charlie Freij in his 9th grade ELA in B50, the same room where I had a pretty good experience last year. But I’ve been mostly an advisor and haven’t done much teaching. Charlie has a lot of energy and doesn’t want anyone usurping his role, which is how it should be. They have to think of him as the teacher and I’m not going to attempt to get in the way of that. But Ron has kept himself very busy with the visual studies and the recording studio and he told me that he had set up a night at the Soho Apple store where we are going to have an hour to display our work. Somehow on a large screen he will be able to divide it and present simultaneous showings of video work done by the kids. I guess that means that 9 or 12 o 15 screens will be running at once. He showed me a sample of it on his computer, which he happened to have with him there in the bar. It looked fantastic to see all of this stuff running at the same time. Rosa [name]’s little movie about moving to Florida was in there and unfortunately she did move to Florida so she’s no longer with us. She was a beautiful kid in every way ….