August 17, 2002

I have been helping L clean, pack, throw things away, and prepare boxes for the thrift store. It was maddening at first. We started with the garage. Every single item I picked up off a shelf or pulled out of a box I’d have to ask him if he wanted to keep: “Shelf brackets?” “Slug bait?” “Deflated basketball?” And with each item, he’d stand pondering its future usefulness, stopped in the middle of whatever he was doing, arms at his sides. And he wanted to keep an obscene amount of crap: old Band-Aid boxes, a bike he hasn’t ridden in four years, melted candles, a burnt out headlight. Well, okay, he didn’t keep the headlight. And we finally hit a rhythm, but it was a slow one. I felt like my mother, gritting her teeth against my teenaged packrat tendencies. I used to keep anything, mostly, I think, out of a desire to establish myself in the world, to have MY books and MY pictures cut from magazines and borrowed from the family photo albums. Identity through possession. But now, having moved every year for seven years, I am no longer so attached. I even overcame my English major book fetishism when I moved to South Carolina, got it down to four smallish boxes and haven’t amassed many since. But it’s not as though I could ever transcend possession, as the next paragraph will reveal.

L’s garage offered up some amazing treasures. I found two bags of old T-shirts from the 70s and 80s. They are perfect: poly blends, hence faded and thin with loose, sagging collars. They are cut 1970s slim, that perfect sizing that no longer exists, somewhere between the boob-mushing, too short, baby doll cut and the oversized, close-collared thick cotton styles we can choose from today. This cut simply does not exist anymore. And even if it did, fabrics now are often more durable and won’t wear thin and perfect the way these shirts do. And though one can find shirts of this cut at thrift stores and yard sales, the ones I found are too rare: one is a white Velvet Underground and Nico shirt with the Warhol banana. One is a yellow sleeveless Talking Heads muscle shirt. Oh my god. Two are from the Furman Philosophy Department and are almost see-through, they’re so worn and perfect. One is black, cropped and tough like Chrissy Hynde might wear, and says “Oxford University” in silver script. Several are from the record store Will manages. And the kicker: two are bright yellow Marvin Sease shirts that say “Candy Licker” in vivid fuchsia, with a five-inch tongue slurping the lettering.

I also found old framed posters, and oh…I like material possessions right now.

On Friday at the show, I was talking to a man from another local band, someone I’d never met before. We were having a civil drunken conversation, politely praising each other’s bands and talking about upcoming shows. Anyway, after a few minutes a woman appeared at his shoulder, smiling rigidly. This is the well-known Bar Girlfriend Swoop. I have used it myself. I don’t know if everyone does, or just those like me who are occasionally overcome by irrational jealousy or a fit of low self-esteem. Anyway, that’s what you do: appear at the side of the person with whom you are involved, making some degree of physical contact and using the term ‘we’ several times. You smile politely and introduce yourself. It could be viewed, I suppose, as a bitchy, possessive maneuver, displaying a lack of trust in your partner and in the rest of womankind. But it can be more altruistic than that, just some added unspoken information. It also has something to do with my nosiness, and wanting to seem cool…yeah, I’m with the band. Anyway, whether it’s defensible or not, I’d know it anywhere. This woman swooped in just so, standing extra-tall and looking very intense. Anyway, we introduced ourselves, shook hands, went home…I giggled about the incident…and then I found out the next day that this was a woman I’ve been wanting to meet for months. I know her only from Swanky Gruel, and somehow the names didn’t click when we met. So I hope someday I can giggle about it with her.

It’s a good Sunday. Carla’s back in town with stories a-plenty, and my house is full of records L is storing here for the time being. I am listening to Paul McCartney. All is well.

Cause if J-1 has a lesson, it's that drinking makes it fine

Hooray! My old roommate has a website. He also wrote me a poem. And everything is better than it was yesterday.

August 14, 2003

This daily web thing lends itself to a certain forced merriment. Though I’m ostensibly sharing the details of my life, I don’t want to appear too goth and angsty, or subject others unnecessarily to the boring neuroses that swarm and recur and never really get resolved, try as I do to make Progress on the Self. I am a hostess, and to borrow from a book I had as a child, A Host, Above All, Must Be Nice To His Guests. I don’t want to appear anything other than clever and hip, with good taste in moods as well as beverages. I don’t want to be as emotional and fucked up as I was last night, so it’s easy enough to leave that part out. I just have to wait until I feel better, pretend I’ve been too busy to write, and then get on with it.

It’s also easy to forget (listen to me, sounding like an elder of the blogging community instead of one of its latest upstarts) that everything need not be resolved or decided on this page. This is not the last word on me. It’s not a journal. It’s not everything. If something good happens, I don’t have to talk about it. If I feel shitty, it is good to try to find out why, but I don’t have to put it here.

All this is leading up to a pronouncement that yes, I felt really shitty last night and have been trying to figure it out ever since. I wrote about it drunkenly last night and slightly more soberly this morning, and still have reached no real conclusions. Okay: here’s this morning’s piece:

Last night felt really shitty, and drinking didn’t feel good. I went to a cocktail party for the English department, just a bunch of people standing around under M and B’s carport in the hot, still humidity. I ate horrible tiny shrimp in cocktail sauce, drank Schlitz, and talked to people I know, plus a few I didn’t. R pointed at the trees: not a leaf was moving. He was sweating, new girlfriend in tow – she wasn’t introduced as a girlfriend, but was giving directives and tentacling like one: he mentioned going out later with the more committed drinkers, and she said to him in undertones “No, we’re going to watch a movie”. Anyway, it was all fine; I feel like an old steady part of the department, even though I got a degree in something else. They drink with me, trust me…I like them, and I’m thankful I know them because my own department was so lame and uninvolved.

Then R, another linguistics fugitive, mentioned that he’s teaching the introductory linguistics class this semester, the one I’ve always wanted to teach. This is fine; he’s a PhD student, and I was only an MA. But then he mentioned it had been offered to C, who is only an MA student, before him, but the people in charge of TAs wouldn’t let her teach it because she had no experience.

I have always wanted to teach that class. I have always wanted to be more involved in linguistics, period. I tried for a whole year to do things for the department. I organized reading groups, went to every event, tried to find some common ground with the other students…and I found nothing. I wanted community, but found none. Those I did get along with, those who were witty and skeptical and good to be around, were older with families, and not interested in afternoon beers. And I didn’t like the director – still don’t. He wanted community, too, but tried to mandate it from on high and only succeeded in driving people further away. So I found other things and other people, found a new wonderful advisor, and got through as best I could. I did great things there anyway.

Then R and C came, and they slid right in with the director, and though I like them both very much, I envy their ability to get along with him, with everyone. I think things would have been different for me if I’d made more of a diplomatic effort. But I aligned myself with other people, wasn’t able to be like them. And I’m all hung up now on how much I may have hurt my academic career or messed up my time here by not being more conscious and artful.

Oh, this really fucked up my night, finding out about that class. I was completely stunned with jealousy. I was furious with the director but couldn’t even remember what it is I don’t like about him – it was just blind anger. I went to band practice, which nobody was really into because of the humidity. We played a few old songs, worked on a new song, and then played an old song I WROTE, and I couldn’t play it. It was a fucking disaster twice in a row. I was convinced the rhythm was wrong, that they were all playing it wrong, but they all agreed that it was fine. I couldn’t play it, couldn’t sing. They kind of stared at me. I exploded about my jealousy, my anger, voice loud in the microphone, but it didn’t come out right, and they stared more.

So, we went out for several beers afterwards, and nothing was right. Everything I said was too loud, badly timed, or just stupid enough to be ignored. I felt obnoxious, self-conscious about my hairy armpits, too drunk and too emotional, and nothing worked right. I haven’t felt this kind of emotionally explosive energy in a long time.

Now it's tonight again:
I spent a long time today trying to detail my discomfort with the director, and didn’t really get anywhere. He’s your average jerk: nice at first, but disrespectful and careless of the feelings of others underneath, a complete monopolizer of conversation, a terrible teacher. But I realized just now why my dislike of him is so profound. It’s because he doesn’t seem to find me exceptional. He has never given any indication that I am a good student, a good anything. When we organized a reading group together he was never grateful. In classes he was never complimentary. When I’ve won awards and been accepted to conferences he has never been congratulatory. He appears completely unimpressed by me.

This splits into two painful branches of problem. On one hand, I am used to being exceptional. Even in graduate school, where everyone is supposed to be smart and motivated, I am still used to standing out. On the other hand, I am a throbbing ball of self doubt, and when people don’t say nice things to me, I can become convinced I am really sucky. And who knows where the root of this is: either I need to hear these things because I have become used to hearing them and have hence based my self esteem on them, or I work hard so I can hear these things and feel better. I think it’s mostly the former, unfortunately.

At any rate, that’s solved. I have an irrationally extreme hatred of the director because he doesn’t feed my fragile ego. Though I do think my dislike is at least partially reasonable: compliments and congratulations build good relationships, and I respect people who are able to give them.

Whew!

I rearranged my apartment today, which I think contributed to my little breakthrough. I finally found a way to make my living room look less stupid, and it has changed everything. The incredible storm this evening helped, too: my road briefly became a river, and thunder brought my cat close, pressed up against my leg as I chopped oregano and rolled out pizza dough.

I will continue to work for the department until classes begin next week, pushing heavy metal desks, rickety bookshelves, and ancient yellow upholstered rolling chairs around from tiny office to tinier office, smelling the pipe smoke from under Dr. R’s door. Yes, he actually smokes in his office. Only in academia could this happen anymore, could thick smoke clog the third floor and could we roam the building with bottles of beer after Friday colloquiua. Oh, it’s the ugliest building on campus, ten stories of budget 1970’s modernity with gaps in the wall where the lead-contaminated water fountains were ripped out…but after two years, I’m becoming attached to it. The rooms are numbered in a completely nonsensical order: my floor (called the third, actually the fourth) contains two Room 323s, one a large computer lab at the east end, the other a small faculty copy room to the west. To reach my office, 314, one has to walk through a computer lab and then another office. I have to draw maps for my students. The stairwells are dark and graffiti-covered, and the toilets spit water everywhere when you flush them. All of a sudden, I don’t ever want to leave.

Congratulations to both of us on making it this far. I will now cast one last loving eye over my living room, ignoring the cat hair stuck to the baseboards, and climb into an early bed.

Later

Walking across campus a few minutes ago I noticed a bunch of new flora planted in anticipation of the beginning of the school year (they'll probably let it all die once the parents leave, though, or maybe after Parents' Weekend). In addition to various impatiens, coleus, and grasses, there are several varieties of ornamental peppers. Add these to the rosemary, sage, and other herbs that were already in many of the planters, and we are well on our way to some kind of Campus Seasoning Mix. Also, a few months ago I found broccoli and lettuce growing in the abandoned vegetable garden behind the old President's House, totally edible and tasty. And, of course, there are squirrels EVERYwhere. A hunter-gatherer could probably subsist for quite a while here. One could cook on the tin roofs of the maintenance buildings, or steam things over the manhole covers.
Or maybe I can just bill this as the Campus Dinner Special:
Pigeon Baked in Banana Leaves with Rosemary Reduction
Squirrel and Discarded French Fry Fricassee
Spicy Steamed Broccoli
Salad of Sage, Dandelion, and Bibb Lettuce
Wild Mint and Acorn Pudding

Mmmmm.

August 13, 2003

I painted offices yesterday, cleaned a nasty floor, and generally made myself useful. I also made some money, which I will unfortunately not receive until several weeks from now. I now have a minor and innocent crush on the head of the English department, because he told me adorable stories as he showed me which rooms to clean and fetched me mops and paintbrushes. He also, when I told him I'd finished painting Room 416, said I was a "treasure".

I got home at 7:45 last night, stir-fried some broccoli, drank a few beers, and was dead useless on the couch for the rest of the evening. I read Summer Blonde, a collection of four graphic short stories ("graphic", like, with drawings. Not "vivid and explicit", though the meanings are related, I guess). The third story, "Hawaiian Getaway", was fabulous -- really honest and screwy, but hopeful, too. Look, Time agrees with me.

I'm not very good at reading comics and graphic novels; I always forget to look at the pictures.

McSweeney's Brain Exploder of the week is hurting my head, mostly because the last clue, JL03, refuses to say anything to me but "J-Lo 3".

August 12, 2003

The dresser I found Sunday should have exhausted my roadside luck; it looks like it was delivered from the Scandinavian home furnishings store just last week. But no: on my very own street yesterday I found a beautiful lamp. The cord had been chewed or ripped off near the plug, so I went to Lowe’s this evening for the cord to rewire it. I spoke with a man working there who’d been a boiler repairman for DuPont for forty years. He asked me if I had a boyfriend, and told me to “take it slow”.

He was very sweet and not at all creepy, but he was part of a pattern: it was one of those days where an excessive number of men hit on me. Everywhere: the grocery store, the fucking LIBRARY (“Hel-LO…I’m really digging the glasses” – I am not kidding), the hardware store. Being hit on is not a constant, low-level thing; it comes in waves, for no readily apparent reason. A less cynical me would say it’s that some days women just exude some kind of energetic beauty that men are drawn to, but I tend to think it’s more like an innocence or a lack of defenses. The type of man who throws out pickup lines cannot be assuming too much worldliness or intelligence on the part of his prey. This is profound snobbiness: I assume that most days these men write me off because I’m too forbidding, have too intelligent or purposeful a look, but that some days I look dumb enough to be their equal.

Then again, it could just be pheromonal, right? Maybe Day Three of my period brings a surge of estrogen and other sexy chemicals which announce to the world “I’d love to have sex with you right now, over there in the reference section. Why don’t you ask me?”

I am painting offices on campus today. For some reason, this entry has been impossible to write. It’s dark this morning, and ultra-humid. The cat is so asleep I nudged her, mildly worried.

She's fine. She glared, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

This story has totally ruined my day, in a pleasant sort of way.

August 10, 2003

It’s a lame sort of weekend, mostly because it’s Sunday. Yesterday I went yard saling, played the guitar, took a nap….and then somehow it was evening.

There was only one worthwhile yard sale, a big multi-family thing filling an entire house. I bought an ancient toaster, which I have yet to inspect fully, and an old battery-operated PA.
Yes.
I bought an Amplivox/PermaPower Roving Rostrum (God, what a beautiful name.) (Echoes of ReverbeRocket). Five dollars. This thing is ridiculous. It runs on ten D cells. It’s in a plastic case which separates into two parts. The base contains one 9” speaker (brand unknown so far – cone in good shape), a battered circuit board, the control panel, and the battery rack and wiring. The electronics are covered by a removable plastic lectern. On the control panel is a knob onto which one screws a foot-long gooseneck mic stand and clip (included). The microphone is also included, stored in a cheap little vinyl case mounted in the lid: it’s a beautiful (and nonfunctioning) little rectangular Astatic 335L-22, cord attached. The lid has a 6” speaker, plus a 40’ cord. The man who sold me this explained that his father, a member of the Toastmasters Club, had used it all over Columbia for many years. I’d guess it dates to about 1970. The whole goal of portability is anathema to good sturdy construction and quality parts…the speakers weigh about a pound apiece, and each speaker housing is joined to its plastic casing by a thick layer of black tarlike goo. This adds a sharp tang to the usual musty smell of yard sale items.

Amplivox was founded in 1959, and as far as I can tell, has always specialized in portable sound. They’re actually still making Roving Rostrums! Look! And check out that hulking babe in the 80s power suit! There’s a gaping hole in her chest where her cleavage should be! And her face has clearly been altered to disguise the fact that she is Brooke Shields’ Russian half brother!

Here’s an excerpt from the instructions printed inside the lid:

When sound from the speaker is allowed to enter the microphone it produces “feedback” or annoying howls. The anti-feedback housing of the speaker allows high volume sound without feedback.

Priceless. Anti-feedback housing: I guess that’s the combination of plastic and tar.

Maybe once my new job starts I’ll invest in the batteries to test this thing out (no, there’s no AC option). There appears to be no vintage market for Roving Rostrums. At least, as Will points out, not yet.

L and I spent the evening drinking beer at a very loud Jake’s. This fed directly into a nightmare which I woke from with a gasp at 8 AM: I and hundreds of other people were trapped at a bar with an outdoor patio, a cross between Jake’s, a high school football field, and the Crystal Rose*. We were being held there until we could be killed, kept from escaping by evil frat boy bouncers. Much beer was being served, and most of the people were oblivious to the evil plots ahead. It was unclear why we were to be killed…I heard rumors it was because the staff were sick of us, but I think it was part of a larger pattern of extermination. L tipped me off, coming to my house with several men in dark suits to simultaneously escort me to the bar and tell me in a whisper what was being planned. Once there, I drank with everyone else, scanning the bouncers’ positions for an escape route. A rich Asian boy named Chau, collected around a table with his college buddies, threw a wad of money on the table for me. I thought he was showing off, but realized later he knew he was trapped, and wanted me to have resources because he knew I had a chance of escaping; I would need money in the postapocalyptic world beyond the bar. I kept trying to escape. Some people were successful, sliding under the deck and wriggling away. I finally escaped through the front door, running off into the dark, expecting to hear shots behind me. That’s when I woke up. Awake, I started wondering why I hadn’t planned a mass escape; surely all those people together could have overpowered the bouncers and gotten away. I felt guilty then: my escape was solitary and selfish, and I had warned so few people…

*I worked there as a teenager. It was nasty. I can’t believe it’s still around. Russell, do you see this?

It’s humid. I will go for a walk, change guitar strings, and plan my syllabus. I will try as best I can to fight off the Sunday ick. L’s house deal has fallen through – he was supposed to close and move at the end of the month, and that won’t be happening. And oh, he’s so bummed out. And I feel it too much.

August 8, 2003

I got drunk last night. It wasn’t intentional. I went out with some English PhD students, and twenty or so of them showed up – it was a bit overwhelming. Even the universally-despised BC showed up. I have never had a conversation with him. All that’s been said about him is true: he is a snob, a rich kid who managed to mention that his parents’ ski home is next to that of a close friend of Dick Cheney, and he is overbearing, but I enjoyed him immensely nevertheless. But I, you’ll remember, was drunk. I was itching to talk some California governorship, and BC was a worthy conversation partner.

My new neighbor is just beginning the program, and I invited her out to meet her future classmates. She didn’t drink, and didn’t talk much, either, but according to the note she slid under my door this morning, she had fun. I used to have straight edge friends; shit, I didn’t drink for a whole year of college once…but I hardly know anyone who doesn’t drink anymore, and I find myself thinking terrible things about those who don’t. Maybe I just don’t know the right nondrinkers anymore – certainly they’re not at bars, where I spend far too much time. They’re making their own fun elsewhere, something I have a harder time doing all the time. I’m not becoming boring, I try to convince myself. I’m just around people who do drink, and so aren’t particularly creative with their fun. I could have a blast dead sober at Denny’s at 3 AM, just like in high school…couldn’t I? Wasn’t building towers of artificial creamer, like, the best thing ever?

Anyway, last night was therapeutically, idiotically social, and I needed it.

Every time I put a sweet potato in the microwave, the fuses in my bedroom, kitchen, and living room blow (okay, yes, that’s pretty much the whole apartment). Nothing else has this effect: no other appliances, no other foodstuffs. I am perplexed.

Since I’ve started carrying a balance on my credit card, the advertisements stuffed into the envelope along with my bill have become unspeakably inane. This month brings an offer for a “John Deere Tractor Sound Alarm Clock” (“Waken to the rooster’s crow! Tractor comes out of the barn and circles the farm!”). Now that I have proven I can’t manage my finances, I guess they figure I’m a sucker for every QVC-ready piece of shit out there.
I wonder if I can subscribe to Parade Magazine without having to get the rest of the newspaper?

Once again, everything that was here has moved to here.

In the shower this afternoon, I decided to see my rapidly dwindling monetary supply as a good thing. It's like a financial enema. It's like defrosting the refrigerator. Bank accounts get a little musty if you don't empty them every now and then. I'm just airing things out.

August 7, 2003

I had an extended account of the new name I found for this site and how, and what it meant, etc...but I woke up this morning and didn't like the name anymore. Too bad; I wrote so eloquently about it. Damn.

I have had a ridiculous morning. I woke up early, intending to go to the beach, and since it was raining, decided to go for a hike instead. There's a state park about an hour away that I've been intending to check out, so I packed food and water and headed out there. It was a beautiful drive. I got there, and the place was deserted. Completely empty. Someone was supposed to be in the office, but nobody was. No other cars anywhere on the long road into the park, none in the parking lot or campground. Nobody anywhere. It was totally eerie: it's pretty rare to be alone here in SC. Anyway, I parked, found the trail I wanted, and set out. It wound around a smallish lake in both directions before, according to the map, climbing a smallish hill on the far side.

I picked the clearer direction, where the trail followed a natural grassy berm about ten feet from the water's edge. I was concerned about water moccasins, with no other noisy people to keep them away, so I whistled fairly loud as I went, watching my steps carefully.

And then, fifteen feet ahead of me, I heard an enormous crashing of reeds and grass, the ground SHOOK, and there was a gigantic splash. A beaver? Oh, please let that be a beaver. I froze, looking to where the splash had come from, already backing away, and, yes, a gigantic alligator floated into view. It was twice as big as any I've seen in this state, more Florida-sized, really, and it turned to look at me. I backed up all the way to the beginning of the trail. I knew it wouldn't come after me, probably, but there were sure to be more of them in the reeds along the trail, resting in the sun. And my heart was pounding.

I tried the other direction. Spiders. The enormous kind that live in swampy areas and build beautiful webs with zipper designs in the middle. But sometimes they get so thick on trails here that you walk into a ten-foot web every five feet: no joke. The spiders themselves are enormous, too. I went a little way, but was quickly coated in web and sick of walking with my hands waving in front of my face. Also, my heart was still pounding. Ick.

I went back again. This time I set out away from the lake across a field. I heard distant booming then; there's a bombing range nearby. This trail took me through the campground, also totally deserted. It started seeming super creepy...an abandoned volleyball net especially made me shudder. I could hike alone fine in Colorado; what was wrong with me? But the eeriness all caught up with me then. I started thinking too hard about Deliverance. So I went to my car and drove back to Columbia. It felt silly, but it also felt right. Something was just instinctively wrong about this deserted lake and park. So here I am at home, getting ready to walk around my neighborhood.

Sigh.

Last night

I’ve never had any difficulty answering the old Blind-or-Deaf question: musician though I am, I would lose my hearing eight thousand times over before my sight. I always gave reasons like Seeing People Smile and Reading, but today I found a new one. I would hate trusting myself to strangers if I were blind. There’s a blind woman in the English department whom I have never talked to, and today she walked more or less toward me across the slippery, rain-wet marble in front of our building while I stood under the eaves having a cigarette. She hesitated, and I asked “Are you headed inside the Humanities Building? I’ve got the door.” “No, I’m looking for Gambrell,” she said. So I led her over there, across the courtyard through the rain. She was shivering – she has always struck me as frighteningly skinny, and she was soaking wet. We didn’t talk, except for her repeated apologies and my announcements of upcoming stairs and puddles. I was comfortable; I’d seen her before, at the coffee shop and at colloquia; I even know her name. But she has no idea who I am, I’m sure. And she had to hold my wet hand in the rain, hear my voice for the first time and wonder who I was, wonder at my motivations and how long I’d been watching her make her slow way across the courtyard before I spoke.

I’ll stick, if I may, with the trust I’ve learned to place in the visible world.