And he came my way near Christmas Day. I was the last teacher in the building, and the day was overcast, cold, and gray. I sat at my desk, looking at a book I meant to finish over Christmas, which had always been an empty time for me. Books filled me up. They were my friends. I came here three years ago. I taught English Comp. I was surprised every year at how poorly students with excellent grades from high school and fine ACT scores did even in their sophomore year. I was alone. I was like no one else in the world, so it seemed. I was ashamed and at odds with myself. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night in a sweat even when the room was cold, for I loved cold weather and winter, the urgency of the season, the no-nonsense aspect of it, and I would be sweating profusely, and filled with fear that police were to break down my door at any moment. That they were there in their swirling strobe light cars and were walking up to my door and I always waited with fearful breath and pounding heart. Talk all you want about gay lib. That was not how it was 'round these parts.
I thought of Alton often. He was in my first period class every weekday. I thought of his blue eyes that I felt I could almost fall into and swim away to a secret place, a bay of tranquility, I would even endure eternal summer if he were beside me, and we would swim naked and bold as brass, for he was the color of brass and I was the color of winter. He had long hair still and was a boy with clever and mischievous eyes. He smiled little crinkles at the end of his lips, and he had a voice that was Northern that lilted over the Southern accents here. I masturbated to him at night a lot. I had a picture of him from the university newspaper I would look at. And feel guilty for. I wished someone would spend Christmas with me. I used to believe how sad those men and women who would hire escorts just to be with them, just to talk with them, or pretend a relationship with, not even sex, just someone to be their momentary dream.
I no longer scoff at that. I think it's the only way to survive for certain people. Alton had a girlfriend. Her name was Jo. They walked down the corridors and sat in the lunchroom and the student union TV room, and shopped at the University bookstore often, always together, holding hands many times, laughing together. She was a somewhat stocky girl with a milky freckled face and hair of brown tied back tightly. She was different from tall, lanky Alton. They would put their hand in each other's back jeans pocket, like most of the other students here, a fad of the times. It hurt me to see this. Sometimes I went home and sat for hours in the dark when seeing them. Or when they were in a school play and had a scene when they passionately kissed, I thought I would die. I would never have gone to see the play, had I known.
And there was a knock at the door of the classroom. I startled, jumped a bit, and said come in, knowing somehow it was Alton, because a man has paid his dues often enough, a man has said to himself some people deserve to be alone, some people are happier that way, and there is sunbeam in the doorway of a cloudy day, and I said to him, without looking, as he had opened the door, come on in Alton. I felt all the cuts of the years on me. He stood by the desk scarred and wounded and he somehow scarred and wounded. It came to me like that. He was wounded. He was scarred. The smile came at a price. The predicament would one day overwhelm him, and I remembered Von Aschenbach's premonition about Tadzio, how it made the man secretly happy, and to pull myself from my favorite movie and one of my favorite novellas, I looked up at Alton, quickly. For if I had been slower in doing so, I might never have looked at all.
