My only explanation for how I ended up at Ole Miss after the Peace Corps is one I stole from a movie: At the time, it seemed like a good idea.

Dating a poet, though, was not a good idea.

I’ve mentioned before that my plan was to get a “regular” Ph.D. in literature at a school with a strong creative writing program. This is because my Master’s degree had a creative final thesis and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a more rigorous thesis for my Ph.D.

After I got there, everything started out reasonably well when I managed to land half a teaching position–which was all that was still available at the time. I found myself once again teaching non-native speakers of English and once again in the familiar territory of school.

Unfortunately, the culture shock that hit was brutal. After two years in Albania, I suddenly found myself surrounded by people aspiring to be Marxists rather than those attempting to recover from the mess left by Marxists. (I won’t get into this, but suffice it to say that all university Marxists hear when you talk about the perils of Marxism and communism is “blah blah blah free stuff blah blah blah free stuff blah blah blah for me”.)

But even that wasn’t as bad as my sudden lack of interest in studying literature. I still liked reading it, I just didn’t enjoy the “oh so serious” discussions of it and the “oh so serious” and “freaking long” papers we were supposed to produce. The comfortable lifestyle was no longer comfortable. It also wasn’t interesting.

In the midst of this culture shock I started dating a poet. Let’s call her Abbey. Now this relationship broke a couple of my hard learned rules

1) never date someone in the same department;
2) never date a woman who has “it” when exposure to “it” makes you stupid and incoherent;
3) never date someone when you’re in culture shock and, thus, stupid and incoherent;
4) never date a recovering alcoholic;
5) if you do date a recovering alcoholic, don’t date her in her first year of sobriety;
6) Don’t start a magazine with someone you’re dating.

The relationship was intense and passionate right up until the day it ended. Unfortunately, at that point rule six had been violated and we had to work together for a few more months until the magazine’s first issue was published. We were both happy to see it finished and both happy to be finished with each other once and for all.

I spent most of my second year at Ole MIss applying to get out. My plan was to go to Japan for a couple years, do the reading for my comprehensive exams and then go back and finish.

I did all the reading, I just decided not to go back.