My High School English Teacher Preyed on the Girls in My Class

Thanks for your support: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% off 💙 80% offBy our senior year, we knew we were surrounded by injustice. But we didn’t have the knowledge or the support to extract ourselves. We waited patiently for our promised power to arrive, never recognizing that our teachers and mentors labored hard to ensure we remained forever suppressed.This cycle doesn’t change, it just gets bigger and more difficult to perceive.Mr. Thornbush taught English. He strolled through the hallways with a big smile on his face, but something about him always felt off. He wore baggy clothing and jackets with patches over the elbows. He dressed in Earth tones of brown, gray and green.He loped along offering pleasantries to the other teachers. They’d laugh as they hurried by. Was he popular among his peers? It’s hard to say. Maybe they disliked him because he seemed more inclined to forge strong bonds with his students.Did they think he blurred the lines and got a little too close sometimes? Perhaps.Still, kindness was in short supply in our community, so those of us with aspirations to leave gravitated towards him.The guise of the affable teacher crumbled when an approach brought visible signs of irritation. I soon discovered that friendly face that he showed the world disappeared when he was alone and disinterested. That didn’t scare me, I’d grown up with that same expression of dismissal at home.My situation with Mr. Thornbush was unique. I needed him. Flawed or not he remained a step I could leverage into a launchpad. Not in the sense the school pressured me to perceive him, but in another way.My way.It didn’t matter that he was obviously a liar and a con. He’d been to college at least. He liked to brag about his time there to the class. He brought in his papers and told us stories about what he’d done to pass.That was knowledge I had to posses.On day one he promised that he would be that sort of mentor to us—to all of us. On day one in the afternoon he proved without question that this promise was a lie. He didn’t like to be cornered, even though in every other moment his body language screamed an invitation.It didn’t make sense to me until I observed how he got on with the girls. That’s when the charm came out. That’s when I understood.He liked to pull a desk around to face us and then he sat on it hunched over with his legs spread wide. He caressed the books he taught. He tried to start conversations, but nobody ever wanted to talk.I talked, but I didn’t provide the kind of conversation he wanted.He was only interested in innocent girls who might be dazzled by the fact that he had memorized a couple lines of poetry. He was interested in desperate children who had grown up surrounded by tractors and bales of hay who would become intoxicated by the promise of an ancient rhyme.What do ancient poets know about life and love and lust? What might they tell us?Mr. Thornbush’s schtick was the suggestion that he knew, that he’d be willing to tell. He could speak whispered words of love to children and they’d listen. It would all be allowed because he hid his seduction within the pages of a poem written hundreds of years ago.“What do you think the author meant? What do you think the author felt?”He waited for a girl to raise her hand and find her courage and share more of herself than was wise. Then he’d be there to encourage it. “Yes, yes, tell me more.”But the girls in my class did not read. There were just over a hundred of us in total. I’ve seen the trope in movies where girls are the readers, and I didn’t understand it until I left my town. That may be the norm, but it wasn’t my norm. We had brilliant girls in my class, our valedictorian was a girl. We had two exceptional mathematicians, a chemist, and a historian, but we didn’t have any readers.Except for me.After about three days of classes where Mr. Thornbush asked a question then spent the rest of the hour angry that none of us said anything, I raised my hand.At first, he appreciated the effort. A voice from the chorus inspires courage in others. But still the girls did not speak.The little sparkle of delight in his eye turned again to irritation. He didn’t want to sit, spread eagle on a desk, having conversations with me. He was looking for girls to impress. He lived for that moment.“Tell us English teacher! Tell us about love and these feelings we have. Guide us into womanhood with your gentle hand. We are new to the world and curious and full of passion that only you can understand.”That’s what he wanted.He didn’t want to waste his time talking to an eager, awkward, well-read seventeen year old boy who was already showing signs of not being impressed.What a strange thing it was to come to realizations about life, literature, and the world in that classroom.Mr. Thornbush was probably less than forty years old then. He was more or less pleasant looking, but only when compared to other teachers. There were a few in that school that barely held on to life. The older ones were from the era of black and white projector films and pocket protectors. They couldn’t have understood us if they tried, and most of them didn’t.They were people caught in time capsules of nostalgia fading into indifference. They barely acknowledged Mr. Thornbush when he passed them by.Our English teacher had read literature, but so had I. It became comical to watch as the girls took the class he presented at face value. They couldn’t read the subtext.It became more comical still when they began to approach me instead of him for clarification.“Walter, you seem to understand this, what does Mr. Thornbush expect of us?”That was the second time in my life when I found myself the target of jealousy from an adult man. The first time had been with my dad, who resented the affection shown to me by my girlfriend.I think he felt that should more appropriately be given to him.After all, his favorite thing to say was, “Look at all the things that I give.”At the end of the lectures, Mr. Thornbush retreated to his desk in the corner and glowered. The girls came to me. I wasn’t particularly handsome or popular, but I liked the attention, and everybody knew I liked to read.So, even though it was natural that I’d have that moment in the larger scheme of things, Mr. Thornbush seethed. It made me somehow feel unclean.But again, I’d grown up that way. Feeling unclean wasn’t a deterrent. Instead, it was something I’d sort of accepted I’d never be able to escape.As the weeks went by, an unspoken battle raged between me and Mr. Thornbush. It was almost comical. He’d throw a wink and a smile and a flirtatious turn of the head to a girl, and she’d diligently take down notes not recognizing the advances for what they were.Within earshot of Mr. Thornbush they’d ask, “Walter, what did he mean?”I wouldn’t say, but I’d hint at the meaning so that only Mr. Thornbush knew I understood. I’m not sure that I meant it as a warning. I just did things based on instinct then. I spoke the words that came into my head and only found out later that they were true in more ways than I ever knew.You can cut the legs out from beneath a man once you’ve seen the part of him he tries to keep hidden from the world. You can cut him right down to nothing, but you have to be careful. A threatened man becomes desperate and there’s nothing they won’t do.I’d learned that lesson in books, but I hadn’t walked through it yet. The threat lingers and grows in the atmosphere like hate or passion or a gathering storm.Later in the year, Mr. Thornbush became frustrated. “Do you think that I don’t want to be like Walter, and come to school in flannel shirts every day?”“Actually, it’s a wool shirt,” I said.His eyes flashed.Back then I wore these oversized wool shirts. I had many different patterns.A few weeks later, he gave a book to the girl who had decided to be my girlfriend. I had several girlfriends in high school, and it was always their decision. They picked me, I was too shy to pursue anyone.He hadn’t shown much interest in her until he found out that she was involved with me. She told me this.“It was weird,” Danielle said. “He came shuffling over with his big smile and he gave me a book. He told me that he thought I should read this book, that I’d really, really like it. But he held the book weird. He had one hand underneath it like a server offering you a tray. Just before giving it to me, he placed his other hand on top of it in a caress.”Her face scrunched up in confusion. “When I got home I flipped through the pages and I found this,” she held up a piece of paper. I took it and looked at it.It was a page from a calendar. It listed all the days Mr. Thornbush’s wife would be out of town.“I guess I should be flattered,” Danielle said. “Do you think he wants me to come over?”“I think he feels he’s entitled to you. Obviously he wonders why you’re wasting your time with me when he’s so much better.”“Ew.”We made it to the end of the year. Mr. Thornbush became increasingly frustrated, but he was in the wrong and he was a coward. His opinion meant increasingly less as we went on.I extracted from him the knowledge that I needed. You see, he couldn’t impress the girls unless he actually provided something of merit. He did teach us how to write a research paper. He taught us MLA format.Not long ago, I was looking through my personal library and I found the MLA handbook I’d stolen from his shelves.That’s the kind of student I was. That was my level of defiance. I stole things like the school’s MLA handbook.I showed that to my daughter and she laughed.A few years later, I was at the library at my college when Mr. Thornbush showed up with his class. He’d done the same thing back when I was in school. We’d taken a field trip to the library and Mr. Thornbush had allowed us to check out books with his card.This time his wife had come along, so there was a different energy in the room. She stood beside him observing. I found her rather impressive. She recognized the subtext and I found that compelling. Maybe she’d learned she couldn’t trust him to be alone.A girl in the class recognized me. Her name was Katie, and she was the younger sister of one of the girls in my class. She came over, “Oh my goodness, look who it is! Come and say hello to Mr. Thornbush.”I didn’t want to, but she took me by the elbow and that was impossible to resist.Mr. Thornbush wasn’t happy to see me. He looked smaller now. Maybe I’d grown taller, or maybe he’d just been broken. His wife stood beside him and smirked.“Look,” Katie said giggling, “you’re wearing the same coat.”I looked down at Mr. Thornbush. It was true. It was a dark green jacket from L.L. Bean. It had a lot of pockets, but no patches over the elbows. Mr. Thornbush shuffled. My impression was that he deeply desired to dress like the kids in his classes, but not like me.“You guys are twins,” Katie said. Then she reached up to brush her fingers through my hair and said, “I guess this isn’t going to last too long.”I smiled. I found her friendly gesture to be pleasant.Mr. Thornbush’s wife’s eyes got wide and she laughed. The laugh was pleasant, but I heard the subtext of pure mockery. It was an “I told you so” in the form of a laugh.Mr. Thornbush said nothing, he seethed. He shuffled awkwardly in my coat. Well, hadn’t he said before that he wanted to be like me?There wasn’t a lot left to say. “I should let you guys get back to your research.”Katie grinned, then she gave me a big hug in front of jealous Mr. Thornbush and his wife. “Watch out for him,” I whispered.“I know,” Katie said. As she pulled away, she gave me a sly wink that made me think she knew Mr. Thornbush to be a joke. I realized that she was the reader in that class. She’d picked up on even more of the subtext than me.I took my leave.There are many men like Mr. Thornbush out there. There are many kids who help each other get past them.We shouldn’t have to.Thanks for your support: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% off 💙 80% offI'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. 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