The N-Spot: Beloved and Sula Reviewed

It always feels slightly blasphemous to review Toni Morrison’s work—even worse if you’re discussing her in an uppity, academic setting. There seems to be some disservice done if you aren’t simply basking in her glory. This is not to say that her work is untouchable (read Love and you’ll know what I mean), and I certainly don’t believe she thinks as much (though she wields a far heavier hand in critical reception to her work), but that any review I might eke out will inevitably fall short. Perhaps this is why I’ve felt so uncomfortable over the past several weeks; I re-read Beloved and Sula one after another (Beloved for my longest seminar paper; Sula for a presentation), and in a scholarly capacity. Not only did I feel slightly, as I said, presumptuous—but also inadequate, for how does one write about a novel as emotionally complex and ethically indeterminate as Beloved? How does one argue against Sula as a positive model for the ‘new black woman’ in a classroom—especially when you yourself love Sula, even despite your inclination to think of her as an awful person? At the end of the two weeks or so it took to get through both novels, I felt like a picked scab. I was emotionally tired out.

It seems strange that it had been so long since I’d read either novel—above three years for both of them—because so many moments from each have become imprinted on my psyche, it seems. Of course, one forgets much: the strange spectacle of Shadrack’s final National Suicide Day; Helene Wright turning to ‘custard’ on the train; the fact that Paul D made an impact on 124 Bluestone Road (or Paul D more generally; it seems I only remember the women of Beloved). But there is also much that feels inescapable: the ‘O-gape’ of despair in Nel’s final howl for Sula; the chokecherry tree that blossoms on Sethe’s dead-skinned back; that strange rose-shaped birthmark over Sula’s eye; Amy Denver’s yearning for velvet and for Boston, where she’ll find that velvet. In some ways, I can only describe the power these novels have had over me in Sethe’s terms—they follow me, my rememory, and I run into these images and moments at unexpected times, with unexpected reactions to them. I say rememory because for Sethe, rememory signals the tangible quality of the past—you encounter your own history as tactile, rather than ephemeral, and at times, this past is something you simply cannot get away from. Not that I want to escape Morrison’s work, but that her novels have that beautifully tangible quality for me; I don’t simply scan the pages, but enter into some other world, an elsewhere, where I confront my self even as I confront all that is narrated.

Re-reading Beloved this go-round was particularly difficult. It took me nearly two weeks to get through the novel—for no other reason than that there were many occasions where I simply had to put it down and step back for a spell. I won’t pretend that I feel the emotional resonances of black experience—but even as a white, gay, male reader, I can feel the resonances of the human experience, which is precisely what I think Morrison intends. The politics of slavery and the tensions of the post-Reconstruction era are of course central to the novel, but Beloved is never a polemical minstrel show—the powerful political work is done, it seems, simply by granting her characters an implicit and enduring humanity. One of the things I’ve always admired about Morrison’s work is her capacity to imagine the nuances of every person, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they might seem at surface. Thus, in the face of the awful atrocities Schoolteacher and his pupils commit against the Sweet Home slaves, there are whitepeople like Amy Denver, like the Garners and the Bodwins—and even in the case of Schoolteacher, who horrifyingly instructs his pupils to put Sethe’s ‘human’ qualities on one side of a list and her ‘animal’ on the other, there is an indication that he has some capacity for sympathetic feeling, if only in his treatment of his dying sister-in-law. Likewise, Sethe is the emotional core of the novel, but she has committed one of the only crimes that is literally unrepresentable—infanticide. Morrison neither condemns her, nor lets her entirely off the hook. Even in their most fraught and horrifying sins, these characters are for Morrison essentially human, and she treats each one on their own terms. A novel about slavery and infanticide—a ghost story, in some capacity, as well—never manages to become moralizing or alienating, because Morrison refuses to let either her narrative or her reader take any easy outs.

Sula once tried to battle Beloved for my top-Morrison spot, but I think this re-reading has cemented the hierarchy for me. Nonetheless, they both remain among my favorite novels of all time (Beloved, in fact, has to be in the top five for me). Sula offers a wonderful exploration of female-female relationships (not necessarily erotic, though one can certainly read the Sula/Nel pairing as erotic in some capacity—I would argue more autoerotic than anything), and imagines a space in which women necessarily rely upon one another in a woman-centered community. My professor asked as we discussed the novel: ‘Do you think Morrison suggests that men have to leave in order for these characters to establish healthy and productive intimacies?’ And in fact, I tend to agree. We talked about the novel as contextualized alongside the Moynihan Report (a 1965 sociological ‘study’ that essentially claimed that female-headed black households kept ‘the race’ down, and generated figures like the Welfare Queen)—and so wondered together whether Morrison’s novel offers an alternative to these sorts of (white) hegemonic discourses on matrilineal systems in black communities. For Sula, this is the only available model; and in the case of Sula and Nel, female intersubjectivity is the most powerful and generative model of subject formation. Notice that the real troubles of the novel occur only after Nel and Sula’s strangely indistinguishable identities are fractured. Oh, look. There I went and did an academic discussion of the novel. But these issues weren’t what first drew me to the novel; rather, I think I was pulled in by the vulnerability of Nel, who ‘pulls her nose’ to make it seem more ‘white’ in the eyes of her mother. I was drawn to the way Morrison describes the ‘expanse of khaki’ that covers the men’s predatory/dormant dicks—and how Nel and Sula are unable to comprehend—but simultaneously able to intuit—what it means to be called ‘pig meat’ by these men. I was seduced by Sula, much the way she seduces everyone around her, and repulsed by her selfish actions—I was lured into imagining what it would be to function as the ‘dumping ground’ for a community’s frustrations, but being self-sufficient enough (as Sula is) to not give a damn. I felt my chest tighten when Nel lets out that final roar of utter grief (sidenote: Morrison has a real way of illustrating inarticulable emotions through guttural sounds). I considered my own conflicting desires to assimilate, as Nel does, and to deviate, as Sula does—the novel asks, in many ways, how we might discover a middle ground, and if such a thing can sustain itself. Sula doesn’t have the weight of Beloved, but it is in many ways so different from Beloved (even though many of the same issues arise—woman-centered communities, the mother-right, infanticide, & co.) that it carries the same sense of power.

As I mentioned at the top, Morrison has had her hits and her misses. Love is scatterbrained, meandering, and a bit of a hackneyed reworking/amalgam of her earlier novels. Song of Solomon may be a powerful novel, quite well written (with an absolutely amazing opening scene)—but for me, Morrison simply can’t write men in the same way she writes women, and the novel suffers for it. Her most recent, A Mercy, is positively stunning; The Bluest Eye was an eye-opening experience for silly-freshman-me, who had read perhaps one black author previously (Ellison’s Invisible Man). Jazz, Paradise, and Tar Baby all sit on my shelf, beckoning to me—but will likely have to wait until summer, as Atwood and Byatt’s new novels will dominate my winter break.

But Beloved and Sula are truly two works beyond comparison. As schmaltzy as it sounds, they changed my life. And it’s almost heartbreaking to see so many vicious reviews on goodreads, where people tear Beloved apart, call it the ‘worst novel’ they’ve ever read, decry Morrison’s illuminative faculties as a prose writer. I can only tell myself that art is subjective that these people are fucking idiots, like most people, and that I’ll keep-on-keepin’-on with my worship at the altar of Toni.

Georgia School Makes Clear that Different is "Not Okay'

Well, of course, Jezebel beat me to posting this, but here it is in any case.

Transphobia in Public Schools

A Georgia high school has “asked” a 16-year-old, male-bodied student to dress in a “more manly” fashion or consider homeschooling. Jonathan Escobar, the student, wears—according to this article (and as is evident in the video interview)—wigs, high heels, skinny jeans, women’s ‘vintage tops’ (whatever that means), and makeup to school. After being involved in a lunchtime fight in the cafeteria, Jonathan withdrew from school, and—as he remarks in the video—would be happy to return if he is allowed to express himself in the manner that makes him happy; i.e., while cross-dressing. There is some disputed evidence involved in the situation; Jonathan claims that he cleared his attire with the school before moving from Miami to Georgia; the school, it would seem, denies this. Administrators are defending themselves by reminding everyone that, although there is no official dress code, attire that might potentially ‘cause disruption’ is prohibited.

Jonathan comes across as an incredibly mature and well-adjusted teenager, especially considering he’s (and it’s unclear whether he prefers ‘she’ or not, since he’s being referred to as masculinely-gendered in all of the articles I found, not to mention he retains the name Jonathan) making one of the most difficult statements a high-schooler can make: as he remarks, “I want people to know that it’s okay to be different.” And, as I well remember from high school, when ‘different’ is specifically construed in the mode of crossing gender boundaries, there is little to no support from peer groups—or, for that matter, from authority figures in the school. As Jonathan’s school shows, administrators are more concerned with avoiding conflict than with creating—perhaps at some risk—an accepting and open environment. An assistant principal blamed Jonathan’s attire for the resulting cafeteria fight—though at what point this same principal made clear that students should never lay hands on one another in violence, I’m not sure.

Though I was tough-skinned enough by high school to handle myself against homophobic taunts, I distinctly remember teachers and staff in junior high, and even elementary school, turning a deaf ear to the kids who would scream “faggot” or “sissy” or “little girl” at me in the hallways. Come to think of it, I can’t recall a single time when an authority figure made it clear that insults and threats of physical violence were not okay, even if the person being threatened were ‘different.’ Not to say that all teachers are scum, but to say that the public education system does not foster an environment where ‘difference’ is accepted into the fray. Again, the impetus is to avoid conflict rather than to cope with it—and perhaps this is because there’s so little protection for public school teachers in situations like this. People lose their jobs over giving a student a kind word, or for defending themselves against a student that physically threatens or lays hands on them. So I can see why, perhaps, authority figures in the public educational system prefer to keep their hands clear of anything like this.

Nonetheless, there should be some way to get the message across that, as Jonathan says, “it’s okay to be different.” There should be a support system in place, particularly seeing as so many kids who don’t fit in with the norm are not accepted in their home lives, either; ultimately, with no one at home, in their peer groups, or in positions of authority (teachers, administrators, employers) to create a support system, the so-termed ‘deviant’ is left entirely alone. One of the highest rates of attempted or successful suicide occurs in the transgender community. There is, it would seem, no place in which trans folks can feel safe—and this extends, more generally, to the GLBTQ community, particularly at that vulnerable moment we all find ourselves in in high school. Jonathan is fortunate in some sense, because it seems that he knows who he is, what will make him happy, and will stand up for his right to express himself freely. But he is a special case; most are not so fortunate.

Reading over the comments to this article, I’m positively struck by how many people are casting all blame on Jonathan. One commenter remarks that taxpayers’ dollars are putting him through school, and so he better wait until he can “exercize [sic] his adult right” to become “Boy George.” Commenter closes by implying that if he can’t accept the normative system, then he can “go join a circus or a drama school.” Many other comments reiterate the idea that Jonathan should be forced to follow the policy, because he is disrupting the classroom with his ‘inappropriate’ clothing. My younger sister is still in high school; I’ve seen the wide range of styles that, though purportedly violating the dress code (for example, no loose jeans, no girls in strapless or thin-strapped tops, no offensive remarks on shirts, etc.), kids get away with. I’m not going to play with the politics of what it means for a teenage girl to dress like a “slut”—because I recognize the kinds of demeaning attitudes in place to make sure girls cover up all their naughty bits in the right way—but the fact is that the girls get away with it. Ditto on the loose jeans, the ‘offensive’ shirts—I don’t want to say whether or not these are okay, because that’s a whole ‘nother ballpark with very different implications, but ultimately, the only reason Jonathan is being legitimately put into this position and harassed to such a great extent is because he has violated normalizing ideals of masculine gender performance.

The comments on the site repeat over and again that he can “do what he wants” when he’s out of school, but that children need rules and regulations. But these are 16-year-olds; they are not ‘children’ who need a bit of a refresher course vis-à-vis the paddle. Comments like this infantilize people like Jonathan, who are clearly at a point where they are self-aware enough to make the decision to dress themselves in the morning; does anyone comment on the fact that the nice little “children” that beat him up in the cafeteria need to be properly regulated? No. They do go on and on about the fact that school is not a “freak show” in which Jonathan can dress the way that makes him feel comfortable. Finally, one comment shrieks “SEND HIM TO IRAN.”

On that note, I’m too furious to continue.

O NOES! The Miscarriage Tweeter!

Oh! Here’s something. So who heard the story of the woman—Penelope Trunk (works for careerist.com, I believe, geared towards teaching people how to market and manage their careers)—who tweeted about her miscarriage in a board room meeting? The tweet, on her account which is, I guess, public and possibly also geared towards career-based networking, reads: “I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.” The media, of course, flew into a frenzy—how dare this woman be so blasé about the loss of a special-snowflake life! Is there nothing sacred in the cyber-verse? What compelled this idiot to tweet something so personal/devastating/graphic?

And yes, I am aware that most people would not wish to exhibit their miscarriage/abortion woes for the entire world. Yes, I realize the thin line between private and public in the Internet Age veers closer and closer to nonexistence—that really anything under the sun seems to be fair game for tweets and facebook status updates and myspace (do people still use that?) comments. Finally, no, I would not put this kind of information on my twitter account. (Well, I did post something on there about my glass-cutting nipples yesterday—but I think that remains fairly tame and mostly ironic.)

But then I saw this interview:

Rick Sanchez Interviews Penelope Trunk for CNN

…and several things came up for me, as well as things that I mulled over from some wonderful comments over on Jezebel (which I highly encourage you all to read, if you aren’t already! srsly one of the best blogs on the internetz!).

1. Would we all tweet this experience? No. But ultimately, she’s achieved exactly what, it seems, she was going for. People are talking about women’s bodily experiences—about the nitty-gritty of miscarrying a child (which, I’ll confess, I had no idea lasted over the course of weeks!), about the obstacles to having an abortion in this country, and about the fact that we HAVE NOT been talking about these issues in an open manner. As someone on Jezebel remarked, even the most ardently pro-choice advocates don’t discuss abortion in such a frank and unapologetic way. Trunk does not spare (that bastard interviewer) Rick Sanchez, and she most certainly doesn’t uphold the conventional image of the (post-abortion) martyred and grief-stricken fallen woman. She comments on the difficulty of having the procedure done in a timely and convenient manner without infusing her discussion with hot-button moralizing phraseology; she makes very clear how both miscarriages and abortions are facts-of-life for many women, and that having careers—and being stuck in a board meeting—does not mean that women aren’t going through these experiences. It’s just that no one is talking about it.

2. Sanchez attempts to put this awful fallen woman in her place at several occasions, to hilariously futile effect. He opens the interview with “Now I’m going to ask you a tough question, young lady” despite the fact that he’s speaking with a grown fucking woman (!)—not some Hot-Topic-styled tweenager cowering in his presence (and I wouldn’t condone his stance if it were). Sanchez infantilizes her, perhaps in the effort to undermine her capacity for decision making, perhaps to question her moral sanity, perhaps simply to impel his own masculine authority over her. His paternalistic demeanor throughout the interview is almost laughable, but the unfortunate and underlying fact of the matter here is that, in fact, much of the media was reacting in this very way to her—they just weren’t as visibly douchey about it. In the interview, he makes it crystal clear that he has no desire to listen to what she has to say or to think about it, perhaps, from her vantage point. As Trunk holds her own in the interview, going into great detail of the ways in which miscarriages occur, and bringing up a rather surprising factoid—that 75% of women have miscarried while at work (which, as Trunk points out, is not unusual, because miscarriages occur over the span of weeks, and aren’t vastly dissimilar to the experience of the menstrual cycle)—Sanchez increasingly appears confused and frustrated.

3. Once Trunk makes it clear that she was planning to abort the pregnancy, and was not going to beg for forgiveness for such a ‘heinous’ action—Sanchez attempts, once more, to undercut her decision. By reminding all of America that Trunk is already a mother, that she has children and cherishes them, or whatever the fuck Sanchez was trying to communicate, he reifies the notion that women are essentially reduced to their reproductive value. An abortion, as he attempts to paint it, is okay only if a woman wants to—does—fulfill her ‘proper’ role as wife and mother. But what Sanchez cannot seamlessly cover over in the process of the interview is Trunk’s insistence on the inadequacy of the legal and health systems of this country to provide optimal service for women that choose to end a pregnancy. Her repeated and merciless attention to the pragmatic workings of her experience—and the experience, as she remarks, of many many women who don’t or can’t talk about it—shines through the interview.

4. And ultimately, the very media that decries Trunk for her so-called TMI moment is the same media that’s not only awarding her the spotlight they seem to think she should be denied—but that believes the Kardashians and the Hiltons are newsworthy, that the ‘reality’ stars of a show like The Hills are worthy of having every moment of their lives publicized. The difference, I suppose, is that Trunk is controlling her own spotlight here, and she’s got something to say. But the hypocritical positioning of the talking heads since this burst out has been simply ludicrous.

5. And quote of the year? She reminds us all in the face of Sanchez’s ignorance that “Whether or not you believe women should have the right to abortion, they do in this country.”

So great. Seriously, watch it. Absolutely refreshing to see someone speaking so frankly and powerfully on the subject of abortion. Whatever you think of her decision to tweet the info, it’s panned out to get an honest dialogue going—and for that, I have nothing but respect for her.

Oh! Also, here are two badly-done phone camera photos!



Aw, the English grad lounge (also Classics, but who cares for them?). Couches, and the fridge where I store my little brown-bag-lunch. And a water machine (what the hell are those called?) that even has hot water for my tea! I spend 90% of my time on campus here.



See, see! There I am! Reading! And the book isn't upside down. But it is Judith Butler, so it may as well be.

More soon.

Rainy days and creepy ways...

A rainy day in Beantown; the sort of day you stay curled up under covers with a book (or laptop) on your lap and a cup of coffee at your side. Which is exactly what I’m nursing right now. Surprised to say I’m not hungover this morning, despite drinking liquor, wine, beer, and champagne all in the course of four-or-so hours and getting to bed at 4:30AM, then waking up at 10. Perhaps my tolerance is upping the ante again? I realized, with much terror, that I was becoming an ancient, haggard old queen last week—I had hangover throw-ups! Who does that? Vomming the night of is respectable, especially if you nobly force yourself to do so in order to preemptively strike back at the impending hangover. But hangover vomming is for long-term alcoholics, people who can’t hold their booze, and grandparents. I’m old! Old, I say! I do feel like a total creeper on campus—there are all these hot athletic (and probably rich and over privileged) boys at school, and so I—naturally—cruise, and then I remember that there’s like, some sort of divide between me and them. I may be but a year or two older, but they’re babies now to me! I’m wilting before I’ve even had the chance to properly blossom. On the gay market, I’m spoiled meat; I’m slowly morphing into the Yoda of the bottom brigade of Boston. Ugh. Take me behind the barn; I’m like the horse with a gimp foot.

In other news, we’re in full swing now. Presentations loom, assignments pop up out of nowhere, professors throw an extra two-hundred pages of reading onto our plate with only a week’s warning. The party-hards are dying out, and now people beg off of sexytimes with the excuse that they have “papers to write.” Oh, those? Piff, posh! I’ve somehow managed to stay on top of everything thus far, but next weekend will, I’m certain, throw me under the wheel. Three of my queens are visiting, and for four days, I’m letting loose—with or against my consent, I can rest assured. Attempting to get ahead on everything this weekend/upcoming week, but with so much to do, there’s rarely if ever time to do anything but stay with the flow of the current. Whatever. I’m just happy to say that even if my ‘element’ isn’t with me in Boston, I can bring it to me from the days of yore—in the form of my beautiful, crazy friends (and the cheap cigs they’re bringing me!).

Beyond that, nothing much of interest in my life. I’ll be seeing Margaret Atwood on her book tour stop in Cambridge in a few weeks, and I’m submitting an abstract to a conference—to potentially present a paper on abject bodies in Anne Sexton’s poetry. I’m actually pretty thrilled about that little fact. I’m reading everything under the sun, and even forcing myself to keep my old habit of reading-one-book-for-pleasure at all times (it keeps me grounded, reminds me why I’m doing this)—even if it means just catching a few pages here and there on the subway, or while waiting for the train to campus. Wilde’s Dorian Gray is my current one; had never read him before, and he’s just delicious and hilarious. I don’t imagine most people think of late-19th century novels as particularly humorous, but I’ve been cracking up constantly since starting it.

Enough boring details on me; yet again, I’ll say that I’ll update more frequently. And hopefully! I can get back into what the original purpose of this blog was (not merely listing my activities or blogging my oh-so-potent emotions), and start bringing in some more frequent cultural critique-type-shite and book reviews and such. Until then…

Generic Update

Well, the results are in, and my second full week of graduate school is complete. I’m drained, though fortunately, mostly in the physical sense now. The emotional drip of the first week or two alone in Boston has nearly dried up, and I’m becoming accustomed to, well, this new life o’ mine. I had a brief relapse the other day, walking home from the T, though. I passed a woman walking a long-haired dachshund, and I wanted nothing more than to walk in the door of my apartment and find Cookie and Sula yapping at my ankles and furiously wagging their bushy tails. [Note: if/when I move out of this apartment, I’m finding a dog-friendly place, and I will be getting a puppy. Or will be bringing Cookie with me. Or both.] I’ve decided with confidence that I am not a cat person. Yes, the cats here are (mostly) sweet and certainly cute, but the almost sinister self-possession of cats unnerves me. Yes, animal rights folks, feel free to call me out on my longing for pet-dependence. What can I say? Dogs give affection without condition, and I like having someone around who will be invariably happy to see me. That sort of genuineness and love are rarely, if ever, found in people. Which is why when I inevitably become a batty spinster living atop a mountain of books, I’ll make sure to be the ridiculous dog lady of the neighborhood. Maybe I’ll throw in a century-old wedding cake and call myself Miss Havisham, while I’m at it.

Off that tangent, now. Classes are running smoothly and I’m surprised to find myself so excited to be back in that element. With only a three month break between the toughest semester of my undergrad and the rockiest change (thus far) in my life, I figured burnout was a given. But I can’t begin to describe how different graduate classes are from undergrad ones; everyone is engaged and excited; we go into the classroom from mutual positions, hoping to interact and learn from one another. Well, I can only speak for myself, but I’m so fascinated to hear what people have to say, and it makes me step up my game—I want to offer something constructive to the dialogue, too. Most of us are coming from different backgrounds; we cover a large span of literary periods and have wildly varying perspectives—but that’s precisely what makes the discussions so electric. I’m thrilled with it, even if the workload is insane and the commute is often brutal.

[update, Saturday morning]

Hungover. Strangely enough, it’s now that I most miss my queens/friends. Don’t get me wrong—the folks in my cohort are fucking great, brilliant and a blast to get bombed with—but it remains strange to wake up feeling like you’ve got cotton wool wrapped around your brain and not be able to walk down the hall and grab the people you were partying with the night before for a morning, messy, unnecessary ciggy. It’s hard to keep myself from falling back into fag slang and to repeat the dangerous and exhilarating party habits that will, of course, leave me forever imprinted on William & Mary’s mythology (har har)—especially when often I’m putting myself in a much more compromised position, seeing as public transportation closes at 1:00 AM and I have a long, lonely hike from any well-populated areas to my apartment. I need to take better care about that sort of thing, because I keep finding myself stomping down the dark roads to my apartment at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, by myself and drunk and without cab cash. And just as a sidenote: riding the T while drunk is NOT FUN. But I keep forgetting that I’m in a big city, that I’m more or less on my own, that the same sluts who went with me to the vomit-bush aren’t able to stomp me home. That’s where the homesickness clutches you in its vile grasp; in the little things that crop up out of nowhere—little itty bitty voids in your daily ritual, where you go to turn and say something to your coffee shop buddy or your smoke buddy and realize that you look like an idiot, because no one’s there.

But as I said, things are beginning to seem normal. When I get back to the city from campus, I think of my apartment as ‘home’; I’m getting into a daily schedule that, sure, is different, but keeps me busy and content. I have two coffee shops and innumerable used book stores. There’s a lounge in the English department for grad students and faculty, and it makes me feel super important sitting in there and half-doing work. I even get to pack a lunch and leave it in the lounge fridge. I’m behind in nearly every class, but not unmanageably so, and I’m enjoying the work and the fact that I’m being compelled to parse ideas out on a much more complex level. I’m reading Faulkner’s Light in August and had forgotten what a joy Faulkner really is. I’m getting my feet rooted in queer/race theory, rather than playing salad-bar with a bunch of theorists, and I’ve got a group of people to bounce ideas off of and likewise sponge up their brilliance. I don’t know how I become so long-winded on this thing every time, but there you have it. Will try to update more regularly, so that it’s not information-dump every few weeks.

Bits and Pieces

Some notes and details on things in my life right now:

-I eat some sort of variation on a deli-meat-sandwich about every day; a potato, cooked in different fashions, typically constitutes the ‘vegetable’ of my dinner. I must be braver at the grocery store, and soon.
-One of my roommate’s cats has taken a particular liking to me; the downside is that she frequently howls outside of my bedroom door for well near an hour as I try to fall asleep. She wakes me up sometimes, too. Though, admittedly, this worked to my advantage over the weekend, because she woke me up from my drunken stupor in time to warn me to run for a plastic bag to vomit into. Nonetheless, I need my fucking beauty rest. This needs to stop.
-Classes are fabulous, but reading a book of theory a week in addition to, like, a million other things, will take some getting used to. I spent about six hours today wading through Foucault.
-On that note, I’m reading Foucault for all three of my classes. And from what I hear from some English grad compatriots in other programs, this is a fairly universal experience. Is he really that great?
-I’m making friends, and am finally at the point where I can sort of count on having weekend plans. Yay! The bloody edge to this sword is that I spent a lot of this weekend hungover and incapable of being productive. And I spent far more money on booze than I should have.
-Though Boston, and my neighborhood in particular, seems to have a pretty substantial—and visible—gay population, I’m apparently still the resident freak. Honestly, no one bats an eye at all the fucking hipsters wearing girl jeans; I wear a pair out—me in girl pants, me, someone who actually sleeps with men—and I’m given glares like a fucking leper? Sheesh, give me a goddamn break, you hypocritical yuppies.
-I still want to properly review Inglourious Basterds, and am hoping to do some capsule reviews for a few others things I’ve read/seen lately—Halloween II, Angela Carter’s Wise Children, and Alice Munro’s Open Secrets.
-There will be more substantial updates soon. And pictures, potentially, though from my shitty phone. Things are generally smooth; I’m still a bit lonely and disoriented; we could hit grad-school-panic-mode soon; I think I’ll survive. Until next time.

Lonely Bitch in the Big City

Everything will hit full stride bright and early tomorrow; general GSAS orientation begins at a mind-numbing 8:45, so that they can pull me from my bed and into an hour-long public commute before I've wiped the sleep from my lashes. To tell me about silly things like finding housing (check), learning your way around campus, ways to save money, and blahblahblah. And it's mandatory. Also, why did I think it would be really fun and health/energy conscious to walk a mile to the T, and then have to take that to the commuter rail, and then take that into campus? This is going to throw an extra forty-five minutes (each way) onto my daily routine. Ah well. I should only be going to campus thrice a week, so perhaps it will work out alright. My only hope about the big orientation in the morning is that I'll be able to cruise for cuties outside my program (cuz, well, that's a bit incestuous, dontcha think?). Of course, I'll be looking icky--sweaty, and still vaguely wet from showering. But what can you do?

My first waves of loneliness crashed today. I saw "Inglourious Basterds" alone (I'll review it tomorrow, because it is SO badass), and coffee-ed and read, and came home to my, as usual, empty apartment, had a smoke, crashed in front of the computer, and roused up some energy to cook dinner. Had a glass of red wine and another smoke, and then a very minor panic attack as I realized that this could very well be my life for however long it takes to make friends (that is, assuming anyone in Boston will put up with me at all). After all, that's been the routine every day since I moved in, with an occasional roommate-chat and a few drink-dates over the weekend with current grad students. I went to a little shindig on Saturday night, which was fun, but the fact of the matter is, I've moved into a pretty bustling city by myself and know no one on any satisfyingly complex or intimate level.

One of the grads I met up with is from Alabama, and she told me that she and her husband play a game...something you might call "Frighten a Bostonian," because they'll smile and wave, or say 'hi' to people they pass on the street, and count up how many people even acknowledge their existence. I played the game myself today, on the way back from the movie-ing, and got a single half-hearted smile in return. Everyone else looked away in fear, or returned with a vaguely challenging look of their own--like, 'who the hell are you to smile?' I love the city so far, I really do, but I think today was the first day where I really sensed the disconnect between me and, well, everyone else here. And I understand why you'd avoid strangers in a big city, but it was a bit of a 'culture' (?) shock, I suppose. A homeless man selling newspapers thanked me and told me to have a good day, just because I had said "no, thank you" to his offer of a paper--he thanked me for "acknowledging" him. And to some extent, it's a bit terrifying to think of going day in and day out without feeling like anyone will look you in the eye or try to connect with you.

I get on facebook, and see my friends posting about doing the fabulous, naughty things I used to do with them--nothing against them, I wasn't expecting them to don black veils for the next thirty years or anything like that (doooon't I?)--and nostalgia hits like a fucking deer against the car hood. I miss my dogs, I miss my sister, I almost crave an argument with my mom, and I want to get blackout with all my queens. It's natural to feel this way, I know this, and it will--I'm certain--pass over time, but nonetheless, I don't want to spend the next five years cooking for and by myself. I don't want to have to say "thank you" to someone for simply making eye contact with me. I don't want to not know who to turn to when I'm feeling down. I don't know why I'm sharing this on a public blog-perhaps just to air out my system? There's a certain level of self-pitying narcissism to any post like this, but I figure if I'm going to keep a blog purportedly aimed at updating people about my life in Boston, the good and the bad will each have their turn being exhibited for consumption.

In short, I'm tired. I don't want to get up before 7AM. And to the rest of ya'll who have recently abandoned the carrion of undergraduate existence, I'm with you on it all (because I've seen your blogs too).

Oh, and if anyone's into Fleetwood Mac, the song "That's Alright" is a nice cure for this sort of feeling. Well, not a cure--so much as a commiserating sort of song.