1
THOMAS
The campus is buzzing with the electric energy of students arriving and professors getting ready to begin a new year. It’s my favorite time here at Lakeview University – when the feeling in the air is one of hope and excitement. I never planned to be a professor. I graduated with a performance degree and a teaching minor, just in case I needed something to fall back on. It had been a good plan. After a few years of barely working as an opera singer, I was broke as shit – in debt – and struggling in every way. My mental health took a huge hit, and one day, when I was bitching to my therapist, she asked me why I wasn’t happy.
It hit me with the full weight of the moment. I couldn’t answer at first, and finally, after she let me sit there in silence – it came to me. I needed security. I was scared and scrambling to make enough money to just pay my bills with the three part-time jobs I had. I wasn’t happy in almost any part of my life. Being an opera singer was supposed to take me to the greatest stages in the world, and I had been performing in Minnesota and Florida for about four weeks a year. The only role I had been given was Papageno in the Magic Flute, and I was tired of dressing up like fucking bird.
I auditioned and didn’t get cast anywhere else. I auditioned and realized that maybe I wasn’t cut out for the life of an artist. It was a life of hardship and hope, and I had found myself in short supply of the latter. Sitting there in my therapist’s office, I made a decision. I would start applying for teaching jobs and go back to get my master’s degree in voice.
It hurt to give up at first. It felt like giving up on my dreams, which was, in reality, exactly what I was doing. I fretted for weeks as I applied to different schools. I had no experience as a teacher and soon started to worry that I would wind up failing at this too. What would be left? Retail? I wasn’t made for retail. Would I have to move back home to Oklahoma? That wasdefinitelynot happening.
Then I got a call for an in-person interview for a small liberal arts college in Lakeview, Vermont. I had never heard of Lakeview University before seeing the job posting. The Lakeview Bullfrogs – honestly, I almost scrolled right past it and didn’t apply. But the photo of the campus was breathtaking. All of the old brick buildings with colonnades standing in front of a gorgeous lake spoke to me in some way. The silver and green banners that hung from the old-fashioned lamp posts made it feel like something out of a movie instead of real life.
I came and interviewed the next week and fell in love with the campus. But I felt like my interview was complete crap. I stammered and hemmed and hawed in all the wrong places and felt like a fool. I left that interview feeling like a failure and went home with my tail between my legs. I started looking for retail work. If I didn’t find something soon, I would have to live out of my car, and trust me, I was not strong enough for that. I was weak and beaten down by my own unfulfilled ambitions.
I wasn’t good enough.
I hadn’t been talented enough. I had a great voice, but so did everyone else in the world with a degree in music performance. I was just another sucker who paid a lot of money for a degree he would never get to use.
Then it happened.
The Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities College called me and offered me the job! I was blown away and completely confused why they would ever hire a loser like me. I said yes before he could come to his senses and found another professor who could actually do the job.
Lucky for me, I got hired at the end of the summer and started in a few weeks as a first-year voice professor with my own studio of students that I would teach to sing. It was like the cloudy sky opened up, and rainbows shot out of my ass – that was the feeling I had while I packed up my shitty apartment. It only grew as the boxes were loaded into my car, and I made my way here to the temporary housing they had provided me for the first semester until I could find my own somewhere near campus.
To my surprise – I was actually good at it. I loved it, and after that first semester, I got glowing reviews from the Dean. I was even asked to start a small opera performance studio where the students would perform in an opera on the mainstage of the theatre. Holy shit.
Maybe I had found my calling after all? It sure felt like it.
Lakeview was great, and I found some even greater friends who were professors in the same college. They may not be musicians in any way, but these two professors in the English Department have become my two best buddies. Robert Staff, who I liked to call Doc, and Professor Preston Page, who I called Triple P, have seriously become like brothers to me.
It’s like we’ve been friends for years instead of just a year ago when they found me alone in the corner nursing a beer at the beginning of the year mixer. I didn’t know anyone and had barely spoken to any of my colleagues in the music department. Most of the professors had been there for years and were already a tight bunch. Not to mention they were so much older than me. The only music professor close to my age was the jazz band conductor, and he was a total dick. It also didn’t hurt that my friends were single, too. Most of the professors had already coupled up. It was nice to have friends who were more like me. I hated being the third wheel.
That same mixer for the beginning of the year was happening later this week. Of course, they chose a Thursday night. I think they were just trying to be mean to us. Who wants to cut loose on a Thursday when you have classes on Friday? No one, but I’m sure that Doc, Triple P, and I will do just that, and then we’ll roll into class on Friday feeling like we’ve been put through the wringer.
They’re a little older than me, but not by much. At twenty-nine, I am the youngest professor in the music department and, in my opinion, the cutest. Not that it matters very much – since I am still as single as they come. They’re other gay professors, but none have made me more excited than a good baked potato. Hey – a good baked potato is as close as you can get to God, in my opinion.
Last year, I was given twelve students for my vocal studio. Only four of them were vocal majors, and they were freshmen. The rest were music production majors who had to take a couple years of voice to graduate. Every music major had to learn how to play the piano – they also needed to know how to sing, even if they never wanted to. It was sometimes painful. But most learned to embrace their voice. The skills you learned as a vocalist could be used in speaking as well as singing. They were good skills to have in life. A voice that would carry could get you a long way in a business boardroom, a classroom, or just screaming at the taxi that almost killed you as you crossed the road. Like I said – life skills.
I walked up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. There was a rumor that the elevator was haunted, and I didn’t mess with that shit. I believed in the supernatural and didn’t want an angry ghost following me home. Besides, the stairs kept me in shape. I climbed them all the way up to the fourth floor, where the studio offices for the music department were set in rows on either side of the hallway. The offices themselves were fairly sound proof, so we didn’t get a trumpet interrupting our vocal sessions. But the hallway was a cacophony of various sounds. I loved it. This floor had become like a second home to me, and teaching students how to use the voice that God gave them – a second calling.
I unlocked my heavy door and walked into my state-of-the-art office. A baby grand piano was set against one of the walls, and my treadmill loomed at the other end. My tiny desk was set between them, with one chair placed in front of it. It was a small office, but it was really all I needed. I only ever had one student at a time in here – sometimes with an accompanist to play the piano for them, but mainly, for most of my studio students, I played the piano for them. Only the vocal majors had their own accompanist.
When I brought the treadmill into the office, none of the other voice teachers understood why. But it was the way my teacher had trained me to control my breathing. If you could run on a treadmill and sing Puccini, then you were in control of your breath – and that is what a singer needed to be. Breath gave us a voice, and it was the key to learning how to sing. My students hated it, which gave me glee.
I opened my computer to see which students I would have in my class for the year. Mostly, I had the same kids as last year, but there were a few new names. All of them were music production majors, from what I could see. There was one who was still undecided, and that was odd. How did he get a spot in my studio without being in the department?
A knock on the door made me jump out of my chair. Probably one of last year's students coming to say hi. There were a few of them that I felt a real connection to, and I was happy to help them be the best singers that they could be. Mainly, it was my vocal majors that I cared the most about. They were here to truly learn, not just to take a class for a degree.
“Come in!”
The door opened, and I quickly sat up straight. Dean Chad Remington, who knew absolutely nothing about the arts, opened the door. His coming to my studio could not be a good thing. He rarely left his plush office with the walnut paneling unless he had to. He was a total bureaucrat who raised a lot of money for our college. He was also a tough SOB who didn’t like to be bothered with the minutiae of his students or faculty. He was donor-focused only, and we all knew he wouldn’t be much help in sorting out a problem.
“Thomas, I hope you had a very nice summer and are ready to get back to the grind.” Dean Remington stood at my threshold and leaned against the door jam with a very creepy smile on his face. He always had a creepy smile that looked as if it were an unnatural thing for him to do. It should be second nature to him. I’ve seen him grease donors for gifts, and the smile was always plastered on. But without a donor present, his face was a mask of un-emotion – usually. If he was grinning at me, he needed something.
“Yes, thank you, Dean Remington. It was fairly peaceful. I went back to Wisconsin for a bit to visit my family. How was yours?” Small talk had become something I had gotten very good at since becoming a professor. At campus events, no one ever wanted to know the truth about you – it was all small talk. I hated skimming the surface at those events. No one was really themselves at them.
“Oh, you know… I had a busy summer with our campaigns and speaking to our alumni about helping us fund them. Hopefully, the new art studios will be able to begin by the end of this school year. Very exciting stuff happening for our college, Thomas. Which is why I’m here to see you, actually.” He crossed his arms and frowned. “You’re in a position to help us bring in a very large donor to help us fund the theatre renovation and concert hall.”
