Chapter 7

Monday’s class was fucked up.  Seriously, without question, it was the most fucked up class Gavin had ever taught.

To start, Kayla spent the first fifteen minutes leaning over Braden’s tiny desk drawing adorable cartoon rabbits on her own coursepack, which they were sharing.  Gavin had a primo view from where he stood by the board, giving his opening mini-lecture on Kristeva’s relationship to structuralist and psychoanalytic theory.  He wanted to tell her to cut it out, but he couldn’t decide if, objectively speaking, she was doing anything wrong.  Just last class he had instructed them to share coursepacks, and wasn’t that all they were doing?  Of course the sight of her shoving her cleavage all up in his sunburned face (Who gets a sunburn in January?) was completely distasteful.  But that was an aesthetic judgment, and everyone knew what you got when you mixed the aesthetic with the law: Fascism.

“Kayla.”  Thirty seconds more and he was going to chuck his dry-erase marker at Braden’s stupid fuzzy head. “Could you please read the passage that starts, ‘A wound with blood’?”

She looked up, startled, with one of those where am I expressions like she had just stepped off a time machine into a strange new world.

“Page three,” Gavin said.  “Second paragraph.”

“Oh, okay. Hold on.”  She took a long time flipping  through the coursepack, which was supposed to be open to page three already.  But at least she put it on her own desk, thereby pointing her boobs back in an acceptable direction.

“‘A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay—’” She looked up at Gavin.  “Is this the right part?”

“That’s it.”

Her skeptical expression meant that she hadn’t read the essay; otherwise she’d know the whole thing was like this.  Looking around, he saw a lot of wrinkled noses, furrowed brows, confused whispering.  The room was dim in the gray light of winter, and the students’ faces blurred into the industrial tan of the furniture and walls.  The ancient fluorescent light that flickered overhead was a symbol for Gavin’s heart, faint, discouraged, barely able to find the motivation to keep going. Here he was, in charge of these young people—their de-facto boss for this one point two five hours—and he was pretty sure none of them had done the reading.

The one person who had done it, of course, would be Rona Gomez, but she wasn’t there.  That was fucked up thing number two.  It was possible that she had dropped, which would be okay, probably good.  But it was more possible that, at this very moment, she was undergoing major surgery for whatever it was that gets broken after you exit a building through a third-story window.  And that would be not be okay at all. It would be really, really bad and all Gavin’s fault and also quite possibly a crime.

“‘Okay.  The sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay,” Kayla sped up, like she was trying to get it over with, “does not signify death. In the presence of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance—I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit—’”

“She crazy,” the black guy said.  He was sitting next to one of the Asian girls who never talked.  She turned and stared at him, silent and blank-faced. Agitated giggles began to travel around the room in uneasy waves. 

“All right, settle down.” Gavin raised his voice above the whispers and laughs. “Let’s try and focus.” 

Most of them pulled it together.  The Asian girl stopped gawking at DeWhatever his name was and stared back down at her coursepack.  Two of the Brandons were muttering back and forth and elbowing each other lightly in the ribs.  Other than that, everyone was quiet.  Kayla even managed to keep reading, though her voice was a little shaky like she was trying not to laugh or cry or something.  

“‘These body fluids, this defilement, this shit,” she repeated, “are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border.’”

“Thank you,” Gavin said.  “So.  Class.”  (That’s what he called his students when he was pissed off at them.) “What is Kristeva saying about bodily fluids and feces?”

Braden raised his hand.  Today his shirt had sleeves, so that was an improvement.  But it was tight, some kind of cotton-synthetic blend that clung to his modest pectoral muscles, a few buttons on the front open to reveal a ruddy bit of chest.  It was probably his good shirt.  This must be what Brandons wore on dates. 

“She thinks they’re gross, right?”

“Everyone thinks they’re gross,” Gavin said.  “Why does that matter?  Why do we think they’re gross?”

“They make her feel like she’s gonna hurl.” He had reclaimed Kayla’s coursepack and was flipping through it.  “This whole story is about things that make her want to hurl.  See, here it is, on page two: ‘When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk—harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail paring—I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire.’” 

“I thought you haven’t bought the coursepack yet,” Gavin said.

“I read Kayla’s copy last night.”

The fluorescent light glowed bright for a moment, with an agitated buzzing sound, before it went out.

“I was kind of into that part.”  Braden said. “About the milk.”

Kayla’s copy, last night. They were just words when the reached Gavin’s ears. But by the time they got to his brain they were a syllogism awaiting completion. And by the time he completed it they had reached his gut and were throwing flying ninja kicks at his intestines.

“Okay.” Gavin could get over it.  Pain in his stomach, no big deal. “Why?”

 “The way she describes it.”  Braden looked down at the page and dug his fingers into his hair nest.  The light had turned on again, just over his head, so that Gavin could see oily little flakes of dandruff getting knocked loose.  “It’s really realistic.  It’s like when you’re wasted—I mean, you know, intoxicated—and you get that taste in your mouth.”

Gavin imagined Kayla’s manicure entwined in that hair.  It was one of those horrible images, like some atrocity on the cover of U.S. News and World Report that makes you want to shoot yourself.

“Great,” he said, trying to move on, but Braden kept talking.

“When you get that taste, it’s like what she says, like you get all sweaty and your heart beats really fast and you just start to feel the hurl coming up.”

The Asian girl raised her hand.  “Professor Cheng-Johnson?”

“Gavin.”

“Professor Gavin.”  Her voice was crackly and her skin was kind of green.  “Can I please go to the restroom?”   She pointed down at the coursepack.  “Makes me feel sick.”

Gavin nodded, and the girl ran out of the room, almost crashing into Rona Gomez, who was standing in the doorway with her boots and her giant black coat and her ratty backpack and two black eyes.

Fuck.

“Come in,” Gavin said.  “Have a seat.”

There were a couple empty ones off to the side.  She put her backpack down carefully, like she was trying not to be disruptive, which was kind of impossible since every single person in the room was staring at her.  She looked like a raccoon, her eyes ringed in black, rummaging through her backpack like it was a garbage can.

“Okay,” Gavin said.  “So why is Kristeva talking about—”  What had Braden called it? “Hurling. What does it have to do with abjection?” 

Blank stares.  Gavin locked eyes with Braden, who was chewing on a hangnail.  Finally, predictably,  the black-sweatshirted arm appeared in Gavin’s peripheral vision.

“Rona.”

“Throwing up is like the perfect representation of abjection.  It’s casting something out from your body.”  She sounded like she had a head cold, and the bridge of her nose was all swollen. “And then you feel better, like everything will be okay if you can just get rid of this unwanted thing.  That’s what abjection is, getting rid of something you think is wrong or sickly so you can have a sense of wholeness and healthiness.”

Yeah, that’s nice.  So what the fuck happened to your face? That would be the logical thing to say. But instead, he said, “Good explanation.”

“But also,” she said, “abject things make you feel like you’re going to throw up.  Like how we feel around shit or blood or dead bodies…”

“Right,” said Gavin.  “Very good.” 

The Asian girl had just returned to her desk, all pale and sweaty.  Please don’t barf, please don’t barf , he commanded. The only thing that could make this day more fucked up would be a hot pile of regurgitated Chinese food.  

“Why don’t we stop there for today,” he said.  Class was supposed to be over in seven minutes, but he couldn’t see any point in dragging it out.  

The students didn’t seem to mind leaving early. The Asian girl was packed and out the door before Gavin had even finished reminding them to please read the article if you haven’t already.  Kayla and Braden walked out together, stumbling and bumping into each other in what Gavin figured was an exhausted post-coital reverie.

He stood by the door, waiting for them all to get out, so he could talk to Rona Gomez. She stayed in her chair, her backpack on her lap, only coming over to him after the last student—the black kid, limping like maybe he hurt his foot or something—was gone.

“Sorry I was late.”  She pushed back the straggles of hair, like she always did, but this time her face underneath was a lumpy monster mask. “ I had a concussion.”

“The window?” Gavin asked.

She shook her head firmly, then stuck out one arm to steady herself against the door frame.

“The wall,” she said.

The thought of Rona Gomez stepping out of a window had seemed far-fetched enough; he had never even considered that she might try the wall.  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it: Rona splattered against a wall, her black coat and hair flattened around her like the wings of a smashed insect.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It didn’t work.”

“Okay,” Gavin said. “I won’t worry.”

Which was total bullshit, because of course he was going to worry.  He was going to do nothing but worry until she was out of his class.  

She needs to drop, he told himself, as he made his way across the snowy quad to the Drunken Buffalo to drown his pedagogical sorrows in Scotch.  His jaw was clenched and his hands shook, not just from the cold. Frick had been right: needy undergraduates would suck all your energy, if you let them.  But Gavin wouldn’t let her.  He was ready to fight. He would go to the English department, the dean of student services, the head of campus security, whatever it took. 

Not today, though.  It was late afternoon, which meant the weak winter sun was already disappearing behind the dead-flat horizon, and he really needed that Scotch.  But soon—tomorrow, or definitely by next week—he would get Rona Gomez out of his class. 

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Chapter 8>