I don’t know how the rest of you guys spent your time in graduate school, but I met some of the most . . . interesting people that one could ever hope to meet. One of them was my friend Jason Gleckman. People come and go, and sometimes you find yourself living, due to financial arrangements, suicide, burned-down dwellings, or whatever, with people whom otherwise you’d not have the pleasure to know. One semester (before he met Pat and started biffing like a rodent), Jason lived with a couple of guys whom the rest of us didn’t know very well. But they liked their beer and football, and they didn’t mind Jason’s rather odd ways, so it was all working out fine, I guess. Until one rainy night.
It really was a torrential storm, and having been improvident enough to let themselves run out of food in the fridge, Jason and his roomies scratched together enough cash to order two-for-one pizza from Little Caesar’s. Their place was a bit off of the beaten path, and there was thunder and lightning and rain coming down in sheets. The deal was, the pizza came within, I don’t know, an hour or something, or you didn’t have to pay for it. They received a phone call from the delivery driver after about 40 minutes, asking for directions. Then he called back in another 10 minutes from a little closer. Finally, after another half hour, he showed up, soaked to the bone.
Jason went to the door to get the pizza, but one of his roomies, without taking his eye off of the television, said: “I’m not paying for that. It’s over an hour. I’m sure it’s cold, and the box is completely soaked.” The pizza delivery dude, a burly guy, blinked in disbelief, while Jason tried to say that he’d go get his checkbook and was rudely thrust out of the way. Before the guy managed to build up a head of steam to go with his threats, Jason’s roomie deftly grabbed his rifle from behind the La-Z-Boy and pumped a shot into the poor schmuck’s shoulder. “Holy shit!,” he observed. “You shot me!”
Jason compressed the guy while his roomie called 9-1-1, still watching TV, and soon the ambulance and the police arrived. Despite the rain, he walked to my place, about 4 miles away, and spent the night. He moved out of that gig soon thereafter. As far as I know, his former roomie was never prosecuted.
******
I had met Jason through Pavel, now a well-known literary theorist. He’d gone through a series of disastrous relationships with a series of women, including Allison the Coke Whore, which put him in a deep financial hole out of which (as you shall see) he was “literally” digging himself. His latest amour, Elke, liked to dance, so he indulged her by taking her to the local clubs. One night, he took her out, went to get a drink, and found her hanging around with a guy named Alphonso. He didn’t mind, till, as they were leaving, Alphonso came around and she decided to stay. He didn’t drive, so he walked home, fuming. The next day he jealously questioned her about it, and she admitted to having had Alphonso back to her place. They quarrelled. She hung up. She started seeing Alphonso.
Pavel was broke, and working for a local construction company to get through the summer, before his TA salary would kick back in. He called me the next Friday, and asked me to take him out drinking. So, I did. As the evening wore on (fortunately I knew the bartender, and he winked off about half of the drinks on my tab), his discussion of Elke got more and more lurid. We were well potted, and I really just wanted to leave the car in the parking lot and stagger home, but he insisted that I drive him somewhere. I said, “Geez, Pavel, what’s the deal? What do you need to show me that’s so important?” “Dan,” he said, “with all due respect, shut the fuck up. C’mon.”
We drove a little ways out of town, and he told me to turn in to a parking lot, that snaked around behind a large apartment complex. He told me to stop. He sat on the hood of my car, and patted it, to indicate I should come sit next to him. He bummed a cigarette.
“So, why are we here?” I asked.
“I want to show you something.”
“What?”
Taking a big drag and letting it out: “See that light?”
“What light?”
“The red one. Over there. Fourth floor.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s her fuck light.”
“What?”
“That’s Elke’s fuck light. She’s up there fucking Alphonso.”
“Is that what you wanted to show me?”
“Yeah.”
“Can we go, now?”
“Just let me finish the cigarette.”
I drove him home.
Pavel didn’t really get on with the other guys in the construction gang. He was the lanky, cerebral outsider attending the University. They were grizzled good ol’ boys. He wasn’t invited into the mobile home erected at the site to cool off in the summer swelter. He ate his sandwiches by the side of the ditch. He was hot, sweaty and lonely, and drinking himself to sleep every night on a twelver of Milwaukee’s Best, curled up in a curtain that he’d taken down off of the window, in lieu of sheets or a blanket. Fortunately the floor in his room was carpeted. Today, however, he was working in dreadful heat, digging with sheer ferocity, not having lunch at all.
One of the fellas came up and asked him what was going on. “My.” he said. “Girl. Left. Me. For. Alphonso.”
“What are you talkin’ about, Pavel?”
“She. Left. Me. For. A. Guy. Named. Alphonso!”
“Huh? A black guy?!”
“Yeah. Named Alphonso!”
“Shit, man!” Guy picked up a shovel.
Now, as Pavel retailed the story, both of them were digging with ferocity. Soon the other guys came out. Listening to his tale, they got more dug that hour than usually they would have in an entire day.
Pavel got to eat in the trailer, after that. They were decent folk, after all.
****
If you like this kind of fare, let me know. I’ve got many more of this kind of true story.
I think we’ve all felt that hole in our soul at one time or another.
Good stuff, keep it coming.
BTW, totally unrelated, but you received the best compliment I could ever give another blog.
“If you don’t agree that Protein Wisdom is one of the best blogs out there, I will fight you.”
Thanks, Frank. It’s much appreciated. Jeff does all the Dragon Style Science, though. I do the Will-o-the-Wisp Style Hooey.
Some people go their whole lives, never eating in the trailer. John Edwards, he would not like this story very much.
Meh, I’m not worried about it happyfeet. He can buy hisself a story he DO like.
Frank: excellent blog. I’ll have to get better aquainted. I saw the letter to Senator Numb Nuts. I assume you’re a Vermonter, too, then?
Yeah, I got to stand in Pavel’s shoes once. I chopped wood instead of digging. It helped.
Good story, Dan.
Dan, I enjoy both styles. Protein Wisdom is a daily must read for me.
No, not a Vermonter. Actually, I live in the south, but I think Senator Numb Nuts pretty much applies across the board.
Kind of a modern N. Maclean flavour …. nice .
Cripes, all I did in grad school was drink gin martinis, play rugby, make First Lieutenant and get engaged…
Gee, in college I managed everything but the rugby, 1LT and engagement bits…
At least Pavel got a little bit of love in grad school.
I think I was the only TA in my department that had absolutely no life whatsoever. While everyone else was married and/or with kids, or got to do cool outdoor trips or weekend getaways, I would hole myself up in my apartment, write my papers, read my books, and grade tests by hung-over undergrads (the fact that I enjoyed handing out Ds and Fs a little too much demonstrated that a career in teaching was not my calling).
I think I made two trips–one to visit my best friend, who was attending BYU at the time, and the other to the Grand Canyon over Labor Day weekend, and both times I went by myself.
It was really interesting, because none of the other grad students ever went out of their way to show me that I was disliked, and I got along great with my professors. I guess I was just the prime example of a grad school hermit.
And all at Arizona State, which had more beautiful women per square yard than I had ever seen in my life.
In grad school I learned that when anyone used the word “Hegelian” it meant for happyfeet to look very engaged but probably better not to participate in class discussion that day.
Well, that was a lovely story. And you tell it with such enthusiasm!
Seriously, though, do you have any true stories that involve naked hookers and coke-glazed nipples?
– Happyfeets, with me it was “prontilization”, but the effect was always the same, and immediately alerted me that the thinking lamp was out for the day.
– Dan – keep lots of notes. Could be the red meat for “The Zen handbook of life screwing and construction work”.
– For some reason, earthy stories give me a good high. That and its always comforting to reaffirm “shit happens”. In the long run its like being a pilot. Every life experience you can walk away from was a good landing.
If you don’t agree that Protein Wisdom is one of the best blogs out there, I will sieze the glory of all your pets…even the ferret.
What is she, like a firefly or something? She lights up when she’s mating?
I can see how no man could resist that.
Little Ceasers doesn’t deliver pizza
Not anymore.
Would have been better if the construction guys grabbed their shovels and beat up Alphonso.
This site is just RIFE with “failed academics,” ain’t it?
If by ‘failed academics’ you mean people who left the academy and went on to become semi-productive citizens, then yes, it is.
Beer and bitches a lethal combination.
What do you mean, you never got any as a TA? I got more college girl tail then than I ever had as an actual college student. All those college girls thinking you’re a smart and brooding grad student, living the bohemian life style (because you’re too G-D*** poor to afford to take a bus, so you have to ride your bike everywhere). They feel sorry for you, want to take you out for a sandwich and coffee…take you back to their places for deep, intellectual conversation…and then ride you like a racing horse. Cuz you’re not a drunk frat boy or whatever.
And those are just the ones I didn’t actually teach. Never mind what the girls were willing to do for an “A” so daddy would buy them another Jetta to replace the one they just totaled driving home drunk and mad from Biff’s frat house after he tried to get her to pull a train. But I digress.
Hey man, you weren’t there. That pizza dude was outta control, expecting me to pay for some cold ass pizza with a soggy from the rain crust.
And then he want’s to charge me like some rhino? Man, that’s what the 2nd amendment is all about.
Besides, after everything calmed down, Jason ate two slices of that pizza before he left that night so I don’t what he’s complaining about.
Dan, I just don’t get you. You have a story of the common man triumphing over the big corporation and their goons, with the happy ending of free pizza, and turn it into some sort of gloomy ass depressing grad-student angst fest.
Way to harsh the mellow…
That’s a fire hazard. I recommend waiting till after to light up.
Know what picking that birdshot out of my tricep was like? Think I had insurance? And now everytime I go to the beach I can’t even tell the truth about the scars that won’t heal – that I was clipped by a crazed 20-gauge wielding fag! Shot standing outside a house of savage fags! Just deliverin’ pizza and winged by a fag! Still noooobody believes me.
I think I qualify as failed – Jeff, you don’t, as you can still effectively instruct the rest of us in your field (quite well, I might add) and write teh funny to boot.
Me, the furthest I got as an academic was teaching CJA 1358 (Ethics in Criminal Justice) for Central Texas College at the Bagram Airfield (Afghanistan) Education Center. I think my students liked the class….except for the night the 107mm rocket landed 200 meters south of the classroom. That kind of sucked. I haven’t taught since.
Yeah, I’m a failed academic too. Did the whole PhD thing right up to but not including the dissertation in Romance Studies. During the year I was supposed to write the D, I was hopped up on Paxil and slept 12-18 hours a day. First time in my life that being conscious of my own existence wasn’t a living hell, though, so I didn’t dare switch over to another drug until much later.
It would be nice to say to some people, “I have a PhD from an Ivy-League school, dammit, so listen up!”
But then, those people about whose opinion I actually care don’t give a hang about which hoops I jumped through a decade ago, so it’s all good.
TW: glass96 still half empty
Hey, these vignettes are incredibly interesting. There’s nothing more interesting than real life…can you continue to mark them, “Vignettes from Academia, part x”, or something like that?
I must be a failed academic. I got a degree in Government and I still vote Republican.
Great writing, Dan. Keep it up.
I know I went to school, at some point. I know there were classes involved. There was also a lot of pot, white cross, and alcohol. I may, or may not, have grtaduated. It was the 70s.
Marty–
Email me, please. I have news.