Let the envy begin!
Yes, I teach at what some call a “maritime” academy, and we are actually on the water. This dock is not my hideaway, but the hideaway of two of my least favorite students ever.
Luke and Lukette were lovers. Oh, they were hot for each other. They went at it before class like they were in an Adrian Lyne movie.
Half the way through the semester they broke up and took chairs on opposite sides of the room. Lukette took to cursing Luke from across the room sometimes, quickly, sharply, and then right back to work. Luke, on at least one occasion, ran from class, tears in his eyes.
I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to get involved. I wanted them to make up and go back to being annoying, but at least together.
During finals week, Luke came to my office, head drooped. Without asking, he told me the whole story, the drama, the misery, the heartbreak. It was pathetic. It was ugly. It was like when a 14 year old discovers “love” for the first time. I admit I wasn’t sympathetic; he wasn’t my advisee, and I didn’t know him at all. I tried to keep Luke focused on finishing class, but he looked at me and shrugged his shoulders as if I clearly didn’t understand the kind of love he was talking about. When I said, “School’s the important thing,” he replied, “But I can’t live without her.” Before I could stop myself, I said something like, “Give me a break.” He stormed out of my office.
After finals were over, and after both of them had failed the class, I was walking across campus to a regents’ dinner. It was dusk and unseasonably chilly on the water. As I passed the dock I saw two figures at the end. It was Luke and Lukette, huddled inside his jacket, whispering, talking, oblivious to the rest of the world. Their faces seemed lit from within.
I never saw them again. I wonder still what happened to them. Did they make it? Are there little Lukalicious kids somewhere with big hearts and overblown love ability? Or did they - like most campus romantics - grow the hell up and get on with their lives.
I wonder, too, why I wasn’t more sympathetic. When I think of them on that dock, I guess I still feel a kind of envy. Their “love,” for lack of a better term, was all-consuming. It blotted out the bullshit of my class, that’s for sure. It took up the biggest space in their hearts and heads, and for them, it was beautiful.
Did I ever have that? Could my marriage have been saved by some of that all-consuming love. Did I marry the right person? Did I give love a second chance? I think of them every time I see that dock.
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With this 6th posting, we’re closing down the “Where Do You Hide?” series.
Thanks to everyone who submitted.
We could only post a few of them, but we thank you all
for sharing your hideaways with us.
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