But the point I’m trying to make is this: Given the effect of Gurionic Solomony, Emmanuel and I, two of the five people with whom Gurion has maintained the closest contact over the last few years, might be two of the only five people with the ability to translate/re-translate The Instructions in the way that Gurion himself would have. And so the fact that we have done so does not — not necessarily, at least — indicate that The Instructions is translingual, at least not in the general sense. It only indicates the potential of The Instructions to be translingual. It might, of course, further indicate that if you’re a scholar without enmity toward Gurion, and you were to come to know him as well as we do — it is his hope, and ours, that reading The Instructions will itself engender such knowing, or at least a sufficient approximation thereof—The Instructions would in turn become translingual. For you. The scholar. It might. We hope. And so maybe I’m merely splitting hairs.
Yet maybe, though splitting hairs, I’m not merely splitting hairs. In either case, who am I to split hairs? To you. Who, to you, am I to split hairs? You don’t know me from Adam. Not really. Not yet.
Come heavy next year in Jerusalem.
— Eliyahu of Brooklyn, December 2013
13 THE FIVE
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
4th Period–5th Period
Fourth period, I had individual therapy. Call-Me-Sandy had a bag of wrapped caramels. She held it out across her desk. A one-pound bag, an inch above the blotter, her elbow at rest between the lips of a tissuebox.
“So?” she said. “How are things?” she said.
Her bony wrist, her medium-length nails, raggedy cuticles, the bag slightly trembling, its stiff plastic rattling. The overhead light panel flickered twelve times.
“I’m worried about you.”
Thirty more flickers, and she set the bag of caramels to rest on the blotter, put her hand in her lap, took a sip from her coffee.
Ninety-six flickers. Three sips from her coffee. Uncountable flickers. She chinned the air at the bag of caramels.
Twenty-seven flickers.
She lifted the bag, held it over the blotter. Again the bag rattled.
“I’m worried about you.”
You said that already.
“You didn’t respond.”
You’re not worried about me. You’re worried because you’re nervous.
“I worry that I’m nervous?”
Maybe that too, I said. What I meant is you’re a nervous person and nervous people worry. The nervousness comes first with nervous people. The vector proceeds from nervousness. Like how you’re worrying that bag of candy. As it were. Your hand’s not shaking because the bag’s rattling — the bag’s rattling because your hand is shaking. And maybe you don’t notice the bag rattling and it stops there, or maybe you do notice the bag rattling and you realize your hand is shaking, and so maybe you stop your hand from shaking, or maybe seeing that your hand shakes makes your hand shake worse, which makes the bag shake worse. Either way, though, your worries are a rattling bag of caramels in the hand of your nervousness. Some people, though: their nervousness is a rattling bag of caramels in the hand of their worries. Those people look calmly on the world until they come across something worrisome, and only then do they worry, and only when they worry do they get nervous. They act upon themselves prior to being acted upon by themselves. They’re the healthier kind of people.
“That’s an almost gestalt kind of observation.”
No it’s not, I said. I said, It’s homuncular. It’s nonsense. Games with prepositions to impress and intimidate.
“Was your mother a gestalt practitioner at any point?”
Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
“Are you upset with me, Gurion?”
Why should I be upset?
“I’m asking.”
Why are you asking?
“You don’t usually make fun of me.”
Was I making fun? I said. I knew I was having fun, but—
“It sounded like you were making fun of me,” she said.
How long have you known you were a lesbian? I said.
She choked and coughed — wrongpiped coffeespit — and dropped the caramels. “Excuse me?” she said.
You heard me, I said.
“I don’t…”
How long have you known you wanted sex from women?
“This isn’t appropriate.”
If someone with a vagina likes vaginas but tells herself she doesn’t like vaginas, or tells herself she likes penises but just hasn’t found the right one, or admits to herself that she does like vaginas and doesn’t like penises but consistently refuses to act on her desires for vaginas, is she a lesbian, Sandy? What do you think?
“This is not appropriate.”
How about this one: If someone with a vagina, at age, say, twenty, realizes she likes vaginas and has never liked penises — i.e., realizes she’s a lesbian — has she been a lesbian all along, or has she only been a lesbian since the moment she realized she liked vaginas? And if it turns out to be one of the latter two cases, is ‘realize’ the correct verb? That is: Do lesbians become lesbians, or are they born lesbians?
“I can see that you’re angry, Gurion. That’s why—”
Are you getting any? Sex from women, I mean. Have you gotten any sex from your professor? Did you switch voices over coffee and decide to get beers?
“Please, Gurion. You’re worrying me.”
But did you say it like Obama or Daley, Call-Me? That is, if you said anything, how did you suggest it? ‘Join me for a beer, Professor Lakey?’ Or ‘What say we blow dis popstand and get some beerce?’ Which code did you use? Was the moment all postmodern and meta and intertextual and post-ironic because both of you knew that Professor Lakey had read “Assessment of a Client: Gurion Maccabee”? Or was the moment, after all, just nice and straightforward and full of tension and potential romance because even though she’d read the paper, you couldn’t be sure she’d read it right—you couldn’t tell if your encoded, footnoted professions of love for her had even come across — and your professor herself was worried that maybe she’d only seen in the footnotes what she wanted to see, a student with a desirable vagina who wanted to see her vagina where there was but a desirably vaginaed student who wanted to talk about linguistics? Did you end up going home together? Did Professor Lakey take you home, Call-Me, or did you end up alone that night, using her, in fantasy, as a tool for venting?
“You were never supposed to have read that paper.”
That’s the response you’re settling on? Blame the victim? That’s the response?
“The victim?” she said.
The victim being me. The victim being sentenced to the Cage indefinitely.
“Gurion, you hurt people.”
I hurt people.
“You hurt people, Gurion. You have a history of hurting people. You cause physical harm to people, and you show no remorse. That’s why you’re in the Cage. I will admit that a lot of what I said about you was inaccurate. This owed partly to my not having known you so well at the time I wrote the paper, but—”
University of Chicago dialect, now. Nearly stentorian. And from such a small head. You are one bold lesbian. You are—
“Make fun of me all you want, Gurion, but I’m coming clean here. I will even admit that many of the inaccuracies in the paper weren’t mistakes, per se, as much as they were — how should I say this? In grad-school — well—”
Sometimes you have to go analytically overboard to prove to your teachers that you’re worth their time.
“Yes. That’s about—”
You constructed me in such a way as to allow yourself room to riff. You needed room to riff on all the valuable knowledge you absorbed in your beloved professor’s writings and lectures. That would get you the A. Or the date.
“Yes.”
Did I mention that I think professor Lakey is imaginary? I think she’s your imaginary friend.
Sandy pushed me the tissuebox. I pushed it back. I wasn’t crying. Not even close.
“You were never supposed to have read the paper. I don’t know why Bonnie filed it with your records. I didn’t know she would when I wrote it. She’s—”
It’s your supervisor’s fault.
“Yes.”
The buck stops there.
“Stop it now. Please. If you know half as much as you seem to, you know that despite my mistakes, I care about you, Gurion. I am fond of you. I worry about you. You should not have read that paper. You should never have seen it. I am very worried about you right now.”
You’re nervous.
“That too.”
And I’m in the Cage because I’m remorselessly violent.
“Yes.”
If you had the chance to do it all over again, you’d still have me placed in the Cage indefinitely.
“When you put it like that—”
From the CYA POV—
“It’s not just to cover my ass, Gurion, no. It’s because you hurt people. You cause disruptions and you hurt people. You cannot be in regular classrooms. You are Cage-appropriate.”
No one is Cage-appropriate.
“That’s a separate issue. You hurt people, Gurion. That’s what we’re talking about.”
I hurt people.
“Yes. You commit acts of violence. You endanger other students. You’re someone from whom other students need protection.”
She pushed me the tissuebox. She wanted me to cry. To share a tender moment. She was trying to create one. I was not feeling tender. I pushed the box back.
Funny sentence, I said.
“Excuse me?”
‘You’re someone from whom other students need protection.’
“I don’t see how it’s funny.”
It’s all stress and context. Repeat it three times. ‘You’re someone from whom other students need protection.’ It’ll sound like the opposite of what you meant.
“You’re someone from whom other students need protection. You’re someone from whom other students need protection. You’re someone from whom other students need protection… Okay. I see. More wordgames with prepositions. So what?”
Try to kiss her.
“What?”
You’re too passive.
“What?”
Touch her hair first. If she lets you, lean in. If she leans in too, then kiss her. That’s the right order.
“We’re done talking about this. This isn’t appropriate.”
Don’t say ‘I love her’ in Klingon, I said, then pretend it means ‘Have a good weekend.’
Sandy’s eyes welled. She blew her nose. Through her tissue, she said, “‘With all of my heart.’”
Pardon?
“jIH muSHa’ Daj tlhej Hoch wIj tIq means ‘I love her with all of my heart.’”
In Klingon.
“Yes.”
In a footnote.
“Yes.” She tossed her crumpled tissue.
You proclaim your love in Klingon in a footnote addressed to your supervisor. A footnote you claim — within the footnote — that you will not include in the copy that goes to your professor.
“I did include it.”
You included the footnote in the copy to your professor, hoping she’d get the message. You hoped she’d read the footnote and conclude that you had forgotten to remove it, or that you were ‘unconsciously motivated’ to ‘forget’ to remove it. You hoped that your declaration of love for ‘her’ would come across, in Klingon, and would — because it was buried in a footnote that she wasn’t supposed to see and was thereby a ‘secret’—not only enhance the thrill of her discovery that you love her, but put the ball in her court, yeah? Because you figured: ‘She’ll see the footnote, and she’ll realize that I, Call-Me-Sandy, can’t bring myself to approach her romantically, and so she’ll have to approach me if she’s interested.’
“Yes.”
Does your professor speak Klingon?
“I don’t know.”
You don’t know?
“She used to want to be a linguist. She majored in linguistics. Even if she doesn’t know Klingon, you’d think she’d look it up.”
No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t think she’d look it up. You wrote that the phrase meant ‘Have a good weekend.’
“You looked it up.”
I didn’t look it up.
“You know Klingon?”
I knew a kid who used to say ‘jIH DIchDaq chargh Canaanite’ all the time.
“‘I will conquer the Cannanite?’”
Yeah. So jIH, I knew, meant ‘I.’ There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Have a good weekend.’
“But how did you know it meant ‘I love her’?”
Context, I said. I guessed. It was either that or ‘I hate you,’ as in ‘I hate you, Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD for making me hand in a copy of this paper.’
“But—”
Touch her hair and lean in. If she leans in, kiss her.
“This is so inappropriate!” Sandy said.
No, I said. This is termination. This is Good Will Huntingstein and Thursdays with Gurion. The saccharine and cinematic moment when the tables turn. The helper getting helped by the one she came to help. I’m done with you now. You aren’t my therapist.
“That’s not up to you.”
If you want me to come on Thursdays still, fine. And you can write whatever you want to write about me for whatever papers you need to turn in, and I won’t even call you out, because I like you. I think you’re a kind person. But I’m not saying anything to you anymore. I’ll sit here writing scripture or reading Philip Roth. And don’t look so down. Just don’t. Just don’t. This could’ve been worse. I could’ve been worse. I hurt people, right? That’s what you said. I could’ve thrown a stapler, but I didn’t, did I? I could’ve been worse but I wasn’t. Remember that.
She pushed me the tissuebox.
It’s not gonna happen, Call-Me, I said.
Sandy said, “Tch.” Then she said it twice more. “Tch,” she said. “Tch.”
I plucked her a tissue.