the day i met B

july 2010, not the first time we met

it was april 21, 2009. i was 23 and i thought the best way to look confident was wearing heels. so i was. it was only the second week of teaching at the university for me, but i already felt happier and lighter--teaching university students was different than the previous teaching (mostly adults) i'd done, but i was still new enough to teaching to be extremely nervous 99% of the time. i tried to look older and more mature than what i really was (and, actually, more than now) but i was teaching academic writing, goshdamn, something i loved, something i could do for the rest of my life, sitting in a cubicle and writing research papers and reading journals and discerning non-continuous pagination. so yes! i could do it. 

my instructions for the course were something like "here's a bunch of material, use this" and "you're the first to do it, so you can control it however you want" and the class was appropriately disorganized. however, these poor souls had to suffer something more detrimental to the overall cause: trial and error. i'm not sure how other teachers started out, but i had a lot of things working against me, namely: 

• crippling shyness
• inexperience 
• "i'm 23 and so are my students...?"
• my midwest over-concern about everything

so this was the second week, and i was talking possibly about the structure and coherence of a unified paper when Bastian came in, late. i generally don't get angry at my students because according to the myers-briggs personality test, i'm an INFP, probably one of the most sensitive souls out there, with a complete and utter inability to be on time. so i forgive this in students. still, i was curious to know, and turned, watching Bastian slink to a free seat. slinking is no easy task for Bastian. he is 6'2" and therefore not slinking material. regardless, the gesture was appreciated. as soon as i appreciated the gesture, i started to panic. i was too inexperienced for multi-tasking while teaching. oh god! what was the next thing i was going to say? i paused, trying to look pensive as Bastian tried to settle without making noise. i didn't take much notice of him because i was too busy shuffling papers and talking about the evils of the 5-paragraph paper. i didn't take notice of most of my students in the first couple weeks (crippling shyness, remember) but i did notice that he had signed "BB" on the attendance list. so i knew his name and, incidentally, that he had green eyes and dark hair.  

in general, i receive a lot of information about my students that i don't read: their majors, birthdates, place of birth, and enrollment year. i don't read this information (unless i have to, for some reason) because i figure that if they want me to know, they'll tell me, and it's unfair since i'm not readily giving out this information to them. this was, i promise you, the only time i read this information for stalking purposes. 

even though i had the birthdate (august 6, 1984), city of birth (magdeburg), and major (mechatronik, or mechatronics engineer), i didn't know what i was supposed to do with this information. so i promptly forgot it and i could genuinely react without prior knowledge when he later divulged these facts. 

the next week, he wasn't there. i was pretty disappointed, then immediately wondered why. i figured i was disappointed that he'd dropped my class and continued talking about expository prose, because big deal. who cared? certainly not me. the next week, he wasn't there again. what the hell? i thought. i was really sad for unexplainable reasons. sigh, i thought. i sighed all over the place. 

the next week, he showed up, late. we hadn't really started class yet anyway, so i hobbled over to him (heels, remember) and gave him a handout from the week before. i explained the contents of the handout, flipping pages, pointing at a chart of linking phrases that give unity to a paper. he nodded, blowing his nose, bless his heart, rubbing it furiously, nodding more. 

the next week, he and another student lingered after class, talking to me. he looked up something on his macbook (the one i would come to hate for its slowness, not knowing that my macbook would simply follow suit) and shut it, putting it into his bag (that i now use), standing up with a kind of delayed finality. 

"um," he said. 

what followed impossibly was a two-hour long conversation about music and germany. i talked too much, too fast. he nodded a lot and rarely smiled (which i suppose i should note, is very unusual for Bastian). he finally looked at his phone (that i would later use when my own phone was stolen), said he had to go, helped me close the windows (i really think that the students who help me close windows have good manners) and left in a rush. i left too, thinking about him, but finally started reading on the tram. another person who wants to improve their english and it's not like we're friends. 

the next week, he asked me if i was planning to go to the uni-air. 

"the what?" 

"the uni-air. an open-air concert behind the hörsaalzentrum." 

"who's playing?" 

"oh, i don't know."

"are you going?"

"i think. i'll probably stop by my apartment first."

"...oh."

then he introduced me to a friend of his (Khoa) and i rode my bike home. i climbed into bed with my laptop and decided to take a nap, falling asleep while nerding out. i was really happy about this plan when my cell phone rang. it was Jen. i considered not answering and actually stared at it for a long time, then finally answered. 

"you want to go to some concert on campus with me?" she asked in her machine-gun english. 

i sat up. i was already down to my undies and not planning on leaving for anything except maybe some yogurt. 

"my roommate's going and it might be lame but i figured. you know," she continued.

"sure," i said, standing, already eyeing my discarded clothing on the floor. "sure, i'll go."