Indecent Read online

  But the male students on these visits: They never made me feel small. When I checked into the main office at one school, the secretary asked her student intern if he would mind leading me to the classroom, and he stood and smiled at me and said, “This beautiful woman? Not in the least bit,” and suddenly I was transported to an alternate universe, one in which I was back in high school but cool, coveted. I liked the ease in the boys’ bodies as they sauntered through the halls and settled loosely in their chairs. And I liked that when they looked at me, they didn’t see unfashionable shoes or flat hair but instead a person, a woman—maybe even an attractive one.

  * * *

  Vandenberg School for Boys, founded in Scarsdale, New York, in 1913, was steeped in honor, tradition, and many, many rules. Vandenberg boys were expected to dress in navy blue or gray dress slacks, white or powder blue dress shirts with a tie, solid black footwear, and the uniform school sweater or school blazer. Vandenberg boys were expected to be clean-shaven and neatly groomed, with nails cut in neat half moons and hair in no danger of festering into that reprehensible mop-like surfer style. For all intents and purposes, Vandenberg boys appeared as deferential as geishas, each one striding purposefully about campus with a thirst for knowledge and a golden halo hovering above his perfectly coiffed head.

  And in that first week of school, I believed it. To me, each boy seemed more capable and charismatic than the last—future heads of State, surgeon generals, chief executive officers. The boys shimmered like imposing bronze statues, laughed and posed and grinned like models on the cover of a brochure. They held doors for one another, said “thank you” to the cafeteria ladies, and engaged their professors in stimulating (yet respectful) debates. Sure, there were vestiges of indiscretion—cigarette butts stubbed out behind the gymnasium, empty beer cans crushed on the running trail, giant phalluses carved into picnic tables and scrawled on the desks in the back of the classrooms—but as far as I could discern, Vandenberg boys were an exceptional breed.

  “Above all, you must remember that these boys are little shits,” Janice McNally-Barnes informed us on our first day of orientation. She was the head of the apprenticeship program, making her our supervisor for the next year. “They may act civilized, sweet even, but don’t trust them. Let your guard down, and these kids will eat you alive.”

  We sat in a semicircle around her in the library conference room, Meggy Woods on my left, her skinny legs crossed over themselves twice, and ReeAnn on my right, working an enormous wad of gum between her molars. Both stiffened in their chairs with this final statement. Chapin, sitting across from me, checked her watch.

  Ms. McNally-Barnes was a squat, indelicate woman with a bulbous nose and even bigger mouth. She lived in White Plains with her partner where they bred dairy goats. She’d worked at Vandenberg for seventeen years now and, according to her, she would take raising a goat over one of these boys any day. I’d already known, when she called in May to accept me to the program, that she was not someone to cross.

  “This program is not for everyone,” she’d said, “and I need to be assured that you won’t disappoint us, Imogene.” Weighty pause. “Are you going to disappoint us?”

  “I won’t disappoint you.” I felt I was signing myself over to her in blood.

  Begun in 1987, the Teacher Apprenticeship Program at Vandenberg School for Boys was a model for independent schools. The one-year program was for recent college graduates who wanted to develop the skills needed to be boarding-school teachers, combining training with residential life experience. Apprentices worked closely with seasoned mentor-teachers and Ms. McNally-Barnes to prepare and teach lessons as well as to support and manage their students’ academic, emotional, and social well-being, supplementing the experience by coaching, running an after-school club, or tutoring. After the year was up, the expectation for apprentices was to pursue a master’s degree in teaching and to become head teachers in classrooms of their own. Apprentices were also expected to serve as role models for the Vandenberg community, a fact that seemed strange to me since, with the exception of Raj, we were all girls—which was reflective of the nature of the teaching profession. Raj was only the third male in the history of the program. He saw this as a point of pride rather than considering, as I did, the reason why there were so few.

  Ms. McNally-Barnes handed out a thick packet entitled VANDENBERG SCHOOL FOR BOYS: THE TEACHER APPRENTICE GUIDE. Apprentices, they called us, like we were learning how to cobble shoes or mend fences.

  “This will be your Bible,” she said. “Stick to this, and you’ll do alright.”

  We all had previous teaching experience. For the last four years while I was in college I had worked at different elementary schools throughout the Buffalo Public School District. I knew how to make lesson plans. I could teach long division and administer a spelling test and explain the difference between mitosis and meiosis. I learned to play handball at recess and how to make friendship bracelets. I’d even been a finalist for The Most Promising Young Teacher in the Buffalo Area award, the most prestigious honor I have ever (almost) earned and maybe ever will. The girls in the classrooms would look at me with big, dewy eyes that provided more validation than any award.

  But when it came time to apply for jobs after graduation, I realized I didn’t want to teach elementary school, nor did I want to be in the public school system anymore. I didn’t want to wear a school ID on a lanyard around my neck and lead lines to the cafeteria and ask students to use quiet voices in the hall. I didn’t want to stay in a world where my students weren’t sure whether they needed to use the restroom, much less who they were, and where kids outnumbered books two-to-one. In the break room of the school where I taught during my last year of college, Mrs. Mlynarski, the science teacher who had been there since before I was born, took me aside. “Public school is going to shit,” she wheezed. “It’s all about closing the achievement gap and coddling mixed with chronic, purposeful underfunding.” I told her I had gone to public school, realizing as I did so that I wasn’t refuting her point as much as stating a fact. “But wouldn’t you have rather been somewhere else?” she pushed. “Don’t you still wish you were somewhere better?”

  Yes, I told her. And a few days later, I submitted my resume to Vandenberg.

  Ms. McNally-Barnes settled herself on a desk, her supple stomach spilling like risen dough over her waistband, and continued. “Having appropriate student-apprentice relationships is essential to maintaining your authority,” she said. “There has been trouble here, in the past, with young women not knowing where to draw the line. Dean Harvey has tried in the past to ban female apprentices from the program, but you know: Only so many guys want to grow up to be teachers.”

  Raj, sitting barefoot and cross-legged in his chair, sat up straighter. “And I’m happy to act as representative for that underutilized talent pool.” His sneakers and socks lay in a crumpled pile under his chair, and I turned away from the sight of his naked feet, as though he was openly picking food out of his teeth. Every time Ms. McNally-Barnes referred to us pointedly as “ladies and gentleman” he grinned widely, happy for the attention and for the novelty of being constantly differentiated.

  Ms. McNally-Barnes pointed grimly to the packet on my lap. “Don’t let these boys think that you’re their friend. Never let them think they have a shot at a romantic relationship with you, oh no. The minute they stop seeing you as an apprentice and start seeing you as a woman, you’re in trouble.”

  ReeAnn had taken out a notebook and was scribbling furiously. I peeked over at the page. APPROPRIATE CORRESPONDENCE ONLY, she wrote. Then, underlined twice: APPRENTICE, NOT WOMAN.

  There were certain rules we had to abide by, Ms. McNally-Barnes explained: No stepping foot into a student’s dormitory room. No touching the students in any way. No allowing the students into your personal residence. No texting, calling, or messaging with any of the students, and emails were only appropriate if they were related to an academic matter. No relationships ou
tside that of student and apprentice.

  “I assume these rules all apply to me, too?” Raj asked, drawing attention to his maleness once more.

  “These rules apply to everyone,” Ms. McNally-Barnes said, and I felt certain as she said these words that she was looking right at me.

  * * *

  Even after the Christopher Jordan incident, I thought I would do all right. The incident had been a small mishap—I stored it away in the same place as the memory of wetting my pants on the school bus in fourth grade and of vomiting outside the Town Houses my sophomore year at Buffalo State after trying weed for the first (and only) time. It wouldn’t be until I told Kip about the incident that the shame would dissipate. “That’s fucking hilarious,” he’d say, and I’d realize that this is why we share things—to transform those memories into tidy stories that are no longer ours alone to carry.

  The night before my first class, I sat at my desk and planned a lesson. According to the course description given to me by my supervising professor Dr. Duvall—call me Dale, he had said in his email—the aim of Honors World History at Vandenberg was “to acquire a greater understanding of how geography along with cultural institutions and beliefs shape the evolution of human societies, tracing the development of civilization from the Neolithic Revolution to the Age of Industrialization.” I would begin my first lecture by defining culture and explaining how the development of tools influenced the culture of early humans. I would show them on a world map the sites where the remains of various hominid species and early humans had been found. I debated whether I would be able to talk about the distinguishing physical characteristics of Homo habilis, Homo sapiens, and—most titillating of all—Homo erectus without the class dissolving into laughter.

  Of course, I wouldn’t be teaching entirely on my own yet, not for a few more weeks. I wished I could be more excited. Teaching is what I wanted to do after all; teaching is what I was supposedly good at. But instead I felt a strange sense of dread, one that felt larger and more threatening than simply standing before a classroom of teenage boys.

  I lay my outfit out on my bed, a pale pink ruffled blouse I had purchased the month before from a department store—loose fitting, high in the neckline, consciously conservative—and a pair of shapeless gray slacks. Downstairs, Babs, ReeAnn, and the Woods twins were watching a TV show they all liked, something about random men and women being paired up to train a puppy together. I thought about bringing the outfit downstairs for the girls to approve. I could hold it up and joke: What do you guys think, too revealing? Maybe I could even watch the show with them for a little while. But I’d already washed my face, and I didn’t feel like covering it up with makeup again. Laughter rolled up the stairs, grating as a car crash, and I felt tired. I crawled into my bed, letting the outfit slip to the floor.

  Through the wall behind my headboard, I could hear Chapin talking on the phone, her voice gravelly and soft and the words indistinct. I wondered how many people she’d slept with. I thought about calling my mom; I imagined her back home in Lockport in her gray terrycloth robe with the holes in the elbows, drinking a mug of Sleepytime Tea in front of the evening news with my dad snoring next to her and the TV volume turned up too loud. My mom and dad had waited to have children until later in life and now, as an eternal stay-at-home mom and a retired support services technician with high school diplomas, my parents simply wanted to rest. That involved attending the occasional Lockport town meeting, providing key lime pies for bake sale fundraisers, and never touching one another (a fact that didn’t strike me as strange until I started watching PG-13 movies and saw the way men and women in love were supposed to behave). I already knew what my mom would say: Put yourself out there. You’re going to do great. Everything is going to be okay.

  I crossed the room to get the notes from my desk and returned to my bed. I sat against the headboard, the covers pulled up over my lap, an invalid awaiting visiting hours. “Welcome to Honors World History,” I said to the room. “I am your teacher, Miss Abney.”

  * * *

  It rained the next day, a cold damning rain, and the boys tracked wet footprints up the stairs and into the halls of the academic buildings. My hair was a crown of frizz around my face, and my ballet flats squelched with each step. “You must be Imogene,” said Call-Me-Dale when I walked into the classroom, coming around his desk to greet me.

  I took his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dr.—”

  “Dale.”

  “Dale, right. Dale.”

  Dale was tall and angular, with long, thinning hair pulled back into a ponytail, wild eyes, and a wide grin. He could have been thirty-five or fifty-five. He bounced on his heels as I set down my bag, a little kid with a secret or a full bladder.

  “Now, Imogene, that’s an interesting name. Are you named for the daughter of King Cymbeline?”

  He grinned as he asked this. I felt bad letting him down. “I’m sorry, who?”

  His grin persisted. “Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Imogen is the princess of Britain, known for her moral purity, unable to be seduced by Iachimo, who bets he can woo ‘any lady in the world.’”

  My skin felt hot. “Oh. No, I think my parents just liked the name.”

  “Well, that’s fine, just fine. It’s a lovely name.” He winked, and I felt a thump between my legs; attraction was still sometimes indistinguishable from discomfort for me. “Now, Imogene. Tell me how excited you are.”

  “Um—”

  “It’s thrilling, isn’t it?” Dale swept his hand around the classroom, to the four neat rows of desks with hinged tops that lifted to store students’ books inside and the beautiful vintage world map that took up almost the entire back wall and the enormous bay windows streaming light from the courtyard. “Being here, at one of the most prestigious preparatory institutes in the nation, helping to shape the young minds of the future. It’s really something.”

  It occurred to me that Dale might be gay, and perhaps that he was on drugs as well. It didn’t matter to me; I felt I loved him already nevertheless. This was a bad habit of mine, falling in love. A few days before, on my morning run through town, I had spent the better part of a mile trailing a guy with yellow running shorts, keeping just a few paces behind him. He had impossibly long, wiry legs and feathered brown hair, and I matched my pace to his until he suddenly veered off the path into the woods. I imagined us going on runs together in the morning, panting beside one another as we jogged through town, until we finally stopped at our favorite coffee shop to get egg sandwiches and kiss. On weeknights we’d lie in my narrow bed, legs entangled, and watch classic films (he’d been a film major in college, I decided, a Hitchcock aficionado), and on the weekends we’d go into the city to see art exhibits and eat ethnic food we’d never even heard of but wanted to try, and we’d take goofy pictures of ourselves that would hang in the West Village apartment we’d move into together to remind us, always, of how we first began.

  I never even saw his face.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It is really something.”

  The bell rang for third period, and the boys began to filter into the classroom. The first few entered in silence, choosing desks near the front. As the clock ticked towards the start of class, the rest of the boys filtered through the doorframe, chatting and laughing but still respectfully hushed. I watched as they settled in like eggs in a carton, so charmed that I nearly missed the exchange between the last two to enter.

  “Sack slap!” jeered one boy as he whacked his friend up between his legs with an open palm. His friend doubled over as the slapper slid into the last available seat in the back row. “Dammit, Marco,” the friend scowled. It stunned me, this childishness; I hadn’t been there long enough to know that the boys I’d seen in the pages of the pamphlet—the boys I’d imagined marching in orderly lines and quietly sipping their soup—did not actually exist, at least not outside the eye of teacher supervision. I glanced at Dale; he hadn’t noticed the exchange, or at least willfully refused to see it. The beha
vior wasn’t hidden from me, however; I felt cool to not illicit censor, as though I was part of the joke.

  “Greetings, gentlemen.” Dale took his place at the podium in the front of the room. “Welcome to Honors World History. Welcome to Vandenberg. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives.”

  Someone let out a half-hearted whoop! from the back of the class.

  “I am Dr. Duvall”—only I, the fellow adult, could call him Dale—“and I will be leading you this semester with the help of my assistant, Miss Abney.”

  “Hello, Miss Abney,” a guy with a pink-and-green polka-dot tie intoned by the windows. His voice was mocking, insular.

  I gave a timid wave to the classroom. These were not the susceptible, open faces of the elementary school students I was used to. One of the boys had a dark shadow of stubble on his chin. Another had an angry blotch of boils on his forehead. I’d wanted this, students old enough to reflect and respond rather than parrot back memorized information like trained dogs, but I’d forgotten that I was a subject they would reflect upon and respond to as well. Before the boys’ condemnatory eyes I felt as authoritative as a cup of plain yogurt.

  Dale launched into a monologue about his career as a commercial artist, his experience in the military as a parachutist, his chihuahua/dachshund hybrid—a “Chiweenie”—named Maxine. The speech was craftily nonchalant, spoken as though off-the-cuff—I could tell he had been doing this, earning the respect of adolescent boys, for longer than he let on. He cursed in places—how cool, a teacher who says ‘fuck!’—and made theatrical pauses in others. He commanded the class like someone accustomed to praise.