the melancholy of m.

so there’s this boy in my junior high. he’s the typical jock, in that he’s sporty, and not only that, he’s part of -the- sports team that everyone in japan worships– the baseball team. the baseballers lounge about school and move in packs reminding everyone why they’re cool and why because they’re cool they don’t really need to care about anything else, much less english. club activities have stopped for the third years, but they persist in indulging in their favourite game during every spare break they have. they all have the same haircut that makes them instantaneously recognisable, and they all have the same fervent hatred for studying and class and school.

so he’s a baseballer.  therefore, by deduction, he’s pretty popular too (though admittedly i have not noticed anything that points conclusively to that). he’s by no means good-looking (there are some heart-breakers-to-be around in this school) but he does have pretty nice (and large) eyes. he’s loud, has an obsession with sex words, which he likes to try to trick young female english teachers into asking him about, or repeating after him.

enter: me.

i’m half sceptical that his ‘fondness’ for me is very much just plain mockery, though i am told by other teachers of his ’soft spot’ for me. but on the whole, i suppose i am quite fond of him. as disruptive as he is, at least he responds in english class, which is more than what can be said for the bajillion zoned out students who resemble little more than androids fixed in their chairs.  he also quite enthusiastically volunteers answers on a regular basis, despite of (or perhaps because of) my determination to not call on him in class (or my habit of calling him in the most reluctant of voices).

but i still have a pretty big soft spot for him. any spark of life is always welcome in class. even if it is annoying. but as far as baseball guys go, he’s pretty benign. (you don’t want to get me started on the malignant ones.)

so one day, ishii-sensei (my teaching partner) tells me that apparently, he was dating a girl in the same year till about last month when they broke up. and he’s been pretty sad and lonely since. and i’m pretty fond of that girl too, for despite being the queen bee she apparently is, she is cute and small and has a voice ten times her physical frame. and it was just such an ‘awwwwwwwwwwwwww’ moment. i mean… when you’re 14/15 and dating and then break up, it must seem like the end of the world. he and the girl also seem to studiously blank each other when they pass each other which is kind of ouch. and it complicates things that the girl is good friends with another baseball guy (they write on each other’s hands. is that not flirting in a 14/15 year old context?!) so i now have quite a bit of sympathy for the kid. and there are times when he kind of zones out a bit in class, and the switch which turns on the ‘annoying’ aspect of his personality is turned off and he just looks out of the window dolefully. and it’s not a wangsty boo-hoo-hoo whyWHYdoesn’tshelovemeanymore!!!11!1 kind of doleful. it’s a deep, silent, pensive dolefulness. self-containing, and all-encompassing and still.

until today i find out that it’s not the breakup that’s keeping master m. melancholic. apparently, he’s really lonely at home, being the only child, and apparently, he doesn’t have a father (the latter seems to have been a recent development). so the kid’s having a hard time, and teachers seem to think that somehow my presence is helping him because it takes his mind off depressive things. and it kind of makes me sad. :( it’s the recurring theme of japan– sad, lonely, broken, alienated people living in little shells of their own because well, ’shoganai’ (it can’t be helped). and i wish i could have a proper talk with him. but he seems to be more interested in making me call him “ikemen” (handsome, apparently.) or try to trick me into saying blowjob in japanese. which is curiously, fellatio. and you’d think the boy would have realised it’s a katakana word, ergo, a word of foreign origin, and that i’d know what it is, and i’d be smart enough to not repeat it. but he hasn’t, so bless his little depraved heart. and there’s the pesky language barrier to get past too, because if the average junior high kid can hardly speak english, a baseball player junior high kid will pretty much know next to nothing.

except, of course, sex words.

sigh. what to do with mr. m?