Tough Girl

Janie is appalling ignorant in some ways due to a serious lack of education. She had no knowledge of how she had came to be, how the human race had come to be, how America had come to be, where her parents came from...you name it. Can you imagine living in a world not knowing its extent, extant or your place in it? Can you imagine knowing only about your block of ghetto housing, how to avoid being eaten by rats, how to sell as little drugs as possible for as much money as possible while getting arrested as infrequently as possible? Janie can read and write and do very simple arithmetic, but her vocabulary is horribly stunted. During my stay in Oberlin, I engaged her in long conversations in which I had to constantly stop to define words (words like "irony," "atrocity," "belligerent," "annihilate," and "endure.") I also had to tell her about important concepts such as theories concerning the formation of the universe, the evolution of life and the free market system (though she quickly grasped Capitalism when I described a series of drug-economy microcosms). She proved to be very intelligent, and topics that take months for kids to absorb in school took her only minutes, and not only that, she quickly applied new knowledge in new situations, for example pointing out irony in a third person's conversation, and recognizing "the survival of the fittest" upon seeing an ancient but fully functional VW bug drive by (she said, "it's still around because it was well made, right?"). I felt like I had landed in the stone age with my Modern-Man knowledge and had found a Cave-Girl eager to learn my wisdom. She tried to spend as much time talking to me as possible because for some reason, she could learn from me more than from anyone else. Shandi didn't have the energy and patience to take the necessary time, and besides, he didn't have the requisite broad interests that would allow him to know enough to actually teach such a wide variety of topics. And as for people like Katy, she approached poor Janie as though she must be told things as one would teach the Bible, performing no explanation. When you are in Janie's position, you don't want to be given things to accept based on faith. You want to know how the world works. Janie pleaded with me to spend the nights with her and Shandi, and surprisingly Shandi was almost as into the idea as was Janie. We three talked in to the wee hours about topics like Astrophysics and Love and the failings we could see in people like Encina, Jeff and Katy. So on such nights we fell asleep feeling superior, deservedly or not.

Other days I spent more time with Katy. She was so friendly to me I was embarrassed. She would spend hours to braid my hair and give me massages while constantly punctuating such behaviour with little kisses and hugs...frequently with her husband, Kevin, sitting right there in the room. He seemed indifferent about it, but I wonder how he really felt. I felt sorry for him. It surely looked to all present that Katy was far more in love with me than she was with her true honest to goodness husband. Chances are, all such fondness on her part was due to my newness on the scene. And all the time I was there she was doing wonders for my ego, saying for example that I was one of the three smartest men in the world she knew...along with her husband Kevin, and Rippy (who you have not have occasion to meet). She would also say that I manifested the sort of creativity that she hadn't seen in Harkness of late. She said that the current stock of Oberlin students doesn't compare to the grade that existed in the days when she and I were in College. (Interestingly, this statement is diametrically opposed to the opinion of the College administration, which maintains that, among other things, the average SAT score of incoming students is now 100 points higher than it was when I was enrolled: from 1150 to 1250). Of course, I wasn't opposed to fostering such opinions on the part of Katy, after all she and her political tentacles were doing wonders for my popularity and acceptance in Harkness amongst the new folks. I need as many friends and/or admirers on Campus as possible if I am to be able to continue to move about there with grace. So, partly motivated by a desire to impress Katy, I would engage Kevin in long conversations about Psychology, Philosophy, and Economics. Kevin is highly intelligent, and he has a large vocabulary, as do I, and so our conversations were fascinating to the likes of people like Katy, who has a smaller vocabulary but wide interests. Katy deeply admires intellectual men. I also related with Katy directly in creative ways, making up ridiculous sexist, harebrained limericks. My scatalogical and sexist humour is partly how I am both loved and hated, and Katy found she could even find joy in my lowest behaviour. I didn't allow Katy's "politically correct hippy agenda" to pussy-whip me from my behaviour. I knew she loved me and would accept behaviour from me she would not tolerate from anyone else. So, for example, I sang along with Jimi Hendrix, but only during "Foxy Lady." That way, I seemed to be acting exactly as I am rumoured always to do, confirming Katy's belief that there wasn't a dark side of me that she didn't know about, one which maybe Laura Heller (her other, lesser friend) had managed to find.

Welfare Scandal