K. Nitsua. Revised version copyright 2006 by the author.
The persistent beeping of an alarm threads its way into my consciousness. Slowly, reluctantly, I open my eyes to an unfamiliar light and unfamiliar surroundings. Where am I? In a moment my brain orients itself.
The small travel clock on the dresser, which I only use here, reads six-thirty a.m. Despite the whirring of the portable fan in front of the open window, the room is warm and stuffy. Buildings this far north are constructed to retain heat, and during a summer hot spell they perform that function all too well.
I'm in a sparsely furnished dormitory single on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, about to begin a week of teaching violin for the twentieth year at the American Suzuki Institute. I put my hands behind my head and stare up at the tiles of the false ceiling, trying to energize myself for the day and the week to come.
The Suzuki method asks child and parent to collaborate in the experience of learning to play a musical instrument, helped by the teacher. Suzuki Institutes are workshops, where kids and their parents come for four or five days of intensive instruction--family music camp.
Faculty members at institutes work very hard, teaching five or six hours a day, frequently performing at night. To say that a Suzuki Institute is not a gay-friendly place is an understatement. The focus is overwhelmingly on the family. Sure, there are gay faculty. But they are mostly women, men I've already slept with and satisfied my curiosity about, or men about whom I have absolutely no curiosity.
Lying naked under the sheet and thin blanket, I remember that it wasn't always like that. One summer at Stevens Point, when I was twenty-eight years old, unexpected and marvelous things happened. Despite the little voice inside nagging me to get up, memories begin to flow into my mind. For a few moments I let myself be carried away by the tide.
***
It was the fourth year I taught at Stevens Point. The American Suzuki Institute was no longer the mammoth event that it had been in the early eighties, when Shinichi Suzuki himself, the originator of the method, paid several visits here. There was something mystical about this old, frail Japanese man, sort of a musical Dalai Lama, descending on this modest college town in Central Wisconsin and transforming it with his vision.
Suzuki was dead now, and Stevens Point no longer had his particular aura. But it was still one of the largest summer workshops devoted to the Suzuki method in the United States, and to be on the faculty carried considerable prestige, or so I thought.
I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to the Institute, which was always held late in the summer, the first two weeks of August. I'd already taught at several other institutes across the United States that summer. Still, I welcomed the activity, since it saved me from having to think about the disarray of my life. I had broken up that spring with a longtime lover back in my hometown of Chicago. It had been a messy divorce, climaxing with shouted curses, slammed doors, and possessions pitched out of the third-story window of the apartment we had shared. My ex-lover had pulled this last stunt just as one of my most refined Asian mothers was pulling into the parking lot with her young daughter for their weekly violin lesson.
When the summer was over I'd have to think about whether to keep the place that was now solely mine. One reason for my frantic teaching schedule was the need to bolster my financial state, now that the two of us were no longer sharing expenses, or anything else.
I certainly wasn't going to catch up on sleep at the Institute. Like that of all of the Stevens Point faculty, my schedule was heavy and demanding. My first class was at eight in the morning and I taught until four o'clock every day of the week. This particular summer I had one teacher training class, adults who wanted to learn how to teach the violin using the Suzuki Method. I'd be doing a lot of lecturing and explaining, not to mention reading papers. It was too much like teaching college to be my favorite activity, though it paid well. The large group classes also took a lot of energy, particularly ones with students between eleven and thirteen years old, sullen pre-adolescents thinking they were too old to be here and daring you to teach them something they didn't know. Staying focused and positive in such a situation could be an ordeal.
I much preferred the small master classes of three or four students where I could work with each one individually. Occasionally you encountered a child with exceptional ability--Stevens Point was big and well-known enough that the best Suzuki teachers from many regions of the United States sent their students here. I'd had six- and seven-year olds playing Bach Concertos with impeccable intonation and musicianship--really amazing kids.
It didn't look like I'd have any such students in my classes this year, but nevertheless, I decided that I was certainly going to enjoy my ten o'clock class, consisting of four girls, aged between eight and ten. One in particular seemed to connect with me. Her name was Molly Wagner and she was a petite, pretty girl with a beautiful playing position and bow hold -- qualities which predisposed me to like any student. She had the notes to all three movements of the Vivaldi Concerto down, her father assured me.
All children who took classes at Stevens Point had to have a parent accompany them to all of their classes. Molly was unusual in that the parent was her father--overwhelmingly in Suzukiland it was mothers who did the lion's share of helping a child practice and learn. There were fathers around, but they mostly served as assistants to their wives, carrying instruments, driving vans and RVs, watching younger siblings. So Molly's father attracted my attention from the very first day of class. He also caught my eye because he was an exceptionally attractive man in his mid-forties, tall, lean and tanned, with curly dark hair beginning to be peppered with gray and a similarly colored, neatly trimmed beard. Mr. Wagner's eyes were easily his most striking feature--a vivid blue. He smiled easily and obviously doted on his daughter.
Stevens Point had a small YMCA where you could get a guest membership for the week of Institute. I always plunked down the few dollars in order to have access to their pool. The University pool was available free to Institute participants for a couple of hours every day, but I was interested in swimming laps for exercise, not in fighting my way through hordes of screaming kids and their water toys. There was always the danger, too, that a mother in one of your classes would waylay you and insist on an impromptu conference then and there about her budding young Mozart.
I much preferred the laid back clientele that frequented the town Y. You hardly ever had to swim circles with more than one or two other folks in a lane. Having to pay a guest fee kept most of the Institute Suzuki families away, and the Institute faculty, with one or two exceptions, was remarkably immune to the fitness craze.
It had been a while since I'd exercised and I was eager to get back in the pool. So I stashed my violin back in my dorm room as soon as my last class ended, and headed down the street to the modest yellow brick building just off campus. When I entered the men's locker room I saw one of my colleagues had had the same idea. Jack Gormley, a cello teacher at the Institute, was standing in front of one of the other day lockers in my aisle, stripping off his clothes. He boomed a cheerful hello in his deep bass voice.
Over the years Jack and I had become acquaintances, then friends, after we had cautiously figured out that we had a bit more in common besides a love of music and teaching youngsters. Not that I ever slept with him--Jack was in the umpteenth year of a happy monogamous partnership back in Madison. But he was something better than a hot trick--he was someone I could talk to here at Stevens Point. His intelligence and goofy sense of humor had kept me entertained, and sane.
"So how'd your first day go?" he asked.
