This is like the millionth time I’ve come home to an empty fridge. And no, leaving a note does not cut it anymore. I don’t care if you put one of your idiotic poems on there. I grind my fingers to the bone all day. I’m a stenographer—that’s serious work. I type over 250 words per minute!
If I find one more note taped to the bathroom mirror with some garbage like this . . .
this is just to say
I am sorry
I used
your toothpaste
it’s all gone
and I
have gingivitis
there’s some
raspberry
floss left under
the cabinet but
it’s gross
and expired
. . . I’m going to break your face.
I type over 250 words per minute! And do you know what I’ve never typed: a metrically irregular poetic apology on the back of a Rite Aid receipt. You went to Rite Aid! Why didn’t you buy more toothpaste? Or you could have bought some more plums, or Pop Tarts, or something. We needed sponges.
All you ever get is popcorn. Who buys copious amounts of unsalted, unbuttered popcorn? It’s messed up. I’d be better off eating one of your stupid stepped triadic “masterpieces” taped up around this apartment.
While I’m at it, let’s just air it all out. This has really stuck in my craw since the moment it happened. You can’t just sleep with someone else’s girlfriend and then tape a note to her that says . . .
this is just to say
I drank
all the beer
and then
you were probably
asleep
while I banged Suzanne
but don’t worry
Phil Collins’ greatest
hits were
on all night.
How does playing Phil Collins while you and my girlfriend cheat on me make anything better? It’s sick. I haven’t even listened to him since Testify! That was ’97, Will!
I can’t take it anymore—you eat all my produce, use all the toothpaste, sleep with my girlfriend, and I just sprained my ankle on another empty popcorn tin. What kind of a person does these things to a notary public? Who still buys things in tins? Are you sending away for this popcorn, Will?
Things have devolved, real bad. FYI, I’m subletting your room and I’m turning you in for grand theft auto and destruction of public property. Our neighbors—the ones with the borzois—found a lime green Dodge Durango parked upside down in their sun room yesterday morning. Apparently, the suspect fled the scene of the crime, but there was a note taped to the window on which “someone” had scrawled . . .
this is just to say
I am all right
I left
the owner’s
number here
although
I stole his cell phone
so he
will not be
picking up
his lime green Dodge
Durango
whoops my bad.
Newsflash, dirtbag: they don’t serve plums in prison!
14
Looking for a young woman for the chance to exchange introductory remarks and help on homework, particularly math and social studies, perhaps the term project, the triptych display about continental drift, share pencils, markers, erasers (including all those in the shapes of animals), and lunch, with the possibility of swapping the store-bought Aunt Dorothy’s Bigrolls for homemade tomato sandwiches stuffed with slices of sharp cheddar, merging our potato chips on a paper plate, talking about our childhood until the bell rings, keeping this up—lunching—both in the cafeteria and on the front steps of the school, until laughing one day we decide to skip quickly away in my car, a lark, that’s what we’d share is this lark, driving the strange daytime streets while all our classmates suffer under the confused rule of Mrs. Delmanrico and her versions of what happened when the great land masses first pulled apart, finally ending up at the Blue Bird Drive-in, empty in the late afternoon, and sharing two malts, the strawberry and the vanilla, the feeling encircling us certainly something, but not something easily identifiable or given a name, just something new, and in that place, decided to try for the Senior Prom, laughing at it in fun—what a goofy, schoolboy thing to do—but also laughing from that feeling and, well, joy, and in two weeks, after another set of lunches, sharing the Senior Prom, including me picking you up in my freshly washed Bel Air, and meeting your mother and your sister, your sister really giving me the once-over, and you in a dress that is actually pink, believably pink, a pink that rescues that color once and for all, and then dancing at the Prom, our first touch really, carefully committed in the old gymnasium, visiting with your friends and some of my friends, and dancing and sharing then the long walk to the car, but knowing as we felt the night air fall on our warm faces as we left the building that everything has changed now and the feeling we had at the Blue Bird Drive-in has now become a real thing we still don’t have a name for, but we are forever different in the car, talking now about college, not kissing, afraid to really, talking about the future and pledging to write to each other when we go away to college, which we will do, daily, handwritten letters, full of the heartbreaking news of classes, social life, every mention of another person male or female engendering faint but genuine pangs of what we will only be able to call jealousy and longing all sent by post over a period long enough for the price of a stamp to go up three cents, and then meeting again at a graduation summer geology seminar, seeing everything by now quite clearly as the entire conference, all of geology, the very world disappears and we go as we never have gone to bed together that noon without words, though they will come along, among them some we will be happy to pronounce, I do, as we’re wed, two young people fresh and strong and ready for the next thing, though it will be no single thing now but five libraries, two extensive research projects, a baby and then another, four apartments and a house, and then another house and a position, yes geology with some solar research this being for an energy firm in a large Midwestern city and a basketball hoop on the front of the garage along with a free throw line in chalk and growing children, a girl and a boy, who will annoy the neighbors into knowing their names, and there will be success—not small success—in the careers, some original work recognized and material well-being, some weekend afternoons with the sound of a basketball on the driveway we’ll eat sandwiches in the kitchen, and with the desire alive in the room it will be as if one time were all time and we were back on the lawn at a school where we met, and then with the kids gone we’ll clean the garage, the stuff we’re storing, all the photos and schoolwork, and we will share the lovely sound of the broom on that cement floor, but time will turn for me, that’s part of this deal, 75 percent of all women outlive their husbands, and there’ll be an era of you sitting at my bedside as a simple fact, this is later but still too soon by my measure, and the days will wash away, your hand on my arm some and some days just the yellow light on the wall. This is when I’ll ask to walk on the beach and expect you to talk to me, to walk me out in story along a beach, let’s make it on an island, far from the grinding continents, you pick it, Kailua, Waikiki, Waimanalo, or further shorelines, and fill in the details please, the texture of the sand, hard pack or plush, and I’ll want the surf, what there is timid or crazed, and the smell of course and the walk itself, which direction and how far, with me on the ocean side most of the time as we swing our arms and talk the way we’ve always talked, the sweet real pleasure of reason and speculation, and whether we’re barefoot or not, my cuffs wet, we’ll walk on the beach, that’s what we signed up for, and when it grows dark we can stroll back all the way and we can dine by candlelight, there are never enough candles in a life, so there it is: late in the day a walk on the beach and this tray of hospital lasagna in the candlelight.
Average Customer Rating:
*** (Based on 9 reviews)
* * *
**** Must-see beard
!!!
Reviewer: A. Dawson from San Antonio, TX, USA
This is the best beard I’ve seen all year. It’s one of those beards where you just never want it to end. If you get a chance, CHECK OUT THIS BEARD. You won’t be sorry. I guarantee it.
* * *
** Disappointing
Reviewer: Monster Man from Baltimore, MD, USA
I see a lot of beards, and I usually really like first beards, so I was excited about seeing Mr. Bachelder’s beard, especially after a friend of mine recommended it to me. But I’m sorry to say that this beard was a big disappointment. You can see that it has potential, but it’s a little patchy and it just isn’t doing anything new or interesting.
* * *
**** Not for everyone
Reviewer: Melissa T. from Eugene, OR, USA
This is one of those beards that not everyone is going to love, but I think it will find a cult following. It’s a really funny and quirky beard. It’s not completely full, but that almost makes it better somehow. Yes it’s uneven and things get stuck in it, but it’s a first beard people! Congratulations, Mr. Bachelder, I can hardly wait for your next beard!!
* * *
***** AMAZING!!!
Reviewer: JD Vulture from Greenville, NC, USA
Oh my God this is an incredible beard!!! I saw a small part of Chris Bachelder’s beard on the Internet and I just had to go see the whole thing. I was blown away. It’s a hilarious beard, but it’s also sad and touching. This girl beside me was crying because the beard was so emotional. I can’t do it justice. Just do yourself a favor and see this beard. It’s an instant classic, and I know you’ll love it as much as I did.
* * *
* Don’t believe the hype
Reviewer: Paul Russell from Lexington, KY, USA
I am baffled by the hype surrounding this beard. I decided to check the beard out after I read reviews calling it a “daring” beard, a “shockingly original” beard, “one of our best young beards.” Some reviewers went so far as to compare it to Vonnegut’s first beard. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. With Vonnegut, you never lose sight of the integrity and sincerity underlying the beard, but Bachelder’s beard is just a tangled joke, and not even very funny, much less deep or substantive. Right now, the last thing this country needs is more smart-ass facial hair. At a time like this we need authentic beards. Bachelder’s beard is the same beard we’ve been seeing for the last fifteen or twenty years, and it’s getting old. Either do it right or shave.
* * *
*** Not great, not horrible
Reviewer: RW from Jacksonville, FL, USA
Let’s not get carried away on either end. It’s not a National Beard Award winner, but it’s not trash, either. Bachelder’s got a decent beard. It has a certain ragged charm, though I agree with others who have said it could have used a trim.
* * *
* pathetic
Reviewer: Jennifer K. from Rochester, NY, USA
I just can’t believe what passes for a good beard these days. I teach junior high English, and I’ve seen better beards on my eighth-graders. Don’t waste your time. I’ll take Hemingway’s beard every time over today’s beards.
* * *
**** A first look at an up-and-coming beard
Reviewer: Night Train from Silver City, CO, USA
Even though Mr. Bachelder won’t let you touch his beard, his beard will touch you!! See it TODAY!!!!
* * *
**** Surprisingly deep
Reviewer: M-Dog from Tempe, AZ, USA
I was prepared to hate this beard after I found out about the huge advance that Bachelder got for it. And to be honest, I didn’t think much of the beard when I first saw it, and I almost didn’t finish looking at it. But I stuck with it and I’m glad I did. This beard has a way of sneaking up on you. Before I knew it, I was completely engrossed. It has a deceptively simple appearance, but this beard is actually very complicated and challenging. If you devote some time and careful attention to Bachelder’s beard, it will pay you back, but you have to be willing to work.
16
THE VARIETIES OF
ROMANTIC EXPERIENCE:
An Introduction
Robert Cohen
GOOD MORNING. It appears we have quite a turnout.
This is an elective course, as you know from the catalogue, and as such it is forced to compete with several other offerings by our department, a great many of which are, as you’ve no doubt heard, scandalously shopworn and dull, and so may I take a moment to say that I am personally gratified to see so many of you enrolled here in Psych 308. So many new faces. I look forward to getting to know you ea—
Yes, there are seats I believe in the last few rows, if the people, if the people there would kindly hold up a hand to indicate a vacancy beside them, yes, there, thank you . . .
Very well then. No doubt some of you have been attracted by the title listed in the catalogue, a title that is, as many of you surely know, a play on that estimable work by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, a subject very close indeed to the one at hand. I assume that is why you are here. Because as you see, I am neither a brilliant nor a charismatic lecturer. I am merely an average one. An average looking specimen of what to most of you must seem to be an average middle age, teaching at an average educational institution attended by, you’ll forgive me, average students. Are there enough syllabi going around? Good. You will note right away that I subscribe to many of the informal, consensually-determined rules of academic conduct and dress. I favor tweeds and denims and the occasional tie. My syntax is formal. My watch is cheap. You may well catch me in odd moments—and there will be, I assure you, no shortage of them—fiddling with this watch of mine in a nervous, abstracted way, or staring pensively out the window into the parking lot, with its perfect grid of white, dutiful lines, in a manner that suggests deep thought. You may well wonder what is the nature of these deep thoughts of mine. Am I parsing out some arcane bit of theory? Reflecting on the dualities of consciousness? Or am I simply meandering through the maze of some private sexual fantasy, as, statistics tell us, so many of us do so much of the time? Yes, there will be much to wonder about, once we get started. Much to discuss. Admittedly you may find me somewhat more forthcoming than the average tenured professor—more “upfront” as you undergraduates like to say—but that, I submit, is in the nature of my researches, and in the nature of the field itself. One must develop in our work a certain ruthlessness in regard to truths, be they truths of behavior or personality, be they quote unquote private or public. The fact is, There are no private truths in our world. If you learn nothing else this semester, I trust you will learn that.
I ask, by the way, that all assignments be neatly typed. I have no teaching assistant this term. I had one last spring, a very able one at that. Perhaps some of you met her. Her name was Emily. Emily Crane.
I say was though of course she, Emily, Emily Crane, isn’t dead. Still, I think of her as a was, not the is she surely still must be. This is one of the most common and predictable tricks of the unconscious, to suggest to us the opposite of the real, to avoid the truth when the truth will cause us pain. We will discuss such matters in the weeks ahead. We will discuss the lessons, the often hard and painful lessons, of the wounded psyche in its search for wholeness. We will seek to gain insight and understanding into our worst humiliations, not because there is implicit value in such knowledge—this is perhaps open to debate—but because as a practical matter we are conditioned more deeply by our failures than our successes, and it is vital to gain insight into what conditions us, in order that we may operate more freely.
Many of you have been led to believe just the opposite. You have been fed by the media a vulgar caricature of our profession, one that claims we are all imprinted at an early age by forces of such deterministic magnitude that we are forever thereafter obliged to repeat the same few patterns, perform endless variations on the same thin script. This is an attractive
idea, of course. Like all such mystical notions, it frees us from the burden of choice and responsibility, and lays the blame instead at the feet of our parents and culture. We can surrender the struggle for well-being and console ourselves with the idea that it was never in fact available to us.
But this is nonsense. Opportunities for transformation are as plentiful as the stars, as the paintings in a museum, as you yourselves. Look around you. It’s September, and I know you can all feel, as I do, the rushing of the blood that comes in with the first Canadian winds. If one breathes deeply enough one can almost feel oneself swell, become larger, less imperfect. I quite love September. I look forward to it all summer, I savor it while it’s here, I mourn it when it’s gone. I experience this as a personal love, but of course this is sheer narcissism—the lonely ego seeking an escape into vastness.
Those of you who have had sexual intercourse know approximately what I mean. One feels oneself changing temperature, contours; one feels an immanence; and finally one feels oneself arrive, if you will, in a larger, more generous space. One feels a good many other things too, of course, if one is fortunate.
I myself was fortunate, very fortunate, when the teaching assistantships were designated last year, and I was paired with Emily, Emily Crane. Allow me to remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that your teaching assistants should never be taken for granted. They work hard in the service of distant ideals, and are rewarded by and large with long nights, headaches, and minimal pay. One must treat them well at all times—even, or perhaps especially, when they fail to treat you well in return. One must listen; one must attend. Certainly I tried to pay attention to Emily, to her various needs, and so forth. Her singularities. These are after all what make us interesting, our singularities. Our little tics. Emily, for example, had a most irregular way of groaning to herself in moments of stress. They were very odd, involuntary, delirious little groans, and they would emerge from her at the most unexpected times. She’d groan in the car, parallel parking, or at the grocery, squeezing limes. In bed, she’d groan as she plumped the pillows, she’d groan getting under the sheets, she’d groan as she pulled off her nightshirt, she’d groan all the way through foreplay and up to the point of penetration, and then, then she’d fall weirdly silent, as if the presence of this new element, my penis, required of her a greater discretion than its absence. I found it disconcerting, at first. My wife Lisa, whom we will discuss later in the term—you’ll find copies of her letters and diaries on Reserve at the library—used to make a fair bit of noise during lovemaking, so when Emily fell quiet I had the suspicion, common among males of a sensitive nature, that I was failing to please her. Apparently this was not the case, though one can never be sure. My own ego, over-nourished by a doting mother—see the attached handout, “Individuation and Its Discontents: A Case Study”—is all too readily at work in such instances. But now, thinking back on Emily, Emily Crane, I find myself wondering what were, what are, the mechanisms that govern her responses. I wonder approximately how many small ways my perception, clouded by defenses, failed her.
Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts Page 11