15 February 1999: Names and Adjectives

There's a scene in "Midnight Run" I love in which Robert DeNiro, a bounty hunter, is on the phone with the bondsman delivering an ultimatum, threatening that if his conditions are not met, he will give the quarry, Charles Grodin, a pair of cement boots and "throw him into a swamp." At this point he looks up at Grodin, next to him in the phone booth, and gives a little deprecatory "not really" gesture.

This cracks me up every time I see it, maybe because it's funny on its own but mostly because DeNiro's facial expressions remind me of PSA in this movie. (And in "Awakenings," his expressions remind me of CXJ. I tell you, I've dated only one man since I was 14--variations on Robert DeNiro.)

This should be its own entry. I've mentioned that I am attracted to dark-haired, easily-tanned, big-nosed, skinny men. BMA, PSA, SEM except for his green eyes, NCS, PLT except he was fishbelly white, CXJ, RDC, and a few others I deliberately omit. They're not all gorgeous, either. In 9th grade, BMA wasn't (but he improved over time) and a few quite disparate people have mentioned the resemblance of more than one of my favorites to Rowan Atkinson. Also to Jonathan Price, however, so it all evens out.

My sister too has been dating the same guy all along. I don't remember if she ever made disastrous forays into blonds, or whether she considers any forays into blonditude disastrous. This had been a well established precedent, when I, once upon a time and to my peril, ignored it. Since the ensuing debacle, I have even less truck with blonds, whether because I simply do viscerally prefer dark coloring or for psychological effect I do not try to puzzle out. The other thing is that in addition to their all having the same basic coloring, many have been adjectives.

I realized this after I first began to date RDC and soon someone else showed an interest in me whose name was Frank. Strange, I thought. All these adjectives. However, he was blond (and beautiful), and there was RDC, so his interest I didn't pursue. I admitted the adjective issue semi-publicly in a road trip.

The road trip: Medieval Studies had borrowed University vans to drive down to the Cloisters on the northern edge of Manhattan. Early one midsummer morning (actually it was February), we all began to pile in. ABW was going to drive one van, so I yomped into the passenger seat behind her and KRW. Another student, about whom I knew very little besides that she presumed to share my name, joined us, and I sighed inwardly: she would make it a tedious trip. Time passed. Just before we all left, a car hurriedly pulled up and spilled out two people. There I sat in one van, and both of the others already held six people apiece.

My ex-boyfriend SSP and his girlfriend, AFK, had no choice but to join my van.

I met ABW's eyes in the mirror. This would not be a boring trip. Unpleasant, but not boring. I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she smiled, relieved: I would be fine. Off we went.

Conversation was difficult. Ordinarily I can talk the hind leg off a donkey, but here I was being Polite. I am not Polite with any grace, which meant therefore that I was weighing my words. If people enjoyed the unaccustomed silence, they cannot have enjoyed the tension, which was palpable to at least five of us. The sixth, the other* Lisa, possibly didn't know the situation (I don't remember). She sat next to me and plied me with tedious conversation, which I welcomed since it filled the space.

She worked in HBL with RDC. She droned, "You know I work with RDC. But the funny thing is, for the longest time I didn't know his name is Rich. I thought his name was Frank."

"Well that was a reasonable mistake," I replied, "since I only date people whose names are adjectives."

This caused a general stir in the car and people wanted justification. "Well, Rich," I started off. I omitted Frank's interest, since he didn't count. "And Pat, as in a pat response. And Christian can be an adjective--"

"You didn't date Christian," corrected ABW.
"And whose fault was that, I'd like to know?" I demanded querulously.
"Not yours," ABW agreed.

"And Nick?"
Were these people medievalists or not? I reminded anyone who hadn't taken a course in the history of the English language that English used to have an adjective icke meaning "also" (found in Chaucer, if you don't believe me), and through the migration of n, an icke-name became a nickname.

At this point AFK spoke up, mischieviously: "And Scott?"
"Scottish," I explained.

I don't remember if anyone accepted my theory, but by golly at least it got us talking.

Back to "Midnight Run." Someone who knows about Blake but thinks he's a foolish obsession came into my cube this morning and told me that I should see the movie "Paulie." I grimaced. I've thought about it, but I shy from animal movies. "I know he doesn't die, but how long until he's reunited with the little girl?" Too damn long, apparently. "Would I cry?"
"Well, I don't know how sentimental you are" (I fell forward, embracing my calves and laying my head on my knees: not at all) "but maybe."

"Not to be melodramatic or anything, but I don't like animal movies anyway and if they're separated not because one has rabies or has been eating the crops but because of stupid parents' jealousy, when I don't like parents anyway--" I gaped ichthily--"except you two of course," and he grinned. My Robert DeNiro impression again.

I dropped off books at the 'brary, actually thankful it was closed. I just borrowed Waiting for the Barbarians and two Douglas Couplands from HAO and haven't finished The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye yet. I should have finished the Byatt by now, but I stopped to investigate a literary allusion I missed and then picked up Shampoo Planet. Byatt mentions that "stories of women's lives in fiction are the stories of stopped energies--the stories of Fanny Price, Lucy Snowe, even Gwendolen Harleth, are the stories of Griselda…" (p. 121). The "stopped energy" of Fanny Price? Never will I question that ASB is a god among authors, but the energy, stopped or otherwise, of Fanny Price? If anyone's fated to die in childbed because she has neither strength nor stamina, it is Fanny. Lucy Snowe I understand. But who is Gwendolen Harleth? That stopped me dead in my tracks. And mea maxima culpa, because if I had read Daniel Deronda last year when RJH gave me Imagining Characters : Conversations About Women Writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison, I would have known. And I should have guessed, because Byatt probably wrote Djinn as diverting exercise while writing Imagining Characters (and, I hope, the fourth book of her quartet please), and Gwendolen Harleth belongs with Fanny and Lucy in the books she discusses therein. I have only read those chapters in Imagining Characters about the books I've read; I won't read the Eliot, Cather, and Murdoch chapters until I've read the respective novels.

(Griselda is the protagonist one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Clerk's tale--make sure you pronounce "Clerk" with an "ar," Britishly, when you speak of it. If you ever wonder how women would be regulated if Phyllis Schlafly has her way, read the Clerk's Tale.)

But I can finish Djinn without reading Daniel Deronda and will do so tonight.

What I really like about ASB is that you get so much more from her if you can catch a glimmer--and for most mortals, it's only a glimmer--of everything she brings to her work. One of the first women to attend Cambridge, she's got to be exceptional. And she is, she is, she is! I recently said something about maybe Jane Smiley becoming my new favorite author. Not no way, not no how.

I saw at Amazon that ASB's half-sister has written an introduction to both Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Hmph. I'm sure ASB has better qualifications, but you'll notice--or you would if I would link to them, which I won't--that Margaret Drabble's are only Signet editions. Blecch. Color me petty. I heard from one person that they're not the closest of sisters (or of half-sisters) and immediately I threw myself on ASB's side, as if there are sides, as if ASB would want me there.

* I also have a problem with people pretending a name they do not deserve.

When I met CGK, for instance, I wondered if she deserved to have CLH's name; luckily she does.

DEDBG and I worked together at Scheduling for a year, from when I started halfway through sophomore year to when she left for France halfway through junior year. The next semester, another D started at Scheduling. I was immediately suspicious. I never liked her much, but she wasn't hideous. She did announce to a tableful of people my interest in CXJ, but CXJ numbered among the few who didn't hear her (whew!--because otherwise I was being so subtle about it, you understand).

There was another D one of my favorite women's studies classes, Gender in the Workplace. The professor looked like a cross between Joni Mitchell and a girl in picture books whose name I forget--Molly?--who went off and killed ogres despite everyone telling her girls don't do that, so of course I found her irresistible. The very first day of class, the prof took attendance: "Whatever, D-----." I looked under my lashes at this female two desks away. She looked suspicious. Then when the prof discussed the books on the syllabus, D recommended to the class that we not buy our books from the Co-op but from the new bookstore. Even though as students we were all members of the Co-op and got a cut of its profits, even though the new bookstore was a subsidiary of a conglomerate. Sounded suspicious. During the three-hour class's break, D fled from the room with a pack of cigarettes and returned to the room smelling not merely suspicious but downright undeserving of her name.

This is my prejudice, and I work with it.

It also works backward: I struggle to be objective when meeting people with my mother's name. It took me a couple of years to get over people with SSP's name, and SEB's name is too common for me to entertain any such prejudice, and I never thought of my father with his first name, which at any rate I only heard in its diminutive form, which, believe me, no one calls himself anymore.

RDC's "doctor" from Kaiser just called, at 6:45 on Monday night, with results he promised to deliver on Friday. What's happened in the interim is RDC's story and doesn't belong here, but I can report just on the basis of the phone call that the man is an uneducated twit. He speaks with a Brooklyn accent.

Now, PSA grew up in Brooklyn and you can tell that's where he's from, but he speaks articulately, like an intelligent being with an accent. Compare his brother, who instead of going to Stanford went to Sheepshead Bay Community College, and perhaps you can get an idea of what the "doctor" sounded like.