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.
