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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon With Nothing
CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord. Magdalene and I have been drinking since Lear. I agreed to drink in part because I like Magdalene and wanted to know more about her and her life and in part because Lear is the play that takes my heart and breaks it completely, soundly, and I always feel drained and heavy both after Lear discussions. So Magdalene and I would leave the Shakespeare class at 3:15 and cross Central to Rebar where we�d sit and talk and I�d try to keep up with her drinks-wise. Magdalene is almost a decade younger than I am and so consequently seems to bounce back from drink easily, whereas I would often find myself just able to walk the three blocks to my apartment after Phillip, Magdalene�s boyfriend, picked her up at 5:00. This was a pattern that began to play itself out a month ago on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:15 to 5:00. One drunken afternoon, Magdalene and I talked about the TA for the Shakespeare class, one Mr. Lynch. She wanted to invite him for a drink one afternoon and I agreed, wanting to move past my distaste for him (a matter that has nothing to do with the matter at hand). So one afternoon, she and I marched up to his office and she asked him if he would come for a drink. He agreed not for that afternoon, but for the week after. The date set, we walked down to the Shakespeare professor�s office to invite her. She agreed for the week after Lynch. Leaving her office, we ran into Matthew, who was waiting to talk to another professor. We invited him to come with us that afternoon, an offer he declined, but did agree to come on the afternoon that Lynch came. Matthew mentioned the plan for that afternoon once a few days later as we sat outside the Shakespeare classroom waiting for class to begin. It was a bit out of character for him to do so, but it seemed then that he was interested in coming out with us. The Lynch afternoon came. That morning, I dressed in an outfit that I had received several complements while wearing and took care with my hair and makeup, wanting to make a good, if sluttish, impression on Lynch. It was a good outfit and prompted Magdalene made the comment that, coming up behind me, she had noticed that I was much smaller than I had seemed previously because of my (and here she leaned over to whisper) �giant boobs.� She had compared me a few days early to a woman by the name of Rebecca (keep the name in mind, because she�ll crop up later�twice as a matter of fact: once in some wonderfully bizarre coincidence and then again in the form of a disembodied voice on the other end of a telephone call to me) who used to run an escort service that Magdalene worked for and who, Magdalene said, had been fairly large to begin with and had gained about sixty pounds over the course of her work. I was not put out by her comment by any means and as we talked about it, she joked that she should have checked me out more carefully. As for Matthew, I had seen him that morning and he hadn�t mentioned coming out, only that he had a paper to finish for another class. When he didn�t show up for the Shakespeare class that afternoon, I assumed he wasn�t coming. I was a bit disappointed, but only a bit, as that is pretty much standard for Matthew. Magdalene and I spoke to Lynch after class and he had a few students to see before he could leave for the afternoon, so we told him we�d meet him at Rebar. We decided to cut through the library on our way to the bar, as Magdalene works there and she wanted to pick up her things before leaving campus. As we came through the foyer of the library that day, Matthew came bounding down the stairs, a bit out of breath. He said he had heard my voice and I said, �It�s nice to know that my voice can be heard all through the library.� He replied, �You can probably be heard outside the library too.� We asked if he were going to join us, and he said yes, but that he had to drop off some paperwork with a professor who was going to write letters of recommendation for him for graduate school. We agreed to walk with him to the Humanities building and to do this and to see if Lynch had finished with his students. He hadn�t, and Matthew�s professor had a line of people outside her office. As Matthew was going to see her later in class, he decided to give her the paperwork then and come to the bar with us. The three of us walked over to the bar together, talking about post-colonialism and about the Quaker/Stranger in a Strange Land joke of the building being white�on this side anyway. I don�t recall what brought it up, but as we were about to cross the street, Magdalene made a remark about me, saying, �You�re not that bad, Sublingua.� To which I replied, �That�s the line I get the most.� Matthew laughed. Magdalene said, �No, I meant, it�s about what I whispered to you earlier.� Meaning, I suppose, the comment about my giant boobs. We got to the bar and Melissa was there, sitting at the bar, a drink in front of her. She joined us at our table and we ordered: Magdalene ordered a cosmopolitan, Matthew ordered a Guinness, I ordered a rum and diet coke. Melissa ordered a salad and cake. We had those drinks and a few more. I didn�t keep track. We talked about split infinitives. We talked about our favorite Shakespeare plays. I requested that Matthew do that thing that makes it such a pleasure to drink with him, that thing where you tell him you want to toast to Milton and he busts out with twenty or thirty lines from Paradise Lost. We talked about a few other things and I brought up Magdalene�s having said to me that I could pass for 19 if it weren�t for my having such a deep voice. I explained that I purposefully pitch my voice lower because it lends an air of competency to women. I tried out a few higher pitches on them, prompting Matthew to comment that it just sounded like I was making fun of them. We joked about that and I told them how much I enjoy being 32 and had always hoped that by this age I�d have more gray hair and wrinkles. But the whole thing reminded me of Melissa�s comment one night at Kelly�s when she, having asked my age, remarked, �You carry your age well.� I was all of 31 at the time. Drinking with children has its moments, I suppose. (Of course, we talked about other things besides me, but why would I remember those things?) Melissa at one point indicated that Hector T., an English professor that she thought I�d be interested in, was sitting across the bar from us. I told her I was going to send over a drink and turned to try to wave down our waiter. Matthew said, �No, don�t. I hate that guy.� So I didn�t send over the drink. But I should have. Magdalene broke out the list of questions that she and I had devised to ask Lynch. They included things like the infamous monkey name question, his age, his marital status, and whether or not he�d like to get a room with Jacuzzi access. The level of questioning was dependent on his level of drunkenness, a plan that failed when, showing up at 4:30, Lynch ordered a non-alcoholic beer, explaining that he hadn�t had a drink since he was a teenager because, for him, �drinking is a bad idea.� Magdalene�s drink arrived then, a quadruple martini in a tall glass. Lynch took one look at it and remarked, �That looks like a bad idea with a straw.� We asked him about the monkey, and he said it�d have to be �Shock.� Then, when that idea was shot down, he settled on Gabriel. I tried to get Matthew to do the Matthew toasting thing, but he, intimidated by Lynch, refused. I didn�t press. Melissa had to leave soon after, as did Matthew. Matthew said he�d return after class though the informal poll at the table suggested that the others thought it a bad idea to go to class with four Guinnesses under his belt�especially since he was going to go ask the professor for letters of recommendation and why would he want to do that while smelling like a brewery? We were overruled of course. So he and Melissa got up, and I got up to walk outside and have a smoke. Matthew headed off to class and Melissa and I stood on the street in front of the bar smoking. Two men came out of the bar and completely checked her out, one of them turning to give her a final look, prompting me to point out how much I loved hanging out with her because of how much attention she gets. This is something she totally denies, though I�ve seen men (and women) doing double- and triple-takes just to get second and third looks at her.
I came back into the bar. Melissa grabbed her things, thanked Magdalene, who had insisted on paying Melissa�s tab, and left. Lynch and Magdalene and I began talking about a story he wrote and won an award for about adultery. We discussed whether we would want to know if we were being cheated on and whether we would ever tell if someone we knew were being cheated on. Lynch said it depended on how close he was to any party. I said that I would want to know, but that I would never tell. He asked if that would change if I were asked straight out, and I replied that I wouldn�t lie in that case. I don�t recall Magdalene�s answer, but she expressed some of her thoughts about monogamy being a kind of false state of being (those are not her words, just her idea, as paraphrased by me). Then we began talking about Heart of Darkness, relating it to post-colonialist ideas. He told me about a Chinua Achebe essay, and we discussed various ideas relating to narrative structure and authorial responsibility for the value structure of a given work of literature. I brought up The Great Gatsby and Paradise Lost, and Lynch flattered me by thoughtfully remarking that he would never have thought to relate those works to Heart of Darkness, but that they did apply. The conversation was one I really enjoyed and it made me think that one of the consequences of drinking with children was this lack of conversations that actually matter to me or that mean something or in which big ideas can be brought out and discussed. As if to illustrate the point, Magdalene suddenly began insisting that I give her the url to my diary. I said no. It wasn�t personal, but no one I knew had it. She kept insisting until even Lynch remarked on it. He and I resumed our conversation about Heart of Darkness. Magdalene continued digging around in her bag for a pen, she pulled out a bottle of pills, asking, �Do you want an upper?� I picked up the unlabeled bottle, still enmeshed in the conversation about Conrad with Lynch (Magdalene said later that she felt a bit intimidated by the conversation as she�d not read very much in her life) and said something like, �Maybe later,� and went back to talking with Lynch. He had to leave about 6:30, and he tried paying for the four O�Doules he had. Magdalene insisted that he wasn�t going to. He went up to the bar for change. When he came back, there ensued an argument between them. I propped my chin up on my hand and watched. Magdalene insisted that he not pay, saying that he was a poor graduate student. He reminded her of her undergraduate status. It went on and on. Magdalene got loud, saying that she wouldn�t take his $12 because she used to make $200 an hour as an escort. He tossed the money down on the table. She picked it back up again and went to stuff it in his pants pocket, at which point he took it from her, thanked her, and left. Magdalene and I were alone then. I moved to Matthew�s vacated place next to her. We were both pretty drunk. I don�t remember what we talked about. It was a bit flirty. We probably talked about sex, as we often do when we�re alone. She told me that she had said to Phillip that she might spend the night at my house and I said, �But, honey, there�s only the one bed.�
More lies:
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