It was Sunday and I had a good deal of work to do before the week started up again, but I didn’t want to do any of it. It had just stopped raining and the sky was gray, the outdoor temperatures mild. I felt well rested, having stayed in the night before to grade mid-term papers. I’d spent the morning at my computer, checking my email too many times, reading some of the spam as if it were poetry—“From Alyssa Sadler. Re: Humberto, but can't. The apostrophe may jangle. So fedora it’s polio…”—and knocking around different websites, procrastinating.
Every once in a while I’d pick up a paper, slog my way through a series of incomprehensible sentences, and try to write constructive notes in the margin with a green pen (it’s less harsh then red). The afternoon wore on. The commotion outside seemed quieter than usual. I blamed the quiet for my feeling lonely. I normally hate the noise exploding daily below my window, but right then I missed it. I felt like one of the only people left in the entire city. Where had everyone gone?
I thought about calling different friends. Everyone was busy, I was sure. Janice with her boyfriend, Jacob with his girlfriend. I gave a perfunctory scroll through my contacts list already knowing there was no one there I wanted to see. I poured a glass of wine. The distant traffic made a kind of whoosh, like a heavy breathing or a river in the distance.
At my computer again, I wondered if he was at his computer, too. I typed in his IM address, and saw that he was online. I wrote, “Would you like to have a glass of wine with me?” The words hung there on the screen. It seemed a pleasant enough thing to do, to have a civilized glass of wine together. My invitation was casual. No big deal at all. I pressed send and cursed myself immediately afterward.
I removed his name from my list of contacts, as if to undo the invitation. As if to reject him. I turned my computer off and scowled. Turned it on again. Turned it off. Turned it on again and then decided to clean my bathroom and forget about it.
I couldn’t forget about it. I posted an item on Craig’s List rescinding my invitation, explaining that I’d made a mistake. That I still hated him. Some guy named Kevin responded 10 minutes afterward saying that if this was Kelly, he still loved me and would do anything to get me back. I removed my original post and read a few of the personal ads filed under “Missed Connections.” “Hipster cutie on the 1 train uptown. I know you felt it too.”
He wrote back an hour after my initial message. “Are you still there? I stepped away from my computer… I just got your message… I’d love a glass of wine.”
I told him to meet me at this little French place around the corner from my apartment where I'd be preparing some last minute work for Monday (because I'm so busy and have a very full and rewarding life, because it’s been so since we ended things, because I do things like that now, have a single glass of wine and finish up my work on Sundays).
I took a shower, made my bed for the first time in weeks, put on a skirt and high heels and then changed into casual jeans and a sweater, and removed to the street. At the end of the block, I stopped at the deli to buy condoms, laboring over the decision of which ones to get. I hadn’t bought condoms in a long time. I had always left that to him. I tried to remember what the box looked like that he used to get. The clerk put the box of three in a little brown bag, which I stuffed into my brief case along with then ten or so papers I had left to read before he arrived.
I sat by the window and ordered an overpriced glass of wine and began reading “Why Females Are Evil,” an essay by Tanya. It was ostensibly about The Odyssey though neither Homer nor any of his characters were mentioned on the first two pages. I’d met with Tanya during office hours. She said she wanted to write about “Love” and told me a little about her three brothers and their women. “That’s a great start, Tanya, you’ll just need to make your thesis more specific and make connections to the text.” I suggested she might begin by examining Penelope’s cunning in her responses to the suitors while awaiting Odysseus’ return. The first line was, “Throughout the history of the world, women have always lied and cheated to get they way and ancient Grease was no different.” I underlined “history of the world” and wrote beside it in green, “general,” and read on.
The waitress set down a glass and began pouring. She was French. Beautiful in that casual way the French are. She’d probably make a wonderful adulteress some day, I thought, imagining her life like a Buñuel film or any other French-language film ever made for that matter, that is if she wasn’t one already. Or a divorcee, or at least a pretty dog owner. Noticing me watching her, she smiled at me with her mouth closed and then turned to say something to the busboy who laughed.
I wondered why I was so stupid to meet my ex-boyfriend in a place where the waitress was so charming and pretty. She had large warm brown eyes have, and cleavage that seemed both wholesome and sexy at once. The kind of girl men are always trying to “figure out” without ever having to offer much of any puzzle. The kind who seems to be saying much more than the words she chooses: “Hmmm, the wine is lovely,” or “I’m tired, let’s go home.” Things that would never occur to me to say. The lace from her bra, white, peaked slightly from her blouse when she leaned over to pour my second glass of wine. She felt bad for me.
I finished another paper, “Disco’s Inferno,” and counted how many essays I had left, hoping that the number had magically diminished by more than one. I looked out the window and tried to guess from which side of the street he might arrive. If I’d see him, or he me first. There was still a half-hour left before our meeting time.
World Humanities is a required course with readings in Macbeth, Dante’s Inferno, The Odyssey, Don Quixote and a few creation myths. My students think I’m mad about this stuff. That I have strange taste and prefer Dante over America’s Next Top Model. They are shocked when I mention Tyra and the outcome of Cycle 9 and look at each other wondering how I am able to receive television signals in that other place where teachers live. They write to me on the weekends as if I had nothing better to do with my life than field their questions about their grades or the first name of Homer.
When I stand before the class, they stare slack jawed and arrogant, as if to say, perform, make it interesting, give me one good reason why I should care about this stuff. On their review cards for the term, they grade me on whether or not I made them want to do their homework. Has the professor motivated you? the cards ask.
I play along. I give them jazzy assignments like, “Compare and contrast Homer’s poem with lyrics to any song by the Smiths.” They look at me confused. Who are The Smiths? Or “Write a glossary of Homeric curse words! What was Odysseus’s first response when he saw his crew turned into swine by that slut Circe? What did the ancient Greek censors beep out?” They stare at me vacantly. Who is Circe?
I tell them that the humanities is all about them. I tell them to write a personal essay about home after we read The Odyssey. I send them to a website to determine what kind of sinner they are and in which circle of hell Dante would put them. I make jokes to demonstrate my point, mentioning that the eighth level of hell is where I’d place all of my ex-boyfriends—“you know, the flatterers.” I encourage them to relate personally to literature. I send out a mass email to the class, with the subject line, “Hubris and Lust,” reporting on my own status in hell and attaching a link.
Hello, everyone!
Here is a link to the site I told you about in class. “The Dante’s Inferno Hell Test" (by the fine people who brought you the Personality Disorder Test). Below are my results. OMG, I have been banished to the second level of Hell! It’s hot… Don’t forget, midterm proposals are due this week. See you in Hell if I don’t see you Monday!
—Ms. Smyles
The papers are a mixed bag. Some of them have obviously not bothered even to read the Cliff’s notes, which I have begun holding up in class and recommending officially on their syllabus. “There is no shame in supplementing your reading with a study guide,” I say. It can be quite helpful!”
“I wish they would just plagiarize. It makes for better reading!” I said this out loud at the holiday party last year and got the most horrible looks. The other adjuncts all talk about reaching out. When I stopped by the English office to pick up some student drop forms last week, Craig, another instructor, was carrying on about “his situation.” He was wildly upset because he suspected one of his students of plagiarizing, though he couldn’t actually prove it. “I don’t know what to do?” he told me. “Count your blessings,” I said. “Unless a student hands me the book from which he’s plagiarized, what do I care? I’m just relieved to be able to give out an A.”
I asked the waitress to remove the empty glasses of wine, which for some reason she left on the table rather than refilling the first, and then asked her to bring me a glass of water. As the time moved toward when he'd arrive, I became slightly distracted as to how I should be sitting. If it is okay to lean my chin on my hand or if it makes my face look funny. If I look ridiculous sitting perfectly straight with squared shoulders. If I seem pathetic with my hands fastened in my lap, like a young girl who doesn't know yet not to try so hard, to let him try a little, to make my voice low and have him lean in close. I thought about how I should not look out the window, that I ought to become very involved in my work so that when he arrived I would look up only at the last minute and thus surprised, I wouldn't consider how to compose my face. I read without a spare glance for a half hour straight until I looked up and saw him seeing me see him approach through the glass.
He smiled coming in. I felt my mouth split in a few different shapes. Neither a frown nor a smile, but a violently squiggling line. He sat down staring at the side of my face, as I concentrated my gaze on the kitchen. I wondered if he found my profile pretty, if I should just hold it there. I could feel my brow tightening up with nerves, which was not particularly attractive on me, I knew.
He motioned to the waitress and suggested that we order a half a carafe. I told him I didn’t want to drink that much. “I’m just going to have one glass,” I said. We talked a little bit and I offered a few mean remarks as if I hated him. As if it had been his idea to meet. I continued meanly, hoping to show him through my meanness, how much he missed me, how much I missed him, that he might interpret my meanness for vulnerability. I hoped he might see right through me. He responded with an argumentative quip back and it was clear that he saw nothing but what I showed him. I felt sad remembering so many other moments just like this one.
We ended up ordering another glass of wine and the room was dark and French and everyone was gone from the place mostly because it's Sunday and why should you be anywhere but home on a Sunday evening? All the happy people are home, I thought. We left and as we walked I thought about how I wouldn't use the condoms after all. That all of my thinking earlier in the shower about what I going to say, would I lure him up to my apartment by saying, “I have to show you something,” say I had an old t-shirt of his, say I wanted him to hear this new song I just downloaded, mention that I needed help with a rusted window shutter, invite him up for sex?
I decided right then, as we walked along 10th St. silently and I stared up at the street lamps which I’d never noticed much before but was now pretending to find really interesting, I decided then that whole line of thinking earlier in the shower was nonsense. How foolish and reckless it was to put perfume behind my knees and in the bends of my elbows. I let go of the idea and let go of him and I felt much better, a little. Finally in possession of myself again.
We approached my door and I was about to say good night, feeling for the first time in all that time that this wasn’t so hard. None of this was so terribly important. Letting him go was quite simple really. Much easier than having him back. I felt relieved, unconcerned with what I was going to say next, or what I'd look like once I’d said it, or what words I’d use. I’d just say “goodnight” or “goodbye” or “see ya” and go upstairs. At my stoop I turned to look at him, surprised to find him already looking at me. His eyes made a tiny zigzag across my face, and then he said quickly, “Aren’t you going to invite me up for tea?”
