Vladimir

by Julia May Jonas

I mean a certain kind of old man that I encountered and that has enshrined itself in my mind from youth), they do not know or cannot imagine a kind of world that is not completely and totally guided by a sense of wanting and getting.

My husband wore what he wore because he believed in it—he had lost the sense of costuming and presentation that well-dressed city dwellers naturally possessed. That perambulating sense of always being on display.

As an islander this is why I enjoy a trip to Tokyo hah. Gimme fashion very once in a while!!!

Now, however, young women have apparently lost all agency in romantic entanglements. Now my husband was abusing his power, never mind that power is the reason they desired him in the first place.

My anger is not so much directed toward the accusations as it is toward the lack of self-regard these women have—the lack of their own confidence.

I wish they could see themselves not as little leaves swirled around by the wind of a world that does not belong to them, but as powerful, sexual women interested in engaging in a little bit of danger, a little bit of taboo, a little bit of fun.

I am depressed that they feel so guilty about their encounters with my husband that they have decided he was taking advantage of them. I want to throw them all a Slut Walk and let them know that when they’re sad, it’s probably not because of the sex they had, and more because they spend too much time on the internet, wondering what people think of them.

Ha

“Those are more hidden. I have my bags of bags of bags. But does one always want to be surrounded by so much culture? There’s something exhausting about being constantly bombarded by everyone’s best efforts,” I said.

I desired them because I thought they had the power to tell me about myself.

a transcendentalist Unitarian with strict principles. He seemed vegan. I liked it. I liked his arrogant anger.

Lol

They don’t shy away from talking about the banality of existence that comes with being a mother—the lunches in rest stops, the weariness of the body, the bad and mortifying toys and food and games and lackluster vacations and compromises that fall like an avalanche over the false totem of one’s own self-regard.

Margaret Atwood wrote exciting books that practically lived inside of a uterus.

Lmboooo

Even from fifty feet away I could see the laboriousness of this activity between the two of them—a smashing motion that brought neither pleasure.

The worst

I find the mental image of my husband with his fat thumbs on his phone, texting back and forth with this young woman—who, as far as I knew, had a certain transplant-from-the-city élan and nice and shiny hair, but no real humor—very undignified. When I think of his little excitements at his own quips, the amount of time he spent caressing that device with quivery anticipation when he could have been doing something worthwhile, it all feels grotesque.

Lmboooooo but i get ittttttt

I’m able to see them in progress, and to know them in progress. To know that they don’t yet fully grasp what they are presenting to the world as they present it.

I could tell they prized their own opinion of my hotness, their ability to appreciate hotness in an older woman.

Lmboooooo. This is so accurate.

“We all live and work within structures and institutions,” I told them. “We can’t help it. I work, I live, inside of institutional sexism, racism, and homo- and transphobia, for example. And the difficult thing to understand about these institutions is that we all, however aware of it we are or not, practice sexism, racism, and homo- or transphobia, even if we are female, a person of color, or homosexual or a trans person.

I'm dyingggg. I am frequently thankful that I didn't not pursue academia further as a student or as a career woman. I can't stand the bureaucracy of it all.

I know that you will understand if I beg for your understanding, and respect of my privacy, as I decide for myself, as a hot, brilliant lady, how I will handle my marriage of thirty years.

Lollll

It wasn’t as though I thought I could become more alluring; it was more that I wanted to erect a fortress around my body—a fortress of care and grooming. A fortress of corporeal dignity. I utterly failed, however.

She suffered under the weight of her own exceptionalism, I know she did. Over and over she had to show up to the promise of her own potential.

I said it was because they were so obsessed with themselves they couldn’t imagine existing outside of their viewpoint. John said it came from an anxiety about representing identities and experiences other than their own.

Vlad posited it was because they had grown up online, representing themselves via avatars, building brands and presences and constructions of selves before they even knew that’s what they were doing.

We talked about the rise of populist ideology, both on the ...

Cautiously sidestepping any Title IX discussion, we talked about how different the college used to be—rigorous but freewheeling (drugs, drinking, sex)—and how neutered the kids were now, calling their moms every day, prizing friendship over romance.

UNLV1000Percent

He saw how men who liked men were more attractive to women, perhaps for the assurance that they had a secret life, or deeper, some primate-safety thing.

Vanity has always been my poorest quality. I hate it in myself, and yet am as plagued with it as I am with needing to sleep or eat or breathe. Despite my ability to read long texts quickly, to analyze them adroitly, to practice exegesis with precision, to publish articles and books on literary form, to write two novels, to raise a child, to be a mentor and friend to my students, still all the while I feel trapped in the prison of vanity.

If I can’t be a woman who is effortlessly beautiful, I wish I could be one of those women who, gracefully or ungracefully, move through the world unconsciously, with a kind of peace about their physical form.

Oh, they drove me crazy, being so completely obsessed with whether or not people were represented well, wanting every piece of literature to be some utopian screed of fairness.

Used to drive me crazy as well..they miss the entire point of the text.

It was merely due to my lack of imagination that I scurried on to my master’s and PhD.

They viewed lives, roles, opinions, stations as things that got taken from them if they didn’t act fast enough. Where was the time for thinking? For consideration? For not thinking? For failure?

Always, the touch of my daughter thrilled me. I still marveled at how cellular the love between a mother and child was—how little I had to think of it, how much I simply felt it.

Beautiful.

Some of my students, when they read Victorian or Edwardian novels, would become so angry at all these heroes and heroines whose lives are ruined because they are afraid of embarrassment, but I did not know of any emotion more powerful, more permeating, more upending than that. You could die seemingly pointlessly or loveless to avoid shame, but shame could also make you feel as though you wanted to die, as I still felt, forty-four years later, when I pictured myself on the floor, looking at the beige strands of our wall-to-wall carpet as Alice and the Australian writhed above me.

But you can’t ask someone who feels like a victim, as John most certainly did, to live apologetically.

Florence was the one yelling now.

Fuck off Flo

I held out a raft for students at the beginning, which they all boarded, and once they got on I skiffed them down the river of experience, pointing out things they should notice, on your left, thematic resonance, on your right, imagery, giving them a chance to reflect, to notice for themselves.

They were overpraised and overpressured. There were teenage billionaires, twelve-year-old YouTube stars, and no jobs for them once they graduated. Once Trump became president, the illusion, the one imparted to them comfortably from the driver’s seat of a minivan, the idea that the world would slowly get better, that “the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice,” was upended.

Ah yes..the liberal arts prof at peak cliche

Or something. I shook off my grandiose thoughts. I didn’t know them or understand their world at all.

Lol

I should walk around with the red letters AW, for Adulterer’s Wife, pinned on my breast as performance art.

Ha

Seized with an urge to consume, I went to an upscale butcher shop that had recently opened in the area and bought expensive T-bone steaks from a very handsome, well-muscled butcher. I tried to imagine him tracing the tip of his knife over the curves of my body to cheer myself up, but the fantasy failed to displace my doldrums.

Lol

You don’t get through a PhD with a concentration in women’s literature without encountering some New Age–ery, and drinking could bring out my mystical tendencies.

Lol

The Apartment

Nabokov,

I mean hes really the stereotypical go to

As a professor one shouldn’t overestimate one’s importance in the lives of students; they care about their friends and lovers far more than they care about you. It is critical to remember that. Whether they love or despise you, you are usually not much more than a minor figure in their dramatic landscape.

“Would I ever have pursued a teacher? No,” I said, “but everyone has the privilege of having experiences and making mistakes and being forgiven.” She sat back and huffed. Hurt dimmed her expression and she took a few deep breaths to calm herself. “No, they definitely don’t.”

Oh boy lol

“Well, I didn’t want to read your book. And then I was very jealous of you when I first started it. But then I realized it was very good, and when something’s very good, it doesn’t make me jealous, it makes me happy that it exists.”

I would wait to send it from his phone later tonight, with the hope that Cynthia might already be asleep.

Bitch iz you crazy?

“Professor,” he said. “I didn’t hand in my final exam. Am I in trouble?” I reeled. I thought about the phrase “turned off”

No. Like. I get it. Hes lameeee

And—this was the most embarrassing—I realized my fantasy had relied upon me being a sexy colleague, an attractive peer. I had imagined passion, something wordless and animal and back-brained.

As if men who took advantage of women ever thought about how those women perceived them.

remember how cruel we were about Monica Lewinsky, who we mocked as unworthy of an affair with Bill Clinton, though when I look back at old photographs I realize she was voluptuous and strong-featured and beautiful. Still, he was the most powerful man in the world at that time, and we shook our heads at him for not at least giving his attention to a nineties-style model or a film star.

She was done dirty for sureeeee

“In a repulsive way?” I remembered a fellow cohort in my graduate program all those years ago—male and tall and reasonably attractive—who told me he pursued ugly women because he was fascinated by the grateful way they made love.

Lmbo stopp