I Don’t Have an iPod, But My Mom Does

In college, I was always one for used books. What do I care if the cover is a little bent? And the perfect, crisp binding of a new book is bound to crack, sooner rather than later, so let someone else bear the guilt. Mine came like that.

The best part, though, about a used book is in the underlining, highlighting and marginal notes of its past owner, this person who is a stranger but whose habits of mind, at least, habits of study, are revealed. Does the person highlight entire paragraphs or just confidently underline a phrase or name here and there? What is written in the margins? Some are messages of affirmation like, “Yes” or “Absolutely,” or, I really once saw this, “This is the point!” with an arrow pointing to the last sentence of a paragraph. Other times, there is self-doubt, confusion, and dissent: “Lame,” or “Huh?” or simply a question mark. Also, there is a kind of assurance in seeing that someone else underlined a particular passage for its beauty, or its truth, or its all-important relationship to central themes. It must be beautiful, or true, or important, because someone else thought so, too. Even in something as solitary as reading, there is still safety in numbers.

Today on my subway commute, I began Jane Austen’s Emma. Just looking at the book itself makes me smile a little. The front cover, which is a shade of yellow that nothing has been for at least 30 years, proudly proclaims that the book costs $2.25. That’s about the price of a slice of pizza on a New York street in 2008. Inside, is a simple stamp, “UNH,” and my father’s name in his familiar scrawl.

I have read many such books, looted from my parents’ bookshelves. The history books and contemporary fiction, I confess, I have not read many of. I have also skipped most of the poetry and things with colonated titles like X: A Theoretical Approach. But it is a great place to find a novel. Many of my motives are perhaps obvious: I’m looking for something to read, and these books are already in the house. Plus, $0 is even better than $2.25. But it is also for the marginalia.

My dad’s underlining (and he always underlined, never highlighting and only very rarely bracketing entire paragraphs) and notes tell me things about him that he couldn’t, even if he wanted to. In Emma, there is something underlined on nearly every page until about page 30. After page 36, there is no underlining at all. In its place is the occasional, sweeping note: “Class system at work openly,” or simply “patriarchy.”

It is a conversation with a past incarnation of someone I know in the present. I wonder, did Dad take an intial interest in the book that just tanked? Was he writing a paper on the exposition of the book (you know, phase one on that story triangle we are all forced to learn?) so notes after that point were unnecesary? Or maybe it was just a case of good intentions fallen short, a moment of scholarly exertion which passed.

Maybe I’ll know for sure when I get to page 36.

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With deposit mailed and current bosses notified, I am fully commited to relocating to Boston this summer and beginning an English MA program in the fall. I couldn’t be more excited. My visit last weekend was a combination of laughing over pints of beer with old friends and meeting an impressive faculty who seem truly charmed that I have chosen to pursue study at UMass Boston when I could have gone elsewhere.

The university aside, it’s always been true that I could have gone elsewhere. Until very recently, I have never seriously considered living in Boston. It’s probably lost now, but I remember writing an entry in my journal one time when I was on a train, headed back to New York from a vacation in Portland, ME, my much beloved home town. The gist of the entry, or part of it, was that despite being in New York indefinitely, “my soul basically dwells in Portland.” I don’t remember that wording because I think it’s mind-blowing prose, but because it’s so true. I never considered myself of New York. In five years, I never got a New York drivers’ license. I never changed my voter registration. I never even got a local number for my cell phone. It was not always a conscious choice, but it was a choice, to remain an outsider. It is always easy enough to feel foreign in New York, so I did.

If it were as simple as all that, though, I would have just gone back to Portland. Going back has always appealed to me, comforted me, and it still does. But the other point of this old entry was my not quite fear, more like something nagging me, that if I did go back home, I would face an awful moment of truth and discover that irretrievable pieces of me were left in New York. The entry concludes, in what I recall was a bit of a mantra for me at the time, with writing off Boston, which I saw as an inbetween that was neither Portland nor New York.

There was a wall there that I just couldn’t think through, and I think I know what the problem was: I saw being a resident of one place or another as the ultimate expression of my identity. I can be urbane and cool when I want to, but sometimes it seems like a lot of work. It’s also true that I am close to my family and care about family history and traditions, but they don’t make much of a Saturday night. The poles change from person to person, but it turns out that my true self is where everyone else’s is, too: somewhere inbetween.

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In the past year, a disproportionate number of the novels I’ve read have been what you could consider dystopian fiction. (Another blog post, maybe the next one, is how this literary diet led me out of New York and into grad school.) As a fan of Medieval romance, not to mention Harry Potter, I have no problem at all imagining these strange, invented worlds. In fact, many of the conventions of dystopian writing have seeped into my everyday consciousness, and into my unconscious mind all well, in the form of dreams.  

Not too long ago, I had a dystopian dream which was vivid enough to be a scene from a novel. It interested me enough to write down, and I’ve copied it below. By way of disclaimer, it is by no means a completed short story. It is a fragment, as near as possible to exactly the way I dreamt it.

* * *

I had never been to Annie’s apartment before. I knew her parents were radicals – had been radicals – everyone knew that. It’s funny how something can seem really out there, but then, without anyone really noticing, it becomes normal.

The door opened into the living room. There was one window on the left far wall. It didn’t have a curtain, but not much light was coming in. The place was pretty much what you would think: pine wood floors, highly polished, and white plaster walls. The violet-colored metal cap of the Portal Point was the only color. A group of eight or nine men were standing in the center of the room. They were older – Annie’s uncles, maybe one was her father – and I had the idea that I was walking in somewhere I didn’t belong.

“Yes, miss?” one of the man said. His sinewy arms were crossed over his dark blue collared shirt. Now I was sure I’d interrupted something important.

“Sorry, sir. I’m a friend, um, a classmate of Annie’s.”

My eyes darted around, always ending up at the purple metal.

“Of course,” the man said. His voice was pleasant, but of course he didn’t smile.

“Lucy! What are you doing out there?” Annie’s voice, warm, pushed out into the room. I felt my body relax and tighten up again with a jerk. I was wearing white, and I could feel an enormous pimple growing and pulsating on the side of my nose.

Annie appeared next to me and seized me by the arm. It seemed to me that her father’s eyes were focused on the place where our skin was touching. Back then, I was always thinking things like that. Annie pulled me, mercifully, down the hallway and out of sight.

“Do you need anything, Lucy? God, I mean, gosh, it must have been a long trip for you. Not like it used to be when you could just get on the train…” Her voice became small and I instinctively looked around. We were under another Portal Point.

“It was nothing,” I said with as much vigor as I could muster. “I only need to use your bathroom.”

“Right here.” She pushed open a white door behind me. I followed eagerly. My fingers ran unconsciously along my nose. Annie’s parents were important enough that they probably had a mirror. A mirror!

The bathroom was clean and everything was new. I will never forget how clean everything seemed at first. “The tap works, but it takes a moment for the water to warm up.” Annie sounded far away. Above the sink was a mirror. My stomach leapt into my throat. To be alone in front of a mirror, just for a few minutes. My pulse was so strong that I was almost afraid the Portal Point in the hall would pick it up and dial for medical assistance. A boy at school said that happened to his mother. There were a lot of stories like that around in those days.

Annie turned to go and let me pass through the door. Almost imperceptibly, she moved her eyes towards something in the room. She did it again, and I followed them. There, below the mirror, was a disk of purple metal.

“You even have a Portal Point in your bathroom!” I said, too loudly.

“Oh, of course!” she answered, keeping her volume steady with mine. “That’s one of the most important places to have one. But don’t worry—it’s not the kind that can hear you. Can you imagine?” She smiled. What kindness!

“I’m so glad you told me before I, before I, made a mistake.” I said brightly. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say. Annie blinked and nodded.

In the bathroom, I went to the toilet and pretended to pee, then walked slowly to the sink. I splashed cold water on my face. It made me seem tough, which I knew was virtuous, and I hoped that the cold would take some of the redness out of my pimple. That wasn’t virtuous, but as long as I kept my eyes closed, the Portal Point couldn’t see it. When I stepped back out into the hall, Annie’s father was standing there. His arms were folded across his chest.

“I hope you found everything you needed, Miss Miller,” he said. I turned my faced up to him.“You know my family name, sir?”

“I worked with your father in the old days, when we were practically boys.” I knew what “the old days” meant. His lips smiled but his eyes didn’t. A smile is really about the eyes. Everything is about eyes.

My father. Annie’s father tilted his head and studied my face.

“You liked him, didn’t you, father?” Annie said. Her expression had changed, but to what?

“Yes, I did. Very much.” He unfolded that great arm and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You are among friends here, Lucy.”

It was the first time in my life when I was absolutely sure that I was being lied to.

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A few people (okay, mostly my dad, my most loyal reader) have asked me what my blog title means. The truth is that, until I had written a few posts, I wasn’t sure myself. It just sounded right. Once I had thought of it, I couldn’t even think of what else might be a title.

Really, the title is about a two things that are different but related.

I am a music fan. I listen to music often, read Rolling Stone, feel nostalgic when I watch VH1 Classic, and am a formidable opponent at music trivia. I care that Group A is working with Producer B, and that they are recording in the same studio in which Group C recorded the legendary Album D. I love liner notes, especially on resissues, to which members of the band usually contribute. Liner notes come with albums, collections of songs which, in the best cases, have been carefully chosen and arranged. Albums mean CDs. You know, CDs, like in the 90s.

From the title of the blog, you already know that I don’t have an iPod, but its more than just the lack of the actual device. I haven’t made a single move in the direction of digital music. I don’t have a single music file on my computer. I have never been to the iTunes website. I don’t have any idea how to burn a CD. When my mom declares that she has to charge her iPod, or when my dad tells me about an old song he unearthed and downloaded, they are speaking from a world that my generation created but that I am not part of all.

So, part of the reason I don’t have an iPod is simply that it isn’t how I listen to music. I like albums, but I also like the act of buying a CD and bringing home to pour over the packaging and listen to it from start to finish. And I don’t even want to have my whole music collection available all the time–I don’t want to listen to music all the time, period. I’m more committed than that. The other reason is the discomfort with my generation that I’ve felt for as long as I can remember. When I get that feeling that “everybody” is doing something, I have to resist it. That’s not a matter of being too cool, it’s not conscious enough for that. For better or worse, I guess I’ve never done that well with the group identity thing.

But as I get older, my generational identity is becoming more complicated. The baby boomers, who I confess I have always idolized, frustrate me more and more as I get older. Their self-indulgence and narcissism looked better on them when they were younger I guess. And it’s hard not to resent inheriting the Social Security crisis a little bit.

I’ve been hoping since I was about 10 that my own generation (Gen X.5, I guess you’d call us) would look better to me as we grew together, and I’m still hopeful. Still, at least for now, I’ll stick with the Sony CD changer I took to college. I hope that answers your question.

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A few days ago, on my regular subway commute home, I peered up from Newsweek and noticed a guy across the aisle was reading 1984. Now, 1984 is one of my very favorite books ever. Certainly, I can find no fault with this fellow MTA rider’s literary taste. But, seriously, the New York subway is a pretty tough place to be reading that sort of thing. Surveillance cameras everywhere, cops searching your bag, crowding, the distinct smell of unwashed human bodies, the free reign of enormous, greasy rats. You see where I’m going with this. It isn’t subtle. 

But sometimes with Orwell, it is subtle. You look from the page out into the world, then back to the page, then back at the world. You privately wince a little and say to yourself, “I wish that weren’t quite so true.” 

Right now, I’m in the middle of Burmese Days, a novel he wrote in the Thirties, when he was still a little hungry. At the point I’m up to in the book, the plot is just getting going, but the atmosphere and context are well established. Orwell worked as a policeman in Burma not ten years before, and the Raj he writes of is a saggy one that ceases to know what it is or what it’s for. The main characters are a group of Englishmen who spend most of their waking hours drinking and smoking at the European club (”European,” of course, meaning white-only). They are racist to varying degrees–to one man in particular, the Burmese people are “dirt” and “savages,” while to others, they are considered harmless, and even charming, so long as they remain unblinkingly obedient.

To Orwell fans, our hero, John Flory, is familiar. He is boozy and somewhat hapless, erudite in an unconventional way, and oddly lovable. He isn’t perfect, but you’re rooting for him. Flory is interested in Burmese art and customs and his closest friend is a Burmese doctor, not a fellow British officer. Again and again, both at the club and among the “natives”, he is expected to act a certain way and have certain attitudes because he is British. Even his Burmese friend makes certain to have whiskey available when Flory visits, because that is what Englishmen are supposed to drink.

At the club, Flory is forced to listen to racist, anti-native diatribes and nostalgic memories of the grand old days of the Raj, when brown brothers knew their place, but he lacks the courage to defend his friend. At the doctor’s, he denounces the English character and Britain’s role in India to a degree that the doctor, a heartfelt Anglophile, considers seditious. Watching Flory go between the extremes of these two worlds is fascinating.

I have lived a lot of my life in New York as Flory in miniature. My Latino students continue to be amazed that I like my enchiladas with salsa rojo (the spicier option, at least locally), and even that I would go to a Mexican restaurant in the first place. I love these moments with my students, but negotiating my whiteness, and the set of assumptions that comes with it, among the adults is often not so rosy.

My first year at Is 162, I shared a classroom a few periods a week with Ms. Purcell. I don’t remember her first name, or maybe I never knew it. She was black and from somewhere in the South. From the beginning, it was clear that Ms. Purcell was going to have a hard time in Bushwick. When kids were nasty to her, she was nasty right back, which only made them nastier the next time around. In December, she announced that she was not coming back after Christmas break. She and I were in our shared classroom one afternoon shortly after she gave her resignation, and I guess she decided I had as good an ear as any.

“Fuck this,” she said. “I’m goin’ home, where I can actually teach.”

One thing I know for sure is that a conversation that begins with the word “fuck” is one which you want to be brief. “This isn’t an easy place to work, that’s for sure.”

I was trying to be small talk-y, politely disinterested, but instead my remark encouraged her. “Did you know that this school was going to be nothing but Spanish trash when you got hired? ‘Cuz I sure didn’t. You can’t teach kids like that.

“Um, what? Didn’t she take a walk around the block when she interviewed and notice that everyone she saw was Latino? Did she really just call said Latinos “Spanish,” like it was 1970? And, most curious of all, why is she saying this to me, when she knows I’m an ESL teacher? Despite the questions streaking by in my head, I was too stunned to actually say anything.

She laughed mirthlessly. “Lowlifes. I ain’t wastin’ any more of my time.”The atmosphere in the room seemed to snap and I could feel something in me rushing to the surface. I was inexperienced with just about everything then, but I couldn’t let this woman think that I was sympathetic to her hate.

“Please don’t talk about the kids like that,” I said, and then immediately regretted saying “please.” It was not a rhetorical tsunami, but it was something. She looked up and studied my face, which I tried to keep still.

“What’s your problem?” she spat. “You’re white.”

“That has nothing to do with anything. I chose to work here. If I wanted everyone to look like me, I would have stayed in Maine. These kids are special to me. So just don’t talk about them like that around me,” I said.

I don’t remember what she said after that, so maybe she didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the absolute last time I saw her, but it was certainly our last conversation. I was proud of the way I had handled myself, both because I felt that I had stood up for my students and that I had represented white America well.

Sometime later, I was in the teachers’ room talking with some colleagues, one of whom was Latina. One of them was telling an unrelated Ms. Purcell horror story and we were laughing. Still feeling new and like an outsider, I was pleased that I had a Purcell tale of my own to extend the conversation. They expressed disbelief when I told them what she said. I threw in my line about taking a walk around the block when she interviewed, which got a laugh, then told them what I had said in response. The Latina teacher sort of scrunched up her face and what she said I will never forget:

“Well, thanks Ms. Sampson. But we can stand up for ourselves.”

The paralysis of being so completely misunderstood by people who have no questions has never left me. Finding a mirror image of that feeling in the pages of book is vindicating, but the feeling is still maddening. And something worse, too. It is lonely.

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There is a moment that happens at parties which I absolutely dread. Not with fear or despair; I mean the kind of dread that mixes frustration with deep annoyance. Loathing makes me nervous, being nervous makes me self-conscious that I am nervous, and my self-consciousness (what could be more uncool?) deepens the dread the next time it happens.

Those who know me may know that the moment I am talking about is the one in which a fellow party-goer suggests that we smoke pot. There is maybe nothing else that makes me feel so completely alienated, unnecessary, and maybe even unwanted, like being out with a couple on their anniversary, but on a grander scale. It is like how it would feel if everyone in the room suddenly, quite by choice, began speaking another language. At once, I am awkward and useless. The scene has switched, gone where I can’t follow. (I suppose it is won’t, not can’t, but that isn’t how it registers emotionally.)

What I have just written seems a little dramatic, even to me, but that is only because nearly 15 years of dealing with pot smokers and navigating social situations has softened my rhetoric and dulled the visceral reaction a bit. I can play it cooler now, but it is acting. My true reaction to pot smoking–to drug use, period–is something like disgust, if disgust could raise a lump in your throat and make you feel vaguely like calling your parents.

With the passing of each of these 15 years, I suppose it has become more and more remarkable that I have never tried pot. My peers and I, after all, were raised by boomers, many of whom still use drugs recreationally. The adults we grew with (my own family being an exception) assumed that we would “experiment” with it, and so, most of us did. It’s true that in college I did become a somewhat enthusiastic reveler, very comfortable, say, organizing a drinking game. As a result, new friends often casually assume that I smoke pot. That moment in a budding friendship, when this assumption is revealed, is one I dislike also, because it insults me a way I find difficult to hide. My convictions are mysterious and passionate, and once public, I have to explain them and even defend them. I have to be prepared to have them dismissed, or worse, to be condescended to.

Even now, I feel a little hesitant about clicking the “publish” button. But I will. Maybe then I can exhale. 

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I don’t know if they are still in vogue, but when I was in elementary school, state reports were an essential part of the social studies curriculum. In second grade, I did one on Oklahoma; third was Idaho; fourth was Alabama; fifth was Alaska. The requirements didn’t change much from year to year. Draw a picture of the flag. Name the capital. Crops. Manufactured goods. Date of statehood.

In general, state reports were not a labor of love. Accordingly, I remember little about the process or product of any of them. Except Alaska.

I remember working on it at the dining room table and my mother coming in to assess progress. It was probably due the next day, and I admit that in those salad days I wanted a bit of watching. Alaska became a state in January of 1959, when my mother was 10. As I sat with the A volume of World Book (remember encyclopedias?) open in front of me, I considered the possibility that she, in 1959, had probably completed state reports. But there would have been no entry for “Alaska” in the encyclopedias she had used.

“So, you couldn’t find ‘Alaska’ in the encyclopedia back then?” I asked, knowing the answer, but somehow needing to ask anyway. She laughed.

“No, it wasn’t a state yet. People weren’t trying to look it up. You know, Grammie’s encyclopedias don’t even have the Kennedy assassination in them. It hadn’t happened yet.”

In the pages of my family’s encyclopedias, history was evolving–truth was evolving–as individuals played out their lives and as the universe of human knowledge became wider and deeper. The world is never still, everyone has history in living memory, and no one knows exactly what kind of encyclopedic articles we will need in the future.

17 years later, this revelation still impresses me. Once in a while, I go back to the World Book shelf, take out volume U-V, and and turn to the entry about the U.S.S.R.

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Though the exact details have yet to be worked out, it is a sure thing that I will be leaving New York in July, and almost as certain that I will never live here again. This move suggests itself, in fact, it has been suggesting itself for some time, but that doesn’t make it easy. I have finished growing up here, and I know this city has done things to me that I don’t even realize.

Living in New York has confirmed a few of my worst fears about the world, namely, that it really is as big and scary as I worried it would be. But New York has also provided its own kind of comfort in the form of insights that have sprung up at unexpected times.

My first year at IS 162, I co-taught a sixth grade ESL class with a girl named Stephanie. She could not look less like me, considering that we are about the same age and both identify as white. She is six inches shorter than I am, and has medium olive skin and very dark, very curly hair. To the eye, I am certainly “whiter.” But one day, quite by accident I discovered that our students didn’t see it that way.

In my coursework for my ESL master’s degree, we talked extensively about African-American and Latino/a identities. In these conversations, White American was always “dominant” and “mainstream.” But within the borders of Bushwick, my school’s Brooklyn neighborhood, whiteness is “other,” it is not the norm. I knew this. What I didn’t know before I worked there is that the factors involved in hanging the “white” tag on someone have absolutely nothing to do with having straight blonde hair and green eyes.

My sixth graders had been working on autobiographies. I was sitting with a group of four of them, checking in on their progress on a section in which they had to provide information about their home countries. Cristela, John, Gustavo, and Joseph were crowded in the back corner, jockeying for screen time on the classroom’s one computer. We began talking about their work, but as is so often the case with kids, my teacherly questions were volleyed right back at me.

“Where you born?” John asked me.

“Maine,” I said, “Up north, next to Canada.” Cristela scrunched up her nose. She wasn’t buying it.

“You were born here? In this country?” I nodded.

“So….what…are…you?” Gustavo asked slowly, like he wasn’t even sure how to pose his question.

I started to explain that I am American, that some of my family came from England in the 17th century and some came from Germany in the 19th century. For a moment, I was pretty impressed with my impromptu lesson. But those four bright, disbelieving faces stopped me.

Cristela squinted her eyes and zeroed in on my face like she had my number. “Talk like a white girl,” she said. Commanded, really. Now it was my turn to be bewildered. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Don’t I sound white all the time?”

Gustavo shook his head vigorously. “No, you talk normal.”

John agreed hastily. “I don’t understand white people. They use weird words.”

I had to know. “What kind of words?”

“White girls say ‘like’ and ‘totally’ all the time,” Cristela explained. The boys nodded emphatically and they all cracked up at the mere mention of such ridiculous sounding language.

Something clicked. I did a brief impersonation of a Valley Girl, a pop culture icon even I am a little too young for. Every other word is ‘like’ or ‘totally’ and the pitch goes up and down constantly, even in the middle of a word. What had been polite chuckling exploded into uninhibited laughter.

“You talk that way with your friends, miss?” Cristela giggled.

“No. I can’t barely understand it when people talk like that,” I said.

“And English is your language!” said John.

“You see?” Gustavo said. “You not white like that. You like us.”

I don’t know what my face may have looked like at that moment or what I said after that. Whatever it was, I hope Gustavo heard, “Thank you. It’s an honor.” Because it has been.

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If you’re like I was five years ago, you’re planning a move to New York from somewhere cleanier, friendlier, and quieter. More predictable, for sure. This isn’t to suggest that you should change your plans. In fact, it’s statistically impossible not to be more interesting after having lived in New York than you were when you packed up the U-Haul. This is good news, but the learning curve is steep and the road is long. And there’s traffic. Okay, I’ve already lost control of the metaphor, but here, in what will likely become a regular feature, are a few insider tips on living here when you’re an outsider.

1. You can’t really live on pizza, bagels, and Chinese dumplings. But, dammit, no one can stop you from trying.

2. People have “parties” which basically amount to a bunch of people meeting at a bar. A lame cop out which requires no cleaning, grocery shopping, or organization of any kind? Absolutely. But just pay the cover and go. You got to have friends.

3. The subway, even with a transfer and a route that takes you all over town, is always faster than the bus. I don’t know why.

4. Have the location, menu, and pricing of at least three restaurants committed to memory. When you’re out with a hungry, indecisive group, you will be the rockstar who says with confidence, “I know this great place three stops away with great tapas…And I think it’s Riesling night….” Party resumed, thanks to you.

5. Some people know which subway exit is most convenient and calculate where on the platform to wait for the train. Don’t be intimidated; follow the signs. Know that you know many things that these people don’t.

6. Bodegas, or delis, are wonderful things. Reliably, they have an ATM (with a fee, of course, but you’ll come off as a hick if you complain), and you can almost always buy the following: phone cards, single doses of most over-the-counter medicines, decent coffee, nearly any Goya product, cold cuts, and herbal supplements that supposedly improve sex drive and performance.

7. Oh, and speaking of delis: when you order a bagel at one, always specify that you want it “cold.” Many before you have learned the hard way that “hot” doesn’t mean toasted, it means “microwaved.” And that’s just wrong.

8. If a parking spot seems too good to be true, it is. That unmarked expanse of curb you find, right across the street from the supermarket, when it’s pouring? There’s simply no way it’s a legit space. And throwing on your hazards to go and do something quickly may work where you come from, but in New York, you might as well have a vanity plate that reads “TIKT ME.” Come to think of it, having a vanity plate of any kind is probably a bad idea.

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