Professor Matriarch

“Well, that’s up to you. If you feel you can connect a religious story to tragedy and psychology, then by all means.”

December 1977

“You understand, don’t you, that a fireplace is absolutely useless as far as warming the house. Completely inefficient.”
We were silent. We didn’t know where he was or where he was headed but it wouldn’t take long to find out.
“Heats the width of the fireplace plus three feet out. So why? What’s the real purpose? It is simply this: being warm has nothing to with it; the fact of the matter is man has an irresistible urge to urinate on the fire. It’s primal. Goes all the way back. And it’s about power. Control.”
The front row took notes with reverent looks on their faces. The middle section of the room stared at the professor dispassionately. Those of us in the back row glanced furtively at each other—too chicken to roll our eyes or raise an eyebrow. As a proud member of the back row I chewed my bubble gum and scribbled down Dylan lyrics as they came to me. “The back of the fish truck unloads while my conscience explodes.”
“Remember now, on a cold winter night like last night, when the fireplace is burning, what do men do? They STARE at the fire.”
“Women stare at fires,” a front row girl put in.
“Of course they do. They are trying to retrieve what they lost. See? We must shake off the ridiculous notion that this has always been a patriarchal society. If you go back, go back to the beginning, it was matriarchal.”
I looked like a note taker as I scribbled down, “He built a fire on Main Street and shot it full of holes! Ah, Mama, can this really be the end?” I felt it had more value than deciding whether I had an urge to piss on fires.
The class was Greek and Roman Tragedy. The first silly notion he hoped to free us from was the idea that the Romans had any original plays. This seemed very important to him because he mentioned it every time the class met. They merely changed the Greek names into Roman ones. Then there was the business of linking Greek Tragedy to psychology, mostly Freudian. I can’t remember if peeing on fires was Freudian or not, though. The other silly thing he wanted us to dismiss included saying Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. He advised us well in advance not to wish him a Merry Christmas or say the phrase in his presence, and he further warned us not to say Happy Holidays either, which was a mere euphemism from his perspective. His greater concern though seemed to be that the world had been matriarchal to start and then the men conspired and killed off the women leaders and took over from which point they vowed to stay in power by inventing religious and cultural norms to make sure women never wrested the power back. I don’t remember actually reading or discussing a play, only selections that he believed underscored his notions.
I was chewing a stick of Carefree Sugarless Bubblegum one afternoon while he was rambling on about men forming a circle around a woman leader and stabbing her to death.
“They all had to participate in the act, don’t you see?” He stopped abruptly and seemed to be staring at the nonbelievers in the back row. He adjusted and readjusted his glasses. “Would you please stop snapping that gum?”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” I thought he was certainly within his rights to be angry, and I was grateful that he didn’t appear to be. I even sat up a little as a sign of my remorse. Then he suddenly switched to the story of Job in the Bible.
“Religion is a trick, a manipulation. Look at Job. God made fun of his devotion. Tortured him in every way imaginable. Job’s piety went right out the window. Until God gave him everything back; then he was God’s pimp again.”
It wasn’t an accurate or fair description. I decided that I would go visit the man. It was not the role I liked to play as a college student. I liked to think that I slipped in unawares, got my education and slipped out before anyone noticed. But now I was the gum chewing guy and I could no longer be anonymous. A few days later, I went to see him during his office hours.
“Hi. I uh, came to apologize for snapping the gum.”
“Oh well, that’s all right. I don’t mind if you chew gum; it’s just the snapping. Very distracting,” he said, almost apologetically.
“Yeah, it was dumb.” His office seemed smaller than others but he made very effective use of every space, a very organized man, apparently. “Well, I had a question. Will Job be in the final?”
“Well, that’s up to you. If you feel you can connect a religious story to tragedy and psychology, then by all means.”
“I, well, I felt that the idea of Job being a pimp was well, I’m a …”
“It doesn’t matter what your personal religious fantasies are. What I said is my opinion. I’ve no need for a Sunday School lesson.”
“I just don’t think it was a fair characterization. I’m not an expert or…”
“I see your point.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“I’ve been thinking about the patriarchal conspiracy against the matriarchy.” I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t capable of grasping ideas that were unorthodox.
“Yes?”
“I’ve been wondering if football isn’t a symbolic recreation of that moment.”
“How’s that?”
“The defense is the patriarchy; the offense is the matriarchy. The defense surrounds the offense; they conspire to kill the quarterback.” It made as much sense as anything else; it just wasn’t in a book.
“Uh-huh.”
“And the quarterback holds a breast like object. See?”
“That wouldn’t be it. Not at all.”
“Well, I was just thinking that…” He jumped up.
“Thank you for coming in.”
I was glad I brought it up; I was going to toss it into my final. I was not averse to putting crazy stuff into finals, not after mentioning Mick Jagger’s member as a pop icon in a popular icon class on a five dollar dare. I decided to throw out plan b which was to reference a lyric in a Flo and Eddie song which concerned itself with a donkey and a burrito.
He distributed the final without comment. He didn’t appear different than any other day. We wrote with a certain silent intensity. Halfway through the allotted time he picked up his briefcase and turned to go out the door. Several of us looked up. He looked a little like of Phil Silvers except that his plans were not quite as elaborate, whatever they were. He got out the door and turned left to go out of the building and we all heard him say, “Merry Christmas” in a staged mumble. The class gasped and called for him to come back; he didn’t.
Six weeks later the second semester began. I was standing on the balcony of the Oviatt Library, deciding whether to go to class or go to the Chinese place on Plummer where they served a huge plate of broccoli beef for $2.50. I had my car keys out when a student from the Greek Tragedy class approached me.
“Hey, man. How you doin?”
“All right.” He was a back row associate but I didn’t know him well. All semester long he didn’t speak to anyone except his girlfriend, and even they didn’t talk much; most of the time she would slip off her shoe and he would hold her foot.
“Did you hear about it?”
“About what?”
“Professor Martiarch.”
“What about him?”
“He killed himself.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Up on Mulholland.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He took his VW up there and put a hose in the exhaust pipe and ran it to the window.”
“When?”
“Day before Christmas Eve.”
“Damn. He didn’t seem depressed.”
“No shit. But hey, good way to go though. I mean nice view and all. If that’s what you wanna do.”
“I guess.”
“And it doesn’t hurt, and you just go to sleep. Must smell bad though.”
“I wonder why he did it.”
“Who knows? Couldn’t get any, maybe.” He spit over the balcony, and walked away. I was glad I didn’t get to know the guy; I felt I had discovered all I ever wanted to know about him.
I stood looking out over the campus, trying to know the why of it, but I could not. My thoughts ricocheted from one thing to another, finally landing on something my friend Robert once said about a Simon and Garfunkel album. “I’ll tell you what’s most peculiar about it: it’s got two songs about suicide. Ha!” Then I glommed on to the lyrics of the song he was referring to, having no other reference point for how to respond to this kind of calamity. I drove home and went to my room and put on the record. I lay on my back and stared at the Who poster on the ceiling while the words poured out.

He died last Saturday
He turned on the gas and he went to sleep
With the windows closed so he’d never wake up
To his silent world and his tiny room


I didn’t know him to know why he did it. I didn’t feel right imagining I was mourning his death. I felt something but I didn’t know what it was. I searched for something that could help me understand him, but all I could remember was a joke he once told; he said it was his favorite joke because it “explained everything.”

There was a man who lost everything in one week. He lost his job, his wife ran away with the mailman, his son stole his credit cards and ran up a huge bill, his car was repossessed. He lost all hope. He went to Suicide Bridge in Pasadena. Just as he was ready to jump though, he heard a voice.
"What's wrong there, young man?"
When he turned around he saw a homeless woman. He told her everything that had gone wrong.
"I can help you," she said.
"How could you help me?" he asked.
"I'm a witch. I have magical powers. I can restore everything to you in 24 hours."
"Yeah sure, go ahead."
"But there is one condition."
"What's that?"
"You have to sleep with me."
The woman was hideous and foul smelling. She had not changed clothes in years. Her teeth were either rotting or missing. Her face was filled with puss-filled welts. She could not have been younger than 70.
"I can't." The very thought was repugnant.
"Then you won't get anything restored to you."
He thought about it some more and he decided he had nothing to lose.
He found a one star hotel and spent his last fifty dollars. He held his
breath and closed his eyes and did what was required.
"Well" he said, "that wasn't easy, but tomorrow I'll have a brand new start."
"How old are you, young man?" The woman asked as they were getting dressed.
"I'm 40 years old."
"Forty years old and you STILL BELIEVE IN MAGIC?"

I remembered that he told the joke more than once, and I remembered how he laughed heartily at his own joke. I thought about the joke for a week, trying to wring some kind of understanding from it, but his life, his beliefs and