Gloria and Ellie settled at a table in the back of the coffee shop. “Who was that guy anyway?”
“Someone from my World History class. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, if I ever even knew it. He was trying to make me feel badly about always reading.”
“Seriously? Why is that a bad thing?”
“Who knows. And, get this, he basically bragged about the fact that he isn’t a reader. Like just doesn’t read. Can you even imagine that?”
Gloria looked horrified.
“That was my reaction too! I’m glad you showed up when you did. I would have ended up helping him study for tomorrow’s test and probably agreeing to go out with him as well. I really need to learn how to be a little more…”
“Bitchy? I mean if you want to make it sound better you could say like me, but we will both know you mean bitchy.”
“I don’t think you’re bitchy. You just know how to assert yourself a little better than I seem to. I hear my mother’s voice telling me to be nice.”
“I hear my mother’s voice telling me that the instep is the best place to stomp a foot if a dude gets too close on the bus. You can hear her voice if you need to. Look, it’s not your fault, you were raised to be good by someone who never sees the bad in people. I mean, I appreciate that about your mother, obviously, but it doesn’t help you out when you’re not in her polite world.”
Ellie rolled her eyes, “My mother’s world isn’t all that polite. They just use coded phrases to be awful to each other; ‘oh I see you had the living room painted; I really should have given you the name of our decorator.’ Which means, oh this is ugly as shit, can’t believe you thought this looks good.”
“But politely!”
“Yes, oh so politely. How would your mother handle it?”
“She wouldn’t say anything. Not to your mother’s face. Sometimes the nicest thing is silence. To me on the way home she’d say, ‘well money can’t buy taste.’”
The girls both laughed.
“You know you are the weirdest combination of polite niceness and rude honesty?”
“It’s not rude!”
Gloria raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, sometimes it comes across as rude, but only because people lie too much. You know how much I hate that.”
“I do. I just think it’s sort of funny that you would have been nice to that jerk because your mother wants you to be nice, but you also would have told him exactly what you thought about him if he ever asked.”
Ellie smiled and changed the subject, “So was the meeting with the TA a good one or a bad one?”
“It was good, sorry again about being late, but we got into a discussion that is going to completely change the focus of my paper. He mentioned a favorite quote that made me look at the theme of my work completely differently.”
“This isn’t the first time a meeting with him has run longer than you thought it would…”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You have that glint in your eye. He’s the TA. He has meetings with everyone in class. And I’m guessing they all run long. He’s not burned out and dead eyed like a couple of the professors. He actually seems to love what he’s doing. Which, he’s getting his masters in English so he better like teaching, right?”
“So…you know what he’s going to do with his degree. Interesting.”
“Again, stop it. Of course, that’s what he’s going to do with his degree. It’s what you can do with a master’s degree in English. And at night he’ll try writing the great American novel. And eventually he’ll be a dead eyed, burnout professor of Comparative Lit who farms out all of his work to his TA and the cycle will continue.”
“Is that what we are going to end up like? Dead eyed, burned-out professors?”
“Oh hell no. We are going to do things completely differently. We are going to write the next great American novels during the day and work part time in this very coffee shop at night.”
“Grand plans for sure!”
Gloria laughed. “Nah, I mean, I am going to teach. That’s still my plan. And you are going to write that book. And I will teach it in my class. Maybe, I mean if you get all glinty in your writing it might not be appropriate for middle schoolers!”
“All glinty. Yeah, you should for sure be teaching English to middle schoolers.”
“It’s a word. I just used it in a sentence. And that is one of the things I’d like to teach. Not to be too tied to language rules when you are being creative. There is a time and a place for really structured writing, but I just haven’t found it yet.”
“Was that what your TA said?”
Gloria smiled, “He has mentioned that I might want to pay to have someone proof my papers before I turn them in for final grades. Just to catch my unique understanding of grammar rules. But that’s what I’ve got you for!”
“But you never listen to me.”
“I always listen to you. I just argue with you in the moment. But I always make a copy with all of your corrections to turn in. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Never. I mean, the fact that you make a copy instead of just changing your original keeps me humble.”
“I am what I am.”
“You are. Now back to your TA. When do you see him again? Hmm?”
Gloria rolled her eyes, “Tomorrow in class I would guess. Just like everyone else.”
“And when is your next creative session with him?”
“Okay, look, I know you are just going to keep teasing me about him, so I’ll stop you right now. He carries a copy of Infinite Jest with him everywhere he goes.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. So…”
“No glinty.”
“No glinty.”
No comments:
Post a Comment