Quitting

25.

Meanwhile, my teaching career was becoming increasingly frustrating. I had been rehired part time, working with 2 year olds at John McLaren Children’s Center, up the hill from my house. I was able to augment my position by substituting in the afternoon, in the same classroom. So, I was working for 4 hours in the morning, making a decent hourly wage. Then, after a 3 hour break, I’d return, working with the same children but making about 2/3 the hourly wage. With a split shift, I’d start working at 7 AM and get off at 6 PM, a long day. And the pay differential made me feel positively schizophrenic: what was I supposed to do, work 2/3 as hard in the afternoon?

I was able to teach the children how to spell their names, which was considered “developmentally inappropriate,” but I figured if they could learn it, why not? I did it by making up a song for each child. Tyrone’s song might go: T-Y-R-O-N-E, T-Y-R-O-N-E, T-Y-R-O-N-E, T-Y-R-O-N-E, T-Y-R-O-N-E, BOOM! The children seemed to like each having his/her own song. I had them hold sentence strips with their names printed on them. I think it may have helped them learn their letters.

I started looking around for other teaching jobs, and in January of 1984 I got a job teaching science to 1st through 6th graders at Markham Elementary School in East Oakland, near Eastmont Mall, a perpetually failing shopping center. Most of the classes had 30 students, all of them black. Being a prep teacher was a lot like being a substitute, but I could handle it – at first. I appreciated the uptick in status represented by moving from “child care” to elementary teaching – I just felt more respected. I liked teaching science because it’s the one elementary subject that tends to be “hands on.” I had the students plant beans, mix vinegar and baking soda, and experiment with magnets. I also included a literacy component, reading science fiction to the classes.

One of my favorite lessons involved debunking astrology. I would buy the latest astrology magazine from the drug store and go around the class asking for birthdays. For each zodiac sign, I’d read the description of the person – only I’d mix them up, so for Aries I’d read Leo, for Cancer, Pieces, and so forth. The students were all like yes! That’s it! That’s him/her to a tee! Some of them were quite angry when at the end of class I revealed that I had switched around the zodiac signs.

The job was difficult, but it was gratifying to me that it seemed I had finally, finally gotten a handle on the classroom control thing that had so compromised my career as and elementary teacher. It was helpful that I traveled from classroom to classroom, and frequently the teacher remained in the room while I taught.

I was hired as a long-term substitute, but I pressured the principal, who got me classified probationary.

That summer I had a full 3 months off – which was fun. We spent a lot of time at Deer Creek. I took a class on teaching science from the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab, which included a lot of propaganda about how radiation was a part of everyday life, how Coleman lantern wicks would inspire a Geiger counter to clickity-click, but also gave me a lot of ideas for teaching the next year.

The following year, 1984-85, I had my own science room at Markham, which at first seemed to make things easier, but I missed the students’ regular teachers not being in the room. The crowd control piece was trying. The stress was taking its toll. By January, it was as if I just ran out of gas. I couldn’t go to work any more. I couldn’t face the constant testing of the 150 hostile students every single day. Perhaps only a dozen were hostile. But I missed the far more rational curriculum and structure of preschool.

So, I quit. I told the principal that I’d gotten a job teaching creative writing at the community college level – I even gave the college a name: Canada College in San Mateo, and thus was able to leave with the blessing of my colleagues. I had only taken a leave from my San Francisco job and had little trouble foreshortening my leave and returning to my part time job teaching preschool. This was an enormously liberating move. The relief I got from quitting this job inspired me toward my next big move, which turned out not to be quite so simple.

Becoming Unhinged

24.

The politics of the novel became somewhat unhinged from the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy which I continued to espouse. I sent a draft to my old comrade Kathy and she did wonder about that. I assured her that the quasi-Christian anarchy of the novel were fully compatible with Marxism-Leninism, and I believed that at the time, even as the world was tiring of the failures of Marxism-Leninism, as China repudiated the Cultural Revolution and increasingly turned capitalist, even as glasnost and perestroika were sweeping Leninist orthodoxy out of the Soviet Union, in a way that we hoped would revitalize the Soviet experiment, though these movements turned out to be too little too late. The “party-building” movement, which I still supported, was becoming hopelessly confused by the mid eighties, with group after group biting the dustbin of history.

The novel seemed to require increasing amounts of marijuana to sustain its inspiration. My own grip on rationality was loosening. I would spend many a morning stoned on Thai Stick, dressed as my protagonist – Ben Davis Can’t Bust Em coveralls with the monkey on the pocket and a yellow baseball style cap with blue Mercury wings – wandering the streets of Berkeley and the halls of the UC library stacks following my hero’s journey.
My sexuality became increasingly impulsive, as I imagined my monkeyman to be, and I persuaded Earldean to participate in all kinds of orgiastic experiences the details of which I will spare you. I have to say that she didn’t take that much persuading. She was a trooper in my explorations.

But then I got it in my head that I was in love with Tessie. I wrote her a poem and a letter declaring my love. We went to the beach and cavorted in the sand. It really looked like it was going to happen.

The next day, I was overcome with guilt about Earldean, and when I went to see Tessie I was foolish enough to be honest about it. This turned Tessie way off, and destroyed my chance of making love to her and having the affair that I thought I wanted. I spent close to two years in unrequited pursuit of this woman, who saw the opportunity to keep me on a string and support her cocaine habit, which I dutifully did. She liked to freebase it, at least $20 a day worth. I would join her, even though the drug did nothing for me.

I did some crazy shit around this affair. Tessie had a boyfriend who worked as a fence, marketing the goods which his friends burglarized from houses and cars, a serious criminal.

One night, he barged in on us when Tessie and I were on the couch making out. He grabbed Tessie, hauled her into the bedroom, and started beating on her. She told me I better leave. I did leave, but I was drunk and stoned, and she had told me that she cared for me much more than him. So without so much as a word to Earldean, who was watching my degeneration in agony, fully believing I was having an affair (which, despite its lack of consummation, I can’t deny), I fished the .25 automatic that her brother had given us out of a drawer and returned to her apartment to challenge him. We had words, but fortunately I wasn’t stupid enough to pull the gun. I ended up leaving again, but thinking back on it, I am lucky to be alive.

At one point during this two year affair, our house got burglarized, and I’m pretty sure that Tessie’s boyfriend had something to do with it. I didn’t mention this to Earldean.