Ayn Rand reception history.

I was talking with an older professor I met at a reception at the art school the other month, and like I often do, I started talking about Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

She then told me that she’s read her novels in the past decade, and had gotten them used.

The first one she read, she said, was a copy of “The Fountainhead” that she got at a charity used booksale.

The binding had one single sharp crease, and the copy fell open to the rape scene.

At that, another, very old and very small and very white in skin and hair painting professor chimed in that back in the day, everyone read Ayn Rand for the sex scenes, it was all anyone ever talked about her about.

Weightroom conversation with a Bulgarian psychology Ph.D. student (2 of 2): Transsexuals.

Later that same workout, we were both over by the freeweights at the same time, and started chatting between sets.

I asked him if he was teaching any the upcoming term, and it turns out that he was a teaching assistant for a basic psychology course, and so I told him that I had been reading a ton on the history of sex change surgery in the U.S. and I started asking him about the effects of testosterone and estrogen on human behavior, and he started telling me that biology and psychology are now in conversation more than they used to be etc. etc. etc.

“I just finished a book,” I was like, “about a set of twins where the one lost his dick in a tragic circumcision accident, so they raised him as a girl.”

“That must have not turned out well,” the Bulgarian psychology Ph.D. student was like.

“It didn’t,” I said.

“Of course not,” he responded.

He then started telling me about some East German women athletes who they pumped so full of testosterone to compete, that one even has a moustache to this day and looks like a man, he recently saw pictures of her when she was old.

“She was totally a man,” he was like, “Completely.  And she didn’t even want that, they began to give her testosterone, and she did not know.”

 

“Well,” I was like, “It just goes to show you, we should all be Buddhists.”

At that, he seem dismayed.

“We think we have control over everything, but we really don’t, even our bodies can betray us, even in ways that we would never expect,” I was like.

He kind of looked at me, open-eyed.

“Hey,” I was like, “Inner peace, it’s a necessity.”

Then, I added, “We need to be prepared.”

Then, I went off to go work on my pecs.

Weightroom conversation with a Bulgarian psychology Ph.D. student (1 of 2): Anxiety remedies.

There’s this one Bulgarian Ph.D. student in psychology that I know, that I run into in the school gym’s weightroom half the time.

He’s pleasant enough, but somehow he lacks a certain savviness and well-placed suspicion – he’s much too open to things, it seems! – as a Bulgarian friend had once told me was true of the people of a certain generation on down, who hadn’t really ever grown up under communism.

Anyhow, we had both finished sets at the same time, and he was asking how I was, pleasantly, and I told him something like “Anxious, to tell you the truth, from ongoing money problems and ongoing family problems” (my standard answer the past several months, when I do feel anxious, why hide it from people).

He seemed dismayed, and so I added that I was actually thinking of getting a cognitive – behavioral therapy self-help book, since I had heard that that was effective in reforming negative thinking.

“Oh yes,” he was like, “That’s true, CBT and appropriate drugs have been proven to be effective, they’re very effective in helping people adapt to situations when they cannot change them.”

“Effective in whose perspective?”, I was like.  “Maybe if more people continued to be anxious, they’d be able to recognize their social disgust, and cause revolution.”

Then, since he seem dismayed again, I added, “Who says people can’t change their situation?”, and added again, “We really do need a revolution,” but he still seemed dismayed.

Barhopping (2 of 2): Unfortunate incident?.

Later that night I stopped through a late night Mexican cafe to get something to eat (which ended up being a torta with roast pork, and some of their hot pickled carrots and cauliflower from the plastic help-yourself container with metal tongs on the side of the table, though I didn’t touch the jalapenos), and the waitress got me a lot of refills of water.

When I was leaving, she manned the register, and as I pulled out my wallet, I swear I saw that I had 2 twenties, since when I flipped through my couple bills I was surprised I hadn’t broke the 2^nd 20 yet (the bars I had been at were cheap, I guess).

I then paid her with 1 of the 2 twenties, and with some of the change even gave her a 2-dollar tip, since she was so nice getting me all that water.

Then, as I was leaving, I started putting the bills into my billfold, and noticed it was only singles, there was no ten there, so I had to go back and ask for the ten.

She was confused, and opened up the register, and there was a ten sticking a bit prominently out of the register clip, and she noticed that and said that I had paid ten, but I said no, that I was sure that I had paid twenty, and was ten short.

The manager came and they talked in Spanish, and she gestured to the ten sticking out of the register clip, but he held up his hand in a kind of a ‘no’-sign, and she gave me a ten, as I was saying that if they wanted, they could count the register and tally receipts, I was sure that I had paid twenty, and would wait no problem.

I slunk out of that cafe, I was so embarrassed.

I’m very very sure that I paid a twenty and there was some mistake (or even that the waitress trying to pull a fast one and even set up that ten dollar bill sticking out of the register clip?), but I’d feel awful if there wasn’t.

I do wonder if that waitress was trying to pull one on me, though.  Some of the people there were a bit tough, and it’s the first late night Mexican cafe that I’ve ever been in where they don’t bring you a bill to your table, so somehow I wonder if she was underpaid and thought I was drunk and decided to try to pull one over on me.

For some reason, I get that sense, in retrospect, though she may also have been confused and saw that ten dollar bill sticking out and seized on that as evidence that she had indeed given me the correct change.