I left one city to go to another in 1996.  I would attend graduate school in creative writing and eventually teach composition, rhetoric, and literature, leaving all I had known behind.  I did not speak to anyone in the new city for over two weeks, apart from the brief conversation I had with the U-Haul representative, who asked me, upon turning over the truck’s keys to him, “What the hell did you move here for?”

I watched a lot of television news those first two weeks, acquainting myself with the local news people, which I always enjoy.  Many of the news people seemed to have nasally inflected vowels, but not the nasally inflected vowels I was used to.  Back home, the vowels “o” and “u” were those most exaggerated by elongation, which I believe was mostly the inhabitants’ prior German language coming through in the English.  Or the prior Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Polish, Norwegian, and so on.  In the new city, the vowels “e” and “a” were the ones abused by nasal vocalization, which I didn’t know the reason for.  I did worry, though, that I may add on, over the course of my stay in the new city, these two new vowels in the nose repertoire.  With this addition, I worried that I may have the most ridiculous-sounding voice imaginable.  And then when these worries were at their heights, I worried that the next city I went to would be involved solely in inflicting the final nasal vowel on me, the elusive “i.”  

*

I heard a knock on my door in the morning in the third week I had been there.  I was happy to have someone knocking, as the solitude and frightening local news stories, seemingly endless, of drowning victims and bodies found in factories and disposal sites, had made my first three weeks exceedingly grim.

I opened up the door, and a small, cheerful woman said hello, and introduced herself as one of the writers in the program.  I asked her if she wanted to come in to the apartment, and she said yes.

She sat on the couch, and I retrieved some coffee for her.  She seemed like a very interesting woman, laughed easily, and jumped from topics with flair.  She was dramatic and funny.  As well, she was wearing a loose-fitting dress, that was cut a bit low on top.  As she was talking—I was directly across from her, at my desk chair—she began making a point of bending forward so much so that her breasts were frequently visible, or by continually rearranging her sitting position so that one could not help but see her hosiery-covered “area”, as my mother might say.  I continued to speak with her, but I was dumbfounded by what she was doing.  It seemed like a skit of some sort, burlesque. 

Then she began fishing in her purse, which I thought was odd, as we had just been speaking for less than ten minutes.  She pulled out a compact mirror and lipstick and began coating her lips red.  Right in front of me.  When she was done, we spoke a little bit more, but not much, and then she said she’d have to be leaving, to get back to her writing.  She had just wanted to say hello.

*

I didn’t work from August 1996 to August 1997 because I received a fellowship and a full tuition scholarship.  I also didn’t work because I don’t like to if I don’t have to.

I was filed under the poet category and processed as such.

Classes included open courses for all three years of creative writing graduate students and a poetry workshop with the five other poetry people I entered into school with.  There were first-year, second-year, and third-year students.  This delineation by year was also how various hierarchies played out in and out of the classrooms.  There was a patent sense of having to prove one’s self, in order to be part of an order beyond one’s own year.

At first, I treated the people in the second and third years with some decorum, whether they wanted it or not.  But as I grew accustomed to their various behaviors and mannerisms, there didn’t seem much point to it any longer.  The most humorous and annoying writers from all three years were those filled with a huge sense of self-worth, which they doled out to others in the form of speaking to the class.  The affected earnestness combined with arrogance—modified by “droll,” “cocky,” or “impoverished”—caused many moments of boredom and/or unwanted hilarity.  A strangely recurrent and seemingly viral (it spread) mannerism I noticed was, when speaking, for a writer to look upward and above the heads of others, often looking into corners, or even in the opposite direction with whom one was speaking.  It looked very much like these writers were communicating with other planes of existence.

Also, there were all the crude maneuverings of careerism, no different than in any other field.  Some people were quite public in their pursuit of those that they thought could help them—which the ones in the more powerful positions (they knew Manhattan presses and editors) sometimes acquiesced to, to fill whatever need they had themselves.

In the three years I was at school, I encountered many different creative writers:  an ex-butcher, a stripper, a woman who collected Pez dispensers, the son of a minister, a lawyer, a man who wore ties and had a hard time swallowing, a sarcastic woman, a man who chronically sniffled, a roadie for Cher, a curmudgeon who liked to dance, a man who wrote preciously, a former Mormon, an angry cross-dresser, a man who racked up thousands of dollars on phone sex, a man who smirked mercilessly, a woman who wrote down everything said in classes, a poseur, a pedant, a dilettante, a woman who called everyone up, a sober man, an articulate student, a man in a closet, an obnoxious woman, a paranoid recluse, a man from Alabama with a banjo on his knee, a woman who wrote of men stuck in sewer pipes, a boxer who beat his chest to verse, a man who wouldn’t end conversations, a jogger, a man who often said “check it out,” a frustrated bowler, a woman who wished me dead in a poem, one seemingly happy person, a mother, a drunk.

It is unfair, of course, to reduce people to a few words, but as I get older and further away from these years, fragments appear, if anything.  It shouldn’t be surprising, though, as for some time I have not been able to recall a single thing from many of the undergraduate classes I took.  For one biology class, all I can remember is the middle-aged instructor telling us about the prostate gland and how it’s important to use a lubricant when masturbating.  He also said something about denatured eggs.

*

I kept all my moving boxes in the middle of my apartment’s living room for the first three months, as I was considering dropping out and going back home.  My student loans didn’t come in on time, because I didn’t apply for them in time, and therefore I was only able to afford very cheap beer, which produced a headache almost immediately.  When the student loan check finally arrived, I went to the bar and had Guinnesses chased by Jamesons.

I was doing very little writing.  I read a lot.  I became embroiled in a ridiculous triangle of people.  The female was not being straight with me, I was not being straight with myself, and the other man was in love with her, and not vice-versa. 

Rumor-mongering seemed to be the hallmark activity in graduate school, which I soon found out via the above mess, and a few other situations that were gossiped about beyond any semblance of truthfulness.  Rumor-mongers have little need for that, it seems.  One, I guess, just wants to fill the air with clouds and crows, no matter if the clouds are fake or the crows haven’t wings.

Also, in many cases the rumor-mongers were the second- and third-year students, so one also had to overrun the hierarchy of the established classes on the way to debunking bullshit.  I tried this a few times, but I only managed to get thoroughly frustrated and sometimes angry.  I decided it was best to not say anything about myself that may be gossip-worthy.

But my new tactic of not saying anything about a woman I was seeing, going to some lengths to avoid being seen with some woman I was seeing, was soon construed by the women involved as evidence that I did not want to be seen in public with them, or that I was a wretched man merely notching his belt, and not wanting to scare off the other women by revealing who I was dating.  It was an endlessly distracting and hopelessly bankrupt situation to be in.  Not to mention the simple conundrum of “damned if I do, etc.”

The existence of the rumor-mongers played havoc with my head, as I began to trust fewer and fewer people.  I didn’t trust the smiles and handshakes, the backslapping, and even the congratulatory asides.  Instead, I began to trust only myself, which, for me, is obviously taking the quick way to ruin.  People tell you often enough, “Trust yourself, and everything will be fine.”  Well, I was trusting myself fine, but nothing was turning out all right.  I had heard whispers early on that others thought I had a drinking problem, but in my usual, well-guarded way I turned it around in my head to say they had a problem with my drinking. 

I had a million of them.

*

I began teaching composition in the fall semester of 1997.  I had never taught before.  In fact, I had never, as a student, spoken for more than ten seconds in any class I ever had.  Except once. 

When I had to deliver a speech in high school, I was so afraid of hearing my voice out loud among others that I faked a cough in the morning and told my mother that I was sick.  I stayed in bed.  The next time I got to the class, the teacher told me I was scheduled to give my speech in two days from the current day.  I was already planning to be sick again that day.  The day before I was supposed to go on, though, someone who was to give their speech was not finished with theirs, and asked for another day.  I was asked to go up instead, a day early.  Everyone spoke at a flimsy, thin, music-sheet podium, or simply stood adjacent to it.  I wasn’t going to do that.  Everyone would be able to look at my whole body for the entire time of my speech, and that simply couldn’t happen.  As I stood up, I asked the teacher if he minded moving from his desk, so that I could be behind it, seated, while reading my speech.  He said it was no problem, and so I delivered the speech from there.  People laughed at intervals of the speech, but I was just trying to get it over with.  I was so happy when it was over.  After everyone was finished the next day, though, the class voted for two people (out of 25 students) to also give their speech to the teacher’s other English class, while two from the other class would deliver their speeches to our class.  Terribly, they picked me as one of the two.  My teacher congratulated me on giving a great speech, which I could not fathom.  I was sweating, panicked, and quaking the entire time I gave the speech.  He told me to come to his other class on Monday afternoon.  Fortunately, I got sick quickly again, and couldn’t make it.

This is all to point out that I had no business teaching students based on my prior history.  I always sat in the back of classes, usually daydreaming out the window, or associating from whatever the principle discussion was about.  It was hard for me to stay on track, to stay focused on one thing.  Someone would say some words, and I would get “lost” following them around in my head, as if the words were fluttering butterflies.  Likewise, the year off that I spent aimlessly drinking, joking, and writing, enabled my mindset to continue to freely associate as before.  It was a setup.

*

On the first day I was to teach, I walked into the classroom and didn’t find any students.  My mind immediately turned against me—I wondered if the students knew something about me, and had all dropped out of my class to head to other sections.  But I was also relieved to not find anyone there.  A part of me hoped that some bureaucratic fiasco had taken place, and that due to some blessed clerical error I wouldn’t have to teach the class at all that semester.

I remained in the room for twenty minutes, and then left.  I walked to the office of the writing department, to find out what was going on.  A woman there told me she had been trying to reach me all morning (I wasn’t home) to tell me my classroom had been changed.  She gave me the new address, and I slowly walked over, hoping that the students had all left by this point.  But I couldn’t be sure, the students being freshmen, if they had enough common sense to leave.  So I meandered a bit.  I arrived to another empty classroom, but one of the students had scrawled on the chalkboard that they had been there, and that they’d see me next time.

I had to teach a second class later that night, and this time the students were there.  I didn’t know how to be a teacher, how to be seen as a teacher, how to gesture like a teacher, how to impart wisdom like a teacher, how to organize my thoughts like a teacher, ad infinitum.  The only thing I thought to do was to look powerful and stern.  That I did, and I believe I scared the students pretty quickly.  I certainly had their attention, if not their respect, but they were afraid to speak, as well, and I have to say I couldn’t blame them.  I can still see myself entering through the students, not saying a word to any of them as I passed by, placing my satchel on the desk, not looking up, pulling out syllabi and scrambled notes, all the while thinking “why are they doing this to me?”

I began speaking, mumbling, and felt like I was plugged into the wall like an appliance.  I was so self-conscious about every move I made, every syllable I said, I could barely function.  And while I was speaking, I was additionally seeing the countless paired eyes of my observers, noting their reactions to what I was saying.  But their reactions were so various—dulled, attentive, smirking, etc.—that I didn’t know how to adjust.  How does one adjust to the students’ needs when the students don’t agree on what needs to be adjusted?  It seemed to me that one student was at one level, and another was slightly different, and another brighter in listening, and so on.  Yet, I had to accommodate all these needs within one lecture!  It seemed bound for failure.  No, not seemed—assured of failure.

My desperation and nervousness were to be allayed by a required discussion group for new teaching assistants.  The group would be moderated by two or three experienced people in the field of composition and rhetoric.  They were to help us with questions we had, explain how to get students talking, how to structure a day in the classroom, etc.

These were the same people who had told all of us earlier that we were “experts in the field” already, and that we should be easily able to handle problems, because we were “experts in the field.”  The circular reasoning and complete nonsense of what they were saying didn’t go unnoticed by my colleagues and me.

In the group all manners of anxiety were vocalized, and the moderators nearly always felt that it was then time to “unpack” things.  There was a whole vocabulary built around the cherubic field of composition and rhetoric studies.  “Unpack,” “unpacking,” “I think what I hear you are saying,” “gifting the student,” and many others.  It seemed the organizers of the groups had been listening to Oprah and reading John Gray’s insipidly dualistic Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, while charting out how our talks should go.

The moderators also made use of a whiteboard at this time.  A whiteboard is a board used to write things on with markers instead of chalk.  When a problem arose in the group, one of the moderators would usually say “let’s unpack this” and then would get up to go to the board.

I had a dream or nightmare during this semester in which a woman kept getting up from a chair, proceeding to a whiteboard, without speaking, and sitting back down.  This was done in a rapid fashion and continually.  It was as if the woman’s movement had been programmed and the movement was now damaged.  It was sticking.

*

My night class was tired by the time I got them at 6 p.m.  They were also often hungry, sulky, and fidgety.  My early afternoon class was the exact opposite.  They talked and talked and talked.

I fairly quickly assessed the students’ personalities, mentally noting who to encourage if one was shy; who to go slowly over assignments with; who to help me in discussions, if they were active speakers; and, of course, who to reprimand non-militarily if one was being a pain in the ass (or, p.i.t.a.).  I’d say 95% of the time the p.i.t.a. would be a male.  But I knew this would probably be true, as I was a p.i.t.a. when I was a student in high school.  I figured I could handle the males pretty easily.

And then, fifteen minutes into the first class, the final student arrived.  He had the typical look and accoutrements of the time:  baggy jeans sliding earthward, a shirt two people could wear, a shaved head, and headphones on, loud enough for others to hear.  He sauntered by me at my desk, gave me the peace sign, and said in too loud a voice due to the headphones being on, “Hey, Teach, what’s up?”  For a brief moment, I thought of telling him “an ass-kicking will be up, that’s what,” but then I realized where I was, and so I thinly smiled at him instead, worrying.  He seemed like he may be too much for me.  He told everyone he was from Joy-zzy (New Jersey).

As I heard him speak for the first time, I recognized an earlier part of myself in him:  a smart-ass who thinks he has everything figured out, looking to lampoon authority figures at indiscrete intervals.  When he spoke, I would often be bemused internally at the profound comeuppance I had been delivered, by having an earlier version of “me” in the classroom.  I imagined my high school teachers, displaced by time and space, cheering on the kid’s wit, eagerly giving high-fives to one another.  I was beginning to understand now how they may have felt in dealing with me.

I wanted to see how they wrote on the spot, so I asked them to shout out words to me, which I put on the blackboard.  I made sure there were verbs and nouns and adjectives.  Then I told them I wanted them to write two pages on anything they wanted, any way they wanted, but they had to include fifteen of the twenty-five words on the blackboard somewhere in the story.

It was a fun exercise, which I think they really enjoyed, as they began writing pretty soon thereafter.  It also gave me a break from teaching.

I gave them twenty minutes to write the story, and then they would read theirs to the class, if they wanted to.  When the time was up, I asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to read theirs, and a few raised their hands.  I noticed the guy from New Jersey was still madly scribbling away.  I looked off and asked someone to read his or her piece, which they did.  We continued in this way, around the room.  The stories were sometimes about family, a dog, the television series 90210, or just abstract musings.  Meanwhile, Jersey continued writing. 

As the time for the class was ending, Jersey loudly put down his pen, and interrupted another person’s story being read, announcing “O.K., I’m finished.”  I told him he could read it after the person reading theirs was finished.  When she did, he began to read his.

His story was set at night.  There was rain and rap music.  There was a mystery to be solved as well.  The protagonist had a blonde wig and wore black latex clothing, covered with a black leather coat.  As the story unfolded—and his was twice as long as the others—the protagonist was an undercover female cop for awhile, in some vague mystery, who then dressed in a short skirt and came home with a male cop.  He described the two cops heavily petting one another, and then the male cop struggled to undo the female cop’s underwear.  When her underwear came off, it was revealed that she had a penis.  The male cop was shocked and outraged, and pulled off the female cop’s wig. 

Jersey then paused fully, and finished the story with the following line:

“It was James Wagner!  A teacher of composition, and a lover of words.”

The entire class burst out laughing.  Yet, tentatively.  They didn’t know me at this point, and were worried and/or wondering how I would react to being, I guess, emasculated.

I was in doubt myself, about how to respond.  I didn’t want this kind of thing to continue, but I also didn’t want to come off as someone who couldn’t take a joke.  I was also very concerned during these opening days of creating the atmosphere I wanted, and worried that I would lose my class in the process.

I stared blankly at Jersey, who seemed nervous despite what he had read.  I sweepingly glanced at the rest of the class.  Then I smiled, and said, “I suppose that’ll be enough for today.”  

language games



james wagner