Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:05 a.m.
it was horrifying
her face reminded me of the time she found an inexplicable piece of beef in the orange bean soup
“if this soup isn’t vegetarian, someone’s going to get it in the neck”
at least marigold is a heavy sleeper
even though she does have rowdy sexual intercourse in the cabin
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:07 a.m.
Oh my God. With Sam?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sinclaire O’Leary
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:08 a.m.
no
gary
well, possibly sam
i try to shield my eyes though
but things are weird with you and sam
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:09 a.m.
Yes. Very weird. It’s complicated. We were best friends (or something like that) first semester, but then he wrote the thing in the Quare Times, and now I can’t really look at him anymore. He tried to tell me that he’d only written it to get back at Elijah for being an asshole to me, or whatever, but that’s a bit flimsy of an excuse for my liking. And if he thinks a few French sentences in the Times are enough to make me forgive him, he has another think coming!!!
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sinclaire O’Leary
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:11 a.m.
i smoked with sam and a bunch of others last weekend
he rolled a “j” (code-speak for “joint,” code-speak for marijuana thing)
i took just one inhale because peer pressure
peter fell asleep by the fire with his peen out
and it almost got burnt to a weenie crisp
but anyway. sam seems lost
the object of the feminist wrath
but he looks like buddy holly <3
i’ve done paintings of buddy holly <3
in one i used egg tempura that i made myself and he has a golden halo
my mum tried to hang it above her bed but my dad said no
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:15 a.m.
I definitely see the Buddy Holly thing. The glasses, too!
Do you have a sustainability project partner yet?
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sinclaire O’Leary
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:16 a.m.
no partner
i am the new girl
and i don’t leave my cabin
but i want to build a garden
an english cottage garden
with roses
want to join me
f.g.
roses
just think of it
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:19 a.m.
I’m in.
Also—holy shit—I was looking for some paper and found a note that must have fallen out of Juna’s diary or something. (She also leaves letters between her and Thee in plain sight on her dresser, and let me tell you, they’re not much better.)
“I’m scared shitless, because I can tell this isn’t just puppy love. I saw right down to the place she keeps her fear and fury and I want to stay there forever.”
I am laughing.
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:24 a.m.
Sorry, that last email was really mean. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me! Not a bitch, I promise.
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:25 a.m.
I really hope I didn’t offend you… . It’s truly all out of love! I’m totally supportive of Juna’s relationship with her girlfriend.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sinclaire O’Leary
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:30 a.m.
calm down, f.g.
i was just sewing a stuffed goat by candlelight and some yarn caught on fire
but crisis avoided
marigold slumbers on
the letter is hilarious
juna is so earnest and passive-aggressive at the same time
she once backhandedly accused fern of speaking in monologues
“have you ever thought about going out for hamlet?”
this must be about the theodora person
“thee”
they are in love
or whatever
“i want to stay there forever”
juna is sort of amazing
To: Sinclaire O’Leary
From: Flora Goldwasser
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:33 a.m.
But I am bad for snooping. Also, she really does mean well. Every time someone comes close to me these days, I want to shove them away with all of my strength.
To: Flora Goldwasser
From: Sinclaire O’Leary
Subject: Re: ughhh
February 20, 2:34 a.m.
don’t feel bad
that’s what roommates do
i’ve found ungodly things in marigold’s drawers
also she changes her menstrual cup in the cabin
and dumps the contents unceremoniously out the window
so i feel entitled to the odd snoop
i should sleep
good night, f.g.
Lael Goldwasser
Harvard College
2609 Harvard Yard Mail Center
Cambridge, MA 02138
February 21
Lael,
It’s late at night, and I can’t stop thinking about Elijah. I know I should stop thinking about him, because he’s never going to write to me again or call me, or anything, but I just can’t. I’ve thrown myself into my work, as I’ve said, but it still creeps up on me when I least expect it. I know I should be pissed at him. And I am. But I have to unlearn loving him first.
You know when you’re reading a book and two characters fall in love, and the author tries really hard to make you understand and feel the love between them? I feel like that trying to get you to understand how I felt when I used to think about him. From the moment I first met him, I felt like if he would only love me, if he would only choose to love what I could offer him, “I could die and that would be all right” (to quote Third Eye Blind). But then he DID accept my offer, and I’ve never felt so hollow and creeped out in my life. I wanted him to absorb me, or maybe I wanted to absorb him, I’m not really sure which.
In the words of the Shangri-Las, “What’s a girl supposed to do?”
Flora
To: Elijah Huck [email protected]
From: Dean Elliot
Subject: hey
February 24, 10:14 a.m.
you need to take responsibility for your actions. flora is. she’s doing a performance art piece that everyone’s talking about. i’m proud of her.
To: Dean Elliot
From: Elijah Huck
Subject: Re: you
February 24, 12:01 p.m.
I feel bad if Flora is upset, but what happened—in my eyes, anyway—is pretty much none of anyone’s business but ours. So if you could get off your high horse and let me know what the hell is going on at Quare, or why that idiot wrote the thing in the newsletter, that would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Transcript of the NPR piece on Vending Machine by Hugo Lauer
From Vending Machine, A Lesson About Selling Ourselves
March 5 8:53 PM ET
HUGO LAUER
LISTEN TO THE STORY
All Things Considered
+ Playlist
HUGO LAUER, HOST: Before I boarded my train from Grand Central Station to a two-track station in small-town Main Stream, New York, I was hungry. Instead of dishing out five dollars for a bag of pretzels, I headed to a vending machine to get my fix, my one and only vice: a Twix bar. Here at the Quare Academy, though, an arts-and-justice boarding school of thirty-four students, vending machines just got a whole lot more complicated.
ALLISON LONGFIELD: So how can we end cycles of oppression? Well, it’s similar to what we’re doing here at Quare: interrupting racism, ageism, sexual discrimination, ableism… .
LAUER: That’s Allison Longfield, who teaches Peace on Earth, an introduction to peace studies, at the school. I sat in on her class this morning and learned all about structural violence. The students at Quare are engaged and serious, and despite the ease of cracking jokes about the abundant kale in the dining hall, it’s clear that they’re doing important work. But back to the matter at hand: a curious vending machine on campus that everyone’s talking about.
FLORA GOLDWASSER: As you can see, all you have to do is insert a coin and make your choice… .
LAUER: And that’s Flora Goldwasser, a first-year—the equivalent of the eleventh grade—at Quare. We’re standing outside her A-frame cabin, which overlooks the enormous Quare Pond, still thick with ice in most parts. Flora’s the creator of Vending Machine, or Everything Must Go, a performance art piece that debuted at the school last month. In the machine are trinkets, cosmetics, and clothing directly from Goldwasser’s own cabin.
GOLDWASSER: There are my cat-eye sunglasses, my French glass water jug, a pair of suede Carel flats… .
LAUER: Whenever a row is emptied of possessions, Goldwasser and a friend crack the machine open. She shows me how it’s done.
(SOUND BITE OF BANGING AND POUNDING)
GOLDWASSER: So we’ve gotten really good at using these tools— Oh, wait, Sinclaire, could you grab this for a second?
(SOUND BITE OF JANGLING)
GOLDWASSER: And now I’m putting some jewelry in this row, because it ran out really fast.
LAUER: What makes this story more interesting still is that Quare was most recently profiled in the New York Times due to its curious “no shell speak” policy. Students sign a pledge not to talk about physical appearance—and that includes objects like the ones in Goldwasser’s machine. And that, for Goldwasser, is where part of the activism lies.
GOLDWASSER: I was surprised when I found out that we couldn’t talk about how we look on the outside, because I’m from Manhattan, and making comments about other people’s clothes and bodies has always been normal for me. Plus, I’ve always loved shopping and going to thrift stores to find treasures like this.
LAUER: Goldwasser’s holding up a pair of old-fashioned binoculars.
GOLDWASSER: But the Oracle—have you met the Oracle of Quare yet?—teaches us every week, in spirituality seminar, this thing about baseless love, this love that doesn’t have to be earned. Baseless love is what “no shell speak” is trying to accomplish. But after last semester, I’ve started to wonder if baseless love exists—or if even when we think we’re experiencing it, what’s really going on is a transaction.
LAUER: That’s a lot to consider.
GOLDWASSER: I’m incorporating all these ideas into an actual play, and that’ll hopefully have more of a narrative.
LAUER: In all the interviews she’s done, which at last count is seven, with every paper from Quare’s student news cooperative to New York magazine’s “The Cut,” Goldwasser’s been tight-lipped about the exact genesis of the project, saying only that it has to do with themes of sex—and all relationships—as transactions.
Many have compared Goldwasser’s project to Emma Sulkowicz’s Carry that Weight, a performance art piece by a Columbia student who vowed to lug her mattress around campus until her rapist was expelled from the university. Goldwasser, however, unlike Sulkowicz and other activists who have achieved notoriety on college campuses, isn’t talking about sexual assault at all. I asked Flora: What do you make of comparisons between you and Emma Sulkowicz?
GOLDWASSER: While I’m flattered, I have to point out that the comparison is not exactly merited. The key difference between Emma and me is that she’s a survivor of sexual assault, and I’m not. I think that it’s important for the conversation around my project to stay focused on the idea of transaction rather than assault. It’s an enormous problem in our society when survivors can’t be heard, so the last thing I’d ever want to do is distract from that narrative. What I’m trying to do with my project is to add nuance to the dichotomy of transgression and consent. Because what happens if you consent, but sex still feels like an economic exchange where you’re selling parts of yourself in order to get somebody else’s love or approval?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this quotation that’s been wrongly attributed, actually, to Sylvia Plath. We talked about it in my Feminist Forms elective. It goes, “Girls are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.” I think whoever said it is speaking to a really important point: that sometimes what looks like free will, or even liberation, is still just a transaction.
We have to believe all the stories women tell about their bodies and experiences. Of course, saying that runs into issues of privilege, too—because I’m white and wealthy and able-bodied and all that, more people are bound to listen to and believe anything I say.
I also want to be really careful about making this a quote-unquote “women’s issue.” People of all genders, including men, struggle with narrativizing their experiences and feeling around sex.
LAUER: Goldwasser’s given us a lot to consider, which is good given the name of this program, but now there’s a student approaching the vending machine. I’d tell you that he was wearing a beanie, ripped jeans, and an oversized hooded sweatshirt with an enormous star design on it, but that, of course, would be “shell speak.”
GOLDWASSER: Hey, Agnes. How’s it going?
AGNES SURL (Student): Pretty good. Can I … ?
(SOUND BITE OF COIN BEING DROPPED INTO MACHINE)
LAUER, to SURL: What’d you choose?
SURL: I nabbed the sunglasses. Some guys would say they’re effeminate, but I think I can rock them.
LAUER: That’s Agnes Surl, by the way. His mom—one of them, anyway—is Tedra Louis, the famous gender theorist who coined the term “gender warfare.” But I digress.
Miriam Row, the head of school, has been quoted at length about “no shell speak,” the campus mandate. I caught up with her outside of the dining hall, where students, faculty, and residents—including playwright in resident Susan María Velez, who’s advising Goldwasser’s independent study—eat all their meals.
MIRIAM ROW: You know, I obviously support any and all means of artistic activism. I’m proud of Flora for taking a risk. She’s one of our most fascinating students.
LAUER: Where do you see the “no shell speak” rule fitting into all this?
ROW: Well, every student comes to Quare with a different level of awareness of the concept of “shell speak,” and a different level of participation in what I like to call “stuff-ness”: a general preoccupation with material things rather than ideas. I see this project as a negotiation between perhaps the two identities Flora occupies—pre-Quare and post-Quare. I see her desire to get rid of all this stuff as an impulse to embrace what’s inside as
opposed to what’s outside.
LAUER: But when I found Goldwasser by the pond, still tinkering with her machine, she wasn’t sold on the idea of the binary that Row presented.
GOLDWASSER: I think that a lot of times we paint this contrast between what’s shallow and what’s deep—or what’s accessory and what’s core. But it’s not that simple. Am I a holier person because I’ve chosen to get rid of everything? What about the fact that people are taking these things—purchasing them from me? I’ve been talking to my roommate about this a lot, actually, and we still have no idea.
LAUER: Goldwasser says that her favorite time to work is in the middle of the night.
GOLDWASSER: I think the most clearly between two and three in the morning. I used to be such a morning person—up by eight—but now I’m all about the middle of the night. The darker the better. I’m still deciding whether that says anything about my attitude toward aesthetics, or whatever.
LAUER: Hugo Lauer, All Things Considered.
END MUSIC.
A few days after my interview with Hugo Lauer aired, I checked my pigeonhole to find a stack of fan mail. I was surprised, to say the least, but not altogether fazed by the response. I felt, with Vending Machine, the type of focus I’d never felt before and have rarely felt since.
Flora Goldwasser
Pigeonhole 44
The Quare Academy
2 Quare Road
Main Stream, NY 12497
March 7
Dear Flora,
I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Wendy Watson, and I’m in ninth grade at Bowen. I always thought you were cool when you went here, but now I think you’re even cooler! It’s so awesome that you’re doing the vending machine project. I just think it’s the coolest thing ever.
Would you be interested in coming to speak to Bowen Feminists for Girl Power! at some point (I’m the secretary of the club this year)? We’d love to hear you impart some feminist wisdom.
Thank you,
Wendy
Flora Goldwasser
Pigeonhole 44
The Quare Academy
2 Quare Road
Main Stream, NY 12497
Everything Must Go Page 21