Between Temperament and Circumstance

The title from this post comes from Madame Bovary, in which the narrator describes Emma’s immense beauty shortly before her re-encounter with Léon at the Rouen Opera, and after the near-fatal illness she experienced after Rodolphe ended their first tryst. It is not coincidental that things have been going swimmingly for me this first full week of classes here at Texas Tech, after a week of hard readjusting to the realities of living alone once more. 

I am still so surprised at the fact that I am even here in the first place. The plane ride was not glamourous at all. One wonders why so many people pay to be ferried around in such uncomfortable conditions. It seems that my experiences riding a Greyhound bus and flying on an airplane were practically the same, although the plane had ostensibly wealthier and more well-dressed passengers than those other experiences where I sat next to convicts and migrant laborers. The sensation of bumpiness and discomfort was perhaps assuaged with the lovely sight of sunrise over a bank of winter clouds, of distant cities and near cities, farmlands, red veins of riverbed and green belts of spring planting, and the eve-present enormities of land and sky, and nothing in between but that. I was somewhat lucky in my accomodations by being given entire rows to myself in which to sit.

At Love Field in Dallas I had agreed with Ryan (somewhat surreptitiously) to meet me. He agreed, after an initial day or two of bickering. However either I had gotten the wrong idea, or he had been misguided in his directions, that we kept on missing one another in the terminal. I spent two hours impatiently people watching while waiting for my flight to come in.

The weather had been, as I had predicted, quite cold but agreeable to the overall circumstances of my flight. I felt harried somewhat by businessmen and social traveller alike–those people who are a rarity in the vast expanses of my beloved South Texas, who are somehow ineffectual and unreal with all their gadgetry and idle worries. For me, though, I was constantly worried about the nature of whether I was doing things in a correct fashion, rather than traipsing about carelessly, as in the case where I practically forgot my wallet in a tray at the security booth of the airport terminal.

I arrived in Lubbock, Queen City of the South Plains, about noon. The air was frigid and still. I called a cab and waited there at the practically empty arrival terminal, for about twenty minutes before a long-haired man appeared to come and pick the other poor college student up waiting to return to his own hall. It was simultaneously embarrassing and comical to see a well-oiled frat boy make light of our meager situations by suggesting to the cabbie to take him in first, rather than us. And thus I reaffirmed my general dislike for the student body at Texas Tech.

When I arrived back to the campus I had a subdued excitement mixed with a great sense of nostalgia and loss. After all, most of the people I had met in 04-05 were either gone, to either more accommodating circumstances, or to rehab, or into oblivion, never to be heard of again. No one greeted me upon returning. Everything seemed at once so hospitable and inhospitable; so strange and intransitory, that coming back felt like I had made a great, irreversible mistake. 

My hall is a decrepit brick building standing out adjacent to a parking garage and the Education and English building, two collegiate monstrosities that I fondly remembered from 2005 as being the furthest I had to walk in uncomfortable shoes to class. I couldn’t resist the urge to poke fun in that weird antiquarian sort of way I have, by referring to my hall as the Sala Clementina.

My roommate, a tall and lanky 19 year old from Dallas, did not immediately show up to give me warm welcomes. Indeed, after a fairly clumsy arrival at the hall,  I opened my door–last one in a long hall, as always–and discovered no one was there. The room was spare, keeping up as dorm rooms here do, with accents of wood paneling everywhere. The beds were prison-made at Huntsville by murderers. Throughout the dreary afternoon I took in drear old Lubbock and dead old Texas Tech. I walked to the library where to my surprise and delight, I found a copy of the Toru Takemitsu songbook. I have now checked out this book for the semester. 

My initial impressions of the University were that nothing had changed. This was still the small dusty West Texas college town I had first come upon in that fateful summer of 2004, and nothing–not even the terrible driving conditions–had changed. The one thing that was gone, however, were all of my former friends. Of the people that originally came here in 2004, only two remain: Mark Watson, who is now at the law school, and Christopher Freyburger, the wonderfully loud, honest, unabashed student of the theatre who became an unlikely ally my first year here. I had told him when I saw him later of the crush that I had developed on his director, Jeffrey, about a year before. He’s gone now, in DC, doing whatever privileged people do. Chris saw me seated in the Student Union building while I was attending to business. “You look so different,” he said. “You don’t look anything like what you looked like in ‘04, that’s for sure.” Indeed I don’t. I was starving then, insane, angry, terrified for my life. This was before those days of great clarity with Ryan, who taught me to finally love myself for who I am. Now I am larger, more muscular, more adept at handling the crises of life.

In my travels around campus, I was gradually reintroduced to the subject of the great American sociocultural malaise. Everyone, it seems, has some sort of totemic object of technological prowess that somehow enhances their social popularity, no matter how repulsive their personality may be. Here, it is any number of things–North Face, Apple, or Hollister. The typical student of agricultural science is a long thin man with a fully developed face of facial hair, decked in tight blue jeans with a brown suede or leather jacket over a plaid shirt. There are some exceptions, the obvious “scene kid” crowd an amalgam of drug or alcohol addicted young fresh things rehashing any number of tired fashions, often choosing to incorporate several decades at a time. And most of them are off in that elitist special little world of theirs, with their friends, their ‘good times’, and their classes. I am defintely an outsider–could it be any other way? 

Ryan had promised to visit me but we had a terrible argument the second weekend of my stay here and for that weekend, I finally understood the terrible emptiness that can exist without him. He is off in Dallas, trying to restart his life, after his job at Pecos was terminated after he struck an unruly child. His boyfriend, Juan Carlos, has firmly declared his intentions to have Ryan never see me ever again, but Ryan said he would always find the time to see me. About a week ago I told Ryan that hearing about Juan Carlos and him made me feel ‘dead inside’. Ryan responded that I was one of the best boyfriends he had ever had, but that I hadn’t really ever forgiven myself for our own mutual sins. I don’t think I ever will. Maybe it’s given me a sense of purpose in finding someone out there who won’t be afraid of saying ‘I love you’ without worrying about the consequences. My heart hurts when I think about all the fights Ryan and I have had. I don’t want to ever lose the admiration of someone like that. But at the same time I feel like I deserve someone else’s love again. I want someone to cook for, someone to workout with, someone to have around to talk about music with. I don’t want to have the semblance of a relationship. I want the actual thing, without fear of permanent and pervasive abandonment. 

I was depressed for about a week after that. I didn’t go to class, and I suffered for it. I emailed the professor of my history class, and he was stern, as was the other professor for my financial planning class (which was a mistake, given my good intentions). The only classes I could muster up the strength to go to were my social work class, where our class project involves visiting a terminally ill person; so far my Wednesday afternoons have been filled with visits to a retired veterinarian on the outskirts of town named Dr. Lambert. Seeing him reminds me of my grandfather, and offers up a quiet hour away from the insipid and oppressive atmosphere of campus. I confront life well lived when I talk to him; most of the time he is in genial spirits and quite conversational. He has a pet bird that mimics whosoever might pass by, their speech patterns or phrases. He has been sick for some time. I am not sure whether he will pass away or not, but somehow, I crave rest and death just as much as he does. 

Within the first couple of weeks there began to be problems. The first few days I was oblivious to the nature of these problems. They were, of course, financial. The college began to pay out financial aid refund checks and it took them all of four or five weeks to find mine. An address change did not aid in the prompt delivery of said check either, but when it came it was most welcome. I bought myself new clothes and the first necessities for class. The other problems were interpersonal. For about a week I had trouble with another resident of this hall. These problems were related to an apparent difference in the socioeconomic status between us (I am not sure if I am poorer or he is more trashy). It got worse as he began to make comments about my physical body and its sexual prowess, which were embarrassing to hear passing by. There were tense situations in between that time and now. Fortunately enough, I have not had any more problems since then. I am convinced, however, that the majority of people here are decidedly of a certain ‘entitledness’ here that comes along with socioeconomic status and its socially empowering forces. 

I wonder if I am the only one who feels isolated and misunderstood here. There are so many, many other people here who probably feel the way I do. And no matter how many new friends I make, it always comes with the understanding that I am not an explicitly young person anymore, nor am I explicitly popular. These things pass away, however, where my education is concerned. I have reminded myself over and over again that I am not here to socialize, but to continue the Great Work I have been commissioned to finish and to establish a life of my own here. It is not easy but it is accomplishable. 

Within a few weeks my room has become populated with gifts and endowments to make my stay here less stressful. From Kevin Hamm in Sacramento, a duvet, pillows and sheets for my bed, as when on arriving here I had none, and was left to spread sweaters over my body. Scott sent soap and a nice box of edible things for St. Valentine’s Day, the first such gift I have received ever from a gentleman. I myself bought a new pair of apple green plaid shoes, just for the color and the price. Such little mercies make the day easier and more agreeable. It makes me fear less about what I am to do here after I am done with the semester. 

Back at home, the spring has come and the flowers have come up. My little brother and his friends cut down the beautiful Texas Mountain Laurel tree that was damaged during last year’s hurricane after that tree scratched up my mother’s car. My mother too, has had no end to her sufferings this year, but I pray that they will end. In early January, just before I left, she had major eye surgery to repair a tear to her retina that endangered her eyesight. Now she will have to have surgery done again to remove fluid that has presented itself again in the same place, and again she is afraid of losing her eyesight. I mortify myself every day for not being around to assist her. I openly wonder if these years that I spend on myself are simultaneously the last years I may ever get to spend with my Mother. She has always told me that I have to focus on what is important for me. But I cannot endure being an orphan again. When my grandfather died, I finally realized what it would be like to be an orphan. How can I not consider the woman who gave me so much? To her I can only give as much back as possible. I do not want to be an orphan again, not this young at least. That would be the final sword, the last of all possible sorrows. 

Writing here is the only opportunity I have throughout the day to be a real, emotional person. It is the only time I can let my guard down and not have to worry about whether people will judge me or not on any number of real or imagined ills. I don’t worry about what people think because I know they worry about the same thing. But conversely, people don’t care about what you do, think or say, unless it is something they can derive some pleasure from. Cruelty, I have discovered, is a universal trait that everyone is good at. I have met people who are perpetrators of such suffering. And I have also met people that are indifferent to the suffering of others because it would only complicate their own self-established sense of apathy and disillusion. 

I ran away from home. I will not lie. I had to leave because there was no room for me. But now I want to keep running until there is no one–till nothing is left but me and the warm open air, and sunlight. I don’t know how long it will take–but this experience here is part of an escape from all the horrors of the present and past. I have only to set my gaze on the upper world. It calls me. I ascend to it freely.