Flyover States, page 6
I believe that in order to get some kind of answer, one must go back to the beginning. I can’t speak on behalf of all women, but I can say quite honestly that I never intended to become this crazy. I know for a fact that I never, ever intended to even look twice at some human compost heap of marriages and extramarital dalliances with men, women and whatever else isn’t nailed down. At twenty, I was clear about things. I was in love with my then boyfriend, a cooler-than-thou painter type, who had more than a passing acquaintance with paint thinner, and wound up in rehab where he came clean and fell in love with some hyperactive recovering alcoholic who let him paint her naked. What I wanted was not good, but I knew that was what I wanted. And it wasn’t so deeply vested in compromise.
But this Chris thing. The Chris thing could prove to be totally different. First off, I have started to refer to him as “Chris,” not just in my own head, but to others as well. He is no longer “hot hippie computer guy,” but Chris, who makes fun of me, and who had a brother whose back he used to tap, and who can do just about anything one might ever need with any sort of computer. Luis has yet to become that much of a person to me. That’s the problem. Thinking of the men I date as fully formed, wholly evolved sentient human beings is no longer my de facto position. If a guy did that, I’d call him a jerk. An objectifying, depersonalizing “WARNING—Do Not Enter” kind of jerk. But when I catch myself doing it, I just think it’s sad.
I write myself a quick note before falling asleep: GOAL FOR WEEK—THINK OF ALL MEN AS PEOPLE (EVEN ZACH, EVEN LUIS).
From across the room I can see that my message light is blinking—joy incarnate, since I was out with the only two people who usually leave me messages. The number reads 2 in digital red. The first voice is my sister’s: Did you get my last e-mail? I need to have the dresses re-sized, since Theresa says that hers doesn’t fit, and it’s a size six, and she just KNOWS that she doesn’t wear a size EIGHT. Drama, drama… I press the Skip button, unwilling to deal, at the moment, with Lisa’s documentation of Theresa’s fluctuating and reportedly bulimic ass. Next voice is less familiar, thickly accented and decidedly male: Dor-ees? This is Dor-ees, right? Dor-ees, I know about you and Luis. You know, Luis, mi Luis. Maybe you think, mujerzuela, you can just dooooo… I know, you writers… And I think…that you owe me an apology. BEEP.
I have that deep down sickening feeling that Luis is going to need a lot more than a little humanizing.
Ronnie
The Luis thing that Doris has going on was trouble from jump, but it gets so demoralizing in grad school, in the good old heartland, I thought, well, at least it’s something. If you’re not a sorority girl gone wild among countless frat boys—or somebody’s wife—you start to feel weird. It’s like someone’s snatched your brain and replaced it with a gray mess of bad judgment. Because flirting doesn’t exist in academia, you feel like a chair or a table, for all the sexual vibes coming your way. It’s not even a question of dating, but a task of trying to stay a well-rounded, therefore sexual, human being. Between getting evil eyes for showing cleavage, or being called a ball breaker for not automatically deferring to every James Joyce wannabe in seminar, times is tough if you’re a broad in academia who happens to like both her brains and her breasts.
So that’s how Doris got caught up with Way Gay Faux Che, and that’s how I started to unironically lust after some of the good ol’ boys around town. They don’t know from Hélène Cixous and the phallocentric order of language or the male symbolic. They just tell you you’re purty and want to buy you a drink. To be honest, I’d never actually date one of them; I sometimes imagine the faint pickings of “Dueling Banjos” when I’m stared at a little too long. But, to continue being honest, most of the local guys I’ve exchanged words with have been plain old nice people, “down-home,” as my mother says, unlike most of the Lit people who are so “awkward,” as I’ve learned to say, that they can’t even speak when they pass you in the hallways.
An example of down-home is Earl. From the first time I walked into the Office Saloon full of, I have to admit, L.A. condescension and general black-person fear of a whole lot of white people in a group looking at you, he treated me nothing but nice. When I yelled my order of double Jack and Coke so that he could hear me over “Free Bird” playing on the juke box, he gave me a wink and said, “Now that’s what I like. A lady who can handle her own.” Of course, if he were in the classroom, eyes would have rolled over the “lady” part, but he made all the difference between me grabbing Doris and telling her that we were getting the hell out of that bar, and not. He’s always polite to me and always gives me that extra top-off of Stoli or Jack. He used to look more mountain man—long blond hair and a beard that took up a lot of his face—but now he’s cut off his hair and cut down that beard because he’s trying to look more respectable, he says. “I cain’t ride a Harley and bartend for all the rest of my days, Ronnie,” he told me. “You’re smart to be in school.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “There’s such a thing as being so smart, you’re stupid.”
He winked at me again. He’s a great winker. “I’m not gone hold it against you,” he said, and dried his big hands on a bar towel.
I thought, just for a second, about the kind of women those big hands had handled. We’d heard talk around the bar that Earl was careful and particular about not mixing business with pleasure. And business, the Office Saloon, seemed to be his whole life. I heard that Earl had at least gone to college for a bit. But I imagine he got out while he could, because he wasn’t a smarty-pants dum-dum like me.
So good ol’ boys—except for Earl—and Italians, it is. The Italian thing is a little easier to explain: for better or worse, they seem to really like women. Okay, so they take the macho thing too goddamn far sometimes. But it’s better than dealing with guys who’ve traded in their masculinity and eros for the desire to always be the smart kid in class, who somehow keep reminding you that if you’re a girl, you couldn’t possibly be that kid.
I have about ten minutes to kill, so I’m in the graduate-student lounge, the Langsdale Workroom, eavesdropping on all kinds of asexual one-upmanship. I usually avoid the room because it’s depressing. Lots of beat-up, hodgepodge seventies office furniture. A small microwave in which someone’s always microwaving a pitiful, single-portion frozen entrée. No one remembers to turn off the coffee machine, so it always smells like burnt coffee. An oil portrait done in, it says, 1946, of the biggest donor and town mogul looms over the line of computers, so you can’t avoid the cold gray eyes of Mr. Langsdale, dead for fifty years now, but always watching. His eyes do that thing where they follow you, like you’re in some spooky movie. I’ve been everywhere in the workroom—on the couch, by the windows, at the coffee machine—and Mr. Langsdale’s eyes are always on me, as if he’s saying, like good old Thomas Jefferson, “Where’d you come from? When I donated a fuckload of money to this place, I wasn’t thinking about you.”
I flip through my Shakespeare and watch the clock. I try to ignore the guy snoring on the couch across from me but he sounds like a low-powered lawn mower. A young woman doing research on one of the computers turns when the guy snorts three times in a row. She adjusts her glasses, glares at him, and then she looks at me. I shrug.
“He’s freaking me out,” she whispers. “I can’t think.”
“What are you researching?” I ask, just to be friendly.
“I’m studying multilimbed erotica, exploring the phenomenon of people who eroticize someone who might have an extra foot, or two arms. I’m trying to argue that the extra limbs, sexualizing the extra limbs, is actually a substitution for the phallus.”
Sleeping guy mumbles something. He’s freaking her out?
“Oh,” I say, and look down at my Shakespeare.
Two guys at the worktable chime in. “I heard of that,” one with tie-dye and long hair says. “Who’s that professor at Duke? Campbell? He’s been doing multilimbed research for a while now. I know, because when I was at Dartmouth, I took a class and came across an essay.”
“Duke?” the other one asks. He’s dressed like a wannabe professor, complete with satchel and tie. “Yale is doing a much better job in that area, and I’m not just saying that because I went there.”
“Well I went to Brown,” the scary girl says. I wonder if they’re all going to whip out their degrees and measure them.
Their eyes turn to me, waiting, but I just flip through the pages of my book. I stop and decide to pack up and head to class when Nigel Rutherford walks into the room.
Last semester, I’d gotten it into my mind that I had a crush on Nigel, this British Ph.D. I realize now, it was all about the accent. “If you date Nigel Rutherford,” Doris had protested, “I will kill myself.” Dramatic, that Doris, but now I see her point. I’d been giving him the eyes for a long time, because I thought he was vibing me—as much as a British academic can vibe anyone. That is to say he looked me in the eye and said hello whenever we passed in the hallways. At Langsdale, that’s practically pervy. Our first conversation was just that. We both were waiting for pages to come out of the printer in the copy room. I’d just finished a story for a workshop, and he was printing out an essay for a conference on “Film and Ethnicity in the 21st Century.” We’d asked each other the obligatory question of “How’s it going?,” when he paused dramatically. He hugged himself after checking the machine to make sure his pages were still coming out, and then leaned up against the supply table with all the staplers and paper clips.
“So,” he started, “will you be going home over break?”
I smiled, “Just for a little while. Why?”
He stroked his goatee. He’d been trying to coax it into growing for half the semester. He’s got jet-black hair and it suited his angular face, I thought. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought we might catch a film. Have you seen Imitation of Life? I quite liked it and thought of you.”
Imitation of Life is that film that had been done twice about a self-loathing black girl trying to pass for white. The second time with Sandra Dee. So when he said he thought of me, I didn’t know where he was going. Was he trying to tell me something? Or did he think I’d be interested in it just because it was a movie about black folks? Either way it was a funky invitation, so I said, “Because it’s about black people?” It sounded bad once I heard it come out of my mouth, because for once I didn’t take the time to make sure my words were comfortable enough for whom I was talking to. I’ve gotten pretty good at the whole assimilation and language thing, so much so that my voice is pretty damn schizophrenic. But right then, I wasn’t thinking about Nigel and his goddamn feelings. It went from bad to worse. I was watching Nigel’s color turn back from deep red to pasty.
“Oh, God, no. Of course not. I’m just interested in the film, and one of my dissertation chapters is about it….” he stammered. “I just thought it would be a nice opportunity for us to… Oh, forget it. I know how I must sound right now. I just thought it would be lovely for us to meet, and I was thinking, too, if you wouldn’t mind, that I might like to show you my chapter on that particular film.”
Doris was no longer in danger of committing suicide. If Nigel had just come out and said, like that rare breed of creature called a man, that he wanted to go out on a date, then maybe I would have. But no, he wanted to show me his chapter. Since then it’s become part of our group’s repertoire of shit that makes us laugh, no matter how old it is. “Hey, baby,” Paolo’s always saying. “Come up to my apartment. I got some Barry White playing, candles burning. Come on up and let me show you my chapter. You have no idea how long my chapter is, baby. It’s the thickest chapter you have ever seen.” After that bit of verbal fumbling around, or academic heavy petting, Nigel stopped looking me in the eye, though he sometimes still says hello. The hot-and-heavy flirtation is over.
“Hullo, Veronica,” Nigel says, and immediately turns red. He puts his backpack down and takes a seat at a nearby computer and turns his back to me.
Jesus. Why turn red at hello? What is so traumatic about “hello” around here?
But I’m not thinking of Nigel anymore. That ship has sailed. I hear a voice just outside the doorway, low, rich and velvety. I know it must be the black man we all keep seeing. I tuck my book under my arm, grab my bag and try not to look as if I’m hurrying. He and Iris are waiting at the elevator and I take him in. We lock eyes, exchange a flicker of recognition and tentative smiles before he steps into the elevator. He’s lanky tall and strikingly dark. Carries himself with an air of “I’m not intimidated by you.” True, the clothes are problematic. Day-Glo muscle tees are a bit odd this day and age, that whole Wham, CHOOSE LIFE look is sort of old, unless, of course, you’re on George Michael’s team. Paolo says it’s so, but I’m not willing to give up on this one just yet. It’s kind of like being lost in the desert and you swear you see some water just in the distance. It might be a mirage, but hell, only a fool would stop walking toward it.
I’m taking a Shakespeare class first-summer session because I’m trying to shave off some of my time at Langsdale, just in case I can’t take it anymore and have to leave before I crack up. The master’s of fine arts I’m working on is a three-year degree, and after wrapping up my first two years, the remaining year all of a sudden seems like a tough row to hoe. Yes, I’m grateful for my deferred tuition and my stipend, but if I can knock out the classes and go back to L.A. for my third year, why in the world wouldn’t I? Why stay here? I’ll never be able to complain about grad school being hard, especially not after punching the clock at Valtek. The thing is place, the feeling of being out of place, that’s crazy-making. On the other hand, I like school, I like teaching, and I’m just trying to figure it out: How much of choosing to be a part of academia just comes with the territory, which has nothing to do with Midwestern states or any other geography, but could be just as much a part of any landscape?
To get my MFA, the English department requires us to take at least four lit classes as proof, I guess, that we didn’t earn our degrees by sitting around talking about our feelings, or as insurance that we can talk about literature in ways other than writing “This is neato” on each other’s manuscripts. The ironic thing, though, is that writers think and write about literature one way, and scholars think and write about literature in another. It should be complementary, not competitive. So, half the time in Professor Lind’s class, “out of place” doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel, but the other half of the time, I’m actually happy to be talking about stuff that makes me think I can understand the world a little bit better.
Now we’re going over the Žižek stuff we should have read. Professor Lind is asking about Žižek in terms of Hamlet. I’m still stuck on Žižek, in terms of Žižek.
“What,” Professor Lind asks, “does Žižek mean by the term ‘Che vuoi?’ when we consider Hamlet’s father’s deathbed mandate?”
Silence. And a lot of eyes looking down at desks. Professor Lind is patient as hell, though. She’ll wait until Jesus rises again if she has to. That’s why she’s scary—that, and she’s for real brilliant, without posing, without having to make sure you know it. If you’re going to give her shit because she’s a woman and doesn’t suffer any fools, or a Jew, or has a tattoo that says This is not flesh—in French—like a band on her arm, or has a really loud laugh, or whatever the hell, that’s your problem, not hers. She’s a fifty-year-old academic assassin. She also happens to be the only professor who openly smiled at me, stuck out her hand and introduced herself when I was wandering the hallways trying to get to my first class in graduate school. I thought she was the secretary and later found out she’s as famous as academics come. She leans forward in her chair and scratches her scalp. “Let’s back up some. Let’s make sure we all know the term ‘Che vuoi?’. Anybody,” she says, and leans back in her chair.
John Casey, one of those who wants so badly to be the smart kid, even though he’s a haggard-looking thirty-five and wearing a pair of glasses that look as old as he is, raises his hand. Professor Lind nods at him. He sits up straight and clears his throat. “‘Che vuoi?’ represents that which exists between the planes of what a certain vernacular posits, and what the speaker of the vernacular nevertheless intends upon attempting to communicate.”
He clasps his hand on top of his desk. This, I’ve learned, is body language for pompous.
“Good,” Professor Lind says. “Now.” She locks eyes with me until I look away. “In English. John’s right. But he’s actually illustrating ‘Che vuoi?’ right now. There’s an even more definitive, common way to explain this term.”
Because this may be the only one out of a hundred fifty assigned convoluted pages that I understand, I raise my hand.
“Ronnie. Yes.” Professor Lind leans forward in her seat again.
“I, uh…” I take a deep breath. “I think one thing Žižek means by that term is that sometimes there’s a difference between what someone’s saying and what they mean to say—or do—by speaking in the first place. There’s some implicit desire behind what they’re saying.”
