plea from a cat named virtue

i went to community college three times, dropping out every time. sure, i admit that i am lazy and i am a terrible procrastinator. yes, to the point where i received a ticket for expired tags six months after the fact because i could not bring myself to make the time to go to the county clerk's office downtown because it would mean having to get change for the parking meter- twice. this would also explain my lack of thought concerning the wedding that is expected of me or my supposed future children. recently, my sister's dog had puppies and she gave me one as a "gift"; while he is still with her, i have two more weeks to get anxious about it before i can officially freak out when he is staring at me, both of us studying each other, wondering what we have gotten ourselves into. i give the little guy a month before he tries to run away- good riddance!

the first time i enrolled (or was it the second?), i tested into all honors classes only to opt for the basic course. the adviser did a double take, "...but you tested into all honors." she shuffled her papers, searching for my results. "yes," she says, "yes, you did. you're in all honors courses." she smiles at me, but it comes off more as pity than any kind of endearing demeanor. she thinks i am confused, as though it were opposite day in my head.

"i understand, but i don't want all that homework."

she continues to explain that it would look better for my GPA,etc. if i took the honors classes before i cut her off, "i know all of this. i'm here for film...an honors english class is just going to make my life harder. so will that calculus class, just put me in college algebra, i know that." it is a tug of war, but eventually she sees things my way and i look for my cigarettes as i walk across campus to the registrar's office to explain that i don't have the money to pay for any of it.

on the first day of class i have english. the teacher, or the professor, or the doctor, since she had a PhD, had a weird face, as though surgery had been performed, but i could not tell if it made her face look better or worse than its previous condition. i begin mixing her attributes, guessing what could have possibly been done. she wears sunglasses even though there are no windows in the room we are in, and her jaw pops when she speaks. she is the oddest woman i have ever met and i love her. everything weird and strange about this woman tells me that we are going to get along just fine; because while she confuses me, she also emits an air of sophistication and i imagine her living in an enormous house with a handsome husband in his fifties. they never run out of fresh, ripe fruit, they own a well-trained pure bred dog, and they have sex at least once a week but never exhibit any public display of affection. i imagine that she would buy me a cup of coffee if i was caught at the register without enough money to pay, but only the difference.

as the weeks continued, i was four homework assignments ahead of everyone in my math class. my film class turned out to be a training course on apple media software taught by a young, blonde woman fresh out of her internship, a class full of goons, and nobody liked me except the lesbian who sat up front. we talked about the british version of the office (the only version that existed at the time) and took our smoke breaks together. on wednesdays and fridays i had photography, which would have been fun if people didn't take themselves too seriously when you handed them a roll of black and white film. while i admired william eggleston for his simplicity and style that mirrored my own even before i discovered his work, these kids were taking photos of their shoes in the freezer. one woman displayed a photo of her pill bottles, each label of each anti-depressant sharp and sober, lined up on her kitchen table. i had no opinion at the time, but in hindsight it was creepy and mediocre. i took another film class on mondays, studying its genres, each class cloaked in a dark, small theatre. we watched movies and pieces of movies, my elbow rubbing with the young cat next to me. i fantasized him reaching for my hand, softly, then holding it while we watched Double Indemnity, wide-eyed and unaware of the mese en scene played out with shadows. despite how romantic my fantasy seemed in my head, i didn't know this kid's name, even by the end of the semester, sixteen weeks later.

the english class was on tuesdays and thursdays. the doctor loved my papers, always insisting to read them out loud, but never letting the class know it was me she was showcasing. i had no friends in any of my classes. i was quiet and comfortable with my silence. i turned in my homework (when i did it), watching all the young energy flirting, knowingly wasting their parent's money, their own time, and who are we kidding, you are going to live with your parents until you are twenty-four, at least. and let us not kid ourselves even further, you won't even have a job in the meantime. as far as i was concerned, she could tell them it was my paper she was reading; i didn't need any more friends. eventually, she decided to spice up class a little bit, allowing us to bring in music. we could bring in one track, play it for the class, ask them questions about the song, explain our own thoughts and feelings, leaving everyone a bit more enlightened by the end of the entire facade. one guy brought in Bad Company, another Garth Brooks, a young girl played Ben Folds ("Brick", of course). per usual, i stayed quiet, never letting anyone know what i thought. it really didn't matter, i was too occupied with picking the perfect track for when the time came. while we all sat in silence, the person selected to play their track would awkwardly fidget at the front of the class; they knew they were being judged- harshly. it was the silence that killed them, making it the longest three minutes, forty-two seconds of their life. meanwhile, they hated us for judging them. the beauty of music is that even though they were the only person in the room who gave a shit, the music backed them up, giving them strength and peace. i envied that while i sat sourly in my chair, counting the days until it was my turn. i was going to open all their eyes, you wait.

when the day arrived, i picked a song that sat on the fence. it wasn't popular, giving me an edge, but the lyrics would appeal to the masses, unoffensive. if i dealt an obscure band from the seventies or the nineties, i would come off as snobbish and unidentifiable, losing any empathy i could possibly gain from the experience. i decided to choose The Weakerthans' "A Plea From A Cat Name Virtue",

Why don't you ever want to play?
I'm tired of this piece of string.
You sleep as much as I do now, and you don't eat much of anything.


I don't know who you're talking to
I made a search through every room,
but all I found was dust that moved
in shadows of the afternoon.


And listen,
about those bitter songs you sing?
They're not helping anything.
They won't make you strong.


So, we should open up the house.
Invite the tabby two doors down.
You could ask your sister, if
she doesn't bring her Basset Hound.
Ask of things you shouldn't miss:
tape-hiss and the Modern Man,
The Cold War and Card Catalogues,
to come and join us if they can,


for girly drinks and parlor games.
We'll pass around the easy lie
of absolutely no regrets,
and later maybe you could try
to let your losses dangle off
the sharp edge of a century,
and talk about the weather, or
how the weather used to be.


And I'll cater
with all the birds that I can kill.
Let their tiny feathers fill
disappointment.


Lie down;
lick the sorrow from your skin.
Scratch the terror and begin
to believe you're strong.

All you ever want to do is drink and watch TV,
and frankly that thing doesn't really interest me.
I swear I'm going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood
if you don't stop the self-defeating lies you've been repeating
since the day you brought me home.
I know you're strong.

i dressed a little nicer. it was nothing anyone would notice, but it made me feel confident about my choice. i remember walking out of my room and going straight to my car, no breakfast, no second thoughts, otherwise i would be there all day. i was too nervous to eat; i bought a cup of coffee, then another. i am not fearful of crowds, or talking to them, it was knowing that this was going to fail...i could already tell. regardless, i talked myself out of it, "who gives a shit what these people think?! you don't even talk to any of them and the guy next to you likes to skydive! god knows, he doesn't care. go in there, show them you don't give a shit, you're here to make films, not show off your record collection. look at that dog, he looks starving, maybe we should buy him a hot dog. who the fuck do those people think they are? do i have enough money? i mean, Ben Folds, come on. you couldn't pick a better song?? i only have dollar. fuck it, this is going to rock their socks off, even though it's mildly depressing. is it too depressing? i hope my cd doesn't skip, jesus, that would be embarrasing. i think i have to poop."

when i found myself in front of the class, i waited for them to settle down. we had a paper due that day, but we were going to listen to my track first. i needed absolute silence, why was everybody talking? maybe we weren't ready yet. the doctor told me to go ahead, start my song. but everyone was still talking, bookbags rustling, notebooks being slapped on desktops, zippers unzipped while lonely hands searched for pencils and pens. you don't understand, i thought, this song is going to change your life, you have to hear it from the first second. i stalled until the doctor repeated, "go ahead, turn it on...we've got a lot of things to go over today." i felt like i was losing control, none of this was playing out the way i had directed it in my head. where was the undivided attention i had given everyone before me? where was the deserved silence, ominous and solemn like a church service. i felt rushed, brushed off, as though this was merely an inconvenience. unwillingly, i pressed play and watched for the enlightened expressions of my audience. it never came.

in fact, halfway through my song, the doctor drew her shoulders up, making a faux hunchback, and crept between the desks, collecting papers that were due. as it turned out, no one paid attention to the song. when the song ended, it was tradition to ask questions to the class, opening the floor to its interpretations. even though i was broke, i pressed on, attempting to ask questions, but was cut short by the good doctor, who thanked me for my song, removed my cd, and bullied me away from her desk, jumping right into her lesson plan. i sulked for the rest of the class, stewing, contemplating if i should dramatically storm out in a display of contempt. on my way out i would let the door slam, cracking in its frame the same moment i yelled out, "fuck you!" but i recognized right away that i wasn't Bender and this wasn't saturday detention.

in the last three weeks i have had guys asking me, "why are you single?" they play the guessing game, pressing to see if i am crazy, hoping my psychotic tendencies will show up before they lose twenty dollars on dinner. even more puzzling is they have spent the money, expended the effort, and invested the time in wining and dining, trying to crowbar magic in our meeting, as though that kind of chemistry were a microwave dinner, ready for consumption after three hours of stop and go conversation and delta drinks. once they realize what i knew from the first moment- we have nothing in common socially, want different things in life, and have conflicting expectations of how we think this nite is going to end- they hug me, try to kiss me (a last ditch effort), and never call again. albeit, i have not experienced a lot of these dates, but enough to wonder. before i turned twenty-five, before i turned twenty-three, i use to see myself as this vessel meant to enlighten and teach and provoke and stimulate, that was my job. as such, i needed to ensure that you were open and ready and willing to accept what i was giving you- the deep, dark music that always made sense, the reluctant movies that documented how you will see the world differently, the sharp books best read into a microphone, the delightful insight that could change your life, the penny for your thoughts since mine were worth a million dollars- i was going to set you free. instead, unlike my former teenage self, or the twenty-year old version of me standing in front of a classroom attempting to move people with a nonsensical song from an unknown band they could really give a shit about, i understand that if they think a pita filled with hummus, a couple beers, and a jukebox will get me to fuck them, or grease the wheels for a second date, they are missing out, not the other way around.

it has been a long time since i felt the way i did in that classroom, on display. i was younger, under the impression everything i did was passionate and righteous, to not only be consumed but engorged, and if they did not want it i was going to force feed it until their submission. once the class had ended and i gathered my things quickly, intent on never coming back, a petite girl who sat in the back came up to me, "i really liked your song...i know what you are trying to say." it would be years before i appreciated that, mending my bitter heart.

i never did return to that class and i never return the phone calls of those poor, naive men. i do not know why i am single any more than i know why a solid group of people (save one), ignored me entirely. the same could be said of the male population that could be said of an english class in 2003: they don't want to buy what i am selling. in a world where we are over-stimulated in all aspects of our life, it is hard to pinpoint what we want or what we are looking for. i am waiting for someone to pay attention, give me a penny for my thoughts because that is what they are worth, make me silent while we listen to the needle on the record, and sit me still like a hummingbird until i learn to start over. if anything, i will settle for a guy who cares enough to remind me that i need to renew my car tags.