Meet Spencer

I am not generally the kind of person who tells funny anecdotes at parties. My stories rarely end with an apologetic "I guess you had to be there," and when they do, it's probably because the punch line is a nerdy reference and my fellow conversationalist is not a geek like me.

Today, I have a crazy story. TODAY, I-- for the first time-- have encountered a person so absurdly fictional that I actually need to *come up with a codename for him for use on this blog.*

He is in my assigned Short Stories group; he grew up on Fifth Avenue, went to an exclusive all-male Academy for high school, and is (as I learned today) a male model. For the purposes of this blog, we will call him Spencer the Prat, as he is both EERILY REMINISCENT of his forebear, and is, inarguably, a complete prat.

As is true of all "been there" moments, this kind of loses something in the retelling, so I'll do the short version:

The story my group is doing comes from something called Godey's Lady's Book, which was a monthly journal in the 1830s which published short stories, articles and advertisements relevant to women of the day. Our particular story is about (among other things) lovers who die of plague. The project, in brief, is to "re-publish" this story. Our idea was to reformat our meta stuff around the story as if it were a modern women's magazine, like Elle.

One of my suggestions was that-- seeing as we're allowed to put in illustrations-- we could add thematically relevant ads... one of which could be an anti-plague skin cream, as satire.

Cut to Spencer the Prat. Spencer, who has not yet read the story we're doing this project on, completely failed to understand what I was getting at. So I tried explaining it several different times, in several different ways. "But why is it skin cream," he demanded.

Spencer, being a student who clearly goes to Brandeis 2-- oh. Wait.

SHORT INTERLUDE: Chef has a theory where there are two versions of 'deis: there's Brandeis, which is populated by smart awkward jewish kids who are generally sweet and well-meaning and want to change the world... and then there's Brandeis 2. Brandeis 2 has frats, and jocks, and people who spend their weekends throwing up and then tell stories about how epic it was after. The reason so few people realize there are, in fact, two Brandeises (Brandeisi?) is because the two so rarely overlap.

Sometimes, however, they're arbitrarily placed in the same group project, and the whole system falls apart.

So ANYWAY. From the way he was talking, I was starting to get the feeling that Spencer fancied himself a bit of a manly man-- that he'd never picked up an issue of Elle in his life, and would be offended at the mere suggestion that he had. Which would explain why he wasn't getting where I was coming from at all.

Me: "I-- look. Have you ever, y'know, looked at an issue of Seventeen, or Elle, or-- because they have these, these ads for--"
Spencer: [coldly] "What do you mean 'have I ever.'" [disconcertingly sarcastic now] "Noooo, I've NEVER picked up a magazine before."
Me: "No, sorry, I didn't mean-- I just thought that--"
Spencer: "Look, I've been in magazines, so you can just drop the attitude, okay."

The more polite and rational I tried to be, the more offended and defensive he got. He then informed me that he's not sure why I think I can get away with my "snotty attitude," but that I need to "wake up" because it's "not gonna help [me] at all in the real world."

Oh, right. That would be the real world where you grow up in a luxury penthouse on the Upper East Side, take family vacations to Morocco, and plan to be a model when you graduate. No, I suppose my attitude won't help me at all in the real world.

Because I don't go to this school because Daddy can pay for it and it has a good reputation. I go to this school entirely on scholarships because I'm fucking smart, bitch.

Now run along to your photo shoot. I have an essay on schizophrenia and family dynamics in Hamlet to write.