Hey uh the phrase "psychosexual obsession with abraham lincoln" punched me so hard in the metaphysical throat I got physically dizzy so I gotta ask what in the hell this teacher was sayi
Let me first give you a visual description of my teacher. He was a short man, about sixty years old, with sandy skin, sandier hair, and small, moist eyes that might have passed as “beady” if they had not been shockingly, distractingly blue. Blue as robins’ eggs. Blue as limpid pools of laundry detergent. Alkaline blue, like a used pH test strip. Twitter blue. They were not deep enough to get lost in, like the ocean-eyes of romantic poetry, but plenty of people have drowned in half an inch of stagnant water. It happens.
Mr. S was born on February 12. He seemed to believe that this gave him a profound spiritual connection to Abraham Lincoln—I suppose we should all be grateful that he was not born April 20 instead.
Now, I can appreciate a good special interest. I indulge and enjoy my friends’ obsessions, as they do the same for me. But there comes a point where someone can have too many images of the sixteenth president of the United States in one 8th grade classroom, and Mr. S found it. It was one thing to sit and take exams under the gaze of the basketball-sized pupils of the floor-to-ceiling portrait of Mr. Lincoln that took up one wall—it was another to try to concentrate while being stared down by the rubber Lincoln masks or the life-sized cutouts. Lincoln’s likeness papered nearly every inch of the classroom’s walls—a walk-in kaleidoscope of black, white, and beard. It was a lot.
Mr. S used to cosplay as Lincoln on a regular basis, both for historical reenactment at public events and in respectful observation of his birthday and the anniversary of his death. He would come to school in a Lincoln costume and read us descriptions of Lincoln by his contemporaries. It was through Mr. S that I learned that our sixteenth president possessed a trim figure with lean, defined muscles and washboard abs that surprised and impressed the doctors during his autopsy. To hear him tell it, the beauty of the dead president’s body was so powerful that it temporarily distracted from his assassination.
On April 15, we all watched in vague unease as Mr. S showed up to class with his fake beard and his stovepipe hat and a grim set to his features. He stood before the class without a word, put his hand over his heart, and swayed back and forth silently mouthing something as he stared into the lifeless face of one of the countless Lincoln effigies while playing the a recording of the national anthem. There was dreamy rapture in his eyes—an almost orgasmic trace-state that left us all exchanging uncomfortable glances.
One would think—hope, perhaps—that this obsession with Lincoln would translate into a passion for abolitionism and civil rights. That the so-afflicted would take up the cause of anti-racism, voting equality, and racial justice.
Not so at all, in any way, shape, or form. No, this man decided that his takeaway and mission in life was to encourage his public school students to become Christian nationalists defending God’s favorite country from the evils of multiculturalism, homosexuality, and me, specifically.