Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

I HAD AN AFFAIR

by Bert Stratton

I’m waiting for the guy I had an affair with to die.  He’s 78 and kind of well-known.

I wore a red “wet look” vinyl coat to his English Lit class.  This was quite a few years ago. The other girls wore rags I wouldn’t even wear to paint in.  I’ve always been fashionable.

I was a pretty good student.  I wrote a Chaucer paper about the miller — or somebody, I can’t remember – maybe the pardoner.  I compared the pardoner to the then-omnipresent countercultural huckster, such as the Columbia Records pitchman:  “But The Man can’t bust our music.”

The professor called me into his office and said, “I want to see more work like that!” He had a Ph.D. and a couple books out. He paid attention to li’l ol’ me.

We walked across campus.  We got ice cream.  I got the hairy eyeball from girls — and guys — my age. Awkward.

The prof lived in the suburbs.  I was at his house only once, when his wife was out of town.  He had a bedroom dedicated to just books, and me apparently.

The prof was fascinated by the “youth culture.” He thought I could help him on that count.  Wrong.   I was a high school English-teacher manqué, not a rabble-rousing hippie.  He didn’t even know what “make out” meant.  He would say “How you making out?” in his class, and kids would giggle. It’s like today when kids say “hooking up” and we don’t know what the kids are talking about.

The prof once asked me, “Have you ever taken pot?” Taken pot?  Also, he didn’t know what hash was.

We talked by phone every night after midnight.  Pre-cellphones.

The prof and I had our liaisons at the house of a professor who was on sabbatical in California.

I just Googled the prof . . .

Holy shit, he’s still teaching! He’s on Rate Your Professor.  Some students like his lectures; some say he rambles. One alum writes: “I took his course 41 years ago and still remember his comments on my papers. I write for TV now; both his entertaining insights and his honest assessment of good and bad in my sophomoric work help me earn a living.”

Maybe I’ll rate my prof.

No, let’s leave this unrated.

—

Yiddishe Cup, 2012, Parade the Circle

Yiddishe Cup plays Parade the Circle noon Saturday (June 8) at Wade Oval, University Circle, Cleveland. 

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3 comments

1 Ken Goldberg { 06.05.13 at 10:46 am }

Provocative piece, Bert.

2 David Korn { 06.12.13 at 3:05 pm }

I second the Ken Goldberg comment. Bert, the provocative part is putting it mildly. JMW (you know who) said “I see that Bert has come out.” “Sweetheart, ” I replied, “It’s creative writing. Bert is taking on the persona of a college co-ed, a fictional woman who had an affair with her prof. Bert didn’t.” I’m not sure I convinced her.

3 Bert Stratton { 06.12.13 at 5:15 pm }

To David Korn:

Yes, this is part of the KlezFiction series. More to come.

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