IF YOU GET YOUR MFA

By

Christina Delia

“If you get your MFA, I am no longer speaking to you,” Grady warns me. We are at a party in Brooklyn. Someone is blasting the Beastie Boys, a little too ironically for my tastes.

“What’s wrong with getting my MFA? Maybe then I’ll feel employable,” I argue. Employable has become my highest degree, my Nirvana. I have not felt employable since I dumped tater tots on the trays of cynical boarding school children, greeting them with my catch phrase, “Eat it.”

Grady grabs a jalapeño popper from an Easter egg tray on his coffee table, though this is November. Because Grady made these jalapeno poppers himself, I know that they are soy based and certifiably delicious. I know this prior to eating them, just as I know that the special ingredient in Grady’s tea could get us all arrested.

“You don’t need to get some fancy specialized degree just so you can tell people you’re worth a damn. Besides, don’t you already have a BA?”

“It’s a BFA,” I admit.

“Big Fancy Assets.” Grady looks me up and down. “No dearie, what you need is a makeover. How are you supposed to go into a job interview in that slothful getup?”

“I’m sure my getup isn’t slothful,” I say, pulling the sleeve down on my sweater like when I get nervous. Grady is so many things. Good looking, bisexual and mean. How could an outfit be slothful, anyway? I curse myself for not buying the pocket thesaurus when I had a chance at the dollar store. I curse myself for not being a Scrabble champion, despite Rocky style coaching from my Aunt Sheila.

“You should be rockin’ a nice suit…get a bodacious tan, maybe some lypo-”

“Why do you talk like a circa 1987 surfer?”

“Alls I’m sayin’ is I know how to dress.” Grady twirls around to demonstrate his style, as graceful as Vanna White buying someone’s vowel.

“I am very happy for you,” I say, pushing Grady aside. There is a pile of crab dip that would look horrible on my stomach but feel divine in my stomach. It would also help me swallow that persistent lump in my throat. Why does Grady always get the best of me?

“Look Nessa, why would you want to get an advanced bullshit degree in something you already know how to do?”

“The hope is that it will shape what I know how to do into something more advanced,” I explain to him, patiently as when I explain to my grandmother why she has to swallow the big, white pills.

Grady raises his eyebrows and fingers a bowl of caramel popcorn. I silently hope that his hand gets stuck inside the bowl, panic ensues and he ends up on The Maury Show for some reason or another.

“It’s like, I know how to fuck, right? And I fuck well. Only I don’t need to end up in a porno to demonstrate what a great fuck I am.”

“You lost me at fucking well.”

“Stop being cute, Lucia,” Grady says. Lucia is the name he calls me when I’m being bitchy, because it sounds to Grady like a bitch’s name. “Don’t court the pretentious is all I’m saying.”

Other people were actually having fun at this party. Someone puts on a Bjork CD. I am embarrassed at the lulls in “It’s Oh So Quiet”. I don’t want people to hear our asinine conversation.

“I’m going to play darts,” I say. “That is, if you can stop shooting daggers at me long enough for me to get across the room.”

“Touché,” Grady says. “Let me leave you with this: I read this article awhile back-”

“Ugh,” I say. “Not an I.R.A.A.B. lecture”. Grady has a tendency to start conversations with the phrase, “I read this article awhile back…” 

“Just shut up. So anyway, this article said that many MFA candidates are writing stories that are insanely similar. None of them have their own voices anymore. Shit, so many writers today have their larynxes ripped out and shoved in their Starbucks.” Grady’s eyes trail after a hot blond punk girl with a plump rear end. I can tell that his lecture is not going to last much longer.

“So how does one go about keeping her voice box intact and java-free?” I ask.

“You evolve in your own right! Say, ‘fuck grad school!’ and read as much as you can! No one reads the great writers anymore. Who’s that lady, Virginia Woolf? She might as well be dead.”

“She is dead, Grady.”

“Yeah, but only literally. Think about that.” Grady, now triumphant, trails off after his potential Debbie Harry-looking conquest. I turn and walk away, past various twenty-somethings discussing sex, jobs, John Belushi, Basquiat, Bob Dylan and Dante Alighieri. I talk to an Elvis Costello look-alike about Liz Phair’s facial structure, knowing that we are going to fuck later. Maybe he goes to grad school, and maybe I will ask him what that entails.