Collusion: Part XXXV

The room stunk. It smelled like years and years worth of male sex hormones, plus no ones mom doing laundry for them.  There was something else though too… cumin? Coriander? Egg rolls?.... Perplexing.  That was the first thing I noticed. And then, Eric. He turned his thin vaguely Asian face away from the origami cranes he was hanging around the room. Hanging them here and there… wherever I suppose he thought one might walk into them.

“Hello.” He said.

“Hi.” I was dragging a duffle and shouldering a pile of clothes on hangers. It never crossed my mind back in those days to throw away clothes that didn’t fit properly or looked jarring. Consequently I nearly always dressed like I was going to clown school… For all intents and purposes… I suppose I was.

“Hi, “ I heard as well. This time from the chair by the desk. Justin was reading something… a small paper back. He had a round face and tightly curled blond/brown hair. You know, the kind that sometimes bi-racial children have.  Or baby Jews.

“How’s it going?” I grunted. I’d take the top of the double I guessed. There were no paper cranes there. 

I dragged my things in. Sweating. The room was stuffy. I would have suggested opening a window. But it was hot outside too. “Jesus, God,” I thought… “Why is it 1,002 degrees?… it’s May.”

I had signed on for a work stay over the summer. Mostly cause I was a stupid a-hole, who believed that there was such a thing as true love… and it could last through college and beyond. Even college at “Praise Yaweh University.”

I smirk as I write. Because 1. Nobody should be that stupid…. And 2…. Just see #1.

And also because I knew things had happened over the semester that I was ashamed of. I was… a kind of *gross* now. And I didn’t want to have to hide that from my family. I knew that they would be able to smell it on me… That going back would be crazy talk and that no amount restitutionary painting for 7 hours in the blazing sunlight would hide those facts from those people. My people. All the residents of crazy town.

I chatted with Eric and Justin. “Oh… yeah, looks like we’re going to be rooming together over the summer… oh… and looks like we’re chatting about it… “ Yawn.

I’d been fighting with X again. Yet another facet of my fantastical stupidity was that I had assumed that staying in Greenville over the summer would be seen as a kind of romantic gesture and that X would be shocked, amazed, and appreciative. Erp. NO! ROFL ROFL! No fucking way!

Another thing that I was stupid about in those days… Having tense conversations via SMS.

DON’T DO THAT IDIOTS! PICK UP THE PHONE AND HAVE AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION LIKE YOU’RE A GROWN UP!!

Sorry. Just… needed to yell.

I wish present me could flash back in time and just sort of float over ‘past me’s head in a small cloud with a gavel. I would plunk past me on the head and yell. “Gotcha Bitch!”

On second thought… Past me would have just gone in for psychiatric testing.

“Where are you working?” Eric had asked… I looked up from my phone, from yet another disappointing text message from X.

“Uh… Museum & Gallery”… I said vacantly. 

Eric glided over to one of his drawers. One that had been meticulously arranged and was filled with folding papers, saved discarded trinkets from Christ knows where… and I think cumin. At least that’s where it smelled like it was coming from.

Eric Inafuku is such a curious little man. He is so thin to the point that we must assume he has only ever eaten three grains of rice at each meal and he has a willowy tendency to move about a room with an uncommon fluidity.  I would learn later that this was due in part to his belief that he was in fact, a geisha… and partly because that’s just how Asians are.

“And you’re working….? Where?” I asked… for a moment distracted by his stealthy movement…

“At the press. I read things… Edit things…” I was mystified. And presently distracted from my worries over X.

“Things like?”

“Oh you know… Just things… This and that. Books. Text books.” He replied with a raised eyebrow as if to suggest that he could possibly be editing anything though…. Like perhaps even more risqué books… novels perhaps... or picture books perhaps…

I would grow to find that Eric was like this about a lot of things. Elusive. Evasive. It was going to be an interesting summer.

I was distracted again by my phone…

X: “All of this is just making me crazy…”

X: “I just don’t  think we should be together anymore.”

ME: “Are you joking? I mean I know maybe we’ve been spending too much time together… don’t you think that could be it?”

X: “Yeah I dunno I’m just tired of fighting.”

“Soooo… didn’t wanna go home over the summer?” The curly haired one asked. There was a lump in my throat.

“Yeah… I mean. No.” My voice was thick and wet and I was walking out of the room. I walked down the hall heading to the back of the building. Johnson was the largest of the dormitory buildings and two of it’s four story wings stretched backwards towards parking lots and the field house. There was a loading dock back there that I just sat down on the dock. I was dripping with sweat and I felt… so so empty.

Apparently I had just given up the next three months to live in a stinky box with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Curly Fries.

My phone was ringing… It was Dad.

D: “Hey my little fat buddy!”

Dad always called me this. I attribute two years of anorexia to it.

ME: “Hey…” My voice was flat and wet sounding.

D: “How ya doing?!”

ME: “Oh… well…. I’m alright….”

D: “What’s wrong bud?”

ME:  “Oh… I just have this feeling that I may be here for the wrong reasons… Can I just…. (Swallow) Call you back?”

D: “Yeah sure ok…”

I hung up and stared out at the heat waves rising up out of the asphalt parking lot. Cocked my head to the side as water slid out of my eyes and splashed onto the loading dock. I was quiet out there. I stayed there for an hour.

FACTion

Ok readers. You've heard great big gobs of what I've had to say for months and months. It's been my pleasure to invite you into my story and with any luck, you guys have been able to take away some laughs and some lessons.
We here at Salt, are excited to introduce another source of inspiration with a series we like to call... "FACTion."
Plenty of you have already heard about some of the things that I had to hide at school, what they costed me and why I did them... But lets be honest... I'm not alone. Truth is, if you've enjoyed reading about Collusion, it's probably because you have something to hide yourself.
That's the beauty of the new set of articles. "FACTion" sets out to demonstrate that there's a big difference from what's supposed to happen at school, and what actually does. Think of FACTion as a sort of Post Secret for BJU students. Only... cooler.

Hopefully some of you are already getting ideas :}

So here's how it works readers... I wanna hear from you. I want to interview you. Anonymously of course. The identities of all the applicants will be sworn to secrecy... names and places will be changed to protect the innocent... but all the same, your story gets told. I wanna hear about the things you've given up that you believed in. Lies you've told to protect your hard earned investment in your education...and of course which faculty members are closet alcoholics, and who's seducing who.

Gotya! You're smiling now! And you should be. This is gonna be fun.

If you or someone you know would like to be a part of FACTion, you can contact me...
at jmedl600@gmail.com Again, your privacy is of extreme importance to us, and you stories can make a difference. Catch me on twitter @SaltNSmoke #FACTion

Collusion: Part XXXIII

It was raining. Those slow... ridiculously mournful rains. The kinds in films about suicide, or genocide. Some sort of 'icide.' I had taken to being the consummate recluse. I had completely devoted myself to my studies, and piano. And to be honest, I was convinced that any day I was going to be called into the Dean of Men's office at school and explain to a perfectly awful stranger, how I wasn't a homosexual.

There was an alcove at the back of the museum that I was fond of. A wooden statue of the virgin Mary stood at the end of a very long very dark hall way. Rooms twisted and split off from it here and there. Here a place to sit... there an ancient set of panels from a church long sunken beneath the grass in eastern Germany. Rooms on and on forever. All half lit, and bruised with the deep reds and purples of thick thick carpet that ate up all the stray sound. I loved this place. I got paid to sit and study note cards for hours. Days on end. There were quite a bit of really great art too. There had already been that falling out with the rest of the members of the Senate, and as a result I had pulled back and cut off all contact with these malicious people. I reasoned that if I had been their friend for this long... and now they were after me... what next? Would they slap a jew? Would they eat their young? I couldnt tell.
So... I stayed away. I read things. I journaled ferociously. In various colors of metallic inks. Angry words. Bitter words. Wounded words. I should have felt sorry for Hannibal. Pressing and jabbing into his spine everything that made me uncomfortable. It wasn't a fair fight that's for sure.

I was terrified. What if... the worst came to the worst? What if... I was expelled? I'd be out a job. Out of an education... and ya know, with the gun slingers in my family ... out in the street.

There was a window that ran from floor to ceiling behind Mary. Double pained plate glass. The rain had caused most of the window to fog. The window was dressed in lengths of wine colored satin that dropped from the ceiling on either sides of the glass. The whole bit was impressive. Serene, I thought.  I stood there staring up at Mary. She'd been cut from wood some time ago, and was beginning to split down the back. No doubt the temperature and humidity had been something of a challenge throughout her life. A fight she wasn't really winning. She was painted. In dark night-black blues. Her face a pearl and varnish color. She looked so very removed. I wished I could have followed her down whatever paths she had taken...

I stood there for some minutes. My expression blank as I thought about all the things that had come to, in the past few weeks. How X and I needed back up plans. And plans to back up those back up plans... Weighing my options with numerous outcomes. At each turn of an idea, there would be another possibility that I hadn't thought of. A new piece of data to add to the algorithm. All of it... had left me... blank. I looked out at all of the limitations of my abilities. My finances and my emotional fortuity. Against it all I felt so very much like a sand castle. No one is just sure when it's going to get swept out. But... It's going to either way.

"Medhead."

I breathed in quick and deep as I heard her voice.

"What are you looking at?"

I didn't reply for a moment. "I was watching the water. It's beading up.... on the window..." I said. Still very much inundated with my own thoughts.

"I haven't heard much from you for a little bit... tell me. How have you been?"

I turned around to face her. Tall. Thin to distraction. Large oval eyes, with heavy lashes... doe-like and inquisitive. A pert face with perfect ivory skin and a tiny little mouth. She was beautiful. Everyone said so. Everyone. And no one could argue. It's just what she was. She always kept a ratty little hair cut that you couldnt decide was more mod, or more lesbian. And she dressed like a gypsy.
Today though she was all in black as dress code required. Her name is Louretta.

"I've... just." I was terrified of this girl. This girl with her mind and her wit. He attention to detail and the sorts of questions she asked. In truth there was a time when I had felt such a kind-ship with her. I loved how painstakingly intelligent she was... How actively her mind begged her to create and how easily she slid from one social group to the next. But as I would learn later, that is precisely what a moth feels before it scuffs a flame and becomes a cinder.

"I've been trying to keep up with my practice regiment." I pushed out. Putting all of my secret thoughts away... far far back on the shelves in case she could read minds as well as she could read a face.

Louretta reminded me of the girl that I had seen in my dreams the other night. They were both thin with razor sharp chin bones.

There were many afternoons since she and I had the fortune to become gallery guards here in meandering halls of the museum, that we would chat pleasantries. We had made a game of things. Surrounded by so much opulence, we had imagined ourselves to be courtesans. The gentility of our conversation was as tedious and as thick as the tapestries that hung mute from the walls and passed silent judgment over the modern era.

We talked about poetry. About what she was working on in her creative writing classes. About her boyfriend Ronny. About whatever. But not so today. Today words had reached her. Today the pleasantries had a different bent. And… what was that new scent that she was wearing? It smelled like…. Malice.

“You’ve seemed different lately…” She said. Leaning gracefully on a door jam. The cocked her head a bit to the side and pouted a little bit. “You’ve been quiet. It’s not like you.”

Louretta had grown up in Britain. A missionaries child, and every now and then to add salt to her conversation, she allowed a bit of this accent to peak out from behind her vowels. She thought, I believed that it added an aristocratic edge to her presence. And you know, at the time it was a bit intimidating. Whenever she was around I felt too small for my clothes. And I fidgeted ever so slightly with my hair.

“I’ve been thinking about things. Ya know, and practicing an awful lot. I have deadlines… and I’m worried about not meeting them.” I offered fingering the flash cards that I had brought along. 

“Well that’s a very wise of you to devote so much time to your studies. I wish I could boast such fortitude.” She said. She always spoke this way. As if an encyclopedia had slipped on ballet flats and started menstruating.

“Don’t you think you should be investing in a small group of friends? You know, people that you may stay in touch with after school is over?” She asked as she began walking heel-to-toe in a pattern on the thick carpet. She had let those British vowel sounds peek out when she said “you know…” I sighed.

“I would if I found there was anyone worth putting any time into. I would if I felt… certain liberties that do not exist in this… penitentiary.” I offered back to this bleak little fish… swimming in circles in the hall.

“Ah…” “Oh I see,” She said. She stopped her walking for a moment and raised one eye and looked at me. Then she went back to walking.

I had no idea who she’d been speaking to. And like I said. The Senate had wasted no time in speaking their minds about my relationships. Why is everyone so interested in penetration? Who’s getting it. Who’s doing it. So very carnal. People are crass. Especially college kids. Especially college kids who haven’t gotten any in a while.

“Something just seems changed in you… Something’s different.” She continued. Half to herself. I was begging to be a bit tried of her. “Something’s gone.” And with this she looked dead at me. Oh Louretta. Always with the flair for drama.

I have to say, If it was anyone else with these vague concerns. These ominous observances that seem like the types of things  you might say to a stranger after you had tossed a bunch of chicken bones and read their fortune, I wouldn’t have minded. Mostly I wouldn’t have listened. But this was someone different. Someone I felt I could… trust.  

“It’s your eyes.”

“What?” I asked…

“You’re eyes.” She said. “They’re all black now… They used to be green…. There used to be light in them, and now… there’s nothing.”

“Oh…” I guess I hadn’t noticed.

There was a sound of a group coming in the hall. We moved back into the positions we were expected to hold. Statues in black suit coats. Arms folded behind our backs.

I was boiling with mute anger. Someone had spoken to her.

Black eyes. What did she know. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing.

And if there was… I didn’t want to fix it.