The hour badly spent

Friday afternoon, servicey tipster Sean Trolinder let us know the wheres and whens of the English department’s super-secret final soiree this semester (Beach Museum, 6pm). Believe me, I really wanted to bring someone with me but let’s face it, you’re all pretty lame, so I went alone.

Upon arrival, the head of the department took my coat, which felt like a little bit of awkward because I also have a class with her (Not for long! End of semester! To be honest I’ll kind of miss it. I’ve been feeling weirdly nostalgic lately. Let’s not talk about this any more). Upstairs, the thing was in full swing. Everyone was dressed to the nines and I hardly knew anybody. And the people I did know had already gone off into grad-student cliques. And I needed a drink.

I spent a few minutes doing that thing where you circle the periphery of the party, gaping stupidly at the people who know what they’re doing but not quite knowing how to approach them and start talking. Largely because, as I’ve suspected all long, they all look pretty fucking sexy and that shit is distracting. What, are you gonna go up to Naomi Wood and tell her "hot dress!" That’s okay, because she came up to me.

"This might be the last of these parties for a while. The English department budget’s getting drastically cut," she said. Oh noes! Then we made fun of the Collegian. With which I acquired a new teacher-crush.

Some professors performed a short reading of ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales,’ a short story by Dylan Thomas. It is fascinating to watch certain people read out loud: Naomi, Michael Donnelly, Wendy Matlock, Liz Dodd, Donald Kimball, Alyssa Dawson; they all had this incredible ability to inflect the sentence just so the humor comes out just so at the end of it. Fun fun fun (yes, I am a huge dork).

I finally gave Wendy Matlock a piece of my mind. Specifically, she is brilliant and enthusiastic, which makes class with her amazing. But! The students, so christianey; sometimes class feels like church, and when it gets like that, my eyes glaze over and my mind shuts down, not to return until someone says "may I get freudian for a moment?" I was afraid you’d never ask.

Phil Nel, by the way, is massively cooler than you. Just ask him anything about music. I dare you.

Tim Dayton is also massively cooler than you. He only listens to punk rock made between 1976 and 1984. We know this from talking to the head of the women’s studies program, Angela Hubler, Dayton’s wife, who wasn’t afraid to zing him. "Does he ever let one else speak in class?" No, he doesn’t, but we don’t mind. We never have anything important to add anyway.

Then we went to the Kathouse, where I flirted with a bunch of grad students. Happy Festivus!

Yesterday Anthony Doerr visited K-State and read a short story from his latest book, The Shell Collector. That reading was the best K-State’s had this year. Afterward, the English department got together at Rock-A Belly’s. I was midway through my second G&T when the Saucy Aussie made some idle comment that ended with "vagina." I remember precisely what she sad: "Crikey! Kangaroo Kylie Minogue sheila dingo boomerang bushwhacked VAGINA!" The table went silent for a second, and Saucy Aussie seemed embarrassed, probably because she thought she had crossed some comfort line.

Well, that’s not why we were quiet. The word "vagina" is actually a great source of comfort. Hearing it is like having a cool breeze roll across you on a summer day. No; we went silent because each of us had hoped to be the first to say "vagina" that evening, and when she beat us to the (kitty) punch, no one was ready with another clever vaginal follow-up. Personally, her awesomeness made me feel like a slow-witted prude.

I lamely tried to break the silence. "Thanks! I’ve been waiting for someone to say ‘vagina’ all day," I ejaculated. But ‘vagina’ doesn’t roll off my tongue as nicely as it does from hers. OR DOES IT?

After dinner, Rhymes With Visa drove a few of us - Imad, Tony Doerr, Saucy Aussie - to the top of the hill that overlooks the city. We had to get out and hike a little ways to reach the summit, from which we had a beautiful view of Best Buy. Then Rhymes With Visa drove us back to town. Not til much later did I realize how pathetically funny the whole scene actually was: we were basically all guided up to the top of Makeout friggin’ Mountain, and yet it never occurred to anybody to cop a feel. Lame.

Vagina! There; our reputations are safe.

 

English Department Head Elizabeth Dodd hosted a soiree after memoirist Allison Wallace’s Friday reading. "You’re all invited!" she told the entire population of Stuni’s Little Hall that afternoon.

This was it! My entire time here I’d been sweating for a chance to hobnob with grown-up English nerds, perhaps even put names to the faces I keep running into at the English majorey events just like this one. At last, the Bard answered my prayers.

Dodd lives in a tasteful house a westward hike away from campus. The get-together was everything I’d hoped for! There were little sandwiches! There was chocolate cake! There was Tanya Gonzalez! There was Jen Roberts! There was Anne Longmuir! There was Imad Rahman! There was Donna Potts (I haven’t finished the reading for her class! Don’t tell her)! There was Chris Kennedy (I was especially pleased about this because he was the only other person wearing a T-shirt)! There were avuncular gentlemen in red bow ties! There was booze! It was Elizabeth Dodd’s booze! I drank Elizabeth Dodd’s booze!

The professors were lively and full of good humor and wit. Why doesn’t it rub off on the undergrads? With that puzzle in mind, I stepped outside for a cigarette with Erica Hateley, who had an important question for me.

Do you find this entire town really, really racist?

Yeah.

I was afraid I was the only one who saw Kansas that way.

Nah. It’s weird how they all think they’re not, too. I come from a big city and even when you find someone who’s full of prejudice, it just doesn’t have the kind of legitimacy it carries in a small town. I spent most of last semester really pissed about it, but I eventually met some other minorities here. Someone took me aside and reminded me that I’m in fucking Kansas.

On a search for a wine glass — umm, and a bottle — I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with guest of honor herself, Memoriste Allison Wallace, who offered servicey advice for interacting with my undergraduate peers:

You can talk to a sophomore, but you can’t say much.

I’m gonna run home and write that down.

Don’t quote me! I didn’t say that.

Oh, actually I was going to take credit for it anyway.

I see! You’ve got a great writing career ahead of you.

Yeah, speaking of that: James Frey? JT Leroy? Margaret Seltzer? Is this really a new thing, or is it possible that people have been fudging memoirs for as long as we’ve been writing them?

Nowadays we talk about people writing a memoir. It used to be that people wrote their memoirs. A hundred years ago it meant that, near the end of your life, you’d sit down and do it, and there was a sort of gallantry about it. Today you can look for one on, say, Britney Spears or someone like that. It’s not about your life; it’s just a slice of your life. This is a new thing. The conventions for it are only recently being written. And so the people running out and sensationalizing these fake stories are breaking this brand new etiquette that they created.

There you have it. Lesson: Mrs. Dodd’s nose gets really really red in the presence of other authors. Also: spend time with convivial, intelligent grown-ups and you’ll actually learn something new. Parties are the new required reading!