MITCH & ME

STUDENT TEACHER CONFERENCE

In addition to my Substack articles, I also post a weekly video conversation with the writer, Mitchell Sisskind. Mitch was my high school English teacher and almost my football coach. I was never a great student, and used to sit in the back of my classes, sketching pornographic drawings of my teachers. One day, in Mr Sisskind’s English class, I was finishing up a recognizable caricature of our teacher having sex with one of my classmates. Suddenly, an ass-kissing student next to me ripped the artwork out of my notebook, and raced it up to Mr Sisskind. He studied the picture, and said, “Mr Pohn, I’d like to see you after class.”

I was a dead duck, this would certainly lead to a suspension or even an expulsion from this snooty private school that my parents had gone to mat to get me into. After class, I sat in a front row seat, mopping up the flop sweat with my necktie (required attire), imagining the draconian punishment my scandalized parents would inflict. Mr Sisskind stood only a few feet away from me, examining my sinful creation, for endless minutes. Finally, he looked at me and said, “This is really quite good.” Friends for life.

Our relationship has spanned fifty-five years; Mitch, a celebrated poet and deep thinker, and I have been writing partners - a screenplay, Stone Age Cheerleaders, and we have ghostwritten together. Mitch has been a kind of mentor for me, providing astute feedback and support on my work-in-progress novels. We speak on a regular basis, long conversations about a variety of topics including writing, publishing, recovery, sports, politics, culture, our lives and families, and anything Chicago. Recently, we thought it would be fun to take those discussions public, and so we post them on Substack. Hope you enjoy.