To sir, with love?

The last thing my professor taught me was that he was only human.

By Susanna Stromberg

Mar 13, 1999 | "I fell in love with all of you." A candle in the middle of the table illuminated Professor Frankel's face, carving it with shadows. Closing his beady eyes behind thick lenses, he went on in a trancelike voice: "I feel like I know you better than you know yourselves. By reading your writing, I've stepped into the most intimate moments of your lives." His eyes opened. "I've walked around inside your minds."

My former classmates Astrid and Esther wore implacable expressions and stared off into the middle distance like wax sculptures. Professor Frankel -- whose name I have changed -- had planned a reunion for his favorite students and I had come to the restaurant hoping the other two would lend an air of normalcy to the evening. But I felt as uncomfortable with them present as I would have had Frankel and I been dining solo.

"Now, I am going outside to smoke," Professor Frankel said, rising from the table trailing his linen napkin, walking with the shuffle of an old man. "He said that to me before," Astrid said, nonchalantly. "I just looked at him like he'd told me it was raining. I like to make him squirm." To think: Only a year before, when I was senior in college, I was still seeking out Frankel's time and attention. Now the thought of being alone with him made me shudder. But since he was my favorite teacher -- a prominent, talented writer who bathed me in the strange, intimate flattery of being a favorite student -- it was difficult to overestimate his impact on my life. Other than my parents, he was the only adult who had ever taken a strong interest in me. And I credited him with helping me get through college. But now with his words of "love" and "walking around inside my mind" he'd brought the unpleasant truth of our relationship crashing into my consciousness. Behind all our discussions about language and literature, we had always, quietly, been speaking about something more unruly -- that precarious place where fact and fiction blur, where teacher and student meet and fall, somehow, in love.

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"This is a class about reporting the truth, Stromberg. You've given me lies," Frankel bellowed from the back of the classroom in the first real class of my freshman year of college. The room was deadly silent; all my classmates stared at me. Moments earlier he had showered me with praise. "This is wonderful writing. Wonderful! Now, read it in your father's voice." He'd jumped from his chair and raised his right arm, pointing at me like a conductor poised for the finale of a movement.

"P-professor," I stuttered. "Just do it! You've heard your father speak a thousand times, just mimic him. Don't be nervous. If you can write something this good, this evocative, then you can read it with equal fervor." I hadn't actually considered the possibility that Professor Frankel might believe my story, or that I'd have to read it in front of the class. I had become enraptured by his brilliant performance at the introductory class. He'd talked about storytelling, writing about lives. He gave his potential students an assignment: Write a story about our families in 24 hours.

My passion for getting into his class had greatly outweighed any inspiration I felt to write about my family. We were normal. We had no stories. Finally, desperately, I eked out a story about imaginary parents. Whether or not they were real seemed irrelevant to me.

Now, sitting in front of the class, I tried to imagine what my overall-clad, balding, beer-drinking, trailer-park dwelling imaginary father would sound like. But this depiction was so far from the truth that my mind went blank. "This isn't really about my father," I stammered. "I made this up. I wasn't trying to deceive you. I just wanted to get into this class." Professor Frankel's eyes widened and his Einstein-like hair seemed to stand on end. "This is the worst thing that any of you can ever do!" he yelled. "I should kick you out of my class for these lies." His voice trailed off. The class waited for him to finish. "This is a class about reporting the truth," he hissed, pounding the table. "The truth! Class dismissed."

Next Page: His peculiar revenge

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