Driving from Pittsburgh to midtown Manhattan on a clear day without traffic should take around seven and a half hours, assuming just one gas stop. However, traffic is an inevitable part of the journey. Somewhere between Scranton and Elk County, perhaps in the vicinity of the Allegheny National Forest, clouds often gather, regardless of the initial weather conditions, bringing with them a moody, gloomy rain. Large trucks create walls of water, momentarily blinding drivers. This route became intimately familiar to me in 2007 when I accepted my first academic position in Pittsburgh, a city that had never been on my radar.
Since that pivotal year, I’ve made countless drives between Pittsburgh and New York. These journeys have been through every type of weather imaginable, from blizzards that sent my VW Beetle careening across icy highways to sweltering heat waves where broken air conditioning forced me to drive with the windows down. I’ve driven through the deep, unending night, fueled by 5-hour Energy shots, my mind buzzing with fatigue. I even navigated this route throughout the initial year of Trump’s presidency, a period when, as a black man, encountering white men in rural Pennsylvania felt particularly fraught. Each drive was an act of resolve, my body tense, hands and legs stiff, focused solely on reaching my destination. This dedication stemmed from a profound love and respect for poetry, the art form that is my calling, and, pragmatically, from the simple need for employment. It would take years for me to understand why I never truly settled in Pittsburgh, why I couldn’t shake my attachment to the coast, despite having long aspired to a university position just like this one.
The idea of the university, I now understand, was largely a fantasy. It was an idealized vision of academia and intellectual freedom, first sparked during Regina Barreca’s “Sex, Politics, and the British Novel” class in college. I found myself welcomed into a close circle of Gina’s friends – young professors in English, art, and French, alongside graduate students, including my housemate Krys, a fellow poet. As a senior, I was the only undergraduate invited to their Wednesday pizza nights in Willimantic, Connecticut. We’d gather, drinking red wine, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in late-night discussions about ideas, film, painting, and the muses behind famous artists. I mostly listened, absorbing the atmosphere, sensing that this could be a fulfilling life. I recall one professor commenting that my cigarette holding style suggested I wasn’t a smoker. This surprised me, as I’d been smoking since high school, but I mentally noted to refine my technique, aiming for a more natural appearance.
This entire scene felt like stepping into a James Baldwin novel. The pizzeria transformed into a space with “open French doors and a balcony, more than a hundred people mill[ing] about, some in evening dress . . . High above [our] heads an enormous silver ball . . . so bright with jewelry and glasses and cigarettes, that the heavy ball seemed almost to be alive.” Overwhelmed with gratitude to be included, I didn’t even register that I was the only black person present at this intellectual gala.
Gina, with her signature short skirts and voluminous hair, would recite entire passages from memory and deliver witty, often risqué jokes in class. A this is what a feminist looks like embodiment, she introduced me and other students to the concept of the madwoman in the attic. With Gina and the Wednesday pizza group, the pinnacle of education existed on a thrilling tightrope walk between rigorous academic discipline and relaxed informality, blurring the lines (in the non-vulgar sense) between professor and student. It was this exhilarating balancing act, this intellectual and social dancing n, that ignited my passion for becoming a professor. The romantic allure of it all flowed through me, a captivating and enduring influence for decades.
