Dark Night

Defense

My phone was set to vibrate, which is why I could tell that I was getting lots of communications before the date even ended. As soon as I came into my apartment, I saw a total of 32 texts and emails, and two voicemails from Zayna and Keshondra. My friends. So awesome. So supportive. So damn nosy.

I sent out a basic email about the conversation and what we'd done for the date. The girls were thrilled to their marrow, judging from the responses I got back, plus tons of questions about what I was going to do. Not for the first time, I wished that we were all in the same place again. Strictly for the convenience of a debriefing like this, of course.

And what I did was that I dated him, of course. But our dates were heavy on conversation and going places, very light on physical intimacy. This year for Thanksgiving, I invited Will over for the celebration and there was some hanky-panky, but we didn't actually start sleeping together again until finals were over. He was going back to his family for the holiday, a pleasure since he'd always been playing games and had missed the celebrations with his entire family during his football career. I went home to Grandpa. I got a lot heavier questioning from my family this time around, mostly because I hadn't been open to sharing much with my parents about him the first time around. They were all very curious about him too. And for our respective graduations, Grandpa was going to take Stan and me on a trip together. We would pick the general destination and Grandpa would choose the details to surprise us, just the way I liked it. After a little discussion, we chose Africa. Neither of us had ever been, and there was a lot to do on the continent.

When I got back, though, Will was kind of shoved to the background as I prepared to defend my dissertation. I was a total stress ball even though I felt like I had a good grasp of the material; the defense had been pushed back twice. He was a champ, though, and didn't fuss at all. His cooking skills were not very advanced (not having the benefit of Grandpa's cooking lessons) but he brought me groceries, sent me pizzas, and brought carry out a lot. He was content to study for his classes sprawled on my bed while I paced around my living area, muttering to myself and consulting my copy of my work, creating my presentation, practicing. Periodically I pounced on him. Sex is a great stress reliever and he was most cooperative, never once complaining.

On the day I mounted my defense, he stayed the night before with me, making sure I got some sleep, ironing my blouse, shining my shoes, taking me to campus and leaving me at the door of the room, having run a lint roller over me and giving me a good luck kiss and a bottle of cold water. I was wearing the earrings he'd given me for my 21st for luck.

I went in, and the chair made a few introductory remarks, and I thanked my committee for the time and effort that they'd expended on my behalf. I set up a recording so that I'd have a record of the event, wanting to make sure that I complied with all requests and not sure of my ability to remember everything or write it down meaningfully. Following that was a presentation of my work, then the defense began. I'd had to redirect a few questions from a couple of people's own pet peeves or theories, but my advisor had reined in one professor whose questions were pretty much unrelated, and the time had actually flown by. I'd gotten to say a lot of what I wanted, but there was so much more that I hadn't been able to get to. My advisor said that was ok, though, that was what the next forty years of my career were for. I identified a couple of weaknesses and post-dissertation research plans.  In some ways, it was less nerve-wracking than the exam I'd had to take about my topic in order to be admitted to my doctoral studies; this seemed to more about how I wrote it all up as what I said in the dissertation. There were some criticisms that seemed perfunctory, but what surprised me was the attention that the committee paid to my writing, suggesting changes to the wording. My prose wasn't deathless and perfect, I had no problem agreeing to the changes. There were no requests for substantive changes. I focused on being confident in my work but humble and not defensive, and found that it was more fun than I'd anticipated. Two hours after it had begun,  I was asked to leave the room while the committee deliberated.