Extra Credit I – Brianna

I flipped over another paper, another one with a subpar grade on it. I guess that makes sense, I am a very subpar person who has lead a subpar life, why should my students put out more effort than I do? Some people figure out what their talents are, and use them to supercede their limitations. But some times, I would rationalize to myself, you just have too many detractions. I stopped growing at 14, never breaching 5′ 7″, and the hair began to thin not long after I was in the dorms at college. I hadn’t been fit, but i hadn’t been fat either, just a bit . . subpar. No good muscle definition, no natural strength, no good tanning skin, and I had acne that never had stopped. Again, it wasn’t highly prevalent, but I always seemed to have on pimple or blemish where you didn’t want them.

Everything had been like that. I wasn’t terrible at sports, just subpar, and my dick wasn’t tiny, just subpar. I believe I maxed out at just under 6 and a half inches, but it was kinda skinny, and the extra weight I had gained over the last 30 years had mercilessly taken an inch away from my length, though if I pressed my little groin ball of fat, the inch was still there. I could have been more I suppose but I am a bit of a pessimist. While I didn’t have the worst luck, wasn’t crippled or horridly ugly or riddled with cancer, nope, like my whole existence it was subpar. Little extra weight, little less hair, little worse skin, little worse athletic ability, a little worse everything, and I had let it steal my joy.

I made it through college, and got a degree in education. I had a few subpar dates with subpar women. Women who didn’t have looks or bodies that drew attention, so they focused on their minds. While I commend it, it’s silly to believe you can get past it, but I tried. But relationships don’t usually do well if you have no physical animal attraction, well for the guy at least, it won’t stay a good relationship. But I tried, because I thought marriage, and a family could make my life above par. The one woman who had as few options as I, and therefore agreed after two years to marry, was Sandy. Sandy was smart and career focused but was as sexless as they come. Not getting off having sex with my wife I went to see hookers. I don’t make much at my job, at least as far as recreational income is concerned but I needed some kind of actual feminine interaction. Therefore I invested in hookers, and they were the just a little subpar variety.

Some had decent faces, or nice legs, but would lack in another area, like having a brutal c-section scar or tits completely held up by the push up bra fell to the floor without support. They put in subpar effort and gave subpar head and fucks. But at least my horniness went away a little. I wasn’t particularly careful and got caught by a sting. Sandy wasn’t all that happy in our passionless marriage and my admitting to frequenting hookers didn’t sit well with her and just 3 years after we wed we were divorced. I didn’t get fired but was ostracized for the most part so I moved to Houston where the crowded inner city schools were so desperate for teachers with any kind of experience.

The school was dingy and dirty, the basketball hoops had no strings or even chains, the kids smoked pot openly,on the grounds, there was a lot of graffiti and no one expected much from their students. It was a heavily Hispanic area and the student population was Vattos from the ghettos and lots of Guatamalen kids from upper lower class households. The only reason most of the kids even showed up was a minimal attendance rate for graduation and most of the kids wanted to enroll in a bullshit expedition to the crappiest state schools, knowing their ethnicity would get them easy money and get them out of the shitty area they now lived in. The boys were either nerds or jocks or gangstas. They dressed like it too. Wife beaters, long khaki shorts, high socks and plaid overshirts.

The girls? Well they wore what I would call a cross between hookers walking the streets and the women you see on rap videos, or did back in the late 90’s. The girls paid little attention to the restrictions on shortness of skirts or how much skin they showed. Heavy makeup and well detailed nails. The only other girls were the nerds and they were as much of outcasts as I had been. I was correcting Regina’s test, and she had done well again. She was a very smart and determined girl. She was also about 4 foot 5, thin as a rail with a tiny head wearing massive glasses. She had no femininity to her body and had no knowledge of attraction. It reminded me of my wife, she was smart too but she would rever get the real recognition her whole life. She just wasn’t pretty and pretty matters in this country, we all know it. Am I a cynical asshole you ask? Probably, but let’s just say it has been a hard life knowing you would only ever get a second-best woman.

I heard the bell, the extra-curricular activities must be concluding, and it meant I could head to my car, traffic would be bearable now and my workload for the night had been knocked off with my post lecture grading. It was getting chilly these days, coming up on Thanksgiving, at least what passes for chilly down here in Houston. I was putting some papers and folder in my brief case when there was knock on the door for the classroom.

“Come in.” I hollered through the door.