Tuesday, August 05, 2003
(10:01 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Enduring Importance of My Pet Novelist
I apologize for that post about the wallpaper; I also apologize for any typographical errors that may creep into this entry. What I want to write about today is not so much my pet "novelist" as my pet "novel." I read Gravity's Rainbow almost entirely during my idyllic two weeks of substituting for the same math teacher continuously. It was the early fall, when it's still hot enough to open the windows, but not hot enough to turn on the air conditioning -- the perfect weather for school spirit. My students, especially the female ones, recognized right away that I would never even consider participating in spirit week, and so they harrassed me every day to make up for lost time the next day: "Remember, tomorrow's 80's day, Mr. Kotsko." They were only five when the 80's ended. I was ten. My knowledge of that great decade was deeper and broader than theirs. I knew who Strawberry Shortcake was. I knew who He-Man was. I liked all the 80's cartoons before is was campy. I was a true believer. Nonetheless, I would not dress up like an 80's person.
Why? Self-loathing, mainly.
Back to Gravity's Rainbow. Reading that book was one of the formative experiences of my life. I found that I had roughly the same repore with attractive high school women that I had when I was actually in high school -- that is, they found me amusing in a harmless way. The nasality of my voice made me less intimidating when I had to raise it. I became a parody of myself when trying to discipline the students. I remember making a reference to Foucault one day, and every day I wanted to write "Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault" on the board, proclaiming that anyone who wanted to know what was happening to her every day in school should read that book. I can think of at least one person I know for a fact would have read that and whose life may have been ruined. At least I would have done something. Maybe we can say ruined in a good way.
Every day that I work in my chiropractor job, putting up with the same habits of my same coworkers, I refer back to substitute teaching. I did it for two months, but it looms huge in my mind. I want to go back to it, but it feels irresponsible. There were two women who came into the office in the last two weeks who were born in June of 1980, one month before me. Women are usually either significantly younger or significantly older than me. There was one girl who I thought was pretty attractive, but she turned out to be only 15. I was friendly with her, and she seems to find me cooler than the other office workers, which isn't hard to understand. We exchange knowing glances. One day I watched her as she signed in. I looked at her hands -- the nails were chewed and stubby. She was wearing the same shirt she had worn two days before, the last time she came in. I could put her right back in a room. When she was done being adjusted, she handed me the money, and I printed off her receipt, so mom would know that she hadn't saved it for herself. Every time I catch myself checking her out, I remember, vividly, her fingernails, the fingernails of a child. I remember her wearing her favorite shirt again, the next time she had to leave the house on her summer vacation.
High school students probably shouldn't read Gravity's Rainbow, at least not students at Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School. In Kankakee, where hope is harder to come by, the students are less well-behaved on average, but there are more people who really take it seriously. In a Kankakee middle school classroom, on my second day subbing, I overheard two very serious young ladies discussing their future careers in the medical field, as physicians' assistants. That would never happen in Bradley. There, almost all the students are white, and every last one of the teachers definitely is. They know that no matter what happens, they're going to muddle through life somehow. When are we ever going to use this? they ask, knowing that they won't need to. None of it. They'll have someone else to pick up the slack for them, someone like me, the one person who cared, for reasons he can't quite specify. The one person sitting in a classroom, reading Gravity's Rainbow on the government's tab, and feeling like he has it made.
I can't write about literature tonight. We'll try again tomorrow, but for tonight, I have to talk about those two short months when I was worried constantly about money, when in a fit of depression I would sleep eleven hours on days I didn't work and would be in constant danger of breaking something (of Richard's), when my credit card bills weren't going to pay themselves, when I felt stupid and incompetent and powerless on a daily basis, yet I still knew that I had what I wanted. I was either teaching something I've thoroughly mastered (public-school-level knowledge), or studying. I was declaiming in front of a group whose attention I could rightfully demand. I was making jokes that would go over the heads of nine-year-olds. I had it made. The kids were evil, for the most part, except at Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School, the clone of Davison High School, ethnically speaking -- but culturally, it was a world of difference. Had I gone to Bradley High School, I would have found a girl and married her. I tried that at Davison, but I think we both knew that in Davison, that isn't done. People from Flint are a lot of things, but they're not hicks.
Tomorrow, the high literature. Tonight, the memory, which I hope will become the future as well. No more office work. No more huge pasty butts in too-tight white pants. No more tedious bickering over office policies. Starting in September, I am in and out by 3:30. Starting in September, I am going to be in a job where I could potentially build a relationship that's not based on telling someone what they owe to their damn chiropractor.
At least for tonight, I am firmly resolved that that will happen.
