Well, I've made a few of those this weekend, but the matter at hand is my latest essay for Nonfiction, a heaping helping of postmodernism I cobbled together when writing a straight narrative proved too difficult.
(The usual problem with my writing: I can describe people, but for some reason I can't get them to move. One of my classmates suggested that I use more action verbs; presumably she was being condescending.)
My guess is that Prof. McNulty will use it for one of his object lessons. I wrote about Manney, and my essay probably exemplifies in its failure something he's been trying to teach us all term: put yourself in the background. The very fact that I can't tell how good this narrative is tells me that I don't have the proper distance.
But this weekend wasn't all essays and broken keyboards.
I went to the MAPH Halloween party on Saturday, in a somewhat disappointing "Gray Lady" costume. I had been hoping to break my streak of spending costume parties explaining what I am (my costumes have ranged in esotericness from D.B. Cooper to the more obvious Little Boy) but my unwillingness to wear a skirt or dress, a lack of costume funds, low lighting that made my elaborate makeup invisible, and a shocking number of people unaware of the nickname all combined to dash this hope.
It was a good time, nevertheless. My preceptor had told me that these Halloween parties tend to be full of clever, somewhat esoteric costumes, and I was not disappointed. People were dressed as the avian flu (with flu haikus), the plastic bag from American Beauty, and Hunter S. Thompson, and of course there was more than enough goodnatured irreligiosity.
(I'm sorry if I find the very thought of the pope at a kegger hilarious. It's that whole smug atheist thing.)
I have class with both of these girls and they're also among the maybe ten people I end up talking to at social hour, so I think I can reasonably post a picture of them and their respective boyfriends. I'd also like the chance to point out that the injured guy actually needs to wear that cast, which somehow made his costume seem all the more clever.
No pictures of me though, I'm too embarrassed.
All told I took forty or fifty pictures with my $300 defense mechanism, which felt creepy because I've only been here for a month or two and don't really know these people. Some of them seemed to agree — I got quite a few deer-in-headlights looks and suspicious glances — but most of them seemed to be fine with it, and I uploaded the pictures to flickr as an expression of goodwill.
If my experience at Lawrence is any guide, picture-taking will eventually come naturally if I keep at it, but I don't want to start taking so many pictures on a regular basis. Senior year at Lawrence I started leaving my camera behind for some parties, and if memory serves, I had a little more fun when I started interacting rather instead of observing.
Granted, I don't remember much about those parties without photos to help me, but it's a trade-off I needed to make every now and then.
Halloween, yes. I had a lot of short conversations, especially at the beginning of the night (I foolishly arrived only half an hour late, when the place was still deserted — an hour and a half seems to be "fashionably late" here), but I remember having an interesting discussion or two with the Strategist, the girl from my precept who I'm always mixing up with the Medievalist even though they look nothing alike.
I totally called the Strategist on trying to get this one guy in the program to be her gbf and we commiserated on the general failure of gaydar this term. I used to take such pride in mine, too, but I guess gay people in Appleton (e.g. Roy the Effeminate Heterosexual) were just easier to spot.
And I guess I talked to other people or something? I remember thinking it was pretty late and leaving, and realizing on bikeride home that I must be drunk, though I couldn't remember being that way at the party.
Found two stale Oreos in my pocket the next morning. Good times.
