by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
This isn’t made up. This is a real conversation that I had with a student this week:
It was Monday morning before the first bell. I was sweeping my room and marveling at the diversity of crap that accumulates on my floor in one day’s time. Candy wrappers! Used Kleenex! The biggest hairball I’ve ever seen! A dime bag! Actually, that happened last year. I’m serious—I found a freakin’ dime bag on my floor. That’s one of those moments when you just shake your head and sigh.
Back to the story. I was disposing of a particularly gruesome used Band Aid and trying not to gag when Rafael walked in. The coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, and my mind was working in fits and starts as it mulled over the day’s lesson plans. Which is all just to say I wasn’t completely there yet.
I should also tell you a little something about Rafael. He’s the kid who gets watched like a hawk in stores even though he has no intention of stealing anything. He’s a legitimately sweet guy, but years of being treated like a criminal have made him act a little like one.
“How was your weekend, Rafael?”
“It was crazy!” he replied.
Uh-oh. I could read the subtext.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Hella parties.” At this point Rafael launched into a lengthy account of one particular party while I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and basically did everything possible to convey disinterest. Just as I was about to cut him off and change the subject, he dropped this bomb on me—
“And I fixed my stripper pole.”
“Your stripper pole?” I asked.
“Yeah, Bomphray!” he replied in a tone that suggested I was supposed to know about this sort of thing.
“You have—a stripper pole?”
“For the females.”
“Uh-huh. Where?”
“In my living room.”
“Hold on, “ I said, trying to make sense of this, “Your mom is cool with that?”
“As long as I keep my grades up, my moms is cool with whatever.”
“Like having a stripper pole.” I continued to prod.
“Yeah,” he said as if it made perfect sense.
“So when people walk into your house, they see—“
“A big ass stripper pole!” he finished gleefully.
At this point, I decided that this couldn’t possibly be true. It was too absurd. I could maybe see having a stripper pole in the basement, but front and center in the living room? Parent approved? Rafael read the doubt in my eyes and called another student into the room, a girl who I had seen hanging out with Rafael’s crew before.
“Don’t I have a stripper pole?” he demanded.
Her face lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed without hesitation. “Rafael has a stripper pole!”
So it was true. Rafael had a stripper pole. In his living room.
What was the teacherly response? Beyond giving Rafael a vocab lesson on “objectification,” and reminding him that women were doctors and teachers and mothers and sisters, veritable human beings, really—“I know, Bomphray” was his response—I didn’t know what more to do.
When you’ve got a seventeen year old who has been given permission to put up a stripper pole in the family living room, you’re talking about years of socialization. I wasn’t going to break that down with a five minute pep talk.
Maybe it’ll come up next parent-teacher conference.
[I did a little research and discovered that Carmen Electra endorses her own stripper pole—The Electra-pole. See below for Carmen’s pretty hilarious letter to potential customers. Maybe she didn’t have Rafael in mind, but she got the location right.]
this entire conversation is great, alistair, and i think its heart is located between the lines, “your stripper pole?” and “you have-a stripper pole?” for me, it’s in this moment that you are quintessentially found. in my head i can see and hear you saying these lines as almost as well as had you said them standing next to me. it’s hysterical. it’s really great. and i loved it.
That’s a crazy story
And you wonder why some parents homeschool????