Head Case (13 page)

I am terrified. At any moment, the trapdoor will open, ticker tape will fall from the sky, and horns will sound and lights will flash and the man with the cardboard check will come out to announce that this is the millionth time that I misplaced my trust in someone. I keep writing giant cardboard checks with my heart that my head refuses to cash.

 

September 2008

Valencia, California

As part of the program, I'm a teaching assistant for an introduction-to-writing course. Half of the MFA students are placed in charge of their own classrooms in support of a series of lectures given by a professor, the other half shadow different professors in their classrooms. Learning to teach is the main reason that I wanted to get my MFA, so I'm ecstatic and terrified to be one of the MFA students with my own classroom. All of my life, following the leader has been my biological imperative. In addition to navigating physical geography by playing a covert game of “follow the leader,” I have also always watched and taken cues from my teachers and professors. The women who were my college professors were my guides to how a woman can be smart and funny and curious about the world and be completely, unapologetically, herself. Now, for the first time in my life, I'm expected to lead. My introduction-to-writing students are surly from the start, though I don't blame them for their lack of enthusiasm for five-paragraph essay structure.

Every Tuesday, the professor for this undergraduate course lectures on a different period of avant-garde art history, beginning with the futurists and ending with the conceptual artists of the late twentieth century. Every Wednesday, I meet with a cluster of students for ninety minutes to go over the lecture and to assign writing assignments concerning each art period. In addition to leading conversations and exercises in relation to the lecture sessions, I go over how to structure an essay, cite sources, and write a bibliography.

I make it up as I go along, artlessly lobbing different pedagogical tactics: joking, cajoling, threatening. I feel less like a teacher and more like a basketball coach in an uplifting sports movie, taking my ragtag team of colorful underdogs all the way to the pennant.

Some days, inevitably, are better than others. Some days I even get the sense that I know what I'm doing; those days feel like a homecoming. As overwhelmed as I am by the brain's potential to unravel, I am more moved by its elasticity.

 

Writing Arts: Twentieth-Century Art Movements and Society Syllabus

Course #: CS110

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In the Wednesday discussion section of this course, we will be focusing on the twentieth-century avant-garde art movements presented in the lecture period and polishing our essay-writing skills by writing about certain works and artists of the era. You will be assigned three critical essays throughout the course of the semester. I will update you on paper topics, guidelines, and formatting as the first assignment approaches. You will be expected to turn in a rough draft as well as a revision of each piece.

CRITICAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT POLICIES

Plagiarism Policy:
As discussed in Professor Nelson's original syllabus, CalArts has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to plagiarism; possible consequences of suspected plagiarism include failure in class and expulsion from the school. Plagiarism is identified as misrepresentation of someone else's work as your own.

(I am the only plagiarist here, the fake, the phony, standing in front of the twelve of you as if I know what I'm doing because I have a syllabus, a cup of coffee, and a blazer. I look like the real thing, but inside I can't believe that I'm getting away with this. The worst part is, I'm falling in love with teaching, so I hope that I'm never found out.)

Absences:
You receive three absences, both in Professor Nelson's lecture and my class section. It is especially important that you be aware of your absences, as this class can only be retaken for your mandatory graduation credit at a community college over the summer.

Reading:
The reader may be purchased at
www.universityreaders.com
. I expect you to buy this reader ASAP and bring it to class every week. Reading should be completed before lecture on Tuesday, in order to get the most out of the week's lecture.

Grading:
(How am I going to do this? The organizing, the rubric—don't let them smell fear; keep a calm and steady grip. Show authority, not vulnerability. They don't need to know. Nobody needs to know. Hide, reveal, retreat.) Check marks for handing in a three-by-five card with three questions: two from reading and one from lecture. Check marks for participation, for attendance. Check marks for having a thesis statement, for MLA formatting, a proper citations page. Data collected via check marks make up your paper grade as well as your ultimate grade.

Goals:
I have been collecting blazers from Goodwill for years in anticipation of becoming a teacher. If I try to open the door with the hand that is also holding my coffee, make the wrong amount of copies or staple them backward, if I forget simple words midsentence and ask for the class's help, may I please remind you: I got this. I know all of your names, I researched discussion topics and prepared lectures. I will work harder than you will ever know.

Outcome:
You will learn things you didn't know before; you will be challenged. For ninety minutes twice a week I will be a conduit instead of a charge.

 

October 2008

Valencia, California

All of the students have impossible expectations for the CalArts Halloween party. We've all heard the story about Paul Reubens passing out on the lawn, about the beer laced with hallucinogens. I'm dressed in a Harlem Globetrotters cheerleader uniform from the 1970s and a grotesque rubber mask of a chicken that I picked up at a toy store in Seattle. I tell inquirers that I'm a “party fowl.” The mask is incredibly hot, and I can only see through holes in the beak, which creates the effect of watching the party through a telescopic lens. When the girl before me in the crushing line for drinks drops a beer on herself, an art student dressed as a giant box of tissues mops her up before disappearing back into the swarm of the party.

Feeling overwhelmed by the crowd, I retreat with a few other writing students to the concrete hut at the end of the campus that houses our program. We're all acutely aware that our thesis defenses are only days away, but tonight is supposed to be about forgetting. Very few of the male writing students have dressed up this year. The man I'm sitting next to, a new student whom I haven't talked to much outside of class, is in his street clothes, a baseball cap jammed backward on his head.

I've noticed how authoritatively he remarks on other students' work in class; every so often his feedback is stalled by a stutter. When he gets stuck on a word, I feel ashamed because I don't know where to put my eyes. Blankly watching him stuck looping a syllable until his body allows him to right himself feels as though I'm adding pressure to the situation. I want to be able to help somehow, to run behind him and Heimlich the words out of him. I usually look down at my desk and wait.

I know what it is to be angry with your uncooperative body. Your body will inevitably fail you—if not now, then later. We are all lurching meat marionettes, Frankenstein monsters stitched together from stronger parts and weaker parts. Try to think of this as a happy thing, a joyful coltish clumsiness born of enthusiasm to be in the world.

I've taken off my chicken mask to facilitate drinking. He also has a beer in his hand.

“So, what's your thesis project?” he asks me, making polite party conversation.

“Yeah, I don't want to talk about that right now.”

“You can tell me.”

“Ask me tomorrow.”

“No, no, tell me, what is it?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

Talking about my thesis sucks all the air out of the room; it's a conversation stopper, not exactly party chatter. But he persists, so I tell him, certain that afterward he will back off immediately.

“I have a hole in my brain. I'm writing about that.”

“Well, I suppose I should congratulate you on being able to dress yourself, then.”

He's smirking. This is a joke.

I look around the small room, which has grown quiet. One girl sitting on the floor in the corner awkwardly plays with the brim of her witch hat. The students are waiting to see if the man and I are going to fight, but I'm stunned into silence. I had assumed that he and I were somehow on the same team, this imaginary team of people who are forced to play the hand they're dealt, instead of two individuals who barely know each other.

The next day, unbeknownst to me, one of my friends in the program tells him that he needs to apologize to me. He does, in a very thorough and touching email.

The Thursday after the party, I will have to defend my thesis proposal by sitting in front of my class of twenty-five students and a panel of professors and discussing my process, my intentions. In trying to practice how I would answer their questions, I only come up with more of my own.

When I trip and fall, is that also when you would trip and fall? When I am certain that the car heading toward me will hit me, is it a justifiable fear? Do you drop your keys? Does a cup fall from your hand as often it falls from mine? Which hand? How often? Please record. When I feel comfortable in my body, is that the comfort you feel in yours? Because feeling comfortable in my body never feels the way I think it should feel.

On Thursday evening, I am scheduled to be the first to present my thesis proposal after break. During the break, I head to the water fountain, where I swallow a muddy rainbow of herbal antianxiety pills with names both beautiful and meaningless to me:
r
hodiola, cordyceps, taurine.

My adviser grips the skinny microphone and flashes a fiberglass smile in a sharkskin suit and shiny black dress shoes.
Now it's time to play a game!
The studio audience shuffles in from break. I take my seat and place my hand above the buzzer. The topics on the board include: “Is That Why You're Such a Bitch in Workshop?” “Are You Going to Publish This, or Is It Just Therapy?” and “Is It Fatal?” A hand goes up.

“So, is this, like, specific to you?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, are you, like, the only person who has this?”

I explain that it's like stroke damage; each stroke results in a uniquely devastated neurological system. I didn't have a stroke, but what I have is unique to me, and I have not been able to find anyone else, via my Web research, with a hole filled with cranial fluid where the right parietal should be.

Another hand goes up.

“I just can't believe it's the size of a lemon. I mean, a
lemon
.”

She pumps her fist in the air repeatedly, as you do when you pass a truck and you want the driver to blow the horn. I fail to decipher this motion, either some sort of call to arms or act of solidarity, or she's going to shake me down for my lunch money after class. I nod and thank her.

A hush falls over the class, signaling the end of the questions. I am thanked by my adviser and dismissed. Afterward, I go out with friends from class to an aggressively festive chain restaurant, where we drink everything there is to drink in every shape of glass there is made to hold it: a fishbowl, a volcano, a hurricane.

*   *   *

Come on, it's not that bad. You're really milking this, aren't you? This is really more of a
self-esteem
issue. I remember that one time when I said “left” and you went left, when I asked you for change and you counted it out, when I pointed to a clock and you nodded, when we lost the car and you found it, when I was feeling down and you kept patting me on the back. This is a bit much, isn't it? Don't you think this is really a bit much? Really. I hang out with you all the time, and
this
, this is bullshit, this is a lie, you are a liar, this is all fake, and you, well, obviously You Are a Fraud.

(I'm afraid of what my friends will say. I'm afraid that they won't believe me.)

 

February 2009

Redlands, California

The word
nostalgia
was originally a medical diagnosis. In the eighteenth century, nostalgia was diagnosed as a physical illness afflicting people who'd left the homeland that their body had grown accustomed to.
Pathopatridalgia
.
Patho
, the Latin root meaning “suffering”;
patri
, meaning “land of the father.” From Latin to Greek, the root becomes
nostos
, “returning home,” and
algos
, “pain.”

Is this the pain of yearning for home or the pain of returning home? Nostalgia is a masochistic twinge, a need akin to wobbling the rickety tooth in your mouth in order to sort through the pain.
Yep, still hurts. Damn, I should get this checked out. Maybe tomorrow it will feel better; maybe if I just leave it alone.
But you are absently worrying that wobbly tooth again without meaning to or thinking about it. It feels inexplicably good. Without meaning to or really thinking about it, you can find yourself jostling around your past for no good reason, not knowing what you are looking for. An old record, a meal at a familiar restaurant, a message from out of the blue, and there you are; twisting and contorting to get closer to the pain, to try to figure out its nature and origins, its roots. Diagnosis is a systematic labeling, an identification. Over time, the meaning of
nostalgia
has shifted from something solid—a diagnosis rooted in place—to something much more abstract: a yearning rooted in time.

“What are you doing next week?” I ask Charlie.