Awkward.

Hour 6.5. It’s the same room the last meeting was in, the one that went over. They are a unit, I am not. Neither are these two other guys. I know one of them, sorta. Well, he’s in my class. I read over his project proposal earlier that morning. Hour 2. The organizer of the meeting grapples with the wine and the cheese. He asks for help. Another member of the unit heeds his call, but organizing the cheese and crackers takes so much longer than it should. I try again, jumping into a conversation about the riot-grrl-looking girl’s new hair cut. I get a one sentence response and am shut out. To make things worse, I notice that the famous professors have arrived. I do not idolize them, but I don’t necessarily want my first meeting with them to be when I’m delirious. The unit members, we who are fragments, we all hover awkwardly until finally--finally!--the cheese cutting is done. I have a plateful and some peanuts, and some bland Chardonnay. Food! But then I look up. The long 3-4 people tables are in a square. The only seat that is not in the spotlight is next to the male famous professor. Great. Well, fuck it, I have to sit somewhere. I sit. We begin. It’s just a reading discussion. We relate what we have read to our work, or what we want to work on. 12 people total. The expected amount of ridiculousness ensues. The moderator is chastised for not moderating. The moderator chastises others for moderating. The famous professors pipe up whenever they feel like it. The female professor lets her dress shoes slide off and there are her nude panty-hosed covered feet. Wine is passed around. I hear some of what everyone says but not all because I keep flipping though my book, Bootstraps. I feel dumb because everyone is familiar with that text. Oh, well. I am fading, fading. Revived when the famous and also married couple (did I mention this) bicker from across the room and the male professor says he is drunk. Then the obviously gay guy, not part of the unit, he speaks. After the moderator “calls on him” by yelling at the established member to shut up and let the “new guy” talk. And he has an article about punk rock and pedagogy in the writing classroom. I am riveted. IsooftenthinkaboutincorporatingpunkintotheclassroombutthenIcringe
notwantingtocoopitmorebutitissofarbeyondcooptingohthisisinteresting. Someone else in my program, interested in the p-rock. He critiques the author for ignoring how issues of class, race and gender come into play (or are ignored) in p-rock. I pipe up. I wait til he’s done. But I pipe up, yelling about punks’ lack of self-reflection. I tell about the girl from middle class Madison suburbia who just started calling herself working class because she detested the middle class. It’s not that simple. I’ve always remembered that. Plus the famous scholars are obsessed with class. The next girl speaks and one from the unit motions so unsubtly to the moderator--she does the signal for cut her off! (Slides hand across throat). I bust her, smile. No response. Busted. And finally it’s me, and I say my piece. I have to close my eyes sometimes when I talk in class, to focus. When I do look around I get some nods. And then I say something about MATC and how I should’ve fucked shit up. The famous professors don’t react to my cursing. It sails right past them.