I fall backwards through life,
Learning from mistakes
Made later, when I'm old,
Growing younger with age.
Edited 10/9/2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Clio MacGuffin Bluestocking: A Rant on Interviewing
In order to resolve part of my professional dilemma, particularly the part involving abject poverty, I have embarked upon a job search in the past few months, looking for pretty much anything and everything that will allow me something more than a subsistence living (or even, at the very least, a subsistence living) in a position that will engage my intellect and creativity while also returning a bit of lost prestige. This search has resulted in three job interviews.
Now I have had number of very bad job interviews in the past. Some of these were my fault because I was unprepared or overly confident or both. Others made me wonder why on earth these people did not just send the “thank you for applying but unfortunately we had so many excellent and qualified applicants that we had a difficult time in choosing the best and the best was not you” letter rather than wasting their time and mine by calling me in for the interview.
In two cases, the interviewer spent the entire time telling me how very much I was unqualified for the position at hand. “Why did you even apply for a professional position without any experience?” one interviewer asked. “Well, because it was advertised as a clerical position, for which I do have experience,” I answered…or would have had I not been so floored by her demeanor. Another spent two hours telling me his life story, in which material history was a guiding force. The, he spent the next hour explaining to me how, because my life had not also been guided by a complete dedication to the same, I was in no way qualified for an entry-level tour guide/interpreter position at his museum. He would, however, be happy to have me as a volunteer.
Those two instances were many years ago. More recently, I have had a new set of experiences in which I am more than qualified for the position, but I am not the specific person that they want for the job. This I can fully understand; but do they have to be so obviously rude about it from the moment they set eyes on me?
For instance, one library called me from across three states to set up an interview. They were so excited that someone with my qualifications had applied. They were thrilled that I was interested in the job. They never expected to be so lucky. Just one thing: they hadn’t anticipated someone from out-of-state actually applying for the position, so they hadn’t budgeted for travel expenses. Would I mind paying for my flight and hotel? They thought that they could reimburse me for the hotel, perhaps. I was so desperate and dumb that I agreed. Of course they did not select me. Their reason? I was overqualified.
For one teaching position, I was flown in and out of the town on the same day as the interview. This meant that I had to be at the airport at 5 am for a 3 pm meeting. The committee was disorganized and openly rude. During my teaching demonstration, no one looked in my direction for the first five of the 20 minutes. One guy leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, ran his palms down his face, and exhaled like a horse. They repeatedly interrupted me to ask one another questions such as “has she met with the dean yet?” and “did you reimburse her for the taxi from the airport?” and “what time is her plane out?” “Is this some sort of test on maintaining class discipline?” I wondered.
When they got around to asking me questions directly, they threw out such hard hitting academic and pedagogical queries as “So, what thing are you most proud of in your life?” and “Who are your heroes?” I later learned that they did not ask those questions of other interviewees. I also later learned that they only called me in for an interview because their deans insisted that they bring in candidates from out of the state or with doctoral degress. I fit both. I learned this from the woman who drove me back to the airport.
Politics, of course, played a large part in many of these interactions. For a full-time position at an institution where I was already working, I was only interviewed because an administrator insisted as a favor to the professor who was my supervisor. My supervisor wanted to get me on the faculty full-time so that he would not have to find the funds for my salary. He and the committee chair hated one another, but he and the dean were good buddies. So, the dean told the committee to interview me. This wasted my time, forced me to return from Christmas early, wasted the committee’s time, and fostered a thinly veiled animosity at work during and after the whole interviewing process. I suffered some hard personal insults to my intelligence and competence, as well.
That same year, another institution called me in for an interview. Everyone was very kind and friendly to me to my face, while I was there. Unfortunately, the dean, who scheduled the interview but who was not on the search committee, arranged for two candidates (not for the same position) to interview on the same day. That day was Good Friday, which was a holiday for the institution. Those faculty who did appear for the interview were not amused to be taking time off from a three-day weekend.
The dean also scheduled the two committees to use the same rooms at almost exactly the same times. This resulted in my committee having to change the time for my presentation of my research. Instead of presenting at the original 11 am hour, I was moved to the 3 pm hour. When 3 pm arrived, all but the 3 committee members had left for the weekend. Two of the committee members agreed that they had enough information about me that they did not need to see my presentation. Then, when they met to make their hiring decision, those same two decided against me for the official reason that I had not given a presentation.
Those two committee members high jacked the committee from under the third member, who was the chair, and brought in another candidate whom they did not introduce to that third member. I later learned that this had been the last straw for the third member, who quit within the month. I also later learned that the hired candidate lasted a year because these sorts of games were endemic to that university.
None of these committees ever formally notified me that they had hired someone else. At the time, I took all of these experiences very hard. I felt as if I were generally incompetent, unqualified, and unlikeable as a colleague (and maybe I am). Then, I realized that none of it was personal. The interactions among the committee members and their superiors and colleagues, or the legal requirements for posting jobs at public institutions, explained their behavior more than anything I did or failed to do. Their behavior felt directed toward me personally, but essentially I myself was immaterial. I was a tool in whatever power struggles and ass-covering were occurring at that institution at that time. I was the MacGuffin in their departmental intrigues.
I am thinking of all of this now because I have been on two interviews and have been invited on a third. The two completed interviews in no way resembled what I have described here thus far. Both paid to fly me in for the interview on the day before the interview. The one that took place in my home town (the place where I grew up, as opposed to where I live now) actually arranged for my interview to be on a Friday. They did not book the return flight until the Sunday after in order to allow me to visit my family and friends. Both set me up in very nice hotel, one was the nicest in town (it was a small town) and the other was a gigantic suite with a view. Both took me to very nice restaurants for lunch and dinner. Everyone involved (with one minor exception) treated me with respect and courtesy. If neither chooses me, I leave with a little hope that there are institutions out there that know how to treat potential employees, even if they have no desire to hire that employee in the first place. I'm hoping they have helped to dissipate this great dread and loathing that I have for the interviewing process.
This brings my story to the third, scheduled, interview, which is really what has inspired all of these bad memories and baggage. This position is at a community college in a state located halfway across the country. They advertised nationally. My qualifications exceed the minimum stated in the listing. Yet, for travel expenses they “will reimburse you up to $200.00 for your mileage.” This suggests to me that they did not anticipate hiring anyone much further away than a day’s drive. When I explained my impoverished situation, which may prevent me from attending my own interview, they replied that they “understand that the cost of airline tickets are so expensive, but we are only able to allow up to $200.00 for travel.” (By the way, the “cost of airline tickets” IS “so expensive,” but I bitterly digress.) I have yet to communicate with a member of the search committee, nor have their names been revealed to me.
This all makes me very suspicious that, because of my qualifications and because the search is supposed to be national (I am assuming), they are required to interview someone like me. I’m also the owner of two X chromosomes, which doesn’t hurt. The interview, however, is on my dime. While I’m not really in a position to toss away any offered interviews, I’m also not really interested in spending some of my own precious few dollars in being their token candidate. I don’t know if I am being unfair to the school in this assessment, or just ignorant of the way that community colleges go about hiring their faculty. I do know that the way they are going about this interview isn’t personal, just institutional. Still, I have a very bad feeling about this one, and have not yet decided what to do.
Now I have had number of very bad job interviews in the past. Some of these were my fault because I was unprepared or overly confident or both. Others made me wonder why on earth these people did not just send the “thank you for applying but unfortunately we had so many excellent and qualified applicants that we had a difficult time in choosing the best and the best was not you” letter rather than wasting their time and mine by calling me in for the interview.
In two cases, the interviewer spent the entire time telling me how very much I was unqualified for the position at hand. “Why did you even apply for a professional position without any experience?” one interviewer asked. “Well, because it was advertised as a clerical position, for which I do have experience,” I answered…or would have had I not been so floored by her demeanor. Another spent two hours telling me his life story, in which material history was a guiding force. The, he spent the next hour explaining to me how, because my life had not also been guided by a complete dedication to the same, I was in no way qualified for an entry-level tour guide/interpreter position at his museum. He would, however, be happy to have me as a volunteer.
Those two instances were many years ago. More recently, I have had a new set of experiences in which I am more than qualified for the position, but I am not the specific person that they want for the job. This I can fully understand; but do they have to be so obviously rude about it from the moment they set eyes on me?
For instance, one library called me from across three states to set up an interview. They were so excited that someone with my qualifications had applied. They were thrilled that I was interested in the job. They never expected to be so lucky. Just one thing: they hadn’t anticipated someone from out-of-state actually applying for the position, so they hadn’t budgeted for travel expenses. Would I mind paying for my flight and hotel? They thought that they could reimburse me for the hotel, perhaps. I was so desperate and dumb that I agreed. Of course they did not select me. Their reason? I was overqualified.
For one teaching position, I was flown in and out of the town on the same day as the interview. This meant that I had to be at the airport at 5 am for a 3 pm meeting. The committee was disorganized and openly rude. During my teaching demonstration, no one looked in my direction for the first five of the 20 minutes. One guy leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling, ran his palms down his face, and exhaled like a horse. They repeatedly interrupted me to ask one another questions such as “has she met with the dean yet?” and “did you reimburse her for the taxi from the airport?” and “what time is her plane out?” “Is this some sort of test on maintaining class discipline?” I wondered.
When they got around to asking me questions directly, they threw out such hard hitting academic and pedagogical queries as “So, what thing are you most proud of in your life?” and “Who are your heroes?” I later learned that they did not ask those questions of other interviewees. I also later learned that they only called me in for an interview because their deans insisted that they bring in candidates from out of the state or with doctoral degress. I fit both. I learned this from the woman who drove me back to the airport.
Politics, of course, played a large part in many of these interactions. For a full-time position at an institution where I was already working, I was only interviewed because an administrator insisted as a favor to the professor who was my supervisor. My supervisor wanted to get me on the faculty full-time so that he would not have to find the funds for my salary. He and the committee chair hated one another, but he and the dean were good buddies. So, the dean told the committee to interview me. This wasted my time, forced me to return from Christmas early, wasted the committee’s time, and fostered a thinly veiled animosity at work during and after the whole interviewing process. I suffered some hard personal insults to my intelligence and competence, as well.
That same year, another institution called me in for an interview. Everyone was very kind and friendly to me to my face, while I was there. Unfortunately, the dean, who scheduled the interview but who was not on the search committee, arranged for two candidates (not for the same position) to interview on the same day. That day was Good Friday, which was a holiday for the institution. Those faculty who did appear for the interview were not amused to be taking time off from a three-day weekend.
The dean also scheduled the two committees to use the same rooms at almost exactly the same times. This resulted in my committee having to change the time for my presentation of my research. Instead of presenting at the original 11 am hour, I was moved to the 3 pm hour. When 3 pm arrived, all but the 3 committee members had left for the weekend. Two of the committee members agreed that they had enough information about me that they did not need to see my presentation. Then, when they met to make their hiring decision, those same two decided against me for the official reason that I had not given a presentation.
Those two committee members high jacked the committee from under the third member, who was the chair, and brought in another candidate whom they did not introduce to that third member. I later learned that this had been the last straw for the third member, who quit within the month. I also later learned that the hired candidate lasted a year because these sorts of games were endemic to that university.
None of these committees ever formally notified me that they had hired someone else. At the time, I took all of these experiences very hard. I felt as if I were generally incompetent, unqualified, and unlikeable as a colleague (and maybe I am). Then, I realized that none of it was personal. The interactions among the committee members and their superiors and colleagues, or the legal requirements for posting jobs at public institutions, explained their behavior more than anything I did or failed to do. Their behavior felt directed toward me personally, but essentially I myself was immaterial. I was a tool in whatever power struggles and ass-covering were occurring at that institution at that time. I was the MacGuffin in their departmental intrigues.
I am thinking of all of this now because I have been on two interviews and have been invited on a third. The two completed interviews in no way resembled what I have described here thus far. Both paid to fly me in for the interview on the day before the interview. The one that took place in my home town (the place where I grew up, as opposed to where I live now) actually arranged for my interview to be on a Friday. They did not book the return flight until the Sunday after in order to allow me to visit my family and friends. Both set me up in very nice hotel, one was the nicest in town (it was a small town) and the other was a gigantic suite with a view. Both took me to very nice restaurants for lunch and dinner. Everyone involved (with one minor exception) treated me with respect and courtesy. If neither chooses me, I leave with a little hope that there are institutions out there that know how to treat potential employees, even if they have no desire to hire that employee in the first place. I'm hoping they have helped to dissipate this great dread and loathing that I have for the interviewing process.
This brings my story to the third, scheduled, interview, which is really what has inspired all of these bad memories and baggage. This position is at a community college in a state located halfway across the country. They advertised nationally. My qualifications exceed the minimum stated in the listing. Yet, for travel expenses they “will reimburse you up to $200.00 for your mileage.” This suggests to me that they did not anticipate hiring anyone much further away than a day’s drive. When I explained my impoverished situation, which may prevent me from attending my own interview, they replied that they “understand that the cost of airline tickets are so expensive, but we are only able to allow up to $200.00 for travel.” (By the way, the “cost of airline tickets” IS “so expensive,” but I bitterly digress.) I have yet to communicate with a member of the search committee, nor have their names been revealed to me.
This all makes me very suspicious that, because of my qualifications and because the search is supposed to be national (I am assuming), they are required to interview someone like me. I’m also the owner of two X chromosomes, which doesn’t hurt. The interview, however, is on my dime. While I’m not really in a position to toss away any offered interviews, I’m also not really interested in spending some of my own precious few dollars in being their token candidate. I don’t know if I am being unfair to the school in this assessment, or just ignorant of the way that community colleges go about hiring their faculty. I do know that the way they are going about this interview isn’t personal, just institutional. Still, I have a very bad feeling about this one, and have not yet decided what to do.
A Poem About Librarians, not by me
My frustration with my recent career choice has been documented on this blog earlier this year. Apparently I am not alone. A friend of mine from the history camp has another friend who also is frustrated by going deeply into debt for a professional degree that qualifies her to make $15.oo an hour. The librarian friend lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. (At least I live somewhere pretty, if somewhat unfriendly and prohibitively expensive.) The history friend, in something other than sympathy, wrote us a poem. I will not divulge his name, but his website is on my links list to the right.
Here is his poem:
Here is his poem:
Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Librarians *
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
Don't let 'em be bitchy and choke on old dust
Make 'em be floozies and drug dealers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
They'll never leave home and they're always alone
Unless someone’s bringin’ a summons (or a pizza)
Librarians are such bitter chicks they won’t crack a smile
They’d rather give you a sneer and choke down their own bile
Catalog systems and faded old archives are subjects on which they do dwell
And it’s probably sexist to call them all chicks
They’ve got bitter gay guys as well.
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
Don't let 'em be bitchy and choke on old dust
Make 'em be floozies and drug dealers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
They'll never leave home and they're always alone
Unless someone’s bringin’ a summons (or a pizza)
Librarians hate Monday Night Football and clear mountain mornings
Little warm puppies and children they give such a fright
And if you should ask one why they seem so dour
They’ll say “what do expect for fifteen an hour:
Then they’ll wrap you up like a piñata
And go Whack Whack all night.
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
Don't let 'em be bitchy and choke on old dust
Make 'em be floozies and drug dealers and such
Mama don't let your babies grow up to be librarians
They'll never leave home and they're always alone
Unless someone’s bringin’ a summons (or a pizza)
* I'm sure our poet apologizes to librarians, archivists, homosexual men, and Willie and Waylon, but probably not.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Story A, Part 4
The story continues to reveal itself in increments. My friend was alone and angry. God had not prevented this act, so he became an unwavering beleiver in complete Free Will. The school had protected the rapist, so he saw education as the font of hypocrisy. He saw the rape as homosexuality rather than pedophila, so he hated all "fags." His parents had not protected him, so he hated them and found any and every way to hurt them. His friends and siblings did not understand his behavior, so they returned his anger in kind if they did not abandon him. I lost him as a friend at this point, abandoning and judging him as a loser because he spent his teen years with his new friend in some stage of being loaded. No one was truly close to him, except maybe one person. Since intimacy only perpetuated abuse, my friend turned to that closest yet most powerless person that he knew. He duplicated his own abuse there.The initial crime happened to my friend, and the story for him starts where he thinks it starts. Perhaps the story also ends where he thinks it ends. Ultimately, the story is about him. Still, I wonder about these supporting players. This crime had repercussions beyond the rapist, his victims, and the rape. The crime infected anyone and everything associated with it.
Yet, as I write this, I question his centrality to the story as I consider the new increments. I wonder at that intimate and powerless person who became the victim of the victim. Whereas the supporting players remain supporting, he throws the story off center. As I hear new voices enter into this story, that one is the most eerily silent and that person carries the heaviest burden of responsibility. I cannot yet find a proper metaphor for his voice. If Arrow’s act was like a sonic boom, moving outward from its source and shaking everything in its path, then this person’s voice is an echo returning the waves with an equal amount of destruction. Except Arrow will not feel the repercussion.
Arrow has moved on to somewhere else doing the same thing as he always had. He was investigated some years ago, but the child victim in that instance was too afraid to testify, which severely weakens any such case. Arrow's earlier victims who are now old enough to defend themselves have cases that are beyond the statute of limitations. I resist the temptation to link to a website that shows his current venture in luring new vicitms. With no conviction against him, any exposure is libel.
Story A, Part 3
I was the first contact with this Arrow. I was in his class, which was one of the bright spots in my life that included a family on the brink of divorce and a year of recovery from the sort of psychological brutality that only 12-year-old girls can inflict (although I gave as good as I got, passing on the pain as most victims can). His admiration for my schoolwork gave me confidence that I did not feel again for decades. I felt for many years that I was at my best because of his class. I longed to be part of that crowd of boys, who received that attention beyond the classroom.The next year, my friend became part of this crowd through his participation in sports. Although he never had Arrow as a teacher, he always had Arrow as a coach. My experience with Arrow was a recommendation. My friend’s parents invited Arrow into their house and never questioned their child’s unnatural closeness with this grown man. Arrow was a symbol of masculinity, and his attention to their son would only help their little boy grow into a healthy male adult. I brought Arrow into their lives, and they accepted him on my experience. Thus, to me, the story started with the beginning of my own relationship with Arrow.
Two things occurred to me as I wrote that last paragraph. First, the parents did question the unnatural closeness between Arrow and their son. The mother said as much to me at the time, almost casually. Her suspicion sparked mine. She quickly dismissed my angry look by saying, “oh, his father and I don’t think anything bad is going on. We just think that maybe your friend ought to hang out with more kids closer to his own age. You know, so he won’t miss out on being a teenager.” Now, as an adult, examining this scrap of a memory, I wonder, how many people knew? How many people knew but did not want to know? How many people would not let themselves know because of some gap that Arrow filled in their lives or because of some prestige that he brought to their institution?
Second, I realize that, for the actual protagonist, my friend, the story may not have started with me at all. The story started when he joined the team, or when he wanted to join the team. The story started when he first saw Arrow’s charisma and wanted to be a part of Arrow’s crowd. The story started when Arrow chose him. The possibility that the story did not start with me does not absolve me from guilt. I was complicit, as were the parents, other teachers, other students, other victims, and school administration.
Story A, Part 2
My second weblog post was an attempt to begin a novel. The novel was not fiction, and would not become fiction in any way except the ending. Given that one draft of the ending involved an act of vigilante murder on the order of Dirty Harry, we can hope that the ending remains in the realm of fiction.Reading that post, you would have no idea where the story was really going, nor that the main character, Sophie, was not the protagonist. This was an inherent flaw in the conception of the novel. I wanted the story to start at its beginning, and I wanted the story not to be about the main character. Yet, the main character was the beginning of the story that was not about her.
"Sophie", of course, was me. Everything that happened in that post was true according to my memory. The story was, and is still, about someone close to me who was raped the “Rob Arrow” character. Rob Arrow, as the story progressed, would reveal himself as a brilliant educator, beloved and trusted by students, teachers, and parents. He coached 7th and 8th grade baseball, basketball, and football teams. He organized innovative lesson plans. He was presented with state and national awards for excellence in teaching. All of the guys from his teams hung out with him in his classroom during lunch and after school. They gathered at his house on weekends, and went to movies and on camping trips. The girls looked on, envious that they were not included, and thrilled by any attention.
Who would suspect that, perhaps for the only time in their lives outside of the military draft, their very femininity protected these girls from exploitation? Why did no one question this boys’ club that gathered around this male teacher outside of the classroom? Why did no one wonder at the decorum? Bad things only happen somewhere else and to someone else who was probably asking for it. Bad sexual things only happened to girls, and maybe prisoners, who both were definitely asking for it. That was the unspoken assumptions of the day.
Logical Fallacy
Monday, September 11, 2006
Thanatos Moving
The moving company was scheduled to arrive at my new apartment to deliver my furniture. Actually, they had been scheduled to arrive three months earlier, then two weeks earlier. This company had proved less than competent in our history together. I was moving from Texas to Indiana, but serving an internship in Connecticut in the meantime. My plan had been to move my stuff to Indiana where it would stay in storage while I was in Connecticut. Then, when I returned to Indiana, I would find an apartment and move my stuff there. All this required from the movers was that they pick up all of my worldly possessions in Texas and deliver them to Indiana sometime during a two week window. “No problem,” they said. “It will be there in a week.”
A week later, they had not yet left Texas. They had not yet left Texas a week after that, either. I now had to be in Connecticut in two days. My father, still in Texas, went down to their facility and, to put it mildly, haggled with them until they agreed to store my stuff in Texas until the end of the summer. According to this new plan, I would call them when I had a place in Indiana, and they would deliver my things there.
Then came the deluge. Every summer, sometimes twice, southeast Texas becomes a lake. Water rains from the sky, saturating the swampy terrain, and taxing the bayou systems beyond capacity. The water usually subsides in within a day or two, but not everything survives. In this case, flood waters were higher than usual. So much higher that, when I turned on the t.v. in Connecticut, the local news led with the story of the Texas floods. The accompanying film clips showed the neighborhood where my movers were located.
My dad went over to the storage facility as soon as the streets cleared. “I’d like to see my daughter’s stuff,” he said. "To see what has been damaged." The manager gave him a blank stare. “Oh, that load is on its way to Indiana," she said. “Why?” asked my dad. “You were supposed to store it here, like we agreed.” “I don’t know,” the manager said, “They left over the weekend. I wasn’t here.”
Ten days later, the truck returned with a moldy and mildewing load of wet boxes and furniture that all belonged to me. They had made a wide tour of middle America, travelling from Texas to Minneapolis to Colorado and back. My parents heroically tried to salvage what they could, particularly the notes for my dissertation and my rather extensive library. The notes and books they saturated with Lysol, baked in the microwave, and blasted with hair driers until each page was toxic with radiation and disinfectants. The neighbors complained about the smell from the wet clothes that my parents had spread out in the sun in the backyard to dry. The cleaners just laughed when my father brought in the heap of reeking cloth, hoping that a professional could salvage my wardrobe. Everything textile or wooden was lost. Everything else remained in storage until September. The company refused responsibility for any damage, insisting that all losses were due to “An Act of God." "Acts of God" included their own role as the Mold and Mildew Angel of the Almighty.
On September 1st, I signed a lease on an apartment in Indiana. The week before I moved in, I had called the movers. “Yes,” they assured me, “The truck will be there on Saturday. It is leaving the lot right now.” “Yes,” they assured my dad, not an hour later, “The truck will be there Saturday. It is leaving the lot right now.” On Saturday the 1st, lease freshly signed, phone plugged in, I called the moving company. “No,” they told me, “That load has not left storage.” The load finally left Texas on the following Wednesday, only to arrive on the 11th.
Early on the 11th, I had tried calling the movers on their cell phone, as instructed, to find out at exactly what time they would be arriving. I just knew that, if I missed them, I would not see what was left of my furniture for another three months. As the events of the day unfolded, however, the hope of contacting anyone on a cell phone became impractical and even frivolous for anything but an emergency.
That night, I sat by the phone, hoping that nothing had happened, hoping that they would call, and desperately longing for my television or radio, both of which were (at least I hoped that they were) packed away in the back of that damn truck. The movers showed up at 9:00 pm. “Thank god,” I greeted them, more relieved that I would not have to bear them any longer once they had unloaded my belongings than out of any real concern for their well-being. “I tried to call you on your cell phone,” I said, “but with everything that has happened today, no one’s cell was working.”
“Oh, we forgot to charge the battery,” the head mover said. “What do you mean what has happened today?”
A week later, they had not yet left Texas. They had not yet left Texas a week after that, either. I now had to be in Connecticut in two days. My father, still in Texas, went down to their facility and, to put it mildly, haggled with them until they agreed to store my stuff in Texas until the end of the summer. According to this new plan, I would call them when I had a place in Indiana, and they would deliver my things there.
Then came the deluge. Every summer, sometimes twice, southeast Texas becomes a lake. Water rains from the sky, saturating the swampy terrain, and taxing the bayou systems beyond capacity. The water usually subsides in within a day or two, but not everything survives. In this case, flood waters were higher than usual. So much higher that, when I turned on the t.v. in Connecticut, the local news led with the story of the Texas floods. The accompanying film clips showed the neighborhood where my movers were located.
My dad went over to the storage facility as soon as the streets cleared. “I’d like to see my daughter’s stuff,” he said. "To see what has been damaged." The manager gave him a blank stare. “Oh, that load is on its way to Indiana," she said. “Why?” asked my dad. “You were supposed to store it here, like we agreed.” “I don’t know,” the manager said, “They left over the weekend. I wasn’t here.”
Ten days later, the truck returned with a moldy and mildewing load of wet boxes and furniture that all belonged to me. They had made a wide tour of middle America, travelling from Texas to Minneapolis to Colorado and back. My parents heroically tried to salvage what they could, particularly the notes for my dissertation and my rather extensive library. The notes and books they saturated with Lysol, baked in the microwave, and blasted with hair driers until each page was toxic with radiation and disinfectants. The neighbors complained about the smell from the wet clothes that my parents had spread out in the sun in the backyard to dry. The cleaners just laughed when my father brought in the heap of reeking cloth, hoping that a professional could salvage my wardrobe. Everything textile or wooden was lost. Everything else remained in storage until September. The company refused responsibility for any damage, insisting that all losses were due to “An Act of God." "Acts of God" included their own role as the Mold and Mildew Angel of the Almighty.
On September 1st, I signed a lease on an apartment in Indiana. The week before I moved in, I had called the movers. “Yes,” they assured me, “The truck will be there on Saturday. It is leaving the lot right now.” “Yes,” they assured my dad, not an hour later, “The truck will be there Saturday. It is leaving the lot right now.” On Saturday the 1st, lease freshly signed, phone plugged in, I called the moving company. “No,” they told me, “That load has not left storage.” The load finally left Texas on the following Wednesday, only to arrive on the 11th.
Early on the 11th, I had tried calling the movers on their cell phone, as instructed, to find out at exactly what time they would be arriving. I just knew that, if I missed them, I would not see what was left of my furniture for another three months. As the events of the day unfolded, however, the hope of contacting anyone on a cell phone became impractical and even frivolous for anything but an emergency.
That night, I sat by the phone, hoping that nothing had happened, hoping that they would call, and desperately longing for my television or radio, both of which were (at least I hoped that they were) packed away in the back of that damn truck. The movers showed up at 9:00 pm. “Thank god,” I greeted them, more relieved that I would not have to bear them any longer once they had unloaded my belongings than out of any real concern for their well-being. “I tried to call you on your cell phone,” I said, “but with everything that has happened today, no one’s cell was working.”
“Oh, we forgot to charge the battery,” the head mover said. “What do you mean what has happened today?”
Thanatos Romantic
A year earlier, not quite to the day, but perhaps to the month, I had seen the World Trade Center. In fact, I had seen them all that summer during an internship at NYU, where I stayed on the top floor of a dorm downtown on Lafayette, across the street from the Tombs. I would sit in a chair by the open window, with a sandlewood candle burning and my feet propped up on the window sill as I read every evening. On weekends, I would open my laptop at the table and work on another chapter of my dissertation, motivated by the romantic notion of writing in New York. The towers were part of the backdrop, only a fragment of my overall adventure in the City of New York.
They weren’t particularly attractive. Just two very tall columns rising up like a child’s overgrown stack of blocks. They weren’t even on my list of things to see. When I wanted a bird’s eye view of the city on my first day there, I went to the Empire State building. “Maybe I’ll go up the World Trade Center later,” I thought. “Some other time.” For me, at that time, they had no connection to anything. I wanted to see things that I had read about. I wanted to see the Lower East Side tenements and the African Burial Ground. I wanted to see settings for Woody Allen movies and locations for Law and Order. I wanted to walk where Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, and John Lennon walked. The World Trade Center had not figured into my personalized tour book of New York.
At that same project at NYU that summer, there was another intern. French, intelligent, handsome, ten years my junior. Down to his name, Francois, he was the sort of young man a slightly older woman would imagine for a summer romance were she writing a chick lit novel. He and I seldom crossed paths that summer because we worked on different days. Toward the end, at a lunch for all of the interns, we learned we had been living in the same dorm for the previous month, him on the second floor and me on the twenty-seventh. I invited him up to the roof that night. We talked. He took pictures. I tried not to look like a drooling Blanche DuBois.
The next week, on our last night in New York, we walked around downtown, winding our way to Christopher Street, then taking the subway further down to Battery Park. There, we hopped on the Staten Island Ferry, just to ride. We stood on the side facing Manhattan, admiring the city lights. We drifted into a conversation about the towers, and the tallest buildings in the world, until a drunk woman distracted us. She wanted to sit on the edge of the ferry with her legs dangling over the side. Her date did his best to restrain her from crawling under the chains that prevent people from doing just that. Finally, he distracted her back inside and they got off at the stop. The French boy and I rode back the city, then went to a bar off of Washington Square where we listened to a funk band play Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Afterward, he gave me the best massage that I’ve ever had in my life, leaving me putty for the next two weeks.
The towers, again, were a backdrop for this interlude. They were the longest string of lights on shore, an excuse to keep the conversation going and draw the evening out further, a buffer between me and a kiss.
They weren’t particularly attractive. Just two very tall columns rising up like a child’s overgrown stack of blocks. They weren’t even on my list of things to see. When I wanted a bird’s eye view of the city on my first day there, I went to the Empire State building. “Maybe I’ll go up the World Trade Center later,” I thought. “Some other time.” For me, at that time, they had no connection to anything. I wanted to see things that I had read about. I wanted to see the Lower East Side tenements and the African Burial Ground. I wanted to see settings for Woody Allen movies and locations for Law and Order. I wanted to walk where Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, and John Lennon walked. The World Trade Center had not figured into my personalized tour book of New York.
At that same project at NYU that summer, there was another intern. French, intelligent, handsome, ten years my junior. Down to his name, Francois, he was the sort of young man a slightly older woman would imagine for a summer romance were she writing a chick lit novel. He and I seldom crossed paths that summer because we worked on different days. Toward the end, at a lunch for all of the interns, we learned we had been living in the same dorm for the previous month, him on the second floor and me on the twenty-seventh. I invited him up to the roof that night. We talked. He took pictures. I tried not to look like a drooling Blanche DuBois.
The next week, on our last night in New York, we walked around downtown, winding our way to Christopher Street, then taking the subway further down to Battery Park. There, we hopped on the Staten Island Ferry, just to ride. We stood on the side facing Manhattan, admiring the city lights. We drifted into a conversation about the towers, and the tallest buildings in the world, until a drunk woman distracted us. She wanted to sit on the edge of the ferry with her legs dangling over the side. Her date did his best to restrain her from crawling under the chains that prevent people from doing just that. Finally, he distracted her back inside and they got off at the stop. The French boy and I rode back the city, then went to a bar off of Washington Square where we listened to a funk band play Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” Afterward, he gave me the best massage that I’ve ever had in my life, leaving me putty for the next two weeks.
The towers, again, were a backdrop for this interlude. They were the longest string of lights on shore, an excuse to keep the conversation going and draw the evening out further, a buffer between me and a kiss.
Thanatos Remembering
I was reading the New York Times online, procrastinating on starting the workday. I clicked on some insipid story or another, but it wouldn't load. So, my co-worker and I decided to start our proofreading. Our boss came in, fresh from his auto commute, and blythely asked, "So, has everyone recovered from the plane crashing into the World Trade Center?"
"What?" We worker bees almost laughed at the oddity of his greeting, at its incongruity with the morning. "It was probably some drunk pilot," I said, imagining a Cessna or a Piper Cub smashed into the side of one of the towers like a bug on a windshield. "No," said the bossman, "it was a big passenger plane." I revised my image to a larger plane taking off from LaGuardia with a pilot so drunk that he couldn't read the instruments. No one expects...
The bossman went up to his office and brought back down a tiny, black and white (at least I remember that those were the colors) television. We watched as the second plane seemed to speed up just before it hit. My stomach slammed into the back of my ribs. We frantically searched the internet for some news, any news, that would tell us what the hell was happening. "Terrorist," we found. I imagined the militia sort, like Timothy McVeigh, despite the immediate speculation that they came from the Middle East.
Then, the first tower went down. "It's like a movie," my co-worker said, awestruck in the most profound, almost religous sense of the word. Something leaden slid from the back of my throat to the bottom of my feet. The ground slid forward beneath me, moving faster and faster, out of control.
"There goes the future," I thought. "This is the end."
[This post first appeared as a comment on BitchPhD earlier today.]
"What?" We worker bees almost laughed at the oddity of his greeting, at its incongruity with the morning. "It was probably some drunk pilot," I said, imagining a Cessna or a Piper Cub smashed into the side of one of the towers like a bug on a windshield. "No," said the bossman, "it was a big passenger plane." I revised my image to a larger plane taking off from LaGuardia with a pilot so drunk that he couldn't read the instruments. No one expects...
The bossman went up to his office and brought back down a tiny, black and white (at least I remember that those were the colors) television. We watched as the second plane seemed to speed up just before it hit. My stomach slammed into the back of my ribs. We frantically searched the internet for some news, any news, that would tell us what the hell was happening. "Terrorist," we found. I imagined the militia sort, like Timothy McVeigh, despite the immediate speculation that they came from the Middle East.
Then, the first tower went down. "It's like a movie," my co-worker said, awestruck in the most profound, almost religous sense of the word. Something leaden slid from the back of my throat to the bottom of my feet. The ground slid forward beneath me, moving faster and faster, out of control.
"There goes the future," I thought. "This is the end."
[This post first appeared as a comment on BitchPhD earlier today.]
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