Plurally Inclined - Parts II & III

II

Heather fidgets in her chair and studies the certificates and framed platitudes on the wall. It doesn’t look that different than our High School guidance counselor’s office. Across the desk from her, her student advisor, Ms. Pierce, a large, overly-cheerful woman, studies Heather’s permanent record.

“Graduated high school at fifteen. Two-year degree. Triple major. Four point oh. Extra curricular -- Pi Delta Phi?” she says, glancing over the top of her reading glasses.

“French Honor Society. I also work part time and skate competitively.”

Ms. Pierce removes her glasses. “Where do you find hours in the day?”

“I multitask,” Heather deadpans.

“Ah. Yes.” Ms. Pierce doesn't get the joke. “So, Heather, where exactly do you see yourself in ten years?

Heather knows exactly where she’ll be in ten years. “I intend to work with at-risk teens,” she says. She doesn’t say the obvious, that we want to be there for teens like us, so they don’t have to endure the same hell we went through.

“In what capacity?” Ms. Pierce asks. “School counselor? Social worker --”

“Psychiatrist.” That’s where we could do the most good. It’s the psychiatrists that drug you and lock you away and tell you that you’re crazy.

Ms. Pierce looks impressed. “So you’re pre-med? Given your academic record, I don’t see why that’s not do-able.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Right now, your course choices seem a bit,” Ms. Pierce searches for the right word, “Schizophrenic, shall we say.”

Schizophrenic! We want to shout. She obviously doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Heather smiles sweetly, nodding, trying not to look condescending.

“Fall semester I need you to really focus on your science. That’s what med schools will be looking for when it comes time to apply.”


III

“Old Campus” is pretty much what it sounds like. The original university buildings, built a hundred years ago, with marble staircases and balconies and ginormous columns. Hundred year old oak trees in spring greenery line the grassy mall. Walk north, you wind up down town. Walk south, you hit the library.

A couple of the buildings house academic offices, including student counseling. The rest are liberal arts buildings. The science and technology buildings are in what could be considered “New Campus,” if there were such a thing.

Heather strides toward the Psychology building -- a renovated brick monstrosity with “Never stop asking questions” emblazoned over the entrance. Noticing a classmate, Matt, sauntering up from the other direction, she cuts across the grass, hoping to casually intercept him.

Matt is a couple years older, a jock with chiseled features and perpetually tousled dirty-blond hair -- the kind just meant to run your fingers through. Matt is not the kind of guy that Heather usually hangs out with, or even notices. But when he’s around, she feels out of breath, her heart pounding in her chest. It’s like aerobics without all the sweating.

Heather discretely googled him earlier in the semester, during a discussion of the distinction between operant and Pavlovian conditioning. He was All-American in High School (whatever that means) and is on the university’s second string offensive line. In hindsight, Heather realizes googling a classmate might be construed as stalkerish behavior, but (as Zoe says) if God had meant for us not to check out hotties online, he wouldn’t have invented wireless access.

Matt and Heather converge on the building simultaneously.

“You look nice today,” he says, holding the door for her and offering a dazzling smile.

“Oh, um, thanks...” Her face turns bright red. Even her hair part is glowing. “So do you.”

Heather manages a shy smile before glancing down and slipping inside. So do you? This sounds lame even by Heather’s standards. She hopes that lightening will strike or perhaps the earth will open up and swallow her whole.

Establishing shot: A college classroom pretty much like fifty million other college classrooms. Beige walls. Risers. Rows of chairs with the arm that flips up and swivels over to become a desktop. Students in various stages of rapt attention. Heather is sitting a few desks and one level down from Matt. Her heart has stopped pounding, her breathing normal. She is bored as shit, but has a magazine smile plastered on her lips.

At the front of the room, Professor Marx sweeps back and forth like an actor on stage. Even though Marx is getting up there in years -- forty-five perhaps? -- he cuts quite a figure in his jeans and herringbone jacket. Rumor has it Marx has had affairs with his students. Hard to tell. The end flap of their psychology textbook sports a photo of Marx with his twenty-something wife and two young daughters.

“The most famous of these,” Marx says, “are Sybil and The Three Faces of Eve.”

Invisible to everyone in the class except Heather, B.J. -- sporting jeans and an oversized herringbone jacket -- follows Marx like a truculent shadow, aping his movements, punctuating his words with jabs of the meerschaum pipe in her hand.

“Merskey argues that Dissociative Identity Disorder is iatrogenic,” Marx says as B.J. tamps her pipe and tries to light it. “Patients create alter egos in response to therapy or to gain attention.”

B.J. takes a deep puff, gagging, convulsing in a fit of coughing. Heather stifles a giggle.

“Miss Lee?” Marx glares at Heather and she flushes red. “Something to share?”

“Oh, um--” she say, covering. “What about evidence that different alters exhibit differing clinical symptoms and that neuroimaging shows distinct states of self-awareness? I have a friend with DID --”

“The variance in symptomology is anecdotal and suspect. In the case of neuroimaging --”

The bell rings an obnoxiously long time, and students start packing up and leaving the classroom. Matt glances at Heather, actually starts toward her, but then --

“Miss Lee?” Dr. Marx calls from the front, and Heather glances up, expectant. “A word?

Looking disappointed, Matt shifts gears and heads outside.


“Dr. Marx?” Heather asks, approaching the desk where B.J. is kneeling, studying the tuft of hair growing out of Marx’s ear.

“I have a T.A. position opening up in the fall,” he says. “Thought you might be interested.”

“I thought --” I thought the T.A. positions were reserved for graduate students, she almost says, but decides not to look a gift-horse in the mouth. “Yes, Sir. I would.”

“Your friend -- the one with D.I.D?”

Precariously perched, B.J. twists up-side down to look up the tunnel of Marx’s nostril.

“Sir?” Heather bites her lip as B.J. leans so far she falls off the desk and thumps onto the floor.

“I understand that people with D.I.D. can be fascinating,” Marx says as B.J. pulls herself to her feet with the help of Marx’s jeans’ clad leg. “But they can... lure you in. Be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

Plurally Inclined - Part I

Welcome to Lyman Hall. It’s early morning and the usual sounds of dorm life seep in from the hallway. Conversations shouted from the communal bathroom / shower. Hair driers droning. Stereos and TVs blaring a dozen different stations at once.

Our room is halfway down the hallway, diagonally across from the head, so we hear a lot more of the comings and goings (and people getting sick after a night of partying). It’s set up like the rest of the rooms on this wing. Two twin XL beds, dressers, closets. Combination desk / bookshelves. If you draw a line down the center of the floor, the two sides are mirror images, almost.

Cathy, our roommate, has the neater half. Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the bed. A few knickknacks on the dresser. Everything in its place. Thing is, Cathy has an advantage. She doesn’t actually live here. She makes pit-stops in between partying and boys and the occasional class. She also doesn’t have a dozen headmates who’re out and about making messes as quickly as we can clean them up.

In comparison to Cathy’s space, our side is cluttered and eclectic, the walls covered in posters. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Zoe’s). Michelle Kwan on ice (Heather’s). The Eifel Tower (Suzanne’s). Lots of B.J.’s colorful crayon artwork. A corkboard on the wall by the desk boasts photographs, Post-It notes, a Battlestar Galactica Calendar, several strands of Mardi Gras beads -- usual stuff. A dorm-sized fridge with a portable television perched on top is squeezed between the dresser and the desk.

On the TV screen, Curious George and his dachshund pal Hundley are roller-skating through town. B.J., sitting Indian-style on the bed, giggles along with George and Hundley’s misadventures while eating Frosted Flakes out of a snack pack. (They’re grrreat!) She is four, going on forty, a tow-head with aquamarine eyes, the most precocious, artistic, and outspoken of all our littles.

With all the distractions going on, Suzanne, at the computer, is struggling to finish up our French homework. Suzanne is older, twenty-eight perhaps -- she doesn’t tell her age -- with dark hair and eyes. She is gorgeous in an anorexic super-model kind of way. And French. (Nuff said.) The most wonderful thing about Suzanne is her voice, a cross between Edith Piaf and Joan Jett, whom she uncannily resembles.

Suzanne reaches over and turns down the volume on the TV. Suzanne has been described as having chronic PMS -- spell that B-I-T-C-H -- but she seems to be having a good day. Taking advantage of the uncharacteristic good mood, B.J. reaches over and turns it back up.

By the dresser, Zoe, our resident fashionista, helps Heather accessorize for class. Heather is nineteen and a bit of a dork in spite of being smart as hell. She has long, straight blond hair and cerulean blue eyes. Hollywood would say she’s a bit chunky, but no one’s gonna call her thunder thighs. It’s all muscle from working out on the ice.

“Jade or Topaz,” she asks, holding up one ear ring of each.

Zoe gives her the once-over. She is a younger, idealized version of Heather. At seventeen, she’s sexy and confident and looks a lot like Sarah Michelle Gellar on the Buffy poster.

“Topaz,” Zoe decides.

In the corner, the inkjet printer whirs. Suzanne leans back in her chair, pretending to yawn, and taps B.J. on the far shoulder. When B.J. glances away, Suzanne snatches a piece of cereal and pops it in her mouth.

“Hey!” B.J. says, realizing what’s happened.

“You kids play nice,” Heather says, “or I’m gonna separate you.”

“Awww, Mama!” Suzanne says with her French lilt. She scans the paper that’s come from the printer and reaches it toward Heather. “Your homeworks.”

“Merci, Mademoiselle.” Zoe takes it and adds it to a stack of books and folders on the bed.

And then the door opens and Cathy slips inside.


Cathy is twenty and striking, even with wet-combed hair and no makeup. She will go far in life. Cathy is the sort of girl who’ll wind up as a broadcast journalist or married to a millionaire. What she lacks in looks she makes up in sexually explicit clothing. Her BFF is a Wonderbra.

Heather shovels a spoonful of cereal in her mouth and turns off the TV as Cathy studies her wardrobe. The room is empty otherwise. No Zoe. No B.J. No Suzanne.

“Hey, Heath? Ladies’ night at the forty watt. Don’t wait up.” Cathy stopped asking Heather if she’d like to come along back in the fall. Noisy crowds aren’t Heather’s scene. Also, she doesn’t own a fake ID and is too big a wuss to get one. Cathy respects this and doesn’t push it.

“Have fun,” Heather says. “And don’t worry about me -- all alone, slaving away over French conjugations.”

“Not a chance.”

Cathy appraises Heather as she gathers her books.

“I like the topaz,” she says. “It brings out the color in your eyes.”

Heather grins as she heads for the door. “Thanks.”