YDN Magazine

DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE 70- 9997** t *446& t /07&.#&3

CHEESE

THE EDUCATION OF A PALATE

The quest to understand autism Renting the runway

INSIDE 13

FEATURE

Every Cheese Has a Story

BY NAINA SALIGRAM

Surrounded by bright-orange Mimolette and flabby Hooligan, Caseus’s owner Jason Sobicinski is advancing the cause of artisan cheese a block at a time.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ben Brody

MANAGING EDITORS

Anthony Lydgate, Jesse Maiman

10

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Sijia Cai, Jacque Feldman, Zara Kessler, Nicole Levy, Naina Saligram, Eileen Shim

PHOTO ESSAY

Old China/New China

BY GINGER JIANG

From neon-lit city streets to moss-grown pavilions in the countryside, China is undergoing an obvious change.

DESIGN & PHOTO EDITORS

Ginger Jiang, Loide Marwanga, La Wang, Weiwei Zhang

WEB EDITOR

Rachel Caplan

20

BUSINESS & DISTRIBUTION MANAGER

FEATURE

No Textbook Definition

BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

Tonia Sun

In an attempt to answer intimate questions about a complex disorder, one reporter explores the relationship between the scientific and personal in a class on autism.

FICTION EDITOR

Angelica Baker

POETRY EDITOR

Rosanna Oh

STAFF WRITERS

26

Molly Hensley-Clancy, Eliana Dockterman, Isabel Farhi, Daniel Friedman, Laura Gottesdiener, Lauren Oyler, Frances Sawyer

The newly-launched website Rent the Runway promises regular women the designer clothes of their dreams with two simple stipulations: Love and Wear, then Return.

ILLUSTRATORS

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY LA WANG TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT ILLUSTRATION BY MARIA HARAS FICTION ILLUSTRATIONS BY SIN JIN

A Cinderella Story

BY ZARA KESSLER

Maria Haras, Sin Jin 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.

FEATURE

32

FICTION

Neither Nor

BY COURTNEY SENDER

On her twelfth birthday, Katy is forced to confront her brother’s unique disability and her own shortcomings.

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

4

3

UP THE HILL

Sweet Song of the Swing

BY DANIEL FRIEDMAN

5

STUDIO SPACE

The Capoeirista’s Philosophy

BY NICOLE LEVY

6

MY YALE LA WANG

The Firepower of Yale

BY ISABEL FARHI

7

AROUND ELM CITY

A cheesemonger at Caseus, New Haven’s only combination bistro and cheese shop, shaves off a thin slice from a hunk of Gouda.

Shark Attack?

BY LAURA GOTTESDIENER

8

PROFILE

Faded Paper Professor

BY LAUREN OYLER

17

POEM

Parable

BY ALICE HODGKINS

36

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

Yellow Bluff Fish Camp

BY FRANCES SAWYER

38

POEM

Children and Dogs

BY AMY LEE

39

BACKPAGE

Destiny: Breakfast

BY AUSTIN BERNHARDT

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

F

or me, it usually happens in December, after a late night research session for a final paper. As I walk home from the library, the straps of my leather backpack tug at my sore shoulders. I’m both exhausted and jittery. Then it happens. I walk into the Silliman Courtyard, and I look up to see that it’s empty. The scene seems beautiful and improbable, and, right then, I – without family, friends, activities, or work for a brief moment – take a step back and breathe. It’s a moment of pause and reflection, and then it’s over.

Some people step back like this when walking on a busy city street or camping in the desert. Maybe you do it when you meet somebody goodlooking at a party or when you bite into a piece of cheddar cheese. If I had to guess, I’d say Frances Sawyer steps back at Yellow Bluff Fish Camp in Georgia, as she writes in her personal essay for this issue.

Naina Saligram’s cover story on Caseus seems to put her in the cheese category, if in a distinctly gourmet branch of it. Laura Gottesdiener’s trip to Sports Haven reveals that you can step back even in an empty bar, while “No Textbook Definition,” Eliana Docktermann’s piece on autism and the Yale Child Study Center steps back in time and place.

Each of them gave me occasion to step back myself.

There are other great pieces in this issue for you to read: Zara Kessler’s insider look a burgeoning internet fashion start-up; “The Firepower of Yale,” Isabel Farhi’s trip to a shooting range; Lauren Oyler’s profile of a rockstar professor. I’m sure these stories will be a enjoyable break for you, a well-deserved moment of pause. After all, this issue is coming out just in time for those December snows.

-- Ben Brody

4

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

UP THE HILL

SWEET SONG OF THE SWING by Daniel Friedman

t’s all in the hips. It’s all in the hips.” Happy Gilmore could have used more sophisticated advice. He should have turned to Yale’s Applied Physics professor Robert Grober and his golf training system, Sonic Golf.

Grober knew golf before he knew physics.

He spent his childhood caddying at clubs in the New York suburb of Westchester, where he grew up, and he attended Vanderbilt on a caddy scholarship, given to exceptional students who also work as caddies. The Yale sweater he wears to work has an icon of Handsome Dan with a golf club in his jaws.

When he became an Applied Physics professor, he began to combine his love for physics with his love for golf. “I’m an experimental physicist.,” he says. “I’m always building experiments, and as a hobby, I build experiments which fit into my golf club.” Sonic Golf is the result of that hobby.

Sonic Golf allows you to listen to your swing in real time. It helps golfers hone in on a few components of their swing. The first is rhythm: “There’s a particular cadence, tempo, or pace at which the swing goes. It turns out great golfers swing at a fundamental resonance of this whole system, and most people don’t sound anything like that.

When you hear that tempo, it sounds fluid and smooth.” Grober compares the swing to the pendulum of a grandfather clock — it accelerates smoothly from the point of maximum displacement, reaches maximum velocity at the lowest point, and then decelerates smoothly on the upswing. Sonic Golf helps pinpoint any parts of the swing that are jerky and smooth them out. It also helps with timing and achieving maximum velocity at impact.

To put Grober’s claims to the test, Brandon Marick, a junior on the Men’s Varsity Golf team, tries a club equipped with the Sonic Golf system. We are both standing in the new David Paterson Golf Technology Center on the second floor of Payne Whitney Gymnasium, and the system allows both of us to listen to his swing at the same time. At first, I am unsure of what I am hearing. With Brandon’s backswing, I hear a low-pitched whir. It rises to a medium pitch as the club passes his hips. Then, in a moment of silence,

WEIWEI ZHANG

Applied Physics professor and avid golfer, Robert Grober has combined his passion for physics with his deep love for golf to create a training aid that moves beyond video analysis, literally allowing you to listen to your swing.

A rainbow of sound: Brandon Marick and Daniel Friedman listen to the sound of a varsity golf swing on Yale Professor Robert Grober’s new training system, Sonic Golf.

Brandon is coiled at the top of his swing, all of his energy about to be released in a series of precise movements which will bring the head of the club into contact with the ball at a speed of about 100 MPH. The downswing passes in a blur. I hear a smooth rainbow of sound, from low pitch to high and back again until we reach an extended silence as he watches the ball smack against the net. After a few swings, I begin to understand better a connection between the sound I hear and what I see. Satisfied with his warm-up swings, Brandon starts hitting balls. The shrill whistle of the peak of the rainbow occurs at the same time as the thwack of contact.

The key breakthrough in Sonic Golf is the method of data representation — sound.

“The standard paradigm is to use charts and all sorts of crazy stuff. The challenge was: how do you get the information to them in a way that’s intuitive and not intimidating?” Grober began developing the concept behind Sonic Golf years ago. At first he tried placing one MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) sensor in the club, going so far as to patent the idea. That measurement proved useless; it reflected gravity, which varied as a result of the sensor’s position relative to the ground, rather than solely the club’s velocity. Grober got back to work, and ultimately

realized he could subtract gravity from the equation by using two MEMS and measuring the difference between the experienced forces. As a result, the sounds represent the angular velocity of the club. The faster the club rotates, the higher the pitch.

For comparison’s sake, I try a couple swings. The pitches on the backswing don’t shift evenly, the thwack and the rainbow are out of sync, and an additional arc of sound is heard on my recoil from the top of the swing. It sounds less like a smooth octave played by a skilled musician and more like a six-year-old banging on the piano.

Once we have both finished swinging, the first thing Brandon notes is the momentary pause at the top of his swing. That pause was described almost reverently by Grober: “There’s the backswing and there’s the downswing, and in between the two, there’s this mythical place, called the transition. When you hear it, it’s really beautiful.

There’s a point when it stops, when it gets quiet. That quiet space is really fascinating, almost like the fingerprint of a golfer.”

Ironically, now that Grober is running a business, he doesn’t have much time to play golf anymore. Nonetheless, he assured me his golf game has improved as a result of Sonic Golf. Happy Gilmore, help is on the way.

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

5

STUDIO SPACE THE CAPOERISTA’S PHILOSOPHY by Nicole Levy For master Efraim Silva, the Afro-Brazilian martial art known as capoeira is an elegant, powerful conversation between its players WKDW DOORZV WKHP WR JDLQ ERWK D SK\VLFDO DQG D OLQJXLVWLF ÁXHQF\ 1LFROH /HY\ DWWHQGV 6LOYD·V FODVV DQG HQJDJHV LQ WKH GLVFXVVLRQ

E

fraim Silva is not Jewish. His mother, a devout Protestant who raised her 13 children in a one-bedroom, one-outhouse hovel in São Paolo, Brazil, named all her brood after Biblical figures. During my first class with him at Payne Whitney Gymnasium on the Afro-Brazilian martial art known as capoeira, Silva quizzes us incessantly on both the names of the movements he teaches us and his given name. He guides us confidently through the fundamentals: this rocking step, in which the feet describe a triangle on the floor, one foot moving backwards and then again to the base, is ginga. This man, with a shaved crown, two ear piercings, and a goatee, is Efraim.

He admits to me later some once called him cabeça de abóbor, or pumpkin head.

“They called me so many odd nicknames, but I never cared. No nickname stuck to me.” As he readjusts his Kangol beret snugly over his bald pate, he smiles. He knows he is an exception among capoeristas. Most are baptized with an apelido when they first apply themselves as students. For the African slaves who originated capoeira in the seventeenth century as a rebellious combat style camouflaged by dance elements, apelidos were the disguises of their empowered alter egos. Silva needs no second name because capoeira is, for him, not a necessity of survival but a daily means of self-expression. His persona is uniquely, immaculately un-spliced.

Silva first began studying the art of capoeira when he was thirteen years old. As a child, he had seen and admired his neighbor practicing the fluid acrobatics, the evasive ducks, and the elegant kicks in his front yard. Thirty-two years later, capoeira has done more than chisel the musculature of his upper arms and streamline his robust physique. His old neighborhood, where sewage once covered the unpaved streets, is now covered in asphalt, and Silva has himself renovated the shack that was his childhood home: “Now, my mom lives in a castle that I built: three bathrooms, three bedrooms, real nice place.” When construction was completed, Silva’s mother

unveiled an essay his thirteen-year-old self had written about the ambition he had just realized. Silva recalls, “Everybody was crying.”

Silva’s resilience, emotional and physical, justifies his sentimentality. On July 4, 1989, three months after his mother had come to Connecticut to visit his sister, Silva could no longer endure her absence. He desperately sold both his old car and his motorcycle and bought an airplane ticket for America. His mother’s

Silva needs no second name because capoeira is, for him, not a necessity of survival but a daily means of self-expression. response — “I don’t want you to come here, because if you come here, you’re never going to go back.” His mother was right: Silva set down roots in Connecticut; he worked three jobs and attended school to learn English, driven by his aspiration to bring capoeira to the States. The most time Silva spent in Brazil was five years later in 1994, when he underwent an evaluation by the old masters and was awarded a Master of Capoeira certificate from the São Paulo Federation of Capoeira.

By that time, he had, with dogged persistence, opened and closed six different capoeira studios in the New Haven area.

The Afro-Brazilian Center on 57 Olive Street was his first successful venture, capitalizing on what first became a major trend in Europe in the early 1970s when groups like Brasil Tropical toured the continent. Among American audiences, it was Jelon Vieira’s company Dance Brazil, founded in New York City in 1977, that popularized the art form and inspired Brazilian capoeristas to emigrate and teach their art in this country. Today, there are over 20 capoeira schools in New York and New Jersey alone. Silva’s studio was once the only one of its kind in Connecticut,

but there are now instructors situated in Meriden, Hartford, New Britain, and Bridgeport. “Capoeira’s going to be the next big thing,” Silva insists, “and I’ll be right there when it happens.”

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights from 7 to 9 p.m., students of all skill levels gather at the Afro-Brazilian Center in their white uniforms under Silva’s tutelage.

They rehearse choreographed sequences, spar with each other, and practice drills down the length of the room. When they do their bananeiras, or handstands, tottering along on their palms until they keel over, they are, as Silva describes, banana trees succumbing to the hurricane winds.

At the end of a night’s session, Silva assembles his students together in a roda, a circle of people in which capoeira is done.

While he plays the twangy berimbau sitting at the mouth of the roda and sings the corrido he has written, everyone responds with the chorus and claps the threepronged rhythm. Two students crouch in the center of the circle, shake hands, and begin to spar. Their motions are seamless and elegant; without sound or, more significantly, intentional contact, they engage in their own call and response of low kicks and crouches. “Learning capoeira is like learning another language. You learn letters, words, sentences, long phrases. You have to memorize them, and suddenly, you are in a place where people are speaking the language, and someone says something to you and you say, ‘Holy cow! I understood that!’”

Silva confesses that “everything [he says and does] comes out looking like capoeira and [him] acting like a capoeira master.”

As I struggle to master what I envision as a calculated sequence of steps, I am astounded by Silva’s unity of purpose and perspective, derived from the fluid focus of his art. “Efraim” in the Torah means “double fruitfulness,” and no one can deny that Silva’s single-mindedness makes him doubly fruitful. As he jokingly remarks to a student’s father, who hopes his son Josh will look just like Silva after partaking in several weeks of classes, “Two of me would be too much.”

6

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

MY YALE THE FIREPOWER OF YALE by Isabel Farhi Deep in the bowels of the Yale Athletic Facilities, the Yale Pistol Club sets its sights on keeping a noble, centuries-old tradition alive. At the Small Bore shooting range, students-turned-sharpshooters learn how to ready, aim, and fire. for the new shooters (fifteen of us this week, mainly graduate students and upperclassmen). The slideshow goes over everything from the logistics of the club — the $10 per month fee for ammunition, the options for NRA certification — to the safety rules.

Keep your finger off the trigger unless you’re ready to shoot. Absolutely no drugs or alcohol. No guns on campus.

We split up into groups, each gathered around a metal table. Two students for every one of the garish blue Smith & Wesson boxes each containing a pistol, and one experienced shooter to demonstrate. At my table, that shooter is Jan Van Treeck, a second year graduate student in German. He’s been shooting for three years, two at Yale.

I ask him why he shoots. “I like the Zen moment,” he responds in his light German accent. That’s when you have to shut everything else in the world out.

Van Treeck shows us how to load the magazine (the container that feeds bullets into the gun chamber) and enter it into the gun, and then lets us try. He runs through the tips for a good shooter. Stance, grip, sight, breath, trigger, follow through. It seems too easy, too simple, though the guns look frighteningly like toy guns as they sit in their cases, wooden stocks and dull, black metal barrels.

BRIAN CHANG

losed toed shoes. Always wear eye and ear protection. Don’t load the gun until you reach the firing line. Be careful with the lead bullets. Never, ever point the gun at anyone else.

I’m in the back room of the Small Bore shooting range, a building attached to the Armory, which is nestled between the intramural fields and Central Ave. The president of the Yale Pistol Club, is teaching me how to shoot a gun. It’s a small room with cinderblock walls set off from the back of the range. Against a wall lean two safes, which hold the guns. The Pistol Team coach has the keys — shooting only goes on when he’s here. A green wooden beam hangs opposite, trophies on top. These trophies attest to the age and success of the team. The Pistol Team has been a tradition at Yale since at least 1893, though it was restarted last year after an approximately ten-year hiatus. “There’s a huge interest in pistol shooting,” says coach Rick Kamp FES ’87. He estimates that there are one to two hundred participants in the club. “I think we have more people than just about anybody.” The club is open to anyone who takes the orientations, though the Pistol Team itself is restricted to the best of the students.

The president runs through a slideshow

Although the quality of the campus shooting facilities disappoints some members of the Yale Pistol Club, they still flock to the Armory in search of their “Zen moment.”

The shooting range has the same cinderblock walls as the back room, the same pipes on the ceiling and cement floors. Eight lanes extend back; at the far end, fifty feet away, the targets hang, flat against the wall. A bulletin board beside the door documents everything from advice on stance to articles praising the second amendment. Despite the earplugs everyone must wear, I jump every time a shot goes off.

“The range has been like this since the 1900s,” says Kamp. “It was once used for World War I and World War II training.”

Kamp hasn’t been here that long, but he has been coaching since he arrived at Yale in 1987. In those years at least, nothing has changed. “It’s old, but it works,” he states.

Van Treeck, though, was disappointed when he arrived here. “It’s not what I expected it to be. I mean, it’s Yale, you know?” He adds that the Armory is one of the more overlooked athletic facilities.

“Everyone in the club would be happy for renovations,” he says. But that doesn’t stop him from coming here every Thursday to shoot, as well as on the Tuesdays that the team competes against the Connecticut Pistol League. A place to shoot is a place to shoot, and this one is only for Yale students and conveniently located near the Intramural fields.

I’m in the second of the two rounds of new shooters. On the order of the veteran, I load. The gun is heavy in my hand, but not heavy enough. It doesn’t have the weight of something that could kill a man.

At the coach’s command, I shoot.

Some people go to the pistol range for practical reasons, to learn to use a gun. But most go because they enjoy the sport, enjoy the skill necessary to hit the black dot that looks so tiny from fifty feet away. Shooting at Yale has a proud history, and the students here are eager to continue it. They’ll ignore the pipes whirring and the assortment of seats that includes everything from lawn to desk chairs. “It’s a decrepit old shed,” Van Treeck declares — but he, and the rest, would prefer to shoot here than not to shoot at all.

After five minutes, I look down at the target sheet. I haven’t hit it once.

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

7

AROUND ELM CITY SHARK ATTACK? by Laura Gottesdiener The Shark Bar’s main draw is its fish tank and eponymous sharks. And yet, upon further inspection, one very important thing is missing from its watery confines. It’s not the booze or the fish. Where did all the sharks go?

STEPHANIE RICHARDS

O

ne fish, two fish, yellow fish, blue fish. The vast room is eerily quiet except for the muffled voice announcing the horse races over the loud speaker. The yellow fish drifts across the tank in increments — flap, glide, pause… flap, glide, pause. On the bar’s counter sit green library desk lights that are completely incongruous with the complex’s racing-themed décor — framed pictures of horses and stenciled banners on the walls reading “HOME OF THE FLYING TURNS!” A thin, metallic fish about the size of my face emerges from the florescent coral. In total, there are 11 living souls in sight on a Tuesday evening at Sports Haven: three fish, one bartender, four men drifting among the hundreds of gambling stations, my three friends — one of whom has just placed bets on the long-shot horse, Lil Buddha Girl — and zero sharks.

“Sharks? There’s no more sharks left,” says Danielle, the bartender at Shark Bar, which stands at the heart of Sports Haven and advertises on its website a 2,800-gallon tank filled with sharks and tropical fish.

“They died,” she says, and then reconsiders. “Well, there’s one left, but he hides in the coral.” I scour the sides of the rectangular glass tank for a glimpse of this shy sand shark, purported to be about two feet long. The tank stretches from the ceiling through the floor and into the basement where there is a massive filter. On the surface of the water is a cocktail party of air bubbles, and tropical-colored coral juts out from the center like the arms of a frozen sea anemone. The blue fish plays peek-a-boo, while the shark and I play hide-and-go-seek.

I’m losing.

“Come on Lil Buddha Girl! Come on Lil Buddha Girl!” My friend’s mantra speeds up as Lil Buddha Girl blows by An Umbrellabag Day in the final stretch for the win. “Yes!” he cries with a fist pump. “I always win!”

A $50 profit, but still no sharks.

“At one time, there be three or four of them sharks,” says Willie Bowman, a janitor with a pyramidal body. “Sharks don’t last long in this tank.” He thinks it has something to do with a mix of salt and fresh water.

Shark Bar’s sand shark and YDN Magazine play hide and seek. Sand shark: 1, YDNM: 0.

Indeed, the sharks’ disappearance is shrouded in mystery. Brian Regan, a short Sports Haven employee with an enthusiasm for punching me in the shoulder, believes that eight years ago, the vicious Moray eels in the tank devoured a newly arrived four-foot-shark. The bar’s manager, Gary Tarquino, heard that PETA forced the bar to get rid of the more exotic hammerheads after one died. Yet the most popular myth is that 14 or 15 years ago, the tank broke during the night, causing the sharks to pour out of the cracks and flap around on the floor until morning.

Jim and Stick, two older black men betting on the dog racing, confirm this Kristallnacht of sharks.

“It was busted,” says Stick who comes to Sports Haven most days of the week now that he is retired. “They was all them sharks on the floor!”

“Oh yeah they was sharks in there,” says Jim, gesturing at the tank. “I forgot.” As we keep an eye on Greyhounds #6, #3, and #1 — Stick had me pick the dogs because, in dog racing, “the less you know, the better off you are” — the two men muse about Sports Haven.

“There ain’t too many people here lately.

The economy’s bad,” Stick says, adding,

“There used to be a lot of people here.”

It seems sharks aren’t the only things in high demand around Sports Haven these days. A week later, as I’m getting drinks with a friend and still searching for the elusive sand shark, Tarquino reminisces about the good old days of Sports Haven. Back then, before PETA, Moray eels, exploding tanks, and a tanking economy, it was a pretty rocking place. Crazy parties, crazy packed.

But somewhere along the way, he admits, the parties got out of control.

I suggest that perhaps the rowdiness had caused the sharks’ demise.

“Well, bullet holes would pierce the shark tank,” he replies, pulling out plastic shot glasses.

“We’d like to get a nightlife back in here,” he says. Over the past year, Sports Haven has instituted drastic changes: a new chef, an updated menu at the restaurant, and an almost completely new staff — which perhaps explains the confusion over the history of Shark Bar. Mike Torres, who is bartending for the first time, wanders over to our side of the bar tonight, and Tarquino pours four shots of Jameson. We raise our plastic glasses.

“Here’s to you guys putting us on the map,” Torres says. “Make us famous.”

8

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

PROFILE FADED PAPER PROFESSOR by Lauren Oyler For Professor R. John Williams, music only supplements his academic career. Fresh from Los Angeles, one of Yale English Department’s newest members talks about celebrity, fame, and why he isn’t really interested in either.

P

Williams and band mates Kael and Heather Alden, who were dating at the time and are now married, were comparing iPods at a UC Irvine party when someone brought out a guitar. “We talked about how I’d written some music,” Williams said of the impromptu jam session that spawned Faded Paper Figures. “One thing led to another, and I ended up saying, ‘I’ll buy you a pizza. Let’s do it.’”

At that point in time, Williams had basically given up music for academia. Although he admitted to having joined a band during his undergraduate years at Brigham Young University, he would disclose neither the group’s name nor its genre. After receiving his masters in English Literature from Utah State University in 2001, Williams relocated to the University of California at Irvine, where he received a masters in Comparative Literature in 2002 and a doctorate in Comparative Literature in 2008.

When he met Kael and Heather, Williams was seeking neither fame nor fortune; rather, he just wanted to have some fun.

Kael and Williams began recording in their limited spare time — Kael on the guitar and keyboard, Williams on guitar and vocals.

Heather came in later with additional vocals, which Williams described as “amazing.” When the duo’s tunes began to generate buzz on

COURTESY R. JOHN WILLIAMS

rofessor R. John Williams is who you want to be when you grow up. With several advanced degrees in literature, he has snagged a job at Yale. He has a wife and two children, Miles and Harry.

There are 6,170 songs in his iTunes library and counting. Every night, he watches “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart every night, and his indie-electronica band, Faded Paper Figures, was recently featured on Grey’s Anatomy. Twice.

This was not how I expected to feel at the start of my interview with him. I met Williams in his office on the fourth floor of LinsleyChittenden, and he suggested that we get coffee.

As soon as we exited the building, however, the conversation shifted, becoming a heated and intriguing discussion of the weather. After comparing the climates of California, Utah, Denver, New England, and West Virginia, we finally reached Atticus, where I spilled coffee all over myself. Twice.

Professor Williams kindly pretended not to notice my clumsiness. Flustered, I asked my first question: “So, how would you describe your academic work?” and he began to tell me about his multi-faceted academic pursuits and the great “experiment” that is his music.

His is the classic tale of a casual side project gone way further than expected. In 2007,

Professor Williams is a member of the group Faded Paper Figures (from left: Williams, Kael Alden, Heather Alden), whose songs have been featured on “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Myspace, they decided to produce a homemade album. “At the time, you’re not sure what you’re undertaking,” Williams said. “It isn’t exactly high-tech. I’d go into the closet in Kael’s apartment with a microphone to record my vocals. It was funny because obviously when I was done I’d have to ask everyone, ‘Can I come out of the closet?’” The group released its music on its own label, Shorthand Records.

According to Williams, Faded Paper Figures’ music production process is comparable to the three branches of government. As the band’s lyricist, vocalist, and guitarist, Williams considers himself the legislative branch; Kael, who manipulates all of the music, acts as the executive branch, and Heather, who critiques songs in progress and adds her own vocals, is the judicial branch. In place of a studio, Williams often begins writing his music while he’s driving or late at night in his office in LC, where his cedar-top Fender guitar sits in the corner.

“When I’m writing a song, that’s all I’ll listen to until it’s done,” he said.

But the song production process has been taking a lot longer ever since Williams relocated to New Haven in the summer of 2009. After writing, recording, and layering a first draft in his office in LC, he emails it to Kael, who manipulates it and suggests changes. Williams then works with the music again, and this process continues until the song is complete. Although Williams, Heather, and Kael use video feeds to discuss their work, the long distance between them (the Aldens live in Los Angeles) still limits the speed and efficacy of making music. The group is currently trying to finish their second album, called New Medium, and has recorded eight of the ten songs that it will feature.

However, Williams says that it wasn’t hard to decide to leave Los Angeles to accept Yale’s offer. “At the time, there was probably a 75% chance that my band mates were moving to New York City,” he said. Heather had been waitlisted at UCLA medical school, and she was planning on attending Mount Sinai. Heather ended up accepted at UCLA, and the band was stuck operating on opposite sides of the country.

Still, Williams claimed he didn’t have a hard time deciding to come to New Haven. “There isn’t a lot you can do with a rock star career,” he mused.

The band’s actual success, however, suggests

otherwise. Two songs from the band’s first album, Dynamo, “Polaroid Solution” and “North by North,” were featured on “Grey’s Anatomy” in their October 22 and November 5 episodes, respectively, and the popular show is been known to be a launching pad for indie bands’ rise to popularity. In addition, Faded Paper Figures sounds like the well-dressed love child of Morrissey and The Postal Service, and they’re good.

Nevertheless, Williams seems more like a “rock star” English professor than an intellectual musician. This semester, he is teaching two sections of ENGL 127 “American Literary Tradition,” and next semester he will be teaching ENGL 299 “Images of East Asia in U.S. Film and Literature” and ENGL 117, tentatively titled “Literature and the Technologies of Modernity.” His focus is the intersection of literature and technology, and his first book project used Asian philosophy to reconcile the apparent gap between postmodern technology and classic literature. According to one of his students, Max Saltarelli ’13, Professor Williams often utilizes music, film, and the Internet to aid in classroom discussion and organization.

“While we were reading Nightwood, he brought in this avant-garde silent French film and set it to modern, hipster music like MGMT,” Saltarelli said. “He really teaches the material in interesting ways.”

Indeed, Williams’ other academic passion lies in film, which he said will play a bigger part in his next book project. When I asked him about the episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” that featured “Polaroid Solution,” he immediately launched into an in-depth analysis of the plot line, exploring the political message behind the merger of two hospitals, casting the chief of surgery as Barack Obama and McDreamy (one of the doctors) as the media.

Surprisingly, Williams’ academic qualities manifest themselves in his music as well. “The only way to understand my lyrics completely is to read everything I’m reading and writing,” he said. To help fans understand his music, Williams

His is the classic tale of a casual side project gone way further than expected.

9

COURTESY R. JOHN WILLIAMS

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

In addition to his day job as a Yale English professor, Professor R. John Williams often writes lyrics for his band, Faded Paper Figures, in his office in Linsley-Chittenden Hall.

not only posts lyrics on the band’s website but also includes links to references that explain his sources of inspiration. These links lead to sites ranging from the IMDB page for Plan 9 from Outer Space, a 1959 horror film, to the Google Books results page for “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” a short story written by women’s rights activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892.

“Sometimes I include very obscure references,” he said, “but some people think [the citations] steal some of the charm and mystery.” After listening to his music, I found that I appreciated his citations — his lyrics were clever, but I didn’t actually understand most of them.

Despite his obvious dedication to his music, Williams insisted that the band is just a hobby.

“Sometimes it’s funny, this thing I save for recreation,” he said. “It’s as intense as something someone else would do for work. I imagine we’ll still find some way to remain relatively unknown.

It’s really just an experiment to see if you can integrate the two parts of your life.”

“If I try to be so academic in everything, then I get kind of anxious,” he added. “You need balance. In my house, staying up late to work on music is allowed, but if I were up doing work, my wife would be like, ‘What are you doing?’”

Perhaps this is why Williams seemed so

nonchalant about his recent brush with fame.

Having never seen “Grey’s Anatomy” before Faded Paper Figures’ debut, he joked that he would rather have been on “The Office,” which is one of his favorite television shows.

“What TV shows do you watch?” he asked me.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Oh,” he said. “You all don’t have time for television!”

As a new member of the Yale community, Williams expressed surprise at how intense students’ self-imposed workloads are.

“Yale students live up to their stereotypes in that everyone is working too hard,” he said, “and I guess that’s fine as long as everyone doesn’t have nervous breakdowns.”

Williams has achieved what many Yale students dream of: a balance between work and play. He focuses on work when he needs to but doesn’t sacrifice the things he loves, which include both his band and nightly episodes of “The Daily Show.” His laid-back, go-with-theflow definition of personal success is admirable, and it’s one that many Yale students, English majors or not, could learn from.

“Music has been so meaningful to me at so many moments in my life,” Williams says. “It’s just rewarding to get recognized for it in this way.”

“OLD CHINA/NEW CHINA” BY GINGER JIANG

BY NAINA SALIGRAM

Naina Saligram immerses herself in the pungent world of New Haven’s best cheese shop and local dairy culture. here is something sublime about taking a bite into the perfect grilled cheese. But it is an uneasy moment, really — caught between ecstasy and guilt, pure indulgence and pure pleasure, you know you shouldn’t, but you just must….

I have always been a glutton for this simple thrill. At home, I am the judge of the ongoing contest between my parents and sister over who makes the best grilled cheese (my sister is currently in the lead). For a family of vegetarians who don’t really like vegetables, bread and cheese is a winning combination. And while I appreciate the gourmet varieties — I bought a grilled cheese cookbook this summer with such suggestions as taleggio and truffles and chèvre and jam — I’m no snob when it comes to the sandwich. I grew up on Kraft singles. Almost every night I sneak down to the Branford Buttery to enjoy the greasy $1 staple. Toasted just right, crisp and crunchy, never burnt — for me, it has always been about the bread and not the cheese.

That is, until I start frequenting Caseus, New Haven’s fromagerie-cum-bistro on the corner of Whitney and Trumbull. At Caseus, overwhelming globs of yellow goodness emerge from butter-soaked slices of one-inch-thick rye.

The cheese has a mind of its own: it bubbles, oozes, almost gushes out of the sandwich, daring to enter your mouth.

Caseus (pronounced kay-see-us) is a mecca for cheese PHOTOGRAPHY BY LA WANG

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

lovers. The restaurant offers cheese favorites including mac-andcheese and poutine (fancy cheese fries), and the fromagerie hosts a selection of over 100 artisan cheeses, both domestic and imported.

The Caseus grilled cheese is made from a unique blend of comté, raclette, emmantaller, provolone, mozzarella, and cheddar. But the secret is this: if anything less than a quarter pound is left in the cheese shop, it gets added to the mix, so the combination is different every time. “You never know what you’ll get from the cheese shop,” says owner and founder Jason Sobocinski with a smile.

In the less than two years since its inception, Caseus has proven to be a blockbuster success. Dubbed by this year’s Fearless Critic New Haven restaurant guide as not “just the city’s best cheese shop” but also its “most exciting new restaurant in a decade,” Caseus is bringing sophisticated, real cheeses to New Haven’s salivating mouths. In a few months, the restaurant will launch the “cheese truck”: a travelling 1994 Dodge 500 whose back has been converted into a kitchen. The cheese truck — advertised on the Caseus website with the slogan “Not all our wheels are made of cheese” — will be a welcome addition to New Haven’s street food landscape, and its featured item will be the famous grilled cheese.

Through the grilled cheese truck, the bistro, and most importantly, the cheese shop, Caseus is part of a broader national movement to make cheese part of American culture. Not the Kraft

Jason Sobocinski, owner and founder of Caseus, says the New Haven cheese shop is an “extension of my family kitchen.”

15

singles or what my family has always affectionately called “plastic” cheese, but rather artisan cheese — cheese, as Jason says, “that’s made with human hands.” The shop’s motto and philosophy is simple: every cheese has a story. Caseus wants to share that story and make consumers a part of it. They are advancing what cheese experts have called the Great Cheese Revolution, one story at a time.

Twig Farm Goat Tomme, Raw Goat’s Milk, West Cornwall, Vermont

W

hen you open the door to the fromagerie at Caseus, cow bells draped around the inside handle ring. The room is small and cozy, stocked to the brim with handmade goods: Rick’s Picks, Bonnie’s Jams, Effie’s Oat Cakes. But there is no denying that the focus of the shop is the cheese.

A display case and the counters next to it tempt you with cheeses of all kinds. Wedges, circles, cubes. Wheels the size of tennis balls and bowling balls. Squishy white cheeses, crumbly blue cheeses. The most visually unique I have seen is Mimolette — it is bright orange and resembles a cantaloupe. When I first start going to Caseus, I know next to nothing about cheese, and since I will be studying abroad in France next semester (where gastronomic literacy is a requisite for cultural legitimacy), I need to learn fast.

Every cheese at Caseus has a sign attached to it with a description, so I start scribbling frantically.

There is Olgeshield, and Wildspitz, and Drunken Goat. There is Pradera from Holland: “If you want to wow your guests, give them a taste of this 7-year-aged Gouda. Caramel overtones and salty crunchy pockets make this oh so popular.” And Pata Cabra: “This deliciously savory goat’s milk cheese is hand made in Zaragosa, Spain. Pair with pear and apple mostarda, or with chestnut honey for a memorable cheese course.”

And there is Twig Farm Goat Tomme. Pale yellow with a thick, knobbly-gray and powdery-white natural rind, Goat Tomme is aged about 80 days and made at Michael Lee and Emily Sunderman’s small farm in Vermont, about 10 miles south of Middlebury. At the moment, Goat Tomme is Jason’s favorite cheese. He loves the flavors — earthy but still tangy — so much that during the summer of 2007, not long before opening Caseus, he spent a few months working at Twig Farm to learn how to make the cheese.

Jason first tells me about Goat Tomme in the dimly-lit, cellarlike bottom dining room of the restaurant, where we sit at a table after the lunch rush has subsided. Wearing blue jeans and with scruffy hair coming out of his Yankees cap, Jason is not what I had expected of the haute cheese connoisseur. But his boyish exterior and sarcastic sense of humor come with a bursting passion for connecting cheese to things deeply and universally human.

“I love food that has history,” Jason says. “With cheese, there is so much tradition behind it. This is stuff we’ve been making for centuries.”

Food has always been important in Jason’s life. His great grandfather, a fisherman from the Amalfi coast, moved to New Haven and opened Cavaliere’s, an Italian specialty shop on Wooster Street. A black and white photograph on the wall in the front dining room at Caseus shows Great Grandpa Angelo Cavaliere and Jason’s great uncles Emiddio and Silvio standing next to a 750-

16

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

pound torpedo of Auricchio Provolone. The first thing Jason’s mom Sylvia, who is also the cheese shop manager, asks me when we meet is, “Have you seen the photo upstairs?

I guess you could say Jason has cheese in his blood.”

Wanting to do something substantial with his love for food, Jason enrolled in Boston University’s masters program in gastronomy, where he studied, among other things, how culture and food overlap. While in Boston, Jason worked part time selling cheese as a cheesemonger at Formaggio Kitchen — what he calls “the best cheese shop in the country.”

And that’s when he “fell in love” with the business. He knew right away that he wanted to eventually come back to New Haven and start something similar. Finally, on January 1, 2008, Caseus was born.

After talking to Jason, with this glimpse into a life where cheese is more than just a delicious treat and instead part of humanist discourse, I am driven to learn as much as possible. I gravitate to the shelves in the fromagerie at Caseus, which include titles from Grilled Cheese (the very book I bought this summer) to the Atlas of American Artisan Cheese and Eat My World. I check out Max McCalman’s 2002 Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best from Bass Library.

I order The Cheese Chronicles online, a new book by Yale graduate Liz Thorpe ’00, the VP of Murray’s Cheese Shop in New York.

And I start devouring cheese on a daily basis. After meeting Jason, Twig Farm Goat Tomme is my first purchase.

Vermont Ayr, Raw Cow’s Milk, Crawford Family Farm, Whiting, Vermont

W

hen Sylvia learns that I am a student at Yale, she immediately opens the display case and pulls out a small white wheel of Vermont Ayr. She unwraps the plastic in which it is tightly bound, and scrapes the side with a cheese slicer to give me a sample. A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best has instructed me that there are steps to tasting: Look. Touch. Smell.

Then taste. Embarrassed to perform all the steps in public, I shove the Vermont Ayr in my mouth, more eager to learn its history.

Vermont Ayr was invented by Maria Trumpler, the Director of the Office of LGBT Resources at Yale who teaches the popular class “Women, Food, and Culture.” When Trumpler was teaching in Massachusetts and wanted a change from her academic career, she decided to go into cheese-making. She had attended a workshop where she learned to make mozzarella, ricotta, and cheddar in one day, and started practicing in her kitchen in small batches with one to three gallons of fresh milk. When she began working at Vermont’s Crawford Family Farm in 2003, it was essentially the

same principles and processes as those in her kitchen, just “ramped up” to a commercial scale.

Before Trumpler arrived, the Crawford siblings realized that their farm would not survive by selling milk alone: what they needed was a “value-added product,” and cheese was their answer.

It took Trumpler two years to plan and perfect the production of Vermont Ayr, which is made from the milk of brown and white Ayrshire cows. The cheese — which Trumpler describes as easy to eat but with “enough sophistication” to please a trained palette — is shaped by the nature of the Ayrshire cow milk. While the natural rind captures the earthiness of the Vermont terroir, the inside of the cheese is creamy and sweet, which comes from the tiny globules of butterfat in the milk. “When I was designing Vermont Ayr,” Trumpler tells me, “I kept thinking, ‘let the milk make the cheese it wants to make.’”

This responsiveness to the milk is one of the essential elements of artisanal cheese. Milk changes with the seasons, over the lactation cycle, depending on what the animal eats, and artisanal cheesemakers accommodate these changes instead of standard-

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

17

in greater and greater numbers to Europe, where they would discover real cheeses that they wanted to eat back home. It was the beginning of an increasing appreciation for gourmet cheeses.

But the Cheese Revolution was — and continues to be — two-pronged: the general interest in high-quality, artisan cheeses, and the interest in high-quality, artisan, local cheeses. In the 1980s, a growing number of artisan cheese makers began to crop up in America, and by 1990, about 75 existed in the country. Today, Thorpe estimates that there are “somewhere between five hundred and one thousand.” This rise coincides with the development of the Slow Food movement and changing national conversations about sustainability and nutrition.

For Jason, the draw to the artisanal is the chance to attach a human face to his products — he has known Trumpler since she started coming into Formaggio Kitchen when they lived in Boston. For Trumpler, the appeal is both intellectual and physical.

Having written her dissertation on 18th century science, she likes that artisan cheese today is made the same way it was in the 18th century. And, in contrast to her academic life of “making ideas,” she loves the feeling of making something tangible. “That’s deeply satisfying,” she says.

Piacentinu Ennese, Sheep’s Milk, Enne, Sicily, Italy

T

izing their product. For any given cheese, “every wheel is different,” Jason says. “Do you really want something that’s always consistent? McDonald’s is consistent. Friday’s is consistent.” Not that Jason has a moral opposition to industrial cheeses; in fact, Caseus sells a few. “Some industrial cheese is made with wonderful milk,” Jason says. He cites the Calabro Cheese Corporation of East Haven, which won a gold medal in 2003 from the American Cheese Society for its fior di latte. But then there’s also Velveeta and Kraft.

Though America is known for these mass-produced, processed foods, the market for and production of artisan cheese in this country has grown dramatically in the past thirty years. “Call it a movement, call it a revolution, whatever,” says Ken Skovron, the owner of Darien Cheese and Fine Foods in Darien, CT, one of the “original” cheese shops in the country. “Cheese is all the rage today.” A practicing cheesemonger for the past 35 years, Skovron has witnessed firsthand the enormous growth in the cheese industry. He says that when he and his wife Tori first took over the Darien cheese shop 23 years ago, they saw Americans travel

he story goes that in 1060, after the Norman invasion of Sicily, there was a Norman conqueror whose wives all suffered from depression. Upon hearing that cheese could improve this mental state, he held a competition, asking all the cheese makers in the land to come up with a “magical cheese” to cure his wives entirely.

Piacentinu Ennese was the cheese that won the contest — with its secret ingredient of saffron, an alleged aphrodisiac.

Jason is telling this story — with the caveat that he found it on an Italian website, take it or leave it — on a Tuesday night at a private cheese-tasting birthday party at Caseus. “Who wants to try to pronounce this one?” Jason asks the group in his cheerful and billowy voice.

A young man in a tweed coat and pink shirt is the first to speak up. “Piashentu en-ess.” He butchers it with a fake French accent.

This time a soft voice pronounces each syllable one by one: “pia-sen-tine-u en-essay”? It’s the birthday girl, so it’s close enough.

Piacentinu Ennese is the sixth of eight cheeses on the menu, which is ordered from least to most intense in flavor. It is a pecorino (sheep’s milk cheese) in a vibrant yellow, punctuated with pieces of dark saffron. Jason has paired it with Quo Garnache, a “persistent, seductive, and luscious” wine with notes of cranberry

18

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

and pomegranate.

When I arrive for the tasting, Jason grins and says, “are you ready to work for your place?” Tonight, I am helping serve the alcohol, but for the Quo Garnache, Jason tells me to sit the round out. With the previous wine, I had misjudged the proportions, so the last of the 17 guests only got a few sips. I’m better with the beers — smaller bottles, easier to gauge how much to pour. It’s a good thing Jason likes to pair beer with cheese more often than not. (“With beer, the effervescence cuts through the throat!”)

Jason holds several cheese classes throughout the year that cover everything from cheese and sake to cheese and poetry pairings. The classes usually cost $35 per person, but since I’m “working” tonight, I get the cheese plate for free.

Education is one of the most distinguishing elements of Jason’s vision for Caseus. He chose the name — the Latin root of “cheese” — because of the connotations of an ancient language: “You expect to be learning something every time you walk in the door.” Educating your palette is so important, Jason says, because he truly believes that “if you teach people about artisan goods, they taste better.” His Master’s thesis, an ongoing project, studies scientifically how our sense of taste is affected by learning. In a way, Caseus is a test case for Jason’s studies.

But for me, knowledge about the Piacentinu Ennesse doesn’t seem to affect how it tastes. It’s the one cheese I have tried from Caseus that I have not liked, even though I find the story particularly intriguing. It’s the saffron, I think, that’s off-putting. I nibble at it, sitting at the bar, but then decide to munch on a Marcona almond, a palette cleanser, before returning to what I have left of my Montgomery’s Cheddar. I tell Jason I don’t really like the saffron cheese, almost apologetically. He’s not offended — I think, in fact, that he’s pleased. “It’s sort of like paintings,” he says. “You might look at a painting and hate it. But it’s powerful because it evokes strong emotions. Cheese has the power to do that too.”

At the end of the night, Jason asks everyone which pairing they liked best, for the winner will go in his “best pairings” class at the end of the year. Piaccentinu Ennese and Quo Garnache come in last place.

Hooligan, Raw Cow’s Milk, Cato Corner Farm, Colchester, Connecticut

I

t’s a stinker,” Sylvia warns me as she wraps up a small chunk of Hooligan in wax paper. Hooligan is my first “stinky” cheese, and I want to experience it properly. At home, I go through McCalman’s steps. Look: the rind is corrugated and a burnt orange color. Touch: The outside is sticky, and when I press into the inside, it is soft, sort of like Play-Doh. Smell: I bring the cheese up to my nose and breathe in the scent. My olfactory sense is particularly weak, so I smell it over and over again, trying to pin down a verbal description. The only word that comes to mind is: eggy? In The Cheese Chronicles, Liz Thorpe, who is full of praise for the “funky” Hooligan, writes that it has a smell “I can only describe as cat-butty.”

Hooligan’s aroma comes from pungent bacteria called Brevibacterium linens that grow on the surface when the cheese is washed in a bath of buttermilk and brine (salt water). Mark Gillman of Cato Corner Farm, just an hour from New Haven, washes his Hooligans twice a week during their 60 day aging

Yale professor Maria Trumpler combined her academic interests with her love of food when she worked as a cheesemonger. period. For the Hooligan, Mark says, they were inspired by the world’s great wash-rind cheeses, such as the French Munster, that monks have been making across Europe for centuries. When I ask Mark about the name, he laughs. “I guess the name fits its roughand-tumble personality.”

Hooligan is among the best in American cheese today, and has been recognized as such by Saveur magazine and Slow Food USA. It was not included in McCalman’s World’s Best — the book came out in 2002 before Hooligan as it is known today was created — but his “Pantheon of Real Cheeses” does include 29 American cheeses, the second highest for any country next to France, which had 58 (only 17 English cheeses made the cut).

“We’re up-and-coming,” says Jason about American cheeses.

Caseus has selections from across the country, including cheeses from California, Texas, Georgia, and of course, Wisconsin. The card for Wisconsin’s Pleasant Ridge Reserve states, “This could become your next favorite! Rich, pastoral, amazing.”

Ken Skovron also recognizes the progress of American cheese.

“I think we’re doing incredible things in the US,” he says. (He too sells Cato Corner’s Hooligan in his Darien store.) “But most American cheeses are styled after European ones,” he admits, “and it’s hard to deny the original. Without them, we would be nowhere.” Indeed, Cato Corner’s “Womanchego” is named as such because it is inspired by the classic Spanish “Manchego.”

I come back to my Hooligan, and to McCalman’s last step: taste. “Always, take a small, very thin slice and let it luxuriate on your tongue, stimulating your mouth and getting all the juices

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

flowing in there,” he writes.

I close my eyes and put a bite into my mouth. Hooligan makes it into my Pantheon of Cheese.

Parmigiano Reggiano, Stravecchio Riserva, Cow’s Milk, Italy

O

n a brisk November afternoon, I stroll into Caseus — it is the last visit of my three-week long cheese odyssey. A young woman in jeans and a black turtleneck is tasting Midnight Moon. When Aurélie, one of the cheesemongers who grew up in Northern France eating cheese every day, eyes me, she smiles. I have become a regular.

She hands me a sliver, and I start gushing. “Oh I love Midnight Moon! It’s one of my favorites. It’s sheep’s milk and from Holland but it’s made in California…”

“Almost — it’s made in Holland for Cypress Grove in California,” she says, laughing. “It’s one of my favorites too.”

But today is not a day for Midnight Moon. I’m here for my last cheese, and I want something classic, but still unique. Something iconic. Something special.

After reviewing all the varieties that are almost tumbling out of the case and off the shelves, I finally decide on Parmigiano Reggiano, Stravecchio Riserva. It is smaller and darker than the 48-pound half wheel of typical Parmigiano Reggiano that sits on the counter, and a sticker with the word “special” is stuck on the outside. Aged six years by Reggiano Luigi Guffanti, it is one of Caseus’ most expensive cheeses at $36 a pound.

Aurélie leaves the cheese shop to get the cheese from the temperature-and-humidity controlled “cheese cave,” where many wheels are stored and continue to age. When she returns, she pulls out a giant knife almost two feet long and pushes down into the cheese until it starts to crumble. The cheese is so hard she has to stand on her toes to get the knife all the way through.

Later that day I bring the special Parmesan back to my room to share with my roommates. We take out red plastic plates and open up the futon in our common room to sit on. I unwrap the wax paper and the cheese has already broken into several pieces.

Each little chunk looks like a crystal rock, glinting in the light. The rocks are crunchy, with a strange but wonderful combination of savory and sweet. “This cheese is nutty, spicy, salty, and floral, all at the same time,” its label at Caseus had read. “Winey,” one of my suitemates suggests.

While eating the Guffanti Riserva, I tell my suitemates about the best hard Parmesan I have ever had: in Florence at a restaurant called Fratelli Briganti that is known for its “secret spaghetti.” My suitemate Eleni remembers the month she spent in Paris last summer and recounts how she developed the need to smell everything she ate when she was there. She sighs, picks up a piece of the Parmesan, and brings it to her nose.

Soon, our conversation drifts beyond food to just the everyday.

My art history paper. Angela’s problem set. Eleni’s play. All the while we continue munching on our winey, floral, crunchy, rock cheese. Eleni ‘s eyes grow large with excitement, and she says that the play makes her think about growing up. Angela tries to explain to me the intricacies of the kidney research she is conducting. I don’t say much and just listen. I think to myself, now the cheese has become a part of our story.

Bitumen Having long given up on late-night radio, I wish only for rain, so that you’ll have To turn the windshield-wipers on.

“We’ll be home soon,” I say into the silence.

In the corner of my eye, your ring flares Each time we pass a hooded highway light.

Be careful what you wish for, my mom’s fingers had said As she dipped them in vinegar to soften the skin.

Just tell the truth, murmur your hands From the steering-wheel, we already know.

It was the same party as last year.

Same people, still single Or nursing a wound, “How happy you two look!”

My lizard blood crawled at your touch.

In shining scales I stood Snickering, driving you into the open.

“What’s funny?” you asked, But I kept quiet.

Winning is not always pleasant, say my hands As they burrow into my dress.

After a few more miles I have fallen asleep.

Giant sea monsters wink, diving And wheeling over the roof of our car.

The nest they guard lies sparkling Fifty miles down the hillside: It is a long-dead civilization and we are playing At archeologists, unwrapping the stiff linen Piece by piece as gold beetles scuttle Away from the light and turquoise buds Shudder and fall from the thin black palms.

-Marissa Grunesw

19

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

no textbook GHÀQLWLRQ

BY ELIANA DOCKTERMAN

Autism is not a disorder that can be boiled down to a single, satisfactory definition.

But how it is to be perieved and handled — that is even harder to define.

June 2009, Orlando, FL isney World: Where Dreams Come True.” I lean forward from the back seat of the crowded car to snap a picture of the sign. I am ecstatic. I haven’t been to Disney World since I was ten. My friend, Emma, whose entire six-person family is testing the recommended capacity of the compact SUV they have rented, flashes me a smile from the adjoining seat,1 but her smile fades quickly. For me, wistful for my childhood visits, Disney World remains “the most magical place on earth.” For her, it has lost some of its allure. Her family has come here for vacation every year since she can remember. It is one of the only places on earth her family can visit that can accommodate her twin autistic brothers.

Realizing this, I settle back in the seat. I don’t know whether to mimic Emma’s indifference. She knows I don’t understand, and my empathy would seem too artificial.

November 2009, Yale Campus, New Haven, CT

E

ach of the the students in Yale’s “Psych 350: Autism and Related Disorders” class almost invariably has a personal reason for taking it.

Many have prior experience with autistic people, oftentimes siblings. The professors do not hide the fact that priority is given to “students with personal interests,” as the class website declares. Since the class is limited to 15-20 students, the application process is very competitive. Currently an estimated 1 in 150 children in the United States is born with an autism spectrum disorder. In recent years, more and more children have been diagnosed with autism. It is debatable whether the rate of autism is actually increasing in this country or whether doctors have been doing a better job of identifying it. Regardless, as the prevalence of autism has spread, the class has become more and more popular. Katie Sexton, a senior in the class, tells me that her main motivation for taking the class is her desire to become a lawyer specializing in child advocacy. In this position, she would specialize in helping families deal with the complications that result from having a special needs child.

1. Some names in this piece have been changed or withheld to protect subjects.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOIDE MARWANGA

21

22

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

Some, however, have very different motivations. Dr. James McPartland, one of the three professors who teaches Psych 350, theorizes, “College is an especially social time, and here we are learning about a group of people who are born” with difficulties in processing social information.

I could personally recognize the appeal of a class that explains the seemingly inexplicable.

Throughout my entire friendship with Emma, I never grasped what autism was. Emma never sat down and explained her brothers’ disorder to me. I don’t think she would have known how to.

Outwardly, I feigned an intimate knowledge of her situation, trying to be as supportive of her as possible. But personally, I felt my ignorance about autism created a barrier between us.

to nothing about autism. Even the definition of autism spectrum disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the gold standard of psychiatric diagnosis, is vague. Rather than precisely defining autism, the DSM offers 12 criteria for the diagnosis of autism. Some of the signs of autism might be impairment of social interaction (like not being able to make eye contact), delay in development of spoken language, repetitive motor mannerisms (like hand flapping), and resistance to change. In order to be diagnosed with autism, a child must meet a certain number of criteria in certain combinations, but the disease is still variable in its manifestations and deeply individualized; each diagnosis and treatment will depend upon the specific child. Yet, somehow scientists must search for an overarching theme that will allow them to develop new treatments that will help the autistic community as a whole.

As I leave the lecture, I feel a little disappointed. I now some of know the science behind autism — its manifestations, its diagnosis, its treatments. But none of this seems relevant to Emma or her brothers. Abstract explanations have not provided me with the revelation I am seeking. But I quickly remember what one of the professors told me before the class. “You can’t really understand what autism is like if you don’t interact with people with autism,” Dr. McPartland explains. “You can only learn so much from the textbook.” He goes on to quote his colleague, professor Dr. Ami Klin, Director of the Autism Program at Yale: “Our best hypotheses come from the playroom.”

Grappling with and understanding autism often requires a balance between the deeply personal and the coldly clinical.

January 2009, Chicago, IL

E

mma and I stand in line at our high school’s cafeteria, trying to grab a quick lunch in the twenty minutes we have between classes. The line inches along slowly, and we are both already irritated. A freshman shoves her way through the crowd to join a boy standing in front of us. She chats with him glibly, clearly intending to cut us in line. I consider exercising my seniority and relegating her to the end of the line, but it is not worth the fight.

Plus, the boy is trying to coax her into leaving anyhow. Emma and I eavesdrop on their argument.

“Seriously, there are seniors behind us. You’ve gotta go to the back.”

“Who are you? The line police? Just let me order with you.”

“I don’t think…I don’t…umm…know,” he stutters.

“Are you autistic? Can’t you put a sentence together?”

Without looking at Emma, I tap the freshman girl on the shoulder. “Not okay. Get to the back of the fucking line.”

Emma says nothing. When we finally load up and pay for our food, thread our way to a table, and sit down, she quietly whispers,“Bitch…”

November 2009, Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT

G

rappling with and understanding autism often requires a balance between the deeply personal and the coldly clinical. Each week, the Psych 350 class features a different guest lecturer. The speaker today is Alison Singer, who introduces herself as the mother of an autistic child and the sister of an autistic brother. She is also deeply invested in supporting autism research. Last year, she founded the Autism Science Foundation, whose mission is to support autism research by funding scientists either searching for the genetic source of autism or investigating safe and novel treatments for autistic children. Singer easily convinces me that her cause is noble, and, more importantly, central to dealing with the disease. As it turns out, we know next

November 2009, A bus traveling between Yale Campus and Chapel Haven, New Haven, CT

K

atie and I pass our stop, and we’re forced to retrace out steps through the somewhat-sketchy streets of New Haven. As we do, Katie elaborates on what her teachers have said about the importance of the experience she is having outside of the classroom: “A lot of times when you are taking a psych or science-based course, it is hard to remember that you are studying real people.” The teaching in the classroom, she explains, takes a much more theoretical and scientific approach.

But when you work individually with people with Asperger’s syndrome or autism, you get the opportunity to see how the disorder is specific to the individual. When I ask how the two aspects of the class interact, she tells me, “The class guides what I look for or expect [in the practicum], but I don’t want to pigeonhole people.”

Once we reach Chapel Haven, I learn that Katie is justified in her resistance to making any generalizations about autism or Asperger’s. Though all the young adults we see that night at Chapel Haven are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three and have all been diagnosed with Asperger’s, no two residents are the same.

The residents at Chapel Haven have a very regimented sched-

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

ule. During the day, they attend classes. Usually, these classes are in the form of one-on-one academic workshops. Their nighttime schedule is more relaxed, but they are still expected to make themselves dinner and clean their rooms. The apartments they live in are all identical — living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms shared by two people. Katie and I ring the doorbell of one of the apartments on the first floor.

An 18-year-old wearing black sweat pants and tennis shoes greets us at the door and invites us in. He heads into the kitchen, apologizing that his roommate is sick with the flu, joking, “You’ve got to be careful when you inhale at Yale.” As he cooks two cheeseburgers on his George Foreman Grill, he continues to crack jokes to us, some of which he has memorized from Abbot and Costello routines, some of which he has made up on his own.

He talks incessantly. Within an hour, he has shared his passions with us — zoology, Star Wars, making pumpkin bread at his family’s Thanksgiving meals, and singing. He swings back and forth as he recalls for me the dates of all the Mets games he has been to and the scores of each. He is not a baseball fan though. He just “watches over the shoulder” of his brother who is. He shows me his daily schedule, pointing out that he takes tae kwon do.

23

He is completely open, switching between sharing random tidbits of information with us and talking lovingly about his family at home. “Marvin Gaye’s father shot him,” he says at one point, matter-of-factly. Later on, he tells us that his little sister has Down’s syndrome. “I wouldn’t have her any other way.”

After hearing one final dirty Thanksgiving joke, we depart from the first apartment and walk up the stairs to a room on the second floor. “Do you guys like horror?” another 18-yearold in jeans and squarerimmed glasses asks us as he pulls us into his room.

He brings up a video game called “Fatal Frame” on his XBOX 360. His roommate enters the room and quickly leaves, saying this game gives him nightmares. In the game, a girl exploring what I gathered to be some sort of haunted house in Japan must take pictures of the ghosts she encounters before they choke her. Somehow, the photograph seems to suck the life out of the poltergeists. The eerie game matches the theme of the room, still decorated from Halloween. Paper links of orange and black hang all across the ceiling, and origami bats hang from the chains. Though he has never been to Japan, the boy’s passion for Japanese culture is apparent. Absorbed in the game, he does not speak often, but, upon probing, we find out that he loves sushi,

Our best hypotheses come from the playroom.

24

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

too.

Soon someone from the staff knocks on their door, interrupting the video game to supervise cleaning. One roommate takes out the trash as the other does the dishes. In the front room, we talk. “If he had gone to my high school,” Katie tells me, gesturing to the boy in jeans and glasses as he puts the salmon he made himself for dinner in a Tupperwear container, “I would have never known he has Asperger’s.” I compare the reserved but calm boy in the kitchen here in front of us with the more talkative and energetic boy downstairs. One is friendly and well-spoken but reserved. The other appears perhaps overly eager for social interaction. They seem polar opposites, yet they have the same diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. The range of the disorder becomes suddenly and blatantly apparent.

I think of Emma’s twin brothers. Andrew is best described as an extrovert; he is the biggest cheerleader at our basketball games. Austin, on the other hand, is completely non-verbal.

And both Austin and Andrew differ from the boys at Chapel Haven.

The disease affects them all very differently. Each of their personalities and behaviors are distinct — that’s what makes them individuals.

Katie tells me that the disorders vary even more widely between the Chapel Haven residents and those students with autism who attend the Benhaven School where some of the other Psych 350 students have their practicum. Benhaven School is for younger, and usually lowerfunctioning kids with autism. The Yale students in the class who work there have had the option of going through aggression training before working with the kids. The people we meet at Chapel Haven exhibit no such aggression. Prior to my visits, Dr. McPartland had explained to me that it was this discrepancy between manifestations of the same spectrum of disorders that got him interested in autism research in the first place. “I was studying psychology in college, and I worked over the summer at a school for kids with developmental disabilities. I was just intrigued by the way that I would see all these kids affixed with the same diagnostic label, and they were so different,” he tells me. He recounts his memories in what strike me initially as a straight-forward and clinical manner. “There were some kids who wouldn’t even look at me and just sit in the corner and flap their hands. There was another kid who would come up to me and ask to read books to me. I was really curious about how a disorder could affect the brain and result in so many different phenotypes. How could a disorder affect the brain and leave a kid with so many skills and yet unable to make eye contact with me or have a conversation? Things that are so core to most of us can be so hard for people who are autistic.” McPartland seems at first to approach autism from a completely scientific perspective. He currently studies brainwave functions with EEG technology. But his inspiration to pursue a career in such a technical field stems

from extremely personal interactions with autistic children, and, even as a scientist, the personal remains central to his work today.

Later, he tells me, of himself and his colleagues at the Child Study Center, ”Many weeks we spend more time working for the families of children with autism than we do with our own families.”

May 2009, Northbrook, IL

Y

ou ready?” I hold my finger on the stopwatch. “Go!” One of the athletes, David, starts running. About 200 yards in he slows down, wandering from the track towards the soccer

field.

“Keep going. You’ve got it,” Emma yells from the finish line.

David immediately refocuses his attention on Emma. He makes it to the end of the track. It is the weekend and Emma and I have been helping out at a Special Olympics event at one of the only Chicagoarea schools that caters to children with special needs.

Families who can afford its steep tuition can enroll their autistic children into this program for a specialized education. One of the families in our neighborhood has enrolled their child at this school; every day, they put their daughter, Sophie, on a bus which then takes an hour and a half to reach the school. Sometimes, with traffic, the bus ride is much longer. It takes Emma and me three hours to drive home from the school in the Sunday traffic. Emma’s brothers don’t attend this school. The family can’t afford it. Instead, Emma’s mother has moved with her brothers, Austin and Andrew, to the suburbs so that the boys can go to a public school which is supposedly equipped to accommodate them. While the family tries this alternative, Emma will stay at our high school. Emma can only see her mom every other weekend. After her bus commute, Sophie only sees her family a few hours a day.

He talks incessantly. Within an hour, he has shared his passions with us — zoology, Star Wars, making pumpkin bread at his family’s Thanksgiving meals, and singing.

November 2009, Yale Campus, New Haven, CT

C

hapel Haven offers full care and therapy. In the cab on the way back to Yale, Katie tells me that sending an autistic child to Chapel Haven is a lot like sending a child to college. The facility offers a full multi-year educational program with room and board. Therefore, the expense of Chapel Haven is comparable to that of college — not counting the added expense of therapy. Our cab driver, when he hears our conversation, chimes in to tell us he has two autistic grandsons. They go to school in Bridgeport because New Haven’s educational options for people with autism are so limited.

Chicago’s schools pose a similar problem as that of New Haven. It is nearly impossible to educate an autistic child in the city. As a result, families are often torn apart. Emma has played thousands of basketball games throughout her middle and high school career, and Emma’s mom, living miles outside the city, has

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

only ever been to two games.

June 2009, Orlando, FL

W

e are waiting in line for the Buzz Lightyear ride. The heat is blistering, and, under its blaze, family bickering sparks. All around us, parents are glaring and hissing at one another as they struggle to contain their sweaty, hyperactive children. One kid stands out. He is particularly wild. Emma’s dad — the man we all call “Coach” — cannot help but notice the child.

He excitedly approaches the family.

“Is your child autistic, too?” He asks, before launching into his own introduction, his own story. “I have two autistic sons, Austin and Andrew…” It takes a while before he realizes that the parents he has approached are staring at him with disgust, insulted. He stops, mid-sentence. He turns around and walks back to our group, shaking his head.

“Nope,” he says to us. We laugh with him to cover the discomfort of the situation. He grins, but the grin isn’t genuine. He’s not even embarrassed. He’s just disappointed.

November 2009, Yale Campus, New Haven, CT

B

ack in the Psych 350 classroom, Singer gives her entire presentation on the hardships parents must go through when they have an autistic child. When a child is first diagnosed with autism, she explains, parents often have a hard time accepting the situation. She tells us that in a study done in Tel Aviv earlier this year scientists discovered that “a lot of stress [that parents of autistic children undergo] is because of a lack of resolution in the diagnosis.” There is no cure for autism, so parents who

25

learn their child is autistic must come to terms with the fact that they will deal with their child’s disability for the rest of their lives.

Most parents come to terms with the situation within four years of the diagnosis. Some do not. The adaptations and compromises required are severe. Often, at least one parent must sacrifice his or her career because the child needs constant supervision and someone to organize all the continuing therapy. This loss of income, compounded with the financial cost of special education and therapy (currently only fifteen states in America provide insurance for evidence-based therapy) creates stress within the family. This stress in turn compromises parenting abilities.

Additional stress originates from society’s misconceptions about autism. Singer relates to us that, at the grocery store, her daughter often likes to pull all the cereal boxes down from shelves and replace them. Singer suffers through much abuse for this simple behavioral faux pas. “You’d be surprised how nasty people are,” she tells the class. “Their first inclination is that I’m just a bad mom.” Rarely does it occur to her fellow shoppers that her daughter has a behavioral disorder. Singer, visibly stressed by the judgment of her peers, calls the situation “embarrassing.”

She expresses to us how such incidents only increase the sense of isolation parents of autistic children feel.

Alison Singer filled her lecture with deeply personal anecdotes.

In every aspect of this class it has become more and more apparent to me that scientific research about autism cannot occur in a vacuum. It must go hand and hand with the personal. The science outlines how we ought to deal with autism. But ultimately each individual is affected by the disorder differently, so each treatment is essentially personal. The one cannot exist without the other. The revelation did not solve my problem as to whether or not I should feign indifference toward Disney World. I will never be able to completely comprehend Emma’s situation. But I did realize that spending time with her brothers is the best way to try and understand.

December 2007, Somewhere between Chicago and Lisle, IL

E

mma has offered to give me a ride to our Christmas basketball tournament. Despite having spent every day with her for the past four months playing basketball, I have not met her family, aside from her father. I have never met — have never even seen — her mother. She never comes to school events or the games, unlike the other parents. And I don’t understand why she doesn’t live with Emma and her father since I know that Emma’s parents are neither separated nor divorced. I open the car door and scoot next to a grinning, red-headed boy. “This is my brother, Andrew,” Emma says, turning around from the front passenger’s seat. I hadn’t even known that she had a brother. It would be months before I found out Andrew had a twin. After me, several other girls from the team join us in the car as Emma’s father stops at their homes. During the hour-long car ride, we play Catchphrase. We get to the sports category, and Andrew guesses every team with lightning speed. “Andrew,” Emma says, “tell me some Cubs’ stats.” He rattles them off, only to be interrupted by Emma’s father asking Andrew what exit he should take off the highway. Andrew ticks off for him not only the name of the exit, but also the name of every street and every turn we will need to take to get to our destination from the exit.

THIS IS GOING TO BE AFROBEAT

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

27

BY ZARA KESSLER

Why buy when you can rent? The author investigates “Rent the Runway,” a new start-up. She answers the question: how does it feel to wear a dress that’s not yours and mail it back the next day? have a fairy godmother. A benefactor of fashion. With the click of a button and the overnight shipping of a garment bag, she will suit me up in dresses found in magazines, on red carpets, and walking runways. She will offer me taffeta, silk, and chiffon. She will arrange dates with Richard Chai, Robert Rodriguez, and Herve Leger. And then, after 96 hours of designer bliss, she will banish me, like Cinderella, to the worn jeans and leggings of a college student.

I

sit, on a day in late October, scrolling through the not-yet-launched Rent the Runway website, scrutinizing it for errors and confusion. As I sift through frocks

by Yigal Azrouel and Catherine Malandrino, I can’t help but click on a purple Tracy Reese dress. The purple Tracy Reese dress. The purple Tracy Reese dress that might break my shell of resistance to dress borrowing. 100% polyester taffeta. Worn recently by Taylor Swift. Stitching on the bodice. Raw edge trim. Exposed back zipper.

The exposed zipper is, and has always been, my fashion weak spot.

I first learn about the newly developed art of designer dress borrowing in late July in the Mecca of designer frozen yogurt, a midtown Manhattan Pinkberry. While all of the other teenage girls in the room are wearing dresses, I, of course, have made the faux pas of sporting jeans. To me, Rent the Runway isn’t a new dress company but some entrepreneurial brainchild of my older sister’s friend from Yale, Jennifer Carter Fleiss ’05, or as I’ve always known her, Jenny. But in between bites of my frozen yogurt, I’m told by Jenny and her co-founder, Jennifer Hyman, or Jenn, that, starting in the fall, Rent the Runway will become the Netflix of fashion. Celebrities have been borrowing dresses for events for decades. Now laypeople too can indulge.

Rent the Runway will rescue us on those special nights when our closets, and our GRAPHICS COURTESY RENT THE RUNWAY

28

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

roommates’ closets, fail us. Rent the Runway will save us from our slim collegiate wallets and clad us in Diane von Furstenberg and Proenza Schouler.

The thirty or so girls in the Pinkberry are being asked to become ambassadors for this new movement of rentable clothing. We will invite our closest friends to the site: not too few, not too many. We will seek out campus sororities before formal events, and in whispered tones tell the sisters of Kappa and Gamma and Theta, that they too can Rent their Runways.

The choice about whether to sign on to become a Runway Representative is up to each of us. Admittedly, I’m not completely sold on asking my friends to order clothes that they cannot keep and aren’t sure will fit. I’ve always been a fan of going to physical stores, of the clothes sprawled across the dressing room floor and the exhilarating swipe of a credit card. While I’ve never been particularly shy about wearing the same dress more than once, I’m admittedly a little uneasy when Facebook photos chronicle my devilish double dipping. And I’ve always been the little kid that sneaks away from my mom while at department stores to look at the super-expensive dresses I’ve seen in the magazines. But a few weeks later, I email to sign on as a Runway Rep. If anything, friends help friends. Or little sisters of friends help friends. Plus, Runway Reps are promised free rentals if they get enough friends to join the renting revolution. I may have worn jeans to a fashion event, but no 19-year-old girl turns down free dresses.

G

o to town,” Jenny excitedly exclaims as she logs into the website to give me a sneak preview. Tension, excitement, and talk of November 2nd fill the air. November 2nd is the day. D-Day. Launch Day. I entered the office at 304 Hudson Street between Spring and Vandam early on a Wednesday in late October, curious to know what the company I’m representing is all about. These days Rent the Runway is doing some renting of its own, leasing a cramped corner of office space from Manhattan architecture firm Tobin and Parnes.

I’ve received quite a promotion today. Jenn, who is also Rent the Runway’s CEO, won’t be in until later, so I’m given her desk and full access to the not-yet-launched site. If I could look for minor errors, misspellings, or points of confusion, it would be much appreciated; these days any set of hands can be utilized.

Rent the Runway’s motto, laid out clearly on the top of each page of dresses, is simple, direct, and to the point: “love. wear. return.” I must admit that the site looks fantastic. It’s clear and visually pleasing, with a girly black and pink color scheme. Dresses are shown from a myriad of angles by gorgeous stick-thin models who somehow manage to convince you that you too can look like them if only you join the renting revolution.

The rental process is laid out very simply. Customers browse over four hundred expensive dresses from thirty-five designers.

The frocks are categorized by size, price, color, and occasion —

everything from the sexy “This is Getting Serious Date” mini to the refined “Meet the Parents” dress. Selecting that ball of poof or ream of silk that your newest crush just won’t be able to tear his eyes away from, you make an online reservation, up to six months in advance, to rent the dress at about ten percent of retail price —

most prices range from $50 to $150. The dress arrives at your door neatly packed in a garment bag. You have four days to spend with their selection (eight for an additional cost). Then it’s time to mail your newest prized possession back to downtown New York, where it will be fastidiously checked for rips, tears, stains, and broken zippers, dry-cleaned, and prepared for its next lucky renter.

Rent the Runway is not exactly the first of its kind. The idea of renting designer goods first arose over half a decade ago in the form of the Bag, Borrow, or Steal website, which has since been renamed Avelle.

More recently, though, a new e-fashion frenzy has emerged with competitive, exclusive speed shopping that sites like Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, and Ideeli provide. Every day a number of sales, only open to those that have been “invited” to join the site, begin at a specifically designated time. Designer items, oftentimes from a few seasons ago but nevertheless significantly marked down, fly off of virtual shelves. Alexis Maybank, one of the co-founders of Gilt Groupe, explains that she was inspired to create Gilt Groupe by invitation-only sample sales in New York that create “this frenzy among consumers who sneak out of work: They stand on lines, they try to grab stuff.” Sites like Gilt and Rent the Runway fill different niches of the e-commerce market, but, like Gilt Groupe, Rent the Runway realized that young girls thrive on competition and exclusivity, even in the online sphere.

This morning, along with their morning Starbucks, a couple of the girls bring in the newest issue of InStyle, which features an article about Rent the Runway. And by article, I mean an 11-line blurb. In a sidebar.

Nevertheless, the neatly made-up girls race to photograph this first sequin of success.

Within weeks the company will move from sidebars to the pages of The New York Times, The New York Post, and a myriad of fashion blogs. But right now, there’s still the fear that everything could fall apart at any moment.

The thought of no one visiting the site on Opening Day is perhaps not as threatening as the thought of masses rushing to their computers. “Hopefully we’ll have 500,000 people coming to our site,” says Jenny, “and hopefully they won’t order on the same day, because we right now can’t service them.” Instead, the group is using the invitation system to handle the potential overload. “We’re only going to enable 30,000 people on the first day. The next day

As I sift through frocks by Yigal Azrouel and Catherine Malandrino, I can’t help but click on a purple Tracy Reese dress.

The Purple Tracy Reese dress.

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

we’ll enable 100,000 people, and gradually scale it up in a controlled way so that we can deliver the best customer service,” Jenny explains. She’s already had her friends and all of the Runway Reps send in lists of hundreds of pals who will receive those coveted first invitations.

I

f Rent the Runway is successful, Jenn and Jenny owe Facebook some thanks. “The tagline we always say is ‘Facebook kills outfits,’” Jenny explains. No longer can an industrious girl wear the same dress with one group of friends one night, and with another the next.

“With Facebook, a lot of times that can’t happen because people post the photos, and, by the next day, all of your friends have seen them,” Jenny explains. “And yes, girls are that crazy. Because, when I tell guys that, they’re like ‘Really?’”

Smart, fashion-saavy women, Jenn and Jenny hope to alleviate some of this anxiety about re-wear with their business. In addition,

29

their model seems any problem that may arise in this simple process.

For those having issues falling in “love” with a dress, there is an 800-hotline with trained stylists who can help young women find the frock of their dreams, and the stylists can be reached by Instant Message as well. Realizing that sizing charts and discussions with stylists aren’t enough to assure a girl that a bodice will hug her bust or a waistline will flatter her long legs, Rent the Runway allows girls to rent dresses in two sizes the first time that they rent from a designer. If the zipper truly won’t zip or the straps really refuse to stay put, customers can send the dress back within twenty-four hours and get your money back. Then there’s the possibility for the “return” of shame. A five dollar insurance fee, paid with the rental, though, covers almost everything short of a dress torn to shreds: “It says to the girl, ‘We don’t want you to worry during your night out. Have fun. If you spill wine, we’ll deal with it. If it smells like cigarette smoke, if the zipper’s snagged or something, you’re totally cov-

I’ve taken my purple taffeta to the extreme, pairing it with neon green tights, strands of fake pearls, a sideways ponytail, and a bright pink scrunchie.

30

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

ered,” Jenny explains. So if all goes according to plan, the “Love, Wear, Return,” process should fit just like that perfect dress: seamlessly.

love.

The Tracy Reese dress and I first became acquainted through my friend Isobel. As part of my Runway Rep duties, I’m supposed to notify the Rent the Runway powers whenever there’s a major formal party at Yale. Indeed, as Jenny’s alma mater, Yale is something of a Rent the Runway guinea pig. Last spring, as part of their research to determine the feasibility of their entrepreneurial conception, Rent the Runway did a trunk show for Jenny’s former sorority, Theta, bringing dresses up to New Haven for the girls to try on and rent before their spring formal.

“We saw that the girls went crazy for it and really loved it. And we saw that there’s a real market for this,” Jenn explains.

So when I told Jenn and Lara Crystal, Rent the Runway’s Director of Marketing, that the Safety Dance, Yale’s annual 80s-themed dance was approaching, they jumped to put together a selection of eighties dresses for fashion-inclined Yalies to choose from. Realizing the embarrassment that would arise when no one rented a dress, I quickly attempted to save face by stressing that Safety Dance outfits usually consist of cut up T-shirts and neon bike shorts from American Apparel. But it was too late.

A few hours after I sent out the e-mail, I caught a group of my friends procrastinating in the library, scanning through the dresses that I had sent them. Isobel would be out of town for Safety Dance but was in love with a purple Tracy Reese dress. I looked again at the “Taffeta Rocker Dress,” in a stunning shade of deep purple.

Perfectly Madonna-esque.

I wasn’t yet in love, but there were definitely sparks.

to the run the site through her website, but realizing the constraints that working within the framework of a major company would impose, the Jenn and Jenny opted instead to give entrepreneurship a stab. “Diane fully blessed that and said, ‘Here’s my Rolodex of thousands of people.’” Von Furstenberg is president of the CFDA, the Council of Fashion Designers of America. “Tell them I told you you could call,” Jenny remembers her saying, “and if they won’t speak to you, come back to me, and I’ll call them.” The women received funding from venture capital firm Bain Capital, no small feat. They were the only company to receive funding from a venture capitalist out of their Harvard Business School class. Jenn describes a recent conference for all the CEOs of all Bain portfolio companies: “We were the two youngest people there and we were two out of the three women that were there. So out of five hundred men who were all in their fifties, we were two women in our twenties.” With the support from Bain, and from the big shots of the fashion community — these days everyone from Anna Wintour, Editor-inChief of Vogue, to Jim Gold, CEO of Bergdorf Goodman is in Rent the Runway’s cheering squad — Jenn and Jenny relinquished the postgraduation jobs that they had lined up. Their entrepreneurial whim became a reality. They became my fairy godmothers.

304 Hudson may hold the brains of the Rent the Runway operation, but 96 Morton holds its soul. Midway through that October afternoon, Derek, an impeccably dressed man with neat buzz-cut hair, grabs his tote and together we make the six block trek to 96 Morton, which holds Slate, the stuffy dry-cleaners that houses all of Rent the Runway’s dresses. He promises me that I can try on any of the dresses that I want, including the purple Tracy Reese that everyone in the office has already agreed I simply must rent for the Safety Dance.

Eventually, I decide to take Derek up on his offer to let me try on the Tracy Reese. As the day has dragged on and I’ve been baited by the sight of more and more delicate dresses, I’ve decided that maybe, just maybe, I should give this rental thing a chance, indulge the little girl in me who once loved to play dress-up. And if I’m going to give it a chance one day, that day might as well be today.

Because today I’m a Renter Plus. Today, I still have on my training wheels. I can try on the dress.

Derek uses a massive silver rod to pull the purple beauty down from the top rack. In two sizes, just as he would have done had I ordered from my New Haven computer. But such a measure is unnecessary: the first one that I try on fits perfectly. Beyond perfectly. Marvelously. Derek loves it. Outrageous and pouffy, something I would never pay four hundred dollars for. Wary of falling for the first piece of fabric in sight, I try on a stretchy pink Pencey mini that we’ve recently unpacked. It’s fine, and I would have been perfectly happy had it arrived on my doorstep. But the Tracy Reese is fantastic. Sixty dollars later — insurance and shipping back to New York included — and the purple ball of pouf is clad in a garment bag, ready to make the trek back to New Haven as my companion for the weekend.

If all goes according to plan, the “Love, Wear, Return,” process should fit just like the perfect dress: seamlessly.

J

enn conceived of Rent the Runway during Thanksgiving break in 2008. She and Jenny had met in 2007 at Harvard Business School (where Jenn also got her undergraduate degree in 2002).

While home for break, Jenn’s sister, a buyer at Bloomingdale’s making about fifty thousand dollars a year, was set to attend a wedding a couple of weeks after the holiday. She was debating whether to purchase a Proenza Schouler, Herve Leger, or Marchesa dress, for the event, all of which would set her back upwards of $1,500. Jenn remembers, “I was like ‘This is absolutely ridiculous.’ She’s about to go out and spend a significant part of her annual salary on this one night, on a dress she’ll never wear again because everyone will see it up on Facebook.” Jenn also thought that the idea made sense from a designer’s perspective as a way to get young women, who are starting in the workforce and within a few years will have saved up enough money to buy immensely expensive clothes, interested in their brands.

Within a few weeks, Jenn and Jenny were meeting with Diane von Furstenberg, the matriarch of the New York fashion scene and a distant friend of a friend. At first, von Furstenberg wanted the two

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

wear.

Most of my friends squeal when they see me. I’ve taken my purple taffeta to the extreme, pairing it with neon green tights, strands of fake pearls, a sideways ponytail, and a bright pink scrunchie. I strut around in the flashy gold heels that I typically banish to the back of my closet. I’m slightly intimidating with the gracious four inches that the shoes offer.

Since our first encounter at Slate, I’ve tried on the Tracy Reese at least a half-dozen times, admiring in the mirror how perfectly she fits my body.

But there’s something magical about taking her into the outside world, the world where the wind of the cool October night produces the perfect flounce.

The world where Facebook photos are snapped, where fashion prowess is recorded.

The world where Cinderella may just find her prince.

Yet the experience of wearing my Tracey Reese love is far from flawless. It’s more than the awkwardness of wearing a pouffy dress among hoards of leotard and bike-short clad peers. Everyone I meet assures me that the dress is fantastically eighties. And everyone looks ridiculous for the Safety Dance. Instead there’s a feeling of dishonesty in wearing a dress that I know doesn’t belong to me. There’s a slight tinge of shame when I admit to those who ask where the fabulous purple poof is from that, in fact, it’s a rental. The insurance fee still doesn’t relieve my worry about spilling, ripping, or snagging what isn’t truly mine. And then there’s the feeling that each instant in the dress is costing me something. I’m paying sixty dollars for about six hours in this ridiculous outfit. Could it really be worth it?

Maybe not, but I have to admit I’m loving it. Because it’s utterly Madonna. Utterly eighties. And utterly not me.

return.

Early Saturday morning, I inspect my purple ball of poof. No stains, no spills, no rips. No worries.

Rent the Runway is a drink that leaves no hangover. No need to bring the Tracy Reese to the dry cleaners. No need to hide her in the back of my closet, guilty to neglect her, but well aware that I won’t be wearing her again for a long long time. Out of the garment bag in which I brought the Tracy Reese home comes an orange priority mail envelope, pre-addressed, pre-stamped. It takes some maneuvering to stuff all of the puffiness inside the envelope, but I eventually manage and march off to the Post Office. I can’t bring myself to neglect the package in a mailbox so I bring it up to the desk. But the postal worker assures me that I don’t have to do or pay anything.

He grabs the envelope out of my clinging hands.

It’s hard to watch helplessly as the young Tracy Reese goes.

31

Making one last pathetic stab to care for my dress, I ask if it’s possible to reinforce the seal of the envelope; I wouldn’t want her to fall our on the journey back to Slate. The postman promises that he will tape it. There’s nothing left for me to do. There’s now no way for me to reclaim my purple ball of poof without paying $475 at a store.

Instead, the young Tracy Reese has another life to begin. I was her first home, but she’s a busy girl. Most dresses spend only their infancy in Priority envelopes and plastic coverings. Then they’re displayed on hangers in stores, purchased and locked safely in garment bags in closets, owned and protected for life. But my purple taffeta will instead go through the journey from envelope to hanger back to envelope ten or fifteen times more. She’ll never have a stable home or a true lover who invested hardearned money to ensure lifelong partnership. Instead, she’ll have a squad of admirers who have paid just enough to have a four-day fling with her. When she gets to too old to continue to be rented out, she’ll be donated to a charity like the Cinderella Project, an organization that helps to outfit proms in disadvantaged communities.

Perhaps she’ll even help some girl find her prince.

W

hen I pop into 304 Hudson on November 6th, Rent the Runway has indeed taken off. Fast. Jenn explains that they’ve gotten almost as many orders this week as they expected get for the whole month. The girls are ecstatic, though admittedly a bit freaked out. Without all of the computer systems yet up and ready, they’re still having to figure out some things manually.

Nevertheless, the girls watch their computer screens and gleefully yell out “Another order!” each time a new person places an order.

Jenny becomes overjoyed when a customer Instant Messages her.

I’m given my official Runway Rep materials to bring back to school: some post cards, a bound set of instructions and fliers, and most significantly, three boxes of business cards. “Love-WearReturn” they instruct, with a heart pointing to a dress pointing to an envelope. “Sign up now: RentTheRunway.com/zarakessler,” a “vanity” URL allows my friends to bypass the invitation system.

I’ve loved, I worn, I’ve returned. And now I’m sure that I’m willing to advertise this system to my friends. The dress might not fit.

And you don’t get to keep it. After admiring my business cards for quite some time, I pop the question: what has been the fate of the purple dress? My beloved Tracy Reese. Someone rented it out yesterday, Lara explains to me. Soon my purple ball of poof will belong to someone else. She turned me into Madonna. She’ll turn her next fleeting owner into a prom queen, a clubber, or a sorority girl.

As for me, all I’m left with is memories of my time clad in purple and a series of pictures to post on Facebook. And that’s enough.

After all, Cinderella didn’t get to keep the dress either.

32

November 2009

The Yale Daily News Magazine

FICTION NEITHER NOR by Courtney Sender While a birthday crown adorns Katy’s head, unspoken words encircle Davey’s feet. Away from the judging eyes of their classmates, the siblings grapple with faith, disability, and what it truly means to put family before yourself.

I turn thirteen years old today, even though other people wouldn’t say so. The thing is I started being born the day before I actually got born, so the first time I saw the world I was a day ahead of myself. You can ask Momma if it’s really true. It really is true.

Davey doesn’t want me to ask for my birthday crown again this year, I can tell. “Why do you have to wear something so gaudy?” he asked me last year, sitting at the kitchen table. “People will stare,” he said,

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

the horror of it clear as summer-breath on his face.

I said, so what if they do and maybe you should try doing something to make them stare — an unfair challenge, really. I know that now. I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known then. But nobody can see the future, it’s true, no matter what Madame Cleo next to the grocery store paints on her starry sign. Nobody can see the future, so how could I have figured out that morning what I would end up doing to him that day?

After I asked him, so what if they do, he stood up and started packing his things and mine, so I said it again. “I’m twelve years old today, and people at school ought to know it. They ought to smile and wish me happiness and let me have my way. They ought to stare. So, so what if they do?”

Davey didn’t say anything. The nice thing about Davey is he’s always quiet when he’s standing or walking, or driving me to play practice or to singing lessons or to the ice cream store for a special treat for when I’m home and nobody from school will go with him.

Although from now on I’m thirteen and I’ll be needing to watch my figure, so I’ll tell him that I simply can’t go so often anymore. The nice thing about Davey is he only talks when he’s sitting down, because of his problem. Don’t even think about asking Momma about that, though. She will just absolutely refuse to tell you it’s a problem.

“What problem?” she’ll probably ask you. “World hunger, that’s a problem.

War and flood and global warming, those are problems. The defrost button on the microwave, now that’s a problem. So your brother talks with his feet. What’s so wrong with that?”

And if you just happened to tell her that just maybe you thought there was something wrong with that, she would stop whatever she was doing and shake her head once and stare hard at you, like she was searching for gold behind your eyeballs. “And what is that, exactly?

Tell me what it is, exactly what it is, that’s so damn bad about it.”

Sometimes, some people made the mistake of thinking she really wanted to know. That was when she would interrupt them and go for the prop.

“David!” She would yell up the stairs, if she was in the living room, or down the stairs, if she was in the office. Or into the phone, if this was a long-distance shaming. “I need you for a minute. This nice man has something to say to you.”

33

Then she, wearing that closed-mouth Momma smile that always said to me she had swords behind her lips that she was just waiting to spit, would turn to the nice man. “I’m sure David would want to hear what’s wrong with him, as well. Thank you for offering.

Doing him a service, wouldn’t you agree? He’s fifteen years old, you know, practically an adult. I’m sure he wants to hear how uncomfortable he makes you. I’m sure he wants to hear how disgusted you are. After fifteen years, sir, I’m glad you’re willing to explain to him what he’s been seeing on everyone’s faces all his life.”

That’s when she would drop the act like a penny down a well.

Nobody still expected to see Davey trudging down the stairs or up the stairs or toward the receiver. “My son had heart and brain and back surgery before he could hold his head up. He swallowed muscle relaxants before solid food. He did physical therapy instead of Gymboree. He trained himself to hold a pencil instead of the monkey bars. So please excuse him if his speech disturbs you.

I’ll tell him he should work a little harder.”

Nobody ever kept talking after that.

The thing about Davey is he came out all wrong. He was born with his wires crossed, is what Momma tells me, his shoulder linked to his knee linked to his eyebrow linked to his left big toe. It was a nerve problem, she says, and what it all comes down to is if he tried to control one part of himself he ended up setting off another.

There was no parents’ support group for what Davey had. The doctors wanted to name that jerking heaving syndrome after him, but Momma said no, don’t get her son involved, just call it what it is: hell. A very nervous system. I’m pretty sure the doctors didn’t listen.

Anyway, they and she and Davey managed to straighten things out mostly by the time I came along, poking my head out just before midnight and the rest of me early in the morning. And he really is fine now, except for being a know-it-all and except of course for the foot thing. The doctors never quite figured out how to cut the connection between his mouth and his feet, so his shoes still trace a pattern in the shape of his lips when he talks. It’s the vowels, the open jaw on an “O” or an “A,” that still link to his legs, forcing his calves apart whenever he opens his mouth. It looks

34

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

awkward, it’s true, and it’s definitely unusual, but as long as he only speaks sitting down so his feet can run their wordy marathon, he gets along just fine.

So if I ever told her it was a problem, like that morning on my twelfth birthday when I just waited for his feet to stop so I could defend my crown, Momma would give me the same what problem? opener she gives everybody. Then she would probably tell me that painting my nails too much is a problem bigger than the microwave and Davey’s feet and the apocalypse combined, but by then she would already be halfway down to the basement to get the leftover chicken from last night, so I wouldn’t have to think so much about what to say back.

I do know what I’d say, though. I tell Davey sometimes on the way to school, when I take his quiet in the car like a birthday gift and then spend it back on him, spouting my special-made Davey Philosophy.

“Just stand up and speak and move with whatever comes. It’s like they say in acting, just connect with your body and accept your body and let it move as it will.” Davey is silent after this, so I watch him barely roll his eyes and I say what he’s thinking, like I sometimes can do and sometimes cannot do. “Your body wills more than other people’s. I know that, Davey, you don’t have to tell me. But maybe if you just let it once in a while, instead of shutting yourself off when you’re on your feet... you just get frustrated, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Davey just shakes his head. When Momma hears me say these things she says I’m instigating and it’s unnecessary, but I really do think at least half of Davey likes to hear it. At least a quarter.

Anyway, the nice thing about Davey is he’s quiet when he’s moving around, so it’s very easy to fight with him as long as he’s working.

He can’t or he won’t do his foot thing unless he’s sitting down.

“That’s good, kid, keep it up,” Daddy likes to say, when he catches Davey running around doing chores. Then he looks at Davey’s special sanded shoes that don’t make rubber sticking noises when they slide along the floor, and his voice gets hard as the kitchen table. “You almost wouldn’t know it, kid. Almost.”

Daddy said those words the morning of my twelfth birthday, just after he plunked the chrome dollar-store crown on my head, messing up my birthday hair, but I know he didn’t mean to. I looked at Davey and I saw it just like I knew I would, that little flare of the nostrils. So small and silent, I’m probably the only one that noticed. I tried to teach him to throw a tantrum, once, but he only laughed at me and said, “Let’s get you some ice cream.”

That morning of my twelfth birthday, after Daddy went upstairs and Davey’s nose calmed down, I twirled around the kitchen with my crown on my head just to bug him. I knew he wouldn’t sit and start talking at me because I watched him take that deep breath before he stood up, sucking in his voice like a snack for later. I can never tell about that standing-up breath, if I love that he holds on to his voice or hate that he lets it go. I’m sure he doesn’t breathe again until he sits down. Then he lets his stored-up conversation out of him like an untied balloon, arranged and ready with his feet

flat and his back supported and his neurological problems just raring to go. He chuckled the first time I said that.

“Come on, Katy, don’t give me that face, I’m not laughing at you. It’s the way you say it. Not illogical. Neither logical nor illogical. You’re so…apt.” He likes that kind of reasoning because it doesn’t make any sense. Let me tell you, it doesn’t make you better than everybody else to think of everything like a neither-nor, like there’s some special third choice only you know about, but Davey in his oh-so-infinite wisdom thinks it does. Davey says he doesn’t like Truth with a capital T. That’s his idea of Davey Philosophy. I say he just doesn’t like truth with a c-h, tchruth, the way I say it.

“Katy,” he asked me in the car before school on my twelfth birthday, before he turned on the ignition, “what is that ridiculous thing around your neck?” His feet tap-tap-whooshed across the pedals, knocking the emergency brake.

I was surprised for a second that he could see anything else when he looked at me besides my crown, so I humored him and looked down. It was just my cross. I told him so.

“And why do you wear it?”

“Because I believe in G-D. And it’s pretty.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Silver necklace charms are very in right now, Davey, Cosmo and everybody says so.”

“No, the G-D thing. Why the G-D thing?”

“Why not?”

I saw the nostrils flare before I even heard his feet start beating on the gas. “Why not? How about because it’s not even about G-D, that necklace. It’s not about belief. It’s about doing what you don’t have to think about.”

“Since when do you have a problem with being Christian? You had a confirmation too, you know. You come to church with us every Sunday!”

“But I’m not the one wearing a cross of suffering and a crown of celebration.” I watched his eyes jump from my necklace to the top of my head, and I knew he was getting his wires crossed. He noticed these things, these inconsistencies, more than most people. He could get turned off of ice cream if it was in a cone and somebody had stuffed a spoon in. He got turned off of people who donated to disabled veterans and looked at the ceiling when he spoke. He saw a cross and he expected a crown of thorns. That kind of contradiction, my kind, was enough to shut him off religion.

His eyes were back on my cross. I realized that I had never seen him wear one. He opened his mouth to speak again, and his feet danced a wide circle over the pedals, expanding outward and back in again. Why carry a symbol of suffering, I guess, when you can have the real thing?

“You’re not the believing type,” he announced, which wasn’t very nice considering how I was sympathizing with his crazy theology lesson when all I wanted was the happy birthday song. “Just look at those painted nails and that straightened hair. You don’t care what people say when they look at you — you just care that they’re looking.”

Davey started the car and used his feet for driving us to school, which was good. Otherwise he would have called me drama queen.

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

“And you only care that they’re not looking at you. You try doing something to make them look some day, Davey, anything.

There’s no point holding in your voice all day — they know about you anyway. You don’t have to see a thing to know there’s something there.”

“But do you know?” I had never really thought about it. I stayed quiet. “Then why the G-D thing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, bored and ready to bring my birthday doughnuts to school and not trying to hide it anymore. “It’s just true. Why not believe?”

There went the nostrils. “I’ll tell you something true,” he said.

“People will laugh at you today.”

He was talking about my crown again, so I decided the best thing to do was turn toward the window and sulk. It occurred to me to throw in some outraged “hmphs,” so I did that, too. Davey started the car and used his feet for driving us to school, which was good. Otherwise he would have called me drama queen.

H

e was right, after all. People did stare. They thought I just wanted attention, and they didn’t like that. I walked down the hall between the lockers and I could tell they were getting mean and I could tell they were gawking and whispering. I thought about whether it would look better or worse if I cried, and even whether I would be able to pick not to by the time I got to my locker at the end of the hall.

Davey was already at his locker, next to mine because of the alphabet and the lazy administration even though by then he should have been in the senior side of school. I didn’t know that Pete was making faces behind me, or that Mike was mouthing names — what I knew before he turned around and started walking was that Davey would double back to me. He had a silent sense for people staring.

I also didn’t know that Tim was reaching for my crown, but

35

I didn’t have to see it to know something was there behind me that shouldn’t be. I could read it on Davey’s face. He had that Momma look toward strangers, that Daddy look in Davey’s baby pictures: that hard face like somebody’s about to take something from you, like you’re planning to fight and probably lose.

“Katy!”

Right before it happened, that was all I heard. My name, in Davey’s voice. I didn’t even hear the banging on the floor that went with it. He was standing and walking and talking all at once, that was the truth, and later it would become Momma’s Truth with a capital T and Davey’s reason to believe even less of what people said and my reason to shut up. He did what he didn’t have to think about. And he was right: it wasn’t about belief. He didn’t believe that his body would listen to him or that his feet knew he sat alone at the lunch table or that his calves thought they got enough exercise just chatting all day.

He didn’t even believe I needed him, not really. He just saw me, that was all, me and my thoughtless cross and my hopeful crown.

It wasn’t about belief.

But the long “A” in my name was too big for him and his legs bloomed open wide and awkward and the “Y” at the end was very small and he danced his chicken dance for just a moment before he toppled over, right there in the middle of the hallway. I couldn’t believe it. Everybody watched. Somebody told him to talk again, and everybody laughed. Pete’s friend Lou bent down to help him, then pulled away at the last minute so Davey was just lying there, arm outstretched like a hangnail. They watched him pick himself up. Mike called him a freak and people laughed again. Tim mimicked a chicken dance that didn’t spell my name.

They didn’t have to do it. They could have stepped over and around and through him, could have noticed him and not noted him. Maybe that would have been worse.

Neither logical nor illogical.

Later I found out from Jenna, who was older, that Davey moved his desk even further back into the corner of his classroom and kept it there, and that he didn’t raise his hand for the rest of the marking period. I have a suspicion that he didn’t raise his eyes, either, but nobody can confirm that. He was wrong to care so much about people staring at him, the rest of the year. Nobody was looking.

I’m not asking for another birthday crown this year. Even though it wasn’t really my fault, not completely. Davey was born on time and uncertain if he wanted to stick around, hesitating his way into this world and then kicking it every chance he got. The truth is, I’m just not that way. I was born a day ahead of myself.

I was always pushing things into the world before the world was ready.

36

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT YELLOW BLUFF FISH CAMP by Frances Sawyer

Nestled by the creeks of Georgia, Yellow Bluff Fish Camp was once a homey destination for fishing and idling.

Now the newly-renovated marina faces uncertain fate in the economic recession. n the mornings, I would rise early to run down the dirt road to the Yellow Bluff General Store where Arthur waited behind the glass counter. Only three years old, I was always a little nervous, but very excited.

“Morning,” Arthur would called.

“Hello.”

“And what would you like?” “…M&Ms.” “Peanut M&Ms. Let’s see here — ” “Uhh, peanuts…?”

With that he would rummage amongst the greasy plastic lures, rusted hooks, and old receipts. Drawing his hand over the bright yellow package, he would pick out the dark chocolate bag and pass it across the counter. Of course there were no peanuts — he knew I couldn’t stand them. Carefully, I’d inch it open, and then go eat them in the corner, waiting for my parents to head to the boat.

It was a typical morning at Yellow Bluff Fish Camp, a place about 4 hours from my house in Atlanta, GA. Liberty County, to be exact, wherever that is. If you describe it as 40 minutes South of Savannah, most people will nod their heads as if to say, “that’s enough. I’ll never find myself there.” But I had been going there on weekends since before birth and couldn’t — and still can’t — think of a better place.

The house and fish camp were perched on a bluff of one of the few meandering deep-water creeks abutting Colonel’s Island, dead east of the I-95 exit. It was three turns and 17 hours from New York City, seven and four from my house in Atlanta. I don’t really remember the house, but there was a screen porch that magnified a tin-drum rat-a-tat from the roof whenever it rained. Out back, there was oak with a soaring swing that could launch me over the creek and back again in a grand moonlit arc.

T

he rope swing is still there, dangling limply from the same great oak, but everything else has changed. Pilots say that as of ten years ago, the Georgia coast was the only part of the Eastern seaboard they could flight over in darkness. All the rest was constantly flooded by artificial light pollution. Georgia is still darker, on a relative level, but it is changing quickly. As one of the fastest — if not the fastest — growing area in the southeast, the corridor from Savannah to Jacksonville is under increasing pressures of sprawl.

Around 2003, Arthur had to sell his property and the fish camp. A developer came in and planted a planned community.

Better than similar developments, its brightly painted cottages — cookie-cutter, yet of quality — are solidly built and try to create a cozy community feel. The black pavement looks strange where there was once a fine sand floor and the concrete curbs seem out of context where they suddenly stop close to the bluff, but the community still holds potential of the old fish camp.

Its development is only one example of the recent growth spurt that has hit what used to be a patchwork of coastal pine planta-

tions between Savannah and Jacksonville. Between 1974-2005, there was a 427% increase in low intensity urban area in the lower Georgian plain. Much of this growth was focused on the Fort Stewart and Savannah areas, with Richmond Hill (one exit north of Yellow Bluff) exemplifying this what? with a growth rate of 137% between 1990-2000. The booming real estate markets drove the development of places like Yellow Bluff, and with a steady stream of Floridians moving north, military professionals moving in, and retirees searching for a piece of paradise, the market was considered invulnerable and thousands of row houses were built.

The area, so used to being a secluded backwater, couldn’t defend itself against the change.

E

ntering the fish camp, Arthur’s house was the first on the left of the sand road. Fifty yards later, the General Store peaked from between the dangling Spanish moss of two towering oaks. Painted bright yellow with a swept yard, the one-room shack was nearly always dotted with the silhouettes of lounging fishermen milling about out front. Next, the bluff fell away — 25 feet or so, depending on the eight-foot tide — to the water. The community dock with a hoist was at the crook of this bend, our splintered dock to the right. The road continued at a 90-degree turn from the hoist, with our house the first overlooking the water. There were other houses too, and in the distance metallic boxy sheds and dinosaur-like dry-docked boats. Every morning after checking in at the store, we would stomp down the corrugated metal gangway to the floating dock where our boat was kept.

“Need anything? I’m going down the hard road,” Arthur called down at us one day. We stood on the dock and looked up. I was poking at the live shrimp squirming in my beat-up bucket and my parents had been getting the boat ready for another full day on the water. He was referring to an upcoming trip down the only paved road in that part of the county — the one that ran to I-95 and civilization. It was the only way to get any convenience besides gas, shrimp, and cokes. We shouted back our thanks and an order for eggs and milk. We had needed them for days but had avoided making the trip ourselves.

Back to the shrimp. I was three at the time and completely fascinated by the pink transparent critters. I thought they were dangerous, so would hesitantly let my hand into the pail before jerking it out the moment one of them convulsed spastically in self-defense.

They were alive! I could watch their humors circulate through their transparent shells. As I stared, Arthur’s son lowered several boats into the salt creek, and the readying fishermen checked their supplies before casting off for the chase. There was the fascinating intensity of realizing the nature of the hunt — predation and prey.

The shrimp, fastened in the proper way to a sharp hook and string, could catch a dinner fit for kings. Yellow Bluff was the first stop for countless fishermen on the way to that feast.

38

November 2009 The Yale Daily News Magazine

As soon as Dad was ready, he would twist the key and the twostroke Johnson would kick to life, belching gas. Yelling goodbye to whoever was left on land, off we’d go.

T

he new town is deserted. I drove in again this summer for the first time since Arthur’s death and was amazed by the silence. A chill breeze — even in the midst of the steamy afternoon — ran through the streets. About 15 cottages saluted the road but only empty rockers creaked aimlessly on the porches.

There were no families, no fishermen, and no signs of life. Driving up to the store, it was still perfectly maintained with a fresh coat of yellow paint and “The Yellow Bluff Co. Store” written in black block letters over the door. As I pulled up, Rabun, Arthur’s son, opened the door and we reintroduced ourselves. I hadn’t seen him since I was about ten. I asked him why it was so quiet. He said it had become the norm.

Looking at local papers like The Darien or Brunswick News, local papers? it is evident that the economy has hit the area hard.

The courthouse steps are busy with foreclosure auctions. The building has all but ceased, yet the shiny-black tar of the subdivision roads still mockingly show the ambition and folly of landowners in the area. In 2000, 25% of all Liberty County residents lived in mobile homes. Despite the new building and empty houses, this number is still pretty accurate — those people have been priced out of most the new developments, but new people are not moving in to fill the space.

The housing bubble was the greatest economic boom to hit the coastal islands since cotton, and the sudden stagnancy after a decade of astronomical growth has paralyzed the region. It could be the coast’s saving grace — providing time for zoning policy and locales to catch up with the whirlwind of change — if they will take advantage of the crisis.

T

here was a necessary competency to being on the water that can only be acquired in a johnboat in the creeks — that special way of holding crabs, the art of coaxing trout to a rigged live shrimp, the feel of the sea floor twenty yards below with only a five-ounce weight and line. On the wall behind the belching potbellied stove in Arthur’s store, there was evidence of this knowledge: pictures of big fish and stunning hauls. A dozen spotted sea bass. A rainbow of sun-stroked mackerel. A doormat flounder weighing more than my four-year-old self. The yellow and green streaked dolphins with their blunt heads and gamey stares. All the people pictured were sun-burnt and smiling.

When I was four, my family began to fish and vacation out of Belvedere Island, one county to the South. We kept in touch with Arthur until his death; then one day in 2008 we drove past the Midway exit and saw a large billboard with a picture of a marsh scene framed in yellow. It said I could buy a brand new marshview home at the Yellow Bluff Coastal Cottages and Marina. A spray of daisies looped about the picture in which an old man and young boy were silhouetted against a burning sunset. It was the same dock I had walked at dusk with my parents and Arthur, but I don’t remember any daisies at the time. Only recently did cookiecutter culture demand them: old Georgia would have never fallen for such cutesy images, but just gossiped a little, said, “bless their hearts,” and moved on.

Children & Dogs

At 8, Stefan is attacked by an albatross And will fear birds forever –– fish, also Though this has only to do with inbred Squeamishness. His little sister heckles him.

Her only fear is the hollow cello in the corner of the room She swears she can hear playing at night Before she sleeps. She makes her Maltese Sleep under her bed each night, licking Up the dust, and laying its head on its paws.

And the Maltese isn’t afraid of anything –– Not people, not ponds, not dry kibble or harsh words, Not trees flinging hard acorns at heads, Not the sound of cellos heard and unheard, Or birds with long beaks and a taste for ankles, Not even the sun coming down from the sky With its red arms open, the clouds rushing.

-Amy Lee

The Yale Daily News Magazine November 2009

BACKPAGE DESTINY: BREAKFAST by Austin Bernhardt Blinded by love even before breakfast, our narrator sees a bit of extra meaning in his morning routine.

IS IT WEDNESDAY SO SOON? HELLO, OLD FRIEND.

I

wake up at 9:16 a.m., pull on a pair of sweatpants and flip-flops, and dart outside to the dining hall just in time to see you throw your bag over your shoulder and leave your entryway.

What serendipitous fortune is this? I hold the door open for you as you quicken your pace to alleviate the strain on my arm. Thank you, you say, as if I am just anyone else, as if the three heads of Cerberus hath not hand-plucked our souls like droplets of morning dew to intertwine in love s sweet ecstasy for the eternity of eternities. Thank you, you say, but I know what you are not saying, what your lips quiver and ache to say: Thank you, my pumpkin blossom, the Romeo to my Juliet, the Orpheus to my Eurydice, the Chuck Bass to my Blair Waldorf, for being the Toussaint L ouverture to my late 18th century Haiti (What s that, my precious, my tenderflower, my chicken teriyaki rice bowl at 3 a.m. giving me the sustenance I need in my drunken stupor?

Why yes, I am taking Revolutions, Women, Gender, and the City this semester; how kind of you to notice). Thank you for liberating my heart from the Napoleonic rule of loneliness.

As you walk past the newspaper table, you grasp a copy of The New York Times with your dainty fingerlettes; the best writers write for the Times and you know it, don t you, know it like I know the way you tenderly brush your hair around your ear with that single finger. I look in my own hand to find, to my chagrin, The New Haven Register. Blast it all! What a clod you must think me, what a dolt! I curse myself as I walk into the dining hall and leave my ID next to yours. If I look very closely and squint just the smallest amount, the two pictures move next to one another to form a portrait of the fantasy within me that yearns to breathe truly, as reality.

I place my backpack on a table across the aisle from you and follow you towards the toaster. You split an English muffin in half and place it in the toaster, you nymph, you mischievous imp, you, glancing sideways at me as if you are so ignorant to the way the toaster of your love warms the nooks and crannies of my own heart, the way the margarine of your affection melts and fills it with buttery goodness (without the dairy of reservation, of course). I giggle at this little message you send me, but when you look at me, your gaze pierces my body, and I turn it into a cough. Always considerate, you ask me if I m okay.

What a way you have with words, my dear, whereas I stumble and flounder about like a buffoon, you penetrate to the very heart of my being. Am I okay? Yes, but also so very no! Okay in the way Icarus was okay as his wings were melted by the splendorous rays of the sun and he felt the divine ecstasy of the last moments of flight. Your affection quenches my thirst for love the way the cool ocean quenched Icarus on that fateful day, the way the delicious combination of seltzer and orange juice concentrate that now fills my cup will course down my throat and fill me with the gentle fizz of seltzer and the delightful citrusy burst of Minute Maid!

I sit down with my delightfully metaphorical beverage and a bowl of cereal, sensuously watching you over the top of my newspaper. You eat your muffin halves and finish your Chinese homework, pick up your backpack, and walk past me.

Oh

well

see you later! I call gingerly at your back.

You glance nervously over your shoulder and pretend not to see me, averting your gaze lest you be blinded by the power of our passionate interpersonal chemistry.

Until Friday, my sweet. Also, good luck on Orgo!

39

YALE DAILY NEWS

MAGAZINE Nonfiction Fiction Poetry Humor Please email submissions to benjamin.brody@yale.edu.

To write nonfiction for the Magazine, please email for details about our meetings.