Coming and Going

REPRESSIVE DESUBLIMATION Professor Pasten (that would be me, but I like the pretentiousness of writing about myself in the third person) writes the words on the whiteboard. He shakes his head as he does. (Even after all these years I can’t get used to using markers. I miss blackboard and chalk, especially the smell when clouds of it gush from erasers smacked together.) His skinny ass sits in his thrift-store slacks like a saggy peach in a produce bin. The girl in the third row from the front, the one with the hair like a thunderstorm, pink lipstick, a face betraying an intricate, indeterminate (and thus currently fashionable) mixed-race composite, and the outrageous outfit—red Keds, white-and-pink striped knee socks, orange fishnets, a green miniskirt, and a midriff-baring teeny white top barely covered by a black mesh thingy and hugged by a short blue-jean jacket—stares at my skinny white ass and bites her lip. “Can anyone tell me what this means?” I start to turn around from the board toward the class. Even though I know what will meet my eyes—the faces downturned to laptops or cell phones, IM’ing or texting furiously; the gum-chewing vacant stares into space; the few eager-beavers looking for a sign, a thought, a way to please and get an A; the heads on the desks, sleeping off a hangover—I still allow myself a second of delicious old-school fantasy that what I’ll find is a sea of bright, attentive faces, shining with an eagerness to learn, with excitement about challenging assumptions. One hand goes up. Her: the chubby Korean girl with coke-bottle glasses and the annoying lisp. “Amy, as always, has an answer ready,” I say drolly, feigning great boredom. “Does anyone else care to participate?” I know I’m supposed to crack wise now, but I’ve grown very weary of the way the professorial role has morphed into that of standup comic, so I fall back on the familiar sardonic declension. The professor glances down at the girl with the storm-tossed hair, who seems to be doing something with her hands in her lap. Shit. What’s her name again? Her eyes glance up and meet mine, glaring. I quickly avert my gaze. I can’t be caught staring at the class slut in front of everyone, even though I’ve gotten a hint from her first paper that she might be the brightest bulb in the room. She suddenly shoots her hand up, just as she loudly pops a gigantic piece of bubblegum. “Yes… um...,” I point to her lamely. “Xix,” she shouts out. “Why can’t you remember my name? It ain’t that hard. Only three letters: X. I. X.” Scattered giggles and snorts from around the room, emitted by the few sentient beings paying any attention. For a second the chirps drown out the constant clicking of keys. “Of course, Miss Xix.” I feign nonchalance. “I ain’t Miss Anything,” she snaps. “Just Xix. I don’t like gender ghettoizing.” Then her mouth allows a smirk. She seems to be missing one of her front teeth—or maybe it’s just colored in with black marker, very likely the latest post-punk thing? “Go ahead, Xix. Tell us about repressive desublimation.” I let out an exaggerated exasperated sigh, the much-put-upon pose that some students occasionally respond to. Scattered snickers with occasional gusts of air-conditioning-blown Altoids. “Herbert Marcuse,” she says, loudly. “Post-Freudian visionary. Saw the future like it was right inside his eyeballs.” The professor strolls over to get a little closer to Xix. A lanky guy even if slightly stooped by age, on the edge of the lecture stage he towers above her like a lighthouse over rocky shoals. “That’s right. Marcuse coined the term. So why is it visionary?” “You asking me?” sasses Xix. “Look around. Eighty percent of the kids in here are cybering or sexting as we speak. Half the guys have hard-ons and most of the girls have wet panties.” At this, there is a slight diminishing of keyboard clatter as a few kids look up from their coding and nudge each other or whisper. “And how does this activity qualify as repressive desublimation?” “Hey,” says Xix, laughing. “You tell me. You’re the teach. But seems to me as long as we’re up to our elbows in constant masturbation, it’s pretty hard to get your mind out of your own asshole long enough to do any fucking thing to stop the planet from burning up or blowing up, whichever is gonna happen first. So, one of them for sure is.” Immediately her head sinks and she goes back to whatever she’s doing in her lap. Murmurs alternate with roars of approval, squeals of laughter, and one loud fart. “Actually, fellow explorers,” says the Professor, trying to wax coolly ingratiating. “Xix here has nailed it.” Then I shift into lecture mode. “Herbert Marcuse was one of Freud’s disciples, but he broke away from his mentor. In the 1950s he could see that increased leisure time and the twin distractions of TV entertainment and advertising might pose a threat to the hegemony of capitalism. “In Civilization and Its Discontents Freud showed how sublimation of libido—libido being the product of the undisciplined id, the childlike, pleasure-seeking portion of the unconscious mind—was necessary for civilization. Repressed libido is sublimated from sexual outlets to artistic, cultural, and commercial pursuits. Thus, according to Freud, civilization runs on rechanneled sexual energy. “Marcuse wondered how the threat of unleashed libido might impact the hegemony of civilization’s institutions.” The sleepers have their heads down again, and the texters are very busy with their fingers. I’m staring at my lectern, aware that my voice is droning. I picture myself as a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Referencing Marx, Marcuse realized that commodity fetishism—the substitution of materialism and money for genuine human relations—could be harnessed by advertisers smart enough to tie their product to libidinal desires, putting commercial materials between the itch and the scratch. “Thus did market imperatives hitch a ride on sexual liberation. What followed was massive cooptation of social rebellion expressed as cultural change. Threatening stars were turned into safe commodities. It started with Elvis, and continued a generation later with Madonna….” Why can’t I shut the fuck up? When I stop my monologue, the only ones paying attention are Amy and Stephen, her doppelganger teacher’s pet. Everyone else is long gone. I risk a glance at the combustible Xix. She appears to be doing her nails. I call for a break and leave for the bathroom, thoroughly disheartened. When the professor returns there is a wrapped-up piece of paper on his podium. He picks it up, and something falls out—something narrow and plastic and gray, with a button. When he presses the button, a green light atop it goes on. He thinks he hears a low moan from the front row. On the paper is scrawled a note in large, perhaps satirically flowery script: Dear Professor, Care to test Marcuse’s theory? I am wearing a butterfly vibe. This remote controls it Please, sir, teach me a real lesson. X. I quickly press the button off and look around in a panic, making sure no one has seen me picking up the note and the thing. As usual, no one is paying any attention. Half the students are still out of the room. The others are pecking away, snoozing, or jabbering. Xix is in her seat, nonchalantly typing on her laptop. On her laptop a video is playing, with the sound turned down. It’s one of her favorites: a girl on a rooftop being fucked by a machine. How do I know this? She told me, later.