Who's got them? Who gave them to who? Oh my God, did you see that? It looks like she got attacked by an industrial vacuum. We think we're beyond such conversations but waves of such hickey-speculation echo throughout Valentine on Sunday mornings. Pretending to peel boiled eggs or sip throat-flaying "coffee," we seek such tell-tale marks. Who's eating breakfast together? If one, or maybe both, sport any splotchiness we nod. Somebody got some action last night.
Valentine's layout is ideal for nosy surveillance. You come out with your tray, maneuvering skillfully around the corner leading to the Annex. You pause at the what-I've-been-told-is-called the "Scannex" and take in the scene. You sit down, and the voyeurism-on the mildest level-begins. Meal times are as much for eating as for people-watching.
Okay, so we essentially eat in a zoo, one accompanied by ample verbal commentary. Wasn't he wearing that yesterday? God, she looks awful without make-up. I wouldn't want to wake up with that hag next to me. Admit it, we all make comments like these. We all like to deprecate, to ridicule, but it's all in good fun. We might compare someone to a manatee or an explosive pizza, but we don't really mean it, right?
And it's not just a girl thing either. Yes, girls have a reputation for being catty and deceptive, treacherously two-faced. I've heard guys say that girls can never truly be friends. That one will eventually, inevitably betray the other. Girls, as members of the sex with the more gifted, glib tongue, will say anything provided that the other person's back is turned. Supposedly. It is true that the very word "gossip" evokes images of giggling, cliquey females, discussing "how long," "how much," "how often," "how so," "how, HOW, HOW COULD YOU? ... Damn, you must have been drunk."
Female gossip is just more visible to the eyes and ears than its male counterpart. You can tell when a circle of women are having a chit-chat, usually attended by squealing and shrieking. But a ring of guys? One assumes that they're talking about sports, music, the X-Box or some other inanimate object. But according to Cosmo and Glamour polls-because these are such reliable sources-and my own personal observations (having been privy to a few masculine dialogues), men are just as likely to gossip as women. One guy said, "We call them rap sessions. And girls? Well, don't you call them bitch sessions?"
So men get to rap and women get to be female dogs. Ignoring such issues of gender inequality for now, my point is that everyone gossips, whatever you might call it. And, apparently, we don't shed this juvenile addiction as we grow older, as demonstrated by the prevalence of "water cooler talk." My grandma tells "stories" about her church congregation, while my cousin tells me the hottest news on the playground. Gossip seems to be one of those life-long distractions and guilty pleasures. We are all indoctrinated from childhood not to say bad things about people. I remember my mother telling me, "Thumper says that if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." Well, most of us are bit too jaded for Thumper by now, and we would rather indulge in the temporary release that gossip provides.
Why do we do it? Sometimes euphemized as "small talk," it's a way to pass time; it is socialization in its easiest and pettiest form. Who really wants to talk about international foreign policy when there's a juicy rumor to pass around? We all view gossip as relatively harmless, and it is, except in very small, contained areas. In such a concentrated vicinity, gossip's power swells. What might cause microscopic ripples at UMass has the force of a battering ram here. Rumors explode and then take on a life of their own. The buzz gets transmitted, each time mutating a little, embellished here and there, until a story about a girl riding a bike morphs into a bizarre tale of a bunch of girls riding horses, and not in the equestrian sense. A few rounds later, a little nudity and cops might be added.
So perhaps I exaggerate, but you get my point. We are truly focused on this tiny campus, both socially and physically; the vast majority of us live here, eat here, breathe, sleep and dream Amherst. Privacy is often optional and, in the absence of it, the personal and the public are too easily confused. Whether it's exposed body parts or secrets we wish to keep, everything is fodder for the gossip mill. We might fool ourselves into thinking that we're alone, but we're not.
Take, for example, open windows and thin walls. Sound travels far more easily than you ever thought possible, and we can hear a lot more than you think. Take your cell phone outside to hold a private conversation? Consider everyone in the building behind you as a captive audience. Thin walls are another case of our false sense of privacy. Living in close quarters, we hear more than we want to: loud discussions, hammering nails, thumping basslines and thumping mattresses.
Lastly, there's planWorld. Remember the dying fad of the webpage? Well, it's here, vibrant, thriving and threatening to conquer every unoccupied moment. Despite the fact that we live a beer can's throw away from each other, despite AIM, e-mail and telephone, we feel this strange compulsion to communicate through plans. Call it narcissism, stalker-ism, lazy-ism, whatever, we feel the need to know what's going on. And now, you can e-mail gossip@planworld.net to anonymously inform others of hatching rumors. It's the Daily Jolt forum taken to a neo-powerful level. Great, now we have a way of accessing the gossip grapevine without the omnipresent posting of Five-College girls.
So, is this urgency to have the latest and greatest 411 the driving force for gossip? Or is it boredom? Whatever the cause, I confess that if gossip was made illegal, much of the amusement would be sucked out of daily life. I like to talk. We all do, but maybe we should all be a little more conscientious about what we say. We should all question the truth of a fantastic story before we repeat it mindlessly. But I won't lie; the next time I hear the words, "Did you hear about ... ?" I'll be curious.