Call Me Sean

Sean runs down the rear stairs from his small apartment, stopping at the bottom to check his shoelaces. “I’m just going for a run,” he tells himself, as though hearing the words out loud makes his intentions truthful. And in part, what he tells himself is the truth. Sean runs most Saturdays; as the saying goes, rain, hail or shine. Today, however, is different. And Sean knows it. Still, lying to himself is easier than facing the truth.

Sean tightens his shoelaces.

He raises his left foot, landing the heel of his trainer on the third step from the bottom. The height is right for a hamstring stretch. He extends his left arm, leans forward and touches the tip of his left shoe. Sean is proud of how fit he is. He was fat on his mother’s butter-laden mashed potatoes as a kid. Then, a crush on his high school PE teacher, Mr Shaw, saw Sean running around the school’s oval, lap after lap, day after day. Mr Shaw changed schools, but Sean, lighter on his feet and buoyed by a new confidence, kept running through high school and onto university, where he discovered literature, weight training and boys.

Sean switches legs. He’s been a high school teacher for one week and knows he’s not cut out for the vocation. The job was tough; the kids tougher. Sean kidded himself (for a day) that he was moulding young minds, but the students and his fellow teachers exhausted him. The charade of being someone he wasn’t drained him; if another teacher asked if he had a girlfriend, he would scream. All Sean wants to do is write. Sean told his Year 12 teacher he would be the James Joyce of Australia. The teacher asked who that was. Still, his plans to quit teaching soonish rather than latish didn’t temper the voice in his head that nags;” Doesn’t make what you are doing right now right, does it?"

 "Shut up." Sean takes down his leg and runs down the long driveway alongside his apartment block and towards the street. Sean can tell himself anything he likes, but he is running towards trouble. His heart rate rises as his shoes hit the pavement, those first jarring steps of a long run. Soon, he won't notice his body's aches as it adjusts to the pace; even the heat of a hot summer's morning won't bother him as his body limbers, and he loses himself in his thoughts. He wipes his brow with the back of his hand, smearing the sweat and grime. The day is brilliant, a bright blue sky, not a whisper of air, so warm even the birds don't sing.

 Sean laughs, thinking of his first day in front of that class. Only a moment ago, it seems, he was the eager young kid raising his hand, calling out, “Sir!” Now, he was whom the seniors called out “sir” to. Sean turns 22 in May. He is lucky if he is five years older than his students. “Crazy.” He turns onto Fifth Avenue and runs towards the beachfront.

He never expected to be assigned a senior class, not with the ink barely dry on his teaching diploma. Neither did Principal Harvey, who offered Sean the Year 8 English teacher position late last year. “Keep it light; nothing too serious,” he told Sean. “The kids in this school aren’t too bright, and neither are their parents. Get them to read The Hobbit or that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book, some spelling and grammar, you know the drill.”

The Hobbit it was. He turned up on his first day only to be told that Mrs Adams, the school’s English teacher of 35 years, dropped dead on Christmas Day in front of her 16 grandchildren. “So inconsiderate,” Principal Harvey shook his head. The jowls hanging under his chin wobbled like a turkey’s. “Those poor grandkids, that’s a Christmas they won’t forget quickly.” Sean agreed but protested when assigned to Mrs Adam’s Year 12 students. “Sir. I’m not experienced enough. Those kids will run circles around me.”

Principal Harvey expelled a loud belly laugh. “Just be assertive from day one,” he explained. “None of this modern teacher mumbo jumbo they teach these days. Kids, especially in this area, need a firm hand and authority. Teach with an iron fist, and if anyone troubles you, send them my way for three of the best.” Sean’s eyes follow Principal Harvey’s to his bamboo cane leaning against the corner wall. A PTS chill runs down Sean’s spine. “You hear me, Kelly.”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

The principal pushed back in his chair. “I don’t see a wedding ring. Married Kelly?”

Sean gasped. “I’m only 22, sir.”

Mr Harvey looked puzzled. “A girlfriend then?”

Sean sighed. “No, sir.”

The principal widened his eyes and shook his head with dismay. "Deary me. Don't let those senior girls know you're a free agent. Eat a guy like you alive, they will." The principal dropped his hands and leaned forward, closing the gap between himself and Sean as if letting him in on a secret. “A couple of those girls are a right pair of moles. Do you get my drift, Kelly? Trouble.”

Sean tried to conceal his shocked expression from Principal Harvey with a firm cough. The principal’s choice of language alarmed him. Sean was no stranger to church and thought Principal Harvey might be better at the pulpit, the conveyor of sin and depravity to a congregation of small minds, than the curator of young minds at an institution where those same minds came to learn.

 Still standing, Principal Harvey circled Sean like a shark preying on a defenceless minnow. "Believe it or not, I once was a young, hot-blooded man like yourself." Sean tried hard not to laugh. He never expected to be the audience of such a speech. "Those girls can be tempting. Just remember Kelly. You are here to teach." He handed Sean a folded piece of paper. "The Senior Class of 1985. You'll find them in room 4B. You better be quick., class started five minutes ago."

Sean snatched the piece of paper and went to turn when Principal Harvey spoke again. “Kelly?”

“Yes, Sir.” Sean felt 13.

“You got a nice pair of guns on you there, lad. What do you bench press?”

Sean blushed, uncomfortable in the tightness of his polo shirt. “100kg on a good day.”

“Good. The school needs a rugby couch.”

"Sir?" Sean could not hide his frustration and began to gesture with his hands. "I know nothing about coaching rugby."

“Well, that gives you something in common with every other teacher in this school. Sign-ups start next month. Kelly?”

“Yes?” He answered in the voice of a defeated man.

“This school hasn’t won a game since Owen Jones led the team to victory in the 1981 State School Championships.” He points at the wall to a photo of a group of begrimed boys raising their team captain high into the air. ”I’m not saying we need to go all the way, but Kelly, let’s win at least one game, shall we?

Head down, shoulders slumped, Sean marched to the classroom, a condemned man. Stopping short of the door to compose himself, he rolled his shoulders back, strutted out his chest, and raised his chin. "You got this, dude," he told himself and walked into the commotion that was his senior English class. 

"Right, everyone," he said, unloading a big smile. My name is Sean Kelly. You can all call me Sean, and I'm your new…" He stopped. Sitting two rows back, with his blue eyes peering out from beneath a blonde cowlick hanging across his forehead, was Dylan, the guy he had met last Saturday fishing off the pier. Surprised, Sean regained his composure despite Dylan’s friendly, welcoming smile. "I'm your, um, new English teacher."

“ Alright!” boomed a girl sonically from the back of the classroom. “We’ve got Mr Hottie as our new English teacher.”

Sean runs to the end of his street, where it meets Flinders Parade. The smart thing to do is to turn left and run towards Redcliffe. Instead, he turns right, following the steps he took last Saturday, the steps that led him to Dylan Jones, now his Year 12 student.

 Sean moved to Sandgate from Paddington, where he shared a small worker's cottage with two older girls and a Siamese cat called Sookie. Sean wanted to be close to the school and alone. Sandgate, he discovered on that first morning, was beautiful. The northern suburb had a village-like feel, with its now redundant town hall and clock tower. Lagoons behind the town centre attracted many birds, picnickers, and nature buffs. On the other side of the main street was the beachfront, a span of waterway called Bramble Bay, part of the bigger Moreton Bay. The beachfront was no Gold Coast. The offshore islands stopped the surf and silt from the Brisbane River, and nearby mangrove swamps turned the sand flats into mud. The sea was shallow; even at high tide, it hardly splashed Sean's knees. The sea made his skin itch. Sea lice, a lady in one of the many fish and chip shops warned him. He was also told not to wade into the sea without wearing shoes. “If the stingrays don’t get you, the stonefish will,” one old-timer explained. Stonefish lived buried in the mud, and their venomous spikes could paralyse a man.

Sean’s forays into the sea ended that day. Still, when the tide was high, the sun shined, and the gulls soared above, the beachfront, for all its hazards, was glorious and a far cry from Inala, where Sean grew up a “Westie” among factories and used car lots. Sandgate possessed an old-worldly charm all of its own. Sean was smitten. The tranquillity of the town suited his gentle temperament. Here, he knew could write.

On the Saturday before school started on the Monday, Sean was excited and nervous. A run, he decided, would sort him out. He jogged towards the beachfront and turned right towards Shorncliffe, where a track made for cyclists took him to the top of the cliffs; here, old homes on stilts took in the expensive views of Moreton Bay. Shorncliffe was once a popular spot for holidaymakers at the turn of the century, and some of the more prominent buildings had once been hotels. Most now were boarding houses, where old men lived alone. Some sat on the verandas in the morning sun, drinking beer from tall brown bottles or tea from tin mugs. Some were missing limbs. Sean ran past and waved. They waved back. He followed the road to a small river, Cabbage Tree Creek, where a sparse fleet of trawlers moored. The bay was famous for its prawns. At the mouth of the creek was a jetty where a lone fisherman cast a line out into the sparkling sea.

The sun had barely risen; the streets were quiet, and Sean felt he had the world to himself. On days like this, he felt less lonely, nature proving enough of a companion. He stopped running. Wet with sweat - Brisbane was hot in the summer, no matter the time of the day - he peeled off his shirt and walked out along the pier, stopping just shy of the young man fishing. Sean dried his sodden shirt on the wooden safety railings, peeling with white paint and exposing the grey wood beneath. From his bum bag, strapped to his waist, Sean took a squished banana and a well-worn paperback before sitting on the tallow wood decking, careful not to get a splinter in his butt. The book was Ulysses, by James Joyce. Sean began to read, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun, when the guy fishing suddenly appeared like an apparition, standing above him. His thick blonde hair fell over his face as he bowed his head to look down. The guy took his right hand and pushed his cowlick away from his face. Sean was struck. He could not tell the boy's age, whom he would learn later, was named Dylan. He was handsome, not conventionally so, but striking all the same. His head was shaped like a small hat box, topped with a tussle of sandy, sun-bleached hair, and a sprinkle of freckles fanned out across his cheeks and down his strong, angled nose. Sean stared for a long second. Dylan’s blue eyes caught the sun’s rays and sparkled like the sea.

“G’day.” Dylan crouched down. Sean liked his casual confidence. “What are you reading?”

Sean lowered his hand away from his eyes and the book, showing Dylan the cover. Dylan took the book and examined it, reading the back jacket before turning his attention back to Sean. Sean felt those blue eyes looking down at his bare chest and stomach. His glance warmed him like the sun.

“One of the greatest novels ever written, hey? What’s it about then?”

Sean struggled to find his voice. He was startled. His head spun. “Um, let’s see. It’s set in Dublin, like at the beginning of the century, and it’s a day in this guy’s life, Leopold Bloom.”

Dylan held the book firmly, lifting it and feeling its weight. “All of these pages, just for one day. At least in David Copperfield, which is just as big, it spans years of his life.”

“You’ve read David Copperfield?” Sean started to stand, surprised.

“Yeah. You?”

“Of course.”

“Shit, I got a bite.” Dylan returned the book to Sean and ran towards the end of the pier, lifting his rod and pulling it back over his head—the tip of the rod bent furiously down. Dylan reeled in his catch; a large silverfish appeared below the sea’s surface. Sean, by now, stands behind him. Dylan lifts his catch onto the pier.

“Wow, what is it?”

“A bream. You get a lot of them around here.”

He watches as Dylan removes the hook from the fish's mouth and then, to Sean's surprise, throws the fish back into the sea. "Why did you do that?"

Dylan smiled- always smiling, thought Sean. “I don’t like eating them. They’re a bit fishy for me, and my Mum hates them.” He looked down the river. Now that the tide is higher, I’m going to head down to the boat ramp and see if I can catch a flathead.“ He held out his hand. “I’m Dylan.”

Sean takes his hand; the smoothness of Dylan’s skin stirs him. Their eyes locked. Another smile. “Sean.”

"Well, Sean, enjoy the book. See you later, hey?"

And like that, he packed up his fishing gear and walked towards the end of the pier, though Sean thought he glided more than walked. He turned before he reached the end and waved back to Sean. Sean raised his hand, mesmerised. A wave seemed hardly appropriate.

 In his flat, Sean tried to remember every detail: the yellow and brown board shorts he wore, the stripped T-shirt, his blonde hair, those freckles, that easy smile, the touch of his skin. He savoured him as long as he could, hoping their paths might cross again. 

Sean just never expected it to be in his classroom.

It’s Saturday again. The first week is done and dusted. He saw Dylan every day but kept coy. Dylan, likewise, remained aloof. However, Sean saw him stealing glances at each opportunity he could, dispersing the odd smile. When Sean walked down the aisle between desks, he imagined Dylan checking out his butt.

Sean runs down to the beachfront, sweat dripping from every pore, flowing in a torrent down his legs, the back of his calves, and his feet, wet with sweat, slide inside his trainers. Sean’s pace is faster than usual. He runs with an adolescent eagerness. As he reaches the beachfront, he slows; the smell of seaweed drying on the mud flats exposed before him slaps him hard in the face. His eyes water and the back of his throat stings with salty air. It’s low tide. What would a Westie know about the tides? As futile as it seems, Sean soldiers on, hoping Dylan fished the pier regardless of the tide—his pace quickens.

Sean now sees why Cabbage Tree Creek is called a creek, not a river. The tide is low—the creek was two metres wide at best. Sean thinks a long jumper could leap to the other side. Boats that bobbed up and down on the sea’s surface last week now lay stuck in the dark, sticky mud. A small flock of long-billed sea birds scour the mud for morsels of food.

Dylan is not here. Sean stops and turns to follow the footpath above the creek towards where Dylan had wandered to find a place to fish. As he strolls further from the sea, the water shallows, the creek narrows, and the air carries the stench of rotten eggs.

 Sean stops and squats. In truth, he has not examined what he is doing until now, and now, he feels the shame of his actions. “Am I chasing a student?” Sean makes a hard fist and smacks the side of his head, like his dad would, to knock some sense into him. He is disappointed Dylan is not standing there, his smile brightening an already sunny day. His absence makes a hollow sound. He punches himself again, harder. Sean is disgusted with himself.

There is no television in Sean’s flat, no radio or stereo. Just his typewriter, a birthday present from his parents when they still did such things, before they learnt the truth about their son. There was nothing but books. Books to keep him company. In books, he found solitude. In books, he found meaning. He thought of Joyce and his line from Ulysses, “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.”

Sean thinks of Dylan and nothing else.