Archives:
February 24-March 1, 2008

February 24, 2008

I flex my lips as I exhale a stream of smoke, trying to make rings out of it. I'm not sure how to, and it just comes out in smaller, broken streams.

Peering up at McCarthy Hall, I can see right in my window. It's the first time I've really looked in from outside at this room, and it's sort of strange. I can see my desk lamp, and imagine I, myself, would be visible, sitting there at my computer, or reading a book.

I think I should close my shades more often.

I take another drag. I've only been smoking a cigarette or two each day—sometimes less. Maybe I'll have forgotten about Dave by the time I finish the pack. Probably not. Maybe I'll have forgotten about Teri.

“ Preston .” I turn to find Kermit coming out the door of McCarthy, stepping up beside me. “How are you doing?”

“Not bad,” I say, letting my arm drop to my side. It occurs to me that, faced with someone like Kermit, I'm kind of embarrassed by smoking. It's like having my dad catch me smoking—though I suppose my dad might be more understanding.

“I didn't know you smoke,” he says.

“Yeah. You know, it's just an occasional thing.”

“Occasional or not, it's not smart. You know that stuff will stay in your system for years, even after you quit.”

“Yeah, I've heard that.”

“Then you should be smarter than that.” He looks at me for a couple seconds—until I look away. “Anyway,” he goes on, “I've got a meeting I'll see you later.”

“Yeah, see ya, Kermit.” I wait until he's a few yards away to take another drag. I've still got half of it left, but cast the rest into the little metal canister for butts, heading along with my day.

February 25, 2008

“There's a lot of good detail here,” I say, turning over a page in the piece we're workshopping in class today.

“What kind of details?” Benjamin asks.

“Mostly the music stuff—the way she links the terms to stuff going on in her life. Like sub-titling the part where she's dealing with her parents' divorce ‘pianissimo.'”

“See that, didn't make sense to me,” the girl across the way says, “because her parents are arguing the whole time, and the pianissimo thing means that it's quiet.”

“But that's why it's so clever,” I say, “because the piece centered on her, and all the time her folks are arguing, she isn't saying anything—she's the one getting quiet.”

I have to admit that I have a bit of an unfair advantage in critiquing this piece. Emma was hanging out in the room when I was reading it, and recognized the name of the author—another music major. We went through it together—Emma as a musician, me as a writer. We both ended up liking it a lot.

“I didn't care for the subtitles,” another guy in class says.

“And why is that?” Benjamin asks.

He shrugs. “It just seemed to break up the piece a little too neatly. I think I wanted to see the interplay between the different pieces of the story more.”

“But I don't know if the story would make sense that way,” Chang says. “The way it stands, everything can tie together in the end, because it's building to the last verse section. That's what makes it coherent.”

I think of Emma remembering stories from her childhood, connecting to remnants of her musical, and personal history. I was hearing a lot of it for the first time, filling in the holes of what I could remember from before of Emma's favorite stories—the ones she told me again and again years ago.

“But sometimes life isn't coherent,” the other guy says. “In a non-fiction piece, that's OK—it lends the focus to the person, not the plot, and that's what it should be all about.” He grins. “I guess to stick with the music theme, you could make it into a medley.”

Benjamin nods. “I like that.”

February 26, 2008

“I'm telling you, that's eel,” Gary says, picking up a thin piece of it between his chopsticks, and dangling it in front of a resident.

“Really?” a wide-eyed girl asks, eyes locked right on Gary , not even looking at the sushi.

Gary drifts his chopsticks closer and closer to the girl's face, and until she leaps back, with a little shriek. Gary chuckles and the girl laughs at herself, putting a hand on her chest. Here and there I've noticed Gary flirting with girls in the hall, and watching him now, I find myself wondering if it's some he consciously does, and is really good at, or if he's just naturally able to connect to people like this girl.

“Things are not looking good for Kevin Hardaway,” a commentator says on TV. I turn back to the screen, eyes drifting past the ‘Rolling with the Knights' sign above it. Our program tonight was a marginal success, with a good twenty people showing up for sushi, and most of them leaving after they were done eating. We had four guys stay back to watch the game, and a couple girls back to talk with Gary .

On TV, Kevin Hardaway, the starting shooting guard for the Austin Knights, is on his back on the court, clutching his knee. He yells an expletive, and the TV station rushes to switch to another camera, further removed from the fallen player.

Soon they cut to a replay, Hardaway cutting to the hoop, only for the opposing center to follow right after him, clobbering before he can let his lay-up go. Hardaway lands knee first on the court.

Cutting back to real time, Hardaway has his arms over two trainers, supporting him as they walk off the court. The camera shifts to Mike Weaver, checking into the game.

“Well,” Jonah says, “looks like this might get interesting.”

Mike heads straight to the free throw line, to shoot for the flagrant foul. He nails the shot, and the camera zeroes in on him as he gets into position for the next play. “With Hardaway out,” the commentator says, “the success of this Austin Knights team, that has been rolling through the Eastern conference, may rest on the slender shoulders of rookie Mike Weaver.”

“We've heard a lot of good things about Weaver from the Knights camp,” another commentator says, “but this is a young man who hasn't played more than a few minutes of any game at the NBA level. I do not like the Knights' chances without Hardaway.”

It's almost as though Mike can hear what the commentators are saying. He breaks free and catches the ball in the corner. Before his defender can catch up, Mike has the clean shot up in the air. The shot hits nothing but net.

“Watch out for Weaver,” the first commentator says. “He just might surprise you.”

February 27, 2008

“You ever read any Plato?” Emma asks, sitting at a corner of my bed, head in her hand, book in her other hand.

“Not really,” I say, “a couple excerpts or something—I think that's it.”

Emma shakes her head. “The guy's like a caricature of himself.”

I smirk. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just the whole Socratic method thing. People joke about that when all they're doing is asking questions. But that's really what this whole book is. Someone makes a speech. Someone asks a question. Someone makes a different speech. There's another question. I mean, why not just write what you're thinking, and forget all the stupid questions?”

I smirk, turning back to my computer screen. “I guess the classics aren't always all they're cracked up to be.”

“So what are you working on?” Emma asks.

“I'm writing about love.” It's a simple answer to question. I'm working on my newest piece for my non-fiction class. I thought about writing about Teri, and how a relationship can go wrong. Then I shifted my focus, and started looking at love more generally. My mind turned to Valerie this summer. Then to Veronica. Then to Emma.

I elected to go back to Valerie—thinking not about this summer, but about junior high, when I first really had a crush on her. I remember trying to bump into her in the halls, trying to sit next to her in class—jerking off to her picture from the yearbook. I'm surprising myself with how honest I can be about how I felt, and how I saw her, and think maybe Benjamin was right, about needing to have some distance from what I'm writing.

“Anything good?” Emma asks.

I click the icon to save my file. “Not bad. It's a work in progress.”

February 28, 2008

There's a banging at my door. I roll over to look at the clock. It's 10:15 , and I realize I must have accidentally reset my alarm then gone back to sleep. My first class of the day started 15 minutes ago.

The banging comes again. I get up and head to the door.

When I open it, Emma's there. “Did you hear the news?” she asks.

“What news?”

Emma holds up a copy of the Eskimo Enquirer—SA's new student newspaper. If anything, I've consciously avoided reading that paper since it's first issue, at the start of this semester, despite my curiosity about how it would look. I knew looking at the paper was only going to make me mad—at everything they did wrong, of everything they did differently, of everything they stole, and worst of all, of anything they did better than The Window.

Emma's not concerned with the writing, or layout, or photography, though. She's concerned about the top headline on the front page.

ENGLISH PROFESSOR FIRED FOR SEX SCANDAL: Professor Jones allegedly has affair with Taylor junior.

I take the paper from her hands, looking at it more closely. The front page photo is of Jones's office door, with an inset picture of the man himself from the English department web site.

“This is wild,” I say.

“But read to the end—they say they think it's Claire he was sleeping with, but the department won't confirm it.” She looks up at me, eyes wide, and a little glassy. “ Preston , was Jones her boyfriend?”

February 29, 2008

“Are you sure we should do this?” I ask, as Emma walks a step ahead of me, into the class building.

“We need to show Jones that he's not alone,” she says, not turning back. “It might not seem like it's important coming from a couple students, but when you hit bottom like this, you need to know you have people behind you.”

I'm surprised with how committed Emma seems to Jones today. I suppose at least a part of that is in lieu of being able to track down Claire—that she's trying to support her indirectly, through Jones.

“But what if he doesn't want to see us?”

Emma doesn't say anything, just walking on. I follow.

When we get to Jones's office door, I'm not surprised to find it closed, with the lights off inside. I am a bit surprised, though, to discover that even his name is gone from the glass, making it just some anonymous room. I suppose department was in a hurry to forget about him.

“Side Burns.” I don't have to turn to know it's Nick behind me. Hearing his voice is enough to make me not want to turn around, and yet, faced with a bare door, there's not much alternative.

“Hey Nick.”

“You like that—side Burns, like the hair thing. And your name is—d”

“I get it,” I cut him off.

Lizzie, the SA president, rounds a corner, joining us in this little alcove outside Jones's office. “ Preston , how are you?”

“Not bad,” I say with a nod. “And you?”

“Good, good,” she says, crossing her arms. “I don't suppose the two of you were here looking for Professor Jones?”

“Actually, we were,” Emma says.

Lizzie nods. “We're actually here to greet you then.”

“You see,” Nick says, “after what this monster did to one of his students, we understand that a number of students are, justifiably, traumatized. We're here to talk to those folks, refer them to the Counseling Center as necessary.”

“Why are you calling Jones a monster?” Emma asks.

“He took advantage of that poor girl,” Nick says. “Who knows what sort of mental and emotional distress he put her through—”

“That poor girl was one of my best friends,” Emma says. “And she was happy to be with him.”

Nick shakes his head. “He had the girl brainwashed—”

Emma lets out sort of a grunt of disgust, and pushes past the two of them, making her way back out into the hallway. I wonder why I didn't think of that mode of escape sooner.

I look to Lizzie and Nick, giving them a shrug, before I follow after Emma again.

March 1, 2008

Walking up to Emma's door, I'm a little surprised to hear talking inside. The voices stop the second I knock. I stand and wait, playing with the strap of my bag, before Emma opens up.

“Hey, Preston ,” she says, then glances behind her. “Come on in.”

Entering the room, I find Claire sitting on the floor, her face red, a balled up tissue in her hand. She sniffs, dabbing the tissue at one of her eyes. At first, I think I'm interrupting something. Emma gives me a look to confirm she wants someone else there.

“What's going on?” I ask, awkwardly as Emma sits down at Claire's side. I set my bag down, and look down at my shoes, still coated with slush and mud. I decide to ignore the mess I'm making, and have a seat with them.

“Not so good,” Claire says, trying a smile for a second.

“Jones left,” Emma says.

“Yeah, I saw the article—”

“No, he left town,” Claire says. “All of his things are gone. He moved out of his house.”

“He's gone gone?”

Claire sniffs. “He always said he could work at a bigger school, for more money. Somewhere else probably hired him as soon as he lost this job.”

“I'd think he'd have more trouble after all of this,” I say.

Emma darts me a look. I shrug.

“He didn't even say goodbye,” Claire said. “I guess I can't blame him. We never made any promises or anything. And I cost him his job.”

Emma squeezes her hand. “You didn't do anything wrong.” She looks up to me.

“Yeah,” I say, not sure what I can add. “It's just, you know, one of those things.”