No Hard Feelings
by Ken Hogarty
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Amidst the sixty pages of mature poetry and narrative you left me, amidst your intensely honest projection of feelings, thoughts, and pain:
“I wish I had friends I didn’t subtly push away, friends you’d get drunk with, friends to tell everything to, friends to sneak out of the house to be with.”
amidst your intimate narrations:
“riding on the back of the motorcycle with the wide handles and deep seats with the nineteen-year old with his beautiful lost eyes and dreads that reached down past his brown eyes, past his short eyelashes, past his just-trimmed goatee to his leather jacket that I held tight to his body as we roared through the fog.”
I was unnerved how you unveiled all completely, nailing the Jordan confession and aftermath perfectly. Excerpts still grab me:
“I led part of class since Mr. S., who I love like I love Seminar, fought laryngitis. It’s only an hour and a half ago, but the change in mood will rock us for months.
“Jordan must have waited fitfully, ironically as we discussed waiting, for the three hours of class to end to strip himself bare.
“He told us about the scissors and his mom coming in and not being able to find a hospital.
“Yvette, Babette, and Parisa flocked to the floor below him, seemingly ‘washing his feet’ until I couldn’t stand not being there, and I went over there, even though I was shaking, and I waited for Parisa to move, and we were all wrapped together as I reached up and gave Jordan a kiss on his cheek.
“As confused students sat in silence or quietly exited the conference room, we listened to Jordan talk about that night and its aftermath when his world exploded and he faced his parents. Pain on pain, and now the pain of telling us — so we could feel guilty? Feel shame? Feel selfishness? Just feel something, about him? Sometimes that’s what people seek, to invite others to peek into their souls.
“We were dying to have him know, to feel, we were attentive to him. Finally, the mask, as Mr. S. called it, was removed, the mask worn by the smiling Jordan, the laughing Jordan, the goofy Jordan, the newspaper Jordan, and a couple cool things happened. Michael Chang came back in the room with boxes of tissues for us gathered with tears flowing down our cheeks at Jordan’s feet.
“And Joe, the man who everybody truly respects and admires, regardless of who they are and what they believe in — even Reid, who accuses me of being as shallow as a wading pool and finds fault with everybody else — rushed back into the room, though the bus to take him with the rest of the basketball team to a SoCal tournament idled in the fog outside the building.
“Joe reached above us to embrace Jordan and wordlessly took off the St. Joseph’s medal he wears 24-7 and draped it around Jordan’s neck and told him to wear it and be safe until he got back when they would talk. It was as if he were giving Jordan a piece of himself, a symbol of love. Someday, I hope I’ll be brave enough to give a piece of myself to others, unselfishly and fully.”
* * *
I thought I’d see and hear from you after you went to Pomona. Innumerable students over the decades kept in touch, to get advice, stay connected, or catch me up on accomplishments. Still, I’ve avoided Facebook, fearing I wouldn’t have time for anything else. I doubt, though, that would have mattered. When I spoke to your HP classmates a few years after you graduated, none had kept contact with you. Or, you hadn’t kept contact with them.
Even when emails flew about Reid — I assume you heard he’s a virtual vegetable after overdosing on drugs — nobody else knew anything about you.
I considered contacting your father since your mom had moved, but with all you confided to me about your toxic relationship that poured out of you after he left, I didn’t think that would be right.
And, of course, during that time, my Nancy left, and my girls found lives where they went to college: Megan back East and Marie in Oregon. But I was okay. I still had my teaching, good friends, hobbies, and pursuits. Wrote for education journals. And students stayed in touch. I do need to come clean, though. I always imagined hearing how you were unveiling your gifts to make me proud.
I’ve had students, many HPers, who commanded the spotlight: lawyers, judges, doctors, actors, tech innovators, politicians, professors, writers. Olympians, other sports stars, and two guys from back in the day who later won an Oscar and an Emmy. I figured you were destined for similar notoriety, inviting people into something memorable, or pulling off something riveting.
So, yes, to make a clean breast of things, I’m sorry we lost contact. But, no, I never had a bone to pick about that.
Then, recently, I was eating out with Mr. Dickerson at La Taqueria in the Mission before supervising a game.
“Have you heard what Faryn’s up to?” he laughed, after we settled into a booth, and I savored my favorite tacos in the world.
“Faryn?” I dumbly repeated, excited to get some news. “From that great class nine years ago?”
“You think?” he snatched me out of my thoughts: “How many Faryns have you taught, or even known?” He took a breath. “She’s a porn star.”
“A what?” I stammered.
“Rafa, our new Dean stumbled upon her site when busting some seniors for sharing their laptop ‘research’ in the library,” he bit off sarcastically. “Laptop, indeed. Jazzed they had come across a San Francisco girl wearing, or slowly discarding, what looked like a school uniform. Our plaid.”
“You screwing with me? Really?”
“You think he really found out from a teacher who admitted he looks at porn?” the Assistant Principal joked.
“I’m stunned,” I blurted before inhaling a taco bite.
“Apparently, even uses her first name, though a made-up last name: ‘Faren Heit, 451’ is the site’s tag that brags, ‘Hotter than Hot.’ It introduces her as ‘Strawberry Girl.’ Isn’t that what you called her?”
“Rafa wasn’t here then. Maybe he got it wrong.”
“He checked a yearbook. No doubt. Always striking. No mistaking her. I admit, I peeked. Just to confirm.”
* * *
I’m no prude, and I was curious, but I couldn’t peek, myself. At first.
God knows, I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve never been into porn. I raised girls and spent my life protecting students, not exploiting them. I filed at least three reports with social services for young women who had been abused. And I often elicited laughs telling the story about the prospective teacher we interviewed at a job fair who earnestly answered my question that his favorite novel was Lolita.
Frankly, I also feared our IT people could dig out any search, even if deleted, from school-issued laptops.
I felt like a scumbag, but I finally gave in, bought an iPad.
Seeing your site brought up feelings as disconcerting as when I first read the note Nancy waved, ironically from another redhead, that upended my life. Especially when I realized your so-called “club,” which supposedly allows you to profit yourself from it, touched directly on our shared past.
The school girl spread. The library spread. The marshmallow spread. The time traveler spread. The boyfriend on the bus spread. The motorcycle spread. The kneeling to wash the guy’s feet spread. The trapeze spread. The discussion leader spread. The wading pool spread. The holy medal bondage spread.
I almost choked when I saw images of you in the counselor’s office with an older guy wearing glasses and, in the first frames, a vest like the one you teased me about.
I address this to whom?
There’s no way I could bring myself really to contact you, Faryn.
Bewildered, embarrassed, I strain to imagine your dad’s reaction, any dad’s.
Should I have seen it coming?
Still, I yearn to see you... in the flesh.
You chose your path.
No hard feelings, Strawberry Girl.
Copyright © 2026 by Ken Hogarty
