The Narrative
When
I was very young, I had a friend named Erik Horn. He kind of liked to make fun of me. In one conversation, he mentioned the
character Steven Q. Urkel in Family
Matters, and he said “got any cheese, got any cheese, got any cheese, got
any cheese?” When he said it, it made me
see this:
It made me want to imitate Urkel, to wear
glasses, to value what is weak, and to study.
Erik and I got into fights over the years, but over time I learned to
rise above it, as you will see. . .
When I was 12 years old, my dad had an affair
with my mother and gave her herpes. In
reaction to this, my mom took me to see the psychiatrist, Lee Ascherman. During those sessions, he taught me to
develop my language skills and also gave me the idea to be a librarian (by
saying the word “library”). Most of
those sessions involved conflict with my brother, Samuel. Near the end of these sessions, Dr. Ascherman
had a special meeting with my parents, and at the end of it, my dad smiled at
me in a way that created the image of the poster for the movie “the
40-Year-Old-Virgin.” What it meant to me
at the time? That everything that
followed from that point onward would be fake.
When I was a student at JCIB high school, I had
a teacher named Martin Chambers. The
style of his teaching corresponded with a movement known as modernism, which
deals with the idea that life is difficult, with the idea that people are
basically good, and that some trends in history cannot be overturned. Around this same time, I saw a film called
“Raging Bull” by a man named Martin Scorsese, which deals with the same ideas
involving modernism (the idea that life is difficult, the idea that people are
basically good, and the idea that some trends in history cannot be overturned). High school was also a very difficult time
for me, because I felt that people ignored me and that I didn’t fit in. Because I was the only person there who
appeared to notice a correlation between Martin Chambers and Martin Scorsese, I
became uncomfortable very easily, and people even feared that I might be gay. .
.
After I graduated from JCIB, I attended Rhodes
College in Memphis, TN. There, Marshall
Boswell, who resembles Urkel’s perfect opposite, was my Professor. He taught an odd class where, among other
things, he would say the full word “nigger” and belittle his male
students. The class left me with a bad
feeling, since it was so different than Mr. Chambers. He would even end each of his classes with a
smile! I would eventually learn that
this idea (of a self-consciously fake smile) was from a movement known as
postmodernism, which deals with questioning preexisting forms in terms of race,
class, gender, or sometimes for no reason at all. Another Professor who I had at Rhodes was a
man named Rob Canfield, who taught a subject called Post-Colonial
Literature. This class was a more
radical questioning of Mr. Chamber’s philosophy, one that sought to challenge
ideas of inherent differences using politically liberal and Marxist ideas. At Rhodes, I also studied the writings of
David Foster Wallace, who in books like A
Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Infinite Jest talked about questioning preexisting forms in a
non-political but still postmodern way.
I also matured a great deal in college, becoming more confident,
physically cleaner, and arguably less like Urkel and more like Marshall
Boswell.
After I graduated from Rhodes, I went to
graduate school in English at the University of Tennessee. There, I had a very upbeat advisor named
Misty Gale Anderson and a very intelligent thesis advisor named John
Zomchick. Dr. Zomchick was particularly
noteworthy because his classes strongly resembled those taught by Martin
Chambers, even containing similar quotes, and caused me to have a more positive
view of modernism. In the summer of
2005, the film “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” finally came out, with the poster of a
man who physically resembled me during my college years. The first appearance of this poster was on
the website www.aintitcoolnews.com. Viewing this poster on this website greatly
upset me, which caused me to post under the name “Chief Redcock” to prove that
I was not a virgin!
After graduating from the University of
Tennessee, I went to teach 6th grade English at Deep Branch
Elementary School. The location of this
school is Lumberton, NC, which has a large, Native American population and
which ironically was the setting of David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet. (Both David Lynch and Blue Velvet, coincidentally, are also the subject of David Foster
Wallace’s 1998 essay “David Lynch Keeps His Head”). Though I thought the faculty at Deep Branch
were capable, at times the children were difficult, and I left after less than
a year. . .
In the Fall of 2007, I enrolled in the
University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Science. There, I met a number of interesting people,
including Jane C. Daugherty, Sara Roberts, Tyler Williams, and Tim Wilson. Making the transition from teacher to librarian
was interesting but challenging, and this period of time was made more difficult
by conflicts that I had with Sara Roberts.
Sara was a married woman, and though at times she would be friendly and
talkative, at other times she would distance herself from me in order to
preserve her marriage. This conflict
would result in tense exchanges between us, including one where she called me a
“virgin,” and one where I called her a “whore.”
To further distance herself from me, she would hang out with a man named
Tim Wilson, who would engage in exchanges with her where they would both deride
me. This period of a year and a half was
very difficult for me, and at times I would drink alcohol and even consider
suicide (I would indicate this on the University of Alabama’s website). . .
In the Spring of 2009, I was fortunate enough
to get a job at Emporia State University’s William Allen White Library. Before this happened, the writer David Foster
Wallace committed suicide, and I friended Marshall Boswell as a cry for help
(the man from Rhodes who taught me David Foster Wallace’s writings). He accepted the friend request at 12:34
exactly, which indicated that he did identify the intention behind the friend
request, but he did nothing about it.
Wallace wrote “The Pale King” shortly before he hung himself which, in
another example of a coincidence, resembles the name “Chief Redcock” from my
writing on www.aintitcoolnews.com
. After accepting the job, I was asked
to be the webmaster, which I accepted with some hesitation (knowing how
difficult it can be to get a job, and wanting to fit in).
Around this same time, an incident happened on
Facebook involving me and a friend Erik Horn.
My friends’ list on Facebook involves many individuals from my life
story, including individuals from my family tree, high school, college, and
graduate school. Starting my job at ESU,
my profile picture was an image of me resembling Andy Stitzer from “the
40-Year-Old Virgin.” After about a
month’s time, I began to post written comments on Facebook, and I also changed
my profile picture to a black and white image of me outside of my
apartment. In reaction to this, Erik
Horn changed his profile picture to a similar image of himself with a man, in
an attempt to mock me and make me look gay.
In reaction to this, I posted more upbeat material about what I was
doing in the library, book reviews I had written for the Emporia Gazette, and
items from the website www.slate.com
(a website that Rob Canfield once told me about). Near the end of my posting, I played a video
clip by the band R.E.M. called “The Sad Professor,” where the lead singer
appears to give a smile similar to the smile given by Marshall Boswell at
Rhodes. Ironically, the idea of a
postmodern smile is also described in the David Foster Wallace essay “E Unibus
Pluram,” which refers to an individual conveying an opposite emotion than what
they actually experience.
I played this video clip on the weekend after Valentine’s
Day, since I was upset that I was still single and bothered by the events at
Alabama. In a strange coincidence,
Marshall Boswell changed his profile picture to an image of himself wearing
sunglasses and smiling. Even after some
consideration, I have a difficult time figuring out if the act of his changing
his profile picture was an elitist snub, a racist joke, or an admission that he
is gay. In retrospect, it seems that the
profile picture change was a bit of homoerotic teasing similar to the profile
picture change made by Erik Horn.
Shortly after Marshall Boswell changed his profile picture, Martin
Scorsese’s Shutter Island was
released in theaters and at the Dickinson Flinthills 8 Cinemas. The film featured a character named “Ted” who
was experiencing an ordeal similar to the ordeal that I experienced at Alabama,
where I was having a difficult time relinquishing contact with a girl or
“letting her go.” In the film, the act
of letting her go results in his physical and psychological ruin, and at times
I felt the same way about Sara. That the
film was made by Martin Scorsese, whose film “Raging Bull” had inspired my
thinking in high school, is only one more twist in this narrative! The timing was so charged with meaning that I
actually thought I was in a fake situation created by Lee Ascherman, Marshall
Boswell, and my parents to punish me for hitting my brother, Winston (he and I
had gotten into a fight prior to my starting graduate work at the University of
Tennessee). To further complicate
matters, I had a strange encounter with Professor Connie Phelps in August when
I helped her to create a video presentation involving the Education Databases
(Education Full Text and ERIC). After we
had finished creating the presentation, she asked me “what is this talk of
another degree for you”? I told her that
the terminal degree for many librarians is a Master’s Degree, and she responded
that this is similar to the degree that an Art Professor receives. She then showed me a picture of a young girl
with black hair and said “this is my daughter.”
When I paused in my reaction, she said “oh, you will!” Then, as if she were making fun of me, she
said “oohh”!
This exchanged left me startled, and
unfortunately, it increased my feeling that I was in a virtual reality scenario. It also appeared to suggest that she had been
communicating with Sara. Dr. Phelps
saying “oh, you will!” implied that a relationship between Sara and I would
occur. Ironically, this corresponded
with my meeting Sara in Washington, D.C. for an American Library Association
Meeting, an event that later in my mind would resemble Teddy Daniels meeting
his wife in the lighthouse at the end of “Shutter Island” (Sara’s husband is named Daniel, which
implies that I should come first : ) ) .
Afterwards, everything ceased to make sense. Taking a break from Sara, and inspired by
Connie Phelps’ words, I then applied to law schools, but I failed to get into
the more prestigious programs. Then, in
reaction to the events that came before the application process, I went into therapy
to try and figure out what had happened.
Unfortunately, my thoughts concerning these events were so troubling
that I did poorly on my evaluations at ESU, and eventually I was fired for
missing meetings. In therapy, I was
surprised and upset to learn that these events had not been planned by
psychiatrists, professors, or by my family.
I don’t know how this narrative would end,
except maybe with my watching Hugo and then committing suicide, after writing
the following note: I want Martin Scorsese to stop making movies, and I want to
marry Sara Clem Roberts.
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