[Published in The Red and Black, May 9th, 1978 in Athens, GA]
Behind LeConte Hall fifth period, against the back wall of the library, Jenny sat. I found her there one day, oh, I guess it was late last week. She had for several quarters now been a part of the outskirts of my circle of friends. Yet though I could be said to barely know her, we had acquired a familiarity of talking that bordered on a comfortable, if mocking intimacy.
She sat expressionless atop the plateau barrier built up against the massive library wall, legs spent out on the grass there. There was a certain wet to her dark eyes, which were moist like the wetness of numerous tiny grass leaves in the morning.
“Jenny!” I cried, “What you doing? Holding the walls of the library up? Do you need help?”
She turned and her eyes fixed on me, but no expression touched her face. Her moist eyes slipped, almost shamefully, down towards something in her hand. I climbed up to her level and sat beside her.
“Why so glum?” I asked.
“The moon is angry at me,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“The moon—but why? What have you done—spat at it?”
“Better if I had spat at it,” she replied. In her hands she slowly twirled a branched twig, as if pondering its great secrets, yet without care. This sense of moroseness about her, this I-want-nothing-to-do-with-the-world-or-anybody bit bothered me. I didn’t care for it.
“You must’ve done something really terrible, to get it so mad at you.” I felt but half-serious.
“It is necessary to feel shame,” she said. “It is absolutely necessary sometimes.”
Her hair, shoulder long and black, had fallen across her cheek and nose, and she brushed it aside as she spoke. She was a girl who had never been beautiful, I thought, though her face had a plainness to it that one felt comfortable with. I’d never known her to wear makeup much less jewelry—not even at parties—and she wore none now. It made her plainness all the more striking. And yet a certain dark vitality always seemed to lurk in her eyes, that alternately drew you or frightened you. One wanted to feel pity—yet didn’t quite dare.
I found her tone of talking disconcerting. It seems to me she was just moping—and a girl ought to be happy.
“Shame on your hair,” I ventured, “for being so intimate with your nose.” Yet she would not smile. I wanted her to smile.
She sat very quietly, as if in a trance or on a trip, breathing deeply and gradually. She took the twig in her hand and snapped it piece by piece into small bits. I turned to her.
“You take life way to seriously, Jenny. You ought to be happy.”
Again she sat not moving or answering me; her head tilted in thought. Finally she shrugged.
“But I’m not happy—so why deceive myself?”
“Life is a game,” I pleaded, “not a business. Nothing is that important—life ought to be fun. What else is living for, if not fun?”
She turned and faced me, her features taking on a set look. I watched her eyes flicker up and dart towards me in a sort of quick, damp anger.
“Life is for fun, alright,” she spoke, “but not to be made into a big joke. Nobody takes living seriously, yet nothing could be more important. Something is wrong, somewhere.” She paused for emphasis, “Vitally wrong.”
“Everyone takes it seriously,” I protested, “that’s what’s wrong. All these students who live and die on what their GPA is. Or these grad students who think what they personally are studying is so god-damned important—that’s the folly. Life is for having a good time. Take it too seriously and it ceases to be fun.”
“So life is a good high at T.K.’s,” she responded wryly.
“Well, that’s a part of it.”
She shook her head and her loose hair went all over. This time she didn’t straighten it as she spoke.
“I’m sick of good times. They’re really just little masks that you pull over your face, to hide you from your delusions about life. I’m tired of joking, words and games all the time, pretended happiness all the time. Nothing strikes me deep. Nothing is really vital. I want that people should strike some deep chord of meaning in me, and they don’t. They don’t even try to.”
We sat there—I rather didn’t know what to say. She seemed so down, depressed, and I felt it some absolute duty in me to bring her up again, cheer her back into a high somehow. But what to say—
“All this fun and good times,” she continued again, “is like Bolton food. You can only take so much of it, then you have to get sick.”
“So you’re sick now?” I asked.
“More angry than sick.”
“But I don’t see why you can’t be happy.”
“Because nothing here is meaningful. Everybody is happy without meaning—in the end it’s hollow.” Her eyes flickered angrily again.
“What is the big deal about meaning?” I asked. I felt essential someone say this to her. “If you have a soul, then you have meaning. What good is it to worry about it. Worry about meaning in the afterlife. While we’re here on earth let’s have some fun—that’s obviously what we’re supposed to do. It is useless to worry about what you can’t change, and it’s a crime not to have fun in life.”
“There you go,” she said, “using fun as a paper bag to hid yourself from the reality of being a living being. Worry about meaning after life, you say, let it be a concern of God, or of the eternal soul. But I only know I am alive, here in this body. I know nothing of god or of a soul or afterlife. I only know my body. I have no more, and what I have I have only for a time. It is essential that during this short time I am alive, I touch my deepest meaning.”
“Fun is your deepest meaning,” I countered.
She stood up, prepared to be leaving, and I found myself standing as well. She took a last deep breath and looked at me queerly.
“No, life is my meaning—whether I’ve fun as you call it or not. I live and have meaning, and then I die and have no meaning. So I want to touch the rock of my life while I live—since I’ve only this one chance to.”
“And I think your rock is an illusion,” I replied. “The best that you can do is to enjoy yourself as you live, to have at every moment as much fun as is absolutely possible.”
And so we parted and went our separate ways. And as our various sidewalks drew us further and further apart, I wondered: Me or her, who was the criminal? Whose was the crime?
At that, I wasn’t so all-fired sure it wasn’t me.
[The piece used a narrator whose viewpoint was in opposition to the point I hoped to make. I make the narrator describe Jenny’s unadorned face as “plainness” and asserts that she “had never been beautiful” and that “one wanted to feel pity—yet didn’t quite dare.” I deliberately made the narrator express everything that I found despicable in the male attitude towards female faces. Jenny’s facial “plainness” was due to her rejection of makeup and jewelry (in my mind something heroic). I forced the narrator to concede “yet a certain dark vitality always seemed to lurk in her eyes, that alternately drew you” (if someone like me) “or frightened you” (if someone like the narrator, or a typical male).
I also hoped it would be evident that the narrator was frightened of Jenny’s seriousness and depressive state—as if his own house of cards would collapse if she too did not pretend to be always happy and joyful—“joking, words and games all the time, pretended happiness all the time.” Jenny popped his balloon, asserting, “There you go, using fun as a paper bag to hide yourself from the reality of being a living being.”
This last reference was deliberate. The previous month a student at UGA had run for President of the Student Government Association (SGA) with a paper bag over his head, campaigning as the “unknown candidate” and making joke promises if elected. The student (Roger Strauss) won. This even got the attention of the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/23/archives/a-bagged-candidate-wins-campus-election.html The following year, SGA itself was dissolved after the student body voted in abolitionist candidate Harold Mulherin, who had pledged to disband student government if elected. (In 1979, I supported Doug Teper; I was against the Unknown Candidate in 1978, but can’t recall who I voted for.) SGA was finally resurrected in 1987.
If I wrote this today, I would ditch the word “meaning” and the phrase “meaning of life,” and focus instead on “value of life.” Life doesn’t have to be—can’t be—meaningful. That’s an effort to evaluate life from the vantage point of the isolated mind. Rather, we want life to feel valuable, which puts the vantage point of the body in the lead.]