So You Like that Girl in Your English Class

Maybe it’s the one who blushes when she reads her poem out loud. Or maybe it’s the one who talks about Prufrock like she actually understands what it’s all about. Or maybe, it’s the one who sits towards the back, who doesn’t usually get called on but when she does, says something that makes you go: wow. She says something beautiful, and – with the sinking that feels like soaring – you realize she is beautiful. And all of a sudden, you’re gone. You’re flying – riding the air like a merry-go-round, round and round and round again.

Your English teacher gives you a quiz and you bomb it, because who the hell cares about the nine circles of Inferno when you’re in Paradiso anyway? Then right after class, you march up like a real man and ask her out – ha! You wish! Who do you think you are, Ryan Reynolds? What really happens is that you struggle with your bags, almost forget your phone, and walk out the door so embarrassed you avoid eye contact. Briefly, you feel like a character out of a James Joyce novel, a lonely man trapped in cowardice and paralysis. Maybe you feel deflated, lonely, laconic.

But all that angst dissipates when you remember her eyes.

The next class, you come in with the cover-to-cover knowledge of your reading —the only reading assignment you ever did. You hope to impress her with your wit and intellect. While you regale your classroom with your reframing of Hamlet through a Freudian lens, your eyes wander to hers, on the off-chance she’s looking back. And she is. With every ounce of your being, you try to keep your composure, but despite all your efforts you stumble only ever-so-slightly, just enough for her to notice and no one else. Oh God! In that moment, you feel like Aeneas, so enraptured in devotion that you’d travel across the Mediterranean to found Rome for her.

Lying in bed, you stare at the ceiling and think of what you’d say to her when the two of you actually talk.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow, I shalt be thinking of thee.” A little creepy.

“Faithful woman, you are as precious to me as Xanadu.” How do you even pronounce Xanadu?

“Hey girl, give me that flashing green light and I’ll be at your house in seconds.” Too cheeky?

“I’ll be your Angel if you’ll be my Tess.” But Tess died, and Angel never got to marry her. Not the best reference.

Then you actually run into her on the way out of English class, and all of your hand-crafted pickup lines fail like Gatsby’s plans. You choke so hard in the heat of the moment that the best thing you can muster is “Hey… I thought what you said in class today was really nice.”

She didn’t say anything in class.

But just as you want to hurl yourself off a rye field, Holden Caulfield be damned, she laughs anyway and lets you apologize profusely for yourself. Her laugh chimes like the silken verse of John Donne, made all the richer by the faint strawberry flavor of shampoo in her long locks of blond hair (or short crops of black hair. I don’t judge.) You want to spit out every verse of The Daffodils and replace every instance of “Daffodil” with her name – but all you say, as you come to that dreaded fork in the road, is “see you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow is peer review day. Everyone picks a partner. The bros pick the bros. The nerds pick the nerds. And you are paralyzed, because your typical partner is sitting next to you with his droopy arm hanging over your shoulder holding an essay for you to read and for him to not care. You cock your head slowly towards him. You summon from your soul righteous anger incarnate. And you cry uncannily, with all the primal vengeance repressed in your heart, “NEVERMOOOOOORE!” And you pick up your desk and throw it out with cinematic irreverence while you charge across the classroom towards your fair maiden on a white steed (or black steed. I don’t judge).

…ooooor, you meekly ask her if she has a partner to read her essay. She smiles. No. You fail to even hear that “no” because her smile bedazzles you with a grace that blows even your great expectations out of the water. You blush furiously, having to ask her yet again about her relationship status, I mean, essay partnership status. Still smiling, she hands you her paper.

It’s perfect. It’s completely perfect. Even the margins exude perfection, and they’re exactly the same as everyone else’s. You read her thesis once, then again. Each time it grows more brilliant. You want to flatter her with vivacious compliments ranging from “the next Charles Dickens” to “I’d worship any religious text you write.” But you end up just being the same old boring editor always you were… with one exception. At the end, you write: “Good work. :)” Smiley-face. You leave a smiley-face. Did she get that smiley-face? Did she get what that smiley-face means?

Slowly, you build up the courage to run into her again after class. You ask her about her essay, her inspiration for it. She lets you talk to her. About writing. About life. Her voice floods your imagination with thoughts of a story unfinished, the rest to be written by you and her – together. That story will never end, it will simply cycle back to the beginning like Finnegan’s Wake, and you will relive those moments over and over again until God Himself takes you up in His Rapture.

You’ve fallen for her. And you realize that God deigns certain times and certain places for you to meet your destiny. Maybe this is that time. Maybe she really is the one. But there’s only one way to find out.

You ask her about coffee. And she asks, “What about?” And you hesitate, but with the courage of Beowulf charging into Grendel’s den, you tell her plainly, “Well I wanted to ask you…” hoping that she would finish your sentence.

Hoping that she would give this story a happy ending.