April 28th, 2004: A book made me cry today. Two children are left wandering the city, their parents dead. I wondered why fictional people were having such an affect on me until I realised that I was crying for the loss of my own mother. I remembered for the first time all month that April marks the four-year anniversary of her death. I remembered for the first time all month that she would have turned 49 years old three days ago. I am so alone.
April 27th, 2004: I finished a paper this morning on the family’s relationship with consumerism in Don DeLillo’s postmodern masterpiece, White Noise. The Gladneys can’t communicate except through eating, watching television, and shopping, I argued. Brand names are their only common language, I said.
I decided that the same is true of most real-life American families. I decided that it’s a horrible way to live. I decided that I’m going to stop buying so much damn stuff.
This was at 11:30 AM.
At 3:30 PM, I left my postmodernism seminar and headed for the record store. At 4:15 PM, I left the store carrying Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Modest Mouse, and 764-HERO on vinyl. I found myself swinging my bag, thinking, “I can’t wait to get home and unwrap my new records! Buying things feels so good! I love to spend money!”
I hate myself.
April 22nd, 2004: I was thinking this afternoon about the Jump CD being released on Tuesday and how I’d like to call my alternative radio station, CD101, and ask them to play the single. However, since I’ve written so many e-mails to them over the years about how great Jump is, I decided it’d be best if I called under a pseudonym so they’ll recognise that a number a Columbus listeners want to hear something from the new album.
In the midst of this, I remembered calling the married man who I was “friends” with last year and having his wife answer his cell phone one night. When she asked who was calling, I used my cat-like brain reflexes to decide that I should give her a fake name. Congratulating myself on my brilliance, I said the first thing that came to my mind:
Kathleen.
That’s right; the “fake” name that I gave her was my real name.
Idiot.
April 22nd, 2004: Last night, after receiving some porn spam mail from someone by the name of Gatsby, I told my friends, “I'm starting to think that I might like to name my first son Gatsby. Acceptable or no? Better than Oliver? Or Emerson? Or Whitman?”
Esther: My kids won't be playing with him.
Sarah: I like it, but you might be cursing him with a life of alcoholism and death. But if you're okay with that, then I'd say go for it. (I like the idea of "cursing him with a life of...death".)
Valerie: Are YOU pregnant, Katieett?
Todd: If it’s Emerson after 70s supergroup, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, then Gatsby is vastly inferior. But then again, what isn't inferior to 70s supergroup Emerson, Lake and Palmer?
Ben: Poor little Gatsby. He’d get beaten up twice daily until he was 30.
Eric: Name him Poe. Get it? Poe Ett.
April 20th, 2004: Today, as I was walking to class, I spotted three boys in their late teens on the sidewalk opposite me. They were of the backward cap/baggy pant/jersey/obnoxiously loud/faux-confident swagger variety, so I ignored them and kept with my cell phone conversation. When I hung up a moment later, though, I realised that they were talking about me.
“Big titties!” one of them called out.
“Bet she got some pretty nipples!” another agreed.
“Love to give that pussy a lick!” the third said.
Yes, that’s right; someone actually said to me, “Love to give that pussy a lick.”
Immediately, I thought of my women’s studies classes, of my feminist roommate who would urge me to shout something back, to flip them off, to kick them in the balls.
Instead, I just smiled.
I was flattered.
April 19th, 2004: I just finished Don DeLillo’s postmodern masterpiece, White Noise. I liked it. So much, in fact, that I feel the need to share my favourite quotes:
We walked under a bright banner announcing a raffle to raise money for some incurable disease. The wording seemed to indicate that the winner would get the disease.
_________
Babette said pleasantly, "Why is it these UFOs are mostly seen upstate? The best sightings are upstate. People get abducted and taken aboard. Farmers see burn marks where saucers landed. A woman gives birth to a UFO baby, so she says. Always upstate."
"That's where the mountains are," Denise said. "Spaceships can hide from radar or whatever."
"Why are most mountains upstate?" Steffie said.
"Mountains are always upstate," Denise told her. "This way the snow melts as planed in the spring and flows downhill to the reservoirs near the cities, which are kept in the lower end of the state for exactly this reason."
I thought, momentarily, she might be right. It made a curious kind of sense. Or did it? Or was I totally crazy? There had to be large cities in the northern part of some states. Or were they just north of the border in the southern part of states just to the north? What she said could not be true and yet I had trouble, momentarily, disproving it. I could not name cities or mountains to disprove it. There had to be mountains in the southern part of some states. Or did they tend to be below the state line, in the northern part of states to the south? I tried to name state capitals, governors. How could there be a north below a south? Is this what I found confusing? Was this the crux of Denise's error? Or was she somehow, eerily, right?
_________
Then we set to eating again. We traded unwanted parts in silence, stuck our hands in cartons of rippled fries. Wilder liked he soft white fries and people picked those out and gave them to him. Denise distributed ketchup in little watery pouches. The interior of the car smelled of grease and licked flesh. We traded parts and gnawed.
April 14th, 2004: Horrible prank in the women’s restroom today: all stalls without toilet paper. At 10:23 AM, seven girls in seven different stalls called out, “Will someone give me some toilet paper?” But there was none in any dispenser, and seven girls left with wet bottoms. Seven girls scowled while I snickered. I was only there to fix my hair.
April 7th, 2004: Today, two twelve-to-fourteen year-old boys walking through my college neighbourhood stopped me, and referring to me by that adorably degrading precursor to boo, asked, "What up, shorty?"
Tugging my sunglasses down my nose so that they could get the full effect of my glare, I scoffed, "Young man, I am an entire foot taller than you are."
April 4th, 2004: My first week of classes of the quarter, recorded for posterity:
Monday, 10:30 AM: I arrive at my 50’s film class with Professor Gardner, who I took a class with last spring quarter and who I’ve since attacked when he brought his family to the science museum one weekend a few months ago. Imagine enjoying your grilled whitefish and roasted redskin potatoes when some random employee shrieks, “Professor Gardner! Do you remember me?! Katie Ett! I took your class last spring! Remember?! Remember?!” Yeah, I’ll bet he was just bursting when he called my name off of the roll, though he did give me a little wave.
There are two girls in there from my last quarter’s Ulysses class, one of whom is already seated when I arrive. We exchange hellos, but I don’t sit next to her, as we’ve never spoken a word to each other. The old man next to me feels the need to comment on absolutely everything that the professor says and expects a reaction from me each time. When the professor tells us that the Internet Movie Database will be our best friend this quarter, the boy in front of me pumps his fist in the air, needing everyone to know that he’s in-the-know. He also needs to show off the eyes in the back of his ridiculously oversized head by moving it just enough that he blocks my view no matter how far to the right I move while we watch Singin’ in the Rain.
Monday, 1:30 PM: During lunch at Chipotle, I reiterate to my friend Ben that his babies would look really nice inside my womb. He reiterates that his babies belong to someone else.
Monday, 3:30 PM: I find that my Russian literature class fulfills a general education requirement for every major at OSU and is therefore filled with turfgrass management and electrical engineering illiterates. However, the teacher is this ultra-hot Russian chick who seems fairly well-read, and she likes the fact that I’m a fan of Nabokov, the author of Lolita. Plus, Ashlie, an English major from my nonfiction workshop last quarter, is also taking the class for the same reason I am—fun—and I’d like to get to know her better, as I surmised last quarter that she probably likes the same music I do if her clothes are any indication. However, I’m taking the class for the sole purpose of finally getting to read the copy of The Brothers Karamazov that the man I loved bought me for Christmas back in 2002, and it’s not on the syllabus, so I consider if I really want to spend a quarter reading Crime and Punishment with a group of people who name things like Sports Illustrated as their favourite “book”.
Ashlie and I walk out together, discussing our nonfiction workshop final grades from last quarter. She confides that she really only liked about five people in our class. She doesn’t tell me that I was one of them.
Monday, 5:30 PM: In my new nonfiction workshop, I decide that I really hate writers, because we all think that we’re infinitely more interesting than everyone else. The problem is that some of us feel the need to voice our every “interesting” thought; the rest of us have websites.
Monday, 7 PM: My friend/former roommate Michelle and I attend a Mary Kay party that I was invited to a few weeks ago when a woman at the science museum approached me to ask if I’d ever considered becoming a “face model”. My response was a simple “no”, but she convinced me to at least come and try the products. Michelle and I have a great time, but I think I really hurt all of the consultants’ feelings when I look into the little bit of their eyes still visible under the weight of their Cappuccino/Purple Passion/Summer Storm eyeshadow-caked lids and tell them that I’m still too young to need make-up.
Tuesday, 1:30 PM: In my postmodernism honors seminar, I sit next to a girl from my 2002 fairy tales and folklore class. I whack her with my umbrella in greeting and get the feeling from the look on her face that she doesn’t remember me at all, despite the fact that we were assigned a group project together. I console myself with the fact that I erased her from my AIM Buddy List last year. The boy on the other side of her was in my Ulysses class last quarter, so I spite the girl by leaning around her to talk to him, though we don’t really know each other at all. He’s the type to wear dress shirts and slacks to class every day, so I’m surprised to learn that he went to Georgia for spring break to see The Decemberists and The Walkmen in concert. I threaten to make him go to local shows with me this quarter. When I introduce myself to the class as an English major focusing on creative nonfiction, the boy next to me reveals that he’s in my nonfiction workshop but missed the first day of class. I decide to not hate writers so much when we have a semi-intelligent conversation on our way out of the building.
Tuesday, 6:30 PM: I drive my roommates to the town next to the one where I grew up to have dinner with my parents and the family who lived down the road from us up until ten years ago. We only see the family a couple of times a year, despite the fact that they only live 30 minutes from us and despite the fact that the mother teaches English and is maybe the most encouraging/supportive person I know when it comes to my future plans of becoming a writing professor. Their son is now in eighth grade and shocks me with his shaggy blonde hair, track jacket, and geek glasses. We ask each other about music interests, and I find that he and I like all of the same local bands. I’m pleased with this until I realise that not only is he ten years younger than I am, but he also lives 40 miles outside of downtown Columbus, not right smack-dab in the middle of it like I do. I don’t try to be this uncool, I swear.
Wednesday, 12:30 PM: Faced with three hours of free time between classes, I go to the English undergraduate lounge to read and find one of my acquaintances doing the same. He tells me about his testicular cancer. I’m kind of creeped out. But also kind of honored.
My friend Todd picks me up and takes me to lunch at the Chef-o-Nette diner in Upper Arlington. He grew up in Arlington and has never thought to ask anyone where the hell the name “Chef-o-Nette” came from, which makes me wonder how a person can be as non-curious as Todd is. I ask him why he’s not eating the pickles on his plate, and he tells me that he’s gotten so used to his friends wanting them that he’s been saving them on the side of his plate for years. I make him eat his pickles. He enjoys them. Todd needs to go to his house to collect his art supplies for class, but drops me off at my building first to ensure that I’ll be on time for class. I decide that he’s worth keeping around.
Wednesday, 3:30: Outside of our Russian lit class, I smack Ashlie with my umbrella, as I’m apparently prone to doing. We talk about how sad it is that our teacher will always look to us on the final word in any discussion because we’re the English majors. In class, the teacher asks Ashlie and me to tell her what we know about Lord Byron to aid in our discussion of his relationship with Aleksandr Pushkin; Ashlie and I just look at each other.
Wednesday, 5:30 PM: When I sit down in my nonfiction workshop, one of the girls who insists on sharing her opinion about everything and the boy from my postmodernism lecture are already waiting. The girl starts telling us that she’s not sure that all of us belong in the workshop, especially one grad student who’s already published a book on finding your way in the world after earning your bachelor’s degree. (It seems to me that going right back into grad school isn’t exactly “finding your way”, but hey, people’ll buy anything if it’s on Amazon.com.) The girl changes her mind, however, and says, “I’m sure everyone in the class is published, though. I know I am.” I roll my eyes and tell her that no, I’m not, and that I’m in no hurry to whore myself. The boy agrees that he’s still a yearling and then looks at me and asks, “And you’re what—a freshman, right? Or sophomore?” I remind him that I’m a senior. And vow not to write mean things on my critiques of his pieces out of spite.
Thursday, 1:30 PM: I sit next to the girl from my old fairy tales and folklore class again. When the group project sign-up sheet comes to our side of the room, there are only two books left to sign up under. She purposely chooses the book that I don’t. She feels the need to explain herself by saying that the other book looks more interesting. I feel the need to find a new seat.
And there it is.
April 1st, 2004: I've been out of work for three weeks, and I've missed it. I've been out of work on my own accord, I might add. There was one week to catch up on 700 pages of Ulysses and write my final papers, one week in Idaho spent hiking and climbing, and one week to get acclimated to my new class schedule. I started back to work today at the science museum, though, and as I relayed my spring break goings-on to one of my long-time co-workers, he stopped me mid-exclamation and said simply, "Katie, I've missed you." And man, that felt good.