"Did you know English classes go up to like... 4115?" she tells her friend and at this point the pamphlet becomes invisible. Mostly because there information is so wrong, as a 4210 student stands attested to, and I want to tell them how wrong they are. Then again, I’d hate to be rude. I glance over to them as they take their seat beside me in the hall. I later learn they're thirty minutes early for their film class. I’ve become very good at overhearing things, so I’m excited about what other incredibly incorrect comments they can spew out in that short time frame.
"I couldn't do that" the other girl groans, "can you imagine all that writing?"
And I'm thinking that they have no idea.
My eyes are still focusing on the pamphlet but I steal a few glances at the girl across the hall from me. This is the girl in the cowboy boots from earlier, brunette, blue jeans. I notice she has her purse clutched tightly to her side, the loops dangling off her shoulder but the bag pressed into her side as if forming into her. Her ankles form a compressed X. Her blonde friend takes a seat across the hall and pulls out her phone. She begins chatting about some guy I don't know and I’m disappointed in the abrupt change of conversation. I wonder if seeing Sturgis loom past the doorway of one of the classrooms deterred them, but a part of me thinks they might not even know who he is. I soon become bored with them. Aside from noting the slow drawl that lilts from the blonde girl's lips when she has to pronounce a short "a" sound, they're conversation becomes more background noise through a haze of learning.
"Did you hear what he said? Something about putting the brakes on sex."
I come back. Sex always brings you back. At this point I whip out a pen for an exact quote because I know this is going to be gold. The brunette shakes her head, and the blonde friend, now ecstatic, surfs madly through her cell phone. From the way her toe twitches in the corner of my eye I can tell she is not excited about the probably less than 3G service she is getting in this building. She finds it and my pen is already hitting the paper.
"I've got the sex drive, but the spirit is putting the brakes on it. Can you believe that?"
This is funny. Partly because who writes that kind of stuff on facebook? Partly because I know a guy who would write that kind of stuff on facebook. I imagine this guy in my head, some bent and broad smiling ladies’ man, flaunting words to win over attention and facebook likes. At this point I'm dying to know who this guy is because the girls seem to be both amused and teeth-suckingly annoyed at what this guy is posting. But I can hardly lead there conversation and when a third friend joins them, they change subject pretty quickly. I'm left with a handful of questions and a strong desire to google this guy... not to mention an odd dislike for light brown boots.
What I like about this piece, initially, is how it dialogues with what we’re doing in this class. I’m having trouble figuring out what to write about—and you have a good idea, here, to write about learning how to write about these things. Even the POV attacks this notion: you’re writing about what you heard, down the point of showing your reader that you documented it for later use. I think that’s a good move, though admittedly not entirely new. But for an early exercise, I find modeling yourself after something that has proven to work for other people in the past is perfectly acceptable, until you learn to branch out. I know I’ll have to do that, because I know nothing about CNF.
ReplyDeleteAs for the particulars: some cutting could probably already start happening. The line “Then again, I’d hate to be rude” doesn’t add anything to the piece—it doesn’t make the narrator (in CNF am I allowed to say “you”?) feel more sympathetic, it just adds to the sarcasm of the line previous, and yet the previous line does it so much better. Likewise, the Facebook section falls flat for me. Facebook, in and of itself, has to be a CNF playground. The light way this brushes over it really doesn’t do it justice—in fact, the bit about sex may be better in another piece. This one could instead focus primarily on the way the rest of the university views the English department.
And some additions: how have you become very good at overhearing things? Perfect time to segway into something else, another story, another moment more potent but like this one you’re documenting now.
But where is the eaves-dropping getting us? That is, where is it traveling to? I want your essays to move, to transport me. You can't stay too long on any one subject but instead must allow the writing to become dialogical, multiple. What, in that writing above, could function as a pivot, a way of swerving away from the immediate overheard conversation and into some other territory? What does that territory look like?
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