“We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.” —Julia Kristeva, Powers of
Horror
* * *
“I
have some good news and some bad news.”
It
was a bright, sunny day, the kind of warm day in early March that gave you
false hope that Spring was just around the corner. Technically on the calendar it was, but that
didn’t mean an end to the snow or anything. There was pretty much always a
decent blizzard in April just to remind you that this was the Midwest, in case you were getting any dumb ideas about
staying here permanently.
“The
good news is, I have your essays graded.”
Sun
was streaming through the dirty window, lighting streams of dust in the air. The
Brandons and Ashleys had their spring-overreaction clothes on, shorts and
miniskirts, because forty-degree weather was the perfect opportunity to show
some skin. Everyone else was dressed the same as last week, except maybe a
regular ski jacket instead of the extra-warm padded one.
“The
bad news is, I’m not going to hand them back until the end of class.”
There
were some aw noises from a few of the
more grade-obsessed students (they were trying to get into law school or
whatever). Gavin always handed back
essays at the end, though, so he could bolt right after. He didn’t want to hang around in the same room
with students who had just gotten their grades, much less try to teach them
anything.
“But I before I hand them back, I wanted to
tell you about the main problem I saw. If you remember, the assignment was to
write about abjection in The Divine
Sharpness. What I noticed is that
many of you did not present an original argument.”
Many was the understatement
of the year. Everyone but Rona Gomez. Every
single other essay had exactly the same main point: “The blood in The Divine Sharpness in the Heart of God
is an example of abjection.” It’s not
like it was such an awesome main point, either.
A bunch of quotes about dripping blood and the heart getting torn apart,
a passage from Kristeva, nothing that hadn’t been said ten times during
class. He had given them all C’s or B
minuses, depending on the clarity of their sentences and paragraph structure. Rona’s
essay got a B.
“When
you become graduate students or go out into your careers, you’ll be expected to
come up with your own ideas. You won’t
be able to get away with taking someone else’s argument and presenting it as
your own. So today, we’re going to do
some small group work on developing original analyses of the plays we read.”
There
was a groan from around the room, an “I hate groups” from one of the Brandons. Two quiet Asian girls scooted their desks
closer to each other to make it clear that they could not bear to be split up.
“I’d like you to get into groups of three and
brainstorm a list of ways the concept of abjection appears in the first act of Time Slide. You should find examples
from the text to support your ideas. You have ten minutes. Get started.”
Blank
faces.
“Groups
of three,” he said. “You have nine and a
half minutes.”
Yeah, right. It took like
seven minutes just to form the groups.
He had to make one of the Brandons—poor guy—go sit with the two silent
Asian girls. Kayla asked if she and the
four other Ashleys could work in a group of five. She had stopped sitting with
Braden a couple weeks ago and the two of them didn’t seem to be speaking. Too bad Gavin wasn’t interested in her
anymore. The whole Rona thing was enough
drama for one class, and anyway Kayla had kind of lost her sparkle. Her shirt today was see-through, not in a
good way, and her thick pancake makeup looked orange in the sideways light from
the window.
“No,”
he said, “Groups of three.”
She
sighed and rolled her eyes. Gavin made
two of her friends go sit with one of the Asian guys. None of them looked super happy about it.
Okay,
groups set. All threes, except one weird
group of two nerds, one Brandon, and the black guy, fine. Rona was working with that Asian guy who kept
sitting next to her, like maybe he had a crush, and this one nerd girl who
always wore shirts with vampires on them. Rona’s copy of Time Slide was open on her desk, but on top of it she was drawing a
giant maple leaf in her notebook with colored pencils.
“Five
more minutes,” Gavin said. Most of the
students were staring silently at their books.
A few were huddled together, whispering. Braden’s group of Brandons were
talking about something, but it didn’t sound like abjection or Time Slide. He heard the words fucking tramp-stamp and boner
killer.
“Okay,
which group wants to go first? Where did
you see the idea of abjection in Time Slide?”
Silence,
of course. Gavin looked over at Rona’s
group. She was still drawing in her
notebook.
Finally
Braden raised his hand. He was wearing camouflage
shorts that showed off his fuzzy blond legs, a hooded sweatshirt and hiking
boots. “Well, this doesn’t really answer
your question. But in our group, we just
talked about how we don’t really get this play.”
That must be a
real boner killer.
“Okay.” Gavin tried really hard not to make a face, but
one of the Ashleys started giggling, so maybe he did, or maybe she was just
telepathic. “Can you explain what you mean by don’t get it?”
“Yeah,
well, like—is the whole thing like
this? Just two guys sitting on a slide?”
Gavin
hated when they were cute like this. Instead of answering your question, I'm going to blame the text for my lack of ideas. Just do the fucking assignment.
“Maybe
we should hear what some other groups discussed about abjection. That might lead us into the larger point of
the play, which seems to be what you’re having trouble with.”
On
the other side of the room, the black guy was raising his hand. Wow,
black guy. He’d barely been in class
all semester, much less said anything.
Gavin still couldn’t remember his name so he just pointed at him.
“This
play, I think it’s about feeling stuck,” he said. “Like how
they’re stuck on the slide.”
“Okay,
interesting.” Not the way people usually
discussed the play—it was about the
passage of time, not about being in a cage or something—but at least he was
actually thinking. “Can you explain a
little more? Why are they stuck?”
“It’s
like.” He grabbed a fist of his own short, curly hair and pulled on it while he
thought. When he let it go, his eyes were bright with an idea. “Sometimes life
just makes you stuck somewhere. Like
it’s your time to be somewhere so you have to be there, but you’d rather get
out but you can’t. I think that’s what
the play is about.”
Gavin
had never seen this guy—DeJon?—so excited.
He gestured with his hands as he explained, looked around to see if the
other students were following him.
“Interesting interpretation,” Gavin said. “Can you explain how it relates to abjection?”
The
guy looked down at his book. He stared
at the cover like the answer would come from the blurb on the back.
“I
don’t know.” The light was gone. Gavin had blown out the candle.
Fuck. That’s not what he
meant to do. He was just trying to get the guy to explain a little more, not
make him all sad like that.
“It’s
okay.” Gavin’s voice felt gentle, the kind of voice you use to talk to your
girlfriend or someone who was sick. He
tried to catch the kid’s gaze, to let him know that his thoughts were welcome,
that Gavin was happy to hear about them. But he was staring at his desk, his
lips twisted, like the world had let him down but he hadn’t expected anything
different.
“DeJuan.”
Yes, that was his name. It had just popped into Gavin’s head, right when it mattered. “What you said about the play—it was really good.”
DeJuan didn't look up.
Gavin
hated handing back the essays. He
probably hated it more than anything else about being a teacher. He read each student’s name, they came up one
by one, he handed them the essay and tried not to make a lot of eye
contact. Some of the students shoved the
essays in their bags without even looking at them. Some compared grades with their friends,
competing, Aw man, he liked yours better?
A few sat quietly at their desks,
studying the comments, then looking up at him all mournful before they
left. The worst was when somebody threw
the essay in the garbage on the way out, but no one did that today.
“If
you have questions about your grade, you can email me,” he announced to the
backs of the students streaming out the door.
“Or come see me in my office hour, which is listed on the front of your
syllabus.”
Rona
sat drawing through the whole process.
When he called her name, she came up, made sure to look him right in the
eye as he handed her essay over, and then returned to her colored pencils. She was still sitting there after everyone left,
filling in some deep reds on the maple leaf.
“Sorry,
I’ll be done in a second.” She pulled
out a golden pencil, held it in the light and studied the color. “I just want
to finish this.”
It’s kind of
distracting. This would be
the perfect time to tell her, quiet, no other students around. No more
drawing in class.
He
sat down next to her and leaned over to see.
The drawing was actually pretty cool-looking, a collage of overlapping
trunks and leaves, bright with color, words dancing around them like they were
more art than language.
“What
is it?” he asked.
“Oh,
it’s this tree thing.” She didn’t look
up, just kept drawing faster, like she was trying to finish before he could
tell her to stop. “I’m doing a
storyboard. It’s like an outline.”
“It’s
really nice, but—”
“Do
you want to go to fight night?”
“Fight
night,” Gavin said.
“Saturday
night at Phi Mu Delta. It’s a frat party
but they have like boxing and wrestling in the back yard.”
Gavin
wasn’t getting this. Okay, Rona was into
weird stuff, he knew. But this was weird
in a whole different direction.
“You want to watch fraternity guys fight each
other?”
She
looked up from her drawing and pushed her hair out of her face. She kind of searched him with her eyes, like
maybe he was as puzzling to her as she was to him.
“I
think it would be interesting,” she said.
Like duh, who wouldn’t want to go to fight night?
“I
might need to do some work that evening.”
That was a lie. He never worked
on Saturday night. He just didn’t know
if he was ready to watch a bunch of drunk undergraduates beat each other up. Or
maybe he just wasn’t ready to be seen at a fraternity with Rona.
“Me,
too,” Rona said. “Let’s work after. And I want to hear how your talk went.”
“No,
I can’t work with other people around.”
She
was lining up her pencils in their flat case, wrapping a rubber band around it.
“So
just come to the fight night for a while.
We can leave early and you can go do work.”
Okay, fine. Fine. It was time he fucking accepted
it: he had no capacity to turn down anything from Rona Gomez. She knew how to do some spell or something,
who knows, but he sucked at telling her no. There was no point pretending it
was any different. Isolation tanks, blow
jobs, being friends, frat parties.
Whatever she suggested, he was going to cave. Might as well do it sooner and save everyone
some time.
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