Post-Spatial

April 26, 2014

Freudian Encounters

Martha Levinson lived with her two small dogs in a Victorian house, high on a hill in the Berkshires. She was long-divorced from her ex-husband and had two grown children, Claire and Philip, who lived in New York and Los Angeles. In her old age her almond eyes had become watery and caked with eyeliner, and she had resigned her chestnut hair to an eternally frizzy nest.

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2D in 3D

I only knew one member of 2 Dickinson Street, the vegetarian co-op also known as 2D, when I signed up for a meal, though I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t know anyone from my year joining next year, as my friends and I had all joined clubs or went independent.

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What Would Jesus Do at Princeton

Mary is cooking breakfast in an ordinary kitchen in a subdivision with a pool in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She pauses for a moment when she catches her reflection in the brushed metal surface of the new refrigerator.

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All the World’s a Stage

Getting tickets was a nightmare—the chances were slim to nothing. One in a quarter billion. But somehow, the odds worked in your favor. Seems pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. You were offered a front row seat under one condition—you would stay for all of it.

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Playground Prejudice

There are thirteen churches and one synagogue in the town where I grew up. It is an anomaly for Bergen County, which is known for, among other things, the heavily Jewish bastions of Fairlawn and Teaneck. My synagogue community is small when compared to communities in the more Jewish towns, though it is larger than others in the county’s northwestern corner.

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Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

I am walking home from the U-Store around 10pm on the first night I can remember not feeling cold after sunset. My Arrested Development poster of Tobias’ jean shorts keeps falling down and I need tape, but they only have the University-approved wall adhesive that mothers buy on your first day of college that you never use.

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The Inheritance of Guilt

My father’s father flew free from the depths of the Russian Empire as an infant, for sticks and stones and angry Christians drove his family out. It was in 1916 or maybe 1917.

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Fage or the Highway

We sit by the window, eating Chobani with rigid, robust, black C-store spoons. “Did you know Chobani was actually founded by a Turkish dude?” I say. She is Greek, and I know some of the tumultuous regional history, but I am still surprised to see her eyes well with tears.

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Competitive Lit

When I was in eighth grade, a girl two grades up from me was writing a novel. I didn’t know much about her aside from her name, the fact that she was my classmate’s older sister, and that she was in the finishing stages of creating a work of fiction, but I wanted to become her, cut my hair short and type importantly on my laptop in my small school’s even smaller library.

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Annie

Annie, dusting the earth in birdseed, cups her ear for the coos of loons that echo up from Bantam Lake—across the thistled yellow hill where deer would bow their heads, go rigid, then bolt into the curtain of trees.

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Wild

It was my first night drinking since February. I’d decided to take a break from alcohol for all of March—now that I have the freedom to buy my own alcohol legally, I don’t feel as compelled to jump at it when offered. But mostly, I just wanted to see if I could make it for a whole month.

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The Nass 100

100 things the staff of the Nassau Weekly doesn’t want to see again next year.

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Verbatim

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Overheard in Chancellor Green

Pi Phi officer, on rush: If they’re on the fence, let them do Theta.

Overheard in U-Store Checkout Line

Girl: Are you going to TruckFest?
Cottage bro, clutching Chobani yogurt: I don’t even know what that is.
Girl: It’s for charity.
Bro: I don’t believe in charity.

Overheard in Austin

UT sorority girl: Ever since she faked her own drug addiction and checked herself into rehab, I just can’t be friends with her.

Overheard in Pyne

Blonde junior: I just feel like my brain is so strong that I can’t get drunk anymore.

Overheard in Campus Club

Junior, to other junior: Sometimes I feel like, investing’s not even hard!

Overheard in Bloomberg

Leftist frosh: Some socialist Jews were counting on me to go to upstate New York and start a pedagogical revolution.

Overheard in Forbes

Theta sophomore: Did I tell you guys? [Redacted] called Psafe on an orgy this weekend.

Overheard at Terrace

Wisconsin junior: I like that shirt. Where’d you get it?
Ohio senior: JCPenney close-out rack.
Westchester junior: What’s a close-out rack?

Overheard outside Spelman

Male student 1, admiring window: That is the sickest room.
Male student 2: That is rad. I bet they just play cards and drink a sick amount of wine.

Overheard at Ivy

NYC freshman: Why don’t they have champagne here?
SAE sophomore: Why don’t they have bottles here?
NYC freshman: Why don’t they have Dom here?
(nod, continue to smoke Marlboro Golds)

Overheard in precept

Tower member: So we were all in the Tower coat room reading presidential slash fiction...

Overheard in class

Theta sophomore: I can’t believe it costs $120 to go to one night of Tower formals.
Ivy sophomore boy: Well, I paid $1100 for two meals and a Tiffany necklace.

Overheard outside Laughlin

6-year-old girl, being forced to pose for a photo with someone else’s bike: Seriously, mom?

Overheard in MOL 214

Professor: Cancer’s a good thing to try and avoid, or treat if you have it.

Overheard in Frist

Girl: Do you like drinking, or do you like learning?

Overheard in the Ramayana

Sanskrit poet: and then he saw their women. They were worthy of the finest things. Pure in mind and noble in spirit, their thoughts were constant focused on their beloveds and their intoxicating beverages.