“I should be shot,” she says. “I should be dressed in a Dark Side of the Moon shirt and shot into space so I can never disrespect Pink Floyd again. And not even a concert T-shirt, but one of those ones they sell in head shops that white boys with dreads buy. But enough about me. What are you going to wear on your date?”
“I dunno. I mean, he’s already seen me in a suit and jeans and a T-shirt. Oh, and half-naked. Oh! And carrying a half-dead dog. So, I don’t think it really matters.”
“It matters because if you look like you made an effort to look nice then he’ll think you care about the date and if you don’t then he’ll think you think it’s no big deal.”
“Um. Is that true?”
“Yeah, totally true.”
“Huh. So, what do I wear, then? I don’t want to dress up. I’m going to his house to watch a movie.”
“Mmmm.” I can hear Ginger mentally flipping through my (very limited) wardrobe. “Wear the black jeans you got last year, your boots, and any shirt that doesn’t have writing on it.”
“Uh, okay, if you say so.”
“Ooh, no. Specification: wear the maroon button-down I gave you that that guy left at the shop after puking like a tiny wuss and running outside without it.”
“The sleeves are too short.”
“Cuff and roll, baby, cuff and roll. It’s hot. It draws attention to your forearms.”
“You like my forearms?”
“No, not yours in particular. I mean, they’re fine. Just, it’s a sexy body part.”
“I totally agree. I just didn’t know girls liked them too.”
“Oh, yes, Daniel. All girls like forearms. Every single one. No really, I’ve asked all of us and we all agree. We don’t even agree about whether or not the long arm of the law should be able to reach into our vaginas, but we agree about forearms.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Ginger, have you been fighting with the pro-lifers again? They’re gonna bomb your shop.”
“They make me want to get pregnant just so I can get an abortion and make a YouTube video of it to send to them.”
“All right, the maroon button-down and black jeans. Thanks. I’m going to ignore the thing about forearms, since I think you know what I meant.”
“Yeah, fine.”
“Hey, I think I accidentally kinda made a friend.”
“Oh yeah, someone you work with?”
“No. I stopped him from getting beat up. Little smartass skater kid. Babyqueer. He tried to make out with me.”
“Um, you didn’t, did you?”
“I didn’t make out with a kid, Ginger. What the fuck?”
“Just checking.”
“Jesus, you think I’m a pervert.”
“Well, yeah, but not in that way.”
I start to giggle.
“He was skinny and smelled like cloves and he said he liked Kurt Vile.”
“Oh my god,” Ginger says, laughing, “it’s like you have your own little you. I remember when you smoked cloves. And, jeez, you were scrawny.”
Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don’t follow her at all.
“Aw,” I mutter. “The wine’s all the way over there.”
AND THEN it’s morning. I must have rolled over onto the phone and flipped it shut at some point because it’s lodged under my left hip bone. The light’s still on and my wine-stained coffee mug is perched on the windowsill, right about where my hand reaches if I stretch. My teeth feel grainy and I’m starving since I fell asleep without ever ordering pizza.
But, despite feeling a little muzzy, I’m not hungover and I’m going to see Rex tonight, so things are looking just fine.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Ginger: You alive, kid?
I text her back, Alive. Wish you *were* here, and jump in the shower.
AN HOUR later I’m showered, I’ve driven to Traverse City and bought a bottle of nice bourbon to bring with me to Rex’s tonight, and I’m parking in the lot at the library, congratulating myself on remembering to drive since I have a bunch of books to pick up and won’t be able to walk home with them. I have my laptop and I’m planning to get a ton of writing done today. Then I’ll get my books and run home with enough time to shower and change and get to Rex’s at nine. It’s a plan.
The Sleeping Bear College Library isn’t particularly expansive and it isn’t particularly nice; it kind of looks like a book prison. It also doesn’t have windows above the first floor. Still, I have a faculty carrel with an actual door, so I can tear my hair out in privacy. I collect a teetering stack of books and haul them to my carrel, ready to start the new section that I’m adding to chapter two.
A major part of what I need to do to get tenure is turn my dissertation into a publishable book. That means not just polishing what I’ve already written, but tearing it apart and rethinking central questions from a different perspective. Now, instead of having to prove to my committee that I know what I’m talking about and can make an interesting argument, I have to prove to an academic publisher that I have something to say about literature that hundreds of other academics will want to read.