Third hour is BIOLOGY, located in the far one story southern appendage of the building, separated from a building protruding like a freshly gauzed splint. The Science hall reeks with the scent of Formaldehyde and cheap disinfectant and is coated an inexplicable yellow and feel like you have just wallowed and drowned in a failed piss test. This is all new to me. I am continuing to float through the hallway. I am continuing to float; reeled by an invisible bicycle chain, unsure what is coming next.
Down the hall is the pool atrium where the Cross-Country records are showcased for all eternity.
There is no teacher present when I arrive into BIO lab. Everyone is quiet. Each table has a sink and twin valves for gas along with Bunsen burner. The seats in Bio lab look like they were purloined from Podunk bars in stone throw area code of the school. When I enter the classroom Patrick is already at his desk playing with the gas valves built into each table, commenting something about trying to arouse a metaphorical chrome clit by licking his fingers first. In the front of the classroom there is a periodic table of elements the size of a stage curtain draped in the front of the vestigial chalk board. There is a jar containing either a calf’s brain or something in utero seated on the front desk already littered with papers the first day of class.
When he waddles out he seems not to be paying attention to any of the students. He seems to keep going in to the backroom to pour coffee into a coffee that has a caricature of a middle-aged man seated on the porcelain throne, the words COFFEE KEEPS ME GOING written in comic sans font.
Both his mustache and correlating toupee is the color of expensive kitty-litter. He is ample, overweight, belly dangling over his waistline in a paunch.
The books are cellophaned and stationed in front of us on the lab desk like holiday gifts.
He tells us to take notes on the intro and to read up to page 55.
There is no attendance. He is not passing out an itinerary of any sorts. He is not elucidating what he tells us we can be expected to this semester. We are expecting the portly professor to teach. He is scratching his head. He explicated what he refers to as the significance of learning to read the material and take notes. He accents that this is a college preparatory.
Instead he whips his glasses off and blathers. he talks for 45 minutes, not mentioning the course at all. In the final minute you see her.
She sits in front of you in cool Joe Thomas Biology class. She sits ahead. Sometimes she bends her legs under her bottom and sits on top.
Her last name is Lighthouse.
Her forehead seems to shine.
She has a beautiful curtain of blonde hair. Her skin is the color of an 18th-century doily, the color of wax dripping next to a reclusive Emily Dickinson as she chisels out her last poem via quill and blotches of ink. She looks like an angel performing a strip tease with her wings, casting her halo off the brim of her forehead as if carelessly playing Frisbee golf in Bradley Park and not worrying about par in the slightest.
She smiles. Her name I will learn is Angelina.
Angelina Lighthouse.
Unlike Coach Mann’s classroom I cannot wait to hiccup the syllables of my name.
No comments:
Post a Comment