YDN Magazine by Yale Daily News

DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE 70- 9997** t *446& t 4&15&.#&3

SAVING YALE’S MUSIC SCENE LEARNING ETIQUETTE LEAVING THE EARTH BEHIND

THE VACATION ISSUE

INSIDE 9

PROFILE

Leaving the Earth Behind BY SARAH HELLER

Smudges of Connecticut autumn slide by as Sarah completes her first lesson with flight intstructor Greg Motolla. Terrified and slightly hung over, she begins to learn the ins and outs of general aviation.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ben Brody

MANAGING EDITORS

Anthony Lydgate, Jesse Maiman

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

In his work on farms in Bavaria this summer, photographer Adam Trettel found everything from cows, horses, chickens, and kittens to the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner.

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Adrienne Wong

DESIGN & PHOTO EDITORS

FICTION EDITOR

Angelica Baker

Lucky Ones When Mark’s young wife announces that she is pregnant a second time, he knows he must face their past in order to save their marriage.

Maria Haras, Sin Jin

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZARA KESSLER PROFILE, “MY YALE” AND BACKPAGE GRAPHICS BY LOIDE MARWANGA FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY BY GINGER JIANG FICTION ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIN JIN “TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT” ILLUSTRATION BY MARIA HARAS

FICTION

BY JACQUE FELDMAN

ILLUSTRATORS

The YDN Magazine invites letters to the editor. Please send comments to the editor-in-chief at benjamin.brody@yale.edu. The views and opinions represented in the Magazine’s articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff. We reserve the right to refuse any ad for any reason and to delete or change any copy we consider objectionable, false, or in poor taste.

Can “Yale Music Scene” Save Yale’s Music Scene? With venues disappearing and audiences dwindling, Yale’s bands are struggling to stay afloat. But a few ambitious organizations are setting out to change that.

Rosanna Oh

STAFF WRITERS

FEATURE

BY GABOR DEBRECZENI

POETRY EDITOR

Rachel Caplan, Rebecca Distler, Jacque Feldman, Nicole Levy, Frances Sawyer, Eileen Shim, Jonathan Yeh

Staudach Farm BY ADAM TRETTEL

Naina Saligram, Kanglei Wang, Victor Zapana

Ginger Jiang, Loide Marwanga, Jared Shenson, La Wang

PHOTO ESSAY

FEATURE

The Case for Etiquette BY EMMA SOKOLOFF-RUBIN

For those interested in the exact duration of a businessappropriate handshake, or the reasons for avoiding marinara sauce at a dinner with the firm, Sharon Abraham’s etiquette class is the key to success.

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

AROUND MY CITY

The Feiner Things in Life Aren’t Free BY BEN BRODY

MY YALE

COURTESY PHILLIP ISLAND PARK

Road Tripping BY JACQUE FELDMAN

STUDIO SPACE

Yea or Neigh: A Sienese Affair

A gaggle of so-called Little Penguins emerges onto the beach of Phillip Island, Australia, where spectators gather every summer.

UP THE HILL

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

BY EILEEN SHIM AND NICOLE LEVY

Penguin Parade BY ZARA KESSLER

POEM

The Glass

BY KATY WALDMAN

POEM

First Foaling BY ELISA GONZALEZ

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

Confessions of a Gossipholic BY NAINA SALIGRAM

BACKPAGE

Berlusconi on Record BY ALISON GREENBERG

s I watch students rushing frantically to get their schedules signed, asking each other anxiously if their coughs are the result of sleepless nights or swine flu, and transferring slowly and sadly out of flip-flops, I can’t help but think, “a few weeks ago, I was working on my tan.” September, as we all know, is the return to school, a time of new beginnings for those in the scholastic cycle, and a time for the exhaustion that comes with them. It is the end of summer break. That’s why this is the “Vacation Issue.” Pick it up to read Zara Kessler’s account of a procession of tiny penguins in Australia and remember the warm sand of August beaches. As you imagine long nights and thin layers, escape to the Palio horse race in Sienna with Nicole Levy and Eileen Shim or stalk Blair Waldorf of “Gossip Girl” through New York in Naina Saligram’s personal essay. Fly high in Sarah Heller’s profile of a Hartford pilot instructor and think one last time before next May about clear sunshine. Then come home to Yale with Jacque Feldman and our long features. Our first issue is a dispatch from leisure, a little souvenir from the places where we spent “the other four months” of 2009. It is also an exciting issue with which to start the year, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. As I go into my final September here, this issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine is a little like browning leaves and brisk winds: it is just one of the many perks of the end of summer. Best Wishes, - Ben Brody

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

AROUND MY CITY THE FEINER THINGS IN LIFE AREN’T FREE by Ben Brody magine a politician so committed to reform that he was willing to abolish his own job, low-paying though it was, in his quest for government efficiency. It’s a laudable idea, but, I think, subtly grotesque — “characterized by distortion or unnatural combinations; fantastically extravagant,” as the OED puts it. The idea of the self-firing functionary conjures images of the sideshow mermaid, a reformer’s head sewn to a politician’s tail. It’s a little uncomfortable to contemplate. But many say that that’s exactly what Paul Feiner used to be. Feiner is currently the town supervisor of Greenburgh, New York, in my home county of Westchester, just north of New York City. But in 1990, Feiner was a member of the county’s Board of Legislators, and he started to argue that the Board, and in fact the whole county government, should be abolished. He contended that it was bloated with inefficiency and that its functions did or could exist on other jurisdictional levels (like the city or state). “If we could avoid the duplication, then we should be able to give people more value for the dollar,” he told me later. Eventually, though, Feiner — who is even more jittery in his political advocacy than in his personal mannerisms — moved on, pursuing the issue with little vigor after a few years and winning the race for his current office. But in 2008, Joan Gronowski, a councilwoman in the Westchester city of Yonkers, became infuriated that the county had raised taxes in her city by 24%. “I got such an outcry of protest from my district,” Gronowski told me later. A first-term civil servant, Gronowski decided to look for an unconventional solution. “I just was one day Googling ‘eliminate county government,’ and the first site I was presented with was for Paul Feiner lobbying for just that very thing.” Gronowski found encouraging solutions in Feiner’s ideas, so she got in touch with him and persuaded him to take up the cause seriously. People in Westchester will tell you that as a 16-year-old political gadfly, Paul Feiner was barred from lobbying the Westchester County Board of Legislators because he

COURTESY PAUL FEINER

While many local politicians are considering budget cuts during this economy, Paul Feiner, the popular town supervisor of Greenburgh, N.Y., is looking to cut far more, and his plan is starting to get a lot of attention.

In spite of the problems Feiner says his movement still faces, he claims that his grass roots effort to abolish the Westchester county government has “created a buzz.” was so annoying; that he does business from a card table outside a supermarket; and that he advertises his home phone number so constituents can call to register even minor complaints, like congested traffic corners. They will tell you that he has a knack for ideas, like energy conservation and open government, that eventually catch on. So, when Feiner began to take seriously the idea of dissolving the county, the county took notice. “I contacted Paul, and it mushroomed into what we have now,” said Gronowski in 2008, referring to the eight research committees, lively public meetings, hundreds of confirmed supporters, and the media attention that had blossomed in less than a year. “It’s a grassroots movement,” she said, “but it’s snowballing.” It was long past business hours when Feiner explained why he thought the movement was snowballing. “Something’s going to have to change,” he told me. Soon, he said, “only the very rich and the very poor are going to live here” in Westchester. High taxes were pushing out the middle class, he said, and much of the blame belonged to the county. “People are rooting to get rid of county government.” Rooting, he said, for a number of rea-

sons, including the financial squeeze on residents in a faltering economy. Indeed, if the economy were doing well, “this effort would have a very slim chance of getting approved, because people generally don’t like change,” Feiner said, pausing. “But I don’t think the economy’s that great.” That was last summer. By the time our current Great Recession had taken hold, I began to notice street signs, television commercials, and local meetings. Feiner e-mailed me about multiple websites, his impressive media coverage, the Facebook pages he suggested I join in support of the movement. Other papers had picked up the story, and Feiner was speaking at places like the Rotary Club. “We’ve created a buzz,” Feiner said. And there have been real, tangible changes. In June, a bill passed in the state legislature that allows local governments to petition for consolidation, although it does not apply to county governments. Feiner is hopeful that a bill eventually will. The momentum is working well for him, but he knows that creating a buzz is, in some ways, the easy part. “We’ve gotten people talking, but now we have to make the case. Now we have to prove to people that they’ll actually save money.”

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

MY YALE ROAD TRIPPING by Jacque Feldman She starts packing on the miles in mid-May, but during a summer of adventures in Spain and treks around the East Coast, Jacque Feldman finds her Honda Accord bringing her to a place of more permanence. his summer, I drove alone almost everywhere except to the airport, where my mom dropped me off before my flight to Madrid. She told me that she was proud of the real grown-up person I’d become, that she was impressed with my independence, and that she really hoped I wouldn’t lose my passport. Just in case, she reminded me, I could borrow the special wallet she always used for documents when traveling internationally. It looked like a fanny-pack. I declined, we embraced, I embarked. Two weeks later, I lost my passport in Majorca. Four weeks and seven Spanish cities after the passport incident, it was time, somehow, for my first Yale Summer Session creative writing class. I had booked my ticket home from Spain for the last possible minute, arriving at my house twelve hours before class started — which turned out to be, as I had calculated, just enough time to sleep, shower, Starbuck, and commute to New Haven from my home in central Connecticut. As a bonus, I planned to excuse my lateness with jet lag. For all of these reasons, I rolled into New Haven in a fog of self-congratulation. That is, until I saw my first Yale buildings in two months, their Gothic rooftops poking out above the shaded brownstones near Exit 3, and snapped out of it. I felt instead that I was happy to be back. More than happy, I felt that I was coming home, and for a moment, I forgot about everything else. Life went on. I parked near LC, fed the meter, and fed my writing teacher the jet-lag excuse. New Haven in summer was everything a Yalie might imagine: sunny weather, ABP iced coffee, and Lilly’s Pad instead of the regular Toad’s dance floor. Even better, with my car on hand, I could drive to Frank Pepe’s for dinner. Life went on, and my summer travel grew no less ambitious. I repeated trips to New York and New Hampshire and, once, flew to Miami — all between sessions of my Tuesday/Thursday class. One Thursday, I woke up in a friend’s New York apartment, arrived by train in New Haven just in time for my midday class, and ended up, around

ten o’clock, stopping to see some friends who would be leaving town that weekend. “I can’t stay too long,” I told them. “I have to drive to New Hampshire tonight to meet my family at the lake.” I was met with blank stares. Was I crazy? What was I doing? I convinced them of my sanity, and the conversation turned to other things. Then, as they saw me to the door, they reminded me to call them if I began to fall asleep at the wheel — the kind of mistake I would have thought myself above, before the passport incident. By four in the morning, with a car full of emptied Diet Coke bottles and a warning for speeding written up by a lazyeyed cop who had promised trouble if I ever sped again in the town of Hanover, New Hampshire, I arrived at my family’s cabin. My long-suffering ’98 Honda Accord, whose temperature knobs had fallen off long ago, was now showing more serious signs of wear. My hastily made endof-school-year plans to visit every friend in the tri-state area were coming dangerously close to realization.

It was a crazy summer, and I felt crazy myself during that last week or two of August when I tried to process all I’d done and, more puzzling, why I had done it. I had grown introspective, much more so after my car’s CD player broke, forcing me to drive in silence after I couldn’t take any more of Katy Perry’s latest radio hit (that’s “Waking up in Vegas,” to those luckier than I). I guessed that I’d learned valuable lessons about my flaws and spontaneity, my coffee dependency and lead-footedness, and, maybe, my impending adulthood. During a summer when I rarely slept in the same place for four nights straight, Yale was the only place I returned to reliably — and more reliably if caffeinated — every Tuesday and Thursday. Some mornings, I would drive four hours from New Hampshire to New Haven, only to muster all the bravery I had gathered in my short suburban life to parallel-park. Maybe, I reflected, I owed my sentiment on that first day of class to something more than jet lag. Here, at Yale, I had found a permanent home.

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

STUDIO SPACE YEA OR NEIGH: A SIENESE AFFAIR by Nicole Levy and Eileen Shim As the dust clouds and hoofbeats of the Palio, Siena’s legendary horse race, fade into the distance, Eileen Shim and Nicole Levy UHÁHFW RQ WKHLU <DOH 6XPPHU 6HVVLRQ KRPHVWD\ H[SHULHQFHV DQG WKHLU LPPHUVLRQ LQWR WKH FLW\·V DQFLHQW PHGLHYDO FXOWXUH

ILEEN SHIM: For weeks, we had lived and breathed the Palio. The contrada system, the colors, the horses, the jockeys… NICOLE LEVY: … who was favored to win, who was a nonna [a team that has not won in years] whose chances were slim, but whose hopes were eclipsed by none… ES: … how a horse was selected, how it was taken care of. Picture us, a bunch of Yalies with barely intelligible Italian, caught up in all of this passion and furor… NL: We were buying fazzoletti [patriotic scarves] and posing in photos with neighborhood fountains. ES: You know, you couldn’t actually buy the real contrada scarves in the stores. Those are reserved for the contradaioli [the citizens of a particular contrada]. NL: I guess it doesn’t surprise me. The whole event was orchestrated in that way — to make you feel as if you were included in something much larger than yourself and your micromanaged vacation. ES: Do you remember how it started? The parade, the flag twirling, the trumpets, the striped Renaissance tights. It felt over-the-top, like a circus show. NL: I pitied the horses. ES: The way they whipped them and slapped them around was objectionable. NL: It was a novelty act. ES: Exactly. I was also offended when they brought the horses inside the churches to be blessed.

NL: It wouldn’t have been so problematic had they not denied entrance to anyone besides the contradaioli. Then at least it could be construed as means of rallying the community. ES: It is not good form to pray for bad luck for others. NL: [Laughs] True, but it happens when we’re really passionate about something. Although, that’s not to say it justifies how seriously the Sienese take their system of alliances and rivalries. ES: Palio has legitimate roots and origins, but the Sienese just play it up too much. I hate to be so skeptical, but it seems like tourism is just the past feeding the purses of the present. NL: There was even cynicism bubbling among the Sienese themselves. My host mother, Signora Poggialini, didn’t care much about the spectacle. ES: Neither did mine. She watched the

Palio on TV, like the rest of Siena. I felt like only tourists showed up to watch it on the Piazza. NL: I did see some excited Sienese in the crowd. One woman, a member of the Chiocciola [Snail] contrada, wore all the accessories, even snail earrings! She was increasingly frustrated by the race as the horses made repeated false starts. I found that once the race did begin, it was anticlimactic. And staged. They all fell into a line after the second lap, with Tartuca [Turtle] in the lead. If only the jockeys weren’t so corrupted by bribery. ES: All the false starts definitely killed the enthusiasm. And the fact that the actual race was over in less than a minute. NL: Yeah. Afterwards, I cheered myself up with gelato. ES: That’s always a good plan. But that was highly commercialized, too. I doubt Italians eat that much gelato, or else they’d

EILEEN SHIM

he Palio is much more than a simple horse race: it is a spectacle, a glorious display, a medieval tradition as old as Siena itself. The city, which is divided into 17 fiercely competitive neighborhoods called contrade, revolves around this age-old biannual event. As July 2, the date of the year’s first Palio, quickly approaches, a makeshift track springs up in the Piazza del Campo, Siena’s heart and center. The square is filled with imported dirt and ringed by an old wooden fence to prevent the frenzied horses from crashing into the spectators whose ranks we will soon join.

Shutters click and heads crane forward as the carabinieri, Siena’s local police, gallop in their costumes around the Piazza del Campo in a ritualistic kickoff to the Palio.

EILEEN SHIM

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

The hours before the Palio are fraught with tension and energy, as the contrade rally their citizens with endless parades and pageantry. Here, la Lupa, the she-wolf contrada, leads a Renaissance-bedecked procession as supporters follow with patriotic songs. myself, but I loved doing it. ES: Yeah, there’s a point where you just go, “I’m here, I don’t really speak Italian that well, but I might as well try.” And the Italians I met all seemed to appreciate the effort. NL: The effort is being a part of a new “we” for a moment, and not just in the piazza, but in the kitchen, admiring the smell of fried squash blossoms wafting from the stove; at the fruttivendolo stand, where the vendor knows you love figs; in the cobblestoned street where you grow to resent “tourists” crowding what has become your adoptive city.

I hate to be so skeptical, but it seems like tourism is just the past feeding the purses of the present. be whales. The fact that there was a gelato store on every corner seemed kind of suspect to me. NL: My host mother was always offended when we didn’t take seconds; I was affectionately called topolino, or little mouse, because she said I nibbled my food. ES: That’s a very good way to get inexperienced people like us very fat. I did love the generosity, though. Our families really opened themselves to strangers. NL: Honestly, sometimes I couldn’t tell whether it was the people I met who made me feel welcome, or whether it was my own change in perspective that made the difference. I wasn’t as afraid to approach strangers and reach out. I definitely made a fool of

e the Sienese stomp on the yellow dirt in the Piazza, paving the racetrack for the horses that will gallop around its rim in a week’s time. We welcome our own horse, which was selected by lottery and will determine our future. We pat him with assurance; we shel-

ter him with care in our stables. We suspect sabotage from any angle, and we pray to St. Anthony to keep our gallant steed safe. We train a watchful eye on our jockey to insure he isn’t bribed in a bathroom stall. At night, we dine with our fellow contradaioli, the words of patriotic songs becoming slurred with bottomless libations. Rain does not deter us from celebrations — our umbrellas blossom, and we sing zealously under the eaves when it pours. At the trial races, we goad our horses onward with cheers from the stands lining the Piazza. In the winding, narrow streets, our rivals accost us, and we fight back with our fists. In the Piazza, we endure the endless pageantry until it is time for the race. The horses rear their heads impatiently, seething in close quarters, and we pray ours is victorious. We breathe and breathe until the rincorsa, the tenth horse, is given the signal. We shout — from balconies, from the sunken center of the Piazza, from our father’s broad shoulders. We hiss. Today, if we lose, we lose no money; if we win, we will be rich with honor.

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

UP THE HILL

PENGUIN PARADE by Zara Kessler

’m pretty sure that my eight-yearold brother thought we were going to see a movie. Even I was almost fooled when my family left a concession stand gripping cups of steaming hot chocolate and wrestling among ourselves for first dibs on a large tub of popcorn. We pushed open a glass doorway, walked through the dark, and searched for seats among already crammed grandstands. In modern times, the penguin parade at Phillip Island, Australia, has become something of a spectator sport. Approximately three and half million people visit the island each year, making it one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. Though the island, with its sizeable populations of koalas and seals, provides ample opportunity to fill a “My Exotic Trip Down Under” photo album, most tourists seem to make the trek especially to witness the Little Penguin phenomenon — hundreds of pocket-sized penguins, the smallest members of their species, surfacing nightly on the same beach. “It’s very famous, because it’s the only place in the world where this happens,” my mother, who first researched the event for our vacation, remembers. “Each night at sunset the world’s smallest penguins, the Little Penguins, emerge from the sea and waddle ashore to their sand dune burrows.,” boasts the Phillip Island Nature Parks website. This is a truly memorable natural wildlife experience.” How these tiny Australian natives find their way back to the sand dune burrows they call home, even after days of hunting at sea, is still a scientific mystery. As the last kernels of popcorn vanished, with no penguins to be seen, the reason for our presence also seemed mysterious. My attention shifted from snacking to oneupping my older sister’s college stories, and I couldn’t help but feel that our twohour pilgrimage from central Melbourne had been a waste. Western tourists, we’d paid a fortune to stare into the pitch-black waters, shivering in the frigid air that marked August in Australia. The deserted beach, illuminated with lights seemingly purloined from a Hollywood set, only strengthened my suspicion that Ashton Kutcher was about to

COURTESY PHILLIP ISLAND NATURE PARKS

Nightly, thousands of tourists come to Phillip Island to watch petite penguins return to their beachside abodes, yet even among the grandstands, popcorn, and commercial enthusiam, it is really nature that is calling the shots.

Three Little Penguins return to their nests on Phillip Island, after a long day at sea.

waddle out in a penguin costume and tell us all that, like thousands of tourists before us, we’d been Punk’d. I think our conversation had reached my sister’s sophomore year of college when I saw them. No single tuxedo-clad bird led the pack or signaled to the anxious tourists that the night’s entertainment had begun. Instead, a mass of minuscule heads suddenly popped out of the water, like soldiers emerging onto land for an attack. “I was amazed that they really showed up,” my mother recalls. “It’s like you hear about it, and you hear about it, and you’re always worried that the one night you’re there it’s not going to happen, and it does. It’s sort of like the Leaning Tower of Pisa — you’re afraid it’s going to fall down before you get there.” The penguins were smaller than I could have ever imagined and seemingly unperturbed by the lights, the cameras, and the spectators. Nature and instinct directed their course as they waddled their way along the beach to their nesting spots. A few braved the climb up a rocky crevice. Most wove along the beach, a crowd of ogling tourists scurrying behind them. Rather than run with the masses, my family resolved to stay put, and soon enough another squadron emerged from the water, then another and another.

Two penguins halted beside the grandstands and performed a mating dance, much to the amusement of all of us dogged tourists who remained in our seats. Talk, storytelling, and complaints about the cold had ceased. Some scientists spend their lives with these downy little creatures, devising new ways to study them and to understand them. “New technologies, like ‘penguinlink’ (which records the nightly arrival and departure times and weights of a sample of penguins) and ‘time-depth recorders’ or ‘satellite tracking’ (attached to penguins to record their diving behaviour and locations) helps us study the life... of penguins at sea,” the Phillip Island Nature Parks website explains. I recently perched the plush penguin that I bought at Phillip Island on the shelf above my dorm room desk. He wears a hand-knit blue and orange sweater. As a worker in the gift shop explained, this sweater was one of many that volunteers knit to keep the penguins that are being cared for warm. Before we drove away from Phillip Island, naturalists reminded us to check that no birds had found refuge beneath our cars. Everything is done to keep these penguins from being harmed. After all, the workers at Phillip Island may produce the snacks, the seats, and the sweaters, but nature directs the show.

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Leaving the

Earth behind BY SARAH HELLER

There is nothing so breathtaking as Manhattan at 900 feet — especially when you and your co-pilots are buzzed. y head feels like it’s hurtling 3,000 feet out of the sky, smacking the tarmac, and detonating, over and over and over again. This is not actually happening — my throbbing head is propped against a stable, if natty, armchair at Tweed Airport’s Braddock Aviation Center in East Haven — but there are no guarantees about later. I’m awaiting my first flying lesson, for which I am entirely unqualified for the following reasons: I do not have a driver’s license; have never proved capable of driving in a straight line; and am still, I must admit, a little bit drunk. “Greg’ll* be right with you,” I’m told on arrival, and if I weren’t so painfully hung over, I’d be paying more attention when he walks in, looking much as I’d have imagined: pilot-regulation RayBans; streamlined, if squarish, face; close-cropped hair; and capable, steady hands. But also, not much older than I am: twenty-one, tops. So Greg Motolla and I have that much in common. That, and the fact that we were both born while our parents were working overseas: him in Tokyo, and me in Hong Kong. He tells me it all began with a glimpse of the cockpit during the 13-hour flight back to the States when he was two. After only ten minutes of introductory chatter, I find myself trailing Greg’s crisp-whiteuniformed, lanky frame out into the aggressive dazzle of sun on concrete and painted wings. The “Arrow” is a widget: a bullet-tipped sausage of 1970s tan and sap green with arms I would swear spanned no more than 20 feet, though I’d later learn it was 35. Greg swiftly orbits our plane, eyes scrutinizing its sur* To protect the of certain subjects, their names have been changed. ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOIDE MARWANGA

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

face, hands unknotting its tie-downs from anchors in the blacktop. He bounds delicately onto a wing. I follow less delicately, then suddenly we’re shoulder-to-shoulder in the cockpit, and I’m not a big girl. The cabin has just two rows of seats, and that same stale bagel smell that’s put me off flying since I was old enough to use a barf bag. Ten dials stare me down like googly alien eyes. I first notice the one Greg identifies as the “attitude indicator.” In it, teeny white wings float over an unstable horizon and reticulated sky. Over the headphones comes a bout of static garble: “N38316,” — our plane number — “Bravo, Romeo to 3, 2.” Moments later we’ve keyed to start, pumped the engine primer, tested the toe brakes, checked the carb heat, gotten the weather, contacted ground for taxi instructions, and now, good God, I’m being asked to make a plane take off. As usual, I can’t drive straight along the taxiway but, since taxiing a plane requires that you steer with foot-rudders rather than manual controls, I don’t feel too bad about this. I thrust the throttle lever to full, and wait for Greg’s signal to pull on the yoke: “Wait for it… wait till you get to sixty knots — now!” I lean back, astounded at how little resistance the yoke offers. As mine nearly bounces off my chin, I try to take comfort in the fact that Greg has a yoke too. Then I leave the earth behind. You don’t see the sublime in a Connecticut autumn until you’ve seen it from a thousand feet. The Technicolor trees become an accretion of oily brushstrokes — crimson and viridian, layer upon layer. The rivers are wicked onyx streaks, late surrealist paintings bracketed by city-block frames. All the while, there you are, a disembodied wonderment, reminded too often of your worldly existence by a jolt of rough air. We head north for New London, hugging the coast. Greg doesn’t seem impressed by my flying, though he does his best to conceal it. The would-be pilot’s trials are manifold: one, it’s impossible to keep the wings level — a tremor of the hand sets the plane wobbling; two, the dials don’t help — the little wings should indicate whether you are nosing above or below the horizon, left or right, but it’s easier just to pick a target outside. “Aim for that Thimble Island over there,” Greg advises. Which brings me to problem three, “rollover” (not as exciting as it sounds),

Even if I’m not a terrorist, I am technically an ‘FUI.’ where your heading indicator says that you have not reached your desired direction, so you continue to steer, miscalculating the time required to stop turning. Hence my slalom through the sky. As I say, difficulties abound. But another glimpse at that ocean, a mirrored sheet of tourmaline, and all is well with the world. I am then struck by the irony of this statement. What of the hellish state of the economy, predictions that 2010 will see oil production reach its upper limit and, of course, our airports’ perpetual fear of Armageddon? My saliva starts to taste thickly of acid, so I ask Greg to land the plane for me. As I’m recording his complex maneuvers, the deft twitching of his hands, I recall the post-9/11 incredulity that instructors at Huffman Aviation School were not suspicious when students had no interest in

learning to land. Frankly, I’m just not feeling up to snuff. It then occurs to me that my own flying hasn’t been entirely orthodox: how long has it been since my last drink? Certainly less than the eight hours I later learn are required. Even if I’m not a terrorist, I am technically an “FUI.” To avoid facing the possibility that I’m entirely at fault, I focus my indignation on Greg instead, and resolve to find out how this went unchecked.

ask Greg that question at our next meeting, this time safely on the ground at Branford’s Southport Brewing Company, known affectionately as SBC. Matt, one of his three brothers, is there too. They’ve been watching baseball, beer in hand, for an hour by the time I arrive. When I confess to my own less-thansobriety at the time of our flight, Greg seems unfazed, though I soon learn that he doesn’t fluster easily. “I went up with a schizo once,” he tells me. “His brother said he was fine, but the whole time I was nervous I might have to give him an elbow to the temple.” This is standard procedure, should a student pose a threat to an instructor, as neither set of controls can override the other. Hearing about these regulations didn’t greatly reduce my concern, as I myself had gained access to a plane simply by calling up the center, booking a flight two days in advance, and showing up. No one asked me for any ID. No one asked me if I was a US citizen (I am). No one asked me my age (though, since there is no minimum, I could have been four, for all they cared). Minutes after arriving, I was at the helm of a 900-pound machine with 25 gallons of fuel and little to keep me from blasting a planesized hole in the ground. Of course, that could also happen by accident. “I’ve never felt threatened,” Greg says, “but there has definitely been some sketchiness when people freeze up and lock on the controls.” Having felt the panic of dangling 3,000 feet in the air (about the maximum for beginning fliers), I sympathize with anyone who gets a little nervy. But what about the people who get more than butterflies in the stomach? Though general aviation instructors must undergo Transport Security Administration (TSA) training when they start teaching, Greg insists it’s not much. “It’s an online thing that takes about an hour to determine what you think is unsafe,” he explains. “Usually you know everyone you fly with, but you really can’t tell who’s crazy before you go. You can’t plan ahead.” Surely you could institute more thorough background checks and alcohol tests? Regarding the first, Greg tells me that out-ofcountry students do get a background check — if they don’t have a driver’s license and birth certificate, a state-issued photo ID is required. Apparently, though, these documents are not required for an intro flight, the kind I had just experienced. Should I wish to fly again, I’d need some kind of ID, although Greg, believing I had neither a passport nor a license, informed me that he could still take me up if I didn’t want a lesson as such. He would just say he was taking out the plane, he explains, as Matt, his brother, shoots me a knowing grin. While Greg can’t technically teach for free, he can take friends along and charge them only the $115-per-hour for the plane instead of the $160-per-hour for a lesson. As for the illicit substances, thinking back on my flight at Braddock, I recall that I walked through no metal detectors, took no Breathalyzer test, and didn’t even have to flash open my purse for a disinterested

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

lations on private international flights (by demanding lists of all passengers onboard an hour before departure, for example), but domestic terrorism still seems largely ignored. This is despite the fact that the ratio of domestic to non-domestic terrorism is seven to one. The Department’s other preoccupations are, naturally, weapons of mass destruction, especially those of the chemical and nuclear varieties. However, as a Kansas aerodynamics professor told the New York Times, even an unarmed plane could cause significant damage. “A 3,000 pound Cessna 152 would have the explosive force of a ton of TNT if it hit a building at 100 mph,” he said. (The Arrow I flew weighed less, but can fly up to 150 mph.) All a terrorist student would need is a weapon sufficient to overpower Greg or one of his co-workers. According to TSA standards, that “weapon” could be a nail file. Never mind terrorists — what about us drunk fliers? “You can fly my plane whenever you want,” Greg recalls one student telling him, “as long as you’ll pick me up at Block Island when I’m drunk.” I can just see poor Greg struggling to steer as flailing drunken limbs bat in his direction. This is one reason why he’s said he’d never pilot a private jet. Though commercial fliers aren’t strangers to the mile-high tipple, they don’t share 100

We take off into a lurid sky so sickeningly pink and orange it is as if a Tropicana factory had exploded. cubic feet with the pilot. In 2007, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s records, there were about eighteen times as many accidents in general aviation as in commercial aviation, despite equivalent flight hours. Finally, leaving all questions of danger aside, note that, contrary to manufacturer’s claims that their planes are more efficient than some SUVs, those planes get an average of twenty miles per gallon of jet fuel (held at a fixed price of $4.80 at Braddock, but up to $6.75 elsewhere in Connecticut). This is a lower fuel economy than is currently legal for heavy trucks. I decide then to try and meet some of Greg’s students, in the hopes that they are neither as frivolous nor heedless of others’ safety as they seem.

guard. The eight-hour rule never came up — Greg tells me that the school doesn’t test for alcohol unless a student or an instructor is suspicious. Instructors are regularly tested for drugs (Greg has had two tests since he started in May, both clear), but not all substances show up on tests. Shrooms, for example, do not. The Department of Homeland Security even admits in its General Aviation fact-sheet that little or no screening or vetting of crew, passengers, or aircraft is required for private flights — this coming from the same organization that makes commercial fliers wait hours in security lines before submitting them to often humiliating searches. The Department is trying to tighten regu-

y chance comes sooner than expected: Greg invites me on Braddock’s monthly dinner flight over Manhattan and the Hudson. This is my chance to observe these profligates in their native state. In preparation, I’ve been scouring Style section articles on the private jet set. “I only fly privately in North America,” starts a quote in one such article, entitled “My Other Vehicle is a Gulfstream,” by Guy Trebay. “What’s important is excluding myself from people who might bum me out.” I’m prepared for the worst. All the same, I must admit I’m a little seduced. I’m recalling the uncharacteristic animation with which Greg described flying up the Hudson with his parents. It’s his favorite flight. We’re

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

taking a similar route: first we’ll zip over to Farmingdale, Long Island, for some dinner; then we’ll fly back along the Hudson up Manhattan’s West Side; then back over White Plains toward Tweed Airport. Neither of us has experienced flying low over Manhattan at night, though. It’s a mind-blowing proposition, for innumerable reasons. I arrive moments before I thought we’d be taking off, one of the alleged benefits of private flying being your freedom to depart whenever you’d like. Apparently nobody’s in a hurry. Greg is still checking airspace regulations for all the channels we’ll be taking, and the reception is abuzz with late-middle-aged to very-latemiddle-aged men. I’m beyond out-of-place in the cocktail dress and fox-fur jacket I’d picked out, expecting a more elegant affair. The other students, all under 5’9” and portlier than they should be, sport ensembles positively reeking of affected modesty: I see baseball caps (with private equity logos), strategically distressed leather jackets, T-shirts, sneakers, company windbreakers, and more than one unfortunate fisherman’s shirt. Once settled in the plane, I start to interrogate my fellow passengers. Besides Greg and me, there are two others: David, a stout Stamford businessman I’d guess is in his late thirties, and Axel, an older German man. Maybe he’s one of the “non-US-citizens” whom, when I ask about racial profiling at Braddock, Greg defensively insists that he “regularly” teaches. We take off into a lurid sky so sickeningly pink and orange it is as if a Tropicana factory had exploded. As we ascend, the grounded planes cluster into a neat white chevron circlet. There is lots of traffic in the air, too: we spot another Arrow on our tail, its lights a warning flare of tangerine and lime. The water below is a slab of slate flooring that abruptly drops into seeming nothingness, and I have to wonder: if we fell out of the sky, would the plane ever hit the bottom? Our first hard thump; the sky becomes a poisonous orchid streak, and I feel suddenly adrift, like we’re being yo-yoed by some sadistic child. Even the clouds look like the scrunched-up-tissue kind you’d find in his uninventive diorama. Another jolt. Since Axel is flying, and Greg is navigating,

only David, the Stamford businessman, hears me ponder aloud whether the point of private flying is to actually get somewhere — in 1966, the New York Times ran an article suggesting airports would become like bus-stops. “I’ve been to India twenty times, Singapore more, Tokyo, Hong Kong, all over Asia,” he says. “But I’ll fly commercial.” His own flying is purely recreational. He tells me about how he ran the Asia-Pacific office of UBS in Hong Kong in the nineties, and I tell him I grew up there. “Really, where?” he asks. “The Peak.” “Oooh.” The Peak is ritzy, and I know I’m being judged, but I’m in. David and I spend the rest of the flight comparing notes on cities (“Hong Kong’s my second home!”), hotels (“All hotels in the States are garbage!”), and restaurants (“Forget Cipriani!”). I learn from David that small private planes worth twenty million are now going for ten (if not five); annual maintenance is still five to ten percent of the cost of the plane; and, counting licensing fees and flight lessons, you could fly First Class a hundred times for the same money. Evan, who works Braddock’s front desk, later suggests David create a holding company and rent a plane to himself, for tax reasons. (To avoid taxes, David won’t rent real estate in New York City, and even considered Chinese citizenship.) “I’ve thought about it,” he replies. “But I don’t need the Fed on my back.” David is still determined to buy a plane; he’s spent hours negotiating with a seller in Arizona, and won’t stop until he’s driven the guy down 30 percent, which should cover the depreciation. With the market gone to hell, he’s the only buyer. David’s been flying only two months, but he’s already logged 45 hours — nearly enough to get his private license. He’s been flying five nights a week. “I want to do IFR,” he says. “In winter it’ll start getting dark early.” This connection makes sense once I figure out that IFR means Instrument Flying Rules: rules for flying with low visibility. Afterwards, he wants to move to multiengine. This sounds pretty fanatical for a hobbyist, so I ask why he does it. He responds: “It’s fun, it’s something to do.” Greg later tells me that David wakes up at four every day for work, so I imagine he already has plenty to do. I spot the Long Island coastline below us: it’s the Dying Swan in its final throes, an echo

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

of the fading light. A swan’s neck curve of runway beckons us back to earth.

esterday’s pilot, as described in a 1967 article on aviation safety, liked his buzzing and looping; his flying through the clouds without instruments; and, above all, his liquor. There wasn’t even a Civil Aeronautics Board until 1940. Today’s pilot apparently can’t even pick up girls at bars by telling them he’s a pilot. “I don’t think anyone cares anymore,” Greg sighs, nursing a beer back at the SBC in Branford. “At Daniel Webster,” — the college where he studied aviation — “visiting the [nearby] nursing school, you couldn’t say you were a pilot — everyone is, so nobody’s impressed.” Aspiring pilots can attend college programs like Daniel Webster’s and NE Tech’s, or more economical part-time programs like Braddock’s. “We’re more non-by-the-books here,” Greg says. After graduating from Webster’s three-year aviation program, most people, like Greg, flight-instruct at smaller schools. A year ago, Greg could have been hired by a regional airline straight out of school, but now, he’ll need to have logged 1,500 hours even to be considered for right-seat (the co-pilot position). He’s happy to stay at Braddock for now, though. “It’s structured,” he says. “And otherwise I’d be at some desk job I’d be killing myself over.” Greg graduated in 2007, having finished in only two and a half years using credits from high school. It’s an expensive education (about $30,000 a year), and very stressful: of 25 students in his class, only four graduated. “Most kids had dads (I should say ‘parents’) who flew or had money to blow,” he explains. I point out that his dad, a former IBM exec, does not fly, but has offered to buy Greg a plane. “It would be a purely economic decision,” he says, claiming his dad would like an efficient way to reach his favorite fishing spots now that he’s retired. I nod. “Everyone at Webster’s kind of a nerd,” he adds. “Guys just stay in their rooms — way too much breathalyzing. I drank a lot, but always had a handle on alcohol. Mostly, we know it’s not worth the risk to drink and fly. We spent a lot of money to get where we are.” Today’s industry has less room for cowboy pilots: the drugs and parties with stewardesses seem a Howard Hughes-era fantasy. “There may be too much equal opportunity,” Greg, a couple beers in and egged on by Matt, says of today’s flight attendants. He still dreams, though. He aims to fly international, work four days on, four days off, and retire at 62 (mandatory age) with a nice package, he tells me, fiddling with his Ray-Bans. He’s unlikely ever to see the $140,000-per-year pensions being doled out to some older ex-pilots, but this doesn’t deter him. “Most pilots just love to fly,” he says. “It’s not enough money, and it’s too much hard work.” Greg currently flies up to 8 hours a day, every day except Monday. Like David, he is reluctant to admit it (at our first meeting he appends “or whatever” to every other statement), but he really loves to fly. Later, I watch him enthusing about IFR to an entirely unconvinced female target.

He’s not even really paying her much attention. His plan is to get his foot in the door, move right-seat to left-seat, first officer to captain on successively bigger planes. “This is all about twenty years down the road,” he admits. “Maybe eventually I’ll hate having to take those fourteen-hour flights, but sitting in a single engine, it sure looks good from down here.” He plans to continue flight-instructing even after the airlines retire him. “You can fly as long as you can pass the med, so it helps to get tight with your doctor.” here’s an eerie, red glow in the cabin from the laserpointer Greg is trying to use to read the map, since, as David predicted, he’s forgotten his flashlight. “He never has his flashlight or a pen, and only just remembers sunglasses,” David says fondly of his instructor. “Gets really pale in the cold too.” David’s been telling me the story of his first flight with Greg. “I pushed the yoke forward thirty degrees and plummeted,” he says. (Greg became especially pallid then, though levelheaded as always.) “Once we were on the airfield, I started laughing, and he started laughing and said, ‘Just so you know, that’s never happened to me before.’” I would laugh too if we weren’t 400 feet above the water, lower than the normal legal altitude. Since we are approaching JFK, the threat of wake turbulence from “incoming heavies” prevents us from flying higher. Within eight miles of JFK, private aircraft must stay below 1,100 feet. “Airspace works roughly like an upside-down wedding cake,” Greg explains. It fills out as you rise. Manhattan hovers ahead like a jeweled cloud. We’re really doing this. David is flying; electricity sizzles off him. When Greg cautions, “Watch out for the—”, David wisecracks, “Buildings?” Please don’t joke about it. We have to stay at 900 feet as we approach the 620-foot high Verrazano Bridge. It’s a scallop-edged prism of greenish light that we just slip past. Wind shear alone can drop you 75 feet. “I could see the antennae,” Axel mutters. Greg points out the course, gently offers to take over, and is refused. Then Manhattan is upon us, and I’m both so terrified and so exhilarated that I become nothing but a pair of staring eyes. Only later do I realize my limbs are numb from the shoddy heat in our tin-can plane. Manhattan is: signs of screaming red, acid green, of every size and blazing from every angle, arrows, crosses, plastic belts of crisscrossing light, “NEW YORKER,” “Radio City,” the copper-stain Statue of Liberty, the George Washington below us, the Bruckner to our right, and, in the distance, the sun-god Chrysler Building. Each street-end is like the threshold to a temple of ice, a laser-cut swath through crystal walls. David stops wisecracking, Axel is dazzled, and Greg sits by, serene. And I, my hands pressed against the smudged glass with circulation-cutting fervor, must now admit it: I’m entirely seduced. Flying is as close as you can get to holiness. A thousand feet of distance and the troubled world below resolves itself. The part of me that sees flying as a mere security hazard, and my fellow-fliers as spendthrift elitists falls silent; I feel only my immense gratitude that I’ve been let in.

The rivers are wicked onyx streaks, late surrealist paintings bracketed by city-block frames.

“STAUDACH FARM,” BY ADAM TRETTEL

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

BY GABOR DEBRECZENI

With dozens of orchestras and a cappella groups performing each semester, there seems to be plenty of students listening to music. Yale’s bands, though, wonder where the audiences went. icolas Niarchos ’11, the emcee of Yale’s 2009 Battle of the Bands, took the stage between the third and fourth acts of the show, reminding the throngs of high school seniors on campus for Yale’s admitted-students weekend, “wote by text message!” Then, in a robotic drone, “it’s the 21st century.” Hundreds of 18- and 19-year-olds dutifully took out their cell phones. The battle took place in Ezra Stiles College Dining Hall, a cavernous room of glass and concrete, whose raised stage had been the location for numerous concerts. Volume, the campus music magazine, had hosted mash-up DJ Girl Talk and Harlem Shakes, the indie rock band founded at Yale, in this same hall before either group hit its peak in popularity. The crowd at the battle was comparable to the now-legendary Girl Talk show, and easily the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at a show of Yale bands. Affirmative, a band assembled in a week by Tina Colón ’09, took the stage early in the battle, visibly energizing a crowd that had largely never heard her before. All I could think was that somehow Michael Waxman ’10 had managed to save live music at Yale. Over the last few years at Yale, a jumble of organizations have tried to help rock bands play shows on campus. WYBC has Battle of the Bands, Toad’s Place had local bands nights, and the

PHOTOGRAPHY BY GINGER JIANG

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Calhoun Cabaret and AEPi have hosted shows with both Yale and visiting bands. Many others found audiences at impromptu Old Campus open mikes. But, what was building last year was a movement not just to let music happen at Yale — but instead to make playing music so accessible as to almost cause it to happen. The nexus of this manufactured resurrection is Waxman’s brainchild, a group calling itself Yale Music Scene.

COURTESY DANIEL CARVALHO

ale Music Scene is, in Waxman’s words, “a student production group [that tries] to make it easier to set up a show at Yale.” The organization’s public façade has been a website, yalemusicscene.org, which takes a blog format and includes Yale bands’ bios, live MP3s, studio MP3s, and live videos, as well as promotional information about and recaps of shows taking place at Yale. Waxman insists, though, the site was set up “not as an end to itself, but as a support for a production group that would organize concerts.” Colin Adamo ’10, drummer for The Sandy Gill Affair, a campus pop-punk band, likes the site. “It’s great for us to have live MP3s available somewhere that we can show friends, family, and new fans. The work that’s gone into it is definitely appreciated.” Yet Yale Music Scene has also been organizing shows most Saturday nights in the new Timothy Dwight College multipurpose room. Depending on the night and the bands playing, these shows have attracted anywhere from 10 to 50 attendants. The series is the first organized attempt in recent memory to bring campus bands together on a regular basis at Yale. The music community has “definitely been more collaborative and cohesive,” said

TJ Smith ’10, former bassist and lead singer for The Sandy Gill Affair and a Yale Music Scene member. The studio has been the most tangible, if not the most public, result of Yale Music Scene’s attempts to make it easier to be a band at Yale. “Freshman year,” Waxman said, “I organized one show. It literally took three days to set up and it was kind of a joke — getting a drum set from the lightweight rowing house, a PA from Morse, and a mixer from Silliman. I thought a lot during my time away about how we can streamline that.” Waxman has tried to solve this logistical nightmare by handling it all himself. He purchased the equipment, found the location, and handles media production for the bands. “He bought a lot of the equipment for the [Timothy Dwight] studio, which is by far the best studio on campus,” said Scott Snyder ’10, who is guitarist and lead singer for The Sandy Gill Affair. “He records all the audio, takes videos, and wants to put it all up.” “[Usually], if you use equipment, it doesn’t belong to anyone. That’s something Michael Waxman has solved very well because it’s all his equipment and everyone uses all of his equipment,” said Sean Owczarek ’11, president of Yale’s radio station, WYBC. “Question is, what happens after Mike Waxman graduates?” One possible answer lies in a return to the Calhoun Cabaret, which Sean McCusker, lead guitarist for The Sandy Gill Affair, said “was the only place shows were ever hosted” last year. It was closed for renovations last year, giving the Timothy Dwight space, which is about three blocks removed from the center of campus, an opportunity to break onto the scene.

The Sandy Gill Affair, a band that often plays Yale Music Scene shows, has found a more reliable audience outside of the university.

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

There are still problems, though. “Now that last thing is trying to get interest, which is still not quite there,” said McCusker. “The bands really have to push that this is going to be a good time — we’ll have drinks, there will be a dance party in between — and spice it up a little rather than just say, ‘Oh, live music!’” “Maybe what Waxman needs to work on is how to make Yale shows more fun,” Snyder said.

he organizers had seemingly back-loaded the Battle of the Bands schedule so that many of the marquee Yale bands — Suitcase of Keys, Great Caesar, Rifle — played toward the end of the show. The Sandy Gill Affair brought a flag, t-shirts, and CDs to the show but by their late time slot, the visiting high school students had moved on to other scheduled activities and the crowd had notably thinned out. A heavily rotating group of about 30 concertgoers remained to watch each of the remaining acts — a number much more common at Yale shows than the earlier large throng. Tina Colón went on to win the Battle of the Bands and the chance to open for Spring Fling, Yale’s largest concert. Some credit Colón’s win to what they call Yale’s collective musical taste. “There just isn’t much rock music support here,” TJ Smith said. “There isn’t really that culture of it being particularly cool to start a student band. Musicians that would [start a band] get wrapped up in other things and never even consider that as a viable way to spend time during college,” Waxman said. He suggested that “when torn between some established extracurricular club or doing more schoolwork and starting a band and practicing a lot,” most Yalies will choose the former. “Being in a band is not a cool thing,” said Snyder, “What’s cool at this school is a cappella. It’s that weird Yale mentality that does that. Being in a band is fundamentally cool. I don’t understand why it isn’t here. There’s no ‘Oh sick, this guy’s in a band.’” Students interviewed from other schools gave a wide range of responses when asked if being in a rock band is eclipsed by other extracurricular activities. Matt Aucoin, who plays in the Harvard student band Elephantom gave a defiant no. He said that this year, “50 bands applied to join [student record label] Veritas, and they’re willing to sign about four new acts every year.” Some band members blame the music scene’s problems on Yalies simply being busy. “It’s cool that anyone who does play music is always willing to check out what any of their contemporaries are producing, but after that it’s pulling teeth trying to get friends out to your shows. It’s really tough because it’s Yale and everyone’s doing something creative and really interesting so what incentive is there for someone to come out to your show?” said Adamo. “Yale people are kind of apathetic about anything unless it’s something global or that’s going to get them into law school so it’s hard to expect them to see what their peers are doing.” Smith agrees: “there’s always some kind of show or performance on campus every weekend so you have to decide what to do. So, I both sympathize and am frustrated.” Owczarek thinks the biggest problem for campus rock bands is the recent shift in musical trends away from rock, especially in the college age demographic. “People want to dance at Yale,” he said, “If there were more Yale DJs and dance bands, I think that would go over a whole lot better in terms of having a scene that suits its student body. That type of thing would attract people better than

The Glass

hit the floor in one piece, hairline cracks whispering through flute and bowl. We must have stood up too fast. The white-haired manager swept glittering dust into a pan, mopped the small stain the water left. I tell people the soprano did it, her voice like the wire grille of stoves, kindled to red —and who could resist that grid of Braille, fractures flowering from a point of impact?— her voice too the kettle flowering above flames, singed, singing

-Katy Waldman

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Bands were once a popular pastime among college students, but as tastes — and technologies — change, interest seems to fade.

a Sandy Gill Affair or a Rifle.” “All the bands come and support the other bands but outside of that small community, there just aren’t people who are interested,” said Snyder.

he Sandy Gill Affair’s musical mismatch with Yale’s demographic, combined with campus fatigue resulting from a large number of shows in a small number of places, eventually drove them off campus. “You kind of reach a saturation point where people at Yale either don’t care about your music or have already seen you so many times that they love you so much but they have other things to do,” Smith said. “So, that’s when we started playing off-campus shows.” Playing around Connecticut has worked out startlingly well for them. Having played in Hamden, Danbury, and Hartford, they’ve been invited back to play repeatedly at venues like The Space, a small, locally focused organization in Hamden, and even to open for national touring bands. They’ve even had a taste of the rockstar lifestyle. “Some 14-year-old girls happened to come to one of our shows and loved us. Our two biggest fans are Ashley and Ally. They’re 14, so it’s a little weird, but they’re super cute and love all our lyrics,” said Snyder. Band members said that they have more fans outside of Yale than at Yale, even though they’ve played more than

twice as many shows at Yale. Some of the more die-hard fans, like Ashley and Ally, have even successfully recommendeded them to venues as openers. The band has enjoyed the challenge of convincing complete strangers to enjoy their brand of pop-punk. “At Yale, whenever anyone performs in front of anyone else, it’s just, ‘Hey, you’re my friend, come support me,’ whereas the great part of music is being in front of a group of complete strangers who have no reason to like your band or anything you do, but you just perform and entertain and that’s what makes them really interested in you,” said Adamo. “[Playing] a kick-ass show … is such a more enjoyable challenge than begging all of your friends to come see you play at Battle of the Bands on campus.” Making it big had crossed the mind of the band. “I think you have to put in a lot of work while at school,” said Smith, “You just have to get out of Connecticut. We’re Ivy League punks. That could be the way we’d get noticed and get attention and stand out from the ocean of similar bands, but at the same time, you can’t use that in the Northeast because there’s almost this antiYale vibe. I couldn’t get a solid idea of how to market ourselves to make ourselves interesting.”

he Sandy Gill Affair’s first show was at an open mic in the Women’s Center. “That was ironic, because our songs were about girls, but they were not very feminist,” said

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

Smith. Their second was in the Pierson College basement, with no space for a drum set. These unusual, makeshift locations were familiar to bands before this year, but now most have moved their shows to the TD studio. There are still plenty of problems with music spaces; there is near unanimity on this point. Waxman agreed that the biggest challenge for an upstart Yale band is “a lack of spaces to play and play regularly.” Band members have taken steps toward finding new venues to play as well. Rifle, fronted by Theo Spielberg ’10, plays in New York City. Smith submitted a request to the Yale Student Activities Committee, asking them to consider opening a student activities center with a committed performance space for music. Some bands were even more ambitious, if less realistic. “There’s a place next to Book Trader [Café] that’s been for rent for the longest time, and we were like, we should just buy that place and knock out the middle floor and make it a huge music hall and have local bands play,” Snyder said. Louder and larger bands are having an even more difficult time finding spaces, as many designated music spaces are small and some, like the Berkeley College music room, are not adequately soundproofed. “I think our music is a little tougher. We have some friends who can be kind of into it. It’s just that we have nowhere to play,” McCusker said. “Kids are playing guitar in their room, but they don’t feel that they have anywhere to show this.” While New Haven area venues like The Space have tried to be supportive of Yale student bands, they have not been able to replace adequate campus concert space. Cafe Nine on State Street has open jams that are attended by Yale students, but that bar is firmly outside of the so-called “Yale bubble.” Snyder tells a story of one time when a School of Music student “hopped on the guitar and I hopped on the drums. I had never played with her before and I was scared that she would rock my socks off. And she did. The whole place just went nuts and there’s no place like that for students around here.” “At Columbia [University], you’re in New York, so if Columbia isn’t going to set up a [space], there are literally hundreds of places to play,” Waxman said, “whereas in New Haven if there isn’t a student music venue then you have the Toad’s [local] showcase and that’s kind of it.” Smith agreed, complaining that New Haven just doesn’t connect with other cities on the national cultural radar. “It’s a very art-supportive city in general, but it’s a bubble. New Haven is contained,” he said. Schools like Harvard clearly have less of a problem finding venues, partially because the Boston area is so much larger than New Haven. “There are so many schools in Boston that finding an audience isn’t that hard.” said Caitlin Crump, a Harvard senior and CEO of Veritas Records. “It’s knowing how to market yourself, and knowing how to book gigs — that’s the tricky thing.” At Columbia, the state of student bands is much the same as in Cambridge. “We’ve played in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, and we just

played a show at Wesleyan,” said Trevor Vaz, a Columbia junior who plays in the band Movement. “We’re playing this weekend at a loft party in Bushwick. If you have a demo or an EP to show for yourself, I wouldn’t say it’s much of a challenge.”

he 2009 Battle of the Bands would end up being The Sandy Gill Affair’s last show with the lineup it had that night. In typical Yale fashion, a conflict of commitments came to a boiling point. “I felt like I was running the band,” said Smith, “It’s really hard when everyone else is not as committed. I want to be in music for my career. I don’t really have a backup plan. I want this to be 100% what I do.” The band and Smith will both play on, but independently. Smith is working on an electronica group called Project Echo, which he feels will be easier to distinguish from other bands at Yale. Meanwhile, Waxman said the remaining members of The Sandy Gill Affair “seem not particularly bummed at all.” McCusker said that the band will be writing more songs over the summer to be played in the fall. “But now we need a bassist, so we’re going to have to try out some kids for that,” he added. Even if Yale bands are struggling, one thing has changed: the difficulty of finding a venue and an audience has been recognized, and a few big ideas have been proposed. “There’s no place at Yale to be a band. There are no real venues. There are no real training and practice spaces,” said Owczarek, “Eventually, the idea is that we’d like to buy a house to be the WYBC house and leave our PA system there and have concerts there every weekend. That’s such an easy solution to all of this.” WYBC is launching a new, online-only station called the X next year. It will not be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and will play student-produced content exclusively. The station intends for it to be a hub for student DJs and student musicianship at Yale. “We want to be there for Yale bands, which is why we’re investing more in equipment next year that they can use so that we can host more events,” Owczarek said, “[WYBC] is meant to be there to communicate between music and students, to be that link.” “It’s very cold toward students right now,” admitted Owczarek, but, he continued, other than the campus radio station, “there is no other place for bands to really get heard. What other music organization would exist for student bands?” Well, maybe something like Yale Music Scene. “What Yale Music Scene has done is [it has] taken Yale content and put it all in one place for people to listen to if they want to,” said Owczarek. “Question is, is there a market for that? Somewhat. Some people are really psyched about student bands and student music.” Waxman, for one, is setting his sights high. “If I had to choose between there being 20 campus bands that were all pretty good and one Vampire Weekend, our goal would be much more to get 20 pretty good bands.”

“Being in a band is fundamentally cool. I don’t understand why it isn’t here. There’s no ‘Oh sick, this guy’s in a band.’”

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

BY EMMA SOKOLOFF-RUBIN

A daylong class at Yale Law teaches students all they need to know about etiquette: how to shake hands, how to make polite conversation, how to select the right entrée. But even perfect manners are no guarantee of finding a job.

haron Abrahams stands at the front of Room 120 in the Yale Law School. In front of her, students place plates of pizza next to spiral notebooks and case law books. Abrahams (“call me Sharon,” she insists) is wearing a pinstripe suit, and the screen behind her displays a PowerPoint presentation. She hands out a quiz on yellow paper. “By the end of this class, you’ll be able to answer all the questions.” By the end of class, Sharon has forgotten about the quiz. But at the request of a guy in the back row, she goes through it quickly. Some of the true-false statements — Name tags should be placed on the right shoulder and It is appropriate to tell someone that his fly is open (both true) — she forgot to address in the past hour and a half. Maybe they weren’t so important at the finishing school Sharon attended as a young lady growing up in Kentucky, a training that Sharon believes “has affected [her] life in the affirmative.” When Sharon, Director of Professional Development at the international law firm of McDermott Will & Emery, observed the dining behavior of law students summering at her firm, she decided it was time to start sharing the rules of proper

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

Detail of a place setting “at a formal dinner table of a great house,” from the 1926 edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette. social behavior with students just like these. So this evening, she announces, “is about you guys.” An “Etiquette Dinner,” as Sharon conducts it is served out of pizza boxes in the back row of desks (a fact about which a second-year law student groans: “you’d think at an Etiquette Dinner, we’d get classier food”). By its end, each and every one of the 34 law students in Room 120 ought to know how to evaluate the most important statements on the Etiquette quiz. And that could make a big difference in their futures. “A good handshake lasts for ten seconds.”

alse. A good handshake lasts two or three seconds. The No. 1 rule when shaking hands is to avoid wet-fishes. “Women tend to do more wet-fishes than men,” Sharon says, but everyone is susceptible to lame handshakes. If someone grabs your hand before you’re fully prepared for a handshake, and your hand is limp and lifeless, “it’s hard to do a do-over handshake.” So the key is to be proactive. If the chairman enters, you power across the room and offer your hand. Sharon recommends that you ask your family to rate your handshake, but she cautions that it’s usually not a good idea to offer partners at the firm feedback on their grips. If you encounter a real knuckle-cruncher, grin and bear it. The key here is deference: in the office or at a firm-sponsored cocktail party, always introduce people in descending order, and hold the door for senior partners. Door-holding, like handshaking, is no longer about gender distinctions. It’s about seniority. That’s because, “in our culture, we’re equal.” But once in a while, it’s okay to defy cultural con-

ventions. In a situation where Sharon and a male reach for the door at the same time, she lets the guy open it. “I’m just saying, in our culture, we’re equal, but if a man opens the door, say thank you — very loudly. Say it loudly.” “Food you eat with your hands is never appropriate at a business meal.”

alse. If a partner or associate breaches proper etiquette and orders finger food, you should not correct him (or her). “Would it be too prissy if you ate finger food with a knife and fork?” a student asks. Sharon ponders that for a moment. “Let me tell you the etiquette of this before I answer the question.” The etiquette: they shouldn’t have food like that. The answer: if the boss serves finger food, it’s appropriate. If you use a knife and fork, it would be odd. “People would make impressions, good or bad, I don’t know,” Sharon warns. When you’re interviewing for a job, impressions of any kind are absolutely unacceptable — at least as far as etiquette goes. You want to be impeccably normal. Unnoticeable. You want to follow the rules. You want to do what one does, not what you do. Assuming your host follows proper protocol (and take note of this, because when a firm asks you out, “they’re courting you”

If you’re attending a cocktail party, go easy on the shrimp.

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

“In eating soup the child must dip his spoon away from him . . .”

“When no knife is being used, the fork is held in the right hand, whether used ‘prongs down’ to impale the meat or ‘prongs up’ to lift vegetables.”

“In being taught to use a knife and fork together, the child should at first cut only something very easy, such as a slice of chicken . . .”

“Bread should always be broken into small pieces with the fingers before being buttered.”

“Having cut off a mouthful, he thrusts the fork through it . . . and conveys it to his mouth with his left hand. He must learn to cut off and eat one mouthful at a time.”

“When he has finished eating the child should lay his knife and fork close together, side by side, with handles toward the right side of his plate.”

as much as “you’re courting them”), he should direct the waiter to the guest first. Keep the following in mind when you place your order: avoid finger foods (unprofessional), marinara sauce (messy), and garlic and onions (smelly). Cherry tomatoes are “an opportunity for things to go flying off your plate, squirting out of your mouth,” and chicken nuggets are “a bit juvenile.” If you’re attending a cocktail party, go easy on the shrimp. The firm invited you to see how you partake in the food, and though the partners will repeatedly invite you to expensive meals and out for drinks, the last thing you want is for them to think you’re an expensive associate. Or a messy one. Always choose roasted chicken over spaghetti. If you find yourself trapped in the unfortunate “spaghetti situation,” you’ll know next time to pack an extra tie or blouse

in your briefcase. Should you twirl or cut your spaghetti? Either one. Well, actually, “both of those are acceptable, it’s just that most people twirl.” Doing what most people do is usually your best bet. “Three things to avoid in conversation are . . .”

his answer comes immediately from the audience: “politics, sex, and religion.” The problem, Sharon says, is that these days, everyone wants to know what you think about politics. If politics comes up, don’t talk about your politics. Make a general, impartial statement. Ask another question. Under no circumstances should you say, “I don’t talk politics.” Just don’t talk politics.

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Sharon ends class a few minutes after eight but stays at the front of the room in case you want to ask a question — “any” question — though you know, of course, to be careful what you say. This might be one of the last conversations with a lawyer in which a minor slip won’t end your career. Sharon knows that learning the ropes of appropriate conversation is a little trickier than learning which spoon to use for cream soup and which to use for clear broth. (Sharon used to bring a 24-piece silverware set to dinners, only restaurants these days don’t tend to use quite that many pieces per person.) As long as you use flatware from the inside out and steer clear of any topic that might reveal controversial information about yourself, you can be as anonymous when you leave the restaurant as when you first walked in. Well, that’s not entirely true. Provided that you’ve ordered correctly, your potential employers will be sure that you’re not messy, not smelly, not unprofessional, and not the least bit juvenile. What more could they need to know? If you can’t talk about sex, politics, or religion, Yale Law School students in Room 120 suggest that you try sports. If you don’t know anything about sports, ask your host about himself. As Sharon puts it, “Have you ever met a lawyer who doesn’t like to talk about himself?” “How do you get the job?”

his one isn’t on the quiz. But it’s the reason 34 law students with mountains of case law on their desks are having no trouble staying awake in this class. First off, you are not yet a lawyer. You’re the one who, within 24 hours of a business meal, a cocktail party, or a casual dinner in an associate’s home (at which a generic suit is always appropriate for guys, and girls should consider “how much skin you really want to show”) must remember to send a thank-you note to show the firm that you appreciate its consideration and that you know the rules of this game. The key to the thank-you note is the authentic presentation. “Buy stationery with your initials on it. Have it made for you or buy it pre-made… Good-quality stationery is an etiquette thing and something that represents you.” Don’t make your own cards. Good quality stationery will represent you the way law firms like McDermott, Will, & Emery want you to be. Later on, if you do get a job, you’ll be in the business of representing others. For now, the key is learning to represent yourself. If you’re serious about being a lawyer, make sure your voicemail message is generic, and if you’ve written something “radical,” see if you can get it removed from the internet before a potential employer “Googles” you (unless, of course, that’s you, but if you want this job, how “you” can a strongly opinionated article be?). Learn to follow the rules, and no firm will discount you for a wet fish handshake, for using the wrong spoon, or for having something to say about yourself. Assuming you’re not disqualified for improper etiquette, how do you actually get the job? There’s the etiquette to this, and then there’s the answer. The etiquette: never let on that you weren’t born knowing the proper length of a handshake, the deal with finger food, and the three things never to talk about at a business meal. The answer: if you listened carefully this evening, whether you’re summering or interviewing or out to lunch with the firm, you’ll run no risk of standing out.

First Foaling

My brother had not yet lost all the child in his face, still leaden with lips and cheeks like Olmec statues. In early light, dust motes orbited our heads, as if the sun brought air to life though I knew from his face this wasn’t true: his eyes matched the mare’s for fear. He sweated like her too, after hours smudged amid all the hay and horseshit. His chest touched her flank when he breathed. Father was elbow-deep in the mare as the moment of birth crackled like lightning between us, as if we passed it from hand to hand. The mare licked her foal, still shining from birth, shining not like light but oil. Her muscles tremored when we took the placenta so she wouldn’t eat it. Father told my brother to hold it, cuffed him on the ear, told him to make him a man to smell some blood that didn’t come from between the legs. -Elisa Gonzalez

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

FICTION LUCKY ONES by Jacque Feldman Mark and Lauren have little to show for their twenty-two years in the same small town. Their marriage seems to have crumbled, and another unbearably hot August looms. But perhaps they can still find hope.

“I’m pregnant,” Lauren said. Around her, their living room seemed complicit with Lauren. Nothing was different, and everything — the faded wallpaper, the Ikea table marked with coffee rings accumulated like notches on a prison wall — could be left behind. Mark ran a hand slowly through her thick hair and cupped her face. He tilted her chin up to force eye contact — a gesture that betrayed suspicion, Lauren worried. But maybe she was being paranoid.

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“Lauren. How long have you known? My Lauren.” Mark spoke tentatively, as though testing what knowledge was within his rights. He never called her “my Lauren.” “Two weeks. I feel so weird.” Feeling creative, she continued: “I get sick in the mornings, sometimes.” She removed his hand from her chin and placed it on her stomach. Mark’s smile was growing surer. He helped her to sit on the couch then jumped up for a pillow, which he slid, without asking her to lean forward, behind her back. He was grinning now, holding both her hands. “Lauren, this is just what we need.”

hey had been sleeping separately all year, the third year of their marriage. Mark would still wake her in the mornings, rising from his dent on the couch to make tea or waffles for her when it rained and his clients would understand a tardy landscaper. Twice monthly, on Saturdays, he mandated a date night. A mandatory date night! Lauren had seen so many movies this year, movies about other young couples or talking dogs or the apocalypse. One night, they fought, sitting behind a group of teenagers eating what Lauren called “the smelliest pizza imaginable.” She “couldn’t stand it,” she said, and she “wanted to move,” but the theater was full, and Mark didn’t want to go. Repentant, in compromise, he went to buy her a big box of Sour Patch Kids. He missed the part where the hero’s baby died. Lauren didn’t tell him what had happened. She shared the candy with him and he kissed behind her ear when no one was looking. They ran giggling like teenagers to the car, having used the rest of his quarters on more neon candy from the machines outside the theater. She got there first and shivered, laughed, rubbed her arms, mimed breaking down the door. He had the keys, and hurried even after double-checking that her anger was faked. Doors open, in the car, they kissed, hard. She bit his lip. Then they were in the backseat, making love with their shirts on, making love for the first time in months. This would be Lauren’s excuse.

he stiffened now and squirmed away from the hand he’d placed on her shoulder. She held her breath, making her stomach big with air. Mark’s smile was fading. She wasn’t giving him enough credit, she thought; something was off, and he could tell. Should she have put a pregnancy test in the bathroom trash? She needed to act quickly, before he grew suspicious. “Mark,” Lauren said, removing his other hand from her shoulder carefully. She moved it to her lap and held it with both her hands, turning his silver wedding ring around and around with her fingertips. “I’m pregnant,” she lied, “and I don’t want to keep it.” That night was movie night, even though it was a Wednesday, because they were going to Mark’s mother’s for dinner on Saturday. They waited for tickets in silence until they were three couples away

September 2009

from the front of the line and Mark turned to her, offering a water bottle he’d brought from home. “Mark, I’m sorry.” She took it. “I mean —” she paused when the zipper stuck on her bag “— I know that you want a do-over, but I don’t want us to have a kid together, another kid together, because I think it’s really important that kids have a happy household, one where —” He was turning his back and asking for two adult tickets. “— where people are in love,” she finished anyway. He wasn’t paying attention, she knew. She finished zipping her bag and stepped forward to put her hands on his sides, running them up and down to feel the hard bones at his hips. He pocketed the tickets and turned around quickly. “Hey there,” he said, kissing her forehead, smiling now. People were allowed to stop being attracted to someone, Lauren thought, feeling his hand on her back as they walked to the theater. It happened all the time, to plenty of people, and even, Lauren guessed, to people who were otherwise highly successful, leading professional and expensive lives of adventure and travel.

his was their hometown movie theater, had been for their twenty-two years of life in Canton, Connecticut. Lauren remembered the free popcorn Mark gave her all summer before their junior year of high school and she felt sick. The memory of all that grease, maybe, or maybe the optimism of the gesture, the hopeful gamble of a job that funded new CDs on the chance she might love him. On the chance they might spend the rest of their lives together. Mark was lucky, Lauren thought, that she was a sucker for romantic overtures, for gestures punching drama into their smalltown lives. She’d buy sweaters that summer, even though Connecticut was hot in August, V-necked or tight sweaters that showed off her figure, appropriate for the air-conditioned theater where she saw mostly romantic comedies or movies about tragic women. Funny movies, escapist movies, movies that never made her cry, their ticket stubs smudging against lip glosses and telling stories at the bottom of Lauren’s purse and the purses of her four best friends from high school, friends who would serve as bridesmaids at her wedding two years later.

She got there first and shivered, laughed, rubbed her arms, mimed breaking down the door. He had the keys, and hurried even after doublechecking that her anger was faked.

happy household?” Mark asked Lauren as he drove them home that night. “What the hell does that mean — a golden retriever? A lawyer for a husband? More bedrooms? Is that why you — Is that why Charlie —” “Stop!” She lowered her voice. She realized that she had been pinching his arm and rephrased her command as she let him go: “Please.” Charlie would have been three by now, as old as their marriage, and he would be using a car seat in the backseat behind them. She and Mark would still be parents. Were they adults? Parents had to be adults, Lauren had always reasoned, repeating it like a mantra as she cleaned up after Charlie, placing his diapers in the specially lidded trashcan they’d received at the

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

shower from their favorite math teacher. The baby for whom she’d given up everything — her education; her youth; her belly-button piercing, now stretched beyond use — was messy and joyless, Lauren would think, then hate herself for the thought, for its implications of her failure as a mother and a person. Mark would come home muddy and track in leaves, requiring almost as much clean-up as their son, bearing groceries or McDonald’s with a cheerfulness that only worsened the guilt Lauren felt at her own disappointment. Her belly-button piercing? What was wrong with her? The aftermath of Charlie’s death had played out exactly as Lauren had imagined. She’d spent days switching from couch to bed, never showering, eating cereal out of the box instead of meals, using up tissue boxes on her reddened eyes. Mark left every room when she entered it and she knew from this that he blamed her. She understood. That their one-month-old son died suddenly in his sleep, suffocated on bad luck, was absurd — impossible. She must have done something wrong, she and Mark both knew. Something negligent, lazy, the fatal irresponsibility of a teenage mother who couldn’t even get dressed to leave the house to buy more boxes of tissues and cereal. Were they adults? Lauren could bear the grief, she realized, eventually, with a new, secret pleasure at not needing to get out of bed. More proof of her guilt, she realized, and began to avoid Mark as he avoided her. When, before Charlie’s death, Lauren had imagined dropping her crying son or silencing him with a pillow, knowing this was horrible, knowing this marked her for some terrible fate, she had never anticipated this final fallout — had never imagined her love for Mark disappearing, suddenly, without warning, like her grey-faced son. Her loss of Mark, Lauren thought to herself in those dark days, was her most painful loss, and this priority proved she was undeserving, evil, a bad mother. For the rest of her life, Lauren knew then, every train of thought she followed would lead to this conclusion, her defining failure echoing: bad mother, bad mother, bad mother. She had been a bad mother, but at least Lauren could uphold this as proof that she had, once, been a mother, a parent, an adult. They were adults, she concluded. It had been a mediocre action movie, in which the hero had died — could this possibly be true? — halfway through. Now, the humid night seeped in through the car windows, the roads empty now, the traffic lights changed to flashing yellow and red. Lauren’s stomach was cramping now, and she rubbed it one-handed. They were driving past the ice cream shop that sold sundaes two for one on Wednesdays. She and Mark had gone every Wednesday night the last two years of high school. There, the lucky ones — couples like them — paid only as much as any single person. She looked back to Mark. She should give him another chance. After all, they had once been in love. “Mark,” Lauren began; charitably, she continued, “let’s stop for ice cream.” “Anything you want.” Mark had been distracted, drumming both hands on the wheel as he drove; now, he executed a careful and

smooth turn and parked in front of the ice cream place, leaping out quickly to open her door. “How’s that for gentlemanly, huh?” Mark rubbed her shoulders. “So do you think this is, like, a craving? I mean, a pregnancy craving. Are you craving ice cream?” “I don’t know,” Lauren said, laughing. “Maybe!” Her stomach really was starting to hurt. “Well, it will probably be good for the baby I think. All that dairy. They say calcium is really important. Have you been taking vitamins? We could stop on the way back. Probably nothing’s open now.” He was holding the door open for her, now. Inside, the ice cream shop was all white tile and fluorescent light so bright she felt forced under an interrogator’s lamp. What did she think she was doing? Did she really think she could get away with this? Mark ordered her favorite — vanilla with hot fudge — in a medium, not the small she usually asked for, and handed it to her, smiling with something like — was that giddiness? They weren’t a giddy couple, not since Charlie’s death. What did she think she was doing? What had she done? Lauren wondered, back in the car, looking at her lined liar’s face in the side mirror. Her face used to be beautiful; she had known this since sixteen, when Mark fell in love with her. Now, they were only ten minutes from home, but Lauren felt so tired. She felt Mark’s hand on her thigh and lowered her head against the window and closed her eyes, the road ribboning steadily underneath. She opened them some minutes later to see him crying quietly. Mark was desperate for her to keep this lie of a baby. What did Lauren think she was doing?

She felt Mark’s hand on her thigh and lowered her head against the window and closed her eyes, the road ribboning steadily underneath.

II.

he was beautiful, Mark thought, as he carried Lauren into their one-level beige-painted house, shouldering open the unlocked door and laying her on the old living-room couch where he was used to sleeping. She was beautiful, still. He shook open the sheets and blanket that lay crumpled on the floor nearby, spreading them over her and tucking in the edges. In August, it was still warm even after dark. The breeze off the Long Island Sound, rumored to be two hours south — they had never gone to the beach, not even with Charlie — didn’t reach them. Still, Mark thought, any man who risked a chill in his pregnant wife was a mouse. Lauren was sleeping soundly. Mark went to turn off the light left on in her bedroom — their bedroom — then padded shoeless to the kitchen. The linoleum floor, painted to look like tile and peeling at the edges, felt sticky under Mark’s bare feet. He poured a glass of orange juice for Lauren — vitamin C was important — and took a sip himself before adding ice. Lauren was still sleeping, so Mark left the orange juice on the side table, using his other hand to smooth her black hair, which had always been so soft. She might never have married him if it weren’t

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

for Charlie, Mark knew, and so at least something had resulted from the one-month life of his bald and toothless son, a life without words or solid food. He remembered the way Lauren’s belly had stretched the seams of her prom dress when she wore it to their wedding. He remembered the price, his summers’ savings, of the smallest house in town. He remembered the greyness of Charlie’s face in death and pulled his hand away from Lauren’s hair quickly, his elbow spilling the juice, and he went to the kitchen to pour more, where he found it difficult to stand and instead sat on the floor, heavily, under Charlie’s baby picture, framed and hanging on the wall.

hen Mark found Charlie dead in his crib, Lauren had been sleeping peacefully. He had placed his hand in front of Charlie’s face, just to check, just to feel his breathing as he slept and when he felt nothing — “Charlie. Charlie! Charlie! Charlie!” Mark yelled as though the baby had ever known language, waking Lauren, who sat up in bed and with (unforgivable, Mark thought) drowsiness, said — “Mark? Honey, what’s going on?” “Lauren.” Mark went over to the bed, grabbed her hands, and yanked her to sit upright, then led her over to the crib. “Look.” Lauren ran her hands along the rim of the crib for a long time as Mark yelled, his words running and sobbing and breathless. It must have been someone’s fault, Mark thought; he had heard of sudden infant death but this, this, his only son’s death, was inexplicable, nonsensical. And he sure as hell hadn’t killed the baby. “What did you do? Lauren, what did you do?” He shook the crib she was still holding to get her attention and stopped only when he saw tears forming in her eyes. Now, inside of Lauren, Mark knew, was everything possible and good for him, and everything she was trying to take from him, and she couldn’t do this to him again, not if she had a heart. She must know, he thought, that he’d leave her if she ended this pregnancy. III.

ethargy settled over Canton every August, melting women’s makeup and forcing down the arms of men who wanted to hide their sweat-soaked sides. Mark hated every summer. In summer, there were fewer distractions from the reality of a life that would never move forward. Mark spent the summer before his junior year of high school working at the movie theater and thinking about philosophers and motion. During the Age of Enlightenment, Mark had learned that year in school, coffee became popular, imported from the New World to fill the glasses served in fashionable salons where important thinkers congregated. An exciting time, some teacher had said, a time of discoveries in a world that would never stop expanding before mankind’s eyes like the kernels Mark set popping, improving upon themselves, quintupling in volume to fill the machine. In that time, Mark had read somewhere while researching a history project, great thinkers, Rousseau and Diderot, maybe, Frenchmen who believed in democracy, would gather to drink hundreds of cups of coffee together. Or dozens of cups, more likely; hundreds couldn’t be right, Mark thought, as he searched the stockroom that summer for more popcorn bags. These men would drink until they shook, drink until they fell on the floor twitching from so much caffeine, their brains hurting, their heads bursting from a pressure that could

only be released in words, and from that posture they’d spout the fundamental ideas of Western civilization. These, Mark knew, were men who mattered. One night, when he was left alone to close the theater, he decided to stay and steal from the soda fountain. The first two big cups of Mountain Dew and Diet Coke made his stomach hurt, and he began to play the car racing games as he drank, to distract him from the taste, which was beginning to seem horrible, too sweet, as sticky as the humid air in August, as sticky as his skinny chest under the black polo shirt of his uniform. He tapped his fingers on the controls and won five games, the cars glistening on screen. He felt his eyes water. He looked at the ceiling. Forty-five minutes passed, and it was past one in the morning; outside, there was no sound. Inside, there was no sound. There was the digital clock above the showtimes, stopped at 5:18, or 5:16; two of the red bars would never light, so this was unclear. Mark wondered if he could, with practice, learn to fix this sort of problem. That would be something meaningful, something like motion, he thought, taking off his shoes and drumming his sensitive toes on the game’s orange plastic, waiting for something to happen. The orange was too bright, hurting his eyes, and suddenly — He threw up into the controls, on his hands, on the floor. He took off his shirt and used it to clean his mouth and the carpet which, upon close inspection, was not gray but rather made of small spots of green and black and blue. He scratched his head. He flattened his sweaty hair and ran out the door to his car. He forgot to lock up. He forgot his shirt and to throw out his cups and sat in his car for a long time, leaving the door open to feel the night air unseasonably fresh around him, unseasonably light and amenable to the limitless opportunities of a world in which anything was possible — a world that was kind to sixteen-year-olds and took seriously their ambitions of success and of love, of kissing and fucking the hottest girl in school who drove him crazy when she ate the popcorn he’d give her on the house. God, she was hot. Driving home, on the highway, Mark drove more quickly past every sign warning of Falling Rock, determined to avoid catastrophe. He felt with joy that much was riding on him. IV.

auren woke up and walked to the kitchen, where she found Mark sitting on the floor. He raised his head out of his hands to see her framed by the doorway. Lauren remembered thinking, in her saddest days after Charlie’s birth, of smothering her screaming son, of making it all stop. Now Mark was looking at her with something like hope. If he thought she would abort his child, then he would leave her; that had been Lauren’s plan, but now — “Mark,” she started, and he rose and met her, taking her in his arms, burying his face in her shoulder, kissing her collarbone and the fabric of her sweater. He loved her so much. He wanted her to give them a chance, he said; this baby was all they needed. “Mark,” Lauren continued, slowly, pushing him a few inches away, forcing him to look in her eyes, “I just went to the bathroom and there was a lot of blood. I think —” she stopped for a moment “— I think I may have lost our baby.” That was how a miscarriage happened, Lauren was pretty sure, and she was pretty sure, now, tasting orange juice, held in the arms of her hopeful husband, that she wanted Mark to stay.

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT CONFESSIONS OF A GOSSIPHOLIC by Naina Saligram Aspiring to live out the Upper East Side lifestyle, if only for a summer, staff writer Naina Saligram plunges herself into the depths of obsession, heading off to the set of “Gossip Girl” to watch one of her heroines in action. potted. N wandering SoHo solo in heels, and doesn’t even enter Balthazar?! What is this Queen-B wannabe searching for so eagerly? I admit. I am obsessed. It all started freshman year when I went to visit my sister in New York. She had just returned from a semester in Ghana (where she claimed to have been television-deprived, though she had managed to take in the whole season of the

lord. Or last season’s liaison dangereuse between Dan Humphrey — the resident Brooklyn writer whose short story was once itself published in the New Yorker — and the J.Crew-wearing, Shakespearespewing English teacher Miss Carr. It was not only morally repugnant, but also so Dawson’s Creek circa 1998. Nonetheless, there is one character who keeps me a Gossip Girl fan(atic), who compelled me last summer to watch the first season probably 15 times and to

I realized instantly that Blair and I — not at the surface but at our very cores — are really the same person. “Real World” while she was there...) and now was intent on watching every show possible to restore her equilibrium. I hadn’t seen a single episode of “Gossip Girl” at the time and had no desire to watch the series. Wasn’t the melodramatic story of teenage debauchery a little old? And hadn’t everyone found Blake Lively completely annoying in “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”? But my sister was adamant, and so we came to watch episode number seven: “Victor/Victrola.” For those of you who don’t know (gasp, there are people who don’t watch the show!), Gossip Girl is a mysterious blogger who describes the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite — that is, the rich and beautiful students of semi-fictitious prep schools on the Upper East Side, as well as a few of their across-the-bridge consorts. Before you judge, know that the book series on which the show is based was compared (rather seriously) to Anna Karenina in a New Yorker article. But in truth, there isn’t much that is special about the show. Sure, the clothes and characters are gorgeous, but the plots are often ridiculous (in the Latin sense of the word, literally “laughable”). Take, for instance, when a new boy-toy who seems lackluster actually turns out to be a British

order season two on DVD three months in advance. Meet Blair Waldorf: the selfprofessed “crazy bitch around here.” In downer Dan’s immortal words, she is a “95-pound, doe-eyed, bon-mot-tossing, label-whoring package of girly evil.” Medusa wants her withering glare back. Okay, okay. It’s true that Blair’s antics are often childish, outlandish, usually downright mean. But people just don’t understand her in the way that I do! I remember watching the opening scene of that fateful episode 7, our first encounter. B (FYI: only her friends call her B) had just ended her relationship with longtime boyfriend, Nate, and proceeded to take a limo downtown to a speakeasy and undress publicly. Maybe it sounds worse when written down so literally, but trust me, it’s this magical moment where we are confronted with Blair shedding her inhibitions for the first time, denuding herself of the expectations that others have imposed on her, that she herself has come to accept as truth. It is a moment of self-discovery, of liberation! Watching this for the first time, I realized instantly that Blair and I — not at the surface but at our very cores — are really the same person. Her desperate acts of revenge cloak her fear of being vulnerable.

Her cruelty and heartlessness shroud profound insecurity. Her guise of innocence masks her recognition of her own weaknesses. Yet on the outside, she remains the epitome of poise and grace. Seeing so much of myself transported onto the screen, but embodied in this glamorous, mythical character — it was something of a transcendent experience. (NB: If you are looking for an episode to understand Blair better, I highly recommend season 1, episode 9, “Blair Waldorf Must Pie.” I promise it will make you cry.) Since then, struck by the unquestionable rapport between us (and after exhaustive research on GossipGirlCloset.com), I have taken it on as a mission to unearth my inner B. After seeing her iconic red Valentino headband in “Victor/Victrola,” I now wear a red headband with almost everything. I now have a pair of red tights like the one Blair loves (and wears best in “Hi, Society”); a pair of salmon shorts just like hers from “Never Been Marcused”; an Audrey Hepburn painting like the one that hangs in her room. Recently, my dad even bought me a new light blue duvet that has an uncanny resemblance to Blair’s. And after learning that Blair’s cat (who lives with her dad and his partner in France) is named Cat (a reference to her favorite movie, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), I have started calling my dog, Dog. (Perhaps it is hard to imagine, but there actually are others out there who are more maniacal than I am. I’ve come across a website where one girl catalogues all of Blair’s headbands from the past two seasons. Another has created a set of playlists for B. So I’m not that bad, right?) This sense of identification reached even greater heights this summer, when I spent two months living on my own in New York City. Suddenly, it was as if everything in Blair’s life would become real to me. For one summer, I could be a part of her world. I could be Blair. Or at least I could try. Often would I meander through Central Park to find the pond where Blair feeds ducks with her Polish maid, Dorota. I would spend

September 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

countless afternoons sitting on the steps of the Met (though usually sans yoghurt). Once, I nibbled on dessert at The Modern, the restaurant at MoMA where Nate had planned to take Blair after the debutante ball. (I couldn’t afford to dine at B’s favorite restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, but at least I walked past it once!) I went to Bendel’s, her favorite store, and even splurged on a coat that I think she would adore. For two months, it was as if I was living my life by one ruling criterion: What Would Blair Do? (No, I don’t have a bracelet, thank you very much.) Near the end of my time in New York, I realized that there could be only one grand finale to my life as a Gossip Girl: I had to come face-to-face with my heroine herself. I had to see Blair in the flesh. Finally, on July 20, I was ready. The night before, I had done some sleuthing on GossipGirlInsider.com (another truly valuable resource), where I discovered that the cast would be filming around Mulberry and Prince streets the following day. I chose a perfect Blair outfit for the occasion: a black high-waisted pencil skirt, a ruffly cream blouse, and a wide cream silk headband adorned with tiny pearls. And, of course, heels. Blair has this superhuman ability to wear heels everywhere, and while I usually changed into flip-flops on the way home from my day job, I knew that tonight, they would simply be unacceptable. Around 7:30 p.m., I exited the Spring Street station, my heart racing, and made my way to St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School. Crowds of swarming preteens in headbands and miniskirts lined the sidewalk, whispering, waiting. “Did you see Dan?” “I saw Vanessa earlier, and the love child, Scott…,” overemphasizing the double Ts. A man in a black t-shirt with dark hair and muscular arms had set up four orange cones and was instructing the fans to stand behind them, but everyone was trying to push past the barricade to get a better view. I decided to climb onto a lamppost for extra height. Suddenly, as I was towering above the herd, the cameras began rolling. Everyone was silent. A limo pulled up on the other side of the street, and a small frame, statuesque and regal, emerged from within. Blair Waldorf. Her white headband, heels, pearls: impeccable as always. Her architectural red dress: fitted, elegant, struc-

tured. Her dark brown hair, her Snow White skin — she was perfection, like a Ladurée macaron. I was straining to see what would happen next, when, abruptly, I heard: “That’s a wrap.” Without thinking, without planning, I ran across the street. I knew it was my moment. There she was, right in front of me: spotted. It was as if time had frozen for a

moment, and I just stared. I didn’t take a photograph — I couldn’t, somehow. A few teenage girls, notebooks and pens in hand, started running after her as she sped down the street with two bodyguards. “We love you, Leighton Meester!” they cried. I just stared. In the few seconds it had taken me to cross the street, she had changed out of her beautiful cream high heels into raggedy old flip-flops.

The Yale Daily News Magazine September 2009

BACKPAGE BERLUSCONI ON RECORD by Alison Greenberg From the nation that brought you Nutella and Sofia Loren’s legs, comes one of the most bizarre public figures in international politics. Silvio Berlusconi has no filters, no reservations, and no boundaries. He owns the internationally renowned soccer club AC Milan, writes music, deals in major real estate, and, in his spare time, has served more years as Italy’s Prime Minister than anyone before him. Oh, and he’s the richest man in his nation. No big. Regardless of his laundry list of jobs and accolades (not to mention his roles in various purported bouts of tax bribery and mafia collusion), the man just says absurd shit.

“I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone.” – At the inception of his 2006 campaign for re-election.

“Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.”– On a national figure. “Hold me tight and call me Papa.” – To a Red Cross volunteer offering aid in the devastated L’Aquila region of Italy, after an earthquake last April.

“I’m paler because it’s been so long since I went sunbathing. He’s more handsome, younger and taller.” – On President Barack Obama, at a press conference about Italy’s economic viability amidst the global recession.

“I am accused of having said that the [Chinese] Communists used to eat children. … But read ‘The Black Book of Communism,’ and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children but had them boiled to fertilize the fields.” – While defending a statement he made in 2006.

“It was questionable irony, I admit it, because this joke is questionable. But I did not know how to restrain myself.” – While defending the aforementioned statement.

“I’m the universal record-holder for the number of trials in the entire history of man — and also of other creatures who live on other planets.” – On his history of numerous criminal charges, at a press conference about the 34th G8 summit in 2008.

“Only I can turn this country around.” – On his awesomeness.

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