Collusion: Part XXXVI

What is the human condition? Lately that's all I think about. I don't mean to sound like a stoner. I promise. But the more I think about it, the more I have to say... everything's relative. I'm not talking fringe science or family trees. I'm talking about trajectory. The likelihood that person 'A' will achieve wealth, progeny or perhaps dare I even suggest... popularity. Or to what degree a person would consider said person 'A' would consider a certain amount of pain 'excruciating' and how that's different for every person. I'm only thinking about these things because I was training for a marathon in February. I've been tricked into it by my run partner. She did the NYC a month ago or so. I wonder if I'm capable of those distances. I mean... It has to be like everything else right? You can do it... it just depends how much of yourself you're willing to give away to do that.

I've always thought that the amount of yourself that you're willing to throw into something is the driving factor in the trajectory of our achievements. And it is the degree of cost that we find   outlandish that differs person to person. There are other tangents to consider. But let's be honest... Most people earn what they get and the people that haven't should be shot in public. Or maybe lynched. Maybe I could head an advisory board for lynchings. For worthless people. I digress.

I was signed up for it. Tom Grimble didn't even ask me if it was ok. He said I should do it, and that it would give me a chance to debut the Tan Dun pieces. I dragged a bag of books into his office. His office that always smelled like melted vanilla wax and carpet cleaner. All around the room was little decorative trinkets that previous students had gotten for him. Tacky cursivy things. Thank you for this. We love you for that. I judged him for those trinkets.

"How are you today Josh?" He asked as I came in and plunked my bag on one of the chairs by the wall. "You look... tired."

I wanted to thank him for his observation. How between working full time, and part time grad work, and living thirty minutes from school I hadn't quite had the luxury of waking each morning at 9 am to the paper and a soft boiled egg.

"I'm..... alright." I said rather disinterestedly. "It's... my schedule is tight. Ya know."

"How are things?... With work?" He asked. Tom is such a curious man to describe. He had grown one of those Italian mustaches long ago in the 90's and for whatever reason allowed it to reside on his face. He's one of those larger people, that have an odd grace and fluidity to their movements about a room. So much so that I often thought to myself, that Tom Grimble moved about like the a cloud... Like the Holy Spirit who led the Children of Israel by day through the desert to the promised land.
He was desperately interested in my personal life. Who was I dating. How my job was going. You know, I can't really knock him for that. He was trying to do his job well. He was trying to be a nice guy. He's one of the few people from school that I think wanted me to be happy. Who had thought through what it may be like for me not to be happy.

"I want you to perform for Mrs Gingery. She's doing a work shop this weekend. Are you working Saturday?"

"I.... " thought through my obligations. I was in the middle of memorizing. I would spend an hour on a page. Close the book and try to play through the page without looking. One page at a time. One piece at a time. Performance time was close to an hour. That meant six months of memorization for me. 2 Hours a day with the piano. Me. The piano and a book.
"I think I'm not working until later that after noon? Tell me about Mrs. Gingery..."

"Well" He was checking his email with his back to me. "She's retired from the music faculty here. I want you to play Tan Dun for her. The pieces haven't premiered at this school, and I think she could be very interested to hear them." Tom always spoke with a kind a lethargy. Due in part to acute back pain from a horrible fall some time ago, and also... That's just how musicians are. They speak as if they are imparting the divine secrets of the universe. It's something that happens as a result of whispering to one another during performances.

"I guess I can do it.."
"Well of course you can do it."

"I'm... just not so sure about some of the rhythms on this page..." I pointed to a folio I pulled out of my book sack. "I've been listening to the recordings for days... and I still don't think I'm getting it right. Can we look at it?" I wouldn't have been happy half-assing it. Workshop or no. Music school is like a quiet pageant. We each take our turns performing at different venues. There are those who get nods from teachers... and there are those who don't.

"Listen. I can't be there either. I'd like to go to introduce you to Mrs. Gingery, but there will be two others from the studio there. She's a lovely woman."

We spent the rest of the hour after praying briefly re-working the rhythm of the first page of the Tan Dun. 8 Memories in water color. Delicate and precise little wood cuts of pieces. Dun had said enough, but not too much. The works were sharp, and they turned quickly from one idea to another. They rushed about spilling money in the street and ending quietly... stealthily even. Reworking the piece was tant-amount to pulling the stitching out of a garment because a line wasn't correct... and re-stitching by hand. Think about teaching yourself to type all over again if the letters swam around and re-organized themselves at will. That's it.

The day was at hand. I was going to be late as well. I tripped up the steps to Stratton Hall and nearly ran around the corner into David Landon who was skittering off on his lanky legs heading towards the Dinning Common.
"Hey Med-head! Just you watch where you're going!" Nasal tall person voice.
"Shut up Landon. Im late for a show."

I was trying to do some sort of controlled panting as I closed the door to the Orchestra Room. There was a echoing 'chunk' from my closing the door and the sound bounced around the room. Eight students sat in chairs around the piano and Mrs Gingery stood one small white hand rested on the piano. She looked exactly like Mrs. Doubtfire. Every last hair. The voice was different though. She was of course a musician. She breathed sunlight from the mountains.

"Mr. Medlin. Will you please come sit down? We're just going to go around the room. And discuss each piece as we come to it." She said this quietly and here eyes sparkled in a watery old-person kind of way.

Each of my associated took there turns. Chin held high. Elbows up. Perfect. Perfect.
As my turn came, I slunk to the piano and announced my piece. Gave a brief description of the artist and genre. Sat down and began. Clipped through the piece like a pony at the state fair.

There was a little stretch where I was applauded. Just a little one.
Then Mrs Ginger began to speak.
"Well... There's certainly some explaining to do here!" She chuckled a little.
"Oh?" I said... I could feel 16 eyes on me. The room was hot. Suddenly.
"Did you perhaps notice... " she began again... "That here and here," She pointed with a red pen... "you botched the triplet patterns."
"Oh?" I felt like I was getting smaller. Like I was shrinking into the leather bench. My eyes widened and my vision glossed. This was gonna be bad.


I was right. It was bad.


She kept on talking. About how my tone was too dry. How my articulation could have been tighter. How if I had been an adequate student I might have performed well. How one day I would ascend to the great heights that she had. As she spoke in my mind she walked up steps... up a high mountain of judgement. And.. I guess I deserved it.

I hadn't prepared like I wanted to. I hadn't checked my performance against a metronome. I wasn't a serious artist. I was a hack. I was a hack in front of 8 of my peers.

Later that week I consulted with Tom. We talked about how I got lynched. And why.
He and I worked it over again. Cut the stitches. Pulled out the thread. Re-stitched the entire piece. Sewed it back together like it should have been.

Later that week, I wrote a piece myself. I learned what it meant to place a tempo as you intended it. Rests where you wanted them to be. And pitches exactly perfect. And then it made sense.

Composers weren't doing this because they wanted to be assholes. They didn't write things because they wanted you to be gap faced at their magnificence. (I'm talking about everyone but Franz Liszt. He was an attention whore. ) They wanted you to feel what they felt about a sound. They wanted you to be convinced that a sound was just as beautiful as they thought it was. They wanted you to believe I think that for a moment, you weren't listing to music. You were listening as an Artist called down sunlight from the mountains, and imparted the divine secrets of the universe.

Collusion: Part XXX

Circle. Moon. Earth. Symbolic of an extraterrestrial sort of intelligence. Thought patters run in them. All sustainable systems burn in cycles. Perhaps the incidents that come to have the most meaning in our lives are those moments when a tangent forces the end of a cycle… and then enacts permanently bonded change. A mother gives birth. Your dog gets hit by a truck as you look on. You remember exactly the moment when… she broke your heart.

But which patterns are healthy ones? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I have to share reader, that I find writing be a little tangent for me. I can almost hear a bottle cap pop when I begin. Though really Im never precisely certain what Ill be pouring one day to the next. Water? Or Sweet Tea? Blackberry wine? Or Jack? Or Pepsi? To some degree or another. Who cares? I’m dumping shit out.

As I have to some degree waxed nostalgic of a late… I’ll follow this path for a time. As I have mentioned before I was quite a voracious reader as a child. The tiny dusty white library was in St. Matthews. A short drive into town would bring me within reach of the thing that I craved most. Knowledge. It felt more intimate than the sort of statistics that you rattle off when you’re trying to be impressive though. It felt like I could leave the dirt roads and wet heat and soy bean fields beneath me and I could float up and up… To every which way but back down. 

The librarians were a mysterious thing to me. Most of the were nearly fallen into their tombs with age, and their accents were all something Mayberry. I had heard their names many times, but that always slipped my mind when Mom would take us by the place. I was rather a shy child. And you know, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. I suppose at the time I was uncomfortably aware of it though. I always wondered what others thought of me.

My Mother was very scrupulous of what she allowed me to check out from the library. She understood that books are just as dangerous as a loaded gun in the night stand. Perhaps more so. Books are tangents also. The books that we had laying around the house had been read and re read and I arrived at the feeling of curiosity about what other books might have to say. I had first thought that all the reading in our little white library might be only more of the same as what we had at home. Or that the books in the little white library would be a reflection of the building itself. That they would be sinless… sturdy… dusty. This was not so. I’d sooner vote republican.

I chose the books that I brought up to the counter judiciously. Weighing carefully the likely hood that Mom would read the spine, or not be over fond of the cover… and tell me to put it back. I didn’t really understand why should would find some in poorer taste than others… but who can say why, at that age mothers do what they do. Mothers are arbitrary.

Along and Along as we made more trips to and from the little white library I noticed that mom was paying less attention to the books I picked out. She would perhaps be using the computers, or talking with a librarian. And then of course there was John and Beth to be concerned about. I saw an opportunity to use less discretion in my selections… and so I decided to do just that. It was as much fun as throwing glitter.

I was a stealthy thing though. Hmmmm yes. I would pick two or so boring books that I knew Mom would find appropriate… and then slide something in between them. Whichever one I found most intriguing. The one that I would read thirstily and blithely ignore the others. Once I found a treasure trove of a read in Anne Rice’s ‘The Witching Hour.’ So adeptly sensuous. So filled with over wrought emotion. Fantastical tales about witchcraft. And… And women. And shockingly vivid vampires… and sex. There were so many things I thought I understood about the story when I read them. Rice painted. She worked for those words and that story. This little boy thought she was some sort of genius of the criminal mastermind variety.

There were other books too. There was one titled ‘speak.’ It was by some somebody that I cant remember. In it I was introduced to a 9^th grade girl. Something was very wrong with her… but I couldn’t tell what. This girl didn’t pray or go to church or anything. She cried often, and hardly spoke to anyone at school. She cut herself sometimes. Turns out though it made sense by the end of the book. She had been raped by one of her peers in a broom closet at school. The closing scenes were fantastic! She fought the boy, with his wanton and filthy desires… he was chocking her… and he pushed her head hard into a mirror. It broke. As the fight moved to the floor she snatched a shard of the thing and stabbed that horrible boy in the neck. And ya know? Good for her! I wanted to give her a hug…

I drank up Tolkien. All the way to the Silmarillion. Which didn’t make a lick of sense until I read it again. It was an intoxicating story of … well a sort of retelling of the Greek myths with name changes.

Dickenson. Shakespeare. Blake. Emmerson. Shelly. Some Bible.

I replicated this process innumerable times. I longed to feel… beyond. And so I did. Each new story began something. The marks that those books left on me are permanent.

I wonder if I still have anything that’s due.

Collusion: Part XX

Saturdays would come around at school and I couldn't be more relieved. It was the one day during the week when it almost didn't matter what I did that day. I would end up having dinner with the clan and then spending the rest of the night practicing in the big gray fine arts building either way... getting there early so that i could commandeer whichever piano I had taken a liking to. Every piano has a different personality. A different way of talking. Some of them have been played for half a century and had their keys worn until there are almost imperceptible concave depressions along the center of each one. You might not be about to feel these depressions unless you were blind or perhaps a shade visually impaired, and you could almost certainly not see them, but they were there. Some had complicated etched patters in front of the key bed where over the years a nail would catch on the shiny wood and chip away a little of the veneer. Microscopic evidence of human interaction. No piano has a life apart from human interaction... and if they do, they fall short of their purpose. Pianos are not so different from us. Some come from wealthy families and never have to work for a living. Some of them get handed off from one slip-shod attempt at a young child's musical education to another. Some are even relics of a time before itunes changed music from a participatory pass time that knitted together a culture, to an alienating insulation to pad our interior worlds. Earbuds. Skull candy. Independent listeners. Loners, stoners, and dancers. But most importantly... alone. Some pianos, but rarely mind you, develop an affinity to a particular performer. Through hours and hours that they spend together they learned about one another. Pianists are a different kind of musician. They're not like violinist, or cellists, or even wind players. They can't develop monogamous relationships with their instruments. Sadly a piano you've developed a friendship with just can't be carried around with you. No matter how much you've enjoyed the amber-rose colored resonance that you could coax from the rich velvety keys south of C3, and no matter how much you get goose bumps from the quick and flawless Japanese action... unless you're touring in concert and have money to burn, you have to move on. Maybe to have a few short hours to get to understand a few of the subtleties of a new partner before displaying your work together. Its sad. And I speculate that it's why pianists hold romantic commitment in high regard.

I had favorites. I can't lie. I was more than partial to the flawless action of a Yamaha, and I couldn't have cared less that it was a fat little studio model. It responded to me. None of that messy worn out soft-hammered Kawai nonsense. I wanted crisp responsiveness. I was a demanding little prick, and couldn't just work with any old keyboard. As it was, my favorite was different from all of the other pianos in the fine arts building. I didn't have permission to practice on it because it was intended only for performances. More than once though I was chased out of the room, offering excuses to the pudgy female hall monitor. It was an inky black 9 foot Steinway. Worn and tuned to a certain kind of perfect. You could feel how much work it had done by running your finger along the simple curves of its body. It was kept elevated off of the white laminated floors on a low wheeled steel frame, so it could be easily moved about the building. The room was large and diamond shaped. The same room we'd had Introduction to Music Literature in. The place had a much different feeling after dark though. Devoid of all the students and the shifting white noise that they make. Papers shuffling and the scuff of bags and purses on the floor. None of that after eight pm. It was empty. Soulless. Begging to be filled with sound. The most perfect acoustics... when you stood in the room with its white white walls and empty chairs all around you could feel something that was a rare delight at school here. Absolute quiet.

I would slip in some nights when the room wasn't being used for rehearsals. I would just flip on one row of lights. A simple dance with a silent partner. It was delicious... to fill up that empty lonely room with Mozart. With Beethoven. With Bach. And listen for the ever so slight reverberation at the pitches of that perfect tuning rolled off the reflective surfaces in the room. I was my own little secret Mecca. I offered up romance and ancient glamor and heart rending stories to a blank room; I loved it all the same.... even more so because there was no one to listen but me.

This particular Saturday I had decided to go to the mall by myself. Christine and I weren't getting along. It seemed like all she wanted to do was tell me how much she hated he dad, and how much she was afraid of failing platform, and sometimes she liked to talk about the slut bucket girls that lived on her hall. I would sit across from her and listen and poke at my salad during a meal, waiting for the endless complaining to stop. But apparently she would not be ebbed. She didn't like Melodie. She hated having to tell people that I wasn't a fag. She wasn't even hungry. She was thinking about dying her hair. She didn't like what she had picked out to wear to the next Artist Series. It was enough to make me research pipe bombs on the internet.

So to the mall I went. I realized how slightly antisocial I might have seemed to climb on the white bus that ran too and from the mall all day and sit by myself and watch the buildings and roads pass as the buss creaked and moaned its way to the stores. But it was nice. To wander into a sea of people that saw you but didn't notice or care who you were or what you looked like. It was soothing. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I wanted to be invisible.

I found the nearest Hot Topic and bought black and white checkered shoe laces. A pin for the school bag that said something ironic, and then headed back to my room.

Roland was there getting ready for soccer practice. You know, putting on those awful looking knee socks.

JR: "Hey man! What's up? How's your day going."
ME: "Its fine I guess, Ill get to get a lot of practice done tonight." Roland had a knack for making conversation about nothing... and then making it drag on.
JR: "Yeah, I'm super pumped about our game tonight! Ya coming to the game?"
ME: "I don't usually go to the games. It's loud and I don't like soccer."
JR: "It could be good for ya! You should come! You can't just practice all the time!"
ME: "Yes. Yes... I can. And I don't think it's necessary for me to fake entertainment in a communal activity to achieve diversion. I have sufficient supply of diversion."
JR: (Shakes his head lacing up a shoe.) "Dude. You gotta relax some time."
I disagreed with him, but decided not to labor the point. I pulled out a pair of my chucks and started to replace the laces with the ones that I had gotten at the mall, tossing the black shiny bag from Hot Topic onto the floor.
Roland gave a hawk-like glance to the bag. Then sniffed the air, as if expecting a stench.
JR: "Those are some pretty interesting shoe laces ya have there.... " He started in. What now. Christ.
ME: "Yeah.... they help keep my shoes on my feet. That's incredibly interesting."
JR: "Where did you get them?" He prodded, ignoring my attempt at humor.
ME: "Oh... It's a novelty store called Hot Topic..." I said gesturing to the bag on the floor. "Have you heard of it?" (Polite smile.)
JR: "Yeah.... " His voice thickened with concern. "Are you sure that's the best place for you to be shopping?"
ME: "Well I think there are places that are certainly less likely to fill my specific needs. Such as, Catherine's Plus Sizes."
JR: (Un-amused) "Isn't Hot Topic black listed?"
ME: "What is 'black listed'?"
JR: "I thought Hot Topic was on the list of unapproved places to shop?" Wholesome concern showing on his face.
ME: "Have you ever even been in a Hot Topic?"
JR: "Yeah. I went in one, one time. They sell pornography."
I controlled my amusement. Even though I wanted to double over with laughter. The idea that pornography could be legally vended in a public mall was about as likely as milking butterflies for profit.
ME: "Well I looked all over the store and couldn't find any pornography...." Smirking.
JR: "I'm just concerned. As your rooms spiritual leader I want to help you move in healthy directions."
I could hardly believe the gall of this creature...
ME: "Well thankyou, Roland dear.... but I promise not to start killing hookers and abusing heroine on the weekends if that makes you feel any better."
JR: "Ha...." (un convinced.) "Well we can talk about it some more tonight...."
ME: "oh kay!" I replied with mock interest and headed off to practice. Chuckling.

Collusion: Part XVII

Summer met me when I got home. With hot sticky arms outstretched... welcoming me back to everything I loved the best. To the broad sands of the piedmont. South Carolina's midlands. Long needle pines everywhere and acres and acres of farm land with fresh corn sprouting up and coming now to about 3 feet tall. My brother and I could go back to spending hours and hours loudly challenging one another to passionate and violent games of Super Smash Brothers Melee.
Perhaps the most perfect multi-player video game of its time for venting sibling rivalry... and destroying the boredom that is understood to accompany living in the middle of a forest. It was certainly more entertaining than collecting four leaf clovers and looking for gnomes. Characters from at least a decade of different Nintendo games all got together and tried to punch and kick each other off of a stage... flinging lighting bolts and rocket punches. Hours and hours I spent with my brother challenging him to face my undeniable prowess. We had played so much that the joysticks on the handsets were starting to become less responsive due to repetitive motion wearing.

"Oh Oh! Right.... now you trash talkin! What about that!!??" John would yell quickly laying 80 or so damage points on me in a skillfully played chain attack which ended in his guiding Luigi to do a back flip and punt my poor little Pikachu skyward. It was at those precise moments that I realized exactly how invested in these little matches I was... and an little vein would pulse at my temple. I've never liked losing. Which is to say... I rather enjoy severing my falling opponent's head, and displaying them on stakes along the side-walk in front of my home. I liked playing with Pikachu. In the game he was one of the smallest and fastest characters... and could pull lightning out of the sky. I strangely identified with this powerful little creature, who looked about as dangerous as a kitten... but was actually quite a challenging opponent. Game play was almost always loud, and neither of us really ever blinked during a match. My devotion to winning was more than a hair psychotic and I'm sure that thousands of my healthy neurons are now crawling around my head... with broken backs and sprained ankles. 
"Oh! Whatever! Come one! Best two-outta -three!!!???" I demanded as John leaned back on his bean-bag chair obviously content with his victory.
"Why? It's not like you're gonna win?" He shot back, but played me again anyway. This was how a large portion of my leisure time was spent. Wasted time perhaps... but at least it was positive interaction with one of my family members. Im betting I could still challenge my brother to one of those games, and I think he'd probably play.

My days stared early. Six or so.... Id get up while it was still cool and damp in the morning and head over to my neighbors house to climb into his huge white utility truck. Ed Sweatman owned a painting and repair business and had enlisted the help of myself and my brother to repaint apartments after a tenant had moved out. The complex was not aging gracefully. We took the hour drive to big dirty Columbia and Hampton Courts, which sighed and creaked towards collapse. Eddie is a broad shouldered man of a perpetual crew cut and nefarious past. He was incredibly hard working. He had to be. He had three kids. Twins and a little chatter box named Brelynn. (Bree-lin) His wife Samantha was a short little wisp of a lady who stayed home and took care of the kids, her advanced degrees from Columbia College not withstanding. They lived right next door and our two families sort of formed a little village, switching houses to have dinner in a couple of times a week.

The ride to work was more or less un-eventful. Somewhere along the way Eddie (who we referred to as Mr. Eddie... its South Carolina y'all.) would either discover a liter sized Mountain Dew that he had brought along, or we'd stop ad some petrol station for it. It was essential that he have this in the morning. I am convinced that the majority of his central nervous system was mostly built from components in the urine colored soda. I was content with coffee. Black.... and too hot to drink more of a 1/18th of an ounce of at a time, with great caution. It was understood that we would not speak to one another, and that no great noises would be created until Eddie had consumed at least half of his urine soda and one or two of the doughnut cakes that he had brought along in a little cellophane package. The dark lord 'Little Debbie' and her consorts had spent years perfecting the recipe for these particular chocolate covered doughnuts, and they had been scientifically engineered to shave a decade off a typical human life span.

We would arrive at the complex and wait in the truck while Eddie would go into the club house with the pool around back, and the vapid, overly manicured secretary and get a list of the apartments that were empty and needing re-painting. And then off we would truck to the building in question. Unloading gray five gallon buckets full of sand colored paint. They were heavy. You had to get used to the weight. An awkwardly large pneumatic paint sprayer. The machine had a very precise fan of spray... it would make a particular glick-glick-glick sound as it sucked the latex paint into its bowels and every now and then the air compressor would click on and roar for a while. We had pretty much accepted tasks that we were each supposed to fulfill in the each little empty house. After John had stretched and awakened from his slumber in the back of the truck, (he almost always slept on the way to work.) he'd start taping everything off and taking off outlet plates and throwing them in the sink. Sometimes we found things that the tenants had left behind. Once a love letter. A little green stone Buddha statue once. Things college kids leave behind. There were quite a lot of USC students who stayed there during the school year, but would move back home after the school year was over. Leaving behind little pieces of their lives. An earring. A bean-bag chair. Panties. Hair brushes. And even less pleasant things. What an odd way for humans to live, I remember thinking, living so close to people they don't really care to know. In a hive. It seemed unnatural to me.

The days would get hotter and hotter as summer pushed towards its apex. Every day dense sticky wet heat that rolled in from Charleston and didn't cool down as it past through the pine trees and over the sandy fields. Without fail, at atleast one point during the long summer we would have to scrape and re-paint the decorative wrought iron fencing around the pool and by some of the main entrances. The spindles in the rails were about the size of your smallest finger, and they stretched a distance of seemingly 300 miles around the pool. First we'd take metal brush scrapers and try to knock off as much of the cracked old paint that we could. The next step was to coat small paint rollers with an oily so green-that-its-nearly-black paint. The hours I spent on those railings were excruciating. And I would always tackle the task with the equivalent angst you might find in any song by Evanescense. Think 'the open door' album. The ambient heat would dry the viscous inky paint on the hot metal within hours. Irreversible skin damage has been done due to the amount of time I spent in the sun. This is how mexicans must feel. Poor mexicans. 18 year olds will do anything for a buck. It's probably because of these summer times that I lack respect for any able bodied person who lets their parents buy things for them. I reason that they should still let their parents change their underpants after an 'wiw axi' and stick a pacifier in their mouth whenever something doesn't go their way. Worthless slothful miscreants.

This was how that first summer past. With that particular rhythm. Sometimes we would hike out to a pond nearby and go swimming because we just couldn't abide the tropic heat anymore. I kept up a little with people from school... but not a lot. I talked to Christine often. Mostly just let the quiet routine of work and sleep wash over me and heal the little bumps and nicks that school scratched in my soul... Sand and heat and pine trees are good medicine. Oh, and sometimes swimming in ponds.

Collusion: Part XVI

It snowed that spring. So unusual for our state. Our state which is so much the more famous for philandering republicans and topless biker rallies in Myrtle Beach. Classes were canceled for that day. All the gang got together and scraped snow off of cars to throw it at each other in parking lots. Snow isn't something Im used to seeing. Being from south-central SC means that I could have potentially interacted with snow about once in a decade... and the last time I had seen 4 inches or so... was never. Im sure the other members of the gang must have found my child-like delight with the stuff.... juvenile. But I was a long ways from caring, and was the main instigator in all of the snow time mischief.

The campus is such a different place covered in snow, and unfettered by academic constraints. Especially the kind of snow that we get in the south.... short lived and muddy looking four hours after it's fallen. All of the sculpted hedges which under during normal weather look so perfect; Stately even, in the snow they look foolish and comic. Garish characterizations of themselves. The sidewalks which were so clearly defined before became a patchwork of dirty browns and asphalt. Icicles don't always hang from ledges in pristine and exact repetition. Nature mocks us. Nature knows no morality.

I believed very strongly in right and wrong. I believed that my heart was desperate, and wicked... and that as a person I should seek the restraints of Christianity if i was every going to find and sustain happiness. Although now that I think about it... at the time, whether i was aware of it or not.... Id never experienced long-term unhappiness. I hadn't experienced very much at all. Who knows why I believed these things. I mean... doubtless hundreds of thousands of hours of Sunday school and Bible studies could have had something to do with it. Maybe it could have been because my father was so passionate about keeping me out of trouble. Away from alcohol and loose women. So passionate about all this so that I wouldn't make the same mistakes that he had. I knew he felt like this.... Ive known it since I was very young. I felt the tension and power that high expectations can have on a person. Even from my earliest childhood memories I recall a singular concept. "Holiness leads to Happiness." The more that we can separate ourselves unto mystic hebrew god.... the more we can lead fulfilling lives. This is exactly what I aspired to. I wanted this contentment. Even though, oddly enough, I wasn't discontent.

It was after dinner on a cold February evening. I wasn't more than 16 years old. My brother John, and sister Beth were milling about, 14 and 12 respectively. Something was wrong with the parents. They weren't making their usual in-roads into popcorn production and television before bed. They had an announcement.... and so gathered us children together. We took places in the dinning room using chairs from around the table or standing curiously beside them. My dad is a short stout man. Given to loudness and being opinionated. He likes firearms to distraction... and at any given time has 186 long guns, and a smattering of handguns that he shuffles through his collection by selling them off to rural people who like killing woodland creatures for sport. He's not a man to be trifled with. He pulled up his chair for his announcement, and mom took her place behind him at his right shoulder.

"There's something that your mom and I have been needing to tell you kids for a while." He started in. I had never seen him unsure of anything he had to say... and was almost immediately struck by the comedy of this 'intervention' style announcement.
"Back a long time before i was saved... when I was 20... I made some bad decisions. I got a girl pregnant, and we got married. We had a daughter. Her name is Heather. I think you met her one time, Josh, at MawMaw's house. She's all grown up now." (Saved is the term that persons in our particular stripe of religion use to signify the moment that we aligned ourselves with the saving blood of christ... and began following the teachings of mystic hebrew god.)
We all just stared at them blankly. We are all brown eyed children, and as such I imagine that a unified stare from the three of us might have looked a bit soul-less and creepy. Dad had rubbed his knees and coughed in one of those gestures of tense discomfort.
"Oh wait... wasn't she that cheerleader girl? The one that was in college?" I asked... I had remembered meeting someone at my Dad's Mom's house years and years ago... and for whatever reason instantly thought of her.
"Yeah.... that was her. I think you were only six then. You remember that?" Dad returned.
The other children were as silent as lambs. I can only assume that they didn't know how to react. Or in the case of my brother... didn't feel led to react. My brother is a follower.
For seconds we all just sat there.
"We wanted to tell you... before you heard it from someone else. Other people know about her. People in the church. All the deacons know about it. We needed to tell them so they wouldn't be surprised about me being divorced." Dad continued on with his heavy southern accent. He plodded forward... telling us about what he considered the biggest mistake of his life. I found my footing rather quickly. Even at sixteen I had a tongue like a knife.
"So.... why did you wait until now to tell us? When other people know about it? When quite alot of other people know about it?" I asked. Not angry... just blank. Logical. Curious. Who was this girl. And why hadn't i been allowed to have contact with an older sister who was obviously cool enough to be a cheerleader.
"We wanted to wait until you were old enough to understand. Sometimes... Even grown-ups make mistakes.... We do things that we wish we hadn't." My mom cut in... sensing that she could phrase the answer better. She took a tone that she might have used to explain the method of discovering the surface area of a rectangle.
"But... didn't you think we would understand before now? I mean... Im... nearly sixteen." I countered... Immediately finding flaws in their reasoning, as all clever children are want to do with their parents.
It was hard to argue with that reasoning... even though it seemed like the worst timing ever. A new CSI was coming on tonight... and you know I bet no one was going to feel like watching it now. I loved CSI. Everyone was so stylish and intelligent on that show. And they solved the most complicated crimes in 45 minutes. Props CSI. Props.
Well I did perhaps the most irrational thing that anyone in my situation could have done. I didn't reassure my Dad that we didn't think any less of him for the deception. I didn't remind him that we all still loved him and thought that every word that dropped from his lips was weighty and truthful. I laughed! One of those short little.... "Oh my gosh! I got it!" laughs. My father had a secret life! One that he didn't like... and one that he had clearly wiped clean like a chalk-board and started over with mom. And then with us. Wow.

I was probably this revelation that brought about the most fundamental change in my reasoning. A secret life! How exotic! How.... romantic! And so very close to home. In-fact. In my home. It was all so magically laughable. And.... as I've stated... Laugh I did. They didn't understand my wonder and fascination with it all. They told me I shouldn't laugh. It was a serious matter.
"Oh.... well. Sorry." I said. But I couldn't wipe the comedy out of my expression. Especially my eyes.

I learned then that the truth is a much more nebulous concept than my sixteen year old mind had allowed for. That my parents were complicated persons of depth and mystery. And most importantly... they were without a doubt. Human. Their judgment was compromised. I couldn't say with 100% accuracy that they would always be right. I was time to start questioning everything.... and making choices for myself.

Toggle back to the end of the school year in 2004. Everyone was heavy with the desire to get the school year over with. I had packed all of my belongings into the suburban. That hulking vehicle. I was absolutely ecstatic with the idea of staying at home... away from here for a few months. I'd had enough of all of the fake friendliness and all to real discrimination. It had been a few weeks since I had poisoned Ramon's hair product. The effects were plainly visible. The tips of his hair were turning beige-orange. He had begun to notice too. I can't deny the pure delight I had to mask when he asked me if i noticed it too.
"I don't get it? It mus be this campus water mayn? What would make my hair do dis yoshie?" He had asked one night in the week before school ended. Ramon could not pronounce and english 'j'.... and so always had used the name of a Nintendo character. Almost endearing if I haddn't been convinced he was an evil serpent.
"Dude... I don't even know. You have to be careful what kinds of shampoo you use... and there's alot of chlorine in city water in the US." I would shrug and stare at him wide eyed.

All of my things were tucked away safely in the suburban. I knew that sooner or later he would have caught on to what i was doing. Low IQ, does not equal no IQ. I had left one bag of mostly pencils, pens and notebooks in my room. It was the last thing I'd have to retrieve before walking away from school. I thought about that bag as I sat through the graduation service. I sat with friends but thought how that one item of my personal belongings was left un-protected from last minute pranking. As soon as the service was over I ran back to the room to find no-one there.... but in the middle of the floor, there was that little brown canvas bag. Someone had up-ended an entire bottle of hair gel on it. Poop.

I scraped off what I could and joined my family for the trip home. "What's that on you're bag?" Mom had asked as I climbed into the car looking slightly angry and perhaps a little odd. I was still wearing the suit that was required for the end of year services... and carrying a canvas bag covered in blue goop. "Oh... it's.... nothing. I accidentally broke open a bottle of hand sanitizer on it...?" I said un-convincingly. They didn't challenge my story. I asked that we stop at a little community car-wash that we saw on the way home. So i could spray the bag off. I dumped the contents of the bag out in the floor board and marched over in my suit to ask a stranger if I could borrow her hose pipe. I did so with an un-blinking expression and the tone of voice that suggested i was on an important mission for MI6.
We drove home and talked of other things and I closed the door on the cubicle that I had put bullies in. Goodbye school.

Collusion: Part XIII

Going back to school was no where near the tooth pulling-experience that it had been when i arrived at the campus for fall term. Everything got boxed or shoved into a suitcase and thrown into the Suburban.
I was no were near ready to return but filled with an unadulterated desire to survive and maybe come out on the side of it with a piece of paper with my name on it. A piece of paper that mentioned just how fantastically talented I was. Preferably in gold calligraphy.
I was mute for most of the return trip.

My mother is a delicate, and quietly passionate woman who is just a hair over five feet tall. She has deeply brown hair that will probably stay the same shade of mahogany forever due to a brigade of chemicals at her employ. She enjoys pruning roses, playing the flute, reading the holy word, and taking exhaustive bubble baths. I have always thought that she was beautiful. But then again, I suppose that anyone who's not a sociopath probably thinks the same thing about their mother, and perhaps in that I'm not significant. Mothers are the link in the chain that connects us to the rest of our culture... right back to where time began.... 

MOM: "What are you taking this semester?"
ME: "Oh something about Harmony again. Something about another Bible class."
I sat listless in the back seat...
MOM: "Well are there any of them that you're excited about?"
The questioning was well intended, but not exactly helpful. Dad was driving. He drives with his knees and elbows and this is reason enough for a healthy prayer life. By ways, or die ways.... from my vantage point it was a little un-decided.
ME: "Well. I guess so."
I was developing a bit of a persona with my parents. I wouldn't even consider telling them about some of the initial bullying and hostility. For one thing, there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it... and on the other hand if i were being marginalized, there was something clearly wrong with me. I wasn't working hard enough on making influential friends. Perhaps there was a certain smell about me that i hadn't worked hard enough to mask... that was no doubt the reason. Expansive orchestral arrangements of hymns were playing in the cassette deck as we made the drive. It was one of those days in January when it's brisk and clear out... and all the scenery was brown and forlorn looking.

I arrived. This time there were no tearful goodbyes... no heartbreaking feelings of being set adrift without a clue of how to carry myself around. I unloaded everything and set about the business of setting my things in order in my little nook in the ant hill. I returned my alarm clock to its precise place on the head board on my bunk and flipped out my silver MOTORazor to find out which of my friends might be back in town. There was a knock at the door as i was re-filling my drawers with my clothes.
The door swung open and un-ceremoniously; in barged Roland.

ROLAND: "Hey man! (beaming) "How was Christmas break!?
I never quite understood the continual vigor which this person poured into every mundane conversation; nor did i understand why he would want to talk to me at all. We have nothing in common! Why are we talking!?
ME: (not looking up from my unpacking) "It was good. It was nice to be away from here for a while."
ROLAND: "Ha ha! I know what'cha mean dude! It's nice to kick back and relax for a while."
I hate being referred to as a 'dude.' Absolutely hate it. I am not a stoner... and i would appreciate it if everyone would just try and respect that.
ME: "er.... right. Well what did you do for Christmas break?"
ROLAND: "Me and the fam went skiing in Vale. It's like an hour away from where we live."
(Why do popular people feel the need to abbreviate words that do not require abbreviating? Isn't the english language deteriorating fast enough without all of us trying to sound like a valley girl?)
ME: "oh wow? really... that sounds like a lot of fun actually." (compared to chopping wood to keep from freezing....)
ROLAND: "Yeah its pretty awesome." (eyebrow raise. general look of self appreciation. he stares off for a second as if to calculate just how wonderful he really is.) "Did you get anything cool?"
ME: "I got some money?.... Yeah. That was about it."
ROLAND: "Sweet dude! I got, like, three different Bible concordances that I was asking for.... a bunch of cash.... and.... hm.... like a bunch of small things. Socks and stuff."
Bible study tools and undergarments. Thankyooou Santa, I thought.
ROLAND: "Did you get a chance to witness to anyone over the break? What's god doing in your spiritual life lately." He asked, as if it were a question about the weather.
ME: "oh..... uh..... witnessing? Yeah... yeah. Seems like I did some of that. I actually got to spend quite a lot of time working in a local soup kitchen, and rescuing tiny kittens from trees for old ladies." I said remembering to add a little smile that i tried to make look honest.
 "Oh... and I've been reading an aweful lot of the Bible! In.... James!" These statements seemed to relieve him of his concern for me... as he began checking for particulates in his teeth in the mirror over the sink, and pushing his super man hair-cut around.

ROLAND: "Yeah man, I been thinkin' that it would be great to start a little Bible study after light bell with any of the guys on the hall that might wanna join. Yeah know... to support hall unity and help us get to know each other a little better."
I stopped putting things in their places for a second to give him a blank look.
ME: (catching myself) "Oh! uh..... that could be good.... . . . . . . . . . . " (wondering how long i would be able to continue this line of conversation without laughing hysterically.)
Roland was now flexing his biceps in the mirror and admiring his profile. I sighed. Yes... what a wonderful idea. Let's start a Bible study. That's going to make my life soooo much easier. Heck.... my room-mates could even stop calling me 'the faggot' in their devil language. This was clearly the next rung I would need to climb in the fame ladder. Look out Ryan Seacrest.... Here. I. Come.

I would realize somewhere in those next few months... that Roland's mind was filled with cotton candy. And he's from a place were smurfs and dolphins are our friends.

ROLAND: "Hows everything going with the room? You guys getting along?"
ME: "... . . . . . . why yes. We are developing into quite the little family." I said flatly enough that i think he finally understood what I actually meant.
ROLAND: "HAHA! DUUUUDE!! I love your sense of humor! its like.... so dark!"

I sighed again. This person was intended to enforce light-bell... not to engage in meaningful conversation.
Thankfully the silence was broken just a few seconds later by one of my friends popping his head into the room. Eric Inafuku. I had met Eric back in first semester... friends of Amy and Christine. He was the first thin Hawaiian that i had been introduced to here. A willowy snarky thing who had changed his major no less than 23 times during first semester. He and I had similar views about school and Handsome Soccer Players such as Roland, and thus got along swimmingly. He was passionate about asian independent films, learning Cantonese....and origami. He also seemed to like photo shopping photographs.... though I have yet to discover why. He always had a way of lightening the mood in a room. I think it had something to do with the fact that he was so outspoken... and that he was so thin, but always always wore black boots with very thick soles.

ERIC: "MERRRRY CHHHHHRRRRRRRIIIIISTMASSSSSS!" he screamed... landing in the room as if he had just dismounted from a pommel horse. "MELE KE IKE MAKA! Hi ya Roland!"
ME: "hey eric."
ROLAND: "Hey." (still looking in the mirror.)
ERIC: "Wanna go to dinner? Everyone's meeting at 5. Tonight's chicken patties!" he exclaimed with mock excitement.
ME: "Sure, yeah.... Christine and I were going to meet anyways I think."
ERIC: "Well it's nearly ten till! Let's go.... we're gonna be late!"
ME: "Ok.... " grabbing a jacket and heading out the door.... leaving Roland alone with his reflection. They deserved one another.

Eric and I made our way down the hall of the dormitory, and across the long walk to the Dinning Common. Chattering and laughing about Roland, Christmas happenings and whatever else we could find to chatter about. Dinner was to become a little ritual for the group. We would work out our class schedules so that we could eat together... enduring the vegetables that had been boiled silly, and the swarm of other students that would crowd the gigantic room. We shared stories from how we spent our Christmases... I didnt have a whole lot to add... but everyone else's stories were funny and touching. These people were my family now it would seem. These people made me feel a little bit like i wasnt so abnormal. We were the loudest group in the football field sized room. Quirky. Nerdy. Mal-adjusted. Those were the days. We created sculptures out of mashed potatoes that were thick enough to glue a glass to a plate. No lie.
Work and class would begin again soon and there were new adventures to be had. Oh, yeah.... and i would have to find a way to punish my room-mates for their behavior. It was way over the line. If the Authority wasn't keeping them in check, I'd have to do it all by myself.




 

Collusion: Part V

You know that thing people say sometimes? When you're parting? Maybe a friend or an acquaintance that you might not see again for a while. Sometimes at that little juncture... they say "take care of yourself." Take care of yourself.
In that small moment of kindness they offer one of the many cliche phrases that have been programmed into the social fabric. "See ya soon." "Great seeing you!" or one of several affable options that social context provides option for. Thoughtless we say these things. Thoughtless we toss the phrase aside... like so many other things in our lives that are as easily discarded.
This little piece of advice, however draped in common clothing is invaluable.
What have we but ourselves? Our bodies and minds.... And should we ignore this cast-away of conversation filler... We are lost.

This tiny pearl of information became bright and evident... in stark relief for me in the first month of school. Much as there might be inclination to let circumstances, room-mates or schedule... class even eat away at your sense of being... it must not be this way. We must make reservation for our own happiness... no matter what the strength of our will. If we don't take care of ourselves... who will?

The first week was so filled with things that i needed to accomplish as to be foggy in my memory. There was my audition for my major. As it turns out, if you're planning to major in Piano Performance... the school wants to hear some kind of proof that you can play the piano. I had been preparing for the audition feverishly for most of the year before. I played Rachmaninoff. I played a Bach matched set of prelude and fugue. C minor i think. And then the piece i was most proud of.... Beethoven's piano sonata Opus 10 Number 1. It was a reflection of the way things worked in my mind. Balance. The most delicate balance. Just like the work, though, i was filled with passion. Passion to do well and to be above all things; perfect. A rhythmic exactitude held this passion in check and kept me from over speaking.... But still that heinous desire was there.

Over the summer before I had spent hours.... weeks and weeks of hours perfecting and polishing. Articulating the precision of phrase.... the sparse pedaling.... and guiding the soulful angst of the piece. All of the pieces were memorized, per requirement by the entrance committee. Repetition and memory made the work a part of me and wrote each line on my finger bones. My joys became the high exuberant lines of the work and my fears and angers grew into a great sea that swelled into the crescendi and crashed on the shore as tiny sea gulls flew away with the staccato.

Three faculty members of some age heard my pieces. Two men and a woman. It was like standing naked in front of strangers. Nerves flooded by blood stream with endorphins.... i felt like i could run for miles.
I nailed the performance. I didn't miss a note. What's more... for a little bit the oddest thing happened. I was communicating. I was sharing.... something beautiful. This was the art of the 'great un-said.'

There was a slight hang up however.... This isnt a hallmark movie after all. I could sight read. But i was doing it several grade levels below what was expected. My growth of expression and memory was thwarted by being a slow reader. I was still sounding out the consonants and vowels of the little riff i was given to sample. It was embarrassing. So much that i ignored the stifling social decorum of the exam.... and asked out-right if that was going to keep me out of the major.
I'm sure they could all hear the fear in my voice.
No. It wouldn't keep me from studying.
The lady judge offered comment. "It's a bit strange that you're playing literature that some don't see until their junior year, and you're reading like a junior high student.... but it's nothing preventing your study."
She said this with as little affectation as if she had been commenting on the weather. Particularly bland weather.

Relief. The kind of relief that one must feel after giving birth. And i had a healthy baby. I'd grown it within me for almost a year.... and there. It was done. It was fine. Everything was going to be just fine.

The rest of the day after the audition... i wandered around campus with a sickening smile on my face. I was walking a good three feet taller than anyone had a right too. All those months of worrying and preparing.... and perfecting every tiny detail... and now i had earned the right to be called a musician.
Sunshine leaked out of my mouth and my ears and my eyes. I was happy. More than happy. I was soaked in happiness.... I was swimming in happiness.
I called my mom. Speaking too fast... so excited... more electricity in my voice than the cell phone.
Rounds of congratulations.

My dad congratulated me, but there was no way for him to understand the momentousness of the situation. I had conquered Rome.... but to him i had just gotten my drivers license. Ah well. I didnt need him to understand exactly.
There were woodland creatures following me around and singing. There were milk-maids dancing in the street.... all the hills were alive with the sound of music.

I levitated back to my dorm room to find Larry in a predictable position. Coiled in his bottom bunk whispering to his cell phone. I often wondered what the possibilities were of having a conversation with anyone for the lengths that Larry had with Gypsy Girlfriend. Spoiler alert.... the relationship ended. Surprise. It lasted for a few eye-roll inducing months. The other room-mates were out and about. I was sure they were out vilifying some of the least popular members of the student body.

As i settled into homework there was talk on the hall of an Artist Series fast approaching. What was an 'artist series?' i wondered... I had practice to do. I had new repertoire. I didn't have time for anymore wastes of time.
Night settled on the campus. The lighting under the maze of covered sidewalks glowed yellow... transforming walkers into tired performance art. Up-lights bathed the campus oaks in a ghostly blue white light. Bells rang. We skipped prayer group. Larry was still on the phone. (yawn)....
More bells. Lights out.

Collusion: Part IV

Each next day was a mirror image of the last. The nice thing about monotony is that time seems to slip by more quickly. The ants were busy about their work. Everyone i met had plenty to say about where they were going... but nothing to say about who they were. Another aspect of society in the ancient puritan tribe i had supposed.
During the flurry of activities and people to meet my name was shuffled in a database. An archaic machine with punch cards was at work selecting what campus job i should have. With a chink, and a ding... a small card with my name and new station dropped onto a slate floor.

Josh Medlin

"Cook"

Dinning Common Staff

I had signed some paper somewhere... quill pen. red ink. According to the rules of my scholarship, i would have to work at least 10 hours a week at a campus job. Ten hours. Nothing to it. There was a work meeting and a power-point presentation about chemical safety. Cartoon characters with overly theatrical reactions to situations involving bleach and turpentine. In one of the booths that had been set up during my arrival, one of the smiling faces had asked me if i wanted to cook. Of course i wanted to cook! At the time when i was asked, the question conjured images of myself and seven or eight other smiling post adolescents in bright, clean, white aprons, icing cupcakes and making sculptures of swans out of chocolate. Out of thick glossy black chocolate. Jokes would be made... Someone would throw a handful of flour... and then we would all frolic about with as many cares as a daisy has. 

 Of course i wanted to cook! 

As usual, my imagination was my most well developed mental faculty. I had not yet seen the dinning common. Just like all the other buildings at school it was made of that same shade of yellow brick. That color like faded sunshine. A color that would take the place of a red curtain in this progressive academic theater. Order. Clarity. An un-assuming color. 

There was a work meeting that I attended in those first days. And after rising and dressing with care and a nod to AH, i walked the distance of four or so city blocks from my room to my new employ. 

The dinning common had at one time ages and ages ago been a grocery store... and the long long front face of the building was pock marked with a row of roughly fifteen double-doors. Identical to the ones everywhere else at school. Black metal. Plate glass and little black security panels to the right of each one. Green light, un-locked... Red light, locked. Through the one door that had a little green light. Those doors are heavy. A long, expansive lobby ran the length of the front of the building.... It would take you three minutes to walk from one end of the room to the other. Bent rectangles of light poured in through the fifteen metal doors and spilled all over the blue gray carpet. Opposite the wall of doors of the front wall, was another wall that ran the length of the room. This time there were 15 wooden double doors.... one of these was open. There were computer printed sings motioning me forward to the main event. 

I had never seen a larger room. Four stories or so to the ceiling i guessed.... It was like the Romans had bricked up a soccer field... and wallpapered it in the largest blue paisley print they could manufacture. Wrap-around windows in a recessed portion of the ceiling continued the idea of an 'inside-outside.'

This room was another machine. Massive common room for one of life's most basic needs. Food. Rows and rows and rows of tables and gray metal chairs covered in some blue rubber. You could seat eighty full sets of Brady Bunches... and all of Elizabeth Taylor's exes. 

In that momentous moment of being wowed by architecture.... it hit me. I would not be sculpting swans out of chocolate. I would not be chasing my friends around throwing flour on them. There would not be any cupcakes. Alac. A sous chef... I was not.

There was a flurry of staff meeting in the center of soccer-field-ish room. Tossing papers around...Writing students schedules around work. Helping them fill out their forms and papers. 

I walked up to one of ladies... and said.... "I think I'm a cook?" and "I don't know what these papers mean....", gesturing with a handful of papers that would become my schedule for the next three months....

She gave me one of those.... "oh, you poor little lamb...." looks. And with a grace and dexterity i had yet to observe amongst the other staff.... wrote my schedule and otherwise allayed my concerns about how i should set out my life for the next little bit. 

The kitchen i would discover was a fur piece more industrial than my imagination had lead me to believe. Cement floors. Rolling carts of staples.... Stainless steel everything. Glossy white paint everywhere... and the central feature was a row of fifteen 100 gallon stainless steel steam powered cooking pots that were all bolted to the floor. This would be what i did. 

I would make macaroni and cheese 100 gallons at a time. I would melt 65 pounds of cheddar that i had grated myself with a machine that would eat your hand off if you weren't careful.... 

I would shoulder 60 lb bags of rice... and the white apron from my imagination would be replaced a full uniform, apron included. all white. Even a pleated white hat. We can't have hair falling into macaroni. The cook staff that i worked with was quite a lot different from the american eagle models in my imagination. There were student workers.... who were mostly mute aside from their tasks at their stainless steel work areas... and then there were the the staff cooks.

Mr. Smith had worked in the kitchen for nearly 40 years. So i think that made him close to 70 something. He didn't know any of the student workers names. Those were the things that had changed the most here, and so were the last things on his list of important things to do. You could tell that he'd been taller at one time. Less bent. But the type of work to be done here was wearing. What was left of his hair was all white... he'd likely been in one of the wars. Korea maybe?

Mr. Rae. (We must always refer to them respectfully.) Mr. Rae was exactly like the kinda guy you would imagine owning a pizzeria in Naples. Prodigious man. Gargantuan. Italian. And jolly mostly. Given to moods. Because of his size, his joints were in bad shape. I swore i could feel the cement floor shudder a bit when he walked past. I liked working with him. This volatile colossal man with his black mustache and sing-song moods. He accomplished his tasks passionately.... and made conversation with the student workers.
There were rumors about him selling an heirloom pasta recipe that had been in his family since they left Naples.... but I don't think he ever will.

Mr. Balentine. Aggressively friendly. A short man with graying hair, large spectacles and a gray brown mustache. Quirky and bright... hard working. I worked with him mostly. He reminded me of a tinker. I had never met a tinker, but i had imagined that if i ever were to.... Mr B. would be one. He moved about in the bowels of the machine... stirring here with a 5 ft wooden spatula... skampering to one of the 60 ovens.... He liked to laugh.

It was grueling work. But it wasn't something that i minded. I made friends there. And the way that my life here had been divided into neat little rows and boxes.... work now. sleep now. read now. pray now.... it was therapeutic. It helped me balance anxiety and ambition. It focused my efforts into my studies.

During high-school i was a runner. I continued this tradition here. Back home i would run 4 or 5 miles along dirt roads.... through trails that four-wheelers had cut into the woods.... Here i ran around a track. Seven times around makes a mile.... and late at night there would be old people walking around the track; swinging their arms bent at the elbow and chatting with other old people.....
I ran around them.... I ran every day and i let the running drown me. The sweat and the repetition and the thud of my feet lulled my mind into a kind of rest. Each lap around the track pulled one of the tangles out of my head and assured me that i would make it here...
After running i slept soundly.

Collusion: Part III

The Authority.

Im all a flutter to be introducing you to this set! As i mentioned in II & 1/2, laws are useless without enforcement. Make yourself comfortable. Listen to this.
See... that's better huh? And now with your blood pressure down a bit, I will attempt a meet and greet with the Authority.

In a system who's laws are so broad ranging (i have no desire to go into more detail about the other confines of the Almighty Handbook. Suffice it to say that it outlines acceptable dress, entertainment choices, shopping choices, and social requirements with the opposite sex... the rules themselves are boring. the people who enforcement them, are not.) the enforcement of those laws must be august; and it must have eyes everywhere. The members of the Authority are as follows.

• Dean of Students: If you are in this persons office... it's because you are saying hello to a personal friend, or because you're being counseled for some sin, or because you are pleading with the Dean to stay enrolled. There are no other good reasons to see this person. He is to be feared and respected. Because, my little cumquats, if you break the rules of the Almighty Handbook.... you will loose all the money you've invested in your prestigious degree.... and all of your non-transferable credits. This man is at the top of the pyramid of power in this scenario. His office is filled with shelves and shelves of leather bound books... and bad memories. If you are quiet enough in his office.... you can hear monks chanting ancient Latin prayers. 
• Dean of Men: The Authority just a hair less powerful than the Dean of Students but you're more likely to have contact with him, than you are with Dean of Students, if you decide to miss-behave. Or god forbid... you become tempted to practice anything from the Bill of Rights. This man has been designated to govern all aspects of male student life. I know how creepy that phrasing was.... er. hm. Anyways... Let's say a male student decides that he's like to have sex, or, i dunno... masturbate in front of a faculty member,... Dean of Men would be the one to expel him. After a long long conversation about how the student had displeased mystic Hebrew god, all republicans, himself, and of course the lord jesus christ. There would be a couple of prayers.... Dean of men would blither something about how he hoped the student would mend his ways.... case closed.... paper signed. Student free to leave. Free indeed. 
• Dean of Women: This is usually a single woman. She handles all terminations of female students.... governs dress laws for them.... has remained un-married so that she may be a shining example of female chastity and swan-like grace etc etc. She is likely 172 years old. She will smell of age and a floral perfume. She will dress like Barbara Bush circa 1987. If you are being summoned by any of the above people... you should make plans for the rest of your year.... such as becoming a pirate.... or a crack head.  Maybe gardening? Consider collecting discarded aluminum cans for a living. Its not that any of these people are particularly frightening per say... if you're not afraid of the loss of thousands of dollars and being banished from your family forever. 
• This powerful tri-fecta control rule of law at BJU and set spiritual directives for each semester. When a member of the student body walks within 20 feet of any of these majestic persons.... he will feel guilty of something. He will tighten his tie. He will walk straighter... and he will either nervously and over exuberantly greet minor deity, or avoid eye contact and hurry away. Its fun to watch. 
• Teachers: Nuff Said.
• Staff: Under paid, Un-attractive people who want their children to get free tuition. 
• Dorm Supers: Each dormitory is graced with one of these. These wraith like persons are hallow and soul-less. They have been in school here for so long that they couldnt think of anything better to do than to continue. And such is their way. The are intensely religious. duh. They are mostly virgins. Or married. They love books and bookish things. If you havent done anything expulsion worthy... you will likely be having an intensely un-comfortable conversation with one of these unassuming creatures. Most of them wear sweater vests. I dont know why.
• RA's: These students have been selected, half via 'buddy system' approval through previous RA's and Dorm Supervisors. Each hall gets one of these. Mostly they are found to be the most religiously devout of the student body and are most likely seniors.... though some of their senior years take considerably longer than an actual year. They should be avoided if possible. There is much corruption in the lower levels of the Authority... much of it here that is. Power to enforce the rules is used for personal benefit... more so on the men's side of campus than on the womens. 
• Prayer Captains: These are mostly average 'Joe Political Sciences'.... or likely Bible majors. they look after 5 or nine rooms when the RA isnt. They tend to show up in your room whenever you're trying to listen to popular music... which is of-course taboo.
• (Lastly) Assistant Prayer Captains: Corruption is rife on this level. But then, what is a system without corruption? Boring. You've met Larry. 

Ah! there! Arduous isn't it! Many of my following adventures will take place around and behind the backs of these wonderful persons. Its best you meet them now. The first weeks of school brought sweeping change in me. Already i had adjusted the people that i considered strangers, and little by little my discomfort level at being forced to constantly swim in society was dissipating. I was given new piano pieces to work on. I listened to every word spoken in every lecture. I took copious notes.
I put down roots. Just a little at first. There's nothing you cant do when fueled by an exotic mixture of fear and religious fervor.

I've only done the poorest of jobs laying a foundation for my stories, children.... stay tuned. xx.