Complicity


"But you have an inherently sympathetic subject position," says Erica.  "You know, because of the relative disempowerment of
both women and native Americans, which means... "

"Oh, no, no, no, I have to disagree," says Ted.  "An inherently interesting subject position, yes, I grant you that, but the
presupposition that she's inherently sympathetic is in itself disempowering insofar as it circumscribes our ability to imagine that
she might have any real authority over the dissemination of her selfhood vis a vis the larger community."

"Um, the thing is," says Barbara, "that I'm actually only a quarter Native American, so... "

"See, okay, Ted, it sounds all nice and progressive to say that," Erica says, "but this fantasy that Barbara really wields significant
control over communal constructions of her identity is in fact nothing more than a way to let yourself, as a member of the white
male elite, off the hook, to dis-implicate yourself from the oppression of the Other, and thus to justify the perpetuation of a
phallogocentric social order."

Lilly, accidentally eavesdropping as she waits in line for access to the keg, tries to catch Barbara's eye, see if Barbara needs
rescuing.  But Barbara's eyes are locked on Erica, and her hands are gesturing wildly, signifying her eagerness to get back into
the conversation.  She doesn't seem to notice that Lilly's even there.

"It's just, I do think, though," says Barbara, at the same time that Ted says, "Oh, but Erica, if you'd only really read and
understood Foucault, you'd see that... " and then there's a tap on Lilly's shoulder and she turns and there's Radley, the short
blond guy from her Pan-Asian lit. seminar who has the roundest head she's ever seen, and he's holding aloft two of her CDs,
Husker Du's Candy Apple Grey and Guided By Voices' Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and grinning at her excitedly, and the
grin looks just like the one he wore that day in class last week right before he advanced his argument about how the
post-Marxian erasure of the female perspective from the dominant post-colonial discourse was a valid counterattack against
Western cultural imperialism, which made Lucinda Afton cry and run out of the room, thereby reducing the rest of the class, and
even Professor Patel, to stunned silence.  Lilly doesn't like Lucinda Afton very much; Lucinda's particularly sanctimonious about
her vegetarianism and once told Barbara that she, as a quasi-Native American, had no business specializing in African American
studies, because in so doing she was lazily co-opting the rhetoric of another Other.  Still, for most of the last week, Lilly's been
stewing over what happened in class that day, has been replaying the scene in her head and fantasizing that instead of merely
being a participant in the collective stunned silence, she'd had the wherewithal to tell Radley exactly where she thought he
should go put his overly-round head.

"Hey, Lilly," he says now, "you know what?  I've been looking at your CD collection, and it's so interesting -- you have all the
wrong albums by all the right bands.  C'mere, let me show you!"

Thrusting Candy Apple Grey at her to free up one of his own hands, he grabs her by the wrist and pulls her out of the beer line,
out of the living room, and into the small back bedroom she uses as a study, where her CD collection is stacked in a couple of
milk crates next to her desk.  "You really ought to reorganize these by genre," he says.  "I can't begin to explain to you how
wrong it is that you have Velocity Girl next to the Velvet Underground."

His fingers, thick and clammy, are still clamped around her wrist, and she is hit with an overwhelming urge for a cigarette.  But
she can't have one.  Having left her $64,000-a-year job peddling antidepressants to psychiatrists for a $12,000-a-year graduate
assistantship, she can no longer afford to smoke.  She could, of course, bum a cigarette from someone; it's a party, her party,
in fact; she and Vince paid for most of the keg, so surely no one would begrudge her one cigarette.  But quitting was almost
two months of relentless, visceral yearnings and exhausting amounts of willpower, and she's pretty sure that one cigarette
would lead to another and then another and ipso facto she'd be a smoker again.

"Because you have to see, right, that Flip Your Wig was their real masterpiece," says Radley.  "All the critics agree with me on
that one.  Candy Apple Grey was their commercialized, major-label sellout follow-up."

Uh, huh," says Lilly.  Candy Apple Grey was practically the soundtrack to her junior year in high school.  She and her best friend
Andrea played it every Friday night when they got together at Andrea's house to do each other's makeup before they went out.  
They sang along tearfully to "Too Far Down" whenever things had gone wrong between either of them and some boy, and they
danced on Andrea's coffee table to "Dead Set on Destruction" every night before they left the house.  And she's always thought
Flip Your Wig was, while brilliant in some respects, irksomely uneven on the whole.

"And then," says Radley, "what's up with this?"  He waves her Counting Crows CD so close to her face he almost whacks her in
the forehead with it.  He's smiling again, but the tenor of his smile has changed now.  He thinks, she realizes, that he's flirting
with her.  Maybe he was flirting with Lucinda Afton that day in class too.  "Look," he says, "I can give you a list of real alt country
bands, good bands.  It just pains me to think of anyone who has even the wrong Teenage Fanclub records in her collection
listening to Counting Crows."

Earlier this evening, when she came over to help Lilly and Vince set up for the party, Barbara reeled off a list of everyone in their
program that she knew of who was on antidepressants, and it turned out to be just about everyone Lilly knew.  Having worked
in the psychotropic area of the pharmaceutical industry herself until just a few months ago, Lilly has to wonder if Radley's doctor
has him on the right meds.  Barbara says that's kind of a recurring problem:  the psych residents who treat you at the student
health center haven't had time to mellow into their jobs yet; they're so sure they know what drugs are right for you that they
tend to refuse to notice any evidence that might suggest otherwise.  And maybe Radley's doctor just thinks this is how English
grad students are supposed to be.  Lilly hopes that when her own time to be unable to function without psychotropic assistance
comes, she'll land a shrink who's enamored of Wellbutrin, which, in addition to its mood-enhancing capacities, is supposed to be
effective in reducing nicotine cravings.

"So, um, do you have any more CDs?" Radley asks.  "Like, maybe in your bedroom?"  He leans in closer.  He has clumps of
something white and blobby -- pretzel crumbs, she hopes -- stuck in his beard.  In high school, she and Andrea once made a
pact that neither of them would ever kiss a guy who had a beard, unless it was just a goatee.

"I have to go to the bathroom," she says.  Mercifully, his fingers let go of her wrist, and then she's out of the study and in the
kitchen.  But the kitchen is hot and crowded; she needs fresh air; she needs to go outside.  The kitchen door is ajar and she
slips through it.  In the backyard, the smokers are huddled together in a circle, all except for Paul Hegman, who's sitting on the
stoop by himself.  Lilly likes Paul, but he's so taciturn that trying to make conversation with him is always an awkward business.  
So she squeezes past him down the stairs and joins the circle, finding herself next to Erica.  Erica's saying, "But that's so
reductionist, Lionel.  Don't you see that if the base is really tied that absolutely to the superstructure, then... "

"Look, woman," says Lionel, the tallish 11th-year PhD candidate whom Lilly thought was pretty hot until he sat in on her
American lit class and she realized what he was like, "you are either dumber than you want to admit or you are willfully
misunderstanding me, and either way, I... "

"Oh, hey, Lilly," says Erica.  "Great party, hon -- thanks for the gracious hospitality and all."  She takes a deep drag from her
cigarette then turns her head so as not to blow smoke into Lilly's face.

"No problem," says Lilly.  "Glad you could come.  And, hey, actually, could I bum one of those?"

The first lungful of smoke burns a little, but not as much as she'd have thought after having abstained for almost six months.  
The second lungful feels so good she almost wants to cry.  She is suddenly, standing in a circle of her fellow grad students and
smoking, strangely, calm and soothed.  She is suddenly almost certain that she really is kind of glad to have Erica Sutton in her
backyard.  And when, a few minutes later, Lionel Shanks starts glancing over at her with increasing frequency and smiling in
much the same way Radley smiled right before he invited himself into her bedroom, she finds herself smiling right back.

Leslie Haynsworth