My Fave Teacher

Appreciation Week

It’s late evening on the last day of TAW and as is often the case I’ve hesitated perhaps a bit too long to share this light piece on the first teacher to encourage my writing during my first semester of community college. It was originally published last year by the Academy for Teachers as part of their chapbook series on the subject of great teachers, featuring essays by George Saunders, Sam Lipsyte, Susan Orlean, Lemony Snicket, Karen Russell and Terrance Hayes, among others. (Click the link to read their pieces!) My experience with this guy, Mr. Mayes, was formative in the way that relatively small things can be when they happen at exactly the right time. And he was just doing his job—like thousands of underpaid, unacknowledged very hard-working teachers. They indeed deserve all the appreciation they can get and so here is my story about Mr. Mayes:

I went to community college, partly because my father taught political science there, which meant that his kids could go for free, and partly because, since I’d dropped out/been kicked out of high school during my sophomore year I could not have attended college otherwise. I am guessing that for many people reading this, community college suggests something low-stakes and unambitious but for me it was grand ambition: a first practical step towards the University of Michigan and then onward to a fantasy of literary life informed by, among other things, watching Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett show, plus proximity to the New Yorker via my mother’s subscription. Like most grand ambitions, it was also intimidating.

To explain:

After leaving high school I also left my family and my country, hitch-hiking up to Canada in ’71 where I lived a chaotic, hardscrabble (sometimes fun!) life, mostly with other teenage girls who had also run away from home or foot-loose young guys, sometimes other Americans who’d dodged/deserted the army: at seventeen my first real boyfriend was a twenty-five year old deserter who sold “underground” newspapers on the street for a living. (This guy went on to become a professional frisbee player and something of a local star in Toronto, but that’s another story!) I don’t think he’d read a book unless he was forced to; few people I met then really read much of anything or paid attention to culture except for music. I did read (Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Colette, D.H. Lawrence and all manner of best-selling paperbacks among them Looking For Mr. Goodbar); I also wrote, mostly in a journal that I carried with me. In discouraging, sometimes adverse circumstances, both practices kept alive a bright, clear beam of desire I’d had since childhood: to become a writer.

This desire was what eventually lead me, at the age of twenty, to go back to Michigan and enroll at Schoolcraft Community College. Returning to my parent’s home where my two younger sisters still lived, stirred up painful emotion and fear; I was already seen as a failure and a disappointment and was unsure that I could succeed. I had done well enough in high school, at least until I completely lost interest, but I was aware of how ignorant I was, how out of practice. This feeling was magnified on my first day at Schoolcraft when I was, along with a couple hundred other new students, herded into an auditorium where we were given three topics on which to write a short essay in the space of an hour or so. (I chose “How to Spot a Phony;” I spent much of the piece ridiculing the prompt.) Based on this essay, I was assigned to the remedial English class, an event that took place in a large kidney-shaped “study area” labeled something generic like The Writing Center. Here, students were divided into groups and presided over by a rotating crew of harried, good-humored teachers who seemed to share the same spirit of yeah, it’s kind of a joke here so let’s try to make it as non-shitty as possible, let’s be good to each other. One of these teachers was Les Mayes. I Iiked him right away—more than that, I recognized him as someone who might help me.

I’m not sure why I recognized this; my trust in him was intuitive, almost visceral. He was a middle-aged man in rumpled clothes and like the other teachers, he gave off a vibe of harried goodwill. But I sensed something deeper in him, something more vital that showed in his face and body. He had an average build that wasn’t at all athletic, but there was nonetheless a physicality about him that made him seem very awake and alive to the world. He had direct, intelligent almost crazily bright blue eyes, and a rueful, ready smile. He seemed hard-bitten, even a little jaded, but still warm and engaged. The first week of remedial I approached him and told him that I knew my writing wasn’t good and that I wanted to make it better, like a lot better. Fast. I asked if he would be willing to read an essay by me every week, about three times the required amount. He not only said yes, he said yes delightedly.

I understood his delight; it made sense. Most of the kids at Schoolcraft had no intention of going on to the University of Michigan. Most of them were there to learn a trade and only took classes like English because they were required to. To meet an ambitious kid who actually wanted to learn what he had to teach—he must’ve loved that. He loved it even more when I told him I wanted to write stories and asked if he would be willing to read them.

I loved it too. The remedial class was loosely structured which meant there was a lot of room for individual attention. In this crowded, quite casual space, Mr. Mayes and I could have close conversations about my essays and how to improve them; I recall him being vigorous and even aggressively critical—but also very willing to entertain push-back from me regarding my style choices. We made extracurricular appointments to talk about my fiction; this was something I so looked forward to. I had never had the experience of someone not only expecting but wanting to read something I’d written and it was inspiring. We would meet on one of the low benches in the hall or, if it was a nice day, outdoors, where we would sit on the brick flower beds abutting the Liberal Arts building. We were seated outside the first time he handed me my new manuscript (with his notes) and, with a serious and slightly astonished expression said “This is very good”—a moment mnemonically blurred with flowers and artificially bright grass.

We rarely met in his office which was situated in tight proximity to three other offices that all opened out into the same small, shared space; anyone (including my father) could potentially hear what their neighbors were talking about which maybe he didn’t want—our conversations were not improper ( well except maybe the time he asked me if I’d ever read Story of O? Which caused me to blush deeply?) but they were intense. I didn’t talk or write about my rougher experiences, but my stories featured desperate young women dealing with absurd longings, disappointment and sometimes squalid situations. I remember him using the phrase “coming up against it” to describe one of them thematically.

I sensed that such themes were resonant with him, that we shared an unspoken apprehension that life was heart-breaking and brutal but also just ridiculous—sometimes poignantly so. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, we were both undergoing major transitions: while I was working hard to charge the course of my life he was in the middle of a divorce—I learned that from my father after I’d left Schoolcraft. We sometimes had arguments; I particularly recall a time he gave me a D.H. Lawrence story, Ticket’s Please! which I found sexist—or maybe I found the way he interpreted it to be sexist or just annoying. We had a lot of disagreements on the subject of sexual politics, but this never seriously offended me. The arguments excited my mind and I felt strengthened by them.

There was a time though that I was offended by something he said. Really maybe the better word is dismayed—pun acknowledged. It was near the end of my last year at Schoolcraft and we were, unusually, sitting in his office. I think we were having a farewell conversation. I don’t remember the content of it exactly but I remember the words that unpleasantly surprised me: he said that my writing talent was going to be a great asset in the job market, that I would make an excellent secretary because the boss could just tell me the kind of letter he wanted and I would be able to write it for him. I was so taken aback—really I couldn’t believe what I’d heard—that I replied simply “I don’t want to be a secretary.” And he said, “I know, I know, but—”

I still have no idea why he said something so off the mark; it wasn’t like him. I do know that, ironically, I was able to quickly dismiss it in part because of the confidence he had given me; I simply took his age into account and didn’t hold it against him all that much. I wonder though if his comment and my dismissal of it was part of the reason we didn’t keep in touch for twelve years after I left Schoolcraft. We did pass occasional verbal messages through my father (“Les Mayes sends greetings”) who also gave me little updates from time to time, for example that Mr. Mayes had finally married a teacher at the college, a woman with whom he had been having an affair. But we didn’t really reconnect until I published my first book, and I sent him a copy, including a note about how grateful I had been for his early help. He wrote back, telling me how pleased he was but also wondering if I wanted any helpful criticism; I did not.

If nothing more had happened, I might not have fully remembered how important Mr. Mayes’ support had been. But something more did happen. Maybe a year after I’d sent him my book, I came to Michigan to give a reading at U-M. It was open to the public, but I don’t believe I told Mr. Mayes that I was coming; I doubt my father told him as he had retired and left the state. So I was surprised to see Mr. Mayes sitting in the audience with his new wife, both of them smiling with unalloyed benevolence. All the feelings came rushing back, even stronger in that unexpected context. The event at U-M was one of my first public readings and I was anxious about it; really the whole experience of coming back was challenging for complicated reasons. It was especially good then to see Mr. Mayes, to be reminded of how lucky I’d been to meet him at a key time. We spoke afterwards; I don’t recall what exactly was said. I do recall though that it was wonderful.