The English Professor

Stewart was a 45-year-old divorced college English professor who told me on our first date that he wasn’t bothered by being short. I craved his confidence. I was dazzled by his Beat generation record collection, the dream catcher above his waterbed, his knowledge of hip Provincetown restaurants, and above all else his ability to make me feel special and beautiful. He read my poetry and literally lifted me up onto his kitchen counter and celebrated my talent.

I was 25 and back in school, and while I was floating around looking for a port, Stewart had lived long enough to have amassed a house, a van with a built-in bed and tiny refrigerator (for trips to the Cape), a wardrobe of Dylan-esque vests and man beads, and food rituals and preferences that fascinated me.

For example, Stewart exposed me to smaller, multigrain slices of bread. To someone who had grown up on Wonder bread, canned vegetables, and ketchup on the table every night, Stewart’s food was Star Trek exotic.

When Stewart and I met, the size 4 dresses of his previous woman were still hanging in the bedroom closet. She was on the way out. That I was being shuttled in hot on her heels somehow didn’t faze me. Even though he had confessed his struggle with needing women (there was a bevy of female students, advisees, and ex-lovers who always seemed to be in orbit around him), I wasn’t worried. “Size 4” had been conventional; I was bohemian. And after all, hadn’t I come home one day to find he had arranged the colorful block magnets on the refrigerator to read “THE REAL THING HAS DONE COME ALONG AT LAST?”

But there was that day I wandered into Stewart’s study and read some letters from a young woman on his desk. Then, in a page from his journal, clearly inspired by her, he wrote, “I think of your breasts. I feel the earth. My mind reels.” I confronted him. “Oh that’s an assignment my analyst gave me,” he insisted.

I was seeing that same analyst, and how Dr. Patterson must have struggled, listening to me all those mon