THIRST
WE STRODE THE HALLS of the overeducated. Ideas were our battlefield. The stakes were highest in our seminar on narrative. A few of us went for the jugular when combating the structuralists, and everyone thought Marxists were passé. Feminists were tedious, unless they engaged Irigaray and Lacan. We loved Foucault but ripped apart his epistemology. We were above personal allegiances. On the first day, the department chair told us to look around the room, because more than half of us would not walk out with a PhD. Some would leave. Others would be screened out of the program at the discretion of our professors. When we saw someone open a slim white envelope and run out of the mail room crying, we were relieved it wasn’t us. And we pretended that we had known all along that our newly departing colleague wasn’t cut out for a PhD anyway. She barely understood Kristeva’s semiotic. She’d be better off in journalism. Sometimes we thought of quitting ourselves, but we couldn’t bear the thought of those still standing thinking that they had predicted our departure all along.
Our ambition was a clawing, grasping thing. It got us out of bed and into class and through stacks of books each more incomprehensible than the last. Admitting that a text was difficult was out of the question. Reading fiction was a crime. All our professors had written books that had reconfigured the field and won celebrated awards. Our goal was to master their books, and then, among ourselves, to tear them down, imagining that we would do better than they. We went to conferences. Yes, we would say, he’s my adviser, and bask in the envy of others at less prestigious institutions. Our professors lectured halls of undergraduates, some suitably dazzled and others sleepy. We did the grading. Each time we told an undergraduate that the professor was too busy to see them but they could talk to us instead, our hearts swelled with importance. Someday, we would be that professor. Our teeth would be sharper, our theories more dazzling. The screening process that thinned our numbers weeded out the unfit, kept our program robust, and primed us for success.
We could not understand why Maia Alfieri had been screened out. She might have been the brightest of us all. We had to have an A- average, and she said her grades were fine. One of her research papers was on reserve at the library because the professors jointly teaching the methodology class had deemed it exemplary. Rory Brandt said the paper was reductive and barely took into account the impact of the linguistic turn on gender, but we knew that was only because Rory thought his paper was better. Rumors swirled. Someone said Maia had done well so far only because she was sleeping with the department chair. Someone else said that Maia had skipped a week of classes not to attend a workshop but to have an abortion. Maia called the rumors ludicrous. She said the program screened out a disproportionate number of women and minorities. Someone brought up Priyanka Sharma. Priyanka’s adviser, Alison Levin, had written a book on British India. Levin had accused Priyanka of plagiarizing her work. After that, no one had been willing to chair Priyanka’s committee, and she had left the program. Priyanka had called Levin racist. At the time, most of us had thought that absurd. Only uneducated hicks were racist. Irfan Alam, the other Indian student in the program, had concurred. He got on fine with Levin.
Although we didn’t usually look kindly upon anyone playing the race or gender card, our noses twitched and our ears pricked up at the thought that Maia Alfieri merited further consideration. Maia’s case carried the heady risk of profaning the sanctified halls of our graduate program with suggestions of the bodily, unintelligent matters that plagued the masses who read bestsellers and tabloids. We theorized about masculinist modes of signification and sexism, but the actual thought of something akin to a sex scandal had us salivating. More so, if it involved the powerful and happily married chair of our department, Dr. Anthony R. Davis, whose understanding of ancient Greek, Arabic, and Persian ethical treatises was legendary, even outside academia. It helped that Maia was beautiful. We thought ourselves too lofty to be swayed by beauty, and it was not something we came by often. The men in our program were bespectacled, odd but nonetheless brainy, and scarred from being picked on in high school. The women wore pointy shoes and superfluous scarves, were intelligent but high-strung, and hid behind feminist theory and irony while vying with one another for the men.
Maia was of us but unlike us. Voluptuous and half-Italian, given to red lipstick and leather boots, coy but effortlessly popular, she inspired brainless lust and pangs of envy. She reminded us of things we thought we were too clever to hanker after, such as popularity and charisma. She brought forth echoes of our insecure high school selves, easily stirred to tears or anger when another’s ability to glide through life reminded us of our own incompetence. Maia was the girl we knew would always be out of our league, who survived adolescence unscarred by acne or social rejection, who walked through life assured of her value. Rory said he was the only one among us smart enough to see through her charms to what was her barely above-mediocre intellect. But we, the anxious and always aspiring, were enraged on Maia’s behalf and hoped to gain her friendship by rallying to her defense. Some of us felt secretly vindicated for personal slights from the past we could not entirely name. This we admitted to no one. We sneered at Rory for being small-minded.
We had to do something. Too educated to take to picket lines and slogans, we organized a graduate student committee that would communicate to the faculty our concern about the lack of transparency in screening procedures. Now that we questioned the process, the signs were everywhere. Alison Levin had written an entire chapter on constructs of theft and ownership in British India. Some had criticized her book for subscribing to the very notion of Indians as savages that she hoped to dispel. Wasn’t it interesting that she automatically assumed that an Indian student was “stealing” her ideas? Dr. Anthony R. Davis came from a long line of privileged white males with Ivy League PhDs. His work never addressed gender. His wife stayed at home, raised their children, and occasionally came to department events with something or the other she had baked. Unlike us, he probably had no respect for women and failed to take Maia, who wore low-cut blouses and made provocative comments in class, seriously as a scholar. We knew Maia’s disregard for feminism was part of an intelligently formulated postfeminist position, but it had clearly landed her in trouble with the male-dominated establishment, which could not see past her appearance the way we could.
Rachel Goldfarb, Maia’s closest friend, said that while Maia hadn’t told her anything directly, she had asked Rachel to go with her if she ever had to talk to Davis in his office. We noticed that Maia appeared uneasy each time Davis entered a room. If Davis had made a move on Maia, she would hardly have been the only woman in the program who chose to stay silent for fear of ridicule and disbelief. Several of us murmured that we too felt uncomfortable around Davis. As chair, he must have had the final word on Maia. We were outraged. Maia needed us to bring about justice, not just for her, but for the principle of the thing. Irfan, who some suspected was half in love with Maia, pointed out that if this could happen to Maia, it could happen to any of us. We were all vulnerable to a system we trusted blindly, despite having to struggle to prove our worth to professors who pretended their assessments were dispassionate.
Marxism, which we had thought outdated, now made perfect sense. Graduate school was nothing but evidence of false consciousness on our part, a willing suspension of disbelief: we believed we had power but in fact we had none, and the faculty could do with us what they wished. Maia nodded seriously as we expressed our frustration at a meeting in the graduate student lounge. She was angry that she was being painted as sleeping her way to good grades. Logically speaking, she pointed out, if that’s what she was doing, she would hardly have been screened out before she could sleep her way to getting a PhD. She had no idea what this was about. She was sick of the rumors. All we wanted, we agreed, was the truth, something to which the faculty supposedly was committed. Maia did not sign the letter from the newly formed Graduate Student Collective demanding a meeting with the faculty, since she was technically no longer a graduate student. But she hoped that a dialogue with the faculty would benefit all of us regardless of her departure. We deserved answers.
That week, we were belligerent. Fangs bared, we snarled at the faculty. Some of us pointedly did not do our readings for class. Or we tore the readings apart more ferociously than usual: What did these scholars know about the realities of the world, the daily injustices that women and people of color had to face, when all they did was theorize about subjectivity as a discursive construct? Sarah Miller called Rory analytically complacent when he agreed with an assigned reading on interdisciplinary methods. Irfan was heard telling Joel Carter that he was going to switch advisers because he was done with Levin. Irfan came to our program from India because he admired Levin’s work, but he was disgusted with some of the comments she made about her Indian husband. Joel said that despite his own white privilege, he understood the insidious nature of internalized racism; in fact, that’s what his dissertation was partly about. Rachel alluded to sexual harassment and coercion in a class discussion about the pervasiveness of power. The professor snapped at her, confirming for us his complicity in an oppressive system.
The meeting between the faculty and us was held the following week. Since Irfan was the only person of color in our cohort, we chose him as our representative. Sarah suggested that we also choose a woman. She nominated Rachel, and we unanimously agreed. The faculty arranged themselves behind a table. Dr. Anthony R. Davis sat in the middle, with Alison Levin on one side and a junior faculty member, Joshua Green, on the other. Green looked nervous, and Levin’s face was pinched. But Davis, gray haired and handsome, still emanated that combination of gravitas and success that drew forth our envy and ire. Joel, his teaching assistant, had been to his house and said it had to be worth nearly a million. We thought of the cramped apartments we shared with people we often didn’t like, and we sharpened our claws. Joel and Sarah pointed out that Davis and Levin were tenured; they had deliberately chosen Green because he was untenured and, like us, had no power. Of course, we thought. What else could we expect from these people?
The meeting began. Maia slipped in sometime after the first few combative words were exchanged. She stood quietly at the back of the crowded room, her long, dark hair loose over her shoulders, her eyes lined with kohl, her lips red, her posture a combination of defiant and demure. We were proud to stand up for her, for ourselves, for principle. Back and forth the accusations flew. Irfan and Rachel highlighted Maia’s achievements and brought out the names of other women and minorities who had been screened out or had dropped out. When Irfan said that the department had a problem retaining minorities, we clapped. Levin’s face turned red. Each student was assessed on a case-by-case basis, she said, raising her voice. And the need for confidentiality restricted the faculty from bringing to light the weaknesses in anyone’s record, including Maia’s. Joshua Green said nothing. Rachel called this convenient; hiding behind confidentiality fooled no one. We cheered.
Emboldened, Sarah raised her hand and brought up the question of student vulnerability to a lack of sexual ethics on the part of certain faculty members. Davis told her firmly that insinuations were inappropriate. When he asked her if there was something specific she wanted to discuss, Sarah backed down. We snuck glances at Maia. Her composure did not waver. Rory smirked. Davis reminded us that this was a discussion among adults, premised on collegiality and professionalism. Shamed but still determined, Irfan and Rachel picked up their argument where they had left off. Could the faculty, without violating confidentiality, at least give us some explanation? Levin responded. She said that all students screened out received warnings regarding their grades, or the viability of their proposed dissertation, or their ability to write and conduct independent research. If a student failed to heed such warnings, and a majority of the faculty members at the screening meeting expressed no confidence in his or her ability to complete the degree, the student was screened out. A student could always appeal the decision.
There was a rustle of disquiet among us. None of us knew anything about Maia’s dissertation topic or final choice of adviser. We had only her word about her grades, and one exemplary paper. Based on her comments in class, we knew she was capable of excellent work, but so were we all. Maia, still composed, stayed silent. Rachel and Irfan exchanged a look. Rachel weakly said that screening procedures could still use more transparency. Our handbook said we needed to be “in good academic standing” to pass screening, but this language was vague. Davis offered to set up a committee composed of both graduate students and faculty. Together, he promised, we could design a more transparent, concrete, and detailed set of rules. He asked if this was acceptable. Having lost our steam, we mumbled agreement. Some of us began gathering our things, vaguely deflated because there had not been as much blood in the arena as we had imagined and already preoccupied with how much work we had to do for classes that week.
Davis beamed at the room and picked up his jacket. This had been a productive discussion, he said, thanking all of us magnanimously. Levin and Green followed him out of the room. We slunk off toward the library or our apartments. Maia was heard thanking Rachel and Irfan. To those of us who clustered around Maia, hoping to sniff out if she had in fact received warnings, she answered tiredly that of course her work had received criticism, but hadn’t everyone’s at some point or other? How was she supposed to know when criticism meant that the faculty would decide she needed to leave? She did not see the point of putting herself through an appeals process, but she said she was glad that at least now there would be more transparency for us. Sarah put an arm around Maia. She suggested that maybe now Maia could focus on other things she wanted to do and spend more time with her boyfriend, a lawyer who drove up to see her almost every weekend. As Maia looked into the distance, into a future some of us imagined wistfully as more exciting than ours and others as merely ordinary, we let her go.
Although screening procedures became clearer on paper, half our class, as predicted, did not graduate with a PhD. Rachel Goldfarb dropped out because her husband, who was in high tech, got a job on the West Coast. We liked Rachel, but she had become increasingly preoccupied with her personal life. Neither she nor Maia, now that we thought of it, seemed suited for purely intellectual pursuits. Rory Brandt landed a postdoc followed by a tenure-track job at a research university, and his monograph on Byzantine pederasty came out two years after he had completed his degree. Joel Carter gave it a review that lauded Brandt’s efforts toward advancing the field but pointed to several transliteration errors and two areas where his already tenuous argument was further diluted by a lack of conceptual clarity. Married now to Sarah Miller, Joel was a spousal hire at the public university that had hired her on tenure track. Irfan Alam moved back to India after completing his PhD. We had no idea what he was doing. Alison Levin, who had remained his adviser, said she was disappointed that he had chosen to throw away his career by moving to a place where he would be starved for intellectual resources.
Dr. Anthony R. Davis, we learned through the grapevine, divorced his wife and negotiated a move to the only institution in the country more highly ranked than ours. With his new salary, he bought a summer house in Wellfleet. Our jobs paid little. Those of us who were employed had heavy teaching loads in small towns with cold winters. Some of us commuted from one part-time job to another. We lived in small apartments. We were always short on sleep. We ran into one another at conferences and competed over who worked the longest hours and had the worst students. We dreamed of jobs at research universities like the one from which we had graduated, where teaching assistants would grade badly written undergraduate papers while we wrote award-winning books. Anthony Davis’s new book was the rage. Widely considered his most brilliant yet, it analyzed romantic love and moral responsibility in poetic traditions in the premodern Mediterranean. Following an untranslated verse in Greek, he dedicated it to his wife, Maia Alfieri, his beautiful muse, his moral compass, and the love of his life.
“Thirst” was first published in Narrative Magazine, where it won the third prize in their Winter 2013 Short Story Contest. It won the Pushcart Prize in 2014.