There I was—distinguished professor of literature, credentialed purveyor of syntax and suffering—perched atop the porcelain throne in the sacred stillness of the faculty restroom, savoring the last vestiges of a sugarless lemon-honey lozenge and the sweet, unbroken silence that comes only from locking the world out, one stall door at a time. Beside me: Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. Above me: fluorescent lighting dimmer than the future of American democracy. Around me: peace, solitude, and the faint illusion of control.
Then came the talcum fog.
That distinct olfactory offense, paired with the telltale wheeze of a Marlboro-ravaged trachea, shattered the silence. I didn’t have to peek between the stall doors. I knew. It was her. Scary Mary. The tenured temp. The mythological grievance machine. The student who had, for over a decade, haunted our campus like a poltergeist with an administrative appeal form.
“Mary,” I barked from my vulnerable perch, “this is the men’s room. Leave now, or campus police will be called.”
“But Professor,” came the whine, pitched somewhere between a toddler’s tantrum and a chainsmoker’s aria, “I need to talk to you about my grade.”
I tried reason. I tried logic. But Mary had the persistence of a nicotine-stained Terminator. “Not until you explain why I got a C.”
“I read your essay,” I sighed. “Your catering hustle was impressive. One hundred smoked salmon crostini in thirty minutes? Brava. But yes, it was larded with grammatical errors.”
“You used the word larded,” she moaned. “Do you know how that hurts my self-esteem?”
Self-esteem? I was pants-down in a toilet stall having a mid-thesis debate with a woman violating Title IX, and she wanted to discuss feelings?
But Mary was just revving up. Her stubby fingers suddenly curled over the stall partition like something out of The Ring, and soon, her jaundiced head and magnified, frantic eyes emerged over the top. She looked like an unhinged librarian perched in a crow’s nest.
“I can’t afford to flunk this class again!” she gasped, dangling from her makeshift luggage tower like a cirque-de-sociopath act.
I stood up—pants restored, dignity in tatters—and let it rip: “You want honesty? Your essay reads like it was written by a sleep-deprived raccoon using predictive text. It made me reconsider the entire purpose of education. It gave me a migraine and a minor crisis of faith.”
Mary recoiled. “You’re a monster!” she shrieked. “The worst professor in higher education!”
Then physics intervened.
Mary, all 250 pounds of her, teetered from her wobbly platform and hit the floor with the grace of a collapsing filing cabinet. She screamed. Something about her shoulder.
I emerged, washed my hands, and surveyed the carnage.
“You’ll be fine,” I said flatly. “Ice it.”
“Aren’t you going to help me?”
Something cracked open in me—some cocktail of guilt, absurdism, and overcaffeinated bravado. “I can fix it,” I said. “My brother dislocated his shoulder in high school. I saw the coach pop it back in.”
Before she could object, I grabbed her wrist and yanked like a man possessed. There was a meaty clunk and then—a miracle—relief.
“You’re amazing,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She stood up, rubbing her newly aligned limb. “Now that I’m not your student… can we be friends?”
“Absolutely not,” I said, “but I can offer career counseling.”
“No hard feelings?”
“None. Now kindly exit the men’s room.”
I returned home expecting a hero’s welcome, only to find my family gathered around a platter of French Dip, their eyes glued to gravy-soaked baguettes.
“Sit down and eat,” my wife ordered, shoveling horseradish onto a sandwich with military precision.
And so I did.
And let me tell you, that sandwich could have ended wars. The beef was so tender it practically recited poetry on your tongue. The bread straddled that holy line between crisp and pillowy. And the au jus? It was less of a sauce and more of a religious experience. As I dipped, the day’s trauma melted like Swiss cheese under a broiler.
In that moment, I understood: some stories deserve to be told. Others should be swallowed with gravy.
Cinemorphosis 
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