The hour badly spent

Did you trudge slowly to Aggieville, reluctantly preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet? Did you run into a pack of grad students, one of whom owed you a drink? How did that conversation go?

"Am I getting you that drink?" "Why, indeed you are."

It was a screwdriver, because they’re only two bucks at Mae’s.

Grad Student paid the waitress. "Tomorrow morning I’ll be drinking a citrusey cocktail as well!"

"While grading portfolios? Let me guess: mimosas."

The two other Graddies discussed who was bringing all the orange juice tomorrow morning. I checked my phone — no new messages since the ones I’d been reading an hour prior (of the soul-destroying "you-hould-stay-away-from-me-or-we’ll-both-get-hurt" variety)  — and finished my drink. And another. They decided to go dancing, as if this fucking day couldn’t get any worse.

We ended up at Tubby’s. The grad students weren’t kidding about wanting to dance. I joined in for a minute and sort of swayed back and forth, lazily bending my knees when appropriate, until I got tired (me = olde). The other guys in the bar all looked like date rapists. I went outside for some fresh air.

It was cool outside, and the music was better, more conducive to moping. And then suddenly it wasn’t; a redheaded Irishman started badgering me about oatmeal cookies. "They taste so good. Have one. Have one. Have one."

"But I need something stronger."

"Have one."

His friend — who also looked like a date rapist — bought a round of viking warhammers, whatever the fuck that is. I downed one and checked my phone again (masochism!) and went back to the dance floor. I tried to start again with the knee-bendey thing, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I’ve felt brain dead all week. Perhaps it was the changing weather? Perhaps I shouldn’t have started the week with Modernist poetry.

"I’m gonna memorize Prufrock," I said. Smallville rolled her eyes. I saw that coming. So did Prufrock.

And I have known the eyes already, known them all–
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

I’ve also been reading White Teeth, and I fear Zadie Smith’s “manic” prose has made mince meat of my brain.

Monday I missed an article deadline and an assignment deadline in playwriting, which set the tone for the rest of my classes. So it goes. I skipped class Tuesday and didn’t have class Wednesday. I returned to White Teeth. I’d read it for fun years ago, but this time, ugh. Not til I had marked up half the book did I remember that my copy was actually borrowed from Cherry. As a woman of integrity, she has most likely stayed true to her promise not to read The Hour Badly Spent any more, so I might be in the clear, but if not, uhh, sorry about that. I don’t know what I did Tuesday or Wednesday, so it couldn’t have been anything special. Both days, perhaps, interchangeable?

For I have known them all already, known them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Except not quite. There is, in fact, so much to do, pages to read, calories to burn, lessons to learn, paragraphs to write, concepts to master, and never nearly enough coffee spoons to measure it all.

The afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

A life of leisure. A guy hanging around with nothing to do, no deadlines, no steps to retrace; not even a job, no need to work that hustle, no-place to be in fifteen minutes. I had a colloquium to deliver. Would there be time, would there be time? Thursday nights, English 635’s class discussions focus on racial and gender oppression, which is just as important as it is tedious. This week was no exception, since many main characters are Jamaican & south Asian. After the break I quietly whipped out the laptop. Jimbo - one-third of our discussion fellowship - hadn’t shown up that night, but he IMed me from home.

The Opera Ghost: sup, yo. are you guys on break, or out of class?
The Hour Badly Spent: just got back from break. we’re on 1 last q
The Hour Badly Spent: this is actually not so bad
The Opera Ghost: what? oh questions?
The Hour Badly Spent: yeah
The Opera Ghost: im sick, btw.
The Hour Badly Spent: we heard :-)
The Hour Badly Spent: flu?
The Opera Ghost: yea.
The Opera Ghost: sad thing is my roommates are still trying to drag me out tonight.
The Opera Ghost: i think i may die if that happens.
The Hour Badly Spent: just bundle up and travel in a palanquin
The Opera Ghost: lol
The Opera Ghost: with a big wooden jug of brandy around my neck
The Hour Badly Spent: if u make me laugh karin [westman] might be pissed
The Opera Ghost: lol sorry
The Hour Badly Spent: ok, got it outta my system. must. stop. thinking of you as friar tuck.
The Opera Ghost: LOL

Whatever; it was funny. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

Then Karin snapped me back to the there-and-now, asking us about the genetically engineered Futuremouse© that brings White Teeth to its climax. Something occurred to me.

"Did anyone else see this as a nod to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?" Karin asked me to expound on the connection.

Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on.
In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth.

Indeed.