Gloria And the Popular Culture Conference

In the fall of 1976, the English Department Head at Auburn introduced me as to the faculty as a newly-minted MFA and an instructor in the English Department at Auburn University. It was the beginning of my life: I was going to be a short story writer and novelist, and I was going to teach freshman composition and literature surveys. I was on top of the world.

And more good stuff to come! The first day of my first quarter, I met a new Ph.D. student named Gloria. She was from Mississippi, short, medium-length dark hair, a great smile, and of course very smart, so I had fallen immediately. She ran, and she kick-boxed or something like that. She told me later that when we met during orientation, she thought, “He’s going to ask me out”, and I did. There weren’t a lot of dinner choices in Auburn in those days, and our first date was at a Pizza Hut. We had two beers each; they were served in bottles, no glasses. Welcome to Auburn.

The apogee of our relationship was the night that Jimmy Carter was elected president. I had been invited to Sarah Hudson’s house for a party for Stephen Spender, an eminent English poet who was visiting, and the faculty let me bring Gloria. She seemed dazzled, as was I; Spender knew an amazing lot and said, “I suppose that if Cook County goes for Carter, he will win?” We were all sick to death of Republicans (nothing changes) and were thrilled. It was a wonderful night for Gloria and me. I took her home and kissed her chastely, but not much was chaste in the coming weeks.

We fell in love, fast, which was efficient, as she worked very hard and time was short: late evenings at her small apartment, and I fixed dinner (white fish, white wine sauce) at my place. Then suddenly it was Christmas break (in the Deep South, they wouldn’t call it anything else). She went back to Mississippi, and, for some bizarre misguided reason, my parents and I drove from Auburn to Los Angeles to see my brother and his wife. The car broke down only once, west of New Orleans; Dad only got one ticket, in Texas, whereupon he paid a fine to a cop in a bunker that Nazis would have built at Normandy; and I got very familiar with a bottle of brandy late at night in LA.

She wrote me once (in those days, everything was snail mail, her elegant handwriting in blue ink on small white sheets) and she signed it, “I love you.” Upon our return, though, something had gone terribly wrong: when we met, she gave me the dreaded, telling, sideways hug. It was over, just like that. I didn’t have the courage to ask what happened, as I’ve always been afraid of women, especially those as quiet and brilliant as Gloria (thanks, Mom!)

In any event, she soon married one of the most hated men in our office building (and it had nine floors of sociologists, psychologists, historians, foreign language experts, political scientists, journalists, and the entire School of Education, including both of my parents. It took a lot to alienate that many people.) Glen was a psych guy, and he tried very hard to be the epitome of the stereotypical obnoxious New York Jew, speaking loudly in the hallways and ignoring colleagues in the elevators. That played very badly in the Deep South. Somehow Gloria fell for him. I will always be mystified. Perhaps realizing how he had ostracized himself, he got a job at Pitt, and she went with him to finish her Ph.D. there.

A year or so later, maybe 1978, under the spell of a charismatic American lit professor, I wrote a paper called “The Early Love Songs of Bob Dylan” which was promptly accepted for reading at that year’s Popular Culture Conference in, yes, of course, Pittsburgh. I found a copy of that paper a few years ago and blushed deeply at how shallow, quickly argued, and silly it was. That conference would take anything.

Somehow Gloria got wind of my visit; if I recall her letter correctly, a friend of hers whom I didn’t even know had written to tell her that I was coming. Academic gossip is the best! Gloria wrote inviting me to spend the Saturday after I read my paper with her; “I know the perfect pizza place,” she wrote. Like Pizza Hut, I thought! She remembers!

The Friday night before I read my paper, I had dinner with an old girlfriend, Marie, who had graduated from our MFA program and who was teaching at Carnegie-Mellon. Her whole gang sat at a long table in a noisy, sticky-floored, Lebanese restaurant full of smart, funny people, including her boyfriend, Bill Knievel, no relation to Evel. He was wonderful, short and thick with curly hair, an infectious smile; a software engineer, as I recall, and no one ever treated an ex-boyfriend of his girlfriend so jovially. They drove me back to my hotel and we sat in the lobby talking for a while—or Bill and I did; I think Marie had other friends who came with us with whom she talked.

When I woke up the next morning, hungover, I went to a nearby diner and the first thing I did was ask for a glass of water. The waitress said, “All the drunks come in here.” I was wearing my suit!

I made my way back to the hotel, the William Penn, old like the name and lush. I found my room and when introduced began reading; Gloria showed up halfway through, a little flustered. When it was over, a 70-ish woman approached me; I thought, oh, super, some feedback! She whispered, “You have wonderful hair,” and strode away.

Gloria and I went to the ornate, old-fashioned hotel lobby for a few moments. She lounged on a sofa, and I sat in a plush chair across a coffee table from her. She smiled at me lazily, her head back on the sofa, and, I will never forget this, said, “You sure still are beautiful, George Jarecke.”

I don’t recall how we spent the day, but there was no pizza involved. Her husband Glen joined us for dinner. We were academics, it was nothing fancy, I think a chain fish place, possibly a Red Lobster. I paid, a ridiculous gesture, I now see, but he didn’t exactly fight me for the check. Then we went to a big-box store for them to buy something. On the way back to my hotel, they held hands in the front seat.

My mother, whose main skill was making stuff up and inflating the credentials of everyone who might have reflected well on her, later theorized that they were having a little trouble and she had met me solely to make him jealous, and somehow that dinner was part of it. They later divorced. It was her second. She had never told me about her first marriage, which I found out about only after she left Auburn.

Like so so many of my ex-girlfriends and wife, she has utterly embarrassed me professionally. Maybe I inspired all of them with my indolence. In subsequent years when I felt wistful and lonely, and as I’ve tracked her career once Google came along, I’ve wanted to ask what the hell happened. But I imagine that she’s forgotten about me altogether. She ended up at Northwestern, has had an exemplary career, and has no time for the likes of me.

Over the years, other details emerged. A friend said that he stopped by Gloria’s apartment with his girlfriend, Lisa, on a Saturday morning, and Glen was lounging on her sofa with a beer and clothed only in his underwear. Though I never saw Glen in his underwear, the image haunts me. Later that year, I got involved with someone else, reluctantly, after it was clear it was over with Gloria. That relationship was fraught, and my friend’s girlfriend Lisa let me have one day in the main office with undeserved fury: “What is that situation even ABOUT?” What did she care? Was she running interference for Gloria? I wrote her that spring once, begging her to come back. No answer. It was later, obviously, that she married Glen.

So what was any of that about? Her breaking up with me with no explanation; inviting me to tour Pittsburgh with her; lounging on a sofa and swinging her legs and telling me I was still beautiful; my having dinner with her and her horrible husband. And never hearing from her again. Who knows? I don’t understand a thing, and I never will.