Lessons in Love

by Jerry Cole

  "They sounded like legit complaints to me, though," Nate said meekly, starting to feel very surrounded, outnumbered. They had already painted Victor a certain way and weren't about to change their minds, it seemed. "I mean, it's whether he was right about them interfering with my teaching abilities or not. My flaws are very real, we all have flaws."

  "And how did you do?" Miss Langley asked. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? Did you do okay?"

  "Well, yeah. I used some of his lesson plans and schedules to get me through the day so far, but two lessons down and I feel I'm doing quite well," Nate replied.

  "Then he was either lying about how bad your flaws were, didn't know how insignificant they were, or whatever," Miss Langley carried on.

  Nate pursed his lips in thought. "No, because I'm just doing what he wanted to do anyway."

  "And what if you made your own lesson plans? Do you think you could make one like Victor did? I mean, did he even show you how?" Miss Langley pressed, almost too insistently.

  Nate felt as though his world was turning upside down. Could Victor have been trying to sabotage him on purpose? It didn't sound like the man he knew. But all the pieces were coming back together just right. Victor hadn't showed him some of the basic things he needed to do in order to perform well. But he had called him out for them. Victor had set him up. Nitpicked. It was an attack on him.

  As the other teachers broke up to return to their classes, Nate sat looking down at his uneaten sandwiches. He had no appetite.

  "But I thought we had a thing," Nate said softly.

  "You were seeing each other?" Mrs. Rodriguez's voice asked from a cubicle away. She was still there.

  "Yeah," Nate said. "That's okay, right?"

  "Unprofessional," she replied. "Unprofessional but not a real problem. Did you think it meant much? It can't have been long, right?"

  "Only this last weekend, but it's something. How can he be racist if he dates black guys?" Nate asked with a vague shrug. "I mean, he could be prejudiced, but he couldn't hate us."

  "You would be surprised," she said, turning around into Nate's cubicle. "He could easily sleep with you and hate you. People are very strange."

  Nate closed his lunch tote and walked it back to the fridge. "It just sounds so illogical to me. Why would you spend so much time getting close to someone you hate? Why not find someone you like instead?"

  "All kinds of people exist in this world who hate themselves for who they are," Mrs. Rodriguez said flatly. "He probably does like you. Perhaps he hates himself for liking you."

  "Have you ever met anyone like that?" Nate asked, collecting his papers for the next lesson. "Who loved you and hated people like you, so they got mad at themselves for loving you?"

  "A few. You're still young. There are plenty of wonderful, beautiful people in this world for you to meet. But there are people like that. I sort of gave up dating white men years ago. They either saw me as some sort of exotic creature or as an exception to the stereotypes. Don't go as bitter as me, but keep your eyes open," Mrs. Rodriguez said, her expression a little blank as she returned to her office.

  Nate didn't want to return to class. He didn't want to take Victor's place, to use his notes. He didn't want to think about Victor, to let Victor into his life. It was all so wrong.

  However much he wanted this position and loved the prospect of working as a teacher, Nate couldn't help but wonder if it might be a better idea to see if he could get the same sort of place elsewhere. Somewhere that hadn't already got so many negative and confusing memories for him.

  The only thing that stopped him from walking out right away was the fact he didn't want to let the kids down.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Victor had not felt more embarrassed or uncomfortable his entire life than when Mrs. Rodriguez had made that accusation against him. He hadn't even thought of that. He just wanted to get rid of Nate. He just wanted to defend himself. He had been feeling so damn attacked, he hadn't realized that it would look like he was the one doing the attacking.

  His whole life he had condemned prejudice, fought against it, worked so hard to avoid the sort of people he'd grown up around. He knew he wasn't infallible, but to be mistaken for an actual racist was shocking to him. He felt like an idiot and an asshole, and he knew that was how Nate probably saw him now.

  But he wasn't racist... was he? The accusation had got him thinking, and he couldn't help but wonder if his privileged upbringing had left him with more biases than he'd thought. Perhaps he was racist? Perhaps the only reason he was upset about Nate and Mrs. Heeley's role in this was because they had darker skin than he did, and he had been taught to see that as a bad thing, as a threat? He wondered if after years of being around such awful people he had become more like them.

  No, he couldn't be racist. He liked people of all races, as friends, as lovers, as coworkers. He just didn't want to be replaced. Did he resent the fact that an unqualified guy had been brought in to replace him? Of course he did. It was a ridiculous concept and he resented it very much. But that was all there was to it. Just a bit of anger toward the program.

  However, programs like those did nearly exclusively benefit minorities. And he had thought Mrs. Heeley was ganging up on him, trying to replace him with someone more like herself. In many ways he had been thinking of them as "brown people," rather than as "people."

  It wasn't exactly the sort of thing you could sit down and talk about with friends from your own past, if he had any, either. You couldn't arrange a high school reunion to ask whether any of them also did things that could be seen as racist. And two wrongs wouldn't make a right.

  In a sense, the assessment promised to be some sort of answer. Then he would know if it was normal.

  ***

  Passing the assessment did not vindicate him the way he had expected it to. More doubts came from within than from outside. So what if other people didn't consider him racist? Could a test really prove that? How was the test graded? Who decided that? Who decided where the line was to call oneself prejudiced or unprejudiced? It frustrated him no end.

  The test could forgive him, the school could forgive him, Nate could forgive him, but he wasn't sure he could forgive himself. Then there was the question of whether this overcompensating, overwhelming white guilt was just another form of racism, another layer to the horrible things his parents and environment had ingrained in his brain since birth.

  He was apprehensive about diversity training, not because he felt he didn't need it, but because he feared that he did. He feared that he would see parts of himself that he could never forgive or love.

  Just walking back into the school, he realized he didn't feel he deserved to be there. Every day before today he had walked into the school with a sense of entitlement, a sense that this was where he belonged. That same sense had driven him to push Nate away. And yet now he felt humbled. He didn't deserve to be there any more than anyone else.

  Walking into the principal's office, he realized how little respect he had shown her. Of course he showed little respect to all authority figures. Sometimes treating people exactly the same wasn't true equality. Sometimes people like Mrs. Heeley had worked so much harder to get where they were, and were thus deserving of greater respect. She had probably been rejected and pushed around her whole life. Not only was it not demeaning to treat her respectfully, but the rebellious, alternative, edgy thing to do would have been to treat her with admiration all along.

  "Mrs. Heeley," he said, looking at his feet in shame. "I am sorry that I said such insensitive things about you and Nathan. I was lying about my perspective. I just didn't want him to keep the job and I thought I could use my role to push him out."

  "But why, Victor?" she asked, sounding more disappointed than angry. "I know you didn't do it out of ignorance or hatred. So what is going on?"

  "I can assure you it wasn't out of any intentional racist thoughts. I just – I feel like an idiot just saying it out loud, Mrs. Heeley," he
said.

  She sighed and rubbed her temples. "I would just like to know what on earth possessed such a nice, pleasant, educated young man as yourself to suddenly and for no reason act like such an ass- such an unprofessional person."

  Victor had gone in with the intention of letting it all out in the open, but part of him felt dumb, and another part of him felt worried he was right all along and she really was trying to get rid of him. "I... Do I have to tell you?" he asked, feeling too ashamed to continue.

  "No, Victor," she said. "I would appreciate it, but you don't have to."

  "I will, some time, but I need to actually process all that has happened and I guess get over my ego a little bit first," he admitted.

  Mrs. Heeley sighed again. She must sigh a lot, he realized. Her life must be one long, continuous frustrated sigh as she had to deal with young people like himself not knowing what the fuck they were doing with their lives.

  "I hope you learn something from diversity training," she mused as he left the office.

  ***

  Diversity training was, naturally, headed by Mrs. Rodriguez. At least Victor was not the only one in the group that day… or the only adult. However, he was the only teacher. He was accompanied by three students and one member of the cafeteria staff, which made him wonder how common his predicament was. Were they all having the same thoughts as he was? What was each one in there for? It felt like being thrown into a prison cell and not knowing if your cellmates were killers or shoplifters.

  Mrs. Rodriguez began by explaining the goal of the training: Not punishment, but to see what mistakes they had made, work out why they made these mistakes, and to correct the beliefs that led to their inappropriate behavior. It was a slow, almost clinical process. That felt like punishment enough to Victor.

  As the room took it in turns to talk about what they had done and why, Victor was surprised. Two of the kids and the man from the cafeteria were all in for sexism. Rude comments about women, inappropriate physical contact, and outright insults were common issues among all of them. It was odd to Victor, to think that a young boy, an old man, and a borderline teenage girl had all made such awful remarks about the female sex.

  It also left him wondering how alone he was in his situation. So far, everyone was decidedly guilty of what they had been accused of. Nobody was just caught up in it, like he was.

  Then the last one of the students stood up, noticeably uncomfortable, and what he said caught Victor off guard. "I called a teacher a faggot," he said really quietly, "because I was angry."

  Victor knew why the kid was uncomfortable. He was the only openly gay member of staff. Whether that word was directed at him or at a teacher who was decidedly not "a faggot," saying those words in front of Victor was probably deeply uncomfortable to the kid.

  Victor had heard worse. What this confession did was convince him of his own innocence. All these people had said and done legitimately awful things to minorities. All he had done was make a mistake. And, as it was his turn, he felt a little more confident.

  Victor stood up and sighed. "I made it look like Mr. Thompson was doing a bad job because I didn't want the school to hire him."

  The looks he was being given told him that he was not seen as innocently as he saw himself. He realized how easy it was to misinterpret simple cruelty for actual bigotry. What was he supposed to say? "I'm not a racist, just an asshole?" With all these eyes on him, he found it hard to think, much less speak.

  "Why did you do that?" Mrs. Rodriguez prompted him. He could tell she was trying her best to be patient with him. That just made it even worse.

  "I was worried about my job security," Victor confessed, looking away, feeling sweat on the back of his neck. They were staring at him angrily.

  "You have to be honest with us, and with yourself, if you want to do better," the cafeteria man said. "Is that really why you did it?"

  Victor nodded. "It actually is. I didn't mean anything racist by it. I just thought my job needed protecting."

  The room did not seem to believe him. They eyed him suspiciously, almost angrily, as though they were not prepared to deal with him if he would not admit to being just like them. He was not like them, but he had to be before he was accepted. It seemed even here you had to fit a mold to be acceptable.

  He was standing right in front of a student who had called him a faggot for no reason other than anger, and that student was judging him for doing something that was accidentally insensitive. It was frustrating. Victor wasn't like these people. He was better than they were. They had real issues and, like the rest of the world, had just decided on Victor as a scapegoat so they wouldn't have to face their own problems. That was all it was.

  Yet he was expected to learn something from this? It was the same bullshit he'd always had to deal with. "Let's gang up on Victor so he'll conform" that was all it was. There was no other lesson to be learned from this.

  He needed to stay humble. They were all there to learn and grow. He might have different things to learn than the other people here, but that didn't mean he had nothing to learn. He was more than capable of learning new things, not necessarily from the unfair judgment of others, but from his own processes, or from their own discoveries. There had to be a reason these things were arranged.

  Victor once again wondered if he was unaware of his own issues. Did he belong in this class, with these people? Were they the same? They had to be in a sense, or else they wouldn't be there together. He felt like he was different to them, better than them. Or maybe that was his mistake all along? Maybe he shouldn't assume he was automatically better than anyone?

  If he actually belonged there and couldn't see his own racism, then what? Would he lose his job? Could he be arrested? Did any of that really matter? Once again he was thinking only of how it would affect him. It was as if Victor couldn't help but think of himself as inherently a better person, a more important person than anyone else. And this realization disgusted him. He felt almost monstrous for it.

  Even if he weren't racist, even if he were just trying to protect himself, he was still an asshole. He was still a terrible person. He needed to stop worrying so much about how these things came back to haunt him, and start worrying a bit more about...

  Nate.

  His thoughts turning back to Nate, he felt another panic grip him. What if Nate believed he had been racist? Mrs. Heeley didn't, but maybe Nate did. Forcibly dismissing the self-pity that came from the thought that Nate might despise him, he wondered how it might have made Nate feel.

  Victor realized he had potentially taken the most wonderful aspects of Nate's personality and crushed them. This was someone without the bitter cynicism and hatred for life that seemed to take over everyone eventually. He had love and hope and happiness. And Victor could have been the one who turned all of that beauty into something cold and hard and dull.

  Victor needed to talk to the guy, to find out if he had caused any pain to that beautiful, sensitive, fun, happy person. It would hurt, but he had to know. He couldn't forgive himself if he had.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Coming into work on Thursday and finding Victor back when he was only put on review on Monday was confusing to Nate. He would have thought that something this serious would have taken a bit, or a lot, longer than this. After all, racism was a serious accusation.

  Or perhaps it wasn't? Perhaps this was his first taste of what the few other black people had called "the system." Victor was a young white man from a wealthy background. Sure, he was gay and dressed oddly, but he was still one of the guys Hollywood and the right wing loved. So maybe they could overlook his minor differences and give him a pass for racist acts?

  Nate was not sure what to do about this. Did it mean Victor wasn't racist, hadn't meant anything by it? He hadn't been racist at all and the review was short because of that? Nate realized he would never know. He would never know what Victor had been thinking, what he had said or done to get back into school, why he was accepted again.
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br />   For the first time in his life, Nate felt a genuine, deep-set fear of society around him. Not of the school, or Victor, or Mrs. Heeley, but of the world he lived in, that allowed dangerous people to swim under the surface like great sharks waiting for prey. Of course Victor's case could be wholly innocent.

  The revelation itself left Nate uncomfortable. He knew there was not true justice in the world. He knew that some people could simply pay to get out of trouble. He knew that even if Victor was racist he could get out of his predicament with the right words, the right connections, or the right amount of money. So what was the purpose of the review in the first place?

  Nate realized he couldn't trust Victor just because he was allowed back. Nate had been led to believe that anyone who was educating kids could not be bigoted in any way. But that was not true. That didn't have to be true. Nothing had changed since he was a kid. There were always bad teachers. Perhaps, Victor could be one of them.

  At least, they were not going to be working the same classes. Nate was still being allowed to trial work as an actual tutor. He was still in a fairly good position.

  Part of the realization that racism was going to be everywhere, no exceptions, was the realization that people like his own mother, like Mrs. Heeley and Mrs. Rodriguez, were still succeeding in this world.

  If he were to run away from this opportunity he'd just be allowing the racists to win. He had to make a point of using the training he'd been handed on a silver platter, to make a better world for his siblings, for the children he was teaching and, hopefully someday, for his own kids.

  Victor's memory still lingered like a persistent stain throughout Nate's classes, but he tried to dismiss these worries and just get on with his day.

  Although they were apart for classes, they still met at break and lunch, after Victor had finished the course he was on. There was some tension. Nate wasn't sure he felt safe around Victor, and he wasn't sure he could respect Victor any more.