The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018

by Sheila Heti

  The “logic”: I have a libido; therefore I could not have been raped. The truth: I did not want to be trapped in his house full of horrible shadows and statues.

  FASCICULUS.

  Where two thighs meet—a Vertex glows—

  My “Sex”—a Bomb or Missile—

  Remembrance Now—the Weapon grows—

  Turned—inward—at—my—Will—

  As Hunters—carcass—make their Prey—

  A “Special” “Victim”—I*—

  To excavate—Preempt decay—

  Extract—from sense of Time—

  * Variant: I’m

  TO BE ON THE MARKET DURING HIS FESTIVAL.

  The professor, at once bragging and threatening, had often told my younger self that he controlled my future, my livelihood, my *worth.* (I still ask myself sometimes: “Is my future ‘worth’ living?”)

  Being on the job market became a continuously fraught performance. The most excruciating theater took place where no one else could see it: my brain. Denial was a circus act. I don’t know how the circus animals survived the mistreatment.

  In preparing for the long stressful winters of phone calls and emails and MLA hotel rooms and campus visits and “professional” attire (my rapist liked to talk about grooming me, as if I were a pet—I remember how furious his reaction would be whenever I chose to wear glasses, look frumpy, or let lint appear on my clothing), I should have done this:

  I should have worked through the bad memories. I should have worked through the feelings of disgust, self-loathing, humiliation, fear, despair, and hopelessness.

  Instead I let the feelings and memories choreograph my actions. I punished my psyche for remembering details about JF. I punished my flesh for what JF did to it.

  PSYCHOMACHIA.

  We wish we had selected our

  Society with much more care.

  The problem is you’ve shut the door,

  Available to life no more.

  But she can’t risk or bear the chance

  Of misconstruing some advance—

  What if his cultured ways to me

  He gave, rape culture a disease?

  I never understood this world.

  I still don’t understand this world.

  REMINDER.

  And yet he could be vulnerable—alarmingly so. Once, in his house, during a meeting to discuss his course (for which I was a teaching assistant), he began to sob violently. No one else was there. I was sitting at one end of a couch. He sat next to me and—before I could do anything—weighted down my lap with his head. “I miss my mother,” he cried over and over again on my lap.

  I was rigid. I was rigid with an emotion for which I still have no name. I don’t remember how I got myself out of the situation.

  Did part of myself get left behind—? Is that why I can’t remember?

  SOMETIMES I SCREAMED.

  A Special Victim said to me

  In Space there is no Rape—

  A Special Victim heard from me

  In Space there is no Hope—

  There is no thing with Feathers, here—

  No tune without the words—

  Nobody can exist out here—

  I’m nothing—Who you were—

  CONTUSIONS, RECENT.

  Whenever I felt the horrible urge to “pleasure” myself, I would often succumb—but not without using a hammer afterwards to punish my flesh with such ferocity that the pain made me pass out.

  There were times in my life when my skin ran out of places that were not purple, turquoise, blue, or red.

  The alternative to battering my flesh: letting the intrusive ghost of my rapist happily watch me surrender to my libido.

  INSTRUCTIONS LEFT INCOMPLETE (after Donne’s Holy Sonnet).

  Gather our parts, united self, though you

  Do not exist quite yet enough to send

  Your futuristic wholeness from the end

  Of lyric time to where we wait for you.

  Make us consent to sentience anew.

  Revive our will until there is no end

  But endless means by which we all transcend

  The paradox you already outgrew.

  Believe the story that free will is free.

  By then you’ll have put on the suit of “me”

  As if it were composed of empathy,

  A fabric of compatibility.

  It’s your turn “to be” now. Now you are me.

  Please sign your name here if you ________.

  WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS IS TRUE?

  (A) Someone says, “I am lying right now.”

  (B) Someone says, “Rape me.”

  (C) Someone says, “I never consented to this alien experiment called ‘existence.’”

  (D) Someone says, “No means yes.”

  (E) Someone says, “At least you didn’t die.”

  (F) Someone says, “Why can’t you just get over it?”

  (G) Someone says, “What you went through is a first-world problem.”

  (H) Someone says, “What about the Earth and climate change? You have to put rape in perspective.”

  (I) Someone says, “But you seem okay.”

  (J) Someone says, “I can’t believe how widespread this problem is.”

  (K) Someone says, “Let me rape you.”

  (L) Someone says, “Let go.”

  (M) Someone says, “Am I the only one who can hear all of these voices.”

  ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMING.

  “When you use the word ‘rape’ to describe what happened to you—can you use a more subtle expression? Something more elegant? You are an English language expert, Jennie, so I trust you must know how to discuss what happened without using that word. There must be a more decent, less ugly way of saying it. I am sure you know of such a way. Jennie? Are you upset? Why are you crying? Did I say something wrong? Jennie, say something. Please, I’m sorry. Jennie, what did I do.”

  CLEAR THOUGHTS IN A CLEAR SHADE (after Marvell’s “The Garden”).

  To vanquish all my memories’ blight

  I swallow dots that promise light.

  Ellipses of unconsciousness

  Unknow me into happiness.

  What science fiction is this space

  Where time is just another place?

  No apples drop about my head

  Yet “apples” I can “taste” instead.

  Such luscious freedom from the past

  Is pleasure after pain has passed.

  Once human life I finally shake

  A shape past human I will take.

  Were I a Daphne turned to tree

  I’d pray for flames to set me free.

  Tillandsia I’d rather be,

  A lock of air, the dew my key.

  Yet still I live, an idiot,

  A shadow that can strut and fret.

  Why human form? Why woman form?

  Collapse me into formlessness

  Until existence nonsense is:

  The sonic and the furious,

  A nothing of significance;

  —An alien of consciousness;

  A spacetime of unconsciousness.

  RESURRECTION LULLABY (after Milton).

  When one considers how one’s life is spent,

  Each resurrected self another hide

  Less human than the one that last had died,

  One’s brain a frozen bruise that can’t consent

  To heal after the violence he meant,

  His afterlife itself slow homicide,

  “Please let my will complete the suicide,”

  One prays. But other voices, to relent

  That prayer, interrupt, “One did not need

  Apology, redress, or an arrest

  To live as though his punishment were great.

  Survival was enough to fill the need

  Required by existence of each guest.

  Your prayer’s heard. Now fall asleep and wait.”

  DREAM.

&nb
sp; Outside: a Farm. Inside: a dimly lit living room. A constellation of antique furniture. A couch. A young woman, my height, we’re standing in the room looking at each other, no one else is in the room, she looks like me but her hair is longer and her cheeks are fuller and the scars on her arms are still visible. I notice them because she’s gesturing. She’s pointing at the couch. “That’s where I die,” she says. “That’s where you must take my place. There is no other way. I have no future worth living.”

  I used to hate these dreams. I’m learning to live with them. They’re like the dreams I have of North Korea. They’re like the dreams I have of life after death.

  The next time I see her I will say:

  Forgive yourself for having been naive.

  You’ve dwelled here for too long. It’s time to leave.

  DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING QUOTATION.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

  THE GRADUATE MENTORING AWARD. NOTE: THE AWARD WAS RENAMED IN AUGUST, SOON AFTER THE LETTER WAS SENT.

  To:

  June 2016

  Executive Director

  American Society for _______________

  Dear Professor _________,

  Recently I learned that there is a graduate mentoring award named after (I’m just going to force myself to spell out his name) Jay Fliegelman.

  This man was supposed to be my dissertation adviser. I say “supposed to be” because he spent more time sexually harassing and stalking me than he did advising me academically. Instead of discussing ideas, scholarship, or projects, he “mentored” me with insights such as “All men have rape fantasies, including your father.” (That is a line I will never forget.) He left me voice messages about overdosing on male enhancement pills. He shared explicit fantasies with me—despite my protests. He violated my flesh, my psyche, my sense of bodily integrity—despite knowing that I was *unwilling,* despite knowing that I was a virgin, despite knowing that I was incapacitated by mental illness. He must have known, too, that I was under the influence of his institutional power. I was new to Stanford, new to California, new to the profession. He had been in the profession and at Stanford for decades. Indeed, his own mentors and former dissertation advisers were still teaching and advising in the Stanford English department when I arrived as a 21-year-old first-year Ph.D. student. Only from this temporal distance can I see so clearly his power and my powerlessness.

  For years I have struggled to be a model survivor. I wouldn’t want to get Stanford into trouble, right? I should show how grateful and uncomplaining I am—after all, Stanford punished the professor by suspending him for two years without pay, right? Stanford, too, has remained silent about the case. There is no public record of what happened. Not even a concise announcement describing the nature of Jay Fliegelman’s misconduct and punishment. (Does Stanford not understand that in the absence of clear communication, rumors and misinformation have a tendency to grow?)

  In the past few weeks I’ve learned that the years of silence surrounding Jay Fliegelman’s misconduct and punishment have had a number of consequences that are regrettable. One of these consequences: the creation of the award mentioned above. This graduate mentoring award is named after a man who abused his power, who refused to apologize for raping his student, who screamed at and terrified his student, who dropped by his student’s dorm unannounced causing the student to hide in her closet in the dark wondering “How long do I have to stay here? Is he gone yet?”—whose ghost continues to haunt his student to this day.

  I have worked hard to forgive Professor Fliegelman. I realize he was human and complex. I am sure he was a good mentor to many students. I admire the loyalty and gratitude that former students of Jay Fliegelman have demonstrated by creating this award. I do not know if they are or were aware of what he did to me. Perhaps they were unaware of the extent to which Professor Fliegelman caused damage. In any case, if any former students are reading this: Now you know.

  I understand the “Jayfest.” I have no objection to naming his collection of books “the Fliegelman Library.” But what hit me in the solar plexus and made—makes—me feel sick: seeing the website for the Jay Fliegelman award for *graduate mentorship* (seeing the “mugshots” of professors honored for mentoring students the way Jay Fliegelman mentored his students) and recognizing one of my graduate professors from a non-Stanford university—a professor who has been nothing but professional and kind to me. “Are these awards given to advisers who sexually harass and rape their students?” I wondered—“and if so what did Professor X do to deserve such an obscene award?”

  The thought now strikes me as absurd. But it is no more absurd than the existence of an award for graduate mentoring named in honor of a man whose “mentoring” included threats, controlling behavior, objectification of a student’s body, and sexual violence. Surely there are better examples in whose honor this award might be renamed.

  If you are one of Jay Fliegelman’s former students who had an experience worth celebrating: I believe you. You need not provide documentation to persuade me. I believe that, in your experience, he was a wonderful mentor. Is it too much for me to ask you to believe me too?

  Thank you for your time and consideration.

  Seo-Young Chu

  January 2017. Why I Am Joining The March.

  In an ideal world, my body and mind together would join the march—in person, in public, in visible protest.

  In an ideal world, my flesh would freely will itself outside and onto the streets to demonstrate out loud against the inauguration of a man whose irresponsible and casual expressions of entitlement and violence have amplified the trauma (the injury, the bleeding wound) of rape culture.

  In an ideal world, the president of the United States of America would not be so eerily reminiscent of a specific nightmare from my own personal past: a man in a position of power who sexually harassed and violated me seventeen years ago, a man whose ghost lives on in this Yellow-Haired-Man-In-Ultimate-Position-Of-Power.

  In an ideal world, the pain that I am experiencing right now would not exceed the sum of the medical conditions with which I have been diagnosed (including post-traumatic stress, bipolar depression, spinal herniation, fibromyalgia, anxiety, and chronic migraines).

  In an ideal world, there would be female as well as male U.S. presidents.

  Yet I believe in the reality of ideal worlds. They can be articulated. They can be drawn. They can be painted. They can be diagrammed. They can be meditated. They can be realized.

  EPILOGUE.

  I am one of the lucky ones.

  STACEY TRAN

  ■

  In Conversation with Vi Khi Nao

  FROM Cosmonauts Avenue

  Let’s begin by knitting

  Stitching

  The haiku is like cutting fabric

  Nao: How fake is your haiku? To what degree of fakeness? And, did you measure? You make pretty extraordinary leaps with your line breaks? Tell me about your process—was it like “cutting potatoes” or as you say like “cutting fabric”?

  Tran: I didn’t measure anything, which contributes to its fakeness. Haiku is a surprising form. Counting syllables is not. My process with Fake Haiku was an industrial machine that sews garments, but also the scene of Jeanne Dielman peeling potatoes. These fragments were held together by what I could reach for outside my window.

  Who is a better chef? Your mother or your father? Or perhaps it is you.

  My parents collaborate when it comes to cooking. My father is a tastemaker; my mother is a magician. My mother cooks more, so by virtue of that, she’s more of a cook (in quantity). She makes all of my favorite meals. My favorite thing she makes is bún bò Huế. I love the food my father makes. He taught me how to scramble eggs and how to wash lettuce. He would buy chicken livers, or chicken hearts, or pig’s blood, xào với rau răm. My fath
er has a few specialties that my mother won’t mess with, like bún thịt nướng. He likes to grill on his homemade outdoor charcoal stove.

  And, what is an armpit journal? Is it a journal that you keep under the armpit at all times? Or is it more like a journal in which you write about armpits?

  My doctor prescribed journaling. She said, “Keep a journal about your armpits.” Today she said “Keep a journal about your muscle spasms.”

  Why is she giving you these imperatives?

  I wanted a second opinion.

  I used to think white people smell like butter. What do you think white people smell like? Especially in a bibliography full of white people?

  Hotel soap

  Lavender and roses pressed

  In old library books

  What do you think Asians smell like? Would you write a fake haiku about their smell?

  Cherry blossoms printed on silk

  Soaking in kwan loong oil

  Dry shrimp under the tongue

  How would you describe the smell of a mother of pearl black lacquer box with the red felt lining?

  Before this interview, I scooped out two scoops of vanilla ice cream. Then I realized that I could not speed eat it so I threw the glass bowl into the refrigerator. I wonder if this interview will go badly because I didn’t eat those two scoops of ice cream.

  You can be doing both.

  I am not at home.

  And, I would need to time travel.

  Bowl in the fridge

  Upside down

  Snow globe

  Speaking of snow globe, are you photogenic? What inspires you to correlate photogenicity with an elevator? Or to juxtapose them in your $20-bill haiku?