Lessons in Love

by Jerry Cole

  This was the same Victor, the same guy he had admired and even began to love. An accusation, however vile, whether true or false, would not change the time they had enjoyed together. And yet Nate wondered if Victor was feeling any hostility, any resentment for being sent home and put through the diversity education course, or whatever it was.

  The tension only got worse when Nate realized that the other teachers were all eating in the cafeteria that day, not in the staff room. He almost felt tempted to go to the cafeteria with his sandwiches, but he'd set up and he knew it would be obvious he was avoiding Victor. Nate didn't want to make things worse. So he sat at his desk and began eating his sandwich, scrolling through various mini games on his phone, trying to take his mind off the fact Victor was there, trying to not even watch what Victor was doing.

  He was so busy trying to distract himself that he jumped when he heard the microwave bell ring out, signaling that Victor's food was ready. It smelled pretty good. Probably something spicy, from the edge of chili, but nothing like the food Nate himself had grown up eating.

  Nate wondered if it was some sort of new take-out from a posh shop, or if it was something Victor had cooked. He knew it was not the best time to think about these things, but he couldn't help it. Nate just couldn't see Victor as a bad guy. Especially not when they were in the same room together.

  After a few moments of sitting in awkward silence, Nate decided he couldn't just sit there in awkward silence watching Victor and letting his own thoughts run wild.

  "How are you feeling?" Nate asked, trying to sound casual and relaxed.

  "I'm okay, I guess I was asking for this. Like I’ve always said, I have a lot to learn," Victor replied quietly. "How are you?"

  Nate contemplated saying he was fine, that there was no problem at all, and they could move on. He opted for a more honest reply. "I'm coping. It's a bit of a shock to the system, thinking that you might have been... you could be... I don't want to accuse you, but, you know—"

  "Someone already has," Victor interrupted.

  Nate nodded. "Yeah. I guess it got me thinking about how unpredictable this world is, how dangerous it can be."

  "I'm sorry about the things I said," Victor replied with a soft sigh, scooting his chair over so he was nearer Nate's cubicle. "I screwed it up and I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're having to feel scared and alone and threatened because I said something stupid that hurt you."

  "I accept that apology," Nate said. "Normally I'd turn it down but I think I need to accept it this time. I think that's the better thing to do, for all of us."

  "I get that," Victor replied. "I respect whatever you need to do to feel safer and happier with all that's happened."

  Nate felt a bit happier just hearing that. He wanted Victor to still like him. He wanted to keep some sort of a relationship going, in a way. "But why even say those things?"

  "So you wouldn't get to stay," Victor said quietly.

  Those words were like a stab through Nate's heart. "Why don't you want me to stay?" he asked.

  "I guess I was worried you'd be getting my job," Victor confessed, face flushed. "I can't afford to lose this position. It's all I've ever wanted."

  Nate knew this could just be a lie Victor was using to cover his ass, but it sounded so heartfelt, Nate was inclined to believe it. "Are you feeling better about that now? Are you feeling more secure in your job? You're not still scared, right?" Nate asked.

  "Of course I'm still scared of losing my job!" Victor exclaimed. There was an anger in his eyes that intimidated Nate and made him recoil. "Being sent away and you taking over, coming back and you're still getting half my classes as I'm in some sort of a shaming-circle, why would I think my job was secure?"

  Nate pushed his chair back, putting some more space between them again. He put his sandwich down. He felt kind of sick, panicked. "I'm sorry, I just... I thought that coming back after the review would be comforting."

  "It isn't. It isn't because nobody wants me here. It's just the long, slow process of getting rid of me," Victor replied, withdrawing a little himself, stirring his bowl of oddly orange rice like he too was losing his appetite.

  "They aren't. They want you. You're a great teacher. Why would they push you out?" Nate asked, trying to sound comforting.

  "You don't know what it's like for people to think that because you dress a certain way, because of your tattoos, you can't care for kids," Victor insisted.

  Nate laughed a little nervously. "I think I do know what it's like to be judged based on your appearance," he corrected Victor.

  Victor shook his head. "It's different for you. There are whole groups of people there to protect you because you didn't choose how you look. But because I choose how I present myself, I'm just expected to suck it up when people discriminate against me, to either accept it or to dress like something I'm not."

  Nate glared at him a little. "Are you seriously trying to lecture me on discrimination? Do you even see what you're saying?"

  Victor still seemed hostile and glared a little. "No, I'm trying to tell you what this is like from my side. I can't tell you anything about racism or what you've gone through. But I can tell you what I've experienced."

  "Victor," Nate replied coldly. "If I could snap my fingers and just be white, I would do it ten, twenty, fifty times a day. I would do it whenever I walked the streets alone at night. Whenever I had a job interview. Whenever I wanted to flirt with a guy. Whenever the cops wanted to talk to me. You can snap your fingers, so to speak, and look normal when you need to. If what you are facing was anything like what I am facing, you'd just dress like you do in private, for family and friends, where you feel safe. There are so many people who do that, Victor. There are trans people, there are Native American people, there are mixed race people who dress like something they're not twenty-four-fucking-six and then spend a day a week behind closed doors being themselves. So don't hit me with that shit because you know nothing of it."

  Nate hadn't meant to rant like that. He'd always been told to take a deep breath and think things over. But he couldn't help himself. Victor had pissed him off. Victor was playing the victim when he was at the very least a passive onlooker, if not one of the actual perpetrators against vulnerable people. Victor needed to know where Nate stood, and, in turn, where he himself stood in relation to Nate and everything.

  Silence weighed them down. They could not look one another in the eye any more.

  Victor seemed ashamed of what he had said as he thought about it. "I... I don't know what I'm saying. I really don't."

  "I know you don't," Nate replied, feeling a bit ashamed of how loud and aggressive he had been. "But you say you want to learn, and, well, I guess I just taught you a lesson."

  Looking up out the corner of his eye, Nate could see Victor, head hanging in shame, nod briefly. "Yeah, you have. I have a lot to think about before I say anything about this. If I ever say anything like this again. I think it was stupid to say in the first place."

  Closing his plastic bowl and dropping it unceremoniously on Nate's desk, Victor walked over to the window and looked out across the playground, still empty as the kids were still in the cafeteria. He silently watched a few birds still picking crumbs of various break-time snacks from the grass and sand.

  Feeling a bit less sick, a bit more evened out after his rant, Nate picked up his sandwich and carried on eating. Argument or no argument, he wasn't going to waste ham, cheese, and mustard unnecessarily. It was by far his favorite sandwich, and had been since he was just a small kid. It always tasted amazing, it always made him feel a bit happier. It was like his personal comfort food.

  "Do you think I'm racist?" Victor asked, interrupting Nate's meal again. "I mean, I know Mrs. Heeley doesn't. But did you take it personally? Do you think I hate you?"

  Nate paused. "I'm not sure I could tell. The Victor I know isn't racist. The Victor I worked with in the class, learning how to teach kids properly, who saw me for drinks, who showed so much love to me...
that guy isn't a racist. But if that guy isn't who you really are, then I don't know."

  Victor just nodded and carried on watching the birds comb the playground for hidden snacks. He wasn't taking any of this well. Nate realized that, even if Victor wasn't the true victim, he was still hurt by the whole situation.

  Nate sighed and, standing up, put his lunch bowl down on his desk, walked over to Victor, wrapping his arms around the other man's waist and resting his head on Victor's strong lean back. "I love you, I think," he said softly. "I had grown to love that guy who was such a great teacher, who was so chill, so much fun. I know we hadn't been together long, but we were sort of together and it was working really well at first. And then out of nowhere I had all these fears, all this shit, and I wondered if someone I had loved so much could wish me harm."

  "I just...I wish I could do something to make it up to you," Victor replied.

  "You can't. It's my job to learn to trust you, and your job to learn to be a decent guy," Nate said plainly.

  Victor's hand came up to rest on Nate's. "So I have to focus on learning to be better in the future, not on fixing past mistakes?"

  "Yep," Nate said. "You can't change the past, but we can look forward together."

  "It sounds sort of difficult. And not fair on you. Why do you have to make up for things I've said and done wrong?" Victor asked.

  "Because the pain isn't a wound you can bandage. It's inside me. Everyone has things they need to work through, I guess," Nate said. "I'm working through mine. I just hope that you are trying to work through yours."

  Victor just nodded. "I'm trying. I just never seem to know where to begin."

  "For someone who looks so confident on the outside, you sure seem a lot less sure of yourself deep down," Nate observed.

  "I guess I've gone through life being sure of myself, feeling that I matter. You know us only kids, we're spoiled as shit. So I never questioned if I really were the most important person ever. And I'm not," he explained. "I mean, even I don't know what I'm truly like, and I'm stuck, and it feels kinda lonely."

  "You're a nice guy, but I don't know if I can say if you have prejudices or not," Nate said, feeling awkward, burying his face in Victor's back for a moment. "I can't help with that. I'm not you."

  "I get that. I just want to treat you like you deserve to be treated. You are one of the most wonderful, sensitive, positive people I have met, and I didn't want to ruin that," Victor replied with a sigh.

  "And you didn't. I'm still a happy person. I still love people. I've been through a lot more than you being a dick to me. It's just who I am," Nate replied. "Being naive is not the same as being happy. I want to be smart, wise, and happy."

  "So this hasn't hurt you?" Victor asked.

  "It has, but I need to deal with things like this and move beyond them. And I've had worse. I guess you don't hate me, which is nice, but what else can I think? I'm not the gatekeeper of racist acts, you know?" Nate said.

  "I guess not. I guess that's just me being ignorant again," Victor said.

  Nate laughed lightly, releasing Victor from his embrace. "Yep. But it's fine. Because you're growing and learning." This was starting to wind him up. What about this did Victor not get? It was his job to improve himself.

  Victor turned around. "It would just be easier if someone could help me with it. I feel I'm missing something, I need to know what to do next."

  "Then tell Mrs. Heeley. Let her and Mrs. Rodriguez work it out," Nate said with a grumble. "I'm not your therapist, and the more I try to help, the needier you get. I just want to get on with my life." He walked back to his desk.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Victor knew Nate was right. But he also found it easier to talk to Nathan than to Mrs. Heeley. Nathan was a nice person, a happy person, a loving, caring, trusting person. And even he was getting sick of Victor.

  Mrs. Heeley had been sick of Victor for a long, long time. But Nate was still right. She was the very best person to tell him if his conduct was genuinely out of line, if he was actually harboring some sort of racist sentiment or if he was over thinking.

  He waited outside her office feeling anxious, biting the inside of his cheek awkwardly, then reverting to tugging at the inside of his lip piercing, wondering what he'd say. It was just so embarrassing to confess he was scared he was actually racist. Especially to his own boss, who was a black woman. It was awkward. He didn't want to do this. He wanted to just get on with his life and tackle his worries on his own.

  For a moment he wondered if he could process these thoughts on his own. Even though if he could, he would have already, he was eager for any opportunity to chicken out and just run off and handle this alone, like he had been failing to do since it began.

  He needed to talk with her about this, though, whatever he tried to tell himself. She was the only person who could help him in that situation. However nice it was to know that Nate forgave him. Or sort of forgave him, anyway. But Mrs. Heeley could tell him, as bluntly as necessary, just how much he needed to improve his behavior, just how badly he'd fucked up, and how to be better in the future.

  He knocked on the door and, for a moment, was relieved to hear no reply. But there was a rustling of papers inside, so he knocked again.

  "Yes?" came her voice from behind the door, sounding unimpressed.

  "It's Mr. Walker," Victor replied. "May I come in?"

  "Very well," she said.

  Victor opened the door and walked in. On top of Mrs. Heeley's desk was a mountain of student review cards, so tall they almost covered her entirely. Parents' day was not for a few weeks yet, but it would take her that long to get through all the teachers' reports and compile a suitable review of each student to hand over to their guardians. Not only did she have to consider the teacher who wrote the review and the student in question, but also the parents and how they would react to different results and different words. It was tiring work, and she made no secret of this.

  "Is this about your diversity training?" she asked, looking a bit bored of the situation already, and ready for her lunch.

  "Yeah," Victor admitted.

  "You have to do it, you know?" she replied, making some space on her desk by sorting some of the piles into slightly taller piles. "It's just what happens when you pass the review. You get a slap on the wrist, told how to be a better person, and move on."

  "But I don't get told how to be a better person, I just get told I suck," he replied.

  She sighed. "Well how can you be a better person if you don't acknowledge that you, as you put it, 'suck'? And what can I do about that?"

  "I guess I wanted to tell you why I did it, and ask you some questions about my job," he said.

  Instantly he saw a change in her expression. More welcoming, like she was ready to listen to him better, to give him a little more of her time and space all of a sudden just because of those words. "Do sit down," she said.

  Victor sat down opposite her and drew a deep breath. "I was worried he was putting my job at risk. I thought if I got him sent away I would be in a more secure position. I figured we wouldn't need him if he sucked, so I tried to make it look like he sucked. I was even hoping that after the review he would go back to his usual duties, and I don't see why we still need him to cover half the classes."

  Mrs. Heeley nodded. "Yes, we will need him. That's why I hired him and that's why you're training him, you know this, Mr. Walker."

  Victor wrinkled his nose. "Why though? I'm here, I can handle it. I can do this job just fine without him. I don't need someone taking over half the lessons."

  "But things change, and sometimes you need more staff," she replied flatly.

  "So you are going to have him replace me? Isn't it a bit ballsy to ask me to train my own replacement?" he asked.

  She burst out laughing. It was obvious she didn't want to, that she wanted to be sensitive, but she was laughing. "You thought I was…" she stopped and covered her mouth. She drew a deep breath.

  "What's so
funny?" he asked warily.

  "That you thought I was going to replace you," she said, shaking her head. "That you thought I was bringing in a completely untrained teacher, without any experience, without even a qualification in education, to become head of mathematics. What sort of an idiot do you take me for?"

  Victor was a little shocked. "I just figured I was doing great, so the only reason to bring someone in was to replace me, probably with someone who was more polite, clean-cut, all that sort of stuff parents prefer."

  "Mr. Walker, you are one of the best math teachers I have ever known. I would not replace you," she explained. "No amount of parents writing whiny emails about your tattoos or their own inability to teach a child math will persuade me to replace one of the best teachers this school has ever had. Nor will people's personal preferences, be they mine or those of other staff, impact my professional decisions."

  Victor felt relieved, and yet even more confused. "Then why do we need a new teacher? I've done great the last few years, I can handle this. I don't see why we need to suddenly split the classes down the middle like this, it just makes the process more convoluted."

  "Mr. Walker, have you been paying attention to the number of students we have every year?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in a way that suggested he should have, in fact, been paying attention.

  He shrugged. "Kind of. We have a few more than we used to, I guess."

  "Especially in the younger years. Each year we have more children joining the school. For two years straight the number of admissions has gone through the roof, and the number of places has been increased by the district to support that," she explained. "In six years’ time every single year will consist of four whole classrooms of around thirty children. That's a total of nine hundred and sixty students. Ninety six hours a week of math to be taught, from first to eighth grade."

  Victor's breath hitched. "I hadn’t considered that. Is it really growing so fast?" For the past few years he'd been working in a school which had around twenty students per grade, totaling a mere twenty-four weekly hours of active class time. Only grade one and grade two were any bigger after two years, each with thirty students.