As far as Vincent was concerned, there was a time and place for everything. He didn’t, unfortunately, know the times and the places as often as he would like. But he felt certain that both existed, and much of his thinking went toward identifying the right combination of both to achieve the things that mattered most to him.
He had known at once, therefore, that when Pancakes’s big-shot college boyfriend stood her up for the prom, she’d be unapproachable for a while. But he couldn’t have predicted the months-long length of her general disaffection for males in general, which even included her father and himself at times. And while he had known also that once he took Pastina's sister, Francesca, to the prom that Pastina would withhold her customary friendly sympathy for at least a month, he miscalculated how much longer she would try shaming him with the incident.
Most surprising, really, had been Francesca’s frank sexual overtures at the prom party several of her friends had organized in a hotel suite. Nothing in their acquaintance could have prepared him for that. She was his friend's little sister, after all. But it was almost a year before Fran stopped calling him a “wuss” for the way he fled the suite to escape her embrace that night.
A better assessment of times and places could have smoothed out all such incidents, he was sure. However, while his predictive abilities improved incrementally, the behavior of his friends grew ever more unruly.
One thing he felt certain he could always predict, however, was Pancakes’s unfailing interpretation of symbolism. In such matters, time and place made little difference. Sometimes she read too much into things, but if ever he knew someone certain to extract meaning from most everything, it was Pancakes. She saw significance in some of the slightest events, and she frequently astonished him with the clear-eyed way she sized up the books and movies they discussed. So he knew if he could make the right kind of symbolic gesture to demonstrate how he felt about her, she would never miss what he meant by it. The only questions then were the selection of the symbol and the determination of the time and place.
If he had been on regular speaking terms with Pastina, she would have told him not to think so hard about it. If he somehow could have consulted Pancakes about it, she would have asked him what he hoped to gain by an overt symbolic gesture. If Francesca had been willing to listen to Vincent’s concerns, she would have called him a wuss again and insisted, “If you like her like that, just grab her and kiss her. That’ll settle it one way or another.”
In the end Vincent decided to seek no one’s counsel. He could figure this out on his own. If he was willing to face how he felt about Pancakes, he could at least figure out how he should express those feelings. Probably.
And so he found himself at the end of that summer still mulling over the same questions. Pancakes’s period of aggression and alienation from the opposite sex had been something of a rollercoaster ride for anyone willing to get too near. She poured out pages of words on some new project, another play that seemed to be obsessing her all of a sudden. She dated a series of throwaway guys throughout the summer months, allowing herself to be pursued for a period, dating contentedly for a week or so, and then dismissing the guy in question with no warning or explanation. And in between she took strange pleasure in needling her bewildered father about his own romantic missteps. Her victim might have been her father, but her theme was specifically about the fickleness of the male heart. She never referred specifically to the numerous short-term boyfriends she'd had over the years. In her mind they were all the same guy. All of them shared in the guilt. Vincent knew that was in her mind, and so he delayed his plan from one week to the next, hoping for some break in which Pancakes might not see him as just another treacherous man.
Then came mid-August. It had been two weeks since Pancakes had cut loose another of her summer flings. It had been days since Pancakes had uttered his name editorially, putting undue emphasis on the first syllable (“Vincent”). And just a few days earlier, she had handed Vincent a wrinkled clutch of papers that contained scenes from her new play. Vincent knew he was back in the circle, and he knew that if there existed a right time, it was upon him. If there existed a right place, he would need to find it quickly. When he found himself sitting just a few feet from Pancakes in a public park at night, he figured both things had finally come into alignment.
A group of their friends had gathered that night, as they had many nights over that summer, to uncork a few bottles of wine and sip it from plastic cups. A stream ran along one side of the park, but the bugs were worse in that area, so they usually ended up sitting together on a set of low risers adjacent to a soccer field. Pancakes had brought five different boyfriends to that park throughout June, July, and August, but in the end the only males in attendance were Pastina’s current beau, Vincent, and Vincent’s longtime, still usually silent friend Lee. Vincent had been happy to witness Pancakes settling near him on the risers, and he felt the pressure of the moment upon him. He reached into the pocket of his battered denim jacket and felt the firm double teardrop shape of the quartz crystal heart he’d been carrying there for over a month.
Pancakes had been holding forth for several minutes on the specifics of her new play. “It’s basically the story of a trade-off,” she said. “The main character is this linguist who’s been helping to decrypt an old scroll. Ancient. Kinda Biblical, but that’s not for sure. But as he gets more into it and it gets more attention from all kinds of unexpected sources, he starts to realize that it has some kind of power if it can be translated. Or, anyway, that’s what everyone seems to think.” Vincent closed his eyes and enjoyed the sound of her voice. It had been a long time since he had heard pure excitement from her.
“Sounds like an adventure,” Pastina’s boyfriend said, and Pastina was glad he couldn’t see the pained expression on her face in the dark. Why did he have to be so simple in front of other people? “Could be more of a movie than a play. All you need is a love interest.”
“Ah!” Pancakes said. “But I have one. That’s the trade-off. A woman he falls in love with. A woman who ends up needing him to abandon his work. He could be in on something totally groundbreaking, a revelation of the old-school kind. So does he pursue that, or does he walk away from it in the hopes that helping out his love will be worth the loss?”
No one said anything for a moment. The sound of crickets filled the silence. Pancakes had still not abandoned her favorite topic of her parents' complicated dynamics, and even Pastina's boyfriend could see it.
But Pancakes couldn't, and Vincent didn't care as he listened to her description of her newest play. He took a deep breath and pulled the heart from his pocket. He held it tightly in his fist for a moment, then turned it over in his hands. It felt much heavier than its size would suggest.
“So?” Lee said finally. "What happens?" Most everyone had forgotten he was there, and his unexpected question made Vincent nervous again. He slipped the heart back into his pocket.
“Well, you have to come see the play, don’t you?” Pancakes said.
That started a sudden debate from everyone. Pancakes had teased them with the plot, then refused to follow through. The eruption of banter eased Vincent’s mind again, and he knew he would have to do this tonight or not do it at all.
What’s the worst that could happen? He knew she’d understand his gesture, and he knew that she would remain his friend even if she didn’t feel the same way. Probably she would. If only there were some way to be sure. But that was part of the point, wasn’t it? Would there be any reason to go through with it if he knew the outcome? If she would say yes for sure, would he even want her the same way? He held his breath and reached to get the heart again. It was now or never.
And suddenly it was . . . gone. The heart was gone! Vincent knew he must be wrong. He dug deep into his pocket, finding only lint and an oxidized paperclip. He reached into the opposite pocket, but there he found only a pencil stub and some change. Maybe he’d put it in one of his other pockets? He started feeling around everywhere, patting down all his pockets and touching lightly around the riser in the immediate area. Maybe it was somewhere nearby. Unless it fell, in which case . . .
“What are you doing?” Pancakes asked suddenly, and Vincent realized she was talking to him. “Did you lose something? Or do you have an itch or something?” Vincent realized he must have seemed more frantic than he realized.
“I, uh, yeah,” he said. “I dropped something, I think.”
“I hope it didn’t fall,” Pastina said. “It might be hard to find it under the risers. Was it important?”
“No, I guess not,” Vincent said. In his mind he was sketching diagrams of the trajectory such an object might take from that height. Maybe it would just fall straight down? Would it bounce or roll? And how far? Maybe he could still salvage it. “Lee, would you help me for a second? It’s just that it was a pen that I really like. Let’s just go down and look really quick.” Lee stood up and prepared to follow him.
“You want us to help you look?” Pancakes asked, starting to rise.
“No, that’s fine,” Vincent said. “If it’s down there, we’ll find it.” He started down and Lee followed after him.
“And if you don’t find it, we’ll go get you another one tomorrow,” Pancakes said.
“We’ll find it,” Vincent said. On the way down he had to confide in Lee what he’d actually lost, and each of the boys worked out a search pattern to cover the most likely places the heart could have fallen, bounced, or rolled. They paced off a large area, then walked in regular concentric patterns to cover as much of the space as possible. They sometimes got down on hands and knees to feel around the ground, especially near portions of the riser structure that might have stopped the roll of such and object. Lee fetched a flashlight from his car, and they panned around the most likely places.
They looked everywhere that the thing might logically have gone, and then they looked in some places that it seemed possible but rather unlikely that it might have gone. Finally, desperate and tired, Vincent started looking in some places that the heart could very likely have never gone. Eventually the rest of the party became restless and insisted Vincent call off the search. How much could a pen be worth, anyway?
Finally he gave up, and even though he returned to the park early the next day, he never did find the stupid thing again.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Friday, May 05, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Saturday, April 29, 2006
What I'm About to Do on My Summer Vacation
Vincent looked at the shiny green coupe in the driveway. Then he looked at the small mountain of luggage Pancakes had stacked in the driveway by the front door. He had yet to investigate the available space in the rear of the car, but even from this distance he could see that the entire interior of the vehicle would never hold all the bags Pancakes wanted to bring on their trip. They wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.
“What exactly were you thinking when you rented this car?” Vincent asked.
Pancakes looked defiant. “I was thinking, basically, ‘go.’ You said to get a car, so I got a car.”
“And you also packed your bags. You were the one who knew how big the car was, and then you packed these enormous bags. I just don’t really get that,” Vincent said.
Pancakes turned to walk away. Since when did Vincent question her? This was unexpected and new. And unwelcome. That dumb girlfriend of his, Jalasso, had changed him somehow. She couldn’t believe those two hadn’t stayed broken up. “Vincent,” she said as she went back to the house, “you know what I don’t get? How your little girlfriend let you come on this trip in the first place. Isn’t she jealous?”
Vincent turned and followed her. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t? Well, what’d she say when you told her?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. Nothing?”
“Well, I didn’t tell her yet.”
Pancakes stopped and turned to face him. “Are you kidding? You didn’t tell her?” She was pleased by that, but she tried to sound appropriately outraged. “How could you not tell your girlfriend?”
Vincent shrugged. “I don’t have to,” he said. “We’re on hold for the summer.”
“On hold? What is that?”
Vincent shrugged again. “I don’t really know,” he said. “That’s what we agreed. She was going away for the whole summer, so we said we’d be on hold. I don’t have to check in with her on everything. She doesn’t check with me.”
Pancakes squinted at him. “This was your idea?” she asked.
“Not really.”
Their road trip together had been hastily arranged, and Pancakes hadn’t really done all that much planning other than securing a car and overpacking. Vincent was taking care of the details. She assumed he knew that. They hadn’t really discussed it in detail. She’d simply known that it was essential for her to get lost for a little while, and she especially needed to lose her boyfriend Brandon, who had grown a bit too serious about their undefined relationship. Apparently after a few months he felt the need to start asking her questions about her feelings and her intentions, and none of these questions were to her liking as she didn’t have ready answers for them. It was really, she thought, the wrong time to press her on anything. She didn’t know and she didn’t know and she didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that her college plans for the fall had been established, and for the moment she needed to prepare herself for the imminent onslaught of effort that would bring. A chain-smoking pseudo-boyfriend didn’t enter the picture. At least not in a good way.
One of the more irritating aspects of Brandon’s behavior was the increasing static he seemed to have with Vincent. It was funny at first. Pancakes liked the fact that, as she said to Pastina, “the boys are getting tough.” Given the temperaments of the two guys in question, it would never come to more than a battle of wits, but after a few months of that, Pancakes was tiring of the game. Vincent obviously had the upper hand, witswise, and that prompted Brandon to become a little meaner in his comments in order to hold up his end of the animosity. One moment in particular stood out to Pancakes as indicative of the degree to which things had devolved. In May, her long beloved cat Mourning Becomes Electra (she never tired of explaining that the cat’s name was not, in fact, “Morning,” as people tended to assume) had died. Pancakes had arranged a small funeral at her family home, and she had been astonished when, standing over the two-by-three foot grave, Brandon had intimated that Vincent might have had something to do with the cat’s demise.
“What are you, Charlie Chan?” Vincent had asked. “Are you going to explain the method, motive, and opportunity for my crime?” Brandon had been stymied for a proper reply, saying only, “Just so you know, I’ve got my eye on you.” Looking back now, Pancakes realized that was the beginning of the end for Brandon. She hated to admit that something like that was so important to her, but his inability to spar verbally turned her off. After all, Vincent wasn’t exactly a sarcastic knock-out artist.
A lengthy delay later, after which it was so late that they decided to eat lunch at Pancakes’s house rather than drive an hour down the road and stop somewhere far less inviting, the road trip finally got underway. “The only thing is,” Pancakes said as she settled into the passenger seat and leafed through the enormous cloth album of compact discs she’d brought, “we have to be back sometime in August so we can get ready for school.”
“That was kind of implied,” Vincent said. “Besides, Jalasso will be back at the end of August.”
“Who?” Pancakes asked innocently.
“Jalasso?”
“Your ex?”
“My on-hold,” Vincent corrected her.
Pancakes smiled. “We’ll see. We’re going to be out on the road for a long time together, Vincent. You may not want to go back to her after I’m done with you.”
Vincent looked a bit panicked and took a drink from his bottle of water. “I don’t know where that came from,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know why you’re not telling me something else, then,” Pancakes said. She selected a disc and slid it into the player. “If you’re in love with that girl, why did you let her go off all unattached? What are you doing out here with me, alone and unsupervised?”
“You wanted to go on a trip.”
“What did you want to do?”
“Get the hell out of there so I could stop thinking about how much I wanted Jalasso to be around.”
Pancakes sipped at a cup of watery iced coffee. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Vincent sighed and shook his head. “It’s pathetic, I know.”
“It’s not pathetic to be in love with her,” Pancakes said. She felt very strange making the statement. She didn’t really believe it, but at the same time she realized it was still true.
“But the ‘on-hold’ part. I don’t want us to be on hold. We can not-be-together, but that doesn’t mean that we have to suspend things officially.”
“I get it.”
“I mean, after the spring break thing.” Vincent didn't have to explain further. He and Jalasso had come close to the end then. She'd spent her break in Florida. Enough said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry too.”
The two rode in silence for a while, letting themselves be distracted by the insistent pulse of the music Pancakes had selected and the blur of scenery sliding past them as Vincent drove. Finally Pancakes said, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Brandon actually cried when I told him I was leaving.”
Vincent tried unsuccessfully to suppress a small smile. “Sadly, it does make me feel better. Not that he was a bad guy, but still …”
“Yes, I know. And for the record, I never for a second thought you were a cat murderer.”
“It was just his whole thing,” Vincent said. “And always with the cigarettes. God, I mean, after a while the casual way he smokes seems really self-conscious, you know? Didn’t you say he smoked in the bath tub?”
Pancakes made a face. “Don’t remind me. I can’t tell you how gross it is to be in the shower and realize there’s ash and tobacco all over the place. He used the soap dish as an ashtray, and he never cleaned it out.”
“So you stopped smoking?” Vincent asked.
“Well …” Pancakes looked out the window. “Okay, not totally. I’m working on it. I hope I’ll be done by the time we get back.”
Vincent’s eyes widened. He took his gaze off the road for a moment to give Pancakes a look of fearful astonishment. “Are you telling me that you’re going to go through withdrawals with me along for the ride? I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” she said. “That’s what I’m counting on in the hopes that you won’t end up killing me if I get too cranky.”
“You were waiting to tell me that until after we crossed state lines, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t think we’d hit on it so early. Why? Are you going to turn back?”
“I guess not,” Vincent said.
“Yeah, so here we are: two old friends out on the road, recently single—”
“One of us is single. The other’s on hold.”
“Two old friends, one recently single, one quote on hold unquote. And one of us is giving up smoking. What about you, Vincent? Are you giving up something?”
“At this point,” he said, “hope.”
“What exactly were you thinking when you rented this car?” Vincent asked.
Pancakes looked defiant. “I was thinking, basically, ‘go.’ You said to get a car, so I got a car.”
“And you also packed your bags. You were the one who knew how big the car was, and then you packed these enormous bags. I just don’t really get that,” Vincent said.
Pancakes turned to walk away. Since when did Vincent question her? This was unexpected and new. And unwelcome. That dumb girlfriend of his, Jalasso, had changed him somehow. She couldn’t believe those two hadn’t stayed broken up. “Vincent,” she said as she went back to the house, “you know what I don’t get? How your little girlfriend let you come on this trip in the first place. Isn’t she jealous?”
Vincent turned and followed her. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t? Well, what’d she say when you told her?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, right. Nothing?”
“Well, I didn’t tell her yet.”
Pancakes stopped and turned to face him. “Are you kidding? You didn’t tell her?” She was pleased by that, but she tried to sound appropriately outraged. “How could you not tell your girlfriend?”
Vincent shrugged. “I don’t have to,” he said. “We’re on hold for the summer.”
“On hold? What is that?”
Vincent shrugged again. “I don’t really know,” he said. “That’s what we agreed. She was going away for the whole summer, so we said we’d be on hold. I don’t have to check in with her on everything. She doesn’t check with me.”
Pancakes squinted at him. “This was your idea?” she asked.
“Not really.”
Their road trip together had been hastily arranged, and Pancakes hadn’t really done all that much planning other than securing a car and overpacking. Vincent was taking care of the details. She assumed he knew that. They hadn’t really discussed it in detail. She’d simply known that it was essential for her to get lost for a little while, and she especially needed to lose her boyfriend Brandon, who had grown a bit too serious about their undefined relationship. Apparently after a few months he felt the need to start asking her questions about her feelings and her intentions, and none of these questions were to her liking as she didn’t have ready answers for them. It was really, she thought, the wrong time to press her on anything. She didn’t know and she didn’t know and she didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that her college plans for the fall had been established, and for the moment she needed to prepare herself for the imminent onslaught of effort that would bring. A chain-smoking pseudo-boyfriend didn’t enter the picture. At least not in a good way.
One of the more irritating aspects of Brandon’s behavior was the increasing static he seemed to have with Vincent. It was funny at first. Pancakes liked the fact that, as she said to Pastina, “the boys are getting tough.” Given the temperaments of the two guys in question, it would never come to more than a battle of wits, but after a few months of that, Pancakes was tiring of the game. Vincent obviously had the upper hand, witswise, and that prompted Brandon to become a little meaner in his comments in order to hold up his end of the animosity. One moment in particular stood out to Pancakes as indicative of the degree to which things had devolved. In May, her long beloved cat Mourning Becomes Electra (she never tired of explaining that the cat’s name was not, in fact, “Morning,” as people tended to assume) had died. Pancakes had arranged a small funeral at her family home, and she had been astonished when, standing over the two-by-three foot grave, Brandon had intimated that Vincent might have had something to do with the cat’s demise.
“What are you, Charlie Chan?” Vincent had asked. “Are you going to explain the method, motive, and opportunity for my crime?” Brandon had been stymied for a proper reply, saying only, “Just so you know, I’ve got my eye on you.” Looking back now, Pancakes realized that was the beginning of the end for Brandon. She hated to admit that something like that was so important to her, but his inability to spar verbally turned her off. After all, Vincent wasn’t exactly a sarcastic knock-out artist.
A lengthy delay later, after which it was so late that they decided to eat lunch at Pancakes’s house rather than drive an hour down the road and stop somewhere far less inviting, the road trip finally got underway. “The only thing is,” Pancakes said as she settled into the passenger seat and leafed through the enormous cloth album of compact discs she’d brought, “we have to be back sometime in August so we can get ready for school.”
“That was kind of implied,” Vincent said. “Besides, Jalasso will be back at the end of August.”
“Who?” Pancakes asked innocently.
“Jalasso?”
“Your ex?”
“My on-hold,” Vincent corrected her.
Pancakes smiled. “We’ll see. We’re going to be out on the road for a long time together, Vincent. You may not want to go back to her after I’m done with you.”
Vincent looked a bit panicked and took a drink from his bottle of water. “I don’t know where that came from,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know why you’re not telling me something else, then,” Pancakes said. She selected a disc and slid it into the player. “If you’re in love with that girl, why did you let her go off all unattached? What are you doing out here with me, alone and unsupervised?”
“You wanted to go on a trip.”
“What did you want to do?”
“Get the hell out of there so I could stop thinking about how much I wanted Jalasso to be around.”
Pancakes sipped at a cup of watery iced coffee. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Vincent sighed and shook his head. “It’s pathetic, I know.”
“It’s not pathetic to be in love with her,” Pancakes said. She felt very strange making the statement. She didn’t really believe it, but at the same time she realized it was still true.
“But the ‘on-hold’ part. I don’t want us to be on hold. We can not-be-together, but that doesn’t mean that we have to suspend things officially.”
“I get it.”
“I mean, after the spring break thing.” Vincent didn't have to explain further. He and Jalasso had come close to the end then. She'd spent her break in Florida. Enough said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry too.”
The two rode in silence for a while, letting themselves be distracted by the insistent pulse of the music Pancakes had selected and the blur of scenery sliding past them as Vincent drove. Finally Pancakes said, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Brandon actually cried when I told him I was leaving.”
Vincent tried unsuccessfully to suppress a small smile. “Sadly, it does make me feel better. Not that he was a bad guy, but still …”
“Yes, I know. And for the record, I never for a second thought you were a cat murderer.”
“It was just his whole thing,” Vincent said. “And always with the cigarettes. God, I mean, after a while the casual way he smokes seems really self-conscious, you know? Didn’t you say he smoked in the bath tub?”
Pancakes made a face. “Don’t remind me. I can’t tell you how gross it is to be in the shower and realize there’s ash and tobacco all over the place. He used the soap dish as an ashtray, and he never cleaned it out.”
“So you stopped smoking?” Vincent asked.
“Well …” Pancakes looked out the window. “Okay, not totally. I’m working on it. I hope I’ll be done by the time we get back.”
Vincent’s eyes widened. He took his gaze off the road for a moment to give Pancakes a look of fearful astonishment. “Are you telling me that you’re going to go through withdrawals with me along for the ride? I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” she said. “That’s what I’m counting on in the hopes that you won’t end up killing me if I get too cranky.”
“You were waiting to tell me that until after we crossed state lines, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t think we’d hit on it so early. Why? Are you going to turn back?”
“I guess not,” Vincent said.
“Yeah, so here we are: two old friends out on the road, recently single—”
“One of us is single. The other’s on hold.”
“Two old friends, one recently single, one quote on hold unquote. And one of us is giving up smoking. What about you, Vincent? Are you giving up something?”
“At this point,” he said, “hope.”
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Detention Journal, part six
Did anyone realize that they take detention hall kids to lunch earlier than everybody else? So we don’t mix with the others, I guess.
It’s creepy being in the lunchroom when it’s empty. And the lunch-line ladies, who maybe never really noticed you before, are probably going, “Oh, look who’s in trouble now. She never looked like a delinquent, but I guess you never know.”
But apart from the unsettling feelings and the public shame—and much more important—who’s hungry for lunch at eleven o’clock? God, it makes the afternoon so much longer!
When they took us to lunch, the two burnout guys who’ve been trying to huff correction fluid all morning brought back a little plastic cup with a snap lid. Today was taco salad day, so it was one of the throwaway cups they give us with salsa in it. One of the guys washed his out in the water fountain when the teacher wasn’t looking. Then I saw him poking holes in the top with a pen once we got back in the room. It’s hard to see them very well from where I’m sitting, but it looks like they’ve made a major advance in their brain cell–killing pastime. Just pour the fluid in the cup, snap on the lid, and breathe in through the lid.
Wow. It’s moments like these when I’m particularly proud that my species is so adept at making tools. I felt the same way when this boy at summer camp a couple of years ago made a bong out of an apple. That’s the guy you want to have around if you’re ever stranded in the woods. He can’t find any fresh water or edible berries, but he can probably forage for the most psychoactive mushrooms in the forest.
And now those guys are back there look sleepy and pleased. You’d think the teacher would notice what’s going on with them. It’s hard not to. But I’m getting used to how naïve people are when they want to be. I mean, even if she did know that they were sucking up chemical fumes only about thirty yards away from her, what would she do? They’re already in detention. The school could suspend them, but then they’ll just go home and do the same thing. Or something worse. If they even wait long enough to get home.
Before today, I never even knew this detention hall was here. I mean, now that I see where it is, I realize it was here all along. I walked right by this spot on my way into the main building almost every day for nearly three years. But I never had a reason to walk through here, except one time my freshman year when I was trying to find a Coke machine and ended up in one of the hallways outside. Now every time I walk by this place, I’m going to know that behind these walls are some bored, bored people. And I’ll feel a little bit better about my day, no matter how crappy it is. At least I’ll be free to move around at will. At this moment, I can’t imagine wanting anything as much as I want that.
Hey, do you think that was part of the point of this punishment? Hmm. But look how effective. They’ve scared a straight student even straighter, all the while exposing her to outcasts, outsiders, and flagrant drug users. And what about them? I don’t think this is the first time in here for some of them. So how well does the system work? What’s the starting age for recidivism? (Yeah, that’s right. I said recidivism. Look it up.)
This afternoon is going to last FOREVER. And here I thought a fat Russian novel might distract me from isolation in the gulag. Yeah. Why didn’t I just bring some French existensialist writings along too? Almost as cheery. Today I am the most doomed girl in the history of doomed girls. See you on the Russian steppes.
It’s creepy being in the lunchroom when it’s empty. And the lunch-line ladies, who maybe never really noticed you before, are probably going, “Oh, look who’s in trouble now. She never looked like a delinquent, but I guess you never know.”
But apart from the unsettling feelings and the public shame—and much more important—who’s hungry for lunch at eleven o’clock? God, it makes the afternoon so much longer!
When they took us to lunch, the two burnout guys who’ve been trying to huff correction fluid all morning brought back a little plastic cup with a snap lid. Today was taco salad day, so it was one of the throwaway cups they give us with salsa in it. One of the guys washed his out in the water fountain when the teacher wasn’t looking. Then I saw him poking holes in the top with a pen once we got back in the room. It’s hard to see them very well from where I’m sitting, but it looks like they’ve made a major advance in their brain cell–killing pastime. Just pour the fluid in the cup, snap on the lid, and breathe in through the lid.
Wow. It’s moments like these when I’m particularly proud that my species is so adept at making tools. I felt the same way when this boy at summer camp a couple of years ago made a bong out of an apple. That’s the guy you want to have around if you’re ever stranded in the woods. He can’t find any fresh water or edible berries, but he can probably forage for the most psychoactive mushrooms in the forest.
And now those guys are back there look sleepy and pleased. You’d think the teacher would notice what’s going on with them. It’s hard not to. But I’m getting used to how naïve people are when they want to be. I mean, even if she did know that they were sucking up chemical fumes only about thirty yards away from her, what would she do? They’re already in detention. The school could suspend them, but then they’ll just go home and do the same thing. Or something worse. If they even wait long enough to get home.
Before today, I never even knew this detention hall was here. I mean, now that I see where it is, I realize it was here all along. I walked right by this spot on my way into the main building almost every day for nearly three years. But I never had a reason to walk through here, except one time my freshman year when I was trying to find a Coke machine and ended up in one of the hallways outside. Now every time I walk by this place, I’m going to know that behind these walls are some bored, bored people. And I’ll feel a little bit better about my day, no matter how crappy it is. At least I’ll be free to move around at will. At this moment, I can’t imagine wanting anything as much as I want that.
Hey, do you think that was part of the point of this punishment? Hmm. But look how effective. They’ve scared a straight student even straighter, all the while exposing her to outcasts, outsiders, and flagrant drug users. And what about them? I don’t think this is the first time in here for some of them. So how well does the system work? What’s the starting age for recidivism? (Yeah, that’s right. I said recidivism. Look it up.)
This afternoon is going to last FOREVER. And here I thought a fat Russian novel might distract me from isolation in the gulag. Yeah. Why didn’t I just bring some French existensialist writings along too? Almost as cheery. Today I am the most doomed girl in the history of doomed girls. See you on the Russian steppes.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
“Tours of a Baguette with a Bag of Minotaurs”
I’m surprised, I quite find,
That I enjoy the Surreal
I can’t say, in a way,
What’s its precise appeal
The mundane I refrain
From encountering too much
Its veneer, I do fear,
Sometimes serves as a crutch
Some Dalis, if you please,
May seem willfully absurd
And Beckett could wreck it
With an ill-chosen word
But they show, don’t you know,
The subconscious’ upswell
Not reined in, contained in
The boxes of Cornell
They may stun, but they’re fun
Always good for a few laughs
With wordplays and Man Ray’s
Solarized photographs
It’s not real, some would squeal
And while Realism’s a feat
It reflects, but can’t vex
Like the views of Magritte
That I enjoy the Surreal
I can’t say, in a way,
What’s its precise appeal
The mundane I refrain
From encountering too much
Its veneer, I do fear,
Sometimes serves as a crutch
Some Dalis, if you please,
May seem willfully absurd
And Beckett could wreck it
With an ill-chosen word
But they show, don’t you know,
The subconscious’ upswell
Not reined in, contained in
The boxes of Cornell
They may stun, but they’re fun
Always good for a few laughs
With wordplays and Man Ray’s
Solarized photographs
It’s not real, some would squeal
And while Realism’s a feat
It reflects, but can’t vex
Like the views of Magritte
Friday, April 21, 2006
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Detention Journal, part five
I’m starting to fall right into their trap. They want this drab room to demoralize me . . . and it’s working. There’s a special kind of horribleness to it.
Part of it’s the lighting. In the regular classrooms, they have these same ugly fluorescent lights. They give off that weird, unnatural light, and they have this way of making this strange buzz that you can hear whenever things get really quiet. And things are supposed to be quiet in here, so it’s hard to miss that buzzzzzzzzzzz all day.
But at least in the other classrooms we also have windows so we can be reminded of the sun. And that reminds us of life. It’s the kind of light that first encouraged things to quiver to life in the primordial soup, after all.
But forget about it here. In here, they try to wipe out all hints of life-giving sunlight. They’ve actually painted over the glass! So not only are we denied the distraction of seeing the outside world, but we can’t even sense the sun. It could be nighttime out there. There might not even be an outside world anymore. We could be floating in space for all I know. I don’t have any evidence that the rest of the world is still there.
Some philosophies would say that it’s not there, because I’m not observing it anymore. Right now, those philosophies are very convincing. And not at all comforting.
You know, I’ve never played hooky before, and I end up here because I’ve been so damn good all my life. When I got home after the attendance office figured out our whole school-ditching scheme, I was ready for them. I know how to act contrite and play the good girl, but my parents must have been studying my book of tactics. So they go, “You want us to believe you’re an adult, so that’s the way we’re going to treat you. You make your decisions, you deal with the results.”
That’s why they didn’t even try to keep me out of detention. But otherwise they didn’t punish me at all. Instead, they just let me know that they now trust me just a little bit less. “If you want to regain our trust, you have to earn it,” my dad said. “We’re not going to punish you like a little kid.” Mom agreed. “You’re smart enough to understand that actions have consequences,” she said.
What do I do with that? I couldn’t even go off and feel angry and superior after all that. So I ended up just sitting in the dark in my room, listening to Fiona Apple sounding about as morose and hollow as I did. I think it was the creepiest, most subtle punishment I’ve ever had.
What’s worse, in my guilt I offered to cook dinner tomorrow night, so now there’s that joy to look forward to. Do you know how hard it is to feed former Midwesterners who no longer eat meat but still have a craving for all the horrible foods they grew up on? Fresh, light, and healthy foods are an insult to them. How much can you really do when your essential ingredients are potatoes, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup?
Whoa! News flash! It seems like I’ve made an ass out of “u” and “me”! Remember my new best friend, with the beads in her hair and the attitude and the humming? When we went to lunch, I got a chance to get a close look at her, and . . . she’s a guy! A total freak of a guy, sure, but definitely not female by nature. I have no idea where he got his personal sense of style, but I really think I can be forgiven for making a mistake.
Still, I don’t think things will ever be same between us. He led me on, and now he’s taken away my friend. All the humming games in the world can’t make up for it. But I still hope he’ll try.
Part of it’s the lighting. In the regular classrooms, they have these same ugly fluorescent lights. They give off that weird, unnatural light, and they have this way of making this strange buzz that you can hear whenever things get really quiet. And things are supposed to be quiet in here, so it’s hard to miss that buzzzzzzzzzzz all day.
But at least in the other classrooms we also have windows so we can be reminded of the sun. And that reminds us of life. It’s the kind of light that first encouraged things to quiver to life in the primordial soup, after all.
But forget about it here. In here, they try to wipe out all hints of life-giving sunlight. They’ve actually painted over the glass! So not only are we denied the distraction of seeing the outside world, but we can’t even sense the sun. It could be nighttime out there. There might not even be an outside world anymore. We could be floating in space for all I know. I don’t have any evidence that the rest of the world is still there.
Some philosophies would say that it’s not there, because I’m not observing it anymore. Right now, those philosophies are very convincing. And not at all comforting.
You know, I’ve never played hooky before, and I end up here because I’ve been so damn good all my life. When I got home after the attendance office figured out our whole school-ditching scheme, I was ready for them. I know how to act contrite and play the good girl, but my parents must have been studying my book of tactics. So they go, “You want us to believe you’re an adult, so that’s the way we’re going to treat you. You make your decisions, you deal with the results.”
That’s why they didn’t even try to keep me out of detention. But otherwise they didn’t punish me at all. Instead, they just let me know that they now trust me just a little bit less. “If you want to regain our trust, you have to earn it,” my dad said. “We’re not going to punish you like a little kid.” Mom agreed. “You’re smart enough to understand that actions have consequences,” she said.
What do I do with that? I couldn’t even go off and feel angry and superior after all that. So I ended up just sitting in the dark in my room, listening to Fiona Apple sounding about as morose and hollow as I did. I think it was the creepiest, most subtle punishment I’ve ever had.
What’s worse, in my guilt I offered to cook dinner tomorrow night, so now there’s that joy to look forward to. Do you know how hard it is to feed former Midwesterners who no longer eat meat but still have a craving for all the horrible foods they grew up on? Fresh, light, and healthy foods are an insult to them. How much can you really do when your essential ingredients are potatoes, cheese, and cream of mushroom soup?
Whoa! News flash! It seems like I’ve made an ass out of “u” and “me”! Remember my new best friend, with the beads in her hair and the attitude and the humming? When we went to lunch, I got a chance to get a close look at her, and . . . she’s a guy! A total freak of a guy, sure, but definitely not female by nature. I have no idea where he got his personal sense of style, but I really think I can be forgiven for making a mistake.
Still, I don’t think things will ever be same between us. He led me on, and now he’s taken away my friend. All the humming games in the world can’t make up for it. But I still hope he’ll try.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Pancakes Dunst Hears Voices
Pancakes could hear her parents arguing. If she had asked, she knew, they would have said they were “having a discussion.” But their discussions sounded a lot like arguments to her, even if they weren’t all that loud. In discussions, people didn’t keep saying opposite things. They agreed about things a lot more. And nobody ever talked with their mouths half-closed like they were trying not to yell.
The reason she could hear their discussion wasn’t because they were being loud. It was because she had discovered a few months earlier that if she crawled into the large storage closet around the corner from the master bedroom, she could make her way all the way to the back and hear everything that was going on in there. One of the heating ducts to the master bedroom ran through part of the closet, and as long as the heat wasn’t on, the duct picked up the room’s sound. The only trick was getting out of the closet and back down the hall to her bedroom when her parents came out of their room and went looking for her. She hadn’t been caught so far, although a couple of times she’d been in such a hurry that she banged into the closet door handle and bruised her shoulder.
Right now her parents were arguing about her, or rather something that she had been playing with. A few days earlier, she had discovered a big deck of colorful cards in the house library. The cards were larger than regular playing cards, and there were more of them than the usual fifty-two. They had a lot of strange pictures of people and creatures on them. She had taken the deck out of their box and spread them out on the floor, looking at all the pictures and trying to figure out what they were for. All the cards were different, and she liked looking at them and making up stories about what was going on in each one. Knights rode horses and ships sailed into the distance. Kings and queens stared out at her. There were townspeople and people who lived in castles and all kinds of animals. Later when her father found her there on the carpet in the library, he explained that they were tarot cards. He said that some people used them to tell fortunes.
Pancakes felt disappointed when her father admitted that he couldn’t tell the future himself. There was a small booklet of instructions, and he paged through it for a few minutes, but after a while he told her it was a little too involved. Pancakes didn’t know what that meant. Involved with what? So Emiliano explained that telling the future with the cards was complicated. Every card meant something different, and they also meant different things depending on how you arranged them. Most of all, he told her, using the cards meant you had to study lots and lots of rules. That was enough for her. Rules meant not doing what she wanted, and she didn’t see any point in that.
Still, the cards were interesting, and Pancakes thought she might be able to figure out how to work them if she just thought about it for a while. She too the deck to her playroom, and every so often she took them out of their box, ignored the instruction booklet, and started laying them out in different patterns. She liked the storybook people from the kingdoms in the cards, but she grew more interested in the stranger cards. A big tower with a lightning bolt hitting it and a guy falling out. Some magical man with a wand or a candle or something. Flying people, Egyptian people, floating cups, people with swords. Every card had its own story, and she liked trying to figure out what was going on in them. And she really, really liked all the animals. It reminded her of the trip her class had taken to the zoo. Too bad the cards didn’t have any monkeys, though.
When her mother found Pancakes playing with the cards, however, she got upset. She took them away and asked where she’d gotten them. Pancakes had no idea why her mother was upset. Because of cards? It made her kind of mad, especially since Lorinda hadn’t been home all that long and she was already going around making rules as usual. “Dad let me,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”
That had led to the present situation, with Emiliano and Lorinda “discussing” the matter in their bedroom while Pancakes listened from the closet.
“They’re just symbols, Lorinda. A bunch of pictures,” her father said. The sound was a little muffled. At first she though he’d said, “A bunch of pigtails.”
“Well, I know it sounds provincial, but I don’t like the fact that our daughter is dabbling in the occult,” her mother replied. Pancakes had a harder time with the end of that sentence. Something about a colt? Because there were horses on the cards? Horses weren’t bad. She knew some girls who even had their own horses, and no one got upset about that.
“She doesn’t even use any of the spreads or the interpretations,” her father said. “She just likes looking at the pictures.”
“And that’s fine,” her mother said. “But I don’t think she should be looking at some of those pictures. The devil? Death? She’s too young for those things, Emil.” Pancakes was surprised to hear this, and she wished she’d paid more attention to both of those cards. If she was too young for them, they must be a lot more interesting than she realized.
Emiliano sighed. Pancakes could tell it was his upset-sigh. He usually did that right before he told her that he’d had enough, and she always wished he had a sigh that meant he’d almost had enough so that she could stop whatever she was doing right before it was too late. “You’re coming in a little late for this kind of thing,” he said.
Lorinda paused. “What?” Pancakes recognized that “what” too. This discussion was getting a lot more arguey all of a sudden.
“For this level of parenting,” Emiliano said. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the tarot cards, but I never knew you felt that way.”
Now Lorinda sighed. It was a loud one. “Well, Pancakes hasn’t played with fortune-telling games before. Otherwise it might have come up.”
“But it wouldn’t have,” Emiliano said. “Because in all likelihood, you wouldn’t have been here to say anything about it. Pancakes could have been breathing the fumes in the cave of the Oracles for weeks at a time. Unless I called and told you, how the hell would you ever know?”
Pancakes didn’t realize the discussion was now over, but she knew it as soon as the bedroom door slammed shut and she heard her mother’s shoes clack angrily down the stairs. She really wished she hadn’t had her ear up to the duct at the time.
The reason she could hear their discussion wasn’t because they were being loud. It was because she had discovered a few months earlier that if she crawled into the large storage closet around the corner from the master bedroom, she could make her way all the way to the back and hear everything that was going on in there. One of the heating ducts to the master bedroom ran through part of the closet, and as long as the heat wasn’t on, the duct picked up the room’s sound. The only trick was getting out of the closet and back down the hall to her bedroom when her parents came out of their room and went looking for her. She hadn’t been caught so far, although a couple of times she’d been in such a hurry that she banged into the closet door handle and bruised her shoulder.
Right now her parents were arguing about her, or rather something that she had been playing with. A few days earlier, she had discovered a big deck of colorful cards in the house library. The cards were larger than regular playing cards, and there were more of them than the usual fifty-two. They had a lot of strange pictures of people and creatures on them. She had taken the deck out of their box and spread them out on the floor, looking at all the pictures and trying to figure out what they were for. All the cards were different, and she liked looking at them and making up stories about what was going on in each one. Knights rode horses and ships sailed into the distance. Kings and queens stared out at her. There were townspeople and people who lived in castles and all kinds of animals. Later when her father found her there on the carpet in the library, he explained that they were tarot cards. He said that some people used them to tell fortunes.
Pancakes felt disappointed when her father admitted that he couldn’t tell the future himself. There was a small booklet of instructions, and he paged through it for a few minutes, but after a while he told her it was a little too involved. Pancakes didn’t know what that meant. Involved with what? So Emiliano explained that telling the future with the cards was complicated. Every card meant something different, and they also meant different things depending on how you arranged them. Most of all, he told her, using the cards meant you had to study lots and lots of rules. That was enough for her. Rules meant not doing what she wanted, and she didn’t see any point in that.
Still, the cards were interesting, and Pancakes thought she might be able to figure out how to work them if she just thought about it for a while. She too the deck to her playroom, and every so often she took them out of their box, ignored the instruction booklet, and started laying them out in different patterns. She liked the storybook people from the kingdoms in the cards, but she grew more interested in the stranger cards. A big tower with a lightning bolt hitting it and a guy falling out. Some magical man with a wand or a candle or something. Flying people, Egyptian people, floating cups, people with swords. Every card had its own story, and she liked trying to figure out what was going on in them. And she really, really liked all the animals. It reminded her of the trip her class had taken to the zoo. Too bad the cards didn’t have any monkeys, though.
When her mother found Pancakes playing with the cards, however, she got upset. She took them away and asked where she’d gotten them. Pancakes had no idea why her mother was upset. Because of cards? It made her kind of mad, especially since Lorinda hadn’t been home all that long and she was already going around making rules as usual. “Dad let me,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”
That had led to the present situation, with Emiliano and Lorinda “discussing” the matter in their bedroom while Pancakes listened from the closet.
“They’re just symbols, Lorinda. A bunch of pictures,” her father said. The sound was a little muffled. At first she though he’d said, “A bunch of pigtails.”
“Well, I know it sounds provincial, but I don’t like the fact that our daughter is dabbling in the occult,” her mother replied. Pancakes had a harder time with the end of that sentence. Something about a colt? Because there were horses on the cards? Horses weren’t bad. She knew some girls who even had their own horses, and no one got upset about that.
“She doesn’t even use any of the spreads or the interpretations,” her father said. “She just likes looking at the pictures.”
“And that’s fine,” her mother said. “But I don’t think she should be looking at some of those pictures. The devil? Death? She’s too young for those things, Emil.” Pancakes was surprised to hear this, and she wished she’d paid more attention to both of those cards. If she was too young for them, they must be a lot more interesting than she realized.
Emiliano sighed. Pancakes could tell it was his upset-sigh. He usually did that right before he told her that he’d had enough, and she always wished he had a sigh that meant he’d almost had enough so that she could stop whatever she was doing right before it was too late. “You’re coming in a little late for this kind of thing,” he said.
Lorinda paused. “What?” Pancakes recognized that “what” too. This discussion was getting a lot more arguey all of a sudden.
“For this level of parenting,” Emiliano said. “I’m not saying that you’re wrong about the tarot cards, but I never knew you felt that way.”
Now Lorinda sighed. It was a loud one. “Well, Pancakes hasn’t played with fortune-telling games before. Otherwise it might have come up.”
“But it wouldn’t have,” Emiliano said. “Because in all likelihood, you wouldn’t have been here to say anything about it. Pancakes could have been breathing the fumes in the cave of the Oracles for weeks at a time. Unless I called and told you, how the hell would you ever know?”
Pancakes didn’t realize the discussion was now over, but she knew it as soon as the bedroom door slammed shut and she heard her mother’s shoes clack angrily down the stairs. She really wished she hadn’t had her ear up to the duct at the time.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Monday, April 03, 2006
who speaks for the pigeons?
I have no idea what's going on here. I posted a pic of this sign back in mid-February, and now it seems to have become a favorite bulletin board for the activist-minded population of Cambridge. Which is to say Cambridge. These come from March 5 and March 21, respectively. Semioticians, please take note. There's a dissertation in there somewhere.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Behavior Unbecoming a Grade Schooler
Dear Mr. Dunst:
Please call me at your earliest convenience about arranging a meeting to discuss Pancakes's recent behavior in class. I don't mean to alarm you; she hasn't been misbehaving, exactly. But some of her responses of late have indicated that she may require a higher level of interactive teaching than we at Opal Anderson's Charter School for the Creatively Accelerated are prepared to give.
For instance, she has begun to incorporate what I believe some might interpret as performance art into her show-and-tell projects. Recently, the object she chose to share with the class involved a garish statuette of Bacchus that she had taken to various downtown office buildings and tried to get admitted for meetings with CEOs of major corporations. The photographs she took of baffled security guards and personal assistants confronting the ceramic figure were well executed, especially for an eight-year-old, but next to Billy Tompkinsonstein's new Tonka truck, her contribution seemed inappropriate and avant garde.
Additionally, she has been answering roll call by standing at attention by her desk, then offering up a quick aria. I congratulate you on her well-developed intelligence and fine singing voice, but I have to consider the disruptive effect such behavior has on the other children. It either baffles them entirely, or it spurs them to adopt such methods themselves. Melanie Grantalano answered a question about a story we were discussing with a few lines of gangsta rap last week. When I tried to admonish her for it (I should mention that the language she employed was entirely unsuitable for school-age children), Pancakes defended her by saying that she was merely “attempting to employ her skills across disciplines.”
These are just the most recent examples of what I'm afraid has become fairly regular and untenable behavior at this institution. I urge you to call me as soon as possible so that we may sit down to discuss better options for Pancakes's future than we here at this school are equipped to supply.
Sincerely,
Edna St. Vincent Carruthers Baxendale-on-Heath
Second Grade Instructor
Please call me at your earliest convenience about arranging a meeting to discuss Pancakes's recent behavior in class. I don't mean to alarm you; she hasn't been misbehaving, exactly. But some of her responses of late have indicated that she may require a higher level of interactive teaching than we at Opal Anderson's Charter School for the Creatively Accelerated are prepared to give.
For instance, she has begun to incorporate what I believe some might interpret as performance art into her show-and-tell projects. Recently, the object she chose to share with the class involved a garish statuette of Bacchus that she had taken to various downtown office buildings and tried to get admitted for meetings with CEOs of major corporations. The photographs she took of baffled security guards and personal assistants confronting the ceramic figure were well executed, especially for an eight-year-old, but next to Billy Tompkinsonstein's new Tonka truck, her contribution seemed inappropriate and avant garde.
Additionally, she has been answering roll call by standing at attention by her desk, then offering up a quick aria. I congratulate you on her well-developed intelligence and fine singing voice, but I have to consider the disruptive effect such behavior has on the other children. It either baffles them entirely, or it spurs them to adopt such methods themselves. Melanie Grantalano answered a question about a story we were discussing with a few lines of gangsta rap last week. When I tried to admonish her for it (I should mention that the language she employed was entirely unsuitable for school-age children), Pancakes defended her by saying that she was merely “attempting to employ her skills across disciplines.”
These are just the most recent examples of what I'm afraid has become fairly regular and untenable behavior at this institution. I urge you to call me as soon as possible so that we may sit down to discuss better options for Pancakes's future than we here at this school are equipped to supply.
Sincerely,
Edna St. Vincent Carruthers Baxendale-on-Heath
Second Grade Instructor
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