The hour badly spent

Among English majors — well, the fun ones, not  — there is an unspoken race to make sex the topic of conversation. Wednesday afternoon, in the process of reviewing for an impending exam, I found out that winning isn’t everything. Rhymes With Fairy and I discussed Alan Seeger’s poem, "I Have a Rendezvous With Death."

I have a rendezvous with Death    
At some disputed barricade,    
When Spring comes back with rustling shade    
And apple-blossoms fill the air—    
I have a rendezvous with Death            
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.    
It may be he shall take my hand    
And lead me into his dark land    
And close my eyes and quench my breath—    
It may be I shall pass him still.            
I have a rendezvous with Death    
On some scarred slope of battered hill    
When Spring comes round again this year    
And the first meadow-flowers appear.    
 
God knows ’twere better to be deep            
Pillowed in silk and scented down,    
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,    
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,    
Where hushed awakenings are dear …    
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death            
At midnight in some flaming town,    
When Spring trips north again this year,    
And I to my pledged word am true,    
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

It’s funny how even the most hipsterey among us can revert to being un-fun when someone else (it’s always me) wins the TMI game.

Pompous English Major: It’s a strangely erotic poem.  It’s written in the language of love, with sexual imagery. I think exaggerating the erotic with the valorisation of Death mocks Romantic ideals.
Rhymes With Fairy: Erotic? I don’t see it that way.
Pompous English Major: "Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep?" Come on. That’s clearly a wet dream.
Rhymes With Fairy: No! I don’t wanna look at the poem like that.
Pompous English Major: "I close my eyes and quench my breath." Come on. It’s an orgasm.
Rhymes With Fairy: Fine, you’re right.
Pompous English Major: Well, what do you think of it?
Rhymes With Fairy: I hate you. [ed. note: not really]

One more such victory will utterly undo me.

I knew, after our talk, during Friday’s annoyingly poetic thunderstorm, that eventually you would get bored or curious and click on that link (I don’t mind that anyone finds it; it’s right out there in the open on my Facebook profile). Then you would read back and see "how I really felt," how childish and petty I really was, how prostrating and selfish I really was, how arrogant and judgemental I really was, how lonely and bitter and embarrassed I really was, but mostly how drunk I really was.

So I knew you would find The Hour Badly Spent and that you would tear through all those posts, and I thought of how easy it would be to just make them private, but then why did I put them there in the first place? Also: I am extremely lazy, so much so that I can’t even be bothered with extra mouse clicks. Also: it’s not really a big deal anyway. Nobody reads this shit except for a few people to whom I’ve given obnoxious nicknames [ed. note: I’m tired of trying to amuse my readers — all 3 of them — with with creative monikers. We’ll be on a first name basis. Except for Professor Potts and Doctor Dodd, because that sounds like they teach at Hogwarts. And Doctor Hately. She went on and on about how hard she studied for that title, la dee da, and if the rest of us don’t damn well recognize or whatever, she is not afraid to shank us. Then she downed a shot of Vegemite with horseradish and yelled "Huzzah, beehotch!" at Princess Glitter Bunny, which was utterly terrifying but also kind of hot*].

This stupid blog was not meant to be some sort of cudgel. So, about all those verbal swipes; umm, my bad. Skimming back through them, I’m actually terribly embarrassed. They weren’t really about you; they were about me: a tabloidey chronicle of what the f, exactly, I am doing here, because otherwise I’ll forget. And if now, I am sometimes disturbingly quiet, it is not because of you or any you-and-me stuff. I had a pretty bad summer, during which I made a terrible mistake and now I’m a thousand miles away and cannot fix it. I don’t mean to play the mystery man but I also really don’t want to talk about it. However, it’s on my mind a lot, and at times it will make me kind of withdrawn and surly until I can think of a witty declaration of some sort, which will usually come in the form of a Russian reversal ("In Russia, declaration think of YOU!"), because those are cheap and easy. Everybody knows how I feel about cheap and easy.

Anyway. So. Not to be all "the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream" over this but it really is all kind of old. A month in blog time is like two years of reality. I’ve aged TEN YEARS since, you know, back then. Which makes me forty-fucking-six. And not to diminish what happened, either, because we did, in fact, have a good time.

It was a good time because you took me to Lawrence in the winter, which was beautiful and white everywhere, and to that party full of Lawrence hipsters — who are much better than Manhattan hipsters because in Lawrence their dresses are smaller. It was a good time because of that morning we laughed together for five straight hours, even though I know you are not that funny and neither am I. It was a good time because we drank way too much and spent nights together and all that other stuff, and perhaps there was just not enough "other stuff" but whatever; you get the point.

Let this be the last of these pretentious livejournal-ish rants of mine. And I’ll try to cool it on the Sonnet 30 references. The Collegian is out! Let’s go make fun of it. And maybe while I’m at it I’ll write more coherently.

*This never actually happened. But it definitely should have because isn’t it awesome? Plus you can totally picture it.

The Poetess recently gave voice to the existential horror of attending an informal gathering of English professors: "I’m not smart enough."

Well, yes you are, and that’s really no big deal. English professors are just like the rest of us. Nobody comes to a party to be outsmarted. They just want you to listen to them, get their jokes, seek explanations for what you don’t understand, and squeeze their asses when no one else is looking (Professor Dodd will use colourful pants to indicate her receptivity. But do not try this with the Saucy Aussie. I saw her first!).

Your best strategy is to figure out what everybody thinks of everybody else, which you can use for leverage when you ascend to the top of a multinational crime syndicate. This exercise is all about self-effacement. You are not here to show off your resplendent panoply of grace and charm. And if you have enough grace and charm to impress the English professors then I hate you already.

So don’t name-drop, like I did with Princess Glitter Bunny ("Oh of course I know what you’re talking about. Unlike the other undergrads, I’ve read Derrida! Har har har!") That’s just wankerish. Rather, just ask questions. Find an old man, with a bow tie and bushy eyebrows, who is already drunk. He is the best place to start. He is a font of experience, good humor, and as a bonus, he is actually kind of awesome. Ask about what he’s written, what he likes to read — Milton, apparently — where he’s travelled, etc. Let him do the work. He’s just itching to unload some jovial backstabbey nugget about one of his peers. Just wait. I promise it will be funny. You should also probably try to make yourself as drunk as he is.

Do not sit next to Rhymes With Flan. You did not dress well enough for that, and this fact will gnaw at you every second you are there. She is tall, slender, blonde, stylish, and her diction is flawless. If she were your age, she’d be a wholesome sorority frenemy. You, by contrast, mumble and stutter (which is partly why you’re listening and not talking); your sartorial contribution is a wrinkled green docent shirt your ex gave you seven years ago. You wore it today because you really don’t have a windbreaker, but next to Rhymes With Flan, you look like you’re homeless.

Eventually, something underminerey like this will happen:

The Hour Badly Spent:  Do you mind if I smoke?
Rhymes With Flan:       Oh. Please, don’t. Ew [shudders].
The Hour Badly Spent:  Oh, okay.
Rhymes With Flan:       Yech.

If you closed your eyes, drifted away for a second, and paid attention not to what you actually heard but rather what you thought you heard, you’ll realize that the terminal "yech" was not directed at your cancer stick. It was directed at you.

 

You’ll see the Perverted Shakespeare Professor. In class, he’s so upbeat, almost cheerleaderey; this evening, long after class, he might seem somehow jaded and weary. We suspect the production of ‘Tis Pitty Shee’s A Whore must have been stressful, what with all the preparations being made during those weeks after spring break where everybody goes through a ceaseless gauntlet of exams and term papers and projects. That is why the cast only met for their first full rehearsal a day before curtain time.

I don’t know shit about Jacobean drama. Or any type of drama, for that matter. But I’ll talk about it anyway. The performance — Saturday night, wish you were there! — was fun and celebratory, and slightly campy; just like the Professor conducts his classes, except with slightly more incest. My favorite actor was the Roman soldier: his uniform was a polo shirt with some pinned-on medals.

You might hear about studentfucking. Kind of interesting, but it’s really to be expected, and it’s only juicy if you actually know either of the parties involved, which you don’t, because you don’t know anybody, which is why you’re drinking with English professors on Thursday night and the following Friday afternoon. So put the hearsay out of your mind, because (A) you don’t want to get anyone fired, and (B) you’re not an earnest do-goodey cockblocker. Also: don’t shout out "studentfucker!" in the middle of a lecture (Sorry about that! It was noisy! How was I supposed to know the dean would hear me?).

You might also hear of dumb stuff the students have said — about ethnic minorities and such. It won’t be so bad. All the real wingnuts either go into engineering or polisci. Don’t worry about who, exactly, said what; there’s a good chance you’ll find out soon enough who this person is, based on your ability to stereotype better than she can (a gender neutral pronoun would be really nice right about now!). She will get a column in the Collegian. She will bring guns to class. She will run for student government. She will meet a soldier who will love her for her "values," and they will marry young and have lots of little douchebags, who will attend K-State.

You, however, will not find love. You will find rum, which is just a different kind of love.

Speaking of which, in time, the Most Annoying English-Major Couple will make an appearance. They really are cute together. They will sit next to each other, of course; bemusedly chatting about their plans for the future. They will lightly stroke each others’ arms, but not excessively; they will smile at each others’ literary puns, but not excessively; and one of them will drink. Excessively. And that is the real secret to shmoozing with people who have more intelligence, class, and wit than you.

Thursday night the Perverted Shakespeare Professor jokingly claimed to "personify radical chic." Suspecting a ring of truth in this, The Hour Badly Spent immediately launched an investigation, and in the process, found out why I never scored a date with any of the hotties in that class: everyone wants to have sex with him.

This irrepressible sexual attraction cuts across all boundaries. It makes no difference whether the student is male, female, gay, straight, promiscuous, or celibate. Yeah, even the virgins.

Later on, the Saucy Aussie and Princess Glitter Bunny turned the tabloidy tables on me.  The Hour Badly Spent is not used to being asked direct personal questions. So, when grilled about who, exactly, I supposedly wanted to snog that night up on the hill, I suddenly got all shy and evasive. I didn’t really want to keep anyone in suspense. It was Saucy Aussie. Umm, duh.

Forgive me: I was afraid saying it would bring the drunken revelry to an awkward halt, and then I’d have no one to sit next to duing Tis Pity She’s a Whore. PRIORITIES!! Additionally, where my friend — Atomic Fireball Candy — is going for her doctorate, there are explicit rules against such fraternization. Hey! Don’t ruin this for me with news like that, I begged her, but it was too late. Also, someone recently told me that I "come on too strong." That’s putting it mildly. Between trying to crank out witty sex-related banter and playing like I am not in fact that interested, I probably come off looking half-insane.

Didn’t mean to get all livejournaley there. Anyway, so, I also tried to find out which professor’s raging sex drive has done the most damage to the integrity of the English department. Apropos of nothing, we discovered that East Midlands men have a reputation for being bad in bed. If this is so, how is it that they apparently manage to bone enough lit students to even acquire a reputation? Clearly I’ve been going about this all wrong. My old shtick was to find someone I really like, impress her with my ribald wit, and later on go down on her gently and lovingly for long periods of time. From now on, I will just work on timing my ejaculations to coincide with the ends of Ballykissangel commercial breaks.

The Poetess tries to peek at my diary journal every time I’m out with her. Thursday night I finally just said what the fuck and handed it over for inspection.

"I won’t judge you for anything I find in here." Not that it’s human nature or anything.

So, as she paged through, I felt the nerves and vessels under my skin getting all twisty. I drummed my fingers on the table. I fidgeted with my beard. I wiggled my leg up and down, insanely fast, like a meth-addled hummingbird. I noticed she was lingering on one page.

"Find something interesting?"

"It’s kind of sad."

The passage under scrutiny: I’m an optical illusion. That’s my secret. Look away and I disappear. Turn off the light and I don’t exist.

Breaking: when no one’s looking, I write reams of angsty, self-indulgent prattle. I’ve also apparently jotted down fragments of Pablo Neruda poetry. And that is definitely the worst of it what was in there (the prattle, not the Pablo). No sordid PILF fantasies (none that I’ve written down, anyway). No shocking gossip. No chronicling private embarrassing habits (I masturbate. A LOT). Am I really so dull that I have nothing to hide? Apparently so.

Therefore, the next night, chain-smoking at a party with Ariana and the usual frenemies, when Limitless Are Leaves asked about taking a peek through the big black book of secrets, I had no objection. And when Brandon, too, wanted to see it, I didn’t mind, although he did sort of seem like he was actually studying it and not just surfing pages.

The party room was so full of Swear Not By The Moon’s laughter that it spilled out through the windows and into the parking lot where the smokers were hanging out. Did she do coke again? No, she’s just always like that. Maybe she’s always high on coke.

I honestly think she is always high. Coke — so I hear, mind you — makes you feel hyper and really important, a perfect party drug. Swear Not By The Moon is a party girl. She’s got the look: annoyingly thin and blonde. She is sometimes fun but she also kind of sneers at you when you talk to her. She powerless to curb her ways. Because of the drugs, you see. Although I’m probably just mad because she never offers me any.

I and Limitless Are Leaves really only came to drink, not to party, so we sort of kept to ourselves and our vodka and let the cool kids do their thing (which, again, may or may not have been coke). It’s a good thing I was really drunk. It’s the only way to deal with certain situations and certain people. Or in my case, all situations and all people. It also somewhat explains why she and I ended up making out on the floor.

Is anyone curious about what it’s like to not have sex? The Collegian seems to think so. They weighed in on it this month. Twice. I wonder how much one could actually say about sex without having any subject material? On April 7, Ryne Witt shared his wisdom:

Casual sex for me was never going to be an option, because in order to have such an intimate moment with someone, I needed a certain level of trust with them. That trust can’t be gained in one night at a party or the bars.

Since that trust can’t be gained in one night, it would take a relationship to exist in order for me to have sex and, to be honest, everyone I have dated has never gotten to that point where I trusted them that much.

Blah blah blah blah mommy issues. Eric Davis followed up two weeks later:

I can remember the first time I tried to have sex with a woman who I didn’t know. From the minute we went back to my residence-hall room, I just felt weird. I will spare everyone the embarrassment and just say it didn’t happen. Also, I can’t remember a time in my life that I have been more embarrassed.

Details, Eric, details, or else we’ll be forced to engage in wild speculation. And you don’t want to let that happen, because we’re just going to assume she got freaked out when you told her you’re a furry.

Two of my friends keep going back to relationships they know aren’t healthy, but the sex comforts them. I feel like they have their self-worth wrapped up in their libido and if they sleep alone, they are unwanted.

Here’s the thing about a sex column: when I turn to this page, I expect to see titillating tales of frantic groping in the dark, not predictable bonerkiller haughty virgin preachiness.

There’s a special technical phrase for an otherwise painful relationship wherein one lonely party uses sex to medicate: your twenties. It’s not sad. It’s an awesome learning process. Plus, you get to fuck. Given the choice between - on one hand - an emotionally destructive mindfuck made better by the mutual celebration of sin and carnal delight, and - on the other hand - cultivating your self-esteem through enlightened solitude and frequent masturbation, I’d probably go with "fucking." Why in the world would you opt for a productive, healthy independence, when you could just be having sex instead?