Absolute Gentleman

The irony is that I never had high blood pressure when I was a middle school teacher. I’ve always been an aggressive and enthusiastic teacher, have always been moved and triggered by things, but every time I went to my doctor for an appointment, my blood pressure was always “perfect,” according to the assistants at the office. When you tell someone you’re a middle school teacher, they say, “Oh, bless your heart…” or “That’s a tough age…” When I moved to high school, the comments changed to, “Decided to move up…” or “Congratulations…” For what? Having high blood pressure for the first time in my life?

Junot Diaz isn’t the cause of the high blood pressure, but he made me feel old sitting there for his talk with the Yale Latino students. It was an outstanding lesson in discrimination for me, though, because I got a good dose of what it feels like to be treated differently because of your race. I’ve always gotten a fair dose of feeling out of place, anyway, but it was a nice change, although I suffered a bit while I was there, to be almost looked down upon because I was white. I didn’t feel anger or anything resembling resentment at all. All I felt was an emptiness.

I was going to write to him as soon as I got home to apologize, because there was another element to what I was asking him to confront. The question I finally got out had to do with how out of place he felt in MIT’s academic community. Since it costs more than 43K per year to go to Yale, Junot was speaking to, presumably, an affluent group of young Latinos. I don’t know this for sure, obviously, and I don’t think he even cared about this. But when I asked him in a straightforward manner if he felt a discomfort among the faculty at MIT, he said “Sure…” So maybe the different factors at play: his being at an elite university, his own past, and being asked this question by a thirty-something, white male caused him to react in as combustible a way as that mixture could create in his brain.

Maybe I was insensitive, didn’t see him as the human being he was, but instead as the brilliant writer and literary celebrity he is. A “combustible” reaction is relative. Some people combust by exploding, yelling, crying. University professors combust by calmly breaking you down in the severely intellectual way reserved for people with their brain capacity. Or maybe there was no combustion at all, and I’m imagining all of it. It’s completely possible, and, in fact, more likely.
Still, I’ve always been like this, have always brooded and haggled with myself over the seemingly insignificant, and I’ve never had high blood pressure up until now. My wife says it’s because I’m “approaching 40.”

“I’m frigging 36,” I tell her.

“I’m just trying to make you feel less stressed about the blood pressure,” she says.

“By telling me I’m approaching 40?”