Straight No Chaser

Academia and Other Circles of Hell

damn these ponderous alphabetized entry headings. i’m such a slave to my own obsessive-compulsivity that today i actually went back and reformatted some of the earlier titles to match the later ones. anyway though, new rotation. and school is hell. today was the climax of pre-finals week; the last day of classes but the first day of SLAVING through a million ridiculously arbitrary term papers, which of course cannot be expected to replace a series of equally onerous final exams, slated to ruin next week.

when i was younger i could never figure out how to write a straightforward love story. you’ve probably seen some of my attempts; they are full of unconventional families, cheating husbands, babies that exist before their parents ever have sex, et cetera. circumstances, rather than events, perpetuate my stories. that is to say, if i felt like a writer this week i’d probably be tempted to write something about grim.

it was great to find out that sharon’s a hippie. somehow that makes her not a man-stealer, not a seductress, every bit as blameless as she always was, actually. now i’m picturing sun-streaked blond waves and feet that sparkle from the chips of mica they tread, short clean fingernails painted silver or green and a closet full of textured earthtones. i’m sure that characterization is over the top, but i like it. i come from a place where it’s not hard to find variations on that girl. i’d write those two into a condo in my town, give celeste a swingset made of all-natural wood, paint the place’s interior in colors that would stimulate sharon’s “inner dialogue.” they would make friends with all the neighbors, young couples and singles, some with babies, and a few times a week everybody would leave the kids at one house and go somewhere else to drink and talk, maybe insist that the writers (of which there would be a handful) treat them to a personalized read-aloud of works in progress. sharon would help him polish and pick whatever was most presentable, and everyone would listen and clap and there would be great conversation, littlest details of life kind of stuff, and that level of analysis that bores anyone who isn’t ridiculously intelligent. then they’d walk back down the street to pick up celeste, and back home to analyze the analysis. inner dialogue becomes outer. two hippies with a perfect life! and babies, more babies, with whom celeste is more than willing to share the swings.

suck on that carob chip.

also this week: the continuation of earlier euphony, abundant inspiration for some slightly more egocentric fantasizing. the harder it gets for us not to sleep together, the more we have to joke about the strength of our collective resolve. “call me when you change your policy,” i said. “call me when you change yours,” he responded, predictably. and really you just have to kind of laugh at it, the idea that at any given moment we are relying wholly on willpower and absolutely nothing else.

my idea of a buzzkill: “well, marry me now and then we can do whatever we want.” intended to calm him down, as commitment is his obvious personal kryptonite. instead it stoked him even more, somehow, and then neither of us was steering the good ship chastity, and after we split up for the night i got approximately nine minutes of dreamless sleep. the other two hours (it was a longish night) were about what we’d do after the on-call priest left.

yeah, i know. i disgust myself, too. every time i hit some maturity benchmark (turning twenty, for instance, or successfully resisting available and highly promising sex with a much-loved partner), i ruin it by realizing that under the right circumstances, i’d probably let him talk me into something completely irresponsible. he finally wrote me into a poem and i was ready to give him his firstborn as compensation. miles.

sigh.

okay, so, misleading title: all my current hells are academic, and soon to be a thing of the past. i’ll be home next saturday, and working eight-hour days starting two weeks after that, and counting down the minutes till marcus comes to visit in july, and probably spending more time on this site than i do now. ahhh summer.