by Rachel Cohn
(Back to Columbia)
As life changed, playlists evolved, updated/deleted/added on to every day, like a prayer (which was an awesome song, by the way, despite Madonna’s faux religious angst, and it deserved inclusion on many a booty-shaking-themed mix). Very did not identify herself as belonging to any particular group of music-obsessed persons. She was not an indie-label DIY hipster, not a grunge girl, not a death-metal monster, not a gangsta hip-hop girl, nor any other stereotype that could be pinned on a person’s musical identification. She simply loved music. She loved soul, rock, punk, hip-hop, even loved classical and some opera (Aunt Esther’s influence). She loved vinyl, too, of course, loved the records’ scratchiness and how they required so much more listening concentration—which she had little of, so therefore did not listen to vinyl as much as, for instance, her mother had. Musically, Very did not discriminate against the uncool or champion the overly beloved. She didn’t classify herself as “eclectic,” knowing that the mere self-classification of “eclectic” musical tastes meant one’s tastes were, in fact, anything but. Mostly, she loved any song she could sing, dance, laugh, or cry to. She loved being able to listen to any radio station beaming from anywhere in the world through an Internet stream; a lifetime of Internet radio was the method by which she’d received much of her musical education (with a bonus shout-out to that French disco radio station, Hot Mix Disco Radio Hot Hot Hot, or, in the French DJ’s parlance, Hawt Meex Deeeescooo RahhDeeOhhh Hawt Hawt Hawt, so brilliantly awful one almost never needed to change the station).
Yet, musically, as with everything else in her life lately, Very was experiencing information overload. Too many song possibilities. Accordingly, she couldn’t make herself stop making mix lists. She already had two going for today: “The Long and Winding Road (Back to Columbia),” songs of boredom for the awkward car ride back to NYC, tunage that was completely overshadowed by the day’s more radical playlist, “BJs Don’t Count, Despite What Lavinia Says,” a pleasant Fugazi / Bad Brains–fest. But neither of which complemented tomorrow’s list, which Very was already calling “Songs to Slash Your Wrists To” in anticipation of her meetings with the dean and her RA, and since apparently Lavinia had decided to stop speaking to her.
“Merritt Parkway is faster than I-95 for getting back to the city,” Very said from the passenger seat next to Lavinia, who was driving them back from Aunt Esther’s. “It’s more windy, but it’s lots quicker. I can tell you how to go if you want.”
Lavinia shrugged. Silent.
From the backseat, Jean-Wayne said, “She doesn’t like the narrow lanes on the Merritt. Makes her nervous.”
Oh, so now Jean-Wayne was speaking for Lavinia?
Very hadn’t realized Lavinia could be so passive-aggressive. Or maybe it wasn’t that Lavinia was being passive-aggressive so much as that, true to her word, she really wanted not to deal with Very for a while. That, and Jean-Wayne sincerely loved to be helpful.
The previous night, when Very had finally gone to her attic room to sleep, she’d found Lavinia, still awake, on her king-sized bed, which had once belonged to Aunt Esther’s son. “I saw you,” Lavinia said.
“Huh?” Very said. Lavinia couldn’t have seen what she seemed to be implying she’d seen. Very had glanced toward the open attic window. That window faced directly down to the backyard. There was indeed enough light from the moon and a nearby streetlamp for Lavinia conceivably to have seen. But still. No way. Lavinia was not a voyeur like that. She slept through everything.
“I heard some weird sounds from the window, so I got up to see what was going on. I saw you. With Bryan. Doing … you know.”
Way.
Why did Bryan have to be so noisy?
Instantly, Very went on the defensive. “Really, that was nothing.”
“It was something to him, probably.”
“Are you mad because you liked him?” Why had Very assumed Lavinia wouldn’t care? Or had Very known Lavinia would indeed care, but chosen to disregard that by assuming Lavinia would simply never find out about the minor indiscretion?
“I’m not mad,” Lavinia said. “Just disappointed in you. For mind-fucking us all, especially Bryan, so regularly. What you do with your ‘skill set,’ as you call it, is your business.”
“Listen to me,” Very said, feeling a tinge of desperation. Why she needed Lavinia’s absolution, she didn’t know. “It doesn’t count. It was just a thing. To close the box. To help him let go.”
“To help you let go,” Lavinia said. “Now he’s only going to be more confused.”
Lavinia was so precociously ignorant. Very wanted to explain to her virgin friend the logic behind pleasing a boy in that certain way, which Very considered to be one of her master crafts (at least, based on former conquests’ reviews) after JavaScript, HTML, and site-hacking. Sex, real sex, not oral sex, should only happen with someone special. Getting a boy off the not-real way was actually a method to stave him off, even if it might seem the opposite. It was a way for the giver to maintain control over the receiver’s pleasure while simultaneously allowing the receiver to feel satisfied and grateful, but not attached. At least, that’s what Very told herself at the time. She hoped for Bryan not to be the one exception to this rule that had proved scientifically solid in her experience to date. (She knew if anybody would be the exception, it would be Bryan. Damn.) Real intimacy, at least according to rumor, though not necessarily what Very knew from her own experience, was the kind that made your heart explode in shimmers and glows along with every precious, beautiful inch of your flesh, and that experience should be reserved for those with whom a person felt a mighty connection, for the El Viruses of the world. A mouth on someone’s genitalia? That was nothing.
Still, it was possible that nothing hadn’t been Very’s wisest move. She couldn’t deny it. Those tricky demons shouldn’t have been trusted. But it wasn’t like she hadn’t given Bryan something quite sweet in return. Right?
Lavinia turned over on her side on the giant attic bed, so as not to look at Very any longer. “You can have Bryan. I wouldn’t want him now, anyway. I feel sorry for him, though, being so completely whipped.”
“He’s not whipped! He understands there’s nothing between us. If you decided you liked him again, I know he’d totally like you, like, come around to like-like you. I’m totally out of the way now. For sure!”
Lavinia put her hand up behind her back for Very to see the Stop signal. “Really. Don’t do me any favors. Let’s not talk. I want to sleep.”
She’d assumed Lavinia was just PMS-ing and it would all “blow” over the next day, but Very couldn’t believe it: Lavinia’s silence was indeed lasting into the next day. Very couldn’t stand it. She’d seated herself next to Lavinia in the car so Lavinia would know she didn’t harbor bad feelings. Bryan had seemed to want to crawl into the backseat and not be noticed, anyway.
“So are we going to stop at Target or IKEA?” Very asked cheerfully.
Not cheerfully, Bryan finally found his voice in the back. “No! Let’s just get back to the city as quickly as possible, okay?”
“Agreed,” Lavinia said.
So unfair. Very had been counting on a shopping expedition. She’d spent all night after Lavinia fell into her snore-sleep searching online for the cutest pair of Target pj’s. If she went to the store instead of purchasing them online, she could avoid shipping charges. Also, Very really wanted to eat those meatballs at IKEA. Now she would have to be quelled by the several jumbo bags of M&M’s residing in her Hello Kitty backpack (purchased online through SuperCuteHandbagsOrSomething.com, free shipping, and free Dora the Explorer fanny pack with any purchase over fifty dollars).
Jean-Wayne, who like Very could not bear the silence in the car, spoke up. “Your aunt gives good Passover. She made me a fabulous sweater, too.” Very turned around to inspect the sweater Jean-Wayne displayed beneath his unbuttoned jacket. It had the words “Tutti Frutti” sewn across the chest.
Very informed Jean-Way
ne, “She must like you. She gave you one of her Collector’s Edition catch-phrase sweaters. Usually Aunt Esther emblazons Yiddish expressions like Bupkes or Oy Vey! on her sweaters.”
“Oy, let us get home and out of this car already,” Bryan muttered.
Talk about ungrateful.
Amazingly, Lavinia’s silence continued through the duration of the return journey back to Columbia, and even after Lavinia had brought her parents’ car back to New Jersey and returned to their dorm room. But by that time, Very had a plan in motion to counteract Lavinia’s silence. It was called “Songs to Alienate Your Roommate By,” a playlist she’d made during Lavinia’s New Jersey run, consisting of songs that Lavinia would hate—but that would also make her speak up.
Lavinia had to wake up early for crew practice. She always fell asleep by ten. At eleven, Very unplugged her headphones for the music to blast forth.
So, tell me what you want, what you really really want
“Turn it off, Very!” Lavinia screeched.
The Spice Girls had never, ever let Very down.
“Let’s talk,” Very said.
“I have to get up at five tomorrow morning for crew practice. Let’s not!”
She left Very no choice but to queue the next song. The angelic voice of Karen Carpenter sang out: Johnny Angel, Johnny Angel. Lavinia placed her pillow over her ears.
No choice left but to play dirty. Chiquita, tell me what’s wrong, ABBA crooned. Lavinia tossed her pillow at Very.
The two roommates looked at each other, smiling.
“You make it difficult to turn you off, Very.”
“Thank you. Love you too. So we’re over this?”
Lavinia sat up in bed. She said, “I’m not trying to be mean to you. But I need to back off for a while. You have a million friends. You won’t miss anything by not hanging out with me for a while.”
“B-but,” Very stammered, “I mostly like hanging out with you, Lavinia.”
“Jennifer. J-e-n-n-i-f-e-r.” L/J lay back down in bed and rolled onto her side again, so as not to look at Very. “And it’s not me you need to apologize to. It’s Bryan.”
Very still didn’t understand. The B/J had been her apology to Bryan.
CHAPTER 9
April Fool’s Day:
Joke’s on Your Wallet, Fool
Very suspected that the rapidly worsening cost-benefit ratio would catch up with her soon enough. How could it not?
Consider: Her undergraduate education, assuming she completed it, would cost her a minimum of fifty thousand dollars in school loans. (How the hell would she ever earn that much money to pay it back? Really. How?) Already, in her freshman year, she’d rung up five thousand dollars on her first credit card—an amount expended on school necessities like electronic “research” paraphernalia, Chinese food delivery (so easy to treat everybody and be a good tipper when signing instead of handing over cashola), cultural-awareness expeditions (late-night music shows downtown), Thai food delivery, cabs, Mexican food delivery, frequently rotating but extremely important hair-care products (she couldn’t have her curly ‘do riding so frizz-high she blocked the view of students sitting behind her in class), and, oh yeah, those stupid useless textbooks. And pizza delivery.
So financially this school thing wasn’t working out so great so far. The New Haven Benevolence Society scholarship only applied toward tuition. Otherwise, it seemed to Very that this education so far was just a sinkhole of debt surrounded by (mostly) attractive coeds. Where exactly was the benefit part of the cost-benefit ratio?
Cost: Bazillion-dollar education, not to mention the ridiculously expensive Manhattan lifestyle that came along with her school choice. Very couldn’t possibly live long enough to pay it all back. Why hadn’t she opted for affordable UConn instead? Maybe she should set up a PayPal account for Columbia tuition donations, or just to cover cab fares. Or, she could set it up to only cover a monthly unlimited MetroCard, so she didn’t appear too greedy? Perhaps she could auction her soul on eBay in exchange for a debt-free existence, so long as fully loaded, fully paid-for iPhone/iTunes accounts were included?
Benefit: Very’s mother had dropped out of college after her freshman year and spent the rest of her life regretting that choice. Cat had been determined that, if nothing else, her daughter would not make the same mistake. Cat hadn’t cared if Very ate ice cream and Doritos for dinner every night or if she didn’t take a bath for a week, but homework and study time had been her mother’s number one (and perhaps only) mandated priority for her. If for no other reason, Very needed to complete her college education for her mother. What else would Very ever be able to do for Cat? Nothing. She had to live out her mother’s one dream for her, no matter the cost, and even if its only benefit was to a dead person.
Computing this equation cost Very more class time than, you know, actual class time listening to the professor drone on and on. What class was she even in?
Very looked down the rows of lecture seats ahead of her to the teacher at the podium. It was the shaggy professor: hippie-long, ponytailed, salt-and-pepper hair, unkempt beard. Vegan shoes = macrobiotics = macro-something-or-other = voilá, Intro to Econ, that’s where she was. Very knew her prescient cost-benefit analysis hadn’t come from nowhere, even if she wasn’t paying much mind to Professor Shaggy.
Very scanned the lecture hall seats. She knew at least two dozen of the fifty or so students in the room. Of those two dozen, sixteen were favorite’d on her IM list. Of those sixteen, ten had their laptops open and operating for supposed lecture note taking. Time to send out a meme. She’d make it an easy one, so as not to appear too obviously ironic on April Fool’s Day.
Make-out or make-up?
Foo (fighters) or pho (soup)?
Dining hall or delivery dining (specify why)?
Purple or orange (alerts)?
Weed or beer?
Fantasy homo love match: Harry Potter / Draco Malfoy or Hermione Granger / Ginny Weasley (I know, that last pair’s practically incest … get over it and have fun speculating)?
Macro or micro economics (LOL! Who cares!)?
Very hit Send and turned to her webcam to make bored-in-class faces at her Skype friends hanging out on the beach in Costa Rica while she waited for the meme responses from her friends in the seats surrounding her.
From two rows ahead of her, Bryan flipped her the bird behind his back, then shut his iBook and opened a real notebook for note taking.
Bryan used to love her memes.
Bryan was probably, fairly, still sore over this morning, when Very had sat down next to him in the dining hall and dipped her spoon into his bowl of oatmeal. She’d said, “Lavinia says I am supposed to apologize to you. So … sorry. And … maybe add some brown sugar to this oatmeal? Makes it tastier.”
He had moved his oatmeal bowl out of her reach, then pressed his hand to his heart. “I find myself overwhelmed by both your sincerity and your gastronomic superiority.”
“‘Gastronomic superiority’? Good one!”
“Please get your own breakfast and leave mine alone.”
Very’s stomach always led her own heart, so she left Bryan to step over to the hot-food line, fully anticipating returning to Bryan’s table to finish off the apology already. But she was intercepted by the dreaded drab Debbie, senior girl resident advisor who might as well be advising a senior center. Debbie’s idea of fun dorm social activities usually involved Scrabble marathons and Make Your Own Chop’t Salad refreshments. Dreabbie, Very privately called her.
“We need to talk, Veronica,” Dreabbie said. “Are you free now?”
Very snatched an apple from the fruit table. “Apple’s all I have time for. On my way to an exam.”
Exam: fool-proof Dreabbie-dodge excuse. Hopefully Miss Resident Advisor “Beware the Freshman Ten” Food Police would also take note of the wholesome, healthy food choice Very had made in picking up an apple instead of the apple danish, as had been her intention. Freshman Ten, indeed. She dared not
step on a scale, but Very knew her number was closer to Fifteen. Luckily, ninety percent of the weight gain had gone to her breasts. Gazoombas!
“What time does your exam end?”
“A couple hours from now.” Very bit into the apple. Act casual. Like getting tossed from student housing is not even a possibility. Don’t stick your boobs out to distract. Dreabbie-type chicks don’t like that. Save that for Bryan.
“Please find me in my room immediately after. You know why.”
“I’ve been summoned to the dean’s office after class.” Double Dreabbie dodge! Score!
Very tried, unsuccessfully, not to make a sour-green-apple face as she bit into the fruit. It probably looked like gloating.
Dreabbie stared at her angrily, gloated-at. “Five p.m. Be there. No excuses!”
If she concentrated hard enough, Very knew, she could not only will the meeting with Dreabbie to never happen, she could will a return to her laptop screen from El Virus during Econ class. No one was responding to her meme. Rude! Was the April Fool’s silence the joke on her?
She’d rather do anything than listen in class. Why had she bothered to show up today? She could have slept in. Oh right, she’d shown up to avoid Dreabbie and because of a note from the professor’s teaching assistant indicating Very’s truancy issues needed to be remedied or would result in automatic failure, regardless of whether she passed the final exam.
If she couldn’t will El Virus into physically being live and direct with her now, she could open his picture file instead. She had to do something to pass this class time. If she didn’t open the folder that contained the secrets to her heart, she’d start online shopping again to pass the time, and really, she needed only so many cute handbags or so much hypoallergenic bedding (Very didn’t even have allergies, it was just that Lavinia said it was a good precaution to take with dorm mattresses that went through so many users). Her credit card was maxed out anyway. Online shopping during class could quell only so much suppressed energy without the sweet buzz that came from clicking on Purchase.
