This is NOT Over

Tuesday Oct 17, 1989 20 Minutes Late but in Time for Tea

Bumbled out of bed. Stood in one place for quite some time, wondering whether or not I should go to class. Decided to go. Showed up 20 minutes late. All the students were writing diligently in their Blue Books. I was not. I didn’t even have a Blue Book. In my defense, I just got there.

Spent thirty minutes writing about the badness of America…eloquently as per usual.

Worked from 1pm to 2.

PM.

Rigged up Chris’ stereo and used it as a piece of recording equipment. What I did sounded good, but any other merits of the material are purely coincidental…with the less than average taste of anyone who might think such stuff is worth a damn.

Well, maybe the song was worth a damn, but that’s it. It certainly wasn’t worth two damns.

Worked another shift at the front desk for psychobitchfromhell. 8pm to 11pm. Dealt with her briefly before meeting up with Bill Garver and Mark. Left Douglass Hall with those boys. Our plan was to go to the new coffee house or whatever they are calling it these days. I never made it to our destination. The minute we hit College Ave, all I could think about was seeing E`{`. I was honest with Mark and Bill and said, “I know we are going to see some outfit that is supposed to be good but all I can think about is stopping off to see E`{` so that’s what I am going to do.”

They made those meowing and whipping sounds.

“…and I hate you guys is the other reason then.”

They made their way to glamorous, downtown DeKalb and I continued on College towards E`{`’s place.

We drank tea and had a nice talk. She drank tea and I pretended to like it. I am not afraid to pretend to like things for social purposes. I am afraid that I will have to pretend much in this life as there are not too many things I generally like.

I think that’s pretty much right on the mark.

Tried to convince E`{` to spend the night with me either at her place or mine. Does that sound like the 70’s? Where are my exotic oils and flowing chest hair?

We had a second cup of tea. I never have a second cup at home. Fuck, I never have a first cup. Stupid tea.

Could not convince her to spend the night with me and she kicked me out by 1am. School is very important to her. I don’t think it was an excuse. I can smell one of those a thousand miles away. I’ve heard them all including, “I have to take my aunt’s bird to the vet’s office.”

That one was hard to swallow.

Walked back to the dorms by myself. Missed the show and now was on my way for home, sober, with only tea in my belly.

Saw Jen-O with a book on her face in the lobby. I lifted it, woke her (just to be a prick) and said, “What’s up kid?”

We ended up drinking cans of beer and smoking Chesterfields in my room and talking until late. She sifted through the unholy pile of books on my desk. That pile, of course, includes the Bible but even that becomes unholy (or significantly less holy) when it comes into contact with my desk. Lord knows what I’ve done on that desk.

He should, I forgot but I know some of it had to be unclean.

She pushed aside the Relative State paper. She laughed at my copy of the Bible and said, “It looks like you have actually read this thing?”

“Parts of it more than once,” I said putting out my cigarette in something that looked like an ashtray. It was late at that point and I can’t be counted on to differentiate between an ashtray and a smashed Hamms can. Ashtray may in fact be the highest purpose for a can that had, at one time, held that awful beer.

She thumbed through my thin volume of Aristotle’s Poetics and put it on top of photocopies of Henry James “The Art of Fiction” and some shit from Poe about how he wrote the Raven and other such stuff. Jen-O said, “You only need one of these.”

The Poetics is stolen, the other things are free because of the photocopy trick Dan J. showed to William T. Garver and I told her that.

“Well you could have saved time and paper by just concentrating on your stolen copy of the Poetics,” she said as she took another cigarette from the pack on my desk.

“I thought that thing was famous because it sketched out the differences between tragedy and comedy. With the advent of MASH, that’s irrelevant now isn’t it? The tragicomic dramady right?”

She stared at me, opened her mouth slowly and her cigarette dropped to the floor.

Ok, that didn’t happen, but that was the look my friend Jen-O gave me.

Jen-O asked me again (as she does once a week or so) what I think I am doing. Lots of people try to have these conversations with me. My parents. My ex. My cousin. A few friends from home who I am currently not speaking to for a variety of reasons…mostly because I don’t need those fuckfaced, half-assed criminals asking me ‘what do I think I’m doing with my life?’ it’s embarrassing having people like that ask such a question.

I take Jen-O a little more seriously when she raises the question, even though recently she has made a fetish out of it. My friend is deadly serious about time and what to do with it. She has good reason to be.

Also, she is a few ticks smarter than me. Only someone stupider than me would completely ignore words from someone who is definitely smarter than they are. Since I am me and I refuse to be a paradox, I do not ignore her.

When I told her what I thought I was doing I talked mostly about E`{` and not about the books on my desk. She said she liked E`{` and that that girl had more substance than the girls I usually tried to find myself around. She lectured me about Jenna from our Post-Renaissance Spain class and asked me if I was seriously trying to date an A Phi. She didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t.

I believed me. It was one mini-van ride and a few bottles of airplane liquor.

Jen-O said that E`{` was better than psychobitchfromhell and girls like that who I was interested in because they had stuff, or money, or were mean (and I go for mean in a big way) or their dads could get me on a Bartlett golf course semi-regularly. Jen-O seemed to know a lot about me, and told me more than I cared to know about me.

Our conversation ended on a noteworthy…uh, note. Jen-O suggested that if I want a girl like E`{` to be or stay interested in me then I better consider doing something interesting. I thought those were fine words and thought about them and am still thinking of them as I write this.

Jen got up to leave and fussed with her wig. “Is it on straight? I’m a little drunk,” she said.

I finished my beer, looked at her and answered, “For a 5am, half-drunk walk through the residence hall lobby, I think you’re going to be ok.”

She mushed out her cigarette in a Hamms can with just a little beer in it, adjusted her wig a few more times, blew me a kiss and left.

I tried to return the books and papers to their original, chaotic state on my desk. As I did I found the copy of Mr. Fitzgerald’s first novel I had stolen from Mark a few weeks earlier. Recently I came to the conclusion that I like writing in these little notebooks but if I continue to do so I better read books like this to make sure I’m not plowing the same earth, even if I am describing my actual life.

I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I have been accidentally writing The Shitside of Paradise all along.

Then where would we be?