Totem 150

       Beau left, finally, and to prevent further interruptions I closed the door of Drawing. I was torn. Though feeling extra elderly for having learned Coral was all of eighteen, I wanted to react like a teen, call Beau an animal for coming onto Coral with those puppy dog ways of his.
       "That Beau," I said, climbing on a high stool, "what an . . . You couldn't find a . . . Something, how that boy Beau offered to show you how to center clay."
       Coral picked up the book I gave her, sat on that folding chair. "It was something," she said, her eyes full of light, her blue hands pressing the yellow book to her breast. "For I was thinking of that very word--centering--when Beau came in the door."
       "You were?" 
       "Yes. You had mentioned your nervous habit--stirring your hair--and I'd wanted to suggest centering as a cure--seeing yourself as centered."
       I worked my tongue in a circle, worked up the charcoal at the back of my throat. No, I couldn't believe Coral had given the clay-boy the time of day, let alone the 'Yes,' she'd given to the clay date Beau had proposed. Boy, that girl could push my buttons. Lucky for her I was an old soul--knew how to choke the chain on my anger; otherwise I might have said something mean.
       "Does that make sense, Anton? Seeing yourself as centered?"
       "Sort of. Of course, when one has logged as many years as an adult as I have, such concepts as centered gain a perspective that a younger person, for lack of experience, can't fully grasp."
       I didn't want Coral to say anything here.
       When she started saying something here I had to cut her off. "See, Coral, when I was your age, I thought I was centered. But now, looking back on that wee dawn of my youth, I can see it was something else. So, though I think I'm centered again today, I don't know--maybe I'm not. They say there's always another circle within a circle. Maybe centered isn't something one gets to, so much, as something one strives towards. Ya, that's it; one is never truly centered, but one must strive towards centeredness that one might grow."
       Coral didn't say anything.
       How about that? I had accomplished what I'd set out do do--shut the schoolgirl up. Of course, like all successes that involved stabbing another in the back, I felt like shit.
       Desperate to make amends, I up and asked the stupidest Fiber Art question ever to have been asked at an art and craft college East or West.
       But Coral didn't want to talk Fiber Art--wanted to continue with the heavy lifting. "Anton, have you ever thought of teaching?"
       "Not like in the classroom or anything. But I do think I have a certain--"
       "Don't," Coral said, cutting me off. "You're really bad at it."
       The gal; knocking me of my high horse. Then again, I had it coming.
       "Really, Anton, given all the years you've logged as an adult, you'd think you'd have a better grasp on the student/teacher relationship."
       I could tell Coral didn't want me to say anything here. By my silence, I handed her the knife.
       And, sure enough, in a voice that was all too masculine, she sunk the knife in my back. "Students don't learn when they are talked down to!"
       Things back in balance with Coral's knife in my back, I decided some frank talk about myself was in order. But Coral, with her own sense of order, cut me off, started franking off about herself. Said she needed to be her own person, self contained. Said her relationship with Trent was trying at times; found herself having to bend when she just wanted to do her own thing.
       "I don't know if I'll be with him forever. It's not like there's any big commitment or anything. I don't want to get married, ever. I just don't need those traditional--"
       The Drawing door opened and in came Hayward, the president of the college. Oh, for the days when one didn't see Hayward much. 
       Hayward started lecturing me on the lecture I'd just set up. Instead of listening, I harked back to the day I'd asked Ezra why one didn't see Hayward much. The professor had answered: "Because it's Hayward's job to sit in his epic office, panhandle over the phone; sit in his epic office, pour over the bottom line; sit in his epic office, make those crack decisions, like spending money that isn't budgeted on consultants we fly in to tell us not to spend money that isn't budgeted."
      That may have been true, but I still believed Hayward sat in his epic office largely because it was lonely at the top.
       It was then that I noticed something untoward in Hayward's lecturing body language. All this time he'd been inching his way towards Coral. At her chair, now, he turned towards her, "And you are?"
       "Oh," I said, standing, "this is Coral, a Fibers student."
       Coral remained seated, said to Hayward. "And you are?"
       "Oh," I said, "this is Hayward, the president of the college."
       Hayward half bowed, half crouched, that he might take the hand Coral wasn't exactly offering him.
       We had a totem pole on campus. Hayward's male professionalism was cast in its image.

       
       Of course, around young women, Hayward had all the body language of spilled oatmeal.

       "So, Carol," Hayward said, giving Beau's puppy dog a run for its money, "did you you help Anton with the lecture set-up?"

       Coral gave me a look that said, 'You'd better save me.'

       "No," I said, "Coral didn't help me with that. Her specialty is wedding planning. Oh, ya, and knocking me off my high horse. But mostly she and I like going at it." I paused for effect. "Stabbing each other in the back, that is."
       Coral laughed so hard she dropped Pan on the floor. Hayward snapped upright, started going totem pole on my ass. "My word, Anton, have you no sense of presentation? We need the chairs set up auditorium style, in arcs, with an aisle down the middle. And the lectern--why isn't the lectern out?" Hayward raced towards the back of Drawing. 
       Wrestling the lectern out of the closet, Hayward kneed the wrack of rotating words on the front panel, giving Coral and I something new to read.

       "Damn," I said, stomping the floor, "that's what I forgot, the podium."

       This always got Hayward hot--calling the lectern a podium. Hayward raced over, started going lectern-verses-podium on my ass. But he hadn't lectured long before the cloud of charcoal my stomping had raised, got him searching the deep pockets of his charcoal sweater. "Dust mop," he said through his hanky. "The floor," spit, spit, "a thorough going over, now!"

       "I'll get right on that," I said, planting my ass on the folding chair next to Coral.

       With Hayward running around pointing out changes to the set up, I leaned back in my chair, mused over Coral's statement concerning marriage: "I don't want to get married, ever." In my head I heard it as a song. A song I took to whistling then.

       Hayward left, finally, and I was sinking deeper in my chair when Coral got out of hers. "I can see you have work to do, so I should--"

       "Work?" I said, sitting upright. "No work. Sit."

       "But those changes; don't you--"

       "No changes. Sit."

       Coral didn't sit. Nor did she say anything.

       Yes, time to show how I could teach without talking down to a schoolgirl. "See, Coral, Haywards of the world are all real good at pointing out changes in the lay of the land. But how the land looks isn't the priority. It's how the land functions given said lay."

       Schoolgirl's eyes dimmed.

       Time for teacher to reach into his deep pockets of biting analogies. "It's like this: How can the Haywards of the world grasp the ways of ants when Haywards are seated too high up to see the ants?"

       Schoolgirl's eyes sharpened. "So that's how Anton's get stepped on."

       I took a stand. Yes, time for teacher, here, to get all eyes off his red face by means of a little demonstration. 
       "See," I said, shoving a couple of chairs out of line, "if I align the chairs in arcs, well, that cuts down on room capacity. If I put the aisle down the middle, well, then all the late-comers coming in the side door can't get to the empty seats. And as for the lectern--hell, I just talked to the artist. He's a pair of bluejeans pitching Salt. Not some suit pitching Wall Street."

       "But Hayward's the president."

       "Exactly. And that's why Hayward can't see his shoe for his hat. See, he's on top of the totem pole dealing with the issues of so much bird shit, while I'm down here on ground level waging war against the gnawing army of worms trying to topple the entire totem."

       Maybe that was too abstract for the schoolgirl. For there she stood, singing her schoolgirl song: "You're going to get fired. You're going to get fired."

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