I am a graduate student eating a sandwich.

To be a graduate student is to live a life teeming with paradoxes.  When I am not pontificating questions of relative insignificance, I often wonder:  How can I read so much, yet feel as if I am getting stupider?  How can I think so many thoughts, yet think that I am not thinking enough thoughts?  How am I becoming older, yet simultaneously so much poorer?

For the latter question, I compensate for my inverse age-purchasing power relationship by swiping miniature cups of half and half from departmental refrigerators and attending formal lunches hosted by my graduate institution no matter the topic of roundtable “discussion”.  To do so successfully, simply refrain from writing your full name on the sticker tag, silently eat a salad, nod strategically with dire concern, speak with your hands, make grunting sounds indicating vague agreement with someone speaking with his or her hands in dire concern, leave inconspicuously with three cookies and five packets of Sugar in the Raw in your jacket pocket.

This past week, I was delighted to attend a lunch in which I could actually, without the aid of Wikipedia, define all the words in the title of the event – a discussion on philanthropy, non-profit and public entities, and the world of foundations.  Of course, this piece of writing has absolutely nothing to do with the actual content of said roundtable discussion because that, in fact, would be practical and educational.  I didn’t go to school to become more practical and educational.

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A Story:

The lunch takes place in a large room located in the oldest building on campus.  The room, with its chandeliers, fanciful off-white trimming, and paintings of women sewing thirteen (THIRTEEN!) stars on an American flag, is, at once, timeless and exceedingly gay.

I divert my attention specifically to the lunch spread.  Immediately, I notice that there is only one can of Diet Coke left.  Predicated by this lone can of Diet Coke, I know this room is full of old white women who wear turtlenecks tucked into their pleated pants.  I, on the other hand, am wearing a button down shirt – a shirt wrinkled by my idea that taking a really, really hot shower and letting my shirt hang on the towel rack is equivalent to an iron that civilized people use.  I suddenly become concerned with my concern in the sole can Diet Coke as it confirms that I truly am an old lesbian soul named Bernadette who likes to spend her Friday nights petting her (literal) cat while watching Antiques Roadshow.  In spite of this anxiety of my true, authentic self, I cut two other old white women wearing turtlenecks tucked into their pleated pants and grab the last can of Diet Coke.

As I move towards the salad and I contemplate, who do I want to be today?  This question is imperative because it determines the selection and arrangement of my plate.  I pile the Styrofoam with salad because I am adult – specifically spinach because romaine lettuce is for peasants (not indentured servants like myself).  I am afforded three types of dressing, but I am not fooled by the idea that these are options.  Light on the vinaigrette and never heavy on the ranch dressing – this is Georgetown University not Rick Perry’s dude ranch in west Texas.

Sandwiches are a food that I have very explicit, personal rules for, particularly when it comes to public consumption.  In meetings, I avoid anything in baguette form since I have learned from painful experience that I am incapable of completely biting through the bread, thus rendering a scene of my tugging at a piece of sandwich in my mouth as I attempt to dissect the 7th pie chart on the 87thslide of this 362-slide presentation.  I opt for a meat that is in one uniform mass – ham, turkey, roast beef – since anything with “units” (chicken salad, egg salad, tuna) consistently results in said “units” splatting loudly on my agenda, leaving concrete evidence of my inability to eat like a successful product of natural selection.

In the dessert section, there are two options.  There are the tiny square brownies topped with a chocolate emblem in the shape of something akin to the pattern on Marie Antoinette’s wallpaper – or the GIANT COOKIES covered with M&Ms.  Truly, this is a test – choosing this GIANT COOKIE with M&Ms over this ampersand brownie means…ah, fuck it.  Just give me giant cookie.

The murmurs of casual conversation overlaying the sound of scraping plates the splatting of chicken salad on agendas halts upon the entrance of the esteemed speaker.  Suddenly, everyone raises his or her hands.  Suddenly, when chosen to speak, everyone’s voices lower by two or three octaves.  Suddenly, we all begin to sound like undergraduate American Studies sophomores wearing oversized plastic glasses and analyzing Avante Garde film.  And suddenly, I turn over the agenda and begin to…

Writing

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Note: Which scribbles turned into paragraphs in this piece?

I am wanting to write a story.

I want to write a story, you say.  You want to write a story because sometimes you’re standing at the bank or on a bus or at the post office and everyone is waiting to go somewhere, anywhere, everywhere.  The line isn’t moving, but everyone is so jittery and restless that it feels like it is. Damn, you think.  People want to get off this bus or get their money or send that package, but where the hell are they going and what time do they have to be there?  The line inches with every minute and I just want to write a story because wherever I think I am going or whatever time I think it is really isn’t.  Get me out of this line, you say. I just want to write a story.

I want to write a story, you say.  Just me and this paper, this pen, this computer, this typewriter – not you, not her, not him, not anyone else.  I want to write a story because my her, my he, my she, my they, my is can say/do/think/be whatever he, she, they wants to do/think/be.  I want to write a story because I didn’t mean to say that to you, so rather than continuing to say things that I don’t mean, I’ll just erase, erase, erase until I mean what I say.

I want to write a story, you say.  I want to write a story because my mom used to withhold chocolate, soda, and chips from me, make me yearn for it.  She said it would pepper my lips in blisters, cover my skin in its badness.  So all I could do is stare at it, think about it, obsess about how sensational and satisfying and delectable each morsel of sweetness and saltiness could be.  How the mere touch of it on your tongue would excite the shit out of the neural pulses in my body.  I couldn’t have it, so I wrote it because I wanted it – and it made me want it even more.

I want to write a story, you say.  I want to write a story because sometimes you stand in a grocery store and you’re like, fuck, there’s so much to buy, so much to eat, so much that I need.  Now, you can grab all the chocolate, soda, and chips that you damn well please, but it doesn’t taste as sweet, as salty, as delicious as you wanted it to be when you couldn’t have it.  You want to write a story because everyone in this grocery store is anxious to leave this line, to walk back into a world where what you say is not really what you say, with groceries that don’t taste as good, that will never taste as good.

Whatever, you say.  I’ll write the story even better than what it is.

I am 23 and keeping a list.

As I cleaned out my old computer this evening, I found an old list that I wrote on April 22, 2010 — a series of goals that I hoped to accomplish in my lifetime.  I usually take to writing such lists in moments of incredible vulnerability, uncertainty, or after eating half a jar of Nutella with a spoon in one sitting.  My goal within the goal list (yes, a meta-goal) was to accomplish at least one item every year.  I now see that many of these goals (most notably #1) are subject to incredible institutional changes that require a coup in the state of Texas led by gays, Mexicans, and/or Gay Mexicans.  Additionally, many of these goals are ongoing throughout my lifetime (see #8).  Oh, excuses, excuses, Jen.

For reference, the red circled numbers indicate goals that have consistently appeared on various versions of goal lists written on napkins, in notebooks, in journals, on history notes, on the back of receipts, on my phone, in several documents on my computer (usually in the middle of a failed attempt to write a paper), and in long e-mails written to myself, usually telling me to get it together, girlfriend, and write your thesis.  And comb your hair!

As of today, I am elated to have accomplished 2 of these goals (“#2:  Run a marathon ‘under 4′” as well as “#12: Go to grad school — only if someone else pays”) and have written in one additional goal (“#16:  Give this list to my children at their college graduation(s) and have it mean something.”).  Aside from the aforementioned, this list has not changed and is still, more or less, everything I hope to experience at some point in my life.

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