Gerald Quits

[Again, I'm going to post the format first. This one was hard. And just so you know, in an act of true bravery for a semi-control freak such as myself, I'm not rereading these even once before I post them.]

Format: Have an imaginary lunch with you and two people from your life. One person stands up and says "And now I'm done with all that." This is the most dramatic thing he/she has ever said. Now see what happens after that; how you all react. "That" can be whatever you want. Just decide that it is huuuuge.

“And now I’m done with all that.”

Gerald has pushed back his chair and is standing up, his hands gripping the edge of the table at the lunch café. Liz and I are staring at him in disbelief. This is more emphatic than either of us have seen him behave by about a factor of one hundred. It is lunch time at the café, and people are staring.

“Okay, Gerald, it’s okay, we believe you.” Liz, apparently is going to try to placate him. “Just sit down and let’s talk about this some more.”

“I....am just fine standing.” Gerald is shaking slightly, like a kid who just jumped out of the swimming pool and into a cool breeze. If he weren’t hanging on to the table, he might jitter right across the café, propelled by anxious vibrations.

For my part, I am completely stunned. I don’t know Gerald that well, but when he, Liz and I happened to arrive at the café at the same time, the only socially acceptable option was that we eat lunch together. You can’t sit five feet away from someone in your graduate program and pretend they’re not there. I had anticipated the typical problem, which is that Gerald is a conversation vacuum. Through a perfect storm of one-word responses, nods, and obscure tangents, he possesses the ability to kill any conversation. It’s not just that you can’t hold a conversation with him, it’s that his presence literally sucks the life out of any other discussion you might have been having before he arrived. So I sat down prepared to eat my turkey sandwich as quickly as possible so as to spend minimal time in the verbal black hole. I’m pretty sure that Liz is on board with this approach, because she had bought an orange for lunch and that was it. I had the sneaking suspicion that she was going to claim a 12:30 meeting and eject early, leaving me to go it along. Ruthless tactic, yes, but completely understandable.

And then, out of the blue, it turned out that Gerald had a lot to say. And he had said it all to us, in a stretched, quavering voice that was clearly not well-trained to carry a great deal of emotion. And now, this conversation-killing, barely-existent, wall-flower of a Canadian graduate student was standing in the middle of a crowded restaurant and calling down quite a lot of attention upon himself.

Liz tries a different tactic. “But you’ve been working on your dissertation for how many years now?”

“Five” snaps Gerald, and then sighs. “Five. But I’ll do it. I’ll leave. He doesn’t think I will, but I will. I’ll go. I’ll just go.”

“Gerald,” I offer, my mind finally wrapping itself around the situation, “why can’t you just write your dissertation on another topic?”

“I told you. I want to write about Canadian theatre. Canadian Theatre is what I want to write about. That is the reason that I came here.”

“Well,” I counter, “not just Canadian theater, but one admittedly obscure Canadian theatre director who directed one play that wasn’t terribly popular, right?” It suddenly occurs to me that this has become some sort of social experiment. I’ve never met anyone like Gerald in my life, and I’ve just decided to push his buttons a little and see what makes him tick. Liz is looking at me with a fresh expression of shock. I am usually not such a bastard, but the idea has seized me and it won’t let go. “I mean, okay, right, we are all pretty obscure, writing book-length papers on the history of theatre, but, well, you’ve had this coming for a long time. Dr. Garner has been trying to steer you gently towards anything that was even remotely relevant, but you were just stuck on this one guy – what’s his name?”

“Bruce...Malarkey,” spits Gerald, “and the play was performed once annually for twenty years in a row, so it is not obscure. It was a holiday tradition in Saskatoon.” He is really about to lose it, but I’m not sure if losing it will involve a breakdown or an explosion. Really, where is this need to find out coming from? Who knows, but it’s there. I press on.

“And this threat to give up theatre altogether? To chuck it all? Couldn’t you just transfer to a program where the faculty would be more open to your ideas? Aren’t you being a tiny bit melodramatic?”

At this point Liz is just sitting back and watching. I suspect that I’m making the situation even more uncomfortable for her than it already is, but hell, she’ll have a funny story to tell people.

“I have invested far too great a deal of my time and energy into my project at this university. I am so angered by the faculty’s decision to require that I discontinue my research and find a new topic, that I am ready to completely abandon my career in protest.”

“In protest?” I am going to hell. Please, somebody shut me up. “What could you possibly be protesting? What are you going to do with your life? You’re almost thirty, and you have no marketable skills whatsoever in any area outside of theatre academia.”

“Guys, could we possibly talk about this outside, or later, or never?” Liz is making a last ditch effort to salvage the situation. Gerald, however, is having none of it. His voice reaches a new level of pinched strain. His left hand has detached from the table and is now viciously squeezing his worn army-green canvas book bag, which is slung over the chair.

“Sometimes there are injustices that must be protested. There are things that have to be – there are confrontations that have to be confronted. And done. Things must be done, and if I have to be the one to do them, then that is how it will be.”

So it looks like a breakdown, not an explosion. His syntax is deteriorating, his other hand is losing its grip on the table, and he’s really shaking now. I should probably back off.

“Why did you pick that topic in the first place, anyway? I mean, right, so you’re from Canada, but I’m from Indiana and I’m not trying to write about Hoosier theatre.” I fire back. I make a mental note to ask Liz to punch me in the stomach after this is over.

“I already explained....earlier....my parents...were in...a production....of.....the....” He can’t finish, but to my surprise, he’s not going to slump defeated down into the chair. Instead, he manages to turn and walk the thirty feet to the café exit. He is shaking so badly that he can barely move, and bumps blindly into two girls who come in the door as he tries to leave. His backpack and coat are still draped over the chair at our table.

“When,” I ask Liz as Gerald staggers out of view, “did I become such a bad person?”