Julius David Metcalfe was 21 years and five months old when he graduated from with his Bachelor's Degree in History with double minors in Philosophy and Education; was 24 when he finished his Master's Degree, also in History, with a concentration in Global Cultures; and proceeded to teach high school Social Studies, mostly freshman World Studies but also some American and African American History. After two years plus one year of searching for the right opportunity, he decided to focus on more "mature" students, and was fortunate enough to get a faculty position at North Central, one of the community colleges in his area. Not quite a "real" professorship, but closer. And at his age, he thought, safer for him.
He knew going in that the student body at the college had a different make-up than a "typical university;" that is, maybe 18 to 22 or 23 years old. At the community college, the average age of students was about 26 or 27 years old—more or less his peers, in age at least, from what he saw right away—with a wide range to make up that average, of course: students who finished high school and then got a job, but then realized (especially when the economy started to get rough) that they needed to get better-paying jobs, and needed more education to do that.
He also took note almost immediately that the student body having a "different make-up" also could be taken quite a bit more literally.
One of the major--if very unofficial -- "fringe benefits" of working at the community college, as one of his other male colleagues who taught in the Math department joked confidingly, was what they occasionally referred to as "the scenery." Julius especially, being young and single, felt a certain freedom, limited but real enough, to discreetly look at the specimens of womanhood that walked through the door every day, incurring none of the guilty feelings for furtively checking out over-developed but under-aged girls and then quickly shaking his head as he did when he taught high school.
He observed a lot of the female students giving him the eye as well, either while walking around in the building, or in his classroom. At 5'10'' tall and 180 pounds, with a short natural afro that he kept just a little bit uncombed to go with his scruffy look offset by wearing pristine sweater vests and wool blazers in Fall and winter (he liked to call it "Lenny Kravitz with a day job"), or pressed linen and the occasional lightweight two-piece African garment in spring and summer, Julius kept himself in shape and was used to getting attention, at least in recent years, so it didn't really surprise him. In fact, privately, he enjoyed it, even thrived on pretending not to notice. At the high school, his internal dialogue regularly shifted, or progressed, from "damn, if she was older..." to "Ignore. Ignore for your own good, J; you're supposed to be better than that." This was often while one of the girls, dressed in a shirt his mother would have politely called "incomplete," forced him to look away by leaning over while he sat at his desk, or quickly and unexpectedly squeezed his arm while cooing, "Mr. Metcalfe, I have a question..."
The two streams of thought trickled off from the wider river of Julius being young (even younger looking), and being his mother's son. When his mother didn't tell him as much, which was actually often, he would imagine in one of his own private moments, memory-induced tightness in his chest, that his father would have been proud. Whatever that really meant, he wasn't really sure, but even as an adult it was something he clung to like a teddy bear with one eye missing and open stitching rescued from a fire, peppered with soot. It wasn't until Julius was in his teens that he became aware of the truth. Not a robbery. Suicide. Depression. A note, in part: "...tell Julius when he's older—I said to never do anything he might regret." Years of being closely monitored, protected, coddled, given whatever he wanted, everything except a male figure, everything but a man's sense of boundaries, from the age of seven, began to make sense at the age of 16.
Then, too, his memories--of girls in high school and even during part of college who passed him over or wanted him to be their "friend" when he was short and overweight, his skin still suffering from the twin ravages of puberty's hormonal attack and bad diet, and when he was considered too weird or analytical or too boring, too shy or quiet, or not enough of whatever the opposite of all those things were--stayed fresh.
He had gone through an unusually late growth spurt, one inch in his last year of high school, two inches in his first year of college, one inch in the second, leaping upward from 5'6'' to his current height, as if the truth had set him free. While he grew on the outside, he paid attention to what women seemed to like, paid attention to the kind of person he could be to get what he wanted, courtesy of his mother and his aunt—his father's sister. When he went back for his Junior year with smooth skin, contact lenses and a new wardrobe, it worked. In his senior year he finally secured an on-campus job as a research assistant for the year in the History department (a position usually reserved for graduate students), and was able to move to an off-campus apartment.
Attention and affection were no longer hard to come by but he never completely let go of or forgot the pain of their scarcity. He often thought of his mother's and aunt's platitudes to his younger, less popular self that someday, a woman would love him "just for him" and recognize him for the good man he was bound to become. If only he knew more about who that was, or whether it really made a difference to anyone. Like a small piece of candy from a funny-smelling stranger, it had been at once tempting and repulsive, in the small minutes surrounded by absolutely no one except the demons of his expectations, to find out. What would it be like to disappear? Then he would run through recollections of his primary reason not to attempt to find out.
"You're a good boy, Julius."
"Thanks, mommy."
"You're a good man, Julius."
"Thanks, ma." I'll take your word for it.
Now, for the most part, Julius tried to ignore stuff like the note he got from one student, on the back of her mid-term paper saying "I would do ANYTHING (wink, wink) to make sure this gets an 'A'." Or the one who had a 'D' at the end of April who asked him in a small voice after all the other students had left the classroom,
"Professor Metcalfe, I know I've been messing up but...can I...go down on you if you give me a 'C'?" he told her "no," gave two extra three-page papers to write, and reported the conversation to his department chair, just in case. Thankfully, thought Julius a week and half later, she did the work.
When he was telling one of his friends about such experiences, the response was "Man, you're a good one; I don't know how you do it. I would be all over that. I could only take so much."
"First of all," Julius explained, sipping his Heineken, "I'm a new faculty member—I don't have the protection of tenure, so these chicks aren't worth losing or even risking my job; and second...even though I know they're basically my age, it just doesn't feel right to take advantage...not to mention it's against all kinds of codes of conduct. Ethics 'n all that, y'know? But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't tempting sometimes, 'cause some of these women have absolutely no fear." He took another sip. "Besides, I do pretty OK without having to tip into the j-o-b to get play. Remember when I was talking to..." was followed by a one-night stand story; not the first, second or third of that month.
If anybody had asked him what he was looking for, the response would likely have been a blank stare, and then a slow "for someone to want me, not what they want me to be." Beyond that, he felt, "I'll know when I see it."
He made it through almost four semesters taking the "high road."
She had been on his mind since the end of his first Spring semester when he saw her -- in the slightly light-headed way that someone "sees" and reacts to a sky-spanning rainbow -- while she was registering for classes; he was putting in overtime assisting with registration for the Summer and Fall sessions. He noticed when she got up that she walked with a limp and wondered why; felt the urge to go help her get up from her place three computers down. He did nothing.
Diondra turned up in his Monday night World Civilizations class, sitting right up front. With a class capacity of 40 students but with many of them not showing up on a regular basis—it was not unusual to have as few as 15 or 18 people out of the 30 who had actually registered—he was able to give her a lot of attention, which he was secretly happy to do, without ignoring everyone else. He had to concentrate, or sometimes just look away, to avoid focusing on her softly glossed full lips or the naturally long lashes on inquisitively wide eyes behind rimless glasses; her clear skin a rich brown on her smoothly rounded face, her hair cut short to the scalp in a way that somehow only accentuated her features.
Diondra went to Julius' office hours regularly, asking pointed questions to clarify something about the Dynastic time line of Ancient Egypt, or to make sure she understood the philosophical and scientific achievements by Africans that western scholars attributed to Ancient Greece, or the factors contributing to the demise of the Roman Empire and the transition into the European Medieval Period. She was always composed in demeanor and very thorough, taking copious notes even as she smiled widely at Julius. She never hesitated to ask him to repeat something or explain an issue differently, either in class or in his office. Her papers were well-thought-out, and always submitted early, and when he made some suggestions about writing style or organization, she always gave it back to him better than expected.
Hers was one of the few A's that was genuinely earned and easy to give that semester; and he was pleasantly surprised to see her take a seat in his History of Pre-Colonial Africa on the second Wednesday night in January as well. In the second week of the semester, Julius looked up from grading his first quizzes when he heard a knock on his open office door.
"Hi Diondra, how are you?"
"Hi, Professor Metcalfe, I hope I'm not interrupting." She looked at the stacks of papers on his desk.
