Of Doubt and Dialysis

It is Spring Break and cogency reigns. I cannot help but chortle a little bit when I think on those lines mainly because Spring Break, for most people my age, is a break away from the ordered confines of school-work. This semester, I have discovered the Breaking Point of The System. I have elucidated how much one can effectively cram into The System until it implodes. What began, in January, as an extremely ordered and extremely busy experiment in juggling 28 credits and committee work along with teaching two and my job (and lest I forget, the imperious shadow of The Great Graduate School Search superimposed upon this already overproduced scheme) began to descend into utter pandemonium in about a month or so.

Chaucer was wrong: February is the cruellest month. At least, in my Spitsbergen it is. By February, I had done things I had never envisioned to be a part of my academic career (kindergarten up) and, perhaps a little snootily, attributed to a Certain Kind of Student. I had a dropped a class, and  descended  to the mellower, saner level of 25 credits. I had found myself in a professor's office making up an exam that I had skipped. I had asked for extensions on papers. The most macabre aspect of all of these was that I didn't care. And I still don't. And I know this. I am very aware that I do not care, and that I should, but I still don't. I remember how Hamlet sighed to me once, "I hate being so self-aware! Are we too self-aware?" Yes, indeed we are, and it's a bitch-and-a-half. I wished I was benighted, but I have been raised to give a shit and that was what was causing all the dissonance. So, indulge me and my dissonant places, constant reader! They help me cope.

My first explanation is that I am not there. Not receiving. Out of commission. Closed for Deconstruction. And I haven't been in: I've been visiting graduate programmes. I make it sound so glamorous, but it's actually quite pathetic. I did visit and interview at two (of eleven) places that I was invited to, and the rest I visited in dreams and visions. How can a brain so suffused with otherworldly musings be coaxed to ponder about trifles like inflation and the best ways to run electrophoresis gels? Preposterous! Why am I so in dreams? That is what The Great Graduate School Search does for and to one: as rejections pile up and pithy phrases like "not enough places in our programme..." and "not enough research experience" incorporate themselves into your daily ritual and rosary, one begins to feel lied to. All those people: parents, mentors, professors, friends who told you things like, "You're so clever!", "Any programme would be lucky to have you!" sound overwrought and platitudinous in the face of what admissions officials have to say. This fun train-of-thought calamitously clashes into this other cerebral locomotive that asks one why one prizes the opinions of those who've known one for ten minutes above the opinions of those who've known one for years. This, in turn, leads to agonising self-communion about perceptions, self-image and self-loathing. And you want me to do homework?! Ha!

My second line of reasoning, and I dwelt upon this one briefly, is that if I am not going to have a future why not give everything up now? If I am supposed to be working this hard for a cause that doesn't want me anyway, then why bother? It was after a week of thinking so that I realised that I was sounding like one of Those Teenagers, so I stopped. Of course I shall have a future! Right? Right. Yeah.

This journey hasn't been what I envisioned it to be. Poor, poor Miss Woodhouse in the big cities of Madison and New York: from botched interviews to amazing, connective ones; from social successes to gaffes of an intoxicated variety, it has all been surreal, like a kind of movie wherein you're watching the film and performing in it too. And yet, there is uncertainty. The uncertainty of agreements writ in water. What's a yes without the money? And you still want me to do homework?! I shan't!

Or so I thought. I actually did plod through homework and made decent grades on things that, by my standards, deserved to be substituted for toilet paper. 'Plod' is the perfect verb for this: I used to flit, pirouette and trippingly stamp out an elegant staccato of progress as I worked into the night. Now I lunge around drunkenly and half-ass things. Like that sentence where I just used "half-ass" as a verb. Melancholy at its most self-imposed is what I was going for, really. I fear this, truly I do, this transmogrifying into a monster of bitter self-concern, ugly pride and self-righteous "Pauvre moi!" tears. Of turning into a Fosca!

"No. You're coming home with me!"

What you've just read is the phrase that, to invoke a cliche, saved me from myself. A very angry Hamlet averred that I was: a) descending a spiral of self-destruction b) going to spend all of break obsessing about graduate programmes and make further progress down aforementioned spiral c) in need of home-cooking, home-loving, freedom from fighting the hours, and a chance to live them. I resisted: I could stay in the Spitsbergen, get some of my papers started (unlikely), get a head start on R.A. things (unlikelier) and pre-study for exams in two weeks (Ha!). Sound reasoning, but Hamlet was having none of it, and I am glad I listened to him. These days, I spend my days running around the Downtown of Hamlet's True City, skinny tie flying, latte in hand, trying to get to the theatre in time. I reconnect with old friends as we navigate around the skyway system that connects every building of relevance in the city and I do not think about graduate school. I do not think about who got in where whilst I am left waiting with uncertainties. I do not think about calling programmes who are "still reviewing" and asking them why they hate me.

I took in a charming production of 'The Winter's Tale' today, and I thought that the little boy who, with wisdom beyond his years, pipes up, "A sad tale's best for winter" surmised this situation perfectly, for winter brings with it uncertainty, so much so that we may begin to believe that we may never know spring again.

Until the flowers grow,
GossipGuy.

Di Cieli E Giardini

The sky was a cocktail: a liquid purple intermixed with orange. The moon and stars waited patiently as the sun finished its torch-song and took its bows; the second act was to be theirs. Or was it to be a brand new play? Who's to say? And I? I was in my dorm room, getting ready for an evening out on the town. It was my first, my first evening as an adult, taking in the vespertine pleasures that were only afforded to those of une certain age and time to spare. I had dressed carefully to create a "Oh, this old thing?" kind of nonchalance. I hummed and half-sang of love, moons and first glances. It was a vain sort of a song, it painted me in a light of utter handsomeness. Hubris, some would say.

Giddy and laughing, I was with a very dear friend with whom I had only exchanged a total of two words before this, and that too in a microbial genetics symposium, so you can guess the level of that conversation! But that night, she was my best friend. We hugged, we laughed, we sang 'Only Girl' on top of our lungs and we flirted with bar-tenders. We haven't spoken since, but that is quite another story. My environs, at first, made me unhappy. It was semi-dark, crowded and people were boorish. But, my clothes were complimented and I met so many people I knew! Even strangers talked and talked and talked and flirted. I was warm and rubicund with the attention. Some of it was unwelcome, but, hey, it's a night on the town, right? Maybe that wasn't meant to be an ass-grab, maybe it was an accident, and accidents happen. Such thrilling ones are especially welcome! I have no qualms in admitting that I loved being one of the belles of the ball. It was heady and intoxicating, like so much else that evening.

I have now discovered that boisterousness/revelry are in inverse proportionality to qualms/inhibitions. Of course, this has been well postulated and documented, but I was certain that it wouldn't apply to me. Why should it? Level-headed and sensible that I am! Laugh with me, please, I urge you! It was around the time that my boisterousness had reached its upper-limit (following that my qualms were only constitutively present) that I met Morris Townsend: handsome, urbane, vain and witty. Just like the Morris Townsend of the novel. He stilled the air, and I felt like a child. The conversation was lively and flirtatious, and I felt his vanity seep into me. I was the chosen one! The one who Morris lavished with all his attention. I felt his vanity seep into me, and I felt handsome, urbane, vain and witty. The lightest of touches, the act of leaning against one's shoulder, the ticklish whispers, I found my rapacious flesh hungering for more. Then, it seemed alright. Natural, even.

Having traded the smoky seductiveness for a short walk in the snow followed by a cavernous carnality of an apartment/office, there was just a slight ripple in the illusory joys that the evening had afforded. Morris Townsend had picked a Catherine Sloper after all, and suddenly, I was abandoned out in the snow with nowhere to go, and my mind yearning for sleep and warmth. I hurriedly called Hamlet who rescued me, and took me home. I don't what would have become of me if Hamlet were not around. I still think with the warmest gratitude of his mock-anger and his, "Fuck, no. You're staying here." when I insisted on returning to the dorm.

But return, I did. In the previous night's clothes. My residents, who saw me, knew exactly what may have chanc'd....

I hate this post. I hate it so much. It's so overdone, with its imagery and nod to Henry James. I always do this! I always intellectualize-dramatize something that doesn't deserve to be so. Poor Gossip Guy and his growing pains! This and worse happens to guys my age, and yet they don't compose jeremiads about it. I hate this post, but I am going to publish it because I have already written so much. God knows, I haven't been inspired to write about anything in the past month. Maybe it's break and the silence it brings that has allowed me to reflect on this. It has festered long enough, and aerial and silly as it was, it was also important to me, as all rites of passage are. How did I want this story to culminate? With grace. All I ask for is grace. The grace that comes with calling someone a cab, or waiting with them till their friend shows up. It seems facile to complain that I wasn't being treated, well, like a human being. Tragically, every time one of us makes that comment, we are, actually, being treated in the same way that people treat one another.

 My two consciences: Hamlet and Verlaine will have very different takes on this. Hamlet has already stated and re-stated how unfair it was, and how I must be careful and not compromise my standards. Verlaine has told me to thicken my skin for the ingénue has a relatively low mortality in the world out there. My two consciences are right: I need to keep my eyes open and thicken my skin. In the meanwhile, I shall stay in. I am almost afraid to go out again. The incident, whatever it was, to me, has a damning beauty to it. It is not like the extended-release agony of Option B, it is a montage in black-and-white of a noire lust-story that ends in the snow. I am doing it again! But I need this! I need to elevate my joys and disappointments so that they may carry some worth to me when I look back. Futility, when swathed in voile and scented with a splash of jasmine and patchouli, has so much more grace.

Fatica d'amore, tristezza

Tu chiami una vita

Che dentro, profonda, ha nomi

Di cieli e giardini

E fosse mia carne

Che il dono di male transforma

Di cieli e giardini.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy. 

Commedia

"So, what is that strap about?"

"It's a Pride bracelet."

"Pride?"

"Gay Pride."

"Oh. So, not like Hubris or anything?" {laughter}

"No, more like Hamartia."

Everything is Illuminated

I am going to take a moment to breathe in my blog. It has been much too long. The Muses sang a delightful yet meaningful version of 'Wake Me Up When September Ends' all of last month, which was just as well, really. The  kind of mood that they and I were in, we would only have written posts of torpitude and turpitude: "Ah, woe is me! Here are my thoughts on casual sex and lush Bollywoodian romances." Fuck that, if you'll pardon my French which, really, isn't French after all. It's annoying to oneself when one realises that all he can write/talk about is the heart and the other multifarious appendages it pumps blood to. Have I ever told any of you about the research I am hoping to do this semester? Have I ever talked about my neverending love (And here we are again!) for the biological sciences and how I cheat on them (Stop!) with literary studies?

As you can probably tell, I cannot stray too far away from what has unwittingly become my dominion, so I shall speak again of romance, but a different one, an epistemological one. I have always been easy when it comes to tests. I never say, "No" and I always work hard to bring things to a successful culmination, sometimes I go on all night.  The red 'A' that I usually receive for my trouble (Praise God) is one to be worn with pride, however, and not shame. I shall be the first on my list of detractors: I have little to no faith in my ability to do anything. I suppose this vitriol is a fuel for it makes sure that I bear down and make it seem effortless. As this vitriol is synthesised in the deep recesses of my brain, it gives off noxious by-products- most notably, the constant remonstrations of "flunking like a bitch"! Oh, good times! Imagine my utter surprise, then, as I show up to the biochemistry GRE utterly ill-prepared. The reasons for this are whingey and sound like excuses, though they are all very tangible and identifiable. But, justifications are for the weak. Also, I am fairly sure that, at some juncture in this post, I am going to contradict myself on that point.

Before we dive head-first into the drama, let me set-up the mis-en-scene. The testing centre was a different college: a compact campus with the sort of imposing architecture one would associate with a school of stature and tradition, or, perhaps a Midwestern version of 'Brideshead Revisited'. Dawn had just begun to break, but, if you didn't have a watch, you would be forgiven if you thought that it was dusking. The scenery was autumnal, as fragrant, variegated leaves with colours ranging from a pallid yellow to a wizened red flew about with delicacy. Amidst this stood I, clad in white, and looking down to Camelot! The bell in the bell-tower began to ring, and I knew it was time.

I was checked in by a kindly lady who found my pronouncements of doom and gloom most amusing; I think she would have laughed had I run around campus yelling, "Trojans! Fools! Listen! Can I persuade no-one of aught?!" Did I really want to? Oh, God yes! Such dramatic luxuries, however, are only afforded to one of one is taking the Literature-in-English GRE and not biochemistry. Ah, well. Now, where was I? Oh yes: having checked in, and assumed my seat in the hall, I broke the seal (this kind of drama, you don't create!) on my test and began reading. I wanted to burst into song. If there was ever a sunny Rodgers and Hammerstein moment in my life, it was this: I knew things. I hadn't prepared, but I knew things! The questions were all over the place: the expected (cell biology, classical biochemistry, molecular genetics), the unexpected (neuroscience, embryology), the elating (immunology, virology) and the seriously fucked up (molecular methods). That, however, is beside the point! I knew things, constant reader! No, I KNOW things! I am actually not a bad fit for my major. Why? Because I know things! And I know things because I know people who know things. That was crude, but what I am saying is that I owe all of this to that zany, eccentric, wicked clever, sagacious, quirky, erudite, devilish bunch known as my teachers! Do you know that vision you see when in a test you encounter a question and your mind's eye shows you that exact page in the textbook where the answer lies? Yeah, that didn't happen to me. What I saw was a harried Dr. O handing out Engaugements (clever to call them that, isn't she?) and charmingly elucidating the relationship between Arginine, the high-seas (look up the titration curve) and pirates; Dr. Transposon grinning puckishly as he disposed a nugget of viral (yep!) knowledge; IgTinaFey, pert and business-like, as she spoke of a scholarly article I may like and simply must check out; Dr. PowerBun mellisonantly guiding me along the trp operon; I heard a lilting Southern drawl sing to me rolling circle replications, a voice from high-school encouraging my explorations into embryology...God, God! I could feel a cry-fest bubble in my throat, but I ignored it in lieu of bubbling in answers.

The only snag was the questions about experimental methods in molecular biology, and, true to their nature, they helped prove something to me: I would have done the same thing had I studied like I usually do i.e. on hyperdrive, for this test. Those were ugly questions: some of the methods they asked about, I had only heard/read of in passing. Others made me exclaim, "This exists?!" I answered from my own basal level of knowledge and I took names, bitches. You guys! I know things! I actually, actually know things! Like most romances, it ended in tragedy, but that matters not at all. Of all my romances, dalliances, liaisons, this has probably been my most successful: my romance with a GossipGuy who knows things, and I think he's a keeper!

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!

Toast. It Would Choke Me.

It shall never cease to surprise me how quickly things unravel, how quickly the Helepolis finds a river it can be dunked into, how stupidly the bottom of the Trojan Horse collapses, and out comes a Greek smiling sheepishly while the ones inside execute an elegant facepalm. It also astounds me how people do not think twice before, even if it is in a jocose sort of way, attaching the epithet of 'whore' or 'slut' to someone's name. Ah, yes, it is all most amusing, but frightfully heedless as well.

Having chosen Option B, I found that I have chosen beneath me. Remember how I waxed eloquent about how 'restive and restful', how 'refreshingly casual' their world is? I was a fool. There is nothing refreshing about casual, especially not when it takes the rather casual, if circuitous, path of a casual inception to a casual proceeding to a casual denouement (as oxymoronic as that is), and finally, a casual finale.

I am laughing more this time around. I remember last time, I was lachrymose and all Eponinny, but this time I find it, ah, "how very amusing, but also inept." This should, on no account, take away from the fact that every time something like this happens, a sizeable chunk of my self-esteem is first fattened to a surfeit, and then served like foie gras, and to an undeserving palate, to boot. Bright, witty and scintillating on the surface does not necessarily translate as 'secure with self', and I am not. I never have been, and this is why every time something like this happens, I feel hideous.

As far as this melange is concerned, I had promised myself not to get too invested. But I did get invested, and almost unknowingly so: how slowly my defences were infiltrated, or perhaps it was MY flesh that was far too willing. What does one do when that knowledge, a conversation intime, of the dans la boudoir variety becomes public knowledge? Well, one takes a walk, and reflects on the lines of "how very amusing! But also inept."

My walking companion was the alter-ego of a dear friend, we shall call the alter ego Scarlet Woman. There we were: Scarlet Woman and the Dirty Mistress walking into the night, our conversation was acrid: we spoke of people who were quick to judge our choices, people who we thought understood what we were about. As one who has dealt in the currency and gambles of gossip and hearsay for as long as he can remember, I firmly believe that those who call out certain actions as "scandalous!" or "whoreish" do, on a very visceral level, wish that they'd had the courage to sin so beautifully. Scarlet Woman and I lay in the grass, and watched the stars; we wept as our laughter bubbled through because all of this was so "very amusing, but also inept", until finally my friend quipped: "I feel like toast. We should get toast. Why don't you come up to my room, and I'll make us toast?"
"You are sure about this?" I said saucily. "Another gentleman making his way to your room? Think of your reputation!"
"Think of yours!" she riposted as crisply as her promise of toast.

There is something to be said about a piece of toast slathered with butter (or rhubarb jam, as in her case). As far as comfort food goes, toast is not fuzzy and/or the harbinger of a saccharified coma. Toast is crisp, and the crispness refuses to allow complaisance. Toast needs to be held with poise, or else one gets their hands sticky, and so it demands that one remains in control. Toast is versatile, and deals with most common spreads, and so is not limited to a particular kind of conundrum. The crunch of toast will force you to get up and get going, be it breakfast or break-up. It was over toast that Scarlet Woman, and I whiled away a few good hours. It was over toast that we let our dominoes slip: the witty one wasn't required to sway passions with his prolixity, and the piquant, business-like one wasn't expected to magically have all the answers. Oh, toast.

I didn't cry too much this time, I laughed more. There are those who said that the embittered laughter was infinitely more frightening, but, really, after a while, it just becomes "so very amusing, but also inept". It is amusing because it is a burlesque, really, everyone saw it coming but the players involved. It is inept for the same reason. I have learnt that one should never seek love below one's station, the hurt that the loss of such potential inspires is quite debilitatingly uncalled for. Furthermore, one wouldn't want maggots to feast on such meet food as one's Dignity, would one? Time for toast, I reckon.

Until the next time,
GossipGuy.

Overtures at Twilight, Or, Push the Button! Don't Push the Button!

Now that I am finally here, back in the Spitsbergen, I want to go home. By home, I mean The Eternal City. The sun would set in the Eternal City, there would be no web of intrigue and desire to disentangle, while ensuring that one's composure wouldn't unravel at the same time in the Eternal City. The only desire I felt there was for Ted Baker creations and macaroons...ah, well.I've barely been back a week, and my life is as tortuous as I had left it, albeit with a whole new cast of characters.  As Hamlet and I discussed, if our First Season was an exposition, the second was a denouement, the third promises to change tracks almost entirely, and present itself as a bedroom farce. Mismatched couples, like fickle water molecules, form momentary interactions with one another, only break off and move to a different cluster, as the sun sits low. 

There is a lot to be said about using one's personal charms, one's crust, if you will. If you are not classically handsome, then your persona needs to be potent enough to inspire a certain degree of, well, a je ne sais quois that may endear you to many. As a person who has skated by on slick wit for many months, I think my word can be taken on that point. So, imagine my surprise, and utter delight, when I found myself being courted. But as a Gemini, making choices hasn't been my strongest point. So now, I have to choose between Option A and Option B. One who courts, and one who smoulders in the distance. One who is all affection, and one who is dangerously vertiginous to be around. These cases shall be addressed separately, as follows:

Option B

Option B is someone whom I have known of, but not really known until this autumn, and there is an innocence about Option B that shatters my heart into a thousand sharp shards that poke me in inappropriate places to remind me that what I have on hand is someone who deserves to be cherished, and not used. Yet, what we have is a liaison: it is a good idea to keep things civilised, is it not? Even if one has entirely countermanded the tedious business of defining what exactly it is that one intends to hold so high in sophisticated high regard. But, as men of fashion, detached liaisons are, well, easy. As men of fashion, we are, well, easy. Do I want to pick Option B? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option B? D'accord! Option B is found in a group of twenty-somethings who have a roughened artlessness about them: they are restive and restful; they take each day as it comes, each hour, in fact. As a person who has always lived and loved amongst the high-strung, the charmingly neurotic, and the achievement-oriented, I find this insouciance most delicious. Could I ever adapt to this? Not a chance! I am much to set in my obsessive-compulsive ways to be able to. I could do it, if there were a process, but that does indeed defeat the purpose, does it not? Have I learnt anything about myself from Option B? Yes. When I revel, I REVEL and weep, and revel again. When my clavicle is nibbled upon, I gasp. Do I see a future? Perhaps. A future in which I pull a 'Brief Encounter' and almost throw my planned life away, but not really? Yes, I may reach that point. Next course of option? Who is to say...

Option A

Option A shouldn't even be an option, since we've barely even met. I was introduced to Option A by my dear friend Elinor Dashwood whose poise and equanimity I admire and envy. I never thought that one could swoon, but I found out that keeping one's feet on the ground when the only thing one wants to do is tip right over, sigh and lose consciousness, is a task of extreme Yogic proportions. I was terrified that the blush that had suffused its way up my neck would be visible to all, but my cappuccino colouring took care of that. I proceeded to make an absolute exhibition of myself, laughing gaily, and orienting myself in a way that can only be described as slatternly. But how can one resist the vellications of such a gaze? I remember hearing Elinor whisper "Remember, you're better off" to herself, and I very nearly winked at her. I walked home steeped in the mud of self-loathing...what was I thinking throwing myself at Option A's head in so brazen a manner. Oh, and weren't my affections otherwise engaged with Option B? Well, not exactly. Being enliased (neologism) does not equal being enfianced. You may think, constant reader, that I am morally reprehensible, and, yes, I concur. But even here, I am not in love, so to speak. I am never in love anymore, it is a nauseating business, and why deal with noisome things when more fragrant, vespertine pleasures are to be sampled? Do I want to pick Option A? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option A? Mais, oui! Option A is the very epitome of pulchritude and comeliness, and has a gaze that makes me deliquesce. What have I learnt about myself from Option A? That I speak in a Southern accent when I am, ah, "half agony and half hope". Do I see a future? Theoretically, yes. But even then, I have no illusions. If Option A were to work out, it would be a situation in which I would delight in the utter wretchedness of my existence: being with someone infinitely more beautiful than one only amplifies the self-doubt, and frankly, I may burn my nights away wondering why this happened, or how this happened, only and only if I get too invested. The key is not to get invested, certainly not in the fickle-minded, proper false. Next course of action? "A weekend in the country! Smelling jasmine! Watching little things grow..." Or perhaps even making them grow. The only trouble with such a weekend is that, after a while, the mosquito bites and the hickeys begin to look startlingly uniform...ah, well.

Concluding Thoughts

I had long believed in the the more entropic nature of love, and I have outgrown that now. I do not even believe that something as grandiloquent as Love (i.e. the marketed kind) even exists anymore. Perhaps, it has more to do with distillation and crystallisation of feelings rather than the sheer entropy of whatever is supposed to happen. This is not a perplexing thought for me at all, a saddening one, yes, but that too is fading. This is no different from the many classes I have taken: read extensively, and carry a big stick. I don't know which button I shall push: A or B, but the one thing I shan't allow is either one of them to push my buttons. I am young,  but too disillusioned in my illusions to want to want anything more than a calculable means to a palpable end. The burlesques that are to play out under this perpetually purple sky are another matter. We shall see. 

Until the next time,

GossipGuy. 

Senescence, Or Something Like It

I have found, of late, that I have a positive dearth of patience with the young. Or at least those who are younger than I am. Eighteen-year-olds are tolerable, I suppose, they have an idea of what is what. They don't realise it fully, but at least they have few illusions. I feel like I have superseded my illusions and I do not like it: this was one race I wasn't supposed to win.

I don't mean to sound old and embittered, God knows, I am not nearly aged enough to own that level of cantankerousness, but I recently had coffee with a friend who brought his protégé along. While my friend and I chattered away amicably, I think the protégé felt, oh, neglected perhaps. I lauded his valiant attempts at trying to join in the conversation, and smiled benignly at the "ten-dollar words", the contrivances whipped out in an attempt to hold his own. It was, as he would probably say, "Rather endearing"! How familiar this all seemed! 'I was such a little snot! Just like this one!' I recalled fondly. We played along, and it was adorable. Initially, at least.

Things began to go downhill when  my friend had to excuse himself to take a phone-call, and his protégé and I were left alone. We talked perfunctorily for a few minutes, and finally he asked me where I went to school. I told him, and his face...changed. I'll admit, mine is a charming State school, and yes, I remember my face 'changing' too when  I had filled out an application for this place. Oh, very well! It was my safety school, and, in the end, when it boiled down to pure economics, I realised that this was my best bet! I felt, for some unfathomable (t)reason to explain this to the protégé, and he smiled sweetly, indulgently: his face was my face from fifteen minutes ago. 

"Perhaps, economics isn't the only criterion, hmm?" he questioned with a cowing politesse, that made me feel like a poor cousin.

"No, not the only criterion, certainly," I responded. "But a vitally important one, wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh, quite. But, you will agree, that reputations are important as well. Imagine, people of our breeding associated with commonplace schools!" he laughed.

"You cannot deny, however, that paying for a reputation and a reputation alone is the worst kind of snobbery!" I trilled.

"I wonder, then, sir, about the Dior label on your shirt!" he exclaimed affably.

"Your Lacoste amphibian inspires similar wonderings, monsieur!" I countered charmingly.

"The point I am trying to make is that, surely, you cannot be satisfied in a farming community?" he asked.

"You do assume, sir, that it is a farming community. Not so. Also, I shan't lie, I really thought that I had settled for something below my station, only to learn that things like station are superficial things that must be indulged in as superficially as possible." I explained, a bit passionately.

"How noble." he responded. He didn't look like he believed me, in fact he went as far as to hum a ditty from 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' (A Match Made in Heaven)- a Hindi film about a young, vivacious woman who marries a staid, older man only to live in connubial bliss. It made me mad.

"And where are you applying?"

He proceeded to rattle off the names of elite academies in India, and of course, the Imperial Eight; the Indian schools were his "Plan B". I didn't have the heart to say anything polite, but I did have the spleen.

"I wish you luck." 

"I will get in, I know I shall." 

"Such confidence is admirable."

I wanted to ask him what recourse he had if he didn't make it in. A Plan B-01 perhaps? I wanted to tell him that he was being a fool, and that, when the chips were down, for an international student, economics was the sole criterion, that one was beatifically fortunate if one found a school that was intellectually sound and didn't cost a King's Ransom, even if one's father was a King or a noble, that scholarships shouldn't be scorned at as 'charity'. 

Reading over that last section, I find that I do sound old and embittered. I hadn't failed, I had just chosen differently, followed an instinct, a call that influenced the tides in my blood vessels, and I had made good. I don't disapprove of the Imperial Eight, but of the questions of 'breeding' and 'station' that come with them. I have friends, dear friends, at these places, and they deserve to be there because they got in meritocratically, and not because of the fact that they were "raised a certain way". Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why I needed to placed in the Spitsbergen so that I could fully comprehend the nature of superficial things.

My friend had returned by then and sensed the tension in the air and managed to diffuse the tension by bringing up a compelling topic of conversation, it's a skill of his that I have long admired. If anything, they are probably very grateful and awe-struck by this skill of his at Princeton! The protégé and I parted cordially; we knew that our paths would probably cross only under the rarest of circumstances. Later, when my friend asked me what I thought of him, I gave him the usual platitudes, but my friend knew. His laugh at the end of my "perfectly delightful" told me that he knew that I hated that kid. Envy is what this is, and an envy that stems from an animated wistfulness that yearns to be that innocently reprehensible again, to be able to have those illusions, and water-tight plans that do not yield to any force. I miss it. I miss it so.

Until the next time,

GossipGuy!