To Love Big Dog

TO LOVE BIG OOG/Cintia Saniana YOU ARE NOT JUST ONE of the girls. Wait untU your senior year in high school, when you know about love, to fall for Mr. Brinkly Uke the other girls. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception High School is something Uke going to school in a dungeon. AU girls. Except for Mr. BrinkhZs reUgion class. Mr. Brinkly calls himself "Big Dog," never enforces the uniform code, has Ms. Cullen banging on the adjoining waU when the laughter in his classroom gets too loud. Every Christmas he displays his Disney figurine collection in glass cases on the top library shelves. He is the tallest person you have ever known. Mr. Brinkly's in charge of the talent shows, the slide shows, the spirit rallies: all of the things the other teachers avoid organizing. Sister Heloise, the principal, adores him. Every teacher should have his energy. Listen to Mr. Brinkly's liberal lectures on world religions and psychology. Learn, through rumor, that he did drugs in the '60s, that he dated an ex-student six years back. Know you have a chance. He's a bachelor. Exactly twice your age. Remind yourself, for courage, that after this year your age difference wiU diminish, sort of. Prepare a strategy. Raise your hand in class and politely disagree with whatever he's saying. Challenge him. Begin staying after school to help Mr. Brinkly prepare Friday liturgies, but not as much as the obvious girls. Share with him the letter of resignation you've written your pastor, fiUed with observations about the corruption in rectory life as seen through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old student receptionist. He'll laugh and slap you on the back. Three days later he wUl stop you in the haUway and mention he's been thinking about the letter. "Soledad," he'U say, "I admire your clear sight, your fearless heart." Break up with your boyfriend from St. Augustine's because he's pressuring you to have sex and takes too much time away from ballet practice. When Mr. Brinkly takes other girls on day trips to San Francisco and Grateful Dead concerts, know he's not some kind of pervert because he always obtains parental permission. Tell yourself he doesn't invite you along because you're not a drooling girl; you have a life of your own. Consult him about your reUgious crisis, the vague reasons you and your ex-boyfriend reached an impasse. Know, in a peripheral way, that there are few things as seductive to an older The Missouri Review · 133 man as a young girl seeking guidance. Have him tell you that certain songs remind him of you, your youth, your earnest struggle to understand life. Love songs wUl surely come next. The day he kids you in front of the entire class that the girl he marries someday will have your smile, try not to turn red. Whenever he makes self-deprecating remarks about not being able to get a date, whenever he says he's married to the school, know he's simply lonely. Once, he'll call on you by the name of the ex-student he dated: Hope. Know that you know more than he. Smile. Around Christmas, write some sad poem about a rising and setting sun that never meet on the canvas of the sky. Break down and confess the depth of your feelings to your best friend, Gabby, whom you've known since you were six. When she tells you that if anyone has a chance ifs you, make her promise not to teU anyone. Gabby wiU go on to speculate about whether he's a virgin or not: he was in the seminary three years but there must be a reason he left. Accept her opinion that he's not and teU yourself you can understand it. Hope in your heart that he is. Cry at night because there is always the possibiUty that everything is an illusion. "Maya," he says the Hindus call it. Give up, mostly. In your mind think of him as Dominic, The Name By Which You'll Never Call Him. Permit yourself to say...