Chapter 1

It was my first day in graduate school, literature had given me a direct romance with each of the forms and their derivatives of writing, which could be considered an obsession on my part. But I didn't care, there were years between my adult life and the responsibility my parents had for me, and no one had enough power over me to deprive me of these little pleasures in life.

Jess was an unsympathetic girl who didn't have enough intellectual capacity to know when to shut up, perhaps it was the fault of her age, youth was mostly a bunch of overgrown, spoiled children. And her chatter went on for about twenty minutes, long enough for my eyes to roll back a few hundred times. My irritation was already at its peak and it was only a few minutes before my notebook found the blonde head on the desk in front of me.

"Good morning, put your phones away and leave them on mute. I won't tolerate any interruptions or conversations that aren't about the subject I'm teaching during the period." Mr. Clark, second class period of the day, and from the short time he had to get ready at his desk, I could tell that Jess was going to make the class a marathon of exhibitionism and my life a living hell.

The laughter and whispering corrupted the silence imposed by the teacher, which was normal for a class of young adults, especially those embarking on the beginning of the end of their lives.

As I entered college a few years later than most, unlike the others, I already had enough emotional capacity to control my excitement at the novelty. So for me, all that studying, bar-hopping or the unfortunate fall-out with the psychology professor didn't make the slightest difference to me and took away what little patience I had.

"You've all been through undergrad and I assume you already know the rules of coexistence in the classroom, I don't want to have to bring a basket for you to leave your cell phones and your other technological gadgets out of my sight." He stood up after finishing spreading the material out on the table. "But I do have a few more rules to follow and I follow them all to the letter. Open your notebooks and write them down, I won't mention them again and I won't tell you when I need to give you a warning for what you don't remember to do."

I finally managed to smile, it was going to be an interesting semester if I took into account the indignant faces of Jess and her friends in front of me.

"I don't accept late assignments, if you forget, you'll lose your grade. I don't give exams, the concept of forcing your memory to that level is repugnant, I believe that if you chose this subject it's because you can be here."

"Then it will be even easier to get through your revision during the semester." The buzz came back, full of giggles from Jess with her ulterior motives.

I glanced from the blond hair to Mr. Clark, the glasses didn't hide the disapproval of the snickers in front of me, but he continued:

"You will raise your hand to interrupt the class, I will not answer any hasty and meaningless questions. I'll let silence answer your stupidity. No talking at inopportune moments. I won't repeat explanations, if you missed them by being late or if your bladder is too loose to make you more present in the bathroom than in the classroom, I won't be able to do anything about it." He wasn't asking for anything too much, it was the minimum to get the most out of the lesson. But the grimaces that broke out in class were astonishing - what was wrong with keeping order in a classroom full of adults who had just graduated?

"Are you doing extra work too, Professor David?" Perhaps I wasn't the only one bothered by the double meaning in Jess's words.

Mr. Clark removed his glasses and walked towards the aisle where we sat, Jess tossed her hair back just before he reached his desk, knocking some of my material to the floor. Now it wasn't just Jess's inconvenience that was getting on my nerves.

"First of all, Miss Wilson, you should call me Mr. Clark, remembering that we're not intimate and secondly, I don't tolerate bad manners in my class and I suggest you help me collect Miss Taylor's material since you've dropped some of it on the floor." Jess fell silent and Mr. Clark concluded before putting his glasses back on and returning to the front of the room: "I'd also advise you to watch your hair, you're in a classroom, not a salon. Can we start our lesson?"

No, I didn't need help retrieving the pens that Jess had dropped on the floor. However, I would pay several times over to see this scene repeated in an endless loop, just for my pleasure. Nothing in the world was better than the look of disgust on Jess's face as I retrieved my pens from the floor.

The class proceeded with a total of zero interruptions, which gave me great inner peace and a notebook full of messy, disorganized notes that I would have to clean up later. But it was one of the best classes I've had since graduation, the understanding Mr. Clark had made me want to spend hours and hours listening to his complex explanations and arguments about all of humanity, no matter if it was his subject or not.

His perception of the world and his philosophy led him to understand humanity in a complex and standardized way and also brought a unique knowledge of how and why people have their dreams, desires, taboos, and fears. It was a sea of contradictions and oppositions, an era of people and labels, where neither were very far apart.

But like all good things, including the peace that Mr. Clark had brought into the room, the class came to an end and as usual, the last student to sign the roll call was left with the responsibility of handing it to the teacher and luckily, I got the job.