3. Below The Waves
I finally made it onto campus at ten to ten. With a fast stride I was in the building where I was scheduled to lecture in five minutes and in the class with a minute to spare. There were about fifteen of them already sitting down, doodling on notepads, thumbing texts for the course or chatting with their neighbours. No one seemed that expectant, but maybe I was projecting. I put my holdall on the table at the front and cleared my throat as a sign that we were about to start. With a hopeful grunt I reached down into my bag to retrieve the subject of today’s lecture. I closed my eyes, offered a silent prayer and pulled the video from the depths of my shoulder bag. My heart pounding, I saw the front cover and a shard of ice pierced it stop. How was I going to construct an undergraduate literature class from watching The Poseidon Adventure? If only it could have been something literary like Tess or The Grapes of Wrath or Moby Dick. Or something culturally important like Citizen Kane, or even High Noon or The African Queen. Or something from my complete collection of Ealing comedies – two hours prattling on about The Lavender Hill Mob or The Titchfield Thunderbolt would’ve been a doddle. No, it had to be the fucking Poseidon Adventure, one hundred minutes of prime turkey, a seventies disaster movie every which way. Why didn’t I just take thirty seconds and give it some thought? Why didn’t I lucky dip down Jane’s end of the shelf? She was bound to have something artistic and relevant. I hadn’t even watched it all the way through, my memories of its worth resting on the number of times it turned up as the Sunday afternoon matinee on ITV.

The students were starting to look at me now, I felt small, pressurised, the great bighead who was about to blubber, collapse in a heap of stupidity. Farouk, the clever-clever Iranian chap was looking pitilessly over the top of his Calvin Klein bottle-tops, expecting me to falter. Tim Ming, the Singaporean engineering major here only on sufferance, designing bridges in his workbook instead of taking notes. The De Angelis twins were also giving me the beady eye, all four of them to be precise, and even the supportive looks I normally received from the shy, but possibly quite attractive redhead who always sat at the front, whatsername, Anelise Gugler, were somehow accusatory. I continually lived in terror of being reported to the faculty for being shit at lecturing and this might be their moment to shiv me. If they ganged up on me I was on my way out. No question. The sweat was now pouring from my face and splashing on my blue and white striped shirt. I had to say something.

“Can I have your attention class? Please? I thought it might be useful today, as part of the programme that I set out at the start of the semester to take a break from literature and set-up a juxtaposition with an item of contemporary culture.” This was greeted by silence, which I took to be a good thing. “This is a movie that had a seminal influence on film-making in the early seventies and, to an extraordinary extent, produced an uncanny reflection of the times in which it was made.”

The room was respectfully silent, not even a hint that they thought I was bullshitting for my life. I continued.

“So, in terms of film, per se, Poseidon ushered in the era of disaster, bringing us suspenseful action movies with all-star casts. This soon resulted in the production of similar movies like Towering Inferno and Earthquake, where physical disasters occur (I could mention contemporaneous movies like Jaws and The Swarm at this point, but it is my contention that these are disasters movies where humans are attacked, rather than engulfed or overwhelmed). Anyway, back to Poseidon. The use of a boat as the set and perhaps the main character in the movie was revolutionary at the time and has since had influence on more contemporary movies like Speed 2 and, of course, Titanic where we come full circle. There is also, er, the literary and classical angle. Poseidon as the sea-god in Greek mythology, conforms to the notion that the gods play with humans for their sport, reflecting the way in which the sea swallows up the ship, the crew and the passengers as they presume to master it. Any questions so far?”

No one should have spoken. It would have taken some kind of genius to decipher my lecture. I thought I was in the clear. Then, ever so slowly, from the front row a hand began to point skywards. Uber-geek, Chase Crossley, cleared his throat and meekly delivered the academic equivalent of a right hook.

“But Mr Ramage, I can’t see how this movie has anything literary in it at all!”

My heart sank quicker than, well, a cruise liner hit by a freak wave. I needed to think fast, summoning a form of wordplay that could save my face and put him in his place. After a couple of seconds I started a stream of consciousness destination unknown.

“Well, that maybe in your opinion Chase. However, this film has both tragic and comic sequences, redolent of a work of a literature. It has strong, engaging characters, a twisting and suspenseful narrative and an unexpected denouement. There is also an undercurrent with antecedents from within the literary canon. Dickens, Zola, Hardy, and … all the others. There’s a linear narrative overdrive to the movie, which has its basis in nineteenth centre literature. It’s certainly pre-modernist, nothing like Conrad, who was also, of course, a naval man. That’s not forgetting the classical antecedents as mentioned earlier.”

“What about the, quote “uncanny reflection of the times”, sir?” Crossley asked. He was either being ironic or simply earnest, from behind his rimless glasses and late-flowering acne. As I sweated and bluffed though it seemed mostly irony.

“Well, it was, er released,” I stared desperately at the box cover for help, but there was none so I plunged on, “around the time of Nixon’s re-election, as the Watergate storm was about to deluge.” I didn’t know if that was a verb, but I was drowning. Not unlike Shelley Winters except I wasn’t wearing a tent. Then, an inspiration.

“You might even say,” I continued, now smiling with relief at having found an insight, “the Poseidon itself is the Ship of State, in this case the United States. Cruising in open sea, its passengers are partying on board – in the film because it’s New Year – while all around an unusual storm is gathering. The storm hits and the ship is unable to cope and flips over. The merriment ends and the passengers – or Americans – are thrown all over the place. It is then time for the long, arduous climb from what is now the bottom of the upturned ship up through to the top, which used to be the bowels, and freedom. One group follows one of the remaining ship’s officers trying to use what could be seen as an officially sanctioned route. They fail. The rest – the main protagonists – follow a totally unorthodox route and leader. They succeed. This might even be seen as an allegory for America in that era – the end of the Vietnam War, high inflation, unemployment, the freeing in social mores, disco. More commonly termed the seventies.”

I felt triumphant. I cast my around eye around the class. Some nodding. Good. A few still furiously writing in their notebooks. Excellent. A couple at the back looking blank, that was to be expected. I had gotten away with it.

“Excuse me, sir,” a voice said, followed by a raised hand. “But what has this got to do with literature?” My heart sank Titanically. That did it. There was only one solution. Throw the class a bone of litcrit babble, ask them a question and get them to do the work.

“Well thank you Chase, I was about to conclude by saying that I hope you find this is a filmic text that yields to ideologically congruous investigation. Now, can anyone tell the class some more about President Nixon and the Watergate scandal? Karen?” Karen Suhail wasn’t the brightest of my students but she was the most talkative and I staked getting out of this with some dignity on her verbosity. Ten minutes later everyone knew more than they would ever need to know about Watergate and I’d recovered my composure. I pressed play on the VCR and sat down.

Ninety or so minutes later, including some desultory questions, class was over. I’d done it, rounding off with a joke of sorts (“one thing that doesn’t make sense: the ship flips because of a lack of ballast but, hey, Shelley Winters is on board?”) It made me smile anyway, though this was partly due to relief. Even young Chase was breaking out the happy-face. Maybe, I thought, and despite the lashed together nature of my lecture, I managed to touch someone today, to impart some of my hard-won knowledge to the callow rabble. My self-congratulations, however, lasted mere seconds. Anelise Gugler came into view as she approached young Mr Crossley to plant an extravagant kiss on his smooth, androidal face. He put his right arm round her waist with the hand dangling over her tan-shorted and shapely backside and said something that made them both rock back with laughter. I couldn’t help thinking it was about me, though now the lecture was over and they had no interest in the person at the front of the class, this was entirely wishful. I could feel my presence rapidly diminishing, from centre of attention to peripheral speck. This was awful, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them as they departed up the steps to the back of the lecture theatre, holding hands while taking turns to whisper confidentially in each other’s ear.

Dispirited, I picked up my things and went for a trudge round campus before going to the faculty office to see if I could find anyone who new anything about Jane’s whereabouts. There was news. One of the administrators said that Jane had booked ahead and taken a fortnight’s unpaid vacation, starting yesterday. I was already sad but this made me feel like retching. Any suggestion that her actions were spontaneous was false: she’d booked the leave at least a week before. She knew in advance she was leaving and she was certainly holding to her plan. No last minute calls in to check certain grade papers were in or to see if the urgently desired copy of the latest Critical Theory showstopper was in. Nothing. Nada. Zippo. What a fucking calculating bitch, I thought, as I clutched my books and papers close to my chest and considered hyperventilating.

Bonnie, the administrator, started calling the medical centre but through my stuttering and uncontrollable breaths I managed to convince her I would pull out of it soon. And so it proved. I reassured her I would go straight to see a medic, however, I ended up wandering into the café for lunch. I wasn’t hungry, but it was lunchtime and I was on auto-pilot. I bought a three-bean salad and sat at a table for two on my lonesome, looking down into the bowl like I was reading my fortune in the leftover alfalfa. I gnawed on some carrot and looked up, my eyes wandering vacantly around the hubbub of preppiness searching for a familiar and friendly face. No one there was a friend, not one person knew me, could come over and say “hi”, put an arm round me or ask what the hell was wrong. I got bored with the food and left the cafeteria, on my way to nowhere particular. Eventually, I found myself back at Jane’s office. I thought a casual nose around might be in order. No one and nothing there, so I checked out her pigeonhole. A hand-written note from Jane (and how my stomach flipped out when I saw her handwriting, the hand that held so many remembrances of love notes and poems gone). This however, was simply re-iterating her intention to be on leave for a fortnight, requesting urgent notes to be sent to someone else on the faculty, the rest to be left on her desk. I checked this for anything incriminating, but found nothing that I could even begin to twist into proof-positive of illicit liaisons, recondite meaning, double-bluffing subterfuge or any other paranoidal imagining. Bereft of clues, there was nothing left but to brave the return bus and go home.

I got off a couple of blocks early to do the weekly shop at Vons without remembering my change of circumstances. Yes, this was the day we got groceries, but no, I didn’t have a car to transport them and I couldn’t be certain what to get. Half as much as normal? Three-quarters the usual shop (I would, of course, continue to eat for one and a bit in the absence of my thinner half, or maybe thinner quarter, in food mass terms)? Whatever the amount it would soon be time to economise, time to start rooting around in the freezer box for leftover takeouts and unappetising ready-mades, usually the ones containing reconstituted meat and uniformly packed fish-flesh.

At the checkout I piled the goods on the conveyor belt and took a good look. They somehow resonated single male: a six pack of Dos Equis; a dozen bagels; coffee beans; two dozen eggs; a pack of full-strength Cheerios (none of that diet rubbish), six jelly doughnuts; a mucho-bag of nachos; a variety of complete microwaveable dinners; and several canned items. I skipped the fresh fruit and veg section, as that was Jane food, too painful to go there, let alone eat. Besides, so much of the produce was big and shiny, almost beautiful, but it always seemed tasteless to me. Looking around I started wishing it had been singles’ night tonight so I could see what they got up to – making this a scouting mission. But no, just real shoppers with no signs of any caring women willing to take me back to their place for a proper feed.

“Hi, how are you?”

That startled me. I was at the checkout hadn’t expected to strike up a conversation with - Clara, I could tell by her name badge – sitting tall on her stool. The instinct to respond positively overwhelmed me, though it was unlikely to be any more than an empty-eyed, retail greeting.

“Fine, fine.” Pause. “And you?”

“Yeah great,” she beamed, her face, tanned, rounded but, sadly for my desperate libido, on the sunset side of fifty. “Looking forward to getting off. Paper or plastic?”

“Oh really. Paper, of course.” She shoved a couple of bags down towards me. I winced, not because there was no helper present, but in memory of a recent “bagging” row with Jane (“paper is just so impractical when you get handles to hold plastic”).

“Yeah, have to go to veterinary surgeon,” she continued, guiding the cereal through the OCR.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s my hamster. Herve.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, it’s really sad. He’s got cancer.”

“Oh.” Clara had my attention now. A hamster with cancer? Fuck. The words floated across my mind and I was overcome. Did she really say that? I clamped both hands across the front of my mouth, to look like I was expressing sadness, or concern but really I was trying to force my lips together to stop from bursting apart to let out a roar of laughter.

“Yeah. We went there a couple of days ago - that’s when we got the diagnosis. It’s in his chest, but I’m not sure if it’s treatable.”

“Can they give chemotherapy?” I am now finding it impossible to keep a straight face. I take things from the down-ramp on the checkout and put them into the bag without looking at her.

“Well, I’m not sure. It’s his age. He’s two.”

“Is that bad?”

“Yeah, hamster’s pretty much don’t live longer than that. He’s an old man really.”

“Oh really.”

“Yeah, and I was told that he wouldn’t survive treatment anyway. It’d just be too much for him.”

“Oh.”

“I couldn’t bear to have him, y’know,” (in hushed tones) “put to sleep.”

“No, I guess not.” I put my hands back over my lips. This is too cruel.

“I just need something to ease the pain. So he can die naturally, with dignity.”

“I see that.” While I’m giving her my chargecard, another shopper comes to my line but Clara shoos them away. Waiting for the till receipt I feel compelled to say something.
“I know someone who used to have a hamster. It was always running frantically around in its cage.”

“Oh poor thing! How was the hamster kept?”

“I don’t know, in a kind of annexe to the house, I think.”

“You mean outside? That’s so cruel. People are just so cruel. You know what all that running around signifies don’t you? I’ll tell you: stress. The poor thing was suffering stress. Did they have children? That’s even worse! People really need to go on a course before they should be allowed to own a hamster. It’s shocking, truly shocking.”

“Maybe it was stress”, I said, “maybe all that running around the same wheel everyday or maybe it was…”

“The stress of not being loved,” she interrupted. For a few seconds it felt as though my heart had seizing and my spirit was departing my body, escaping Vons and accelerating vertically towards nothingness, leaving a mass of uncoordinated cells below.

“That’s thirty-three seventy, sir,” Clara said with emphasis, leaving me guessing that she had asked me to pay several times without my senseless brain getting the message. I apologised before pulling out my pocket book and searching clumsily for a card. My hand was trembling.

“You must have a lot on your mind,” she continued as she handed back my charge card, “so promise me you will have a safe journey home and a nice evening? Oh, and one other thing sir. Promise me, that you will tell those friends of yours to change their ways – you should never look after a hamster that way.”

I made my promises and left.

I emerged from the store to find three-quarters of the voluminous sun sunk behind Wells Fargo across the street. Despite the encroaching gloom, I couldn’t face another bus ride and so I made a run for it with my two bags of groceries clutched close to my chest for protection, like they were bullet-proof. I put my head down and walked with haste the three blocks north and one east back to our small cramped bungalow (sorry, my small cramped bungalow, and that I probably couldn't afford the rent on any more). Skint and depressed, I shouldn’t have eating but an hour later I was blowing out my stomach wall with a six-egg helping of Huevos Rancheros, all laid out on a well-sprung bed of refried beans and rice, sluiced through with a couple of cocktail glasses of Peach Margarita. These and the six attendant Dos Equis took me through, from bluster, to self-pity, to longing, to recrimination, until, at last, I was too lagged to give a damn about anything. After all, that was where I wanted to be, just drifting away.