No one believes in love at first sight, not really. Certainly Burt didn’t–who had time for anything like love, really? And then, that early winter day, in January, at the start of third quarter, he took a seat in the seminar room, and Dr. Herman Boel walked into the room, passed out the syllabi, and Burt didn’t know what to believe anymore.
He wanted it to just be a crush. He tried, desperately, to tell himself it was just a crush, that the butterflies he would get from the beginning of class to the end would fade, eventually. In the meantime, he just did his best to enjoy him–mid fourties, a solid gut, full beard across his face, always dressed nicely with those cute vests of his–just an adorable professorial bear. Besides, it was a useless crush anyway, surely–he was was probably straight as could be.
But then, the weight of the crush only got heavier. During their fourth class, in a brief aside, Herman included a brief anecdote that filled Burt’s heart with hope, no matter how hard he tried to quash it–he was gay. They were gay, they were both gay! What were the chances! Herman was the handsome daddy bear, and he, at a few months shy of twenty-one, might, one day, be considered a cub. He had some scruff at least, and he’d managed to grow a goatee in over the summer, though he’d shaved it before going back to school. He decided, the next morning, to try growing it back out–maybe Herman would notice. Maybe Herman would like it.
Still, Burt waited and waited for it to fade–it had to fade, didn’t it? He hoped his professor would reveal something about himself in class, something deeply problematic, give him some excuse to reject what he was feeling, but it never happened–but it also didn’t seem like the love was particularly requited, either. It took a great amount of effort, anxiety, and terror to go to Herman’s office hours, ostensibly to look over one of his papers for the class, and while the professor was congenial, even behind a closed door, even after Burt told him he was gay himself, there didn’t seem to be even the slightest interest. The crush deepened and turned into an obsession, one even Burt could recognize was unhealthy, and getting out of hand. He just…had to know! He had to know if it was possible, if maybe, somehow, it could work–and so, the next week in his office, arriving under vague pretext, Burt instead leaned in and kissed him, catching Herman by surprise–and nothing hurt more than when his professor let out a muffled yelp, and pushed him away towards the door.
Maybe he didn’t mean it. Maybe he was just a bad kisser. Maybe if he thought about it, he’d want to do it some more? There was just silence between them for a moment, a deep unsettling silence, before Herman pulled him over to the chair, and sat him down–and let Burt down as easily as he possibly could–but it crushed him all the same, and Herman could see it. Burt apologized, and then rushed from the room before his professor could see any more of his tears than he already had, and wondered how it was even possible to love someone so much who had no desire to love you back. He was pouring all of himself into an empty void, and it had to stop. Herman was right–it was inappropriate, it was wrong, he was stupid to have even imagined his professor would be interested in him, he was so stupid! The humiliation of it, he told himself, would be enough to chase the love away–how could he possibly love someone who would dismiss him so coldly? But it remained, and class was impossible to bear with him, and so he started missing classes entirely, unable to even face him. That was how, one afternoon, he ended up walking through an odd street of shops in a small neighborhood near the school, when he should have been in class. That was where the short old man saw him, laughed, grabbed him by the hand and dragged him into the small curio shop tucked away into a space that seemed much, much too small to house everything inside it.
“Oh my, such a love around you! Very rare, very rare!” the man said, “We should find you something for the special someone, shouldn’t we? I have all manner of beauties in here, perfect for the special…” he squirted through his thick glasses up at Burt for a moment, and then they went wide again, “Man! Yes, such a man you must have found! Come come, let’s see!”
Burt tried to protest as best he could, but the older fellow wasn’t listening–and his grip was like a vice. They wove their way through the tightly packed shelves, stopping suddenly for the older fellow to dig amongst the trinkets lining his shop, pausing only to stare at Burt for a moment, before shaking his head vigorously–hard enough that Burt was concerned the old fellows glasses would come flying off his face–and then they would hasten on. It was clear that the old man was searching for something specific, and he wasn’t finding anything satisfactory–and Burt kept trying to wrench his hand away and get some explanation from the man about what, exactly, he was doing. At long last he did, and pulled away. “Stop, Stop!” He said, “What are you even looking for? I’m not with anyone.”
The old man looked at him, befuddled, “But you are so in love, boy! So in love.”
Was it really so obvious, that a strange old man could read it on him in the street? He felt crushed all over again, and started to cry, and the old man realized, then, what he was seeing.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no…” he muttered, “Such a love, unrequited! Sure a travesty! Something special, yes, very special! Tell me,” he said, gripping both of Burt’s hands and staring up at him, his eyes impossibly large through the glasses, “What would you do, if you could have such a love be returned? Would you change for him?”
Bracken's Corner 