Going Down

A couple of weeks ago, at the school where I was doing my student teaching, I walked into the copy room and somebody from my cohort said, “Hi, Gorgeous!”  I’m pretty sure she was talking to Shardae, who came in with me, though I guess we could have been collectively gorgeous.  For some reason I still don’t understand, I was thrilled anyway, like she'd been talking to me.  It has something to do with the cohort deal, the closeness and the comfortableness and the sort of support where you feel all the successes as if they were your own.  We joke about building our own school.  We share books.  We could be socially clumsy with each other and would be immediately forgiven, but we never are.  Cedric (the only male in our cohort) is the first straight man ever to have told me that though he thinks I look nice in a suit and lipstick, he prefers me in jeans and a t-shirt.

Back to the copy room comment:  I’ve been fretting lately about losing my looks.  I love that expression and will take any opportunity to use it.  It’s so Southern and dramatic, and it satisfies me somewhere deep down.  I like to say "I'm losing my looks" while placing the back of my hand to my forehead and leaning backwards unsteadily, as if on the verge of collapse.  I was raised in the South, and I still enjoy certain elements.  You may have noticed my need to exaggerate.  That is from the South.  There is something in the air there--maybe it's the heat--that grows children who exaggerate and then are surprised when people take them literally.  I am one of those.  I also try to drink mint juleps, but I can’t because I hate them.  However, I feel strongly that I would look good holding one, with my pinkie sticking out and the mint leaf poised artfully, half wilting, in the heat.  Perhaps the mint julep is a prop that could make up for losing my looks.

While we are on the topic of dramatic poses, I shall reveal that I enjoy toddler-hood for the high drama.  I sometimes laugh when my son hurls himself on the floor and wails and pounds his little fists because he can’t have a lollipop before dinner, though of course I feel his pain.  I am proud of his dramatic prowess, and it’s hilarious.  As a parent, if you can’t enjoy some aspect of this shit, you are going to go down.

Ari's dramatic baby-hood

The phrase “going down” is another good one, one that reminds me of a story my mother-in-law told me about having a newborn who wouldn’t sleep in a 16^th floor apartment building in Brooklyn.  She used to look out the window with the baby in her arms at 3:00 am and think, “If this keeps up, we’re both going down.”  Luckily, she didn’t jump out the window because the newborn was my wife.  But I appreciate her sentiment.  High drama is the saving grace of parenthood.

I never see any of my cohort anymore.  I didn’t know this when I started grad school, but the cohort model is some kind of psychological trick.  They put a small group of people together all the time, and the result is supposed to be a supportive atmosphere, intense bonding, and increased learning.  They do it a lot with immersion programs like mine, where you complete large amounts in a short time.  Evidently, it works.  I miss my homies.  I feel a kind of chronic, low-level incompleteness. 

Ari, just because

I’m listening to this trilogy by Philip Pullman in the car.  The first one was called The Golden Compass.  I forget the other two titles.  Most people have probably heard of them.  They are hot shit in the middle school English classroom.  Anyway, they’re fantasy young adult books, and the people in the books have daemons, which are animals who contain half of their souls.  The daemons cannot go more than like 20 feet away, or the people they are a part of freak the hell out.  They get all bleak and frantically depressive, and they must have their daemons back, or they eventually go catatonic and die.  I think this part of the books is neat.  It reminds me of Ari, and how much I miss his soft, heavy body when I’m away from him, or when he’s just sick of being cuddled.  It reminds me of my cohort, and how we were forced to bond and then cruelly torn asunder.  It is very dramatic.

I also like the books because they are the first truly radical things I’ve read in a long time.  They include a pair of gay angels who are banding together with other “good guys” to try to kill God.  Cool, right?  They are pissed (the good guys) that God has made man do all this dumb stuff and fight all these wars and generally submit to His will.  Oh, and in the books, God is a big liar.  Such drama!  Such sacrilege!  I love it.

I enjoy drama that is low key, that seems almost as if it might not be dramatic.  One example of this is a story I was told by one of my cashiers in my former life as a retail manager.  The cashier is named Alain, and I guess because he was gay (and very dramatic) we'd grown close.  He was Haitian, and he told me he'd seen Sade in concert in Haiti.  The concert was outdoors, and she performed in full daylight.  It was over 100 degrees.  According to Alain, Sade sang for more than two hours without breaking a sweat.  I've wanted to see her ever since I heard this story, because it makes it seem like Sade becomes her music as she performs it in some essential way.  She gets all cool and mellow, no matter how hot it is.  Of course, it has occurred that Alain had to be lying, and I'm grateful.

In my fantasy Sade concert (based loosely on Alain's story), I lie all over the place.  Because Alain said the concert was outdoors, I place it on the beach.  I place it at sunset, sort of Carly Simon/Martha's Vineyard.  I put the attendance around four.  Me and Barbara, barefoot, dancing.  Ari and his excellent babysitter off playing in the sand.  I can see them if I want to, but I don't because I'm not worried.  There is champagne in a flute B and I are sharing, and it is ice cold and stays that way.  We are well rested and would rather be dancing than sleeping.  I can hear Ari giggling in the distance every few minutes.  And of course, Sade doesn't sweat.

Happiness is making fantasies and then seeing huge chunks of them are real.  We have each other, a refrigerator, some decent prosecco, and some Ipod speakers.  We have a nice balcony.  We laugh a lot.  We have two good sitters, and Ari loves other people.  The missing parts aren't important.  Because if you can't believe that, then you are going down.