Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World: List 3

But what we do with the time in between the day we are born and the day we die, that is what constitutes a human life.

And he spit into my face and then I was standing next to you again and I was afraid because you were afraid and when I turned to look at you, you were gaunt and I knew you were dying and I also knew you were dying from AIDS.

She said she was just the kind of mean mother who served her children liver on special occasions because she knew her children hated it. She didn’t believe in happy children. So she’d serve them all a plate of liver and sautéed onions and when they’d all finally managed to get it all down, she was back up, standing in front of their empty plates, asking, ‘More liver?’

“She doesn’t hate us. She just thinks we’re inferior.”

“Lovely couple? Every time someone says something like that, I feel like a total fraud. I feel like an impostor.”

But my want was beyond desire. Because what I felt transcended my own body.

One of them said that they were happy for my mother because I was such a good kid, not like my brother, who had a severe and chronic allergy to goodness.

That is an unfair and unjust accusation. I have no idea where you got the notion that you were entitled to attack your teachers with such venomous slanders.

“I was being friendly, and I don’t know why you think what I said is in any way derogatory.”

Mrs. Livermore was pulling on her pearl necklace and fingered each pearl as if she were praying a rosary.

The just thing to do would be to suspend these students. I am not a punitive person, and I will not insist that they not be allowed to graduate.

“There. See for yourself how they give themselves the freedom to say whatever they feel like saying. They have no understanding of the consequences of their actions. These three barbarians apparently have no respect for my position as a teacher, and I will never accept what this”—she pointed at Susie—“this person, this, this—I will never accept her slanders. Tell him, tell him what you said to me.”

Susie wasn’t the least bit repentant.

“I’ve had enough. I leave these ersatz human beings to you, Mr. Robertson. I don’t care what you do with them so long as you do not return them to my classroom.”

They had the best costumes by far. Nobody came even close. Certainly, they were the most elaborate.

“Make sure the students read the next chapter in the textbook, and if there is mayhem in the class when I return, I’m going to hold you responsible.”

After they’d left for their little visit with Mr. Robertson, Sheila looked at me and said, “Go, go. Go and sit at the teacher’s desk, you paragon of responsibility.”

The stragglers were filing into the classroom just as the bell rang.

I was staring at the painting Emma had given us. It was a strange and mesmerizing painting.

It’s a small liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio.

You know, Ari, racism is something that’s almost impossible to talk about. And so most of us don’t talk about it. I think that we somehow know that we’re all implicated. Racism is a finger that points at all of us, and every few years, there’s an explosion—and we all talk about it for a little while.

Go and run into the arms of one of your pretty girlfriends and let them coddle you.

Most misogynists are married to women. They think that being married to a woman means they’re not misogynists. Wrong. Think about all those women marching for the right to get the vote. Where were their husbands? They were fighting against the rights of women wanting to get the vote. Misogynists, all of them.

I don’t remember the coroner arriving and pronouncing my father dead.

Dante took Sophocles in his arms and we both kind of doted on him.

“Mom, you are the quintessential schoolteacher.”

“Will you honor your father by giving his eulogy?”

I think we both wanted to start crying again—but we refused to do it out of sheer stubbornness.

Oh, your father kept a journal sporadically. I have the others put away. Sometimes he wrote in it every day. Sometimes he’d go weeks without writing in it.

And each one of them just hugged me and they didn’t say stupid things like Don't cry or Be a man and they didn’t utter clichés like He's in a better place.

But will I ever be a real American? That’s the question. It used to be my last name that was an impediment.

But now I think it’s the fact that I’m gay that’s the real impediment to being a fully enfranchised American citizen.

I think there are people all over this nation who are invoking Scotty’s name.

I rose from the pew and made my way to the pulpit.

Happiness. Sorrow. Emotions were fickle things. Sadness, joy, anger, love.