Despertar

september 3, 2008

At midnight, Valerie, Hugh and I were sharing Indian food and a bottle of ro-zay, our first reunion dinner of the new semester. As is always the case when she drinks, Valerie got really weepy and started lamenting her break-up from three weeks ago. It's difficult, with her, because she has been through a lot of therapy and has very a very introspective, very detailed analysis of why her relationships tend to fail, but that analysis is based on theory, not fact, and she doesn't know herself very well. What happens, then, is that she'll throw out a fact pattern and a question--"Do you think it's really, like, unconscionable that I went through Mike's phone to see who kept texting him the last night we spent together?"--then somehow express surprise that, yes, we do.

Anyway, she stole that show, as always, and we dutifully built her up over samosas and palek paneer, did two bottles of wine, ignored our first-week academic obligations (as is customary around here). Hugh put on Justin's sweatshirt, which bothered me a little bit, irrationally, said he was too cold and sleepy to walk home and asked if he could crash head-to-toe on one of our queen-sized beds. We both said sure, and I promptly fell asleep on my own bed while he set up camp on the other end, clicking away on his laptop keyboard.

My alarm went off at seven. I woke up and there was Hugh, passed out under the covers a few chaste feet away. This unsettled me somewhat, not because I don't trust Hugh or because I felt disloyal, letting a close friend crash on a bed I've only shared with one person, and not because Justin would care at all, but because...well, I don't really know why. I just felt like he should have bedded with the single person, or woken me up to make sure I knew he was sleeping with me, or something. But, whatever. This is the kind of thing I sort of pride myself on not blowing out of proportion, so I tried not to. Whatever.

Hugh slept while I showered. Around seven-thirty, I started wanting my space, wanted him to leave so I could get dressed in peace, so I opened my iTunes and started up my Bill Withers morning playlist. He woke up, got the hint and left.

First class of the day was Patent Law. Awful, awful, awful. The professor walked in fifteen minutes early, which is really awkward because they never start class till the exactly scheduled moment, so everyone just sits staring at him, feeling frozen and castrated in a relatively small room. The second the clock switched to nine thirty-five, he looked up and said, in the haughtiest voice I have ever heard, "I'll be your professor in this class, should you choose to remain in it." He spent the next twenty minutes detailing his zero-tolerance attendance policy, then jumped into an arrogant overview of patent law and how important it is to civilization, yada yada.

Halfway through the class, I started developing a question about the topic he was talking about. I raised my hand, joining several other people doing the same thing. He called on an estimated eighty percent of the people with their hands raised, then announced he was moving on to the next topic.

My hand stayed raised during the transition, but when I realized he was done talking about Topic A altogether, I gave up and lowered it. He delivered a few sentences on Topic B, then looked over in my direction. "Miss?" he sniffed. "Did you have your hand up?"

I HATE when teachers and professors do that. If I've lowered my hand, it means I've determined my question somehow inappropriate, or otherwise decided I don't really want it answered. Leave me the fuck alone, once my hand is down. "Oh," I said. "Well, you've sort of moved away from this topic, but..." blah blah blah. My question. I acknowledged in the preface to the question that it wasn't relevant anymore.

He was quiet for a second after I stopped talking, then said, haughtily, "Well, we've already sort of drifted away from that topic. If you've got a question about the material we're covering now, I'll be happy to answer that."

"Well," I said, "I don't."

I hate that class. I desperately want to switch out of it, but I can't unless I get accepted into one of two others I'm currently waitlisted for. My chances are sort of bad, both because I'm a second-year student and because I didn't enter the lottery until after the semester had started.

After that class, I ran into Justin in the main academic building. We went to the bookstore together. He bought some workout stuff with the school logo, I bought a day planner and a Taxation nutshell. We had a crisp, tense sort of exchange about something really dumb (I had asked for stamps earlier, he didn't have any but decided just not to answer my question instead of telling me nope, sorry), but moved past it and sat down in the quad to read for class.

Over the next couple of hours, different friends came and went, passing by our table, making comments about the upcoming bar review, inviting Justin for a round of golf over the weekend. It was warm and pleasant and comfortable.

Then this guy came over, an ex-neighbor of mine from the old building, and he came, and sat, and stayed, and stayed, and stayed. Talking football, talking bullshit, ignoring every body language hint that we were sort of studying, sort of wanting to be alone, sort of enjoying our silence. He stood hovering over the table for about twenty minutes, then finally threw his backpack down on the table and sat.

I don't know why I get like this, but I did, I got really annoyed and tight-lipped, found a million excuses to keep leaving the table. I went and bought us chicken fingers and a Powerade. The Powerade turned out to be frozen. It exploded all over Justin. I had to jump up and get napkins.

Then, Family Law. My favorite class, so far. Uneventful but interesting.

Kegs on the Quad. The SBA sponsors this weekly, providing free beer to everyone who shows up and mingles outside. I went because friends were there, developed a huge headache, left early.

I went home, ate a Balance Bar and watched TLC in bed for several hours, hoping to fall asleep but with my head pounding too hard. A very distinctive kind of misery, that.

Justin and I were supposed to hang out at nine, but I finally fell asleep just before that, missed his call, and by the time I woke up and called him back, he was building Ikea furniture and missed mine. I had wanted to watch Sarah Palin and be disgusted together, but I did it alone, instead, which was just as compelling.

I called my mother. We exclaimed over the Republican National Convention for a few minutes.

I brushed my teeth and fell asleep.