I know it don’t thrill you; I hope it don’t kill you.
Late this summer, I discovered the university library to be an ideal place to work. Its peculiar off-season emptiness pleased me; the place was near-silent except for the occasional off-color exchange between bored summer employees and constant dark hiss of the a/c. All of this contributed to the illusion that I wasn’t really supposed to be there, or moreover, like no one would ever find me there, which made it the perfect place to write.

I like doing work under the illusion that I’m getting away with something, and I like to work at places and times that encourage that belief—a local diner in the wee morning hours, a crowded coffee shop, abandoned classrooms or the departmental office no one ever uses early on a Friday evening, anything to encourage the idea that what I’m doing isn’t work, but some sneaky pleasure.

So I blame my current block on the return of the students to town. I sit and look at these shoddy, rambling, absolutely no-holds-barred first drafts I cranked out in those days of what felt like writing splendor, and have no idea where to cut or how to fix them. And how, and how-! they desperately need it.

And I can’t face them now, not in these days of rapid repopulation by the baseball caps and cellphones and George Hamilton tans. And it’s not just the undergrads. Knowing that my own colleagues are coming back to town feels just as paralyzing. “Go away!” I think when I see their friendly faces and field their friendly Hi-How’re-yous, even in my mind. (Everyone that is, except you, Henshaw.)

Everyone, all this humanity, returning and wresting the town’s character back with it, from weird little beachtown to collegetown once again. And bringing the expectations I knew would befall this experience eventually, with it.

Welcome back to the schoolyear, Henshaw. The very last one.

Right now, when people ask me what I'm reading, I tell them this book from the 1960s on the history of the funeral industry. That or that I’m just trying to plow through the February and March issues of Harpers, which arrived at the same time after I finally got myself a damn subscription. Or sometimes I’ll say I’m reading the latest AWP Bulletin or this December ’07 issue of Glimmertrain, or George Saunders’ The Brain-Dead Megaphone, which is truly excellent, or sometimes, if that “sometimes” is in the past two days, I might say Tobias Wolfe’s This Boy’s Life, which is also true. Also usually always true: I’m reading both forty papers by undergraduate students and essays and short stories by my fellow MFA programmers.

Really true: I want a cabin to just sit in and read and read books and magazines only and to fall asleep and then maybe wake up and read some more and then maybe eat some meat loaf and mashed potatoes while listening to a little Silver Jews’ Bright Flight and drinking a little wine at the end of the day and fantasizing about doing a needlepoint project involving Silver Jews lyrics, which, whoops, I guess I’m doing, now.
Instead of reading.

Also reading this ongoing ethnographic account of the habits of white people, which you’ve probably seen by now since you’re a thousand times more tech-savvy than I, Henshaw. Anyway, I find it startlingly accurate.

Bad lyrics good life
I’ve been listening to a lot of music with very bad lyrics lately. Interpol and The Rentals. I love, love, love this music; you just have to plug your ears and go “la la la” when you start thinking about the words (“Would you like to be my missus and in future with child?”) you’re singing.

Things both are and are not as stressful as I’ve made them out to be here. I have a number of ideas for the thesis, and I’m plugging away on quite a few. It’s just that something someone said yesterday in a class, is true: Researching and writing are polar opposite activities. So while I’m all into the research end of things, I see no daily output in the writing, and that… Well, it’s just a big ol’ bummer when everyone around me is coming to workshops with pages and pages and with gleaming faces, “Oh, the writing was just so great, this weekend.” This weekend, for me? Well, the writing About Things Completely Unrelated to the Thesis was pretty good. But even that didn’t amount to much, quantitatively. And the poets. The poets-! With their, “Oh, I wrote two poems this week.” A poem. I am jealous of that unit of measurement.

My head just might explode the very next time I am forced to hear the phrase "deceptively simple." Especially as applied to writing. You, sir or madam, are the one who is deceptively simple.

The youth. And: Not freaking out.

I haven’t written here in a while. I am writing, mind you, only it's mostly gems such as these, on my students' papers: “What’s the larger significance of writing about this acid trip? It seems like it could possibly be one layer in a larger story, but as it stands now, I’m left wanting more.”

“Your grandfather’s death is a great concept for this essay. What would make it even better: Some scenes. An exercise to try: Sit down and consider just one scene during this five year span you cover here.”

Truth: I’m not left wanting to read anything more about anybody’s drug trip, dead grandfathers or the puddles of tears “I could of swum in” tears and more tears dripping, dripping to the floor at their “pint sized feet.” Truth? I just want to be left alone. I think this is Phase Two of grad school. Phase One is a head-snapping adjustment period. Phase two is Leave me Alone with my Thesis. I think Phase Three might involve the acquiring of an eating disorder, or perhaps psychosis. Worth the thousands in loans a year by itself. Because those experiences sell books like mad.

There's terror in paradise.
There’s this awful movie called Snake Island that came before Snakes on a Plane, about this island, see, and these cruiseship people who get trapped there, and, well, there are these snakes.
Tricky plot.
Well, it was while watching this movie that my friends and I were able to define the classic answer to the horror movie question of Who gets killed next? The answer is always the people who deserve it, because they’re either:
A – Having sex. Sex that’s enhanced visually onscreen with saline or silicone, and, more to the point, sex that’s frivolous and naughty, because we Puritans love to see the frivolous sex-havers getting their due.
B – Complaining. Tacky mustachioed whiners are always the second to get killed by the snakes. Followed by all other brands of whiners.

So, to warn one another that we were about to start bitching and therefore probably deserved to get bitten by all manner of serpents, our shorthand became, “Okay, this is totally Snake Island territory, but…”

So, it’s Snake Island time. I've warned you.

Whatever I devote my attention to, I feel guilty; I should be doing something else. Whatever I’m doing becomes diminished in its importance as the responsibilities I’m not turning my attention to loom up and, just outside the corner of my vision, become these huge, amorphous shapes, impossible to gauge and harder still, to overcome; there will always be more.
I should be grading papers, I should most definitely not be grading papers; I should be writing, but writing what? Is it for my thesis? No? Well, then I should be doing research on my thesis, but that feels like nothing but noodling around on the internet most of the time. (And just what has this or that particular goofy little article to do with my focus, anyway? If the answer's not immediately clear, I'm wracked with anxiety.) So, soon I’m back to working on the paper due Wednesday instead. It’s cut and dry; six pages. Thesis, paragraphs, conclusion, all assigned, all straightforward, all utterly forgettable.

When I was in nursery school, I got this evaluation from a teacher: “Alice gets utterly absorbed in whatever it is she’s working on, but has a hard time moving on to a different task.” This was my problem as a reporter, too. I like working on one thing, not twelve. Grad school is like being a reporter, only on acid. No, I don’t know what I mean by that. I need to get back to work, now.

In Which the Fish goes Inland for a Swim
There are periods in your life that feel more stagnated than others, and then there are periods in which so much is changing so rapidly that you don’t even have time to think about how to classify what’s going on.

I met a woman at dinner tonight who reminded me of this. I introduced myself and she said,
“Oh, we’ve met.”
When?
Five years ago, it turns out, back when I was a student at this same conference I’m mentoring at this week. This woman was a mentor at the time, and she remembered me. Flabbergasted I was, at this. I swear, I don’t even remember me, back then. So much has changed.

The conference is taking place in the town where I went to college. The funny thing is that I spent the days preceding this week just dreading it.
“I don’t work in media any more!” I thought. “How can I possibly mentor some young kid on how to do it??” So many of these completely illogical thoughts. (It’s been what, nine months since I was last “in media”?)

Once I arrived, I realized that these fears came as a result of a dip in courage that I’ve experienced only lately. During my months in Beachtown, I have felt, in large part, rather stagnated in many areas of life in which I want to grow. It’s true that I’ve been faced with the potentially self-esteem-annihilating challenge of being in a new geographic location, doing a completely new thing every day, surrounded by completely new people. But then you also have to take into account that (at the risk of offending those of you who are one of these, err, people), there’s the fact that most of these new people are younger, and lack the same brand of maturity/drive and self-confidence that characterized folks whom I surrounded myself with back in ‘Lanta. I’m not counting my very best friends in Beachtown. So chill, ya’ll.
However, the general climate in any creative writing program is gonna be more laissez-faire than that in an urban journalistic environment. Put that program on the freaking beach and boom: You have the possibility for extreme stagnation for goofuses like me, who rely an awful lot on my immediate environment to supply get-up-and-go. So the energy is lacking and you’ve neglected to find a way to refuel it and you start to lag, to be less than the Kicker-of-Ass you know you are. Then you start to blame yourself for your own lagging, and the next thing you know, you’re thinking all sorts of illogical things. Things like, “What if I don’t remember how to use that piece of equipment I used every day for four years?”

Cut to tonight. A night out, after a great day of mentoring and, well, general kicking of ass. To a healthily beer-enhanced dinner out with a few of the coordinators of this program, and a fiery discussion about the future of communication and news and media, what it should be and what our respective roles should be. Tra. And la. We got there around 6:30 and started right in on this talk and at some point shortly thereafter, I looked up from the table for a gulp of air and glanced at the clock. It was past nine. And I wondered: Where the hell had I been hiding myself all these months?

I haven’t jumped to the conclusion that I’ve made the wrong decision in leaving Small Publication for grad school. I just need to find a way to remind myself of the wider world that I love while I’m immersed in academia and the strange social milieu of Beachtown. To remind myself, that while I love the time I have available now, and the things I am learning; the wider world I prefer is still there and it’s still mine. I don’t have to completely unplug from one, to benefit from the other.

By the time I got back to my hotel, I was in this weird, rare state of complete ecstasy with every conceivable aspect of my surroundings. There were these lovely, intelligent, snappy people I’d just eaten with. And then there was the fact that I was driving through my college town, which is also my favorite place forever and ever amen in the land.

How I love it here. I drove back to the hotel from dinner with the windows open, turning down each street by instinct, amazed how well I still knew the way. Here’s the tree-lined street I used to bike to campus on a-million-and-a-half years ago, I thought, and look, there’s a pack of old hippies on bikes, now. Here’s that street right through the center of campus and look how nothing’s changed! I drive right by some girl crossing that street carrying a backpack and the thought floors me: she’s having her college experience right now. The thought is both heartening and lonely-making: I don’t own this place. It never was mine. Still I drive through it; I catch the air in my hand as I surf it out the window. I let it go again.

V is also for Vroom.
I have developed a full-fledged non-trial version of foot-tapping, sighing-aloud senioritis at work. It worked out fine this week because we had these special events taking place during which I didn’t have to do most of my usual duties. Instead I worked on an extra-fun special project and then did things like get my hair cut and have lunch with friends.

And it works out even better now, because I’m going on a trip for a week and a half with Marshall. I originally planned this trip in a fit of “Oh, dear lord help me, for now I must visit all the schools whose MFA programs I’d consider going to!” at the beginning of the month, before realizing a mere week later that you can learn all you need to know over the phone, and realizing also that most of these places had to know whether I was going there before the end of March, anyway.

But all that doesn’t matter because now we have two plane tickets to Arizona booked for next week. Leaving from Pittsburgh. So tomorrow, we take my wee speedy Honda from Attalanta to the tiny, bustling metropolis of Grifton, NC to see my grandmother. Then we drive to check out this beach town where it looks like I’ll be spending the next three years. I hope there are good music venues there. I hope there are interesting people there. Hell, I hope there are any music venues there. From there, it’s back to the car and up to Pgh for all of one(1) day in which I will regale Marshall with the best parts of the city of my birth. Places like the Southside and the inclines and the creepy Wabash Tunnel – which was built and then never used and so its dark, vacant entrance looms, all toothless maw’like on the side of Mount Washington facing the city. Effectively scares the bejeebers out of me whenever I see it. (Don’t ask me why. My sister has a phobia of empty swimming pools. Look at her and point and laugh; not at me.) (Except if you do, I’ll sock you.)

After that it’s Arizona to see our good friends who live there and also the Grand Canyon, for which I am totally excited and for which I have been given three very specific and separate orders from family-members and friends for various tchochkes.

And then, flying back to Pittsburgh and driving d’reckly back to Attalanta.

And yeah, phew.

And you know it will.
So all this starts tomorrow. It’s midnight now and I’m too antsy to go to sleep, so I’m getting important last-minute things done, like making sandwiches for the road and sprinkling catnip on Danger Cat’s new bed and observing his bizarre reaction (Sniffing followed by washing followed by rolling around, then abrupt sitting up and more washing. Is my cat actually having fun or is he freaking out? Do I need to put on some Traffic to chill him out? I can’t believe I bought this legally at fricking Petco.) Also making important travel mix tapes, err, cds, whatever. Which I adore because they adhere perfectly to my Principle of Nonsnottiness With the Music: See, you can just put on songs that are terrible that you love without one iota of consequence, because the sole fact that you’re in the car and punchy because it’s been five hours somehow excuses the presence of Stephen Stills’ “Southern Cross” on your Road Tape. And the fact that you know all those lyrics. (For, why –yes. I, in fact, have been looking around the world. For that woman-girl. With a love that can endure. )

Ai-yi-yi. See ya laters, taters.

Ex. Huh. Lation. (In Which Alice Recalls She’s a Self-Powered Engine and Makes a Choice)
Hi.
Wasn’t dead; just down some rabbithole-thing, there. Just been busy learning a number of things. Here’s one: No, they were not cold and hard and mean at Number One Nonfiction program. In fact, not only do they have an amazing faculty: People who write regularly for magazines like Harpers, like the New York Times Sunday Magazine, magazines I want to write for, but those faculty members are also gosh darn cool. This is how I know this: They liked me. Funny how that works, huh? Had my head swirling and waltzing some Cinderella dance of the veiled promise of future agents and connections-

I was infatuated. Clearly, this was the place for me. Clearly, there was love there.

And then I checked out the price-tag on that big, wet kiss.

And then I plugged that into an online loan calculator. And fricking yowza and ouch. Spent the next week trying to see if I could scrounge funding from somewhere to go there. Became, how shall we say…a tad obsessed? A tad self-absorbed? A tad um, delusional?

But I’ve come down from that. Concluded it just won’t happen. This morning I called up School formerly known as Choice Number Two and you know what? Not so bad. In fact, I was reminded: pretty darn great. And located somewhere it’s not cloudy from October through April, either. And everyone I’ve talked to there is so gosh darn enthusiastic about the program, it’s nuts. And? Psssst-! They tell me I’ll have fun there. Fun? Writing? Wha-? Oh, yeah…

Sometimes I forget that small point: That when I write well, it’s my little secret garret; it’s more than fun; it has nothing to do with me and nothing to do with now; it’s better than chocolate and as good as sex and puts the same stupid, secret smile on my face when I’m all alone, hours later, thinking about it. And it’s been mine all my life and no matter where I go it will continue to be mine and – (gasp) – the point was supposed to be this: two or three years to write. Um, yeah? Remember that?

So off I go at the end of July not to Arizona, not to Pittsburgh or Massachusetts, but just several hours away to the coast, to a school at my favorite state. Two hours from my grandma and with a damn teaching assistantship to teach fricking Creative Writing, to boot. This is not a let-down. This is good. Good, good, good. No slush, no grey, no fears of never being able to eat again post-graduation.

Back in the world. Hello.

I’ve Just Been Through the Love Blender! ! !*
The most brilliant thing I’ve heard in the past few days came from my mother. She told me that I’m at the point where I’m choosing among wallpaper patterns. I can’t really screw it up; I decided back at Sternbergers that these were the designs I liked best, but get ‘em home, and suddenly scalloped shells or abstract wavey things become life or death.

I should enjoy this. I’m somewhere I’ve never been before and possibly will not arrive at ever again, or at least for a long while: This moment of being courted not by one entity, but by four; four different MFA programs, all of whom want to know Where I Stand in my Decision Process, all of whom want to know, what are your questions? What are they? What? And act all surprised and miffed when I let on that I’m considering other programs with timetables that vary from theirs. They make sharp nasal exhalations and say Well, fine. Whatever. Just, call us, then. In the meantime, [cold voice] what other questions do you have?
So I ask one or two but then my mind goes blank which proves I was never any kind of journalist or decision-maker.

So, which is it?
Is it the midwestern school with the people who say, “Oh, Alice. We just love your work and all you do and might I mention you have a lovely phone voice plus you’re pretty. How do we know? We can just feel it,” like I’m Truman Capote and not just someone with the four essays I sent them plus the work on Small Publication’s website. Who insist that They’re the Program for me, no matter what my question is. Example:
Alice: Does your program teach any x-type of nonfiction? Because I’m really interested in that.
School: Oh, whatever we do, you know, I’m just certain that we are the perfect fit for you because you’re so neat and we are too.

Is it Fancy ‘n Cold, the place with the Name in Nonfiction, the place that won’t offer me an assistantship, seemingly because I should just be glad I got in? That shrugs and says, “We don’t care if you say yes or no. Because only 2 ½ people got into our fancyland program and 50 more are waitlisted, so if you decide to come then, yes, the connections here with Harpers and Jesus Christ could guarantee you Fancy Fame, but on the other hand, we coddle no one and it’s up to you to figure everything out while you’re here and don’t expect to actually receive an ounce of sympathy or support for the next two years, furthermore there is the distinct chance that a fellow student will actually cut your throat while you’re busy writing and guzzling Tums.”

Or is it the place whose director I totally hit it off with on a personal level on the phone? It doesn’t make sense to go somewhere because you’d like to have coffee with one guy.

And then there’s the Place Out West. And there’s Calexico-lovin’, Never-Been-West, romantic me. (except California. Whole different enchilada, and I flew.) “Ooh! Cowboy hats! Okay, I’ll go there,” a voice says.

And yes, I’m considering financial thises and thatses, and yes, I’m going over every little detail about who teaches where and yes, I’m getting the names of current students to talk with. And yes, yes and yes. But basically, it’s wallpaper time. And so, I’d like to open this up to you, dear reader. What do you think it should be? Where should Alice go? I await your sage wisdom. Please, comment below.

(*“Love Blender.” See Love is Hell: A Cartoon Book by Matt Groening. Copyright 1982-1986. Pg 2)

What You Wish For
A few years ago, I hated Atlanta.
I worked in a coffeeshop where most of the people I saw day in and out were customers who could afford to lay down three or five bucks every morning on some coffee and steamed milk, could afford to take fifteen minutes to stand around with neighbors and friends and chat and laugh and catch up, could afford this little world, this community paid for with this hot paper cup they grasped between their hands. I was jealous of them.

There were also those, yes, who swept in on their cellphones and swept out in their Miatas, who threw their bills down each day and barked out their orders or worse, waved their hands in a manner both impatient with and dismissive of the baristas who knew their drinks by memory. There were those who were rude or mean, and - worse somehow - there were those who were friendly, who would strike up conversations day after day. We became fond of them and felt the flower of friendship begin to spring up, a bud that never saw the light of day – doomed because, all things considered, there we were behind the counter, and there they were on the other side, and sooner or later all it came down to was whether we’d toasted the bagel well enough or whether the silver canister was out of half and half. There was nowhere for those friendships to go. They were stunted from the get-go.

I took that dynamic with our customers and the resulting Comrades-on-a-Lifeboat, Fuck-‘Em-All dynamic with my coworkers and, on four or five hours of sleep every night plus days spent on my feet eating muffins and drinking caffeinated beverages, I carried that outlook into the rest of my life. I was a bike rider in a world of shiny Cooper Minis that zoomed by too fast and splashed water on my legs and butt as I pedaled – me, a tattooed, tank-topped clerk with unshaven armpits, always buzzed or crashing from caffeine.

Who was also at odds with those lifeboat-comrades. The coworkers/friends/only people I ever really hung out with because they were the only ones who understood every detail of daily life. I was the girl who had gone to college - who had loved college - who respected authority and was shitty at poker and missed rules and health insurance and routine and talked with her parents for long stretches every week or two and got along quite well with all her kin. I felt patted-on-the-head and was patted on the head by coworkers who joked good-naturedly over Ambitious Alice and thought me naïve and sweet and a tad dizzy. And I had a boyfriend with whom I lived and fought over about money and loved madlymadly. And he was one of the lifeboat-comrades, which complicated matters. And we hated Atlanta and its car culture and its nouveau riche tackiness and one day he did something about it and left. And then things changed.

I started working full-time at Small Publication and left the coffeeshop. I started spending time with people who valued passionate careers and who weren’t afraid of trying for something they might fail at. And then I started popping into the coffeeshop a few days a week when I could afford it. I’d go to parties where I met people who did everything under the sun and made their homes here Atlanta. It wasn’t just the place they lived while they squirreled away money. They were writers and city planners and accountants and bartenders and cheese purveyors and ACLU lawyers and massage therapists and hardware store clerks and high school teachers and international fax technicians - and everyone had something to say and I joined a rock band and I learned to knit and I learned still more about this city and state as I wrote stories and interviewed people doing still more fascinating things here in this town. I went jogging and bike riding on weekends along trails that run through town and hiked Stone Mountain. I started dating a very, very sweet man. I started spending more time with The Best Nieces in the World. I started participating in activities at my Unitarian church.

Now, all of a sudden, I have the opportunity to leave. I found out Friday I got into one of the top nonfiction MFA programs in the country at the University of Pittsburgh, and suddenly, it’s real; it’s a voice and it’s saying You can go. It’s a ticket.

And I will go. I’ll take it. I’ll either go there or to one of my other top choices; I’ll figure it out as responses continue to trickle in. But now it’s not so easy.

Today I had lunch with a guy with StoryCorps, an amazing oral history project that, err, Small Publication is hosting during its stay here in Atlanta, and I was telling him about The Beltline project and about a thousand-one quirky, cool things here in and around Atlanta to make sure he does before he leaves, and I was a god damned motormouth; a bouncy, bubbly – possibly a bit dizzy-sounding – motormouth. Someone who sounded like she really loved her town. Her town.

Please, don’t let this feeling end.
Last summer I was sitting outside in my old backyard in the gentle, purply-pink twilit air, weaving a wildflower garland and drinking a tall glass of lemonade with my friend Clara. The evening was sweet, our futures felt limitless and I was rambling to her all about applying to MFA programs the coming winter. Clara said to me, “Okay, but don’t get all stressed.” I looked at her, smiled and threw another length of garland over her pretty, pretty head, laughing. She sighed. “No, you will get all stressed, but don’t completely lose your mind, okay?”

I thought: How bad could it be? Once I get the business of recommendations and transcripts and GRE testing out of the way, I revise some of my actually-good writing and make it the shiniest it can be and send it in to these places along with some paperwork, right?

But it’s December now, and I think I’m going crazy. I am, however, enjoying it, in part. I am no longer carefree and outdoorsy; instead I spent night after night cocooned in my dimly-lit, poorly heated bedroom with the glare of my laptop and my own words, my lights to the future. Instead of living now, I am bent on the months and years ahead. I am writing my way there. And I like having this crazy-making project. I like the challenge of writing 30 pages for this school, 50 pages for that one; I yawn and stretch and Buddy Holly Dangercat looks up from where he’s perched behind my deskchair and yells at me. I wander to the kitchen in my flannel pajamas and bear slippers for a cup of tea. It’s sleeting outside and Buddy Holly follows, slinking himself about my legs and just continuing to yell on and on, so I scoop him up and tell him about the future I’m crafting for the both of us: a move to a new town, two years of writing ahead and no one at the helm of this but me and me.

That would be how it is, if it weren’t for the other people involved, that is. That’s where it begins to feel like I’m being genuinely tested. This is where I begin to understand the insane-gleam in the eyes of others I’ve spoken with while they were going through this same process, in years past. Because if it were just up to me, I would be rocking this thing. Instead, it’s also ETS, the testing system in charge of the GRE, an exam a few of the schools I’ve applied to require. The testing end of it is just fine, but the score-reporting department? where there’s actually like, an office with people? That part’s run by orangutans or some other very un-cute primate. Some un-cute primate with creepy anti-social tendencies.

Sample phone-call between Alice and ETS:
Alice: Yeah, hi. I got a letter from Wainscoting College telling me that they still haven’t received my GRE scores. And I actually mailed a score-report request to ETS a month ago, so I’m just calling to see what happened.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Social?
Alice: What? Oh. 999-9999-99.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Okay hold on.
Alice: [Waits. Is standing outside of office in the cold on cellphone because her school-applying process, which takes up Every Single Spare Second outside of work, is not known to her colleagues at Small Pub’. Paces ol’ crappy driveway.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [Stops pacing.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Please hold.
Alice: Oh, okay. [Resumes pacing. 20 seconds pass. Sighs.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Ma’am?
Alice: Yes? [As paces.]
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: Sorry for the hold. They were throwing their excrement at me again. Anyway, we shows no record of having received a score request from you.
Alice: [Stops pacing.]But, um, that’s really weird because I mailed a score request, weeks ago.
Phone operator enslaved by evil monkey: [Pauses.] Sorry. You can fax in a request, and we’ll start processing it now.
Alice: [Sighs.] Okay. What’s the number?...

So I fax the request all on-the-sly-like from my office fax machine, wondering if ETS’ll remove one of the charges once my original mailed request gets found beneath the moldy old banana peels or bamboo shoots under Head Monkey’s desk and is processed accidentally, next April.

A half-hour later, I call back to ask if they received the fax. The enslaved operator puts me on hold again because they keep yanking at her hair and then running away while screeching at the tops of their lungs. “Goddamn it,” she mutters and finally asks me which number I faxed the new request to. I tell her and she says, “Well, that’s all the way across the building, so I can’t tell you if it got here or not.” And she actually tells me to call back *the next day,* because by then, they’ll have it on file, if it arrived.

Which I do and am then told by a third enslaved operator, the Least Sympathetic of All, that they received it, and it will take them APPROXIMATELY 20 DAYS to process before they can mail my scores anywhere. The deadline for Wainscoting College is like, totally in five days. Which I tell him, in a manner that I’m sure comes across as just ever-so-seeeee-lightly petulant and sniveling. And he responds, “Well, we can’t do anything about that,” in a way that makes it crystal clear he’s looking at the clock on the wall over the banana tree across from his cube and thinking, I-get-out-of-this monkey-ruled-hellhole-in-15-minutes. Which I would be, too. But then I went and got angry, anyway, in that way that you do when you just start talking and you can actually feel your voice spiraling out of control in perfect accord with your emotions. Like, if they were a figure-skating couple, your voice and your feelings, they just completed the most beautiful creepily-identical tandem triple-lutzes, ever, and then made identical smashing leaps straight into the glass window and got blinded for life in the exact same way. That’s how it was: this dawning clarity of just how goddamned S.O.L. I was. Which I added at the end of my crazy-person diatribe, in a really cool and likeable way before hanging up like a big old wanker: “Well, I guess I’m just totally S.O.L., aren’t I?” Click. That was so freaking awesome of me.

On the whole, this process is really helping me get out in the world and be a real woman.