From My College Notebook: June 1976
Why do I always fall a little bit in love with my boyfriend’s friends? I attach myself to a guy only to find his friends are his betters—or even if they’re not really better, they’re briefly, at least, more desirable. They become the man in my idle dreams, the one waiting until I’ve sorted myself out. Maybe I should say they’re idling, idling like a car you leave running with the key in the ignition but one that’s not going anywhere, just using up energy and rattling around while staying in one place. But then it’ll happen. One night we’ll start a real conversation when no one else is around, or it’ll seem like no one else is around even because it’s noisy at a party, so it doesn’t even look weird to anyone because nobody else can see we’re suddenly alone together. We dance close. Last night we danced close. I need to figure this out. I need to understand why I’m suddenly and obsessively hungry for somebody I’ve known for years, and why this should have really suddenly overtaken me. He’s all I’m thinking about, key in the ignition. I’ve gone through phases of this with other guys it’s true, but not lately. It was after I danced with him. There I was in his arms, and had never been there before—and I wanted to stay there. This was wrong of me. There was the woman he was supposed to be with and there I was, dressed in black because my boyfriend, his best friend, likes me in black, but all I wanted to do was to rub myself on him, run my fingers up and down the length of his long back. But, to be fair, I wanted to do this even before I saw him. I wanted to see him because I’d been thinking about him, not the other way around—I haven’t been thinking about him because I run into him all the time. It isn’t that easy or simple.
Is it because he’s been reading my work, because I dared to give him the last paper? Could this be the real reason for the sudden shift in me? Is it that all the writing I’ve been doing lately has really been for him? I want him to read every word, to rub his eyes all over my pages.
(Illustration derived from a photo by Flickr user charliehey)
12 Responses to From My College Notebook, 1976
honore - June 14, 2010 at 9:43 am
Gina, are you aware that instead of the education-themed article you had written for the Chronicle, the CHE editors accidentally posted that barely post-adolescent rambling diary entry you had submitted as retro-spective of one of your 70s rants about loving the one your with (or not)?Here’s some advice…next time, open the attachment to make sure you are sending the correct piece of literary wit, but then again, I guess would love to read your pubescent reflections on Woodstock, I suppose. And don’t forget to write about the first time you ate rainbow-colored cotton candy at a Ricky Martin concert. Por ahora…tu esclavo
literarytype - June 14, 2010 at 10:14 am
#1: need to go out dancing, honore?
macheath - June 14, 2010 at 11:02 am
Hey Gina, do you have any of those fingerpaints you did in kindergarten that your parents put on the refrigerator? Maybe you could post a couple of them.
akafka - June 14, 2010 at 11:11 am
Y’all are cold! I liked this, Gina. Blogs can be lots of things, including windows into the development of the blogger. And this friend of significant other pang and the literary/romantic conflation are both parts of a lot of people’s experiences, I bet. Don’t let the naysayers get you down!
macheath - June 14, 2010 at 12:33 pm
My previous comment was over the top. I apologize.
sahara - June 15, 2010 at 10:20 am
Gina, this stuff belongs somewhere else. Not here, please.
dank48 - June 15, 2010 at 10:57 am
I wonder what the reactions would have been like had one of the male bloggers posted a similar musing from the past.
lisalita - June 15, 2010 at 11:00 am
I think this is pretty foolish and I would most assuredly feel the same about a similar piece from a man. Probably I would like that even less.
drj50 - June 15, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I took this as a reflection on who we are and why we write. Isn’t that a topic of importance for all of us who write and who study (and teach) writing?Intriguingly, it seems a bit outdated, though, in the sense that suddenly the author is back in the equation as we seek to understand what is written and what it may mean. I’m not complaining, mind you; I’ve always thought that authors must be taken into account. But then I have also been been used to the idea that I, too, was outdated in some circles.Thanks, Gina.
katiebeautifulkatie - June 15, 2010 at 1:28 pm
The author and the author’s crush are always in the equation. Even academic articles are written with somebody whose attention you’re trying to capture in mind.
dank48 - June 15, 2010 at 3:10 pm
This post took courage on Professor Barreca’s part. My own thoughts from 1976 would not be so worthwhile. I’m glad my diary from that time is long since smoke and ashes.
drgabekeri - June 15, 2010 at 7:52 pm
To make transparent the contents of a person’s mind [first off, is a bold step forward] may in part incite judgments of all sorts, and yet it may be intended to provoke a discussion about the many layers of this person’s [and, or our human] consciousness…whether what is here revealed makes for proper/acceptable conduct or not.