It's a Small World
Now that you've all got that evil ear worm eating your brain...mwah haha!
I was looking at a few journals online the other day, and I had what I guess is an inevitable experience: I saw the name of someone I used to date. Hey, it happens, right? We manage to accumulate a certain number of people in our own personal stable. Of course, I thought that I could dodge that bullet; Senor Fluff and I met my first year of graduate school, so there wasn't a lot of weird flirting, drunken parties, having to face someone in a seminar on Dickens that you've gotten with the night before. Okay, there was some of that, but I suppose since we're married and all, it's okay now.
But this journal article? Written by my college boyfriend. Not the sweet and pathetic guy that I dated for three years, that I drove to Nebraska to be with the summer after he graduated, that I eventually had to break up with because he couldn't deal with the fact that I read more theory than him (true. sad, but true). No, I could manage that; hell, that college boyfriend came to my wedding and got tanked. This college boyfriend was the one that I had a weird clandestine relationship with because he worked at the university; the one that wooed me with avant garde poetry and film; the one that my mother hated and I should have known better because he was 12 years older than me. He needs a pseudonym, no? Let's go with Batshit Crazy, or BC for short, because when I think of him, that's the phrase that always comes to me. I've never in my life been so totally confused by someone. You combine that with a 21 year old's idea of romantic love, and it's just trouble. I went to the UK for a month, and he wrote me amazing letters that magically appeared at every place I stayed. On my way back to the West Coast, he met me in New York and we wandered around in Park Slope in the snow, and he said it was like a honeymoon. [Note to men everywhere: do NOT tell a girl that anything is like a honeymoon. Ever. Total mindfuck, even if she's not interested in marriage. Which I wasn't.] We went back West, I met his parents, hung out with his sister in San Francisco, and then he sat on the bed in my apartment and read me a letter in which he told me that we had to break up before he slept with different woman later that night.
Oh, WTF, my friends. WTF indeed. I will spare you the ensuing drama. Needless to say that it involved much rage on my part, and a good deal of time spent crying in my closet so as not to disturb my roommates. And the university did not look kindly on him deflowering students. Because to think that I was the only one was a laughable misperception on my part. Ugliness galore.
I had vague notions that he went on to get a PhD, and that he'd been teaching, on and off, on the coast. Other than snorting and scoffing a bit when I heard things through the grapevine (because, seriously? one trick pony.), I tried my best to ignore that we are technically in the same field. But seeing his name in print in a journal I read--that really took me by surprise.
So I read his fucking piece. And it seems laughable to me; the form is wrong, the argument is weak, the references are random. But I'm far from a reliable, objective reader. How I dearly wish I could publish a link to the article and ask y'all what you think. In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to nurse my apparently-still-quite active resentment by myself.
I was looking at a few journals online the other day, and I had what I guess is an inevitable experience: I saw the name of someone I used to date. Hey, it happens, right? We manage to accumulate a certain number of people in our own personal stable. Of course, I thought that I could dodge that bullet; Senor Fluff and I met my first year of graduate school, so there wasn't a lot of weird flirting, drunken parties, having to face someone in a seminar on Dickens that you've gotten with the night before. Okay, there was some of that, but I suppose since we're married and all, it's okay now.
But this journal article? Written by my college boyfriend. Not the sweet and pathetic guy that I dated for three years, that I drove to Nebraska to be with the summer after he graduated, that I eventually had to break up with because he couldn't deal with the fact that I read more theory than him (true. sad, but true). No, I could manage that; hell, that college boyfriend came to my wedding and got tanked. This college boyfriend was the one that I had a weird clandestine relationship with because he worked at the university; the one that wooed me with avant garde poetry and film; the one that my mother hated and I should have known better because he was 12 years older than me. He needs a pseudonym, no? Let's go with Batshit Crazy, or BC for short, because when I think of him, that's the phrase that always comes to me. I've never in my life been so totally confused by someone. You combine that with a 21 year old's idea of romantic love, and it's just trouble. I went to the UK for a month, and he wrote me amazing letters that magically appeared at every place I stayed. On my way back to the West Coast, he met me in New York and we wandered around in Park Slope in the snow, and he said it was like a honeymoon. [Note to men everywhere: do NOT tell a girl that anything is like a honeymoon. Ever. Total mindfuck, even if she's not interested in marriage. Which I wasn't.] We went back West, I met his parents, hung out with his sister in San Francisco, and then he sat on the bed in my apartment and read me a letter in which he told me that we had to break up before he slept with different woman later that night.
Oh, WTF, my friends. WTF indeed. I will spare you the ensuing drama. Needless to say that it involved much rage on my part, and a good deal of time spent crying in my closet so as not to disturb my roommates. And the university did not look kindly on him deflowering students. Because to think that I was the only one was a laughable misperception on my part. Ugliness galore.
I had vague notions that he went on to get a PhD, and that he'd been teaching, on and off, on the coast. Other than snorting and scoffing a bit when I heard things through the grapevine (because, seriously? one trick pony.), I tried my best to ignore that we are technically in the same field. But seeing his name in print in a journal I read--that really took me by surprise.
So I read his fucking piece. And it seems laughable to me; the form is wrong, the argument is weak, the references are random. But I'm far from a reliable, objective reader. How I dearly wish I could publish a link to the article and ask y'all what you think. In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to nurse my apparently-still-quite active resentment by myself.
Labels: academentia, TMI
posted by kfluff at 9:36 PM
2 Comments:
"weird flirting, drunken parties, having to face someone in a seminar on Dickens that you've gotten with the night before"
I know nothing about this. Nothing.
On the rest of it, I feel ya. Boy howdy I do.
The totally weird thing is watching my current students go through the whole "I hooked up with you last night and now we're watching David Fincher films in class." Sucks to be them.
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