-Richard the Third

Those of you who know your Shakespeare will have some idea why Richard ( and this quotation in particular) is one my favorites, second only to Titus Adronicus in terms of pure villianry. I thought I was utterly miserable at the beginning of the day, but I had absolutely no idea how bad it was going to get.

At moments like this, I wish I wasn't an atheist because then there would be some sort of complaints department I could register my displeasure to. Before Rabid left for Paris, she talked about her faith in G-d. I said, "Fuck G-d. Put your faith in me, I at least return phone calls." But on days like today I have to wonder what evil I could have possibily perpetrated to be rewarded in such a fashion.

I have that New Englander stiff upper lip. Last week I had to take off my shoes and teach barefoot because I was bleeding all over the place ( not that my students noticed as long as I stayed behind the podium). The bleeding has gone down of course but the pain has increased and today my limp is not just apparent but truly obvious ( most likley that cool breeze is responsible). So I am trying my best to keep my students from noticing including limping behind the library tour my first class had.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I am a master of misdirection when it comes to the disability. Oh I'll talk about it, but let you see it, I will cry tears of blood before I let that happen and so on top of all the other misery, the administration being obnoxious and evil, the other teachers being idiots, the students who can not follow even the most simple set of directions, and the other assorted pains in my life which I will not go into detail about, the health issues are what always upset me the most. No, upset is the wrong word, enrage. Because I have never stopped trying get this fucking albatross of a body to work like its supposed to and it just won't cooperate. And I'll be honest with you, I'm fucking sick of it.If I could have just one day off once in a while it wouldn't be so bad. And even now it's not as bad as it has been in the past. But to be trapped in a body that doesn't work, let me tell you, I have nothing to fear from Hell. I will be lighting cigarettes off of the Devil's tail saying "Honey, honey honey, seen it , done it, wear the t-shirt, read the book, bought the film rights. You know what? Just let me go now because really you'll break before I do." And if he questions me I'll just say "Look when I was eleven years old I spent two months in a wheelchair watching my gym class learn how to square dance and that's just one small episode from the lifetime of horror." And the Devil would say, "Uh, yeah, well just make sure you sign out with the front desk before you leave."

That is if I believed in the Devil, which I don't. The Jews call this planet the veil of tears. There is a very good reason for that. I can only hope I'm not one of the 36 people on whom the fate of the world depends (you see it's not just a blog, it's a scholarly research problem-do you know to what I am referrring in terms of the 36 people on whom the fate of the world depends?), because if it's true now they are down to 35.

And if I get my hands on a weapon and find those other people, it will be even lower than that.

For those of you wondering how long it would take me to feel like this again, you can stop the clock. Nine days. At what point did the ability to follow simple directions stop being a qualification for getting out of the first grade and become optional for even college students.

Looking out at my class I am reminded of what Evolution really is.

Just a theory.

Add to that the fact that every step I take is like walking on hot razor blades and I am hauling around twelve pounds of books today and you have a fair idea of why my students should be taught the slogan "Duck and Cover."

Last night when I was getting on the train, there was a cute, christ what to call them, punk couple-al in black, black hair, piercings, the girl had a furry bag with a chain for a strap, the guy had a shaved head-but really the looked sweet enough, young as they were (early 20s). But then I noticed the girl giving me a distasteful look.

Now I get looks from people all the time. Iget looks, people whispering and obvious giggling, I even get pointing and laughing. When I get it from "conventional women" on the train, I assume it has mostly to do with the assumption that I have indulged in some ill advised breast augmentation surgery. But when it comes from, well people who seem to court being noticed ( dye your hair black, pierce your lip, dress like a gothic Pippi Longstocking) I am more confused.

Take for, example, the other night when dressed to meet my mother for the theater, I got on a crosstown bus in front of a kid sporting, I kid you not, a foot and a half afro-all around. I would have hardly taken too much notice of his tumble weed of hair if he hadn't kept directing "What the fuck is wrong with you?" looks directly in my direction. I was on my period that day and tempted to walk to him and "Listen, I am more of a freak than you can ever hope to be. I get a pair of shears and you are just another Gap ad. I don't even have to put effort into this. I wake up being freak-o-rama and this is just the freakiness you can see. Don't even get me started on my more invisible freakdom so just back off."

My question is why is that people who WORK to be freaks have hostility towards those of us who achieve it naturally? Would they admire us or at the very least see us as kindred spirits? Is it so much to ask to get acceptance from SOMEBODY even if they have a five foot railroad spike stickingo ut of their heads?

-one of my students discussing the relationship between Adam and Eve in Genesis

Part of the reason I love teaching is my students sometimes come up with brilliant things, from the student in my Prose class who described her boyfriend as "strategically built", the student's whose mother encouraged her to "dream giant", the student who "grew the feeling of gloom and obscurity", and finally the student who "developed a platonic relationship with the act of playing the violin." And when I say I love these phrases, I really mean I love it. As strange as they are, they evoke such interesting images-the gloom and obscurity farm (which if you grew up where I did in CT you would think gloom and obscurity are our primary crops), a boyfriend built like the pentagon, and the student whose dreams ressemble a character from Jack and the Beanstalk. But I have to say that today's brilliant comment du jour goes to the student who coined the phrase "subconscious worship."

Now why do I think this is so brilliant? Because it occured to me in the moment that she said it that as ridiculous as it seems to worship someone subconsciously, for isn't the very nature of worship that it is conscious, that I and most likely a great many other people succumb to subconscious worship often. For example, Rabid was recently accused of worshipping me ( by VR who most likely conceives me as a threat and doesn't realize that I was the one who encouraged the romance much to my chagrin in light of her current attitude). Now since Rabid not only doesn't conceptualize our relationship that way (devotee/idol) and rejected the suggestion, it could be suggested that she is guilty of subconscious worship. I myself probably have subconsciously worshipped people in my life like my late singing teacher David Bucknam who committed suicide in 1998. I am not meaning to suggest here that subconscious worhsip should be linked to romantic love, although certainly it could be, and in my students I certainly see many who already act like a devoted dog when their boyfriends are around without being aware that their devotion is obvious. If you asked them if they worshipped their boyfriends most would be insulted, but still, BUT STILL the reality of their behavior suggests that they do.

"It's like having my own personal porn star."-GHV

Is it wrong that I like that compliment? Is it wrong that I think being a personal porn star is part of my girlfriendly obligation? Is there any other term for gilfriendly obligation?

It seems I should clarify part of what I was getting to in my post, which was unfinished. My point is not that I suffer from low self-esteem in terms of my evaluation of my own physical attractiveness. Trust me. I am supremely confident about my ability to attract men. If a guy rebuffs me for sex, my response is not "What is wrong with me?" my response is "What the fuck is wrong with him to turn down such a, well let's be frank, sublime piece of ass?" What I was more upset about is how men have put me in the "Just for Fucking" category and somehow these other chicks who are not as smart and often times not as good looking are put in the "Love Object" category.

To some degree I feel lied to by my parents, my mother conditioning me to be attractive and both conditioning me to educated and intelligent with the implication that this would lead to happiness and marriage. It seems the more I look around there are an awful lot of men who say that like smart women, but what they really mean is women who are slightly less smart than themselves Remember this pair? I recently ran into Irish Eyes at the bus station who went on and on about how awful it is to date a girl who can't understand Nietszche, yet he was always intimidated by me. He went ahead this weekend and married a girl he considers his intellectual inferior. For a long time I thought it was was because men might fear that my disability would make me dependent on them, but my childhood friend Bridezilla, who is less attractive, less intelligent, and less emotionally stable managed to find herself a husband who will literally drop everything because she can not handle the monumental task of getting her prescription filled at the drug store. (Mind you, Bridezilla, has been hospitalized for psychotic episodes and I cut off the friendship when I got sick of her calling me and asking me to send my migraine medication to her in Georgia because she was over the limit on her clonazepam AKA clinopin. She's been unemployed since she graduated from school and before marrying this rube she was engaged to another twit whom she left.) Meanwhile I am slogging up and down subway stairs carrying ten pounds of books. Generally, and remember this is a general statement, men are terrified once they find out what I do for a living, and often they lose interest when they realize that I could kick their asses at Trivial Pursuit. Many men have admitted as much to me to me (Thus John Yule's great "Act stupid, more cleavage" advice.)

What's particularly interesting is that in this analysis it is my intelligence not my lack of it that puts me into the "Sex Object" pool. Generally when I put a person into the "Sex Object" pool it is because I wouldn't trust them to sit the right way on a toilet seat not because they can offer pithy opinions on Newtonian physics. Am I terrified by brilliant men? Absolutely. I lived in fear of dealing with the Beast because I felt my intellectual inferiority almost every minute, BUT that was part of my attraction to him. He pushed me beyond my limits, and generally I think that is what Love is supposed to do-push you to develop-challenge you. I didn't let my fear eliminate him as a possible mate (or whatever). And of course he emigrated just like the rest of my love interests.

One of the other things I was contemplating this weekend is my inability to understand weak people. When my students get one paper back with a bad grade and just give up, I simply can not understand. The whole concept of giving up is beyond me. Not that I consider this virtuous. Certainly the ability to walk away would have been a boon to me at many points. For example, when I was an undergrad. I didn't change majors even after I knew I wasn't going to be an actor because I didn't want to be perceived as a quitter. I knew lots of people who changed majors, but looked down on them as being weak instead of thinking perhaps they were doing the best thing for themselves. How much better would my life have been if I changed from acting to psychology? But no I slogged through all four years with grim determination and completely ignored that I wasn't supposed to just get to the end goal, but ostensibily be doing the right thing for myself and that might entail taking more time or making mistakes.

Still considering that determination is tied to my survival it is not particularly surprising that I would find it difficult to let go of things. Survival is always a choice. The reason why suicide disturbs so many of us is it serves a reminder how much of a choice life really is. My therapists have always reminded me that every time I have managed to drag myself out of a hospital bed, it was a choice. But it doesn't feel like a choice to me. I know on some intellectual level that I could just have given up back in 2001, moved back home, quit my job, even been committed, but it didn't really feel like an option. And this inability to perceive quitting as an option is joined directly to my survival. So when I see my students give up after such paltry discouragement I find myself getting angry. Hell, I find myself getting angry at my co-workers too. As I was teaching the other profs about the Aeneid today one prof said, "You know I'm glad you are making this presentation because you know there is just so much information it's hard for me to even know where to start." As I don't have any magical powers, I'm shocked by his statement. Sure it's a daunting task, but it is after all your job so you do it. And this rage on some level I know is wrong and is based again on my own inability to understand giving up and accept it as a viable option, but I don't know how to train myself to accept that it is reasonable behavior.

And speaking of giving up I'll stop here. This wasn't the post I meant to write. That will have to wait until tomorrow.