The Undergraduates

by Steven Snell

  I look at her, our eyes meet, there’s a sadness in hers. “You okay?”

  “I will be.” She looks out her window and I reposition myself and see the Rocky Mountains just covering the edge of a picture of me drinking a slushy and recall the vicious brain freeze just before Cynthia snapped the photo, my eyes still wet with exhaustive pain. There’s a photo of a news headline: Climatologist Exposed As Fascist. There’s a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. They’re on a toboggan expositing philosophical musings. There’s a picture of a Hummer that has parallel parked backing over a bicycle. I look from picture to picture remembering the day and the story each picture has embedded in it, how they were captured, the moment. Everything has a story, a nanosecond, a billion light years everything comes with a history and Cynthia continues telling hers talking to the ceiling, her glass of wine, her bike on the balcony, she blames herself, she blames the air, she blames the cold, she blames a boy at sailing camp in the summer of Grade 11, she blames Grade 7, she blames Haiti and The Temp and The Pope, she blames the city, the city, the city.

  She says, “This town needs a warm fluid to rush into its anus. A slow but strong cleansing of the debris stuck in its bowels.”

  She says that maybe she needs an enema too. She says that she feels blocked.

  “Perhaps I need to spread apart my ass and remove emotion … completely ignore it from now on.”

  She tucks her legs up to her chest.

  “I should be numb and indifferent. Pretend. Forget myself … Become someone else … A machine. An automaton. I will become … no longer feeling, just experiencing.”

  She says she would be a test pilot for prototype aircraft. Fly the plane, see if it functions, do a few negative G-dives, be inverted, break the sound-barrier, fire a few missiles. See if the plane holds together. Land the plane, walk away, write the flight manual.

  “But I won’t become attached to the machine because it’s only a prototype and will surely be modified, be a technological revolution but not put into commission. Like the Avro Arrow. I want to be the Avro Arrow, Shawn. I’ll end up in a museum.”

  She smiles and then takes another sip of her wine.

  I ask her if The Pope can handle negative G-dives. I ask her if it’s difficult clutching a dildo when her body is being pulled apart by gravity.

  “I have no idea. The G-dives in the Avro Arrow were just a metaphor for head.”

  I force myself to swallow my mouthful of wine, trying not to choke, laughing with a mouthful of wine. “Interesting concept.”

  “It is.”

  I stand up and change the CD.

  “Is Górecki okay?”

  “Very. Very very.”

  She leans forward, tops up her glass and then moves to the couch and settles deep beside the arm.

  “So?”

  “So,” I say sitting back down beside her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She says over to me, “Do you think one can ever be free of all this. Free of … free of knowledge, free of the fear that knowledge creates.” She continues, as if to answer her own thoughts, “Can we be truly free? Maybe free is recognizing how close or far the walls that enclose us are. Our room of knowledge. We learn and experience and push the walls out. We get afraid or hurt and the walls close in. We recoil and hide in the things we buy, the pre-packaged holidays and private beaches and private enclaves and private parking … But … hmm,” she gleams subtly, “but with The Tenor … I think I was starting to climb over the walls.” I can’t see her arms but they must be covered in goose bumps.

  She pauses, tucks her foot under her bum and settles back again. “Or maybe knowing only pulls those walls closer, and higher. I think knowledge can sometimes make you hopeless. … Now that I know all these issues, all these problems, where do I start? Which one to choose? Who to help? What to help? … But when on the top of the wall, having climbed up there to change perspective, you don’t realize they’re moving. … It’s like being on a plane. It never feels like you are at 80% of the speed of sound. At 30,000 feet the ground doesn’t seem to pass that quickly by.”

  She says, “Come here” and I move closer and she says “closer” and tilts her head to my shoulder. “I remember reading something in university, something about the, huh, the fear of freedom or something like that. How the modern world allows a certain level of personal sovereignty, freedom, but people are insecure so we seek crowds or network TV to be protected or feel secure. But instead of the reality of our banal lives, we’re fed glamourized information. And this is what now governs us, gives us comfort, control over our lives. Be it god or a prime minister or a TV mom or boyfriend or professor – people are given guidelines because they wouldn’t know where to stand or what position to take without them. … We’re buggered.”

  “Yah.”

  “Our modern lives buggered us, Shawn.”

  “Agreed.”

  She repositions her head. “Could we turn away from our contemporary conveniences and live in a time when we were self-sustaining?”

  “… I couldn’t.”

  “Nor could I.”

  She closes her eyes as though sinking into the red wine in her body. She rests her head back, and places her hand on my thigh and opens her mouth to the ceiling, stretching her jaw. She breathes through her open mouth. “It’s not control,” she says. She says, “Guidelines is a better word. There’re some things I want to know that could hurt me before I experience them. I don’t want to lose a limb acquiring that knowledge.” She squeezes my thigh with a gentle giggle. “Don’t put your finger in an electrical outlet. I want to learn or appreciate a spectrum of sensations or knowledges without being burned by them.”

  “To know only good –”

  “Is crap.”

  “It’s like saying one only has love in his heart.”

  “Crap too.”

  “One can only know love from knowing hate.”

  “Exactly.”

  “The only way to know yes is to know no. Wrong is right as right is wrong – morality is your compass.”

  “I like that.”

  “You can use it.”

  She puts her head back to my shoulder and I tilt my head to hers. She tucks her glass into her chest and drags her finger up and down my thigh. “I wonder if there’s something different between physical freedom and emotional or mental freedom.”

  I put my arm around her and she readjusts and tucks in closer. “I guess I’m free to do as long as it affects no one else. Or freedom … yes … freedom is an action that does not impose on another’s … which means none of us are ever truly free because none of us are truly independent.”

  “Agreed upon freedom.”

  “I like our dependence.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm, yes.”

  I notice Cynthia’s fingers on my thigh and I look at them. I imagine her finger holding a pen. My mind flashes to another one of her letters. I see her wrists, her arms, her apartment in Siena. I scan my mental catalogue of the pictures she sent me from Italy. She attached a letter to one of her squatting a pee in the Adriatic. She wrote,

  Hello Lovely,

  Fresh olives and cheese for lunch while I sit here outside San Domenico. If life can improve upon this moment, it would stop my heart.

  Speaking of my heart, I got an email from my BF Jason. He’s packing for his work placement in Haiti. It’s been, hmm, how long have I been here now? Well, that’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen Jason. He was going to come here before he started his placement but it ended up that there was an opportunity to go early so that’s what he did. Sanitation engineers are in high demand, I guess.

  Anywho … I’m back in Siena after some day trips and overnight trips to other lovely places for drinking wine and expensive coffee. La dolce vita! (I swear on God’s grave that I’ll never use that expression again!)

  You should see me! Wait – I’ll attach a picture, yes, that is what I’ll do!
See attached picture … now. See! Don’t I look fab?! You can be jealous. I’m totally fine with that. I’ll still love you whole heartedly. You? Enjoying pale skin autumn? Oh I’m such a mean gash to rub it in, aren’t I?

  (I just had another olive – gasp! So amazing!)

  This evening a couple of girls from down the hall and I are going to wander the market at La Lizza. After that, I don’t know. If I’m indulged by too much beauty maybe I’ll just need to be alone on my bench near San Domenico and live in my head. Or if I’m not totally topped up I’ll go drink red wine with them and speak broken Italian while they reply in broken English. You’d like them. They’re both gorgeous in a bellezza mediterranea sort of way, if you like that voluptuous, perfect olive skin, dark, dark hair look. (I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve checked out their boobs. I even told them that if I ever got breasts I’d want them molded on theirs.) I’ve told them both about you! They very much want to meet you! I don’t know, I might have mixed up my Italian nouns but I think I told them you are brilliant, or I might have said you’re a billionaire with a yacht docked in Cannes. I’m SO good to you. I just love you to pieces, what can I say?

  Okay, are you sitting down? I’m going to get serious here for a moment because I need to get this off my chest. It’s one of the things I think about when I’m sitting on my bench beside San Domenico (yes, MY bench! I’ve sat on it more times than anyone else in its entire history! … okay, okay, back to serious.)

  Deep breath …

  I’m a graduate now. I have a bloody university degree! I should be skipping through the streets! But some days I feel so heavy I can’t even get out of bed. I’m supposed to be educated. I’m supposed to be prepared to enter the work force and navigate my way through career success. But I think I have the wrong map and my compass is broken. There are some nights that I’ve laid in bed in the middle of the night crying. There are some mornings I don’t even want to get out of bed. I feel like a child. I feel like I shouldn’t have a degree, like I don’t deserve it, like I’m not mature enough to have it. Why would any company ever want to hire me?! I’m not capable of anything! I’d probably cause an electrical fire using the coffee machine. Maybe I didn’t come to Italy for a holiday before a career but rather to run away from a career, period. I can’t think of anything worse than being in an office, joining the herd on the morning and evening commute, climbing the corporate ladder. I’m afraid of heights. What should I do, Shawn? What should I be when I grow up? Will you carry me? Will you help lift me? Will you always be there for me?

  Okay … (picture me taking a deep breath) … thanks again for listening, er, reading. You make me feel safe. And on that note, I’m going to drink with hot Italian women who could both probably piggyback me, which I guess is some sort of safety, and whatever you do not picture that. ;)

  Miss you millions, C.

  XO

  I take a long drink titling my mug and empty it.

  I set the mug on the cushion beside me and take her glass and place it beside my mug and we slide down deeper into her sofa and stare at a yellow car wrapped around a light standard and blue and red lights reflecting in its only remaining intact side window and orange and green leaves being blown off of towering maple trees and a red stop sign that someone taped a large piece of brown cardboard under it and wrote, Please.

  25.

  She tucks her sandy blonde hair behind her ear. She takes a sip of her hot chocolate. She’s wearing a grey skirt with grey leggings with dark brown flat-soled boots. She’s wearing a red turtle-neck sweater; the arms she can pull over her fingers.

  We’re on a couch in a lounge closer to her home than mine. The ceiling is low and hanging from it are thousands of permanently tacked Christmas ornaments. Above us the entire visible light spectrum everywhere at every single moment. Laura calls it pretty. I agree.

  We’re telling each other about our day, small talk. She tells me about work and how it’s exciting in an emotional sort of way, people dying, living, trying to live longer. She tells me about the long shifts and irregular hours. She hasn’t slept right since she started her first rotation. She tells me about the doctors and nurses and staff she works with, their different mentalities, their interests, their plans. They’re not like hers. She says she’s almost acting at work, acting as a nurse, as a form of herself to get along better with others. They want to grow up to retire well. I’d rather sell my paintings. That’s what she says.

  “My ward, it’s sort of like a large Catholic family where we all get along, smile the right way at Thanksgiving dinner but all return to our rooms in the patriarch’s mansion and gossip about each other. Who’s overweight, who’s on medication, who’s sleeping with who, who you wouldn’t want as a doctor, a nurse, a student nurse or a med school student … health care in Canada is that great social equalizer but sometimes you have a patient and wish this person, I wish this person was uninsured and would die a slow smoker’s cough death.”

  “You’re such a good person.”

  “Some patients are assholes so I just sorta accidentally won’t get the IV in the first couple of times. Dear asshole, your arm is now a pin cushion.”

  I laugh.

  “I can’t believe they actually allow me to use a needle. Oh, and some of the doctors are walking penises. FYI, scrubs have nothing to do with sanitary measures but rather to be unflattering as possible to keep doctor sluts at bay from nurses.”

  “I have no doubt you look great in your uniform.”

  “Why thank-you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’d prefer you’d not see me in scrubs, not in anything.” She smiles. I smile.

  She raises her mug to her lips, smiles again, re-crosses her legs under her and adjusts her skirt. She takes a shallow breath and gently inhales and takes another sip. She holds the mug to her chest and tucks her hair back again. She smiles again. Subtle, delicate, but underneath ferocious. The softness of Laura in so many of her acts, but not all. She has a tattoo behind her ear that can only be seen when she has her hair back. She told me once it’s a Blackfoot Confederacy symbol meaning purgatory or the place one goes after death for judgement. “Really?” I had asked her. “Actually, no, I just want to sound bad ass.”

  She’s an eagle floating in thermals on a warming Saturday morning or a passenger airliner slamming into the side of a mountain. She has a spirit that could reorient Jupiter’s orbit. How she drinks her hot chocolate is sea foaming in the receding tide of Nova Scotia harbor. Her oral sex sinks pirate ships off the coast of Somalia. She’s the missile defense shield, NATO, the liberalization of international trade barriers, 33 feet high razor wire fences, tasers fired into fatigued and agitated air travellers, photo time in Santa’s lap. She’s a tongue in my ass and a toe in her vagina. Think metaphors for the Poles, opposites across the planet, that’s Laura.

  I met Laura at the Calgary International Airport. She was departing for Vancouver to see her sister and I was off to Mexico City to see a friend. I looked at her and liked her unassuming smile. She said “Hi.” I said “Hello.” She said she’s in Nursing and needed a break, “Seat sales are a student’s wet dream.” I said nice use of the vernacular. I added when she finishes her time off she should ring me to say hello again. Seven weeks later we went for a coffee and walk. A few weeks more I learned about her philosophical talent, her oral sex and I can’t keep the images out of my mind as we sit side-by-side drinking hot beverages on a cool autumn evening.

  I ask her if she’s dating anyone right now. She says, “Dating is like the chairs on the Titanic … wait, how does that go?”

  “It’s like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.”

  “Yah, that’s it. That’s how I feel about dating, well, my dates, my past … it’s catastrophically bad.”

  “Makes for good stories.”

  “Oh it does.”

  “Worst date?” I ask.

  “Hmm … give me a sec.”

  “See, if you can’t r
ecall you must be getting by okay.”

  “No no, I have to categorize and scan my mental catalogue for which one to extract from the terrible.”

  “Ha!”

  “Oh, got one!”

  “Hit me.”

  “This guy wanted to take me to the gym.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, like go and work out.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Fuck me!”

  “And you did?”

  “Fuck yes!”

  “No! What were you thinking?”

  “You know how they say don’t think with your penis?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Don’t think with your crotch either.”

  “He was that cute, eh?”

  “Yes, from a distance.”

  “Nice.”

  “So I went.”

  “A charming time I’m sure.”

  “You should have seen what he was wearing!”

  “Oh I have a mental image.”

  “His shirt sparkled!”

  “Fuckin-A!”

  “It was probably $100 T-shirt.”

  “Did it depict a sexy monster-esque man carrying a troupe of women high above his shoulders?”

  “Oh my god! And it was a V-neck – you could tell he waxed his chest!”

  “AWESOME!”

  “Christ, I’m getting nauseous reliving it again!”

  “And I’ve never felt better!”

  Laura laughs out loud.

  “So then …” I encourage her.

  “We hit the weights.”

  “This continues to get better.”

  “He spotted me and said motivational lines like ‘feel the burn’ and ‘push it’ and ‘come on!’”

  “I think I might jizz.”

  “And I might never again. In my head I was thinking, there’s going to be no cuming, I promise you that! … So we finished after a couple of hours.”

  “A couple of hours, what?”

  “Seriously. Lifting weights took for f’in-ever. That entire time was lifting weights. I didn’t even hit the steam room. I just wanted to get the F out of there.”

  “So then?”