You couldn't ask for a more committed teacher at John Wayne Cotter H.S. than
Brendan Bilicki (English) even if he didn't live in the Bronx. He hardly missed a day; he was
rarely if ever late. On the other hand he had a reputation for storming out of department
meetings or faculty meetings, declaring his dissatisfaction with some point of procedure.
Bilicki had already done nineteen years in the system; he had secured tenure; he was
respected and reviled as a curmudgeon.
Primary among the targets of his loathing were the supervisors, the oldsters in jackets
and ties who ran the school; he called them "the good ole boys" and he joked often that they sat in the principal's office "drinking whiskey and rye", formulating procedures that
so far had failed to turn the school around. He had it in for his assistant principal, Pete
Plimpler, whom he considered a perfect example of what was wrong with the running of
the school.
In the morning, he'd observed, Pete Plimpler was viperish until he'd had his cup of
coffee. No point running to him with problems at the start of the day. You'd find only a
cranky old man sitting at his desk, watching his coffee maker bubble, while his radio
played low-volume classical music in the background.
Pete Plimpler was also part of the white establishment which refused to embrace the
need to revise the curricula in the light of demographic shifts in the city. Bilicki, who was
white but always at pains to remind everyone of his Irish-Jewish roots, became
contentious at department meetings, pointing to the outdated reading lists, the books assigned to students over the years, many of which ended up lost or unreturned or "found" later on the lawns outside, wet and unusable.
And why were there no African-American authors, no Hispanic authors on the lists?
"Wake up and smell the coffee," he'd shout at Pete Plimpler, who sighed, wearied but unbowed, and tried to move the meeting on to the next item on the agenda.
(Later in a deft move, and in deference to the general mood of unhappiness in the
department, Pete Plimpler offered the electives program to Bilicki; this pacified him for
awhile. He introduced his seniors to James Baldwin and Gabriel Garcia Marquez; and he
vigorously suggested that money be set aside to order at least one class set of Chinua
Achebe's "Things Fall Apart".)
Mr. Bilicki was loved by his graduating seniors. He was the only teacher who greeted
students with a chaste kiss on both cheeks. Some of them had had Mr. Bilicki in their
junior year when they read "Streetcar Named Desire" so they signed up for his elective.
Pass any room where his class was in session, you couldn't fail to notice a pony-tailed
teacher like an aging rocker in blue jeans sitting on his desk, the class leaning forward
in rapt attention. They liked the the "free form" tempo of his classes ("free form", a
phrase from the 60s took on fresh meaning for his students); they listened enthralled
to accounts of his college days, to his casual confession one day that he'd smoked
marijuana. ("You did drugs, Mr. Bilicki?" the class gasped.)
When he revealed, looking out the window and stroking his beard, that he'd married
too young, that he had a teenage daughter and was divorced from his wife, they shook
their heads in shock and disbelief.
They wanted detail, postmarital insights. Mr. Bilicki waved the matter aside. He
explained that he and his wife were very good friends. Which prompted someone in the
class to declare, "Marriage sucks."
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 