Mr. Maxwell by Philip Harris

10.

I knew exactly what I was looking for. My fingers dove through piles of memories, the closet smelling of dust and morning. From its deepest parts I excavated a battered shoebox. Sifting through receipts and pictures, I sat on the twin bed in my old room. I quickly found what I was looking for?a picture of me graduating from pre-school. The tiny photo was more worn than I thought it?d be, not nearly as clean or intact as I?d hoped. It was flimsy, flaky. In this photo I?m five. My smiling eyes are wide, not yet dampened by adult burden. Mr. Maxwell is sitting behind me, his hair full and thick. He is also smiling. We wouldn?t meet for over another year.

I snapped a pic of the photo and texted it to him. He didn?t respond. I left the picture and shoebox on the twin bed and went for a jog. The neighborhood was still waking up. Late summer gilded the myrtles. Half a mile away, as I trotted past a 7-11, my phone vibrated.

?we have to stop,? Mr. Maxwell?s text read. ?marcus found my phone. he knows. the pics. the calls. everything.?

Absurdity suddenly broke the rules of the game I?d spent years unconsciously designing. Obsession had brought me to a place where fantasy and reality mixed, and the chemical products were bitter absurdity and dull contempt. Actual consequences weren?t part of the plan. The plan had been fantasy, sex.

He texted again. ?he dumped me. i told him u and i meant nothing. he left. & u never came to miami like u promised.?

A bead of sweat dripped onto the phone as I brushed away a bee, hoping to not get stung, the morning sun nagging at the back of my neck. ?You?re fucking pathetic,? I said out loud to my phone, to him.

He texted again, ?for the record tho buddy, this pic is adorable. u were hot even @ 5.?

I knew our interactions were over.

9.

Six months earlier, by the time Mr. Maxwell and I had reconnected, things had been falling apart between he and Marcus. They?d been together for a couple of months, and, like me, Marcus was significantly younger?over twenty years. The age difference between them was beginning to wear on Mr. Maxwell. He was having trouble keeping up with the all-night, drug-induced parties. Mr. Maxwell told me he?d started getting Botox injections to compete with Marcus? youth. He told me that Marcus stayed out all night and that he was sure Marcus was sleeping with DJs around Miami.

He started sending me longer texts and calling every day. I listened for hours as he droned on about Marcus, Florida and the gym. I?d help him decode text messages and conversations from Marcus. I listened quietly as my contempt for him began to grow. I never told him about my life; he never asked. He just wanted someone to dump his drama on. His voice was whiny, and I realized that now, in my late twenties, I was six inches taller than he. Suddenly, all our proportions seemed off. He was supposed to have been a stable, non-drug user with a real job and glasses. He was supposed to be an older man with whom I could brunch and cuddle. Instead, he was a drug addict. My only recourse, now that he wasn?t living up to any of my fantasies, was to use him.

One night, during one of our late calls, talk turned to sex. Over the next couple of minutes, as we began sharing our favorite positions, my mind filled with a warped rationale. After years of obsessing over him, I deserved to at least have phone sex with him. The least he could do was get me off in my living room. Who cared if he was over two thousand miles away and had a boyfriend? Exploiting his sexuality in such a detached way fit perfectly with the vicarious version of him I?d been sculpting since I was ten.

Our conversation turned blue. Objectification tapped at the window. The living room was empty and dark around me. I ejaculated, his voice tickling my ear. The adolescent me, the scared kid who?d been afraid of his first orgasm, was finally able to fulfill as much of his fantasy as he could. In my mind, Mr. Maxwell had been there for my first orgasm, an impossible question I?d once asked the dark, and nineteen years later he answered it.

For the rest of that summer, until the morning I found the picture of me graduating from pre-school, we had phone sex every night. I whispered from under the covers of my twin bed. Twenty years earlier, I?d discovered my semen in the same bed one Easter night. I promised him I?d come to Miami and truly reunite with him. He told me we?d dance, do drugs, and ?fuck ?til we dropped.? We began texting each other pictures of our body parts. Questions I?d had for years about his ass and thighs were finally answered. Studying these texted pictures, I ignored the sad tiles on his bedroom floor and the pathetic folding chair he used in his makeshift office. Instead, I chose to focus on his carved body and the revelation of his penis. I also ignored the blatant perversion of him being sexually enticed by me, the man-version of his former fifth-grade student.

8.

I found him on Facebook. He didn?t accept my friendship request right away. ?I don?t get on that often,? his first Facebook message read. When he finally accepted, my intestines tangled with nervousness. I didn?t know what to expect. I hadn?t seen him in nineteen years and was afraid to look at his profile pictures because in my head he was still the same Mr. Maxwell from Butler, the private elementary school where he?d been my teacher. I was shocked to discover that, while older, he was still uncomfortably attractive?defined abs, bulbous biceps, swollen pecs. His face seemed a little stretched, but it was definitely still him.

He began sending more messages, filling me in on what he?d been up to for the last nineteen years.

He told me that just before we lost contact nineteen years earlier, my aunt, the Spanish teacher at Butler, during a random gossip session with teachers and staff, mentioned how he was living with her and my uncle. She casually referenced his frequent of male houseguests, inadvertently outing him. He was fired the next day. That was right after the end-of-year dance.

He moved out of my aunt and uncle?s house and moved in with a female friend. After a night of drinking, he and this friend had sex. She got pregnant, and they went to Vegas and got married. Over the next couple of years they adopted four more kids while he went to grad school, became a college professor, and pretended to be straight.

He wrote to me how his marriage had been a sham from the start. Their sex life was nonexistent and he?d started cheating on her with men immediately, stopping off at bookstores on the way home from work to, as he wrote, ?blow a load.? His wife found out about the cheating and moved the entire family to Miami. Nothing changed. He began fucking his male students during office hours. Rumors of his affairs began to circulate and eventually the following was posted on RateMyProfessor.com: ?Yeah, he?s a great instructor. Too bad he?s cheating on his wife (and kids!) with one of his young gay students.? A friend was able to delete the comment, but his wife had already discovered the damaging claim. He promised to stop having sex with his students. He initially stopped, but then he met Marcus, a twenty-two-year-old college senior. They fell in love immediately.

?You?re fucking a child!? his wife yelled at him during their last argument. They divorced soon after. She got custody of the kids and moved to Atlanta. As he said, ?She thought her love for me was strong enough to keep us together. It wasn?t.?

7.

I stopped seeing Mr. Maxwell?s face during orgasms when I was sixteen. I?d just started having sex with actual people. Still, for the next fourteen years, I thought of him whenever I looked through my old yearbooks. I thought of him when I visited my aunt and uncle in Oregon, and of course whenever I heard ?Vogue? by Madonna.

Fantasizing about him was a regular practice. I?d imagine bumping in to him at a club in West Hollywood?we?d see each other across a dewy dance floor. At first he wouldn?t recognize me. I?d tell him who I was, and his face would light up. We?d kiss and spend the rest of our lives eating Mexican food and listening to George Michael, twisted up in his black satin sheets. He?d be a doctor; I, a scholar. We?d both wear glasses. I pictured him older, still handsome and strong. I saw him camping with friends, strumming nineties classics on his guitar. I imagined the kinds of guys he?d date were all professionals?lawyers or architects.

I could be anywhere?school, my parents? car, Disneyland?and suddenly I?d see him laughing at something my uncle said on a Sunday night or eating chicken salad with a plastic fork during lunch. For those years?as I came out to little fanfare, lost weight, gained weight, almost failed out of high school, dropped out of college, re-entered college, had countless dates, a few awful relationships, hundreds of sex partners, and three therapists?I allowed the fantasy of Mr. Maxwell to build, to collect like poisoned rainwater in an invisible barrel.

6.

A few days after Mr. Butler was fired, at the beginning of summer, my aunt and uncle moved to Oregon. I was moved out of private and into public school. Being a child?translation: invisible?I was given no explanation, told nothing. My uniform was traded for jeans and slouchy tee shirts, my security for danger, my past for future.

The protection I?d felt from the students and staff at Butler was replaced by the daily threat of rabid peers who found my fey ways the perfect receptacle for their own self-loathing. Snack during junior high was a daily war. Kicking, spitting, being drawn on, getting punched in the arm constantly. I taught myself how to be funny, how to protect myself with humor. If I could make a joke about my gayness before they could then they had no power. ?Yes, I?m a fag. Yes, I suck dick.?

Amongst this angst, I discovered masturbation by accident one Easter Sunday. Tucked in my twin bed, my stomach aching from a day of bacon, chocolate, and eggs, I began touching myself with the same hand I?d high-fived Mr. Maxwell. There was a strange pain, a pleasurable bite in my penis accompanied by a punctuated release that shoved Mr. Maxwell?s face into my mind. ?What was the that?? I asked out loud. The darkness didn?t answer. In the days following, my daily orgasm to Mr. Maxwell?s face became my only connection to the past, to the childhood I?d just lost?my aunt and uncle?s house, homemade tacos, Butler.

5.

The last time I had contact with him as a child was at Butler?s end-of-year dance. He was the DJ and had a preference for diva dance hits like ?Hot Stuff? by Donna Summer and ?Groove is in the Heart? by Deee-lite. The dance floor was actually our classroom, his DJ booth actually the desk that held my plastic bee sting kit.

I discovered I loved to dance that night, finally tapping into the healing properties gay men have always found in heavy beats and sassy lyrics. Student I?d grown up with cheered me on. My family shouted for me to keep dancing. I felt at home, safe. I had finally found something that made me feel like I was flying.

I?d just finished busting a move to ?Vogue? by Madonna. Uncontrollably smiling, I found myself walking over to the DJ booth. Mr. Maxwell had his eyes closed. His head was bobbing to the beat. I tapped him on the arm. He opened his eyes and smiled back at me.

?Looking good out there, bud!? he shouted over the bass. He gave me a high five. The sting in my right palm faded in seconds.

4.

A few months before the end-of-year dance, my parents and I went to my aunt and uncle?s house for Sunday dinner. The house smelled of refried beans flavored with bacon fat and flour tortillas warmed on a gas flame. Spanish rice steamed up from pots on the stove. The orange sunset matched the hue of the shredded cheddar in my aunt?s red clay bowls. Gloria Estefan, my aunt?s favorite, sang from the giant stereo in the living room. My uncle and dad sat mesmerized by a humming football game. Dusk drifted into hazy night as my cousins and I took empty coffee cans and sprayed their silver insides with Windex. We stuck our heads in and took deep breaths; the world spun for four seconds.

My mother called me from the kitchen.

?Yeah?? I asked, standing in the kitchen doorway.

?Will you go downstairs and grab a folding chair from the garage?? She asked, chopping cilantro.

?But, Mr. Maxwell is down there,? I protested.

?He won?t mind,? My aunt said stirring the beans.

I went to the edge of the stairs and looked down. I couldn?t see him, but I knew he was home because his ?no duh? car was in the driveway.

The stairwell yawned up at me. Step-by-step, I crept down, my forehead beading with sweat. Once below, I inched past the lit door of his bedroom. A dormant part of me wanted to catch him naked in his black silk sheets. Instead, I found him sitting in a leather chair, shirtless, strumming a guitar. I suddenly wanted to ask him questions about his calves and thighs. I wanted to know what the rest of his body looked like.

?Hey, buddy,? he said, smiling. ?How?s your arm? It?s been through a lot this week.?

?Fine.?

?Good to hear it.? His smile made me flinch.

I ran to the garage, got the folding chair, and darted back up the dark stairs as fast as I could.

3.

A week earlier, during recess at Butler, a bee stung me for the second time that year. The previous sting had occurred a few months earlier and?after being rushed to the ER and put on an IV drip?I discovered I was deathly allergic. My parents and the doctors warned that if stung again I?d only have ten minutes to live. My parents gave Mr. Maxwell my newly prescribed bee-sting kit, and he kept it?a tiny red box of extremely hard plastic?in the bottom drawer of his desk. I felt safe knowing that if stung again, he?d save me.

When stung the second time I ran through the blur of black and white uniforms to our classroom, an alien place during recess. I showed Mr. Maxwell where I?d been stung, trying not to panic. Calmly, he took the red kit from his desk and instructed me to sit down. He scraped the stinger out with a key as my breathing relaxed. He took the tiny hypodermic needle, filled it with epinephrine, and administered it to my left arm. His other hand held my shoulder to steady me. His strength disarmed me.

As he tightened the tourniquet above the sting, he said, ?Gettin? a little heavy there, buddy. I gotta tell your mom and aunt to stop making all that fatty Mexican food.?

I smiled knowing that my family and Mexican food were things only he and I shared. None of his other students could understand our inside joke. I thanked him for saving my life and spent the rest of the afternoon waiting in the principal?s office for my mom to pick me up.

2.

Mr. Maxwell moved in with my aunt and uncle a few weeks before he became my fifth grade teacher. He was in his late twenties, had just moved to LA, and needed a cheap place near school. My aunt and uncle?s house, being less than a mile from Butler, made perfect logical sense. Neither they nor my parents thought that fraternizing with their son?s teacher on a personal level was a violation of an implicit authority code. Instead, they let him bleed into our lives.

My life became a paradox. On any given night, Mr. Maxwell and the other adults drank and gossiped over greasy homemade tacos. We?d all laugh, watch movies, and dance until us kids fell asleep and had to be packed into the family minivan. The next morning, when my family wasn?t around, he?d yell at me for not doing my homework.

The boundaries had all but dissolved and Mr. Maxwell began to know more about my family than any fifth-grade teacher ever should. He knew my mother reprimanded me when I ate too many enchiladas at Sunday dinner. He knew what I looked like splashing around with my cousins in their aboveground pool on hot days. He knew my grandmother watched Geraldo every afternoon and that my aunt listened nonstop to Gloria Estefan records.

Conversely, I knew more about him than any fifth-grader should ever know about his teacher. I overheard my aunt say that he slept naked in black sheets. I knew his vanity license plates spelled out ?no duh.? I knew his father was in the Coast Guard. I knew he didn?t want my aunt washing his underwear. And I knew he liked to listen to U2?s ?Drowning Man? and George Michael?s ?Father Figure? on Saturday mornings as he washed his car, bare-chested. I knew to not ask about the men that spent the night. I knew to ignore the yelling that came from downstairs when he was on the phone with his father.

1.

I officially met Mr. Maxwell when he hit me. I was six and in the first grade. He wouldn?t be my teacher for four more years. I wouldn?t find him on Facebook for twenty-three more.

I?d punched a girl in retaliation for her punching me, and the substitute teacher had sent me to the principal?s office. The principal, a whale with too much power over helpless children, yelled at me from behind a massive desk. To my right, Mr. Maxwell was carrying out another student?s punishment. I watched his angular face scrunch up and his lips curl with anger as he slammed a wooden paddle against the backside of a weeping boy.

?You?re next,? Principal Thayer hissed in my direction, pointing a finger to where Mr. Maxwell stood.

I walked over. ?I?m Mr. Maxwell,? he said. ?What?d you do?? He towered over me. The thick paddle, covered in signatures and pieces of tape, dangled from his slim fingers.

?I punched a girl,? I said. My hands were sweaty. I was so nervous I couldn?t look up at him.

?Touch your toes,? he said.

I bent over and closed my eyes. He stepped behind me and swung. Whoosh. The nerve endings in my butt ignited in white pain. I didn?t cry, and just as the hurt rushed down my child legs, it was gone.