Toward the end of the summer I took an aluminum baseball bat on a Trailways bus and no one, including the driver, gave either of us a second glance. I took that as an indication of how far this country has come and then gone back again in terms of heightened security for travelers. I can remember a time late last fall when my fellow passengers and I had our baggage searched and were questioned fiercely by security before we were permitted to board a Peter Pan bus out of Albany. They demanded to know whether I had any guns or knives. “No? Razors? No? Well, what about fingernail clippers?” This last one surprised me. I didn’t in fact have any, but even if I had, what sort of damage could I possibly have done with them? How do you threaten someone with fingernail clippers? “Pull this bus over. Don’t mess with me, I’ll clip you.” Certainly you could injure someone with them, but only…very…slowly. The in-bus movie that trip was My Father the Hero, a romantic comedy starring Gerard Depardieu as a father who must play the part of his underage daughter’s lover so she can impress a boy (although the boy who would be impressed by anyone’s dating Gerard Depardieu I certainly wouldn’t go near). It was halfway through this lighthearted, overtly incest-tinged romp-which was inescapably played on the bus’s speaker system, so that even those passengers who hadn’t brought headphones or rented them from the driver could enjoy the show-that I realized why security was so strict about passengers not having access to any sorts of harmful or sharp objects. They were only trying to protect us from ourselves. Had I had access to fingernail clippers, I could have inflicted much more bodily harm on myself in my efforts to distract myself from the movie. My only other explanation for the fact that no one batted an eye at me as I clutched my menacing travel accessory is to take it as further
proof that, as far as appearance goes, I am about as non-threatening as it gets. On the threatening scale, I am ranked just below yogurt. And not the kind with active cultures, either. The kind with listless, inactive ones. The state of being congenitally nonthreatening (cases are also referred to as having a high “wuss-factor”) does have its plus sides. My ability to do well in card games where looking innocent helps you do well is slightly increased, although when that slight increase is coupled with my incompetence at card games, I just about break even. Perhaps this is why running has become my sport of choice; it works with my wussy appearance, rather than against it. As a person who naturally looks intimidated, I appear much more in my element when running away than I do standing firm, clutching a bat and staring straight ahead, my knees defiantly touching.
Now that nearly a month has elapsed since February 14th, I’ll venture to say that I don’t know why anyone bothers to get worked up about Valentine’s Day. I measure holidays by the variety and amount of candy that you are encouraged to eat on them and the amount of work or school they get you out of. It’s a poor excuse for a holiday that fails you on both of those accounts. (Arbor Day, I’m looking in your direction.) I know Candy Conversation Hearts have their devotees, but I for one am not impressed by a candy that comes across as emotionally needy, although it is true that Conversation Hearts have become much less effusive in recent years. Hearts from not too long ago said things like “SWEET THANG” and “MARRY ME,” which are a far cry from “FAX ME,” which is what this latest, more guarded generation of Candy Hearts would prefer us to do. And as far as I can tell, no number is given, making even this impersonal, perfunctory contact impossible.
I don’t even know much about the origins of Valentine’s Day. The part of my brain which heard and remembered the tale of St. Valentine (and everyone has had the story explained to them at least once) now stores the lyrics to Fat Bottomed Girls. I thus find it impossible to reflect on the true meaning of Valentine’s Day and why it is important for us to show our devotion to loved ones and Hallmark executives.
I suppose that your feelings about Valentine’s Day often stem from your earliest encounters with it, and mine were always fairly innocuous. Until I reached the age where I was supposed to have found someone else to love me on February 14th, our parents gave my sister and me candy, taking advantage of an opportunity between Christmas and Easter to shower us with affection and chocolate that they would have to help us finish.
Then there were the Valentines. Since the Law of Kindergarten stated that you could not give something to one person unless you had “enough for the whole class,” I was generally forced to make Valentines not only for my very exclusive group of First Best Friends, but for the kids I hated as well. Not to mention the many children I felt nothing for. Sometimes I made them by hand, sometimes I bought them pre-packaged and signed my name at the bottom in cursive, but either way, my seemingly magnanimous gesture was often fraught with subtle details which indicated, in my judgement, the social status of the recipient. Mary, my spelling partner, got the heart trimmed with lace and covered with glitter that said, “Love,” while Lucas got the misprinted Care Bear card in which Tenderheart Bear looks as though he has a fishing-pole sticking out of his head and six eyes. Lucas was a mouth-breather.
My family did host a Valentine’s Day party one year when I was about seven, which was a glorified excuse for my mother to put me in patent-leather shoes and a party dress. She liked doing that. As usual, the entire class was invited. The only memory I have of that party is that George, one of the kids who wouldn’t have come had I been in charge of the guest list, showed up with his dad and an extravagant (at least in my mind) present for me. It was a small candy-filled mug with “I LOVE YOU” printed on the side. I assumed from it that George did in fact love me, and treated him with nothing but scorn from then on. I knew how to play the game.
I was one of those children who had an enormous enthusiasm for dogs and cats and was unfortunately allergic to both. Whenever it was possible to play with a dog or a cat I did so. It takes an enormous amount of dedication (and an enormous lack of self-control) to play with something that consistently and without fail gives you a severe allergic reaction. I played with furry animals until my sneezes echoed to the cold, uncaring skies, and the tears in my itchy, watery eyes mingled with real tears of regret that I could not have this much fun all the time. More than anything in the world I wanted a puppy, and I asked for one every Christmas. I got a sister.
Looking back, I don’t think a real animal could have lived up to my expectations, anyway. I wanted a playmate, a confidant, and a licensed therapist all rolled into a big furry package that never shed or smelled like a wet dog. I was determined that my dog, when I got one, would be courageous and faithful like Old Yeller and have the wit of Snoopy, the soulful, melancholy brown eyes of a Pound Puppy, and the British sophistication of the two parent dogs from 101 Dalmatians (the cartoon, not the live-action version). On top of this, I had no real experience with owning a dog, and my subconscious assumption was that they waited, patient and immobile like stuffed animals, for you to play with them and take care of their basic needs when you felt like it. One of the more inventive of my many How To Get A Puppy When Your Parents Won’t Let You Get One schemes involved letting the puppy live in a large cardboard box on the New York City street outside my apartment building, where it would be taken care of and properly watched over by kind, attentive strangers and passers-by.
I couldn’t have a puppy, but I could have goldfish, my parents said. I sure could. And I had goldfish, off and on, for many years. I discovered early on that I received precious little emotional fulfillment from taking care of a creature with a six-second memory and no awareness of my existence. Not that I didn’t try. I named my fish, I took care of them, I watched them swim. It’s pretty much all you can do, though I somehow continued to expect more—and to be disappointed. A short but eloquent poem that I wrote at the age of five perfectly expressed my feelings of disillusionment at the deep and profound bond that failed to develop between me and any of my goldfish. It went:
I have a little fishI love her very muchBut she doesn’t care.
The thought that I wrote that poem still troubles me. My parents think it’s hilarious.
I have been giving this topic a lot of thought, because last week I bought another fish. I haven’t owned one since early on in high school. My motivations have changed, I reasoned. This is a frivolous purchase; I’m getting a little blue fighting fish because it looks pretty and it will jazz up my room. I won’t even name it. Look how far I’ve come!
Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment. Maybe I like my feelings unrequited. But I really think it’s going to be different this time. Just now when I looked over at my fish, I could have sworn it gave me a look like it understood. At least, for six seconds.
I can’t lie to myself anymore about the work I’m going to do today/tonight/when I am steady enough to walk again. These lies poison my soul and irritate my friends. Each time I stand up from dinner and announce that my plans tonight are to get a little reading done, maybe study some flashcards, then turn in early, an angel loses its wings. Or at least gets heartburn. This cannot go on.
My latest endeavor is to have a completely open, honest relationship with at least myself. I know damn’ well that I am not going to walk into my room, pick up a book and read for an hour, though it’s what desperately needs to be done. I won’t go on the Internet and immediately begin my research on the history of the tent.
No, when I get to my room, before getting started on that six-page paper, I call the friend who is in the class with me to complain about the length and difficulty of the assignment. When I get off the phone, I tidy up my desk. I feed my fish. I water my plants. I wonder why living things that need my attention receive it only when I’m putting off doing work. Perhaps my priorities are a little off. At this stage I should only have children if I plan to have the kind of high-pressure job that makes feeding them become an attractive alternative to meeting deadlines. So, the paper. Right. First, better make some Ramen. And a mix tape…
I now assume that carrying a book with me like a security blanket everywhere I go is equivalent to reading it. Consequently I lug books to places where reading is at the least inappropriate and at most impossible. I have sat in darkened friends’ rooms and watched movies with Sociology readings in my lap. I have gone to parties in the Old Gym with Crime and Punishment tucked under my arm. My books become battered and worn from their constant travels but still remain very much unread.
It is my hope that being brutally honest with myself about the ways in which I am actually going to spend my time, rather than the ways in which I have the best intentions of spending it, will shame me into better study habits. Probably, though, it will just shame me.
I was surprised by my reaction to spending a weekend deep in the woods of Vermont. I’ll admit that I’m a city girl who finds Central Park’s foliage more intimidating than its performance artists. But while I admired the extraordinary beauty of the endless woods surrounding the small wooden cabin where we stayed, I was not accustomed to my subsequent feelings of isolation. Even in the most secluded depths of Central Park you can still buy a hot dog. It’s difficult to find an area in the woods of Bard’s campus that has not been previously discovered and marked by territorial beer cans.
These woods did not kid around. They began to get dark around 4 p.m., which meant that for the last six hours or so of my day, my body was gently insisting that it was time for me to go to sleep. It was the same feeling I used to have during an afternoon of double biology in high school, except with more miles of birch trees and darkness and fewer DNA strand models made out of gum drops. (I wish more teachers tried to generate interest in class material by presenting their students with candy analogies or candy-related subject matter. I would be much more interested in doing my philosophy readings if the main arguments of the text were spelled out with mini-marshmallows.)
I’m glad I made this trip with someone I know and trust, because there’s something about the knowledge that the nearest telephone is a winding ten-minute drive away that can really bring out the creepy side of innocuous statements like, “Good, here’s an axe! For chopping firewood.”
Being in a cabin in the woods gave me a lot of time to think about being in a cabin in the woods. It seems I achieve the same level of philosophical introspection observing a beautiful sunset that I do watching the Home Shopping Network. Living deep in the woods and surrounding myself with the natural world would, I believe, waste the time of all involved, plants and wildlife included. Rather than recording thoughtful observations about life and nature, I would record thoughtful observations about the TV shows I was missing. I would spend my time checking to see if my pants were actually wet from sitting on the muddy ground, or if they just felt cold. I’d rather leave the solemn examination of man’s relationship with nature to those whose prior experience with woodland creatures is not limited to Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons: dedicated individuals who can distinguish between an animal and a Pokemon.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t have a good time this weekend. What I wouldn’t enjoy doing for a long winter was fun for a couple of days. I discovered fire. I chopped wood, vicariously. And most importantly, I came back alive to share my story so that I might someday, somehow, profit from it.
I have heard friends of mine who grew up in small towns (but which are only an hour drive or so away from small cities) complain about their places of origin and how unexciting they were to live in. I usually counter their Adolescent Boredom adventure stories of stealing shopping carts and riding them down steep hills, by replying that, growing up in Manhattan, there were always interesting things to do, but most of them were expensive and some were incredibly expensive. My cheap friends and I did our best to find fun things to do for little money, but most of them involved the management politely asking for us to leave. Still, I loved living in a large city, even one that charges $9.50 to see a movie, regardless of who is in it (no ticket agent has ever been moved by my suggestion for a “Keanu Reeves Discount Policy”, no matter how I pitch it).
However, recent terrorist attacks and even recent mail scares around the country have led me to believe that this is the time for everyone who adds, “I’m sure you’ve never heard of it,” in a vaguely hopeful way when saying where they’re from, to dance up and down their little-known streets. A couple of blocks away from the Metropolitan Museum, a few subway stops from Carnegie Hall, and a hop skip and a jump away from Grand Central Station, I used to revel in my apartment’s close proximity to so many points of interest in New York City. Lately, though, I’ve been wishing my family could relocate somewhere peaceful and quiet for a while. Somewhere where only one or two places are Open 24 Hours, and neither of them have neon signs that flash ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’
The past few anthrax incidents have also been a call for us to put things in perspective. Suddenly, living and dying in obscurity is no longer a fear which haunts my days and nights and drives me into a frenzied orgy of self-destructive behavior in pursuit of artistic recognition. At the moment, I enjoy living in obscurity. People only send me bills here. Although perhaps being really famous is not the problem; it’s the middle-ground of fame, the rising but not yet well-known celebrity rank that one really has to worry about, because at that point one still opens one’s own mail. What I find surprising is the number of people who are convinced that they are in danger of terrorist mail even though they aren’t on the staff of The New York Times and don’t bring us the Nightly News. Our country’s love of, and subsequently, frequent usage of white, powdery condiments has, surprisingly, backfired. But we must not live in fear, especially if we live in Idaho. Anthrax doesn’t come cheap, after all.
I was listening to National Public Radio last week, and a news brief came on that mentioned Vermont. I have friends there and listened with a mixture of concern and incredulity. As it turned out, the news story itself was about how the governor of Vermont was making announcements assuring Vermont residents that every possible precaution was being taken to protect them from terrorism, including extra security at the nuclear power plant. Now, I’m not saying that Vermont isn’t a viable target for terrorism. However, I can’t imagine this exchange:
“Never mind the Empire State building. We have to show them we mean business.”
“But, you can’t mean. . .?”
“I do. It’s time we went after the nuclear power plant in. . .Vermont.”
“Gasp.”
Perhaps Vermont’s fear is justified. Maybe enemies overseas are angry that they haven’t yet been commemorated by a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor. But I’ll say right now that I would consider purchasing “Taliban Nut Crunch” or “Osama bin Lemon” only if they were the last flavors left in my grocer’s freezer.
I was born and raised in the city—note the oblivious ease with which I refer to it as “the city”—and the overwhelming fear and sadness I have been experiencing since that infamous Tuesday are difficult for me to express in words, through poetry, or with magazine and newspaper-photo collages. I have been deeply affected in ways I never could have imagined, one of which involves the fact that I am living in a single this year.
The idea of having a single used to make me giddy to the point of public embarrassment. My little sister and I have always shared a room, and I found the concept of living in a room, and not on a ‘side’ both strange and wonderful. I refused to believe that my friends who lived in singles at school really and truly had them all to themselves. Surely there was a sibling or a roommate stashed in the closet or under the desk.
All summer I feverishly anticipated the move into a room of my own. I plotted and re-plotted ways in which I would organize the furniture (the bed by the window? The bed not by the window?) and spent hours at K-Mart pricing throw pillows. In late August I drove to my single on gossamer wings.
Sure, it was wonderful at first. My room was my castle, my playground, an homage to half-assed interior decoration. But I began to realize that I hadn’t properly valued the hidden advantages of having a roommate. A roommate gives you someone to say “goodnight” to who won’t borrow your toothbrush, take up the bed, or be huffy if you don’t want to eat breakfast with them in the morning. A roommate is someone you get to sleep later than because they scheduled two nine a.m. classes and you never have to get up before noon. In addition, a roommate is a barometer of normalcy, a reminder that there is a world outside your little room, a world filled with other people, some of whom probably don’t like to hear Rubber Soul played back to back five or six times every afternoon. (This is unless you are unfortunate enough to have been matched with someone who is weirder than you in every significant way, which, in my school, is not that unlikely.)
When the two of you get along, talking to your roommate when you should be doing work is one of the most enjoyable methods of procrastination out there. When the two of you don’t get along, complaining to your friends about your stupid roommate is one of the most enjoyable methods of procrastination out there. But no matter how you feel about them, your roommate is a fairly consistent presence in your life at school. I didn’t realize how much I missed that constant human contact until September 11th when all I wanted to do was sit in my room and cry over The New York Times.
It’s a lot harder to leave your room when you live alone and you’re unhappy. No one drags you from your bed because they think you need to get out more; no drives you from the room with their boyfriend who throws his jacket on your bed and informs you that your little sister is hot after seeing family photos on your wall. Unless your friends are checking in on you constantly, no one observes you alphabetizing your cds, picking the price stickers off of your used books or watching the paint dry on your walls (for those of you who live in the newer dorms on campus).
I’m not sure when I began to realize that my habit of spending extended periods of time alone in my single was not doing me any good. I think it was when a friend stopped by to visit and found me sitting in my room with the door closed, talking back to the people who were giggling in my hallway. “What are you doing? They can’t hear you,” she said, to which I muttered darkly “Oh, they can hear me all right.”
Eventually I began emerging more and more frequently from my room and forcing myself to seek out the company of others. Unsurprisingly, it made me feel better. And while I was disappointed to discover that living alone wasn’t as great as I had imagined, especially during difficult times such as these, my concept of a dream-single was probably too fantastic for the reality to have ever come close anyway. With the possible exception of a single in one of the Village Dorms, which have temperature control to the degree. Can you even imagine?
Looking back, I shouldn’t have been so surprised that I didn’t make the basketball team my freshman year in high school. It probably wasn’t my lack of talent that mattered so much as the fact that my high school was well known for being athletically competitive and always “winning” games; the coaches apparently only wanted people on the team who were “capable” of “physically exerting themselves.” I took the failure personally, however, and underwent the sort of transformation usually reserved for comic book characters who become super-villains after their dreams of social acceptance are thwarted. Cackling gleefully from my secret hideout in an abandoned locker room deep within the school’s core and across from the cafeteria, I aspired to be the anti-athlete. I couldn’t join them, I sure as hell couldn’t beat them, but I could laugh at them from the bleachers while eating icing from the can. Twice a year the Phys Ed Department rounded up all us team-sports deadbeats and made us take fitness “tests,” which involved seeing how many crunches we could do in a minute (or in the case of me and my cronies, how many we could avoid doing…because you don’t miss 100% of the crunches you don’t do). Together my friends and I pushed each other to depths of laziness and ineptitude that I wouldn’t have dreamed possible. We ran forty-minute miles. We fainted after two push-ups. We tripped and fell and then let ourselves go limp when anyone tried to offer us assistance. I truly believed that my Phys Ed teachers were personally insulted by my utter lack of coordination and endurance. I would imagine them thumping their chests in fury or punching the wall in impotent rage as they read over the wretched results of my fitness tests.
Around the time I decided that I had fully explored all the wonderful things inertia had to offer, a friend introduced me to the sadistic field of intramural teams. I was hooked, probably because intramural sports involve only a little more teamwork and a slightly greater group dynamic than you find during your average city riot. Intramural soccer in an all-girls high-school is beautiful in its brutality. Rules are irrelevant. Assigned teams are of little importance; grudge matches are the order of the day. Whether or not you and the girl who corrected your pronunciation of the word “bourgeoisie” in history class are on the same team, you’re going to confuse her shins with the soccer ball as often and as hard as possible.
Rather than regret my days of aggressive inactivity, I prefer to consider myself an activist in the field of passive resistance at an early age. I refused to let my shortcomings push me into doing something that might have resulted in personal injury, humiliation and, at the very least, sweating. I can’t condemn someone who decides to overcome athletic incompetence through determination and hard work. It’s their choice. But I can be proud that I stood my ground and refused to take part in a struggle in which there would have been no winners.
I Heard Tell 