Entry #687121, added on 02-11-10 @ 9:24 am EST
Entry Access Restriction: None.
| where's wingham? | Entry #687121 |
I'm doing my best to stall things at school. I can't bring myself to finish my Human Resources course because it will bring me to my last book, and that book needs to last me two months, when I could easily finish it in a week. So, I sit and I read. Correction: I read and I eavesdrop, because my mind is not as focused as it was when I was a 'serious' student. Now, I know, or at least, I think I know everything that is happening around me. So, in the course of a week and a bit, I have read Salinger, and then I read a book of short stories by Alice Munro, and then, because I liked it so much, I went and grabbed 'The Lives of Girls and Women', also by Munro, which I started this morning and am just about finished. I can't deny loving it, either, reading like this. At home, I am unfocused, tired and distracted. At school, I am sitting in a chair, trying to find a way to tolerate the hours I'm forced to sit in a chair. Strangely, I have owned the Munro books for ages; one was a gift from R. who probably bought it because it had 'love' in the title, and the other is one of my friend Kyla's assigned books from university, part of a collection she gave me when she was finished with them. How have I not read them before? Munro is something of a Canadian literary heroine, and somehow I've never even cracked a book of hers until this past week. I am annoyed with myself for this. She writes about the human experience in a way that is so intricate, disturbing and complex that I admit I have to really read every word in order to fully understand her intention, but I have come away from her work thinking that she is something special when it comes to writing real. Aside from this, she makes me appreciate my country a great deal more. I never before thought so much about our traditions and customs as I do when I'm reading her, mostly because I used to try to hide from them in my youth. Something about getting older, perhaps a little wiser, makes you miss where you're from, even if you haven't left.
Here's a brief scene from a day of study:
Immediately, I notice the tension between Flirty Girl and French Guy when I take my seat. Normally, she giggles at everything he says and he sits back in his chair, wearing a winter coat and concealing his head with his hood despite being indoors where it's heated. This has always confused me about him. Why the coat? Why the hood? You're inside and it's heated!, I want to ask him, but he and I have never even made eye contact. He likes the younger girls, the ones who giggle, the ones who wear pencil-thin heeled boots to school even when it's snowing outside. Stupid girls, then, the ones more concerned with fashion then they are with falling down. This one, though, is clearly more than giggly. She is a giggly single-mother, or so I heard her say one day. A child, five years of age, a boy. French Guy didn't seem so enamoured with her after that reality set in. They both annoy me but in a way I don't understand. I am annoyed by them but I am also fascinated by them, watching the way they interact, clinging to the predictable conversations they have in the student lounge. She talks about her 'ex' and laughs at every feeble joke French Guy makes, while he sounds like a duck with his 'oui's that sound more like 'wah's. He has a chip on his shoulder because the older students clearly have some prejudices about the French, so he 'wah's whenever he can, and even though I have no French-prejudices, I want to pull his hat off every time he speaks. Today, though, the two of them aren't speaking, and what's more, they aren't looking at one another. I'm certain that they've slept together. Sometimes, you can tell these things just by the way a couple interact with one another, like their secret is spilling from the way they eat together, the way their heads come close when they're speaking, or in the familiar ease with which they get up, wordlessly, at the same time. I'm also certain that she tried to establish a commitment from him, because that what a girl like herself does. She doesn't want the casual sex and the infrequent phone calls. This is a girl who is looking for a man to lean on. It's written all over her, with her desperate laughter and tight pants. He figured her out and made it clear that he wasn't looking for anything 'heavy'. A fight happened, probably in a car in the parking lot, and now, the lines have been drawn. Occasionally, she looks over at his desk, her face twisted with hostility and contempt, but he doesn't look at her. Instead, he gets up, pulls the cigarette from behind his ear and pops it into his mouth, and moves toward the back door that leads to where the smokers congregate. He doesn't even have to put his coat on.
Chicken Lady sits next to me as I scroll through the job sites on the computer in the resource center. I call her Chicken Lady because her voice reminds me of a croaking hen and her face is bird-like, with a delicate-beak nose and tiny eyes. When I first saw her, I assumed, wrongfully, that she was a lesbian. It is the haircut. Long in the back, short in the front. Also, she appears to have no serious concerns about her appearance, with a missing front tooth and not so much as a lick of makeup. Once, she wore a skirt, and I was amazed by the sight of her. She looked awkward and strange, like she felt she'd made a mistake in wearing it - a knock-kneed colt. Today, she is wearing faded blue jeans and a grey sweater and she seems comfortable. She hums to herself as she searches the screen on her computer and occasionally makes little inaudible remarks to herself. At least, I hope they're to herself because I'm not responding. At some point, she cackles and says 'Well, I know I can't apply for that job! She hates me!. I realize this comment is directed to me so I say something to the effect of Oh?'. This greenlights her, apparently, and she tells me how the woman she is referring to used to work with her husband, and that one day when she went to visit him at work, the woman who he worked with said 'Oh, so that's why he won't go out with me.' She tells me that the woman then went on a tangent and began using some 'choice words' because she was so upset that the man wouldn't date her, and the whole time she's telling me this story, I'm wondering what compelled her to do so. She doesn't know me, has never exchanged so much as a 'hello' with me, and yet, here she is, telling me a highly improbable story, looking as pained as she is relieved to be telling it. I want to say that it sounds like her husband actually did go out with the woman in question, which is the only reason I can come up with which would justify such a strange outburst, but I can see that the Chicken Lady will lose it entirely if I do anything to rip the paper-thin fabric that is holding her life together. I nod and make sympathetic sounds before excusing myself to return to my desk.
Eyebrow Boy is my new desk partner. He smells like smoke and it bothers me a great deal. Not a fine mist of cigarette smoke but a dirty haze of it, and it follows him wherever he goes. He's too young to smell like this, shouldn't be this offensive so early in life. I try not to grimace when he takes his seat. He used to be a cow-wrangler, he said, until he was injured on the job. As a result, he can only sit for fifteen minutes at a time, tops, and no more than three hours a day, which is impossible to do since he is at school for a minimum of four and a half. He is in pain a lot of the time, and not in the put-on way that Yahoo Serious is. His face contorts with the pain even when he isn't aware that someone is looking. He drinks massive amounts of coffee and walks around the room frantically when the pain gets bad and I bet he wishes he'd never seen a cow anywhere but on his plate. He talks to himself, is always dropping things off his desk, but he seems...wounded. Despite the haze of smoke around him and the constant slurping of coffee he subjects me too, I feel badly for him. His pain is on his face.
Yahoo Serious is a woman with a bird's nest for hair who sits in her car in the parking lot smoking her brains out. She flirts unabashedly with any and all males in close range, and seems to think she looks far more desirable than she actually does. Of all the people there, she is the one I'd most like to see fall down on her face. She talks about her 'sore back' and nurses a back pillow as she walks up and down the aisle. I rarely see her studying, and even when she goes to the bathroom, she wears her long brown coat and carries her enormous purse with her. When she's done flirting in the lounge, she walks, dozily, outside into the parking lot where she smokes about three cigarettes in a row before coming back in. She always looks to me as though she'd benefit from a bath and delousing, followed by a good brushing. She irks me because she exudes opportunism and laziness. She is on the hunt, but not in a way you'd expect a predator to advance on its prey. She knows how to play it. She is the injured mouse now, but will have razors for teeth when it's time to show them.
IT Dork is the guy who talks loudly so everyone can hear what he's saying, whether we want to or not. He stares, in a creepy, lascivious way, and walks past my desk about ten times a day. He wears black, but for some reason this makes him seem menacing rather than chic. His face is what you'd expect to see on a stalker and when he does well on a test, he jumps up and hisses 'Yes!'. He wears a long trenchcoat that probably hasn't been in style since the early '90's, and he occasionally wears a baseball cap at the same time, but that isn't what I hate the most about him: the man is a water buffalo. This is what I call a man with improper bathroom etiquette. He is the toilet-seat leaver-upper, the one who leaves evidence of bowel evacuation, the one who passes gas with gusto despite knowing that the acoustics in the lounge area amplify like a voice on water. He is, in a word, disgusting. I hate IT Dork not because he goes to the bathroom, but because he is mannerless and his face makes me think of fart smells.
I get up to clock out, eager to shake them all off me.
|
© Copyright 2010 katwoman45 (UN: katwoman45 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
katwoman45 has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
|
Content Rating Notice: Recommended for Readers 18 Years and Older Only
Static Items
Books
Forums
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
