Alan Hollis #0741

Alan Hollis was older than everyone else in our English Education classes in college. He was a class clown, and he always sat next to this diminutive mousy girl with glasses named Darla.

It was the understanding of everyone in the class that Darla was going to be an awesome teacher. She always came up with the best lesson plans, and though shorter even than myself at a good 5'2", she seemed to have what it takes to beat the five year turnover rate of the public school system.

Alan, however, could perhaps have taught clown school. He specialized in smarty answers, sarcastic remarks, and the helpless look that meant he didn't mean to be a pain in the ass, it was just all so funny. Class was a joke to him, and to Darla the joke was Alan.

I saw them walk together to multiple classes. They hugged. They flicked each other in good natured flirtation. Everyone thought for sure they were dating.

But apparently they weren't dating.

(*cue dramatic crescendo*)

"Hey! That is so not true! Def Leppard, man! Fuckin Def Leppard was the shit!"

Cue Darla's boyfriend, Roy. Roy was huge, at least six feet tall. He had a shaved head, a goatee, gauged ear lobes and a lip piercing. Frankly, I would not have been surprised if he had a swastika tattooed on his chest somewhere.

Roy liked to be the center of attention, puff up his chest like a game cock, and walk around intimidating everyone with various feats of idiocy and unnecessarily foul language.

I saw them outside of a campus bar at a picnic bench under the covered porch.

"Darla and I here--" he slung his arm roughly around Darla's neck and she smiled and pressed into his shoulder, "--we were going to go to Buzzfest this year, but she had some fuckin school shit to do."

"I'm trying to teach Antony and Cleopatra without talking too much about sex," and she giggled behind her nerdy glasses.

"Oh man, I said. You're teaching that? I have to teach Chiua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. I think I'd rather have Shakespeare." Next to me, Kyle Parson had also been in our classes and known Darla.

"Yeah? I've got to do Faulkner. I found out about that and thought 'what the crap.' I didn't understand Faulkner in college!"

There was a lull and Roy started looking about the room since he obviously had no place in the conversation. He started playing with Darla's hair. His macho affection was actually coming off pretty disgusting. every since Darla had informed us that they lived together, I couldn't stop thinking about how weird they must look having sex.

Kyle broke the silence.

"Have you heard anything from Alan?"

Darla immediately looked at Roy. She opened her mouth a fraction of an inch.

"--Don't even say that name, man. Don't fuckin bring it up." As much as he looked frightening, I had to stifle a smirk because the thought of Alan, who was puffy and goofy looking stepping in and emasculating Roy was just really funny.

Abruptly, Darla got up and excused herself.

Roy leaned in to Kyle and I as we watched Darla round the corner toward the bathroom inside.

"I told that motherfucker if he ever comes near her again I'll fuckin break his neck."

But I kept seeing Darla and Alan together in class. I never saw Roy in the same one hundred foot radius, but the two of them always sat together, always joked, always teased.

When we graduated, Roy watched Darla walk. I saw him standing there clutching a bouquet of Kroger carnations when they caught up in the grass outside the arena. Alan and I ended up with the same student teaching supervisor, so I kept up with him. He got a job at a well-to-do public high school in the suburbs coaching football. He had been dating a woman with special needs who was divorced with two children.

And I couldn't understand how he had time and patience for all that. How he could be laughing and joking and poking fun, and really be coming back to that? But then, I couldn't understand how Darla ever had patience for Roy either.

So I guess it all made sense in a way.