post-English 302

I have been outed. My old-school, New England liberal writing professor asked for a showing of hands on who, in the class, was homeschooled, after reading an article on the local phenomenon. There are two of us, apparently, and we represent both ends of the spectrum: the tidy, early, verbose Latin scholar and the perpetually almost-late free-verse partier. Well, we aren't normal. On Thursday, we're assigned a poem on death. I want to make it something beautiful and terrible, something Sylvia Plath.

But I was also surprised in class - when he asked us two freaks if our parents didn't "believe" in evolution, like people don't believe in gravity - "Is the earth flat?" - half the other students started talking about how most schools teach it as a theory, and with other theories. He laughed at us, but the harassment was over - he didn't even defend the exaggerations, or claim a studied cultural disconnect, as he does when we have to explain references to Mario 64 in our work. I do wish I'd taken debate, though, sometimes...

Yes, I am skipping theatre class; I don't want to be present for today's assignment. I can take their language and innuendo; it only further cements everything I believe about the world. I bury my nose in the book, write excellent papers, and exult quietly when I find a fellow dissenter. But I will not stand in the middle of a black box stage and sing their songs, play their hand-organ, dance like a chained bear.

It is a day for Earl Grey tea, with the sky all fog and mold. The colors of the world are wet coals now, an infusion of cynicism and rusted loveliness. I shake an extra packet of sugar into my cold black bergamot and leave to run paperwork upstairs to the dean's office.