The Barnes and Noble Incident(s)

Dustin and I have found ourselves hunkered down at a table full of books and laptops, surrounded by the scent of ground coffee beans for a typical grad-student afternoon of haunting the local coffee shop. The difference is that the local coffee shop we're haunting is a cross between the Barnes and Noble book mogul and their equally megalomaniacal partner Starbucks. Don't misunderstand me, unlike my graduate school colleagues, I actually harbor no real resentment for corporate America. I have definitely seen the self-proclaimed, corporate-hating, hypocritical hipster self-consciously wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart, slipping, eventually, into a state of ease when they have finally convinced themselves they will not run into a colleague that will smirk and mentally call them out on their blasphemy. Then, shiny, Wal-Mart-logo-bearing, stuffed cart will turn a corner only to come face-to-face with me. And I smile, of course, and engage them in slow, steady conversation, watching them wriggle like Prufrock, uncomfortable in the spotlight of their hypocrisy. That's the secret: they subscribe to it whether they want to admit it or not.

However, despite my semi-nefarious satisfaction and indulgence in another's discomfort, I have learned to dislike Barnes and Noble for an entirely different reason than my colleagues, and I actually mean it. A month or so ago, when D and I came in to visit the shiny books and to fan the scent of their nascent pages past our noses, we skipped through the rows and rows of newness, opened and closed literary journals to note the writers we knew, the ones we liked and the ones we hated, turning up our snobbish writer noses at the lack of craft here or the crassness in the voice, a direct attribute of the writer, there, secretly contemplating and scolding myself for my own lack of actually submitting my work anywhere...and then, I came across this:

And stopped in my tracks. Why is James Frey and any of his work in the biography section? This would denote that the accounts in his books were true, an outrage I've managed to cultivate in many students by the mere statistic that 90% or more of A Million Little Pieces was fabricated. Yet, there they were, staring smugly at me as I had done to so many hipsters in Wal-Mart. In disbelief, I backed away from the shelf, trying to convince myself there was no "right" place for A Million Little Pieces, but that certainly, Barnes and Noble was not the high court judge in position to make that ruling. I made my way uncertainly through the aisles, no longer sure of what they held, in search of Dustin. It was time, I thought, to leave this place.

As I wandered past the massive, catch-all "Literature" section, bleary-eyed, I found focus again on the placard that read "Teen Non-Fiction," a welcoming, familiar word: Non-Fiction, and breath found its way back through my lungs. Until, again, I was struck in horror, frozen and mortified to see this:

Look closely. Do you see it? Wicked. The Clique. Love Bites. These are the titles listed under "Teen Non-Fiction." These vampire love sagas and Gossip Girl-mimicking novels have been placed under a section that claims to be full of truth, and all its many definitions and facets.

It was there that Dustin found me, statue-still, mouth agape in disbelief.

We left after that fateful day in late August and haven't returned again until today, almost two full months later. Since then, Dustin has informed me of the bookstore's surprise announcement of putting themselves up for sale. We've discussed the fall of the printed word and I have managed to conjure up a sense of sympathy for the chain store, one that really stems from my love for the heft of a book in my hand, the sheen of its glossy cover and creak of its ream of pages when opened for the first time. It's taken some time and distance for me to begin to forgive and forget Barnes and Noble's indiscretions, though, to move beyond what it has done, to redefine my expectations of the corporate bookstore, and that's ok. I've accepted it for what it is now and have not yet wandered through its aisles or diverted my pregnant path from our table in the Starbucks area to the bathroom a mere fifteen second walk away. The joy I felt in fanning pages of untouched books and scanning the table of contents for familiarity in journals is still feasible, as long as I confine my attention to the books at hand and not the section labels they fall beneath. Barnes and Noble and I have an understanding.

Today I have found a different bone to pick during my experience here. An entirely unexpected qualm with space-invasion that, actually, has more to do with social norms of people and respect for comfort zones than anything boostore or corporate-related. On my first trip to the bathroom, I followed a direct path to the ladies room, opened the door and found four empty stalls to choose from. Despite having learned from a pop-up-video of Jewel's song "Who Will Save Your Soul" that the first stall is the most underused, I chose the second stall. It was early, the stalls still reeked of disinfectant, so I felt secure in my choice. No sooner do I get ready to actually "go" to the bathroom, then the door opens and another occupant enters, choosing the stall directly beside me. Stage fright ensues and, annoyed, I pull my clothes back in order and leave the restroom in a huff thinking back on an essay Dustin once wrote about "liking his space" and choosing the handicap stall as a result...and, of course, the hilarity that occurred after that fateful choice was made in Italy.

"I get your essay now. About wanting your space in the bathroom and choosing the handi-stall," I breathe at him while noting he is still in the exact spot in line to order coffee as he was when I left.
"Why? What do you mean?"
I relay the tale of the six (four) stalls all being open and how the lady chooses the one open stall (two) directly beside me to use instead of any of the five (three) vacant ones that were available. I press him for more thought on why I feel so violated; he shrugs, orders us coffee and we sit.
"I couldn't even go because she was there. Right next to me. It was like we were in the same stall or something. She had her pick and yet she had to be right next to me? What is that? I bet guys don't do that with urinals, right?"
"No," he says. "It's guy code."
I raise my eyes in question.
"Guy code, like..." His eyes search around for something to write on before removing the sleeve from his cup of coffee and pulling a pen from his pocket, then he draws five small rectangles. "These are urinals." He places a stick figure on every-other one, leaving two vacant. "If you come in and there's a guy here, here and here, then you wait, even though these two are empty. So everyone has their space."
"How do you know to do that?"
"Maxim," he says. "But, they just put it in print. We all just know and do that anyway." He traces over the stick figures again with his pen, his face focused in concentration. "But when we're drunk and there's a line, it's like you just do whatever. It's like, Fuck. I gotta go. I'm not gonna look at your dick, man. And you just go."

I beeline to the bathroom again when baby has been using my bladder as a trampoline for so long I just can't hold it anymore, only this time it's not vacant and there's a woman in the handi stall. It's quiet, so I have a good feeling I know what she's doing down there. I choose the very first stall, the polar opposite of the one she's in, leaving two empty stalls between us and pee like I'm being timed for a world record. Halfway through my rush, I hear her pulling at the toilet paper, an attempt I recognize as one to mask sound, so I do the same. I don't want her to feel rushed or self-conscious because I'm in there and she can no longer have her privacy. I make a loud show of flushing the toilet and snapping the metal lock open, turning the water on high so it's loud, and unrolling the handpaper at the same time so I cut down the time she has to "hold back" whatever noises she's trying not to make. I finish up quickly and bolt out the door, knowing that, whether she realizes it or not, my sensitivity to her predicament has left her with a sense of relief from embarrassment. A sense of relief she can now enjoy in the privacy of an empty bathroom for however long it takes.

"How was it?" D asks as I return to the table feeling like I'd performed the act of a samaritan.
"Better," I say. "But I have to admit...between the poor section titles and the bathroom situation, if I were Barnes and Noble, I'd probably put myself up for sale, too."

Evening Conversations

A brief interaction or two to demonstrate the dynamic between me and the best husband ever.

"Sometimes it feels as though my legs don't know how to work anymore. They don't feel like anything and it freaks me out." Pause. I wait.
"Mhmm." Dustin responds.
"Does that ever happen to you?" I ask, wanting to confirm that this unfamiliar and strange feeling is not, in fact, strange.
"No."

We're hanging out in the new homestead with some Vivaldi playing on our Christmas-present-cable which presents us with a Classical Music-station, among several others, not least of which includes a score of Mexican music stations, some techno and, of course, the ever-necessary indecipherable rap. I realize we've lived in this home for going on a month and a half, but since we only just got rid of the end of the boxed stuff on the bottom two floors of the house, it feels brand new all over again (unboxed, that is). D is reading Plato's "Republic" on his Kindle and occasionally goading me into conjuring up my previous philosophy-major self (who read it twice for school and once more for fun before reading it yet another time for comps a year ago) and would've been glad to expound on it for hours. When he's not goading me, he's reading passages aloud that demonstrate Plato's sexism or other odd argument Dustin finds sort of appalling and humorous, at the least, dogmatic and outdated to our liberal mindsets.

When he finishes a particularly female-bashing passage, I comment:
"It was different back then, though. I mean, he liked men."
"That's obvious," D says reading more examples of Plato's hatred for women from the book.
"No. I mean. He liked men. The Greek philosophers, a lot of them, were gay. They liked men and some of them thought it was unnatural to be with a woman."
Dustin turns this over, trying to decide whether I'm lying or not, then gestures toward the laptop on my lap, "Google "Plato" and "gay."
I do. He reads the support to my claim.
"Ok. Now google "Aristotle" and "gay."..."Socrates..."
Again and again the proof is evident.
"Leonidas."
Google headlines regarding "Leonidas" and "gay" yield the following results:
        
               A Facebook Fan Page titled: "I'd go gay for King Leonidas" and
               "A gay day in Thermopylae."

"Soulmates came from Plato, but there's a reason he chose the "bellybutton" as where the two parts to a soulmate split rather than, well, the more obvious separation a man and woman would have. He was thinking of two men as soulmates, not two people of the opposite sex."
Silence as he absorbs these new revelations.
"You know...Plato's discussion on soulmates. The "Symposium?"
He explains that, clearly, he's familiar with this concept, but wasn't aware it came from Plato. Understandable since not all people spent their early tween years wandering the local library's stacks in search of the logic to support what I cynically and innocently believed were irrational claims of being "in love" and having a "soulmate." In my search, I found the philosophers, since I couldn't imagine anything going further back to the beginning of those concepts than them. Now, though, I can see Dustin storing up these pieces of information on Plato, the Greek philosophers, "The Republic," rethinking and revisiting movies he's seen or books he's read, all in the flash of a moment. Sheer enlightenment comes over him.
"So ancient Greece was pretty much the gayest place ever." He states, picking his Kindle back up and seeing Plato more clearly now.

We both go back to our individual reading and writing. Vivaldi serenades in sweeping strings and staccato plucks. The soft chirps of our parakeets who have been covered up for the night peek out from behind their transparent sheet. The German shepherd's deep, sleepy sigh escapes at my feet.

"He's describing a pretty Fascist state," Dustin remarks, "And he's going to bang all these guys."

Our Baby: First Glimpse

Maybe now is also a good time to mention that this blog might see even less postings from Dustin since some of his friends and I have coaxed him into beginning his own blog. It's in the works, and he's not ready to unveil it yet, but it allows him to make whatever changes and calls he wants on it. I think we all need our own blog every once in a while :) Plus, this one doesn't really have a goal or voice yet, and the one he's putting together is going to have both, so once he's ready, I will unveil it to you, silent world.

Since you probably miss Dustin as much as I do when I'm only at work for eight hours or he's at work for five, let me tell you a quick "Dustin Realization" story.

Around week 16 of our pregnancy (we're about to end our 21st week on Monday, so come Tuesday we'll be 21 weeks and a day), we went to the doctor for a regular check-up and ultrasound. The ultrasound tech had me lay down, hike up my dress then SPLAT (think Juno-style) she squirts stuff on my belly and starts running it around. Dustin sits down in a chair to my left, the tech is to my right and a good-sized, elevated television is rigged up on the wall in front of me.

"So we're going to be able to see it this time, right?" he asks.
"You got it." The tech responds, moving the device on my belly around.
"Where will we be able to see it...over there?" He starts to stand up, preparing to go around me to the tech's side where he can see the baby on her monitor.
"No, no. You can see it from there."
Dustin sits back down. "Where?"
"Right up there," she gestures to the wall I'm facing and we both look up to see it:

"Oh, my God," he says, leaping out of the seat and walking closer. "That's our baby? Oh, my God. Neesh, are you seeing this? It looks like a baby now. Oh, my God."

It might've been the greatest reaction I've ever seen. As I lay there, his back to me in a silhouette against the light shining out from the screen showing us our baby, I kept thinking about how moments before we came into the ultrasound room, I'd tried to remind Dustin that the baby no longer looked like a tiny grain of rice, the way it had when we went for our first ultrasound during our very first visit to the doctor. I knew this because I was reading baby books to keep up with how our baby was growing and what parts of it had taken shape. I expected the baby to look something like a baby and knew that D was still envisioning a mass of cells or that early grain of rice, despite my reading aloud to the book about what was happening with the baby during week (fill in the blank with any number up to 16), but I never could've imagined the reaction he displayed. It couldn't have been more perfect. Watching him stand there in amazement, I felt my face widen in a smile.

Finally, he tore his eyes away from the baby, who was now amazing us with its dexterity as it performed flips and turns, stretched its legs up, putting its feet on my uterus and bending its knees before putting its arms up for us as if to let us know it had two and was developing just fine. "That's our baby," D said, stumbling back to me, groping for my hands and nearly grabbing the goo on my belly. "That's our baby."

When we heard the heart beat for the first time that day, as well, the reaction was similar and I felt lucky, all over again, for having married such a wonderful, expressive, genuine man and soon-to-be proud father.

xoxo
N

Back and Better than Ever!

...When we last left off, Dustin and I were going into the witness protection program. Mainly this was to keep my life a little private while the job market took hold, but in the meantime, I was offered a wonderful job near my family in the south, which Dustin and I decided would be a wonderful new adventure and opportunity. Not too long after that, we found out we were expecting our first baby on January 3rd (we know, at least, three amazing people born on that day!). Then D had his amazing essay published in Rick Magazine. You'd be doing yourself a huge injustice if you failed to read it, so to better your life and health, I'm posting the link here. Honestly, it gives me chills and brings me nearly to tears each time I read the end.

It took some time once we got to Savannah to find an actual place to live...we looked everywhere, literally from places like this:

To places that had Dustin literally picking fleas off his legs when he left. All in all, it took an entire month with, perhaps, a week or so change on top of it, to find a place to live...but, we found one. A 1920's house with wooden floors, three stories, three bedrooms, beautiful french doors from the dining room to the living room and more french doors from the living room to the front hallway. It has a few decorative coal fireplaces (one in our bedroom!) and the third floor totally fits my ginormous kidney bean shaped desk.

You might be wondering why it took so long to find such a place and what the hold up was. Why we couldn't just move into an apartment somewhere and whether Dustin brought the fleas home to our new home. The problem, in part, was due to having dogs (though Savannah is a super-pet friendly city from what we see), and due to my inability to study, do work...etc...in a room that is cramped with books and desks (example: our study in Columbia where we couldn't see the walls because there were so many books). After 26 years of school each, D and I have too many books to live in a normal room. They require a space of library-proportions. Seriously. D used to study in that room and always wanted me to be in there, too, but I just couldn't do it. I felt so overwhelmed by all the books and stuff in that tiny cramped room.

Then there's the matter of the desk. My desk is not your ordinary desk. It's a mammoth desk. A life of its own, really. I can't explain it better than this picture can do it justice:

See what I'm talking about? It's so large in needs a room or a house of its own, practically. It was, honestly, the bane of our existence when it came to finding a temporary home to live in...and finally, lo and behold, after the fleas and the too-small apartments, the narrow stairways I couldn't possibly climb at nine months pregnant and the perfect places in the horrible locations, we found it! Our home for the year, the place our new baby will first live in:

Pretty, huh?

It has its issues, don't misunderstand. Plenty of 'em and I am going to go on record as saying that we might have the WORST rental company in all the land (Judge Realty) or maybe just the worst realtor (Tripp, who never returns phone calls or fixes any issues). The owners of the house clearly did not maintain the house as much as they should have (knobs in doors fall right off in our hands, not all the phone jacks work which hurts our DSL usage, no one has ever dusted that place until the day we moved in and I did it with my mom and sister, all the crispers and drawers are broken in the fridge AND the fridge had dead bugs in it. Really.), but it has a luxurious backyard that the dogs can play in and we can bbq in (on the giant grill the owners left) and a patio we can eat out on and a sunroom off the side of the house, a white picket fence and gardens, a porch we can sit out on in chairs or a swing...a whole third floor where the kidney bean desk and all of our books can live without feeling cramped or overwhelmed. There's so much space up there, D even had the movers put one of our couches up there (the one I studied for comps on for half a year--the same one I wrote my comps answers on and most of my dissertation) for me to read and work on so when he's studying, I can be close by.

D could now get his degree in historic preservation without ever having taken a class, and maybe a bit of freelance repair work if he advertised himself as such. And we're happy. Together and settled with a few boxes that still need unpacking and a few purchases that need to be made (I haven't even started talking about the three 2x2 closets and how that's the only closet space for our clothes in the entire 2000+ square foot house!), but we're doing pretty great so far.

Stick around. We've been documenting our adventures and our baby's adventures (in utero, of course) since arriving, taking suggestions from friends who are afar for places to go, restaurants to eat in and things to do...we've had visitors and taken small trips...as usual, we're having an incredible time of it. Now that we're settled, we're back in action on this blog, sharing it all with you!

Stay tuned for recaps and KEEP IN TOUCH. Out of sight, but not out of mind, and D's been working at the airport so you can be even more exciting tales are ahead.


xoxo
N

Undercover

Hello, world!

This blog is headed for the witness protection program for a short period (we hope!) of time. If you wish to continue reading it in its privatized mode (even if you've never commented before and are a "secret" reader), leave a comment or "anonymous" comment in our comment space with your email address and we will gladly add you to the VIP list. We're closing 'er down in about 48 hours (aka-heading to the privacy setting) so don't dilly dally!

Thanks for reading and, if you don't leave your email address, don't forget about us! We'll be back!

xoxo

N and D

PS-S and MB, we've already got your emails and your invites are "pending." As soon as we go "off" again, you should receive an email if you haven't already! Thanks for your loyalty!

Roots

Today when I get home and grade the papers I've been thinking about grading, finish the cleaning I need to do and make the phone calls that always need making, I'm going to take our tomato plants outside and plant them in the ground behind the fence with stakes and cages near the strawberries.

This has been a decision I've put off for weeks because 1-it's been sort of cold and 2-I wasn't sure if we were staying very long or not. I'm still not sure, really, but a week has gone by since my campus-interview with no word from anyone at the campus I interviewed on. It's not that I don't believe I might get a job offer, I made it this far so, at the least, I'm hoping for a very kind rejection, it's just that the plants are growing now. They're getting so big they can barely stand on their own anymore. They're falling over on the window sill and in the chair beside it that I've been keeping them on.

It broke my heart a little to imagine I'd plant them, then we'd up and move with no one to tend to their needs, but I've been thinking a lot about roots--where we grow and how we grow and why. Mom says her vegetables aren't doing so well--it's been cold in the south, colder than the vegetables prefer. If we move, that's where we'll be, but my vegetables seem to like it here. They reach and stretch toward the window, the outside world, where I believe they want to be planted. I can take them in pots out of Missouri to wherever we might go, even though this is where they were bred, just like I've been transplanted from place to place even though my family is where my origins reside. But, like the plants, I sort of like it here, enough to put down roots, even if they're just those of my tomato plants, so some part stays when all the rest goes.

Closing Time

There's been talk of moving in our home, as the job market becomes more a part of our lives...and interviews and dossiers and the like. I didn't expect it, but I'm saddened by that likelihood. When I first moved to Columbia, people weren't nice to me. Immediately. I mean, strangers were, but people in my department, colleagues and the like, weren't. They made plans to have drinks after class and wouldn't invite me. If I suggested it to them during a break from an evening class, they'd say they had too much work to do after class and just couldn't swing it. As I walked to my car after class in the dark, I'd consider that the Ph.D. required a lot of work and that they were probably right: I should get home and study hard. But then, I'd reach my car and start driving home through the city streets only to see those same classmates who thwarted my efforts at socializing walking into a bar, laughing and joking around together. It was crushing.

Honestly, it took a few years for me to really just accept that my colleagues didn't like me for whatever skew of reasons they might have. It took time for me to realize that some people don't formulate their own opinions, they just adopt the opinions of others. The hardest part for me was understanding that I hadn't actually done anything to these colleagues; they didn't even really know me and had never actually had a conversation with me. It's hard to believe, when a group of people around you don't like you, that in rare instances it really isn't your fault, you really haven't done anything, they're just close-minded and sort of mean.

I took a little time off from school when it all became too much. There were other forces at play, even bigger ones, but they're not blog-ready. When I came back from my semester off, I dove headfirst into my work, my relationships (with Dustin, that is, which was quite new at that time) and my other interests. I didn't allow myself to lament the outcast position I'd been cast into. And my life got so much better.

When Dustin joined our local community's cast of Communicating Doors, I thought it was great for him to be getting out there, doing something outside of our field and having a hobby that removed him from the stifling atmosphere we'd been living in. I remembered loving the theatre my whole life, seeing my first Broadway show at the age of 9, then dozens and dozens of others in following years. I remembered how much I, too, had once loved being on stage until one day, in a production at the age of 17 years old--after having been on stage for the better part of my life, I noticed the audience and got really scared. Let's just say I never got up on a stage to perform again--crippled by sudden stage fright.

But the friends we made during Communicating Doors were incredible. They were supportive and came to our readings. They were always willing to make time if something came up and we needed support--both emotional and otherwise. And our relationships kept growing, our circle of friends expanded and when Rory asked us to be in the IAT's short Women's Play Festival, I responded with: "Do I have any lines?" Remembered how wonderful these friends had been to us and before he could answer the question, revised my response to: "Who am I kidding? If you and Kir (the director) need me, I'm happy to help. Just tell me what you want me to do."

I didn't know then that I didn't have some lines, I had many--all crammed eloquently into a nine minute scene, but I did know that these friends had been here for us when Dustin was attacked back in September, showing up at our door to check in on us, taking time out of their lives to come lighten up his spirits. I knew they had come to our house for various get-togethers and had invited us to theirs. Some of them had been to our wedding! I knew them before, during and after they found "the one!" and got married, the heartbreaks they'd been through and the relationships that thrived, how they sang karaoke and what they liked to drink, their favorite restaurants and football teams...I knew that they were our friends and if they needed something, even for me to overcome the knowledge that an audience would be watching my every move for ten minutes, I was going to do it.

This weekend has reminded me why I liked being in productions so much. It's the coming together of a cast of sordid individuals and characters to create a unified existence that's more than just the self, but a community creation. Together, we have created something bigger than any of us individually; we have made an audience laugh and cry and think. It's the perfect metaphor for what this group of friends we've found has done for our lives: gave us experiences that are fulfilling and thought-provoking and meaningful when I, for one, had started to doubt that such things still existed.

Last night, after our performance, we went to dinner with some castmates we didn't know very well, and the dinner lasted for two hours, each of us talking passionately and excitedly, finding more and more things we had in common or respected, learning and sharing and enjoying each other so profoundly that, even then, we had a hard time walking out and leaving.

So it saddens me to think that, at some point, Dustin and I will be leaving Columbia and this phenomenal group of people we know here. Friendships last, I know, but the distance can be far and sometimes crippling. Time passes and life happens and we miss each other. Many of these friends have planned and considered leaving, are actively looking for jobs or opportunities elsewhere, so we're not alone in our departure from Columbia. But, this push toward departure is like being at a party with all the people you love and care most about while knowing that, eventually, everyone is going to leave, but just not wanting to be the first to go...pushing out those last few hours and minutes, collecting and lingering by the door just a little bit longer, not wanting to walk out into the darkness, into a world that's not always so nurturing, unsure of what you'll find, just knowing you don't really want to go.