After the Fire by Fred Bubbers (Excerpt)

After The Fire: A Personal Essay by Fred Bubbers

“After the fire, the fire still burns, the heart grows older but never ever learns. The memories smolder and the soul always yearns. After the fire, the fire still burns.”

- Pete Townshend

Excerpt…

If he remembers me after these many years, it surely isn’t as an individual, but as of a type. What a sight I must have been. The mussed wavy blond hair, the scruffy beard. The black polo shirt and jeans. The brown corduroy jacket, a worn and tattered copy of “Leaves of Grass” bulging out of one side pocket, Nick Carraway’s meditation on life, passion and the American dream peering out of the other. The future rock star of American letters, radiating passion, joy, and heartbreaking charm to any lovely young thing who might be seduced. Few were.

He himself was a man of letters, a published author of three novels of good critical reputation, but little financial reward. His voice had been silent for many years and he had settled into teaching American literature and creative writing to the small group of budding young Fitzgeralds, O’Connors, Whartons, and Salingers who sailed in and out of the Humanities building of the university every year.

The first time I met him was during the spring semester of my junior year. I was applying for a seat in his fall section “Writing Prose Fiction.” I had already taken several writing courses, but this one was different. This was the senior level creative writing class offered by the English Department, taught by a published novelist. Registration for the class required his approval and a writing sample was required. A few days earlier, I had agonized over my meager portfolio of writing: personal narratives, stories and fragments of stories produced over the previous two years. For a person whose goal in life was to become a writer, I had produced very little that I could be proud of. Friends complimented my work, but it had always seemed to me that they were complimenting what I wanted my writing to be, not what it actually was. “Don’t submit anything too long,” an acquaintance who had taken this class advised me. “He gets a lot of people handing him things to read so keep it short.” Short was good because short was all I had. Finally, after agonizing over the selection, I chose a three-page interior monologue I had written earlier that year: a young man waiting for his girlfriend in a coffee shop, his mind racing from thought to thought, fear to fear, as to why she might be late.

Acceptance into this professor’s writing class would be, for me, a validation of my talent. It would tell me that yes, I did have talent and that the writing life was a worthwhile pursuit. What I didn’t understand at the time, was that competition for admission to the class wasn’t all that tough and that the writing sample was merely to assure the professor that the applicant had a rudimentary ability to put both nouns and verbs in most of their sentences.

When I had stopped by his office a few days earlier to give him my sample, he was not there. A file folder was taped to the office door, labeled “Fall Writing Prose Fiction – samples.” I pulled my story out of the folder in my hand, glanced over the first page, and slid it into the folder on the door.

The next day, I went back to his office and found the door was again locked. It was late afternoon and the hallway on the third floor was deserted. There was a pale gray light coming in through the skylight above the waiting area outside his office. I took a quick look around to make sure that no one was coming and pulled open the folder on the door. My manuscript was still there, along with some others that had been pushed in after it. That sleepless night I had spent worrying about what the professor thought about my writing, and more importantly, me, had been all for nothing. He hadn’t even read it yet.

On the day after that, The Professor was still not in his office but the folder on his door had been emptied. My future was being decided.

On the fourth day, as I was walking up the hallway toward his office, I could see that the door was still closed. This time, however, there was a young lady sitting in the reception area.

As I approached his office, she looked up at me and said, “Hi, are you here to see him?” gesturing at the office door.

“Yes”.

“He told me he would be here at three o’clock.”

I looked at my watch; it was 3:05.

“He should be here soon,” she said, smiling.

I slid my backpack down off my shoulder and set it on the floor.

“You must be applying for the writing class,” she said.

“How can you tell?”

“You have that look,” she replied. “And a folder with manuscripts in your hand”.

I smiled and her and said, “Oh I guess I look a bit typical. Actually, I left my writing sample a few days ago and I’m waiting to find out if I’ve been accepted.”

I sat down next to her and asked, “Are you applying for the class?”

“Oh no, I’m here for something else,” she said mysteriously.

“Oh”.

There was an awkward silence and I started looking this way and that, trying to avoid looking at her. My mind was on my story, what The Professor, who had most likely read it by now, thought of it, and my future as a writer.

“May I read some of your writing?”

The question unnerved me. No one had ever actually askedto read my writing. Usually, I would thrust it into their hands and they would be forced to politely indulge me.

I opened my folder and started fumbling through the manuscripts, not sure which one to give her.

“Do you have a copy of the one you submitted?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“How about that one then, since you picked it out to be your best.”

I pulled the extra copy I had of my interior monologue out of my folder and handed it to her.

Sitting next to someone who’s reading your work is even more stressful than thinking about someone you can’t see reading your work. To settle my mind down, I stopped thinking about the class, how embarrassingly bad my writing actually was, and just focused on the young woman sitting next to me. Up until now, all I had been able to think about was what The Professor had thought of my story. I hadn’t really paid much attention to this young woman who was now reading my story.

She was quite attractive. She had long brown hair, parted in the middle, and brushed back and feathered in that popular style of the late seventies. She wore oval shaped silver rimmed eyeglasses that were only partially obscured her large blue eyes. She was not dressed like a student, but in a well tailored, or at least well-tailored to my twenty-one year old eyes, business suit, the hem of her skirt modestly reaching below her knees. She looked like she had a grownup job. I thought she might be one of the professor’s graduate students who held a job out in the real world. “Are you one of his graduate students?” I asked.

She emitted a barely audible chuckle and she moved her head slightly from side to side as she quietly said “No.” Her eyes never lost focus on what she was reading and she appeared to be concentrating very intently, almost as if she were looking through the pages in her hand.

When she got to the end, a smile crept across her face. “That’s very good,” she said. Looking at the top of the first page for my name, she added “Frederick.”

“Oh, it’s Fred. Just Fred.”

“Well it’s very good. Thank you for letting me read it, Fred.”

Just then, I heard the squeak of rubber soled shoes walking up the hallway. I recognized the man walking toward us. Over the previous two and a half years, I had passed by him in the hallway and entered classrooms that he had been leaving. He was a slight figured man. He wore a tan sport jacket and dark gray slacks. He was bald but still with some dark hair on the side of his head, showing only a few flecks of gray. He had that bald appearance that allows a man to appear to be of indeterminate age from the time he’s thirty-five to the time he’s sixty-five. He smiled and nodded at the Mystery-Woman next to me and then looked at me.

“And you are?” he asked.

“Fred Bubbers.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Bubbers”, he said, grinning.

He pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket and approached his office door.

“If you just give me a moment, I can give you back your story and the registration card for the class. You don’t mind if I take care of this first?” he asked looking over his shoulder at Mystery-Woman.

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she answered.

He opened the door of his office and said, “Step inside, Mr. Bubbers.”

It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever called me “Mr.” Well, my parents and other teachers had called me that, but when they said it, it meant that I was in trouble. This, however, sounded polite and respectful. It made me nervous.

I stepped into his office and he followed me in closing the door behind him. Whatever he had to say to me, it was going to be in private.

He walked around to the other side of his desk and switched on the green porcelain library lamp on his desk. He set his brief case on the top of his desk and opened it. “I have your story here,” he said, pulling out a stack of papers from the briefcase. “Yes, here it is.” He reached down to his desk drawer and pulled it open. “The registration cards are in here.” He pulled one of the white cards out of his drawer, placed it on top of my manuscript and held them out to me across the desk.

“Thank you,” I said taking my manuscript and the registration card from him.

“Welcome to writing prose fiction, Mr. Bubbers, I’m looking forward to next fall’s section. We have some fine writers.”

He didn’t seem to indicate in manner, gesture, or tone of voice whether he considered me one of those “fine writers.”

I placed the manuscript into my folder and looked up expectantly at him. He had a kind, friendly face, but also a kind of reserved and distant quality about his look. His eyes seemed tired, world-weary.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Bubbers?”

“Well,” I stammered. “About my story.”

“Oh your story!” he interrupted. “That was just fine, Mr. Bubbers, just fine.”

“Fine?” I asked myself. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Maybe it was my look. Or maybe it was his experience with my type, semester after semester, year after year, coming to him for some kind of validation. He would never give us what we were seeking; he would only give us what we needed. And he would be damned cryptic about it.

“Mr. Bubbers, you shouldn’t get yourself worked up over a simple short story. Write them, finish them, and get on to the next thing.”

He stepped around his desk, reaching for the door. As he pulled it open he said, “Have a fine summer, enjoy yourself, and I’ll see you next fall.” He smiled a mischievous, conspiratorial smile and his tired eyes locked on mine.

I was ushered out of his office. As I walked past Mystery-Woman, still seated outside, she smiled up at me and said, “Congratulations, Fred.”

I’m not sure whether I answered her or not. I don’t remember if she told me her name that day. The only thing I remember from the rest of that day was bursting out the door of the Humanities building into the bright warm sun and devouring the clear, crisp air of the early spring afternoon.

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