My Troubles With Time
BY
BENSON LEE GRAYSON
Contents
Chapter I
I
, Maynard Snodgrass, was a failure. Not just a failure. A total, complete, utter failure. The logic of this conclusion was unassailable. I had no family. I had no friends. I had no sex. At the age of 33, I was still a virgin.
Part of the problem was my appearance. Every time I saw my reflection in the mirror, I shuddered. It was not that I was ugly. That might have been tolerable. Really ugly individuals can look striking. Often, people look at them and expect the worst. When they find some redeeming trait they are usually surprised and pleased.
I fell just a trifle short of being ugly. My mousy colored hair was thin, but I was not bald. While my features were all regular enough, they somehow seemed oddly mismatched. The thick, horned rimmed glasses I wore seemed to emphasize my nondescript face. I was slightly under average height. With my round shoulders and large rear, I resembled what one obnoxious classmate had dubbed me, “Pear Shape.” Although I was not exactly timid looking, my wan smile and round face lacked any vestige of character or personality. Many fat people look cheerful. I just looked eminently forgettable.
From the way I was treated by everyone I encountered, my personality must have matched my appearance. When I was younger and still went to parties, I was as popular as an insurance salesman. At the university and later on, when I attended scholarly conferences, I was ignored. People looked right through me, as though I was not there.
If someone could avoid speaking with me, he did so. If people could not escape, they mumbled a few polite phrases and then left, giving some lame excuse. I was seldom introduced. When I was, those present struggled to recall my name.
It is true that I was smart. In school I usually received good grades. In objective tests, when the examination papers were graded by an instructor according to a master list of correct answers, I always received an A. Unfortunately, whenever a teacher had enough leeway to allow his negative feelings toward me to come into play, I got a C at best.
Physics was the only subject in which objective tests were the norm. It was thus the only one in which I could excel. I therefore choose it as my major in college. It turned out to be an excellent choice. I rapidly developed an affinity for physics and achieved an unremitting succession of A’s. Despite the concerns it aroused among my fellow students and my instructors, I won several scholarships and financial prizes, which enabled me to continue my studies in physics in graduate school, eventually receiving my Ph.D.
The intelligence tests that I gave myself in an effort to bolster my self-image indicated that my success in physics was no fluke. In plain fact, they showed me to be a genius. For a brief moment this cheered me. But not for long. How could I take comfort from my intelligence when everyone else seemed determined to ignore it? No matter how brilliant my contribution, my associates were blind to it. None of them ever remembered that I had been the person who gave them the suggestions they adopted.
I was a failure professionally. After six years as an assistant professor in the Physics department of Miles Standish University, I had still not received tenure. Most members of the faculty were awarded tenure after five years. Two members of the Physics Department had received it after four.
I consoled myself after Gertrude Peabody received tenure one year early. She was a female. It was no secret that the university was under pressure to appoint more women to tenured positions.
Kim Han Chu had also received tenure after four years. His English was so poor that his classes could not understand him. Every time he lectured, his students would come to my office to ask me to me to explain what he was driving at. Still, Kim had been born and educated in South Korea. I consoled myself that he, too, had benefited from the demands for faculty diversity.
Endicott, however, was a different story. Like me, he was a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. We had joined the Physics Department at the same time. True, he was handsome, played bridge and golf well, and had a young, beautiful blond wife. But he had only one scholarly paper to his credit in his five years at the university to my three. He was not as good a teacher as I am. And I had been asked to teach four courses each term to his three.
When I was told that he had been given tenure after five years, and I had not, I at first refused to believe it. Eventually, after the news had sunk in, I became so angry that I overcome my shyness and rushed to see Dr. Bolton, the chairman of the Physics department
Dr. Bolton was in his late forties. He was tall, heavyset and completely bald. Somehow, his appearance did not work against him. He seemed the very personification of wisdom and assurance. On reflection, I think that this was largely due to Bolton’s voice. It was deep and sonorous. When he spoke, one had the impression that God, Himself, had revealed the ultimate truth.
After being kept waiting for an hour, his secretary told me in a cold voice that I could see him.
I entered Bolton’s plush, paneled office, to find him seated behind his large, mahogany desk. His eyes were closed, as though he was meditating. When after a few seconds he opened them, he looked at me and frowned. The expression of annoyance on his face was one he might have directed if bothered by a pesky mosquito.
“Yes?” he said. As usual, he did not seem to recall my name. He, at least, should have remembered it. During my years at Miles Standish, I had written two papers for him to publish in scholarly journals.
This was not an uncommon practice for senior professors. Usually when they did so, they listed the real author of the paper as a contributor. Bolton, however, had omitted any mention of my contribution. Listing himself as the sole author of the papers, he then proceeded to take full credit when the concepts I had worked out were subsequently hailed in physics journals as important discoveries.
Meekly, I asked him why I had not received tenure. He was silent for a moment, and then he looked at me with contempt.
“Come now,” he said, his tone similar to what God might have used if Adam had the poor judgment to protest his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. “At Standish we have an obligation for service. We do not appreciate unbridled ambition.”
I found myself nodding apologetically and humbly retreated from his office. Only later, upon reflection, did I realize that Bolton had not answered my question.
Most of all, what made me realize I was a failure was my total lack of success with women. It was not just that I was still a virgin. I had not even had a date in three years.
The last time I had even kissed a girl had been in my first year of high school. I had taken advantage of mistletoe hanging over the entrance at a Christmas party to kiss Mildred Perkins, the plainest girl in the freshman class. Mildred, I thought, of any girl would not object to my kissing her.
I was wrong. She had stared coldly at me, as though she had stepped in something unpleasant on the sidewalk. Then she had slapped me hard across the face before going off to tell her friends about the incident.
My face stung where she had slapped me. Even worse, everyone in the room seemed to be aware of what had happened and was staring at me. Mildred and her friends stood in a group giggling and pointing at me. Crestfallen, I slunk out of the party, acutely aware of the laughter behind me.
My love life had not improved in the intervening years. In college, desperate over the fact that I was still a virgin, I had gone off with two of my classmates who were in a similar predicament to lose our virginity. They were reluctant to take me along with them, but by offering to tutor them in physics without charge, I had prevailed upon them to let me tag along. Emboldened by each other’s company, we had made an appointment with Rhonda, a prostitute regularly employed for that purpose by the campus fraternities.
We met Rhonda at the commercial hotel downtown where she rented one of the rooms by the hour. In the lobby we matched pennies to determine the order in which we would enter her room. Naturally, I ended up last.
I waited outside as first one and then the other of my two companions entered the room. Each emerged after fifteen minutes, a triumphant grin on his face. Now it was my turn.
Expectantly, I entered the room. I found Rhonda on the bed naked, eating a candy bar.
“All right,” she said, putting down her half-eaten candy bar and belching loudly. “Let’s get on with it.”
In a flash, my ardor evaporated. I stripped in mute obedience to her command. I climbed on to the bed and found to my embarrassment that I could not produce an erection.
To her credit, Rhonda did her best to encourage me. To no avail. After a few minutes she gave up and burst into laughter. “Maybe we better wait till you grow up, lover boy,” she said with a nasty grin. Shamefacedly, I dressed and left the room, consoling myself with the fact that I had at least saved myself her five-dollar fee.
In this expectation, too, I was mistaken. As we left the hotel, I attempted to cover up my failure by lying to my companions about how much I had enjoyed the experience.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” one of them told me. “Now how about paying me the five dollars I gave Rhonda for you? She didn’t have any change for the ten dollar bill I gave her.”
I could think of no escape. I could not admit I had been unable to perform. Mutely, I handed over the five dollars he demanded.
My subsequent love life was no better. If I went to a singles bar widely known as one at which no man had ever failed to secure a date for the evening, I would invariably be the one person unsuccessful. I would end up sitting alone at the bar, watching everyone else there happily coupled for the evening.
I tried every ploy I could think of. Usually, I would select as the target for my advances some young woman sitting alone at the bar. Sometimes, the encounter would start off well. The target of my attentions would seem pleased by my interest, accept my offer to buy her a drink, and smile at my attempts at humor.
Just as I thought I had scored, a man would saunter up and engage her in conversation. She would turn toward him, smile warmly at his remarks and gulp down the drink I had bought her. Always, usually without even a goodbye, the two of them would go off, leaving me alone and forlorn.
As frustrating as these experiences were, they were the highlights of my love life. More often, my efforts to strike up a conversation failed at the start. The women usually ignored me. On one memorable night, a lovely blond sitting alone at the bar had taken one look at me, picked up a bowel of pretzels near her, and emptied the contents on my head to the delight of the other patrons.
Even my cat despised me. My colleague, Dr. Peabody, had presented me with Princess, a large white cat with unpleasant fur and a disposition to match. Peabody had arrived at my doorstep one evening at dusk, handing me a closed cardboard box. From within came loud, angry noises. The cat, she told me, was a most affectionate feline, adding pointedly that I obviously could use the company.
Acquiring a cat was the last thing I wanted. However, as a tenured member of the Physics department, Dr. Peabody could veto my receiving tenure, if she chose. I realized it would be foolish for me to reject her gift of the cat. Moreover, in my naiveté, I considered her delivery of the cat to be a gesture of misplaced kindness.
I had accepted Princess without argument, thanked Dr. Peabody, and watched her go off happily. Only later did it occur to me that Peabody had gifted me with Princess to avoid having to drive out to the animal shelter to rid herself of the beast.
I quickly discovered that Princess was anything but affectionate. It was not just that she scratched me when I tried to clip her nails or when I tried to stop her from ripping the upholstery on the furniture. She also made it a habit of scratching me when I tried to feed her. Or whenever else she felt like it.
If she wanted to eat, she made it impossible for me to sleep. Every morning at dawn, she would jump on my chest to awaken me. Try as I could, I could not ignore her repeated hard landings on my chest. Sometimes it
felt as though she had jumped from the ceiling to maximize the effect.
My efforts to lock her in the bathroom were always a failure. She would rip the toilet paper into shreds. When that had been accomplished, if I did not yield to her demands, she would start on the wallpaper. Locking Princess in some other room had produced wanton destruction followed by such hideous howling that it was impossible to think.
The time Princess did not devote to biting me or destroying the furniture, she spent leaving strands of her long fur where it would cause the most inconvenience. It was impossible to sit on my sofa, chairs or bed without gathering on my clothes enough fur to begin knitting a sweater. If I brought home a suit I had cleaned from the tailor, it would be covered with hair as soon as I hung it in my closet. Firmly shuttling closet doors was no solution. Princess had the ability to open them.