room carpet after having drunk most of a bottle of cough syrup, which had somehow made me feel more depressed instead of having the desired effect of making me feel mildly drunk. We had just got done talking about the mating habit of insects, specifically this mite that leaves its sperm behind in intricate patterns for the lady mite to sit on, if she approves of the artist’s work. I said I thought that was romantic. Then Bret started telling me about this guy who lived in one of his dorms who’d gone to visit his family for the weekend and had shot himself. He said, “He was this brilliant musician. I can’t believe he did it with a gun. I’m not even sure where he would’ve gotten one—not from his house, I know that. I met his mother once, and she had this huge peace sign tattooed on her leg and a ‘Bread, Not Bombs’ bumper sticker on her Prius.”
Then, without even knowing I was going to say it, I said, “Sometimes I think it’s a good thing I don’t know how to use my stepdad’s gun.”
Bret paused so I could hear the full measure of his distaste. “Your stepdad has a gun?”
“Yes, the service pistol he got issued in the navy. I tried to pick it up once, but it’s too big for my hand—about three pounds. Still, sometimes I think about what it’d be like to bring it to school and hold a classroom hostage. I could go up and down the rows of desks, pointing the gun at people, and decide right then and there who’d live and who’d die. Wouldn’t that be interesting? I don’t think I’d know what I’d do unless I was actually in that situation. Maybe I wouldn’t even shoot anyone. Maybe I’d just make them think I would.”
“I would call that extremely uninteresting ,” Bret said, “and definitely not romantic.”
He didn’t understand at all. He didn’t understand that I was just blowing off steam when I thought about these things, like I’d done with Scotty. That was the last time I brought up anything serious or personal like that with him. Since then, we’ve stuck to safe subjects—subjects he likes. Whether or not dark matter exists. Whether homeless people are visionaries. Whether Andy Warhol was really an artist. The number of starving artists who are actually starving.
With Bret being away at Columbia, we don’t even have phone conversations that much anymore because of the long-distance bill. So now it’s just down to Sundays. And that’s what got me started telling you about all this in the first place—because of that call I just got. That call where he seemed distant, though maybe I just imagined it.
This is part of the reason why my parents don’t like Bret. They say he doesn’t seem that invested in me. My mother always says, “An investment is something that you give to someone that you can’t get back.” Still, Bret’s about as invested in me as anyone else has ever been. And this, to me, has come to mean a whole hell of a lot—enough so that I don’t know what I’d do without him.
I’m going to try to go back to sleep now. I didn’t mean to go on this long, but now I have, and I’ve worn myself out—and you, too, probably, if you actually read all this.
Vera laid the last page of Jensen’s journal on her table. She wanted to write a comment on the girl’s paper, an in-depth comment thanking her for the entries she’d written thus far—the sheer volume of them and the quality of thought therein. But somehow she could not think of how to respond to Jensen without revealing her own stories—stories, she thought, that were best kept to herself.
Instead, she took out a fresh piece of paper and began to write a response to affix to the end of Jensen’s journal entries; she preferred the old-fashioned approach of handwritten feedback, though most teachers she worked with now relied on computers.
Jensen,
This is a general response to all the journals you’ve submitted thus far. I’ve made individual notes in the margins of each, responding to
Then, without even knowing I was going to say it, I said, “Sometimes I think it’s a good thing I don’t know how to use my stepdad’s gun.”
Bret paused so I could hear the full measure of his distaste. “Your stepdad has a gun?”
“Yes, the service pistol he got issued in the navy. I tried to pick it up once, but it’s too big for my hand—about three pounds. Still, sometimes I think about what it’d be like to bring it to school and hold a classroom hostage. I could go up and down the rows of desks, pointing the gun at people, and decide right then and there who’d live and who’d die. Wouldn’t that be interesting? I don’t think I’d know what I’d do unless I was actually in that situation. Maybe I wouldn’t even shoot anyone. Maybe I’d just make them think I would.”
“I would call that extremely uninteresting ,” Bret said, “and definitely not romantic.”
He didn’t understand at all. He didn’t understand that I was just blowing off steam when I thought about these things, like I’d done with Scotty. That was the last time I brought up anything serious or personal like that with him. Since then, we’ve stuck to safe subjects—subjects he likes. Whether or not dark matter exists. Whether homeless people are visionaries. Whether Andy Warhol was really an artist. The number of starving artists who are actually starving.
With Bret being away at Columbia, we don’t even have phone conversations that much anymore because of the long-distance bill. So now it’s just down to Sundays. And that’s what got me started telling you about all this in the first place—because of that call I just got. That call where he seemed distant, though maybe I just imagined it.
This is part of the reason why my parents don’t like Bret. They say he doesn’t seem that invested in me. My mother always says, “An investment is something that you give to someone that you can’t get back.” Still, Bret’s about as invested in me as anyone else has ever been. And this, to me, has come to mean a whole hell of a lot—enough so that I don’t know what I’d do without him.
I’m going to try to go back to sleep now. I didn’t mean to go on this long, but now I have, and I’ve worn myself out—and you, too, probably, if you actually read all this.
Vera laid the last page of Jensen’s journal on her table. She wanted to write a comment on the girl’s paper, an in-depth comment thanking her for the entries she’d written thus far—the sheer volume of them and the quality of thought therein. But somehow she could not think of how to respond to Jensen without revealing her own stories—stories, she thought, that were best kept to herself.
Instead, she took out a fresh piece of paper and began to write a response to affix to the end of Jensen’s journal entries; she preferred the old-fashioned approach of handwritten feedback, though most teachers she worked with now relied on computers.
Jensen,
This is a general response to all the journals you’ve submitted thus far. I’ve made individual notes in the margins of each, responding to
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