An intensely long digression.

C.S. Lewis, in his An Experiment in Criticism, divides the world into two types of people. "The Few" and "The Many." Good readers, and bad readers. Not--note--not people who read good books and people who read bad books; but into people who read both good and bad books poorly, and people who read good books well, and bad books not at all.

It is with some consternation that I must report that, unfortunately, I have misplaced said book sometime in the past few months, and was quite unable to find it within the 45-second perusal of my room which I like to call "looking for it." This is unfortunate because I wanted very much to use this book to make a point, and now I fear I have lost the point entirely, and the book besides; a shame because it was interesting.

My mother gave it to me; a very slim book it was, about a hundred pages long but with comfortably large type, no more than a pamphlet, white on the front, orange on the back. Paperback. More like a pamphlet. I have no idea how my mum picked it out, knew I would like it--literary criticism isn't one of my more well-known or well-exercised interests. But my mother always picks the right books, books that I want to read, no matter whether I realize I want to read them or not. She says she is something of a idiot savant in book-choosing, using mainly cover appearance to select the best ones. I think of it more like the French sense of the word savant; that her mother's knowledge of my tastes and interests and psychology is so thorough that she can easily and intuitively discern what I cannot even choose for myself.

It's sort of like clothes. I have no idea what looks good on me, and a color that I like to wear may be pronounced a disaster by my sister. But my mother tells me things like "You look good in grey," and, lo and behold, that grey shirt she fancies on me so much garners complements from every quarter.

I know my parents know things. I can't deny it. I'm not so much a teenager as all that.

But I digress. The point, the point, I know. It's here somewhere but without the text in front of me it is exceedingly difficult. In any case. Two sorts of readers.

Now normally my reading is the one thing I have no modesty about, and I would place myself firmly in the "good reader" category, but with Lewis one is not so sure. One comes out of his essay unsure about one's status as a reader; indeed, about everyone, except perhaps Lewis himself. "Very insightful and very annoying," one reviewer has said and with that I concur. I don't know if I meet his qualifications for good reader status. But there is at least one requirement in which I might get an A: the aforementioned re-reading.

I am a prodigious re-reader. Family will attest to my obsessive devotion to the books I know and love; the Harry Potter series, C.S. Lewis's Narnia, Sherlock Holmes. Not just the great stories, though, or the favorite books of my childhood. Everything from humorous essays to science books to parenting manuals have warranted a re-read. There's a certain something, I don't know, when a book clicks with you. One might make the analogy to human relations, to having "chemistry." Great books have chemistry with lots of people, but not all great books have chemistry with all people. For instance, I never clicked with Jane Austen, much as I could recognize her talent. Haven't a clue why. Lengthy sentences haven't deterred me in other cases. But some conjunction of things therein conspired to make us incompatible. Who knows why?

In any case, that doesn't mean that everything I enjoy I re-read. Some things, like most fanfiction or light short stories or pop psychology books, are meant to be read, and that is all. But really almost any book or story that has genuine merit and is worthwhile can be re-read, so I have found. A funny story will be amusing again in the re-reading. A poignant description will recall tears to your eyes easily, perhaps even with more ease than the first time. Even a surprise ending will still bring that little pang of shock to your heart, upon reading again.

That is the one thing people don't seem to understand, but it is true for me, so perhaps that particular peculiarity has less to do with Lewis's good readers and bad readers, and more to do with my eccentricities. A mystery story, for instance. It truly is no less good once I know the ending. In fact, it may be better in the re-reading, because I'm no longer racing through to discover, for instance, the identity of the murderer. The first time I read the Sherlock Holmes story, The Final Problem, I sobbed. Then I read the next story, chronologically, The Empty House, I think, and (spoiler ahead!) I rejoiced. The second time, reading of Holmes's untimely demise and subsequent "resurrection," I cried with equal emotion. My heart gave an equal pang of sympathy for dear, dear Watson as he grabs Holmes's arm with great astonishment and, upon finding it real and solid and alive, faints clean away.

Perhaps it is just the suspension of disbelief which one undertakes whenever one reads a book, but it takes nothing away from these books, for me, when I have read them before and thus know the plot. Indeed, it adds a good deal in some cases, especially with authors who have carefully built up foreshadow and such in anticipation of the climax. When one re-reads The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, for instance, discovering every accidental reincarnation of a character who does not make his appearance until book 4 is a pleasure that can only be indulged in the re-reading. These are books that demand to be re-read, that require it, for the full experience. Knowing the hows and whys and whats of how it all fits together do not detract at all from them.

Science is sort of like that, for me; and again I do not know whether it is a peculiarity or deficiency on my part or no. Understanding how something works, and why it is like that, don't somehow take away from its essence, any more than knowing your anger is irrational makes you behave rationally. (Certainly doesn't work for me.) The daisy in my garden is assembled of plant cells, which are passingly well understood, according to instructions laid out in its genetic code, which was obtained via the evolutionary process, which again we understand approximately. It's still a daisy. It still is beautiful. The love I feel for my siblings is biologically programmed into my brain via that same evolutionary process, by selfish genes which recognize (not literally, that's personification) that my siblings share 50% of my DNA, statistically. Knowing this does not lessen my love for them, or make it somehow less important or good, or reduce that indefinable essence.

Nothing worthwhile is so fragile. No book of any real merit is seriously worsened in the re-reading. No phenomenon to which we ascribe worth and meaning should lose meaning upon scrutiny.

Perhaps it is just me, though. I was, after all, always the sort of kid who liked to see how the magician did it better than the show itself. Doesn't that ruin it? my sister or dad would say. No, I would say, rather nonplussed. Magic is entertaining, I like it. Understanding, I far prefer.


* * *


I would leave it at that, except that I get the impression that people will be offended by my insinuation, real or perceived, that I am somehow nobler than they are because I prefer knowledge to mystery. That I, like Mr. Lewis, am dividing humanity into two groups, the more privileged of which I am a member of. This is, of course, not my belief at all. All people like beauty, love, and yes, even magic; and I am not asserting that I find no pleasure in the mystery of not knowing the end of a television show or a detective novel, or no pleasure in the peculiar type of mystery which comes from the people one loves...which one, of course, cannot know absolutely in all aspects, and thus are a constant source of surprise and wonder.

I am just saying...do not fear, so much, the horror that a scientific explanation will destroy the worth of things. The sunset is still beautiful, even now that we know it is not being carried by the sun god's golden chariot. There are valid things to fear about science. Its explanatory power is not one.

We await your owl by no later than May 1.

It's midnight on a school night, and I just can't sleep; not, in and of itself, an unusual occurence, but it rarely because I am bouncing off the walls in ecstatic disbelief. I can't believe it. I got into MIT and CalTech! Please, allow me one Little Miss Sunshine-style scream.


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


A teacher I know very well, and one of my mother's coworkers, commented that it's a little like getting a golden ticket. The metaphor is very apt. In fact, it's a little like opening two unrelated chocolate bars in the same day and happening upon two golden tickets. You can hardly even process having two at once. Too amazing. I dunno if I'll ever feel quite normal again.

* * *

A too-brief thanks is in order, because I know a couple people read this: thanks, mum, dad, everyone who gave me advice on admissions essays, everyone who told me to stop dawdling and get it all in, everyone who gave pep talks when I sighed despondently and bemoaned admissions statistics, everyone who told me I'd do all right. But especially thanks to mum and dad, who've put up with my increasingly testy stressed-out-ness, who've paid for every application, score report, and AP test, and who keep telling me you go where you want, we'll figure it out. I love you guys so much.

And thanks to everyone who's said congrats to me in just the past 2 days: news travels so quickly! Haha, thank youuu, I am so happy to have people to share this with and who are glad for me. (And who know what MIT is; telling kids at school has already necessitated a few explanations. "I got into MIT! And Caltech!" "Is that good?" "...it's kinda like Harvard and Stanford for geeks." "Ah.")

* * *

Truly, I feel like I just got my Hogwarts letter that I've always been convinced got lost in the mail when I was 11. An invitation to a magical, mystical place full of wizards and learning and misfits like me. Except instead of magical aptitude, we all expressed signs of mild social awkwardness and a tendency to spend too much time in the science section of bookstores.

Harry Potter got until July 31 to reply to his admission; I have only until May 1, but I really can't complain. I couldn't be happier. I'm no Hermione Granger, but I feel like she must've, on that day she realized magic was real.

Some day in the not-too-distant future I might be whisked off to one of these places; I can't help but picture sailing on rickety boats over some lake, being hurried, nervous and drenched, into the Great Hall, stumbling up to the front and having the sorting hat tell me where I ought to be...

CalTech, actually, does have Houses, and a Sorting; though I understand it's more of a sorting week than a sorting ceremony. And hopefully no mind-reading hats. But still. The analogy is getting uncanny.


Look mum! I'm not a Muggle after all. :P

just a series of blurs, like I never occured

Do you ever feel like you're the only person in the whole world?

Not, exactly, like the world revolves around you. You're still a tiny, finite, ephemeral person-speck on the face of an enormous blue planet in a massive universe that doesn't really care one way or the other about your star, let alone your species or yourself. It's not a feeling of importance like that.

No, it's more like feeling that your life is a book and you are the author, or the main character; it is only around you that the words unfold. Though events may occur in between the lines and during chapter breaks and off the page, what is truly there, what exists is what you read--what you see. The only things that I know for sure exist are the things that I am looking at, feeling, and thinking about at this second.

Perhaps that is that same feeling of importance, I don't know.

I felt like that yesterday on the bus going to our band competition; when I closed my eyes for a second the entire universe blinked into blackness. Every car we passed, every little old man crossing the street, every bicycle-rider--their life stories seemed only to exist for the brief moment that they flashed past, only because I gave them my attention, and then disappearing again into the abyss only to be called up again when I looked.

Sort of like minimizing a window on a computer. Where does it go to? The computer is certainly not wasting energy rendering it visually for the benefit of no viewer. It is gone until I look at it again.

I was playing on the bus, what I term in my head the Literary Game, in which I attempt to describe the things I see, hear, sense in a rather flowery descriptive literate style, and see which things lend themselves well to description as such. Certain people, objects, and places (regardless of beauty) just must be captured in words; I feel like I'm collecting things, descriptions of things, that I may write into something some day. I remember things best when they're in words, anyway.

For instance, I remember the thin, bored-looking blond woman at the intersection; one hand resting lazily on the steering wheel, the other on the windowsill, cigarette dangling from her fingers. And in my current solipsistic mindset, this is the only moment she ever existed; and if that verbal snapshot were not etched into my memory, she would never have existed at all.

It is a bizarre place my mind goes to, this pseudo-solipsism, and it can be quite happy or quite sad. It is happy when you see a baby smile, as I did yesterday, in a nearby car while staring at us mysterious band kids trundling past in our big yellow bus. (I suspect, though, that every philosophy makes one happy when you see a baby smile.) It is sad when you read the news and feel that you must read every horrible story, note every soldier's name, because it is only you who remembers them and they deserve to be remembered.

I know I'm not the only person in the world. But I am the only person that I am referring to when I say "I," and that is almost the same. I am one point of view out of many, but I'm the only one that I get to experience. My world, if not the world, is of course just a compilation of snapshots, each one my experiences; and my world is the only world I can have.

Our band concert for a moment erased this feeling of aloneness; music does that, a bit. You are simultaneously at your seat, playing, and in the booming bass note of the tuba, on the tinny muted wail of the trumpet, concentrated at the tip of your conductor's baton. If the bus ride gave me a sense of being alone, the concert gave me a sense of being...I dunno. Not many, just...spread out. Blended together. Something.

The bus ride back was strange. Fog, thick fog, of the sort that things just appear out of the mist, startlingly close by, stay for a moment, and then disappear into the clouds as if they'd never existed at all, as if they no longer did. I couldn't see any street signs to tell my dad how close we were. There aren't any signs, I said. There aren't any.

Mmm.

* * *

In other, less rambly news, I got accepted to MIT? I keep telling people that with a question mark, as if I'm not really sure if it's some sort of prank, yet. haha.

Le Pétit Prince

I read The Little Prince some time ago, ages, ago; but I met him last year or perhaps the year before, in some class or another. It was probably European History; even if it wasn't, that's how I think I'll remember it. That would fit.

I have a beautiful copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, that was my mother's. I am looking at it right now, to write this. On the title page there are the words TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY KATHARINE WOODS. Someday soon I will take my Barnes and Noble giftcard and buy it in French; perhaps I can read it now. My friend, my Little Prince friend, would not approve. He does not like French. He says English is confusing enough for him, thank you very much, you can have your verb conjugations.

* * *

The reason I have The Little Prince in front of me now is because I was looking for a quote to begin a rather boring entry about how I am tired and stressed and sad of late, who knows why. I used my favorite site, quotegarden, to find one, and I saw this:

"It is such a secret place, the land of tears." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

It is beautiful and very true, but it does not express how I felt today. Last night I felt very like I wanted to cry, but I didn't let myself. This is always a mistake; while I am unable to regulate the amount of sleep I get, my body is acutely aware of when it is getting short-changed on tears. That is not nearly so dramatic or sad as it sounds: just frustrating. Here is the quote for how I felt today:

" I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full." ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I know if I write an entry about this quote, though, I will probably begin to cry, and then I will never finish anything and certainly not my economics notes. So. The Little Prince.

* * *

Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince, like mine, came from a different planet than his narrator. They discuss things of great consequence--everything they talk of is of great consequence. The Little Prince only talks of things as if they were of great consequence. They do not understand each other, but they do understand each other.

My little prince friend and I talk about everything; school and philosophy mostly, and how I am feeling and what he is doing. He does not often talk about what he is feeling--that is my language, and occasionally I have to translate it for him. We weave in and out of sarcasm deftly; in and out of subjects abruptly; in and out of vocabulary clumsily. He is an optimist and a realist; I am a cynic and a idealist, or so we have decided. Or so I have decided. I don't think little princes have much need for labels one way or the other.

* * *

The first time that I realized I was friends with the little prince was not long ago. Saint-Exupéry defines his character like so:

"The little prince never let go of a question once he asked it."

This, more than any other single phrase in the English language, I think, describes my friend. He has never dropped a subject in his life, ever. I am well used to him bringing up a question or a point from pages before in our conversation, with no preamble at all, no segue. Now I just answer and on we go, retracing conversational steps sometimes, finding new tangents sometimes, and sometimes hitting on something that one of us really wanted to talk about.

You cannot evade a question, with the little prince; it will come back up, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, probably all three. One must be very careful with one's responses. Whereas normal people take, "Eh, I'll explain later," to mean "I don't really want to and I probably will not," little princes will be around, later, waiting for an explanation. One must be careful.

* * *

It is possible, I suppose, that if my friend is the little prince, that I am the narrator, Saint-Exupéry. When we discuss philosophy, when we agree that grown-ups do not understand anything (present company excluded, of course), it certainly seems so.

However, I think it is far more likely that I am the flower.

" 'This flower is a very complex creature...'

'At night I want you to put me under a glass globe. It is very cold where you live. In the place I came from...'

But she interrupted herself at that point. She had come in the form of a seed. She could not have known anything of any other worlds. Embarrassed over having let herself be caught on the verge of such a naive untruth, she coughed two or three times, in order to put the little prince in the wrong.

'The screen?'

'I was just going to get it when you spoke to me...'

Then she forced her cough a little more so that he should suffer from remorse just the same."

Or perhaps I am the fox.

"'My life is very monotonous,' he said. 'I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life....And then look, you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...'

....

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

'Ah,' said the fox, 'I shall cry.'

'It is your own fault,' said the little prince. ' I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you...'

'Yes, that is so,' said the fox.

'But now you are going to cry!' said the little prince.

'Yes, that is so,' said the fox.

'Then it has done you no good at all!'

'It has done me good,' said the fox, 'because of the color of the wheat fields.' "


* * *

My other friends--and I do have a few! Others, I mean--also often remind me of books, of characters. I suppose it comes of all that reading I did at an impressionable young age. Perhaps I shall explain their characters, sometime.

* * *

I must go now; the Little Prince just signed in on the instant messenger. I will talk to him for a while, and perhaps even get out those tears that I have been putting off for a while now. If I do, I will explain to him--because my being upset disquiets him--how I have felt so on the brink lately, how ridiculous it is that I feel so, how good and necessary those tears are.

He won't understand at all; Little Princes don't really comprehend worries about the future or regrets about the past or fears about the world or other such things. They think mainly of the here and now, and there is a sort of naive but wise optimism about them; a childish certainty that everything will be all right, an adultish certainty that whether it will be or not, one is happiest and sanest if one thinks it so.

We will talk and we will laugh and it will be both frustrating and good for me that one of the only people I talk about how I feel with is also a person who cannot really understand why I feel so oddly. My little prince cannot compound my bad feelings, cannot feed my sadness with empathy, because he does not know how.

"Everything will be all right," he will say for the millionth time, with such sureness and solemnity that one almost forgets he is a little naive blond-haired child, and one can believe that he has fallen from a star.

The first door on the left, next to Hell.

"Are you talking about the story?"

We freeze, Kristin and I. Or more specifically, she freezes; she was halfway through explaining to me in a soft murmur what my job will be during our lunchtime band meeting. We look at each other with embarrassment, and some guilt.

"I guess not," says Ms. A primly. "We would appreciate it--we're trying to have a discussion, over here, about the story. We would like if you would join in."

Ms. A does that a lot; talk in the royal plural, I mean. But she's right, of course; we are in English class and supposed to be doing something or other connected to this short story, not divvying up band duties. Nor should Louise be doing statistics homework, nor should Ashley be studying my physics notes, nor should the rest of the class be sitting in distracted silence...but true. We should be paying attention.

Kristin's ears turn a little red. Sorry, my fault, I mouth at her, because I asked her the question.

Ms. A is back in her "discussion" now, and I am listening. I was, actually, listening before, but honestly the discussion is not the type that requires one's full attention. I sound like a jerk, saying that--perhaps I am. Even Ms. A, though, was not offering her full attention: getting up, rummaging through her desk, finding papers, organizing things, etc. etc. To assure her that this time I am Paying Attention, I affix her with a burn-holes-through-your-head stare. She is the sort of person who does not believe you are listening if your eyes are not on her head. I make eye contact with people I feel comfortable and respect. I do not often make eye contact with Ms. A.

I should say Mrs. A, she goes by Mrs. and I am not such a wild feminist that I affix a Ms. to your name no matter whether you want it or not. I am just a neurotic who has often addressed a Mrs. with a Miss or a Miss with a Mrs., and I am sick of picking wrong, so I just got in the habit of using Ms. with everyone. G, last year's English teacher, always went by Ms. G, which worked very well. Ms. G used to call me Puglisi, and that worked very well too. I have this thing about first names; they feel very personal to me, like they contain something of who you are. I feel very awkward calling someone by their first name if we are not good friends. It feels way too intimate for that. I liked being Puglisi. It was more respectful than distant. It was nice.

This is all quite beside the point. I am in Ms. A's class now. Here is the point: we were analyzing the short story Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood. Our short story unit has been quite hurried, all things considered: we have a schedule, we go home, we read the story, we answer the questions, we come to class, we are divided into groups, we "discuss the questions" which really means all agree on the most respectable answer, Ms. A directs us to answer each question aloud, we start, she interrupts us to talk for a while, we gamely try again, she interjects some more, we finally give up and let her just talk, she asks us why we aren't talking, we sit silently, she is annoyed with us. We have read perhaps 20 short stories this way; each time she is progressively more annoyed. Each time I am progressively more bored.

Ms. A is not a horrible person, but I doubt that she will change this format just because it works poorly for us. I get the feeling that she is just pretending to care what we have to say. Not that I mind lecture; I do not. I do mind lecture that masquerades as discussion, however. Either tell me, or ask me--do not ask me in order to put your words in my mouth.

But again I digress. We are reading Rape Fantasies. This is a very odd short story, about just what it says. There is a narrator, named Estelle, who is talking (to someone, I suppose, but I will go into that later) conversationally about a bridge game with some girl friends of hers. One of them brought up the topic of rape fantasies, and then they take turns describing a few of theirs. Estelle's friends' fantasies are typical, romanticized, bodice-ripper-type stories.

Then Estelle describes hers--and hers are quite different. In hers, she is always set upon by the rapist in some unusual way, and then is able to get out of it rather cleverly, in almost comic ways. In one she asks him to hold her purse, which he does quite politely, and eventually she produces lemon juice which she squirts in his eyes. In another, they both have awful colds, she offers him a tissue, and they end up watching the Ed Sullivan show together instead. In another, his zipper gets stuck and she says, "Oh, honestly," and he begins to cry, and she tries to bolster his self-esteem and eventually gives him the number for her dermatologist so that he might clear up his acne. And so on, and so forth.

The end of the story is rather peculiar, and this is what I have come to class to discuss. At the end of the story, Estelle's already conversational tone becomes quite hurried and almost urgent. She reveals that she is in a restaurant, or perhaps a bar, getting a drink, alone. She knows the waiters, she says, so if anyone were bothering her...well. She explains that in reality, if she were approached by a rapist, the thing to do, she thinks, would be to get a conversation going, to share a bit of your thoughts and your life and your story. So that he knows it's a person, you know? Because she just doesn't see how anyone could go through with it once it's a person who you've had this whole conversation with. That, she just doesn't understand.

It struck me when reading this that she is very probably talking to a potential rapist, here, and the entire story is exactly that--an attempt at conversation, yet another of her quick-thinking scenarios to get out of the situation. I shall not bore you (more than I have already) with all the textual evidence, but this is what I would like to discuss.

In fact, I could not wait until class to discuss it; I pestered my friends with the idea beforehand, getting their opinions, asking them if they had seen it in that light. We had a bit of discussion, ourselves, but we are not sure sure that this isn't just something my brain has invented.

This is why I am slightly bored while Ms. A explains the gender-inequity of rape fantasies to us, as if we hadn't understood it. I confess readily that it is selfish and self-centered of me, to want to talk about my view of the book, what I saw in it, etc. etc. But Ms. A seems eager to share her view of it, and since no one else in the class bloody talks, I figure that I can say about whatever I like.

Except now she has reprimanded me and Kristin for talking while she is explaining how the title "Rape Fantasies" is oxymoronic (she cannot find that word, for ages; I understand what it is like to misplace a word, but honestly). I decide immediately that I will not share my question/observation today. It is petty of me, but I decide it. Although Ms. A doesn't like me, she does like it when I talk, because I am the only person who is able to talk on and on and on. (Not because I'm the most articulate or the most eloquent; I'm just the most tenacious and opinionated--it is difficult to keep on through all Ms. A's interruptions, to be frank. I refuse to accept her opinions as my own without at least letting mine be stated, first.) It is my little revenge, then, not to participate in the discussion at all, today.

They continue to "discuss." (Pardon the scare quotes. I think they are warranted.) It is a very awkward-pause-ful conversation, truly. Not even really a conversation. We have the discussion questions, and Ms. A asks them, and the assigned groups read what they wrote, and Ms. A asks a follow-up, usually...and no one says anything.

The reason no one ever says anything is because Ms. A is always looking for one answer, and we are nervous to give the wrong one. One answer. She often tells us this, when trying to formulate a question. "I know what I want you to answer, I just don't know how to phrase the question..." Ms. A would be good at Jeopardy, I think sometimes. I am not good at Jeopardy, or at giving the answers Ms. A would like. I don't know why. I used to be good at it, very good. Go figure.

This terrible lopsided discussion goes on, and I continue to stare at Ms. A silently. Childish, childish I am. I am paying attention, my stare says, see? Just like you wanted. Now tell me what to say.

We are perhaps ten minutes from the end of the period, now. Ms. A is asking another follow-up that no one will answer. "What is different about Estelle's rape fantasies?"

She is not asking my group. The group she is asking, is silent.

"What is different about them? Is her role different, is the outcome different, what?"

Nothing. Ms. A is getting a little exasperated. Louise looks at me like for God's sake just talk before she starts yelling at us.

"They are different," I say, and most people turn towards me. Ms. A looks over at me--we are at opposite sides of the room, her and I, but we have a clear line of sight and I make direct eye contact as I speak. "They are different because--well, her friends have normal rape fantasies. Rape fantasies are fairly common sexual fantasies, about ten percent of the female population has them, which are characterized by a chance sexual encounter with a man who they do not know, and by sexual submission. Of course, naturally, they are complete romanticizations of the concept of rape, but they are fairly common." I pause, and continue; my tone is very cool, and I do not mean that it is neat. "Estelle's fantasies, however, are completely different. Firstly, they aren't rape fantasies per se...there is actually no sexual component. Secondly, they are not fantasies of sexual submission--actually, by talking the man out of it, or otherwise gaining control of the situation, Estelle actually asserts a position of dominance. So she actually reverses the roles. Rape is an act of control and dominance, not sex--as the sort of naive fantasies of Estelle's friends would imply--and Estelle's fantasies turn around that paradigm."

The bell rings. We put the books back and sit down. She likes us to sit down so that she can hold us a minute or two before we go every day. I think it's a power thing; if it makes her feel a little more secure in her position in the classroom, fine. My physics class is pretty close anyway, I won't be late.

I duck out of that classroom as quickly as possible. "God," I seethe to my friends quietly, "I just wanted to show her that we understand this stuff; it's not our fault that we aren't speaking up, no one can get a word in edgewise."

We walk past my sophomore English classroom, the door of which we referred to as the portal to Hell because that class would literally destroy your soul.

"Are you sure A isn't worse than R?" Louise asks me, as if I have some special say in the rating of teachers. The R she refers to is the inhabitant of that special hellish classroom which sits right next to the hellish classroom we had just departed from.

"Getting closer," I say grimly. We hurry along to physics. It takes until lunchtime, though, to recover from Ms. A. It always does.


*ETA: On second thought, names have been omitted to protect the innocent and not-so innocent...the latter, of course, being myself.