Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  “I—” I looked down the hallway toward Gwen’s room. Had she known? Was this whole night a setup? Had I, once again, been the only person out of the loop? “It’s just so sudden.”

  “Now who sounds like a queen.”

  “Hey, you don’t get to say that.” I stood up from the sofa. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been playing it up for me this whole time. You knew what I thought.” As soon as I said it, I remembered him hugging me at the Parlor, calling me sweetie, saying he’d give me anything. Shucking corn on the retreat: Everyone’s in the game, hon. Even me. How stupid I’d been not to notice. “But you made me think it didn’t mean anything,” I argued with myself out loud. “Not that, anyway. You took advantage of me.”

  “Who took advantage of whom?” He arched an eyebrow. “Sorry I didn’t turn out to be your hilarious queer sidekick.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said helplessly. “I thought I had a friend. A real friend.” Even as I said it, I wondered when I had started to need more friends than just Gwen.

  “You do.” He leaned forward again and grabbed my hands. “I’m your real friend. I just want to be a different kind of friend. A better one.”

  I snatched my hands away and said, “I liked the old one.” Then I saw his face. “I’m sorry, Connor. I really do love you, just not like that.”

  “Fair enough.” He slowly unfolded his legs and took his feet off the sofa, then faced forward, hands on his knees. Looking straight ahead, he said in a flat tone, “Look, I know who it is you’re hung up on. But we both know it’s not going to work out with her.”

  My heart almost stopped. But, of course. Connor was Bethany’s research assistant now, a job that included running her personal errands. What if I had left something at her house—​something he’d recognize as mine—​and he’d found it while he was picking up her dry cleaning or something? First Tess, and now Connor. Who else knew, and what would happen if it became public knowledge?

  Meanwhile, Connor continued to sit on my living room sofa, posed as the Lincoln Memorial. “Trust me, she’s not into you. Gwen’s even less gay than I am.”

  Gwen?

  A massive jolt of confusion was followed immediately by a wave of relief. He didn’t know. Nobody but Tess knew, and she only had a guess. The knowledge ran through me like a tonic, straightening my spine. There seemed to be nothing left to do but get him out of the apartment as quickly as possible.

  I stood up. “Connor, if you want to be friends, we can be friends. Otherwise . . .” I shrugged, trying to pretend I didn’t care.

  He stood, too, jerking reflexively back as his head bumped one of the fan pull chains into motion. Despite the element of slapstick, his height gave him a certain dignity. “Let’s take a break for a few days and think. A friend break,” he hurried to say, seeing my expression. “You try to get used to me being straight. I’ll go pick someone up at the Parlor and make sure I really am.” He put on his most melodramatic tone. “I’d hate for this all to be a tragic mistake.”

  I opened the door.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to peck me on the forehead. “Call me when you’re over her.” Then he left.

  12

  I stayed up late stalking Bethany online and passed out with the laptop on the bed.

  The following week, every time I sat down to work, I went down a Bethany rabbit hole. At first, I thought scratching the itch might clear my head and help me get my focus back. Instead, I sank into the search results each time with a giddy relief that gave rise to new cravings. I read and reread the same interviews and blog posts and open-source encyclopedia entries, clicking fresh links, looking for a fix. I memorized her career path: graduation from CUNY and then Columbia, first job, notable collaborations, hiring at DHU, rumored short-listing for the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” speculation about why her follow-up to Ethical Negation was taking so long. I read as many free articles as I could find online, and selections from her earlier, less famous books. The Hasty Subject. Scant Analysis. Undoings: A Praxis. The further I got from Friday night, the more frantically I searched.

  Whatever was blocking me from understanding Bethany’s operatic lectures had spread to my other coursework. I no longer had even fleeting moments of comprehension when I read, just a dull senseless ache. This was not the gap Gwen had observed between critical acumen and writing skills, but a crushing, breathless feeling that had first come over me in Bethany’s presence, as if she were drawing my personhood up through a straw. Now it began to follow me everywhere, even down to the library’s whale belly of an archive, where I sat flipping mechanically through age-spotted periodicals for Margaret without seeing them. When I read, I felt Bethany looking over my shoulder. When I spoke in class, I tasted her tongue in my mouth. When I tried to write, the blank screen in front of me filled up with images of what we did in the dark, and I heard her voice whispering in my ear, Stick to what you know, Beauty Queen.

  I continued to produce nothing.

  Facing her at our midweek meeting was awful. She greeted me with her usual bland chatter, unwrapping a packet of tea while she talked, but when she discovered I had done nothing for the Joyner proposal, she went dead silent, her lips pressed together so tightly they went white around the edges. She leaned back, never taking her eyes off me, and began drumming her fingernails on the arm of her chair—​rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—​as if she were waiting for something specific to happen.

  “I’m sorry. I just haven’t been able to think of anything.”

  She continued to tap her fingers, her eyes drilling into me with something like contempt.

  “I—​ Should I just go?”

  “No,” she snapped, lifting her hands and dropping them dramatically in her lap. “You’ve already wasted enough of my time. Let’s not waste yours, too. We’ll finish the hour. Since you obviously can’t come up with your own ideas, why don’t I test you on mine? After all, I have to give you a grade for this class eventually. Let’s see if you’ve been listening. Put away your notes.”

  My eyes prickled with shock, but I kept them wide open, unblinking, until the immediate threat of tears had passed. “Okay,” I managed.

  She began to drill me with question after question about radical negation: its roots in Heideggerian metaphysics, its critique of Hegelian dialectics, its relationship to Kantian judgment, Derridean difference, Lacanian lack, Deleuzian deterritorialization. I muddled through the first few answers, drawing painstakingly on memories of my notes, but as I paused to search for words, Bethany lost what little patience she’d started with. She began cutting me off mid-sentence with ever sharper interrogations. She hinted that I must have been lying about being able to read in French. She asked about theorists and philosophers I didn’t recognize, whose names I could swear had never come up before. She demanded three examples of radical negation in the natural world, three in the world of architecture and design, and three in modern-day political struggles, sneering coldly in the pause before I answered that all of these could easily be drawn from her lectures, had I been listening.

  I stuttered and looked down at my lap. I heard myself make one last unintelligible noise of distress before my throat closed. My mouth twisted itself into a pained grimace. I shut my eyes, begging myself not to cry. Despite my efforts, two hot, humiliating tears forced themselves out.

  The chair in front of me emitted a small storm of squeaks and rattles. I kept my eyes closed and listened, detached, as Bethany crossed the room. The door clicked shut.

  I thought she had left, and my tears stopped. But when I opened my eyes, she stood in front of me with her back against the door, her expression cold but calm. She seemed to have spent the greater part of her rage.

  “Mac, you have got to get serious. This is not a game.”

  But she had told me, the night of the dinner party, that it was. I tried to force myself to meet her gaze but felt a telltale quiver in my jaw and looked down again.

  “Your friend Gwen is out there rig
ht now, somewhere, fucking my husband.” She crossed the room and leaned over me, getting so close that I turned my head to one side. “And I don’t like it any better than you do. Sometimes I imagine killing them both. Slowly.” She grabbed my chin and pulled my face toward hers. Her eyes looked so hungry, I thought she was going to kiss me, and I went limp with relief. But instead, she squeezed harder.

  “But do you think they fuck first, Mac, and strategize later? No, they do not. That’s why your friend Gwen has a stellar proposal, all polished up and ready to go.” My eyes watered at the pressure on my jaw. “You are my dark horse, Mac. I have placed my bets on you. And you will ride.”

  She released my chin and straightened up. Then, smoothing her hair and skirt, she strode back to the door and opened it—​not all the way, just a crack. She returned to her seat.

  “Now. We’ll continue the exam where we left off. Just do the best you can. You’re doing fine.” Her voice was, if not exactly gentle, mildly encouraging.

  Unbelievably, I finished reeling off examples of radical negation perfectly, if tonelessly. After she dismissed me, I went straight to the bathroom and threw up. Then I cried for half an hour.

  Coming out of the bathroom, I passed Tess outside of the Dean’s office. She took one look at my freshly washed face and gave me a grim nod. Freedom’s always expensive, she had said. Even as I nodded stiffly to acknowledge our truce, I felt the cost go up.

  Gwen, Connor, Tess. I was losing my friends in the Program, one by one.

  * * *

  In the middle of the night, I woke up gasping. I’d never finished listening to the hotel room recording. I put in my earbuds. Bethany, suspended in time, was still on the phone.

  “I’m going to hang up now,” she said softly, malevolently. “And don’t bother calling again. You think your life is worthless now? I’ll make sure of it.” That was it. No other clues.

  Just silence. I stayed up the rest of the night, listening to Bethany and me sleeping. When dawn broke outside, the me in the recording woke up and kissed her goodbye.

  * * *

  The next day I could barely function.

  I dragged myself to the department to drop off some research for Margaret and checked my mail folder on the way out. Inside was a pink carbon copy of the Midterm Exam form, signed Bethany Ladd.

  Student showed remarkable poise and confidence, answered questions in exhaustive detail, and demonstrated a superior overall command of the subject matter. Since no further coursework will be required in this class, I am filing her final grade now: A.

  At the bottom, a Post-it note.

  BQ: Fri @ 9

  There was something bulky in the bottom of the folder. I reached in and pulled out an old-fashioned wrought-iron key attached to a leather key fob. I recognized the address stamped on the fob.

  The farmhouse.

  It was an apology, a concession, an appeal for forgiveness. But it was also, as I well knew, a command.

  I slipped the key into my coat pocket. I didn’t know what else to do.

  * * *

  Like every week in the Program, this one ended with a Friday afternoon talk from a visiting professor.

  I had attended enough of these talks to know that their appeal was mostly gastronomical. The same abundantly catered spread appeared at the reception afterward every time: still-life platters of hard salami and limp prosciutto; cheese, in crumbling wedges and fanned-out slices; water biscuit cascades curving around dewy grape clusters. For the vegans, a lonely tray of cold asparagus tips and roasted portobellos. And finally, the pièce de résistance, the dessert tray: a fleet of fat strawberries decorated with tiny tuxedos and pearl-necked evening gowns of white and dark chocolate, a miniature treatise on gender performance executed in fruit. Those with the patience to outstay the crowd took home Ziplocs of leftovers and unfinished bottles of wine, a more than usually glamorous way to stretch a grocery budget that guaranteed robust attendance, at least among the poorer students.

  The audience for this week’s speaker, an ethnomusicologist, was even larger than usual, and Margaret has asked me to help Lorraine set up. This was rumored to be a job talk—​part of the hiring process—​and job talks always brought out a festive atmosphere of knife sharpening.

  Undergrads and latecomers lined the floor. Lorraine and I sat with them near the exit, so we could dart out for the platters as soon as the talk finished. The first- and second-years packed the front rows, while the faculty and more advanced grad students filled seats from the third row back. The only person from our year I didn’t see was Tess, whose motivational impairment I suspected of becoming more acute by the day.

  The job talk proceeded according to a formula that was by now familiar. Margaret made a few announcements and then turned the floor over to Grady, who introduced the visiting speaker in adulatory, almost fawning terms. The ethnomusicologist, nervy at the beginning of Grady’s stilted preamble, soon melted at the words of praise. By the time he took his place at the lectern, he looked positively delighted with himself. I zoned out during the lecture itself, “Lord Love a Duck: Spiritualism in Late ’90s Birdcall Electronica.” When it reached its inevitable conclusion (inevitable, too, that it ran ten minutes over), the room erupted into applause, and the ethnomusicologist opened the floor for questions with a radiant smile.

  Morgan raised her hand, obeying the unwritten rule that first-years kick off the Q and A. “This is more of a comment than a question,” she began, twirling a lock of indigo hair around one finger, and the ethnomusicologist nodded encouragingly. “I’ve been thinking a lot about gesture and the gestural in the social field. If, as you put it, sound is a social field—” She cleared her throat. “Well, I suppose if I had a question, it would be, what is the role of gesture in your argument?”

  After the ethnomusicologist had answered this question in conscientious detail, several more students delivered their comments-disguised-as-questions, always punctuated with the dutiful interrogative: “What is the role of {something I have recently written a paper about} in your argument?” As the minutes allotted for questions ticked away, I began to relax, abandoning the worry that I would have to ask a question. The student Q and A was over. It was faculty feeding time.

  Grady raised his hand politely, and the ethnomusicologist nodded at him.

  “This was an excellent paper, a really refreshing argument,” Grady doled out. The audience tensed. “I have simply never been more impressed with an invocation of Pliny the Elder. And what a masterful gloss on the history of atonality in Western opera. Bravo.” He clapped, twice.

  “Thank you.”

  Beside me, Lorraine sucked in her breath with a gentle hiss. The room was silent as those familiar with Grady’s speech impediment waited for him to continue.

  “I did wonder, however . . .” And here Grady raised, at great length, in carefully worked-out clauses, what seemed at first to be a minor objection. As his words plodded on relentlessly, however, the mistake seemed to grow until it contaminated nearly every aspect of the argument.

  “. . . And so,” Grady finished.

  The ethnomusicologist’s smile had abandoned him. He fielded the original objection carefully. Grady continued to heckle him at a snail’s pace for several minutes before cutting him off to say, “Thank you,” with an air of finality. He uncrossed his legs, crossed them neatly in the other direction, and leaned back in his chair.

  Half a dozen more hands shot up, all of them belonging to faculty.

  “Do you really think your single example bears the weight your argument requires?”

  “Surely you know this work has been done, far better, in Kleinfeldt’s book.”

  “Was your reference to Agamben perhaps meant to be ironic?”

  Near the end, Rocky chimed in with a comment so lazy it was clearly a setup, and equally clear for whom. “Perhaps this argument is less radical than it pretends to be.”

  “It’s radically inane.” Bethany didn’t even bother to raise h
er hand. “That’s the only way to describe the utter obtuseness, the almost criminal banality on display. To call a fermata a ‘state of exception’ is to ignore or, worse, fail to comprehend my entire body of work on sonic negation. Of course, I’m not personally offended, but you’ve missed quite a few important theorists in the process.” She began listing names.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the ethnomusicologist’s face slowly draining of color, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Bethany. Petite, helmet-haired, a general in tall boots crossed delicately at the knee, she eviscerated with a casual brutality that made me feel how gentle she’d been with me at our last meeting.

  “To sum up, this has all been a revolting waste of time, wouldn’t you say?”

  The ethnomusicologist nodded miserably, his face red and blotchy. From where I was sitting, I could barely hear him say, “Thank you, Bethany. I will certainly take your comments into consideration.”

  Grady stood abruptly. “Everyone, one more round of applause to thank our guest.”

  The ethnomusicologist cast him a ghastly look as the audience began politely clapping, rising from their chairs to make way for the reception in a kind of bored ovation.

  “Not a good fit,” Lorraine observed as we hustled down the hall toward the department kitchen. She maneuvered her way around the carts crammed into the narrow room, opened the refrigerator, and started pulling out trays. “Go ahead, I’m right behind you.”

  As we passed the door to the main office, the department phone started ringing.

  “Shit,” Lorraine said behind me. “It’s not five yet, I need to get that. Just come back for this one.”

  I hustled toward the lecture room, now buzzing with loud conversation. The savage Q and A had broken the fever, and everyone—​except the ethnomusicologist, of course—​seemed giddy. Grady held court near the center of the room, facing a semicircle of admirers. It was evident that he was being groomed for the next department chair.