True Stories

My graduate school has this really interesting thing where they try really hard to get everyone to be a cohesive group. They have a lot of happy hours and events all organized by this group called the EGSA, or the English Grad Student Association. This all seems like a really cool, healthy, non-English majory environment, the only problem is that somehow I have totally managed to avoid all interaction with these people, through no real intention of my own.

For instance, the main event of all this, the kicker, was a barbeque held at the Department Head's house the first week of school on the day, of course, that I was moving into my new apartment. In the normal world, missing something like that is not a big deal, however it has actually been pointed out to me by other EGS's that I wasn't there and that this is not acceptable. And only in a half-kidding sort of way.

The second issue is that somehow, I got into the two most unusual classes on the schedule, apparently. Not the content of the classes themselves, but the attendance. Every other class I've seen is replete with students, and I hear them talking about their classes in the library and in the grad lounge. However, I am the ONLY English grad student in one of my classes (trust me, it's obvious) and there are only seven of us in the other.

All of this build up to say that Tim and I finally tried to make it to one ESGA event on Friday , a Ghost Tour in Old Town Alexandria, so we could meet some of these elusive people. We were five minutes late getting to the meeting spot and not a soul was there (five minutes, people!?). We had no info about where everyone was going from there, but after overhearing someone on the phone mention a ghost tour we got a hint and hunted down the spot. They were long gone, but the tour organizers nicely let us onto the next tour without making us pay again.

I love ghost tours, but I will admit that the one in Dover, England, where a) a lot more people have actually died in Clifford's tower and b) our tour got chased by this manic duck that kept biting people, was a lot more exciting.

Anyway, we went 17 metro stops to meet a bunch of people who we never saw. They weren't at the cafe where they were supposed to meet afterward either. I know there are other grad students out there. I've just still never met them.

On the other hand, yesterday Tim and I went to AU because my History of the Book class read a graphic novel called Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel, and American had hosted a colloquium on her work that day. The colloquium ended with her giving a talk which was really entertaining and actually fairly amazing. She brought slides of her illustration process and of some of the photos she used to create a number of the illustrations in the book. She also brought slides of some of her favorite comics as a kid and of her own comic strip, Dykes to Watch out For.

The talk was funny, and enlightening, and sad too. My favorite authors to listen to are always the ones who are a little mystified by their own process as well, and who may not exactly know the answers to everyone's questions, but who still manage to tell you something about the book that you never, ever could possibly have gotten by just reading it, or by reading an interview or an article.

The book is a memoir about Bechdel's relationship with her dad, his sudden death, and the fact of his closeted homosexuality in relationship to her coming out. After she gave her talk, people asked questions (and I don't think a single person asked a question that wasn't a question, it was, in short, a miracle) and because she was so funny, someone asked if she was funny in her family and she said, "yeah. I was. My mom is funny and I think learned that from her. I loved to make my dad laugh, but it's not like that was hard, you know. He laughed at the road runner. Someone pointed out once that there's not a single picture in the book where my dad doesn't look very stern and serious, so... you know... ...it's not a true story."

I love that.