Everything Must Go
Page 9
N: Are you professionally trained?
EH: Sort of? I went to this supersmall alternative boarding school in upstate New York, and all these artists who live in the area come through to teach classes—artists in residence, they’re called. When I was a first-year—sorry, a junior—we had this super-rad dude come teach us how to take pictures. He had this thing where before we could even touch the camera, we had to learn how to see. The class was actually called “Ways of Seeing.” A lot of staring at walls and trees and trying to read texture.
And then over the summer I started doing Chicago Arts, which is this program for teenagers into visual and performing arts, and I met a bunch of friends there who just wanted to talk about, like, making art all day. It’s an amazing opportunity that they afford to young artists, and I learned a lot from them—and some of us ended up going to that same little boarding school upstate.
N: Do you want to be a photographer when you grow up?
EH: I thought this was “Ask an Older Dude”! Am I not supposed to be a grown-up already?
N: Do you feel like a grown-up?
EH: On some days. I recently went back home to Queens—I go to Columbia, so it’s kind of a commute—to spend a few weeks with my mom, just because we’re really close and I missed her. So I’ve been living in my childhood home, right next door to my childhood best friend, but still feeling kind of mature, I guess.
Well, there you have it, Nymphettes. Smart, stylish, AND caring. Please try to restrain yourselves in the comments section.
And there, snaking just between the lines, was everything I needed to hold on to the hope that he was coming for me after all.
Journal entry, afternoon of September 23
After everyone went to sleep last night, I snuck into the library and Googled Elijah, just for old times’ sake. I haven’t done it since being at Quare, and as soon as I saw the interview, I was immediately flooded with warmth. My thoughts:
• See! He DOES care for me.
• Why hasn’t he written me yet? Or confirmed his December visit?
• I’mhismuseI’mhismuseI’mhismuse
• He’s off being an artist. Of course he hasn’t been in touch.
I read the line about not being meant to be rooted to this world maybe fifty times, and then I turned off the computer and hyperventilated for a while. The library was completely dark and silent, and the computer I’d been using was warm.
To: All-staff
From: Wink DelDuca
Subject: Miss Tulip
September 24, 9:54 p.m.
Salutations,
Wink here with the weekly digest.
After we published Grace’s piece yesterday, the comment section blew up, just as expected. I’ve been hearing from many of you editors, too, and it seems that everybody’s on the same page: we want Miss Tulip back, and we want her back now. As you’ve read, Elijah seems pretty set on staying tight-lipped, but a girl can have hope, can’t she?
As usual, we’ll be meeting on Wednesday evening. Those of you who are local will be at the diner, and we’ll Skype the rest of you in. We can drown our feelings in burgers and milkshakes and do some serious scheming. It’s Rhonda’s turn to buy.
;)
Wink
Editor in Chief, Nymphette magazine
Nymphette is an online feminist arts & culture magazine for teenagers. Each month, we choose a theme, and then you send us your writing, photography, and artwork.
Attempt 1
Elijah Huck
245 West 107th Street
New York, NY 10025
September 24
Dear Elijah,
I’m here at Quare.
It’s just as bizarre as you made it out to be. And it’s strange to think that I’ve only been here for less than a month. I’m already forgetting how to shop online.
Why did you decide not to come to Quare this year? Did it have anything to do with me?
Funny story! One of my neighbors, Marigold, was sitting next to me in the computer lab in the library and pulled up the latest issue of Nymphette, which as you know features an interview with you.
“Can you believe he went here?” she kept asking. “I’m such a huge Miss Tulip fan.”
I tried to play it cool, and be all blasé but I was having difficulty swallowing.
Attempt 2
Elijah Huck
245 West 107th Street
New York, NY 10025
September 24
Dear Elijah,
Everyone here nods and says, “This Friend speaks my mind” when they agree with someone.
My roommate is Juna. She’s okay, but very serious and I think she hates me. There’s an awful wood nymph girl named Becca who thinks the proportions of sex are akin to an orange trying to fit into a straw.
It’s awful and I hate it. Can you come get me?
Attempt 3
Elijah Huck
245 West 107th Street
New York, NY 10025
September 24
Dear Elijah,
You would be so proud of how I’m adapting to Quare. I love how kooky and bizarre everyone is! I’m even embracing “no shell speak,” though you teased me endlessly about not being able to do it when you told me about the rule last year.
That said, I haven’t become ugly or unstylish. I’m maintaining relationships with my favorite Etsy merchants, who continue to update me immediately when they get something in that they know I’ll like. I trust you won’t tell anyone that I’ve been using the Internet like this when you come in December.
Attempt 4
Elijah Huck
245 West 107th Street
New York, NY 10025
September 24
Dear Elijah,
I want to bury my head in your neck and smell your flannel and wear your tiny round glasses but as a joke and everyone in Maison Kayser will look over and be like, Oh, those two again, they’re so in love
The actual letter I sent Elijah
Elijah Huck
245 West 107th Street
New York, NY 10025
September 24
Dear Elijah,
I’ve been at Quare for about two weeks now, and I have to say that it’s everything I thought it would be—and possibly more. I made a valiant effort to start off on the right foot (I even read the entirety of Naomi Klein’s writings over the summer in addition to Gender Trouble), but I’m not exactly rolling in friends at this point. Between writing a loser of a poem during an orientation exercise and taking all the good stuff from the Free Store before everyone else got to it, I’ve established myself as the neighborhood oddball. A Boo Radley of sorts. Only much less creepy (let’s hope).
Even so, it feels exciting. It feels like a new chapter, exactly what I need to clear my head from this past year, what with my parents and Bowen drama and the photo series. To be quite honest, I think the blog—in a certain way—saved me from thinking about all that other stuff. You could call it the perfect distraction.
I’m really looking forward to your visit. There are so many possible settings for Miss Tulip posts, and you can be sure I’m scoping them out!
Flora
Journal entry, evening of October 1
Sam and I have been sitting together at dinner this whole week, making snide comments about the Quares. Yesterday, after we circled up and sang the pre-meal song about letting life move and stir us, I stood to the side, as usual, waiting for the crowd to die down before getting food.
“You’re always the last person to take food,” Sam noted, migrating over to where I was standing to wait beside me. Today his high-waisted slacks were plaid, secured with suspenders visible under his red-and-brown cardigan.
“I don’t do lines,” I said, only half kidding. “They strike me as so plebian.”
He laughed. “And you are … ?”
“A patrician, obviously.”
“Obviously. Has anyone ever
complimented you on your posture? You’re like a ramrod.”
I told him that they had, just once or twice. My heart was beating fast, but not Elijah fast, just like I’m-a-little-bit-excited-and-I’ve-missed-witty-banter fast.
We sat at a table with Juna. For dinner was Miriam’s famous lentil loaf, which sounds much more disgusting than it is.
“Is this supposed to be so solid?” Sam slapped his fork on the mound of lentil loaf, which quivered gently.
“Again with the lentil loaf,” I said. “You really have something against it. I think it’s good.”
“Oh, it’s swell,” he said. “Now we have some form of self-defense.”
He looked around, then leaned forward conspiratorially.
“You never know when everyone is going to snap. They may seem sedated with love now, but I don’t want to know what’s going to happen when they find out how much money you spent on that outfit.”
I pushed his shoulder. Inside, I was beaming. There’s nothing like someone noticing my outfit. Despite Quare’s efforts to stamp this out of me, it is my DRUG.
“Stop it,” I said. “I look the part. See? I’m finally starting to fit in.”
He was kind of right, though. I was wearing a tunic with clogs, but the tunic was far from tattered. It was vintage DVF, for Christ’s sake. And the clogs, painted with an intricate design depicting a Renaissance scene, were comfortable, sure, but they’re those ones Daddy got me from Amsterdam on his “Amsterdam Dental Group Goes to Amsterdam” trip.
At that very moment, Althea and Michael Lansbury started doing contact improvisation right there in the dining hall. It’s this form of dancing where you’re always in contact, like sliding over each other’s backs and rolling on the floor on top of each other.
Needless to say, I would never in a million years do contact improv.
“I think,” I said, while everyone was still staring at Althea and Michael, “that once you’ve been here too long, you’re sort of not fit to be around people anymore. You go off the deep end.”
“Going off the deep end—that’s kind of a perfect metaphor,” Sam said. “Maybe going to Quare is like walking into a pond. Some of us are on the edge, just dipping our toes in from time to time. Other people are wading in, really getting their knees wet and getting used to the water like moms do, one segment of their bodies every fifteen minutes. Some people are actually swimming, doing those stupid flips in the water that always get water up your nose. And some people are, like, pegged under a rock at the bottom of the pond, just meditating. Those are the super-Quares.” He looked meaningfully at the Oracle of Quare, seven feet tall and skinny, with long, tangled yellow hair, then wearing a rainbow tie-dyed onesie and heart-shaped sunglasses and holding Basilia over his head like in that scene from The Lion King.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Well.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “It’s hard to say, because I’ve only known you for a month, Flo-Go, but I think you’re a toe-dipper. But more of a toe-dipper than you’d admit to being. Me, I’m not putting my toe in that nasty shit. I’m, like, sunbathing on the dock. SPF one hundred. I burn easily.”
It’s such a shame I’m not attracted to him, because he’s so funny, and I like talking to him. He really does remind me of my grandfather: crotchety when he’s hungry, uneasy around leafy green vegetables. He mediates so easily between the Quares, who seem to really like him—even though he makes fun of them all the time—and people like me. I feel like all I do is laugh around him, and it’s been so long since I’ve laughed this hard.
“You two are such characters, but I don’t think that’s a fair metaphor,” Juna said, obviously using the confrontation strategy of keeping her tone level and beginning with a lighthearted, non-judgmental statement to remain amicable. But she had that pinched look on her face that she gets when somebody says something she doesn’t agree with. “Quare takes some getting used to, but I think you’ll find that it’s less homogenous than you think it is. Give it a chance. Or maybe talk to the Oracle about it? His office hours are on Wednesday nights, and if you’re unhappy, it’s really on you to address it.”
I’d thought that Juna and I had made strides in our relationship ever since I had recently and vocally agreed with her that Quare should do more to acknowledge that the school exists on land stolen from indigenous people. But tension clearly bubbled below the surface of her suggestion.
“I was talking to the Oracle the other day, actually,” Sam said. “He doesn’t believe in condoms because they make sex meaningless. He looks like he’d give a great massage, if you’re interested.”
It sounds mean, now that I write it, but he really was joking. He was smiling at Juna the whole time, trying to form an alliance with her. Juna, though, wasn’t biting.
“Thanks for the recommendation,” she said, not unkindly, stacking her dishes and standing up. The back of her skirt was tucked into her underwear, but it would be shell speak to point it out to her, so I averted my gaze.
“My pleasure,” Sam said easily.
“Well, I’ll see you around, I guess,” Juna said, and left.
Just because I have an ally now doesn’t mean I miss India, Cora, and Lael any less. Sam is just someone who sits across from me in the library and emails back and forth with me to pass the time.
The emails Sam and I sent back and forth to pass the time in the library
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:10 p.m.
I just found a long, curly black hair in my vegan oatmeal cookie. I feel like you’d know what to do with this information.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:15 p.m.
Spit it out, I guess?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:16 p.m.
Genius.
I thought I’d be cool with it, but this natural stuff is kind of wearing on me. I think I need a cigar.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:21 p.m.
If you’re not a hippie, why are you at Quare?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:24 p.m.
Public school sucks.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:24 p.m.
Really?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:25 p.m.
Okay, maybe that’s not the whole truth. There was a small incident last spring, and my analyst said it would be good for me to get out of Montréal for a while.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:26 p.m.
“Montréal.” Avec l’accent aigu.
Also, you see an analyst?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:30 p.m.
Mais oui. Bien sûr.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:33 p.m.
I guess I don’t know much about public school.
But seriously, that sounds hard.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sa
m Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:34 p.m.
“That sounds hard.” The Quare motto. I feel like I hear that fourteen times a day.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:34 p.m.
Sorry to be such a cliché.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:36 p.m.
That’s okay. It was hard.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:37 p.m.
Can I ask you something? Why do you dress like you’re eighty-five? Your cardigan today, for example. I think it’s really cool and everything, but I’m curious.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:38 p.m.
I’m pretty sure that’s shell speak. I could report you for that, you know.
To: Sam Chabot
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:38 p.m.
Sorry.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sam Chabot
Subject: Re:
October 2, 9:41 p.m.
I dress like this because I appreciate a casual, durable knit.